Things you need to know are that the toilets are over there, and the coffee and cakes are over here,” says a woman with pink-tinted hair, wearing a colourful floral shirt.
Welcome to Willesden Cemetery’s Death Cafe (spelled without the accent on the e). This is where people get together and talk about anything and everything connected to the D-word over a hot drink and a few nibbles.
It’s a jolly start, thanks to our buoyant facilitator, Naomi, a veteran in the end-of-life chat department (she prefers to stick to first names) and thanks also to the recent refurb of the cemetery’s House of Life, which has created the most upbeat room of any cemetery I have ever visited. It appears that here doom and gloom are left firmly at the door.
Even so, for a sunny afternoon in June, there are a surprising number of people (around 15) who have opted to spend it talking about The Inevitable. They are Jewish and non-Jewish, most are aged 50-plus and all, bar one, are women.
Before doing an AA-style introductory circle, Naomi gets some housekeeping out the way, which apart from pointing out the essentials (the cake and the toilets), includes a rather ominous-sounding prohibition on climbing “the staircase to nowhere”. (Fortunately, she is just talking about the steps at the back of the meeting room, which lead to the cemetery superintendent’s flat.)
Naomi kicks things off by telling the group that she ran her first Death Cafe during lockdown, online, (when the spectre of death loomed larger than usual) having done a “Master’s in Death” and later training as a Death Cafe facilitator.
But her fascination with death and people’s feelings about it started as a child. “I had 11 aunts and uncles who died, but I didn’t go to any of their funerals. My job was to wait by the front door and make sure the kettle was on when everyone got back.”
She stresses to the group that a Death Cafe “is not bereavement counselling, but you are welcome to leave if the discussion gets too heavy”.
I suspect it won’t, though under the guidance of Naomi, who discusses death with the same ease as one might talk about a film they have just seen.
NaomiMiriam
Buoyant: Naomi, facilitator of Death Cafe meetings in Willesden (Photo: Handout)
Carla tells the group she decided to come along because death “is going to be the next big event in my life. I try to engage my kids with it in a jovial way, but it disturbs them when I say I’m going to leave my body to science and save them from all kinds of bother.”
Sandra is a regular at Death Cafes and a member of an organisation that provides guidance and support on assisted suicide, something that, along with assisted dying, is currently illegal in the UK.
Robert, the only male in the group, was drawn to the cafe having lost a baby brother when he was younger.
“My elderly father is still alive, and he has never spoken about my brother. I also experienced many very undignified years of my mother dying, but we don’t really talk about death in the West or in the Jewish community.”
“I have a fascination with death,” says Harriet, who saw a Dead Cafe advert in a bakery when she was buying her cheesecakes for Shavuot. While seemingly accepting of what she calls “another chapter in life”, there is a sticking point.
“I’m a member of the United Synagogue and would like to be buried in an Orthodox cemetery, but my husband would prefer the Woodlands Reform one.”
Maddy, whose mother was a bereavement counsellor, now belongs to a small choir “where we sing for people at the end of their life”, and Gemma used to work in a hospice and shares with the group (perhaps too) enthusiastically:
“People would ask me how I could work with death, but give me death and dying any day!”
For some, their personal history makes the subject of death deeply emotive, for others, such as Linda, who always stops off at a cemetery when she visits a country for the first time, the relationship with death is also a practical one.
“Like taxes, death is something we have to deal with.”
The Death Cafe is a relatively new concept. The first one took place in 2011 in Hackney at the home of Jon Underwood. Underwood and his co-founder Sue Barsky Reid were inspired by the Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, who established Café Mortel — a public discussion groups about death —after his wife died in 1999.
Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Willesden Jewish Cemetery is a peaceful oasis in a quiet, residential corner of London
Death Cafe is now a social franchise and according to its website, since 2011, approximately 16,400 meetings have taken place in 85 countries, with a mission “to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”.
As is typical of Death Cafes, the vast majority of people at the Willesden one are strangers, so it feels somewhat paradoxical — but also surprisingly comfortable, as well as comforting — to be sitting in a room together, discussing one’s innermost thoughts about death.
Naomi says she wants us “to be as open and frank as you want to be and as silent as you want to be. The conversation can go absolutely anywhere. It’s your conversation.”
But we are not left entirely to our own devices as she gently steers the discussion by throwing in questions such as: “How do you talk to your children about death?”, and “What’s more important? A good living or a good dying?”
It is heart-warming that while not everyone agrees with one another, everyone shows great respect. After all, as Roz points out, death is the greatest of levellers. “It doesn’t matter if you live in an eight-bedroom house, we will all go out in a body bag.”
The only time the discussion becomes a little heated is when it shifts to what Naomi refers to as “dignity in death”.
Some participants are staunch believers in assisted dying, having witnessed the immense suffering of loved ones. “We treat animals better than we do people,” says Claire. “We talk about a person wanting to cling on, but it’s the medical profession wanting to keep you alive.”
Sandra has her feet firmly in the other camp. “[Judaism] tries to preserve life. It worries me that someone might not be terribly ill, and then they might get better. It’s very difficult playing with that.”
To alleviate the mood, Naomi shares an anecdote about her aunt, who went into a hospice.
“People came from all over the world to say their goodbyes before the doctors pulled out the tubes. Two hours later, she sat up in bed and asked for a cup of tea. She went on to live for another five years.”
After wrapping up the session with a chat about “last goodbyes”, people leave, noticeably more relaxed and animated than when they arrived, with many asking Naomi when the next Death Cafe will be.
“That was joyous,” enthuses Debra before going to catch her bus. “Bizarrely, I feel very good right now after spending two hours talking about death,” says Harriet.
Naomi seems equally content with how the Death Cafe went. Leaning back in her chair, cup of tea in hand, she says simply (and accurately): “What a lot of very happy people.”
Names of all participants have been changed
The next Death Cafe at Willesden Cemetery’s House of Life is on August 8 from 2pm to 4pm. The event is free.
Visit willesdenjewishcemetery.org.uk/events/death-cafe-discussion or phone: 020 8459 6107
