An Unexpected Call

About a month later, I got a call.

On the line was Mandi, the executive director of End of Life Choices New York, who knew I had just attended INELDA’s training. She had received a phone call from an older woman in Manhattan looking for a death doula. She thought of me. “Can I refer you?” she asked.

“Um, I guess you can,” I said. “But you know I’ve never done this before. And she should know I’ve never done this before.”

“It’s just a referral,” she reminded me. “I can give her a few names.” 

This soothed me. Plus, I thought, I may not have death doula’d before, but this woman has never died before, either. Thinking about it this way made me feel better, so I said she could pass along my number. A few days later, Rachel Rose called me.

I worried my background as a journalist and storyteller might be a liability. I thought my being young-ish might be a deterrent. I definitely thought that never having had a client before would be a deal-breaker. But right from the beginning, my conversation with Rachel was easy. She was funny on that first call—super alert and coherent. It confused me why she needed a death doula until she shared that she had a respiratory illness. She was on oxygen 24/7. Later, I would learn she had outlived her doctor’s six-months-to-live estimate. Twice.

We discovered a shared love for storytelling, people, and improv comedy. (I did stand-up in high school; she took improv classes after she retired in her 70s.) She was down to work with me. This is definitely a call, I thought, as I hung up.

The First Visit

My first in-person visit with her was a few weeks later. I took three subways to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, listening to my death doula audiobooks on the way there. Rachel opened her door. I don’t know how it’s possible for someone to be so cute and beautiful at the same time, but she nailed it. She was slight, with a big smile. Her oxygen tubing ran around her ears and under her nose, attached to a bright green trail of medical-grade tubing.

I must have had extra coffee or tea that morning because, by the time I got there, I needed to go to the bathroom. I was annoyed at myself. The first thing I do is have a need?! Obviously, Rachel was fine with this and pointed me to the loo.

The bathroom was the first door on the left, and it’s where her oxygen concentrator was. It’s called a Stratus 5, and I thought the name was appropriate given that it sounds like a space machine. I’d never seen or heard one before. I didn’t know if I should shut the door, as it could smash the oxygen tube running from the bathroom to, presumably, her lungs? I decided it was better to be considered rude than to kill my first client within minutes of meeting her, so I kept the door slightly ajar. This was the right move. Rachel seemed fully oxygenated upon my exit.

Finding My Footing

That first meeting went well, but some haven’t felt as fluent. One day, early on, we were sitting in her living room, and the topic of pets came up. I told her about my cat, Thomas. I asked if she wanted to see a picture, and she said yes. It sounded like she meant it. I showed her, and it sounded like she thought he was handsome. (To be clear, he is. Rachel struggles with her lungs, not her eyesight!)

The exchange ended, and we went about the rest of the day. The following morning, or maybe the day after that, in some of our online correspondence, I quickly snapped and included another picture of Thomas as a PS.

Rachel wrote back:

“…I feel friendly towards Thomas because you are so fond of him and his name is cute. However, I hope that you do not incorporate him into our regular correspondence. It will be hard for me to be a good steady friend of Thomas.”

I was so mortified and embarrassed that I’d pushed my cat onto this unsuspecting woman who clearly could not care about her death doula’s cat. It felt like breaking one of the cardinal rules of death doulaism. This is “taking up space,” when our work is meant to hold space. I was so horrified, in fact, that I told two friends and my mom because I needed at least three people to tell me that I wasn’t a total screw-up and that this was recoverable.

Of course, and as you would imagine, it was fine. And now, when I think about it, I laugh at myself. In the movie version of this chapter of my life, that was definitely a scene.

I share these two stories—the Oxygen Conundrum and the Thomas Catastrophe—because they’ve been pretty representative of the challenges thus far. That is to say, they’ve been minor in the grand scheme of things. I’m fully aware that we haven’t gotten to the hard part yet: the part where Rachel does, in fact, die.

But if you can imagine the feeling during the Oxygen and Thomas moments—that “Oh God, what am I doing?” feeling—then you’ll understand how I often feel working in this space. But if you can also imagine easy laughs, open-hearted conversations, and clear-eyed presence, with two people looking at each other and smiling at each other’s company—the feeling of having helped someone with something, or at least made their day better—then you’ll understand the majority of how I feel.

Death as a Final Production

In my work as a documentary filmmaker, I’ve absolutely engaged people in heartfelt and heartbreaking conversations. I know how to listen, reflect, make meaning. I can handle logistics, project management, and research like a pro. I’ve traveled around the country and across the world, filming remarkable people doing remarkable things. But death doula work feels like the most remarkable work I’ve done yet. It is like documentary production—if producing were existential and deeply grounded and open-hearted.

When friends from my former company ask what a death doula does, I’ve found myself saying, “It’s like producing, but instead of a story, you’re helping someone produce their death.” (The client is the director, of course.) It helps me to think of it this way—like producing the ultimate production, the last and final project of someone’s life. Ideally, it’s the story that helps pull together all the ones that came before it. Perhaps that’s what this chapter of my life is about.

To be clear, there are differences from my old work, too, and those differences are palpable. For all the talk about “truth” in documentary news and storytelling (and I did tell very true stories), there was another type of truth that felt missing. I think that’s because the very thing journalism requires—a sort of distance between the journalist and the subject—feels like an untruth in how humans really are with each other. Or at least how I am with people. Or how I want to be when I can tell I’m not.

Before, I often wanted to bring a hospitality gift to folks I interviewed (that’s a no in journalism). More often than not, I wanted to hug the people I spent the day interviewing (also usually a no). I wanted to say I was sorry. A lot.

“I’m sorry that we had to do this interview on a Saturday.”

“I’m sorry that it’s easiest for us to film in your home.”

“I’m sorry that we took over your kitchen with our gear.”

Especially: I’m sorry that you shared so much with me, and I will only be able to use so little in this story. 

Ouch after ouch. 

But those stories did change me. My previous job taught me so much about the world and its people. I do think storytelling is one of my callings, and I would guess I’m not done making documentaries. Perhaps I’m just learning more about life now, so that the ones I make have even more truth to them.

In the meantime, I love the idea of helping people know their stories. Knowing mine has helped me immensely. And since dying is the inevitable end of mine (and of all of ours), in this chapter, I want to get close to it.

A Human Understanding

I’m still getting used to calling myself a death doula. I see people all the time getting attached to identities of what we have been, are, or could be. I don’t think this is the right question for me. The right question is:

“Do I believe I am doing what I am meant to do right now?” (Yes.)

“Am I taking care of myself in a way that will allow me to do what I’m being called to?” (I think yes? At the very least, I am trying very, very hard.)

But these are all thoughts. And these days, I try to focus more on feelings.

The real feeling, underneath the anxiety of wanting to do well, the fear of messing up, the constant restraint from sending Rachel pictures of Thomas—the most salient feeling is gratitude. Sometimes I just look at her and smile. 

I am so honored to have encountered this person who feels like the best person to do this with. She is frank with me. She knows herself and her wants. She speaks her needs quietly but clearly. She is generous of spirit. She sees the good in me. 

And in exchange, I am really motivated to show up for her. Of course, I want to make her laugh and smile, but what I really want is to help her feel like her serious self, her smart self, her funny self—all of her—belongs in the times and spaces that she still occupies, including the ones we share together. I want to help her have a good death, whatever that means to her. 

We’re starting to talk about this more often. She has mentioned hospice more lately, as well as the desire to create a list of people who should be notified when she dies. 

I don’t know how long she has, and neither does she. Clearly, neither do the doctors. But I suppose I don’t really know how long I have, either. Which is why, at the end of the day, we’re just a couple of gals walking toward death together.