This time of year, reminders of death are everywhere — in costumes, decorations, and ghost stories. But inside Winston-Salem’s Hayworth-Miller Funeral Home, a small group is approaching the subject with curiosity rather than fear.
Their gathering, called a Death Cafe, invites people to talk openly about mortality over coffee and snacks. It’s part of a worldwide movement to make conversations about death less uncomfortable.
At their most recent meeting in honor of Día de los Muertos, participants mingled around a table filled with pan de muerto — dead man’s bread. Host Joshua Terrell baked it himself.
“The bones on top represent the crossbones,” he explained. “The little circle represents a skull.”
Nearby, a colorful altar displayed candles, photos, and offerings to honor loved ones who’ve passed away. Attendee Heather Schenck brought an item from her late brother, Dennis.
“It’s funny when he first passed away, I really struggled with feeling like a fraud,” she said to the group. “Because here I am a death doula, and I help other people through their grief. But I'm still learning how to process my own grief. It's so different from holding space for other people.”
She hit on something that kept coming up during the conversation: even for professionals, talking about death is hard. Analise Munday started hosting Death Cafes last year to create a safe space for those conversations.
“It's typically a taboo subject in this country,” said Munday. “And we wanted to break down those barriers between [the] public and the funeral home and also just bring everybody in and have a safe place to talk about death, fears, wishes, questions, all of those things.”
The cause is personal for her. Munday lost her father unexpectedly when she was just five years old, and struggled to find places where she could talk about it without making people uncomfortable. The experience drove her to become a funeral director — she wanted to comfort others during their own times of grief. Munday learned about Death Cafes through her job, and attended her first one in Boise, Idaho.
“I was sitting next to a woman who was actively dying, a holistic doctor and a woman who had just lost her husband and moved to the area,” she said. “It was such a beautiful conversation that we had — it was an amazing experience.”
The Death Cafe concept grew out of the European tradition of meeting in public spaces to discuss big ideas about science and philosophy. The first was held in London in 2011, inspired by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz’s café mortel gatherings, which encouraged open conversation about mortality. Today, thousands of Death Cafes have been held in more than 90 countries around the world.
Each meeting is different, with some having laid out agendas and others a more free-flowing conversation. One thing they’re not, though? Grief counseling. Munday says cafes are not meant to be a substitute for professional support, but rather a space for a broader discussion.
Attendee Gwendolyn Stanfield said she thinks the movement’s growth is a response to how the experience of death has become more private over time, moving from homes into hospitals and care facilities.
“We are shielded from a lot of it,” she said. “So we do not have the experiences that we used to, and I think perhaps that does instill some additional fear.”
She said it’s been difficult to get people in her life to engage with her on the topic, even family members.
“I think that is one reason why death cafes are probably more necessary now than ever,” she said. “People may not have the apprehension that they would about it if they were able to attend something like this.”
Death Cafes have taken root in several North Carolina cities beyond Winston-Salem, including Greensboro. And not all of them are held in funeral homes — many take place in actual cafés. You can find a directory at deathcafe.com.
