Discuss life and what follows at Upper St. Clair Library
In addition to coping with her grief, a woman whose husband passed away while on a business trip out of the country encountered another issue.
“She couldn’t get into his computer to let his colleagues know that he had died,” Upper St. Clair resident Naomi Herman said, “because she didn’t know what the passwords were and didn’t know where to look to get the passwords.”
Examples abound of people who find themselves in similar situations because of reluctance to address a certain subject.
“We, in our culture, tend to not talk about death, about dying, about living wills, about serious illnesses,” Herman explained. “We want everything to be happiness and glory. Life is not that way.”
“My philosophy is, the more one talks about a taboo topic, the easier it becomes to talk about it.” – Naomi Herman
To pave the way toward opening the discussion, she is hosting what’s known as a Death Café from 7 to 8:30 p.m. April 12 at Upper St. Clair Township Library. The event is a group-directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes.
“The focus of Death Café is to take away some of the fear of talking about death and to bring it into the vernacular,” Herman said. “There’s no selling of anything. There’s no discussion about, is there an afterlife or isn’t there an afterlife, in terms of trying to change one’s attitude. We break up into small groups and just talk.”
She writes a blog, “The Mindful Files: About Living and Leaving,” and while researching applicable topics, she came across the Death Café concept. It originated in England in 2010, and the first such gathering in the United States took place July 19, 2012, in Columbus, Ohio.
A Death Café Pittsburgh is active, and Herman attended an event last year in Greensburg that attracted some 40 participants, from young adults through senior citizens. To start, they were asked: “What brought you here?”
“And that is the question I’ll be raising,” Herman reported. “However the conversation flows, that’s what we will do.”
One point of discussion might address the disposition of an individual’s possessions after he or she dies, which Herman said served as a motivation for starting her blog.
“We, in this country, have a lot of stuff that we don’t need,” she explained. “It’s pretty. It looks lovely. And shopping, I don’t know if it’s one of the most important activities in today’s world, but it certainly ranks up there.
“I wanted to help people start thinking about their need to organize their lives and put all their stuff together,” she continued, “the important things that you want to make sure get carried on into the next generation. You need to think about that.”
As per Death Café tradition – it’s tea in England, of course – Herman will serve cake and coffee to go with the conversation.
“I just want people to start thinking about it,” she said, “and my philosophy is, the more one talks about a taboo topic, the easier it becomes to talk about it.”
For more information, visit www.twpusc.org/library/library-home and click on “Library Events Calendar,” or contact Walker Evans, programs and outreach services librarian, at 412-835-554, extension 283, or evansw@einetwork.net.