Our last meeting of 2020...
6 of us met for our last meeting of 2020. Two people were attending their first Death Café. Our discussion moved in different directions, and themes included the news of the Covid-19 vaccine and anniversaries at this time of year.
Are we emerging from the pandemic? We discussed our own thinking around the vaccine beginning to become available, and the theme of personal responsibility as we wait for it to be rolled out.
Learning of a tragic bereavement at a time when loved ones cannot be together was another experience about which someone shared.
We talked about the experience of a parent losing their child, and the devastation caused by such instances of the disruption of the natural order of things.
We thought too about the exceptional circumstances in which the death of a child might in fact be met with something other than horror, when the child’s quality of life has been dependent on the care of their parents, and the parents’ concern as to what might happen after they die.
We revisited the theme of the inequalities that the pandemic has highlighted, and the mental health toll of Covid-19 and the increased suicide rate in different parts of the world.
Will the world be returning to ‘normal’? What will like beyond Covid look like? Will it resemble anything we knew before?
We acknowledged how living alongside a global pandemic has, in our experience, opened up the conversation about death and dying – there has been a lot more in the media, and in our own lives we have been talking with others about these themes which were previously off people’s radars, or out of bounds within day to day conversation.
Has the pandemic thrown things into sharper focus, and given us a better perspective on our lives, and what really matters to us? What is it that we live for?
We named the intimacy that we have found possible to create and find in our virtual meetings, and the deep, soulful connections we are able to make in our conversations. We savoured the delicious silences, and rejoiced in the meaning we have been able to make by meeting in this way.
Comments
Deathling
We gathered in this Cafe opened by Cecilia for over a year. Miss you all. Hope to learn of an opening one day soon. Jim Berkeley,. CA USA
Posted by Jim Kirkpatrick