B (3:28)

I think that one of the things that we often forget about the bedside is that people are so human. There are jokes, there is laughter, there's beauty, there's joy, there's also sadness and tears. But there's also like awe and wonder and like seeping in.

A (3:45)

When I think of the word doula, I tend to think of birth doulas, the people who support parents as they bring life into the world. You can say Alua does that in reverse. She's there on the other side guiding folks off into that great beyond.

B (4:03)

A death doula is somebody who does all of the non medical and holistic care and support of the dying person and their entire circle of support through the process. When I mean the dying person, I also mean anybody who is in relationship with their mortality. Anybody who has some awareness that one day death will come.

A (4:24)

So death doulas aren't just for the dying, they're for healthy people too, at any stage of life, who want to get a jump start on their end of life plans. We'll get more into that in a bit, but let's get back to Alua. When it comes to death doulas, she's kind of a superstar. She's at the helm of Going With Grace, her end of life planning organization. Plus she just put out a New York Times best selling memoir. But you might know her from her popular TED talk, why thinking about death helps you live a better life.

B (4:55)

I want to die with socks on my feet because I get cold and if I die with a bra on, I'm coming to haunt everybody. I will terrorize you. And that is a threat. Okay.

A (5:07)

A lua didn't always help people die for a living though. When I sat down to chat with her, we turned back the clock to talk about who she was before when she was an LA lawyer at Legal Aid working on heavy stuff like domestic violence. By 2012, she was burnt out.

B (5:24)

I did not feel really connected to it. I mean, I was also wearing like pinstripe suits and that is just not my jam. Like it just wasn't working. I was clinically depressed. I had a major depressive episode and I took a leave of absence and I went to Cuba where I met a fellow traveler on the bus who had uterine cancer. We talked a lot about her life. Then I started asking her a lot of questions about her death.

A (5:49)

Speaking to this stranger on a 14 hour bus trip across Cuba, Ailua says she started to think about her own mortality for the first time at 34 years old. She was questioning everything.

B (6:03)

I did not like what I saw. I didn't like what I saw. The life that I'd lived was not authentic to me. I didn't feel like I'd lived out the edges of it. I felt small and purposeless and I was embarrassed. I was full of shame that the life that I had lived thus far wasn't what I'd wanted it to be.

A (6:26)

That awareness of mortality became even clearer for Ailua. Six months after she returned home from Cuba, her brother in law had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She moved in with him and her sister to support them for what would be the final two months of his life.

B (6:42)

And that's when I saw firsthand what it's really like and it wasn't pretty. So I wanted to do something about it.

A (6:50)

Ailua became the resource her brother in law and family needed. A guide and an advocate through the dying process. She realized it was her calling.

B (7:00)

I felt on purpose, I could be emotional, I could be logistical, I could push, pull up the checklist, I could ask the questions, I could hold hands, I could cry alongside everybody. These are things that I do very, very naturally.

A (7:14)

Ailua took a death doula course in LA called Sacred Crossings. From there she worked part time jobs at a hospice and a funeral home before transitioning to full time work as a doula. Eventually she started her organization and added a death doula training program in 2018.

B (7:31)

The role of the Death Doula what does love look like in the face of death? This is a huge question.

A (7:37)

Ailua told me she thought maybe 10 people would sign up, but the first group had 57 students. Since then, Ailua has continued to pass along her wisdom to students through a 12 week online training program.

B (7:50)

Since you're going to treat each death like the first, you're going to have to come in open to whatever it is that you may be receiving in that room. Ask questions, ask questions, ask questions of the person who's dying. Pay attention to.

A (8:01)

I love that you found a need and you fulfilled it and now you're equipping people to continue to fulfill it. I think that is brilliant. I am curious about the people who apply and turn up to do the doula training. What are they like? Is there anything that they all have in common?

B (8:18)

I think what they most have in common is their comfort and emotional depth because you have to be willing to play in really, really deep waters in order to do this work. I also think it's wildly important that people who have also spent some time on their privilege and their bias and their judgment and their anger and have found ways to inject compassion and wonder and awe into the inquiry are people that are best suited for this work.

A (8:47)

So far she's trained over 2,000 people from 17 countries. One of those students was Lupe Tejada Diaz.

B (8:56)

She thought about death and humans in a way that I hadn't vaguely considered yet.

A (9:02)

These days Lupe is a death doula and community organizer based in Minneapolis, but back in 2018 she applied to be in the first group of a Lua's training program. She was just 20 years old.

C (9:14)

It was around 2am That I submitted this application for the Going With Grace program and I had sort of forgotten that I did it until I got an email back saying, you've been accepted. Let's do this.

A (9:27)

For me, 2am is usually the time I'm buying new Lego sets online, not making a life altering decision. But for Lupe, this decision was easy. Pursuing death work was a no brainer. Unlike Ailua, she was thinking about her mortality from almost day one.

C (9:44)

I was a very death obsessed kid so I kind of took that into the rest of my life and here we are.

A (9:52)

More of Lupe's story after the break.

D (9:59)

Hello, I'm James Corden and on my new show this Life of Mine, I sit down each week with some of the most fascinating people on planet Earth. From Dr. Dre to Julianne Moore to David Beckham to Cynthia Erivo to Martin Scorsese to Jeremy Renner to Denzel Washington to Kim Kardashian. We talk about the people, places, possessions, music and memories that made them who they are. These are intimate conversations full of stories that you've never heard before. This Life of Mine premieres October 21st. Wherever you get your podcasts.

C (10:40)

My family is indigenous Mexican American and we grew up with Day of the Dead and we grew up with ancestral veneration and death was never something that was taboo. I could always ask my parents about it and they would tell me as honestly and as age appropriately as they could.

A (11:00)

I met Lupe over Zoom since she graduated from Alua's death doula training six years ago. Lupe's been busy serving indigenous and immigrant populations in her community. Lupe herself is Nahua, and a few years ago she learned her tribal language and got a face tattoo to honor it. Her cultural background has made her view death in a different way than we do here in America. Like you heard earlier, death wasn't a taboo topic in her house growing up.

C (11:25)

It wasn't until I got to America and I started getting older and my friends, family members started dying that I realized, oh, we handle this in very, very different ways. And I have a very vivid memory of being in grade school, hearing that one of my friends fathers died. And, and in my head, you know, when somebody dies, you have a nine day ceremony and folks come from everywhere and you're taken care of. And for her it was very sterile. It was very like, you know, dad died one day, funeral the next day you're back in school. And that to me was so foreign and it was so strange and I could see my friend suffering and I said, there has got to be a better way to do this.

A (12:08)

Remember how A. Lewis said the best folks for this work are those that can sit in discomfort? Well, for Lupe, that looks like consistently showing up in her community and working outside of what she calls the funeral industrial complex.

C (12:22)

A lot of my community unfortunately has. They're either undocumented or they don't speak English or they don't have any sort of financial literacy or medical literacy. Right. And another thing is that the grieving process and the cultural traditions are so different and America doesn't necessarily make room for that. Right. So I was constantly running into folks saying like, oh well, we couldn't play our drums at the funeral home or we couldn't have our music or they kicked us out because there were too many people or they don't want to work with us because we're black, brown, whatever. And I just remember hearing that and just being like, this is not right. We cannot continue to do this.

A (13:04)

Yeah, I mean that's. As a black woman in America, I totally understand everything you just said. But in the black community, we call funerals homegoings. We celebrate the life of our loved ones and then dance and sing and shout them on to glory. But our joy of life and celebration of it, even in death, isn't always welcome or understood in some spaces. So I love that Lupe is pushing back against the norm to provide culturally competent care for her community. That looks like advocating for people like Shane, one of her current Clients. He's part of her tribal community.

C (13:39)

He is a traditional Aztec dancer. I'm a traditional indigenous healer. So my close friend here introduced us because she said, oh, Shane needs some help with some spiritual stuff he had going on. And I said, sure.

A (13:54)

Together, Lupe and Shane have been working on his end of life plans. He's 53 and making these plans while he's still healthy.

C (14:05)

Right now we are headed to powwow grounds and it's one of my favorite coffee shops here in the cities.

A (14:10)

Before meeting up with Shane this past April, Lupe stopped by a local coffee shop. She told me she usually picks up a treat for the elders that she works with. And personally, I will be talking to Lupe about calling somebody who's 53 years old an elder, the nerd.

C (14:24)

Can I get two fried bread tacos and then can I get an ice cream? Sugar free vanilla latte with oat milk.

A (14:33)

In her apartment building, Lupe waited for Shane to arrive.

C (14:37)

So Shane, he had a really terrible accident and suffered with a lot of post traumatic stress and just a lot of physical ailments. Right. And so Shane and I have slowly been kind of working on putting a plan together. And I say slowly because for him it still comes with a lot of trauma and a lot of stress.

A (14:57)

In 2018, a car struck Shane while he was on his bike. He flatlined at the scene twice. It was a wake up call. What if he had died? He hated the idea of leaving his two daughters to figure out what to do for him without any end of life paperwork.

C (15:14)

So right now we're trying to get an advance directive for Shane. And now I think that we're at a place where we're ready to put pen to paper and say, you know, my name is Shane. This is what I want, and this is who I want to support me in that.

E (15:28)

And Lupe is really good at educating, explaining to me. And the way my brain is, sometimes it does, sometimes with a brain injury, it doesn't want to operate very well. And Lupe, she'll sit down and really focus on things and like separate things out, make it simple.

C (15:43)

Would you want like a traditional funeral?

A (15:45)

Yeah, yeah.

E (15:46)

You know, we get together for nine days and sing and hang out and.

C (15:49)

You know, tell stories.

E (15:51)

Tell stories? Oh, yeah, maybe bury me at sea, but just put a note saying, save the ocean, right? You know, sure, toss me out there so I can surf.

C (16:00)

Gosh, I wish it was so easy.

A (16:04)

Lupe and Shane were working on an advance directive, which is a legal document to communicate your medical care Preferences. Making a will is important too. That's where you can handle your financial assets, make burial plans and name dependents.

C (16:17)

I think it's really important to have people who know exactly how you want things done, but also who are able to have those hard conversations. So one of the things that I like to think of is like, having documents like this written out is like the ultimate extension of love. Because it's like, we're done, we're good, everything's fine.

A (16:35)

Just reflecting on what you want is a good place to start. And at the end of that reflection, it never hurts to treat yourself to a fried bread taco rehate.

C (16:43)

Real nice too, you know that?

B (16:45)

Oh, yeah.

E (16:45)

It'll be dinner tonight.

C (16:46)

Absolutely.

A (16:47)

So I was fortunate enough to have an end of life conversation with my mom before she passed three years ago. Actually, it was more like an ongoing conversation our entire lives. She would tell me and my brother, I don't want anything heroic done to keep me alive. That was my mom. She was always clear about what she wanted. So when she got sick with leukemia and found out chemo was coming, she said, nope, I'm good. My little Franny lived a big life. She raised kids, had been in love, retired from a job, and played a hell of a lot of bingo. So she chose hospice and we let her go. We said our final goodbye. Twelve hours later, she truly was ready. Like you heard, Lupe calls end of life plans an ultimate extension of love. I couldn't agree more. But I also know these can be difficult conversations. When we come back, Ailua has advice on where to begin.

B (17:43)

By the time you get sick, it's kind of hard to think clearly about what you might want. But if I can do it now, I also have the potential to influence how I'm living daily before I get sick.

A (17:58)

That's after the break. One message kept coming up over and over again when I was talking to Aua and Lupe. We need to make end of life plans for our loved ones and for ourselves. Unfortunately, my dad and I didn't get the chance to do that before his memory started to go. That's something I wish I'd done. Dementia is a weird disease, though sometimes he is more present. So I haven't given up hope that we can still have that conversation someday. But even if your loved one is in good health, this topic can still be tough or awkward to bring up. So I asked Alua for some guidance.

B (18:44)

There are a lot of different places to begin depending on you and your relationship. So it really depends on the set and setting, the person that you're talking to. If it's difficult, I suggest often trying to tie it to public events or celebrities or people in the news or things that are happening. I was in a room full of black elders around the time Aretha Franklin died, around the time of her funeral. And one of them was like, I can't believe they have her out here in like three different outfits. Because they kept changing her outfit. They were like, why are they doing that to her? They should let her rest. And so I turned and I said, does that mean you only want one outfit? And she said, yeah, I would like one. And I said, great. Do you have one in mind? I have this purple suit that I wore. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's an in. It's an in. Lastly, I think paying attention to any quiet moments that seem like reflection, I've noticed with my father. He's almost 80 and he has end stage kidney disease. And he started to tell a lot of stories about his life. And so when he does that, I'm like, wow, is that a story that you'd like us to tell about you at some point? Yeah. And he's like, I'd love it if that story lived or no, no, no.

C (19:48)

No, no, no, no.

B (19:49)

You better not tell anybody that story. But it's also a way in.

A (19:53)

There's a lot of conversations we don't want to have because we're sad. You know, I had a conversation with my dad this morning because he's 81 and he has dementia. And I can see him sleeping more, eating less, and talking more about the.

B (20:06)

Good bye and bye.

A (20:07)

Right. And I have to get over myself because I love my dad. I want him to live to 127. So what advice would you give to those of us who need to have the conversation but are afraid or scared or sad to do it?

B (20:24)

First, I understand it's hard. I get weepy thinking about my dad's death and my mom's death. You know, my dad, as I mentioned, is ill. He's been ill for a while. And it like something in me seizes up when I think about how close we are, we might be to the end.

A (20:40)

Yeah.

B (20:42)

And. And that our grief is not going to be impacted one way or another by having the conversation. That the sadness that I carry now will stay with me whether or not I talk about it. It might actually be greater impacted by it if I don't talk about it. And so I encourage us to just be with our sadness for a moment, acknowledge it Put it in our back pocket, stay with it because it's serving you. And move with it. Move with it.

A (21:12)

How can a loved one or a family member help someone who is ill and cannot face it? How do you find a way to bring them out of that space to where they can talk about what they would want for their transition?

B (21:30)

It's hard when people aren't trying to have the conversation because we so desperately want them to, you know, and my job as a doula rather is just to honor the people for where they're at. There's a client that I wrote about. She had been ill for a very long time and had been in a bed for months at this point. And her son called me because he said that she was finally ready to talk about the fact that she might die. So I went to go and visit her. And that day, however, she decided she was not ready, which meant that I didn't have that much to do other than listen to her and reflect back what I heard and also help her figure out what she wanted to experience in the time that she actually had left. So I was actually able to show up in my doula capacity for her, just not in preparing her for her death, but rather to prepare her or to encourage her to live as fully as she could for the time that she was here. So those are some of the things that we can do. How can I support you in this? What do you still want to experience? What do you want to eat? How do you want to be? Who do you want to see? Who do you want to spend time with? Because that also is preparing people for death.

A (22:41)

Absolutely, Absolutely. I love that. What are some practical steps we should take to prepare for our own deaths?

B (22:49)

Pay attention to things like what you want to have happen to your body after you die. What type of life sustaining measures do you want? Select somebody to be your healthcare proxy, the person who's going to make your decisions for you in the event that you can't. We can also think about our possessions, what we want happen to all of them after we die. Should they throw away all your crusty socks or do you care? Do things like check in with any dependence that you have. Those are little steps that we can take. And doing any one of those is better than doing none. Doing all would make me very, very, very happy.

A (23:23)

Listen, having my affairs in order, socks and all, would put me at ease. And guess what? That's something we can all do now, even if death feels far away. Those are the practical considerations. But I think the other important Consideration is that we have to come to terms with the fact that none of us really know what happens after we die. The uncertainty can be scary, so I asked Alua about that. What do you think happens after we die?

B (23:51)

I like to think that it is an endless wave of beauty. Beauty because it's one of my core values. While I'm living, I would like to feel as though every piece of who I've ever been, the things that were important, the things that touched other people, the things that are actually my legacy, have stuck with the people that I touched. And for all the rest, like my bonnets and my secrets, those things will just be enveloped back into the collective consciousness. And I, as I know myself, will poof. Yet I will live on in the people whose lives I've come across. And then I can just sit back and look at all this beauty. I would like that a lot.

A (24:34)

We all have different relationships with death, and they're ever evolving. Maybe you're a little less morbid than I am, or maybe you've already planned out your whole funeral with three outfit changes. Whatever the case is, I hope Elua and Lupe's words have resonated, because I know from my own experience of losing my mom how important it is to talk about Death freely and openly. Knowing her wishes made it easier for me to be in the moment when it was her time to go, even though not everything went as I would have hoped. It happened during the pandemic, and I was working out of the country so I couldn't be there with her. My brother propped up his phone so we could all be together. From afar, I watched her final moments over FaceTime. I can still see her in my mind as she passed. In that moment, I felt myself take a deep exhale. As I saw the essence of her leave that weary little body. I knew she was no longer suffering. I'm using that moment, my faith, and my conversations with Lupe and Ailua as I mentally prepare for my dad's eventual death. When I think about his passing and my own inevitable departure, I say to myself, death will be an exhale. When I set out to host this podcast, I wanted to look at what it means to be a caregiver in this country. Whether that's looking after children or caring for a parent, or both. I wanted to show how much strength and love it takes to do this work all day, every day. And I wanted to make us caregivers feel seen. While there is beauty in caregiving, it's hard and often lonely work. But you know what? There's a lot of us and together we are powerful. We can support each other careful for the caregivers and make our voices heard when it comes to demanding more support for families and caregivers in this country. We can do this work with dignity, but we can't do it alone. This is Squeezed. I'm your host Eyvette Nicole Brown. There's more Squeezed with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like previously unheard clips from all our voices in this series. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts. Squeezed is a Lemonada Media original. I'm your host Yvette Nicole Brown. Crystal Genesis is our senior producer. Julia York, Tess Novotny and Hannah Boomershine are our producers. Field production by Nancy Rosenbaum. Ivan Kurayev is our engineer. Our theme music is by Andy Kristen so Daughter with additional music by APM Music. Jackie Danziger is our VP of Narrative Content. Executive producers are me, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Whittles. Wax this show was created in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a leading national philanthropy dedicated to taking bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime and pave the way together to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. Follow Squeezed wherever you get your podcasts or listen. Ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.