End-of-life carer brings death café to Bloomington-Normal

Carley Cotner wants to talk about death – and she wants Bloomington-Normal to join in. She said she trained as a death counselor so she can host death cafes in the city for people who are going through similar situations.

“I lost a lot of family members when I was young, and as I got older, it seemed very strange to me when friends or partners had the first death in their life and didn’t know how to deal with it,” Cotner said.

Then Cotner began working in a nursing home, where she encountered people who increasingly wanted – or needed – to talk about death. She said part of her job became comforting families whose loved ones had died.

“There was no title for the role and no set rules to follow, but it was something that came very naturally to me as I got to know the dying man and his family,” she said. “It was very enjoyable and very meaningful to me.”

This, she said, inspired her to become a death carer, adding that her job is not to replace healthcare professionals or counselors, but to fill a gap that sometimes arises in providing emotional support to people experiencing loss.

To continue that work, she completed an online training course with the International End-of-Life Doula Association this year and hosted her first Death Café on Sunday afternoon. Her goal, she said, is to make people comfortable with death so it is not a “scary, looming event.”

“The more comfortable we are, the more we practice thinking of death as part of our lives, as the next thing we do. That can make the process easier when we lose someone we love,” Cotner said. “Or when we die ourselves, it can make life easier for our families.”

History of Death Cafés

Death Cafés have been around for a few years now. Jon Underwood hosted the first one in the UK in 2011 and Lizzy Miles brought them to the US a year later.

Bloomington-Normal had a few death cafes of its own, but they fizzled out during the pandemic.

Now they’re making a comeback. Cotner plans to host more Death Cafés in the coming months, and the Normal Public Library has started doing them too. The next one is planned for August at the Coffeehouse & Deli in Normal.

Cotner’s Death Café

Cotner hosts her Death Cafés with Kim Hayes, who has offered her wellness center – Blooming Life Studio & Spa – in Bloomington as a venue.

“I just knew that this place and the reason it was created is to be a center for physical and mental (and) emotional wellness in general,” Hayes said. “Also safe, in the sense that people can come as they are and speak from their hearts.”

Hayes said her goal was to make the studio free of prejudice and fear, so that people could come by every now and then, drink coffee or tea, eat cookies and talk about death.

On Sunday, a handful of people did just that.

Cotner explained to the group before the discussion began that she didn’t want to steer the conversation toward a particular point. She wanted people to feel comfortable saying whatever was on their minds.

“The goal of the Death Café is not to sell you anything. There is no agenda. I’m not here to steer you in a particular direction or give you my opinion,” Cotner told the group, preparing them for the next hour and a half of discussion.

Participants discussed a range of topics, from how they would like to die – something sudden, like a plane crash, or a peaceful death in old age – to end-of-life planning.

Dezi Palmer said she came because she saw Limitless, a Disney+ show in which Chris Hemsworth explores the limits of humanity. In the final episode, Hemsworth and his wife receive technology that makes them feel the effects of aging.

They also meet Alua Arthur, a dying carer who helps them deal with the complex emotions associated with this process.

“Seeing people discuss what death and passing would be like and, you know, being in that state of mind was really a side of death that I had never thought about before,” she said.

Then Cotner – who is dating Palmer’s brother – became a death counselor and said she would host a death cafe, and Palmer decided it would be an opportunity to have that conversation herself. She said it was encouraging to see that other people in the community were going through the same things she was, “with questions and fears and seeing family members trying to process different states of grief.”

“It’s just nice to kind of normalize the conversation about death, and I think that’s what’s going to bring me back,” she said, adding that bringing up the subject with her family might help her.

Cotner and Hayes are still planning their next event, but Cotner said she expects it to take place sometime in September.