Dead and alive NewPhilosopher
managed to get a picture of this young
boy looking into the coffin of the old
man – there was a window in the cof-
fin. And he was just looking at the man
with curiosity. There was no fear, there
was just pure curiosity. And this was
actually the first time I had seen a dead
person myself, and I was interested in
the way I would react to this. When I
went there, I was quite excited – I had
been following life in the mosque for
three weeks and then this happened.
That made me start thinking – it was
in 2002 – I was in my early 30s and I
was starting to think what a big taboo
death was in Denmark. It was, and still
is. My visions of death and what hap-
pens when you die didn’t change much
from when I was a kid up to that age
because I had been so fortunate that I
hadn’t been confronted with death in
any way in my family or anything like
that. So that made me start thinking
about this. And shortly after I had a
very, very dear friend of mine who died- someone I was very much in love
with. She died quite suddenly, and after
she died I felt like I was left alone, there
was nobody calling me to talk to me. I
was in the middle of this huge crisis in
my life and I was falling apart. I sud-
denly started to realise that it was a big
issue, a big problem – and this taboo is
not a good thing for anybody.
What effect do you think it has when
people look away from death?
Often with a married couple when
one of them dies, the other dies soon
after. I think it is a big problem when
we leave people alone with their grief.
We also don’t have the language to
speak about it – in the past, death was
more upfront because you had people
dying in their homes, we hadn’t pro-
fessionalised it in the way we have to-
day. Death was a normal part of soci-
ety and you could see your grandfatherBrædstrup, Denmark. Simo is looking at
his father, Lauri Makela, who just died of
cancer at a hospice in Jutland.
Photo: Klaus Bo.