c. 2000 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Social issues, from childbirth to sexuality, are “out of the closet.” Yet, talking about death is still taboo, say experts on death and dying. But two upcoming public television shows, “On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying” and “Final Blessing,” aim to break through the taboo by starting a nationwide conversation on death.
Bill Moyers, an executive producer of “On Our Own Terms,” speaks for many when he says at the start of the program, “Like you, I don’t want to think about death. Especially my own.”
But, he adds, “death is pushing through the door we try to keep so firmly shut. Like it or not, we can’t push death back through the door.”
Moyers and Journey Film’s Martin Doblmeier, producer of “Final Blessing,” said they wanted to let death in the door.
Moyers spent two years filming and editing “On Our Own Terms.” Doblmeier filmed “Final Blessing” on location for six months.
What made them so intent on getting death onto America’s radar screen?
In telephone interviews, the two broadcast journalists cited several reasons for their interest in producing TV documentaries on end-of-life issues.
As they began production on their TV shows, they were starting to think about death in personal terms. Doblmeier, who is also president of Journey Films, said, “I’m 49. I’m thinking about my mortality a lot more than I did when I was 20.”
When he began producing “On Our Own Terms,” Moyers’ mother was dying. His mother was in pain and died at 91 in 1999).
“I made so many mistakes during the course of her dying. I’m in my early sixties and I’m a world-traveled man. I’ve been in politics and broadcasting for 30 years.”
But, he added, “I didn’t know diddly do about hospice care!”
Fortunately, Moyers said, he found a doctor skilled in palliative care to care for his mother. “My mother died peacefully holding the hand of a hospice volunteer.”
Moyers said he produced “On Our Own Terms,” so that “other people wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did.”
Doblmeier said, “We have such a wealth of resources in America. Yet, we haven’t yet determined how to turn these resources over into how we die.”
When “Final Blessing” was in production, a public debate was taking place over whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
“We wanted to offer a spiritual dimension to the debate,” Doblmeier said. “Final Blessing” is about “the spiritual dimension that is there for the terminally ill.
“Contrary to what most people believe, many people ending their lives now, have the potential to be in a positive period of growth,” he said. “It’s one of life’s great ironies. Many terminally ill people say, `Family members say they love me. They wouldn’t have told me that if I didn’t have a terminal illness.'” Moyers and Doblmeier both said the movement in recent years to improve end-of-life care in this country inspired them to produce their documentaries.
“We saw newspaper articles about hospice care,” Moyers said. “There was the physician-assisted suicide debate. Baby boomers were … talking about their mortality.
“My wife compares the movement to improve end-of-life care to the natural childbirth movement. Driven by the women’s movement, women wanted to take responsibility for the birth of their children. Now people are starting to take responsibility for end-of-life care.”
“On Our Own Terms” features interviews with dying patients and their families as well as palliative care and hospice care doctors and nurses across the country. Issues ranging from living with a terminal illness to palliative care to physician-assisted suicide to improving end-of-life care are discussed.
“Final Blessing,” filmed in Ireland and the United States, profiles a hospice in Dublin, founded in 1879, and the Missoula, Mont., Demonstration Project, which studies the impact of death on America. It also features interviews with terminally ill patients and their family members.
Both programs aim to make death seem more human, less impersonal, to a culture that has “medicalized” dying.
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Until the second half of the 20th century, many Americans cared for their dying family members at home, experts on end-of-life care say. Thomas Lynch, a funeral director, who appears in “On Our Own Terms,” and author of “Bodies in Motion and at Rest” (W.W. Norton & Company) tells the filmmakers, “Now, we’ve put such a distance between ourselves and our death that when it occurs, when there is actually a death in the family, there is an embarrassment about it.”
Much is known now about relieving the pain and spiritual suffering of the terminally ill, the films argue. Yet, doctors, nurses and chaplains warn against romanticizing death or imposing religious dogma on the dying.
In “Final Blessing,” Sister Joan O’Connor, chaplain of Our Lady’s Hospice in Dublin, says, “Nobody has a monopoly in their knowledge or understanding of God. I don’t like to give the impression that … it’s all a happy death. We often have people who struggle to the very end.”
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(Editors: “On Our Own Terms” is scheduled to air on PBS on consecutive nights from Sept. 10 to Sept. 13.
The show’s Web site:
http://www.PBS.org/onourownterms
A 30-page discussion guide to the program can be downloaded from this site. “A Final Blessing,” produced by Journey Films, is scheduled to air on PBS stations beginning Sept. 10. For air dates see:
and check local listings.)
DEA END WOLFE
