Death cafe write-up: April 2018
Our April Death Café has come and gone in a flash, and though it was a small group which gathered, the conversation was, as always, enthusiastic and ranged across, again as always, diverse death-related topics.
One attendee, a member of a spiritualist church found that it was curiosity, a fairly regular occurrence I’ve found, which had brought her to Death Café. Another, a funeral celebrant, was looking forward to like-minded conversation and company, while another came after hearing about Death Café from a friend.
During our time together, we explored death in the 21st Century, particularly fear of death. Would believing in an afterlife help in knowing that physical death is not the cessation of ‘life’? Is it that, in the West, we have limited engagement with death, due to its ‘sanitisation’ and lack of ritual? One attendee asked, “Who do you call when someone dies, a funeral director, triple 0, the ambulance, the police? We need options for how we treat the body.”
Discussion also moved to the word ‘parlour’, aggregated from the term, ‘the front parlour’, which is particularly associated with Victorian England. The parlour was the front room of a house which was always reserved for company or, when one of the occupants died, for laying out the deceased. This tradition changed when a growing professional elite assumed responsibility for the body which was then kept ‘off site’ in a specially dedicated building, the Funeral Parlour, which was managed by a Funeral Director.
Currently, there is growing awareness and knowledge that the recently deceased can be kept at home for up to 5 days in New South Wales using ‘cool mats’. Pertinent to this is the following from Kerrie Noonan’s blog, “Deathopedia”:
If a person dies at home, the body can be kept for up to five days (in NSW refer to your state or local law). You can also take possession of a body and take it home from a hospital or nursing home. The body can remain for up to five days after death. While there is no legal requirement to hire a funeral director, they can be helpful for transport (and other things!). Like most of these death related experiences – if you know what you want it is possible to plan and negotiate ahead of time with healthcare institutions and funeral directors. [http://www.thegroundswellproject.com/new-blog/2015/8/21/bodies-at-home-and-at-the-hospital]
The topic of suicide also featured in our discussion, and an important point was made that a person’s life is not negated by this one tragic act, and that the life they have lived up until that moment in time is to be acknowledged and honoured.
