#109. What if your loved one doesn't have a 'good' death? How do you cope with the trauma of witnessing someone suffer at the end of their life?

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, to see if hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss.

Loss #55 of 101: Loss through a bad/complex death

In this episode we chat to Kay Backhouse, in Morecombe, Lancashire, about the death of her youngest brother, Syd, to neuroendocrine cancer in 2019.

Kay was living in Australia with her family when her brother was first diagnosed, and one day she received some unexpected communication from him that started a chain of events that led her back home.

Sadly, a couple of years later, in a hospice, with his family, Syd suffered a 'bad death' or 'complex death' which added an extra, very painful, level of grief and trauma to Kay's loss.

This is a subject you don't often hear discussed, so we're very grateful to Kay for chatting to us about her experience.

Kay believes that if she’d been better prepared, or educated, about deaths like this, then maybe the way her brother died wouldn't have been so traumatising.

She's now passionate to help others learn more about death, and we believe it's an important topic we should all be willing to learn about - not only in case we go through it, but also to help others.

And Syd's death has had a profound impact on Kay's personal and professional life; the way she views death, sees hope, spends her time, and views the future. This is a conversation that is anything but sad and depressing, it is a story of hope.

For more about Kay, and her book, 'Losing You, Finding Me', visit: https://www.kaybackhouse.com

Listen to our other episode with Kay & Maddy: https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/7c8f6445/lets-chat-life-in-a-hospice-with-maddy-bass-and-kay-backhouse

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