My Dad’s body was at home for a week in winter and did smell awfully after two days so he was taken away by the funeral directors to be embalmed. My mum and the rest of us really hated that part of his death . He died of metastatic cancer and the one thing he kept saying is that he wanted to stay at home through his illness, after his death and until he was cremated. (I think this comment is important to hear and I wonder if enough advice was given before having the body at home since it seems surprising that this happened so quickly but could be connected to how he died – Liz). It would be great to hear from men about dying. It is so often the women who do the talking and expressing and we hear much less directly from men. (Agreed – Philip Gould comes to mind as a wonderful exception here and of course Atul Gawande).
