Susan Barsky Reid is a Gestalt psychotherapist in Chester, UK. She has worked previously as a teacher, a social worker, and a mental health practitioner. Along with her son Jon Underwood, they co-created the Death Cafe model. There have now been over 13000 Death Cafes in 80 countries. Jon and Sue produced a guide to running your own Death Cafe, based around the methodology Sue developed. Death Cafe was run on a voluntary basis by Jon until 2017 when Jon died suddenly on June 27th, 2017. Death Cafe is now run by Susan and Jon’s sister, Jools.
What was the impetus for doing death cafe?
Really, it was my son, John Underwood, who wanted to do some work around death and dying. He got the inspiration from his religion, which was Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism really resonated with him, where people contemplate death every day as part of their practice. That led him to decide to do some work around death and dying. My husband sent him a cutting from a newspaper. It was about a Swiss sociologist named Bernard Crettaz, who held something called Cafe Mortelle in Switzerland where people talked about death and dying. So John was inspired by that and thought of the name death café, and it was basically to just have a way to get people to talk about death and dying because he thought it was important.
When was the first Death Cafe?
The first one was in John’s living room, and he had about seven friends come round. I’m a psychotherapist and am interested in existential issues, so I was keen to facilitate and thought I had the skills. So I facilitated the first one, and it went really well. And then social media got hold of it and it just grew from that to the worldwide movement that it is now. John’s definition of death Cafe is to help you make the most of your finite life. To make you seize today.
Why do you think that there’s such a taboo around the discussion?
People don’t want to think that they’re going to die. There is the saying that talking about sex doesn’t make you pregnant and talking about death doesn’t make you die. But in fact, people are superstitious and believe that it will. And so if they don’t think about it, then it’s not going to happen. Even saying passed on or passed away is sort of a denial of what’s actually happened. I think people just don’t want to face up to it. It’s not a pleasant idea, I guess, depending on what your beliefs are, about what comes afterwards, but most people want to be here.
So what is behind the tradition with the tea and the cake?
It’s life-affirming to have a slice of cake, and it’s nice isn’t it? John always said we must have a really nice cake. I baked cakes for the for the first few death cafes.
The Death Cafe materials say that it is not supposed to be the same as a grief group. Could you speak on that a little bit?
I’ve been to various different ones. Every single one I’ve been to has had a different focus. And yes, there are people who—if you’ve lost someone, as I lost John—there is a need to be soothed. And so people might think that Death Cafe is about being soothed, but actually I don’t think that type of hurt can be soothed. I think talking about it helps a bit for some people. But people come to talk about a lot of different aspects of death and dying that interest them. And a lot of them are for people with special interests, for example psychotherapy students. But most students haven’t lost people so their interests will be different. The whole point of it is that it’s about what the participants want to get from it, it’s not about what the what the facilitator or the host wants to get out of it. And we were very clear about that, that were just there to work to keep people on topic, or to intervene if something happens that is difficult. But we’re not there to tell people what to talk about. So people can talk about grief, and they do, but that’s not its sole purpose. But it’s okay for people to go there to talk about grief.
It’s life-affirming to have a slice of cake, and it’s nice isn’t it?
What would you say to someone who says that a Death Cafe that sounds depressing?
I’d say that’s your choice, that’s fine. But that very often, we laugh as much as we cry and death cafes can be really good fun. And it’s not always morbid or depressing. I do have good friends and family who wouldn’t dream of going to a death cafe. And that’s fine for them. It has always been somebody’s choice whether they come or don’t.
Has COVID changed the conversation around death or impacted your work?
Yes, I think the number of Death Cafes certainly went up. Even though they’re they’ve moved from being in person to being mostly online now. It has been interesting, because it meant that Death Cafe stopped being parochial, and became much more international, because we have people from all over the world joining in, and that has enriched it. Many people come to death cafes saying because they want to talk to their families about their end of life choices and the families don’t want to hear it or can’t tolerate the thoughts of their loved ones dying. So we’ve had people come to Death Cafes for that reason.
I think COVID has inspired people to reprioritize their lives. For example, after John died, his sister decided that she wanted to be a doctor; she had had it in the back of her mind for years. She was doing marketing and decided that she was going to go to medical school, and she’s now in her second year of medical training. And this was as a result of thinking, “what am I waiting for, I need to do this, I need to take that chance.” So she’s actually living her dream now.
In your opinion, would you say that the world would be a better place if people could talk about death more?
Yeah, that’s my belief. We don’t have a problem talking about birth or getting married or getting divorced or whatever, all these life events. We’re all born and we all die. That’s the thing that all human beings from wherever have in common; they’re all going to die and not thinking about it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.