Catherine Tremblay wants talking about the afterlife to be less of an afterthought.
For more than a year, she has been hosting a death cafe meeting on the North Shore to turn this afterthought into a useful conversation about death, dying and life itself.
It’s a meeting, she says, where people can freely chat about the topics surrounding death that are usually only discussed in hushed tones.
“We never really address how it is for us to think about our own mortality or the mortality of our loved ones,” Tremblay explains. “We never talk about that, it’s very rare, and yet there is a big fear. Many people are very afraid of death.”
A death cafe is almost exactly what it sounds like: a place for people to gather and have conversations about death, dying and mortality.
To add a sense of casualness to the meetings, the discourses on death are often accompanied by a spot of tea or a slice of cake.
It’s a phenomenon with a global following.
Death cafes have been around for decades in some form, but the practice as it stands now really took shape in the U.K. in 2011.
In the ensuing years, reports of people hosting death cafes have cropped up all over the world in places like Canada and the U.S., to Australia and Hong Kong.
While the idea of discussing something as private and intimate as death might seem counterintuitive to some people, Tremblay insists that’s exactly the point.
“There’s a big fear in our culture,” she says. “I think they’re afraid of what may come up for them, but once you pass that you realize it’s actually opening up so much.”
What exactly it opens up differs depending on the person, Tremblay says, but what is for sure is that discussing death – any facet of death – in an informal setting can help transform a heavy topic into something that’s lighter and, for some, potentially illuminating.
The underlying philosophy behind death cafes is nicely summarized in an email Tremblay recently sent out to participants in her monthly meetings: “By opening the conversation on a topic that is still taboo in our culture we make it a little less threatening.”
Tremblay takes on the role of a facilitator during a death cafe, but is essentially a participant just like everybody else.
“I’m just there to ensure that there’s a container to the conversation,” she says.
Discussions are broad and informal during a meeting.
One participant might be inclined to discuss their near-death experience and its impact. Others might want to talk about the notion of life after death. Maybe someone will want to talk about advance care planning and their wishes when it comes to future health-care needs.
Or maybe a participant has a friend who’s sick and they just want to talk about the conflicted feelings they have over their pal’s illness?
“Someone may say, ‘Well, my friend is dying and I don’t know what to say.’ And they may share about what they’re experiencing in that experience, and then other people will respond based on their own experience,” Tremblay explains.
In short: death may be taboo, but people sure seem to want to talk about it when given the opportunity.
“There’s no agenda, we don’t impose a theme. It’s really organic and the conversation goes where people want to go,” she says.
Tremblay has been hosting her monthly death cafe in a meeting space at Mount Seymour United Church in the Parkgate area.
It has been mainly women attending her death cafe so far, but she would like to see more men and young people showing up.
Tremblay says she has always had an interest in death. For her, though, an interest in death has never been about morbid curiosity, but a means to live a fuller life by accepting death’s certainty and embracing it.
When her mother got sick years ago and talked about ending her own life, she says that talking about it and about death itself helped Tremblay empathize with her mother’s point of view.
“It’s not fearful and it’s not sad. It’s usually engaged,” she says. “Your life is not at risk because we talk about death.”
Tremblay is taking the summer off from hosting death cafes but says she plans to start them up again in September at Mount Seymour United Church.
In the meantime, you can connect with her on her Facebook page, called The Conscious Living and Dying Community, or learn more about death cafes around the world by visiting deathcafe.com.
