Is dying alone the worst possible thing that can happen? At The Baffler, Ann Neumann reports that with the onset of death doulas, you need not impose on friends and relatives in your inevitable decline or suffer the shame of kodokushi, the Japanese term for ‘“lonely death,” meaning the quiet but messy end of a solitary life.’
Need someone to “be present” for your final hours? Need music, aromatherapy, reiki? A death doula will, for a fee, swoop into your home and help you navigate the end of your life, from your spiritual needs to the arrangement of the furniture in your sickroom. Awkward, Americanized, consumer-focused forms of Buddhism have long since taken over our exercise (yoga), our offices (mindfulness), and our homes (feng shui). Now, with doula programs popping up like mantras in the mind, they’ve come for our deaths.
Which is, we’re told, a good thing, since a death without warm bodies is practically taboo. On my trips to various end-of-life care facilities as a reporter or a volunteer, I have heard the same belief over and over again, breathed into my ear by the cooing, pastel-wearing do-gooders who have taken on grieving as their life’s salvational work. What they say is, “No one should have to die alone.” What they mean is that dying alone is a character flaw—an imperfection growing somewhere deep inside of you that, provided it is caught in time, can be rooted out or zapped away.
A doula-assisted death is a bespoke affair. Through made-to-order rituals, your death can be propelled into the realm of the unique, just like everyone else’s.
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