DIARY OF A DAWDLING DEATH DOULA

So what does a Death Doula do?

I took a week-end workshop to find out.  Turns out they are advocates.  Birth Doula’s help mother and baby at the beginning of life, and Death Doula’s help patient and family through the process of dying. 

Doula is a Greek word meaning handmaid.  One friend, who’s a bit hard of hearing, thought I said Death D U E L E R, and was envisioning fights with swords with the Angel of Death etc., No!  No point in fighting!  It’s all about knowing when to surrender.  So I wanted to learn how best to DO death, without it being maudlin or macabre.
               I want my death to have a bit of fun to it;
                                   If I can!!

It’s been niggling at the back of my mind (on the back burner so’s to speak) that my own death can’t be, too far away – given that I’m 72 yrs. old, and was diagnosed with a chronic incurable illness  7 years ago.  The drama of finding out I had a rare blood cancer spurred friends and family to gather in sympathy and support.  From the most surprising woodwork, people surfaced back into my life.  Sometimes it felt like a premature wake – all the eulogistic proclamations of love and understanding.  It was intense.  But that sort of intensity can’t be sustained when the object of your empathy doesn’t actually die fairly quickly. And I, the writer am guilty of staying alive!
  But boy have I worked at it!! Juicing carrots until I turned orange; diet change vegan healthy and raw; Reiki; health guru’s;  faith healers; self-healing courses; snake oil; online research with Dr Google; eye rolling from my real doctor; Zen; God; meditation; medication; prayer; shamanic healers; blood transfusions;  best haematologist;  Feet in both worlds of conventional and natural therapies – all in an effort to prolong life.
  But now I get the feeling that all these friends are getting a bit impatient for their hour of reckoning – a chance to express real tears and real grief (or relief) as promised or at least suggested ages ago. It feels a bit unsettling now when they ask “how are you?”  Especially when I respond “I’m fine “Maybe, at the time, I overdramatised, and didn’t explain the difference between ‘life limiting’ and “life threatening” or maybe they over reacted.  As one outspoken friend, who came across me several years later exclaimed….’Vicki Norman!  Aren’t you dead yet?! 
 Normally I’m in a state of remission, but when this takes an occasional dive, the end of time emotions are once again rallied – by them!  Not me!  I keep fighting tooth and nail to stay the journey with a good quality of LIFE.  But am starting to feel a little like the boy who cried wolf.  And the joke about the words I want on my headstone I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK only gets a snigger, not a real laugh anymore

   

So I thought I’d better show a serious regard for the fact that I can’t keep postponing my ultimate demise indefinitely, and signed up for the Death Doula work-shop.  I hope friends and family aren’t saying ‘Oh here we go again!’, because paradoxically, the best thing I’ve taken away from this course is that I’ve never felt so alive in all my life.

Sorry folks – we’re in for a long denouement......

(Hopefully)

You’re ever loving Death Dawdler

Vicki

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