The Death Cafe is a discourse for the conversation about death. It is a safe, accessible, and respectful space where death can be discussed. Also, there is tea and cake. The protocols of the Death Cafe focus on experiences of mindfulness, self-care, giving others the time to speak, and sharing your own experiences. Silence and listening are also acceptable.
The first examples that were shown to the audience on death cafe discourse were artists who have representations of death in their work, such as, Christie Belcourt, Not dead yet the resistance, Nancy Rourke, and Syrus Marcus ware: black lives matter. I am particularly interested in Christie Belcourt piece “ Walking with our Sisters”. Her exhibition explores the issues of missing and murdered indigenous women. The layout of the exhibition is rows of moccasin tops or vamps, which were made from hundreds of indigenous women across Canada; specifically women who have been affected by the missing and murdered indigenous women epidemic. These vamps were sent to Belcourt at surprising rates, and within no time she was able to showcase the opening of her exhibition, Walking with our Sisters. From a First Nations perspective, I would see the exhibition as a ceremony for missing and murdered indigenous women, and not a discourse on death. In my community, I have experienced death more than most of my peers that I have met in my life. This is the same for other First Nation students I have met as well. In a whole semester, I have witnessed a First Nation student experience five deaths within their community. In my life, my first experience with death was at six years old. Later on I learned this was not a normal age to recognize death. However, it was a part of my life as more family, friends, and community members passed on;ainly family, friends, and community who were First Nation.
With this difference to my peers, I feel the Death Cafe has opened an accepting conversation towards death. The word Death or dead has a different meaning for everyone, however, the meaning isn’t discussed because the mainstream opinion leads to sadness. The Death Cafe allows ideas of more than just sorrow. In my group, we discussed films, TV, and public broadcasting. If you watch film and TV, how can you not discuss death, as death is popularized and portrayed within the media.
From the Death Cafe presentation, I remembered a specific episode from The Walking Dead. In The Walking Dead “season one episode eight”, the main characters are in a fight with a gang over a bag of guns. Later the main characters find out that the gang is actually protecting a nursing home and the clients that live there. An orderly who is the leader of the gang explains why he decided to protect “the old ones” from the zombies. During the outbreak’s peak, the orderly said all the doctors took off and left their patients, and none of the patients family members came to save them. In the new age, courses are being added to post-secondary curriculum such as the zombie apocalypse course. Students may think this is a course on how to survive the zombie apocalypse, however, the course actually explores how we treat homeless people like zombies.
What worked?
Serving food at the Death Cafe is successful because it can be used as comfort food. Since there is a possibility for participants to feel upset about any recent events, food is a good source of relief.
What was surprising?
Seeing the turnout of people was surprising because the discussion of death is not desired. This did not stop students from attending. In addition, People from more than one program and discipline were in attendance. Getting into groups with individuals from diverse disciplines was interesting when discussing the questions we were given.
What feels unfinished?
A topic our group did not have time to finish discussing was death in the media. This discussion released the idea that death is very much open to conversation in the media. Especially in film and TV. For example, the Netflix TV show, 13 Reasons Why, the film, The Road, the animation, Coco and the widely popular TV series, The Walking Dead, as well as many more movies and TV shows all portray and discuss death within the media.