When I asked for permission at the Cafe I chose, it drawed my attention that one of the questions they asked before agreeing was what kind of people usually show up at this events. Kidding, one of them asked if suicidal people arrived. It kept me thinking that comments like that –far from being mischevious, but rather clumsy– show the tabu around talking about death. 

Very few people showed up, we were only six: one was my dad, another one was my boyfriend, and the last person joined us after hearing what we were talking about. Although, as a first approach, I think we felt comfortable enough.

I proposed to start talking about our personal relationship to death, and the reasons why we don't talk about it.  

One of the participants talked about how his grandmother felt she was an inconvenience to her relatives –she was a "well-mannered lady"– and she thought that it wasn't polite to bother them with her illness.

Another one, who lives in a low-income neighbourhood, said that he thought young people who lived there try to live fast and enjoy everything they can. They have children very young because they can die at any moment, given the rate of violence in their surroundings. He, himself, has seen dead bodies on the street, and a friend of him was murdered. 

We agreed that in Mexico City we do not have a close relationship to death, even though we know that in other cultures of the country they do. We are perceived as a death-accepting country, we are seen as the ones who mock death and party instead of crying, but we are actually not that open to talk about it.

The increasing violence in the country keeps us in a state of fear. Living is a risk, we could die at any moment: in a failed robbery, kidnapped, in a car crash, killed, in an earthquake. So maybe we have so many chances of dying, we don't want to keep them in mind. It's overwhelming. 

So there we were, talking about the impossibility of accepting death, in a very philosophical set of mind, and the person who joined at the last moment presents herself: she is a woman who has multiple sclerosis. She talked to us about how she has dealt with her illness, with the notion of it advancing. She has two daughters; they each have different ways of accepting her death in a near  future. Nonetheless, she is quite joyful. 

It ended abruptly, we all had to leave suddenly and didn't have a chance for closure, but agreed on having the next cafe in July.