We gathered on a bright fall evening at the Mount Auburn Cemetery to sip tea, eat cupcakes, and talk with complete strangers about society’s ultimate taboo.
For about two hours, some 40 people sitting below the dark wooden beams of Mount Auburn’s Story Chapel dared to ask the big questions: What scares you most about dying? What would you like done with your body after you die? We talked about death as the ultimate loss of control, the search for ways to confront dying beyond organized religion, and how to approach our deaths without regret. And the cupcakes were delicious.
This is a death cafe, an increasingly popular forum where people gather to discuss — and perhaps demystify — this most universal truth. “We are on the cusp of a significant change in how we talk about death and dying,” Bree Harvey, Mount Auburn’s vice-president of cemetery and visitor services, said in an interview. “I feel it’s in the ether.”
Like many in my age cohort, now passing 70, death has been much with me lately; the circle of those close to me who are falling ill or dying tightens seemingly every month. Even the death of famous figures — Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, Gloria Steinem — seem to touch me more, because their lives and times were nearly in tandem with my own. Mortality feels very alive when you get to my age.
Which is why I was so surprised that everyone at my table was under 40.
One young man, 24, spoke about his father’s unexpected death. “I didn’t feel I had the right to cry,” he said. “Mom did all the grieving instead.” A woman in her 20s described having a sister who died years before she herself was born. “I feel like it was a kind of soft launch to grief,” she said. But despite carrying the knowledge of death’s caprice in her core, she couldn’t fathom her own end. “I can’t sit with the idea that I won’t be able to talk or think.” (The participants knew I was a journalist and agreed to be quoted without their names.)
Although there were plenty of gray hairs in attendance as well, the evening’s facilitator wasn’t surprised by Gen Z’s participation. “It’s become a fashionable conversation to have,” said Corinne Elicona, 31, Mount Auburn’s end of life educator, who began hosting death cafes in her dorm more than 10 years ago. The climate crisis, artificial intelligence, and the staggering pace of change compel young people to address the greatest unknown of them all, she said. “You think about your existence in a way older generations did not at the same age.”
Death cafes aren’t new; Mount Auburn has been hosting them twice a year, on the equinox, for about a decade. But their popularity is spiking as part of a larger movement to reimagine death — including the growing acceptance of medical aid in dying, natural burial, and end-of-life doulas who guide their clients through the process with emotional and spiritual support. Swiss anthropologist Bernard Crettaz hosted the first cafes mortels in 2004, aiming to break what he called the “tyrannical secrecy” surrounding death. In just a few decades the idea has taken off. Death cafes are scheduled in Winthrop, Weymouth, and Martha’s Vineyard this month.
Some set a winking tone, with coffin-shaped cookies or skull cakes. Some are more somber affairs, though they are not formal bereavement groups. Anyone can facilitate; hosts need not be certified in anything but empathy. The team at Mount Auburn believes young people are attracted to a forum that lets them take some measure of agency over an experience deeply bound by societal strictures. The same could be said about baby boomers, looking to put an alternative stamp on death, just as they have with every other life passage.
“We haven’t had this level of disruption in the funeral industry since cremation came in, in the late 1800s,” Harvey said. Indeed, before the advent of commercial funerals, most families laid out their dead at home, in the parlor. When that started to change in the early 20th century, the term “living room” was coined.
One paradox I noticed that evening at Mount Auburn is that every person’s experience with death is uniquely theirs, and yet, of course, it happens to everyone. Roughly 63 million people worldwide will die this year. This universality could help us remember that we are all part of nature, and few things are more natural than death. There may be some comfort in that.
When I left the Story Chapel it was dusk; the cicadas were sawing away, and the stately Mount Auburn memorials were in silent silhouette. Far from being down after two hours discussing death, I felt lighter, more than ever in love with life.
Renée Loth is a contributing Globe Opinion writer.