Summary: RadioRotary interviews Laurie Swartz and Rev. Lynda Carré about the Death Cafés they help run as part of Circle of Friends for the Dying in Ulster and Dutchess Counties. A Death Café is a gathering of a few people in a home, a church, a restaurant, or other venue where the conversation over tea or coffee and cake is all about dying. Our population is growing older every year and death will come to all of us—many who are not very old die as well—but few are prepared for it and many don’t even want to think or talk about it. The Death Café experience, often with a speaker, is offered about once a month at various locations around Ulster and Dutchess counties. A new project for the Circle of Friends for the Dying is a home in Kingston where a person who lives alone and is close to dying will be able to live with one or two others, which many would prefer to dying in a hospital or nursing home or dying alone at home.
