Boo! or Taboo?
Talking About Death: Boo or Taboo?
A Brief Field Guide to Making Friends with the Grim Reaper
Last week, I attended something called a Death Café. I know what you're thinking, finally, a coffee shop that matches my morning mood. But no, it's not what it sounds like. Nobody served espresso in tiny coffins, and the barista wasn't dressed as Judge Dredd, though that would have been a nice touch. Instead, people gather to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death in what can only be described as the world's most cheerfully morbid book club.
I'd stumbled into what the organisers call the "Death Positive Movement," which sounds like a pharmaceutical commercial for people who've given up on antidepressants. The premise is deceptively simple: if we talk openly about death, we might actually get better at living. It's like practicing your acceptance speech before you win the Nobel Peace Prize, except the award is eternal rest witnessed by coffin flies. [Coffin flies (Conicera tibialis), yes, it’s a thing, Google it!]
The Death Café Experience: Earl Grey and Existential Dread
The Death Café movement began, as many good ideas do, with someone who wasn't MAGAmerican, or thereabouts. A Swiss fellow named Bernard Crettaz started hosting these gatherings, and they've since spread globally faster than a conspiracy theory on Truth Social. Thanks to John Underwood's vision, these conversations have popped up everywhere from community centers to people's living rooms, proving that humans will gather anywhere to discuss anything, including the one thing that makes everyone squirm, as long as tea and Tennis Biscuits are served.
I arrived expecting the atmosphere of a funeral home waiting room, hushed tones, uncomfortable chairs, and that peculiar smell of lilies mixed with regret. Instead, I found a group of surprisingly animated people discussing their mortality with the enthusiasm typically reserved for Monday morning Springbok Only Fans Social Media diatribes. There was Martha, a retired teacher who'd already picked out her funeral playlist (heavy on the Bee Gees, surprisingly), and Jeff, who'd been planning his own wake for three years and couldn't decide between a cash bar or a potluck of lightly expired meat pies from Pick n Pay.
The facilitator, a lovely woman who introduced herself as a "death doula", which sounds like either a yoga instructor or someone who helps you move furniture to the afterlife (that could be a sherpa, I confuse easily), explained that Death Café facilitators serve as the death doulas of family communication. Essentially, they're therapists for people who can't bring themselves to say "I'm going to die someday" at the dinner table without clearing the room faster than a rodent the size of a Jack Russel scuttling across the floor.
The Death Doula: Your Final Life Coach
Death doulas, I learned, are like life coaches but with better job security, after all, everyone will eventually need their services. These compassionate professionals help people navigate end-of-life issues, which is considerably more helpful than my usual approach of pretending death doesn't exist until I see my reflection in a store window and wonder when I started looking like my father's older brother, who was deceased by four decades.
One doula I spoke with described helping people struggle against intrusive thoughts about mortality, which sounds exhausting. I can barely manage my intrusive thoughts about whether I remembered to turn off the stove, and those don't involve eternal consequences.
Everyone Dies: The Least Exclusive Club Ever
The "Everyone Dies" movement takes a refreshingly democratic approach to mortality. Unlike most exclusive clubs, this one has a 100% acceptance rate and no membership fees, though the exit interview is reportedly quite thorough. The movement focuses on educating ourselves and preparing for our own mortality to disarm fear and improve the time we have left, which is like taking a defensive driving course for the highway to hell.
What struck me most about these death-positive communities is how they've managed to transform our culture's ultimate taboo into something resembling a hobby. They approach death with the same methodical enthusiasm that other people bring to bird watching or competitive quilting. There's something oddly comforting about people who can discuss casket options with the same analytical rigor they'd apply to comparing cellular phone service plans.
The Dying with Dignity Crowd: Making Death Less Awkward
The Dying with Dignity organization brings a political dimension to the conversation, advocating for end-of-life choices with the persistence of people trying to get you to switch fibre internet providers, except their cause actually matters. They create spaces where people from various communities gather to discuss experiences, fears, joys, thoughts, and feelings around death, dying, and grief, which is refreshingly inclusive. It's nice to know that regardless of who you are or where you come from, death will treat you with the same enthusiastic indifference.
Breaking the Taboo: From Boo to "How Do You Do?"
What these movements understand is that treating death as taboo doesn't make it go away, it just makes us worse at dealing with it when it inevitably shows up, like an uninvited golfer, at your Heritage Day braai with your padel buds, who never leaves. By talking openly about mortality, we can strip away some of its power to terrorise us during quiet moments at 3 AM when we're wondering if that stitch in our side is indigestion or an inflamed appendix.
People explore themes related to death through religion, philosophy, psychedelics, therapy, and yoga, which cover most of the ways humans try to make sense of anything. It's like a spiritual buffet where everyone's trying to figure out what happens after last call.
The Cake and Mortality Paradox
There's something beautifully absurd about eating cake while discussing your inevitable demise. It's the human condition in microcosm, we're simultaneously celebrating life and acknowledging its finite nature, all while trying not to get frosting on the pamphlet about advance directives.
These death-positive communities have figured out something important: death isn't actually the problem. The problem is spending our entire lives pretending it won't happen, like cosmic-level procrastination. By making death a topic of conversation rather than the elephant in the room that everyone's trying to ignore, we can focus on what really matters, namely, figuring out how to live well in the time we have, and whether to go with the mahogany or the pine.
So the next time someone brings up mortality at a dinner party, don't change the subject to the weather. Lean in. Ask questions. Suggest dessert. Because if we're all going to die anyway, we might as well get comfortable talking about it. After all, it's not like death is going to get any less inevitable just because we refuse to acknowledge it. And who knows? You might discover that facing mortality head-on is less terrifying and more liberating than you expected.
Besides, at least it's one thing you'll never have to worry about doing wrong. Death, unlike parallel parking or assembling furniture from Temu, pretty much takes care of itself.
The author is still alive at the time of publication and plans to remain so indefinitely, despite statistical evidence from the paternal side of the Van der Merwe family tree suggesting otherwise. My Mom will turn 97 at the end of October…
Dawid van der Merwe
Somerset West