David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, returned to social media yesterday for the first time since the passing of his father. Jones re-tweeted a thoughtful and moving letter from a palliative care physician written as a thank you to the late iconoclast.
In the thank you letter, British palliative care doctor Mark Taubert shared a story about how Bowie’s own approach to facing death helped him in easing a dying patient’s fears:
At the beginning of that week I had a discussion with a hospital patient, facing the end of her life. We discussed your death and your music, and it got us talking about numerous weighty subjects, that are not always straightforward to discuss with someone facing their own demise. In fact, your story became a way for us to communicate very openly about death, something many doctors and nurses struggle to introduce as a topic of conversation.
Via cancer.gov, “Palliative care is care given to improve the quality of life of patients who have a serious or life-threatening disease, such as cancer. The goal of palliative care is to prevent or treat, as early as possible, the symptoms and side effects of the disease and its treatment, in addition to the related psychological, social, and spiritual problems.”
Dr. Taubert went on to explain how Bowie’s own journey and his art allowed him to have an open and meaningful dialogue about what can often be an impossibly difficult subject:
She too, had memories of places and events for which you provided an idiosyncratic soundtrack. And then we talked about a good death, the dying moments and what these typically look like. And we talked about palliative care and how it can help. She told me about her mother’s and her father’s death, and that she wanted to be at home when things progressed, not in a hospital or emergency room, but that she’d happily transfer to the local hospice should her symptoms be too challenging to treat at home… We both wondered who may have been around you when you took your last breath and whether anyone was holding your hand. I believe this was an aspect of the vision she had of her own dying moments that was of utmost importance to her, and you gave her a way of expressing this most personal longing to me, a relative stranger. Thank you.
Jones is a director and screenwriter. He’s the only child from David Bowie’s first marriage to Angela Barnett.
