If the Internet has given us anything, it’s the proximity to movements happening elsewhere and that’s how I came to find out about the Death Cafe back in 2015.
I read a blog written by a Facebook acquaintance who had attended their very first death cafe. When I saw that tea and cake were included, along with a good chat about the inevitable, I was hooked! I am forever grateful to Sofie who probably does not know how that article she wrote for The Guardian impacted my life!
I googled death cafe and came up with nothing in my immediate area of Mallorca nor the Balearics. However, I did find one scheduled in the north of Spain, just a little too far to justify tea and cake!
I got in touch with the founder of the Death Cafe movement, Jon Underwood, and asked him if there was a death cafe here in Mallorca to which he answered, yes! I was so happy and asked where, to which he answered, wherever you want it to be! Not one to back down from a challenge, I began the Mallorca Death Cafe and hosted the very first one in December 2015.
Luckily for me, one of the participants who attended that day gave me some very wise advice when we finished. She told me to be constant and consistent and to offer death cafes every month.
So, here we are, ten years on, hundreds of death cafes facilitated, mainly in Spain but one in Jamaica too. Every month now, I organise around five or six encounters, in person and virtual, in English and Spanish, for the curious and for the professionals.
I am so grateful to Bernard Crettaz who was the one who inspired Jon Underwood with his own Café Mortel and that Jon eventually took talking about death even further. It’s good to know that the death cafe network in Spain is growing all the time and Ï am proud to be a part of it!
