“All of us,” the syrupy American voice said slowly to the room, “will die sooner or later.”

Sarah shifted on the floor next to me. Her bangles clanged a little in the silence between sentences, and someone across the room coughed.

“Death is inevitable. No one is exempt.”

I squinted one eye open to get a look around at the white-walled Tribeca art gallery. The elegant Asian girl on the grey rug opposite me had her eyes dutifully closed, poised like someone who was about to excel at an exercise class and like, hug the teacher at the end.

“Death is an inescapable outcome of life. No one can avoid this fate.”

We were at an event Sarah found on the ticketing website Eventbrite (which now apparently has a For You Page). It was labeled Death Mediation and Dialogue, in conjunction with Elizabeth Englander’s exhibition Mister Poganynibbana. The meditation was to be followed by a Q&A with a funeral director, on the topic of—surprise—death and dying.

On the other rugs: a smaller man with a thick 'stache and glasses, in a sort of rockabilly outfit; bold considering that the event stated Please bring: Comfortable clothing for sitting on the ground. The tension across the crotch of his skinny jeans was giving me a headache, and I wished he’d come in something else. Detach, I reminded myself.

Next to him: a gallery assistant, a bespectacled girl hiding away in the corner (I remember my first EventBrite), and a man with straightened hair who I can only describe as a teacher’s pet. He gazed and nodded emphatically at almost everything anyone said.

Before the meditation started, the artist shyly spoke about her work, which was beautiful— a large modular cardboard sculpture of the Buddha lying on his side took up one half of the room, with small metallic flowers dotted around the walls and floor. The second, slightly smaller, sleeping figure lay on a plastic sofa in the back room, dreaming snoozily with two large arms tucked beneath its head, encased in yellow-painted newspaper.

Our meditation guide read us the passages of The Nine Contemplations of Death— these being: Death is inevitable. My life span is decreasing continuously. Death will come regardless of whether I am prepared for it. My life span is not fixed. Death has many causes. My human body is fragile and vulnerable. My loved ones cannot keep me from death. My material resources cannot help at the moment of death. And my own body cannot help me at the time of death.

The meditations, while comforting in their conclusive and unembellished force, didn’t seem to really…penetrate. Sarah put it well when she said, “It felt like she was telling us a story about someone else”. Perhaps thirty minutes on the floor of an art space isn’t enough to truly get to grips with one’s own finitude, but I was surprised to come up against so much resistance. My tiny prawn brain kept being like… so true…. but like, not me.

After the meditation, the teacher ‘invited’ us to share how we felt, and after an excruciating minute of silence, we moved onto the funeral director Q&A. I was expecting (and very much looking forward to) Q-ing and A-ing with a stuffy fifty-year-old man in an ill-fitting suit, but it was Erica Hill who actually sat before us, an exceptionally trendy woman with yellow-lensed aviator glasses. She had left her previous job as director/producer to open Sparrow, a contemporary funeral home profiled in The New York Times alongside other “Modern, even hip, mortuaries”. I was ready to eye roll my way through it— the never ending cool-ification of every facet of our modern lives now reaching death, but was immediately won over by the frankness, care, and creativity with which Erica spoke about death and dying.

During the session we covered a lot: burial options in the case of people with prosthetics or surgical enhancements (boob jobs can go into the cremator, pacemakers cannot), the legalities of staying with loved ones who have passed away before the funeral home is called (up to three days with the correct application of ice and ventilation), and many other things which people who have experienced death have had to think about and the rest of us, quite unfairly for the former, have not.

Someone put their hand up. “My mom was taken away twenty minutes after she died, the EMT guys were like, proudly saying it was the quickest removal and sanitisation they’d ever done. It felt kind of strange, but maybe that’s normal?” Erica gently and plainly told her that twenty minutes seemed very fast to her. She was, at all times, completely unpatronising.

As we finished up with the questions, (What’s the most eco-friendly way to get buried? What’s a death rattle? Can you keep someone’s teeth?) Erica parted with some advice: get together with friends over a bottle of wine and talk about what arrangements you want when you die— warning us of situations where secular people ended up with deeply religious services or gender identities not being respected. “It doesn’t have to be morbid, just a light conversation.” She said.

At dinner afterwards I tried to think of things I’d want, but it seemed unfair to take away the task from my friends and family, who I have no doubt would do it all very well. I wonder if the amount you feel the need to plan your own funeral is a good litmus test for the state of your relationships… do I feel known enough on this mortal coil to shuffle off it with no specified wishes?

My good friend Jarrod organised the celebration of life for his sister Richelle last year, so I asked him what the planning process was like. “For me it was really important to not have a traditional funeral. Both my parents are quite religious and it would have been easy to default into the whole church thing (…), but me and Richelle were always very aligned on how we would want our funerals to happen. The details weren’t fully like talked through with her, but I had a general idea - I had a notes app of her wishes.”

The service took place in a beautiful conservatory decorated with retro TVs, a dress code barring all black, and notecards for memories embellished with Richelle’s cats. “The celebration of life was the end point to it all - to the suffering and sickness. It was super cathartic for me. We were alone in that hospital for so long, and no one saw how horrible it was except us. People were walking into the celebration of life already crying— and I was like, girl— why are you crying?! This isn’t the hard part.”

The funeral, in its individuality and trueness to Richelle, seems to signify not only her and Jarrod’s closeness, but that she lived in a way that allowed people to know her confidently, without guessing. Aside from the hardcore decisions around burial or DNRs, maybe the best way to plan for the rest is to live like that?

✤✤✤

I am back from New York and sick as a dog!! The changing leaves and the way they are making me feel about my life is cool.

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love you allllll