We Only Fear What We Don't Know

Abstract

One afternoon, on the bus from Inala going into Brisbane city, the bus driver and I were chatting. He'd seen my student card and asked what I was studying. I told him I was writing about birth and death at home. 'Plenty of that around here,' he said, indicating the Housing Commission sprawl of the western suburbs. 'What do you mean?' 'Dying at home and all that. People killing themselves... suicide.' I explained to him that I wasn't writing about suicide, but about people who chose to manage birth and death in the home instead of being in a hospital. He liked that idea - 'Just like the old days' - and said it would ease the pressure on hospital beds. He also thought it a better way: 'Who'd want to die in a hospital anyway? Not me, that's for sure.' No, not me, either. I've avoided hospitals for most of my life. I spent a lot of time in a children's hospital as a baby, having my crooked neck 'fixed' with weekly neck-stretching torture sessions that left me screaming. After six months I still had a crooked neck and I never trusted hospitals again. One thing I know for sure is that I don't want to die in one.