Death comes to all. But heaven forbid it be mentioned.<\/p>\n
Certainly not over tea and cake.<\/p>\n
Yet people young and old are bucking social mores and having oh-so-morbid conversations about d-e-a-t-h\u2014all while enjoying a civilized nosh.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re called Death Cafes\u2014these meetings at coffee shops, cafes, libraries, even cemeteries, where philosophy, science, social responsibility and more merge under the umbrella topic: shuffling off this mortal coil.<\/p>\n
For people who have never attended a Death Cafe, an obvious question is, \u201cWhy would I ever want to?\u201d But for others, the response is more like, \u201cWhen? Where? I\u2019m on my way!\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, since the 2011 launch in England of the organization Death Cafe, there have been almost 5,000 Death Cafes in 42 countries. About half of those have been held in the United States.<\/p>\n
There is, it seems, a small but determined movement of sorts going on, made up of people who are eager to talk about death but feel isolated in this desire. They don\u2019t necessarily have an agenda; they\u2019re not urging people to sign advance directives or plan their funerals or write wills. They just want to discuss this profound thing that everyone will face but that\u2019s largely hidden away in nursing homes and hospitals\u2014that\u2019s surely avoidable through modern medicine\u2014that doesn\u2019t at all jibe with the culture of youth\u2014that\u2019s oh, so easy to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t talk about death enough in our culture. We fear it. We deny it,\u201d says Lauren Herzak-Bauman, a 34-year-old artist in Cleveland, OH, who has hosted two Death Cafes. \u201cDeath Cafe creates space for people to just explore death in a nonconfrontational way, in a nonjudgmental way.\u201d<\/p>\n
For people like Herzak-Bauman, who want to push past the cultural denial, talking about death isn\u2019t morbid or depressing. In fact, they argue that having this taboo discussion has the power to improve not only how you die but how you live each day.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one reason Death Cafes almost always include food. The act of eating is life-affirming\u2014which is a large part of what these meetings are supposed to be about.<\/p>\n
What Happens at a Death Cafe<\/strong><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a funeral or a grief therapy session. Nobody was actively dying. But on the evening of July 19, 2012, half a dozen people sat in Lizzy Miles\u2019 basement in Columbus, OH, talking about death. It\u2019s what they came to do. It is, in fact, what they very much wanted to do, as odd as their friends and family may have thought it.<\/p>\n This was the first Death Cafe in the United States, a concept Miles, a hospice social worker, brought over from England. (Death Cafe was started there in 2011 by Jon Underwood, a British man in his late 30s, who\u2019s currently a web programmer and self-described \u201cdeath entrepreneur.\u201d)<\/p>\n To date, about 2,300 Death Cafes have been held across America.<\/p>\n At the typical Death Cafe, a dozen or so strangers gather at a designated location, likely having heard about the event through fliers, social media or word of mouth. The designated facilitator\u2014often the host who organized the event\u2014gets the conversation going, and attendees take it from there.<\/p>\n Some Death Cafes are one-offs. With those that meet regularly, many people come only once or occasionally. Anyone who wants to can organize a meeting, with general guidance from the central Death Cafe organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Miles\u2019 events, she often begins by posing this question: \u201cWhat brought you out of your house to talk about death?\u201d At the 30 Death Cafes she\u2019s hosted, new topics have emerged every time.<\/p>\n Perhaps more than ever, Americans are seeking answers about death outside their religious upbringing\u2014or outside religion altogether.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cPeople might bring up a book that they\u2019ve read recently, or they might be talking about cremation versus burial,\u201d she says. \u201cOne Death Cafe, they were talking about people that pull over for funeral processionals and how it\u2019s different in different cities. There\u2019s random topics like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Also often delved into are deeper subjects such as fear of death and caring for dying loved ones. In fact, it\u2019s the more profound topics like these that, in a way, inspired Miles to start these cafes.<\/p>\n In her work, Miles had found that even if a hospice patient had been sick for a long time, the family often hadn\u2019t discussed death and dying and what it meant to them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like they almost didn\u2019t believe it would happen,\u201d Miles says. \u201cI originally thought, if I have these events, people will talk about it before it\u2019s a real crisis situation. But what I found was you don\u2019t come to a Death Cafe if you\u2019re not comfortable talking.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, \u201cpeople come for a variety of reasons. They may want to think about it existentially. They may have had loss experiences that they want to process. Some people are processing their own mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n The Death Cafe guidelines specify that meetings are not therapy sessions. They\u2019re also not supposed to be teaching sessions. The host is mandated to push no agenda. Event attendees are prohibited from trying to change each other\u2019s views.<\/p>\n Who Attends Death Cafes\u2014and Why<\/strong><\/p>\n Though anyone can host a Death Cafe, most hosts work in the end-of-life arena like herself, Miles says. Attendees vary. There is a strong contingency of hospice workers, funeral directors and the like, but many people come who don\u2019t work in death-related professions.<\/p>\n For the most part, whatever their day jobs, they\u2019re people who want to talk about death but whose friends and family members don\u2019t. They\u2019ve been told they\u2019re weird or morbid, or they\u2019ve just been ignored or dismissed.<\/p>\n Most attendees are women. Ages vary widely depending on the location, host and advertising methods. At Miles\u2019 events, the average age is 50-something\u2014a time of life when women are often processing both their parents\u2019 mortality and their own.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a general sense that we have that aging ought to teach us something,\u201d says Brad DeFord, PhD, MDiv, an adjunct instructor for the master\u2019s program in thanatology (the study of death) at Marian University in Fond du Lac, WI. \u201cWhen you go to a Death Cafe and you\u2019re a middle-aged woman, you\u2019re going not just to learn something about death but to learn something about life\u2014where your aging has brought you to.\u201d<\/p>\n Death Cafes and Religion<\/strong><\/p>\n In the United States, one community gathering place where the topic of death is traditionally broached is the church or synagogue or other place of worship. After all, religions tend to take strong stances on death\u2014or at least on what happens afterward.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s of note that the rise of Death Cafes comes at a time of religious change in the United States. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey of more than 35,000 Americans found that almost one-fourth were religiously unaffiliated, meaning they were atheist, agnostic or \u201cnothing in particular.\u201d That\u2019s up 7 percent from the first survey in 2007. Most of the unaffiliated are millennials, but percentages have increased across the generational board.<\/p>\n Survey respondents were also more likely to identify as non-Christian than in 2007 and more likely to have switched from their previous religion.<\/p>\n These findings suggest that, perhaps more than ever, Americans are seeking answers about death outside their religious upbringing\u2014or outside religion altogether.<\/p>\n At Death Cafes, atheists and agnostics mix with Christians and Buddhists. Miles\u2019 attendees consistently say that their favorite part of a Death Cafe is meeting and hearing from different people. \u201cEven when you have people who are the same ethnicity and religion, it can open your mind to different points of view,\u201d Miles says.<\/p>\n DeFord, however, cautions that the cafes\u2019 free-for-all approach can lead to pitfalls.<\/p>\n \u201cWith increasing secularization, we are really left much more on our own to establish our own rituals and our own beliefs, and we tend therefore to kind of smorgasbord it\u2014we mish-mash it together,\u201d he says. When it comes to rituals, \u201cthe nice thing is that there\u2019s no sense very much of right or wrong. But there\u2019s no sense either of whether it\u2019s efficacious.\u201d<\/p>\n The Abstract Versus the Practical<\/strong><\/p>\n That no-agenda, nonpedagogical environment is one thing many hosts and attendees love about Death Cafe. But some end-of-life experts would prefer at least a little proffered guidance\u2014especially when it comes to practical issues.<\/p>\n After all, Death Cafes have sprung up in the midst of not just religious change but scientific revolutions. Advanced medical interventions bring complicated, difficult, end-of-life decisions, such as which life-sustaining measures should be continued and for how long.<\/p>\n For years, Americans have been urged to think through these issues and to prepare living wills and other advance directives. Janet McCord, PhD, FT, who designed and runs the thanatology master\u2019s degree program at Marian University in Wisconsin, \u201cloves\u201d Death Cafe but nonetheless wishes meetings addressed end-of-life care outright. \u201cI think education is necessary, and Death Cafes [are] one way to get people going down that road,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In fact, another meetup organization has sprung up in recent years that does focus on end-of-life decisions: Death Over Dinner, which launched in 2013, encourages people to host dinner parties that prompt attendees to think and talk about how they want to die.<\/p>\n Before these dinners, guests are given a list of educational and inspirational resources that the organization has curated. They\u2019re asked to choose five to read, watch or listen to. \u201cI like that structured approach,\u201d says McCord, who\u2019s also president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Over 100,000 such meals have taken place in 30 countries, according to Death Over Dinner.<\/p>\n And then there are Death Salons. Organized by a group called the Order of the Good Death, Death Salons take place once or twice a year. They\u2019re a meld of conference and festival, featuring academics, artists, writers and the like. The 250 to 300 attendees might learn about 19th century British death rituals, the ins and outs of a natural burial, or grieving traditions in other cultures, says Death Salon director Megan Rosenbloom.<\/p>\n On each occasion we hadn\u2019t really been talking about death at all\u2014we had really been talking about life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sophie Sandell<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rosenbloom notes that learning about death can even have financial benefits. For example, if people know more about funeral and burial options, they\u2019re less likely to end up in debt out of guilt or ignorance. Like, maybe they won\u2019t buy that $10,000 coffin purely out of guilt. Or maybe they won\u2019t have their grandmother unnecessarily embalmed before cremation.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who don\u2019t think about death at all don\u2019t reckon with what might happen,\u201d she says. So when a loved one dies, \u201cyou just want to do whatever you think is normal, and you don\u2019t really ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n All that said, just because Death Cafes aren\u2019t about teaching in the same way that Death Over Dinner and Death Salon are, that doesn\u2019t mean the cafes aren\u2019t about learning.<\/p>\n Before Bill Sipe started going to the Death Cafes hosted by his daughter in St. Joseph, MO, at age 61 or 62, he didn\u2019t think about death much. But hearing attendees talk about their own end-of-life wishes and funeral plans \u201cwas very much an eye opener,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter my first or second Death Cafe, I actually picked out the songs that I wanted to play at my funeral,\u201d he recalls. This \u201cfloored\u201d his daughter, Megan Mooney, who also runs Death Cafe\u2019s Facebook page. \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019ve got my funeral all figured out.\u2019 She said, \u2018What? You\u2019ve never talked about that!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Sipe, now 65, has been in the hospital a few times lately. During one stint, he realized he could die. \u201cI really felt at peace,\u201d he says. His religion (Sipe is Christian) and prayer helped with that, but also at Death Cafe, \u201cI learned that dying is just the beginning of something else,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I really don\u2019t know if I would have felt at peace prior to going to a Death Cafe. I really think that had something to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Future of Death Cafe<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite their critiques, the experts the Silver Century Foundation spoke to are glad Death Cafe exists because it\u2019s at least opening the door to an important taboo topic.<\/p>\n