Summary of Death Cafe in Belleville, IL 6272015
A write up of Belleville, IL Death Cafe
By maggieboone
We were pleased to welcome 8 new participants into the fold. These new members had read a recently published article about the death cafe in the Belleville News-Democrat. We began the meeting with introductions since there were so many new participants. Each were asked to provide their name and their reasons for joining our Death Cafe discussion.
We discussed green burials using mushroom spores which aid in decomp of bodies. This may be an alternative for the overcrowding of the available cemeteries.
The discussion then went to voluntary sharing of the first encounter with death and how the family embraced (or not) it. It was interesting to note that most of the member's were taken to funerals and also took their own children to funerals. We talked about the importance of honesty when discussing death with children and that the majority of children generally experience death with a beloved pet, first, before their first encounter of losing a loved one/friend.
We also touched on hospice again as one of the new members is a hospice volunteer and another was thinking seriously about volunteering at a local hospice organization.
We discussed when would be the best date in March to have another Death Cafe meeting and due to Easter being celebrated on March 27th, it was decided that the next meeting would be March 12th.