LET’S TALK
ABOUT DEATH
JOHN LOGIC
“For years, doctors have
been talking to doctors
about how to talk to
patients about dying,
which is wonderful,
but truthfully, the way
we need to shift our
thinking is through a
grassroots movement
like this.”
U.S.-based projects on the end of
life that have launched in recent
years. They are popularized on social media, where Sweet and many
others found Death Over Dinner.
Among those projects are
Death Cafes, informal discussions hosted monthly in coffee
shops in dozens of American cities, as well as tech startups that
focus on funerals and end-oflife planning. There’s also a card
game about death discussions,
My Gift of Grace, that a Philadelphia design firm is developing.
Gary Laderman, a professor of
religious studies at Emory University whose specialty includes
the history of death traditions and
funerals, believes these kinds of
efforts are bound to grow.
“New forms of communica-
HUFFINGTON
09.29.13
tion change the way we express
our understanding of death and
how we grieve. Social media is,
at least in part, a great democratizing force, so I imagine more
and more people will turn to
Facebook, Twitter, Death Cafes,
to struggle with the meaning of
death and how to live with it,”
said Laderman, who authored
Rest in Peace: A Cultural History
of Death and the Funeral Ho me
in Twentieth-Century America.
“What is certain is that we no
longer only and exclusively turn
to the ‘traditional authorities’
in these matters, the religious
leader/institution, medical doctor,
and the funeral home, but instead
work with a wider range of cultural resources to make sense of
death and dying, and
living with the dead.”
Jaweed Kaleem is the national religion
reporter for The Huffington Post.
A group
gathers at the
home of John
Logic and
Lisa Bessolo
in Seattle,
Wash., to
work through
their personal
struggles
with familial
death and
illness.