Died not Passed

 When I die, please say just that: that I died. Please do not say I have "passed, or "passed away", or "passed on", for if you do I will be very cross and come back to haunt you for such infuriating flabbiness of expression.

No, actually, scrub the haunting joke. I won't come back. I'm a hard rationalist, who doesn't believe in ghosts or life after death. The precise problem with our journey towards woolly euphemism in the sphere of death is that sentiment is starting to beat science. And in today's world of untruth, we have never needed the tough clarity  of science more.

Death the Comforter
William Strang (1859-1921)
Photo Credit: University of St Andrews [CC BY-NC]  

So please say it like it is. I am allergic to "passed" in any form because it implies the soul undergoing a religious transition. The language of death, highjacked by millennials - and now worse, gen z - is becoming one of enforced timidity: florid and filled with woo-woo. "Death", "die" and "dead" are increasingly, among younger people, regarded as impolite and insensitive. 

As with disability, censorship and sanctimony over the choice of words does few favours for those most affected. I have an intimate perspective on disability, life and death.

Death needs a sub editor - a good, brisk spring-clean in sparse, neutral language. "Passed away" fails the first test, using two words where one will do. "Died" is splendidly lean: four letters, job done.

I do not doubt the trend is well intentioned. But these expressions are maudlin and fuzzy, open to magical interpretation. I can just about accept someone who says they lost a family member - "we lost Dad the year before last" - but without any sense of historical perspective, it could just mean losing him in a supermarket (which I've done several times now with my husband - and it's a nightmare, because he forgets he has to pay).

If we do have to use euphemisms let them at least be unusual. The Victorians had some crackers. I love the grim weight of "removed from this tenement of clay", the melancholic "empty chair"  (appropriate for me) and the portentous "gathered to his fathers".

A couple of metaphors aspire to the metaphysical. In the 18th century, you could slip your wind, and 100 years later be pushing clouds, while lesser mortals might be popping (or pawning) their clogs, or kicking the bucket.

Bang up to date, I have come across the unlovely "unalive" on social media. Google's chatbot advises that "died" on TikTok  may be censored by automated systems that can't distinguish between someone planning murder and someone who has lost their mother. It suggests "unalive" as an alternative. Furthermore the chatbot  chides, passed away is "gentler, more sensitive" than "died", and therefore more considerate of the reader's feelings.

Well, not mine, it isn't. I'm with the actor Jennifer Lawrence, who was once asked what happens when you die. "They make up the bed for the next person," she replied.

I will maintain my doomed campaign for slush-free death. And I'll behave myself - as long as no one ever suggests my dog, when it dies, has "crossed the rainbow bridge" and waits for me in the afterlife.

(Melanie Reid, Observer, 2025)

Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010.

Another instance where chatbots can be safely ignored.