I Run The Local Death Cafe
It started with being told I had five years to live. I was ill with a heart disease. Residents came to my room and we chatted in hushed voices at night about what the future might look like — and how much future might be left. I’d been admitted after turning blue at an ultramarathon I was participating in and kept for observation, seeing all sorts of medical professionals who were curious about my case.
When I was released, I was scared and stunned, looking to my partner and friends for support that never came. I wanted to — needed to — talk about the prospect of dying. And I was only thirty-eight, a far cry from a life fully lived. Yet no one wanted to have a dialogue with me about it.
So I went looking for death and dying groups online and found Death Cafe, a group founded to normalize the conversations around end of life and all forms of death. Already a user of Meetup, I formed a local chapter of Death Cafe online and began setting up monthly meetings.
The first meeting went something like this:
“Hi, I’m Harper and welcome to you all today. Let’s go around and say who we are and why we’re here. I bet that will be plenty to kick us off.”
And so it was.
There was a mother whose high schooler had committed suicide, a man whose parents were aging and refusing to do…
