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WRITER / www.bretthetherington.net - 7 November 2021 2.00 h

Jordi Abad Lalanza

Death Cafés

- WRITER / www.bretthetherington.net

W

hat do you think is the most im­por­tant thing peo­ple should know about Death Cafes?
They are in­for­mal gath­er­ings where we talk about death re­lated top­ics. It is a space of com­plete trust. It’s non-ther­a­peu­tic and we let our thoughts and emo­tions flow.
. This year is the tenth an­niver­sary of Death Cafes at an in­ter­na­tional level, with the first one in Lon­don. How many have been held in Cat­alo­nia and when did they start?
It is my per­sonal ini­tia­tive. I started in Feb­ru­ary 2019 and we had 12 meet­ings up to March 2020, when we stopped due to the pan­demic. Sub­se­quently, I have held 7 more vir­tual meet­ings.
Why did you de­cide to or­gan­ise these meet­ings?
My per­sonal story is that I’ve had sev­eral losses that have marked my vi­sion of life and death. From 2007 to 2015, I’ve been at­tend­ing on­col­ogy pa­tients at the end of life in their homes. Then in 2015 I fin­ished my So­cial Worker stud­ies and later I did a Mas­ters in pal­lia­tive care. I am cur­rently work­ing in end of life care. My major con­cern is that this so­ci­ety does not talk about death. It’s a taboo and I want to break this taboo, invit­ing peo­ple to do that.
What kind of peo­ple come to death cafes and for what rea­sons?
Usu­ally the av­er­age age is 40 and up, but we have also had young peo­ple. There are many rea­sons, mainly just cu­rios­ity, but also there’s in­ter­est in talk­ing about death and not being judged for it. It’s not a grief man­age­ment group, but peo­ple find that they’re re­spected with the free­dom to talk about death and every­thing re­lated to it.
How do you run your cafes?
As an or­gan­iser, you should have ques­tions or top­ics pre­pared to be pre­sented. That makes the ses­sion more dy­namic. The role of the mod­er­a­tor is to en­sure that the con­ver­sa­tion is safe and that every­one can par­tic­i­pate, and the most im­por­tant thing is to never be judged for your thoughts or emo­tions.
At last count there have been 13,099 Death Cafes in 80 coun­tries, why do you think they have been so pop­u­lar?
There is al­ways an in­ter­est in every­thing to do with death, as the last taboo. It is true that in British and Amer­i­can cul­ture, these en­coun­ters are eas­ier. In Mediter­ranean cul­ture I think there is much more ret­i­cence.
One at­tendee at a meet­ing in the US said that “most of the ses­sions are full of peo­ple laugh­ing and hav­ing fun... You meet strangers and talk about an in­ti­mate topic that most peo­ple can’t even talk about with their fam­ily.” Do the meet­ings in Cat­alo­nia ac­tu­ally in­clude fun?
There are mo­ments of every­thing, of at­ten­tive lis­ten­ing, of se­ri­ous­ness, but there can also be mo­ments of hu­mour and pos­i­tive ex­pres­sion. Peo­ple also enjoy them­selves and share joy as well as funny sit­u­a­tions about death.
In a broader con­text, what do you think have been the im­pacts of the pan­demic on be­reave­ment, grief and fu­ner­als, and the ef­fect of these changes on men­tal health and well-being?
I think that not being able to say the usual good­byes to our loved ones will make griev­ing more com­pli­cated to man­age. Death has been vi­su­alised, but in the end if it hasn’t hap­pened to you, it will be sta­tis­tics. I think it af­fects our men­tal health and well­be­ing, but I think so­ci­ety pe­nalises peo­ple who have suf­fered a loss and be­reave­ment will be poorly man­aged.
Do you think there’s re­ally such a thing as the much-talked-about “clo­sure” after death? Is a good death pos­si­ble?
A good death is how you want it to hap­pen, so it is im­por­tant to think, talk and write down how you want it to be if the time comes (ad­vance di­rec­tives). It’s a very per­sonal thing and can be con­fus­ing but for me it’s being able to be with my loved ones, to have them re­spect my de­ci­sions, to have con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion and to be able to leave with every­thing spo­ken about and with a lot of love. There is never clo­sure if we truly have love for that per­son. At the be­gin­ning it is an in­tense pain but as time goes by, this per­son re­mains in our mem­ory, not with pain but with grat­i­tude for hav­ing known and en­joyed him or her.

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