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Socrates did not fear death; he calmly drank the hemlock. Kierkegaard was obsessed with death, which made him a bit gloomy. As for Lorraine Tosiello, a 58-year-old internist in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, it is the process of dying that seems endlessly puzzling.

"I'm more interested, philosophically, in what is death? What is that transition?" Dr. Tosiello said at a recent meeting in a New York coffee shop, where eight people had shown up on a Wednesday night to discuss questions that philosophers have grappled with for ages.

The group, which meets monthly, is called a Death Cafe, one of many such gatherings that have sprung up in nearly 40 cities around the United States in the last year. Offshoots of the "cafe mortel" movement that emerged in Switzerland and France about 10 years ago, these are not grief support groups or end-of-life planning sessions, but rather casual forums for people who want to discuss philosophical thoughts.

Death Cafes have expanded as well to other parts of Europe and to Canada.

"Death and grief are topics avoided at all costs in our society," said Audrey Pellicano, 60, who hosts the New York Death Cafe. "If we talk about them, maybe we won't fear them as much."

Part dorm room chat session, part group therapy, Death Cafes are styled as intellectual salons, but in practice they tend to wind up being something slightly different - call it cafe society in the age of the meet-up. Each is led by a volunteer facilitator, often someone who has a professional tie to the topic (Ms. Pellicano, for instance, is a grief counselor). The participants include people of all ages, working and retired, who are drawn by Facebook announcements, storefront fliers, local calendar listings or word of mouth. Women usually outnumber men.

"In Europe, there's a tradition of meeting in informal ways to discuss ideas - the cafe philosophique, the cafe scientifique," said Jon Underwood, 40, a Web designer in London who said he held the first Death Cafe in his basement in 2011 and has propagated the concept through a Web site he maintains.

Death Cafes were scheduled this month, for example, in London; Essex, England; Ottawa; and Toronto, according to the site deathcafe.com.

Mr. Underwood adapted the idea from a Swiss sociologist, Bernard Crettaz, who had organized "cafe mortels" to try to foster more open discussions of death. "There's a growing recognition that the way we've outsourced death to the medical profession and to funeral directors hasn't done us any favors," Mr. Underwood said. He envisioned Death Cafe as "a space where people can discuss death and find meaning and reflect on what's important and ask profound questions."

Dr. Tosiello, who said she had never lost a close family member, was there for intellectual enjoyment. Others went to ponder the questions and feelings that the death of a loved one had raised.

Kelly Vanderpool, a 25-year-old mother, who was a high school freshman when a friend with a new driver's license died in an auto accident, attended a Death Cafe in Missouri. "Ever since," she said in an interview, "I've wanted to know where he was. Is it true that life continues? Is Joe around still?"

The meetings tend to be more mundane than macabre, and more likely to produce small epiphanies than profound realizations. "It's not like psychotherapy," said Jeneva Stoffels, 60, who attended a meeting in Nebraska. "There's not going to be a big breakthrough."

Doctors and scholars who study attitudes toward death say that for most people, such conversations are healthy; talking about death can ease people's fears.

"At one cafe, I had someone who believed in reincarnation sitting across from three atheists, telling them about her past lives," said Lizzy Miles, a hospice social worker who organized the first meeting in Columbus, Ohio, last summer. Discussion topics have included euthanasia, grief and do-not-resuscitate orders.

Ms. Miles logged 112 participants in her first nine events and determined that a quarter were under 35 and 22 percent were over 65, with most ages 45 to 64 and women predominating. About half who filled out a survey after a meeting agreed with the statement that "I feel more comfortable talking about death and dying now."

The Death Cafe movement has a few ground rules. Meetings are confidential and not for profit. People must respect one another's beliefs and avoid proselytizing. And tea and cake play an important role.

"There's a superstition that if you talk about death, you invite it closer," said Mr. Underwood, the organizer in London. "But the consumption of food is a life-sustaining process. Cake normalizes things."

The New York Times

(China Daily 06/23/2013 page10)