Two years ago, I got a call from my dad saying he had stage IV skin cancer. He told me he was going to be okay, but stage IV means terminal. He held my hand under the table, he apologized to me for getting sick. In the next six months, I watched his cancer move from his skin, to his blood and his bones and his brain. In the next six months I watched this strong, fiery, Karo syrup-sweet man become bloated and yellowed and weak. I watched death reach its hands up inside my dad, nestling somewhere right below his liver, robbing me of the best thing I had in my life. And It seemed slow, but it was always too fast to ever catch up.
When I watched my dad died, no one talked about it. He wrote his will in ICU, 12 hours before he died. It took a year and a half to get his head stone made. And no one talked about it. When I watched my dad die, all I wanted was to talk about it, about anything. I craved conversation but it was never there. I watched death take my favorite part of my life away from me, and no one wanted to talk about. So all I could do is swallow it.
Death is a multi-faceted platform full of hushed tones in the kitchen and scattered eye contact. But the conversation surrounding death is beginning to blossom, especially on the west coast with the introduction of death cafes and the certification process of death doulas. I would like to bring that conversation here. With the only guarantee in life being that death will eventually consume us all, opening the conversation to this reality helps lessen the impact when death inevitably makes its presence known. This story explores death in its many forms and how to meet death gracefully without getting the breath knocked out of you.
Death can be violent, it can be graceful, but it does not have to be foreign. The conversation starts with these three people: Jim, Susie and Christina.
Death is not an easy thing to talk about, but the conversation surrounding death is beginning to change. Through death doulas, the familiarity with death is being introduced at a younger age, when death is tucked away in the closet at the end of the hall, and fear has not made an association yet. Christina Pierstomlin, a 31-year-old death doula in the Athens area, helps prepare people for their next transition, particularly their transition from life to death. She prepares living wills, arranges funeral plans, secures legal agreements and helps coach individuals in their growing relationship with their final transition.
One of the best ways to open the conversation up about death is to talk about it when death seems far off in the distance, and the threat of death seems inapplicable. I made a podcast to help make this conversation easier. In this first episode of this podcast, The Inbetween, we will be examining death doulas on the east coast, their influences on the conversation of death in the south, and the way they stand as translators between life and death. For the first episode, I spoke with two death doulas from similar southern backgrounds, both stationed on various parts of the east coast. Check out my podcast by clicking the button below.
But there are times when death creeps within loved ones through the soles of their feet, traveling through the creased skin and wrinkled ring fingers, and steeling them away in their sleep. There are times when death is an ever-evolving mouth, swallowing different parts of a person until they finally are taken in a fit of heat and spit. The dying process can be hard, especially in illness-induced dying, and hospice workers specialize in helping serve as the translator between the language of death and the living. Susie Lundie, a 55-year-old hospice worker in the Athens area, helps communicate between patients and their families when the weight of death is filling the room and realities of conversations not-yet-had come rushing forward.
Though it seems to be a losing battle when it comes to the end of life, there are ways for life and beauty to come from a death. Green Burial sites are an eco-friendly way to bury a loved one. Services that are offered often consist of biodegradable caskets, the option of having a tree planted in the grave, and the indistinguishable headstone that rests level with the ground, ensuring aesthetic harmony and discretion in the grave-marking process. Jim Bell, an older gentleman from Milton, Georgia, runs the only state regulated green burial site in Georgia and provides services similar to these. Many individuals are buried in his back pasture, from children to holocaust survivors, to victims of the opioid epidemic - all buried in a natural, harmonious way, sharing a common burial lot, despite the varying paths they took to get there.
Death greets us in many forms. Sometimes it comes in old age, when our bones are talkative and our skin forms mountains and valleys across our hands. Sometimes it is quick, without a formal introduction, but rather in an oily, silky kind of greeting that slips through our grasp, and swallows us from the upside down. Death has made itself present in different ways for Ansley, Melissa and Brantley. Each share their experiences with death in its varying forms.