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Dealing with Death at Congressional Cemetery

By Larry Janezich

Posted March 5, 2025

Last week, Congressional Cemetery wrapped up a month long series of Death Doula Pop Ups held inside the cemetery’s chapel.  These “Mortality Tea Rooms” were an extension of the “Death Café” program sponsored by the cemetery.  The “Death Café” is a loose knit international movement to facilitate regular discussions about death over food and drink with a dozen or so participants. 

This series was coordinated and hosted by Congressional Cemetery’s Death Doula in Residence, Laura Lyster-Mensh. 

A visit to one on the events last week found Lyster-Mensh offering tea and information through a series of exhibits illustrating a death doula’s mission and her own approach to her practice.

And that’s what death doulas do – provide information about end of life choices both for families and individuals and support for terminally ill persons and their families. 

Lyster-Mensh conducts a tour of her Mortality Tea Room exhibits:  

Impermanence

Every day, she starts a new nature mandala – a geometric shape made of things in nature picked up on the cemetery grounds by visitors to the chapel.  She says, “People are shy about things associated with bodies – so I’ve invited people to be part of building this geometric shape as a study of impermanence.  At the end of the day, I wash it away – and we start over the next day. 

Community Mourning

She references the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead and said that that on the Day of the Dead last year an ofrenda was set up in the chapel.  (Ofrenda means “offering” in Spanish and refers to the colorful altars set up to honor deceased loved ones on the Dia de los Muertos Mexican holiday.)  She says that it displayed “hundreds of objects and photographs and flowers.  It was just splendid – a way of introducing ancestors and a way of talking about the past.” 

Choose Your Corpse’s Adventure

She moved on to what she called her pet project, a game called Choose Your Corpse’s Adventure.  She says, “Most people don’t think about what happens to their body after they pass – that causes expensive chaos.  So I set up toys to show people their options – how much money will it cost you to die and how much carbon will it take?   I get them to think – if you have as much money as you want and as much carbon as you want, how much do you need?  I ask them to think about that.  Given options such as water cremation, human composting, or fire cremation, what is the actual cost financially and environmentally? And the party – what about the party you might have after you’re gone?  By end of the game, people have gotten a better idea of death’s costs and impacts.  The real thing is the conversation, especially with couples.  That’s my goal – to get people talking and to think about their behavior in these terms.”

Library and Life Planner Area

Lyster-Mensh has a lending library including books and life planners.  She lends them out and people bring them back.  She wants people to organize and think about the chaos the day after they die.  She adds, “There are so many kinds of organizers – some are funny and some are serious.  I hand them a stack and let them go through them.” 

Immortality

Lydia-Mensch doesn’t talk about immortality, but she alludes to it by giving away plant cuttings. 

She says, “All living things come from something that has died.  The cuttings are all from my mom’s plants.  It’s a symbolic thing – I encourage people to think about taking my plants home; they will live or die and all these are coming from my mom’s plants which come from other plants and I like that idea.  Snake plants, Swedish ivy, tradescantia, spider plants – I love the idea that they are going out into the world.” 

Last February was the first month-long mortality workshop – which she says is a completely new way of encouraging contemplation of end of life scenarios – “It happened because the chapel was open for the month of February, and I asked to do it.  Last year, I did individual appointments.  The year before I did weekly gatherings and events.”  She says the cemetery will probably repeat the experience next year. 

Asked what motivated her, Lyster-Mensh says, “I’ve always had an interest even as a kid.  As I get older and lose more people and get closer to death the ‘eye-rolling’ (encountering people’s annoyance or reluctance to take the issue seriously) motivates me.  When I sit with dying people – and I’m with dying people a lot – their families and friends are often too frightened to be there and so they’re alone and that doesn’t have to be.  So I feel that death awareness is a way to bring people back to being more loving and taking care of each other rather than just leaving people to suffer in fear and isolation.” 

For more information and to sign up for a Death Café, go here:  https://bit.ly/3QNeZxb