Category Archives: Death Café
Earth Earth Awakening – Death Awareness Space
I was delighted to be invited to complete the Death Awareness team held by Celia Libera and Mike Grenville at the Green Earth Awakening (GEA) festival which is an Autumn event, from Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th September 2018, this event is affiliated with the Buddhafield Festival. A description of the GEA is as follows: ‘The Green Earth awakening is an intimate, late summer gathering to explore engaged Buddhism, community living, land skills and creative responses to forging social resilience. To bring together Buddhists, activists and anyone drawn to exploring the skills required to reach our collective potential. An Off-grid, drug and alcohol-free, temporary community where creativity can weave and connections can deepen. Expect the opportunity to network and collaborate through discourse, movement, music, play and fireside story and song.’
Tipi
‘The Buddhafield theme for 2018 is Dance of Life and Death, (which followed through to the GEA): Death can bring deep sorrow and grief. As the Buddha showed, all human lives are touched by loss. The paradox of the dance of life is that it is also the dance of death. Life is so precious because we have such limited time on this earth. How do we honour our grief and sorrow, whilst allowing it to permeate our lives in a positive way, encouraging us to transform ourselves? Buddhafield and GEA celebrated relationships, coming into a community, turning towards death and celebrating the joy of life, together, supported by our beautiful earth’.
I arrived Thursday evening arriving just in time to co-hold the Death cafe with Celia in our beautiful tipi tent, this was a full tent and one of the main themes that arose was suicide, and someone dealing with a terminal prognosis. It was powerful to share, and bear witness to peoples experiences and thoughts.
Friday morning Celia and I held a session Exploring Mortality and making plans to make choices around our death. And in the late morning, I offered a Gentle touch session, which became a lovely pampering session with emphasis on touch and consent as a giver and receiver and being clear about our own boundaries.
In the afternoon, I attended a grief tending ritual which was beautifully held by Sophy and her team, this was my second experience of this, my first one being at Buddahfield this year. These teachings come from Sobonfu Somé, who has brought to the West teachings from the ancient wisdom, ritual and practices of her Dagara ancestors. Largely offering community grief, so often we grieve alone or not at all, however, when we grieve together, not only does it help the individual to heal, it also helps strengthen the entire community fabric. Which I what I felt again. This yet again was a powerful ritual of feeling supported and supporting people in our temporary village namely this festival. I recommend attending such a ritual if you get the opportunity The song that was sung by us during this ritual and the same as the previous grief tending has now stayed with me.
Saturday morning Mike offered a workshop called when someone dies – exploring practical and spiritual options at and after death and Celia led 5 discussions to have with the dying who are living.
In the afternoon we all offered Blessing the body – ritual of washing, blessing and anointing as we say goodbye to our loved one. Celia made a splendid corpse model as we offer a demonstration. Late evening we held a companion voices session- whereby we learnt a simple song (lullabies in essence)and each takes it, in turn, to lie down and be sung too. It feels like a beautiful healing sound/voice bath.
Sunday we completed with Dying to talk session and a Sound Bath, the sound Bath was popular and unfortunately, we had to turn people away as the tipi was full. I totally enjoyed the festival, a small 500 people capacity and out in nature, the weather was good for this time of year. We offered varied workshops around death and dying and it was lovely to be offering this space at this festival and working alongside an awesome team.
Taking Death Café to Colourfest 2018
Death Café has been presented and offered at different festivals before. This was Colourfest’s first Death Café and my first time to run one at a festival, so I was so delighted to be hosting this one. This festival is described as “A dynamic, beautiful & constantly evolving gem of a gathering celebrating life through connection, ceremony, yoga, dance, music, art, theatre & playfulness.”
I was scheduled for Friday and Saturday. On Friday twenty people or so arrived; the indoor venue room that we were scheduled to use was not appropriate to use and I was asked to move to the tiny bar which was in fact too small. Unfortunately, a couple of people left and or didn’t stay as they popped in, whilst the others were ok to continue in the compact space.
I began with a minutes silence to remember those who have been before and then followed with an introduction of myself and how death cafes began, the purpose of them and then an encouragement to discuss any aspect around death and dying. I suggested that the conversations could be held in small clusters of about 3 to 4 small groups.
I provided a selection of herbal teas as I thought this would be the most simplistic method along with some biscuits.
In essence, there was a mix age range and I think the majority of people had never been to a Death Café before, however, it was well received and the conversations were flowing freely. Some had experienced a close family member or friend dying and were recounting their experiences of that time and others had no first-hand experience, however, it seemed that all wanted the opportunity to be in a discussion group around death.
A question was posed re mediumship versus the soul being reincarnated and how can the two approaches to the spirit or soul be both? Another spoke about their experience attending a funeral in Thailand for a local person and the cultural difference, in which gambling at funerals seemed to be a cultural given and part of the ritual and in addition lighting of string fire rope which travelled the site and finished at setting the cremator/body alight!
Near the end of our session, a woman said that she was inspired to start a Death Café in her own area, which is very positive indeed.
In the lounge area close to the bar and dining room I had put information leaflets from Dying Matters & Marie Curie and had a blackboard up with part of a comment: ‘Before I die I want to …. ‘ with available chalk to use. On my return, the blackboard already had a few statements written on. The following day the blackboard was full of interesting comments, however, it also had graffiti of a penis on it, which I felt a little disappointed by.
For the death Café itself, I managed to secure the dining room which was far more spacious and I felt drawn to stay in one large group, as the numbers were small, however more people drifted in and the number exceeded over 23 / 25, despite this we remained in the large group as people already had begun to introduce themselves.
Saturdays Café was also lovely. I believe nearly all except one had never attended a death Café before. Those who attended were pleased this was taking place or intrigued to be discussing death and also there were a significant number of people who were in grief, in particular, one with a recent and unexpected sudden death and another with a longer term grief. Hence there seemed to be quite a bit of sadness in the group generally along with intrigue and interest. We also touch on euthanasia and the seemingly insufficient end of life training that Doctors receive. For both sessions, I ended with my usual minute silence to complete.
In conclusion, the cafes were a good call to be on the festival programme and I hope there will be future opportunities. Colourfest is a delightful festival with a beautiful energy. Death is part of our life cycle, therefore to include Death cafes alongside inspirational, healing workshops and the general festive spirit is a welcomed aspect to be in the mix.
Death Cafe Glastonbury- a third meeting
On the 18th September 2016 on a Sunday afternoon, we held our third cafe, in the top floor at Coffee Zero in Glastonbury high Street. the numbers were quite small this time only 6 people, so we sat together in one group. Three people had travelled from Bath…. themes for the afternoon …. one person spoke about his near death experience as a child, what was fascinating about the story was that he said he was no longer a child as he was witnessing his child body… we spoke about community connections and how we get help and support when one lives alone with no particular family support in our lives and went onto to speak about End of life Doulas and what they can offer.. and about the need for more open discussions around death and dying.. and advertising the death cafe here a bit more vigorously.. I had forgot to place an advert in the local free Oracle paper which has a lot of readers… it felt like another successful event and I’m looking forward to hosting the next one in two months time. The cafes that I run alternate from a Sunday afternoon to a mid week evening.
Death cafe Glastonbury
Death cafe was held upstairs in Coffee Zero on the high Street In Glastonbury on the 3rd April 2016. 23 people attended, and we sat in clusters of 4 groups and swapped around at about half time, I used a similar format to Death cafe Bristol where we started and ended with a minute silence, one feed back was that the silence could have been a bit longer. On each of the table there were suggested conversation questions which some people used and found helpful. The conversation seemed to flow and was quite animated and people appreciated this event was taking place. The next cafe will be in 2 months.
What is a Death Café?
What’s a Death Café?
I have had this response from a few friends, so I thought I would write a short description. A recent death Café that I attended was in Bristol on Sunday 27th September 2015. The Death Café was held at a busy Café, called the Cox and Baloney Tea Rooms in Cheltenham Road, Bristol.
Below are some descriptions from the Death Café website describing such events :
‘At a Death Café people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death.’
The objective is ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”.
‘A Death Café is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session.’ Read More…