December 2016

Death Cafe write-up: December 2016

Our final Death Cafe for the year saw us reflecting on a year of living and dying,summed up by the following comment which had been written on one of the feedback forms, “Great opportunity to speak about the death of my mother and listen to others and their experiences of death”.

​As I listened to the conversation I was struck by a number of statements, “Focus on life, because death takes care of itself”, and “Death is letting go of life … the last attachment that we have to let go of is our attachment to life”.  In truth there were many statements made, as there are at each Death Cafe, which highlight the need once again for conversation and discussion about death and dying and the particular mysteries thereof.​

It’s been a busy year for Death Cafe Marrickville. We’ve moved ‘home’ twice and we’ve seen lots of new faces, along with regular attendees, at each Death Cafe event.  Life has come and gone in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and all the while, death beckons, standing like a silent sentinel.  I wonder if we can ever truly know that moment in time when we are destined to die.  Speaking for myself, there have been a number of times in my life when I was certain I was going to die, but I didn’t.

My particular philosophy is, you live until you die, but how do we live, and how do we die?  Well, we’ve all spent the past year finding out.

Michele T Knight Written by:

Dr Michele Knight is a Social Worker, Social Scientist, researcher and independent scholar. Her interest and research in the end-of-life has its origin in the lived experiences of her own bereavements, her near-death and shared-death events, the returning deceased and attitudinal responses to those experiences. Since 2006, she has been extensively involved in community development, support and advocacy in both a professional and community services/voluntary capacity in the areas of bereavement and grief, hospital pastoral care, and academic lecturing/tutoring. Her PhD, Ways of Being: The alchemy of bereavement and communique, explores the lived experience of bereavement, grief, spirituality and unsought encounters with the returning deceased.