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Two Together: Save £100!
Save £100 when you purchase two funeral plans together. Call us for more details.
Buy now, pay in January
Buy your funeral plan today and pay in January for peace of mind this Christmas. Click here for full T&Cs.
12 minute read
A great source of solace when we are going through a bereavement can be found by reading and engaging with stories about death. Some of the greatest works of literature and fiction are stories about death, dealing with themes of grief, loss, love and remembrance, as well as spiritual responses to death. We wanted to write this article sharing some of our favourite stories about death, and reflecting on their wider significance.
Death is an extremely rich creative springboard for storytelling. It has proven to be a powerful narrative theme, with many different cultures treating it differently.
Death gets to the heart of many of the most complex emotions that it’s possible for us to feel. It’s also deeply connected to the big philosophical questions that we might ask ourselves, such as “why are we here?” or “what is love?”. When we experience the unexpected death of a loved one, or any other bereavement which we feel keenly, it can prompt us to ask ourselves these questions, or to simply be overwhelmed by the emotions of grief.
Laurus, a recent award-winning international best seller, follows the tragic story of a young healer named Rukinets, who attempts to grapple with some of these questions. Set in mediaeval Russia, but spanning Europe and the Holy Land, we follow Rukinets on a spiritual journey of repentance as he comes to terms with the death of the love of his life, Ustina, and their child, who both died in childbirth.
Rukinets buries himself in work to cope with his grief – a common response to loss still seen today – giving spiritual and medicinal aid to those dying of the plague around him. In placing himself on the boundary between life and death in this way, he gains clarity on the themes and questions that death can provoke.
There are many different beliefs on death and funerals, and these can vary according to culture, religion or nationality. There has been a decline in religion in the UK in recent years, meaning that the role of Rukinets in Laurus – one who guides people spiritually through the difficulties of death, is now shared by the likes of the death doula.
Our beliefs on the afterlife impact the stories about death which we tell ourselves. The Death of Ivan Ilych – one of the most famous and well known stories about death – would have different significance for one who believes in the concept of reincarnation, as a hindu or buddhist would. Ivan is a man with a “most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible” life, free of worry. One day, whilst hanging curtains for his new home, he falls and injures himself, which brings on an unspecified terminal decline in his health.
In many ways, this story is about living the best life you can live whilst you can (for Tolstoy that meant morally according to Christianity, but its message is more widely applicable than that). Ivan, as his end drew near, realised that he had not taken the chance to live such a life himself; he was then struck by “some force” in the chest and side, before being brought before a bright light. It’s one of the most commonly held myths about death that we see a bright light before the end, but this may have something to do with how we commonly imagine Heaven in Christianity.
Reading stories about death and grief can help us to realise that we are not alone in what we are going through, and that experiencing the emotional pain and confusion of grief is central to the human experience. That’s why telling stories about death is so important: it can help us to open up conversations about dying, and bring us closer together.
Some of the most moving stories about death come from the Classical world. One of the most profound of the ancient myths and legends about death is Ovid’s retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. It is the story of the semi-divine musician, Orpheus, trying and failing to bring his love, Eurydice, back from the world of the dead after she was killed by a snakebite on their wedding day. After successfully convincing Pluto (the King of the Dead), through song, to let him have her back. Despite his promise to Pluto that he won’t, he can’t resist checking over his shoulder that she is following him when they are almost back to the land of the living. But, when he glimpses her, agonisingly, she is spirited away from him once again.
Apart from showing us that saying goodbye to a dying loved one, or letting go of one who has recently died, can be incredibly difficult, it’s also a story that shows the power that music and love can have over death. It’s one of the reasons that we have always felt it important to include music in our funeral ceremonies, as it can help us to express feelings we may be struggling to put into words.
Like Rukinets in Laurus, there are many stories in which death helps the narrator to evolve as a person, and to become a positive part of themselves. This is the case in The Fault in Our Stars. This tragic love story depicts two teenage lovers, Hazel and Augustus, who are facing cancer together on the same ward, although Augustus is in remission at the start of the story. They become close after agreeing to read each other’s favourite books, one of which is itself a story about death, which shows how powerful engaging with such stories can be.
In the end, Augustus’s cancer comes back, and his health begins to deteriorate. When he realises he is going to die, he decides to have a ‘Living Funeral’; a sort of celebration of life which the person who is dying also attends, giving them a chance to say goodbye to everyone who meant something to them in life. When we lose the one person who we know most closely of all, and who knows us on the same terms, it can feel as if we are truly alone. But stories like The Fault in Our Stars can help us to reflect on the beauty and the positives in having known someone: it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
We often assume that, when breaking bad news about a death to family members, we should spare children from most of the detail, or even invent convoluted ways of over-softening the message to them. But children can be more capable of understanding death than we give them credit for, and of having an appetite for knowledge about the subject. Stories about death are a great way to connect with and educate children in your family about death, particularly if there has been a recent death in the family, such as of a grandparent.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga – a collection of novels which hardly needs an introduction – is arguably the most famous series of novels in the history of the world. It can be difficult at times to remember that they were published by Bloomsbury, a publishing company which typically focused on children’s books. The protagonist, Harry, is 11 years old at the start of The Philosopher’s Stone, and makes a perfect character for children of a similar age to relate to.
Apart from learning how to cast spells and brew potions, Harry is also an orphan, given that his parents were murdered when he was a baby. One of the central themes of the whole saga is how to cope with the death of a parent, and in the earlier novels, the theme is handled delicately, but plainly and openly.
For children of a younger age who are perhaps not reading fully independently, a great picture book that can be read by parents together with them is The Memory Tree. The short story revolves around an old fox living in a forest, who, feeling tired, lies down to a sleep from which he will awake no more. Before long, his friends gather one by one to share memories of their friend.
This book gets right to the heart of how telling or reading stories about death can be helpful for remembering a loved one. It teaches children the basic building blocks of grieving, as well as a healthy attitude towards death. It can help children to reflect on the things they miss and love about those they’ve lost, and to help them understand that it’s okay to grieve.
Losing a loved one, especially a treasured parent, friend, or partner provokes some of the profoundest and most difficult emotional responses in us. Many stories about death deal with this aspect of things.
Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is a television series produced by Netflix largely focusing around telling sinister cautionary tales about overreliance or dependency on technology, or otherwise the overreach of technology into our lives. One episode, ‘Be Right Back’, tells the story of Martha, who, one day, loses her partner, Ash, in a car-crash. The episode imagines a reality in which we can pay a company to produce a physical replica of the one we’ve lost, who seems human, but isn’t, and who can communicate with us as if we had never been bereaved at all.
In the episode, Ash is reproduced for Martha down to the last detail, including the quirks of his personality and voice, which the company is able to do using voice and messaging data from his phone. It teaches us the importance of grieving and of recognising the fact of a loved one’s death, if and when we have been bereaved, by showing us the drawbacks of what can happen if we don’t.
In the episode, Martha is unable to move on from the death of Ash, because his replicated presence prevents her from embarking on the grieving process. It’s a sinister take on the fact about death that we can often see our lost loved ones in front of us, as if they really were there. This may sound like a load of science fiction, but this type of technology already exists through voice-recognition software and GPT AI. These kinds of stories about death warn us about the challenges which technology will pose to the grieving process in the near future.
The way in which somebody faces death is something that can inspire us. Many of us in life will need to look death in the eye and hold our nerve – one of the most difficult things we can do.
Me Before You centres on the love between Louisa and her partner, Will, who became quadriplegic after being hit by a motorcycle. Will, unable to face the prospect of life in a wheelchair, travels to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide, even after having found love with Louisa. The novel raises lots of questions about the difficulty of doing right by our loved ones when, in doing so, we may be hurting ourselves. It helps us to understand the importance of empathy and patience when learning the end-of-life wishes of a loved one.
Me Before You is one of the most famous stories about death in recent years, centering around the subject of assisted dying. With the UK’s Assisted Dying Bill having passed in late-November 2024, the practice is now highly likely to be legalised within certain strict eligibility criteria. MPs were offered a free vote in the Commons on the emotive and divisive issue, meaning they could vote based on their ethical or religious beliefs on death and funerals, rather than on party lines.
The issue of assisted dying is very close to Aura’s heart. Our founder, Paul Jameson, is a passionate advocate of the right to a choice in assisted dying, which he writes about in his own book, Very Much Alive; a memoir of his experience with the terminal illness of motor neurone disease. In it, he candidly and openly confronts the pain of facing a terminal illness; his sooner-than-expected journey towards end-of-life planning; and the beginning of our company, Aura, which Paul still runs today alongside his son, Dave (our CEO), and a family friend called Ben (our COO).
Whatever your reason for having read this article, we hope that you have enjoyed it. Telling or reading stories about death, especially if they were the favourites of people we might have lost, can be a wonderful way of remembering a loved one. Readings at funerals can even be enhanced by referring to them, and it can also be useful to think of stories about death when writing a eulogy.
Aura is here to help if you find yourself needing to arrange a funeral, whether in the here and now for a loved one, or in the future for yourself. Aura’s funeral services, whether direct cremations or prepaid funeral plans, are some of the best regarded in the country; we are the top-rated ‘Cremation Services’ provider in the UK on Trustpilot, with a score of 4.9/5 stars. If you’d like your help in arranging a funeral, or in helping to coordinate a funeral ceremony, we are always ready to assist.
