Things to not say to someone with a terminal diagnosis, and more importantly, why.

“Well, we are all really dying anyway”

This can be paraphrased many ways, to include things like “Well, we could get run over by a double decker bus tomorrow.”…”When it boils down to it, you just know your fate, I don’t”…. “We could all die tomorrow”…”We start dying as soon as we are born”…”Nothing is certain in life”…”Well, we have to die of something, after all”…

Or, in a really crass comment following my sharing on a post about someone living with Stage 4 Cancer “Zoom out a bit and there isn’t too much to differentiate between couple of years and couple of decades”… followed by a “calm down dear.” (spoiler alert, I didn’t)

So, superficially, there is, I’m sure, good intent behind these phrases. When someone we know shares such epic news, the first impulse we have as caring sharing human beings is to ease the load, to make it better. But, who are we trying to make it better for? For the person facing a foundation-shattering / faith-questioning / grief-howling realisation of mortality, or for ourselves?

Death and dying are fearsome, unsavoury, uncomfortable things to look in the eye. It is very easy to offer a well meant platitude, to minimise the impact of what’s just been shared. To cushion the pain for both parties, to bring a sense of commonality and normality into such bewildering territory. But as someone on the receiving end of most of these comments, I feel much less met, much less heard.

These platitudes are of course, unarguably also true. None of us know the date, the hour we will die. I may indeed, be hit by that rogue red vehicle (although, in rural Devon, well, I would have to time my road crossing to the single bus- transverse of our lanes each day for this to even be a possibility). If this is my fate, please, please laugh uproariously and uncontrollably at the irony. At my funeral please, please jest about how much I underestimated the threat of this magnificent, double decked killing machine, maybe even suggest I may have made manifest such a death simply by ridiculing the possibility.

In reality, please do a quick tally of all the people you know who have died by bus, then those you know who have died from terminal illness. With absolute honouring and respect for the former, I suspect that the number of the latter is much higher.

The analogy of the bus is a vague, misty, some-time-in-the-future-possibly for most people. It is how we avoid thinking about what it means to live and to die. We know death is coming, but we don’t really Know. To anyone with a life-limiting diagnosis, no matter how early in the process, we Know. The Knowing is vast, all consuming at times. It is hard to see around, past, through.

Does death and dying feature in each of your days? Or is it an occasional dive into deep waters when you are feeling particularly brave or adventurous? Try to imagine the difference living, facing and really Knowing your mortality could make to your days. This is why such a platitude rankles, to say the least.

Let’s think about booking a holiday next autumn. What is your thought process? Where to go, how to travel, who you go with? What excitements await?

Did “will I be too unwell / have treatment that prevents me from travelling/ catch a bug that could kill me / fight for two days to find insurance that will cover me and won’t cost double the cost of the holiday or exclude me from doing anything with the vaguest whiff of danger / be so fatigued that even packing a bag is too much” feature?

How about “will I still be alive??”

I can guarantee that most people who are living with serious illness consider these questions. It isn’t to say that we can’t or don’t travel. We do, it is simply that there are myriad extra considerations that need to be thought through before we can even think about pressing the book now button. This is just one example of a state of being and living that impacts each and every decision and plan we make.

By not considering the impact of these type of platitudes, by suggesting that we are not in a wholly different boat, even if we are on the same sea, is to minimise our experience. It keeps things securely back in the comfort zone. If we are all dying, well it’s not so bad really, is it? Breathe, normality resumed, awkwardness avoided.

And returning to the comment that made my blood boil, what is the difference between a few years and a few decades? For me, it’s the difference between dying an old woman, or a middle aged one. It’s the difference between having time to fulfil the life-purpose I found late in life, or not having time to do so. It’s the difference between having a far-too-short marriage to my love, or a long, delicious one supporting each other into old age. For others, it’s the difference between seeing their children grow up, or leaving them motherless or fatherless at a tender age. It could be the difference between reaching adulthood yourself, or dying a child. It could mean finding your soul mate, or dying before they cross your path. It is a chasm away. Think in your own life, what difference a few years left or a few decades left would make to your sense of purpose, of completion, of fairness? Do they feel even slightly the same?

Words such as these half-joked platitudes, no matter how well intended, have impact and they have meaning. By attempting to make my experience of the world the same as yours, you are censoring and belittling my reality. I know how easy it is to do, before I Knew, I am certain I have used some of these myself. It is human nature to want to heal and fix and make better, it really is.

But, if you have made it this far, I would like to suggest some gentler alternatives, to tenderly hold such news. Maybe we could ask how it feels to receive such news and be prepared for the whirlwind of emotion that may flow. To ask what the person needs to feel supported. To express our grief that this is happening and welcone theirs. To be honest and say you don’t know what to say, but you are there. To witness, to honour, to explore alongside, even in your and our discomfort and pain.

For here is the simple gift of being met and seen and heard in all our messy, wonderful, human complexity. A gift like that changes things, it makes the impossible-to-bear weight a touch lighter, the load shared, not dismissed.