I Heal as I serve the dying: A Calling

 

I Heal as I Serve the Dying

When I tell people I’m becoming a death doula, they frown.

They tilt their heads, try to mask confusion with politeness.

“You don’t look the type,” they say.

And I smile gently, because—what exactly is the type?

Is it someone cloaked in black, face unreadable, always whispering?

Or is it someone who has lived through so much grief

that their heart, though cracked, has become a vessel—

not empty, but deep enough to hold another’s final moments?

I didn’t choose death work. Death chose me.

It found me again and again.

I lost my first real love to suicide—

a death that left the sky torn and trembling.

I lost my brother—my soulmate, my immortal, my everything.

I stood by others, in-between losses,

offering what little peace I could as they crossed over.

Then came the deepest cut—my grandson.

Grief that has no map, no name, no edge.

And still, death called.

I was there for my father too,

his last breath echoing in my memory like a hymn.

It was then I knew—this is sacred work.

Not an end, but a passage. A threshold. A holy moment.

People ask, “Isn’t this too much for you? Haven’t you lost enough?”

But what they don’t understand is—this is my healing.

This is my purpose.

I heal as I serve the dying.

Grief didn’t break me.

It carved me.

It made me tender where it matters and unshakable where it counts.

To be here for the leaving is not strange to me.

It is, in fact, the most natural thing I’ve ever done.