Soul Boom - Death and How to Live It: Death Doula, Alua Arthur

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Alua Arthur joins Rainn Wilson on Soul Boom to explore the transformative power of embracing mortality. They delve into how contemplating death can bring clarity and meaning to life, the cultural taboos around discussing death, and the importance of preparing for the end of life. Alua shares personal stories and insights, revealing how facing death can be a pathway to living more fully. Alua Arthur is a death doula, attorney, and founder of Going with Grace, an end-of-life planning organization that helps people navigate the process of dying with dignity. Her work involves providing emotional, spiritual, and practical support to individuals and their families as they approach the end of life. She also offers education and training for others who want to become death doulas or better understand the dying process. Alua Arthur is known for her compassionate approach, blending legal expertise with a deep commitment to making death a more conscious, informed, and peaceful experience. She often speaks publicly and conducts workshops on topics related to death, dying, and grief. Thank you to our sponsors! LMNT: http://drinklmnt.com/SoulBoom HOKA: https://bit.ly/HokaSoulBoom Pique Tea: (15% off!): https://piquelife.com/SOUL Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Spring Green Films Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Soul Boom Generation, I've got a really exciting announcement for you. We've got a substack. If you love the Soul Boom podcast and book and ideas, then you're going to want to get our weekly newsletter substack sent to your inbox. It's magnificent. There's going to be fantastic guest authors. Some are written by me. A lot of them delve into the ideas around the podcasts that we're doing that week. So sign up. Please subscribe. Go to soulboom.substack.com. Thank you. You're listening to soul. Everybody dies. Everything dies, except for a styrofoam at some point. Everything else dies. And because of that, we get to really be present with the fact that that happens

and then see what we'll do with it, how we engage with it once we become aware that this is what happens. And there are a number of ways to look at it. We can look at it as dark and scary and macabre and no thank you and morbid. And also we can see the value in it, the benefit, the potential. Because when I'm thinking about my death, I'm thinking about death in general, my entire life comes into very, very clear focus. Life itself becomes far more meaningful. Life's meaning is that it ends. The fact that we will die, I will die, this will die, creates such importance for the while, for the time that it's here.

Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. I think my favorite part of your new book is when you describe your own deathbed and your death scene. Can you take us through that? What does that look like? Take your time.

Yes. Hit the poetry. Great. Bring us in. Wonderful. It's just fantastic. Okay. So you're passing.

Yes. Hopefully it's a long time from now, but what's going on? What's happening hopefully is that I am dying as a result of disease. So I know that my death has been coming in. I've had some time to prepare for it. Ideally, it will be at sunset. I want to watch the sky change and turn orange and pink and purple and that vibrancy as the day dies into the night.

I would love to see that. one last time is such a rich tapestry. I would love to hear some running water very gently. I'd like to smell Nogchampa, Amber Incense, and peonies. I want to be wearing socks. I want a blanket. I don't want to be, I don't want to have any machines. I want to be in my own bed. I want to have all my affairs in order. I want my folks to know what it is that they're supposed to be doing with my body and with my stuff after I die. And mostly, I want the people. that I love and those that I've held really dear to be with me, to journey with me. I want them to not make me the center of attention, though. I'd love it if they were chatting amongst themselves

and paying attention to what's going on, but not just staring intently as I breathe. I want them to be comforting each other. I want them to be maybe talking about memories that they have of me or our time together or what our relationship has brought to their lives. And I want us all to go and surrender. I want them to surrender to this big moment. I want myself to surrender and just to say this is it. My whole life has been leading up to this moment. And I'd like to die in gratitude. I'd like to die with one last exhale, giving it all up, having arrived using up all of my skill and talent and everything that I came to this earth to do in full surrender and in gratitude. And then how does the actual dying work?

Well, I think my body system shut themselves down, as they do generally. One by one, all the systems just slow down. First, the cells, then tissues, and the major groups and the systems. And one by one, they shut themselves down. And eventually, I lose consciousness. I don't know what happens. I wish I kind of did. Well, no, I don't actually want to know.

But eventually I lose consciousness. My breath slows. It stops, and they clap. My people that are there, clap. They applaud? They applaud. They applaud. They applaud the transition.

They do. Okay. I think they applaud for the life that I lived, truly, the life that I lived and the grace with which I let it go. I think they say, good job, honey. He did it. That's beautiful. I would love that. That's beautiful.

I wrote in my book about, and I have a chapter called Death and How to Live It, And you know I'm not quite as obsessed with death as you are, but death is an obsession of mine. I find it incredibly valuable to think about, to deeply ponder, to meditate upon, and to feel its reality. We'll get to that in a little bit. But in my book, I talk about the passing of my father.

And it was, he went in for a quadruple bypass surgery. He was 78. But still the percentages of survival were quite high for that. They were going to take segments of his arteries from his legs and put him in his heart. And the success rate was, is very high. And so we were like, oh, okay, well, see in a few hours, Dad. and I got to spend in the last hour that he was alive with him in the waiting room for the doctors and give him a lot of love and talk and chat and it was really beautiful.

And then we got a call like four hours in like it's not going well. And then we got to call like six hours in. It's really not going well. And then it was like, oh, it is going a little better. Oh, no, it's not going well. He was under the knife for almost 12 hours, which is like the maximum a human body can do that because they have an artificial heart and they're pumping. blood and whatnot and and then it it really was not good and then we visited that night and he was

losing blood pressure and we had to essentially unplug him i mean we could have let it ride out but it's kind of like what's the point like we could literally see his blood pressure going and i was like how long until he dies naturally it's like 30 minutes to three hours but i mean it was just like and um it was uh devastating and um uh terrifying and uh heart wrenching and it's funny because for me i thought of this is such a cliche like i've seen this scene before you know as someone who's a hollywood storyteller like i hear the squeaky shoes of the nurses i hear the beeping of the machines. I hear the from the lung thing and the

and the nurses' conversation. Dr. Sam, I'm changing Dr. Sam. And it's like, this is like an episode of ER or Gray's anatomy and I'm in the middle of it. And that felt silly. And then when we unplugged him, I felt this incredible revelation. And again,

Again, when we prepared the body for burial, because as Baha'is and members of the Baha'i faith, we bathe and purify the body and ready it for burial, I had this profound experience of, oh, looking down at my dad, and there's like an eyebrow hair sticking up, and there's a mole on his hand, you know, and there's this little gray mustache. and I was like, oh, but this isn't my father.

This is the vessel that contained my father, his essence, his spirit, his soul, his consciousness, whatever you want to call it. That has moved on in some way, shape, or form. I did not experience it as like snuffed out. I didn't experience it as like, oh, it's dead and gone and it doesn't exist anymore. For whatever reason, on a visceral level, I experienced.

it as moving on. And I saw this body for what it was, and it was beautiful, and it had a lot of joy and laughter seeing that body that I've known since I was a toddler. And it carried his essence and his essence moved on. And that was really profound in terms of my spiritual thinking, which is, comes back to this quote that I'm always quoting right and left about Father Teilhard de Chardin who says, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And I saw my father's spiritual beingness had this human experience for 78 and a half years in this vessel and moved on. And I guess I'm just sharing that story with you, Alua, because I know that you have seen that happened dozens and dozens of times and experienced family members having that same experience that I had like you've been there. But can you talk a little bit about that idea of

a vessel? First of all, thank you so much for sharing that with me. There are so many ways which we engage with our mortality and one of the most profound is to be with somebody as they're dying and experience the ineffable awe that comes once life has left the body. And I've witnessed time and time again where the body now is laying lifeless, yet you can still feel something in the room. There's some essence that still remains. Sometimes it feels like it descends or comes up, but like there's a presence maybe, yeah. A thick presence that is in the room at the time. I wonder what that is. I wonder, but I do know that watching as life leaves the body

it goes from this vibrant, even if the person was unconscious in the hours beforehand, this vibrant vessel animated by something unknown to just really matter, just like that, you know? And as the body starts changing, physically, that the eyelids get flatter because the eyes lose water and flatten out and the cheeks get hollow when the color changes. And, you know, there's a whole relaxing that happens to the body. It's much easier to identify that this body house the depth of love and experiences and this person got to engage with the earth because of this body. But now that thing, that

anime the body is gone, it just is matter, tissue, blood, flesh. That's it. It's, I don't have words for it. I think we're probably not meant to. And do you experience family members having had the same kind of revelation that I had? Some, some. You know, others cling to the body, clinging to grandma, and others see and identify it instantly that, wow, that wasn't her. She's now elsewhere, and this is just the thing that housed our love. Amazing. And for those listening right now who are going, well, this is dark, this is macab. These guys are gross. You know, who wants to think about this and talk about this? You know, what's your answer?

There are parts of it that are sad and difficult, and also it's something that we're all going to go through at some point. Either will die. And if you're not okay with that, somebody in your life will die. And if you're not okay with that, celebrities will die, dogs will die, trees will die. And because it is... Celebrities die? My socks were rocked by Michael Jackson. I thought, what do you mean?

He's a celebrity. He'll never die. He's immortal. I was wrong. Everybody dies. Everything dies, except for styrofoam at some point. Everything else dies. And because of that, we...

get to really be present with the fact that that happens and then see what we'll do with it, how we engage with it once we become aware that this is what happens. And there are a number of ways to look at it. We can look at it as dark and scary and macabre and no thank you and morbid. And also we can see the value in it, the benefit, the potential. Because when I'm thinking about my death, I'm thinking about death in general, my entire life comes into very, very clear focus. life itself becomes far more meaningful. I think it's Kafka. Life's meaning is that it ends.

The fact that we will die, I will die, this will die, creates such importance for the while, for the time that it's here. I think about that indigenous Native American phrase that comes from a number of different tribes where they say today is a good day to die. And it's often misinterpreted as like, Indian native warrior kind of credo of like, I'm going to go to my death. But it's really a daily affirmation today is a good day to die, realizing one can die today, that death is very real

and that I've lived a rich full life and that the end is coming. For all of us, at any point in time, and to me, that's inspiring. It gives me a reason to look forward to the days to be more present in my moments, to feel as though I've done this life thing in a way that feels good for me so that when it comes, when it comes, if it's today or tomorrow or 50 years in the future, 50, I'll be 95, that's pretty old. But at some point, it will come. And I want to look back and say, all right, I'm ready. I'm ready. That's a practice. That's a daily practice to get ready. We did a show on my old company, Soul Pancake, called My Last Days. And, I was made by the great filmmaker Justin Baldoni.

And it was interviewing people who were in their last weeks or months or one case, a years of their life. In fact, one guy is still alive, about what it's like living with some kind of terminal illness. And it was very sad. It was incredibly powerful. And we had people write in all the time who say, every day I watch one of these videos in this series. It took off.

It was incredibly viral, hundreds of millions of views. People are really interested in this topic, even though it's dark and morbid, like you say. Because it's so inspiring. And it's like, oh, these people that are facing their mortality and struggling to and succeeding in a lot of cases, just an exuberant, passionate embrace of being alive. Like seeing those stories every day was incredibly powerful for the viewer. I'm not surprised at all because one thing that death teaches me over and over and over again is what a gift it is to live, which means that when I'm considering my death, when I'm supporting other people through theirs, what happens is that they end up so full of life once they start to accept and embrace their mortality. If you think of it this way, if you knew that it was going to be the absolute last time that you ate an orange and you like oranges, you're not allergic to them or whatever, but you're like your last time, you would savour it.

you'd notice the little bits of oil that fly out as soon as you start to peel it and that little iridescence that's on your finger afterward, the tartness of the juice when you first bite it, the little pulpy bits on the inside, the changes in oranges and the cream of the little strings that are around it, you would be really present with it. And that's what being with our mortality, that's the gift that it can bring when we're willing. We have to be willing. People that are facing their mortality have no choice. The rest of us should be facing our mortality regularly, and when we do, it's possible to live in awe. Aw. Aw, of being alive. I mean, the vast number of things that have to go right in order for us to become human is massive. It's overwhelming

when you think about it. How is that not so awe-inspiring? And even for life to exist on this planet, I was listening to this scientist talking about, like, if the earth was spinning a little bit faster, we'd all be dead. If it was a little further from the sun, we'd be dead. If the atmosphere had a little bit of more of this in it, we'd be dead. Like, all of the circumstances that have to be just right to create this beautiful blue jewel spinning in space that has this water and an atmosphere, then forget, you know, evolution and science in amoebas and paramecium. and monkeys and otters and, you know, chimpanzees and then humans and then us being able to have this conversation, it is. It's pretty awe-inspiring. Absolutely. There's no way for my human brain to really comprehend all it takes.

And then on this beautiful jewel with all these beings that we journey with, the ones that we can see, maybe some that we can't, within all of that, at least the human beings, there are about eight billion of us here right now, all with our joys and our trust. trauma and our pain and our unique perspective on the world. My experience, which feels like the only one yet in my head, I understand there's a bunch of you all too, but like mine feels like the one to be having. It's just fascinating. It blows my mind all the time. The awe of being, I'd say, is something that fills me up regularly. The awe of being. I love that. A awe of being, even sometimes when I'm in traffic.

And don't get me wrong, I got mad at the woman at the dentist office yesterday and for a second was like, but for the most part, a lot of times I can pull back out and say, wow, what a gift it is to have teeth to get them cleaned, even though their point was supposed to be one day and they changed it to another day when I can't make it. Those assholes. Dick Eds. I know. Yeah, I mean, I do. I talk a good game about spirituality and I'm talking about meditation and, you know, very, very, very, very, you know, very, you.

You surrender and Buddhist ideas and blah, blah, Baha'i ideas. But most of the time I'm just kind of, I'm a grumpy and annoyed and constipated and checking my phone way too much. Human. Yeah. Briefly, perfectly, human. Blink. One thing that's so fascinating about your field is the different levels that a death

dula works in what you call death care, which I love that idea, death care, emotional support to the person who's passing and of the family, spiritual support to the person who's passing and to the family. And then there's this whole world of like, you list the shit you got to take care of that hopefully people have prepped for before they die. Can you go through some of that stuff? You're talking about like titles of cars and insurance and all of that. C passwords and everything. It's mind-box. It's mind. It's so much shit. We could talk for three hours on the things that you must do to prepare, but generally, here are the categories to think of because death doulas also are able to help healthy people create comprehensive end-of-life plans. And also, once somebody is aware that dying is coming from a particular disease, it's important to just kind of check to see where all these practical things lie. So for starters, an advanced directive. Getting clear on who will make your decisions for you in the event that you can't, and then also your desires for life support. most important, I'd say for everybody. And then start to think about things like how you want to be

cared for while you are in your dying, what you want done with your body once we're disposing of this vessel, the body, your services, if you want any at all, consider your possessions, what is going to happen to all of them. Yes, you should get a will and a trust perhaps for the big ticket items, but also what about your sentimental items and the things that hold great value. you to you, but maybe you aren't worth much, you know? Like, for example, these bracelets, I wear them every day. They don't cost much money, but they are brass and copper, and I think a lot of people identify them with me.

I'd like to give them to my niece or somebody who would care, because otherwise. I'll take one. You can have one. I'll give you one today. Also important to think about your dependents and pet care and any disabled adults that are in your care. You have pet care. You don't think about what's going to take care of your cat or whatever.

And then what happens? So you're in the hospital for three weeks. Your dog is starving at home. Like what we need to think about these things. Also, here's where it gets really thick. Any biographical information and data, any important information in documents, birth certificates, death decrees, marriage certificates, passports, veterans affairs numbers.

Did you serve anywhere? What are all the titles you have? Any leases? Storage boxes. Safe deposit boxes. Dear God, the list goes on and on. Passwords, online accounts, titles just on and on and on. If you think about the amount of information you hold to make your life work,

once you die, all that information will die with you unless you are doing life closely with somebody who holds some of it. But if not, then... Yeah, wow. Yeah, it's important. You mentioned about, you know, what to do with the body when it passes. And one thing I thought was really screwed up is, well, when I was a kid, our cat, Tex, disappeared. Okay.

It was gone three days. It was heartbroken. Where is Tex? I'm walking down Ballinger Way, southeast and in Seattle, northwest, I forget where. And there is Tex laying down. I'm like, oh. And then I realize, oh, Texas is Texas. dead. And then I go over to Tex, and it looks like Tex on the top, and the bottom of Tex

has decayed. And, like, Tex is literally turning into dirt. Wow. Like, the body is dissolving into dirt. Cat on top, dirt on the bottom. Wow. Probably some worms and other stuff going on down there, right? I'm sorry to get all morbid and macabre, but kids, this is what happens. This is the great miracle of life. Ask Sir Richard Attenborough. And I was thinking about texts when my father passed away because I was like, okay, so the Baha'is don't preserve the body. What is that called? And you fill it full of chemicals. Embalming. We don't embalm the bodies, which is embalming is the most ludicrous practice, in my opinion, known to man. Like a body dies and you fill the body with like chalk full of like preservatives so that it kind of retains somewhat of its life life-ve-looks.

It's ridiculous. It's an insane. It's gallons of chemicals. It's wild. And it prevents odor for a while. I mean, maybe there was a while, like during a war, during a plague or a hundred years ago or 150 years ago where that made sense. And bodies used to die and go be in your living room, you know, with you. Um, but so we're like, so no embalming.

They're like, okay. I'm like, so here's this plain wooden box. We don't need anything fancy. He's going in that. Like, okay, what happens? He goes into the earth. Oh, no, no, no. He doesn't go into the earth.

Like, what are you talking about? Like, no, there's a, a cement box that they put into the ground. Then the coffin is lowered into it. Then a cement lid is put on top. because they want to preserve the look of the cemetery. Kids, get this. They don't put coffins in the ground like you see in the movies. They put coffin into a giant stone box.

And then I was like, well, wait, my dad's precious, beautiful body, this vessel that carried him through my life that I've hugged a thousand times. Like, it's sitting in this coffin and there's just air around it. And like, it's decaying. And then what happens? I'm like, well, slowly over hundreds of years, water seeps in and some dirt seeps in. And then it all very, very slowly stabilized. So eventually the body's going to be in the ground.

But I was like, wait, the body's not going to be in the ground for like 100, 200 years or more. Like, that's not even nutstein. And then I was like, well, at least fill the box with dirt. And they're like, that's going to cost you. I'm like, how much? Whatever it is, I'll pay you. And they're like, it was like an extra, like, $500 for them to bring some guys over with some wheelbarrows of dirt and fill the concrete box with dirt on top of the coffin. So that at least there's like, he's in dirt.

He's in the ground. He's in the earth. To some degree, he's in the earth. Part two of this has to do with cremation because. as I was exploring cremation, the highs don't cremate from our faith tradition, but essentially you're stripping all of the nutrients out of the body by cremation.

A lot of people don't know this. You're turning it into ash, any vitamins and minerals or whatever that the body contains that, that could be used to grow flowers and trees and feed bunny rabbits and worms is stripped out and like they throw the ashes somewhere or they keep them on a shelf or something like that,

but you've destroyed what's natural and beautiful about the body. Recently, just in the last 10 or 20 years, there's been kind of like green burials, and there's a couple places in the Pacific Northwest where they own a couple, but it's illegal in most states. It's legal here in California, gratefully. Okay, good. But they have like a place and you can go, like, literally put the body in a box

and go bury it under a tree or something like that. And that seems like really the only truly humane way to do this. why is our burial practices so bas-acquards? The only way it makes any sense is money, because otherwise I can't understand, and partially our death avoidance. I had a long conversation with a mortician once about embalming, and what she said was that part of the reason that they are embalming

is to restore the body to a life-like state. Now, that was really confusing to me, because the way that I understand it, the body's dead. there's no life anymore in it. And everybody who's coming knows that the body is dead. Nobody's expecting this body to look lifelike. And on top of that, it doesn't even look life like it looks like a wax figure of some sort. And so it doesn't actually do what they wanted to do. And I think that a big portion of it is folks aren't used to what dead bodies look like. And so they want to pump them full of chemicals to see if they can look as close to

lifelike as they can, even though they never can because they're dead. That aside, I just think a lot about it. I think a lot about educating folks. A big portion of my work is to educate people on what it is that they're getting some of these practices that we've been doing for hundreds of years without thinking about it necessarily. Embalming actually costs a decent amount of money. It's an add-on service at a lot of funeral homes. I can't understand why we, while we're still doing a lot of these practices. Green burial is available in a lot of states. I think almost in every state it's available. Oh, it is now? Yeah, it's just, it's hard to find. And it's expensive, and I can't understand why it's expensive, because to me it sounds far more expensive to create that concrete vault and to put the coffin inside the concrete vault underground and then put more, put another concrete slab on top.

That seems incredibly expensive. Absolutely. It is pretty pricey, by the way. Absolutely. And to me, it would be cheaper just to put a body in the ground because it will also get taken care of very quickly by the elements, which doesn't happen when bodies go into concrete slabs or it takes much longer. We also have natural organic reduction. Are you familiar with this? No.

There's an incredible organization out of Seattle called Recompose, and their founder, Katrina Spade, spearheaded this new movement called Natural Organic Reduction, and it's essentially human composting, where the body is put into a vessel and turned over. That sounds really gross. Every few days at that sound like. And I threw up in my throat just a little bit when you said human composting. Well, let's talk it through. But I love where you're going with it, but at the same time, I kind of got a little bit of

revulsion. It's like techs all over again. Yeah. Just happening as the body is turning. It's human texts. And turning and turning and turning. Which finally it gets reduced to this mulch that you can use. That actually is full of nutrients for the soil.

Full of nutrients. People are able to plant things with it afterward and use it. They're able to visit their loved one as they're being turned in the vessel. John Wayne Gasey's backyard had so many flowers blooming. No. I'm so sorry. No. Were they even?

No. We can cut that. So it's a really useful way for us to dispose of our bodies afterward. What are they doing? What is it? What is what? What is remaining? No, what is the human reduction?

What is, what do they do? They just put it? It becomes mulch and dirt. But how do they put it in a? They put it in a vessel with all the little things that you need in order to compost. And the gases and stuff are created and they break down the body and it just turns into soil. Wow. Yeah.

It's pretty incredible. And that's legal. It's legal in a few states, and they're working really hard to push it into other states, which I really think it should be everywhere, at least as an option. Because don't you want, I have a ridiculous body. My torso is way too long. Okay. And I've always had this belly, even when I was like 23 years old, I've had this ridiculous pale belly.

I look like a larva. I want to feed the worms and the soil and the trees and the plants and the sparrows to eat the worms. and then the hawk to eat the sparrow and then the elf warrior to shoot the hawk out of the air and I don't know where there's going, but you get the idea. Absolutely. The cycle.

The cycle. I think a lot of us desire to be part of the cycle. There is one element of natural organic reduction and green burial and all those things that I find really, really beautiful, which is this just dust-to-dust idea, you know, that I am made of the same elements that make up the earth. Which you're not really getting in cremation.

Which are not getting in cremation at all. And also, cremation releases a lot of CO2 into the air. It's not very environmentally sound at all, at all. So those folks that think that they're doing the environment is solid by choosing cremation or not. So by virtue of a green burial or a natural organic reduction or any of the more natural ways, all the donuts and fried plantain and breads and cheeses and delicious things that I've enjoyed in my life, cellulite, the bugs are going to feast on it when I'm dead. And I just feel so grateful to be able to give them a little present. Do it for the bugs. I'm doing it for the bugs. Do it for the bugs.

I was recently in India and in Rishikesh, which is a Hindu sacred holy site. And as we know, Hindus cremate for the most part. And we were walking over this bridge. And there was a body being burned at the side of the Ganja River. It was encased in a, some kind of stone thing and had firewood and it was and the family was gathered and there was some kind of ceremony there was a priest there and that i think the sons had shaved their heads or and there was some thing going on and they were purifying in the in the river and whatnot to our guide i was like wait what is going on right now is there a body in there because we're walking over this pedestrian Bridge and it was like 60 feet away like the smoke was coming up. I was like, isn't there

someone overseeing this? Do you have to get a license for it? He had no idea. Like, what do you do? Do you go to town hall and you get a death certificate and then you get a burn certificate? And like, or do you just grab your uncle Stan and put them on your shoulder and go down to the river and like, come on, we're going to burn Stan today? I don't mean to belittle the ceremonial aspect of it because it actually, as I thought about it, it was incredibly beautiful. So it went from my kind of Western knee-jerk reaction to it. bureaucracy.

And bureaucracy. Like, it went from that to, well, look, the whole family is gathered. They've probably interred the body. They are purifying themselves in this sacred holy river. The body is being returned to. to dust and to ashes in in front of us. There's a priest there kind of incorporating kind of ritual ceremony and prayer. I'm like, well, that's a hell of a lot better than just putting it in a stone box and saying a few words and throwing a flower and walking away.

This is like it's so interactive. Yeah. I'm not familiar enough with how all the burial, the ritual, the ritual aspect happens in India. but I will tell you that there is so much ritual and tradition baked into how they do things around death and dying, which to me is just really wonderful to witness and to be a part of and also to acknowledge that folks are doing it in a way that they've been doing it for very long time, that works for them. And the way that they do. Thousands of years.

Forever. Forever. honoring religion and history and grief and the whole nine. But even if that bureaucratic element wasn't there, I still totally trust that the way that it's been done is the way that honors the folks that are doing it. You talked about death avoidance, and I think probably a lot of listeners right now are cringing a little bit and feeling uncomfortable and getting goosebumps and maybe throwing up in their mouth a little bit and then turning this off and then turning it back on. And you talk about death avoidance, and I had an aunt. And she was a chronic smoker and the doctor was like, you know, you've got emphysema and the first stages of lung cancer or whatever. If you keep smoking, you're going to die.

And guess what? She just kept smoking. Of course, she did. And the family just was like, uh-huh, she's so smoking. And just pretended it like it wasn't happening and went on like, hey, so what's the casserole for tonight? I think every family has a denial baking. I want to ask about the denial, but then part two of my question has to do with my friend, David, that passed away of cancer a couple years ago. I mentioned him in the soul boom book.

And he all of a sudden, out of nowhere, was diagnosed, he was in top health, 45 years old, diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer. And his whole journey for that year and three months that he remained alive over during his diagnosis, following his diagnosis, was about getting better. It was all about how do I heal this? How do I beat this? You know, he changed his diet and he tried experimental medications. And I would never fault anyone for diving whole hog into the healing, especially around cancer, because you never know that can be an experimental therapy that all of a sudden I've known people that have reversed cancers from. So certainly nothing wrong with wanting. to preserve life. But at the same time, I found him very difficult to talk to because he really was

in deep denial around his own mortality. He just, he couldn't go there. I would never judge anyone for not being able to go there. This death denial or death avoidance, what's your take on that? Is that it's pretty human. It's also very Western to push away ideas of our death. You know, just to tie back to what we were just talking about in India, we have folks that are walking these paths every single day. And so they are seeing dead bodies and seeing what they're, and they'll eventually meet all the time. We don't generally have that here. We push death and dying away into corners, into nursing homes, into hospitals or not. It's not happening in our daily life around us. I saw a woman, an elderly woman on the street the other day walking, and she was moving slow.

She was probably in her 90s or so, a little hunched over her cane, and she looked like an utter alien in Los Angeles because I don't ever see people that elderly. You know, we don't have the experience of watching people growing older and recognizing that one day probably not that far in the future they're going to die. It's much easier to behave as though I'll live for forever when I'm not confronted with it all the time. And we used to take those 80 and 90 year olds in to live with us. And they would pass away in our houses. Yeah. And then the bodies would be in our houses and we would sit chival or have some kind of communal experience around that.

And that's one thing that makes New York City a little bit singular is you do see the 90-year-old, 97-year-olds hunched over, you know, going down to the Gristides Market with their little carts because New York, you know, has some rent control and can operate like its own old folks home. Yeah. But, yeah, that's a great point. It is a big difference. The death denial is, it's based into our culture.

You know, we don't acknowledge elderhood. We want to really focus on youth. We don't accept illness. We want to focus on health. There's a potential to be preparing for the end of life and also to be hoping for healing and to be focused on health and also thinking about writing down all your passwords.

Those two things can coexist. I'm thinking about your friend here. Yeah. It's not an either-or. It's not. That's a false dichotomy. All the time. It's both all the time.

My presence and my joy for life is also held very closely with my preparation and acceptance of death. Those two things go hand in hand. When being with somebody who is refusing to see one perspective, it's not necessarily my job. I don't think of it as my role to help them get over their fear or their denial of, but rather to meet them where they are

and to be with them as they are journeying through this huge existential dilemma, one that we all must come to at some point in our lives. I wrote about a client that believed that she was going to get better, even though she was at the very tail end of her disease and she'd been sick for years. And she was still insistent that she was going to be healed. And I thought, okay, well, how can I help her live out this time that she has left as fully as possible? And so I was with her in it until it got to the point where she came into recognition for herself. And then she was ready to prepare.

But this journey that we all take into our mortality is a very individual one. and it's hard enough to try to talk to your friend about breaking up with their toxic partner, let alone, hey, you're going to die. There's no way. It's like, there's no way. You know, I can't force anybody to do anything, let alone think about their mortality. That's huge. I hope that folks take the invitation because there's benefit in it. You've been with so many people that have passed.

Have you ever seen anything that you would call? profound or mystical or magical in those moments of passing of the soul leaving? It all is. Every single time I'm floored because it is so profound. Standing at the doorway of existence with folks time and time again, every single time I'm in all. There's been things that have happened. There was a client once who had all sorts of. and dementia. And when we first met, she would speak in sentences that made sense, but maybe the

whole context didn't make sense. And then slowly over time she devolved and was just speaking syllables that weren't really making words that I could understand anyway. And in the middle of one afternoon when we're sitting together, she is eating. She has her fork in a greeting card and she's like pretending or thinking she's eating food out of the greeting card, but she's not. And we're, we're were sitting together and she looks at me very clearly and says, I don't want to be broken anymore. Mind you, she hadn't spoken a sentence in probably nine months at that point. She had a respiratory event that later on that night. A few days later, I'm visiting again.

She sits up in the bed, like with a little bit of trouble because she was also in her mid-90s and is looking up at something and says, Hubert, Hubert, help me. You know I don't know how to do this, Hubert. Help me. help. And then she's like kind of reaching and then she lays back down in the bed. Again, she has not spoken sentences in a long time. And this was context. I understood exactly what she was saying. Now, I didn't see who she was talking to, but she was clearly talking to somebody. When her daughter came back, she asked what had happened and I told her. And she explained to me that Hubert was mom's

boyfriend when she was 17 who died in a car accident. Yeah. And she was really, for and talking to Hubert to help her along. And there was a very, like, coy little flirtatious thing happening. Like, help me. You know I don't know how to do this, Hubert. That's pretty profound. Hubert had a little experience. Yeah.

Huber was coming back. Yeah. Maybe. I think. I had a friend whose wife got cancer, and he said to her, hey, you know I'm an atheist, but if there's, life on the other side, you've got to send me a sign.

Send me a sign that only I would know. He loved motorcycles, and he had a collection of motorcycles, and he, you know, signed the death certificate, and she died at like 3.14 a.m. or something like that, and he signed it and whatever. And then the next day, he's like, I'm going to go on a motorcycle ride,

and he took the cover off his motorcycle, and it wouldn't start, but the clock was at 314. And he looked at the clock on the motorcycle, and he was like, that's it. That's not a coincidence. No. And he was like, yeah. Have you read anything like that, anything mystical, like connection? So many.

Hit us. So many. Well, the first was after my brother-in-law died. So he's upstairs in the hospital. He's been dead a few hours. We're packing up all of our things. things to leave. And I had been driving the car all around New York City. So I went to go and get the car and bring it into the parking garage. And I disconnected my Bluetooth for certain. Disconnected off.

I go back up to the room. I help my sister, my brother-in-law's parents, gather, there are things really, really sad, like final goodbye and walk out. Everybody is somber. I can't believe we're leaving without him. They're finally moving out of the hospital that they've been living in for weeks at this point. And as we approach the car, I, bam, to open up the trunk, it opens up, I hear some music playing. I look down at my phone and the Bluetooth is off. It's off. And yet, when I get closer to the car and I'm like scrambling because I don't want it to be playing like Tupac or something at this moment.

Just totally incorrect. Or baby shark or something. Something absurd. And I approached the car. I have goosebumps. as I'm telling it, might get emotional. And it's playing their wedding song. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a Shadei song. I can't remember something about I'm never leaving you or always be by your side. My phone was off. It was not connected to anything. It was nothing. Nothing was playing it.

Nothing was playing it. You know, sweet. Difficult. So I got to go to Ghana. Yeah. Wow. So I did the show a year and a half ago called The Geography of Bliss for Peacock, traveling around the world, looking for what made people happy.

And we went to Ghana. So I was in a craw for, but not just a craw, went out as well for like nine or ten days. You're Ghanaian. I am. I want to hear about what it's like being Ghanaian American. Ghana was magnificent, beautiful. People were radiant. um so warm welcoming even though it is harrowing to see those forts that were the center of the slave

trade and that that red road that emerges from the jungle that you know tens of thousands of men women and children were were kidnapped raped violated and then their freedom uh sold away and that was a center of that. And yet Ghana itself is so vibrant and beautiful. But you grew up in a coup in Ghana. I did. Yeah. My dad was a member of parliament and the government got overthrown.

And we lived in housing, particularly for members of parliament. So the soldiers were coming there to snatch them all up. And so we had to escape and flee. And it's my very first memory of life. The only thing I can kind of crystallize is holding his hand and like running away from something towards something. There was a lot of chaos. I remember that.

But I remember also feeling very grounded with my dad as all this was happening. Ghana is everything to me. I left very young. And there's always a sore spot, you know, about that. I've always felt like an outsider everywhere I went because the place that I would identify as home was taken so young for me that. I'm still, I think, perpetually looking for home in some way. It doesn't feel like it when I go there now.

In some ways it does because people look like me and speak my language and eat my food. But also I present very Western, which is tricky. We are folks that for a bunch of years, centuries were stolen from and beaten and the whole nine. But yet our spirits have never been broken. I feel strongly about that for black people across the world is that I find black folks to be some of the most joyful and connected and vibrant, despite what colonialism has done to us for centuries.

And that to me is an element of being a death dula, a black, a Ghanaian death dula, who is helping to restore dignity and dying for all, despite what my ancestors and the ancestors of those that look like me experienced. Aloha Arthur. paperback. Your book is out. And I guess I've transitioned to it. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing in the book. I've read literally about three quarters of it. It's wonderful. It's a lot memoir. It's really memoir of your life and how you came to being a death dula. And

you certainly didn't invent the job, but you have brought you and your organization going with grace, have brought so much attention. You've trained 2,500 death doulas in 17 different countries. Yeah. That's crazy. That's cool. That's so cool.

That is like you've literally changed life on earth to bring so much more consciousness to this sad, beautiful, difficult, and incredible idea that we all pass away. But what were you going for in your book? I was going to. for the opportunity for most of us to feel seen, to recognize that so many of the experiences that we have while we're living and dying are in fact universal. I get to see it when folks

are dying because I get invited into all these homes and lives and I see what people are struggling with. There's so many beautiful stories you tell of being in those rooms with people passing and the stories. I mean, you could just do a whole book of just the stories of the people you've been with and hearing their life story and interacting with their family and then being part of those tragic and glorious final moments. Tragic and glorious, beautiful and brutal all at the same time. There are so many stories, so many stories. And I really wanted to highlight that every human has a story. You know, we all have medicine for one another. We all journey through life in these somewhat similar ways,

somewhat different, and there's so much we can learn from one another. I wanted to write it as a memoir to tell my story as well because when looking back on my life and my journey into death care, had I been present with my mortality much earlier, I wonder what my life would have been. I firmly believe that many paths, same destination I would have gotten here anyway. And at the same time, I was struggling with a lot of things that would have become in very, very sharp focus if I was with my mortality in a very present way. I practiced law for 10 years at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles doing work that was great.

It was great. And important. And important. Yeah. And it crushed my spirit. The system is not set up for the people that need it most to thrive and to survive within it.

And budding up against that infrastructure constantly just war at my spirit. So depression bloomed. And when it did, I took a leave of absence. And I met a fellow traveler on a bus in Cuba. We started talking about her life. She had uterine cancer. We started talking about her potential for death.

And then I started thinking about my death. And then it was like, all of a sudden I started to think of my life in relationship to my death and realized that if my disease of depression was going to kill me, which depression can absolutely be a life-limiting illness for many, if my disease of depression was going to kill me, I was not pleased with the life that I'd lived thus far. It was such a call to action to wake up, to wake up to my life, that this was the one that I was living.

the only one that I had and not, you know, times a ticking, but not in a hurry up and do something way, but rather get with it way, you know, get present way. And it shifted the way that I see life. I thought that it was important to tell my story as well because I think so many people can identify with just kind of living unaware and doing the things that you think that you're supposed to do until one day you realize, oh, shit, this was it. Well, it's a fascinating life story too. And I don't want to get a little bit to your childhood, which is amazing. But then right after you were traveling with the woman in Cuba, your brother-in-law, Peter, was starting his journey and you were intimately involved. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that inspired you into this field?

Yeah. Peter was my older sister's husband, Peter St. John. He was a lovely man, gregarious and funny and stubborn and a little annoying. and he was just like constantly needling me and I couldn't understand what the, he's just constantly, but I did it back too. I did it big time back.

I just gave him so much shit. And he was in my life for about 15 years or so. And then he was sick and he was dying. And it was devastating. And I went to New York where they were and I thought I'd just be there for a few days or something, hang out, see how he was doing. I don't know what I thought.

I hadn't thought it through at all. But I arrived and I didn't leave until after he died and after we'd had his funeral. I got to journey with him and my sister and my niece, their child, through his death. Being present for him in that way was one of the greatest gifts that I've ever gotten to care for him in that capacity. It felt so intimate. I felt so honored to be able to be there with him and for him. And through it, I also saw how I solicit. it can feel, even though it is an experience that all of us will have at some point. It felt at that

point, like we were the only people journeying through it, and it felt so unfair. I wanted somebody to see us and to help and to be with us and to explain things and to just say, you got this, or yeah, this is hard. And it's not surprising that this is a situation you're in or to explain what was happening with his body or to give us some referrals for any. Just anything, anything, anything. Aylua, this was such a joy to speak with you, even though we were talking about such a dark and difficult topic. But I loved your book, briefly, perfectly human. It's a beautiful story.

It's very touching, incredibly powerful to thanks for the work that you do. People can also, how can they find going with grace? It's just the website. Are you on the socials as well? Everywhere. Everywhere. Social is at Going with Grace on the website. Also,

Elua Arthur.com or Elua Loa Loves Life on Instagram, but everywhere, really. Elua loves life. That's perfect. She sure does. And you certainly do. And thanks for dropping by the Soul Boom Studios. Thank you for having me.

The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.