Book Review: Michael Hebb’s “Let’s Talk About Death Over Dinner”

I recommend the book for anyone who finds themselves needing to facilitate these conversation. But even if you don’t read it, I think the *idea* of doing it hits you when you read the title, and that’s 80% of the point.“

Talking about death and end of life decisions isn’t easy, but it’s something I do with my clients regularly, especially at this time of year. So I really appreciated the book Let’s Talk About Death (over Dinner): An Invitation & Guide to Life’s Most Important Conversation by Michael Hebb, founder of DeathOverDinner.org. It gave me some clarity on how to wrangle the words for these conversations, and examples that didn’t need to come from my own somewhat limited experience. 

I recommend the book for anyone who finds themselves needing to facilitate these conversations. But even if you don’t read it, I think the *idea* of doing it hits you when you read the title, and that’s 80% of the point. If you do read the book, you’ll find about two dozen “prompts” and some stories about conversations that came up when those prompts were used. The idea is that you consider three or four prompts to use in a dinner party, and then just let the conversation flow. I can’t imagine doing it as a themed dinner party with my peers, but I *can* imagine doing it with my parents and children and siblings. 

But not everybody can imagine doing with their families. The first time I discovered this was the second year I was doing taxes. A woman came to me and said she had terminal cancer and she wanted to get her affairs in order. I was distraught, gob-smacked, not sure what to say, but she taught me. She said, “I’m not allowed to talk to my kids about this stuff because they don’t want to hear it. But I’m hiring you to help me with this because I need it done.” We all need to get our affairs in order. For some of us, it’s more pressing, but none of us know when it will become pressing … or too late. 

This fall I’m speaking with all my clients about “getting your affairs in order.” As they come in, I dive right in. I ask a series of questions about the location of things. Where will we find:

their actual wet-signature will? (Not a copy, I’ve just discovered, we need to find the original.) 

their marriage certificate? 

Military discharge papers? 

There are a bunch more questions like this. 

Then I ask about people. Who’s called on the first day? This leads to the disposition of the body: if you don’t want a big embalmed funeral with a casket and casket liner then perhaps the first call should NOT be to the funeral home. We have a direct-to-crematory service around here, and there are also services that will transport your body for medical donation, which I think I’d like to do. If you want a green burial, you’d want your loved ones to have a chance to prepare your body themselves (also what I’d like). I tell my clients NOT to think they have to get a body moved immediately, that staying with the body, calling people over, washing and dressing the body are all reasonable things a person might do INSTEAD of calling 911 to cart the body away. But we don’t know a lot of these things. We don’t think about them, until we are in the situation or our loved ones are. That’s why we need to talk about death over dinner … or at least somewhere. 

When I’m helping my clients get their affairs in order, we talked about end of life choices. Don’t want CPR as a frail elder? Say so. Say so loudly, and do it in your doctor’s office while filling in a MOLST. (I want CPR as a healthy 54-year-old, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want it as a frail 94-year-old!) 

We discuss “exit ramps,” places where you do not call 911, but rather sit with your loved one crumpled on the kitchen floor and hold her hand. It’s a wonderful thing to fall into the maw of Big Medicine when it can cure you and give you forty more years of life. When it will medicalize your life and give you 30 days of torture, maybe skip it instead? I think people are so caught up in the pattern of trying to stay or become healthy that they forget that the focus changes someday. Every time we click our seat belt, it’s not because we hope not to die, it’s because we hope to die at 87 on morphine with our daughter holding our hand rather than in a car crash. We all have our different ideas about exit ramps and about this, and we need to make them know. 

I bring up “life interrupted” issues: what would you need to tell your loved ones if you were suddenly not there? 

Any prepaid things we need to know about? 

Any automatic payments coming out of your bank account? 

Any collections worth more than you expect them to be?

I also bring up ethical wills: what stories do you want to pass down?

My prompts are substantially different from the prompts in the Michael Hebb book, but that’s okay, I’m not serving any wine, either. On the contrary, I’m frantically scribbling notes about the artist’s name of the art you bought that is NOT tag-sale junk. (Glad I asked!)

I wouldn’t hesitate to talk about death over dinner, but if you would, I recommend reading this book — or finding somebody you can have these conversations with.