[Death Kopitiam Review] From last wishes to living wishes
From last wishes to living wishes
A Death Kopitiam Review of Living Wishes' Conversation Starter Kit
When was the last time you had a heartfelt conversation with your elderly loved ones?
Truth be told, we are often too occupied with our own lives, schedules and struggles to even exchange a few sentences with our parents.
We often leave many words unsaid. It’s seeming perfectly fine until it is not.
We take our loved ones for granted. When death knocks, it is often too late. Regrets are, unfortunately, often part of our grieving process.
Thus, Living Wishes, a student initiative by a team of four undergraduates from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, seeks to turn our last wishes into living wishes that we can freely and openly share with our loved ones.
To kickstart die-logues about life, death, relationships and advance care planning, Ms Charlotte Chong, Ms Phyllis Lee, Ms Raelynn Tan and Ms Emily Gouw, the minds behind the Living Wishes campaign, have prepared a conversation kit made up of a nostalgic game of tumbling towers, question cards in four different colour categories that encompass questions on life, death, relationships and our advanced care choices, a brochure on advanced care planning, and an ACP booklet.
Key to this conversation is an invitation to our loved ones to take a breather, indulge in a game of tumbling towers and, in an inventive twist, take our loved ones on a conversational journey about their life, mortality and end-of-life preferences.
In a metaphorical sense, as colour blocks are removed during the game, participants strip away their fears, reluctance and excuses to engage in a conversation about living, dying and many of their unspoken memories of one another.
This conversation kit is an excellent opportunity to express our love and gratitude, seek forgiveness from one another and communicate our last goodbyes and wishes whilst we are still cognitively able to do so.
Essentially, more than being a conversation starter kit to encourage us to have end-of-life conversations with our loved ones, this/it is, in fact, a gesture of love.
It is indeed an admirable and laudable effort on the part of four undergraduates no less.
Living well and leaving well is a loving act and this Living Wishes campaign seeks to do just that.
End-of-life conversations should never be shrouded in fear, silence, stigmas and uncertainties. It should take place in an open and confident environment and should be held whenever an opportunity presents itself.
We can start ACP conversations with our parents by sharing experiences of someone in our social network falling sick or passing away, reflecting on song lyrics related to death, dying and mortality, discussing scenarios in moves or films.
Of course, another brilliant and practical way of starting an end-of-life conversation with your loved ones is to grab a free Conversation Starter Kit from the Living Wishes team.
Beginning today, we should take it upon ourselves to show our love towards our loved ones and start a conversation about life, death, relationships and advanced care planning with them.
Therein lies the frustration of such a meaningful student campaign. That it ends when their project ends, and the students graduate. This lack of continuity should be something that the sponsors of this initiative should seriously consider.
This campaign is too consequential for it to end when the students made their submission to their lecturers.
We hope this is not the last time we hear from excellent student campaigns such as Living Wishes and Dying to Talk.
In fact, there should be concerted efforts on the part of the stakeholders involved to ensure that these student initiatives on end-of-life care become a permanent and distinctive feature of our nation’s healthcare and deathcare landscape.
The students have painstakingly shown us how a conversation on love and dignity can be done, it is our personal and society's duty to keep it going.
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The Living Wishes campaign will hold their ACP activity sessions at Ghim Moh Gardens RC (26 February, Saturday) and Tampines Regional Library at Our Tampines Hub (27 February, Sunday).
During these ACP Activity Sessions, you have the opportunity to spend quality time with your loved ones and share your values, perspectives on mortality and death, as well as Advance Care Planningtheir preferences with each other. This will be facilitated with Conversation Starter Kit, which features a Tumbling Tower game and Conversation Cards, and is designed to help you do ACP with your parents.
To sign up for session: Sign up at bit.ly/ACPsession now (by 24 February, 7pm) - each adult-parent pair will walk away with a FREE physical Conversation Starter Kit.
To find out more, please visit the Living Wishes
Facebook page. More information about the campaign can be found at livingwishesSG.com.
All images are obtained from the Living Wishes Facebook page
