Last week was a tremendously powerful week for evoking memories and reflection with “Remembrance Day” activities being broadcast on the television and ceremonies being held in our community. It was also a week that I found out that a number of people I knew had died.
This has had me thinking about remembering, reflecting and the social normal methods we share and speak to each other about the death of friends, relations and colleagues.
It wasn’t that long ago that I noticed another cherished colleague, too many at the Royal Derwent Hospital, had died and as expected there was a wonderful response and out pouring from past friends and colleagues, all sharing their condolences and stories of who that person was to them and their loss and sadness felt. As a small community there was a joint grieving that could be felt even through the digital social media that we commonly use today.
This has made me think as I was dealing with grief, the grief and loss of two people. This was on top of the news of the last six people in a short space of months that have died and yet some of this news I hadn’t heard for weeks afterwards.
There had been no opportunity to show that out pouring of grief, no opportunity to attend public funerals to celebrate the lives of these people and the contribution they had made to society and the people around them. There was no Facebook group to share this knowledge, no place to write your thoughts. It was allowed to quietly pass.
This is the life (and death) of the past Residents of Willow Court.
What is stopping this from happening? Doesn’t true inclusion look the same as other people’s lives or is the need to maintain the “Organisation’s” privacy and confidentiality policy stopping real inclusion, even in death?
The only characteristic that is different was an intellectual disability. Maybe we have a long way to go.