21st Century Death

What is it?

The future is “fluctuating, vague and uncertain”, wrote the economist John Maynard Keynes in 1937. That is, apart from death. Death is the one, unfailing inevitability that we all (currently) face. Innovation in technology and advances in medical science have, as yet, failed to indefinitely off-set the cessation of the biological functions that sustain life as we know it. Though they have extended our lifespans.

Despite this inevitability, most of modern society has exiled death to the outskirts of our existence. We’ve become ingenious at skirting round the word, favouring less naked alternatives, like: passed away, eternal slumber, or (my personal bete noire) traversed the rainbow bridge. (There are 156 expressions for death).

“To be human, in modern western cultures at least, is to push the knowledge of death away for as long as we can.” Jaqueline Rose, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

But death is not something that is a privilege of age. Death can meet us at any point. Which makes it even more incongruous that we shy away from acknowledging its reality in society. Even our depictions of death on tv are wildly unrealistic. US hospital drama ER was found to show CPR resuscitation success rates of 75%, whilst the real survival rate is closer to less than 10%.

We have become experts at putting off the inevitable, at delaying conversations or making plans for the one thing we know we must all experience at some point, until it’s potentially too late for any meaningful transaction, dialogue or processing of fear, value, love, uncertainty and grief.

Collectively we have avoided, shunned and under-invested in death. We have become experts in denial. Take palliative care as an example. The clinical specialism which helps those facing death to live well right up to the end, supports hundreds of thousands of people in the UK each year but receives less than 0.3% of the £500 million cancer research budget.

And then came along Covid-19. The daily government briefings on infection, hospitalisation and death numbers. The news reports which (when you can’t use Wales as a referral unit of measurement) looked to the Spanish Flu, 9/11 and even World War II as metrics to put the pandemic in context.

Whilst vaccines have enabled the route back to ‘normal’, the pandemic held up a mirror to how we collectively avoid our own mortality. Sigmund Freud once stated that no one believes in their own death. Covid-19 made us all pause and reconsider that fact.

Why should I care?

Let’s be honest - charities have and will continue to make money out of death. Legacies were worth £3bn a year in 2020, and are forecast to reach £5bn by 2030 as the Boomer generation age. And it’s not just legacies. In mem and tribute fundraising are bankable products that can deliver income and deeper engagement.

Yet, even here, in a product category whose foundation is in the death of a donor or loved one, we shy away from acknowledging the reality. We did a quick trawl of 10 big charity legacy landing pages, (including some of a subscriber organisations), and not a single one includes the word death.

As a society, we need to transform our relationship with death. Emotional solace that was previously found in religious rituals and artefacts no longer satisfies. Over 25% of the UK population identified as having no religion in the 2011 census, and this number is going up.

Dissatisfaction with legacy service providers and striking shifts in demographics have converged to make alternative ways of dealing with death – that universal experience – in demand. Today’s broadly secular society, especially one in which more of us will soon be dying than ever before, has to find contemporary strategies for death. [Reinventing Death - The Design Council]

The future of dying is going to look radically different in 50 years. Now is the time to innovate, invest and prepare for the inevitability we all must face.

Opening Up The Conversation

Death remains one of the last taboos. According to Biscuit Tin (a digital legacy vault), 41% of respondents surveyed sighted feeling uncomfortable talking about death as the main reason why they had not yet talked to their loved ones about their post life wishes. Yet two thirds of respondents in Macmillan’s 2017 report on death said we don’t talk about death enough in the UK. A recent YouGov poll found 67% of us think issues around death and dying should be taught in schools.

Choosing the right language around death and dying can feel like a minefield. You want to be sensitive about the topic, but equally talking in code can make the situation more confusing or unclear for the individual or their loved ones. By talking in euphemisms we keep death hidden away.

Hello (previously branded as My Gift of Grace) is a card game that helps families and friends talk about death and dying. It’s designed to help families have a conversation about what’s most important to them as individuals and learn what’s important to those closest to them.

Akin to how a birthing doula typically provides care, death doulas aim to bridge the gaps between the medical (AKA physical), emotional, and spiritual facets of death — both for patients and their families. Also known as a soul midwife or end of life doula, the support this person offers often focuses on the emotional, psychological and spiritual side of dying, as well as the more practical things. [Marie Curie] Whether in birth or death, the role of the doula is to normalise the experience of death for all parties involved — because death, just like birth, is a natural (and unavoidable) part of life.

Death cafe is an international movement, aimed at helping us understand more about death in order to make the most of life. Groups of people meet in a cafe or somewhere else you can drink tea, eat cake and discuss issues around death. Topics up for discussion may include if there’s an afterlife, the impact of death, or what makes an interesting eulogy.

The Departure Lounge was an innovative installation in Lewisham Shopping Centre throughout May-June 2019 that encouraged visitors to consider some of the big questions we all have to answer. Visitors to The Departure Lounge were encouraged to record their views and stories on what is most important to them at the end of life.

21st Century Death

Millennials are putting the “fun” back into “funerals.” And then posting it on TikTok. Young morticians are taking to the social media platform to share the secrets of the death business. Informally known as ‘DeathTok’, they’re trying to normalise death care and myth bust some assumptions about the end of life.

The Co-op have jumped on the no-frills-funeral trend with ‘no-frills’ cremations. A service that celebrates life rather than focusing on a sombre funeral. The service was inspired by the death of David Bowie who had a ‘direct cremation’ with no family or friends present, and no funeral service.

We Croak is an app inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying: to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily. The app sends you a notification to stop and think about death 5 times a day. Or try Tikker, the app that estimates your life expectancy and then begins a countdown.

Capsula Mundi are biodegradable urns, with ‘bodypods’ shortly planned to launch. Whilst Emergence is a French design for an entire cemetery where biodegradable urns and caskets can in turn provide energy and nutrients for an ecosystem above ground.

Death Tech

As our lives become increasingly digitised, our deaths are suddenly much less final – with the huge rise of the ‘death tech’ industry and conversations around how our online lives do or don’t end once we die.

We’ve probably all experienced it at some point. That unnerving moment when you receive a birthday reminder for a deceased friend. New research suggests that the number of dead people may outnumber the living on Facebook within 50 years.

Digital Beyond is a site that maintains a list of dozens of companies that handle everything from closing out social media accounts and maintaining permanent cloud-based obituaries to creating interactive online memorials. Many of them allow you to post posthumous text and videos, or even to send scheduled messages to your loved ones long after you’re gone.

Cake is an end-of-life planning service that helps work through a checklist of to-dos. They view end-of-life planning as a ‘gift to yourself and your loved ones’.

Managing Your Digital Estate

In the UK alone, the value of individuals’ digital assets has been estimated at £25 billion. A third of consumers claimed they would not be able to replace these digitally-stored assets if they were lost or compromised, and 25% said that nobody would be able to access their digital content after their deaths.

A 2021 survey from The Law Society found that 93% of those who have a Will have not included any digital assets in it. Just take Gerald Cotten as an example. Founder of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, QuadrigaCX. Who died suddenly, leaving £145m worth of his clients’ crypto locked in inaccessible wallets.

For charities, understanding, valuing and managing digital as well as physical estates will become an increasingly large part of legacy management in the future. So how and where can you help your supporters and donors on this journey?

Late 2021 Apple their Digital Legacy program. The IOS update allows you to designate up to five people as Legacy Contacts. These individuals can then access your data and personal information stored in iCloud when you die, such as photos, documents, and even purchases.

While Apple’s approach opens up access to memories and data, Vault12 has created a pathway to transfer other valuable assets, such as digital wallets. The Digital Inheritance offering enables users to designate an individual, who could be the executor, trustee or beneficiary, that will be granted access to the entire portfolio of digital assets stored in a secure Vault upon the investor's death.

2heavens takes this all a step further, through a last will and testament built on the blockchain and coded through an NFT. When you pass away, the NFT is then passed onto your heir’s digital wallet. You can have multiple NFTs, each going to an individual heir.