Death Cafe write-up: June 2015
The following comment, written on a Death Café evaluation form, “Affirmed that it is normal to talk about death” typifies one of the aims of Death Café, which is to normalize death, to incorporate it into the ‘every day’. Yes, it is normal to talk about death as much as it is normal to consider how we live our lives knowing that we die. How do we do that? In what ways does knowing we die impact on or determine how we might choose to live?
With reference to this, it was recently suggested to me that to increase attendance at Death Café Marrickville, perhaps I should change the title, make it more inviting, less intimidating. Perhaps the wording should change to “Understanding Death Café” … Hosting and facilitating a Death Café creates a space for people from all walks of life to come together, if they want to, to talk about death and dying related issues; no one can be compelled to come and the crux of the matter is ‘if they want to’.
Wanting to ‘soften’ death or to make it ‘more palatable’ reveals our lack of understanding about it. While dying can be painful, fearful and protracted, death is not a dirty word and to lessen our fear of it we need to understand its purpose in our lives. This seems to me to be tied up with notions of the afterlife which itself appears to be something of a Pandoras’ box. Is there an afterlife? What happens there? Will I see my loved ones? Is there a ‘heaven’, is there a ‘hell’? My thinking concerning the afterlife began when I was a child, and my interest in wanting to know what we do there has continued throughout my life.
Having a committee member attend from Dying with Dignity (check out the website http://dwdnsw.org.au/) was an insightful opportunity to learn about, amongst other things, current Australian law reforms and developments centering on why voluntary assisted dying should be lawful in Australia. Did you know that to date in Australia, there have been approximately 17 attempts to introduce this legislation?
Where there is death, grief usually follows and in response to shared stories of grief and grieving one group member reflected, “Grief changes your address book”. Anyone who has experienced grief sadly knows the truth of this statement. Death and grief impact the assumptive world of the experient. The assumptive world concept refers to what it is that forms our world for us. It is our beliefs, our relationships, our spiritual belief system, our overall world view, our attitudes; it is our way of being in the world. The impact of death and grief can be equated to a psychosocial earthquake. It can not only include intolerable suffering but a changed or redefined physical, social, financial, emotional, spiritual and psychological landscape as well. Navigating death can be excruciatingly difficult which is made even more so when experiencing grief as well.
As is inevitable at Death Café, what I define as spiritual experiences (as opposed to paranormal experiences which seem to have different associations attached to the term) were discussed. The lived experience of death-bed visions, seeing spiritual beings and having out-of-body experiences suggests that we are more than our physical bodies and material selves. I wonder then, if it isn’t so much who we are, but what we are …
Death Café is a wonderful forum to explore the philosophical meaning of death, as much as it is an opportunity to clarify some of the practical aspects of death and dying. Green funerals, advanced care directives, public lectures, even death-related websites that are now appearing on the world wide web all testify to a growing awareness of what it means to die; physically, emotionally, and socially. And to quote once again from one of the questions on the evaluation form, if someone told you they were thinking of attending a Death Café, what would you say to them? “GO!”.
