Palliative Care Nurses Australia National Palliative Care Week
Special Event
We invite you to a national online screening of this compelling documentary, followed by a panel discussion featuring the film’s director, Susie Forster, alongside other distinguished experts in palliative and end-of-life care.
Candid and deeply personal, this 72-minute documentary offers an unflinching look at the final two weeks of Victorian artist Lee Stephenson’s life. Surrounded by family and supported by dedicated palliative care professionals, Lee’s clear and unwavering wish to die at home is honoured. Her story provides an intimate perspective on the complexities, challenges, and profound moments of connection that arise at the end of life.
This screening is a unique opportunity for healthcare professionals (community, hospital, aged care) who care for people with palliative care and end-of-life needs to gain insight into the emotional, ethical, and practical aspects of home-based palliative care. The post-screening panel discussion will offer a space to reflect, ask questions, and engage in meaningful conversations about compassionate care, patient dignity, and the realities of supporting individuals in their final days.
Viewer discretion advised: This film contains scenes that may be distressing for some viewers, including depictions of end-of-life care, illness, and suffering.
Watch the trailer
Joining the conversation
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Jean Kittson
PCNA Patron and your Host for the evening
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Susie Forster
Director & Producer
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Josh Cohen
Nurse Practitioner - Specialist Palliative Care
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Sarah Begley
Palliative Care Educator, PCNA Committee Member and PCA Board Member
PRESS RELEASE
A Feel-Good Story About a Death at Home
Not many of us have lived with a loved one at home as they die. Those who have are likely to be changed forever by the experience.
Candid and highly personal, this 72-minute documentary unflinchingly reveals the last two weeks of Victorian artist Lee Stephenson’s life, whose abundantly clear wish to die at home is granted with the support of her family and local palliative care workers.
Shot by Lee’s daughter, Susie Forster, this film surpasses any of the filmmaker’s previous work for hitting close to home. Begun as a way to record the quirky conversations she found herself having with her dying mother, she soon realised that she was capturing a window into a world that is rarely viewed. In an act that some would consider radical, and certainly highly personal, she shares with the audience some of her family’s most intimate moments at the end of Lee’s life.
For most of Lee Stephenson’s 82 years, she evaded doctors and hospitals, living a secluded life on a bush property in the Victorian Goulburn Valley. Her house is filled to the brim with her own paintings of the landscape and garden she loves. In the midst of COVID restrictions, having long ignored symptoms of ill health and now losing weight rapidly, she senses her days are numbered. Her daughter, the filmmaker, recounts how her mother phones her one day to say she wouldn’t mind if she woke up dead.
The reality of death is a subject we often avoid in Western society, leading many of us to approach our own mortality, and that of those we love, with a fair amount of trepidation—if indeed we consider it at all. This head-in-the-sand approach means that choices about where and how we die are often made for us, without us being fully aware of our options.
In Australia, one of those options is state-funded palliative care at home, which offers us the chance to care for a loved one as they die safely and peacefully, with the support of trained nurses and carers, in their own home, with a hospital bed and special equipment.
In the film, we meet the Lower Hume Palliative Care team, who assist with everyday care and pain medications for Lee. Some take part in sensitive discussions with her about death. Their help, and in particular, the hospital bed, is invaluable to the family. One of the carers describes what she calls “a good death,” something we can aspire to supporting.
This observational documentary reveals layers of beauty amongst the gritty reality of dying. We sense it through humorous moments, the caring of the support crew, the stunning landscape, Lee’s striking art, and the poignant original folk song played by her granddaughter in her dining room, only days before Lee’s death.
Don’t miss sharing the privilege of witnessing this, at times confronting, view of the everyday trials and tribulations, and ultimately the love, of this unrehearsable process—living while dying at home.