A Bit of Optimism - A Sweet Conversation About Dying with Death Doula Alua Arthur

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Death is a word we like to avoid. We dance around the subject or use vague euphemisms to not hurt anybody. But what if being open about our deaths meant we could live happier lives?That’s where Alua Arthur comes in. Alua is one of the most prominent death doulas in the country, which means it’s her job to help people die. She offers support to her clients and their families as they embark on their dying journey, tackling everything from financial planning and insurance policy to emotional support and grief.When I sat down with Alua, I was prepared for a grim conversation. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by her candor and good humor about dying. She shares with me how she made a career pivot from lawyer to death dula, the most interesting stories she’s heard from people on their death bed, and why thinking about our deaths is the key to living the way we wish to live.This…is A Bit of Optimism.For more on Alua and her work, check out: Going With Grace

What is the most interesting secret or story you've ever heard somebody tell you on their deathbed? I've heard so many secrets. Oh, tell one. What's your favorite? Come on, come on. About the kids. About mistresses. The kids. Other families. Other families. There's so many other families. So many other families. And I think that 23andMe and Ancestry.com and all those places, we're about to find a whole lot of families. That's right. It's all coming out.

Yeah, nobody's dying with secrets anymore. Let's talk about death, dying, being dead. Those words are so jarring, literally just hearing them make many of us squirm. It's such a morbid conversation. Who wants to have it? Or maybe we're thinking about it the wrong way. That's where Elua Arthur comes in. She's flipping the script. She's a New York Times

bestselling author and one of the leading death doulas. Like a doula helps some people prepare for birth, death doulas help other people navigate life's final chapter with clarity and grace. But for those of us who aren't currently in the process of dying and aren't navigating grief, thinking about death may actually be the best hack to focus on life. This is a bit of optimism. So I'm always fascinated by people's career paths, right? Doctors and lawyers tend to know pretty young that they're going to be a doctor or lawyer because you have to make a decision, you know, pretty young to start going through that amount

of schooling, etc. And I have to believe that being a death doula wasn't like your childhood dreams. You weren't helping your teddy bears take their final breaths. I'm so curious how someone finds themselves doing this. It was a sharp right turn. I was a lawyer. I started out on the path of lawyer. So I did all the schooling and took the bar

and started practicing and was not having a good time. It was not working for me. It wasn't a fit. And I also just felt frustrated and still do that. We ask young people to choose their profession so early in their lives, you know, and like commit to something, something with the big financial responsibility of law school. I put that as a side. But I was a lawyer and then life came and worked its magic on me and grief worked its magic on me and here we are practicing death work instead. So did you start in grief work and find yourself to death work

or do you talk about them as that one thing? To me, they're inexorably linked. They belong together. They can be separate though because grief doesn't exist only with death, but it's like an open marriage where death is married to grief and monogamous with grief, but grief is super polyamorous

and goes wherever it wants to. So when talking about death, I can't help but talk about grief, but I'm mostly talking about grief. But I mean, but grief is super polyamorous and goes wherever it wants to. So when talking about death, I can't help but talk about grief, but I'm mostly talking about it. But I mean, but the way you got in, like what was the chicken, what was the egg? I guess that doesn't help resolve the problem because that's actually a debate,

but in the actual way and thick way things worked out, like what happened? Yeah, well what happened? What happened that you're doing what you're doing now? Okay, so I was- I didn't even know death doula was a thing. It's super a thing. So I was practicing law at Leo aid.

I got really burnt out, absolutely depressed and like a clinical depression. And I took a leave of absence where I went to Cuba and I met a young fellow traveler on the bus. We started talking a lot about her life and we started talking about death. She was traveling because she wanted to see the top six places in the world before she died because she had uterine cancer. And so that initial spark was like, oh wait, hold on a minute, people die? And I had been privileged enough in my life not to have known anybody who died. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was of age. So nobody close to me had died. I hadn't had that experience

yet. And I was really fascinated that she was looking at the end of her life or at least contemplating it. So we talked a lot about her relationship to her death. I asked her a lot about her life and what meaning it had and what she'd made of it thus far. And it helped me look at my own life through some lens that I hadn't previously considered. And that lens helped me see that I did not like the life that I was living, like it wasn't what I wanted out of my life, you know?

So I, on the bus, was like, well, shoot, if we can talk about this, and it can create purpose for people, like it did for me during that very brief exchange that we had about our mortality, well, it was 14 hours, it wasn't brief. But in that one moment of time, then it held so much weight for me.

And so I started really leaning into that for myself. When I came back from Cuba, my brother-in-law became sick, my older sister's husband. His name was Peter St. John. And I got to journey with him through the last two months of his life really, really closely. And I saw how isolating it is to be dying to be in the system and not have the support

there that we needed. You know, there were plenty of doctors, there were plenty of medical folks, but there wasn't somebody just to hold our hearts and to, you know, remind us that it was hard and to offer resources and a kind word and a listening heart. There was nobody like that. And so I really decided that I wanted to do that for other people. So grief came first in the way that I was grieving deeply. I was grieving my brother-in-law, but I was also grieving a system that I didn't feel cared for the people within it. And so grief pushed me into death work ultimately.

So the job that you described or the role that you played, I should say, you know, with your brother-in-law, I mean, you were the sister-in-law. Yeah. the role that you played, I should say, with your brother-in-law, I mean, you were the sister-in-law. So you were family sitting by his side as the doctors and everybody came in and through. And I think perhaps the reason that the concept of a death doula is not on the tip of everyone's tongue is because I guess there's an expectation that that's what the family does.

Yeah, it's kind of what the family does, but we're also so deeply emotionally entrenched in what's happening that it's hard to pull back. It's hard to take my feelings out of it and be able to show up for the dying person the way that they need to. The death doula is somebody who sits on the outside of the circle of support. Sometimes it's family, but not everybody has a family around, so it could just be folks that love the person or their chosen family that are around. And so the doula is kind of the person that sits on the outer rung, kind of holding everybody else up

and holding the whole thing together. There are, there's a number of things that death doulas do that family members, I think, don't know how to do or wouldn't even know where to begin. And that's where I found myself with Peter often, like, how do we do this thing? Is this the thing we should be considering? I wish that there was so much more we'd known at the time, his death would have looked a little different. For example, so what was missing

when when Peter died that you wished you knew or had been there? I wish somebody had said very clearly to us that he was dying. That didn't happen. What? It was more that they couldn't treat him anymore. That's what I'm saying. This is that that's what May I ask what was it that ultimately caused his death? Brickett's lymphoma. Okay. So, and nobody said he's going to die. They said this is no longer treatable. They said we can't treat him anymore.

They spoke in euphemisms to avoid the D word. Everybody danced around it. The palliative care team came in. They would like nod and smile slowly when it was clear that something was happening when he was not responding anymore. A plus B equals C, you know, he has an incurable illness. They cannot treat him anymore. He's going to die.

But I did that. You know, I did that in my own brain, in my own body. And it was really, really difficult to take in because it was also the unimaginable. And I think anybody who's been in this situation understands when it's somebody close to you and they're getting close to the end, it's like this can't be it, like this cannot possibly be it. And so aside from just somebody saying very clearly, hey, it looks like he's dying,

they could have helped us find ways to engage my four-year-old niece at the time into his death. We didn't have support for that properly. Nobody explained what the death rally was, which is something that I noticed in Peter and I've seen many times before and many times since in my work. Nobody explained how we could find certain hospital gowns that closed in the front because he had all these sores on his back or getting him up to change the gowns was difficult. Getting his will in order trying to figure out what he wants to do with his cremains. Like there there were so many items that I wish that we'd known beforehand.

What's a death rally? A death rally is often a surge of energy nearing the end of life that often looks like the miracle that people have been waiting for, but in fact, it's a sign that life will soon reach its end. I think it may be the body shedding off the last little bit of life force energy, but the person often starts behaving like they did before. Maybe they're making jokes or asking for food or asking to see certain people. They look a little bit more robust than they have and typically happens right before the person begins to actively die. Do the doctors and the palliative care specialists, are they

avoiding the d-word because there's some weird stigma? Is the word death or die? Is it too aggressive? Because we do, we do, at least in the West, you know, we speak, we speak around it, right? Like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for your, for your father's passing, you know? What happened to your, your, you know, your brother-in-law? He's no longer with us. We don't like the D word. We don't say, oh yeah, he died a bunch of years ago. Or yeah, he's dead, you know? It is a very sudden, even the D,

it's a hard consonant, right? It's an aggressive word. Totally. So why is it that even medical professionals are so afraid of using that word? Is it because they've triggered families before and they've just learned over time not to use the word? I think there's a lot of different reasons for it.

That may be part of it. Because you don't call yourself an end of life doula. No, I don't. Yeah, I don't. There are many that call themselves end of life doulas or end of life specialists or practitioners. Right, right, right. I'm kind of a straight shooter.

What you see is what you get and people die. It is a big word, one syllable that lands like an anvil, but it really, it holds a lot of truths that many of us seek to avoid. And I think doctors and medical professionals are also human. You know, I think that on some level there isn't enough training in hospitals or training in medical school about dealing with people nearing the end of life. I think that oftentimes folks want to have saved the person. They want the medicine to work and maybe it feels like a failure of some sort.

I think as long as we think of death as the opposite of health or we think of death as a failure in some way, the folks that are meant to cure folks will always have a hard time with it. But then also societally, we shy away from it like you were saying. We speak in euphemism about it. Passed away, somebody lost somebody. One of the times recently, somebody said that to me, not in the context of work. So I did not have my Death Do The Hat on, but she said she lost someone. And I thought, like, she couldn't find her. I didn't realize she meant she died, you know? It's tricky.

I wish that we would be a lot more straight about it. I wonder if we're all overly sensitive because we don't wanna offend the people we're talking to or is that we're offended by the word? I think we're offended by the word. Are we tiptoeing around a sensitive subject and being overly cautious? It's like a weird end of life political correctness.

We're all tiptoeing around for fear of offending somebody. So we go the most sort of euphemistic way when in reality, if you just say what it is, everybody's actually okay with it. And much better with it. In fact, if you just say what it is now, I've noticed that sometimes it takes family members or the people close to the person that died a while to come around to it because it is so final, it sounds so final. And yet, we, I think, do everybody a favor when we just call it plainly for what it is. When we speak in euphemisms, we also run the risk of continuing to pass on our death avoidance and our death phobia and culture, particularly when talking to children.

There was a guy I talked to not that long ago who told me that when his grandmother died, they told him that grandma had gone to children. There was a guy I talked to not that long ago who told me that when his grandmother died, they told him that grandma had gone to sleep. He was terrified to sleep for years. He was seven when she died. Terrified to go to sleep because they thought he wouldn't come back either, you know, thereby reinforcing the idea that it's something that we don't talk about, something that we don't address, something that we put over there. We don't say somebody died, we say they went to heaven or they went away for a long time, you won't be seeing her anymore. We cause more confusion and we reiterate

death phobia in our culture. It's so interesting, especially when it comes to children, right, you're so right, because we don't upset the child and yet you can watch cartoons from the 50s, like Bambi. It's wild. And there's death all over these cartoons. Everywhere. And like these are for little children

and they're, and none of them, you know, I don't think anybody would say that a Walt Disney film caused some sort of lifelong trauma. Yeah, but like I cried big, grown up tears at Moana very recently when the grandmother died, spoiler alert. But children are watching these films and they have their own relationship with death and grief and loss, either through the films or in their own lives, or their grandparents die or their parents die or their siblings.

They know the experience and yet adults, we try to shield them from it. I'm using air quotes, but they know it. And when we don't address it, it creates a strange cognitive dissonance. It also sends forward the message that it's not okay, whereas it's just a part of the cycle of life. We all are part of the cycle. We all will meet our end at some point. Are you afraid of death?

I wouldn't say afraid. I'm curious about it, I'm very curious about it. There are things that- Like if you're on a plane, and there's really bad turbulence You know, do you have fear of death like fear of dying? You know, or you totally relaxed and you're like, well, this is my time. This is my time I feel more like if it's my time, it's my time, but i've also spent a lot of time thinking about my death

And preparing for my mortality, you know, but there are things that still make me a little uncomfortable about it I am so deeply in love right now, and I would really, really, really like to see elderhood with this man. And I think about him dying, and it makes me want to cry. So sometimes, that fear of death lives in somebody else. You know, I'm maybe not afraid of my own mortality that way. I would love to see elderhood with him. But also, I don't want him to die either.

That's the fear of death that's showing its head. Who hires you? Does the family hire you or does the person dying hire you? Does the hospital hire you? It depends. Never a hospital or at least not yet, but often the family members are the circle of support or the person themselves because sometimes we're not there for the person that's dying. Sometimes we're there for the circle of support, like they need an additional hand or they need some information or some comprehensive end of life planning. I also want to be clear that death doulas work with anybody who has some recognition

of their mortality, which means that when somebody is still healthy, we can help them complete comprehensive end of life plans. So we can help folks think through their end of life plans, think through their fears of death, think through their death avoidance when they're still healthy and they're not yet looking at the end of their lives. It's such a good point, right? Cause I think we all know that we're supposed to, whether we do or not, you got to have your will, you got to have your living will, you know,

you have to make your state in order to make sure somebody knows where all the paperwork is, where the bank account numbers are, insurance policies. You're good. Like it's, I mean, no, I know the stuff. As you get older and you sort of reach a middle age, you're like, I got to do this, you know? And somebody will say to you like, I just finished my living will. Did you Simon, did you do yours? I'm like, I got to do it.

Damn it. You know? And like, you know, because we don't think of about our mortality when we're younger, of course, it's basically mostly financial. It is helping our loved ones be prepared or be, you know, there's insurance policies, for example, to make sure that they're taken care of, etc. But none of us think about the emotional care, we think of the financial care. Like, you know, people have insurance policies so that their spouses will be taken care of after my dying, my kids, you pay the mortgage.

But none of us think about, they're going to go through frickin' hell emotional awfulness when this happens. I'm going to also have a plan for them, maybe for myself, but at least for them. It's so interesting that death is a financial thought. Yeah. And we've completely neglect the emotional components to help our family grieve our loss. Yeah. That's an absolute mirror about the capitalistic society that we live in.

It shows us where our values lie. What society does it well? Many of them do. I think a lot of societies don't really focus on the financials, but they focus on the community event of it. You know, dying is a social event. It's not a medical one. It's not a financial one. It does trigger a lot of financial responsibilities and conversations, but it's a social event. It's a community event. And there are a lot of places that treat it as such, which is part of the reason why a death due to today's

day and age in this society, a Western society seems interesting or strange, but it's a role that has been inhabited since time immemorial because since humans have been alive, humans have been dying, and other humans have been supporting them through it. Literally. Yeah, literally. And other humans have been there for them.

It just seems strange now maybe because we live in these individual pods where the nuclear family is the center It just seems strange now maybe because we live in these individual pods where, you know, the nuclear family is the center and I am the center of the universe and my life matters and I, I, I, I, I, such that I forget about all those around me whose lives will continue after I die, who I would like to take care of in my dying as well, who are going to be taking care of me. One of the things that I find also fascinating about the concept of death, and I studied anthropology in college, and a universal is ceremonial burial. That every culture in the entire world,

everywhere, big or small, there's ceremonial burial. And when anthropologists go back and look at sort of early bones and of early homo sapiens, they're amazed that they find ceremonial burial. It's a thing. And I wonder if that that you called dying a community event, that the concept of the ceremonial burial is sort of the community death doulaing, if you will. And to your point, which is the decline in sort of ceremonial anything, you know, we ship ourselves off to the cities and leave our families far behind. That I wonder if the need for a death doula is a very modern construction because we aren't so community-less

in this modern day and age. I absolutely agree with you. That role used to be inhabited by a member of the community. There was somebody that the people knew that when the dying is happening, you call them over and they come and support. There are still some cultures and some religions that hold on to those. There's a Sheva Kaddish within Judaism. They're the folks that you call when the dying has occurred and they prepare the

body. And there's ritual written into the religion about how to grieve afterward, but it's written into it. So everybody knows that's what you do. But in the absence of culture that dictates that, then what do we do? You know, what we do is that we ship it off to hospitals. People are dying in very sterile environments, not in the way that they want, not in the way that their whole humanity is being cared for. And then we pass on their money and we don't, we give them three days off for bereavement leave for their grief and we don't give them any time to be with this massive event that

is taking place. I mean, I know, I really want to talk about living in just a second But I'm really just so fascinated by this which is if you think about it when a when a when a couple gets pregnant, right? When someone gets pregnant There is thought put to how I want to have my baby. Yeah, you want to do natural childbirth? You want an epidural do you want to be in a tub of water? Like where do you want to be? Do you want to be in a home? You know your hospital like you want to see section like what are to be in a home? Do you want to be in your hospital? Like do you want a C-section? Like what are the medical considerations?

Like there's lots of thought in how to bring a child into this world and so little thought about how I would like to leave this world. I've never thought about it. I've never thought about it. Here we are. Now's the time to think about it. Now's the time to think about it.

Okay, let's talk about living. How did you change how you live your life as a result of this experience? And take me on the journey, which is. How did you change how you live your life as a result of this experience? And take me on the journey, which is what changes did you make right after that bus ride in Cuba? So in the very short term, before you decided to go do the work, how did you start living your life differently? Well, I also took that invitation to start living like I was dying, essentially.

I was under a leave of absence at work, but when I came back I extended that leave of absence a little bit longer because I thought that I need a little bit more time to decide what direction I want to take my life in and I'm glad I did. I applied immediately for a graduate degree program in death and spirituality because I thought maybe I want to be a therapist and sit and talk to people that were dying. So I started making the changes. I downsized my apartment because I knew I wouldn't be able to afford it anymore given

that I wasn't collecting my salary at the rate that I was. I made changes in my own life. But since then, so much has changed. Not only did I not go back to the practice of law in any capacity, and I built a business and a career around supporting people when they're dying, I also think I speak a little bit more clearly about how I feel. I brush up against my vulnerability a lot more often.

The idea of individualism seems to be fading in me that I'm more comfortable being needed and needing people in my life because I see how communal our lives are and can be, and I want that for myself. But, you know, this idea of individualism has us say that we can do everything on our own. I also eat more delicious foods. I'm not as concerned with my weight if we're going to be silly about it. Like I eat whatever I want because this life is short and I want to use my taste buds as

long as I've got them. And I love french fries and cake. So I'm trying to get them while I can. Yes and, but if you eat too many french fries and too much cake, that day comes a little sooner. Yeah. Theoretically. Theoretically, because I don't know, tomorrow could be it.

And if it is, I really hope I had a french fry. And also, also, as I'm going about eating my cake and my french fries, at some point I also want some kale and spinach, alright? Like I don't just want that. When I eat a little bit of it, I satisfy. Then I want to eat something else. I want to nourish my body.

Because you don't want to have diabetes along the way either. That's not funny either. No. And I also really like squats. Like I like squatting. I like muscles. I like exercise. And so I do that plenty as well.

What do you think about the obsession right now of longevity? I live in California, so everybody's in some sort of, you know, supplement something or other. Everything. And you ask them the reason why you're doing this, and they, longevity is the answer they give you. I'm curious your thoughts. Is it fear of death?

Is that a good thing? I think it's death denial at its core. I think we live in a highly death avoidant death phobic culture. And that tells you that you pop enough supplements and you drink enough baby's blood, you'll live till 117. But why do you want to live till 117 anyway? What is it that we're trying to avoid by wanting to live for forever? And what are you doing with that extra time that you wouldn't do now with the finite time

that you have? That's such a great point, which is I'm taking all these vitamins and doing all these things and spending hours a day to prolong longevity so that... For what? You know what's the equivalent of? It's the same mentality of I'm going to make a lot of money so that I can give to charity later. Same mentality. It's like, why not just give to charity now and give to charity later also?

With what you got. Yeah. Start with what you got. And none of us know how much time we have, you know what I mean? Like I could live to 104 anyway, but I could also, tomorrow could be it. And if that's the case, then why not live my life right now with the fullness that I can while I'm still here?

What's the youngest person you've helped die? Well, I supported a family with their newborn died. Okay. And what's the oldest? She took like three breaths. Probably about 95? 95. So what have you learned from the people who, and a newborn doesn't help me with my argument here, but like somebody who's in their 40s or 50s, right? So we would say they've died young, right? Relative to the national averages.

Versus somebody who lives way beyond the national averages, 80s, 90s, right? Have you noticed any patterns in how the older ones have lived their lives? What is their attitude to life? How have they lived their life that that you can perceive that they have lived longer than everybody else? Can I tell you a story? Yeah. A client of mine, one of my absolute favorites, although they're all my favorites, so don't tell anybody I said this.

One of my favorite clients, Miss Bobby, she was about 95 when she died. And in the time that I sat with her, she told me all these stories of her life, you know, about how she was the first black woman to integrate multiple neighborhoods in Los Angeles. She was a traveling nurse that traveled abroad and saw the French rules in France, and so she swears she was the one to bring it to America. She chased off lovers with guns, a cheating husband with a gun. She threw newspapers at nosy neighbors. She did a big life while she was here. Okay. Near the end of her life, I asked her if looking

back on any of it made any sense or anything like that. And she responded to me in a super husky, gravelly voice, because she's also smoked like packs a day and drank a bunch of whiskey while she was living. I think it was cognac actually. She drank a lot of cognac. And she said, first of all, none of it made any sense, but it was one hell of a ride. To me, the indication of the, like how people approach their dying is based on how they view their lives themselves. You know, if I'm spending my whole life resisting my death, it's not going gonna be one hell of a ride. But if I can just sink into it for what it is,

the utter miracle it is, the joy, the benefit of being able to eat food and travel places and meet people and be here for the times that I'm here, then I think they reach the end feeling like, okay, that was all right. And I noticed that same attitude in the younger folks. There was a woman I supported who was about 26, 27,

who also was like so joyful. She did not want to die young, air quotes. She didn't want to die young, but there she was. And she embraced it with a wisdom that a lot of older people didn't have, that I certainly didn't have even at the time that I got to support her. She had enjoyed her life for the time

that she was present in it. And I think that's what we can all take away from it, is to be here. It never made sense to me why people would save their money to go on, you see the retirees who've gone on these incredible world tours that they've been saving up for for 30 40 50 years yeah and i always think why not just take a small trip every year you know as opposed to the grand tour near the end because to your point i think

a lot of what we're talking about is gratitude i'll tell you one thing that i find absolutely poetic and beautiful when i asked you what you changed about your life you know after When I asked you what you changed about your life, you know, after that bus ride in Cuba, I expected you to say, well, you know, now I take more vacations. Like, I expected you to say those kinds of things, but you said something more beautiful, which is you said, I've become very comfortable being needed and being needy. Like, I've been very comfortable needing the help of others, and I've been very comfortable feeling needed. And I think that is absolutely beautiful, which is to recognize that like we're not alone in this.

And to be open to being needed and needing others is something you appreciate more since you've learned about death. Significantly, significantly more. I see how as we approach our dying, those that are resistant to the support of others, those that are so afraid to be vulnerable, that are afraid to have a need, are the ones that tend to struggle because they're still trying to do it all by themselves. There's a client that I got to be with who, a big burly guy, who in his dying and his illness got so thin and frail. And he was a classic, you know, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and the American success story. He came from nothing.

He made everything. And then his dying struggled so much with the fact that he could no longer stand on his own or pull his pants up by himself. He was angry. He was frustrated. He, it was breaking him. He couldn't surrender into being vulnerable. And that's not something that I want for myself.

I also see how all of us become vulnerable. You know, dying is probably one of the most vulnerable acts we'll ever undertake. It's certainly one of the most intimate. Everything, my whole life is going to be on display for other people. Somebody's gonna go through my sock drawer and that one drawer by the side of the bed that I do not want my mom to see before anybody else does, you know what I mean? That one drawer. Like, everything's gonna be on display. My body's gonna be cold and naked on a slab at some point. It's vulnerable. It's very vulnerable. If I'm

ill, even more vulnerable. Why not practice it a bit now? Do you cry? All the time. When your clients die? All the time. All the time. I grow close to them. Who helps you manage that grief? My partner, my friends, the other death doulas in my life, the grief therapists in my life, everybody, the cashier at CVS if they ask me how I'm doing that day. They ask the wrong question. And they catch me at the wrong time or the right time. You've been there for a lot of final words. What are some of the best final words that you've heard that have left you like, yes, thank you? I wish they were, but it's more like yes or no or mm-hmm. Like there's not that much energy

to come up with something poetic, you know? No, I haven't heard anything that's been like wow. I think that's the stuff with the movies. My grandmother died when she was about 95 or 96. She had a weird relationship with death. And you know, I remember I'd visit her in London. She was already in a home because her body had not worked like it used to.

Her mind was fine right until the end and it was caused her endless frustration because she was an adventurous woman and she couldn't really do the stuff she wanted to do. So she was in a home and I would like visit her in London and I'd leave I'd say well I'll see you you know next year when I'm back in London and she'd scream out maybe not you know like she's just this weird relationship with death very comfortable with it. When she died some of the nurses from the from the home came which is very unusual because they're around death all the time They don't go to funerals, you know it's part of the job, but a few of them came to her funeral, which I found really touching and The one who was with her when she died

She was standing next to the grave with her and I said said, I have to ask you, did she have any last words? And she said, yeah. She was sitting in bed and she said to me, I think I'll have another pillow. And she left to get another pillow and she'd come back and she died. And, you know, I kind of love that. You know, I kind of love that. I kind of love that.

Me too. I think I'll have another pillow. Yeah. And I think she was telling her to leave. I think she knew she, and I think she wanted to be alone. But those are like the best final words I've ever heard. That happens often when people want to be alone.

I'm so touched that that nurse not only remembered, but shared that with you. It is beautiful. I also just love the idea that she was like, oh, let me get a little bit more comfortable with psych. I'm out. Being English and polite, I didn't want to say could you get out for a moment, please? I'd like to die. It happens a lot. And I often talk to folks that are experiencing some grief or sadness because they stepped out of the room because either the person dying needed something or they stepped out to get a phone call

or to go to the bathroom or so while they were gone the person died. Yeah, they waited for their moment, right? They waited for the moment, they wait for the moment, they wait for the moment. What is the most interesting secret or story you've ever heard somebody tell you on their deathbed? I've heard so many secrets. Oh, tell one. There are all types of secrets, family secrets, about mistresses and babies and kids and people who died under mysterious circumstances. Ooh. Juicy stuff.

Were they confessions or were they more like you want to know something? Both. Ooh. Juicy stuff. Were they confessions or were they more like you wanna know something? Both. Wow. There's a lot of you wanna know something cuz I'm not gonna die with this secret or this is so juicy. What's your favorite? Come on, come on. Um about the kids. About mistresses. The kids. Yeah. Other families. Other families. There's so many other families. So many other families. And I think the 23andMe and Ancestry.com

and all those places, we're about to find a whole lot of families. That's right. OK. It's all coming out. Yeah. They don't have to be dead. That confession thing worked.

It's like that drawer next to your underwear drawer, that's coming out. And the 23andMe that you have two other families. Nobody's dying with secrets anymore. Look, everything we're talking about, obviously, is partially about planning for death, but it really is about a celebration of life. And you talked about the 26-year-old who just lived in gratitude, you know, and the 96-year-old, 95-year-old who lived in gratitude for the wild ride and whatever time you have, make

it something that you'll be grateful for when your time is up, whether it's a short time or a long time, right? But we speak in these faux philosophical, like every day is a blessing and count your luck. And we say nonsense like this all the time. The only time we really, really, really appreciate that life is short, and the only time we really, really appreciate

that how stupid most of our problems are is when we or someone close to us suffers some sort of real awful tragedy, whether it is a cancer diagnosis or natural disaster. And then we sort of all sit around and take account, you know, somebody says, did you hear, you know, Stanley has terminal cancer, you know, you're like, oh, it really makes you want to appreciate every day we say things like that. and by the way, we mean it. Every lesson I've learned about the value of life and the shortness of life, blah, blah, blah,

and the fragility of life, I've always, for about a day, maybe a week at most, lived a better life, and then I forget. And I go back to the, go back to normal. And, A, is that okay? And if not, how do we stay aware? How do we, you know, without having to suffer tragedy regularly to remind us,

or be surrounded by tragedy around us to remind us, how do we find joie de vivre? How do we live a life of gratitude and joy and make joyful decisions more often on just a regular normal day? Well, I think that's part of the beauty is in the question is that these regular normal days are where the magic lies. The magic is absolutely in the mundane. It's not just in the tragedy and it's also not just in those perfect days where the concert

tickets are your favorite artists are half off and you get like the last ones Or you're at the concert. That's the met there is magic in both those things but it's in the every single day where I can be reminded I can remember what a wild miracle it is that I get to touch and look at you through these eyes, through a computer no less, and speak. I am sending air into my lungs, sending up, pushing my diaphragm out

through these vocal cords to make noises, random noises, that somehow you understand and are alchemizing in your own brain and making some sense of and causing a reaction in you and then thinking of the same thing, then you'll do the same thing and send it right back. That is a miracle. And that's happening trillions of times a day.

And yet we get so caught up in the little annoyances of life, you know? Taxes, a big annoyance, or like traffic, or not having the particular type of peanut butter I want at the grocery store, forgetting that peanut butter itself is a miracle. Like being alive is an absolute utter gift. It's an utter gift. When I can remember that, when I can remember that, it allows me to be more, like, present.

I was talking a bit about gratitude when I was talking about summer, that client I was telling you about, the young one, but also a lot more about presence. Like, she had a way of just zoning out and noticing raindrops, noticing the pattern as the raindrops came down the window. That may have been because she was approaching her end and she was very present with her mortality and could think, wow, I won't be seeing this much longer. That gift is available to all of us every single moment.

I don't know when my end will be. At all. At all. I mean, like you're already making me feel bad, right? Because I don't mean this in a bad way, but like, I was snippy this morning. Uh, I was annoyed by something at lunchtime. You know, and it's so all of it was stupid. Yeah. And the reality is, I don't care.

Like, if I really, if you really push me, I don't really care. And so what I'm grappling with in my mind is like, I know everything we've been talking about, like, and I think everybody knows everything we've been talking about, you know, like, just to look around and be grateful for, as you said, because I think we do sort of gratitude practice, I think most of us who've tried a gratitude practice, you run out of things who've tried a gratitude practice, you run out of things real quick.

Like you have an amazing vacation, so grateful for that vacation and that dinner. And by like the third or fourth or fifth day or second or third week of this, you're like, I'm grateful for my family again, like I was yesterday. I'm grateful for, I guess, I'm safe at home again. I said that, I think I said that yesterday. But your point is, you could say the same thing

every single day and that's good. Absolutely. And get minute with it. You know, you're safe with the home, what about the roof? It doesn't have any leaks. You know, what about the fridge and the food that's in it? What about the ability to chew? What about teeth?

What about saliva? what about digestive enzymes? Like we can get really, really minute with it. And when I'm thinking about the minute, it's where the magic is. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of suffering also in the world. There's so much suffering. And yet, when I can zoom out and think about what this life is for me at this moment, it allows me to snap back into it. I think the most effective practice of gratitude

for this life itself is a reminder that I'm going to die. When I can remind myself of that, it pulls me right back from the annoyances and the minor grievances and the frustrations. And at the same time, it allows me to be with them in a way that allows them to be so because I'm also human. And to be human is also to be like a little annoyed sometimes. It makes me like not be so like tight about the emails that I send, you know what I mean? So I didn't get all the wording right. Well, I'm gonna die. But also you're gonna die, you know?

And so when I'm thinking about that, I don't just hit the email on like the really nasty thing. I don't hit send really easily. When I'm standing and I'm being a jerk in line someplace and somebody else is having a bad day, I think about their death and it allows me to be a lot more compassionate toward them. One day, whatever it is that's troubling them is going to be a thing of the past. All of their history, all their doubt, all their fear, all their regret, that's going

to die too. It allows me to like soften toward them. It allows me to like hold my fellow human for being a human, to have like hard days, to be angry about things, to one day be really vulnerable, to be laying there like a baby bird, like it allows me to soften. Oh I love that, which is some I'm standing in line at you know the coffee shop and the person in front of me is having a conniption because they gave them oat milk instead of, you know, almond milk. To, instead of being like, chill out, or it's just a small step to say, you're gonna die, and this won't matter.

At all. And it does, it really sort of like, gives you a little compassion for somebody else's troubles. A lot of compassion. I don't think that any society that reveres death, any individual that reveres death, can also hold any of the systems that keep us disconnected from each other. It's impossible. Because when I'm revering death, I'm honoring the individual for their entire life, for the totality of it. Like,

I can't do that and also walk down the street across all the people that are laying there and not think twice about it, you know, or hold up transphobia. Like it's impossible. You can't. For people who say grace before a meal, I think that everyone should learn to say grace even if you're not religious or that's not in your, in, in, that is not associated with the religion that you practice. Because I think sometimes when I've sat around a table with friends who say grace, sometimes I sort of like giggle to myself, like I always think of it, it has to be this big religious thing.

And some of it's funny and silly, you know? And I think it's good. I think the more funny and silly it can be, the more genuine it is. It's a little gratitude practice. Thanks for this meal. Thanks for having the friends and family around the table. Thanks for the nice weather. I think that's a way to do it,

which is to build it into the routine of life. Say thank you when you're brushing your teeth for your teeth every single morning. That'd be great. Thank you for the teeth. And when you lose your teeth, say thank you for your gums. Yeah. Thank you for having had teeth.

Thank you for having had teeth. Yeah, thank you for having had to hold a tooth in your mouth. Boy, I'm grateful I had to chew. Yeah, lucky me. Lucky me, lucky me. I am really partial to the concept of grace overall. I think of grace as like the basket that gets to hold all of us in our lives and also in our death. I name my company Going With Grace for that reason that if we

can like go along in our lives but also into our deaths with grace, that feels like a high bar but it's also so available immediately for all of us at any turn. And I swear that wasn't a plant. I actually didn't know the name of your company. You did it. That was spontaneous. But yes, it is Grace. To have Grace, to go with Grace. And how do you, when you named the company

to go with Grace, how did you define Grace? Why Grace? Well, I actually. Was it your anti-Grace? I don't know, no, right? People often think my name is Grace. I think that's just so funny. because I'm so not graceful. But that's funny, to go with Grace.

It's like, I'm Grace, and I'll go with you. And I'll come along with you. That's right. I don't know that I ever had a solid definition of what grace could be. I grew up in evangelical. I no longer practice that particular faith tradition. But the concept of grace was through all of my upbringing,

my religious upbringing. And I started the concept of grace was through all of my upbringing, my religious upbringing. And I started to think of grace as allowing things to be as they are, to be with the gratitude for what is, for that thing that holds us through everything that we journey through. And so going with grace, like going into life, but also into death with grace, that would be really pretty cool if we could. And we could. And we can. By the way, even though we're both anti-euphemisms

and we're both pro, just like, just say what it is because everybody knows, everybody knows they died, just say they died, right? But let's be honest, the best euphemism I've heard is going with grace. I win, yeah. I mean, it's a really good euphemism. It's pretty good, we'll take it, we'll take it. Oh, it's actually really good euphemism. It's pretty good. We'll take it.

We'll take it. Oh, it's actually a very cheery conversation. Surprise, surprise. Beautiful conclusions here. Grace, presence, gratitude. My favorite, which is getting comfortable with feeling needed and needing others. All lessons that intellectually we all already know. And I think to be reminded of the fragility and temporariness of it all is one mechanism.

And I have to believe you know this, but your life seems to help us feel inspired on two levels. Tactically, the people you're holding their hand and working with them, you know, as they're coming to the end and their families, and then talking about it, talking about it with me and writing about it and Ted Talks and things like that that you've offered to the world, you know, helps us all greatly benefit from the gifts

that your dying clients have given you to pass on to us. I'm the luckiest person in the world. I feel so grateful to be constantly in relationship with my mortality in such a way that it has allowed me to create a life that feels really good, that ultimately I can feel comfortable leaving at some point, where I can live in service, where I can wear all the wild colors I want to work,

because I don't care because I'm going to die, where I can just be myself while I'm living that that to me is the greatest gift that I think this work has been able to give me and I just hope to pass a little bit of it on. Well thanks for letting me be a part of that journey with you. Thank you Simon. Oh such a delight. Yay so and so bad right just death talk that's all. It's just death talk that's's all. I mean, that's what it is. Yeah. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenic.com, for classes, videos, and more.

Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of the Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsey Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.