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This April a group of St. Olaf College students gathered in a classroom for a small group discussion guided by only two short questions: How do you feel about death? What do you want to talk about? 

The resulting discussions were featured in a Star Tribune story on the college’s Death Cafe, which is part of a larger, international program that prompts people to think about death as it relates to living life with intention. Death Cafe is not a grief support group, but rather serves to offer people a space to share curiosities, confusions, and stories about death — something that has affected nearly everyone in some way.

Originally founded by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz in 2004 as “Café Mortel,” Death Cafe was first brought to the United Kingdom by Jon Underwood in 2011 and then to the United States by Lizzy Miles in 2012. 

Like a franchise, groups hosting these conversations must adhere to certain rules and regulations in order to be considered a Death Cafe: these discussions must be not-for-profit, held in an appropriately private space, centered around open conversation rather than persuasion, and always complemented with snacks. 

“We are trying to lessen the friction between us and the topic of death,” says Gloriana Ye ’24, the student who originally introduced the idea of the Death Cafe to campus last spring. “It is just like other conversations we have in the coffee shop.”

Ye is a nursing major at St. Olaf and after studying cadavers with her peers in a science lab on campus, she thinks that college-aged people are not offered an appropriate space to talk about a phenomenon that is present in all of human life. 

“The questions we are pondering about death are not talked about in a normal peer relationship. Students are still thinking about it, but I did not feel that there was a comfortable space for me to initiate these conversations with my peers,” Ye says.

“We are trying to lessen the friction between us and the topic of death. It is just like other conversations we have in the coffee shop.”

Gloriana Ye ’24

The St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community has hosted five Death Cafe events, including one held solely for students working in the cadaver lab.

Ye leads Death Cafe events alongside psychology major Carly Anderson ’24, who has co-led with Ye since the event started on campus and has written about her experience for the Lutheran Center. 

“I think that at the college age, people have a sense of invincibility,” says Anderson. “We’re so focused on periods of transition and what’s coming next. We’re focused on life, which is great and that’s a beautiful thing. That’s what you’d expect from college. But death is a part of life. It can be a grim part of life, but it can also be a very beautiful part of life too.”

Ye and Anderson purposefully allow a maximum of 20 students to participate in the event to ensure comfortability in discussion groups. These students are welcomed to the space for a short period of eating snacks and mingling with one another before Ye and Anderson give a brief overview of the Death Cafe’s history. 

“We’re focused on life, which is great and that’s a beautiful thing. That’s what you’d expect from college. But death is a part of life. It can be a grim part of life, but it can also be a very beautiful part of life too.”

Carly Anderson ’24

Once discussion begins, the possibilities are endless; students ponder how to cope with the idea of death if they don’t believe in the afterlife, how grief is so powerful that it seems to change who a person is, and how to measure a life well lived. They laugh as they listen to the stories about the fun and creative ways they’ve celebrated someone’s life or honored a person who has passed on. On the other side of the room, they listen intently as another student speaks about their relative who was in hospice care for nearly a decade.

Family became a natural theme of the discussion, as Ye mentions the way that someone’s family and culture will influence how they think about death. Having grown up in Taiwan, Ye says that many Asian cultures consider conversations about death to bring about bad fortune and that in her home, questions about death were not encouraged. 

“Our goal is to create a space for people to practice and explore their thoughts and feelings on this,” Ye says. “And the most amazing thing is that people can initiate Death Cafe wherever they are using the Death Cafe conversation guidelines for people to follow.”

Death Cafe ends with a guided meditation, meant to recenter students before they return to their daily schedules. 

“I feel like I have found comfort in Death Cafe because death is something that is normal to think about,” Anderson says. “Students who attend, including myself, are often curious to learn about what other students think and feel and how they like to approach these existential issues. I think they leave feeling less alone knowing their peers also have questions and strong feelings about this topic even though it’s something people are often hesitant to discuss. Death Cafe provides a space where students can reflect on huge life questions about life and death and their own experiences together.”

Affiliated with the Lutheran Center, the Death Cafe invites participants to reflect on their sense of vocation in the present while contemplating the end of life. While not an explicitly religious space, it is a space where participants can bring their whole selves, including religious, spiritual, and non-religious ideas on death and dying. Student organizers assure that the Death Cafe is a place for respectful conversation, whether religious or secular. 

“Purpose is rooted in mortality. In order to think more about living life with intention, I think you have to think about death too,” Anderson says.