Death Cafes: The Coffee Shop Concept Where You Talk About One Of The Most Vulnerable Topics Of All – CoffeeTalk

Death cafes are a concept that began in England over tea and cake and became popular in the United States in 2013. The idea is that talking about something that is scary, and that Western culture in particular tries to avoid, will diminish anxiety and fear. Death cafes have popped up across the Denver metro, in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Paonia, and Durango, with the goal of normalizing a conversation considered too unpleasant for brunch and too much of a buzzkill for a night out with friends.

The concept is not created for people whose grief is raw, but for those who want to talk about how death makes them feel, how they should plan for it, and how accepting that you’re going to die helps you live a better life. They have popped up across the Denver metro, in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Paonia, and Durango. The goal is to normalize a conversation considered too unpleasant for brunch and too much of a buzzkill for a night out with friends.

People want to talk about whether people with dementia should get to use aid-in-dying medication, what it was like to watch a loved one die, a brush with death like surviving a shooting, and the pragmatic questions about planning a funeral. At this cafe, a woman who has been coming for years, even on Zoom during the pandemic, brings her homemade binder to show anyone who is curious. The word “EXIT” is printed along the book’s spine.

Some people ask whether aqua cremation is better for the environment than cremation by fire, and get a detailed description of how it works — the body is placed in a metal cylinder with alkaline water, which causes decomposition. And yes, loved ones can have a vial of the water along with the powdery “ash” that is actually crushed bones. One woman can say from experience that power of attorney for a loved one ends upon their death, meaning you can’t use their credit card to pay for their funeral expenses. This is why you should prepay, she says.

The breezy love song “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl” is playing on the coffee shop sound system as the group discusses what happens if you prepay for your funeral and then move to another state, a reminder that the rest of the people are here not to discuss death but to simply have coffee and send emails.

Megan, 41, came not because she has experienced any major loss in her life or is expecting to die any time soon, but because she finds death terrifying. She grew up Catholic, with the fear that even being mean to her sister would land her in hell. After attending two death cafes, the fear is still there, but the conversations help, mostly because she’s learned other people have similar anxieties and that getting more comfortable talking about them makes her appreciate life more.

Karen Keeran, founder of Golden Heart Transition, has been working in hospice for over three years. She has helped 50 clients prepare for their deaths, including those who were dying, making arrangements for their parents, and making future plans for their own deaths. Keeran also runs three Jefferson County death cafes, guiding conversation with gentle questions.

Keeran avoids the word “heal” when talking about grief, instead calling it a process of “grief metabolism.” She believes that the fear of death prevents people from being present for themselves and others dealing with death, and the way to overcome that fear is to understand that death is part of life, not what comes after.

Maura McInerney-Rowley, 34, has experienced two major deaths and a fall on a mountain. The first death was a near-death experience, as her mother had battled breast cancer for 15 years before she died at home in Philadelphia. She moved to Aspen, running from seemingly suffocating job opportunities that followed college graduation and becoming a wedding planner in one of Colorado’s wealthiest towns. However, watching brides hug and cry with their moms was too much for her to bear, so she left Aspen for graduate school at the University of Michigan.

The second death was less personal, but it rocked her life again. While attending a wedding in Boulder, McInerney-Rowley read a poem for the bride about loved ones who are gone, which hit the guests on a whole new level. A day later, while on a backpacking trip with fellow business students, she lost her balance and tumbled down the side of a mountain.

McInerney-Rowley won a pitch contest with a business plan that allowed people to die where they wanted — the wilderness, beside the ocean, their favorite place instead of “under bright lights and with the beeping noises” of a hospital bed. After graduation, she helped a death doula on Cape Cod open a hospice called the Lily House.

In conclusion, Karen Keeran’s work in hospice and her experiences with grief have led her to recognize the importance of understanding and addressing the fear of death in order to create a more compassionate and accepting environment for individuals dealing with their own mortality.

Hello, Mortal is a death-focused business that helps people transform the denial of death into a celebration of life. The company offers individualized grief support recommendations, memorials, living funerals held while people are still alive, and helps people get their financial and advance directives in order before they die. McInerney-Rowley and her business partner created “death archetypes,” which began with McInerney-Rowley creating a survey and passing out survey QR codes at the farmers market in New York City’s Union Square.

The goal of taking the quiz and discovering your archetype is to reduce anxiety about death, a hypothesis McInerney-Rowley hopes will one day become the subject of a clinical trial. She believes that life is a “grand journey” that leads to the greatest adventure of all, “liberation of consciousness from the body in the moment of death.”

Tributes to people who have died sometimes are left near niches where cremains are placed at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. Daniela Lien, who attended a death cafe for the sixth time, sees the changes now as “mini deaths” that people go through in preparation for final death. She believes she is in “bardo,” the existence between death and rebirth, according to Buddhism.

Each death cafe has a different flavor, typically dominated by women, though sometimes there are a couple of men. In smaller groups, the conversation has been deeper, more spiritual, with questions of what happens metaphysically when we die. Lien has learned a lot, too, from more practical discussions about how to prepare loved ones for their deaths or your own.

Ann, 74, learned the term “solo ager” at death cafe. Her husband died 10 years ago after a short illness and she didn’t have a good plan for the rest of her life, or her death. She ended up retiring, downsizing from their too-big home in Evergreen and taking up new hobbies including making greeting cards and creative writing. She wants to plan and pay for her death arrangements ahead of time, especially since she has no close family to deal with it.

Barbara, 68, came because she is processing two deaths in her family and because those deaths made her think more about how she wanted her own to go. She and her two sisters talk on the phone or text daily, but instead of talking about the losses, they describe what they’ve planted in their gardens and how it’s growing, or they share what they call “today’s pretty picture.” Barbara is also dealing with the loss of a part of herself, recently retiring, which gave her more time to contemplate things like whether there is an afterlife than she had before.

Ruth, 68, jumped wholeheartedly into death cafe. She came in the first place because she recently watched her brother die, an experience she described as “spiritual.” She found that talking about anything that she’s afraid of helps relieve the fear, and “death cafe brings you alive.”

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