Yuma Death Cafe begins in-person gathering to talk about mortality
What’s it like watching a loved one conclude the final stages of life?
How might we grieve once that person has passed away?
How should we prepare for our own deaths?
Those and any other questions about our mortality will be up for discussion Oct. 23 when the Yuma Death Café hosts the first of what are planned as monthly in-person gatherings at the Foothills Library.
Borrowing a tradition begun in Europe, Death Cafes bring together people to share experiences and observations to help one another address fears and questions relating to dying, and to cope with the loss of loved ones.
The Yuma Death Café started up in August on Zoom, following the example of other such cafes that have been meeting virtually to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Oct. 23 in-person session at the Foothills Library, 13226 S. Frontage Road, will take place from
12:30 to 2 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Future session are slated the fourth Saturday of the month at the same location during the same hours.
The facilitators for the Foothills sessions are Deb Bershad and Joy Lovejoy. Bershad worked as a hospice nurse in the San Francisco area prior to moving to Yuma, where today she volunteers with a hospice organization. Lovejoy is a chaplain who served fulltime at Yuma Regional Medical Center during the pandemic.
They define the gatherings as informal discussions in which participants can bring up any death-related topics that occur to them, with others contributing as much to the conversations as they choose.
“We don’t set an agenda,”
Bershad said. “We allow the participants to decide what they want to discuss. They set the agenda.”
Lovejoy said she and Bershad will guide the sessions “gently,” refraining from steering the discussions in any preconceived directions.
They differentiate the Death Café from a traditional support group, in which participants might, for example, be advised as to whether to secure hospice care for someone, or what funeral or cremation arrangements should be made, or how they should go about coming to terms with the loss of a loved one.
“We invite open discussion, but we’re not there to tell you what to do,” Lovejoy said.
The goal, she said, is “to help (participants) normalize death and to think about it, so they do make the best of their lives.”
The sessions, reminding participants of the fragility and brevity of life, can also spur them to pursue heartfelt conversations they’ve been meaning to have with friends and relatives, or to act to resolve grievances they’ve nursed.
And, adds Bershad, Death Cafes can help people confront what for many is a taboo subject: our mortality.
“Often what we fear is something we need to take a look at. And taking a look at death will take away some of the fear.”
Talking about lost love ones in the gatherings can also revive fond memories of those individuals, Bershad added.
“Death can also be a time of remembrance and joy,” she said. “We find in the meetings that we can talk about death and laugh.”
Jon Underwood, a web developer in the United Kingdom, is credited with starting the Death Café movement that spread around Europe and to this country.
Underwood, who died of leukemia in 2017 at 44, encouraged people to have their talks about the end of life over tea and cake. Fittingly, tea and coffee will be offered at the gatherings at the Foothills Library.
While the Yuma Death Café is starting in-person meetings, it continues to offer Zoom sessions the second Wednesday of the month from 12:30 to 2 p.m. for those who prefer them.
For more information about Yuma Death Café, visit https://deathcafe. com/profile/24018/