Hosted by Home Hospice Association, Pastor Janacki & Lisa Robbins

To be held at a private location

This Death Cafe has taken place

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About Home Hospice Association, Pastor Janacki & Lisa Robbins

Home Hospice Association (HHA) aims to help communities develop resources to care for their dyintg in non-institutional environments. Much of the agency’s work also focuses on helping all members of any community die a ‘good death,’ however that may be defined. HHA's organizational values of choice, knowledge, community, collaboration, and empowerment at – and before – end of life lies directly in-line with the values of the Death Café movement.

Pastor Janaki Bandara of St.Peter's Lutheran Church explains 'why' it's important to her to host a Death Cafe:

"In 2004, as an engineer and project manager, I encountered the death of loved ones for the first time. One was a close family friend had a long palliative journey of many years before cancer took her life. The second was the suicide of a little-known cousin, half a world away in Sri Lanka. These two deaths, or more accurately my response to them, rocked my world. I was astounded by the grief, as well as the questions on the meaning of life that came up for me in response to these deaths. In 2005 my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and after a year of difficult palliative time, he died in 2006. Again I found myself astounded by the responses I had. Why? perhaps because death and dying were not topics I had thought much about, let alone talked with others about. Suffering, and the role of suffering in helping to order values and priorities in our lives ... this was also something I had not given much thought to.

My experiences with death and walking alongside my dad in his dying transformed my life. I am now a pastor and a spiritual care giver because I have come to understand all of life as a journey towards the transition from mortality to immortality. I have come to understand palliative process as one of the most sacred processes and journeys that we can be part of, or witness to - because for me, death keeps life in perspective. The quote I heard at a deathbed from a loved one sticks with me "the last shirt has no pockets" ... it makes me ask the question then, what do we learn from death and dying? What are we supposed to take away from being witness and accompanying those who are dying?

Yet, in our culture and context, death is sanitized and we tend to not talk about how our own finitude shapes how we live our lives. I would like to host a Death Cafe at St Peter's (810 King St East, Cambridge) as a means of bringing this difficult topic for conversation out into the open, where those with questions and experiences they might need to share can have a safe space to talk, where the conversation might be facilitated in a healthy way, and through this dialogue, our community be better equipped, person by person, to face the unavoidable encounter with death - whether our own or of a loved one, whether expected or unexpected - with compassion and a knowing that we walk this journey in common humanity - we all walk this journey at some point."

The event is facilitated by Lisa Robbins of Home Hospice Waterloo Region. As a Death Doula Candidate is proud to be part of this community outreach.

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