Tracey Spicer shares what it means to die well

Please be advised that this blog contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some readers. Readers’ discretion is advised.

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Written by Camille Howard for Australian Seniors

With a decades-long career as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster, Tracey Spicer, 57, is no stranger to talking about death, but witnessing the painful passing of her mother Marcia brought into sharp focus the concept of dying well.

“Even at 32, I felt like I wasn’t ready for it,” she recalls to podcast host James Valentine, in the latest series of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know. “Especially because it happened so quickly. Mum was the linchpin for the family, smart and funny, and she could do anything. And then all of a sudden, at the age of 51, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer [and given] seven months to live. She lived seven months almost to the day,” Tracey says. 

Becoming a VAD (Voluntary Assisted Dying) advocate

Despite wanting to remain at home, it got to the stage where the family had to take Marcia to palliative care. “She was in agonising pain,” Tracy adds. “And that’s when we started having the conversations about voluntary assisted dying, because mum and dad had always said, ‘Put me down, like a dog’.

“You never want to see a loved one in suffering,” Tracey shares, who became a fierce VAD advocate and ambassador for Dying With Dignity. It was a cruel end for her role model and mentor, but there was some comfort in the immediate aftermath. “We sat with Mum’s body for as long as we were legally and practically allowed to in the hospital, which was hours and hours and hours,” she explains. “It was really lovely because it cemented the idea that she was actually gone. We told her stories. My sister and I laughed. We cried. It was actually incredibly therapeutic.”

Talking about death

The whole experience taught the family some important lessons. “Dad’s now got an advance care directive that’s 28 pages long, so we know exactly what’s going to happen. My husband and I still haven’t done that, but we do talk to our kids who are aged 18 and 20 about this kind of stuff. 

“I think part of that is my husband’s a camera operator and I’ve been a long-time journalist, so in newsrooms, there’s a very dark sense of humour, so we talk about death and dying an awful lot at home. But I think it’s important to have those conversations and to prepare for a good enough death as much as you can.” 

That includes preparing for what happens after we die. “My dad wants to be buried in a cardboard box, and I think that’s a wonderful idea!” For her own send-off, Tracey has been recently planning her funeral soundtrack. “I’ve gone with Edith Piaf, No Regrets – an absolute classic.” 

Despite the grief, she says she enjoys the opportunity funerals provide to commemorate a person’s life. “You learn so much about someone’s life that you may not have known. And often they’re rich for that dark humour.

“I’ll never forget my grandmother’s funeral. My father’s new girlfriend loved my grandmother. She was so distraught she tried to throw herself into the hole in the ground on top when she was throwing the dirt in and I thought, well, that’s intense!”

Reflecting on the importance of sensory pleasures like taste, smell and touch at the end of life, Tracey is reminded of someone who did have a good death: “My grandfather, mum’s father. He lived until 94, and I cared for him towards the end of his life. Our kids were little then, they were probably 7 and 8. And he had that burst, and they said, come on in, he’ll die in the next couple of days.

“We brought in oysters, we brought in red wine. I brought in the kids because I think it was important for them to see that, and he had a good death within the next 24 hours. So, it is possible. I think it’s rare, but it’s possible.” 

What the anthropologist says

Dr Hannah Gould, an Australian anthropologist who studies death, religion and material culture, says how we die is changing, with control becoming an important part of what we think about as a good death.

“One of the interesting things about the rise of voluntary assisted dying,” she says, “is it reflects this kind of cultural shift that we have about the importance of choice and control towards the end of our lives.” 

A big part of this includes where we die. “We know that 70% of Australians wish to die at home. Only about 15% do,” Dr Gould says. And that rate is lower than other developed countries, she adds. “Australians are more institutionalised in their death than places like Ireland, New Zealand, the US, even Canada. More than other countries we tend to die in institutions – aged care, hospitals, and hospices.” If you’d like to know more about dying at home, read this article on planning for home deaths.

The medicalisation of death, which means we have pain control and can keep people alive for longer, has also created a “great paradox”, Dr Gould says. “We have better medicines, drugs, palliative medicine is massively advanced. And yet, if we ask people, the quality of death and dying has not increased.

“There’s lots of things you can do to measure it, and people try. So, one of them is to ask the family, ask the dying person, and also ask the physician: did you think this was a good death?” Even so, she acknowledges: “The words ‘good death’, ‘bad death’ are controversial now because it’s like, oh my god, I have to try at everything else, do I also have to live up to a good death? We can’t make it good. Can we make it better?”