End-of-Life doula Martha Heymann strikes a singing bowl as she begins a visit with a client on Feb. 26.Photo: Marie D. DeJesùs
As an end-of-life doula Martha Heymann helps her clients learn to accept death and find meaning and peace in their final days. While the profession is unregulated and there are no accepted standards for certification, experts in the field say the number of EOL doulas in practice has been growing rapidly in recent years, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic brought death and dying so close to home for so many. According to NEDA, theNational End-of-Life Doula Alliance, the organization currently has 1,477 members, up from 250 in 2019. Heymann shares her story and her work with PEOPLE’s Eileen Finan in this week’s issue: “Dying is not a failure — we’re meant to die,” Heymann says. “And when someone has a say in how they die, they feel a sense of peace.”
In a candlelit room in a Houston home,Martha Heymannhas set up a makeshift altar at the bedside of her client Richard Branscomb. She picks up a Tibetan singing bowl and strikes it three times, marking the beginning of a ritual to focus all thought on a stark reality: Branscomb, 64, is facing his own death. As an end-of-life doula, Heymann is here to help Branscomb, who has cancer, accept that fact—and make his remaining days as meaningful as possible. “We help people do the work of dying,” she says. “When someone companions you down that road, you can remove some of the fear and create beauty and sacredness.”
That kind of companionship was something Heymann, 62, longed for 30 years ago when she was a new mother caring for her dying husband, Eddie. Before his death in 1993 at age 44, “no one was there to help Eddie know how to die or to teach me how to help him die,” she says. “We missed many an opportunity to create a beautiful space around the end of his life.” Today Heymann sees her work as a calling—and a healing of that wound: “I like to think that I am who we did not have.”
Likebirth doulas, end-of-life doulas (sometimes known as “death doulas”) offer care and comfort rather than medical treatment. “Hospice workers do a lot. They’re very helpful, but they can’t invest in a family emotionally,” says Heymann. “We can.” Because the profession is unregulated, exact numbers are hard to determine, but the field has been growing over the past few years, says Doug Simpson, executive director of INELDA, theInternational End-of-Life Doula Association, one of the largest EOL doula programs, which has trained more than 5,600 doulas worldwide since it was established in 2015. “As a culture, we avoid conversations around death, but during the pandemic, when loved ones were dying, we had to face it,” Simpson says. “That was transforming.”
RELATED CONTENT: Riley Keough Completes ‘Death Doula’ Training Months After Losing Brother Benjamin to Suicide
Branscomb, who was diagnosed withundifferentiated pleomorphic sarcomain 2019, first reached out to Heymann, a childhood friend, in October when he thought he had years to live. Two months later his prognosis changed, and suddenly their work together took on a new urgency. “It’s happening faster than I ever imagined, and Martha is helping me face my fears,” Branscomb says. “It’s been terrifically comforting.”
Using a technique known as Nurturing Touch for the Dying, Martha Heymann cradles the arm of her client Richard Branscomb, who is dying of cancer.Marie D. DeJesùs
Heymann knows that all too well. A young mother with twin toddler sons when her husband Eddie was dying of leukemia in their Corpus Christi home, she remembers keeping her distance out of fear. Eddie had been sent home from the hospital for his final few weeks after a bone marrow donor couldn’t be located (at the time the non-profit donor centerDKMSwas in its infancy). “I didn’t crawl into bed next to him until the end, because I was worried about hurting him,” she recalls. “It’s one of my regrets, not knowing I could be touching him more often to bring him comfort. When we remove human touch, the isolation of dying is even more difficult.”
Instead of “soothing his heart,” she says, “I became nurse, he became patient. I was no longer wife, he was no longer husband. I was swabbing his mouth and making his Ensure milkshakes, but we didn’t know how to have the important conversations. I remember crying into a pillow because nobody was there to help me figure out how to do this.”
In the years since Eddie’s death, Heymann, who remarried nearly 10 years ago, has been committed to opening the dialogue on death. After volunteering in a children’s oncology ward and working as a hospital lay chaplain, she earned a degree in psychology and then finished her doula training with INELDA in 2019. As part of her doula work with her businessTogether Forward, she hosts “Death Over Dinner” nights to get people talking. “We used to have generations of families living in a single home where a grandma or grandpa was always dying, so we were accustomed to death,” she says. “What we don’t know can be terrifying. Knowledge takes some of that away. And when you peel away the fear, dying can be a beautiful experience.”
Richard Branscomb (center) shares a light moment with Heymann and Branscomb’s son, Massey.Marie D. DeJesùs
Heymann, who wears a blue glass pendant filled with some of Eddie’s ashes when she makes her visits as a doula, maintains an unflinching view of death. In the course of a recent conversation, when asked about the “loss” of her husband, Heymann smiles. “I find it interesting how people say we ‘lose’ people, like we’ve gone to the mall and suddenly they’re gone, hiding under a coatrack somewhere!” she says. “I think it’s important to call death what it is.”
And, she adds, to notice it in all its forms. When Heymann drives, she’ll even take note of dead animals on the road, “and I’ll say ‘I’m sorry.'” If she’s able to stop safely, she’ll move the carcass to the side and cover it with grasses and flowers. “When we notice death, we honor it,” she says. “Every living thing deserves to be honored, whether it’s a human or a possum.”
Some might imagine a life focused on death to be bleak, but Heymann disagrees. “It is hard, which is why I only work with one client at a time,” says Heymann, who meditates and journals after her doula visits as a way of processing her work. “But it’s not depressing to me. It’s such an honor to be asked into this most precious place in somebody’s life. When we understand that this is the arc of every single life, we can stop and pay attention and even embrace it. It’s a magical thing to watch someone move from here to there.”
source: people.com
