By: Noeka Nimmervoll, Staff Writer
On Sunday, June 29, Ava Quissy, a recent SFU political science graduate, hosted a Death Café at Slice Vancouver that welcomed all community members. The café hosted group conversations about death, using prompt cards to facilitate smaller group circles. Quissy led the larger group discussions, cultivating an open and grounded communal environment through questions such as, “What makes you feel most alive?” The Peak attended the event and interviewed Quissy to learn more.
The Café Mortel was the original inspiration for Quissy’s Death Café, pioneered by Bernard Crettaz in 2004. It was a bistro where community members met monthly to talk about death. Jon Underwood developed this idea into the Death Café to further destigmatize death and bring dying back into the hands of the community instead of hospitals. Underwood expanded Crettaz’s project to become a more accessible global phenomenon, bringing conversations of death to all who wanted to partake. The café is based on four requirements: the event must not generate any financial profit, be an accessible hub for discussing death, have conversations led primarily by community members, and offer some form of refreshments. Underwood developed a website that outlines logistical aspects of Death Cafés, including a full guide on how to host your own.
“I think a lot of people come because they’ve experienced a loss in their life and they felt like they haven’t really processed it” — Ava Quissy, SFU alum
When asked about her attraction to death, Quissy said that it has haunted her since she was 10, when she first realized everyone would eventually die. The anxiety of this inevitable moment was pushed away, at least until she took Jason Brown’s class at SFU called Death, Disease, and Disaster (HUM 330). Quissy said taking this class “changed [her] life,” through the exploration of this niche topic that “transcended education,” and encouraged her to have a greater appreciation of the multifaceted ways death is viewed around the world. Through the class’s topics relating to “how cultures respond to tragedy and dying,” she realized she wanted to have and host conversations around death, stemming from a desire for more cultural understanding and recognition around what she sees as “one of the most natural things” about human existence.
“It started off as a class project,” Quissy said. “I was super curious to know, especially within my friend group, how other people approach this; if they felt the same way [as me].” Quissy plans to host more events like this, focusing on encouraging youth to come out and talk about death. “I definitely want to be able to inspire conversations [about death] in people that are younger so that they’re not first encountering them when they’re older,” she said.
Quissy added, “I think a lot of people come because they’ve experienced a loss in their life and they felt like they haven’t really processed it,” owing to how “there’s no unified base for how people should grieve, and so people are just starting to do it in isolation.” Usually in Western cultures, she explained that “death has been sanitized and overly simplified,” which she believes to be detrimental to the individual and the community. Personally, I think Death Cafés provide a space for nuanced, personal conversations in which to grieve and process thoughts communally, and proves as a reminder for every human experience that we are not alone.
Media about death recommended by Quissy
Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Departures (2008) by Yôjirô Takita
The Order of the Good Death
Death Café
