One of the greatest traumas I dealt with before, during and after the deaths of my parents, was my complete lack of genuine understanding of what was happening to me.

I knew what was happening on an intellectual level, and even on an emotional one (however hard I ignored that part) but only in a very broad, basic way. The world I lived in, back then, did not talk about death, so when people I loved started dying I was not really prepared for the aftermath, either logistically or psychologically.

This is one reason I’m so thrilled about the Death Cafe project, which comes from Britain. The first U.S. Death Cafe event was hosted just a few weeks ago, and looks like to have been a success.

The mission of Death Cafe is simple: “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”.

This means people talking about their own mortality as well as the deaths of those people they love. It is an intense topic and one a lot of people will not willingly participate in. I’m honestly not sure I would have, during or after my parents’ deaths, but I might have and who knows how much better my life would be now if I had. Maybe not, of course, but I really believe it would have been.

I’m hoping to get one of these hosted here in Tallahassee this year. I’m stressed because I’m poor and broke and graduating graduate school and looking for work, but this is important. We need to talk about death, openly and honestly, because if we don’t, then I don’t think we can have a true understanding of what it means to be alive.

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