As a child, Rachel would ‘mummify’ her siblings. As an adult, she’s written a book about death anxiety with her father

Professor Ross Menzies, 62, and his daughter, Dr Rachel Menzies, 33, are clinical psychologists and specialists in death anxiety . Skulls, mummies, coffins and gravestones are all grist to their existential mill.

RACHEL: When I was about five, Dad found a rat’s skull in the basement. He put it inside a clear display box and gave it to me. I kept it for years. It was a very touching gift; he understood just how fascinated I’d be by it.

From a very young age, I was obsessed with Egyptian mummies, so Dad took me to this holiday workshop where we learnt to mummify bits of fruit with salt. He bought me lots of books about mummies and helped me to learn hieroglyphics. Later on, I started to “mummify” my younger siblings, getting them to lie really still, pretending to remove their organs and wrapping them tightly in blankets. Later on, when I started at uni, Dad and I started to talk about death from a more academic perspective.

In 2018, we wrote a book about death anxiety for other academics and clinicians and then decided to write one for the general public [ Mortals: How the Fear of Death Shaped Human Society won the 2022 Nib People’s Choice Prize]. I’ll write one half of a chapter and he’ll write the other half, then we edit each other’s work. We’ve worked together for so long, and know each other’s thoughts so well, it ends up sounding like one person.

Dad can be an easy person to fight with because he’s very stubborn and, being a professor, he thinks he knows everything – a touch of that classic academic narcissism. The whole family takes the piss out of him a bit for that.

We travel a lot together for work and this is when his anxiety comes to the fore: he has to be at the airport about three business days before the plane takes off. If his bag isn’t one of the first out, he’s convinced it’s been lost. He’s fine on the plane itself: it’s just the transitions. He’s more worried about shirts going missing than the plane crashing.

But that doesn’t stop us talking about practical things to do with his funeral. He’s prepared a photo montage to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass . And the desk in his office will be converted into a coffin. One day, he’ll be sitting at it; the next, he’ll be inside it.

It doesn’t upset me: I like knowing that things will be the way he wants them. It’s about practising what we preach: facing death because, whether you face it or not, it’s coming. It makes life more meaningful somehow. Dad and I share the view that death is the end of consciousness, so when we die, there’ll be no “us” left to speak of.

The main thing we disagree on is my career. He’s always wanted to guide me, which I’ve benefited from, but I’ve also needed to go out on my own. It was important for me to build something independently of him, which is why I opened the [Menzies Anxiety] Centre [in Sydney’s inner west]. He couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just want to join him.

I love my dad a lot. We’ve always been close and he’s someone I can turn to. We still like to go on holiday together – our next trip will be to Egypt – and we both love the Beatles.

The happiest I’ve ever seen him was on my wedding day in March 2021.