Category: Death Education

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How do horses perceive death?

A study from Portugal analyzing the reactions of feral horses to the loss of herdmates has lessons about the emotions and intelligence of all horses.

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A sad event provided researchers in Portugal with a rare opportunity to observe how feral horses react to the death of a herd mate and to collect data that may advance understanding of emotions and intelligence in all horses.

Scientists from the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Kyoto University in Japan were doing routine fieldwork, observing a feral herd, when they noticed a 2-month-old foal whose hind legs had been severely injured in a presumed wolf attack.

“We started to work with this horse population in the north of Portugal in 2016,” says Renata Mendonça, PhD. “Every year in the breeding season, from April to July we conduct fieldwork. We are almost every day in the field following and observing horses’ behavior from morning to late afternoon. Additionally, this population is subjected to predation pressure from the Iberian wolf, and for the past two years, foal mortality has reached almost 100 percent and we believe it is mainly due to wolf predation. These two factors combined increased our chance to observe this event.”

The researchers watched the foal for nearly six hours, making notes on his behavior as well as that of his dam and other members of the herd in his vicinity. They noted the activity of the nearby horses—such as feeding moving, resting or social interactions—every five minutes and documented the approximate distance between all the observable horses and the injured foal every two minutes.

For the first several hours, the herd was walking, but the foal moved only when prompted by his dam. Eventually, the foal went down and was unable to stand. His dam stayed close by grazing and occasionally nuzzling the foal. About 15 minutes later, the herd began to move again, leaving the dam and foal behind. The stallion returned to the dam soon after and attempted to herd her away from the foal. After the seventh attempt, he was successful and the dam left, whinnying to the foal 10 total times during the separation. The foal responded only once.

A few minutes later, a second group of horses arrived in the area and remained within 20 yards of the foal for about 40 minutes. All the group members initially showed interest in the foal, but most eventually started feeding nearby. Two adult females, however, remained interested and licked and sniffed the foal for several minutes. The foal’s dam watched this interaction from a distance and whinnied 44 times, but the stallion prevented her from approaching. The foal responded only once, after the other adult mares had left.

The foal’s dam briefly returned to his side later in the day and clashed with bachelor stallions who showed an interest in her, but not the foal. Eventually, the dam moved away from the foal to join the herd, which was 200 meters away. The foal stood three minutes after she left but fell twice and made no further attempts to follow. The researchers estimate he died about an hour later.

Although conceding that it was difficult to watch these events unfold, Mendonça says researchers must try to avoid interfering with animals in the wild. “It is always hard for us to see our subjects of research get injured or die,” she says, “and our first instinct is to call for help or try to intervene. However, when we are dealing with natural causes, as in this case, we try as much as possible not to intervene. We have to think about the complex environmental and trophic interactions that are occurring and can benefit from such a loss. A carcass is a food resource for other animals, scavengers, which depend on them to survive and to feed their offspring (which were born in the same season), such as wolves, foxes, crows and wild boars.”

Mendonça says that the dam leaving her foal may seem heartbreaking, but it makes sense in evolutionary context. “Ensuring her own survival seems to be a priority for the mothers in the animal kingdom, in general, even if the mother-infant bond is the strongest bond established among individuals. While a mother can produce offspring every year (in the case of horses), developing, growing and reaching sexual maturity requires a lot of time and has a lot of costs, so, for the benefit of the species, it is more advantageous, and less costly, if mothers prioritized their survival over their offspring’s,” she says, adding, “The constant harassment by the two bachelor males could have hastened the abandonment of the foal. The situation might have been different if she had been alone with her foal.”

More difficult to understand, says Mendonça, was the attention the two unfamiliar adult mares gave the dying foal. “I was surprised by the reaction of the unrelated females toward the injured foal,” she says. “Usually adult mares and stallions behave agonistically toward foals from other groups. These agonistic interactions (e.g., chasing and bite threats) are observed when foals get lost from their band and approach other groups while seeking their own or when foals are lying down far away from their group and other groups approach. Showing affiliative behaviors, instead of agonistic as expected considering previous scenarios, could mean that the horses somehow perceived that the foal’s condition was unusual.”

As for the broader question of how horses perceive death, much more remains to be learned, but in the meantime it’s advisable to take equine emotions and reactions into account when managing domesticated horses.

“Some studies suggest that [after the death of a herdmate], horses show signs of anxiety, cessation of feeding and social withdrawal,” Mendonça says. “Therefore, it is important to consider horses’ needs when they are facing a situation of loss before asking them to complete or perform their daily tasks.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Yellowknife teacher’s final lesson

— How to live a good death

Maureen Tonge at a Kundalini Yoga Retreat in October 2019 on the Greek island of Karpathos.

Maureen Tonge’s death from cancer at age 52 offers friends and family a window on how to live and die well

By Joanne Stassen

Maureen Tonge’s living room looks out over the houseboats on Yellowknife Bay. She’s sitting in a comfy chair by the window, wrapped in a cozy blanket.

“I’m in the end stages of my life,” she says matter-of-factly. “Yep. I’m dying.”

It’s Sept. 16. Three weeks from now, Maureen will die at home, with her husband Robert Charpentier, her sisters and her parents, by her side.

The way she wanted it.

But on this day, with the warm autumn sun lighting up her face, she wants to talk about dying, while she still has the strength and memory.

Tonge has taught at École Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife since 1992.

In the last decade she’s shared her Kundalini Yoga practice with people in the North and around the world.

Her family and friends say she’s taught them how to live a good life, and now, to die a good death.

‘I would prove them differently’

Tonge was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme in February 2019.

Doctors gave her four months and said she wasn’t likely to see the end of 2019.

Those giving the prognosis had no idea who I was … so I would prove them differently.
– Maureen Tonge

But Tonge wasn’t giving up that easily.

“I indicated to everyone who would listen that I was not my diagnosis nor my prognosis,” she told CBC North Trail’s End host Lawrence Nayally at the end of 2019.

Tonge went through chemotherapy, but also followed her own less conventional path, working with a naturopath, and with other healers. At diagnosis, the tumour was bigger than a golf ball, but a bit smaller than an egg. Ten months later it was more like a quarter of a marshmallow.

“Those giving the prognosis had no idea who I was,” she said.  “So I would prove them differently.”

Welcoming death

By June this year Tonge begins to feel pressure between her eyes, jitters and dizziness. A scan shows the tumour has grown aggressively.

By mid-September trips to the bathroom require a supportive arm. She has trouble keeping track of conversations.

“I’m pretty low functioning now,” she says. “It has been a bit of a struggle to wrap my head around the fact that has changed so dramatically.”

But the transition from fighting death, to accepting it, has become easier.

“It’s not been a struggle to wrap my head around the fact that I am dying. Dying is an inevitable part of living. I’m welcoming it.”

Teaching about life, and death

Maureen’s sister-in-law, Kathleen Charpentier has been helping with Maureen’s care and says hearing that gives her a lot of comfort.

“We live in a culture that is death-phobic and grief illiterate,” she says. “We often make the demand of dying people to live, and I think that’s a very hard demand.”

Eleven days before her death, Maureen’s condo is quiet, but there is still laughter, and a fridge full of food from friends. Hundreds of people have been posting on Maureen’s Facebook, sending messages of love and appreciation.

Maureen’s twin, Kirsten Tonge, has come from British Columbia, and soon her parents and two other sisters will be there, thanks to a special exemption from the territory’s chief public health officer.

Kirsten describes their relationship as “halves of the same whole” and remembers cuddling up with Maureen on the gurney, when they got the news that the tumours were growing again.

Their bond goes back to the womb, but Kirsten says she’s not sure she will ever understand the grace and gratitude her twin shows in the face of death.

“Earlier this month she said to me ‘I’m healing you know … it’s not the end.'”

Kirsten believes Maureen was talking about spiritual and emotional healing of trauma from her childhood.

“You know she had some deep wounds to her spirit, and emotionally. And she’s been able to truly dig deep and use the resources she’s built, and heal herself with the love and support of so many people.”

Former student Cailey Mercredi is there to give Maureen a massage.

“She’s taught me papier mâché mask-making and then Kundalini yoga,” Mercredi said. “To say she’s taught me about love would be an understatement.”

She added that being part of Tonge’s journey toward death will stay with her forever.

“Vulnerability and the trust there, is what brings us closer as human beings. This is how we make connections and how we build community.”

It’s just hard. Knowing I’m saying good-bye, and a part of me feeling entirely ready. And another part of me, not.
– Maureen Tonge

Tonge says she can’t say how she got to a place of peace about her death, but that it has been a process, something she’s been building toward through her life.Having people around her has been essential.

“I’m so grateful that I have family here but also friends that are like family. Connections have always been really important to me.”

For her sister-in-law Kathleen, sharing in Tonge’s last days is a gift.

“I think when you share your death, you are teaching others,” Charpentier says. “I think it’s important. Because we’re all going to be there someday.”

‘There is zero fear’

Tonge says she doesn’t know what happens after death, but she’s not afraid.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “There is zero fear. I know that we are composed of energy. And I don’t believe energy can be created or destroyed.”

She does feel sadness and it wells to the surface when she thinks about the ones she’s leaving behind.

“It’s just hard,” she says, between tears. “Knowing I’m saying good-bye, and a part of me feeling entirely ready. And another part of me, not.”

Two things bring Tonge comfort: Having no regrets, and the hope she has for her family and friends. It’s an echo of what her students of art and yoga have always heard from her: “I just hope that they are able to tap into their richest opportunities, and take full advantage of that.”

Kirsten Tonge says losing her twin will be the “the most difficult loss.”

“She has taught me that this time is only one of many … it’s not the final chapter,” she said.

“She may be gone in the physical sense … but I know without a doubt that her love will always be with me, and my love will always be with her.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Deathwives, Death Cafes And Death Doulas.

Learning To Live By Talking About Death.

By Robin Seaton Jefferson

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Even Peter Pan, the mischievous little boy who refuses to grow up but rather spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the island of Neverland, attempted to see death in a positive light.

But things were different in 1902 when Peter Pan first appeared in the book “The Little White Bird.” We saw death differently then and treated it more as a part of life. Is it because we believe we’re more likely to avoid it for longer in the 21st century that we seem to shy away from talking about it? Or is it because we have removed ourselves so far from the reality of physically dealing with the dead.

Whatever the reason, a reluctance to face or even talk about dying is largely an American phenomenon. And though there are many and varied ways for families and friends to honor their dead, we don’t seem to want to talk about it until it’s too late. And then we pay others to handle most of it.

But people like Lauren Carroll are trying to change all of that. Carroll and her partner, Erin Merelli, formed Deathwives in hopes of forging a cultural shift which encourages people to think and talk more freely about death. They describe Deathwives as “a collective of professionals who care about the practice of good death.” And they want to educate others about their end of life options which they say should include in-home funerals and death doulas.

“You have the right to a good death,” Carroll said. “We seek to widen the narrative around death and dying and support our community as we remember how to care for one another till the very end.”

A former funeral director and current hospice volunteer, Carroll serves on the board of directors for the National Home Funeral Alliance (NHFA). She said she wants to create connections between funeral homes, home funeral educators, death doulas and families. Merelli is a death doula, ceremonialist, funeral officiant and grief counselor. She is often called to sit with people as they die and to “create ritual and sacred space around the dying process.”

Most people don’t know that home funerals are an option available to them, Carroll said. “There have never been laws against this. You have the freedom to die at home and to take care of your loved ones at home. The family legally owns the body even after death in a hospital. The only law is that you have 24 hours after death to refrigerate or cremate the remains.”

According to the NHFA, “keeping or bringing a loved one home after death is legal in every state for bathing, dressing, private viewing and ceremony as the family chooses. Every state recognizes the next-of-kin’s custody and control of the body that allows the opportunity to hold a home vigil. Religious observations, family gatherings, memorials and private events are not under the jurisdiction of the state or professionals in the funeral industry, who have no medico-legal authority unless it is transferred to them when they are paid for service.” The National Home Funeral Alliance offers a list of legal requirements on the books in each state—either statutes that are applicable to all or regulations that fall under the state mortuary board’s set of procedures applicable for licensed funeral directors only.

“Keep this in mind: there are no funeral police,” the alliance states. “And there are exceptions to every rule, many of which happen when someone dies in the middle of an ice storm or a weekend or a holiday or a multitude of other unpredictable circumstances. Even under perfect conditions or professional care, many of these requirements are not logistically or practically enforceable.”

When America was a new nation, families cared for their dead in their own homes. The preparation, dressing and readying for a funeral was done there, and the caskets were typically built by the family themselves. As parlors gained popularity, families held their funerals in them. Traditionally rooms filled with a family’s finest possessions, parlors were ideal locations for honoring the dead. The parlors of grander homes even had a “death door” for the removal of the deceased family member, as it was considered improper to remove a body through a door the living entered.

The Civil War brought about the practice of embalming, as so many men were dying far from home, and the practice allowed the time needed to bring the bodies home to their families. With embalming came the appearance of funeral homes, funeral directors, morticians and undertakers all over the United States. The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) as well as the first school of mortuary science—the Cincinnati School of Embalming, now known as the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science—were both formed in 1882. It was really the beginning of the same funeral process we use today, though advances in the profession have improved the ways that morticians care for the body as well as the ways that families can remember their dead.

And new trends on how to honor the dead and even just how we talk about death are being presented all the time. Environmentally-friendly funerals are being offered by so-called “green” funeral homes. Advocates of these services say that it’s less expensive, uses less natural resources and eliminates the use of hazardous chemicals such as formaldehyde.

And apparently we’re using a lot. According to an article by Tech Insider, more than 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde are put into the ground along with dead bodies every year in the US. In addition, conventional burials in the US every year use 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete, Tech insider reported. “The amount of casket wood alone is equivalent to about 4 million acres of forest and could build about 4.5 million homes.”

According to the NFDA, a green funeral may include no embalming or embalming with formaldehyde-free products; the use of sustainable biodegradable clothing, shroud or casket; the use of recycled paper products; serving organic food; locally-grown organic flowers; funeral guest carpooling; and natural or green burial.

“In a purist natural or green burial, the body is buried, without embalming, in a natural setting,” the NFDA states. Any shroud or casket that is used must be biodegradable, nontoxic and of sustainable material. Traditional standing headstones are not permitted. Instead, flat rocks, plants or trees may serve as grave markers. Some cemeteries use GPS to mark the locations of gravesites. A natural or green burial may also simply mean burial without embalming, in a biodegradable casket without a vault, when permitted by a cemetery.”

Jon Hallford, also a member of the Deathwives Collective, owns Return to Nature Burial and Cremation in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hallford told 9NEWS.com in Denver, Colorado last month that he plans to begin offering aquamation as an alternative to cremation. “Aquamation uses an alkaline hydrolysis system that consists of a metal chamber that uses water and lye for the cremation process, which is a cleaner process than the traditional cremation,” 9NEWS reported. “Once he has the system in place, he’ll be the only funeral home in Colorado to offer the service.”

The environment isn’t the only reason we’re talking more about death. Death doulas are becoming more mainstream. Just as a doula or birth companion provides guidance and support to a pregnant woman before, during or after the first days of the life of her baby, the death or end of life doula accompanies the dying person and their loved ones through the final months, weeks and days of their life. The doula provides support, resources, education and friendship for this period of life, whether it lasts a year or a day.

Then there are now so-called “Death Cafes,” where people gather to share cake and coffee, tea or hot chocolate and talk about death. A “Death Café is a space where you talk about death to become more engaged with life. Such is the paradox of a Death Café,” writes Abby Buckley about a meeting at the Alchemy Café in Gawler, South Australia. “We came from all walks of life, aged 6 months to 64 years old, from all over South Australia but met as equals because we all have one thing in common. We know we are going to die. We don’t have many spaces in our lives or our culture that are conducive to talking about death and dying. But people are hungry to talk about their experiences, to listen to others and to reflect on death.”

Death Cafés typically offer visitors an opportunity to discuss death without judgment, without prescribed ideology, and without any sales pitches. They are not grief counseling or bereavement sessions. There are no agendas, objectives or themes, rather they are often philosophical—and at times, humorous—discussions about death.

Death Café is both the name of the organization that created the format of the death-discussion groups and the term for the meetings themselves. To date, some 9,045 Death Cafes have taken place in 65 countries—4669 of them in the United States—since September 2011.

Death Café calls Death Café a “social franchise,” meaning that people who sign up to the organization’s guide and principles can use the name Death Café, post events to the website deathcafe.com and talk to the press as an affiliate of Death Café.

The Death Café model was developed by the late Jon Underwood and his mother, Sue Barsky Reid, based on the ideas of Swiss sociologist and ethnologist, Bernard Crettaz.

It’s not surprising the concept of Death Cafes has taken off. There’s been a tendency in the last few years to bring death out from among the list of forbidden topics.

“We have become such an isolated nation,” Carroll said. “Death is normal, and for some reason we’ve made it seem like the most abnormal, scary thing. We don’t even talk about it. Like Jon Underwood said, ‘Just like talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about death won’t make you dead.’”

Carroll said society has removed the family from taking an active part in the death process “other than picking out the casket and flowers. In the past we had to prepare and think about it. It helps the healing process to be more hands-on, and it has been proven across the board that it helps to be active in grief.”

With Deathwives, Carroll hopes to teach others to have a better “relationship” with death, to take away the fear. “I have a healthy relationship with death. Knowing I’ll die, and talking about it, has made my life fuller. That’s how everyone single person should live.”

Carroll compared the moment of death to the moment of being born. “We don’t know what happens after death, just as a baby comes into the world having no idea what’s about to happen. We’ve all done it before. We were all born. We opened our eyes to the unknown. I have a feeling what’s next is going to be pretty amazing. If you think about it, no person who has had a near-death experience has ever come back and said that it was awful.”

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How to Mourn 2020

By Claire B. Willis

When 2020 began, our routines felt familiar, well within what we thought of as “normal.” We felt a relative sense of security. Then the pandemic struck like a storm out of the Bible, a plague beyond what we could have imagined. The world turned on a dime, and suddenly governments worldwide were mandating lockdowns, and we were all sheltering in place.

Where we live in Boston, April and May brought a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths. An email Marnie received during the shutdown began: “I am writing with a heavy heart to tell you. . . .” It was about a friend from her meditation group who had been hospitalized and then died a few days later from the virus. That week, there were almost no non-COVID-19 stories in the news, as the US pandemic death toll surpassed 100,000.

In a column in the New York Times, David Brooks asked readers how they were holding up. In the first few days, he received 5,000 replies. “I think I . . . expected a lot of cheerful coming-together stories,” Brooks told NPR. “But what I got shocked me. It was heart-rending and gutting frankly. People are crying a lot . . . It tends to be the young who feel hopeless, who feel their plans for the future have suffered this devastating setback, a loss of purpose, a loss of hope. Then the old, especially widows and widowers, talk about the precariousness of it, the loneliness of it. They just feel vulnerable, extremely vulnerable. While a lot of people are doing pretty well, there’s just this river of woe out there that really has shocked me and humbled me.”

Now we see that aspects and qualities of grief and grieving are universal, whether you have suffered an individual loss, or are experiencing losses on a global scale. Individually and collectively, we are grieving. We’re experiencing large, difficult feelings, even if we don’t recognize them as grief: sorrow, fear, anger, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, or disorientation. These troubling emotions, sensations, and mind states are the ways we humans respond to loss.

We feel the loss of family members, friends, and neighbors we loved, celebrities and public figures we followed. We’re missing the person we were and the way we lived not long ago. In the midst of this invisible, highly contagious virus, we grieve the loss of a kind of innocence. As we don our masks and gloves, we fear being infected or infecting others, and wonder what impact these changes will have on our worldview and our emotional well-being.

We grieve the loss of our work and economic stability, the familiarity of seeing our kids go off to school, and the ease of chatting with friends and even strangers. We grieve for shuttered offices, factories, and gathering places. We grieve for elders in nursing homes, family members who cannot visit one another. In the midst of national protests over police brutality and systemic racism, we bear witness to the deep grief of the African American community and other communities of color who suffer a disproportionate share of deaths and infection in the pandemic.

And yet, despite all the towering amounts of grief we are holding, many of us harbor our own “great palace lies” about grief. We may believe that grief should last for only a fixed and fairly brief period of time, or that the “grieving process” should proceed in a particular sequence. In 1969, psychiatrist and renowned researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote a popular book about the five stages of moving through dying and death. Decades later, Kübler-Ross and coauthor David Kessler wrote a book in which they worked with the same stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—to explain how people move through the grieving experience.

Even at the time of writing their book On Grief and Grieving, the authors acknowledged that Kübler-Ross’s ideas about stages were widely misunderstood. She did not mean to assert that there is only one prescribed timeline or a unique sequence of emotions and experiences (denial, anger, and so forth) that most people would predictably follow as they grieved.

And yet, Kübler-Ross’s ideas gained traction and have continued to penetrate popular culture with far-reaching and, for some people, painful consequences. In my bereavement groups, I often hear people worry aloud that they have missed an important stage or even plaintively ask if they are grieving “correctly.”

But the reality is that grieving has no predictable stages or particular timeline. Grief has as many different expressions as there are people who grieve. We all share some common and universal experiences, yet each of us moves through grief in our own way and in our own time. Russell Friedman, author and cofounder of the Grief Recovery Method, describes grief as “(a) normal and natural emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind.”

Your grief will last for as long as it lasts. Some of us experience grief as a series of waves. One day you feel distraught and immobilized. The next day you find the unexpected strength to do an errand. Perhaps you walk down the aisle of a supermarket, thinking that you are having a good day. And then, you see something that reminds you of what and whom you’ve lost. Your heart is broken open by something as ordinary as a can of tuna.

You could think of grief as a passage. You are torn from the life you knew before. You are not who you were, and you are not yet who you will become. You are, in a very real way, between identities. This experience—profoundly different for each of us—is confusing and agonizing, and it may also be a doorway for transformation.

Though this may be hard to believe or accept at first, grief can be seen as an invitation to grow and, eventually, to find meaning in suffering and in the experience of loss. A heart that is broken open offers a precious gift—a chance to become more authentic with yourself and with other people.

When you try to turn away from grief, when you hope to bypass or escape it, grief persists. Painful emotions—such as sadness, anger, or fear—linger and may even seem worse than ever. Until you stop running, begin to name or acknowledge and lean into all you’ve been through, and build a friendly relationship with grief, you’ll almost certainly continue to suffer.

Alan Wolfelt, author, educator, and grief counselor, puts it this way: “ . . . the pain that surrounds the closed heart of grief is the pain of living against yourself, the pain of denying how the loss changes you, the pain of feeling alone and isolated—unable to openly mourn, unable to love and be loved by those around you.” What would it mean to live instead with an open heart, denying none of your pain or grief, mourning in whatever ways feel appropriate and comforting, being loving and loved by those around you?

Holding grief close, as a companion, allows for opening to love, compassion, hope, and forgiveness. Author and grief therapist Francis Weller writes, “When we don’t push the pain of grief away, when we welcome and engage it, we live and love more fully.”

Grief Meditation: A Practice

Sit quietly for a few moments and settle into the meditation by noticing the subtle movement in your body as you breathe in and then out. Say slowly, to yourself, the following phrases:

May I welcome all my feelings as I grieve.

May I allow grief to soften and strengthen my heart.

May I hold my sorrow with tenderness and compassion.

A Few Contemplative Suggestions

Spend a few moments reflecting on any “rules” or expectations you carry about grief:

  • What do you think grief should look like?
  • How long do you think grief should last?
  • What do you view as a normal or abnormal way to grieve?

Consider where you acquired your beliefs about grief:

  • Which beliefs serve you?
  • Which beliefs could you release or let go?

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Death Doula Alua Arthur Gets It Done

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In 2012, Alua Arthur quit her legal career to become a death doula. The problem was that she had no idea such a job existed. “All I knew was that there had to be a better way to give support during one of the most lonely and isolating experiences a person can go through,” she says. Now 42, she is a leader in the field of death work and has guided thousands of people and their loved ones through the end-of-life process. She has also trained hundreds of other death doulas through her company, Going With Grace, and is on the board of directors at the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA)

This year, as COVID has forced so many Americans to cope with sudden loss and their own mortality, Arthur has been inundated with new clients and students as well as larger questions about how to handle constant grief. She lives in Los Angeles. Here’s how she gets it done.

On her morning routine:
I usually get up around 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. I’m a night owl, and it helps me in my work because people tend to die between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. I’m not sure why; there are a lot of different theories about it. But I’m most awake and alert at that time. The witching hours. I love to burn my incense at 4:00 a.m. and greet the crows.

Most mornings I meditate right after I get up. After I meditate, I fill up my gallon jug of water and exercise. I need to sweat and move. I love anything where the instructor is like, “Faster! Go! Only ten more seconds!” Since we can’t do group fitness in person right now, I have to re-create it in my house. It doesn’t work quite the same, because I will stop and eat snacks in the middle of a video. But I’m trying. Exercise and meditation are the things that keep me sane and grounded. They’re the baseline.

On being drawn to end-of-life care:
Being around death has made me more honest. I see that what we don’t say chokes us as we die. People always think they have more time, and when they realize that they don’t, they have regrets about things they haven’t done. I try to do what I feel like doing right now. And if that means eating white-cheddar Cheetos for breakfast, I will. Which is what I did this morning. I won’t always be able to taste delicious things, so let me do it now.

On managing her clients:
I don’t take on more than one client at a time who is imminently dying, because I want to be on call for them. Whatever they need, I will do. When a client with just a couple of weeks or months left first comes to me, we’ll go through the long list of items to consider in death and dying, and then we’ll create a plan. That usually happens over the phone. Then I go to visit, put my hands on them, really see what their physical condition is, and see what kind of support they have.

I continue to visit every week or so until their condition starts deteriorating fast, and then I’m there more often. I might be there when they die, and if I’m not, I’ll come sit with their family or caregivers afterward until the funeral home comes. I may also help wrap up practical affairs — possessions, accounts, life insurance, documents. It’s exhausting for a family to have to think about that when they’re also grieving, and I’m equipped to help. I’ll sit on hold with insurance companies, make funeral arrangements, all that stuff.

Beyond those who are imminently dying, I often have several clients who need end-of-life planning consultations. I can take on a couple of those at a time. That could be someone who has just gone on hospice and it doesn’t look that bad yet, or someone who just received a diagnosis and wants to prepare.

On winding down after an intense day:
I’ll drink wine and hang out with a lover. I’ll go out dancing until 5:00 a.m. Sometimes I just want to shut the brain off after a long day, and the best way to do that is by spending time with friends and people who tickle me. But it’s also good to spend a lot of time alone, which is the default these days. I like silence.

On becoming a death doula:
I spent the bulk of my career in legal services in L.A., working with victims of domestic violence. Then there were some big budget cuts, and I wound up getting stuck doing paperwork in the courthouse basement. I was already depressed and burnt out, but it blossomed into an actual clinical depression. So I took a leave of absence and traveled to Cuba. While I was there, I met a German woman who had uterine cancer and was doing a bucket list trip. We talked a lot about her illness, and her death. She hadn’t been able to discuss a lot of those things before, because nobody in her life was making space for her to talk about her death. Instead, they’d say, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re going to get better.” I came back from that trip thinking I wanted to be a therapist who worked with people who were dying.

I applied to schools to become a therapist, but in the meantime, my brother-in-law got very sick. So I packed up and spent two months in New York with him. That experience gave me a lot of clarity on all the things we could be doing better in the end-of-life processes. It was so isolating and I couldn’t understand why. Everybody dies — so why does it feel so lonely? After that, I did a death doula program in Los Angeles, called Sacred Crossings, and then I founded my company, Going With Grace.

On leaving her law career (and a steady paycheck):
It wasn’t a hard decision to leave my job as an attorney. The challenging part had more to do with identity and what achievement means. I was born in Ghana, and we’re all raised to be doctors and lawyers and engineers. So I was going against societal expectation and parental expectation. It was also tough to be broke for a long time. My student loans were in forbearance. I spent a lot of nights lying on my mom’s couch wondering how I was going to make things work. If my friends were going out, they’d have to pay for me or else I couldn’t join them. To support myself while I was starting my business, I worked part-time jobs at a hospice and a funeral home.

Eventually, I started hosting small workshops about end-of-life planning. I charged $44 dollars for people to come together and learn how to fill out the necessary documents. Now I have my own doula training programs. I have about 100 students at the moment, all online.

On charging for her services:
I have to navigate the financial conversations with a lot of directness. Part of the challenge is that our society doesn’t see the financial value of having somebody be kind and supportive. Being able to hold so much compassionate space when somebody’s dying — that is a skill. It needs to be compensated highly.

On living with grief:
I’m constantly grieving with and for my clients and their family members, all the time. There’s no fixing it. I have to be present with my feelings and let them wash over me, in whatever expression they take. If I try to shut off that part of myself, it becomes much harder to function in everyday life. Grief doesn’t always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like anger, promiscuity, or eating everything under the sun. Like all things, it’s temporary.

On how COVID has changed her work:
We have to rely much more heavily on technology and remote communication. There’s also a lot more interest in the death doula training program. Death is on a lot of people’s minds, and I’ve seen a lot more people starting to do their end-of-life planning — mostly healthy people in their 40s with young kids. A lot of people have seen younger people die suddenly, and it’s changed their perspective.

On her own end-of-life plan:
I would love to be outside or by windows. I want to watch the sunset for the last time, and I want to have the people I love around, quietly talking, so that I know they’ve got each other after I leave. I want to have a soft blanket and a pair of socks because I hate it when my feet are cold. I want to smell nag champa incense and amber. And I want to hear the sound of running water, like a creek. I’d love to enjoy all those senses for the last time. And when I die, I want everybody to clap. Like, “Good job. You did it.”

I want my funeral to be outside, and I want all my jewelry to be laid out. As guests come in, they grab a piece and put it on. I want my body to be wrapped in an orange and pink raw silk shroud. They’ll play Stevie Wonder — “I’ll be loving you always” — and everyone will eat a lot of food and drink whiskey and mezcal and red wine. There will be colorful Gerber daisies everywhere, and they’ll take me away as the sun goes down. And when they put my body in the car, the bass will drop on the music, and there will be pyrotechnics of some sort. I hope my guests have a grand old time and dance and cry and hug each other. And then I want them to leave wearing my jewelry.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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In the midst of deep grief, a scholar writes how Hindu rituals taught her to let go

Hindu cremation being performed on the banks of the River Ganges in Varanasi, India.

By

Cultures have built elaborate rituals to help humans process the grief of losing someone.

Rituals can hold the core beliefs of a culture and provide a sense of control in an otherwise helpless situation. I came to understand this when I lost my mother last year and participated in the primary Hindu rituals of death and grief.

The cultural practices and experiences helped me find meaning in my loss.

Body and soul

Many Eastern religions do not bury their dead; instead, they cremate them. Most Hindus consider this to be the final sacrifice of a person.

The Sanskrit word for death, “dehanta,” means “the end of body” but not the end of life. One of the central tenets of Hindu philosophy is the distinction between a body and a soul. Hindus believe that the body is a temporary vessel for an immortal soul in the mortal realm. When we die, our physical body perishes but our soul lives on.

The soul continues its journey of birth, death and rebirth, in perpetuity until a final liberation. This is at the heart of the philosophy of detachment and learning to let go of desires.

Scholars of Indian philosophy have argued about the importance of cultivating detachment in the Hindu way of life. An ultimate test of detachment is the acceptance of death.

Hindus believe that the soul of the deceased stays attached to its body even after its demise, and by cremating the body, it can be set free. As a final act, a close family member forcefully strikes the burning corpse’s skull with a stick as if to crack it open and release the soul.

To fully liberate the soul of its mortal attachments, the ashes and remaining bone fragments of the deceased are then dispersed in a river or ocean, usually at a historically holy place, like the banks of the River Ganges.

Knowledge within rituals

Someone from a different tradition might wonder why a ritual should ask mourners to destroy the body of their loved ones and dispose of their remains when one should be caring for all that remains of the dead?

As shocking as it was, it forced me to understand that the burning corpse is only a body, not my mother, and I have no connection left to the body. My Ph.D. studies in cognitive sciences, a field that seeks to understand how our behavior and thinking are influenced by interactions between brain, body, environment and culture, made me look beyond the rituals. It made me understand their deeper relevance and question my experiences.

Rituals can help us understand concepts that are otherwise elusive to grasp. For example, scholar Nicole Boivin describes the importance of physical doorways in rituals of social transformation, like marriage, in some cultures. The experience of moving through doorways evokes transition and creates an understanding of change.

Through the rituals, ideas that were abstract until then, such as detachment, became accessible to me.

The concept of detachment to the physical body is embodied in the Hindu death rituals. Cremation creates an experience that represents the end of the deceased’s physical body. Further, immersing ashes in a river symbolizes the final detachment with the physical body as flowing water takes the remains away from the mortal world.

Dealing with the death of a loved one can be incredibly painful, and it also confronts one with the specter of mortality. The ritual of liberating the soul of the dead from its attachments is also a reminder to those left behind to let go of the attachment to the dead.

For it is the living who must learn to let go of the attachment to the dead, not the long-gone soul. Cultural rituals can widen one’s views when it is difficult to see past the grief.

Standing at a place where millions before me had come and gone, where my ancestors performed their rites, I let go of my mother’s final remains in the holy waters of the river Ganges.

Watching them float away with the waves of the ancient river helped me recognize that this was not the end but a small fragment in the bigger circle of life.

As the Hindu text, the “Bhagavad Gita” – The Song of God – says of the soul,

It is not born, it does not die;
Having been, it will never not be.
Unborn, eternal, constant and primordial;>It is not killed, when the body is killed.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How ‘I Am Dead’ Uses Death to Illuminate Life

Developer Ricky Haggett and designer Richard Hogg talk about how the puzzle adventure game is “not spooky or sinister,” but is instead a story about people and relationships.

by Trilby Beresford

Welcome to October, a time that, depending on which social circles you frequent, may be dominated by conversations about the next-gen Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles set to release in just a few weeks; and their respective launch titles.

While for many players this month may also contain video games that indulge in creepy vibes or costumed assailants (Resident Evil, anyone?), this week’s column features an interview with two of the creatives behind Annapurna Interactive’s puzzle adventure I Am Dead, a game that one might assume involves terror and tragedy, but actually, that couldn’t be further from reality.

Hollow Ponds developer Ricky Haggett and designer Richard Hogg, both who are U.K.-based, describe the truth and meaning behind their latest offering, which just dropped on consoles.

I Am Dead is a Colorful Game About Living

As the title suggests, I Am Dead does involve a dead person, but it’s not explicitly about death or dying. As developer Ricky Haggett recalls on the phone with The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s not really a spooky or sinister game. It really is a game about people’s lives.”

Artist and designer Richard Hogg chimes in with the irony that the game, which features bright colors and an inviting sense of warmth, is releasing in October, the month of Halloween. “It suddenly occurred to me, wow, we’re launching a game called I Am Dead, about ghosts, kind of during Halloween season, and that’s so duplicitous because our game isn’t at all scary,” he says.

The story of the puzzle adventure game follows a deceased museum curator named Morris who sets about to explore the afterlife, a world filled with learning and discovery. The idea came to the developers years ago when they were working on another, entirely different game, where the central idea was “somebody dead in a grave — somebody from like the Bronze age, who was thousands of years old, with all of their tools, clothing and equipment that they would have had with them,” explains Haggett. “Occasionally people turn up in a bog or in the ice where it’s like, oh this person is this many years old and we can learn about their lives from these objects that they had with them.” He goes on to say, “We never ended up making that game, [but] then when we came to make I Am Dead, the first thing that we had was the idea of this mechanic.”

“I remember being really into the idea of it being a game about a dead person, but not about them dying — one benchmark idea was that you wouldn’t know how they died,” says Hogg, “instead the game is about how they lived.” He adds that death is a common theme of video games, but the stories are often about that moment when someone dies and how it happened. “We liked the idea of using death as a way of illuminating life.”

I Am Dead is set in present day in a location similar to the seaside town of Hastings, where Hogg resides. “It’s full of anecdotes and mini-stories about people’s lives and people’s relationships with each other that I think work a lot better [than the game that was set in the Bronze Age] because they’re things we can understand and that we can relate to.”

Morris is loosely based on Haggett’s geography teacher from back at school, a man who used to walk with his fingers tucked into the waistband of his trousers. “He was quite an elderly, fairly eccentric guy,” Haggett recalls. “He’s the sort of person that you see, if you go to the supermarket in the U.K. quite early in the morning,” adds Hogg. “The only people who do their shopping early in the morning are maybe people who’ve retired. Sort of non-descript, middle class guy in his 60s, probably quite cheerful, probably quite a fun granddad, quite an interesting guy, but at the same time doesn’t choose his own clothes, his wife chooses his clothes for him.”

While developing I Am Dead, Haggett and Hogg drew upon their shared enthusiasm for the literary works of Patrick O’Brian, scribe of the Master and Commander books about historical naval warfare. “They’re the sort of books that someone like Morris would read,” says Hogg. And then there’s libraries and museums, which Hogg and Haggett frequently meet at. “This game is kind of like a love letter to small, provincial British museums that we’re massive fans of,” Hogg concludes.

I Am Dead is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!