38 | New Scientist | 23 November 2019LIL
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F YOU planted an apple tree in the ground
where your mum had been composted,
would you eat the apples?” It isn’t a question
you hear every day. But that’s the whole point
of a death cafe: to get people talking about
something we typically choose to ignore.
I had come to the end of the line, the London
Underground’s District Line, to get my first
taste of the experience. Fuelled by tea and cake,
the conversation meandered from powers
of attorney and whether a sudden death is
better than a terminal illness to living wills
and biodegradable burials – hence the apples.
But I wasn’t here to think about what to do
with my mother. The assignment was to
embrace the end of my own life.
Honestly, it felt a bit daft to begin with: I’m 37
and, as far as I know, in good health. As it turns
out, though, that first visit to a death cafe was
the start of a brief journey that would open my
eyes – not only to what I can do to prepare, and
the adventures my cadaver might enjoy, but
also to how the very act of contemplating
death can improve my life.
We are all going to die, and we know it.
Yet people don’t generally think about death,
never mind discuss it. That might be because
it is far removed from most of us. In the
West, death is outsourced: the dying itself is
medicalised, while the aftermath is sanitised
and stage-managed. Or it might be the result of
deep-rooted fear. According to the influential
“terror management theory”, a desire to
transcend death is the driving force behind
all manner of human behaviours, from art
to belief in the afterlife.
Either way, brushing it under the carpet
isn’t doing us any good, says psychologist
Mireille Hayden, co-founder of Gentle Dusk,
which seeks to lift the taboo around discussing
death. “It tends to isolate people facing death
or bereavement because nobody knows
how to talk to you,” she says. “It also makes
it difficult for your relatives when the time
comes because in most cases the family have
never discussed what the dying person wants.”Take back control
Above all, our inability to confront death
means we lose control over one of the most
significant events we will face. For instance,
although some 70 per cent of people in the
UK say they would prefer to die at home,
only 24 per cent get that wish fulfilled. That
might help explain the increasing demand for
end-of-life doulas, people who are trained to
support those who are dying and their families.
Hayden is one. The services she provides rangePrepare to die
It’s never too soon to
start contemplating
your own demise,
finds Daniel Cossins
from companionship and advice on pain relief
to helping people with terminal illnesses make
video messages for their children.
When I ask what I can do, she says the first
step is to complete an “advance care plan”. The
template she gives me asks how I would like to
be cared for in old age, where I would prefer to
die and what is important to me in those final
days. I find it hard to engage. I suspect I am
failing to manage my terror. But then I reach
the question about what I want to do with my
lifeless body, and I’m keen to find out more.
Until recently, there were just two main
options: burial in a cemetery or cremation.
Now, people are waking up to a world of
possibilities. You can be made into a firework,
a diamond or an artificial reef, for instance,
or float gently towards space beneath a helium
balloon. Such alternatives are certainly
flamboyant, says Fran Hall, CEO of the Good
Funeral Guide, an independent, non-profitA teenager muses
on mortality at a
Bangkok death cafeMARIAIO
NOVA-GRIBI
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