Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico – The Living Room Bookstore & Café will host The Long Table, a monthly Death Café offering the Vallarta community an open, respectful space to talk about death, dying and the questions we so often keep to ourselves.
The first gathering takes place Friday, October 9 at 1 pm at the café’s Marina Vallarta location on Calle Timón, and will continue on the second Friday of each month. Everyone is welcome, and attendance is free.
A Death Café is a simple idea with a quietly profound effect. People gather around a table to drink coffee or tea, share something sweet and talk about death in whatever direction the conversation naturally takes. There is no agenda, no guest speaker and no product or belief being promoted, and while the conversations can be deeply supportive, a Death Café is not therapy or a formal grief counselling session.
The movement began in London in 2011 with the aim of helping people make the most of their finite lives by talking more freely about their mortality, and since then more than 24,000 Death Cafés have been held in over 100 countries. The Long Table follows the principles of the international Death Café model, which you can learn more about at deathcafe.com.
The gatherings will be hosted by Laura Ghilardi Miller, who has called Puerto Vallarta home for 18 years. Laura’s connection to this work began with her own loss. After her husband died 27 years ago, she started a grief support group at a Chicago hospital, and in the years that followed she saw how deeply people needed a place to talk openly about the people they had lost. Having noticed that Vallarta has no venue offering that kind of space, she decided to create one.
“I’m not a therapist, but I am a good listener,” Laura says, “and I’ve found that being heard is what people who are grieving need most.”
For The Living Room, hosting The Long Table is a natural extension of what the café has always set out to be. Beyond home and work, people need a third space, somewhere familiar and unhurried where neighbours become friends and conversations are allowed to run long. As a bilingual bookstore and café, The Living Room has built its identity around exactly that kind of community, welcoming locals, expats and visitors.
“Bookstores and cafés have long been places to meet friends, build community and spark conversation,” says Madeline Milne, co-owner of The Living Room. “That’s what we strive to do through our programming and events, and The Long Table is a beautiful addition to that. Some of the most meaningful conversations are the ones we rarely make room for, and we’re honoured to offer a table where they’re welcome.”
The timing of the first gathering, just weeks before Día de Muertos, feels especially fitting in a country that has long embraced remembrance as an act of love, honouring those who have died with the things they cherished most, ofrendas and stories told around the table.
The Living Room Bookstore & Café is located on Calle Timón in Marina Vallarta.
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