Volunteer Spotlight

Jenny Watt

Southside Death Cafe

In truth, I have absolutely no idea why I’m so interested in death. I guess it probably comes from that interest in people’s different views on spirituality, what their processes and celebrations look like, and coming at it from more of a world religion side of things.

It’s more about who that person is, what their family situation is, what things are important to them and what are some of the things that are getting in the way of them having the best life possible. It’s more on the spiritual care side of things than the medical care side of things.

When I was 14 and looking to do work experience, I thought an interesting place to do it would be the children’s hospice. There were lots of complications, so I ended up not being able to, but ever since I have been interested in talking with people who are dealing with death, dying and grief. I was also curious about the beliefs and customs of cultures when it comes to these topics, so instead of going down the medical path, I chose to study philosophy to give me the opportunity to explore this further.

During lockdown, I got an email from my old university, St Andrews, saying that they were having an online death cafe. It sounded interesting so I joined in for about 18 months before they moved back to face to face.

I decided that I wanted to have something similar that I could go to locally. I knew there were some such cafes set up in Glasgow at different times through different organisations, but there weren’t any current cafes that I could see on the Death Cafe website. I was speaking to my colleagues and convincing them that we needed one for the health board, so we set up an online death cafe which launched last year. I also met someone who works at a hospice and was really interested in it, so we decided to set up a more regular one at Finn’s place. It’s been going since November on a regular basis.

One of the reasons why I like running the Death Cafe is because no one’s going to be shocked that we’re suddenly discussing death. People will come along and know that they’re going to hear the word death, and that we’re going to be talking about things that might stir up emotions. It’s also just a safe space for some people to sit and process feelings. I think this is a really powerful environment to create.

Death Cafes also give people the opportunity to speak about some of the practical things like Power of Attorney, making wills and planning funerals as they often come up in conversation. We tried to create even more opportunities for people to discuss these things by hosting lots of events through Demystifying Death Week (an annual week of activities across Scotland at the start of May). We ran sessions on how to donate your body to science, and even one about what stories and songs you might want for your funeral.

We also ran a session on ‘how to host a death cafe’ and, really, my hope is that people see that they don’t need to be an expert, all they need to be able to do is confidently sit in a room while people experience emotion and not be completely terrified of that. Managing that is the biggest hurdle. Then it’s about finding a community space that works, and that could even just be a cafe. Then we can build up that momentum and more people start to come along.

In the future I’d like to do more. I want to use our public buildings for public use and have those conversations. That’s what I think would be really nice, to be able to have enough death cafes so that no one’s having to travel hours and fork out loads for transport costs – it’s there, it’s local, and it’s at a time that suits them. Really, the more death cafes and the more choices people have, I think the better.

Jenny’s next cafe is on Thursday 8th June, 7.30pm in June at Finn’s Place, Langside Church