Section One
What is Augmento Mori
A structured card game for mortality reflection -- not a therapy tool, not a parlor trick, but a designed experience for holding the most essential human conversation.
The name is Latin: augmento -- to increase, enhance, magnify. Mori -- to die. Where the medieval memento mori urged passive remembrance of death, Augmento Mori asks us to actively design our relationship with it. To magnify what it means to live and die well.
The game was developed as the central design intervention of an M.F.A. thesis in Design for Sustainability at the Savannah College of Art and Design (2026), grounded in three years of primary research across four stakeholder cohorts: general community members, medical and palliative care providers, deathcare professionals, and caregivers. It is informed by the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death (2022), Allan Kellehear's Public Health Palliative Care framework, and evidence from over sixty survey respondents whose voices shaped every card.
Anam Cara Foundation
This guide is also informed by the Anam Cara death doula apprenticeship, a two-year intensive training in which Mona M. Hamdy participated. Anam Cara is an Irish phrase meaning "soul friend" -- a concept rooted in the Celtic spiritual tradition of intimate, accompaniment-based care for the dying. The Anam Cara method teaches that dying is not a medical event to be managed but a sacred threshold to be witnessed with full presence, compassion, and without agenda. Its practices -- including active dying presence, sacred space creation, conscious breathing accompaniment, and legacy witness work -- are woven throughout this facilitation guide wherever they are most relevant. These teachings have informed the game's approach to holding space, the hospice mode of play, and the understanding that a facilitator is not an expert in someone else's death, but a companion alongside it.
"Death, dying, loss, and caregiving are not just medical issues, but societal ones. The people who know and love make up what matters most for those undergoing the experiences of death."
-- Allan Kellehear, Public Health Palliative Care (2018)
42 cards. 8 languages. 5 thematic decks. One purpose: to lower the wall between people and the conversation that most shapes how they live.
Section Two
The Research Behind the Game
Every card prompt emerged from research. These are not philosophical exercises -- they are the questions the data asked.
82%
agreed that society is too distant from death as a natural process
85%
believed that open discussion of death reduces fear
76%
wanted to die at home -- yet most die in hospitals
88%
wanted comfort-focused care over life extension at end of life
This is the paradox at the heart of the research: people intellectually accept death as natural and prioritize comfort over intervention -- yet most avoid death conversations entirely. Families described "skirting around the issue" and becoming "distant" after a death. Medical professionals noted that families are "generally not open to honest conversations about limited prognosis."
The game was designed precisely for this gap. It does not require participants to have had difficult deaths in their families, to hold particular spiritual beliefs, or to have thought carefully about mortality before. It creates a structured occasion for what most people already want to say but haven't.
Research also included the Dancing for Della workshop, which documented structural inequities in palliative care access for Black American communities: historical mistrust of the medical system, late hospice referrals, and the critical role of faith communities in death education. These findings directly shaped the Gullah Geechee language edition and the Community deck.
"Tell me why we are doing what we are doing. Show me how it's connected and important and more of what death means besides grandma is an angel now."
-- Sensorial study participant, Augmento Mori Research (2025)
Section Three
The Five Decks
42 cards organized across five thematic domains. Each opens a different dimension of mortality reflection -- from the deeply inward to the communal, from the abstract to the bodily.
Reflection
Personal mortality awareness. What death means to you, what remains unresolved, how you want to live knowing you will die. The most inward deck -- a good entry point for first-time groups.
Legacy
What we leave behind -- not possessions, but the immaterial: unspoken stories, qualities we hope to pass on, letters unwritten. Often surfaces the deepest emotional responses.
Ritual
Cultural and spiritual practices surrounding death: funerary traditions, anniversaries, ways of honoring the dead. Especially generative in multicultural groups.
Community
Who belongs in the room. How we support each other in dying, caregiving, and grief. The most relational deck -- powerful in groups with existing bonds.
Body & Earth
The physical reality of dying: bodily wishes, ecological return, the sensory experience of mortality. The most embodied and direct deck -- use with care in groups new to this work.
Section Four
How to Facilitate
Facilitation is not management -- it is presence. Your role is to hold the container, not fill it. The cards do the asking; the group does the knowing.
Anam Cara Teaching
The Anam Cara apprenticeship teaches that the most essential skill of an end-of-life companion is following, not leading -- meeting the dying or grieving person exactly where they are, at the pace they set, without agenda or rescue. This same principle governs facilitation of Augmento Mori. You are not here to guide anyone toward a particular insight or emotional destination. You are here to make the space safe enough that whatever needs to arise can arise.
1
Prepare the Space
Arrange seating in a circle. Dim lighting where possible. Have water, tissues, and silence before you begin. Remove clocks from view. The physical environment communicates care before a single word is spoken. Anam Cara practitioners speak of "making sacred space" -- not through ritual objects necessarily, but through intentionality of presence.
2
Name the Container
Before drawing the first card, state the agreement aloud: no wrong answers, no advice, no fixing, no pressure to speak. Passing is always available. What is shared in the room stays in the room. This is not therapy -- it is shared inquiry.
3
Draw and Read Aloud
One person draws a card and reads the prompt aloud -- slowly, twice if needed. Then: silence. Let the question land before anyone speaks. That pause -- even 15 or 20 seconds -- is itself the work. Do not rush it.
4
Listen Without Agenda
Model receptive listening. No vigorous nodding, no leading responses, no "yes, and." Others speak if they wish. Silence from a participant is not failure -- it is one of the most valid responses available. Protect it fiercely.
5
Invite Written Reflection
After group sharing, invite each person to write privately in the diary space. The act of writing moves reflection from conversation into something more lasting. This is where the deepest work often happens.
6
Track Mind, Body, Spirit
After writing, invite participants to notice how the card landed across the three pillars: Mind (how they were thinking), Body (what they felt physically), Spirit (what stirred beneath both). These are not categories to explain -- just to notice. See Section 5.
7
Close with Intention
End each session with a small closing act: a shared breath, a moment of gratitude, or a single word from each person. Closing rituals signal that something real happened here -- and that the container is being gently, respectfully released. The Anam Cara tradition emphasizes that how we close is as important as how we open.
When Someone Becomes Distressed
Death conversations can surface unexpected grief, trauma, or overwhelm. If someone becomes visibly distressed: slow down, offer quiet presence rather than words, and offer to step outside briefly. Do not rush to fix the feeling -- distress is contact with what is real. In clinical or healthcare settings, have a mental health resource or crisis contact available before the session begins. Facilitators without clinical training should not attempt to provide grief counseling -- companionship and professional referral are your tools.
Session Length
60 to 90 minutes per session. 4 to 6 cards is a good depth for one sitting. Rushing is the enemy of this work. Better to go deep on two cards than to skim ten.
Group Size
2 to 8 people is ideal. Intimacy diminishes significantly past 10. For larger settings, break into smaller groups with one facilitator each.
Returning Sessions
Multiple sessions over weeks or months deepens the work considerably. Death is not a once-per-lifetime conversation -- each session opens a different layer.
Section Five
The Library of Reflections
and the Mind, Body, Spirit Framework
Every entry saved in the diary becomes part of a growing personal archive. Over sessions, it becomes something more than notes: a record of how someone's relationship with death evolved.
The Library of Reflections is the game's long-form companion. Each saved diary entry carries a timestamp, location, and -- when the participant chooses -- a Mind/Body/Spirit signature. Together, these entries form a longitudinal portrait of a person's inner life around mortality.
The library can be exported as CSV for analysis or as plain text for sharing, printing, or incorporating into legacy letters and end-of-life documents. This feature serves as a natural bridge toward advance care planning -- the step from reflection to documented wishes that the research showed most people intend but rarely complete.
Mind
tenderunsettledgratefulresistantpeacefulgriefcuriousnumbclearconfused
Body
chest tightwarmthtears nearexpansivebreath heldheavygroundedrawlightstill
Spirit
quietrestlessopensearchingconnectedestrangedsurrenderedheldalonevast
Across all eight language editions, the Mind/Body/Spirit labels are translated with cultural nuance. The vocabulary of grief in the body is not identical across cultures, and the game honors that. Participants are encouraged to use the provided words or find their own -- the chips are a starting point, not a limit.
Section Six
Cultural Sensitivity and Language
Language is not a neutral vessel. The words we use to approach death -- their grammar, their silences, their connotations -- carry entire worlds within them. Meeting people where they are begins with meeting them in their language.
The research behind Augmento Mori surveyed participants across diverse cultural backgrounds. Respondents described rituals spanning the Islamic azza, the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, Ghanaian multi-day celebration burials, Hindu shraddha rites, Gullah Geechee ancestral vigils, Tamil karam ceremonies, and Indigenous beliefs in death as the beginning of a new journey. In nearly every case, the rituals that moved people most were those that made death communal rather than clinical -- witnessed, named, and held together.
The Anam Cara tradition similarly teaches that death is not a private medical event but a communal threshold -- one that ideally involves the presence of trusted companions, both living and perhaps ancestral. This cross-cultural finding reinforces the thesis's core argument: that death has been unnecessarily isolated, and that community, in its many forms, is both the remedy and the design criterion.
Fluency Over Literalism
A literal translation often arrives as cold or culturally alien. Each edition privileges the emotional intention of the question over word-for-word equivalence. What is being asked in English as "What do you want to leave behind?" must find its natural form in Twi, in Tamil, in Chinese -- or it lands as nothing.
Formality and the Second Person
Most languages carry formal and informal registers for "you." Augmento Mori uses the formal register in all editions -- usted in Spanish, ap in Hindi, niiṅkaḷ in Tamil, nin in Mandarin. These are sacred questions. The grammar should honor that.
Avoidance is Cultural Data
In some cultures, speaking one's own death aloud is considered to invite it. In others, the deceased's name goes unspoken for a year. In others still, death is celebrated with song. These are not obstacles to facilitation -- they are the content of it. A facilitator's job is not to override cultural avoidance but to create enough safety that it can be gently explored.
The Untranslatable as Invitation
Some of the richest facilitation moments arise when a word in one language has no direct equivalent in another. Mogya (Akan blood-lineage), dhikr al-mawt (Arabic: remembrance of death as spiritual practice), virásat (Hindi: legacy as living inheritance) -- these are not gaps. They are invitations to explore what a culture has named that others haven't.
Structural Inequity is Not Culturally Neutral
The research found marked differences in palliative care access along racial and economic lines. Black communities in the United States face late hospice referrals, historical medical mistrust, and care systems that frequently ignore cultural and spiritual preferences. Facilitating with Black participants requires acknowledgment of this context, not transcendence of it.
Section Seven
Eight Language Editions
Each edition is a cultural homecoming -- not a translation but a transposition of the same essential questions into the emotional and philosophical language of a particular world.
English
Reference edition · ~1.5 billion speakers
Death Positivity MovementDirect RegisterSecular and PluralistLancet Commission Framework
The English edition addresses a Western cultural paradox: intellectual acceptance of death as natural alongside near-total avoidance of death conversation. Research found that 85% of participants believed open discussion reduces fear -- yet most had not had a serious death conversation with even their closest family members.
Key influences include the hospice movement, death cafe culture, advance care planning research, and the Anam Cara tradition of soul-friendship accompaniment. The English edition also draws on the death positivity movement's insistence that naming death is not morbid -- it is an act of courage and love.
Sample Reflection card
"What do you most want the people you love to know about how you lived -- that they might not already know?"
Facilitation note: English-speaking participants often approach cards intellectually first -- analyzing rather than feeling. Protect silence. If a group intellectualizes repeatedly, try: "Set the analysis down for a moment. What was the first thing you felt when you heard that question?"
Espanol
Spanish · ~500 million native speakers
FamilismoDia de los MuertosCommunal GriefCatholic Ritual
Written in formal usted register, the Spanish edition draws on familismo -- the centrality of family bonds as the primary unit of meaning -- and the Mesoamerican-Catholic tradition of honoring death as continuation rather than ending. Survey respondents cited the ofrenda and Dia de los Muertos as the death rituals they found most beautiful: "I find ofrendas deeply beautiful. There's something about communing with the dead I find comforting."
In Spanish, death is la muerte -- feminine, intimate, grammatically close. The language itself models a different relationship with mortality than English allows.
la muerte
death (feminine)
la ofrenda
altar offering for the dead
Sample Legacy card
"Que desea dejar atras -- no objetos, sino algo mas dificil de nombrar?"
Facilitation note: Death in many Spanish-speaking families is held communally and visibly. Participants may recognize the game is facilitating what their family already does -- but may have lost as generations disperse. Lean into intergenerational questions and the ache of diaspora distance from ancestral practice.
العربية
Arabic · ~400 million speakers · RTL script
Islamic TraditionAzza Gathering40-Day RemembranceDhikr al-Mawt
Arabic is written right-to-left and the game interface fully supports RTL rendering. The Arabic edition draws on Islamic traditions: the azza (communal condolence gathering), ritual body-washing, the 40-day remembrance cycle, and the understanding of death as a chapter every living being will experience -- like birth. A survey respondent described it: "In Islam we have to wash the body and wrap it for burial. Despite the constant tears, it was the most profound experience I have gone through -- women coming together to cleanse a loved one as gently as we can."
The Islamic teaching that dhikr al-mawt -- remembrance of death -- is itself a spiritual practice aligns deeply with the Anam Cara understanding that consciously acknowledging death is not morbid but clarifying. Both traditions teach that the awareness of death is a path toward fuller life.
الروح
al-ruh: soul / spirit
العزاء
al-azza: condolence gathering
البرزخ
al-barzakh: threshold between worlds
ذكر الموت
dhikr al-mawt: remembering death
Sample Ritual card
"ما الطقس المرتبط بالوفاة من ثقافتك أو معتقداتك الذي تجده ذا معنى؟"
Facilitation note: Frame facilitation within the Islamic understanding that death preparation is a religious virtue -- i'dad. The game can open space for advance care conversations that feel natural within, rather than in tension with, Islamic tradition. Death is less taboo here; communal practices are rich entry points.
Gullah Geechee
Sea Islands Creole · Low Country, US · Endangered
African DiasporaOral HeritageAncestral PresenceRacial Health Equity
Gullah Geechee is a living Creole language of the Sea Island communities from North Carolina to Florida -- a direct descendant of West African languages blended with English under conditions of enslavement. It carries unbroken threads of ancestral knowledge about death, memory, and community that were never fully severed. Its inclusion in Augmento Mori is an act of cultural repair.
The Dancing for Della workshop documented structural inequities in palliative care access for Black American communities: historical mistrust of the medical system, late hospice referrals compared to white patients, and the critical role of churches, barbershops, and trusted community elders in death education. These findings shaped every card in this edition.
gone home
died (euphemism of return)
de ancestor dem
the ancestors (present tense)
kumbaya
come by here -- invocation
sweetgrass
sacred plant; memory of homeland
oonuh
you all (communal second person)
Sample Community card
"When someone in oonuh community been dyin, what you wishin you coulda do -- an what been holdin you back?"
Facilitation note: The Gullah Geechee edition must be facilitated with attentiveness to the ongoing context of racial health inequity. Do not assume participants from Black communities have equivalent access to palliative care, advance planning resources, or institutional trust. The game can be a bridge -- but only if the facilitator understands the water under it and does not pretend the bridge doesn't need building.
Twi (Akan)
Akan · Ghana · ~9 million speakers
Akan WorldviewJoyful Funeral TraditionMatrilineal LineageAncestral Continuation
The Akan people hold death as a transition rather than an ending. Funerary celebrations for elders are joyful community events: dress color varies with the deceased's age, and the one-year anniversary gathers family to celebrate what the person lived. A survey respondent described it: "The multi-day celebration in Ghana -- depending on the age of the person you dress in different colors to signify how they lived. It allows family to sit together and remember."
mogya
blood / matrilineal lineage
sunsum
personal spiritual self
abusua
family clan (matrilineal)
Sample Legacy card
"Biribi woo hoo a wopee see wugya -- mfaso anaasee obi a oowoo ho nyansa. Deen na wobeehu woo wo mogya mu?"
Facilitation note: The Akan distinction between sunsum (personal soul) and kra (divine life force) opens rich territory for Legacy and Reflection cards. Ghanaian funerary traditions already celebrate what Augmento Mori argues for -- that death, held communally and joyfully, can be one of life's most life-affirming acts.
தமிழ் (Tamil)
Tamil · South India and Sri Lanka · ~80 million speakers
Thirukkural PhilosophyKaram RitesShaiva Siddhanta2,000-Year Literary Tradition
Tamil is one of the world's oldest living classical languages, with an unbroken literary tradition spanning over 2,000 years. The Thirukkural by Thiruvalluvar contains profound couplets on mortality, right living, and the naturalness of death -- a cultural sensibility most Tamil speakers carry regardless of whether they know the source. The Tamil edition uses formal niiṅkaḷ throughout.
நினைவு
ninaive: memory / remembrance
மரபு
marapu: heritage / legacy
Sample Reflection card (Thirukkural-influenced)
"நாளை மரணம் வந்தால், என்ன தீர்க்கப்படாமல் இருக்கும்?"
Facilitation note: Tamil communities may span Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and secular traditions. Do not assume a single spiritual framework. The Ritual deck is valuable for surfacing which practices resonate personally, as distinct from what family or tradition expects. This distinction between personal meaning and inherited obligation is often where the most honest conversation lives.
हिन्दी (Hindi)
Hindi · North India · ~600 million speakers
Bhagavad GitaShraddha and BarsiPluralist TraditionMrityu Smriti Practice
Written in formal ap register, the Hindi edition addresses the immense plurality of the Hindi-speaking world -- encompassing Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and secular participants. The Bhagavad Gita's teaching that mrityu smriti (awareness of death) leads to fuller presence in life is woven through the Reflection deck -- not as doctrine but as a cultural sensibility most Hindi speakers have absorbed regardless of personal faith.
विरासत
viraasat: legacy / living heritage
श्राद्ध
shraddh: ancestral rites
बरसी
barsi: death anniversary
मृत्यु स्मृति
mrityu smriti: death awareness as practice
Sample Reflection card (Gita-influenced)
"अगर कल मृत्यु आ जाए, तो क्या अनसुलझा रह जाएगा?"
Facilitation note: In mixed-faith Hindi groups, the Ritual deck often surfaces surprising differences -- participants may discover they hold very different beliefs from family members who have never directly asked each other. The game can open these conversations without forcing them.
中文 (Chinese)
Simplified Mandarin · ~1 billion speakers
Confucian Filial PietyQingming FestivalDaoist TransformationAncestor Veneration
The Chinese edition addresses one of the most profound cultural taboos in any language edition. Speaking directly about one's own death is widely considered to invite it. The character for death (死, si) is avoided in many contexts; the number 4 is omitted from buildings. The Chinese edition navigates this with deliberate care, using Daoist language of transformation (转化, zhuanhua) rather than cessation, and Confucian frameworks of filial legacy. Zhuangzi's butterfly dream provides the philosophical frame: not ending, but transformation.
遗产
yichan: legacy / inheritance
清明节
qingming jie: tomb-sweeping festival
转化
zhuanhua: transformation
Sample Reflection card (Daoist-influenced)
"如果死亡明天就来临，什么会悬而未决？"
Facilitation note: Begin Chinese-language sessions with the Legacy or Ritual decks -- approaching death through what one leaves and how one honors before arriving at what death itself means. Frame the experience through Qingming: we are doing what Chinese families have always done, tending to the relationship between the living and the dead. Transformation, not ending.
Section Eight
Modes of Play
Augmento Mori is designed to be flexible across contexts: alone at a kitchen table, between two people who love each other, in a community circle, or beside a bed where someone is dying. Each context asks something different of the cards -- and of you.
Solo play is the most intimate form of Augmento Mori -- just you, a card, and what arises. It is best understood not as a game in the conventional sense but as a contemplative practice: a structured occasion for sitting with the questions that daily life tends to push aside.
The Anam Cara tradition encourages regular solo reflection on death not as an exercise in fear, but as a clarifying act. In the Celtic understanding, the soul friend -- the anam cara -- is sometimes one's own deepest self, and the practice of sitting with mortality questions is a way of coming into deeper relationship with that self.
Draw one card per session. One is enough. Sit with it for the full session duration -- do not rush to the next.
Write in the diary before and after reading the card. Notice the difference.
Track your Mind, Body, Spirit response. Over time, patterns emerge about where your relationship with death lives in you.
There is no obligation to arrive anywhere. The question is the destination.
If strong emotion arises, let it. You are not alone in having these feelings -- millions of people sit with the same unasked questions.
Consider using the Library of Reflections as an ongoing personal document -- a record of your evolving relationship with mortality that can also serve as a foundation for advance care planning.
The two-person format is one of the most powerful uses of the game -- often between partners, parent and adult child, or close friends who have never found the language for these conversations. Research found that even people who described their relationship as deeply intimate had rarely discussed death preferences, fears, or legacy wishes. The cards create permission for what love already wants to say.
The Anam Cara tradition holds that deep friendship involves the willingness to accompany someone into their darkness -- not to fix it, but to be present within it. This is the spirit of two-person play.
Draw one card. Each person responds privately in writing first, then shares -- without interruption from the other.
After each person has shared, sit in silence for at least 30 seconds before responding. Let the other person's words actually land.
There is no requirement to agree, advise, or fix. The most powerful response is often: "Thank you for saying that."
If the conversation opens unexpected grief or conflict, slow down. Acknowledge. Do not push through. You can return to this card another day.
Couples and long-term partners: consider using the Legacy and Community decks first, which tend to open into love rather than fear.
Parent and adult child: the Reflection and Legacy decks often surface the conversations that neither party knew the other wanted to have.
Group play -- 3 to 8 participants -- is the form for which the facilitation sections of this guide are primarily written. A group creates something a solo or duo practice cannot: the experience of being witnessed. Research found that one of the most consistent effects of the game sessions was the surprise of not being alone in one's fears and hopes about death.
The group format is well-suited to community settings, healthcare team retreats, caregiver support groups, faith communities, and educational contexts. It works best when participants share some degree of existing trust or when the facilitator devotes sufficient time to establishing the container before play begins.
Follow the 7-step facilitation protocol in Section 4. Do not shortcut the opening container-naming or the closing ritual.
4 to 6 cards per 90-minute session is the recommended depth. Rushing is the enemy of this work.
In groups larger than 6, consider a "popcorn" sharing format -- people speak when moved rather than going around the circle, which can feel mechanical with heavy material.
One facilitator per group of up to 8. For larger gatherings, break into smaller groups with trained co-facilitators.
Plan a de-briefing conversation at the end: "What word or image is sitting with you right now?" This grounds the session before people re-enter ordinary life.
Multiple-session series deepen the work considerably. Consider a 4-session arc: Reflection, Legacy, Ritual, Community -- each session building on the previous one.
This mode requires the most care, the most training, and the most willingness to follow rather than lead. When Augmento Mori is used alongside someone in hospice or terminal care, it is no longer primarily a reflective exercise -- it becomes a form of legacy witness work and dignified accompaniment.
The Anam Cara apprenticeship teaches that the role of an end-of-life companion near death is not to process, fix, or facilitate in the conventional sense. It is to be fully present without agenda -- to witness the dying person as whole, complete, and worthy of unhurried attention. This is the spirit that governs this mode entirely.
Medical best practice in palliative care similarly emphasizes person-centered communication, the primacy of patient agency and pace, and the importance of open acknowledgment of prognosis when the patient initiates it. The SPIKES protocol (Setting, Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Emotions, Summary and Strategy) used in clinical communication training reflects a similar spirit: follow the patient's lead, do not impose information, honor what they are ready to receive.
Essential Boundary
Facilitators using this mode should have specific training in end-of-life accompaniment, death doula practice, hospice volunteering, or clinical palliative care. If you do not have this training, do not use this mode independently. Work in collaboration with the hospice team, a trained chaplain, or a certified death doula. Augmento Mori is a tool, not a credential.
Let the dying person set every parameter. Do they want to play? Do they want to use cards at all, or just talk? Is today even a day for conversation? Never assume.
Use the Reflection and Legacy decks preferentially. In active dying, the cards most likely to serve are those that open into meaning, love, and what the person wants to be remembered for. The Body and Earth deck may or may not be welcome depending on the person's relationship with their dying body.
One card, or none. In hospice settings, one card per visit is often more than enough. Sometimes no card is drawn at all -- the session becomes simply being together, which is its own form of the game.
The diary becomes a legacy document. Entries made near the end of life carry particular weight. With the patient's permission, the Library of Reflections can be printed as a record for their family -- an ethical will, a legacy letter, a final set of reflections.
Sitting in silence is the work. The Anam Cara tradition teaches that one of the most profound gifts we can offer someone who is dying is simply our unhurried, non-anxious presence. You do not need to fill the silence.
Coordinate with the care team. Inform the hospice nurse, social worker, or chaplain that you are using the game. Document anything clinically relevant (unmet wishes, undisclosed fears) and share it with the appropriate team member rather than holding it alone.
After each visit, tend to yourself. End-of-life companion work takes something from you. This is not a weakness -- it is a sign that something real happened. See Section 9 on facilitator self-care.
Anam Cara at the Threshold
The Anam Cara apprenticeship includes specific training in active dying presence -- the practice of being with someone in the final hours and days of life. This includes attending to the dying person's breathing, offering gentle verbal reassurance that they are not alone, facilitating completion of unfinished relational business, and supporting the family in what to say and how to be present. These practices are beyond the scope of Augmento Mori as a game -- but they live in the same tradition of care that shaped the game's design. Facilitators trained in Anam Cara or equivalent practices are well-suited to this mode. Others should seek that training before working in active dying contexts.
Section Nine
Facilitator Self-Care
You cannot hold space for others' mortality if you are not in some honest relationship with your own. This work asks something of you. Name that.
Facilitating death conversations is meaningful work -- and it is also work that costs something. Facilitators often absorb the emotional weight of what is shared in a session. Over time, this accumulates. The Anam Cara tradition is explicit that those who accompany the dying and grieving must also tend to themselves with the same quality of care they bring to others. The practices below are not optional additions to this work. They are part of it.
Before Each Session
Spend a few minutes in quiet contact with your own mortality. Not anxiously -- simply. Breathe. Ask: what is alive in me about death today? Your groundedness is the first gift you bring into the room.
During the Session
Notice when you want to speak to relieve your own discomfort, not the group's. The hardest facilitation skill is staying present with another person's unresolved grief without rushing to resolve it.
After Each Session
Transition intentionally. Do not move from a session directly into routine activity. Walk, write, sit quietly. Let what was shared settle before you carry it into the rest of your day.
Supervision and Peer Support
If you facilitate regularly, find a peer or supervisor with whom you can debrief. Name what you heard. Name what landed in you. This work should not be carried alone.
"How we die shapes how we live. Valuing how we die changes how we live."
-- Lancet Commission on the Value of Death (2022)
Section Ten
Quick Reference
| Context | Mode | Start Here | Notes |
|---|
| First-time community group | Group | Reflection deck | Most accessible entry; builds trust before going deeper |
| Healthcare or clinical team | Group | Community or Reflection | Anchor in shared professional experience first |
| Caregivers or family members | Group or Duo | Legacy or Community | Already close to death; can move deeper faster |
| End-of-life doulas | Group | Any deck | Experienced; Body and Earth offers somatic grounding |
| Partners or spouses | Duo | Legacy or Community | Opens into love; creates advance care planning conversations |
| Personal practice | Solo | Reflection deck | One card per session; use diary and MBS tracking |
| Hospice or terminal care | Hospice (Mode 4) | Reflection or Legacy | Requires training; follow patient's lead entirely |
| Chinese-language group | Group | Legacy or Ritual | Approach death through legacy before naming it directly |
| Arabic / Muslim group | Group | Ritual or Community | Communal practices are rich; death is less taboo |
| Gullah Geechee / Black communities | Group | Community or Legacy | Acknowledge health equity context; center oral heritage |
| Signal | What It May Mean | Facilitator Response |
|---|
| Long silence after a card is drawn | The question landed deeply | Wait. Silence is not empty -- it is working. |
| Laughter | Relief, recognition, or deflection | Welcome it. Then: "What does that laugh know?" |
| Tears | Contact with grief or love | Slow down. Offer presence. Passing is available. |
| Intellectualizing | Avoiding the personal | Invite: "What does that mean for you, personally?" |
| Someone wants to leave | Overwhelm or genuine need | Affirm their right. Offer to check in after. |
| A recent death enters the room | Live grief arriving | Slow everything down. This is the work. Be fully present. |
| Conflict between participants | Different values or grief styles | Witness both. There are no right answers here. |