Young people ‘obsessed with Covid-19 death tolls’ turn to Death Cafés

Every culture has rituals to help people deal with death. Many have been around for thousands of years and continue to be practised today, in part because they offer a framework in which to process the trauma of losing a loved one.

Some see mourners tear their clothes, others wash the bodies of the dead. In modern, secular British society, the focal point of the grief process is usually a funeral followed by a wake, where family and friends gather to collectively celebrate the life of the person who has died.

But, what then? The relatives and friends of a person who is no longer here go home and try to get on with life, often to find nothing is quite the same. The world continues on, seemingly normal, but the bereaved person is still living with their grief.

For many people, losing a loved one also means coming face-to-face with the reality of our own mortality.

This is where Death Cafés come in.

A Swiss sociologist, Bernard Crettaz, first came up with the idea of a public "Café Mortel" back in 2004, and Londoner Jon Underwood founded the first British Death Café in 2011.

Usually held in person over a cup of tea and slice of cake, Death Cafés provide a space for people — often total strangers — to gather and talk about the end of life. There is no agenda for the meetings, only a facilitator, and all sessions are confidential. Topics can range from discussing funeral arrangements to hearing participants share poems, or raise questions.

The movement's main objective is "to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives'.

It has become a global phenomenon, inspiring spin-offs including menopause cafés, which help women facing physical and hormonal changes, and 'extinction cafés' - a space addressing global warming and eco-anxiety.

Over the past four months, as death dominated the headlines and tens of thousands of people lost their lives to Covid-19 in the UK alone, thousands of people have dialled into virtual Death Cafés.

A spokesperson for the UK Death Café team, which provides support and guidance for anyone wanting to set up a local meeting, says the organisation saw an increase in interest from young people as the pandemic hit.

Organisers have seen growing numbers of younger people posting about the cafés on social media, and say hosts have also reported seeing more under-thirties attending sessions.

At the height of the coronavirus outbreak in April and May, official Covid-19 daily death tolls surpassed one thousand on 22 consecutive days. One London host, Gemma Norburn, says young people began joining her Zoom Death Cafés after realising they were becoming obsessed with the daily figures.

Gemma deals in death every day in her job as an anatomical pathology technologist in the mortuary of Queen's hospital, Romford.

Her job is to prepare bodies for burial or cremation and, since 2018, the 33-year-old has also co-run two Death Cafes in her spare time — one from the hospital and another in the community.

"Interest has gone up," she explains. "I’m getting a lot of younger people interested and they are wanting to talk more about death.

“A few have said their interest peaked when they realised they were waking up and looking for the number of people who had died, and wondering why. They thought ‘huh, it’s strange that’s the thing I’m noticing’, and they wanted to explore more about what they were thinking, and death in general."

Careers coach Helen Green has run a Death Cafe in her spare time in Boston Spa, Yorkshire, since late 2016.

She has also seen "a greater mix of people" as a result of the pandemic. One attendee, in his forties, works with young people and attended the most recent session "with a view to set up and do death cafes with the young people he works with". The second lockdown Zoom session saw a young father attend with his baby.

"That is an age group that probably wouldn’t have been represented before," Helen says. “I think when death is literally the main topic of the news bulletins, as it has been for months now, and certainly was then, people start thinking about it more.”

Holding sessions on Zoom has has "meant no limitations on people being able to come", and attendees at both Gemma and Helen's sessions have joined in from as far afield as Canada, India and Uganda. Both hope this means the movement will continue to grow.

Gemma also believes the sessions going online has also helped young people feel safe to join, because if an attendee feels uncomfortable they "can just leave after five minutes".

Sophie Broyd, 27, works at Queen's Hospital with Gemma. She plans to become a regular attendee, as she found her first session strangely uplifting.

“I’d seen a couple of posters around and wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed like something interesting and a bit different. I thought I’d dial in as an observer and not say anything, but that only lasted five minutes," she says.

"When you hear that people who are younger are passing away as well, it became quite scary. And hearing from my grandparents how scared they were, and how they still haven't left the house."

She adds: “I’m going to go back, even when they are in person. It’s nice to, if you’ve got a weird little niggle you’re thinking about. Some people say ‘how do you not want to die’? Sometimes it can get real and emotional, but a lot of times it’s positive, upbeat and humorous, and these are people I would never normally meet.”

Jon Underwood died in 2017 from undiagnosed acute promyelocytic leukaemia aged just 44, and his family have continued his work.

His mother, Sue Barsky Reid, says that the team are "delighted that Death Café has been able to continue to make such an important contribution to the wellbeing of so many people during this time when face to face gatherings have not been possible".

As someone who encounters corpses every day, Gemma is hopeful the pandemic leads to a long-term shift in our society’s overall attitude to the end of life.

“We avoid death in everyday life," she says. "Grief is something that we don’t deal with very well. We are very good at avoiding it, and not at facing it.

"People are scared of saying the wrong thing [to a grieving person], so they don’t say anything. But just starting the conversation is important.

“In Victorian times it was something to be very aware of and open about. Then in the 20th Century there were the two World Wars and lots of death, and after that it became a taboo subject and better to ignore than to talk about it.

“And, this sounds like a grand statement, but the response now that there has been [in the pandemic] and the effect of an event with a lot of death, I think that we will move forward and realise that ignoring these things is not a particularly good thing to do."

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