Author Archives: diealoguecafe

Mention the name death doula and people look somewhat mystified, as if one is talking a foreign language.  As it turns out, there is nothing mysterious about it at all.  On the one hand it turns out to be a … Continue reading →

A lot of people today would claim that they are beyond rituals, beyond what they might call superstitious practices to call on the gods to save them from harm or calm their troubled minds in times of stress.  And yet … Continue reading →

The idea of having some say over how or when we die has resulted in the development of action plans like Advance Health Care Directives (AHCD) that inform what an Enduring Guardian requests of the medical staff attending to a … Continue reading →

The Swiss love to talk about all manner of things including dying and death. And what better place than a café.  Bernard Crettaz’s café meetings in 2004 didn’t spread much beyond Switzerland and France until Jon Underwood in east London … Continue reading →

It is good to see that the dodgy practices of some providers in the funeral industry are getting some coverage in the mainstream media and in the business pages as well as general news stories. This report by Caitlin Fitzsimmons … Continue reading →

It is Palliative Care Week in Australia – a time to pause and reflect on the significant contribution made by those who care for the sick and dying in our families and the community. There was a time in our … Continue reading →

Every day of our lives, we are provided with yet another opportunity to learn a little more about life from another of perspectives. This is one of those days. In What we can learn from the dead, Alan Stokes (Sydney … Continue reading →

It might sound a bit odd, but I have mixed feelings about Mother’s Day. The modern holiday of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. … … Continue reading →

There are two sides to this story. On the one hand there are many ways to remember someone who has died by making or crafting something that perhaps was significant to them or something that we can remember them by. … Continue reading →

We are told that the news reports, be they the hourly radio news bulletin, the nightly television news hour or the newspaper reports are simply reflecting the realities of our daily lives. Well we reckon otherwise. All the stories about violence … Continue reading →