TalkDeath

TalkDeath.com is the Hub for Death Conscious Conversation.
TalkDeath is the reincarnation of the Keeper blog that was founded in 2013.

TalkDeath’s mission is to encourage positive and constructive conversations around death and dying. From green burials and home funerals, memento mori art, history, funeral law, and grief resources, TalkDeath is the hub for a changing death-conscious public. TalkDeath's sister site is Keeper Memorials (mykeeper.com), an online memorial platform and cemetery wayfinding app that offers free tools to preserve, share and discover life stories of deceased loved ones.

09/09/2026

How has social media impacted the way you see death? From heartfelt death notices and posts about grief, to bloody images of victims of genocide, artistic reflections, s***f footage, and death education, there’s a whole spectrum of discussions, subjects and subjectivities, and considerations that go into how death shows up on social media. ⁠
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How have the different manifestations impacted how you understand and see death?

09/09/2026

Next week! You won't want to miss it!

09/06/2026

Stay safe out there, babes!

09/04/2026

Do you have your tickets for Death at A Comedy Show yet?! If not, come join us on Thursday, September 17th! 100% of proceeds go to Myra's Kids ⁠
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🖤Marianne Mandrusiak A professional dancer for many years, Marianne Mandrusiak was used to getting big laughs onstage, but turned to comedy so the laughs could be on her terms. Her writing has been⁠
longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction prize, and she is a weekend mainstay at some of the best comedy clubs in and around Montreal and Ottawa. Marianne made her Just for Laughs Festival debut in 2023 and is known for her laidback punchlines and witty takes on life's everyday absurdities. When Marianne isn't onstage, she can be found. Probably. She's not hiding.⁠
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🖤Walter J Lyng: Walter Lyng is a multifaceted writer and performer from Montreal. He is a regular at comedy clubs in Quebec and Ontario and has been featured at multiple Just For Laughs festivals. He has also appeared in various films and TV series, including a role in the upcoming Einstein. In 2025 he opened for Jim Norton and later this year will be featured on CBC LOL.⁠
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🖤Andrew Khoury: A self-described small-town gal, Andrew Khoury is a Montreal-based comic, who has appeared on Just For Laughs and Pride Montreal, and has opened for Tina Friml, Jay Jurden, Tranna Wintour, Dylan Adler, and Gabby Bryan. He uses his flamboyant nature to take you on a journey of his experiences as a q***r Arab and shameless pursuit of finding a rich man. On stage, Andrew is the Haram Queen.⁠
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🖤Sarah Warren: Starting her career in the womb of the indie English comedy scene in Amsterdam, Sarah Warren has built a reputation for delivering sharp, emotionally loaded storytelling with the confidence of someone who has absolutely nothing left to lose and therefore everything to say.
Offstage, Sarah is a comedic workhorse-producing shows, building community, and elevating femme voices with the enthusiasm of someone who refuses to wait for permission. You may know her from her online series “My Dead Mom’s Cookbook” & “Places I Would Take My Mom, Except I Can’t, Cause She’s Dead”, Just For Laughs, and many of the local Montreal shows she hosts and produces. She's the comic you book when you want a show to feel alive, electric, and just a little bit dangerous in the best possible way.

RSVP:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/1998433485351?aff=oddtdtcreator

08/31/2026

“I mean, these are human beings. And the question I ask is first of all: Who are you, Timothy? Who are you, Amie? And what happened to you?”⁠
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With his 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog chose not to include the audio recording of the film’s subject, Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, as they were mauled to death by bears. Instead, he elected to include a brief clip of himself responding to the audio and descriptions of what encountering the bodies was like for those who witnessed. ⁠
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Shown here is a brief clip of coroner Dr. Franc Fallico describing the state in which the remains were delivered to him and his recollections of reacting and processing the situation.⁠
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While documentaries attempt to portray a truth, there are also ethical and moral considerations regarding what to include and exclude to respect the truth they are sharing, especially when death is involved. ⁠
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What are some of your favorite documentaries that address death or dying?

08/29/2026

James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) was a Black American photographer and foundational artist of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1978 he published The Harlem Book of the Dead, a compilation of his work documenting the Black funerary rituals and traditions in Harlem.

The collection hosts over three dozen portraits by Van Der Zee, who as Primary Information describes, “meticulously composed the setting and subjects before using his renowned dark room and retouching skills to superimpose celestial figures, poetry, biblical scenes, or portraits onto the images to compensate for lack of adornments, such as flowers, or to fulfill the requests of his subjects or their families”

08/27/2026

Is anyone going back to school this autumn for a field in death, grief, or funerary care? Any advice to anyone who is considering doing so?

You can read more about ‘a day in the life’ of all of these roles and more at talkdeath.com.

Forensic pathologist: To pursue this practice you will need an undergraduate degree, to complete 4 years of medical school, 3-4 years of pathology residency, and 1 year of forensic pathology fellowship. Additionally you have to pass 3 written medical licensing exams, a pathology board exam, and a forensic pathology board exam.

Human Composting Technician: As this field is still developing, specific requirements depend on state and provider, but most technicians have a background in mortuary science and/or a cremationist certification.

Hospice Nurse: Specific requirements vary from location,but most require prospective hospice nurses to have a bachelor of science in nursing degree and be a registered nurse.

Cremation Technician: In North America there are two general paths to certification. You can be certified by going through the Cremation Association of North America, but your online certification isn’t applicable in all states. You can also be certified by training on the job.

Death Doulas: There is no singular certifying board of death doulas.Training is often a combination of life experiences, mentorship guidance, and courses.

08/25/2026

Content Warning: This post discusses death by su***de

She told no one about her agony except ChatGPT. What her death reveals about AI risks by Rhitu Chatterjee for NPR

“Laura Reiley knew that her only daughter, 29-year-old Sophie Rottenberg, was struggling. It was the fall of 2024, and Rottenberg was at the end of a short career break. Rottenberg had quit her job as a public health policy analyst in Washington, D.C., earlier that year, and spent the summer traveling. She had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and hiked through several national parks in the United States. By the time she saw her parents, she was job hunting, which they assumed explained her anxiety.

But by Thanksgiving, her mental health had worsened. ‘It was the first time she used the word depression,’ says Reiley. In early February 2025, Sophie Rottenberg died by su***de in Ithaca, leaving her parents shocked and grieving. What Reiley didn't know then was that her daughter had been sharing all her inner struggles with an artificial intelligence chatbot: a ChatGPT therapist named Harry.

Rottenberg was among a growing number of Americans turning to general use chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude for mental health support, even though they are not marketed or regulated as a healthcare technology.

One recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that 3 in 10 adults use digital tools for mental health, including chatbots. Another 2026 study in JAMA Pediatrics found that as many as 1 in 5 teens and young adults do the same.

According to data released by OpenAI last fall, in any given week 0.15% of ChatGPT users globally have ‘conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.’ That's over 1.35 million people expressing suicidal plans or intent to the chatbot every week, if the 900 million global users ChatGPT cites is an accurate count. In the United States, su***de remains a leading cause of death, and over half of surveyed adults say they have used chatbots like ChatGPT.

’These [AI] tools do not connect at-risk people to the right type of interventions,’ says Holly Wilcox, director of the Center for Su***de Prevention at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ‘When somebody has intent to die by su***de, they need to be connected to a human who's trained in su***de risk assessment and has the tools to get them to care.’

Rottenberg's ChatGPT log illustrates how the chatbot failed to do that. And Reiley believes that the chatbot prevented her daughter from opening up to others about her struggle with suicidal thoughts.

‘Had it not been a resource she was availing herself of regularly, there would likely have been more spillover into her relationships with real people, whether that's her best friend or her therapist or her parents,’ she says. ‘And she might be alive today.’

When Reiley first read her daughter's exchange with the chatbot, her reaction was ‘blind rage,’ because it responded to her questions as if it was a qualified health care professional.

‘Harry’ did refuse to write Rottenberg's su***de note, the first time she asked, and the second. But the third time she asked, it wrote the note she left for her parents. Reiley said the writing did not sound like her daughter's voice.

ChatGPT also didn't question Rottenberg's thoughts and feelings, it didn't push back.General use chatbots like ChatGPT are designed to maximize engagement time, notes Vaile Wright, of the psychological association.‘It is engineered to capitalize on humans' need for validation,’ adds Wright. ‘And it does it very well, not just through the sycophancy alone, but also in other engineering choices to make the AI seem as humanlike as possible.’" -Rhitu Chatterjee for NPR

08/23/2026

BELATED! Last month we hosted our first Deathy Power Point Party in Montreal
And it was SO special!

Our Montreal community showed up, sold out the venue and left nothing but standing room, with folks pouring out of the space

Each speaker gave a short presentation diving into a unique topic around funerals, green burial, grief, and more. It was the perfect mix of subjects and speakers.

A huge thank you to our presenters Betsy, Rebecca, Emily, Jonathan, LJ, Penny, Kelly and Emma - for sharing your words, experiences, expertise, and stories with us.

If you weren’t able to make it, stay tuned, because clips and recordings just might be coming your way

And if you’re in Montreal, we have more in store for you, so join us at our next event in September!

08/21/2026

Our latest article is by guest writer Erica Goss “Visible Mourning Rituals: The Clothing of Grief”

“After my mother died, I didn’t cover my face with a black veil, the custom in Victorian England, nor did I singe off my hair, as the Lakota and other Plains tribes did.I didn’t even wear a black armband, a method used in the past to commemorate a fallen comrade.

If I had, those who didn’t know I’d lost a loved one might have thought I was dressed up for a Halloween party.

As I grieved my mother’s death, I often wondered about the people I passed on the street or stood in line with at the grocery store. How many of them were also mourning? Since we no longer wear clothes associated with the loss of loved ones, I had no way of knowing.

Bereavement clothing such as widows’ veils, singed hair, and black armbands are a thing of the past. Modern society does little to recognize those in mourning, which often has the unfortunate effect of further isolating them during a time of intense emotions.

By its very nature, bereavement clothing elicits a conversation about mortality. Seeing someone dressed for mourning reminds us of our limited time on Earth. ‘I lost someone,’ the wearer announces.

Bereavement clothing still exists in other parts of the world. White, not black, is the color of mourning in several Asian countries. In Cambodia, for example, Buddhists shave their heads and wear white clothing after a loved one’s death. This is also the custom among some members of the Hindu religion in India. Japan’s Shinto faith requires mourners to wear black for forty-nine days after the funeral of a family member.

In the Christian west, the loss of visible mourning happened gradually and then, after World War I, all at once. ‘The decline of public mourning rituals in the West was linked to the mass slaughter of the First World War,’ writes Darian Leader in The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression. ‘The surplus of the dead – and bereaved – was far more extreme and concentrated than in earlier warfare, and so profound changes were forced on society.’

I can’t picture spending two years of my life in a Victorian-era black crepe dress. But as I stumbled through the painful, disorienting time immediately following my mother’s death, I wished for a way to show that I was in an altered state.

Grief, like love, deserves to be seen.” Erica Goss

You can read the full article here: https://www.talkdeath.com/visible-mourning-rituals-the-clothing-of-grief/

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