Ana Bendaña has seen and studied death, and too much of it hasn’t been good.

It may sound strange to say that a good death is possible, or that one can even embrace death, making it easier on oneself and those we love.

The San Antonio nurse and former hospice case manager has spent a lot of time studying death and dying. She has a master’s degree in thanatology, the scientific study of death and the care associated with those who are dying.

She’s a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling and is associate editor of its quarterly publication. A progressive interdisciplinary group, it includes social workers, ministers, nurses — and, not surprisingly, fewer doctors. They’re focused on saving the living.

Bendaña wants to bring more awareness and education to the work of dying. Her Educatrix consulting business calls on a Latin word that means foster mother or nurse, one who nurtures, tutors or teaches.

Death instruction may sound ominous, but that’s what she’ll attempt to do at what might be San Antonio’s first Death Café at 3 p.m. Saturday. She’s still looking for a place in which to hold the gathering on a date that the Groundswell Project, founded in Australia, has set as Dying to Know Day.

D2KD, for short, raises awareness by encouraging communities to gather over coffee or tea and learn about end-of-life issues.

The Death Café movement has gained traction in Europe and in U.S. cities on the East and West coasts, Bendaña said. They’ve been successful in sharing information about a subject too many of us put off, don’t plan for, or leave for our families to struggle with and handle.

Bendaña believes there’s not only another way in which to handle the physical business of dying, but the emotional aspects of what can be a “magical passage,” she said.

She has had experiences from which she can preach the death and dying gospel. When her father died eight years ago in Nicaragua, he was surrounded by loved ones. Though not in a hospice, his family replicated all the medical and spiritual care he would have received in one.

Though in the middle of letting go of someone they loved, depended on and admired, and though they didn’t want to say goodbye, the family gathered around him in love.

A man who loved to converse, in the end, listened to the voices of the people he most loved until he took his last breath. Because experts believe hearing is among the last senses to go, Bendaña said, her father heard voices filled with thankfulness and love.

“I’d always thought I’d be depressed, but it was so peaceful, so beautiful,” she said. Grief was clearly in the room, but fear was not.

Her father’s good death led the way to a master’s program, which brought Bendaña back to the United States. She grew up in South Texas.

Bendaña hopes to advance this important conversation, especially in the Latino community, where she thinks there’s great potential to promote the idea of a good death.

El Día de los Muertos teaches us to embrace loved ones who have passed to another world, she said, adding, “Latinos don’t fear death as much.”

In Bendaña’s experience, however, fewer Latinos plan advanced directives or hospice care, even though Medicare pays for 100 percent of it, she said.

Bendaña thinks the word “hospice” is part of the problem.

“In Spanish, literally, it means hospicio, a word with a negative connotation, because historically it has been a place of asylum for the needy, the old and infirm who don’t have family to care for them. It’s where orphans were placed, usually in the care of religious orders, or the charity of others,” she said.

Bendaña thinks hospice might better be referred to in Spanish as “cama,” she said, which means bed, or to take to bed.

“When I talk to Latino families, they’re surprised at what hospice is,” Bendaña said. Too often, families feel that doctors are abandoning the patient. But as your medical needs are met in hospice, so will “the many needs beyond the physical,” she said.

Bendaña believes that not only can we experience death better, but even learn to experience it profoundly, so that those who are left behind can better celebrate life.

She has yet to find a home for her Death Café on Aug. 8, but if you know of a place that might want to host such a gathering, you can reach her at lasbendanas@icloud.com.

eayala@express-news.net