Visiting a Los Angeles Death Café to talk about mortality ...Middle East

It was raining on the day that I walked to the Death Café. I sheltered beneath a red umbrella and skirted puddles on the sidewalk. The low clouds made the world seem smaller, cozier.

Thinking of death was almost cliché in weather like this, but it was also unavoidable. In the span of a few months, I’d lost my beloved uncle, two high school friends, and a horse. Though my rational brain understood that death comes for us all, the bare reality of my recent experiences had caught me off guard.

I’d been to memorials and church funerals, but I wanted to see what it would be like to talk about death without the structure of religion or ritual. What if we talked about it the way we talk about the weather? What if we acknowledged it was just one more natural process?

The upstairs lecture room at the Philosophical Research Society, a Los Feliz institution dedicated to multicultural wisdom and learning, is made snug by built-in bookcases and Oriental rugs. It’s a room where, when my kids were much younger, I used to practice mindfulness meditation. But on this day, I joined 17 people — ranging in age from their early 20s to early 70s — to talk about death.

Some, like me, had dressed for the rain in wellies and slickers, others dressed for comfort in soft sweaters. Two women, who took the seats flanking me, favored thigh-high boots, faux fur and leopard print. Elizabeth Gill Lui, the moderator, wore a sweatshirt with the word “thankful” written across the front.

It’s easier to explain Death Café by telling you what it isn’t. It is not a grief workshop. It is not therapy. There is no agenda.

Founded in the UK in 2011 by Jon Underwood and his mother, the psychotherapist Sue Barsky Reid, a Death Café is defined simply as a place where people gather to eat cake, drink tea — and discuss death. There is no topic off limits. Folks might chat about green burials, right-to-die laws, guilt, legacy, fear and disappointment. Sometimes people cry. Often, people laugh. They are a source of mutual support and a circle of comfort. It’s not planned. It just happens.

The first meeting took place in Underwood’s East London home. After a year of subsequent gatherings in cafes, cemeteries, a yurt and the Royal Festival Hall, Underwood and Reid created a guide for others who might want to start a café of their own.

Inspired by the work of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, the main objective of the Death Café is to increase awareness of death and help make the most of our (finite) lives. The importance of this idea is underscored by the fact that, in 2017, at the age of 44, Jon Underwood died. His mother and sister, Jools Barsky, have carried on in his absence, and this community engagement project has spread to 93-plus countries where more than 20,000 meetings to date have taken place in libraries, pubs, banquet halls, church basements and other community spaces. An active calendar on the Death Café website (deathcafe.com) makes it possible to locate a group online or in person on almost any day of the week.

Elizabeth Gill Lui started this Los Angeles group more than three years ago. A photographer, author and educator, whose photographic collages and architectural collaborations appear in numerous museum and private collections, she often projected the warm yet brisk demeanor of an elementary school teacher. “At the Death Café,” said Lui, “we don’t waste time.”

With an aim toward establishing connection between participants, and creating a strong tether to reality, Lui makes it a practice to use what might seem like harsh language. “There’s no ‘passing away,’” she said.

Saying and hearing “they died” helps promote what she calls “death literacy.” It’s hard to get comfortable with the idea of death if we lack the vocabulary to speak about it. “We are clearing the path,” she said, “to make it not uncomfortable.”

Lui considers the twice-monthly conversations part of her ongoing artistic practice.

“By the end, we have a cohesive ball of thoughts,” she said when I spoke to her after the café get-together. “I love that I’m not creating objects anymore.”

After three-plus hours of conversation, my story was just one thread running through that “ball of thoughts.” In a rambling and wide-ranging discussion, our group had touched on the death of friends, lovers and pets. We’d talked about caregiving for aging parents, but we’d also talked about the end of relationships, and the uncertainty of moving into a new home. There were two psychology grad students looking to deepen their studies. One person was about to lose a kidney, and another was working on an opera about adolescent grief. We talked about the performative nature of mourning and our worries about getting it right.

“I tried to do my best deathbed scene by reading Blake to my father,” one person said. “But then, an alarm went off, and he got cranky and …”

We all joined his rueful laugh. Though most of us had never met, we were in this together.

A Death Café moderator needs to have a sense of time and order, but they must also be a good listener. Throughout our time together, Lui, like the best teachers, was able to home in, with precision, on the smallest kernel of an idea.

“I’m trying to see what people are really grappling with,” she said. “I might ask a question to get them to go deeper into a line of thought — to expand on what I feel is their blind spot.”

I’d been the eleventh person to speak and, instead of speaking about my most recent experiences with death, I found myself automatically returning to the story of my father’s death from early onset Alzheimer’s. He’s been gone for over two decades, and yet, I often speak and write about our time together. He was so young. I was so young. His death created a rupture in my life, but it’s been many years, and I’ve begun to question the story I’m telling and my need to tell it.

When I mentioned this to Lui, she nodded with recognition. “People attach themselves to grief,” she said. “And then it becomes an identity that’s hard to abandon because you associate it with love.”

The Death Café is a safe space to examine our narratives of loss, find deeper meaning, and, perhaps, begin to write new stories.

“It’s an opportunity,” Lui said, “to really rethink how you engage in the world.”

More ‘Well and Good’

When I stepped out of the meeting, the rain had let up, and the sky was tinged violet. Orange leaves lay in rough order on the sidewalk. A motorcycle roared along the street. In the distance, a siren wailed. I’d had some cake and some tea. I had talked about death. Sugar and caffeine ran like an electrical current through my body. I was alive and on my way home.

RESOURCES

If you’d like to learn more about attending or starting a Death Café, you can find a calendar, instructions, and numerous articles and blog posts at deathcafe.com

Elizabeth Lui Gill has read more than 200 books about death, grief and mourning. A few from her list: “What Are You Going Through?” by Sigrid Nunez; “How We Live is How We Die,” Pema Chodron; “Faith, Hope and Carnage,” Nick Cave; “The Wild Edge of Sorrow,” Frances Weller; “In My Time of Dying,” Sebastian Yunger; and “Being Mortal,” Atul Gawande.

For more information about death and dying, explore the following websites:

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