UNC students bring Death Cafe to Chapel Hill

At a New York cafe last summer, Jack Denton found himself in a spirited debate about free will with a 70-year-old woman from Long Island.

The UNC student was interning in the city, and the woman drove three hours just to attend the monthly Death Cafe.

Death Cafes are held throughout the world, and were designed to be casual forums in which people can discuss death — a topic often avoided in everyday life. And on Thursday, UNC students have the chance to experience this national trend.

Fedor Kossakovski, a fellow UNC student, joined Denton at the Death Cafe in New York, where they were able to discuss the beliefs of deaths in Western and Hindu cultures, as well as hear an oncologist’s son’s personal experiences with death.

“Everyone has kind of close contact with death, and it’s just so ubiquitous,” said Denton. “But people really don’t talk about it a lot in every day life.”

The two UNC students walked away with the inspiration to bring this environment to Chapel Hill. They will host their first Death Cafe 6 p.m. Thursday at Bread & Butter Bakery on Rosemary Street.

“It’s a big unifier for a lot of people,” said Kossakovski. “It’s such an easy way to find a common thread to talk about with people that are so different from you.”

The first official Death Cafe took place in London in September 2011. It was so successful that its host, Jon Underwood, collaborated with psychotherapist Sue Barsky Reid to publish a guide to running a Death Cafe. The guide has since been picked up by hundreds of people in cities across the world.

Both Denton and Kossakovski said death deserves to be discussed more frequently.

“The big challenge with Death Cafes lies in the reason that we have them — that people are a little uncomfortable with death,” Denton said.

They are often loosely structured and aim to bring together people from all walks of life to have an intellectual conversation about this taboo subject.

“It’s not like a talk — you’re not going to hear a lecture — it’s not even like guided discussion,” Kossakovski said.

Aside from discussion, Death Cafes can offer closure to people suffering from a recent loss.

“Having an environment where people have suffered a loss but also (with) people who are just interested in (death) is really important for normalizing and decreasing isolation,” said Samantha Halle, a UNC student and member of Students of AMF at Carolina, a student group dedicated to peer grief support.

Denton said a Death Cafe has different meaning to each person who attends.

“Some person could maybe be able to deal with the passing of their grandmother better, or some person might understand life more,” he said. “It’s a very specific thing to each person.”

Mark Taylor, a UNC student who plans to attend the discussion, said he was apprehensive about the club at first but warmed up to the idea after talking with Denton.

“What’s especially exciting about it is that you don’t really know if it will change anything or if it will just be a fun experience,” he said. “But it’s a win-win either way.”

Kossakovski and Denton said they are hopeful that the UNC event will be as successful as their first experience with Death Cafes.

“If I (have) that same feeling I had in New York after walking out of like, ‘Wow. That was not somber at all,’” Kossakovski said. “Then I’ll know that it’s not a one-time thing.”

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