I can’t recall how I found out about Death Café, or what attracted me to the group, but I do recall a calming sense of relief. I had found a safe place to talk about death — safe for others who do not want to hear about it, who don’t want to speak of the loss they feel for loved ones no longer with them, missed so deeply it hurts.
In our home, my father was missed so deeply that our children would leave the room if discussion turned toward life with Grandpa. But soon, we were able to speak of how much he would have enjoyed the dark chocolate or ice cream we shared. He was a lover of sweets. That was the limit of sharing in our home when I discovered Death Café four years ago.
I was thankful for the space to talk about his death, and the many deaths of his that preceded his leaving us forever. His struggles with Lewy body dementia exposed our family to a new reality we had never before imagined: confusion, disorientation, falls and injuries, hallucinations, and an awareness of the coming end. The many losses we experienced, the small deaths, were not spoken of. There was no time, because the next death was looming, and often it was unspeakable. After he died, the trauma of the past year was over, but what just happened?