OLDS — A Death Café, held by the Olds & District Hospice Society (ODHS) in the Beech CoWork facility March 17 attracted 12 in the afternoon for an informal discussion about loss.
A free seminar on wills and estates, held in the morning in the same facility, attracted 29 people.
ODHS services coordinator Cindy Palin convened the event.
Death Cafés, which began in England in 2011, are events where people gather to give their thoughts and concerns about death and dying while drinking coffee or tea and eating desserts.
Death Cafés are now held around the world.
ODHS officials say to their knowledge, the March 17 event was the first one held in Olds. They had planned to hold one earlier but “because of COVID, they couldn’t get it off the ground," Palin said.
They have been held in Sundre though. Palin attended one there in January.
Palin said ODHS staff and volunteers decided to hold the event at this point in the year because they hold other events at other times of the year – the Hike For Hospice in May, for example.
“We thought this would be a good time also because of winter. It’s great to get people out and talking. Grief can be really difficult in the winter. People can feel closed in,” she said.
“The other thing too is, after COVID, there’s been a lot of difficulties with people connecting for any reason, just because we’ve gotten out of practice of talking to each other.
“It’s just really been kind of isolated and so we thought this would be a good way to get people together talking.”
Palin had hoped to have about 30 people attend, so overall, she’s pleased by the turnout, but would have liked to have more people attend the Café in the afternoon.
She was very impressed with the fact so many people came in the morning to find out the importance of having wills drawn up and the planning their estates for their passage.
Palin was asked why there was such a difference in attendance between the morning and afternoon sessions.
“One of the reasons why they have Death Cafés is because they believe there’s such a stigma around talking about death,” she said.
“It’s interesting that the morning is planning for when you die; the afternoon is talking about deaths that have affected you.
“And I think it (death) still is uncomfortable. I think that in our culture, I think we’re not comfortable about slowing down and taking time to talk about death.
“We find at the Hospice there’s all kinds of conversations around death and we wanted to equip people as much as we could.”
It was pointed out to Palin that while only 12 people attended the Death Café, usually about double that figure – if not more – attend the Hospice Tree of Remembrance ceremony every November to remember loved ones who have passed away.
She was asked why the difference in attendance between those two events, both of which deal with death.
“I think people feel their losses a lot around Christmas time because it’s a family gathering or a community gathering and so they just feel their losses more at that time, possibly.”
Palin said the next time the ODHS holds a Death Café, a concerted effort will likely be made to attract young people, because she’s heard that they’re more open to talking about death than their older counterparts.
Thus, she said the Death Café, will likely be promoted at the Olds College of Agriculture & Technology and École Olds High School.
“There’s been a lot of losses in the younger generation, just like there is in the older (ones); just differences in how people have died,” Palin said.
“But because of social media too, I think the younger generation maybe see it more and find it easier to talk about, so they might be interested.
“This is becoming quite a trend around the world and if you use the word ‘trend’ with the younger people, I think they’ll (say) ‘oh, it’s a trend, we’ve got to go, it’s going to be cool.’”
Palin said to her knowledge, there was no discussion about the fatal shooting of two Edmonton police officers which occurred March 16.
She said that was likely because the plan was to get the conversation going by pulling slips of paper with ideas for conversation starters out of a jar “and that wasn’t one of the conversation starters.”
