A MATTER OF life and DEATH

I was intrigued by the flyer. The Death Café, it explained, was “where people gather to eat delicious cake and discuss mortality as a means to making the most of life”. Illustrating the evening’s event, titled “Mortal Monday”, was a Gary Larson cartoon of a cone-headed, cone-nosed couple, named the Arnolds, feigning death, in crime-TV fashion, until their neighbours, “…sensing awkwardness are compelled to leave”.

It was not the advert I expected for a discussion of the Final Act.

But I like cake; I like life and Gary Larson cartoons. I hadn’t given mortality much thought, other than a knee-jerk urge to postpone it, , as long as possible. Despite this, I felt ready to give a