Margaret Verschuur/ Cortes Currents - When you asked me about doing an interview, Roy, I hesitated. But then I thought of Jennifer Stevens, and her courage, and thought: I can do this. Jen was someone who really showed up in community, and she let the DeathCaring Collective be a part of her experience.

Of course, confidentiality is something important in everything we do in the DeathCaring Collective, but Jennifer was always very open and her daughter Darshan has been generous and eloquent in her sharing her experience with her mom and has given us permission to talk about Jen as well.

Jen Stevens Journey

Jen has been part of the DeathCaring Collective and involved since we began meeting and learning a few years ago. Her vibrancy, warmth, presence, community-mindedness and sharing added a lot to our meetings.

In Jan 2022, she and Darshan gave a talk at one of our meetings. Jen shared what it was like to live with a potentially life-threatening illness. At that time she was putting a lot of energy into healing and was hopeful she’d have more time. She allowed us to be part of her journey and trusted, as did Darshen. When Jen died and up to her death, we were able to participate in the ways that she had asked us to.

It was/is sad to witness Jen, so full of life, cross over into death. She was easy to love. That we as a Collective were able to participate in that journey, even contribute – to find ways to create beauty, to be with her body and help prepare it for burial, be with her family in meaningful ways. Death is something that affects a community, especially for someone like Jen, who was so involved, and the Collective was a part of that community experience.

She died on the island, her body stayed in her cabin for three days, she was buried in the nearby cemetery. This was all done by family, supported by the DeathCaring Collective.

This was the first death we’ve participated in this fully: with someone we knew, who was part of the Collective, who planned ahead. She became our teacher, our leader, we’ve learned from her.

As I reflect on this past year I say, thank you Jen.

2022: A Year of Building Confidence

As a Collective, we’ve grown in confidence and competence. We meet each non-summer month, and at each meeting we share, like a death café. We talk about our experiences with death, dying, and grief – whatever has come up for us, and we learn something about a particular topic. I know for me – and I can only share my experience, but others have expressed this as well – that by sharing and learning, we get more comfortable with death itself.

Talking about it normalizes it. As it becomes easier to talk about, I realize how death-phobic we are. It feels right to talk about something that affects us all so much. It feels right to express the loss of those we know, other losses, our sadness, our fears, confusion, thoughts. Talking about this becomes the new normal, and going back into the world where it is not talked about begins to feel strange. The education helps as well.

As I look back on the past year, having people from the community teach us has been helpful. Like Jen telling us 2022 what it is like to live with a potentially life threatening disease. We’ve had a retired hospice nurse telling us about the moment of death; a notary public about end of life planning, a beautiful presentation on Jewish practices around care of the body after death; a couple sharing their experience with the loss of their child. People pass on articles they’ve read, and I pass them on to the Collective through the email list, there is so much information out there and a lot of it is about empowering people to take death back into the family, into the community, to be more aware of choices.