They sit around a table eating cake and sipping tea while talking about death. To some, it might sound creepy—but not to Eduardo Santiago, who attends a death café where he talks about his fears of and feelings about death.
Death cafés take place in cities around the world. It was a concept developed by Bernard Crettaz, a Swiss sociologist who organized the first death café in 2004. Bernard’s approach to death and dying pushed for open, honest dialogue, which became the cornerstone of every death café. The cafés are held in restaurants, community rooms and homes; they can also be held online, and are usually open to anyone, of any age.
“People don’t want to talk about death,” said Santiago, who goes to the Idyllwild Death Café, which takes place at 2 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month at the Spirit Mountain Retreat. “It’s socially dangerous, and even at home, people don’t want to talk about it. They think it’s creepy. I want to talk about it, because I’m curious about understanding death and preparing for it.”
Born in Cuba, Santiago grew up in Los Angeles. A writer, he’s a two-time PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, and has won numerous other awards for his novels, short stories and nonfiction pieces. Santiago found the café useful after his father died. His father was distant, let him down and didn’t know how to have a relationship with him, he said.
“I went to the café and was able to say my father died, and I was glad that he was dead,” he said. “I felt grief when he was alive and relieved when he died.”
Furthermore, his mother used the specter of death to discipline him and his siblings. “When we were little and being bad, three little boys, being rambunctious, she would always pretend she died,” Santiago said. “She would say, ‘You’ve killed me this time,’ and she would drop down on the floor and stop breathing. We would go into a panic, screaming, ‘Mom, Mom! We’re sorry; we’re sorry. Come back!’ We thought she died.”
After Santiago talked to the group about his feelings surrounding his father, he felt understood and relieved.
“(The group) had a group discussion about it afterward,” he said. “They talked about their relationships with their parents and how they didn’t have the courage to understand that when their family members die, sometimes they, too, felt relief. It comforted me, and I didn’t feel so alone.”
Ari Simon, one of the Idyllwild Death Café facilitators, is an engagement specialist, producer, coach and grief-care worker. “A lot of us are taught if we’re feeling sad or hurt or upset, we shouldn’t burden other people, that they don’t want to hear about death, and we don’t want to be a ‘Debbie downer,’” Simon said. “But the more we normalize this topic, it can help our psychological health and help everybody.”
Simon said a death café is especially important in a place like Idyllwild.
“I am emphasizing the community part, because we’re a small town of 3,000 people, and one of the largest concerns about living here is that we’re far away from a lot of medical care,” Simon said.
“We have taken death out of the home and out of the community and put it in hospitals and care facilities so people don’t have that experience of it being a normal part of life.”
idyllwild death cafe co-facilitator Bronwyn Jones
Simon said he’s experienced the harm that can happen when people don’t have the tools to deal with death.
“In college, my best friend and roommate died, and the university did little to support my group of friends and me,” he said. “The message we mostly heard was, ‘Do your best; keep on going, and make it to graduation. Maybe if you need some counseling, you can come to the counseling center.’ We were young and had no idea what other options could look like. There wasn’t any willingness to have conversations around this out in the open.”
Bronwyn Jones is Simon’s co-facilitator at the Idyllwild Death Café. “We have taken death out of the home and out of the community and put it in hospitals and care facilities so people don’t have that experience of it being a normal part of life,” Jones said. “Everyone had the experience of death when they were growing up.”
Both Simon and Jones noted that the café is also a place to discuss practical matters, like new burial options such as the mushroom burial suit, a biodegradable shroud with mushroom spores. The suit is designed to break down the body naturally, without harming the environment. Another alternative burial method is alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which is marketed as a greener, cleaner form of cremation that breaks the body down using a high pH solution.
Having a monthly place where people can share information—for example, if someone knows about a great hospice facility or nurse—is valuable, Jones said. “We’re doing a lot educating and sharing information with each other so that we can be better guides to ourselves, and to the people we love in our community and in our life around death,” Jones said.
Anyone can run a death café, and Jones pointed out that topics can extend beyond physical death.
“There are all kinds of death in this life,” Jones said. “The loss of a job is a death, and people can come to the death café and talk about the job or the divorce that they’re going through or a pet that just died. They’re beside themselves. People come with all kinds of issues of loss and grief. It’s not therapy. It’s not counseling. The counseling is sharing experiences and feeling safe to talk about what they find is difficult to talk to just anybody about. It’s a safe and loving space.
The Idyllwild Death Café takes place from 2 to 4 p.m., every second Tuesday of the month, at the Spirit Mountain Retreat, 25661 Oakwood St., in Idyllwild-Pine Cove. Learn more at www.spiritmountainretreat.org/calendar.html. Planning Ahead for LGBTQ Seniors holds an online café via Zoom at 2 p.m., every first Thursday of the month. Learn more or register at palsinthedesert.com.
