Fourteen people gathered at the Hurley Public Library on Sunday, March 15, to share coffee, tea, cookies, and talk about a subject many people avoid: death.

“Simply come as you are and take part at your own comfort level,” the program announcement read for the Death Cafe hosted by Circle of Friends for the Dying, an organization that provides compassionate comfort care in a home-like setting for people with a terminal prognosis of three months or less and promotes death education.

The conversation-based event, in which people gather to discuss topics related to the often-taboo subject of dying, was part of a global movement aimed at increasing awareness of death and helping people make the most of their finite lives.

Typically free or donation-based, death cafes are designed to have no agenda, objectives, or themes. They often bring together strangers and are meant to offer nonjudgmental, safe, and confidential discussion. They are not intended as bereavement counseling or crisis support.

Pamela Timmins, a visual artist and Circle of Friends for the Dying board member, co-facilitated Sunday’s event with Katrina Klinge. After a brief introduction and refreshments, participants split into small groups to talk.

“As facilitators, we don’t lead the direction or tell people what to talk about. Whatever they bring, they bring and if someone doesn’t want to speak, that’s ok, too. It seems to always go very smoothly,” Timmins said.

The full group reconvened at the end to share highlights from their discussions, which centered on personal stories and the challenges participants face discussing death with loved ones who remain closed to the topic.

“It seemed like people were feeling encouraged about making decisions on how to communicate their own wishes to their loved ones,” Timmins said, adding that some conversations also turn to topics such as green burial or existential questions about the existence of hell.

Circle of Friends for the Dying held its first Death Cafe in Kingston in 2013, a year after the movement was founded in London by Jon Underwood.

“We had no idea how many people would come,” said Laurie Schwartz, 80, a Woodstock resident who co-founded Circle of Friends for the Dying in 2012 and the Hospice Association of Ulster County in 1979.

“70 people came from all over the county and it was standing room only so we began holding them monthly. Sometimes we have seventy people and sometimes we have four but size never matters. People always find value in the conversation,” she added.

Schwartz said her commitment to creating space for conversations about death was shaped by her own family’s silence around it. When her father was dying of cancer when she was 19, she said, his diagnosis and impending death were kept secret, even from him.

“We couldn’t tell friends and he couldn’t complete what he needed to. It’s important to me to know that people can have these conversations with loved ones,” she said.

The organization also offers public workshops on advance directives, a process that helps people clarify for loved ones what they do and do not want as they approach death.

Woodstock resident Barbara Klar, 72, was thrilled to participate in her first death cafe after learning about it on Facebook. A cancer survivor who has been interested in death since a young age and who never thought she would live as long as she has, says she finds it liberating to talk about death. 

 ’I’m not afraid of dying,” she said. ”I got a lot out of connecting with others and hearing our commonalities and the importance of building community as we age, It was really uplifting.”

As for death cafes, Schwartz emphasized that, under the model, anyone can organize one. “We call ours Circle of Friends for the Dying cafes because we come with experienced facilitators who have been in the field for over a dozen years and who have expertise about resources in the community,” she said.

Circle of Friends for the Dying cafes are typically held at Jim and Lisa’s Circle Home, the organization’s volunteer-supported residence in Kingston, when the home does not have anyone living—and dying—there. The home currently has two residents, so the cafes are being held elsewhere in the region. An alternative to dying in an institutional setting, the residence serves people from Ulster and Dutchess counties through referrals from Hudson Valley Hospice, which also provides medical care.

“The truth is that we are all terminal. Death cafes are a safe place to speak about it,” Schwartz said.

Chana Widawski is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.