I lost my dad to a brain tumour but now I've found a purpose and the perfect legacy with Didsbury Death Café

Lexi Sears lost her father Greg nearly two years ago. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died just seven weeks later. He was only 58. 

“We were incredibly close,” says the 27-year-old, “It was a really really intense experience and awful to see my dad like that.”

Lexi’s father devoted his life to helping people, and always encouraged her to do the same. Now, she’s doing just that having set up a Death Café in Didsbury.  The worldwide franchise aims to create spaces to raise awareness around death, dying, and grief. Currently, there are 17,951 Death Cafes across 89 countries. 

“I always was trying to find that purpose, and weirdly, after he died, I knew this was it,” Lexi said. “It's a real legacy to him because he was just such a fab person, and the light of everyone's lives.”

Lexi attended Death Cafes in London, but after moving to Manchester, she realised there weren’t any equivalent “transformational" spaces for people to meet in her new home.  She decided to set her own up in Didsbury at Home Community Café, at the entrance to Emmanuel Church, and the 25 spaces are always fully booked. Visitors include a range of people, ages and experiences.

“You realise people were just desperate for a space to speak,” Lexi said. “People bring such different experiences that they still learn from each other. There's so much laughter, so much light.” 

Lexi said she thinks there is still a stigma around the discussion of death. But at the Death Café, no conversation or experience is off the table. 

“Death and grief are so often forced to be something we deal with alone,” she said. “Everyone can understand or empathise and listen, and that's super powerful.”

April is Stress Awareness month in the UK, and Lexi said it is important to remember how overwhelming grief can manifest as stress, without a person realising.

“In the first six months after dad died, people expected me to be stressed and upset, and now people expect me to be fine,” she said.  “Your stress levels are so high because you've lost someone, and you're going through all this emotion - any tiny thing can just completely set it off and you're over the line all the time.

“Grief is almost like a condition you live with through your life, and it ebbs and flows. I think that stress again is different for different people and how people deal with it, so it's a complex landscape navigating grief.”

The next meeting of the Didsbury Death Café takes place on May 15 between 6pm and 8pm.