Holding Space for Death

The decision to become a death doula was an emotional one, from start to finish. My adoptive father was dying, and his kidneys failed. I was watching him slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, die. As a family, we were beginning to grieve and also trying to afford him the grace and support of his untenable situation.

At the whim of medical professionals to be allowed access to the coveted transplant list, he pushed back by refusing some treatments, ignoring healthcare directives in a pandemic, and for a long time, stubbornly maintaining old habits that only hurt him.

And then, amid all our frustration and angst with Dad, my co-parent, my kids’ stepmom, died unexpectedly. She finally worked up the courage to leave our ex. But, driven to alcoholism for the same reasons I found myself divorced at age 31, her liver failed, and she died in the hospital hours after diagnosis.

Here I was, the child and the mother simultaneously dealing with two very different situations, but in the thick of it with my family, it didn’t feel different at all.

I went to her funeral for my children. I found myself comforting people who still regularly say terrible things about me behind my back. It was when I was holding the father of my children while he cried in my arms, staring helplessly at my partner over his bowed head, that I realized this was now a part of my life.

The older I get the more death will come. Sometimes it creeps in the window and sits with an aging pet, other times it pounds heavy on the door to collect a parent or grandparent or, worst of all, a child. No one taught me to deal with death in any of its forms. We’ve been removed from our traditions by modern religious beliefs and ideological fractures in our family.

Death was once celebrated as an important part of life. Too many of us are generations removed from a time when we cared for the dead and dying the same way we cared for the living and newly-born. People who seek control and profit have done their best to steal our villages from us, separating us from the traditions that brought us peace.

I was sure more knowledgeable folks than me had already drawn the connections between a new religion that granted life eternal, and the fear stoked around the myth of a good death.

So, I started reading what they had to say. Then, I went back to school.

I have no idea where this will lead me. But now my family has a renewed connection to our own traditions once more. It’s amazing how much stronger we are when we honor roles that have historically fallen to women.

Some of us have lost our rhythm with Life and Death. That’s the problem with survival. It takes you right out of sync with the beauty of natural order. By keeping us forever struggling to stay afloat, it’s easier to convince us that anything other than the struggle is evil and terrifying. The truth is there is beauty in the struggle— but there’s also beauty in the end.

And the end is fascinating.