How our earliest experiences with death shape everything that comes after.
There is a question I have asked many times, in many rooms, to people of all ages and backgrounds. Sometimes it comes up in the quiet, candlelit setting of a Death Cafe, a community gathering where people come together specifically to talk about death over tea and cake. And every single time, something remarkable happens.
The question is simple: What were you taught about death growing up?
What follows is never simple. Grown adults pause. Some go quiet. Some laugh nervously. Some tear up. And almost all of them, in that moment, connect something, sometimes for the very first time, between the way death was handled in their childhood home and the way they are living with the topic of death today.
It is one of the most powerful moments I witness. And it has only deepened my belief: how we first experience death shapes us, profoundly and often permanently, in how we deal with it for the rest of our lives.
The Lessons We Never Knew We Were Learning
Most of us were not sat down and formally taught how to think about death. Instead, we absorbed it, through the way adults spoke (or didn’t speak) when someone died, through whether we were brought to funerals or quietly kept away, and through the language used and the emotions expressed or suppressed around us.
For some, death was wrapped in the warmth of religious tradition: prayers, rituals, community gatherings. It was sad, but it was held. There was a framework for it.
For others, death was something that happened behind closed doors. Hushed voices. A changed subject. An uncle who was “gone” without much explanation. A grandmother whose name stopped being spoken after she passed.
And for many, there were simply no lessons at all. Death was absent from conversation entirely. Which, of course, was its own powerful lesson: that death is something too big, too frightening, too final to be spoken about out loud.
What Happens in the Room When We Ask This Question
At Death Cafes, I have sat with people who arrived thinking they were comfortable with death, only to discover, when asked this question, that their comfort was really avoidance they had learned so well it felt like acceptance.
I have sat with people who arrived anxious and apologetic about their discomfort, only to realize, through this question, that their anxiety was never really theirs to begin with. They inherited it from a parent who inherited it from their parent. The silence had been passed down like a family heirloom.
These moments are intense. They are also, in the most genuine sense, freeing. Because when you understand where something comes from, you get to decide what to do with it.
Why This Matters, For All of Us
The way we relate to death does not just affect how we grieve when we lose someone. It affects how we support others who are grieving. It affects whether we have the important conversations with the people we love before it is too late. It affects how we approach our own end-of-life planning, our own legacy, our own life.
At Renaissance Funeral Home, we believe that death deserves conversationn. Not because talking about it makes it easier to bear. Loss will always be loss. But because when we are able to talk about death openly, we live differently. We love more intentionally. We grieve more honestly. We support one another more fully.
And it all starts with asking ourselves what we were taught, and whether those lessons are still serving us.
A Gentle Invitation
You do not have to share this with anyone. You do not have to have answers. But if you have a quiet moment, we invite you to sit with these questions:
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When was the first time you experienced death, and how was it handled around you?
Was death something that was spoken about in your home, or something that existed only in silence?
How do you think those early experiences live in you today?
There are no right answers. Just yours. And just sitting with the question is its own kind of beginning.
Renaissance Funeral Home is committed to holding space for these conversations, because we believe that how we talk about death changes how we live. This is us starting.
Death Deserves Conversation.
