By Tania Phillips
Death is inevitable and talking about it seems to be an uncomfortable subject for most but Leyburn-based author, death literacy advocate and journalist Lisa Herbert is hoping to change all that.
Lisa has just published the third edition of The Bottom Drawer Book – The After Death Action Plan an informative workbook aimed at preparing us for the inevitable. Written to be quirky but practical with plenty of tips and lots of room to write plans and requests, the book, features the illustrations of well-known cartoonist, Phil Judd.
Writing the book was a bit of a no brainer for the talented broadcast journalist, the subject has long interested her and more than a decade ago, being an organized and curious person, she decided she wanted to put her own plans in place for that one day in the future
“I’ve always been fascinated with Western Society’s perception of death and dying and why we don’t talk about it,” she said.
“I’ve always been up front in my conversations, my friends and I enjoy a good debate. When I was proactively giving some thought to planning my funeral and getting a bit organized – because I am one of those people who likes to be organized – I couldn’t find the information I needed.
“Keep in mind this was 12 or 11 years ago when the seed was planted.
“I started trying to research things. Back then there wasn’t a lot of information on-line. We were still very much with our heads in the sand. There were very few people on social media talking about death and dying. Funeral directors very rarely had a social media presence. So, I couldn’t find the information.”
Wanting to make an informed decision about things like whether she wanted to be buried or cremated she decided to do more hands on research, interviewing the people with the first-hand knowledge.
“I hit the phones,” Lisa explained.
“I’m a journalist by trade, and very curious, so I just rang funeral directors and they were very open to discussing it with me which was fantastic. Perhaps they thought they were going to sell a funeral to me or a funeral plan, which is fair enough, they’re in business too.
“But after I spoke to them I had all of this great information, I thought surely I’m not the only one who wants to proactively plan a few things so when my time finally comes my family isn’t squabbling about what they think I might want, they will no exactly what I want.
“So, my curiosity, and a couple of years of research and writing, became a book and then I found a great illustrator in Brisbane because as you know death and dying can be seen as morbid, if you talk about it which I disagree with.
“It’s really frustrating when you tell people what you do, they go, that’s a bit morbid and you say no it’s not, that’s just what people have been conditioned to think.
“Western culture, we give away our dead in the middle of the night to somebody we don’t know, aka a funeral director whereas it was only several decades ago where death happened in the home and death care then also happened in the home.
“Funeral parlors, the name came about because people would put their deceased in the parlor of the house and do the wake and care for their deceased. But we outsource that now.
“It’s got to change.”
Lisa believes that change is coming as more and more people start to talk about death and question what they want.
“It’s incredible, since I first released my book nine years ago, I’ve seen massive change,” Lisa said.
“Even Governments, as slow as they are, are changing – not in Queensland because Queensland is still so backwards – legislation in other states is addressing this kind of thing. People are starting to talk about it on social media. Funeral directors are using social media to advertise their funerals or let people know. But there are also people like me giving information about death and dying, there’s morticians who are streaming photographs or giving information about autopsies or the process of coronial inquests.”
But there still a long way to go.
“We all know we are going to die we can put our head in the sand or we can do just a little bit of preparation – that’s why the bottom draw book is so colourful, I’ve written it really lightly,” she said.
“There are jokes in there, there are bright illustrations in there, it’s quite colourful and comedic because it doesn’t have to be morbid, it can be interesting.”
These conversations are important and according to Lisa it is time to take our heads out of the sand as a society and stop doing our families a disservice by not telling them what we want.
“One of the pages is about organ donation, you can register with Medicare and say you want to donate your organs but your family still has the right to veto your wishes,” she explained.
“In the bottom drawer book there is a page which asks “do you want to donate your organs, yes or no and if yes, why”.
“You can write down why you want to do it, so perhaps in those final moments when your family doesn’t want to let you go and they want to change their mind and say no to organ donation you can tell them in your own words why organ donation is so important and hopefully that will sway their decision.
“It’s all about communication, if you can have that conversation now, when the time finally does come, which may not be any time soon, at least they have something to hang their hat on and they can say oh hang on Margaret didn’t want anyone wearing black. It gives them some solace at the funeral to be able to fulfill those wishes.”
So why call it the bottom drawer book?
“That was a no brainer for me, I wanted these books to be easily found when the time comes and I receive many emails from people saying we didn’t know my mum had this book, but we found it when we were going through her things looking for her will,” Lisa said.
“And here it was everything she wanted in these pages. Once people fill it in, my advice on the last page is let people know you’ve done this book, that you’ve filled it in so when the time comes look in your bottom drawer.
“So quite simply The Bottom Drawer – After Death Action Plan is what it says on the box.”
For more information head to thebottomdrawerbook.com.au
