The topic today is helping people we love at their end of their life.
When I took the end-of-life doula course, there were some people that wanted to take the course to become professionals. Some were looking to be volunteers in this this area, and some were doing it for a specific loved one. There were even a few women, that were there to help their ex-husbands in the last chapter of their life and there were only women who were doing that role. And I looked at all those people that were learning how to be in a life doula, to help somebody specific in their life and I was very impressed with that with that thought and processing idea.
Little did I know that not too long after the course, I would do the same thing for my mother. So when my mother passed, I was her son and helped, to some degree as kind of an end of life, doula with my training. There were a few things that became a higher-level conflict because of that. So, for example, my mother did not want to say goodbye. She did not want to say goodbye to her friends. She didn’t want to really say goodbye to the family. As she got worse, she wanted no connection with anybody but her kids and grandchildren and didn’t want to say goodbye. Of course, I talked to her about this, but once it was clear what she wanted, me and my sisters facilitated that. But the reality is that I’m also part of the family. I’m an end-of-life doula, helping her not communicate with people when she doesn’t want to. But her sisters are my aunts, and their kids are my cousins, and her friends are people that I’ve known since I was a little kid. What about me?
Now, of course, I’m less important in that equation, but it was an interesting added complexity. And there were a few other things like that, where I was thinking, if a professional came from the outside, they would not have some of these same challenges. I wanted her to say goodbye to her sisters, partially because I felt it was good for her, but also because I felt they would want me to do this. Maybe when people are just professionals, they don’t have the same complexities. So, you could say, what are the advantages of a loving family member doing these complex roles versus an outside professional that is not as connected. There are costs and benefit to those things. But for me, the benefit dramatically outweighs the cost. So now I have a slightly more complex relationship with my cousins and my aunts, and I had to explain a lot of things to them and spend time with them. But at the end of the day, I think that when we provide this service, this help to people we love, the benefit of having them trust us and helping us do this for them outweighs the complexity.
I think that more people should take an end-of-life doula course to help people and their families. The course would prepare people, I think, in slightly different ways to deal with people we love, because there are some differences there.
But I think everybody would be better off if we did this.
