Death Cafe | Hacker News Reader

Death Cafe

deathcafe.com

41 pointsunkeen14 comments

When my wife died over four years ago, I had to deal with her various online accounts. The most egregious was an organization where we had a family membership. I called them and told them she died. They expressed condolences, and said they would switch me over to my own membership.

When renewal time came, I received two emails: one to me, and one redirected from my wife's email address. Mine said (names changed for reasons of privacy):

"Dear Herodotus, We hope this email finds you and your family well. It is time to renew your membership...."

The second one said this:

"Dear Jane (Deceased), We hope this email finds you and your family well....."

Not all experiences were this bad, but I did get the feeling that most people building client databases do not give much thought to the one use case that is guaranteed for every entry in the client database: Death.

I get physical mail addressed to my late mother at my current address, which I did not own or live at during her lifetime.

Political ad/survey text messages also seem to think my number is my late grandfather's, even though my given name isn't the same as his.

This is a wheel that everyone is asleep at it, and they really don't care. If it happened to a mega-rich CEO something might happen, but they have people to handle their mail.

I have been getting physical mail addressed to my late mother for more than 15 years from a charity she used to donate to and that had supported her education when she had been an adolescent.

She always talked about that time very fondly and receiving that yearly letter always made her happy. I could never bring myself to inform them about her death and end that yearly tradition.

Memento Mori is a cliché, but it really is powerful (if truly experienced, not merely acknowledged on a rational level) .

It seems to me that we're living in a sort of haze, caring about unimportant, downplaying/postponing the really important stuff. Whenever I have this deep realization I can die any minute, I cut tgroygh this haze, I can re-focus on what's (for me) truly important - namely close personal connections, chiefly my family and good friends.

Is it really a problem with the people who built the client database?

Maybe the administrators of the organization should have removed Jane from the system?

It looks an awful lot like someone couldn't see a way to delete a member from a family account, and couldn't be bothered to figure it out. So they just edited her name from "Jane" to "Jane (Deceased)".

Dealt with the same a couple of years ago when my father passed. However, the worst experiences by far were places that needed proof of death/legal to cancel accounts.

But as a creator myself, I'm not at what size I would figure out company procedure for death other than canceling/transferring an account.

If you have an online way for people to cancel membership or subscription, and if you ask the reasons for cancelling, at least have an "Other" option.

Organizations often lack sensitivity in handling such matters

Technically, malicious bots can't die

Site's dead. The irony?

Here's wayback machine from August 22nd - https://web.archive.org/web/20240822193714/https://deathcafe...

Thought it was hug of death or something but irony is good too, thanks for the link

If you are looking for this sort of community, you may find Jane Miller a good guide.

https://janemiller.xyz/death-care/#moon

She offers regular group meetings on how to navigate the cycles of life and death.

This immediately brought to mind two pieces of media that I really enjoyed recently:

* Necrobarista[0], a 3d "visual novel" explorative game about a cafe where the souls of the dead have 24 hours to hang around before passing on. It's a little quirky, but still somber and best played with headphones on.

* The "Monk & Robot" books series[1] by Becky Chambers. It's set in a post-apocalyptic solarpunk world where humans and robots live separately, and follows a tea monk named Dex who meets a robot on their travels, providing tea and a listening ear for whomever they come across.

[0] https://www.gog.com/game/necrobarista

[1] https://us.macmillan.com/series/monkrobot

That description of Necrobarista reminded me of Dostoevsky, "Bobok" (1873).

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