Welcome to the death cafe: Chatting about the end in a small room in Vauxhall

I wish I could remember my first day at the Death Cafe more clearly.

It may have been Nicky or Susan who opened the jade green door — though I know for certain it wasn’t Bernard or Jeff, both almost 80 years old, whose knees make them poor candidates for the position of doorman. 

I had learned of the death cafe phenomenon from a friend of my late mother. She’s a Bahá’í sociologist, so is well versed in the kinds of movements and events that might make most people raise an eyebrow. She had felt a responsibility to help me, I think, after my mother had died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism in November 2023. I had confided in her about my grief — how nobody wanted to talk to me about the nasty universality of death, and how I felt like my loss repelled others. Go to a death cafe, she said; they’ll let you talk there. 

The first death cafe was launched by web developer Jon Underwood in Hackney in 2011, spawning a movement dedicated to “increasing awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”. I happened upon Bonnington Centre’s Death Cafe by sheer luck. I first tried one in Walworth, held only once every two months, where I met a palliative care doctor familiar with London’s scene. He suggested the Vauxhall branch, held in a vegetarian cafe and community centre. With its frequent meetings, familiar faces and an Alcoholics Anonymous-esque shroud of secrecy, he thought it might suit me better.

This is how I found myself at 11 Vauxhall Grove on an uncharacteristically sunny Monday morning in October, standing face-to-face with a sprightly woman who offered me a choice of coffee or tea. I poured from a cafetière into a hand-painted mug that read Mummy’s Little Darling and was pointed in the direction of a small room with about a dozen chairs arranged in a circle, Socratic seminar style. A few of them were already taken.

People trickled in until a man across from me cleared his throat at exactly 10.30am. In his late 70s with a roguish haircut, well-worn face and eyes that twinkle, he introduced himself as Martin “Jeff” Jeffrey, our moderator for today. His caramel voice instantly put me at ease. He asked us to say our names, explain our attendance, and pose any topics we’d like to discuss.

It became clear during introduction time that Jeff was one of four moderators on rotation and that many people in the room were veteran attendees. There was the medium, the Jesuit priest, the palliative care doctor (pleased I decided to come along), the death doula, the terminal cancer patient: regulars whom Bernard calls our “irregulars”.

When it came time to introduce myself, I said something or other about having a dead mom, and received a knowing head tilt from the room. I told them I’d sought out a death cafe because I found the isolation of grief overwhelming. I desperately needed to talk about death and loss, and I was surrounded by people who, either because of blissful ignorance or emotional repression, avoided the topic at all costs.

Over the next 90 minutes, I learned Bonnington Centre’s Death Cafe took the opposite approach: they ran headlong into discussions of death, with moderators giving attendees’ topics due time and attention, from assisted dying to funeral planning and more. Though the topics were heavy, simply talking — and often laughing — about death left me feeling lighter than when I arrived.

From the start, I was fascinated, not only by the event, but by the characters who organized it. Why did four very different individuals decide to devote their time to other people’s grief? And why do I still attend twice a month, with a smile on my face and the topic of death on my lips?