The experience of bereavement is one of the most intense that life has to offer. To be present when someone dies is to be consumed by thoughts of love, loss, sadness and even a degree of wonder. To witness when someone is with you, fully alive, and the next minute no longer exists is beyond mystery.
How terrible, then, when the world in all its practicality, its routines of order and procedure intrudes upon that precious moment. And yet that is what happens after as many as half of deaths happening in this country. It is the law of the land that an “unexplained” death must be referred to the coroner. In making a programme for the BBC Radio 4 series We Need to Talk About Death, we have found how coroners, inquests and postmortems can arrive in the lives of the recently bereaved.
Before a death certificate can be issued, four questions must be answered: who, when, where and how. The same degree of scrutiny that is ascribed to public acts of violence must be applied to domestic deaths in intimate family settings.
We encountered several stories in making our programme. Bridget’s mother, 92-year-old Mel, was not feeling well one evening. Bridget tried to get her to bed but found she couldn’t lift her. Mel collapsed on the bathroom floor so Bridget called an ambulance. Paramedics confirmed that Mel had died and that the death would have to be referred to the coroner. In practice that meant Mel’s body had to remain under continuous supervision, lying there on the bathroom floor. Police arrived later that night and stayed until the body was collected by the undertaker next day. Bridget felt like a suspect, but she also missed those final intimate moments to say goodbye to her mother.
The same happened to Caroline. Her husband, Robin, had had heart trouble for many years and been in and out of hospital. On a morning visit their GP decided Robin should again go to hospital and called an ambulance. The couple were both Catholics and Caroline called ahead to make sure a priest was at the hospital. Soon after Caroline arrived, a nurse explained that Robin had died. The priest administered the last rites. Then to Caroline’s surprise and horror two policemen burst into the room where Robin lay and ordered her to “stand away from the body”, one of them adding, “You are disturbing forensic evidence.” As a Catholic, Caroline believes that while the body is still warm the soul is still present and that her tender leave-taking of Robin’s presence was brutally disrupted. Worse, she even felt she was being implicated in his death. Even now, two years later, she is haunted by these unhappy final memories.
How many people are affected by such procedures? The chief coroner of England and Wales, Mark Lucraft QC, explained to us that of 533,000 deaths in 2017, 229,700 were referred to a coroner. About 30% of such referrals go to postmortem: an opening up of the body familiar to viewers of television dramas about forensics. This is only done when the coroner has failed to establish a clear cause of death – for the bereaved, such matters can be very traumatic.
Some alternatives are emerging: in Leicester, for example, there is a cadre of medical examiners who can be called in on the spot to verify the cause of death. A recent, small-scale development is the use of scanning to trace the cause of death without procedures as invasive as a postmortem.
Of more personal comfort is the establishment of the Coroners’ Courts Support Service, an organisation of trained volunteers who are there to give comfort and information to families attending an inquest. As is often the case, such an organisation has sprung from the initiative of an individual who herself went through a bad experience. Roey Burden went to the inquest of her cousin’s son, David, who had died in a traffic accident abroad. Roey was appalled by how chaotic and impersonal it was. So she set about creating a network of people now trained and available at coroners’ courts to explain and comfort those who don’t know what to expect and feel pushed around by the officials.
Not everyone knows about all this, but these are among the many ways in which we need to expand how we talk about death.
• Joan Bakewell is a broadcaster, writer and Labour peer. BBC Radio 4’s We Need to Talk About Death airs on Wednesday 23 January at 8pm. Earlier episodes are also available to listen to on BBC Sounds
