The other three I have no stake in: an app that interrupts your day five times to say you will die, a dinner where dying is the subject, and a book by a woman who cared for the dying and wrote down what they regretted. I put them side by side because people keep asking which one to pick, and the honest answer is that they are four different things.
The same seven questions for each
To compare them fairly I asked the same seven questions of all four: what you actually do, whether you do it alone or with others, how much time it takes, how often you repeat it, who guides you, what it costs, and where you can get it. Every answer below comes from what each maker says on their own site, not from my memory.
Nothing here gets a score, and nobody wins. A reminder, a conversation, a book and an hour do different work. The useful question is which work you want done.
WeCroak: five reminders a day
What do you actually do with WeCroak?
You install an app and it sends you five notifications a day, at random moments between seven in the morning and ten at night. Open one and you get a quote about death from a poet, philosopher or other thinker. The makers suggest you use that moment to breathe or reflect. That is the whole practice.
Where does the five come from?
From a folk saying out of Bhutan, a small kingdom in the Himalayas, that the makers put on their front page: to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily. The saying does the heavy lifting. The app only keeps count.
When would you choose it?
When you want the thought to keep showing up without planning anything. It takes seconds, and it is built to catch you at the wrong moment on purpose, which is how the makers describe death itself. What it will not give you is depth. Five short nudges keep the subject near, and that is all it promises.
Death Over Dinner: one table, one evening
How does a death dinner work?
You host a dinner and make death the topic. The website walks you through six steps: who you invite, why you want to talk about it, something to read, watch or listen to beforehand, a check of those choices before anything goes out, the email to your guests, and what to do after the dinner. That email comes with a draft invitation, the homework, conversation prompts and a short guide to hosting. Then you cook, and you talk.
Who started it, and how big is it?
Michael Hebb and Scott Macklin, two teachers who taught a course at the University of Washington called Let's Have Dinner and Talk About Death. On the launch night, August 24, 2013, the makers counted over five hundred dinners in twenty countries. Since then: over a hundred thousand. The makers say it began with a number: three in four Americans want to die at home, and only one in four does. A dinner is where that gap gets talked about.
When would you choose it?
When what you have been avoiding is a conversation with specific people: a parent, a partner, the friends you would want there. The site lets you pick a reason, and several are about someone who is ill or recently died, so it is also a way to say something in time. What it costs you is a meal and the nerve to send the invitation.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: a book
What is the book, exactly?
A memoir by Bronnie Ware, an Australian who spent years caring for people at home in the last weeks of their lives. In 2009 she wrote an online article about what they told her, and millions read it. The book that followed tells her own story alongside theirs. By her count it has reached over a million readers, in 32 languages.
What are the five regrets?
In her patients' words: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
When would you choose it?
When you want other people's endings to do the talking. A book takes a few evenings, and you can put it down. It works slowly, and mostly afterwards, when one of the five comes back to you in a meeting you did not want to be in. Her five are not the whole list: I put three deathbed accounts side by side in a separate article.
The Last Hour Experience: one hour, alone
What happens in the hour?
This is the one I make. You put on headphones, alone, and for about an hour a voice leads you through your own last hour, with sound and images. Fifteen questions come up that you answer on your screen, and near the end you write one or more farewell letters, to whoever you choose. It is not therapy, coaching or a course.
Where did it come from?
From a six-hour seminar in South Korea about your own last day, which ended with me in a coffin with the lid closed. I was there in my last months as an airline pilot, looking for what to do next. In 2018 I ran a version myself in the Netherlands, with six real coffins. The hour is what I built after that, without the coffin. The rest is on The Deeper Story, the long page on this site about how the hour came to be.
When would you choose it?
When you have read the quotes and had the conversation, and you still know you will die without feeling it. The hour is built for that gap. It is too long to skim, and it happens to you rather than being explained to you. You pay once and can return every year. What it will not do is fit into a coffee break.
Side by side
What do you do, with whom, and for how long?
What you do. WeCroak: read a quote when your phone buzzes. Death Over Dinner: talk about death over a meal you host. The book: read a memoir by a woman who cared for the dying. The hour: live through your own last hour with headphones on, answer fifteen questions, write a farewell letter.
Alone or together. The app and the hour are alone. The dinner is together, by design. The book is alone, unless you read it with someone.
Time. Seconds, five times a day. One evening. A few evenings, at your own pace. About one hour, in one sitting.
How often, who guides you, what it costs, where you get it?
Repetition. The app keeps reminding you daily for as long as you leave it installed. A dinner happens once, or as often as you host one. A book you read once and pick up again years later. The hour is built to return to once a year.
Guidance. A quote and a suggestion to breathe. A draft invitation, conversation prompts and a short hosting guide, with you as the host. An author's voice on the page. A voice in your ears for the full hour.
Cost. WeCroak is free to use, with a paid subscription for extras. Death Over Dinner's site names no price. The book costs what a book costs. The hour is a single purchase, with a yearly return visit included.
Availability. The app is on iPhone and Android. The dinner works anywhere you can set a table, and the site is in English. The book is available in 32 languages, as a paperback, e-book and audiobook. The hour is online, in English and Dutch.
What is an alternative to meditation apps?
A meditation app trains attention in ten minutes a day, and it is good at that. If what you are after is meaning, the better question is what you want to do with those ten minutes: be reminded, talk, read, or live through something.
If you want to be reminded
Then WeCroak is the closest thing to what you are used to: it is on your phone and it interrupts you. The difference is the content. Instead of a bell and your breath, you get a sentence about dying and a few seconds to let it land.
If you want to talk
Then no app will do it for you, and Death Over Dinner is built for exactly this. The hard part is sending the invitation, and the site writes that text for you.
If you want to read
Then start with Ware's book. If you want the long history behind the idea, the two-thousand-year-old practice of memento mori, Latin for remember that you will die, has its own article. Reading is the slowest of the four, and the one where the least is expected of you on the day itself.
If you want to live through something
Then the Last Hour Experience is what I made for that, and I am not neutral about it. What I can say is what it is: one hour, alone, from the inside, with your own answers at the end of it. If a reminder or a conversation gets you where you want to be, you do not need it.
What I keep coming back to
None of the four replaces the others, and I built one of them. What Korea gave me was something I could not have read: the thought of my own ending only started to count once I was inside it. The reminders and the conversations are how you keep that weight from fading. The hour is where I found it in the first place. Pick the door you can actually open this week, and go through it.
Questions people ask. One of them is me.
Can I combine them?
Yes, and the four fit together better than they compete. Reminders keep the subject near, a dinner gets it said out loud, a book gives you other people's endings, and an hour gives you your own. Most people who keep this up do a small thing often and a big thing rarely.
Is it unhealthy to think about death this often?
For most people, no. Keeping death in view is an old habit, from Roman philosophers to Buddhist monks, and it has lasted because it is useful. Two limits apply. If grief is fresh, wait. Grief already keeps death in view, louder than any of these four. And if you are in treatment for depression or in a crisis, talk to the person supporting you before you add any of this.
Which one should I start with?
The one you would actually do this week. If that is an app, install it tonight. If it is a dinner, pick a date before you pick a menu. If it is a book, order it. The hour is for when you want to go all the way in, and you can decide that after the others.
What should I try after reading The Top Five Regrets of the Dying?
Turn her five into questions and answer them today. My article on the regrets of the dying does that, and puts her five next to two other accounts from people who worked with the dying; together they name eleven different regrets. Then choose a form that keeps them in view: a reminder, a dinner or the hour. A book read once fades. A regret is only useful while you can still act on it.
Sources
WeCroak, the makers' own site, for the five daily invitations, the random timing, the quotes and the saying from Bhutan. The app's page in Apple's App Store for the free download, the paid Leap subscription and the seven-to-ten window.
Death Over Dinner, the project's own site, for the six steps, what a host receives, the launch night of August 24, 2013, the count of dinners since, the University of Washington course and the numbers about dying at home.
Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware's original article on her own site, for her years caring for the dying at home and the five regrets in her words. Her book page for the 2009 article, the million readers and the 32 languages.
What the Last Hour Experience is comes from the questions people ask before they begin and from The Deeper Story, both on this site.