I’m writing this listening to Tallis’s  Spem In Alium while the growing spring light and warmth is bringing my garden to budding life.     

Terry Pratchett intended to die listening to this - “That’s the one where every single part of it comes together at once, where God picks you up and drops you on your head,” - in his garden drinking an excellent brandy. Apparently he died in his own bed with his family and his cat with him, and I hope he was listening to this music.

Many of my friends and acquaintances are texting, emailing and talking on Facebook about the loss of this good man, all of us feeling a bit stupid about the terrible sadness we’re experiencing. But we’ve shared a world, landscapes, lineages, lives, adventures and histories with him and with each other, and that world has now come to an end. The characters we love can now only repeat their stories, they can’t develop or mature any more. Discworld has suddenly become preserved rather than living on in a kind of real time.

The most common element on Discworld was Narrativium, which caused people to act and events to play out as they are meant to in a story. Heroes were guaranteed to win if the chances were a million to one. If a little girl walked alone through the woods she had to meet a wolf, who was forced to try and eat her. But Pratchett’s most complex characters fought the pressures of storylines that cast them as the Evil Witch, the Killer Cop, a Farmers Wife or an Unwilling Reaper and in doing so became more fully themselves and infinitely more interesting people.   

Mistress Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, Susan Sto Helit, Tiffany Aching and Death himself exerted self control, experienced pain and unhappiness in order to learn and grow and become who they were truly meant to be. None of them were interested in being nice or even particularly liked, and paradoxically became loved.   

Please take the time to listen to Spem In Alium and raise a glass to Terry Pratchett who brought good philosophy to millions of children and adults, and whose legacy is fierce, funny and full of wisdom.

Back in the early 90’s I ran an organisation that advised on everything to do with death and dying, including sitting vigil with the dying, so I’m relaxed around the subject. In general though, people feel that death is something that they can’t speak about, perhaps because it will bring death to them or make people think they’re weird, so I was slightly anxious about how many people would turn up to the first Portobello Death Café, especially since it was being recorded by Radio 4.

I need not have worried. In all, there were about 20 of us, about half of whom looked under 25, and the conversation flowed beautifully. Not surprisingly, older people had developed their philosophy around death, it seemed to hold no fear for them, and they were keen to stress how important it was to live as full a life as possible. Younger people seemed more focused on the deaths they had experienced and how the process of dying, death and bereavement seemed too haphazard, that there were no rituals to guide them or anyone else through something that didn’t just happen for one day but resonated throughout their lives.

(A few days later Selfies At Funerals appeared on tumblr, which confirmed those experiences. I don’t think it’s the end of civilisation but a demonstration that many young people are now totally unprepared to deal with death and are attempting to find their own way based on how they handle other events. They now know that death is not like other events.)

Right at the beginning of the evening we wrote about what death meant for us on Post It notes and stuck them on the wall. Throughout the evening the notes fell off like autumn leaves. No one missed the symbolism. The reporter put his recording equipment away and joined us as an equal, we all listened to each other carefully and respectfully. The age differences in this group were striking and whilst no overt teaching happened it was noticeable and somewhat moving that younger people listened carefully to what older people had to say and vice versa.

Then we fell upon the exquisite Red Velvet cake that Hummingbird Bakery had so kindly donated and I had to remind people to go home so that the venue could close on time. The only thing I wasn’t happy with was the part of the Radio 4 report in which I say “Portobello Death Café” as if I’ve gone mad. I was reading the cake and was fairly overwhelmed by Hummingbirds generosity and the sheer prettiness of the cake. You can hear my shame as well as the wise and useful things that people said at the café here at around 25mins in.

I’m hopeful that tonight’s Death Café will be as successful and that the one on the 13th November that will be filmed by Yahoo will come across well. People do want to talk about death, to explore their fears and philosophy and develop their knowledge by listening to other people’s experience. If you’re around Portobello, join us.

Lighthouse West London
111-117 Lancaster RoadW11 1QT

http://www.londontown.com/TransportInformation/Attraction/London_Lighthouse/bded/

A lot of what I’ll be doing in the coming months will be ritual based.

About half of my clients describe feeling detached or distracted, they can’t get on with life, often they’re irritable, sometimes they’re listless. Life has lost meaning: what’s the point of going to work/ struggling with exams/ anything?

Any number of clients who’ve experienced bereavement describe this kind of melancholia, and it seems that a part of them has followed the person they love into the world of the dead. While there may not be an actual ‘Land of the Dead’ it’s a useful idea to play with: you’ve followed the person you loved but since this is a place for the dead not the living, you start to become listless, hopeless, indecisive and get uncomfortable feelings – rage, fear, hatred – that you can’t shake off. You’re not dead but you’re not really alive. To return to life you have to say goodbye to the person you most want to be with.

Every other culture has ritualised life changes, not primarily to control a community but because humans are inherently ritualistic. Menarche, first sexual experiences, becoming pregnant, giving birth, becoming a parent, first day at school and so on towards becoming a post-menopausal woman or a properly mature man; great age, moving closer to your Ancestors rather than your grandchildren; last illness and death. And finally being honoured by the living as an Ancestor yourself.

For a decade I facilitated these kinds of events in a formal setting for large groups of people and saw how powerful and transformative they can be in a very different way from therapy. Therapy relies heavily on words and on exploring how you’re feeling. Ritual speaks to instinct – you move from your intellect to your guts and heart quickly and safely. So powerful is ritual that just watching one can change the way you view the world and your place in it. When you don’t know where that might be, beginning to find out can be very restorative.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be drawing up a list of events, some seasonal, some weekly, some monthly. Let me know what you’d like to be involved in, from Red Tents to shrouding our dead.