To get to the Madison Death Studio, you’ll pass by vintage paperbacks, carved marionettes, and other eclectic studios and shops within the artists’ enclave at 2716 Atwood Ave, nestled between The Victory cafe and the Ritual Barbell Gym.

It’s a community that’s welcomed Meghan Allynn Johnson, a Madison native who formerly ran a gallery in New York City, and her new studio, which opened July 1. She describes her new studio as an “experimental art space” and a “walk-in resource hub” for those grappling with our final fate.

Inside, display cases offer scores of sympathy cards, candles, altar animals and tarot decks. Books and zines line one wall, with titles like Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book of Death, Death Nesting: The Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula, and Grieve On: A Little Book of Truths about Grief.

In the center of the room sits a large table with orange metal stools. There’s warm lighting, relaxing music playing, and Johnson offers me sparkling water. The environment is loosening us up for something that’s sometimes hard to do: talk about death.

Johnson is an artist, and has training in death midwifery, but she prefers a different term — “death worker” — that describes her desire to shift the cultural conversation around dying and grief.

“I think we all think we’re doing it wrong, and that’s why we carry so much shame around grief,” she says. 

The studio is opening up softly, with limited hours: Wednesdays from 4-7 p.m. or by appointment. She expects three main audiences: death workers looking for community and resources, people who are simply curious, and people actively in need of support — like those who are caregiving, grieving, or are themselves dying.

“There are going to be some people who don’t want to think about death at all, and they’re not ready to have that conversation,” Johnson concedes. “And then I think there are people that really do, and they just need someone to open that door.”

Johnson’s family was one that didn’t usually talk about death, and when they did, it was “uncomfortable.” Johnson says she feels that she’s breaking a “generational pattern” by being explicit.

 She was in her 20s when both of her parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses; an undergrad when her father was diagnosed with degenerative dementia, a grad student when her mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She describes long-distance caregiving for both, first while living in St. Louis, then in New York City.

Johnson recalls getting the call that her father was dying, and being asked if she wanted to visit with him. She says she was warned that it would be difficult to be at his bedside. Instead she found the experience “profound.” She felt like she “knew what to do” to support her father, and says it was a “surprise” she had that “level of comfort.”

Her mother lived for another 18 months. When she got the call that her mom was entering her end of life, it was June 2020 — in the first months of the COVID pandemic, when there were no flights available.

She ended up renting a car to drive to Madison, sleeping in it while avoiding hotels to prevent possible infections. She recalls stopping at a Burger King, which had all the lights off, and one person working. No one else was around. “It was a dystopian scene,” says Johnson, “which felt almost perfect for what I was experiencing, because I was losing my mom.”

Her mother’s death lasted weeks. “And again, I had this intrinsic knowing around what to do to support her in that space,” Johnson says, describing situations where she had to advocate for small but important measures to keep her mom comfortable.

She didn’t know it, but she was doing work similar to that of a death doula. Years later, after she’d returned to Madison, Johnson took a course in death midwifery. It helped her understand the role she’d played in her parents’ deaths, and reinforced what she’d already felt: that there are gaps in the death care system and how we treat the ensuing grief.

Take bereavement leave, which she says isn’t usually time spent grieving. It’s spent attending to the second “full-time job” of administrative arrangements— funeral planning, obit writing, tracking down passwords. “If your mom dies, you get maybe three days of bereavement leave,” Johnson says. “But does anyone actually get to grieve on those three days?”

Johnson plans to offer workshops to help drive collective processing. The first, scheduled for July 30, is called “The Forgotten Funeral,” and is aimed at processing collective grief about climate change and the natural world. The group will build an altar/shrine to honor a dead animal.

Another future workshop, with no date yet set, aims to help the LGBTQ+ community, who may need documentation to have “dignity at death.” The workshop will focus on preparing paperwork like advanced directives and financial planning.

In the end, Johnson says, Madison Death Studio isn’t about inventing something new. It’s about remembering what “used to be normal”: a community that knows how to show up for its members. What does she want the shop to look like a year from now? Johnson doesn’t hesitate to describe the scene: “I hope it looks like a community.”