How do I Know When It’s Time for a Doula?
While most people imagine the time to hire a death doula is when a person has weeks or months before death is imminent, it’s really never too early to hire a doula or to keep one on retainer. It might be helpful to know that I have been contacted by a number of people who are alive and healthy who just don’t want to be caught off guard should the inevitable happen. Early planning is the best way to ensure that the client has the kind “end of life” that they want. In short, a doula’s work can begin well before death and might take the form of something more akin to planning.
With respect to planning – a doula’s work might look like helping the client with writing obituaries and eulogies, exploring life insurance and burial insurance, planning for donation of the client’s body for medical research, exploring potential hospice programs, touring funeral homes, looking for burial plots, visiting green burial cemeteries, assisting with legal paperwork such as advance directives, and establishing health care proxies. Death doulas can also help the client to sort through and purge and donate years of accumulated “stuff”, organize their heirlooms, even create beautiful legacy projects to bequeath loved one’s years later. Think of a death doula as someone to help bridge the gap between families and all of the many processes associated with death, dying, and final rest.
Doulas are especially helpful when an individual has little or no family, or if the client has a family that has little experience with death, or when family members are afraid of confronting death. The death doula can act as a liaison between the family and any number of businesses associated with dying, they help to educate families about the options available to them and easing what can often be a difficult or painful arrangement process. Doulas can also provide death education so as to relieve the confusion and fear around the dying process and can provide grief care before during and after the client has died.
Most importantly, doulas can provide enormous care and compassion in the home sitting vigil with the dying person, relieving family when they are tired. They can arrange meal-trains, cook, clean, and can create a space in the home for dying that allows the client to be comfortable and at peace.
In summary, if you or someone you love has very specific ideas about how you would like the end of life to flow, it is never too early to reach out to a doula to begin exploring your options and start putting a plan together.
As always, my friends, Memeto Mori
