Grief and caffeine

Good morning, Colorado Sunday friends.

We’ve got a lot of seasonal, celestial and religious significance to contemplate this weekend — the first seder of Passover and the full moon last night and today, Palm Sunday, the start to Holy Week on the Christian calendar.

It’s a lot for one little weekend. But it seems meaningful to mention these events in the context of this week’s cover story as they all represent and celebrate various forms of renewal and liberation through darkness, struggle and death. Many of our religious traditions encourage us to talk about death in the context of reaching some state of enlightenment or awakening.

But are we really talking about death? Those conversations are difficult enough, whether we’re considering our own deaths, the metaphoric death of relationships or the figurative “death” reflecting physical or emotional loss. Who can we turn to when we need to confront the very practical realities around anticipating our ultimate exit?

Jennifer Brown had heard about this one option. Out of curiosity, she ventured to a death cafe, an increasingly common gathering of people who are trying to figure out dying while they are still alive.

Dana Coffield

Editor

The Cover Story

Could we live better if we talked more about death?

A few months ago I read a novel, “The Collected Regrets of Clover,” by Mikki Brammer, in which the main character is a death doula living in a New York City apartment that she used to share with her now-dead grandfather. Her parents had died while on vacation when she was a child, which set her on a path to eventually become a death doula, a non-medical person who helps prepare people for their death and is sometimes with them when they die.

Clover collected the last words and wishes of the people she guided to their deaths in three notebooks: advice, confessions and regrets. And she took the subway to “death cafes” around the city, sitting in coffee shops listening to people discuss their deepest fears about dying. I had never heard of such a thing. A quick Google search determined that death cafes are a thing, and there are several that meet in Colorado. I obviously had to go.

The one I chose happens once a month in Golden, in the cozy back corner of a Bean Fosters coffee shop that also sells used books. The death doula who facilitates the cafe said I was welcome, but not allowed to record or quote anyone besides her. Attendees could talk to me afterward, if they wanted, and many of them did.

As soon as people went one by one around the circle explaining why they came, I understood why the cafe is built around a “what happens here, stays here” rule. Death is a scary topic, like the most scary. People felt vulnerable as soon as they started to speak. What they said felt like a window into their darkest thoughts.

I left the death cafe feeling a bit drained. And a bit anxious about how much there is to do. But also feeling a bit more like if we weren’t so terrified to talk about death, we might live more meaningful lives.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Jennifer Brown | Reporter

The Colorado Lens

One by one, the lifts have stopped turning for the season at major Colorado ski resorts. Telluride called it a day on April 6 and photojournalist Kelsey Brunner was there for the particularly colorful last few laps.

Dana Coffield | Editor

Flavor of the Week

A sweet new cafe in an old Brighton building

It hardly seems possible that a dozen years have elapsed since that one day I was sent to meet a job candidate in Brighton and the two of us spent most of the time we had looking for a good, local place where we could chat. We ended up at a chain cafe in a strip mall. It worked out OK. That “candidate” now is The Sun’s publisher.

If we had it all to do again today, we would have more interesting choices. Brighton’s original town center is perking up, with nice looking places to eat and drink filling beautiful historic buildings. I landed at one — Wolf and Honey — last week when I had work to do but could not spare the 30 minutes it would take to get home.

The charming coffee shop was a perfect place to post up for an hour. It was late on a Friday afternoon, so I had my choice of seating — deep, comfortable club chairs, upholstered stools at high-top tables or metal perches along a well-lighted bar toward the back.

The drink menu is populated with all the old familiar espresso drinks and a long list of honey-forward house specials that looked intriguing for a hot, summer day in the future. (I’ll take the Sweet Bee, an iced espresso concoction with lavender and honey.) The pastry case is stocked with sweet and savory items from La Belle French Bakery.

The decor is warmly spare, with exposed brick walls, hardwood floors and a painted tin ceiling. Light filters in through windows built for a long-gone retail enterprise. An old photo of Brighton back in the day hanging on the wall reminds you that even though Wolf and Honey has been open for less than a year, the place has been there forever and you’re welcome in.

WOLF AND HONEY: 43 N. Main St., Brighton

Dana Coffield | Editor

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“True Crime Redux”: Coming to terms with a murder in the family

EXCERPT: Stephanie Kane was a college student at CU in 1973, about to get married, when her fiancé’s mother was brutally murdered. She was haunted by the crime for years, and eventually wrote a fictionalized account called “Quiet Time,” which triggered a reopening of the real-life cold case. “True Crime Redux” recounts how the case played out, both legally and personally, with Kane and her fictional work coming under close examination.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Kane eventually became a criminal defense attorney, but it was her involvement in the murder case that, over the years, pointed her toward becoming an author. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?

Kane: Betty’s murder made me a writer. “Quiet Time” was my lab for learning fiction craft. Between it and “True Crime Redux” I published six other mystery-thrillers. Looking back, each taught me to hone my craft (character development, dramatic structure, suspense, etc.) so that when I finally had the facts, I could tell the story of Betty’s murder in the most effective way.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE KANE

LISTEN TO A PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

???? It’s the news we all knew was coming: U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is running for governor. What we might not have understood, Jesse Paul reports, is how the announcement has triggered a shadow campaign among those who would like to be named to replace him in Washington if he wins.

???? Everyone has a story to tell about the struggles of elementary school. Almost none of us can say they included worrying about carrying a “nutrition backpack” most of the day. Jennifer Brown reports on a very rare condition that requires some people to be fed through a port in their chests and how the number of pharmacies that create the life-preserving solutions flowing through the tubes has dwindled to just one in Colorado.

???? Two new measles cases have been reported in Colorado. One in a baby who had been in Mexico and another in a person who was at Wolf Creek Ski Area all day on March 28, 29 and 30 who reported no international travel. John Ingold has the details. While we’re on the subject, state lawmakers are attempting to RFK Jr.-proof the state’s school vaccination requirements.

???? Traffic engineers spend a lot of time working to make streets safer for pedestrians and yet, pedestrian fatalities are on the rise in Colorado, Elizabeth Koenck reports. Part of the problem is that all the engineering in the world can’t stop motorists from driving drunk and speeding.

???? It ain’t easy being an electric utility trying to go green. If all the geopolitical chaos going on around grant funding and tariffs wasn’t enough, Mark Jaffe found out that the Colorado Energy Office and the governor were contemplating a bill to move up the deadlines for meeting greenhouse gas emissions goals by a decade.

???? It looked like Western Energy Alliance boss Kathleen Sgamma was going to lead the Bureau of Land Management. But then a memo she sent out to alliance members four years ago criticizing President Donald Trump for spreading misinformation that incited the Jan. 6 riots resurfaced. Jason Blevins has been trying to talk with her since she was nominated to the BLM gig, but the usually available Sgamma was keeping quiet.

???? The president declared an “emergency” on 100 million acres of forest that he says can only be resolved through logging. Tracy Ross looked a little more deeply to see how the hyperbole translates in Colorado. She also caught up with community leaders in Chaffee County who are building a better plan for fire resiliency (and yes, it does sometimes involve chainsaws.)

???? Meet a backcountry skiing phenom who logs about 500,000 vertical feet in a season. He’s only 13. Jason Blevins caught up with the kid in Silverton.

Dana Coffield | Editor

Thanks for checking in with us today! We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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