June 18th, 2025The Departure: Ethical, personalised death care

Hayley West asks: “Are we ready for death?” And through her newly established service The Departure, she can help to answer such a question.
Not just another conventional funeral provider, The Departure is intended to champion ethical, personalised and environmentally conscious death care, blending creativity with compassion.
Based in Castlemaine and servicing Central Victoria, Hayley strongly believes that we should embrace the realities of grief, the inevitability of death, and the acceptance of mortality while crafting meaningful rituals that honour both the departed loved one and those left behind.
Hayley has been what she describes as a ‘death literacy advocate’ for over 20 years through talks, exhibitions, and residencies as an artist and researcher. And since 2021, with her weekly radio show ‘Dead Air’ on Maine FM.
But her interest goes back further than that.
“Since I was a child I’ve had a lot of death in my life,” she says. “The first was my sister who died at three years old when I was six. From there I have experienced seven significant deaths before the age of 40.
“But my family was very much a death-denial family and nothing was talked about. For instance, when my sister died, her photographs were taken out of the house and she was never spoken about again.
“Then later on in my 20s I began to see (the theme of) death creep into my art work and I began to research extensively into the whole death and funeral industry.”
The Departure offers all those familiar services such as assistance with body preparation, death certificates or transport, but more importantly, The Departure wants to normalise the conversation around it and let people be aware how many choices there are when it comes to end-of-life processes.
“The funerals I had attended were so conventional and run of the mill, nothing interesting, nothing exceptional. I wanted to see something more sincere, more personalised, much more a part of life.
“And as people are really thinking about choice it is the right time to start as an independent death worker and do death differently.”
Options include engaging a death doula or (end-of-life midwife) who helps a dying person and their family navigate the end-of-life process. There is the possible use of shrouds or ecologically friendly cardboard boxes (to specification) instead of ornate coffins.
Funeral services can be held at home with choices for live bands, transport (ute or horse and carriage anyone?) or even flash mob dancers and the gesture of leaving one’s record collection for mourners to take.
The most important thing to note here, Hayley says, is the process of death and dying does not have to be talked about in whispers or hidden away behind the walls of a funeral home or crematorium. It can be an open celebration of the deceased’s life and everything they were about.

Hayley sees that the character of the funeral industry is changing partly due to the emergence of assisted dying laws which have opened up conversations about death and dying and on whose terms. She sees that the rituals associated with death, especially in western countries, had been taken away from us.
“We used to tend to our dead, or someone in the community would. I think now people want to claim a little of that back. So much of the practices of the modern funeral industry have been stripped back to the point where they are just like McFunerals.”

Words & image: Tony Sawrey