Haley Lips started as Community Engagement Librarian at the Plaza Branch in July 2021 (previously, she’d worked in Collections). In-person programming at the Library was still on hold during the pandemic, so staffers made connections and brainstormed new ideas.

As Lips recalls, a patron reached out by phone to see if the Library offered grief support groups. She says it made her “think about just being a bit more dynamic in our offerings, and our scope of reach.”

She was familiar with Death Cafés – the first one launched in the U.K. in 2011. Since then, it’s spread as a “social franchise” to more than 80 countries where people “drink tea, eat cake and discuss death.”

“So, I started by attending some virtual Death Cafés,” says Lips, “and learning how different people run them and taking, you know, what I liked and what I could learn from that.”

The first Death Café at the Plaza Branch launched in November 2022 and now takes place the second Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m.

There’s no set agenda, says Lips, it’s an open discussion.

“And there’s a solid crew of people that have been coming pretty much from the start,” she says. “I think that giving food to people – even if it's just a cookie and a warm beverage – starts to break down that nervousness or those walls.”

Lips starts each session asking patrons to introduce themselves and share what brought them to the Death Café.

“And I'm very clear, like, I am not trained in grief counseling, this is not a bereavement group,” she says. “But this is a place where you can say these things, and nobody is going to be like this isn't appropriate.”

Lips adds, “We've had people share things that they've said they've never shared with anybody else. And so, it can be very intense. But I think from that intensity comes a sense of connectedness.”

Death Café participants have also started to include death doulas – who help support someone with a terminal illness or facing death as well as their family members and friends. And, Lips says, related programs focused on advance care directives grew out of conversations with them.

“In their line of work, they see a lot of people without these documents,” she says, “and so families are left often trying to scramble and make decisions.”

Lips says the sessions on Tuesday, April 16, from 5 - 6:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 21, from 2 - 4 p.m., are offered in partnership with KC End of Life .

Patrons can pick up an advance care directive and have it notarized at the April 16 and 21 events. They’ll also get help navigating after-death wishes: "Who do I want notified? How do I want my body treated? What kind of service do I want?”

For a decade, the podcast “Death, Sex & Money ” has explored, as host Anna Sale describes it, “big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.”

Lips is already organizing programming covering two of these topics – death and sex (“Let’s Talk about Sex” is scheduled for Wednesday, April 24, from 5 - 7 p.m.). She jokes that money is likely to be addressed in the future.

“I'm proud of the programming I've done,” she says. “I think that it’s programs I would like to attend. But it's all kind of around topics that are a little bit uncomfortable to talk about.”