Why Are Strangers Meeting at Death Cafes? | Unveiled

Why Are Strangers Meeting at Death Cafés?

Death is an unfortunate, sometimes unsettling, but inevitable fact of life. Confronting this fact, though, doesn’t have to be scary or uncomfortable, and many believe that being frank about death is the best way to come to terms with our mortality.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; why are strangers meeting at death cafés?

Death cafés are events held all over the world, for anyone wanting a safe space to discuss dying and all that comes with it. They’re not specific, permanent venues, but are held in everyday restaurants, bars, homes, or any other place, for a day or an afternoon, enabling people to come and talk to like-minded strangers about all things “end of life”. The initial idea was hatched by the sociologist Bernard Crettaz, in Switzerland in 2004… but when the founder of the Death Café Movement, Jon Underwood, brought the concept to the UK in 2011, it really took off.

Underwood, who himself died in 2017, said of his work that the cafés are necessary because westerners have “outsourced” the conversation about death in modern times. For him, death today is only really addressed by doctors, morticians, undertakers - anyone whose business is death - while everybody else avoids the subject. At death cafés, though, the taboo topic is broken down, with café-goers welcome and encouraged to talk through their anxieties about what will happen when they’re gone, including whether their loved ones will be taken care of, and their own funeral arrangements - down to the music they’d like to be played at it. It doesn’t matter how “close to death” you might believe yourself to be, either, it’s a totally open environment that anyone can enter. In some cases, it’s even argued that those made most uncomfortable by simply the idea of a death café could also be those that benefit most from them - given how they’re designed to bring the “unknown” out into the open.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, death cafés have gone through two major changes; one, they’ve become more popular than ever… and, two, they (like most other events) have had to adapt by shifting entirely online. Increasing numbers of people are contemplating their own mortality in the wake of the virus, and now there are everything from Facebook groups to planned video calls available to those who want to talk frankly about the prospect of dying. It’s thought the spike in café participants could specifically indicate that more and more people are particularly concerned about how quickly the virus takes hold - with these events offering an opportunity to maintain at least a little control over death. But, really, the key reasons one might attend a death café are the same now as they were before the pandemic.

While death anxiety, or thanatophobia, can be crippling for some (to the point it can even stop them from going outside or living a normal life), it’s also quite an ordinary and expected part of being human. The cafés address, potentially even alleviate, some of the stress, though. In this way, they aren’t about being morbid for the sake of it, or celebrating and glorifying death, but are more simply about understanding what’s an ordinary part of the human condition. One other big problem they have to overcome, however, is that humans are naturally good at ignoring the fact that we are going to die. In fact, this particular trait has given rise to the “terror management theory”, a psychological theory which says mankind’s ability to forget its own death is actually an evolutionary adaptation for survival. The theory, also known as TMT, says that it’s actually a fear of death that drives many of the most important aspects of society and culture - including the creation of various beliefs in an afterlife to reconcile the permanence of death, and the pursuit of fame or notoriety to make sure you’ll always be remembered. TMT has even been studied in relation to our everyday health behaviours, with claims that the primary motivator behind things like eating well, exercising and quitting smoking is “terror management”, our innate fear of dying.

But, let’s be honest, most people probably aren’t going to death cafés to chat with experts in their field about complex macro psychological theories; death cafes are much more relaxed than all that! If you did want to talk it out with a bona fide “death expert”, though, you might consider a Death Salon, instead. The Death Salon works like a sister organization to the Death Café, but it’s one which emphasizes education.

At a Salon - which at present are more prominent in the US, although they are held in other countries, too - you can listen to talks and seminars given by doctors, undertakers, religious figures, and other key speakers considered to be authorities on death. These events are almost akin to a convention, as opposed to the café approach of gathering around to chat death over coffee and cake. Maybe you want to learn the more specific details about things like embalming or cremation or even precisely what admin goes into planning a funeral – if so, then perhaps a salon would be more up your street! And, while these haven’t yet migrated quite as widely to online, they’re tipped to return with gusto once the global lockdown lifts. Before now, they’ve been held in churches and funeral parlours, but also in museums - with the UK’s 2014 Death Salon taking place at Barts Pathology Museum in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.

Though we don’t usually like to think about it, death and traces of it can be found almost everywhere; throughout history, in the media, in art and culture, it’s a concept which at some level controls our most basic behaviours and beliefs. For as long as humans have had time to sit and think we’ve contemplated death, so death cafes and salons simply build on that. After all, it’s not like there aren’t other death-related hobbies and events that we also enjoy… The majority of police procedural shows focus on death and murder; “whodunit” murder mystery weekends are still a popular pursuit; and often gruesome medical museums (like the one at Barts) also draw big crowds. People like watching horror movies and true crime documentaries, listening to ghost stories, visiting haunted houses, and celebrating Halloween. One of the most visited tourist attractions in Paris, for example, is the Paris Catacombs, a series of 18th-century ossuaries housing the remains of more than six million people. Even in the “City of Love”, there’s an enduring interest in death.

So, are death cafes really that strange or unexpected? Death is inevitable in life, but these events can help people to come to terms with their own unavoidable impermanence - whether they’re ill, scared, believe in an afterlife, work in the industry, or none of those things. The debate as to what happens after you die rages on, but that’s why strangers are meeting at death cafés.