'Let's talk about death': Breaking taboo over coffee and cake

Trudy Walker sits in a cafe by the sea talking to more than a dozen strangers about the recent death of her father-in-law, who had dementia.

She's animated.

"He went so gently. It was just an absolutely glorious experience," the newly graduated social worker says with conviction.

"He had a beautiful death."

Mrs Walker recounts one of life's most intimate experiences to people she has never met, bar a work colleague she has only known a few days.

Participants are invited to make themselves tea or coffee, and there's cake, strawberries, chips and biscuits to graze on.

But this is far from your average coffee shop.

Mrs Walker was a participant in a Death Cafe, organised by Kylie Whyte, a Queensland Health psychologist.

Like her, about half of those attending are health workers wanting to learn more about death and dying to help their patients.

But Kim Hutchins, who is studying to be a death doula, has driven three hours from Maryborough to the Brighton Wellness Hub, on Brisbane's northern outskirts, to attend.

And Betty, a young woman from Taiwan, has interrupted her working holiday in Australia to come to the cafe, keen to learn about the cultural differences in how death and dying are talked about between the two countries.

At the outset, Ms Whyte makes it clear the Death Cafe is not an opportunity for grief counselling, or a support group after someone close died.

"There are other forums for that," she says.

It is more about facilitating conversations about death and dying, breaking societal taboos that stop people talking about the subject.

Mrs Walker, who is three days into a new role as a graduate social worker when she attends the cafe, says she is "fascinated by the dying process and the impact on family".

"Generally, I have found that people are frightened of death and don't want to talk about death," she says.

"I am not afraid of death."

Mrs Walker references her father-in-law Sonny's passing at 11.31am on March 12 at his Brisbane nursing home throughout the two-hour Death Cafe experience.

The former train driver took his last breath as his son and daughter joked about a time when, as children, he took them to see the movie Jaws while on holidays in the central Queensland coastal town of Yeppoon.

The next day at the beach they refused to go for a swim, obviously frightened after watching Jaws, a thriller about a great white shark terrorising a small beach town.

More than a half a century after that day in 1975, they laughed as they recounted the story by their dying father's bedside.

"I had my eyes on him. I could see that he'd passed," Mrs Walker says.

"I said: 'He passed with your laughter in his ears.'"

Research suggests hearing is the last sense to go before death.

It can be a wonderful death

The Walkers spent time with their father after he died, and when it finally came time for his body to leave the nursing home, dozens of workers formed an honour guard as he was wheeled out.

Louis Armstrong's It's a Wonderful World was played as he was rolled from the loading dock to the funeral home van. With her hand on her father's chest, his daughter sang to him one last time before he was taken away.

"Everybody was in tears," Mrs Walker recalls, later describing the scene as a powerful farewell, full of love.

"This whole experience, I know it's not everybody's, but for my husband's family, it was transformative."

Rather than being left traumatised, they felt a sense of peace.

Ms Whyte, a grief and bereavement coordinator with Metro North Palliative Care, uses Mrs Walker's experience to guide the Death Cafe conversation towards people's positive experiences with death.

She tells her own story about changes in her life since her mother's death from cancer aged 62.

"Prior to her death, work was really important to me," Ms Whyte says.

"I was on a trajectory, wanted to do leadership roles. And then I realised life is short. Work is important, but it's not that important.

"I don't work after hours unless I want to. I'm not going to kill myself early by working crazy hours. My priorities are different. She's given me a gift."

The message is clear — make the most of life while you have it.

Since Ms Whyte started organising Death Cafes at the Brighton Wellness Hub early last year, they have been attended by participants aged from 18 to 92.

She says the concept started in 2004 in Switzerland when sociologist Bernard Crettaz founded Cafe Mortel — French for death cafe — which inspired Jon Underwood to set up Death Cafes in the UK in 2011. They have since spread globally.

The objective behind the cafes is to assist people in making "the most of our finite lives".

'I didn't expect to laugh today'

According to the deathcafe.com website, more than 23,000 death cafes have been held in 97 countries.

The Brighton Death Cafe generates as much laughter as serious conversations about death and dying.

When conversation turns to the cost of burials, including the "ridiculously expensive" price of urns, Kim Hutchins, the death doula-in-training, tells the group: "Mum's still sitting on the shelf in the spare room. Sorry, Mum."

The comment leaves the attendees giggling.

"Sometimes people think: 'Oh, I didn't expect we were going to laugh today,'" Ms Whyte says.

"We actually do laugh at these cafes. You never know where it's going to take you."

Participants talk about an evolution in people's preferences for the disposal of their remains after death, including environmentally friendly methods, such as aquamation — using water and an alkaline solution, often potassium hydroxide, rather than fire, to break down a body.

Ms Hutchins also mentions a woman who uses cat's claw vine — an invasive species — to create wicker caskets.

"She's taking all this rubbish … out of the bush and creating something beautiful," she says.

When the conversation turns to death doulas, she discusses the role with the group, describing it as providing emotional, spiritual and practical care at the end of life to individuals and their families.

"It's not clinical in any way, shape, or form," she tells the gathering.

One of the participants says she has read Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman is studying to be a death doula, apparently inspired by the death of her mother Janelle in 2024, aged 84.

"I thought that could potentially be a bit distracting," she says, but adds: "I love that for her."

Ms Hutchins is not so sure about the worth of Ms Kidman joining the death doula ranks.

"When I heard that I thought: 'Great, we'll get it out there, but let's not make it trendy,'" she says.

"I think you need … to be a special type of person."

Ms Hutchins has driven about 250 kilometres to Brighton because the "concept of death cafes fascinates" her.

She wants to learn about how Death Cafes operate so she can take the idea back to her home on the Fraser Coast, where almost 30 per cent of residents are aged 65 and over.

"It needs to happen," she says.

A review published this month of 18 studies which assessed participants' experiences of Death Cafes, found they served as "valuable spaces for fostering open, non-judgemental conversations about mortality, challenging societal taboos, and enhancing death literacy".

"The findings of this review suggested that death cafes can enhance death literacy by fostering open conversations about mortality, enhancing emotional resilience," the authors wrote in the International Journal of Nursing Studies.

For Ms Whyte, if her Death Cafes trigger more conversations about death and dying, it's job done.

"My desire is that you do go away, you share your experience here today, and hopefully together we can start to demystify this whole death and dying thing that we're all going to face," she tells the group.

"These are important conversations to have."