JM: Hello Kirthan! Thank you so much for your time! Welcome! We are so pleased that you’ve taken the time to chat with us today. First and foremost, can you tell us what a Death Doula is?

K: A death doula can have a lot of roles but I see it primarily as someone working with people at end of life to ensure that their final transition is as comfortable as possible. Being a death doula can mean being an advocate for the dying and bridging the gap between healthcare and home care. It involves taking a more holistic approach and seeing the dying person as a whole human rather than just a body to be treated as a patient. 

AGB: I hadn’t heard of a death doula before but you seem to have joined and trained in an existing tradition. Can you tell us a bit more about where that tradition comes from?

K: Absolutely. Long before modern medicine and the funeral industry people were cared for at home. Most people died at home. It’s only now that most people are dying in hospitals. In some cases that is unavaoidable but I think there are a lot of situations where people could die at home or in hospice if they had more information. 

Death doulas are involved in community death care and we often provide respite for tired family members. This can be something as simple as sitting with the dying person so that family members can take a break or run other errands while knowing that their loved one is being cared for. I also think it’s helpful to have someone from outside the family helping out. There are still emotions involved but not being part of the family means I can be more objective and level headed about what kind of care is needed. 

JM: Who tends to approach you for your services? Dying people or their loved ones?

K: Most of my work is focused on getting people to prepare for death even without a terminal diagnosis. My philosophy is that any one of us could die at any time so we should take the time to truly think about our wishes and put them down on paper. I find myself more often trying to reach out to people in my age group (millennials) to get them thinking and planning for the inevitable. I find this can be especially useful for couples who are newly married or have kids. We often appoint a substitute decision maker or power of attorney but don’t leave any guidance for that person. I’m trying to change that so POAs can be confident knowing that they are making the choices their loved ones wanted. 

JM: For you, what is the most important/meaningful/valuable/ part of your job? Do you think everyone should consider working with one?

K: I think for me, helping people gain peace of mind is the most important. I also love normalizing talking about death and grief. It can be a heavy subject but I often hear how surprised people are that the “homework” I give them wasn’t as difficult or harrowing as they expected. I find that once you start talking about death people feel a sense of relief knowing that they can discuss this difficult subject with me. I think death doulas are a great option for people and there are so many who specialize in different areas. There are death doulas who are former nurses or PSWs, death doulas who provide reiki and other treatments, death doulas who focus solely on certain social groups. There are so many ways that a death doula can help with the final transition. 

AGB: What is the most common thing dying people or their loved ones have said to you in your work?

K: The one thing I’ve heard over and over is “I wish I’d known about this when my [family member] died.” I think a lot of people come to learn about death doulas after a less than positive experience. Sometimes I forget that most people haven’t even heard of a death doula, but it’s such an important and special service that we can provide. 

JM:  I really resonated with your description of your work as a “move beyond The Five Stages of Grief and the myth of closure.” Can you expand on what you mean by moving beyond the stages of grief and the myth of closure?

K: Absolutely! People often talk about the Five Stages of Grief and think that is the end all and be all of grief knowledge. But Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s book, “On Death and Dying” was published in 1969. It was groundbreaking for the time but grief research has moved far beyond that. As one of my professors said, this would be like only citing Freud and ignoring all the other psych research that has happened since his day. People also don’t often know that the stages described were experienced by people who were terminally ill. They also were never meant to be considered like a series of five stages that you complete and then you never grieve for that person again. That’s simply not how grief works. 

Closure is another concept that has been greatly misunderstood. There are certain things that might help a person process the death of a loved one (some people need to see their person one last time or perform certain rites) but again, the idea that we get “closure” and then get over a death is inaccurate. Realistically, the grief is always with us and we learn to build our lives and grow around it. There are times when it feels miniscule and then times when it gets big again and you have to face it. But it never fully goes away. 

AGB: I have a question for Jessica!: do you wish your family had had someone like Kirthan to support you during your dad’s death and its aftermath?

JM: That’s an interesting question. The short answer is yes, absolutely. That question immediately makes me think of my mom. Losing my dad was quite a shocking experience because when we found him it wasn’t him, it was a dead body in our home. There was no grieving, no goodbyes, it was very macabre, in a way. We didn’t live near extended family, my mom was an only child raised by a single mom who died when she was 10 so she was/is quite an independent person and was probably retriggered after her own childhood loss, and in that day not only had she lost her spouse of 20+ years but also our family’s breadwinner and she became a single mom herself; she was contending with SO MUCH. That night my sister & I ended up sleeping at a school friend’s house and my mom stayed home alone and that is something I often think about. I wanted to stay with my mom, but I imagine she felt quite alone and I often wonder how she spent that night. I’ve never asked.

But if a Death Doula had been a resource provided to us by the emergency services who answered our 911 call (and maybe it was offered I don’t know), but if we had access to one, would that night have been different? Would my mom have felt less alone? Would we have stayed home with her and the Doula? Would the entire dynamic and life-shaping decisions of my family over the next 10 years have been different?

This makes me want to ask Kirthan: have you ever worked with grieving families after the death of a loved one? Or do you primarily work with people/families in the lead up to someone’s passing?

K: I have yet to work with grieving families after the death of a loved one but it’s something I’m very interested in. People often feel so confused or even guilty about the grief they experience. We live in a society that tells people to move on and even pathologizes grief to a certain extent. I’d love to educate people more on what can be expected while grieving and how society impacts the ways we grieve. 

JM: You recently shared a post on instagram that resonated with me. The text read: 

“It is my personal belief that the rage and anger we are experiencing in everyday life is mainly due to unprocessed grief from the ongoing pandemic. How does one grieve in a society that won’t acknowledge the source of its grief?”

I think this is a really potent & insightful point and something that PIECES OF US attempts to explore in the sense that we don’t acknowledge grief societally. But, also that we don’t experience grief only through bereavement. Many lost loved ones, but basically everyone (it seems to me) have experienced a loss of either a sense of safety or a trust in leaders or the social contract because COVID exposed deep inequality and callousness (in some instances) of people in powerful positions in society. In my experience, a betrayal like that can be just as potent an experience of grief and a source of anger. Does that play a big role in your work?

K: Absolutely. We are grieving for people we’ve lost during the pandemic but also for the life that we once knew. I definitely miss the days of being able to go into a restaurant and have a long meal without worrying that I might contract a potentially debilitating virus. Right now many of us are trying to adjust to a new way of life while others are clinging to the past. And unfortunately the decisions that other people make can have a huge impact on our health and bodies. I think the pandemic has emphasized that we live in a capitalist society where certain people are treated as expendable. Members of the disability community have also been shown where they stand with many people expecting them to stay home so that others can go out and “live their lives.” These are attitudes that seemed to be just under the surface pre-pandemic and now they are in the spotlight. It’s very disheartening. 

JM: How do you think society impacts grief?

K: Society impacts grief in so many ways. For starters, there are different policies on bereavement leave depending on where you live. Here in Ontario, workers are only entitled to two days bereavement leave per year and it’s dependent upon the relationship. That means if you have more than one loss in a year (as I did in 2019 when my grandmothers died six months apart) you are still only entitled to two days. I can tell you that I don’t remember what I was doing two days after my father died. It’s not enough time to even plan a funeral let alone process your grief. These policies also decide which relationships matter. Bereavement leave is only applicable to family members so even if your best friend died, you wouldn’t be entitled to bereavement leave. 

I also think that we are a deeply grief-phobic society. We seem to have trouble sitting with heavy feelings and as a result are rushed through our grief by people who want us to go back to normal. So many people try to push away their feelings of grief which just exacerbates it even more. In my experience, letting myself feel my feelings and truly sit with my grief allowed me to process it more easily. 

JM: It says in your bio that you started incorporating your death interests in your freelance writing before becoming a certified doula. I find I am also quite drawn to death having lost a parent, but I’ll be honest I was interested and curious about death when I was even younger. When did your interest start? Was there a particular event or thought or was it just something you always were drawn to?

K: I think to be honest it started when I was around 17 or 18. I had spent some time visiting my cousins in the summer and we started everyday eating cereal while watching Law & Order. Each episode got me thinking of how many different ways a person can die. I had also been a huge fan of shows like Six Feet Under and Dead Like Me so there was always some interest there. As I got older it started to bug me that our society is afraid to talk about death even though it’s the one thing in life that is a guarantee. I think a highlight for me before I got into this work was being able to interview Caitlin Doughty (Ask A Mortician) for a local website called She Does The City. I’m so grateful I had that opportunity. 

JM: Do you think having such an aware or close relationship to death improves your appreciation of and/or decision-making in life?

K: Absolutely. Not every second of every day. There are still times I get frustrated by life’s minutiae but I try to remind myself that life is short and I want to make the most of it. I also try to focus more on having new experiences than acquiring stuff. I think my relationship to death has furthered my anti-capitalist beliefs and the feeling that our relationships with each other are far more important than material objects.