Death Cafe Iowa Writeup - February 2024
A write up of Death Cafe Iowa
Our Death Café was held over Zoom this past February and had 3 people in attendance. After brief introductions and some catching up we began a long conversation on all thing’s death related!
We started with the importance of balancing grief alongside celebratory life events, and how tricky it is to go through such happy moments while grieving. From here we transitioned into speaking on how grief is felt/expressed differently by everyone and is not something that can be fixed. Everyone has different needs, so simply showing up and listening to your grieving person is a great way to offer support.
The final broader topic we talked about was the inevitability of death, therefore it is crucial to live life with a purpose and continue connecting with others, as we are not guaranteed tomorrow. We all agreed that although human beings thrive off of connection, it seems to be in short supply as of recently, with one attendee saying “we are running out of connective tissue!”
Lastly, some of the smaller/briefer topics we spoke on included the Return to Nature funeral home scandal, common stereotypes surrounding suicide, and funeral preparations in the cold weather!