East Rockville Online Death Cafe June 17
A write up of East Rockville Online Death Cafe EST
By AmesSandra
The East Rockville Death Café has been meeting since October 2019. When we were meeting in a local café we always had a mix of neighbors and other people who were interested and dropped by. Meetings moved to Zoom in May and we continue to have an interesting group of people, one of whom was attending virtually from Canada.
In the June meeting the subject of palliative care vs “lingering” came up. Roughly the former is an acceptance of chronic disease from the outset with a view towards quality of life, the latter an attempt to try any means of prolonging life. Participants discussed the time before the deaths of parents where they wished they had been able to make the time more meaningful and close. People also talked about deaths they had witnessed and what they hoped would characterize their own deaths.
The last virtual meeting addressed COVID 19 and the pain of some participants being unable to attend to the needs of loved ones in nursing homes or who were ill with the disease and on their own. The June meeting did not touch on the subject at all. Discussions always follow the interests of the participants and are never predictable but always interesting.