On a late-January night at the Radical Cat bookstore in Reno, shelves were pushed together, creating a cozy space in the middle of the room, where about 20 people were paired up in deep conversations about mortality.
The first question focused on community grief. Participants shared their feelings about the two viral murders by ICE of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“I had an immediate reaction to it,” said Jonathan Cramer. “We’ve gone through some loss with animals, but seeing him die like that, alone, cold in the street, broke my heart. I started crying. I couldn’t help it.”
Cramer and his wife started attending the Biggest Little Death Café during the fall. This is where he met Caitlyn Ottmann, a funeral director.
“With my job, I deal with the after effects of the things, but it isn’t being there in that moment of loss, and I have no idea how to grapple with it,” Ottmann said.
The duo paired up at the monthly gatherings, finding comfort in a familiar face.
“It was a very emotional time for my wife and I. I've lost my parents. I’ve not really grieved my parents. It’s important for me, I think, to understand grief and how it’s impacting me,” Cramer said.
“It's been nice to have a space to come that is open and embracing, it feels like a hug,” Ottmann said. “It’s confronting the grief that we don’t talk about in public.”
After about 15 minutes, Emily Barney, a death, birth, and postpartum doula, told the group to switch partners for the next question. Death, she said, is the elephant in the room.
“We’re living every day, and we could die at any moment, and our Western culture pushes it away,” Barney said. “It’s swept under the rug. It’s a taboo. It is dismissed. It’s dramatized. We don't know what it's actually like, and it’s the thing that we fear the most.”
Bringing people together like this is just one of the roles of a death doula, said Anita Hannig, a death educator and author of “The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.” She said it’s part of a growing death-positive movement, led largely by Gen Z and Baby Boomers.
“I think it’s the realization of how estranged we have become from one of the most significant aspects of our existence. It’s a dissatisfaction with the status quo around how siloed death and dying have become in our country,” Hannig said. “And now you really see this trend of boomers saying, ‘I’m not satisfied to die, as I saw my own parents dying.’”
Death doulas advocate talking about death often, and even planning for it. Melissa Chanselle-Hary, a death doula and founder and co-owner of Sacred Transits, works with clients who are young and healthy.
“We’ve gone through a series of discussions between some of the logistics and the bureaucratic stuff of paperwork and estate plans, but then also just some exploratory emotion-based conversations, like, what does a good death look like? What do you want to happen to your body?” Chanselle-Hary asked.
One of the biggest barriers to having these talks is that U.S. society prizes youthfulness and vitality, Chanselle-Hary said. When working with people who are dying, she has a “zero shenanigans” policy.
“Sometimes you’re a quarterback, sometimes you’re a hand in the dark, sometimes you’re just the lackey or the grocery runner.” Chantelle-Hary said “Sometimes you’re the person pacing visits and indicating, they can’t read very well, sending voice memos would be more helpful. Family dynamics can come into play. I’m not confrontational, but I am comfortable with conflict.”
Volunteer death doula Lea Cartwright compared the advocacy to her day job as a lobbyist and owner of Cartwright NV Government Affairs. She met Chanselle-Hary at the Nevada legislature, and later sought her support while Cartwright’s grandmother was in the hospital.
Her advice: Think about death every day.
“I do think life is a little more colorful, and this may be a little bit too morbid, but it’s definitely better if you think about death every day, because it could happen at any time,” Cartwright said. “And so if you think about, what can I do today to make my little corner of this earth garden a little bit better, a little bit brighter, a little more fertile? If I were to leave today, what would I be leaving behind?”
Cartwright also encouraged people to reflect on those who have passed before them to keep their memories alive.
