A watercolor view of a welcoming café and bookstore setting along Calle Timón in Marina Vallarta. Illustration generated by AI. Not a photograph of the event described.
The Living Room Bookstore & Café, a bilingual bookstore and café, will host The Long Table, a monthly Death Café. It is on Calle Timón in Marina Vallarta. The first gathering is scheduled for Friday, October 9 at 1 pm, at the café’s Marina Vallarta location. Attendance is free, and everyone is welcome. After that, the gatherings will take place on the second Friday of each month.
Participants will sit around a table with coffee or tea and something sweet, then talk about death in whatever direction the conversation takes. There is no agenda and no guest speaker. A Death Café is not a formal grief counselling session or therapy, and it does not promote a product or belief. The Long Table follows the principles of the international Death Café model. That movement began in London in 2011, and more than 24,000 Death Cafés have been held in over 100 countries. Its aim is to help people make the most of their finite lives by speaking more freely about mortality.
Laura Ghilardi Miller will host The Long Table gatherings. Her husband died 27 years ago, and she started a grief support group at a Chicago hospital after his death. She saw that people deeply needed a place to talk openly about those they had lost. She also noticed that Vallarta had no venue offering that kind of space, so she decided to create one. Laura Ghilardi Miller says she is not a therapist but is a good listener. She says being heard is what grieving people need most. She has called Puerto Vallarta home for 18 years.
The idea reflects The Living Room’s stated belief that people need a third space beyond home and work. Madeline Milne, a co-owner of The Living Room, says it strives to build community through its programming and events. She says bookstores and cafés have long been places to meet friends, build community, and spark conversation. The café considers hosting The Long Table a natural extension of what it has always set out to be, and Milne calls it a beautiful addition to The Living Room’s programming and events. For visitors or residents interested in attending, the first gathering is at the Calle Timón café on Friday, October 9 at 1 pm.
