Liz Rothschild

My parents Henry and Pauline Rothschild attended St Giles Meeting; Pauline’s memorial gathering was held there; and the family was lovingly supported by a number of Friends from the Meeting. The Meeting house has also been the venue for the festival of living and dying I curate called Kicking the Bucket, and I met with the funerals group to consider different aspects of preparing for end of life. I am an unreliable attender of Faringdon Meeting.

My work as a celebrant, founder of Westmill Woodland Burial Ground, and performer led me to write and tour nationally a one person show called Outside the Box – A Live show about Death because I passionately believe we need to open up the conversation about death and dying to reduce the sense of fear and isolation that thrives on our silence.

There has been wonderful progress in recent years from many places such as Dying Matters (www.dyingmatters.org) and the Death Café movement (deathcafe.com) but there is still more to be done.

My show was made up of stories from my own life, those I work with, and others. During the course of the nearly 100 performances, I would have post-show conversations with my audiences and invite them to share a story with me. I gathered many wonderful and thought-provoking stories that I knew needed to travel further, and so I came up with the idea of a book.

In November Outside the Box – Everyday Stories of Death, Bereavement and Life was published by PCCS books. It consists of 274 stories arranged in themes and responded to by a wide range of experts – from a palliative care doctor and nurse, midwife, therapists, former chaplain, dementia experts, child bereavement charities, and me – and contains a wide range of resources and some wonderful original artwork.

I also worked to broaden the type of stories I received, inviting more from men, seeking out racial diversity, and reaching out to the homeless community and those with learning disabilities. There are some wonderful books written by experts in a range of fields, but I wanted to foreground the experiences of ordinary people and show how much they have to share on the subject when they feel invited to contribute.

I hope it will prove a trustworthy manual to guide people through life. Some may read it from cover to cover but many I suspect will dip into different sections when they feel the need or seek specialist advice to support a friend.

Why write a book about death? It is my experience that by avoiding the subject we live in fear and that when we allow our mortality in it can lead to some wonderfully honest conversations with others and ourselves about what really matters in life. COVID has shown all of us this during this year.  I believe that death can teach us about life if we will only let it.

https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/videos – This was the launch event. It consisted of storytelling from the book, and some of the experts in conversation with me.

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Forty-Three e-Newsletter • Number 501 • January 2021
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW

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