On a recent episode of The Book Club, host Jennifer Byrne, hugging Cory Taylor's latest (and last) book, Dying: A Memoir, to her chest, asked why books about death are trending at the moment. Marieke Hardy, the great niece of irreverent comedian Mary Hardy (who committed suicide in the bath so her family wouldn't have to face the mess), replied: "None of us are comfortable talking about death." That's true, but Taylor was and her final mission was to help us - the living - broach this subject fearlessly.
Her book may be short, but it packs a giant punch when it comes to courage and honesty. Winding through both the lightness and darkness of a journey towards her inevitable end, which came on Tuesday, Taylor takes us along for the ride, questioning why we can't have the same sort of control and choice at the end of our lives as we do with every other aspect of our mortality.
In a recent panel at the Sydney Writers Festival, I sat onstage with Andrew Denton and Father Frank Brennan, as Taylor's disembodied voice emerged from the huge black speakers, an audio link provided because she was already too unwell to attend. Diagnosed with melanoma in 2005, Taylor was an advocate for open and honest discussion about all aspects of death.
When Denton broached the subject of doctor-assisted suicide, I raised the notion that as a physician I am the one who "has to go home to sleep that night, after helping to kill you". I was highlighting how currently physicians have no training, no forum for discussion and no public platform in which to explore the issue in Australia.
Taylor's feisty voice boomed down at me, did a lap of the room and entered the audience's heart. "Killing me?! You are helping me fulfil a choice that is my absolute right." It blew open the topic to which I still have no answers. But it made me realise that knowing the right questions to ask is more important.
What Cory Taylor has done, and so many others speaking out against the muzzle Western society has firmly placed on discussing death, is to force open the coffin lid and take a good, hard look at the Last Taboo. We need to stare right into the old Grim Reaper's absent face, and invite him back into our lives, so we may appreciate the extraordinary possibilities that lie within our ordinary days.
Leah Kaminsky is the author of The Waiting Room (Vintage 2015) and We're All Going to Die (HarperCollins 2016).