How this attorney became a ‘death doula’ to help terminally ill
A woman has shared how she quit her high-flying job to become a death doula — a person who helps people organize a death plan.
Alua Arthur who left her legal job to help others plan the end of their lives has revealed people’s heartbreaking last requests.
It all started in 2012 when Alua struck a conversation with a stranger on a bus in Cuba.
The woman said she was suffering from uterine cancer and the two of them started discussing funeral plans.
Alua said at that moment she realized the woman had not been able to discuss these matters with anyone close to her as people generally avoid the subject of death.
A few months later she helped her brother-in-law after he was diagnosed with terminal late-stage cancer.
That was when Alua knew that’s what she wanted to do-help terminally ill or healthy people with planning the end of their lives.
“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 told the Cut.
“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,” she added.
Now she has become the founder of Going With Grace, an organization specializing in end-of-life planning where she has also trained hundreds of death doulas.
The Los Angeles- based end-of-life support team helps patients and their families plan the emotional, practical, legal, and, spiritual issues that come with a person’s death.
The death doula has revealed that “sentiment plays out in beautiful ways” in some people’s final wishes.
She told the Insider a young woman opted for a house funeral where the place would be covered in white roses.
Another one wanted to share with the world her brownie recipe and asked for her remains to be placed in a baking pan.
Alua said: “Pick parts of the individual, who they are, and what they care about. Try to pour that into their dying because you’ll find that our values in living carry us through to our death.”
She has also said she has a plan in mind for her own death.
She added: “And then, as soon as they see I’ve taken my last breath, I want them to clap and be really grateful that I lived, and hopefully died, with grace.”
This story originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced here with permission.
