Death Cafe in a bedroom at The Tallet
A write up of A Death Cafe at The Tallet
By EmilyShep
Death Cafe at The Tallet was held in the Bedroom of facilitator - Emily.
Emily decided to host the Death Cafe in her bedroom to reflect the private nature of death and talking about death. As she stated: "I wouldn't normally lead a stranger straight to my bedroom".
She swapped her bed for tables and 12 of us sat, rather tightly, in one group.
We drank berry tea and ate 'coffin cake' - cakes containing skeletons made from candy canes.
The discussion began with Emily talking about her reasons for hosting the death cafe. She talked about losing her step-father last year, the result of which had caused a sudden awareness of the fragility of life. Emily explained it had jolted her into a deeper awareness of what it is to feel alive.
We proceeded by taking it in turns to introduces ourselves. There was an immediate sense of warmth for being able to so openly talk about our experiences with death. Many recalled details of funerals, of pets dying, of those days between someone's death and their funeral - how difficult it is to make sense of loss. We queried the word loss - one loses a handbag, why do we use the same phrase to talk about a person?
Conversation meandered to thinking about the difficulties in understanding death. We talked of pets dying - perhaps it is easier to sense death when we lose an animal. We wondered if this is because death is primal - we can recognise it when a pet dies. When a person dies we deal with the formalities - the formalities seem to hinder our abilities to process death.
We talked of the distinction between life and death - many of us see life as complete existence and death as the end. Are we always complete? Or are we in a continual state of fluctuation, is death a continuation of this?
We touched on time - how our consciousness perceives time contrasts greatly to our linear method of organising a passage of time.
This lead onto thinking about trying to live in the present moment without fear of death. Some talked of the positive potentiality of the present moment related to chance. Others, those that seemed to also fear death, explained of the unnerving sense of not-knowing the future.
We thought about methods to be in touch with life, with living, which brought us rather nicely to the seasons. Spring is useful for showing us the potential for life but also for giving us an awareness of our own, temporal state.
Apologies for the lack of photos - we were involved in the moment.
Comments
W have been enjoying our Death Cafe for about six months now. Your story about meeting in the bedroom was very touching and I feel a very special idea and must have made it much easier to be forthcoming.
Posted by Jane Sims