(Karen G Johnston, MSW, M. Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, a practicing Buddhist, and in her previous profession, a clinical social worker. She has been trained as an End of Life Death Doula (INELDA). The heart of her spiritual practice is befriending death; during a three-month sabbatical, she developed the Date with Death Club curriculum. You can learn more about Karen at her LinkedIn profile.)
There just aren’t enough public spaces to ponder together what it means to be mortal.
Certainly, some art takes on this weighty topic. There are memoirs, novels, and books of non-fiction. There are documentaries and even Hollywood blockbusters. I just attended an art exhibit at a city museum focusing on depictions of lamentation and grief in the 20th century.
Yet, community spaces where we can actively and intentionally engage this most common of human experiences are rare. Date with Death Club aims to change that.
Date with Death Club (DwDC for short) is a secular, multi-session, facilitated curriculum with a pedagogically-sound format and flexible implementation capacities. While mortality may well be a serious topic, we should not take it too seriously, so each session ends with a Joke of the Day. We even have a mascot – Mx. Mo (short for “mortality”) helping us to keep it real.
DwDC has 14 mix-and-match sessions, so it can be tailored to a community’s needs and/or the facilitator’s confidence in session topics. The format creates a space where a core group can connect over time while also welcoming individuals to drop in for one or a few sessions. Sessions include didactic content and time for personal reflection, as well as small group conversation.
From the fall of 2021 through the spring of 2022, the curriculum was piloted by seven sites, online and in-person, with well over one hundred people participating. The curriculum, revised based on the pilot experience, is now available. On the DwDC website, there is a video recording of an online orientation that took place at the end of August, 2022 and at which 50+ people familiarized themselves with the curriculum. There is no cost for curriculum; it is a free-will offering. As such, those who facilitate it in their communities may not charge a fee to participants.
There is a consistent format across all sessions to help create a dependable space in which participants can engage in topics of a sensitive nature. Justice-affirming values are integrated throughout the curriculum, asking participants to pay attention to patterns of inclusion/exclusion. Some sessions require a guest speaker to share their expertise and respond to questions. The 14 sessions fall into two general categories: Logistical/Informational and Philosophical/Spiritual. Session titles of the current offering are
- Getting Comfortable with Death Talk
- Afterlife / Afterlives
- Grief: Loving & Losing, Learning & Living
- Dying, Death, & Poetry
- Extinction Fears: Processing Eco-Grief
- Good Life & Good Death
- Writing Your Own Obituary
- Hospice, Palliative Care, & End-of-Life Documents, Oh My! *
- Medical Aid in Dying / Death with Dignity *
- Owning Your Dying
- Planning Your Own Memorial Service
- Resistance & Acceptance: The Mortal Dance
- What to Do with a Dead Body?
- Aging: Better than the Alternative
* These sessions reference Final Exit Network.
DwDC is well-suited for public libraries, senior centers, over-55 residential communities, houses of worship, and even those funeral homes who provide community education. A group of friends or neighbors could get together to create a Date with Death Club. Though the curriculum provides background for the content it delivers, it is helpful if the person leading the sessions has previous skills in facilitating groups, as well as knowledge in the realm of death education. Participants in the pilot year gave rave reviews! Some of their reviews are on the website, including this one:
“Love, love, love this class. Who would have guessed?”
Given the fact of our mortality, whether we want it or not, aren’t we all members of a Date with Death Club? To request the curriculum, complete the form at the DwDC website. You’ll find the form just below the video on the landing page.
In a recent national survey conducted by The Conversation Project, 92 percent of respondents said they think it’s important to have conversations about end-of-life care with their loved ones — but only about a third actually did so. Promoting discussions about mortality is essential to preparing for a “Good Death.” The Date with Death Club is a welcome part of that effort.
Gary, thank you for commenting. You raise an important point. So many of us want to have the conversations, but aren’t quite sure where to start (The Conversation Project has great resources in this regard) and can feel alone, losing motivation to get started. Participants in Date with Death Club often report how less alone they feel, seeing others with similar questions and ruminations. Last year, in an online DwDC, a mother-daughter team took it together – a great way to enter into these necessary conversations and hopefully grow closer. ~ Karen