What is a Death Cafe?

At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. The movement was started by Jon Underwood in Hackney, London, UK in 2011 and since then nearly 18,000 have been held across the globe. The idea was based on the continental European tradition of meeting in a public place to talk about important and interesting subjects. There's a café philo, which is a philosophical cafe, and a café scientifique. And this is a café mortel, or death cafe.
The idea is 'to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives'. Poignantly and shockingly, Jon died suddenly in June 2017 aged 44 after collapsing suddenly with leukaemia two days beforehand. This sadly demonstrated the fact that none of us can know when we will die and so normalising talking and thinking about can only be a good thing. We talk about and plan for other key life moments like birth or weddings but there is still much taboo in our society in talking about death and dying.

 How does a Death Cafe work?
A Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, specific objectives or themes. What is shared is always totally confidential and it is not a grief support or counselling session. Anyone can run one and everyone is welcome.

This article describes a recent event I held and go to the Death Cafe website for details of cafes being held near you.