What Happens As We Are Dying?

The First And Last Things To Go

Knowing what happens when we’re dying can tell us how to console colleagues and loved ones as they lose their battle with COVID-19.

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As our mother lay dying, my sister and I sat on either side of her, holding her hand and whispering words of comfort until the hospital machine showed a flat line. Having heard that physicians often witness positive reactions in patients when loved ones speak to them in their final moments, we intuitively thought that perhaps she could hear us. No one knows for sure what happens as we die, but recent information from neuroscientists shows that our intuitions could be right. Knowing what happens when we’re dying can tell us how to console colleagues and loved ones as they lose their battle with COVID-19.

The Last Thing To Go

In the last hours before an expected natural death, many people enter a period of unresponsiveness, during which they no longer respond to their external environment. Anecdotal reports from near-death experiences commonly include stories of the dying person hearing unusual noises or hearing themselves pronounced dead.

In a June 2020 groundbreaking study published in Scientific Reports, neuroscientists provided the first empirical evidence that some people can still hear while in an unresponsive state hours before dying. Using EEG indices, neuroscientists at the University of British Columbia measured the electrical activity in the brain from hospice patients at St. John’s Hospital when they were conscious and when they became unresponsive. A control group of young, healthy participants was also used. The researchers monitored brain responses to tones and found that the auditory systems of the dying patients responded similarly to the young, healthy control groups just hours from the end of life. They concluded that the dying brain responds to sound tones even during an unconscious state and that hearing is the last sense to go in the dying process.

The First Thing to Go

Many people who have had near-death experiences describe a sense of “awe” or “bliss” and a reluctance to come back into their bodies after being revived. I interviewed brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who described having a strikingly similar awe experience during her stroke which she detailed in her book My Stroke Of Insight.

Jill Bolte Taylor: I was bouncing in and out of the consciousness of my right brain. The left brain had the hemorrhage, growing at an enormous rate over those four hours. By the time I got to the hospital, the hemorrhage was about the size of my fist in my left hemisphere. Over the course of the morning, I drifted into blissful euphoria, the consciousness of my right brain. And then I would come back online and attend to the details to get myself help. It was a movement in and out of being aware of external reality. I was completely conscious through the entire experience, but only at some point could I attend to detail in the external world, recognize that it existed, or even care.

Bryan Robinson: So the fear factor wasn’t there?

Taylor: I was very blessed. I had zero fear. I was there in blissful euphoria in the right brain. Or I was in the left brain, preoccupied with trying to figure out what I needed to do to orchestrate a rescue.

Robinson: How did the stroke change your outlook on life? Or did it?

Taylor: One hundred percent. It shifted me away from believing that I was the center of my world and that “me and mine” is what matters. That whole circuit—the consciousness of me as an individual—went offline. In the absence of the focus of my life being me, I shifted into a consciousness and awareness that I’m a part of a greater humanity. I’m more open, expansive, and flexible to possibilities—as opposed to “here’s what I want and these are the steps I’m going to take to get what I want.” I function inside of a hierarchy of people above me and below me and I’m climbing a ladder. So I shifted away from the linear way of looking at the world and my relationship to it. I live more open to the possibilities of what can be and what is the best match for me.

Robinson: Is it true that your training and professional and personal experience have led you to believe that the right brain or authentic self is the brain hemisphere that endures even at death?

Taylor: The authentic self is the part of us that I firmly believe shows up in the last five minutes of our lives. When we’re on our deathbed, the left brain begins to dissipate. We shift out of all the accumulation and the external world because it’s no longer valuable. What is valuable is who we are as human beings and what we did with our lives to help others. We all face it, and I think that is judgment day. But I don’t think it’s the judgment of something beyond us; it’s the judgment of ourselves. Those of us who are tangled up in the external judgment are not slowing down enough to reflect on the essence of who we are as human beings and what we could be in connection with one another.

Steps You Can Take

It’s important to be supportive, compassionate and understanding in cases where a coworker loses their battle with COVID-19. Don’t hesitate to reach out to other bereaved colleagues, share your concerns and be willing to listen. If you’re an employer, make sure HR personnel are well educated about the process of death and dying. If you are an employee in an organization where COVID-19 deaths haven’t been acknowledged or discussed, speak to someone in authority who can take steps to provide training for all employees. Appropriate information makes sure employees receive emotional support during the loss. Otherwise social isolation can cut employees off from help when they most need it.

Now that hearing is widely thought to be the last sense to go during the dying process and that a blissful experience might replace fear, this information might be helpful to bring comfort to family and friends in their final moments. Perhaps being present with comforting words in the last hours in person or virtually can console the dying as well as loved ones. According to Dr. Elizabeth Blundon, lead researcher in the Scientific Reports experiment, “This is consistent with the trope that hearing is one of the last senses to lose function when a person is dying and lends some credence to the advice that loved ones should keep talking to a dying relative as long as possible.”

Complete Article HERE!

How Taiwanese death rituals have adapted for families living in the US

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Taiwanese people living in the United States face a dilemma when loved ones die. Many families worry that they might not be able to carry out proper rituals in their new homeland.

As a biracial Taiwanese-American archaeologist living in Idaho and studying in Taiwan, I am discovering the many faces of Taiwan’s blended cultural heritage drawn from the mix of peoples that have inhabited the island over millennia.

Indigenous tribes have lived on the island for 6,000 years, practicing their diverse ancient traditions into the modern day. Chinese sailor-farmers arrived during the Ming Dynasty 350 years ago. The Japanese won a naval battle with China and governed Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945. Today, Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, albeit with contested sovereign status. Peoples from every corner of the planet visit, work and live in Taiwan.

Language, religion and food from all these traditions can be encountered in the cities and villages of Taiwan today. Multiple beliefs and customs also contribute to the rituals Taiwanese people conduct to send family members into the afterlife.

Death rituals

Taiwan’s death rituals offer a bridge with the afterlife that stems from multiple spiritual sources. Buddhists, who make up 35% of Taiwan’s population, believe in multiple lives. Through faith and devotion to Buddha and the accumulation of good deeds a person can be freed from the cycle of reincarnation to achieve nirvana or a state of perfect enlightenment.

This belief is fused with elements of the island’s other belief systems including Taoism, Indigenous spirituality and Christianity. Together, they form death customs that showcase Taiwan’s multiculturalism.

In the streets of Taiwan’s metropolises and villages alike, temples, churches and wooden ancestor carvings invite one to contemplate eternity while the odors of nearby food vendors – such as stinky tofu, a local delicacy – tempt people to pause and enjoy earthly delights afterward.

The rituals associated with passing from this life include cemetery burial or traditional cremation practices. The dead are cremated and placed in special urns in Buddhist temples.

Another rite involves burning of what are known as “hell bank notes.” These are specially printed non-legal tender bills that may range from US$10,000 to several billions.

On one side of these notes is an image of the Jade Emperor, the presiding monarch of heaven in Taoism. These bills can be obtained in any temple or even 7-Eleven in Taiwan. The belief is that the spirits of ancestor might return to complain if not given sufficient spending money for the afterlife.

Adapting in America

My Indigenous great-great-grandmother married a Chinese man and her great-grandson – my father – grew up speaking a typical blend of languages for the 1950s: the local dialect, Hokkien, as well as Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin. Arriving in the U.S. at the age of 23 to study electrical engineering, my father mastered English quickly, married my Euro-American mother, and raised a family in the American West.

Taiwanese people living in America often cannot participate in the rites of mourning and passage conducted back home because they do not have time or money, or recently, pandemic related travel restrictions. So Taiwanese Americans adapt to – and sometimes, accept the loss of – these traditions.

When my Taiwanese grandmother, whom we affectionately called Amah, passed away in 1987, my father was unable to return home for the Buddhist ritual organized by his family. Instead, he adapted the “Tou Qi,” pronounced “tow chee” – usually conducted on the seventh day after death.

In this ritual, it is believed that the spirit of the recently deceased revisits the family for one final farewell.

My father adapted the ritual to a modern U.S. suburban home: He filled our dining room with fruits and cakes, as my Amah was a strict Buddhist vegetarian and enjoyed eating cakes. He put pots of golden chrysanthemums on the table and incense whose smoke is believed to carry one’s thoughts and feelings to the gods.

He then opened every door, window and drawer in our house, as well as car doors, and the tool shed to ensure that our grandmother’s spirit could visit and enjoy the food with us for the last time. He then settled in for an all-night vigil.

After helping Dad with preparations, I returned to my small apartment across town, placed flowers and fruit and a candle on the kitchen table, opened the windows and doors and sat through long dark hours of my own small vigil.

I reflected upon the memory of my grandmother: a petite woman who raised six children during World War II by hiding in the mountains and teaching them to forage for snails, rats and wild yams. Her children survived, got educated, and traveled the world. Her American grandchildren learned how to stir fry in her battle-scarred wok, lugged all the way to the U.S. in a suitcase, and peeked curiously as she performed Buddhist prayers each morning in front of the smiling deity.

My vigil ended with the rising of the sun: the candle burnt out, the flowers drooped, and the fragrance of the incense faded. My grandmother, whose name in translation is “Fairy Spirit,” had eaten her fill, and said her goodbyes.

Complete Article HERE!

‘Not a Single Casserole’

— What It’s Like to Be Widowed by COVID-19

Levester (LT) Thompson and his wife Simone Andrews

By Kevyn Burger

In her last FaceTime conversation with her husband, Simone Andrews begged him to keep fighting.

“They were going to intubate him and after that he would be sedated and he wouldn’t be able to talk,” said Andrews. “He was afraid. I said, ‘Please, please, don’t give up. Keep working hard.’”

Andrews’ husband Levester Thompson, known as LT, had begun feeling lethargic as the family prepared to shelter-in-place in their Staten Island, N.Y. home in mid-March.

Four days later, after his fever spiked and he experienced a seizure, LT was hospitalized.

“He didn’t have the symptoms. He wasn’t coughing and we weren’t thinking COVID, but that was his diagnosis,” Andrews said. “I thought he would come out of it; he was just forty-six and healthy, he worked out every day, no pre-existing conditions.”

On April 6, LT died on a ventilator, never regaining consciousness. Because of visiting restrictions put in place at the start of the pandemic, Andrews and their two children saw him only through an iPad during the 19 days he was hospitalized.

“We didn’t know he was at the end and we didn’t say goodbye,” Andrews said. “And then we went into our grief bubble. My parents and in-laws couldn’t come and be with us. It was too risky to see anyone. It’s like we were marooned.”

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‘One of the Many’

On the day LT died from the coronavirus, so did 876 other New Yorkers. The sheer scale of the number of those lost to COVID-19 is staggering.

Each one of those casualties is attached to a family unable to access cultural rituals that accompany the end of life. Many funerals or memorial services have been cancelled or delayed. Those that can be staged are often conducted via an online platform, with guests attending virtually, unable to hug or put a sympathetic arm around the bereaved.

“Grief naturally isolates you, but many of these widowed people have not touched anyone for months.”

The coronavirus is robbing a new generation of widows and widowers not only of their life partners, but also of their ability to access community support networks as they mourn in isolation.

“This is unprecedented. It’s compared to 9/11 in terms of the intensity, but it’s more than that. These newly widowed people become one of the many. And their person is a piece of the larger tragedy — they are a number,” said Michele Neff Hernandez, founder and executive director of Soaring Spirits International.

Hernandez founded the California-based nonprofit after she was widowed at 35 and wanted to find a way to meet others who had also lost their partners. Since 2009, Soaring Spirits has put on more than two dozen Camp Widow events across North America to help bereaved spouses though education and by introducing them to widowed peers.

Soaring Spirits is now reaching out to COVID-19 widows and widowers with specifically designed information and Zoom meetings that replace face-to-face interventions.

“They have a lot in common,” Hernandez said. “Grief naturally isolates you, but many of these widowed people have not touched anyone for months. That lack of affection and connection as this crisis has stretched on and on keeps them in that cauldron of pain.”

In the support groups, facilitators stress the importance of self-care and finding ways to reach out, even when they’re staying home alone.

“Our work is to connect them to each other and remind them of their resilience,” Hernandez added. “We suggest therapy as an option and have workshops on how to find a therapist.”

Traumatic Grief

Support groups and other resources designed specifically for COVID-19 widows and widowers are beginning to emerge.

Based in Manhattan, the pandemic’s epicenter when LT died, psychotherapist Danielle Jonas is providing online therapy for people who have lost a spouse or romantic partner to the coronavirus.

“In the U.S., we have decided what a good death looks like. The person is surrounded by their loved ones, they’re comfortable. Maybe there are songs or prayer,” said Jonas.

None of the partners of her newly-widowed clients were afforded anything resembling that good death.

“It’s imperative to understand that for many of these widows and widowers, this is not just grief. This is trauma.”

“When the spouse can’t be present at the end their loved one’s life, they’re haunted by the idea that their person didn’t remember why they were alone. They ask themselves, did they feel neglected or unloved at the end?,” said Jonas. “These survivors feel guilt: They should have gotten (their spouse) to the hospital sooner, they should have taken their symptoms more seriously. They may wonder and worry if they brought the virus home to their loved one.”

The loss experienced by those widowed in the pandemic is also complicated by its unanticipated nature, according to Laura Takacs, clinical director for grief services at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.

“It’s imperative to understand that for many of these widows and widowers, this is not just grief. This is trauma,” said Takacs.

She considers COVID-19 widows and widowers to be “sudden traumatic death survivors.” That designation is typically assigned to those who lose a spouse in a sudden, shocking or violent way and are tortured by their thoughts of their loved one’s last moments.

“These survivors can’t get images of their loved one’s death out of their head. They can’t sleep, their thoughts get caught in a loop. They think they’re going crazy,” Takacs said. “I expect we will see this with COVID losses, where they ‘see’ their loved on a ventilator or imagine them suffering in a crowded hospital ward.”

Using a method called restorative retelling, Takacs gives sudden traumatic death survivors coping skills for when they wake up in a cold sweat, and educates them to normalize their experience.

“I tell them, these are the symptoms I would expect; other spouses describe similar feelings. You’re not alone,” she said. “When they hear that, there are often tears of relief. Then we can go to work.”

Isolated in Grief

There’s a fragment of a song stuck in Darlene Thoreson’s head.

“I keep thinking of that line, ‘You picked a fine time to leave me,’” said Thoreson, 71. “This has been so horrible. I can’t tell you how lonely I am.”

Thoreson and her husband Eric, 77, had moved to a senior living building in suburban Milwaukee on March 1. They were still unpacking when Eric began feeling ill. He attributed his body aches and breathing difficulties to his persistent asthma, but on the night of March 28, his condition quickly deteriorated and he collapsed and died in their living room.

While Eric’s symptoms were consistent with COVID-19, a postmortem test was inconclusive. Darlene tested negative for the virus but was quarantined under a tight lockdown with the assumption that she’d been exposed.

“I couldn’t leave and no one could come in. They slid my mail under the door and wouldn’t take the rent check from me because Eric made it out and had touched it,” she said. “Everyone was so leery of me.”

“I’ve experienced death in my family before. Everyone swarms around you and takes care of you. There was none of that.”

Unable to lean on her two daughters, her friends or the pastor at her church, Thoreson was isolated in an apartment that didn’t feel like home.

“I’ve experienced death in my family before. Everyone swarms around you and takes care of you. There was none of that. Not a single casserole,” she said. “We’re not meant to grieve alone.”

Late-in-Life Loss

Although the average age of people dying from the coronavirus has begun to drop, statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control this spring found that Americans 65 and older account for eight out of ten of the U.S. deaths from the disease.

That means a disproportionate number of the newly-widowed due to COVID-19 are those who’ve celebrated silver, gold or even diamond anniversaries.

“Their pain is deep. They’ve lost their life’s companion, their source of security, perhaps their protector when they were feeling vulnerable, and this is happening in the middle of a crisis like we’ve never experienced,” said Steve Sweatt, clinical director at Community Grief Support in Birmingham, Ala.

Sweatt has facilitated support groups for older widowed spouses in the past and has seen their grief patronized. He wonders if that will become a more frequent response in the coronavirus era, when some pundits and policymakers have suggested that older people should sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy.

“Our culture is too often dismissive of late-in-life loss. The cliched response is, ‘They should be thankful for their many years together.’ But that’s callous in the extreme,” Sweatt said. “This undermines and disenfranchises their bereavement.”

An Intentional Life

Two weeks after LT died, Simone Andrews returned to her job, working from home as a therapist. Some of the clients she now sees remotely have been touched by the coronavirus, too.

“It’s been almost a blessing to have this job when I’m going through this loss. It gives me something within my control,” she said.

Andrews finds herself distracted, though, by her unexpected status as a widow and by the cascade of existential questions it raises.

“Why am I here and he’s not? Why wasn’t it both of us? It’s such a crap shoot, such a game of chance,” she said. “But I’m here and I want to live in the most intentional way possible. I am not going to waste this life.”

Andrews has resumed running, found a therapist and is conscientious about both her physical and mental health, motivated to “get my body in its best shape” to increase her odds of being present for her children.

“In my doctoral training, they stressed that a good clinician is constantly evolving. This has deepened my understanding of loss. What I’m learning will inform my work and my life moving forward,” she said. “And I will move forward.”

Complete Article HERE!

Boom Time for Death Planning

The coronavirus pandemic has drawn new business to start-ups that provide end-of-life services, from estate planning to a final tweet.

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One day in April, as the coronavirus ravaged New York City, 24-year-old Isabelle Rodriguez composed a tweet she would send from the grave.

She wasn’t dying. She wasn’t even sick. In fact, her risk of contracting Covid-19 had been reduced after she was furloughed from her job at a Manhattan bookseller and retreated to her rural hometown, Callahan, Fla. But when she came across the poem “Lady Lazarus,” by Sylvia Plath, Ms. Rodriguez knew she had found the perfect words to mark her digital legacy:

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Ms. Rodriguez logged on to Cake, a free service that catalogs users’ end-of-life wishes, instructions and documents, and specified that she wanted the verse sent from her Twitter account after her death. “Any of my friends know I’m obsessed with Sylvia Plath,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “That was the best way to put my personality out there one last time.”

Through Cake, Ms. Rodriguez also filled out a “trusted decision maker” form, appointing her younger sister to call the shots should she end up incapacitated. She was still debating other important details: Did she want to be buried or cremated? If the latter, would her ashes be scattered, pressurized into a diamond, composted into tree food? Also, how much would it annoy the guests at her funeral if she requested that her favorite album, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” be played on loop?

Ms. Rodriguez conceded that it might seem a little weird to be considering all of this in her mid-20s. On the other hand, young people around the world were getting incredibly sick, incredibly fast.

End-of-life decisions can be overwhelming, but making those choices when she was healthy gave her more control. Knowing that she’d ease the burden on her family if the worst happened also gave her peace of mind. “It would be easier for people around me to know what I want,” she said.

Before the pandemic, end-of-life start-ups — companies that help clients plan funerals, dispose of remains and process grief — had experienced steady to moderate growth. Their founders were mostly women who hoped a mix of technology, customization and fresh thinking could take on the fusty and predominantly male funeral and estate-planning industries.

Still, selling death to people in their 20s and 30s wasn’t easy. Cake’s team sometimes received emails from young adults, wondering if the site wasn’t a tad morbid. Since Covid-19, this has changed. Millennials are newly anxious about their mortality, increasingly comfortable talking about it and more likely to be grieving or know someone who is.

“The stigma and taboos around talking about death have been way reduced,” Cake’s co-founder Suelin Chen, 38, said. This has driven conversation across social media, spurred interest in deathfluencers (they will discuss how funeral homes are responding to the coronavirus but also whether your pet will eat your eyeballs) and increased traffic to end-of-life platforms. From February to June, people signed up with Cake at five times the normal rate.

Another new company, Lantern, which calls itself “the single source of guidance for navigating life before and after a death,” saw a 123 percent increase in users, most of them under 45.

Lantern’s tone is soothing and earnest, but not everyone takes that tack. Cake skews playful. It features a tombstone generator and suggestions like “Viking funeral” and “shoot my ashes into outer space.” New Narrative, an event-planning company for funerals and memorials, introduces itself with a wink: “We’re not your grandma’s funeral (… unless it’s your grandma’s funeral).”

It’s a tricky opportunity for these start-ups to navigate. “When you have a brand that’s directly interfacing with people in the throes of loss and grief, you have to walk a fine line,” said Liz Eddy, 30, Lantern’s co-founder and chief executive.

All these founders stress they’re not trying to capitalize on the coronavirus. But this hasn’t stopped anyone from pivoting hard toward Covid-19. The companies have created new forums and content on how to plan for death, honor the newly dead and grieve virtually. They have initiatives with major health care providers to disseminate their products more widely and formed new partnerships with influencers. The start-ups have even begun to coordinate with one another, sharing tips in a cross-company Slack channel called “Death & Co.”

They are all hoping the pandemic will be the event that turns end-of-life planning — from designing a funeral to writing a will and final tweet — into a common part of adulthood.

In 2012, a friend invited Ms. Chen and her fiancé to dinner and suggested they play an unusual party game: Write and share their own obituaries. “It’ll be fun!” the friend said. “They do it at Stanford Business School.”

At first, Ms. Chen was delighted by the exercise: Both she and her fiancé wrote, in the imagined past tense, about a music album they hoped to one day record. But when Ms. Chen started reading what she had written about her career, she was seized with panic and started bawling at the table.

“I just lost it,” she recalled. “It was confusing to me, because I loved my job. I was happy in the most obvious ways, but there was part of me …” She wasn’t sure how to describe the upswell of emotion.

Around this time, Ms. Chen was advising health care companies in commercial strategy. While interviewing last-line cancer physicians, she would constantly run a calculation in the back of her head: “If this treatment extends life by three months, how much money is it worth?” And yet she’d wonder: But at what quality of life? The system of prolonging life at all costs seemed out of whack.

Ms. Chen had also recently lost her grandfather, who died at 95 after a long period of suffering. He lived in Taiwan, where death in very old age is treated as a celebration, Ms. Chen said. And yet there had been a lot of family conflict around the experience.

Amid the pain and relief of her grandfather’s being at rest and the joyful commemoration of his life, Ms. Chen understood that she needed a new path. She didn’t yet know what it would be, but a few years later she met Mark Zhang, a palliative care physician and technologist, at an M.I.T. health care “hackathon.” The pair won first place at the event and went on to found Cake. The platform now includes resources and templates to help users write their obituaries along with guidance for how to get them published.

The venture-backed company makes money through partnerships and will eventually add fee-based services. The pandemic has been especially busy. Cake’s services, for example, soon will be integrated into the website of the British bank RBS/NatWest.

In April, Ms. Chen learned that Partners HealthCare, a large health care system in Massachusetts, was recommending Cake to all its members. Ariadne Labs, run out of the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, also came calling. They wanted help distributing their end-of-life conversation guide beyond a relatively small audience of doctors and patients. They also wanted real-time feedback from a young and healthy audience like Cake’s.

Cake also teamed up with Providence Health System, a network of 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics in seven states, to share Cake’s “trusted decision maker” form, the document specifying an individual’s medical preferences if the person becomes incapacitated. Through Cake, individuals could submit the form to their doctor without needing a notary and two nonfamily witnesses, which are often required but difficult to get under quarantine.

The next step is offering premium services, tailored to different types of users. “Are you here because you just lost someone, or because you just had a kid, or have an aging parent, or because a celebrity just died and you had an existential crisis?” Ms. Chen said. “We’re trying to automate based on what we know about the person.”

In April, Ms. Chen learned that her head of product’s grandfather had died from Covid-19. She had heard of people texting and messaging their condolences, but even email seemed inappropriate, overly impersonal. Unsure of what to do, she turned to Cake. Following an article from the site, Ms. Chen shipped her colleague soup, rolls and cookies with a note: If and when you’re ready, I’d love to hear more about your grandfather.

“In the modern age, the norms around supporting people who are grieving are not super clear,” Ms. Chen said. “It used to be that you belonged to a religious community or lived in a small town, but now we’re far away from where we grew up. We’re more secular.”

During the pandemic, condolence-related traffic on Cake doubled. To address the need, the company started a forum where users can crowdsource their questions and concerns.

Lantern provides its own grief and condolence content, including a “pandemic-proof” guide to “inclusively addressing grief at work.” In recent months, more people are grieving on the job, where the emotional distress for people of color over high Black and Latino rates of coronavirus infection is compounded by anguish over police brutality.

“Especially during Covid, it’s how can you incorporate the grieving process into 9-to-5 and day-to-day work?” said Alica Forneret, 31, who runs grief workshops and just started a namesake consulting agency to help companies address this question. “Employers, managers and H.R. need to understand there’s an extra burden on people of color and especially Black people when they sit down at their computer in the morning and are expected to engage and perform.”

For Ms. Forneret and other millennial founders, preparing for death and navigating grief during the pandemic has become a form of self-care. That has created new opportunities and partnerships. When Ms. Eddy pitched funders, she situated Lantern’s end-of-life services as an untapped market in the $4.5 trillion global wellness industry.

“We’ve been called a niche market,” she said. “But death and dying is possibly the least niche market out there.”

Corporations are rethinking the wellness programs they’re offering employees, Ms. Eddy said. They’re no longer just gym memberships and kombucha on tap. Studies have found that being able to talk about your mortality makes you a happier person and improves your relationships. The thinking, for employers perhaps, is that access to end-of-life services can make people happier (and more productive) at work.

This market potential is also why Near, a start-up that connects users with grief and end-of-life support services, like death doulas and art, sound, music and massage therapists, recently decided to seek investment. The company also moved its debut from September to June and is expanding its offerings to even more unconventional end-care providers like end-of-life photographers.

“Before Covid, we were looking at being a smaller platform. We’d be able to keep up with need through bootstrapping,” a Near co-founder, Christy Knutson, 36, said. “But the demand is far greater.”

This spring, a beauty writer and skin-care company chief executive, Charlotte Palermino, approached Lantern about co-hosting an Instagram Live. She had been watching her friends “panic post” death rates and was feeling increasingly anxious.

“I know people who got really sick, were suddenly on ventilators in their 30s,” Ms. Palermino, 33, said. She received such an overwhelming response from her followers that in June, she filmed a similar video for her Generation Z audience on TikTok.

In May, a large senior care company asked Ms. Eddy about a partnership. Ms. Eddy, who declined to identify the company, was intrigued but skeptical. In search of guidance, she did something that would normally be unexpected. She reached out to Ms. Chen at Cake, Lantern’s closest competitor.

Ms. Chen wasn’t surprised to hear from Ms. Eddy. In fact, she said, this kind of collaboration is frequent among end-of-life chief executives. “There’s a lot of texting and calling all the time: who are the good investors, the partners, give me the lowdown on these people,” she said.

The most common means of communication among end-of-life founders — and where Ms. Eddy went to reach Ms. Chen — is the cheekily titled Death & Co. channel on Slack. It was born in December during End Well, a conference about improving the culture, products and policy around end of life.

After one of the sessions, a handful of female founders gathered for an impromptu happy hour. They bonded over the rarity of having so many women running companies in the same industry, all them, in one way or another, trying to challenge the corporate, predominantly male funeral industry.

They discussed the difficulties of securing funding as womenand the challenges of trying to make a distinctly unsexy product accessible and affordable. Ms. Chen said a male founder had told her: “No one thinks about death. I don’t. I’m immortal.” Ms. Eddy said another had told her that he thought she’d be more successful if she created the “Tesla” of end-of-life services.

The women decided to start a WhatsApp group, which one of them named “Death Chicks.” A couple of months later, with more people wanting to join, including a handful of men, Ms. Eddy moved everything to Slack and renamed it Death & Co. For some months, the group was largely dormant. That changed in March.

“At the beginning of coronavirus, we came together and said this can all be reimagined with alternative, more modern solutions,” said Christina Andreola, 31, the founder of New Narrative, who joined the Slack channel in March. “My colleagues were asking: How can we team up to be competitive?”

The channel has around 70 members. They have worked together on a white paper about the funeral industry and Covid-19, raised funds for personal protective equipment for funeral directors and created short video guides for health care workers to talk about end-of-life options with their patients. Eterneva, a company that turns ashes into diamond jewelry, used the group to start a series of Instagram Lives about collective grief. LifeWeb360, which creates multimedia memorial scrapbooks, teamed up with New Narrative to create resource guides for planning virtual memorials.

The women have also freely shared connections and leads. Ms. Knutson of Near joined Death & Co. in March. She used the group to meet end-of-life photographers, a small and elusive set, and expand her provider list of death doulas, caregivers who help dying individuals navigate the end-of-life process.

“Overnight I walked into a virtual room with loads of smart, driven leaders who are building things that it would have taken me months if not years to hear about otherwise,” she said.

Not everyone is finding what he or she needs at Death & Co. Ms. Forneret, one of the few Black members, left after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. She said that the channel had done a lot of good for the industry and that she worked closely with Ms. Eddy and other members. But at this moment, she wants to align herself with other founders of color, she said.

In mid-June, Ms. Forneret participated in a Zoom panel featuring five Black entrepreneurs. The topic: how to have a “good death” in a racist society. The event was organized by Alua Arthur, 42, who runs a death doula training company, Going With Grace.

Ms. Arthur serves as an adviser to Cake and Near and has become a de facto spokeswoman for Black-owned death care businesses, especially in the last couple of months. She has become exhausted in this role and said end-of-life start-ups should be working harder to reach communities of color, which are largely underserved in the industry.

Even so, all of these founders share a mission: to democratize end-of-life planning and care. Ms. Arthur said the searchable database and broad collection of providers on Near were a step in the right direction.

Trust and Will, a company that bills itself as Turbo Tax for estate planning, charges a small fraction of what most lawyers do. Eterneva, the company that turns your loved one’s body into bling, just rolled out financing. Cake’s and Lantern’s basic preplanning services are free. Given that the average cost of a funeral in 2019 was $7,640, this kind of foresight could reduce the cost of dying. Because maybe you don’t want to languish on a ventilator or need a fancy coffin.

At the very least, when we can personalize our deaths the way we do our weddings and our wardrobes, we can feel a little more control over life’s greatest uncertainty. It’s something of a silver lining to this very scary moment.

“We’re never going back to the way it was,” Ms. Chen said. “That’s a positive thing — to accept the reality that we’re not immortal.”

Jennifer Miller is the author most recently of the novel “Mr. Nice Guy.” Her next book follows a year in the lives of first-generation college students.

Complete Article HERE!

Virtual Grieving

– When Pandemic Death Stares Us In The Face

Virtual grieving of a colleague who dies from coronavirus can be difficult for everyone in the … [+] workplace
by Bryan Robinson

“COVID-19 robbed us of our goodbyes,” says Dr. Joy Miller of Peoria, Illinois, “My friend was suddenly gone without warning. How do I say goodbye? I can’t travel. We aren’t allowed to gather, and I will never see him again. I don’t know what to do. I feel lost and empty, as if my heart is being ripped from my body.”

Grief is a lonely and isolating experience in and of itself. And human contact is essential for healthy and full psychological closure. With added self-distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, grief can be compounded and prolonged. In the midst of heartbreak, Miller finds the loneliness of grieving compounded by the double whammy of self-distancing. Unable to embrace or be embraced by those who share her loss, she must draw upon her own creativity and resources for comfort.

Miller—founder and CEO of Resliency 2020 and Joy Miller & Associates—isn’t alone. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleagues and friends are dying in isolation. And coworkers and families are mourning from afar. Not only are they robbed of their colleagues, they are robbed of their ability to gather and mourn their losses with others, which is leaving an empty, unsatisfying feeling from a lack of full closure. Studies show that during bereavement, having satisfactory grief scaffolding and a support person navigating post-death formalities, plus satisfactory information about the death decreases risks of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and prolonged grief disorder (PGD).

Without appropriate bereavement scaffolding in place, many grievers are at risk of PGD and complicated grief (CG)—a syndrome characterized by preoccupying and disabling symptoms that can persist for decades. Affecting between 10 to 20% of mourners, CG can lead to the difficulty of accepting the death of a loved one, yearning or avoidance, sadness, somatic distress, and social withdrawal.

“In my faith of Judaism, everything is mandated to occur in a specific way,” says Miller. “At a specific time, with a specific prayer. I always knew what to do. Right now, I would normally be at the visitation, making food for the family, standing at the graveside and helping put dirt on the grave until each particle covered my friend completely. I would say Kaddish, and I would mourn, and in eleven months we would return to once again celebrate his life, and place the stone on his grave. But now I can do none of that.”

The pandemic has mandated that mourners of all faiths cannot have their traditions that have helped them heal for generations. Like so many other people in this country and around the world losing their loved ones to COVID-19, mourners must find new ways to grieve and process. Some dying hospital patients are saying their goodbyes to loved ones by FaceTime or other virtual devices. This modality isn’t ideal, but it’s the only option for now to contain the community spread.

“I am faced with death without normality,” says Miller. “This is the new normal for right now. Each of us must find a new way to enter this path, but I am choosing to discover new rituals that help me face my sadness. Ironically, I teach a graduate-level course on grief and loss. It seems to open my heart even deeper as I contemplate the stages of death and dying, joy and pain and healing and peace with my students.”

Although there are no adequate substitutes for human connection during grief, Dr. Miller came up with nine tips to help you grieve your departed colleagues from afar during the new normal:

  1. Go through photos. Miller is a photographer, so sorting through old captured pictures has helped her reminisce about past celebrations, joyful moments, funny stories and the love she shared with her close friend. But you don’t have to be a photographer to create a montage of photographs to help you heal, and you will see how the act of reminiscing about your colleague can bring peace and healing.
  2. Write down your feelings. Writing helps us discover some peace, sort our feelings, and document what we’re not allowed to share at the mortuary, the visitation or the cemetery. It brings closure and helps us find clarity. Journaling your thoughts and feelings down on paper can be a huge unburdening. You might also consider writing a goodbye letter to your departed coworker, saying what you wish you could have said directly and how much he or she changed your life for the better.
  3. Allow yourself to cry. Miller remembers tells her grieving clients that each tear brings you closer to healing. The process is cleansing and tears help us move toward a new reality. Acceptance means realizing that these tears may be present for a long time.
  4. Meditate. Meditation, prayer or contemplation can help you face and release your feelings of loss and bring comfort. If you need guidance in meditating, you can Google “apps for the bereaved” and find many support resources online.
  5. Reach out to others. Social distancing platforms—such as live streaming of funerals—are temporary solutions until mourners can embrace the comfort of each other’s arms. Meanwhile, take advantage of social devices such as FaceTime, Zoom or Skype to share stories with others who are also mourning the departed. Talk about the times that were sacred to you. Discuss how your colleague helped you change your life and the impact he or she had on your growth.
  6. Set up a memorial page. A memorial page on Facebook or other social media allows you to connect with employees who share your loss. Friends and family can post their own tributes and condolences. And reading through the online messages can provide comfort.
  7. Focus on the positives. It is called “anamnesis”—a way to remember the positives in this painful loss. Each person is in our life for a reason, a purpose, and it all has meaning. Ask yourself what this person taught you and what you want to keep from your life together.
  8. Consult a grief counselor. If the grief process is severely interrupted to the point that you could be having prolonged or complicated grief, contact a grief specialist. During the pandemic, therapists are conducting virtual sessions by social media, so it’s possible to get immediate support.
  9. Let there never be the final death. Author David Eagleman said, “There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” Consider making a vow that there will never be that final death, and speak of your departed colleague often in your head and in your heart.

On September 10, 2020 Dr. Joy Miller co-hosts Resiliency 2020, an international live streaming webinar to support the mental health needs of front line pandemic workers.

Complete Article HERE!