Can you really be positive about death… in a library?

When, on Friday morning, the editor suggested that a reporter was going to be dispatched to something he called ‘Omagh’s first death positive library’, nobody quite knew what he meant.

We gaped in incomprehension, as he stood looking back at us from his office door; never before had we heard the man string five such seemingly unrelated words together.

“Omagh’s first death positive library,” he repeated, “who’s up for it?”

There were a few seconds of silence, then I threw up my hand with an urgency that soon proved unnecessary.

While the mention of this enigmatically morbid sounding morning was enough to arouse everyone’s curiosity, willing volunteers were few. I had this one all to myself.

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I should, at this point, make a confession which may shed some light on why a 25-year-old was the person in the office most excited by the prospect of visiting a ‘death positive library’.

Since my early teens, I have, for reasons that remain foreign to me, been intermittently overcome by what I’ll call a death obsession. Yeap. An obsession about death, specifically, my own death, but, occasionally, other people’s too.

For the majority of you, who are not partial to periods of all-consuming preoccupation with the eternal blackout, it’s about as fun as it sounds. Sleepless nights, distracted days, time wasted worrying about time running out.

Anyway, the bright side is to be found in the transitory nature of the obsession; like the Karma Chameleon, she comes and goes. Thank God.

But, nevertheless, when I heard the words ‘death’ and ‘positivity’ in close proximity, my internal psychiatrist spied an opportunity for some free therapy.

The editor had hardly pulled his head back into the office before I was excitedly skipping towards the library to see how these most unlikely of neighbours, ‘death’ and ‘positivity’, could co-exist.

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To greet me on my sweaty arrival (it was oppressively humid out) was Edwin Johnston, a man who looked a lot more like a librarian than the ‘District Manager for Fermanagh and Omagh’ which he purported to be.

Tall, bookish and bespectacled, Edwin raised a quiet hand, and beckoned my coated, perspiring self to the front desk.

He kindly told me I could hang my coat on the corner of the floor, and, in seconds, whisked me away to a macabre corner at the back of the library.

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The corner that Edwin led me to consisted of a three-tiered shelf which held a collection of what might be called death-help books; books which promise to make your death easier on you and your loved ones.

In the middle of the collection stood a small sign titled, ‘Death positive library’. An illustrated bubble floated up the side of it reminding the reader that ‘Death matters’, and to ‘Live for today and plan for tomorrow’.

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“This project is all about opening up a conversation that allows people to start talking about death and getting things in order for when the inevitable comes,” explained Edwin.

“You know, stuff like, have you made a will? Have you made arrangements for your funeral? Have you communicated your wishes to your family?”

Of course, death is a conversation which can be approached from many angles, but in times when I find my mind spiraling down the mortal sinkhole, I tend not be to be tortured by thoughts of my family playing the wrong hymn as they carry me down the chapel, but, rather, the fact that I am being carried down the chapel at all.

“Fair enough,” nodded Edwin, “but there is nothing worse than somebody dying and nobody knowing what they wanted. Having these practical arrangements in place does make a big difference.”

“This is all very unselfish and outward-facing,” I noted. “But what about the diers themselves? Knowing that you’ll be wearing your favourite socks at your wake is pretty cold comfort in the face of your impending death.”

Edwin’s response was, unsurprisingly, reasonable, sensible and practical.

He said that people, generally, are more comfortable speaking about practical, less emotionally charged things, thus, with regards death, discussing these more administrative realities can be a good way of opening up conversations about our deeper, more frightening fears and anxieties.

“This one project isn’t going to provide anyone with all of the answers they need, but the thinking of Compassionate Communitues NI – which I tend to agree with – is that we are beginning a process of destigmatising death, and removing some of the taboo which pervades within this death-phobic society we live in.”

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“Maybe this little collection of books, donated by Compassionate Communities NI, will help to start conversations, and start them early,” said Edwin, hopefully.

“I know that, already, it has sparked an interest among many library users about how we can prepare for death, and that’s certainly a good thing.”

Death is our one common fate, the single shared certainty of our lives, and the thing which – along with being human – unites us all, but still we are almost completely estranged from it.

To think about it alone is, for many of us, to sink into a state of despair, but, to think of it together, and have our thoughts about it mediated through books and considered conversation, makes this most terrifying to topics easier to broach.

Omagh’s ‘first death positive library’ exhibition has now moved on, but Compassionate Communities NI, Omagh Library, Age Friendly Fermanagh and Omagh District Council have promised that they will be continuing to run initiatives to give local people access to books, information and conversation on death and dying.

Anyway, I for one will be going to more death positive events in the future.

It’s morbid, literally, but it is probably best to voluntarily think about death now, so that, hopefully, when we are left with no other choice but to think about it, we are a bit less likely to fall apart.