Tag: Death Spirituality

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Former Archbishop of Canterbury advocates for assisted suicide law

George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, leads a ceremony of prayer in the Crypt Chapel at his official residence in central London on Oct. 5, 2001.

By Anugrah Kumar

Lord George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has challenged the official stance of the Church of England on assisted suicide, urging the British government to set aside time for debate on the law governing assisted dying. A Christian group is warning that it would be “a very dangerous thing” to do, however.

Carey, who served as archbishop from 1991 to 2002, framed this issue as being “profoundly Christian,” asserting that it’s crucial to prevent individuals from suffering against their will, The Telegraph reported Monday.

The former archbishop diverged significantly from the position of the Anglican Church, ignoring its warnings that such legislation could pressurize vulnerable individuals, particularly among the half-million elderly people mistreated annually, to end their lives prematurely.

The Church of England has also cautioned that nations that have legalized assisted dying have experienced a “slippery slope,” with the process becoming progressively easier over time.

Carey has been calling for assisted dying since 2014, when he lent his support to a bill introduced in the House of Lords by Labour’s Lord Falconer. Although the bill did not pass, the issue has resurfaced as lawmakers on the health select committee are reconsidering assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The proposal includes an evaluation of safeguards needed to prevent coercion and the requirements for an individual to consent to the termination of their life.

In his submission to the inquiry, Carey emphasized his belief that one of the many Christian values is to ensure no one endures suffering against their will. He stressed that assisted dying should only be an option for those expressing a clear, persistent wish for it and suggested it was an “act of great generosity, kindness and human love” to aid those wanting to end their suffering.

Carey also contended there is a need for laws reflecting the “compassionate society” we live in, encouraging the government to gather evidence from a variety of sources and ensure an appropriate debate to facilitate law change.

He pointed to evidence from Oregon, California, Australia and New Zealand, asserting that laws allowing choice over the manner of death, with adequate safeguards, can be enacted successfully.

However, the CofE’s submission contradicts his perspective, noting that evidence from the same regions indicated a “slippery slope in operation.” It contended that no systems could effectively rule out coercion in such scenarios.

The CofE has raised concerns over “improper psychiatric testing” in places like Oregon and the prevalence of “doctor shopping,” with patients looking for medical professionals willing to administer lethal drugs. It further warned about challenges to the original law, expanding the definition of assisted dying to include those with non-terminal but “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions.

In an op-ed, Christian Concern Communications Manager, Paul Huxley, reinforced the CofE’s position, asserting that legalizing assisted suicide would be “dangerous, unnecessary and wrong.”

He cited evidence from other jurisdictions where vulnerable people felt pressured into ending their lives prematurely, and highlighted the Christian perspective that views death as an enemy and noted that suffering is an opportunity to strengthen one’s faith in God.

“It would be a very dangerous thing to do. … Assisted suicide changes the way doctors think about how they care for people. They think, ‘oh well, we can offer you euthanasia’ rather than thinking about how can we look after this person…,” Huxley wrote. “I think it’s a very concerning message that we are sending to people.”

He pointed out that “the most dominant symbol of Christianity is the cross – a man dying,” and, therefore, “life and death are put right at the center of the Christian message (the Gospel) as Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Making peace with life the secret to a good death, says veteran palliative care counsellor

Recently retired counsellor Barry Whelan spent 18 years in ministry before working in palliative care.

By Rachael Lucas

Over the past 25 years, Barry Whelan has made more than 20,000 visits to palliative care clients and their families.

The recently retired palliative care counsellor from Poowong, in Victoria’s south-east, has guided people of different faiths and backgrounds through the final stages of their life.

It’s given him insight into what happens when someone is at the end of their life.

“When someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness, they run through a milieu of emotions,” Mr Whelan says.

“Most people get to their 30s or 40s or 50s and think they’ve got 30 years left, then all of a sudden they’re told that they’ve got something that’s going to terminate their life.”

Elsie's Project
Resolution of an ongoing family dispute is an important part of the dying and grieving process.

He says common reactions to a terminal diagnosis include shock, denial, or anger followed by questions such as ‘Why me? Why now?’ and ‘What happens when I die?’

“I often get asked, ‘What’s it like to die?’ and my favourite line is ‘I don’t know, I’ve never done it, but I can teach you how to live before you die’.”

Palliative care primarily involves nursing in co-ordination with services such as occupational therapy, art and music therapy, counselling, and pastoral and spiritual care.

“When I first started back in 1997, it was probably a 95 to 98-per-cent death rate, but now with the advances in modern medicine, people survive a lot longer,” he says.

Despite significant advances in pain management with terminally ill patients, Mr Whelan said the mental anguish around death and dying remained a challenging personal journey for individuals.

A good death

Mr Whelan says initial visits with palliative clients were about determining a client’s goals, priorities and what they wanted to achieve in the time they have left.

“A good death to me is someone who is at peace with themselves, at peace with their family or surroundings and at peace with whatever they believe in,” he says.

As a counsellor, he has helped clients work through their stress, anxiety, guilt and past issues to reach a point of comfort.

“One of the first patients I had, the lady wanted to jump from a parachute. She survived the parachute jump but within a few weeks she had passed away,” he says.

“It was something that she wished to achieve”.

Barry stands between two professional women
Barry Whelan with Palliative Care South East (PCSE) chief executive Kelly Rogers (left) and co-founder Dr Ruth Redpath.

Mr Whelan says the most heartbreaking cases that he witnessed as a chaplain in aged care facilities was when terminal patients who had not had a visitor for months and even years were suddenly set upon by relatives.

“Where there’s a will there’s a relative,” he says.

Likewise, he says that family dispute resolutions were an important part of the dying and grieving process.

“I’ve seen people sit on one side of the chapel with other family on the other side [and] it was all over some trivial thing that happened 40 years before,” he says.

“It’s amazing what drives people apart, and how little it can be to bring them back together.”

The body follows the mind

Mr Whelan says he has observed that terminal patients can linger on for days or weeks if there is something unresolved that they wish to sort out.

“I think the body follows the mind in this, both in living and in dying,” he says.

“A lot of people, once they come to that peace they can accept the dying, but a lot of people hang on.”

He recalls the story of a woman who was sent home to die in October 2007, whom he later visited in February 2008.

He says she was determined to see out her 47th wedding anniversary, then she willed herself to live for her 70th birthday celebrations, and later her son’s wedding in May 2008.

“That lady went right through for the two and half years that I visited her, until finally we made the decision at work that she wasn’t really palliative anymore,” he says.

“She was still having chemotherapy, but she didn’t really need us.

“We all have aims and goals.”

She eventually passed on in 2015, living for seven years beyond her life expectancy.

Young Barry
Barry Whelan estimates he has counselled more than 2,500 terminally ill clients since starting in 1997.

Mr Whelan has witnessed countless occasions where clients have seen through a birthday or milestone celebration, waited until a relative had arrived from overseas, or met a new addition to the family before passing within days of an occasion.

“The other thing that I see is that sometimes people wait until their loved ones have left the room, and then they will simply just close their eyes and they’re gone,” he says.

Mr Whelan believes that self-will plays a key role in a person’s ability to hang on to life. In the same way that people without particular purpose, attachment, direction or will to live, can make a call on when they’ve ‘had enough’.

He says it is not unusual for widowers to pass on not long after losing a lifelong spouse and soul mate.

“If a person doesn’t feel wanted, doesn’t feel needed, I think they lose the will to live,” he says.

“I have seen people who have gone to hospital and not been visited by their loved ones, and they’ve died within a few days. So again, it’s this will to live.”

A man walking into the light at the end of a dark tunnel
Terminally ill patients have a tendency to determine when they’ve ‘had enough’.

In illustrating an example of a sustained will to live, Mr Whelan refers to the stories of concentration camp survivors and prisoners of war who manage to make the best of every day despite horrific circumstances.

“I guess my motive has been to survive as best you can for as long as you can with the best conditions you can manufacture from what you’ve got,” he says of his philosophy on life.

After 25 years witnessing people in their final stages of life, Mr Whelan says that he has learned to value everything he has.

“My advice to people is just, ‘enjoy what you’ve got, while you’ve got it, because you can’t go to a doctor and ask for a prescription for tomorrow’.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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End of life care: medical, emotional and spiritual support

— End of life care can be varied, holistic, and filled with love. We look at two end of life services – hospices and end of life doulas – that show how medical, emotional, and spiritual needs can be looked after in different settings.

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What is end of life care and what is palliative care?

There’s a lot of confusion around palliative and end of life care. For starters, although related these two terms do not describe the same thing – they are distinct.

Receiving palliative care doesn’t neccesarily mean you’re dying – rather that this kind of care is for people with incurable diseases, many of whom could or will live for many more years or decades. It’s about making life as manageable and as good as it can be.

End of life care is a form of palliative care you are given when you’re approaching end of life – it offers support and is wide-ranging and holistic.

When does end of life care start?

From a healthcare perspective, end of life care may be recommended if you are likely to die within the next 12 months, although this can sometimes be hard for doctors to accurately predict. End of life care may last a few hours, days, weeks, months, or sometimes more than a year – the only rule is that it begins when you need it.

Who provides end of life care?

End of life care doesn’t just take place in a hospital or hospice with doctors and nurses. Depending on your needs and care plan, you could receive various forms of this care at home, over the phone, or at specialist day centres. A whole host of specialists and non-specialists can deliver end of life care.

Specialists include palliative care physicians and nurses – such as Marie Curie and Macmillan nurses – but also counsellors, social workers, bereavement therapists, speech therapists, religious or spiritual carers, and many others.

Non-specialists are made up of people in your community who have different roles to play in your care. These include district and practice nurses, GPs, and pharmacists.

This should give an idea of how varied and personalised end of life care services can be.

What services are available for end of life care?

Here we take a look at two important forms of care that showcase the range of services available.

  • Hospices – hospices are specialised healthcare spaces for palliative and end of life support. Yet, hospice care extends beyond hospice beds and medical treatment.
  • End of life doulas – outside of your medical needs, doulas offer emotional and spiritual care, and they can do this inside or outside of the hospice setting.

Spotlight on: hospice care

In hospices, specialist palliative and end of life care is delivered by a multi-disciplinary team, made up of people who have different roles in a person’s care. This includes doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, complementary therapists, counsellors and chaplains.

Jodie Morris is deputy director of nursing and care at Myton Hospice. She explains how hospices offer so much more than medical treatment:

“Hospices are happy places full of love and laughter where families can create special memories and spend quality time with their loved ones. This isn’t just about medicine – it’s about whatever is important to the patient and their family and friends. We take a holistic approach and see the person – not their illness.

“At Myton, we provide support right from the moment a person is told that their illness cannot be cured until the very end of life. We provide this free service in our three hospices, in the community via our Myton at home service, and as an outpatient service:

  • Our outpatient services – help people to live well for longer with their terminal illness. This may include advance care planning, counselling, lymphoedema therapy, complementary therapy such as massage for relaxation, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy.
  • Our hospice inpatient services – provide symptom control and end of life care.
  • Our hospice at home services – provide care and support for people in their own homes in the last weeks and days of life.
  • Our bereavement support – looks after the wellbeing of family and friends after their loved one has passed.

Going the extra mile

Jodie goes on to describe how the staff and volunteers at Myton go the extra mile to look after the wellbeing of their patients, welcoming beloved pets and arranging birthday celebrations, weddings and christenings at their hospices, often at very short notice.

Kerry and David’s Myton Wedding

David Black was admitted to Coventry Myton Hospice on Friday 13th May 2022 and less than 24 hours later he and his wife Kerry had their wedding at the hospice. On hearing the couple’s plans to marry, Myton staff and volunteers pulled out all the stops to arrange decorations, food, and refreshments to ensure they had the best possible day making precious memories. They were surrounded by close family members and their two sons, Fergus now aged 10 and Alfie, 7. David sadly died aged just 41, one week after being admitted to Myton.

Kerry said: “Alfie and Fergus were so excited to see us get married and I’m so pleased that they have such happy memories of the hospice. Their faces say it all and for that I will be forever thankful to Myton.”

Kerry and David's wedding
Kerry and David’s wedding

Spotlight on: an end of life doula

An end of life doula, sometimes called a death doula or death midwife, is a non-medical specialist trained to provide emotional and spiritual support to terminally ill people. According to the International End of Life Doula Association, a doula “holds the space for the kind of dying experience that honours who the person is and has been in their life.”1

Alessandra Olanow is a trained end of life doula and author of Hello Grief: I’ll be Right with You. She explains how a doula can be a comforting and positive presence:

“Doulas are there to allow the dying person to be who they are, and to allow them to be more than old or sick. A doula listens deeply to the concerns, fears, hopes, and life stories of the dying person and their loved ones to bring them peace at the end of life.”

There are many things a doula can do, including:

  • Being a companion and source of comfort.
  • Offering emotional support to the care recipient and their loved ones.
  • Have conversations that help death seem less scary and lonely.
  • Providing practical support – for example, walking the dog, providing care, preparing meals, and running errands.
  • Being a point of contact for the other care teams.
  • Enabling family carers to take a break.
  • Advocating for the care recipient’s wishes – for example, making sure the desired religious or cultural rituals are followed during end of life or after death.

Doulas can visit people at home, or in a facility such as a hospice or nursing home. Alessandra volunteers on the palliative care floor of a New York hospital. She adds that training as an end of life doula has helped her appreciate living: “I used to avoid thinking about death and dying; it was just this fearful thing. Now, I choose to live my life with an understanding that every single day is a gift.”

Alessandra’s advice for coping with loss

If your loved one is approaching death, an end of life doula needn’t disappear the moment they have passed on. They can also support you through your grief, offering guidance and comfort.

Alessandra shares this advice from her experience helping with grief: “Allow yourself the time and space you need without expectation. There is a misconception that grief has a timeline and that there is a certain way to grieve. But there isn’t. Everyone grieves at their own pace and that is ok.

“It can be helpful to have a creative outlet to express overwhelming feelings of loss. When I first lost my mother, I began to draw my feelings – these drawings became my book, Hello Grief. I hope it helps others to process their own grief.”

Further reading

  1. International End of Life Doula Association: What is an end of life doula?

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Live When You Know You’re Dying

— If my father knew his death was imminent, why didn’t he warn us?

By Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung is a Slate Care and Feeding columnist and the author of the new memoir A Living Remedy, from which this essay was adapted.

There are so many things you do for a person after they die, things they don’t need—the living do. Rituals, memorial services, acts of public mourning are all ways of honoring the person we loved, intended to bring us comfort as well. After my father died, I welcomed the chance to work on his obituary, look for photos for the memorial display, find something suitable for my children to wear to the funeral. I even found some strange consolation in my attempts to explain the unexplainable to them, because these were all duties to manage, tasks I could do. As long as I had responsibilities, I didn’t have to sit with the wrathful stillness of grief.

In the end, however, there were few preparations to throw myself into once I got home to Oregon, because my parents’ friends were already hard at work on their behalf. In their hands, the service and burial would be exactly what my mother wanted. The choir knew their parts by heart. There was no need to hire a caterer, because everyone was bringing a dish to share. A craftsman in the parish was working on the casket and refused to accept payment for it.

A number of items went into my father’s casket to be buried with him: a cross, also made of wood and small enough to fit in one of his hands; a white cloth draped across his forehead, representing the crown of victory he had earned for running his earthly race, adorned with the prayer Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us; and an icon of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, a 12th-century monk’s rendering of St. John Climacus’ treatise on the 30 steps monastics might progress along in order to reach Christ, who awaits the faithful at the summit, his once-pierced hands outstretched.

I had never been to an Orthodox Christian funeral before, but my mother had told me it was a beautiful liturgy. With my father’s siblings unable to travel and my mother’s largely absent, it was their parish community that drew together to mourn and bury him. Many people approached before the service to tell me how much they had loved my father. As happens at all open-casket funerals, everyone told my mother that Dad looked really good for being dead. “They did a great job on him,” she agreed.

During the service, my parents’ priest spoke of the daily pain Dad had lived with and how, in the end, he’d allowed this suffering to bring him closer to God. Of course, he couldn’t know the day or the hour. But he knew he would soon meet our Lord, and he prepared for that meeting. This, he concluded, is why my father ultimately knew peace at his death: It did not find him unready.

If that was true, I thought, why hadn’t my mother and I known? Had my father truly spent the past weeks, maybe even months, preparing to die? If he’d known his death was imminent, why didn’t he warn us? I stared at him in his casket, and the sudden flare of anger I felt was so unlike sorrow that I let myself take momentary refuge in it. If you really knew and didn’t tell us, that was a real dick move, Dad.

When we approached to say our final goodbyes, Mom put her arm around my shoulders, her solid warmth a familiar comfort. “Don’t despair,” she told me. “This is our hope in the resurrection.” The words might have upset me coming from anyone else in that church, anyone else in the world. But I felt her sorrow as something deeper and more powerful than my own, and couldn’t help but feel awed by her abiding faith in what she saw as my father’s victory over death. She was a warrior, even in grief.

Though raised in a devout Catholic family, I was no longer a regular Sunday churchgoer. There were too many things that I felt ambivalent about or disagreed with altogether. And as I get older, I’ve found that there are some answers I don’t need. I can’t say whether I will ever again feel as certain of anything as my parents were of the mercy of God or the promise of heaven. But it’s also true that the faith you’re raised in can still move fathoms below the surface, even when your relationship to it has changed beyond recognition. As I held my mother’s hand at the cemetery, watching my father’s casket disappear beneath a layer of earth, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised to feel the old belief stir, bearing me up like a strong current, as undeniable as it was unseen.

My parents became Orthodox Christians after I had left home. My mother converted first—I think my father was less inclined than she to commit his time and energy to another church that might prove unworthy; plus, he liked having his Sundays free, especially during football season. Eventually Mom got tired of going to church alone. You need to find some church that’ll bury you when the time comes, you know.

The first time Dad went with her to church, he halted at the entrance, causing my mother to run into him and ask what he’d seen. He pointed to an icon above the door, one of dozens that filled the walls. “I’ve seen that before!” It was an icon of the Ladder of Divine Ascent. Mom, a recent but fervent devotee of iconography, started to explain its origins, but he interrupted. “I don’t mean I’ve seen the icon before. I mean, I’ve seen that ladder. I saw it right after we moved here.”

She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

After my parents moved to the area, they would often spend their days off driving with no particular destination in mind, getting to know the landscape. One afternoon they were heading home from somewhere far out in the country, the region’s tallest mountain in full view, when my father glimpsed a ladder beside it, partially hidden by clouds encircling the peak. If he squinted, he could see tiny figures clinging to the rungs, some slowly ascending while others stumbled and fell. He watched in wonder for a few seconds, but when he blinked, the ladder had disappeared.

He didn’t have an explanation for what he’d seen, couldn’t begin to guess what it meant, so he never told anyone. Not until some 30 years later, when, entering a mission church housed in a storefront, he encountered an icon written by a long-dead monk at a monastery on Mount Sinai. “That’s what I saw on the mountain when we were driving home all those years ago,” he said to my mother, who was still looking at him in astonishment. “That’s my ladder.”

Written for monastics and studied by laypeople as well, St. John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent is an allegorical model of the Christian journey to holiness. The 30 rungs of his ladder represent 30 steps: passions to be mastered, vices to conquer, virtues to attain. Among the virtues extolled is “remembrance of death,” which, he asserted, should inspire us to live as God would wish and do as much good as we can.

“Just as the Fathers lay down that perfect love is free from falls,” he wrote, “so I for my part declare that a perfect sense of death is free from fear. … It is impossible, someone says, impossible to spend the present day devoutly unless we regard it as the last of our whole life.” It’s a charge that reminds me of the old Ash Wednesday exhortation: Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you shall return. In the Christian sense, these are calls to repentance, but one can also read them as invitations to surrender: to accept our limitations and our mortality; to be prepared, not consumed with clawing fear, for our life’s eventual end; to focus on doing good and not harm, because any day could be our last.

After my father’s death, my mother told me she believed that he often perceived things she could not. She said he was able to grasp certain matters at an instinctive level, to accept them on faith, whereas she was always quick to question or feel frustrated by that which she could not immediately understand. Perhaps this also proved true in my father’s final months: She railed against his illnesses, resented them, as you do when someone you love is suffering. He struggled as well, and maybe at times even despaired, but I think, of the three of us, he was the quickest to understand and accept what would happen. He had to have been feeling his worst in the weeks before he died, yet when we spoke, he seemed so calm that I could almost forget how much he was enduring.

I couldn’t understand it after he died, of course, but then I am much more like my mother: I hated that he was in pain, blamed myself for not being able to help, yet could never manage to convince myself that he would die. If he had told me he was about to die but did not dread it—because he was “remembering death,” or because he had somehow found strength in something far beyond his own fear—I would not have wanted to hear him. I would have wanted him to fight. I would have denied him that peace until the end.

The cover of Nicole Chung's A Living Remedy.

Maybe our refusal to accept his suffering, accept what it meant, is why he didn’t see fit to tell my mother and me. Or maybe, she later theorized, laughing and crying at once, he wanted to spare us the knowledge: It might have been the one truly noble act of his life.

By then, I was afraid of losing her, too. I didn’t know what to believe. I still don’t know what I want to believe. In my memory, my father wasn’t prone to hiding the truth in order to comfort others. But neither was he prone to visions. Was it really there, the ladder he saw that day, propped up against the snowcapped summit? Of course it wasn’t. I am sure that he imagined it. But I can’t claim to know what it means that he did.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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When death becomes you

— My journey towards becoming a death doula

Dana Purdom taps into her deep intuition to find her calling as a death doula.

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When I was as young as four years old, my mother would send me to my grandparents’ home to stay during the summer months. I was this little girl, neatly coiffed, dressed impeccably, and placed on a plane to fly across many states to Leakesville, Mississippi. I was a quiet and reserved child, and shy, which, I believe, others perceived as timidity and an inability to fit in. But I knew this was not true.

I was deeply intuitive, sensing, empathetic, and feeling all things around me. I wasn’t quiet. I was observant. I wasn’t shy. I was curiously aware. I wasn’t timid or unable to blend in. I was simply different. And this made others uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t name or remedy at such a tender age. So I shrank into myself and sat quietly as I watched others – aunts and uncles, cousins, friends – live their lives out loud. The only people I felt understood and knew me were my grandparents. They had a way of communicating, seeing and loving me in ways I can only attribute to them also being intuitive.

During those summers. I spent hours wandering in the fields and deep woods, exploring and communing with nature. I heard the sounds of animals moving from one place to another, giving instructions of where they were headed next. I would listen to the trees, the leaves and the brush as they sang, sending messages to one another of what season it was, and whether or not to bend and stretch when the breath of God blew on them.

And though these times were glorious, expansive, and faith-forming for me – instilling a sense of other-worldly trust and peace – there were moments of fear of the unknown, of otherworldly happenings that I couldn’t explain.

At times, asleep in the back room of my grandparent’s home, I would be overcome by a weighted feeling, making it difficult to breathe. Subconsciously, I was taken to a deep, dark, unknown place. No matter how hard I fought – to get away, to breathe, to scream – it was pointless, as the grip on me was too great to overcome.

“The witch was riding you,” a family member told me.

Whenever this happened, it would physically feel as if I was experiencing death, or the dying process. First: asphyxiation, immobility and panic would set it in because somehow, even in this state of paralysis, I knew death was imminent. And then, an unwavering calm, a gentle peace, a release or surrender to the unknown would take over, shortly after the “witch riding my back” dismounted and the paralysis ended.

These moments are what I understand to be my induction into the mystical world of death and dying. As these moments continued to happen over the years while visiting my grandparents, I began to intimately connect with the peaceful surrender of death. It no longer frightened me, but instead, drew me closer. I wanted to know more about what I was experiencing and the visions I saw. I wanted to know more about death and its transcendental relation to the beyond.

Early on, I couldn’t comprehend my curiosity about death or why these experiences happened to me. But I’ve come to understand this mystical phenomenon as a gift, a blessing and a means to serve others by becoming a death doula.

A culturally spiritual call

We live in a death-denying culture. But because of my childhood, the draw of the witch that was riding my back, and my growing intimacy with death, my curiosity grew into a deep passion: what happens, I wondered, when a physical body is no longer present in the natural world and has returned to its original form as a spirit, transitioning into its next phase of life?

For me, death is never ending; it is a transition from one life-form to the next. I am a soul cultivator, one who seeks to hear the heart of others, beyond the words they speak, desiring to reflect back to them the love, care, and peace they long for in their lives. If they never received this type of care in life, if I can give that to them in death, I will have lived fully into my call of “doing the work my soul must have,” as theologian Katie Geneva Cannon challenges each of us to do.

For me, death is never ending; it is a transition from one life-form to the next.

Like a midwife who assists in the process of birthing, a death doula “guides a person who is transitioning to death and their loved ones through the dying process,” according to the International End-of-Life Doula Association. Death doulas have existed as long as death itself; culturally, however, Black death doulas have specifically answered the spiritual call between Black people and their tormented, historical relationship to death and dying. This became more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic and the growth of social movements focusing on Black and brown lives — and deaths.

“The inequities in the way we live and die could not have become more apparent during this time, coupling both the pandemic and social movements we’ve witnessed in the last two years,” according to grief consultant Alica Forneret in a story on refinery29.com. Forneret also is the founder of PAUSE, which creates culturally specific spaces that provide end-of-life resources and grief support.

Nikki Giovanni once said, “death is a slave’s freedom.” Black people’s history with colonized culture has demanded that the care and personal needs of its own community regarding death and dying be met in ways that greater society doesn’t recognize.

“God’s salvation is a liberating event,” James Cone wrote in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, “in the lives of all who are struggling for survival and dignity in a world bent on denying their humanity.”

New rhetorics of lynching and continual perpetuation of Black tropes dehumanize and distort one’s humanity in death. These are primary reasons why Black culture, by restoring power and dignity to the dead, has taken personal agency in God’s vision for humanity. Black funerals, therefore, are celebrations that honor the life that was lived on this side of eternity, and they rejoice in the transition into the next.

And this was what our ancestors did in remote, secret places: they practiced sacred religious traditions because they were prohibited from performing funerals or any traditions that commemorated the dead. Black funerals were once one of the only spaces not permeated with Whiteness, where we could live into our traditions in our own sacred ways.

And so, more and more Black people, by becoming or by employing death doulas, are seeking to protect the knowledge that not only Black lives matter, but also Black deaths.

Black ancestry has taught us to acknowledge death as a moment of joy, to celebrate the transition from pain and suffering in this world, to that of being in the arms of their Creator, where they will walk around heaven all day, as the song goes. Funerals, for instance, are called “homegoing services,” and are outpourings of both joy and grief. Helping the dying do so in dignity while remembering and honoring ancestral traditions, and ensuring that the family of the dying person is nurtured, became the impetus that moved me in the direction of becoming a death doula.

Black ancestry has taught us to acknowledge death as a moment of joy, to celebrate the transition from pain and suffering in this world, to that of being in the arms of their Creator.

While there are currently no licensure requirements to become a death doula, organizations exist to provide death doula certification and training. Going With Grace (goingwithgrace.com) offers death doula/end-of-life training “steeped in ancient wisdom traditions adapted to modern times” and prepares individuals to take the National End-of-Life Doula (NEDA) proficiency assessment. Passing this curriculum exam, according to the NEDA website, earns the doulas a badge that assures them and the families they assist that the doula has competencies and knowledge around, among other things, spirituality, the dying process, non-medical care and comfort, and grief, and that their understanding of these areas aligns with those of others in the field.

Being a death doula differs from chaplaincy and hospice care. While death doulas do not provide medical care, they do collaborate with hospice programs, bridging the gaps and strengthening the relationships between medical and non-medical support, as noted on cremationassistance.org. Hospice care is regulated by Medicare rules, which limits caregivers’ interactions with patients and families. Death doulas bridge this gap by showing up in the following ways: grief support, advance health care planning, end of life planning, practical training for family caregivers, funeral/memorial planning assistance, needed relief for family caregivers, companionship to patients, vigil presence for actively dying patients and more, as every death doula is different and has their own specialties they provide.

And while chaplains also do this work, there are differences between chaplaincy and being a death doula: education, training, certification, and ways of making meaning of a person’s experience of sickness, death, and dying. Chaplaincy is not only shaped by one’s own religious tradition but also the extensive religious and philosophical studies completed during graduate school. Death doulas have more flexibility in their practice. Doulas are able to serve as many or as few clients as they wish to serve at a time, whereas chaplains are limited to serving those within the institutions where they are employed. And death doulas are independent contractors charging an hourly rate or setting a flat fee, but services are not covered by insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.

A death doula can also help relieve the burden of improper or confusing end-of-life planning, and support family members who are responsible for completing their loved one’s affairs. You can find a death doula by checking registries that are available in individual states.

Death should not be a taboo topic

We live in a death-denying culture, where the discourse surrounding death is taboo, and we don’t want to accept that we live in a finite world. We shun people who talk about death, especially those people who may be living terminal lives. We do this as a means of self-preservation, not wanting to be exposed as being vulnerable or appearing weak for expressing emotion. I believe that if we talk about death and dying more, in constructive and life-giving ways, and with the support of a person like a death doula, the topic will become less taboo.

I recognize I have a unique perspective concerning death and dying. Death is inevitable, and neither humans, nor any of creation, were meant to live forever. I believe we are spiritual beings, having a human experience. And as I was writing this article, the song “Take Me to the Water (to be baptized)” by Nina Simone dropped in my spirit.

In death, we are reminded of our ‘maternal baptism’: dying to the spiritual realm from which we came and, born to life in the maternal waters of the womb, becoming the physical beings we were created to be. In baptism, we see the death and resurrection of Christ as well as our own. Though, in baptism, we are “not actually dead, placed in the tomb, and brought back to life …” the sacrament re-members us to Christ’s passion, giving us new life in Christ (Cyril of Jerusalem).

If we allow this consideration of baptismal grace being the death and life of a soul, then death becomes a return to the waters that once birthed us. No longer physically present in the earthly realm, and yet, still present as spirit.

Like other injustices, this “holy disruption” of a pandemic “has magnified the problems Black people face in the death and dying space,” says Alua Arthur of Going With Grace.

By dispelling myths regarding death, through curating soft landing spaces for mind shifts to occur, while holistically supporting those in the midst of experiencing death, I aim to become a change-agent in the death doula industry — re-writing the narrative of what Black death is and how beautifully sacred the dying process can be.

“When death comes to find you, may it find you alive.” — African Proverb

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‘I will reflect on my own death – and try to conquer my fears’

— The thing I’ll do differently in 2023

‘It is death that makes life meaningful’ … Monica Ali.

I don’t want to be mawkish or indulgent. But I want to consider my mortality in order to live well in the years I have left

By

Have you ever spent time seriously contemplating your own death? I haven’t. I’m 55, in good health, exercise regularly, eat well and – barring the proverbial bus – have no reason to think death is imminent. Thoughts of my own mortality naturally arise from time to time but they’re easy to banish. After all, both my parents are still alive, forming a kind of metaphysical barrier. Not my turn yet! But one thing I will do differently in the coming years is to begin reflecting on my demise. Does that sound mawkish? Self-indulgent? Pointless?

Well, I won’t be picking out a coffin or selecting music for the funeral or tearfully imagining the mourners gathering. All that would be a waste of time and, like everyone else, I’m busy. With work, family, friends, travel, trips to the theatre, galleries, restaurants and so on. What I mean to say is that I have not lost my appetite for life. Why, then, do I wish to begin meditating on death?

For two reasons: in order to live well during whatever years I have left; and to begin to confront and maybe even conquer the fear that, thus far, has stopped me from having more than a fleeting engagement with the knowledge that death is the inevitable outcome of life.

There’s a well-worn trope about living each day as if it’s your last, or if you only had one year to live you wouldn’t choose to spend it at the office. That doesn’t quite chime with me. If I only had a year to live, I’d still choose to work. (I might try to write faster!) Nevertheless, it is death that makes life meaningful. In Howards End, EM Forster puts it like this: “Death destroys man: the idea of Death saves him.” The value of our days floats on the metaphysical stock market of ideas that we hold in our minds.

The idea of ceasing to exist isn’t easy to contemplate. But I don’t believe in reincarnation or an afterlife. I don’t believe that raging against the dying of the light is going to achieve anything. And ignoring the issue isn’t going to make it go away. In fact, it makes the prospect more, rather than less, frightening.

I first read The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne when I was at college, but it’s only now that I’m ready to take on this piece of sage advice: “To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.”

How will I go about it, then, this new contemplative practice? Place a skull or some other memento mori on the shelf above my desk? Fly to Thailand or Sri Lanka and visit the Theravāda Buddhist monasteries where photos of corpses are displayed as aids to the maranasati (mindfulness of death) meditation? Walk around graveyards?

I’ve recently rented an office where I go to write. There’s a huge picture window under which I’ve placed the desk. The window overlooks a Victorian graveyard that’s still in use. When I sit down, all I can see are the trees. But when I stand I have a view of the tombstones and, in the distance, the crematorium.

One day I’ll be gone, my body consigned to the earth or turned to ash. Sooner or later I’ll be forgotten. Truly accepting that revivifies life. It doesn’t make every moment wonderful, but knowing I will die is a source of strength to endure the difficulties, and a spur to be more present for all that is good and precious in life.

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Most older adults are wary of mixing health care and religion or spirituality, poll finds

But majority see role for health care providers in finding meaning or hope in the face of illness, and are comfortable discussing their beliefs with their providers.

By Kara Gavin

When it comes to matters of personal beliefs, most older Americans prefer to keep their health care and their spiritual or religious lives separate, a University of Michigan poll finds.

But they do see a role for their health care providers in helping them cope with illness by looking for meaning or hope.

In all, 84% of people between the ages of 50 and 80 say that they have religious and/or spiritual beliefs that are somewhat or very important to them, including 71% who cited religious beliefs and 80% who cited spiritual beliefs, according to new data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging. About 40% of these older adults say those beliefs have gotten more important to them as they grow older.

Among older adults with religious or spiritual beliefs that are important to them, 19% say their beliefs have influenced their health care decisions, and 28% say they want health care providers to ask them about their beliefs.

Meanwhile, 77% of all older adults, regardless of beliefs, say health care providers should keep their own personal beliefs separate from how they deliver care.

The poll is based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center.

For the report, the poll team worked with Adam Marks, M.D., M.P.H., a hospice and palliative care physician at Michigan Medicine, and L.J. Brazier, M.Div., a chaplain at Michigan Medicine’s Department of Spiritual Care.

“While 45% of older adults say their religious beliefs are very important to them, and 50% say that about their spiritual beliefs, even this group largely wants to keep this aspect of their lives separate from their health care,” said Marks, an associate professor of geriatric and palliative medicine. “But a sizable majority of all older adults – whether or not they say belief is important to them – reported that they’d turn to health care workers to help them find deeper meaning in their illness, and 78% believe health care workers will help them find hope when they’re having a health-related challenge.”

Brazier notes that many health care systems have a way to record the religious affiliation of patients in their electronic medical records, and that medical students and others training for health professions are told to ask their patients about any beliefs that might affect their future care.

“While 45% of older adults say their religious beliefs are very important to them, and 50% say that about their spiritual beliefs, even this group largely wants to keep this aspect of their lives separate from their health care.”

Having this information available can help providers ensure that patients with strongly held beliefs or specific religious affiliations receive everything from appropriate hospital food to visits with chaplains of a specific faith tradition when they’re having a health crisis or nearing the end of life.

But for those who do not follow a faith tradition or have strongly held beliefs, having that information available to health providers can also be helpful.

“Being a religious or spiritual person, or not following a faith tradition or spiritual practices, is a highly personal matter,” said poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., an associate professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine and physician and researcher at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. “So perhaps it’s not surprising that only about a quarter of all people in this age range say they’ve talked about their beliefs with a health care provider, though this rose to about one-third of those who say their religious or spiritual beliefs are very important to them.”

In all, 70% of those who say their beliefs are somewhat or very important to them reported feeling comfortable discussing their beliefs with their health care providers.

Even if patients don’t want to discuss their beliefs with their health providers at a typical appointment, it’s important for providers to know if patients with significant health needs, or those experiencing a health crisis, are connected to a faith community that can help provide support.

In all, 65% of the older adults whose religious or spiritual beliefs are important to them said they belong to a community of people who share their beliefs.

The poll report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for IHPI and administered online and via phone in July 2022 among 2,163 adults aged 50 to 80. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect the U.S. population. Read past National Poll on Healthy Aging reports and about the poll methodology

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