“Are you interested in talking about death?”
It was this small ad in a London newspaper about 12 years ago that caught Bernie Folan’s attention. “I’ve always been interested in the big stuff, not the small talk,” says Folan, who was brought up in London but whose family is from Connemara.
“The ad said: ‘Phone this number.’ And I did.” It brought her to a house in Hackney, East London, where she and five other strangers gathered at the kitchen table of a man called Jon Underwood.
She didn’t know it then, but she was attending the second-ever Death Cafe – Underwood was in the process of founding what has since become a global movement. His objective was to increase awareness of death, and so help people make the most of their finite lives.
RM Block
Folan was intrigued. “I said: ‘I’m not really sure why I’m here, I haven’t had a huge amount of death in my life,’ but for some reason or other, I kind of got hooked,” she says.
Soon she was hosting Death Cafes herself. Living between Yorkshire and Connemara now, she hosts a Death Cafe in Galway about every six weeks. “I posted a ‘Meet-up’ yesterday, and already we have 15 people signed up. It’s often oversubscribed – there is a real willingness here,” she says.
With Death Cafes popping up in recent years in Dalkey, Dundalk, Belfast, Bantry, Waterford and Wicklow, there is no shortage of people who want to talk about death. Those who attend meet simply as people who are going to die – so all of us qualify.
Anyone can meet to talk about death, of course, but the meeting can only use the social franchise name Death Cafe if it follows certain principles outlined by Underwood, setting out what a Death Cafe is and what it is not.
In short, there is no agenda, and no set themes or guest speakers – the group directs the discussion. A Death Cafe doesn’t lead people to particular products, conclusions or actions either.
End-of-life care, eco funerals, musical choices, is there an afterlife – individual participants might end up talking about these things, but a Death Cafe is not about persuading anyone, agreeing anything or selling something. It is about growing social impact, not profit.
It helps to have a good facilitator. Death Cafe organisers, or “hosts”, must be able to listen and talk about all aspects of death with equanimity, and make others feel safe and comfortable to do so too.
Oh, and there must be tea and cake, that’s in the principles too. Eating cake, especially with strangers, can be a comforting and social activity. This can make it easier to discuss a potentially sensitive topic.
The Hook & Ladder and Jack Monday’s cafes in Limerick city don’t bat an eye when the Death Cafe people arrive. “We have to give the venues a lot of credit for embracing this,” says Jennifer Moran Stritch, co-founder of Limerick Death Cafe, which will mark its 10th anniversary in November.
“Every event we’ve had has been a ‘sell-out’ crowd. It’s part of the community culture in Limerick now,” she says.
Attendees have included college students, octogenarians, neighbours, mother-and-daughter duos – “We’ve had a couple of first dates too,” says Moran Stritch who hosts three a year including during Limerick’s Halloween festival, Samhain, and in Holy Week.
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“There is laughing, and people leave feeling more connected. There is a real sense of connection, respect and lightness among people.”
Moran Stritch, a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon, is a thanatologist – that’s someone who has an academic interest in all aspects of death, dying and bereavement across cultures. She has taught at the Irish Hospice Foundation and as part of the Masters in Bereavement Studies at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland.
She is clear about what a Death Cafe is. “It’s not an educational opportunity, so it’s not me lecturing people – but if you don’t learn something from other people there, I’d be surprised,” she says.
It’s not religious either. “We’re not proselytising anything. Like, here’s a way to think about death that’s much better. But if you don’t walk away feeling a bit spiritual, I’d be surprised,” she says.
Importantly, the Death Cafe is not a therapy session or a bereavement support group. “But if you don’t walk away having been able to share what grief feels like for you, or support someone else in that, again I’d be surprised,” Moran Stritch says.
There are too many stories of people who say they wish they were better prepared when a loved one dies, she adds. “You hear: ‘I wish I had talked to my mam about what she really wanted,’ or ‘I wish she had been willing to talk to me about what she wanted.’
“Those conversations are about developing a comfort and openness with being able to talk about all aspects of life, and death is part of life. For me to be able to say I can go some way to be able to provide a space for people and myself to talk about those things, that’s a real benefit to me.”
Underwood had been inspired by the work of the late Swiss sociologist and anthropologist, Bernard Crettaz, says Moran Stritch. On a mission to liberate death from what he called “tyrannical secrecy”, Crettaz had held a “Café Mortel” in Paris in 2004.
“The assembled company, for a moment, and thanks to death, is born into authenticity,” Crettaz said.
Cake was important to Crettaz too. “His thing was it has to be a celebratory food. Celebrate your one finite life, taste the sweetness of it, even while discussing the fact that you won’t be here some day. Celebrate that,” says Moran Stritch. Underwood met Crettaz in 2014, and Death Cafes credit his influence.
There is value in confronting death frequently, Moran Stritch believes. “The word that comes up for me is ‘microdosing’. A way to build up against an allergy is to do small, safe exposures with some frequency. You are never going to be able to grieve sufficiently ahead, you are never going to be all right with it, you are still going to grieve and feel those not-nice emotions that the death of others or our own imminent death brings up for us, but at least this can normalise it.”
The Death Cafe in Galway attracts a mix of people, says Bernie Folan.
“There may be people who are actively dying, they know they are dying. Well, we are all dying of course, that’s what we have in common,” she says. Some are dealing with the loss of partners or parents.
“When listening to people’s stories, you can see that they are living their lives and it is very instructive and it’s a privilege,” she says. “It’s a privilege to talk about death and dying with people because you learn a lot about living from doing that.”
Some are very fearful of death. “There is one person who is terrified, she has a real fear of death. And I said to her, the fact that you are here is really impressive. A lot of people would run a mile from something called a Death Cafe and you are here talking to other people. That might not feel like progress, but it probably is.”
A Death Cafe won’t prevent or cure fear, but it can be cathartic for attendees, says Moran Stritch. “If there are things inside me that are upsetting, or that I think I shouldn’t be thinking, I can chat with other people and not feel embarrassed or ashamed or feel I’m being silly by bringing these things up,” she says.
“I’m sure there are personal benefits for me too in terms of my ability to think and feel about my own mortality, but also the deaths or potential deaths of people I’m close to.”
Talking about death hasn’t protected Folan from grief. “When my father died, people asked, was it easier for you because of all the work you do on death? And I said no, you can’t inoculate yourself against grief – and why would you want to? Grief is normal,” she says. “But if we pretend that death is not going to happen, it can really disarm us.”
Talking about death can instruct how we live. She refers to the work of 16th-century philosopher, Michel de Montaigne. “He says something like, think about death for five minutes every day and then get on with your life, get on with living.”
It’s about understanding viscerally, as Underwood did, that time isn’t forever, she says. Your life is finite, so make the most of it. “It enables me to keep from straying too far from spending too much time doing the wrong things, from wasting time. It’s really hard to get angry about waiting in a supermarket queue if you think ‘I’m lucky to be alive’. Not everyone is,” she says.
Patricia O’Sullivan hosts a monthly Death Cafe in the side room of the community hall in Ballydehob, Co Cork. “There are no experts at a Death Cafe,” she says. “We are all equal. It’s simply people talking and being heard on the subject of death.”
O’Sullivan arranges the tea and cake. She has lived in the area for 34 years, attending the Death Cafe events in the village for years before taking on the hosting duties herself.
“I just think it’s an excellent idea. Any subject that is difficult to speak about for people, I just think, what a beautiful idea to gather and talk about it.”
Ballydehob’s Death Cafe attracts all ages, some regulars and some new joiners. Some will be well known to each other, but it’s unlikely they have ever spoken about their feelings around death to each other before.
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“In the olden days people gathered a lot more easily, but in this day and age we have to make it happen. To be sure, it brings a closeness and a connection when you hear people’s really authentic expression about something that is so important for all of us. It brings connection.”
The Death Cafe enables you to hear people’s experiences. It might not change how you feel about death, but listening can open new ways of thinking, she says. “If you think about death, you also inevitably think more about life.”
For her personally, the meetings have brought a sense of “spaciousness”. “Now, when I imagine the moment of death, rather than feeling fearful, it brings a feeling of spaciousness. Hopefully, I’ll be more able to deal with it, to be in the moment. That’s what I would hope for.”
Jon Underwood died suddenly of an undiagnosed leukaemia in June 2017, aged just 44. His invitation to talk about death and dying over tea and cake has led to more than 20,000 Death Cafe meetings in cafes, homes, at festivals and in universities in 93 countries. His mother Sue Barsky Reid and sister Jools Barsky continue his Death Cafe work as he requested.
Before the longest day of the year in June, the Ballydehob Death Cafe took place outside at the nearby graveyard of Kilcoe. The oldest legible headstone there dates back to the 1820s. Still standing inside this graveyard are the ruins of a church from the 1400s. The dead have been buried there for centuries.
“It did feel different,” O’Sullivan says. “In the beauty of the sun, this graveyard was gorgeous.”
