Hosted by Adult Education and Enrichment at BuxMont UUF

This Death Cafe has taken place

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About this Death Cafe

There is no charge for this meeting and refreshment and child care will be provided. We are running a Death Cafe to foster greater comfort with a "taboo subject" in our American society.

The Death cafe experience will benefit participants by reminding us that we have a finite time to be alive and that we can live our lives to the fullest starting now.

We need to direct a little attention and respect to the biology of our human bodies.  We need a better system for public education about our human condition, our health, and our mortality

Until science and technology advance substantially, all complex living systems die (in the conventional, individual organism sense). We celebrate our birthday and never think about our obituary. "facilitating the process of death, when death would be a benefit, can be seen as proper an activity as aiding in the process of birth"(J. David Velleman). Lewis Thomas, author of The Lives of a Cell, wrote: "Animals seem to have an instinct for performing death alone, hidden. Even the largest, most conspicuous ones find ways to conceal themselves in time." Have we humans, who are part of the animal kingdom, lost this ability? 

We all should be conscious, educated, and perhaps reminded as our lives progress about the reality that we human beings are mortal.  The reality is that, at the instant we are born, we are on the schedule to die as well.  They are the two most vital moments of our existence.  Yet we avoid thinking about our own death, let alone talking about it.  How many times have we had a conversation with the members of our families, including the children, about our own death? 

At the end of our biological journey our bodies will fade but our legacies will endure.  Let’s be ready to depart, perhaps not entirely in a "haze of tranquility," but at peace with the naturalness of death in the universe that eternally encompasses us.

About Adult Education and Enrichment at BuxMont UUF

celia sharp

Peter Scheer

Kely Tevlin