Boomers Finally Face Death...Over Wine and Caviar!

Baby Boomers may be the most pathetic generation in memory. Being born after World War II, they grew up in the most prosperous period of recent U.S. economic history. It was Boomers who brought us the political and social revolution of the '60s and the acceleration of cultural decline and degeneracy that followed the protests, drugs and "free love." Having rejected the "faith of their fathers," the 10 Commandments, as well as the moral compass that guided sensible people of good will for untold centuries, it finally dawns on them that death waits around the corner - and they're grasping desperately for some way process what they now face. But rather than turn to the traditions that sustained their ancestors, rather than deal directly with their own mortality, apparently some of them are now holding - get this - "death dinners":

Get-togethers...are happening largely thanks to a group of master’s degree students and faculty at the University of Washington, who have started a program called “Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About Death.” It offers talking points, reading material on death, and how to word a death dinner invitation. Since starting last month, about 400 people have signed up to host dinners, the group said.

Describing one such gathering, this article in Bloomberg describes the scene:

As the group ate zucchini pancakes with caviar around the formal dining table...having a venue to talk about death was like releasing a pressure valve. With baroque music playing in the background, for three hours they shared stories of near death and supernatural experiences and the deaths of loved ones. They agreed that death lurks in the back of their minds, yet isn’t something they were comfortable talking about before.

If you thought I was being unkind calling these folks pathetic, maybe now you'll understand why I did. 

And this particular gathering having taken place at the Landauer's residence in Manhattan, you can well understand that just how ultra-pathetic that scene must have been, as we are informed:

As the server removed the dessert plates and Landauer’s young daughter began stirring upstairs, many of the guests said they felt a kind of catharsis.
 
Since the dinner, Landauer has finished and signed his will and he says it forced him to think more concretely about what he’d like to happen to his remains. He has now made sure to include instructions in his will for his children to spread his ashes near a specific mountain in Tibet that he once visited.

So this guy tells his kid to travel to Tibet to scatter his ashes. Can you just imagine being this guy's kid, being told to do that?

Then again, maybe the kid - being raised by Boomers his or her whole life - thinks this is just fine.