Death Cafes Create a New Kind of Space to Talk about Death and Dying

Sometimes you just need to talk about death.

You don’t need a therapist. You don’t need a self-help book. You don’t need a support group.

You just need to say the word death and talk about what it means to you and in your life.

Jon and Sue Barsky Reid are spreading this idea around the world as they produce “Death Cafes”, inspired by the ideas of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz and the original death cafe in Paris. Death Cafes work from the idea that a cafe is a comfortable place to come together, “drink tea, eat cake”, and talk with friends. That talk, in this case, just happens to be about mortality.

The objective of Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”.

Since they hosted their first Death Cafe in London in September 2011, Jon and Sue have produced a guide to hosting your own, and Death Cafes have spread to over 300 participants in the U.S., Wales, Australia, Brazil and Canada. While the idea may still sound macabre to some — the skulls and caskets scattered across their online profiles might actually perpetuate that unfortunate perception — we know the importance of getting this conversation started. Death Cafes offer a simple, safe space to do that.

The guide to Death Cafes takes an almost-cheeky approach to the events, offering a menu that includes fair trade coffee and tea, simple vegetarian sandwiches, sticky date cake, and “thoughtful, respectful, and provocative” conversation.

An interesting point to note about Death Cafes is that they are targeted to participants who are “not thinking that much about death”. They aren’t limited to those who are dying or facing the loss of a loved one, but rather for anyone, as they say, “on this side of the curtain”. As we try to stress at SevenPonds, the conversation about death, dying, loss, and grief shouldn’t be left to the dying or the grieving. Death is a natural part of our lives, and the more we can discuss it honestly and the comfort of the everyday, like Death Cafes offer, the more we can begin to accept it as such.

Find more ways to talk about death through The Conversation Project and the Go Wish card game.

Image by Ignacio Palomo Duarte (Creative Commons)