Recipe

The cafés provide an informal setting to talk about grief

understood. It was so good to cry about it. That’s the first time I have.”

Nora, in her sixties, is a regular. She had to leave work while caring for her father, who had dementia. When he died, she felt very isolated. “I hadn’t had time to keep up with my friends,” she confided. “Coming to talk to other people who are willing to listen makes so much difference.” She’s now made some friends through the death café and says it feels like a new community. TEARS AND LAUGHTER As well as tears, there’s a lot of laughter, too. One woman couldn’t stop giggling about seeing her aunt in the mortuary with a face full of make-up.

“She never wore a scrap in real life, so I didn’t recognise her. And I hadn’t realised it’s basically a fridge in there. It was a hot day, so I hadn’t worn a cardigan,” she said. From a personal point of view, I’ve got so much out of my three years of running death cafés. I’ve met local people and bonded deeply with them.

I felt so inspired by the people I met and what they shared, I decided to train as a soul midwife, sometimes known as a death doula, which is an end-of-life companion to the dying. For so many nowadays, conventional religion doesn’t offer the farewell rituals they crave, yet they still want a spiritual element. I’m able to work with them to create a ceremony they want – even if it’s their own personal goodbye once the official funeral is out of the way. I even create rituals for those whose animal companions have died – a much underestimated source of grief that comes up in almost all my death cafés. From my own experience, I know expressing some of our fears and sadness around death can lead to a richer life. We pay for your stories – email us at truelife@ reachplc.com

Research by Dying Matters, an organisation that raises awareness of dying, death and bereavement, has found that 77 per cent of Britons find it hard to talk about death, although one third of us think about it at least once a week. When we do talk about it, we use hushed euphemisms – “he passed”, “she slipped away” and so on. Yet each year, in England alone, half a million people die, with every death directly affecting five people and indirectly affecting many more. It happens to all of us, so why do we struggle so much? “There can be an idea that if you talk about death you’ll somehow make it happen,” says bereavement counsellor Julia Samuel. “And people worry it’s a depressing topic, but it doesn’t have to be.” Talking about it can help you get life into perspective, appreciate the present moment and connect with those close to you, she advises. ■ Find a death café at deathcafe.com Why we should talk about death