‘Death doulas’ help dying people and their loved ones say goodbye

By Kevin Fagan

Henry Fersko-Weiss, co-founder and president of the International End of Life Doula Association, conducts a session at the association’s training at the Omni Hotel in San Francisco.
Henry Fersko-Weiss, co-founder and president of the International End of Life Doula Association, conducts a session at the association’s training at the Omni Hotel in San Francisco.

The emotional crumbling started when she was 14 and a friend was killed in a car crash. Three years later, her father died when his helicopter exploded. When she was in her 30s, her brother committed suicide.

By the time a close friend was murdered three years ago, the coping skills Bonnie Ludwig had for dealing with death were shattered — and she found herself one day on her knees on a sidewalk, sobbing obliviously.

Therapy gave healing, which allowed her to help comfort dying dogs at the pet care company she runs — and which soon led to her sitting in a San Francisco hotel room on Friday, learning how to help people die better.

Ludwig, 45, was taking a class in how to become a “death doula,” someone who helps shepherd the dying and their families into loving, peaceful exits. The man who founded the craft in 2003, Henry Fersko-Weiss, is guiding her and 47 other students through a weekend-long course on handling what for many seems like the worst moment possible — but, if handled deftly, can be a beautiful journey to whatever lies just beyond a heartbeat.

‘Learn to let go’

“Humans hold onto life so tightly,” said Ludwig, who flew up from San Diego to take the $600 training at the Omni Hotel. “We need to learn to let go better. We grieve so badly in our culture, and I have found it is sacred and an honor to be with animals when they die. Now I want to be able to do that with people.”

Fersko-Weiss, 68, has trained more than 1,000 people in his discipline, and this was his first session in San Francisco. People come to his trainings for many reasons, he said — some from pain, like Ludwig, some because they’ve already helped others die and feel a calling to do more. But they all have one thing in common.

“I have found that the people who come to these trainings have a great deal of compassion and want to serve people at this incredible period in their lives — death,” said Fersko-Weiss, who lives in the small town of Warwick, N.Y. “They are self-selecting. Like me, they feel this is a way they can really do some good and help. It’s very intense and very important.”

The idea of finding a better way of dealing with the obliteration of life came to Fersko-Weiss when he was a hospice volunteer and saw too many people missing the last breaths, not saying the words they wanted to say before passing, not feeling complete in what they were leaving behind.

International End of Life Doula Association
Laura Statton attends the training session by the International End of Life Doula Association at the Omni Hotel in San Francisco.

He had a friend who was training at the time as a birth doula — a midwife of sorts, who helps birthing moms and their partners stay comfortable and well-centered — and he found the approach so dynamic he took the course himself.

What he learned there led him to co-found the International End of Life Doula Association. Doula, in ancient Greek, means “woman who serves.”

“It’s just our human nature that we want to be reassured as we die,” Fersko-Weiss said. “We’re going into the unknown, and everybody has fear of passing that boundary between life and death.

“I believe the only thing that counts at the end is having people we love, someone at your bedside, talking to you, telling them how much they love them, reassuring them it’s going to be OK. Those things are important.”

Calming techniques

Students learn techniques for calming the dying and their family and friends, and then they help them find the right kind of intimacy to say the things that need to be said. To cut to the chase about what they want to be remembered for, to compile scrapbooks. To face the end with grace.

Lori Goldwyn attends the training session by the International End of Life Doula Association at the Omni Hotel.
Lori Goldwyn attends the training session by the International End of Life Doula Association at the Omni Hotel.

Sometimes doulas ease pain by having the dying visualize soothing times in their lives or by giving therapeutic touch. And they help plan what the final moments will be like. Sometimes people want candles burning, certain clothes, favorite poems read out loud. Doulas stay at the bedside, ready to recognize when death is minutes away — mottled skin, fingernails turning blue, other clues — so everyone can be prepared.

Cynthia Imperatore, who lives in New Jersey and is helping Fersko-Weiss at this weekend’s training, found that sometimes the simplest actions are the most important.

Recently she was helping a son sit vigil with his terminally ill mother, and found herself sitting at the woman’s bedside, holding her hand while the son stood stiffly at the foot of the bed with a TV blaring in the background. The final minutes were near. It didn’t feel right.

“I had him turn off the TV, put on some classical music, and I said, ‘Come here and hold your mother’s hand,’” said Imperatore. “So he came, and then I said, ‘Tell her these things’ — in Spanish, because that’s what his mother spoke. I said, ‘Tell her she’s done everything right. Tell her you’re grateful. Tell her you love her. Tell her what she did mattered.’

“And what happened is that these were the last words she heard,” Imperatore said. “He didn’t have to carry a sense of unfulfillment with him. It was good.

“What we do is not morbid,” she said with a gentle smile. “It’s a privilege to be there when people are dying. Death takes us to a place where we seek meaning, makes you question what is life. And sometimes it can make you appreciate life more.”

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