In today's society, death has become sanitised and distant, happening away from us in hospitals, mortuaries and funeral homes, or is experienced vicariously and trivialised through television or films. Previously part of everyday life and surrounded by sacred rituals, death seems to have become something dark and frightening, to be largely ignored until we are forced to encounter it directly.
Mary Brown confronts the taboos surrounding death by talking to those who have lost loved ones and to those who work with the dying and their families. In doing so, she brings out their unique experiences of and perspectives on death and shows that it is not something to fear, but part of life, to be acknowledged and discussed openly.