Death Cafes Invite Coloradoans to Openly Discuss Dying

At 22, Denver resident Hillary Wertenberg is confronting a topic many people her age avoid entirely. After losing her stepfather nearly two years ago, she searched for ways to process her grief and found something unexpected: a Death Cafe.

“I’ve turned to therapy and many other sources to try and cope with the loss of my stepfather, but I wanted to try something different,” Wertenberg said. “I saw an ad online about death cafes, and I went. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

Death Cafes are informal, nonprofit gatherings where people come together to discuss death, dying and mortality. There is no attempt to lead participants toward a particular conclusion. Instead, the conversations unfold organically, often over coffee, tea and, traditionally, cake.

The concept began in 2011 in East London, inspired by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz and developed by Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid. Since then, the model has spread globally, with tens of thousands of events held in nearly 100 countries. Today, Death Cafes take place in homes, community centers, cafes and, in Colorado, even cremation spaces.

Across the Denver metro area, gatherings are held regularly in places like Wheat Ridge, Golden, Lakewood, Littleton and Denver. One local event meets monthly at Be a Tree Cremation in Wheat Ridge, though locations can vary. Unlike grief counseling or support groups, Death Cafes are intentionally unstructured.

“Death Cafes have no outline, no agenda, no sales,” said Jamie Sarche, the host of Denver’s Death Cafe. “People just show up, and they talk about whatever they want to talk about. And I just make sure that everybody in the room gets to speak if they want to, and then we just interact with each other. People come and bring their questions, their thoughts. We talk about that until we’ve used up all the information that we have, and then we move on to the next topic.”

Topics range from practical questions about end-of-life planning to deeply personal reflections on loss, fear and uncertainty.

“Every meeting is different,” Sarche said. “In mine, I really find that people are very concerned about how to take care of their bodies after their death. They want to talk about how to put their own sort of things in place so they are not going to leave a mess for their people. They want to talk about things that are coming up with their brother or their neighbor or whatever.” 

“Most recently, we are talking about somebody’s brother and sister-in-law who are really unwilling to talk about any of this,” Sarche continued. “The sister who brought the issue up is really concerned about how she is going to navigate things if she doesn’t know what to do at the time of someone’s death.”

The openness of the conversation is part of the appeal. Many participants say talking about death with strangers creates a different kind of space than conversations with friends or family.

“When you talk to it about your friends, they’re trying to make you feel better and distract you or change the subject,” Wertenberg said. “But with strangers, the only thing they know about you is that you’re going through that, which kind of brings a comforting aspect to the conversation. These people aren’t here to judge me or distract me. They just want to talk, and that is what I have been needing.” 

Death remains one of the most avoided topics in American culture, even though it is universal.

“It is ridiculous that we’re afraid to talk about the one thing aside from birth that everyone’s going to experience,” Sarche said. “People think about death a lot, but they don’t usually talk about it with people, and they think that there’s something wrong with them for talking about it or thinking about it.”

Death Cafes aim to dismantle that discomfort by normalizing the conversation. Still, organizers emphasize that these gatherings are not therapy sessions.

“Certainly, we can talk about grief, but we are not a support group in any way, shape or form,” Sarche said. “Nobody is there in a professional capacity, even me.”

Instead, the value comes from shared experience and perspective. Crispin Sargent, 78, is a regular attendee who appreciates the environment.

“There is a safe place to have a conversation that’s not therapy and doesn’t have an agenda,” Sargent said. “There was a young woman who shared her death experience as a witness and survivor of a school shooting. She was so appreciative to be in a room where she could share the experience without anybody trying to fix her. She just got to express her story and her experience.”

For many attendees, the impact of a Death Cafe extends beyond confronting fear. It reshapes how they think about life itself.

“I think it kind of brings an appreciation to everything and makes all of the problems that we go through seem way, way smaller than I had originally thought that they were,” Wertenberg said. “Like, nothing really matters as much to me after kind of confronting the idea of death.”

Ultimately, Death Cafes are proving that talking about mortality doesn’t necessarily have to be a dark and scary experience. Rather, they help people realize that talking about death and dying might just be the best way to learn how to live.

“These cafes make me comfortable with the curiosity and comfortable with the mystery of what comes next,” Sargent said.