"Funeral rituals in India helped me celebrate memories of my dad"
Anil Seth, cognitive and computational neuroscience professor and author, tells us what his father's life and death has taught him about a good end of life.
“I look back and see that he was very lucky to be able to die the way he did,” says Anil Seth, of his father Bhola, who died from heart failure in 2013.
Bhola, aged 85, was cared for in his final weeks by Marie Curie Nurses in his own home. “My Mum and I were lucky too, to have space and time to just be with him. Time that wasn’t pushed out by hospital lights, noises, action. There was a calmness, it felt solemn, natural.”
“It was a very difficult time,” he says, “but not a sad time.”
We don’t prioritise a good death
As a society, Anil believes, we don’t prioritise a “good death” – like his father’s. But we must. Part of this is making sure you know what’s important to those who are approaching the end of life, while there’s still time. “Having these conversations can be difficult, but is hugely important. We shouldn’t turn our face away from death as a society. It will happen.”
Anil has spent his career “on the border of the humanities and the sciences”, studying consciousness. “I try to understand what happens in the brain that means we’re more than just a complex biological machine, that we experience the world, that each of us experiences being ‘me’,” he explains.
To some extent this scientific and philosophical work has shaped his thinking about dying and death. “It’s very plausible that a deeper understanding of consciousness takes away some of the uncertainty about what death involves,” he says.
“For me, there’s no ambiguity about the fact that my dad has gone and that there’s none of his consciousness around anymore.”
But he knows that most of us haven't explored what makes us who we are, or discussed dying and death in depth. "There is this fear, this tendency to look away from the inevitability of oblivion. Trying to come to terms with the precarious nature of the self, talking about what that means, can be helpful."
Trying to come to terms with the precarious nature of the self, talking about what that means, can be helpful.
There's a growing recognition that rituals are important
While Anil’s understanding has helped him navigate his loss, it hasn’t taken away the pain. “It doesn’t inoculate you from grief. I spent a long time grieving. I still grieve. I think my work just provides a different relationship to this emotion, taking me to a place where I can be a little bit more comfortable with it.”
Ritual has also been source of comfort – at the end of his father’s life (the calmness of the final hours “gave a sense of ritual”) and after his death. This too is something he believes could help more families experience the best possible end of life; but from which Western society is increasingly disconnected.
“A sense of ritual is often missing in the journey of dying in the west. Yet it provides scaffolding, you know what to expect, what to do at a particular time. The last thing you want when someone is dying is to be thinking: ‘What should I be doing?’, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’.”
Traditionally rituals surrounding death have been rooted in religion. But Anil is pleased that alternatives, such as those offered by the Humanists, are increasingly available for those without religious faith – one-third of the population of England and Wales, according to the 2021 census. “There is growing recognition that process and ritual are important, especially for children. We should foster that. The challenge is to interpret what we increasingly understand from science and philosophy into these rituals, in ways that enrich rather than undermine them,” he says.
A sense of ritual is often missing in the journey of dying in the west. Yet it provides scaffolding, you know what to expect, what to do at a particular time.
Rituals help the people left behind
For Anil and his mother, it was important to celebrate his father’s rich life and cultural heritage. Bhola grew up in Allahabad, India, moving to Britain to study engineering in 1947.
They held a funeral near Bhola’s Oxfordshire home, and scattered half of his ashes in the Lake District – a place he loved. Then, a few months later, they observed funeral rituals in India, where most of Bhola’s wider family still live.
“The rituals there can go on for a long time. There are aspects of solemnity but there are also moments of joy in celebrating memories,” he says. This opportunity to focus on his father’s life, spending time in the places important to him, was deeply comforting.
His father’s “good death” – with expert end of life care in his own home, as he’d wished, and with the rituals known to him and his family – have helped Anil focus on happy memories.
“It’s rarely emphasised but it’s so important for the people left behind as well as the person who’s dying. In my experience, there’s a rebalancing of memories as time goes by, from being dominated by the time he was ill, to covering the whole time he was part of my life.”
He treasures these moments. “The impact of his life is everywhere for me, and it continues to change. No memory is a static snapshot. Every memory evolves over time,” he says. He particularly recalls a trip to India with his parents in 2009. “We walked around where he grew up. He was explaining how different it had been, and I tried to imagine him as a young boy, roaming around the streets.”
The rituals [in India] can go on for a long time. There are aspects of solemnity but there are also moments of joy in celebrating memories.
A holistic view on end of life
A connection with places they visited together, is something Anil particularly values. “We used to go on holiday to the Lake District. I have lots of memories of tramping around the fells, walking and talking.” Bhola so loved the Lakeland landscape that he eventually bought a retirement cottage there, which remains in the family. “It’s a very special place for me now. There are threads of continuity in my life which mean thoughts about him surface for me frequently when I’m in these places.”
As medicine and science advance, we mustn’t lose a holistic view of the end of life, asking difficult questions about what’s most important to the person dying and to their loved ones, Anil believes. “Modern medicine is so predicated on keeping people alive at all costs. We need to think about that person’s wishes, and attention must shift from keeping people alive at all costs, to allowing them to live the best life with the time they have remaining."
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
