Category Archives: Death

How might death spark innovation and design in your organization?

I want to introduce you to three different starting points or frames for conversations you could have in your organization about death and design. One or another conversation may seem more relevant for your organization. Questioning in this moment why you would bother to have ANY conversation about death in your organization? What if death could be a spark for innovation – a catalyst for design?

I’m going to dip into my background in human factors engineering, my experience in quality development, organizational effectiveness and business process re-engineering, and my most recent work with loss, grief, and the bereaved in order to illuminate the possibilities. While these may all, on first glance, seem unconnected, consider that the seeds for innovation often come from putting two or more things that already exist together in new ways…

1. Design Because of Death

As part of my human factors training I studied accidents in the workplace with an intention to understand, from a broad, socio-technical systems based perspective what contributed to the accident. In this perspective something had happened – sometimes a death – and we were interested in how that accident might be prevented in the future. What is learned through the investigation becomes input for change – new policies, new procedures, new products, new services. The desired outcome was a safe and healthy workplace for all. Here new design is sparked because of the unexpected/unplanned. It is what I refer to as “after the fact” design.

For your organization:

Turn towards:
- Any accidental deaths in your workplace OR
- Accidents connected to the use of your products and services with clients/in the community OR
- Deaths individuals in your organization are seeing in the world that get them angry, frustrated, and/or saddened.
Engage in potentially difficult and awkward conversations. Ask questions. Learn.
- What could you do about reducing or preventing those deaths? Is there a product or service you could create that might make a difference?
Design/redesign.

There are many ways in which this type of design catalyst can come to light. Workplace accident/death investigations is one I’ve mentioned above. Another scenario is an individual who is touched by a loss and is motivated to do something about it. Consider this new helmet design connected to family, an accident, and a death. Or organizations like MADD that have their seeds in an individual’s loss. In all of the these the original loss cannot be undone, but future losses can hopefully be prevented. Society as a whole benefits by better designs in products and services, and the creation of new organizations that are catalysts for change.

2. Design with Death (and grief) in mind

Human factors also offers principles for design in general. It advocates thinking about the “human” – the end user – in the design of the product or service. Here we look at designing a product or service given a particular user base and what their needs might be.

So what if we design with an end user who will die in mind? We are beginning to see this play out in the digital world. Facebook for example, now enables users to designate a Legacy Contact – someone to manage your account , and process for how to do that, should something happen to you. As another example, Gmail has designed a tool for you to make decisions about what happens to your account when it is “inactive”. Designating “Next of Kin” or “Beneficiary” are examples we recognize from many of our finance/money or benefits related products and services.

Any organization with a customer can engage in this conversation. What happens when one of your customers/clients dies? Policies? Procedures? There are customer relationship management implications, data and privacy implications, and great potential to be very unhelpful to any grieving survivors if no prior consideration is given to designing with death and grief in mind.

I wrote recently on this topic from a customer relationship/customer loyalty perspective and included a set of questions for organizations therein, so I won’t repeat them here. I will however reiterate that giving consideration to death and loss in the design of your products and services can influence customer loyalty.

[Note: For those who are interested in exploring this more from a human-computer interaction perspective, I encourage you to look at the work being done on thanatosensitivity which refers to research and design that recognizes and engages with the conceptual and practical issues surrounding death in the creation of interactive systems.]

3. Design for Death

In the first frame I put forward, a death had happened unexpectedly. In the second, death is acknowledged, but it is not the focus of the design conversation. Products and services are being developed and consideration is being given to how death and loss might touch those. In this frame death is both expected and the focus – products and services are being designed for death and the process of dying.

Consider the emerging green burial movement. (What’s old is new again.) Consider urns. Consider pet cemeteries. Consider custom jewelry that incorporates ashes from the deceased. Consider hospices. Consider the role of a Death Midwife. None of these links are endorsements for that particular product, service or organization, rather each represents an example of design for death. And collectively they represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is possible.

Some questions to begin the conversation:

How and why do people die? (Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.)
What happens once someone has died? (Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.)
What have our personal experiences been with the process of death? (Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually)

So why have a conversation about death and design?

Loss and death are part of the human condition. Our first reaction is often to turn away from these kinds of topics. What if we turn towards them instead? Be curious. Be brave. Explore the meaning of death. Here’s a few possibilities of what we might find:

inspiration
healthier and safer products and environments
innovative approaches
customer loyalty
quality improvements
beauty
healing
remembering
creating jobs and organizations.

Let’s have a conversation.

Is it too soon for Sheryl Sandberg to be going back to work?

As someone who supports grieving individuals, a red flag of concern was raised in my mind when I read that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg returned to work 10 days after the unexpected death of her husband David Goldberg. She returned on a modified schedule, wanting to support her children through daily routine and the sense of normalcy that can bring.

Don’t take my red flag to imply that Sheryl Sandberg should not return to work. Maybe it will be helpful to her, her family, and to Facebook. And maybe it won’t. There in lies the red flag – the “normal” of our daily lives is shattered the moment someone close to use dies. Life as we know it becomes life as we knew it. She is not done grieving.

Here are four things I’ve come to understand about loss and grief that I believe are particularly relevant to this set of circumstances:

1) None of us is immune to grief. Period. It doesn’t matter how old, how young, how wise, how wealthy, how much support, or how ‘having it together’ we might appear, when we lose someone or something that matters to us, we grieve. Sandberg has not just lost her husband of 11 years, she has lost the normalcy of her everyday life. She is exploring what it means to be wife today. It is different than what it meant to be wife just a short time ago. Only recently she was a COO at Facebook with an avid supporter, her husband David Goldberg. Today she is a COO at Facebook and David has died. There is not a handbook for being the COO of Facebook and losing your husband unexpectedly.

2) Grief can be all consuming – from head to toe – body, mind, and spirit. Individuals may experience health symptoms in conjunction with their grief such as disrupted sleeping patterns – some sleeping more, others experiencing difficulties sleeping. Some will report challenges making even simple decisions accompanied by a struggle to stay present. There can be a loss or increase in appetite. There can be a questioning of beliefs.

3) Grief looks different on everyone. I don’t know what Sheryl Sandberg’s loss and grief experiences will be. I just know she’ll be having them. Maybe her health is fine and she is sleeping well. Maybe she feels able to make decisions. Maybe she doesn’t feel distracted. How she feels today might not be how she feels tomorrow. Grief is a ride, an often unpredictable ride including unpredictable timelines.

4) There is no right answer for how long to take before returning to work. For some, going back to work after a death or other loss can be experienced as very helpful. The work place offers the familiar. There can be supportive friends and colleagues. For others, the busyness of work becomes a way to keep the grief at bay. But remember, none of us is immune to grief – busyness doesn’t make it go away. Sometimes distraction is helpful in the short term as we deal with the shock and numbness that often occurs in grief. It can become unhelpful if we use it to avoid the process of grief. In addition, those well meaning colleagues can say or do rather unhelpful even hurtful things in the face of grief. It can also mean avoided conversations, potentially impacting decisions, as individuals steer away from the uncomfortable and awkward.

I offer the following to Facebook and more generally to any organization that has a senior leader who has recently experienced a significant loss:

Consider that the grieving individual’s leadership and decision making abilities may be impacted by the grief.
Consider others in the organization may avoid the grieving individual in their own efforts to avoid the uncomfortable or awkward. This may impact the flow of pertinent information.
Acknowledge that grief is a process for which the landscape of the grieving individual can change daily, or even within any one particular day, and that the timeline for grieving is fluid.
Offer support both to the individual and other employees. Most of us don’t know how to do grief or how to support a grieving person. Some education on what the process of grief is and the myriad of ways it can impact an individual could be healthy for your organization. Bringing awareness to helpful and potentially not so helpful ways to support a grieving colleague might be of value too.
Be prepared to make adjustments. In the case of Sandberg, some have already been made, for example her schedule and travel. More may be necessary. The decision making structure and processes may need to be modified temporarily. As well Sandberg may decide at some point in the future that she does want to take a leave from work. Support her in that exploration and be willing to step into some difficult or awkward conversations along the way.

In the end it is not about whether Sandberg has gone back to work too quickly, rather I would offer a more appropriate question to ask is: How can Facebook best support Sheryl Sandberg, honoring wherever she is at with her grieving process, and at the same time acknowledging that her grief may temporarily impact her leadership abilities?

What if…your anger is a window into what you are passionate about?

Wanting to find your passion for that next career, but not feeling it?

Wanting to make changes, but not sure what to move towards?

When my grandmother first went into the hospital at the end of her life she was in a room with two beds. It seemed the polite thing to do to say hello to the person in the other bed, particularly when he had the bed closest to the door. So each time I came into or left the room I acknowledged the man with a hello.

My grandmother was eventually moved to her own room. For whatever reason, I made a decision to keep visiting the gentleman in her old room. It became clear that other visitors were sparse, that he too was terminally ill, and that he welcomed the conversation.

I came away from that experience with very mixed emotions. Part of me was incredibly sad. I was in anticipatory grief, leaving my Grandmother’s bedside knowing I would not see her alive again. I was also angry.

I could not stop thinking about the gentleman who was dying and who had had limited attention. I felt a sense of injustice. No one should die alone!

I did not know what palliative care was at that time, other than my grandmother had been declared palliative and I knew that meant she was dying. When, how, what it might look like – I had no insights.

My anger both for the man in his aloneness, and anger in judgement of myself – for not knowing how end of life worked – sparked me to look into hospice and palliative care and step into training.

I now know that palliative care and palliative wards tend to operate differently than other parts of the hospital. It is, generally speaking, about comfort care rather than curative care. My hope is that the gentleman I paid several visits to was indeed able to experience comfort in the care he received while at the hospital.

Palliative care wards also tend to have volunteers who come and visit on a daily basis. I have also come to appreciate that some individuals do want to be alone as they draw to the end of their life. Others welcome connection. The gentleman clearly wanted the hellos.

Sometimes anger is a signal that something or someone matters.

Perhaps a value you hold dear is being violated and it is sparking anger. Perhaps you see someone else’s pain and you want to alleviate it, you want to help them, but you don’t know how. Anger or frustration, a sense of fire in your belly, might just be a call to step in, to be curious and follow your energy.

While I have been in and around loss, death, and grief in a professional capacity for several years, I’m still surprised to find myself in this space. When I left academia I was a business school professor. I have advanced degrees in engineering. None of that is about grief or bereavement support. Now I help people step into some pretty tough circumstances in their lives. And I love what I do. The surprise to find myself doing this work is paradoxically accompanied by a deep knowing I’m in a space I’m meant to be in.

It all began in anger, a sense of injustice, self-judgement, and questioning.

So what might your anger be igniting in you?

The next time you are angry at a circumstance, feeling a sense of injustice, or going on about how the system needs to change, I invite you to take a step back and ask what your anger is asking of you.

Perhaps you too will uncover a career calling, or a new way of being in the world.

Living Your Dash

I can’t remember when I first heard about the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis. What I do know is that every time I read it I renew my desire to live my life on purpose – to continue to do work that feeds my soul, to do one thing a day that scares me (encouraging my evolution), to step into the emotions that feel difficult or uncomfortable, to let the good stuff sink in including expressing gratitude and love, and to see the possibility in whatever is showing up in my life.

Here’s the general gist of the poem. (I encourage you to read it in its entirety here.) On a tombstone there is a beginning date and an end date. In between those two dates is a dash. That tiny dash represents the fullness of your life. The question the poem raises is what do you want to do with your dash?

The intention here is not to instill fear of the end-date (the second date on your tombstone). Stirring up panic and a sense of scarcity of time is not the vibe I personally want to have clouding my dash. The reality however is we generally don’t know when our end-date is coming. We imagine living a long and fruitful life and yet anything could happen.

Here’s the approach I’ve taken. I’ve asked myself what do I want to be doing now so that if I found out I was terminally ill and going to die within a month or two I would have some degree of ease because I had been living my life on purpose, because I had been making choices in awareness of the reality of not knowing when the end will come. I don’t think it is possible to live without regret (the words that come of my mouth some times – yeesh!), yet I do think it is possible to minimize regret through actions like vulnerability, compassion, empathy, and a willingness to ask for re-do’s or acknowledge mistakes.

Do the people you love and who matter the most to you know it through your words and actions?

Is the work you are doing feeling your spirit – does it make your heart sing?

Are you learning from and in the discomfort that life gives?

Are you being gentle with yourself? Do you acknowledge your self-worth?

Are you having fun?

I ask these questions not to invoke shame or a sense of “not enough”, rather they are invitations to reflect on how you are living your dash. You are worthy and enough no matter how you are living your dash. AND you have agency in how you live your dash. I realize sometimes it can feel like you have anything but power and possibility in your life. This is the gentle reminder that there is always choice. That you can bring “creator” energy to your daily life.

Dream like you’ll life forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow. ~James Dean

I’ll be speaking on this topic on Sunday February 23rd as part of the service at the Centre For Spiritual Living Vancouver. Please join me if you are interested in reflecting on how you live your dash. [11 AM Creekside Community Centre, Olympic Village, Vancouver]

Window Into Death

Have you ever seen a dead body?

Have you thought about about what you would like to have happen with your body once you have died?

Have you shared those thoughts with someone?

Here is a window into all of that as told in the context of a family, Lynch and Sons, and their Funeral Direction services. Through their story we learn about how caring for the dead is just as much about caring for the living.

I personally did not know all of elements that I saw in this video. I’m glad I watched it. It has, interestingly, given me a greater sense of ease imaging that my family members were treated with the same reverence and respect.

I hardly remember my Grandfather’s funeral. I was a young adult, yet the memories are very vague. Curiosity about why I don’t remember.

When my Nagymama (Hungarian Grandmother) died, I did not travel to Hungary for the funeral. I have been to her grave site several times and appreciate being able to connect with her there.

When my Grandmother died, I had just spent 10 days with her knowing she would die soon, but without knowing exactly when. I left, saying goodbye, knowing I would never see her alive again. That goodbye was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. She fell days later and died rapidly after that. Because I just had the ten days with her, I opted not to fly back for her funeral. Having now studied death and grief, I wish I had flown back. I didn’t appreciate then the value in seeing the body and saying goodbye once again.

I say these things not to advocate for burial, cremation, or to say you should have an open casket. I do however now see the value in ritual and the need for mourning. Mourning is grief made public. It is the outward expression of bereavement and our grieving process needs that.

I invite you to watch this video and consider what you would like for yourself when you die. And I invite you to step into conversations with those that matter in your life about what they want. I encourage you to have a ritual – whatever resonates in the context of you and your loved ones.

I have done some thinking in the context of Advanced Care Planning about what I would like. I’ve gone as far as saying I want to be cremated. I realize now I want to consider a few more details as well. Not with the intention of burdening my family, but rather to open space for some ease at a time when there will be enough “hard”.

Some of you who read this might be saying “Is she obsessed with death?” No. I don’t spend every waking minute thinking about what it will be like to die (who knows!) nor do I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about what I want when I die. I’d like to live a long life – there is much I still want to do – yet I find some peace in this moment knowing I’ve looked through the window into my own death. It helps me live this life. It gives me a sense of being on purpose – of taking responsibility for my living by giving some consideration to my death.

This video was produced in 2007. You will see dead bodies being prepared for either burial or cremation. You will hear the story of parents preparing for the death of their child. Of a niece caring for her aunt in a hospice setting. Of a family that has dedicated its energy to serving the dead and the living. I’ve imbedded the first part of the video below. To see it in its entirety, I encourage you to go to the PBS FRONTLINE Website and watch The Undertaking.

Watch The Undertaking on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

No Regrets

It seems that as we approach the end of our lives we have regrets.

I’ve read many books that talked to people who are nearing the end of their lives either because of terminal illness or age. A common theme is having regrets.

Regrets come in all shapes and sizes –

wishing you had said no when you said yes
wishing you had said yes when you said no
wishing you had resolved that problem with a particular person
wishing you had told that person how you felt about him/her
wishing you had jumped, taken the risk, when instead you hesitated

The list could go on. For the most part regrets are about wishing you had taken an action – whether it is to do or say something – an action different than the one you took.

I try and live my life without regret. I ask myself with some regularity “If I were to die tomorrow, how do I feel about the choices I’ve made to this moment?” And then I notice how I feel as I ponder my answer. I have to say that right now I’m noticing some not so good feelings – those feelings are telling me I have to take some different actions.

I did take some action today. I wrote am email I’ve been putting off doing for several days – am email that might well lead to the end of an intimate relationship. Yet now if tomorrow never comes, I shared some things I needed to share. And it wasn’t about yelling, being angry, or about wishing for something different. It was about taking responsibility for my own feelings and asking to hear about theirs.

And there is some other action I need to take. Another friend is, I believe, hanging at the moment because I haven’t responded. I’ve been avoiding – it feels easier in this moment. Yet the idea of tomorrow not coming leaves me with a bad flavour in my mouth if I am to leave things with this friend the way they currently stand. It is not a big deal, but it is about speaking my truth and sometimes that can feel vulnerable and scary. So I’m inviting myself to step into that scary, to be vulnerable, to speak my truth, and know that shifts my feeling of regret.

A person recently asked me “Can you really get to the end and not have regrets?” I don’t know. I’m certainly willing to put the energy into my life, to live it on purpose, to be vulnerable, to speak my truth, and find out. How about you?

Catherine Hajnal

Life Fundamentals: Acknowledging pain and loss. Igniting hope and possibility.