Recent Death Café in Cwmdu
Recently, on Nov 21st, 2023, Eva Ryan and I co-facilitated a death café in the welcoming and homely atmosphere of Cwmdu Inn.
If you don’t already know, death café is an international movement aimed at bringing death out of the shadows back into the mainstream of life. It is not about glamourising death, but openly and courageously facing it, learning from others’ experiences, and gaining a new perspective on the reality of death. Death cafes try to redress the prevailing narrative that the death is a problem, one to be feared and somehow conquered: a narrative that is morbid, excluded from everyday conversation, and left only to the professionals. As one person said at the death café, we have overly sanitised death in the last few generations, removing it from most people’s direct experience, and become somehow poorer as a result.
Fifteen of us gathered in Cwmdu Inn, sharing cups of tea and delicious homemade cake around a welcoming fire. It was a mix of people from different backgrounds, both local and from further afield, and both men and women. Eva, and her partner Graham, hosted us all so openly and naturally.
Initial introductions led into simple ground rules such as confidentiality, not talking over others, respecting other contributions and sentiments, and holding more lightly our concepts of right and wrong around death, which after all remains the great mystery. Following this, the floor was open for people to speak and contribute as they wished, with occasional steering and support from Eva and myself.
A prevailing theme that arose was how we so often deny the reality of death, relegating it to the shadows. As such we’re not usually educated around death, so we have very few options available to us when it happens. We’re often disempowered. Greater options arise through the willingness to open our eyes and endeavour to learn more about death. Then, when death happens around us, we have a greater possibility of making more practical and wiser choices. We become more empowered.
In the group, the conversation flowed around various subjects, such as how best to help a dying person, and their family; how birth can be similar to death, both portals between the manifest and the unmanifest; what to do when faced with a culture of denial, whether of the dying person and/or their family; how to carry on when we lose a loved one and how to support others in that situation. The dying process, and how we interact with it, is never meant to be perfect. Each situation is unique, and we can simply do the best we can, informed by as much experience and knowledge as possible.
Death can no doubt be messy, painful, and challenging at times. Yet it can also be a time of grace and for a deeply authentic sharing of the essentials of life, which can deepen our humanity, and enhance our appreciation of this transient life.
The honest and open sharing of those present, fortified by the teas and delicious homemade cake, felt both genuine and meaningful.
Eva and I plan to run another death café in Cwmdu around late January 2024, and you and all are welcome. We may need to use a bigger room next time!
