Death Cafe diary: March Death Cafe
A write up of Manly NSW Death Cafe
By mknight
Our first Death Café of the year took place in our regular space, the Creative Library, a fabulous community room in our local Manly Library. After a holiday break of some months, it was wonderful to once again engage in spirited conversation about all things death and dying, welcome back regulars, and meet folk new to the Death Café movement.
I’ve been facilitating Death Café’s since 2014, and have found that while the conversation will cover a diverse range of death and dying areas of interest and importance, there is always one topic which is discussed in every Death Café I have run; the afterlife. And this occasion was no different.
Attendees shared and explored a range of other-worldly experiences including near-death, experiential dream encounters with the deceased, and ghost or paranormal encounters, all of which made for fascinating and thought-provoking conversations. While death is an all too real event in our lives, it is what happens on the other side of death that we wonder about. And it is these experiences which not only testify to the fact that we are more than our embodied and mortal selves because we continue to exist after physical death, but which invite us to consider what life beyond physical life and existence might constitute. And importantly, that it, an afterlife, does exist.