I have a strange, reluctantly close, relationship with death. I think about mortality a lot, not just because I am a 28-year-old woman who never really let go of her teenage Goth phase, but because death has shaped most of my adolescence.

When I was 10 years old, my father became very ill. He had been experiencing indigestion and lost a lot of weight. The GP prescribed antacids for several months until he was referred for tests, which revealed that he actually had a malignant tumour in his oesophagus. Gaviscon, it turns out, is no match for metastatic cancer. 

When you are 10 years old, there is no one stronger than your father. You feel like he can protect you from absolutely anything. My father was aware of this and he decided that he did not want me to know that he was dying. 

Being young and naive, it never occurred to me that my father would not get better until he was sent home to die. I was overjoyed by the news that he was coming home and couldn’t quite understand why my family did not match my excitement levels. 

My not-so-sophisticated understanding of the healthcare system was that the hospital was somewhere that sick people went to get better. It was not somewhere that 39-year-old men went to get pumped full of chemicals in the hope that they would live to see one more Christmas.

That early, almost formative, experience of death defined my relationship with it. It is difficult to lose a parent so young and not grow up utterly petrified of death. I became quite fixated on my mother’s wellbeing and sought constant reassurance that a cough or a cold wasn’t going to trigger a similar set of events. 

Death, of course, has not stopped knocking, though my attitude towards it has certainly changed. I developed quite a dark sense of humour (a trait that I, ironically, share with my late father) about it, which I think chimes true with many others. Studies have shown that Scottish people are quite comfortable having conversations about death – though, in my experience, that it is only if it is being joked about or detached from any real emotion. 

There is a recent-ish Billy Connolly interview in which he said that the best way to deal with the dark side of life is to laugh right in its face. “Everybody knows death is coming and there are all types of tricks – religion, etcetera – to deal with it but comedy can release you from your terror of death,” he said. “You can treat it lightly and kid on that it’s the school bully you can beat.”

And, sometimes, that is definitely the advice I need. I would be lying if I said I didn’t find some enjoyment in dead-panning “My dad is dead” whenever someone asks what my father does for a living. If you know, you know, if you don’t... well, it is hard to explain. Nearly 12 years later, it does not hurt to tell you that my dad is no longer in the land of the living. It does not mean that I do not feel his loss in ways that I cannot begin to explain, much less joke about. 

Over the past few months, my colleague Fidelma Cook has written candidly about her experience of disease and mortality. Her words are so unflinchingly honest that they are not easy to read, but it feels desperately important that I do. Embracing that discomfort and understanding more about death is where I sit know – which is why I write this in the middle of Demystifying Death Week, which exists to help us better understand mortality and learn how to have conversations about it, whether we are grieving ourselves or comforting the bereaved.

What I have learned – perhaps all I really know for sure – is the need to establish where the benefits of the stiff upper lip humour ends and the need to have a meaningful conversation begins. People still have absolutely no idea how to talk to the grieving. 

Death comes to us all. Before then, it comes to the people we love. And, since we cannot run from it, we must learn how to live with it, laugh at it and find some sort of peace with it. I think I have done that now, kind of, and my teenage Goth self should be very proud of that.