Berlin and Beyond: Dying together

I remember the first time I was really aware that someone had died. It was a girl I used to play with sometimes. I was perhaps 10 or 11 and she was around the same age. I still remember that unfathomable feeling that she was gone. Just like that. And forever.

I also remember feeling something akin to relief when I overheard adults talking some days later about how her parents had managed to smile while reminiscing about her short life. I had questions about her, about them, about the whole  experience of death. But most I didn't ask because it just felt like I shouldn't. And in many respects, that feeling has never really gone away.

Neither though, has my curiosity. I've often referred to myself as having a morbid fascination with death, but the more I've seen people talk about it in hushed tones as if it were something sinful, or shrink away from its name as though it were reserved for others, the more I think such curiosity is healthy. Equally healthy is my respect for the random nature of its decisive hand. But because I still have unanswered questions, death cafés hold a certain appeal.

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The Berlin branch of a movement that started in a London living room seven years ago and has since spread to 62 countries, is held once a month and aims to dismantle the edifice of fear around death. It's not a café as such, but a gathering for anyone inclined to go along and chat about the big full-stop over a cup of tea.

Or at the meeting I attended, which doubled as a Mexican Day of the Dead-style celebration, a cup of tea and a glass of vermouth.

Dismantling the edifice of fear

To mark the special nature of the event, the funeral parlour room where it was held had been set up with an elaborate altar, bursting with color, symbolic elemental offerings, flowers, pictures, and statues.

Those attending had been invited in advance to bring a photo of someone they'd known, and some of that person's favorite food and drink to share with the others. To celebrate the dead  in their absent presence. Hence the vermouth, which was a wink to my grandparents. 

The food and drink was not all we shared. For four hours, the kaleidoscope of emotions that accompany dying were given a voice and a face as the 10 of us present talked about a range of experiences so unique in nature, yet so comfortingly similar in their distilled essence.

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Some who came volunteer as what are known as death doulas, people who've trained to accompany the dying, to hold their hand and be there for and with them until the very end, and who've become more common since the start of Germany's hospice movement 25 years ago.

The service they provide is sometimes likened to that of a midwife. Just at the other end of life. True enough, they both provide an invaluable service to the ones they are caring for and those around them, but death doulas go a step beyond, because just by being there, they have the potential to broaden societal acceptance of our ultimate fate as human beings.

To create, in a country where getting on for a million people passed away last year, a space that allows questions to be asked freely. Even if there aren't always easy answers.

In Berlin and Beyond, British-born Tamsin Walker takes a closer look at some of the quirks and perks of life in Germany, which has been her home for almost 20 years. She tweets as @TamsinkateW