Seasonal Melbourne Death Cafe dates for 2019 are:
Autumn Equinox Death Cafe 21 March – 6.30-8pm
Winter Solstice Death Cafe 26 June – 6.00-7.30pm

Death Cafe is by donation to cover the costs of putting on the event. Suggested donation is $10. To find out more about this global movement check Death Cafe. or the Melbourne Death Cafe facebook page.

I’m also running Poetry & End of Life Events with limited spaces available.
Poetry and End of Life, a gentle workshop 20 March 12.30-2pm Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, Carlton
Poetry and End of Life, a gentle workshop 2 May 6.30-8pm venue t.b.a.

# I also run workshops for organisations if you’re interested.

Thanks to the City of Melbourne for assisting me to keep these events as affordable as possible through reduced venue costs.

Here’s some more on Poetry and End of Life to whet your appetite!

And dear readers, always appreciate your shares on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linked in.

The post 2019 – Melbourne Death Cafe and more events appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

What kind of Death Cafe do I offer? Well, participants get a chance to be together and explore experiences, values and views on death and grief in a safe setting. And to eat lovely food and see something attractive in front of them. Here’s a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald by a journalist who came along.

At the end of a Death Cafe I ask people to write a word or a phrase that the time talking together has evoked. Today I opened the folder they sit in on my shelf, and had a look. I had the idea I might put every single one that’s been added in, in one death conversation after another, into a post. But there are just too many! All I can do is give you a flavour – what people say about death cafe may surprise you.

Kindness
Precious Life
Giving
Real!
Ripples
Connection

At each death conversation there is someone who writes Connection. I offer ceremonies and funerals through Kinship Ritual. I’m glad when a participant experiences this sense of kinship at an event.

Sometimes the pieces of card I hand out have a lot of space on them and people to write a phrase.

Talking death brings interesting people together
Freedom is ever-evolving, it is never really over
Living for its own sake
Death is part of life, we need to talk about it
Life is too short not to live it to the full.
Beautiful stories shared.
Death is not the end
The importance of living in the here and now.

When I see in the bunch of cards how many references there are to life and how we live, I remember the stories that have been told in different sessions. I’m heartened. At the 2018 Winter Solstice Death Cafe a young woman spoke movingly of how her father’s death had changed her understanding of life and how she would live in future. That was what had made her come along, to be with others who wanted to face the reality of death. Two women talked of their husbands’ deaths and both had warm and humorous stories of how these companions stay with them in a vital way.

When anyone holds the idea that death is opposed to life it’s hard. In a death cafe conversation participants come to a nuanced perspective of the way life and death sit together, and how life and death weave together. Perhaps that led to someone writing Not to live with death dictating choices.

I no longer remember the circumstances, conversation and stories on the occasion someone wrote: There’s no shame in fear. On reflection though I know that facilitated exchange between participants can validate all kinds of experiences. Perhaps those words came from someone who had an experience of losing an important relative at a young age, who was isolated and frightened, and came to feel that there was inevitably something terrible to fear about death. Sharing that story led him to understand that he was just a child then, or that others had also been strongly influenced by experiences they were unprepared for.

Among the cards there are questions, not many, but one person has asked: Why? Another asks: What is the place of meaning?

I’m grateful to have been part of so many rich conversations, in which groups of strangers inform each others’ understandings, in an atmosphere in which death is both ordinary and in some way sacred. Thanks to Jon Underwood for advocating for this hospitable style of open conversation about death through the Death Cafe movement. What people say about death cafe is It’s good to talk!

The post What people say about death cafe is reassuring appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

When I spoke to him, Jack had recently attended a powerful ritual, the Commemorative Thanksgiving that the University of Melbourne holds each year, for the families of people who’ve donated their body to science. The Victorian body donation program is coordinated by the University of Melbourne.

Commemorative Thanksgiving program

‘I had no idea that there would be this event at all,’ Jack said. ‘It was at Wilson Hall which is pretty big, and a least a half to three quarters was set up with chairs. In the front there was a row of tables right across the width of the stage. On each table were glass jars with tealight candles, and in front of each a handwritten card, with the name of the donor.

‘As you came in you were met by students with the question: Are you family? Please go up to the front …

‘On each seat was a program, with a wonderful poem. Nothing was sombre. The Professor who spoke didn’t approach it as a chore. Rather the event was filled with life.

‘We were invited to talk to students afterwards while having refreshments. I got a good chance to talk to a young man about the importance and necessity of body donation.

‘He told me: “Photos and screen images can only show you something abstract. It’s not until you see the body in front of you, and have to make an incision … it really comes home to you.”’

You can’t learn everything there is to learn on YouTube.

Jack and his wife Kath had seen a program on Catalyst about the need for bodies to help medical professionals in their training. This led to them making arrangements with the University of Melbourne Body Donor program. Jack speaks very highly of the coordinator.

‘They agreed to take our bodies. She told us that this isn’t always the case. She also explained that once someone has made the donation the program doesn’t tell anyone what institution the body was ultimately donated to. It was donated to the University of Melbourne. Full stop. Amen.’

‘Kath died at St Vincent’s and I’d given the information about body donation on admission. I was with her when she died. I held her hand.

‘I asked the Sister if there was anything I needed to do? She assured me that the hospital would contact the Body Donor Program and they’d arrange transfer by a funeral director. I went home and waited to be in touch with our son overseas, when he was home from work. It was exactly what we wanted.

Thinking of donating? You can find responses to frequently asked questions here, and a contact to the wonderful coordinator.

Kathleen and Jack, 2008, with thanks to Jack Bolt.

The post Donating your body to science. And generous ritual. appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

Ruby Lohman of Death Dinner Party remarked that Peter Xing (transhumanist and AI enthusiast) and I, speakers at a recent Melbourne Death Dinner Party, each opened up questions about radically different issues and options.

This made for incredible conversations over a fine dinner in an enchanted place, Kinfolk Cafe. The venue suggested fairy tales and old wizened ladies peeking in, rather than a world where we’re going to cure the causes of ageing. For Peter Xing, it’s important that we challenge the normative idea that we’re born, live out a life and die. For him it’s a waste of human experience to have people die. Ending death means we don’t have to leave one’s important people and interests behind. Curing death would spare pain and suffering for family and friends.

In her interview with me, Ruby asked what made me want to be an end of life consultant. Like Peter I want to help people spare their relatives and friends unnecessary pain and suffering. Fresh and relevant arrangements for end of life can make a difference and so can having a plan in place that reflects a person’s values.

Why does it matter whether or not we plan for the end of our life? she asked.

I told the story of a young widow I heard speak at a conference last year, who together with her husband made a plan for the end of their lives when they married, encouraged by their minister. Sadly she did need that plan, and it helped her navigate a very difficult time of her life.

So a plan matters for our partner, for our family. It matters for our friends. It may be hard to consider, but it’s just so worth it. None of us want to make it any more difficult for close people struggling with grief, when we could make it easier for them. They could be much less stretched at a very difficult time.

Who is the funeral for, you or your friends and family? Ben in the audience asked.

It’s for the family. It’s for the friends. But by making some choices in advance they would have a lovely starting point, an essence that would infuse a ritual with you.

What if friends and family don’t want to talk? asked Jess.

Try talking about a movie, an episode of a drama, a story that’s got you thinking. Ask if they’ve considered some of the things it sparked for you. Get their views on the topic of your digital legacy, and go from there.

I’ve written a book on these topics and can’t wait for it to be available, but for now here’s a link to my resources page.

Reflecting on Death Dinner Party, and Peter Xing’s amazing talk, I don’t think bio-hacking, whether through genetic editing or drugs for life extension is for me. But Google sees human biology as information, and has recently acquired numerous AI companies. So it was awesome to have someone as super smart as Peter encouraging us to think more about what it means to democratise these technologies for extended healthy life.

As Ben left he thanked me and said he’s definitely going to write a will.  A win for a plan for the end of our lives!

The post Death Dinner Party. Life and Death in 2017. appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

The post Online when days are numbered? The social media love project appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

The Sustainable Living Festival’s round the corner, and for Kinship Ritual it’s an annual event. This year it’s Thursday 16th February in the morning in Carlton. The focus is ‘Shades of Green, Melbourne Eco-Funeral Options’. At past events the question ‘what is sustainable actually?’ and the topic of greenwash have arisen alongside stimulating discussion around personal values and choices. Now we take this exchange of views further, looking at what’s available on the 1st page of a Google search for a green funeral in Melbourne.

Later in February I’ll be on a panel with the title Enlightened Funerals. Hosted by the fabulous East Coburg Neighbourhood House, on Tuesday 28th, the other speaker is a Jen Drysdale, delightful death doula.

Together with Lina Patel a member of The Weekly Service I’m hosting one of Stephen Jenkinson’s events in Melbourne, entitled Sanity & Soul, Grief & Climate Change. How difficult it is to face the reality of climate change! Surely there are feelings and grief. I’m honoured to be working with people from a generation who are pierced more than mine I think, by the climate change reality and its effect on their lives. Our event will be at Donkey Wheel House on 7 March. See Eventbrite for other Stephen Jenkinson events in Melbourne.

Some of you know that I convene the Melbourne Jane’s Walk each year in May. I’ve decided to make my walk one that celebrates the life of Glenda M. Lindsay, whose contribution to urban sustainability in Melbourne is legendary. Glenda died recently, and her immense legacy in the City of Yarra and beyond calls for a joyous walk with singing, stories and sharing. It’s going to be on Saturday 6th May, coinciding with the monthly Fitzroy Urban Harvest Food Swap at Smith Reserve, and ending at Tramstop 22 at the north end of Smith Street. If you’d like to help with this walk, be in touch.

Hope to catch you face to face soon, and always appreciate you sharing my news!

The post Hope to see you! Events Feb-May 2017 appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

Nonetheless paper is stuff. Both of my friends asked the same question: what should I do with all the letters you’ve sent over the years?

I wrote back saying that I’d kept their letters, and that one day, when I’m at my leisure I’m going to review all my correspondence. Yes, it takes storage space but I treasure it. Envelopes, stamps, handwriting. The inclusions. I’m not letting go! I couldn’t suggest what they do with mine.

Associations and worlds

What is it I find so nurturing about correspondence? It’s to do with the voice-handwriting association. I hear the voice more strongly on folded pieces of paper than I do in email. Or is it a certain voice that I hear that I don’t hear on email? The reflective voice. The voice that composes while listening to the world. Handwritten personal letters come from a private world. There’s a pot of tea. A window. And the weather outside.

We had a beautiful steady healing rain falling all night. This morning’s bird calls sound like water flowing.

It’s been the coldest spring in 15 years, making the first sunshine this June even sweeter. WASHING DRIES OUTSIDE. It is so exciting. Ferns are unfurling …

We’re experiencing very hot dry weather at the moment. A lot of the lawns round town look like ploughed paddocks. I’ve been saving the washing water to put on our grass.

Personal correspondence in the digital age is informal, brief, quick and can even be to a template! It’s usually to the point. Generally easy to let go. Hearing from you by email can be just as wonderful as by snail mail. Why don’t I ever think of printing it out and making it stay? By its nature email is a public, passing medium. Every email can immediately be sent on to someone else. All the messages on any topics pile together holus bolus in the ever-full Inbox.

The correspondence love project

When I think of correspondence as a love project, I think of the words Dear and Dearest. Not Hi. The way Thank you often appears at the start of letters. Or an impression of the other: I’ve thought of you so many times. How are you?

Love projects are mysteries with their own life. In the case of correspondence, there’s the paradoxical idea in its etymology of mixing or ‘together, with (each other)’ and respondere ‘to answer’.

Writing to and fro from Melbourne and San Francisco, my friend Tova and I have always shared poems we’ve written, drawings and paintings we’ve done.

We also bring publicity for events we’ve attended to each others’ notice. We practice Zen Buddhism. In November, at her Zen Center they’d just had an event Sickness, Ageing and Death. I wished I’d been there.

‘At San Francisco Zen Center, we view death as a normal process, a natural part of life,’ the flyer says. ‘As Zen Buddhists we consider death as a teaching. It reveals and enriches our understanding of impermanence, compassion and interconnection.’ Tova knew I’d have a strong interest. She didn’t write much, but when she visits next year I know we’ll talk about it.

Those letters I’m keeping are not going to last. Impermanent, infused with compassion and interconnection, they’re a love project for now. Someone else may well have to deal with them when I go.

Going through papers

‘My cousin … and I going through my mother’s papers, came upon a poignant and upsetting correspondence,’ writes Annie Proulx in Bird Cloud, in a family story. For those of us who are not letting go of letters this is something to think about. My friend Janet once told me of the time after her father’s death when she and her sisters found a letter written when her middle sister was six months’ old. He’d written that she was an unprepossessing baby. This reinforced unhappiness that had simmered between them at different times in their relationship, and became a lasting bad memory.

Letters are powerful. ‘I can now barely open the box that holds those letters,’ says Annie Proulx.

We’re impermanent. It’s a fact. If possible, let’s be compassionate in considering what happens with our letters, knowing how they they connect to others even when we’re out of the picture.

The post Love projects, the correspondence of a lifetime appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

Emily Dickinson in the flower

No Coward Soul Is Mine

By Emily Bronte

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:

I see Heaven’s glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life – that in me hast rest,

As I – Undying Life- have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain;

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by Thine infinity;

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love

Thy Spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou wert left alone,

Every Existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,

Nor atom that his might could render void:

Thou art Being and Breath,

The post Morbid Poet or Canny Pre-Planner appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

When four people die, little expecting it, it hits home. You never know. Over The Age in my co-work kitchen, we talked about it. I was thinking about Deborah Thomas almost breaking down at the Ardent AGM. The CEO, who failed, and didn’t call the families like she said she did. Who forgot that the bonus she’d been anticipating after her first year of hard slog didn’t paint the right picture in the circumstances. I asked Steve, a young social entrepreneur for his view.

‘If you were the CEO in a fun and fantasy industry, you’d have to be really good at ramping up damage control. You’d have to have the right spin at your fingertips,’ he said, thinking from a business perspective obviously.

Where angels fear to tread

The word spin has negative connotations, but you could say it’s about being able to speak off the cuff without stuffing up. This was what as CEO, Thomas apparently lacked. Now she stands accused. Yet, how many of us are practised at speaking spontaneously when someone we know suffers a bereavement, let alone major trauma? I don’t meet many people who find approaching those who are suffering easy. I’ve even worked with grief and loss professionals who describe anxiety about going in where angels fear to tread. Talking about death is not our society’s strong suit. We’re unpractised in the face of death.

Here can we think of damage control as being a way of not making things worse in circumstances where the company has responsibility and lives have been cut off in their prime? My hunch is that events unfolded in an unforgiving timeframe, and saw a mix of people, phone and face-to-face discussions take place. I can’t help imagining the corporate ‘family’ in which Deborah Thomas works, and the forces pushing and pulling as the implications of these deaths came rapidly to light.

As in many families those in this troubled company would have different styles. Some would have wanted to act immediately. Nothing wrong with that. The situation was urgent and instrumental types are good in these circumstances. Having come in at the rank of CEO, Thomas may well have been one of them. But there may also have been some wanting to take time to think things through. There’s value in that too. In extremely vulnerable circumstances for the families affected, and for the company it wouldn’t hurt. Intuitive, reflective people are good like that.

Whose fault?

I simply think that it’s improbable that the work of not making things worse was entirely in Deborah Thomas’ hands, or that events would have played out in a rational and straightforward way. This isn’t what happens when related individuals and families hit up against extreme misfortune. Facing pressures of time doesn’t help, when everything we know about grief and loss says slow down.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Photo credit: Ulrich Kunst & Bettina Scheidulin

Damage control in the face of death is something I often hear people say their family failed at. It’s an emotional time. Each person thinks that the way they want to proceed is the right way, the only way. Everyone is under stress. There are a lot of practical things to deal with in a short time. Often, nobody has ever been in these circumstances before.

Communication can fail. You may also know families that have fractured when a parent dies. Everyone has been in denial. Perhaps the mum or the dad didn’t make clear what they wanted at the end. It’s too late to become skillful with difficult conversations in the thick of it. Everyone blames someone. You might have had personal experience of compromising what felt right to you, through being shocked, anxious and uncertain.

A preventative would be to practice. To think about situations where we’ve stood mute when we wanted to say ‘I’m sorry’, and explore what paralysed us. To be attuned to the reality that death is part of life and to be prepared to be in touch with those who are grappling with loss. I don’t think Deborah Thomas is alone in the experience if she was simply too scared to call. She saw unexpected death shatter the known world and a crisis unfolding and lost the capacity to speak. I’ve stuffed up and wished afterwards that I’d been braver and said something. Haven’t you?

It’s not our fault. These are behaviours we take from our social environment. One is to hold death well away. Socially we’re poorly equipped to meet the reality of death. The difficult conversations that everyone will at some time need to have are not covered in Women’s Weekly, where Deborah Thomas worked as Managing Editor before taking up the Ardent CEO role.

Difficult conversations make a difference

Yet we short-change ourselves by not acknowledging the reality that circumstances change, we change, and that we’re mortal. Atul Gawande, a great writer on this subject, notes that in pushing the reality away, we miss the opportunity to change individual experience for the better. We see this starkly in the unfolding of Dreamworld events. Ardent Leisure had a real opportunity to make a small difference to the lives of the bereaved, but couldn’t do it for some reason. Possibly nothing had prepared Deborah Thomas to have a very difficult conversation about death. Perhaps she told the truth when she said ‘I didn’t know how to contact them’.

Would any of us be ready to face up to it? Was Deborah Thomas in fact wise when she did not pick up the phone and call the families, knowing she was at a loss and did not have good words to say?

I think we get it wrong about Deborah Thomas when we make her the fall-woman for a mismanaged crisis and revile her for not being an expert when it comes to facing death. We might note also that she’s a woman in a corporate boys’ club, as a recent cartoon in the Australian Financial Review reveals.

Her story highlights that by steering clear of death, we miss the opportunity as a society to change. Numerous initiatives have grown up to address this, such as Death Café and Death over Dinner. We can sit down together and have conversations about death.

We miss the opportunity to change in our families when we pretend death is a long way down the track and that we don’t need to talk about it. We miss the chance to become more secure, less avoidant and more organised around the fact that death is part of life.

In 2017 I’ll be running four workshops Having Better Death Conversations or How to Talk about Death without Stuffing Up. To keep in the loop join up to my email list.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

The post Difficult conversations; what we may have got wrong about the CEO of Ardent Leisure appeared first on Annie Bolitho.