Here’s a write-up of our last Death Cafe on May 17.

Dear Friends,

It was a pleasure to see those of you who could make it to the death cafe last Saturday. We had a really great and personal discussion. A lot of it was about the concept of “Allowing Natural Death.” The DNR, or Do Not Resuscitate order, is widely known but is difficult to obtain and is a negative request, meaning one is asking people NOT to do something. The Allow Natural Death request is easier for families to follow because it indicates to those who may be making decisions for you exactly what you want your family TO DO for you.

It remains that, of the two, the DNR is the one that is a legal document.

We also discussed the following:

• Thinking about death as a form of meditation.
• Natural Death Care is a movement of the people, and as such, we need to talk about it. Our technology has advanced so far that we have to catch up in our feelings about the ethics of keeping people alive.
• Voluntary Cessation of Eating and Drinking as a means to accelerate death when one is already terminally ill.
• The Tibetan Practice of Phowa
• Dylan Thomas’ poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
• How to survive the death of a loved one
• Raam Das: “The game is not about becoming somebody, it’s about becoming nobody.”
• Write a statement of confidence to go along with your Advanced Directives that explains your choices and says that you trust your advocate to do the best they can and that you forgive them.
• Megory Anderson: Sacred Dying
• The concept of Death Coaching. Anyone have any more info on this?

I look forward to continued sharing about life and death at the next Death Cafe, Saturday, June 15, 10 am to noon, at Crazy Wisdom. Please check out the DeathCafe.com blog.

To Life!

M