After her 14-year-old son killed himself, people didn’t know what to say, recalls Christie. We’re drinking coffee, eating cake and talking about the last thing many of us want to talk about: death and dying.
We are here, 50 strong, in Mount Pleasant Cemetery’s Visitation Centre, August 21, for the monthly meet-up called Death Café.
These special conclaves date to 2011, when web designer Jon Underwood began organizing them in his London, UK, basement. Since then, they’ve spread across England, Wales, Italy, Australia and North America.
Like Christie, I lost someone close to me earlier than I ever expected to. My mother died of cancer when I was 20. My friends and I were in university or starting our first real jobs. Our lives, in a way, were just beginning, and the last thing most of us wanted to do, or maybe knew how to do, was speak about extinction.
Though in my experience, at least, older people are no more comfortable with the topic. It all kind of reminds me of the film Fight Club. The first rule in our culture seems to be “Do not talk about death.” The second is “Do not talk about death,” and the third is….
“People just don’t have the opportunity to explore this process we all have to go through,” volunteer host Fran Brunke tells me. She’s training to be a life cycle celebrant, meaning someone who cooperatively creates personalized ceremonies. She specializes in funerals, and was drawn to the Café after her husband’s death from a prolonged illness just under a year ago.
To stir conversation, we take turns choosing cards with statements like “Death makes life meaningful (Viktor Frankl) – agree or disagree?” Organizers of any given Death Café “franchise” have a lot of freedom, though to use the name certain principles need to be adhered to: meetings have to be free of charge and of ideology they need to be tolerant of all races, genders, religions and sexual orientations and there needs to be cake or a similar treat on offer, because eating is not only comforting, but also life-affirming.
It’s also important to distinguish these meetings from bereavement support groups or therapy. As Café organizer Linda Stuart puts it: “Death Café is not so much about planning your death as about planning your life.”
To underscore this philosophy there are whiteboards and markers throughout the room with the words “Before I die I want to….” written on them. As the conversations come to a close, one of the hosts reads aloud the things on the list, which range from the very specific “Run the Disney Dopey and Goofy Marathon 100-plusK race” to the more abstract “Live without fear.”
The two hours have flown by, surprisingly, despite the heavy things I’ve heard – like the mother accepting her terminally ill 12-year-old’s decision to forgo another blood transfusion, or the wife giving her husband permission to die. I’ve never had conversations like these, I realize, sipping my coffee, glancing out the window at the gathering dusk.
We’ve spoken about these matters as we might discuss the lives and deaths of characters in a novel or film. It reminds me of what I tell my creative writing students about crafting a good story: the stakes need to be high. At Death Café, it feels like we’re recognizing what good stories everyone has to tell. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
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