In honor of LGBTQ+ History Month this October, Compassion & Choices participated in a four-week #RadDeathReads series titled Queering Death, Dying and Mourning. Hosted by the Collective For Radical Death Studies, this virtual series explored LGBTQ+ experiences with death and dying, and reimagined memorialization, end-of-life care, and other practices and norms.

Osha Towers (they/them), LGBTQ+ engagement director at Compassion & Choices, partnered with Jane Haskell (she/her), director of collaborations at SAGE, to lead the October 20 session on the topic of end-of-life planning and options within the LGBTQ+ community. 

Recognizing that the end of life can be a particularly vulnerable time for LGBTQ+ people, they discussed the importance of empowering oneself by planning ahead. Through learning about end-of-life options, reflecting on one’s wishes for future care, discussing them with others and formally documenting them, LGBTQ+ people are more likely to have a positive and meaningful end-of-life experience. It is also more likely to be a better experience for their greater community and chosen family. 

Additionally, Osha and Jane offered several ways to envision conversations about what we leave behind, sharing: “Your legacy doesn’t have to be a mansion — legacy is our history and a gift to our community.”

Osha also explored the intersections between LGBTQ+ history, the start of the AIDS epidemic, community death care, and how this history continues to be foundational for the way we see end-of-life care and compassionate options today. 

Medical aid in dying is one end-of-life option that is supported by many LGBTQ+ people in light of this history. Available in 11 jurisdictions, it allows a terminally ill, mentally capable adult with a prognosis of six months or less to live to request a prescription for medication they can decide to self-ingest to die peacefully. While only a small number of people will choose aid in dying, terminally ill adults should have every option available to them in order to make end-of-life decisions that align with their values and priorities.

Osha and Jane also led the community in reflecting on how queerness shapes the grieving process, the evolution of death and dying within the LGBTQ+ community, and how these themes are present in queer art: “Out of the AIDS epidemic, we started to finally see queer representation in the media, but it revolved solely around death from this illness and was often shown by straight performers.” 

Now representation has expanded to show queer people as complex characters living full lives. In 2023, two movies came out directed by queer directors, starring queer actors joyfully in love and navigating grief, dying and community support. Good Grief and All of Us Are Strangers are examples of the growth we’ve seen over the years in the media that deliver us queerness and justly reflect the complexity of our experiences of death and dying.

We look forward to continuing these vital conversations through future collaborations with the Collective For Radical Death Studies, SAGE and other partners.

Please check out this LGBTQ+ Advance Care Planning Toolkit to learn more about navigating end-of-life care in the LGBTQ+ community.

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