Bob Jarboe has years of experience working with hospice and dealing with death, and he wants others to have the ability to comfortably embrace it by laughing at life and laughing in the face of death. He hopes to accomplish this through group meets at Bob’s Death Café. He said his idea for the Death Café started when he was with a few of his friends and they started discussing death. One of his friends said he wanted to be buried buck-naked and face down. This friend passed away, and when Bob went to meet with the family as he usually does, he noticed his friend was dressed nicely. He looked to the man’s wife and said, “You know, he wanted to be buried naked.” He said his goal is to make death more lighthearted. “I don’t want (death) to be a heavy thing,” he said. “When we can sit and joke about it, that’s good.” He has been researching death cafés for about six months. He said sometimes when he is working with families, they are in denial of death and want to avoid the discussion entirely until it confronts them. He wants to hold death café meetings monthly and start it Aug. 7 at First Friday, tentatively. He is still in the planning process for times and location, but will know them within a week. Jarboe said this is not set to be a grieving or support group, but a place for open and comfortable discussion about death and to help “understand what it’s all about.” He said people tend to have a preconceived notion that they will live forever and never look at death. “People may say they’re scared of death, or that they hate it, but that’s OK, too,” he said. Jarboe said he has discussed his death with his family to be more open and make it a more comfortable discussion topic. “(Death) is the next stage,” he said. “I’m excited for what is beyond this.” With his experience in funerals, he said he’s noticing a funeral is seen in a less morbid sense and more of a celebration of life. “When we mourn death, it's because the battle has been lost,” he said. “But it’s not that way … they may have lost to cancer, but they won in life.” Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice Inc. Business Development Manager Kim Nance said some people think about death all of time and waste a lot of their life dwelling on it. She said attending Bob’s Death Café is beneficial, even just to sit and listen to the discussions. Jarboe said if he gets something from the death café experience, it would be fulfilling for the attendees as well. He said there is no set format, he just wants everyone to feel comfortable sharing understandings and misunderstandings about death. “The longer I work in hospice, the more death fascinates me,” he said. “Death is still running at 100 percent.” For more information, contact Jarboe at 574-372-3401.
