Birth and death are the bookends of life, yet we welcome one and dread the other. Why is it that birth is celebrated, but death is taboo?” so asked Virginia Chang in an article published in Scientific American in June 2021.
She writes about our history where “people were cared for and died at home, with corpses even displayed on dining room tables for mourning.” Over the years, we saw significant advances in medicine resulting in medical technology that helped improve diagnosis and the development of new treatments of illnesses. These developments moved health care away from local doctors and care delivered at home to patients going to the hospital and eventually dying there.
While the number of people dying in hospitals has steadily decreased, the numbers still do not reflect the fact that 71% of people would prefer to die at home.
And so little is being done to change the fact that unsheltered people, those who are living homeless, do not have access to comfort care or hospice care and die alone on our streets or along our rivers. They also often lack family support.
Joshua’s House will provide trained and certified End of Life Doulas (ELDA) to serve residents if desired. ELDAs go through three phases when working with the terminally ill residents. The first phase focuses on meaning, legacy and planning. This is when Doulas will guide residents as they look back to seek the meaning in their lives in a deep, more structured way.
In the second phase, when the person is actively dying, Doulas begin to conduct an end of life vigil, taking shifts in order to maintain a 24-hour presence. The vigil phase typically lasts two to four days—but may continue for up to ten days. During that time the Doulas implement the plan that the dying person set earlier. Sometimes Doulas ease pain by having the dying person visualize a peaceful place in nature or by providing therapeutic touch. They also assist in implementing the plan for the atmosphere around the dying person and their wishes for music and reading.
The third phase is designed to help bring closure to the staff and volunteers (and family members if any are present) after a resident dies.
