By: Anna Lococo
Before the ghost and goblins come to play on October’s final day, Bellarmine has more fall events to keep students in the spooky spirit. Campus Ministry sponsored the fourth annual Death Café event Wednesday, and Bellarmine senior Ben Taylor said he learned how different cultures celebrate death and connected it to his own culture.
“I want to be buried because I am Catholic, and that is what my family does,” he said.
The idea of the Death Café is modeled around the normalization of conversations that focus on one’s own death and dying. Senior Emily Arnold said she was reminded during this event to “not be afraid of death because it is going to happen to all of us someday.”
Some of the questions discussed during this event were:
· If you had a choice, how would you choose to die?
· Do you want to be buried? Cremated? Something else?
· If you were told you were dying tomorrow, what is one thing you would do?
Taylor and Arnold both said if they had a choice how to die, they would die in their sleep.
Arnold said, “Dying in my sleep would be the easiest so I do not feel anything (pain) and also so loved ones do not have to be there waiting for it to happen.”
Junior Aniseya White said she did not want to be buried or cremated.
“I found out about this new process where they decompose your body into soil and then you can use that soil for other gardens. I would rather do that because it is cleaner, and I do not want my body to go to waste.”
There was a special guest from the St. Joseph of Arimathea Society whose role is to act as pall bearers for the poor and to provide a Christian burial service for the deceased who do not have the funds to be buried. This program started in the spring of 2006 with a small group of students and teachers from Saint Xavier High School that allowed students from the all over Louisville area to participate in the burial services. They bury the dead at River Valley Cemetery.
“I learned from the guest speaker (from St. Joseph of Arimathea Society) that if I got into a car wreck tomorrow, my family could do anything they want with my body,” Arnold said. “If I do not have any of my words written down on paper, then it is pretty much free to do anything.”
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