Confrontation and avoidance: Talking about death and dying in a pandemic

When lockdown and social distancing meant we couldn’t hold our usual, cosy Death Cafes in the wood cabin in the Abbey Physic Community Garden, it took a few weeks to take the plunge and go online. Death and dying was in the news more than I have ever experienced; everyone I knew was confronted with their mortality and collectively we were doing what we could to avoid death and dying an isolated, breathless death. And yet…. holding a death cafe felt somewhat insensitive. It felt like something we shouldn’t talk about while so many people were really suffering and facing death. I was aware I was experiencing some of the thoughts and feelings that hold us back from talking about such an important topic in society for fear of getting it wrong, or upsetting someone, or for feeling the weight of any loss, grief, fear, uncertainty, relief, curiosity we may feel about the fact. It brought the taboo into focus, reminded me of the aims of the Death Cafe movement, and we started planning our first online Death Cafe.

Connection and disconnect

“In November 2019, when Louise and I held our first Faversham Death Cafe, we (like everyone else) had no idea what the following few months held in store. 
So, from March this year we were unable to hold ‘in person’ groups and decided to use Zoom. I had slight reservations about how we could still create the same atmosphere online as we had in our ‘in person’ groups. I have been completely reassured as the online cafes have worked so well. People still seem to be able to make real connections with each other and from the positive feedback we have received seem to get so much from them. It also has the added advantage of people joining us from around the world which gives another perspective too, which is great.
We also held an ‘in person’ Cafe this month. We are lucky enough to be able to use a beautiful spacious garden so that we can socially distance and feel safe. This worked really well. I know there are people who may not feel comfortable with online groups so it’s wonderful to be able to offer this, too.
I’m so pleased that we are planning to continue to run both ‘in person’ and Zoom cafes so that anyone who wishes to can access our Death Cafes.” – Roz Macklin, Faversham Death Cafe facilitator

A stipulation of a Death Cafe is that there is tea and cake. In the ‘in-person’ death cafes, this gives a bonding opportunity and common ground – passing around a plate of biscuits or sipping a cup of hot tea next to someone doing the same instantly gives a shared experience. In an online death cafe, the sentiment is just as powerful even though you will have to make your own cuppa! Talking about the lack of tea service and cake provision can be a handy ice breaker as people are getting settled – though for anyone attending more than one facilitated event online, the joke may be wearing thin now…

“I found holding a mug very comforting and grounding for the conversation.”

– ONLINE DEATH CAFE MEMBER

Love and loss

Is loving someone worth the pain when we know we will grieve them one day?

A paradox that is perhaps never going to be resolved collectively – we all have very individual responses to this question. The duality of loving and losing, of the fulfilment that comes from reciprocal love and the emptiness and isolation when that is unplugged. Described beautifully in a multitude of ways through the death cafes I have attended: a bridge with love and grief at either end. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. We cannot have one without the other, in the same way we cannot have life without death, or happiness without sadness. We cannot have without not having.

“I definitely left the event with a heavier heart knowing the gravity and implications of death, but I also felt very comforted that there were people I could speak to about this, that there are people who muse over the same things that I do. Many of my deepest, most personal thoughts around death were echoed by people around me even before I spoke. It was wonderful to find the language and words to put together what I’m feeling. There is something about having the same feelings with the people you’re having a conversation with that makes you feel sane, supported, and brave.”

ONLINE DEATH CAFE MEMBER

We may not have resolved the tensions this duality brings, but sitting, talking and drinking tea together while we share in them on our individual journeys in life brings comfort and a knowing that we are not alone.

“I feel more connected, probably, by knowing for sure other people think the same thoughts… I am still struggling to understand what my thoughts on death and dying are”

ONLINE DEATH CAFE MEMBER

Finding purpose in an existential crisis

An existential crisis is defined by existential psychotherapist Emmy van Deurzen as “a situation in which our entire existence and everything we used to take for granted is in the balance, so that we feel insecure and threatened.” And so perhaps death and dying is the ultimate existential crises. Collectively so in a pandemic not only because death is brought into focus, but because many aspects of life become restricted, limited, different. To paraphrase a thought-provoking lecture on Existential Courage that I attended (by Emmy van Deurzen), navigating an existential crisis takes existential courage. Everything we know is thrown up in the air, and so we are acting from a position of unknowing. This can be scary (perhaps exciting, too?) and it brings opportunity for creating something new from the rubble of what we had before. Finding purpose helps give us direction and enables us to act on our existential courage and grow and move from through a place of insecurity and fear.

Sharing a Death Cafe space with strangers has personally given me many tools to help me find purpose in navigating my own death and dying. Listening to people who hold different beliefs, who live within different cultures, with different knowledge of laws, possibilities and rituals. I have learned about what is possible in this country when someone dies: how long someone can be kept at home once they have died; how and where people can be buried or cremated or donated; ideas for the days and weeks before death including palliative care, sharing time with friends and living funerals; rituals leading up to death and afterwards.

“I know listening to other people’s stories and thoughts is bound to make my own come into a different perspective”

ONLINE DEATH CAFE MEMBER

These discussions and plans can help us to navigate the existential crisis of our own death, or the death of someone we love. Perhaps in sharing the planning for what we want our friends and family to do for us after we die, we enable an opportunity for continuing that shared preparation and give a sense of purpose in a time of grief.

“I was great to be able to have a space to articulate complicated ideas, or at least attempt to articulate them. It’s also reassuring to know there are these conversations happening and that people want to talk and share and embrace what is in our collective human experience to die and to welcome death or experience death as part of the journey. What makes it hard is that there is a lot of physical and emotional pain with death, and suffering with illness, but if we can find a way to talk about and provide not just medical, but emotional, spiritual, human support for each other, I’m sure we’ll have a much better world.”

ONLINE DEATH CAFE MEMBER