Ageless: approaching death differently

[UPBEAT MUSIC] I've never felt more comfortable in my own skin

than I do right now at the age of 58. The key is to bring quality of your life to your life

now because if you're living in the present moment, then you won't fear your future self.

Most people associate the word "doula" with birth doula. So what do birth doulas do? Birth doulas guide, support, educate, and companion

pregnant women through the transition to being a mother. End-of-life doulas do the exact same work

but with people at the other end of the spectrum of life, not at birth but at death. And that's why I'm very passionate about people

being prepared now and having the conversations early because I have seen that you can change the course of the experience.

You can become an active participant in your illness journey. You don't have to be one where this happens to you, where

you feel like things are being done to you, that you're being forced to go down this path that eventually

leads to death. It's a whole different mindset to then embrace being part of it, being an active participant, learning

to really appreciate the life that you're living now and determine how your future death will be.

Another example that I often give to people is, would you have a stranger plan your wedding?

You want to determine all these elements of your wedding yourself, and then you want to be part of that planning process.

And then you want to be the focal point of that event. And I believe it can be the same thing at death.

There is a great deal of comfort and security in the process, knowing what the outcome will be,

and that's what I try to do with people who are ill or in the dying process, is empower them in the process

to achieve that outcome that is the most embracing of themselves as a human being.

I think one of the bad parts of aging is perhaps looking back and realizing that there may be past regrets, guilt,

unfinished business, or broken relationships that never got resolved. And what's really bad is if you don't do anything

about those things because those might be the type of things that get in the way of a peaceful death. But the good thing about it is that you're not dead yet,

and you still have the time to work on those things, to resolve them, and perhaps get yourself to a better place

so that you can have a death with more peace of mind about how you've lived your own life. [WHOOSH]

[UPLIFTING MUSIC]

[JAZZ MUSIC]

[UPLIFTING MUSIC]

[WHOOSH] I missed his touch. [SOMBER MUSIC]

I miss the way he smelled. I missed the warmth that he brought because he--

I mean, in bed, I used to just kick him away because he was like an oven. But all of those very small, huge,

slash huge things were the things I missed about him, despite our troubled marriage and all that,

because, besides, he was also a lovely person. When my husband of 46 years passed away,

I came back here, home, and the first thing I did was I asked my assistant Judy to give me a big glass of white wine.

And I sat in the courtyard, and I'd been in this dreary, sad, awful place for an entire month,

his room on a cot. And I just took deep breaths, and I was feeling free.

And that felt wonderful. I went to bed that night, woke up the next morning,

and I suddenly thought, if I want to stay in bed and eat cookies and put crumbs all over the bed, I can.

If I want to stay in bed until it's bedtime and go to sleep, I can.

That felt so wonderful. But it's not being lonely. It's being alone. There's a difference.

There's aloneness, and there's loneliness. And I don't feel lonely. If you think of it as a way to show your love for the people

who are going to be here after you're gone, it might make it-- maybe it might make it a little bit easier to get the work done

that needs to be done. [UPLIFTING MUSIC] In my experience with my mom, I feel

very fortunate in that I was able to be with her when she died because that's what she wanted.

And of course, you know, I mean, I don't know whether anyone ever feels like they've done the very best possible, the best thing

possible when-- when someone dies, but I've come to the conclusion three, four years later that I did the best I could.

And it was largely because she opened up the space to talk about what she wanted. I think it's really, really important.

We can be kind to ourselves in trying to understand why it's so difficult to talk about,

but also, remembering that talking about it so that we can resolve some of the issues before it becomes

impossible to resolve them can make things so much easier for the people we love. My son, who happens to be a lawyer, was so adamant with me

about updating my will because my-- my will and his dad's world were ancient.

And-- and I found it really annoying at first. And then when my mother-- when I realized my mother was going to die eventually,

I mean, she was 93, so she was-- and she was healthy up until pretty much the very end.

And when I realized that she had taken care of everything, which made it so much easier for us, I realized

why it was important for my son, for me to do this for my son because it is one of the most loving things you can do for the people you're leaving behind.

These are not easy jobs that these caregivers do. [SOMBER MUSIC] When they lose their client, it's hard.

It's as if they have lost a family member as well. They, like everyone else, have to go through a grieving

process, and it's always great that-- when they have a positive relationship with the family. So you just go through that process together.

The people who or caregivers are very special people because after they lose a client, they go back in,

and they try to find another individual and family and patient that they can support. They have that resiliency, but it's just

knowing that they're truly impacting and improving people's quality of life in their final years

in working with the family when there is a passing to just acknowledge that the big role that they played

to support them in those final years. We're all going to experience grief many times through our lives, and so how can we manage grief?

[UPBEAT MUSIC] Often, grief is a very uncomfortable emotion,

and our minds are set up through these very basic survival mechanisms to want to avoid or make unpleasant things go away.

So if we are not used to being with strong emotions, that unpleasant feeling of grief or the thought of a loved one

that has passed away can trigger us to want to avoid that situation. And what that does is it might feel a little bit better

in the moment where we're avoiding what's happening, or we're distracting ourselves from it. But it doesn't actually allow us to truly feel and pass

through our different stages of grief. As we see strong emotions arise, often, we judge ourselves and think, oh no, I can't be with this,

or I shouldn't be having this. Or I should be stronger or something like this. But in truth, as Brené Brown and others talk about,

vulnerability is strength. And so how can we support ourselves in moments when we have really strong emotions?

This is where we can really bring kindness and compassion to ourselves, reminding ourselves that we can be with strong emotions

and that even when we feel like, you know, something feels overwhelming, you know, even-- even simple phrases to help ourselves through this, like,

oh yeah, I'm doing the best that I can right now, can be really helpful to support us in these moments. So whether it's just fear of, you know, of dying itself,

worry about the aging process, or any combination of those things, what we can do is bring in some of our own practices where we've learned,

you know, oh, this is my mind worrying about the future. This is my mind being afraid of the future. And here, we can step back and ground ourselves

so that we can stay in the present moment and work with the fear right now so that we can learn to live into whatever happens in the future.

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