Mark Dowie doesn’t let up, though his latest book is a treatise on letting go. Every several years, he offers readers a new book on some heady subject. And now comes “Judith Letting Go, Six Months in the World’s Smallest Death Café,” something very different from his usual fare, though still heady, and profoundly heartfelt. 

When I first read the term “death café,” I thought it was something Mark had made up. But no, Google it: There are more than 17,000 death cafés in 86 countries worldwide. At these “cafés,” people gather to talk about death. There is no agenda, no objective. It is not a grief support group, there are no set questions, no counselors, facilitators or guest speakers. There may be tea or coffee. Sometimes there’s cake.

Death cafés may serve as many as a dozen or more participants, but the one Mark writes about had two: himself and Judith Tannenbaum, a new friend living with a severe form of foraminal stenosis, a disease so excruciating that Judith explained there wasn’t room in her body for it. She had attempted every manner of dealing with it, visited pain specialists, tried various treatments, drugs, prostheses. Exhausting every possibility, she had chosen to end her life. “Judith Letting Go” is an accounting of the six months Mark spent with her preceding her death. 

Mark had some experience in helping people prepare for the end of life, and he had lost two adult stepsons to suicide. Both had suffered from depression-anxiety disorder, and their suicides were cases of existential despair—nothing like Judith’s rational choice based on an intolerable physical condition. Mark and Judith did not use the word “suicide” to describe Judith’s plan. They understood it to be something else: a letting go of life, of pleasures, of pain, of the past, and of the future.

This is a book about death, but not a book about dying. Judith was not dying as she moved closer to the end of her life. And it is a book about a profound friendship as much as it is about death. Mark refers to the “terminal circumstances” of his relationship with Judith, a poet, mother, daughter, friend. Terminal as in final, and ultimately fatal, but also as a place of embarkation, or as a point of connection. All these meanings are valid in this account of their alliance. 

Though “Judith Letting Go” is a small book at merely 118 pages, it is a big book in its depth and breadth. Mark’s warm, confidential tone permeates the text, in spite of his admission that he is “someone who breaks out in hives while writing in the first person.” The book contains the wisdom of scholars, philosophers and physicians who have immersed themselves in studying and thinking about how we die. Richard Powers, Christopher Hitchins, Carlos Castaneda (!), Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the Final Exit Network, Compassion & Choices, and many others make an appearance. The text is seeded with jewels like this one from Yale University professor David Katz: “We do not own life, we wear it for a while. It doesn’t belong to us; it flows through us. Death is no more enemy to us than autumn is to summer; it’s what happens next…the common end to every story.” 

Mark shares with us what he and Judith talked about: “fears, mostly the fear of not existing, regrets, hope for survivors, legacies, and our plans for existence in the Elysian Fields. That part provided the comic relief.” 

“I had never met anyone, and probably never will,” he writes, “who was so comfortable talking about death, particularly about her own. It was as if we were discussing gardening, cooking, or training a pet. The ‘Life Reaper,’ as she called him once, became a third party in our conversation, always present, mostly silent, strangely cordial, at times a friend, and of course throughout, our ‘wise advisor’ and ‘secret teacher.’” 

By the end of this book, readers will have a repository of questions and ideas with which to open a death café of their own, or to approach the subject with some aplomb instead of fear. Mark offers a dozen or so questions that could act as prompts for further discussion. But readers will surely formulate their own. Here are some I took away from the world’s smallest death café:

What is your idea of death?

Do you fear death? Do you fear dying? If yes, can you identify what you fear about either?

How does your idea of death affect your living? How do you think it will affect your dying?

Do you think you will exist in some way after life? Do you think you existed before birth?

Is there a difference between imagining your own death and imagining the death of someone dear to you?

“Judith Letting Go: Six Months in the World’s Smallest Death Café” is available for pre-order at Point Reyes Books, at Wayfinder Bookstore in Fairfax and on Amazon. Doris Ober is the former managing editor of the West Marin Review, the author of “The Dogtown Chronicles,” and an avid reader. She lives in Point Reyes Station.