Death Cafe Marrickville in Marrickville
A write up of Death Cafe in Marrickville
By mknight
Our December Death Café, the final for this year, once again drew people from diverse backgrounds, interests, life experience and profession. Sitting in our usual assortment of overstuffed couches and armchairs around a low table laden with cake, we were looked down upon by freshly painted vividly rendered Japanese erotic art which boldly decorated the ceiling. “It is the procreation of life; the perfect complement to death” my host of Lazy Bones Lounge had said.
As always, the time flew by and as always discussion was free-flowing and moved along at a rapid pace. What has become consistently evident across each Death Café is that people are deeply appreciative of the opportunity to have death-related discussions. In conjunction with that, it has also become clear how important it is to have those discussions long before folk have been confronted by their mortality, either by way of an accident or a terminal diagnosis or perhaps by some other means such as for example a near-death experience.
Some people came because they were curious about death and about life-after-death, while others came because they felt they wanted to be with those of like-mind. Some talked not so much of dying, but of their fears for those left behind while others shared their experiences of being present at various deaths. One group member articulated that people have to be made aware of death in order to not be afraid of it and shared a story of taking her two young children to view a full-term still-born baby, kept beside it’s mother in hospital, while another group member, speaking softly, shared her out of body experience when after an accident she watched the doctors operating on her in hospital. After recounting a particularly poignant account of the death of someone close, and becoming quite tearful and apologising another group member said matter of factly, “It happens” which resulted in a round of laughter from everyone present. Yes, death does happen!
Another group member shared some of her experiences of being present with the dying, commenting on the things that people do to let you know when death is about to occur, which brought back memories of the death of my own mother and what she did. Another group member highlighted the importance of understanding the language used by the dying as death approached, and of knowing how to be present in that context with them. We also talked about how we would like to be “sent off”. Some preferred cremation, one longingly talked about going out in the style of the Vikings! We also compared death rituals of other cultures with our own Anglo Western culture, which sanitises death. Mention was made of the movie “Tender” http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1929081/tender-farewell-helping-families-deal-with-dying/ a documentary of the establishing of a not-for-profit funeral service called Community Undertakings, during which a colleague of the project filmmakers develops lung cancer and dies. The film follows “Nigel” and everyone involved, as they come face-to-face with the issues surrounding end-of-life, which is exactly what Death Café is all about.