There is a societal change taking place which the Farewell Innovators (My Last Song included) are part of, and which the Dying Matters Coalition is heading.

It is the belated recognition that the baby boomer generation born in the two decades following the end of the second world war is now reaching the latter years of their lives and that their end of life expectations will need to be met.

It’s becoming rather un-PC to call them old, or elderly, not least because they don’t think they are. Indeed, with more people living to 100, those in their 60s and 70s aren’t really old any more.

More acceptable terms are elders, which has a ring of wisdom attached to it, and seniors which connotes greater experience.

Unlike the generations before them, this group – let’s call them superior seniors – will take more control of their end of life experiences. Baby boomers have been criticised for being the ‘me, me, me’ generation who get what they want.  This attitude isn’t going to change as baby boomers become superior seniors.

They will want better health care so they lead longer and healthier lives. They will want to be independent as long as possible, and when looked after will expect a higher standard of service from care providers.

When the end of their lives is approaching, they will want to be involved in the decisions previously taken by family members or their doctors about how much medical intervention they want to receive and where they want to die.

And when they die, they will want their lives to be remembered positively and uniquely with a high quality farewell ceremony or service.

Superior seniors will have learned from the end of life experiences of their parents’ generation and not been impressed by poor quality care delivery, hardly reassured by the NHS end of life medical care lottery and disappointed by anonymous, dreary send offs.

We are at a point when the future tense is changing to the present…time is passing, years are being added to the ages of the baby boomers. If not old, they are no longer young.

The farewell innovators are those companies and organisations who want to give this increasingly large market (by 2015 there will be well over ten million people aged 65 or older) a better farewell experience.

Central to this approach is the move towards a ‘good death’, the achieving of which is the purpose of the Dying Matters Coalition. It means the ailing patients, their families and their doctors have to address dying and death openly and positively to make the end of life experience as comfortable as possible. The My Last Song death plan is an holistic approach to organising a comfortable death.

While all this signals the retreat of the pervasive Anglo Saxon death taboo, superior seniors and the farewell innovators who wish to provide services for them should not be complacent.

Death is sad, upsetting, worrying and uncomfortable to discuss. It is often easier to ignore, but if not addressed, superior seniors can hardly complain if the end of life decisions are made by their families or health professionals, not always for the reasons they would have chosen.

As this government puts an inclusive, collaborative and mutually supportive Big Society at the top of its agenda, it must do more to encourage better living standards and the delivery of a ‘good’ death for the increasingly large numbers of superior seniors who will not expect to be left out of the tent.

Tags: baby boomers, Big Society, death, death plan, Dying Matters, Farewell Innovators, funerals, palliative care, superior seniors

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Age related illness, Funeral, Planning for the end. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.