How well do we talk about death?
As a society, how can we do it better?
These questions lie at the heart of a new project, Death, Dying and the Afterlife – a collaborative study about public attitudes in the UK, and how COVID-19 has shaped the conversation and outlook on death – being conducted by the Susanna Wesley Foundation and the public theology thinktank Theos. You can read more about this qualitative study here and here.
Below, SWF’s Senior Research Officer Lia Shimada, who is part of the project, shares her own background.
My own interest in this topic sharpened dramatically after the birth and death of my first child. In July 2017, I went into labour unexpectedly while attending the annual conference of the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology. Rowan was born in distressing circumstances, before I could reach the nearest hospital. He lived for 39 minutes. My husband and I spent one terrible, extraordinary night with him. A few weeks later, we buried Rowan in the southernmost corner of London’s Brompton Cemetery (by chance, between a nanny and a cocktail inventor). In time, we will be buried with him.
In the long, bleak months that followed, I hungered for opportunities to talk about death. I would learn that few people shared my enthusiasm. Death, I realized, is an awkward, anxiety-provoking topic. I lost count of the times my conversation partners would simply steer the subject to safer waters.
So I decided to create the opportunity that I craved. With the support of the Royal Parks, which manages Brompton Cemetery, I began convening regular Death Cafés as a community outreach activity. Death Café is an international movement that brings people together to talk about any aspect of death. Over tea and coffee, in the company of curious strangers, people share their thoughts, ideas and questions; the conversation unfolds from there. (During the pandemic, I moved the programme online.) Each Death Café travels into new territory, shaped entirely by the participants and what they bring to the discussion on a given day.
As both a facilitator and a researcher, it is an enormous privilege to hold the space for these conversations – and to explore, together, what it means to be mortal.
