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Food

London’s Death Cafes Are Gaining International Popularity

When I headed to my first death cafe, I expected to find myself eating soggy croque monsieurs among goths and depressed old women who wanted to talk about loss.
Photo via Flickr user Gareth Williams

A waiter named Antonio put a plate of crevettes in front of me. I was about to say I'd actually ordered croquettes when the woman sitting across from me—we'd met three minutes earlier—asked, "So what's your fear of death?"

I stuck with the shrimp and asked him for a glass of wine instead. I was sitting inside of a death cafe—well, technically I was at a French restaurant, Cafe Rouge—in north London for "tea, cake, and conversation about dying and death," according to the e-flyer I had seen posted online.

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First incubated in London in 2011, death cafes have gained international popularity over the past year, soaring from 100 events to a current 900 around 19 countries. The idea is straightforward enough: People meet up in dining establishments to talk about death over some food. The concept of meeting complete strangers to talk about stinking corpses, the afterlife, and embalming over a plate of crustaceans seemed like a moot point. I went anyway.

Although all the information about the event clearly stated this wasn't bereavement counseling, I assumed I was in store for a macabre night of people talking about tragic losses over slightly undercooked croque monsieurs. But it turned out more like a cross between a book club, life coaching session, and a philosophy salon. Intense. There were a couple of middle-aged women who wanted to talk about the practicalities of dying, a midlife crisis type who was trying to figure everything and nothing out, a recently bereaved lady, a retired nurses, one curious girl, a few spiritualists, and a couple of people who just really liked talking about death.

Two women walked over to my empty table and sat down. It was really uncomfortable at first. Since we were all newbies, we made small talk because, well, foreplay to conversations about our impending expiration dates seemed too forward. One of them was in her 30s, worked in a vague government job, and was taking a course in psychotherapy on the side. The other one was a young art student who wore all black.

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I decided to put the uneasiness aside and embrace the awkwardness. A folded card on our table was propped up with the "rules" printed on one side (there are only two: respect everyone's view and everything said is confidential) and a list of suggested topics (what kind of funeral would you like? What do you think happens after death?) on the other.

Eventually, our "facilitator" came over and sat with us. Her job was to not make us feel like total knobs for asking a complete stranger, "What does a good death mean to you?" I wondered what her normal dinner conversations were like outside of this setting.

A bloke wearing a yellow tie joined our table just as we got started. He worked in IT and liked to attend death cafes because his friend told him they were 'fun.' It didn't take long to get into the swing of things. Conversation meandered between whether we believed in an afterlife, "existentialist counseling," and the ethical implications of assisted dying. It wasn't really about death at all. Our chat kept coming round to the the meaning of life and our, if any, grand purpose. At one point I started to panic because I wondered if our table wasn't doing it right as Josefine, the group leader, rang one of those bells they use in Yoga classes for break time. Was this speed dating?

When I came back upstairs, the lights had been dimmed, ceiling fans were running, and everyone had formed a slightly wonky circle around the room. We had to tell the group what we'd been talking about. I felt better when I heard that most of the other tables spoke about similar stuff to us.

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There was an older lady sat near me who piped up about personal fulfilment. She told us that we forget humans are social creatures and that our perennial quest to 'find ourselves,' with little to no regard for those around us, makes no sense. God, she was wise. I'd go back just to leach off her wisdom alone, to be honest.

After an hour of this, Josefine wrapped everything up with some more sage words. "The red thread that ran through this evening was honesty. Be honest with yourself and to others in order to live a meaningful life." Said in her thick, croaky French accent, it sounded like a line from a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film.

And that was that. I went home feeling surprisingly upbeat, considering I'd spent a considerable chunk of time talking about death and existentialism.

The next morning I went round to see Jon Underwood, the man who birthed death cafes. I told him we'd talked about more than death in one of his cafes and he was fine with it. "If we can deal with death we can tackle any sort of change," he said, sitting in his Hackney garden. "Death talks to some of the big problems that we face in society." He set up the death cafe for this very reason: So people could be more open to reflecting on death, rather than following personal experience. "My mum or cat didn't die or anything like that."

After a decade of working for the council, Underwood did something about his fascination surrounding mortality. The first death cafe was hosted in his living room and his mum, a trained psychotherapist, led proceedings. Underwood played waiter.

This first event was scripted, asking that people write down any negative feelings they had towards death, and culminated in a ceremonial burning of these writings in his fireplace—something his mum thought pretty silly, telling him just to get people to talk about death in any way they wanted. After a few more death cafes done at home, he led his concept into the outside world.

Underwood's hope for the future is to have a permanent space dedicated to caffeinated death chat. Maybe the doorway will be a hollowed out coffin? Who knows.