That was a quote form one of our local 6th formers who attended one of our death cafes….yes…death cafes.
The question is how do we prepare our young people for life? How can we give them opportunities but at the same time give the inner strength to know that often life goes pear shaped? Three years ago we began experimenting with an idea called Grave Talk. Sound grim? Read on.
Is how a conversation started with one 6th former. Every year we invite the local Heads of 6th forms to send their pupils for free coffee and cake and a 1 hour discussion about the one of the two unavoidable things in life – the end. We leave taxes to someone else.
We set up a café area supply the refreshment, out the pupils (we prefer ‘young adults’) into groups of 5 or 6 and give them a set of cards with questions such as: ‘Would you wear bright colours to a funeral?’ ‘How would you like to be remembered?’ ‘What’s your earliest experience of death?’ The results are fascinating and give our young adults a chance to begin wrestling in a non-examined (that’s important) atmosphere some of the big issues of life. Put simply it’s powerful, it’s refreshing and it’s effective.
So successful is the project that we now run it annually in the New Year as part of our junior doctors’ training programme and the feedback is always good. It’s a chance for them to explore their own attitudes, principles and beliefs and think about how that will affect them as doctors.
We don’t help our young people, our future doctors or ourselves by avoiding hard questions and difficult subjects. We don’t want to dwell on them but we do want a safe space to be able to talk about them – It’s healthy!
