November Meeting: The Art of Natural Death Care

MN Threshold Network invites you to attend:

THE ART OF NATURAL DEATH CARE: a movie, discussion, and demonstration

Cover Image from Katelyn LaGrega’s “The Art of Natural Death Care”

The movie is Katelyn LaGrega’s documentary about loving, heart-felt, sacred, and compelling stories of how we can care for our own loved ones after death.

LEARN ABOUT NATURAL DEATH CARE:

•Options that exist no matter where someone dies for grief vigils and funerals
•Facts about legality and lowered costs
•Ways that open the heart when it hurts the most
•Demo on blessing or washing a loved one’s body

DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 7th  (please VOTE on Tuesday the 6th!)
TIME: 7-8:30pm
LOCATION: Nokomis Square Senior Coop
5015 35th Ave. So., Minneapolis, MN 55417
Community Room (parking and entrances in front and back of building).
FREE OF CHARGE. Treats welcome. Tea will be available. Donations of the heart accepted.

***Invite your own family members, such as adult children and grandchildren, and close friends (in other words, your “peeps”). It’s a great opportunity to have a the discussion that isn’t easy, but you may secretly want to have. Face the elephant in the room with support from this program.***

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November Twin Cities Meeting: Home Funerals: Family directed after death care

Presented by

Minnesota Threshold Network – Twin Cities

Ellen Hufschmidt, MA, chaplain and hospice grief counselor,

and Kyoko Katayama, PhD, LICSW

Tuesday, November 14, 5:30 -7:30pm

The Community Gathering Space at 514 Lowry Ave NE

(Adjacent to Carma Coffee Shop)

Did you know that

•  when a loved one dies, family and friends can care for the deceased and hold the visitation and ceremony at home?
• a deceased person is not unsanitary or unsafe to the living or to the environment
• embalming is not legally required
• green burials are available in Minnesota  

This event is FREE and open to all. Please join us and learn about your options.

Until every Minnesotan is informed–Make it known; it can happen at home.

 

Twin Cities March Meeting: Tibetan Approaches to Death and Death Rituals

Join MTN Twin Cities for a presentation on Tibetan approaches to death and death rituals, with local resident Lobsang Namru. Come prepared to learn and engage in respectful discussion as part of our Expanding the Conversation focus.

Meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 7:00 pm at the home of Kyoko Katayama.

All Minnesota Threshold Network meetings are free and open to the public.

MTN “Caring for Our Own” workshop largest ever

Twenty people attended the all-day “Caring for Our Own” workshop on November 22, taught by three Minnesota Threshold Network home funeral guides. In MTN’s six years of offering after-death care workshops, this was the largest!

After check-ins, the morning began with guided rememberings of death in our lives, as children and as adults. Anne Murphy presented a brief history of after-death care in the US. Linda Bergh guided the group in becoming more aware of the specialness of this sacred time in the hours and days after a beloved has died. Kyoko Katayama shared the poignant story of her husband’s death, care, and home vigil. 

Anne led the afternoon session by demonstrating step-by-step practical care of the body, with Linda and Kyoko adding stories to illustrate the uniqueness of each experience, as well as the unifying theme of bringing comfort and meaning to families.  Many connections were made as the participants opened to this powerful topic and became a community for the day.

Workshop participants prepare a gracious volunteer “corpse” for disposition. Beautiful cloths and flowers offer one last chance to show love and care for our beloved dead.

It was a day of soul care as well as body care. As one person wrote on the evaluation, “I got a great sense of what after-death body care really is.”  Another participant commented, “The stories made the day’s experience so authentic.”  Another said, “I’m going home and writing out what I would like done for me when I die.”
 
Several people have asked when MTN will offer another workshop. Fortunately the presenters enjoyed working together and found it a good mix of backgrounds, experience, and interest. It’s likely they’ll be doing another workshop. The topics most requested on the evaluation forms were:

• Green burials
• Being with the dying
• Minnesota laws (Come to the Dec. 9 MTN meeting for this!)
• Facing our mortality
• Home vigils