Alua Arthur

The most interesting version of the story is also the true one. This is how Alua Arthur reflects on the life-altering series of events that led her to become a death doula. She was burned out in her career as a lawyer in Los Angeles and so took a trip to Cuba as respite. On an errand one day, she narrowly missed getting hit by a car; then, later the same day, she found herself deep in conversation on a bus with a fellow passenger, a woman with cancer and who, it turned out, had been in the car that had almost hit her earlier. When, only a few months later, Arthur’s brother-in-law got sick and eventually died, she became the support system for her sister, both in logistics and emotions. It was a process she had to learn in the midst of grieving for him herself. “I remember just sitting there and being like, Why isn’t there somebody who already knows the answer? I would pay them anything,” she says. 

A year later, Going with Grace was born. Arthur’s company offers not only services for the dying and their loved ones, but also training courses for those seeking to become death doulas, or who want to learn how to “be with dying.” “We learn how people come into this world, but we don’t learn how people go out,” she says. “Most of us will be at the bedside of somebody we love who’s dying. We should all get this training.”

What were your ideas about death growing up? Was it something that you always felt comfortable with?
I had to learn how to befriend it. I hadn’t had any major impactful deaths before my brother-in-law. Then the woman on the bus [in Cuba]—she was only two years older than I was. I was like, Wow, we’re all gonna die. I had to really start to get comfortable with the idea. It was useful for me, though, because I was depressed at the time. And so I used the opportunity to look at my life. Like, if this disease kills me—because let’s make no bones about it, depression can be a terminal illness when left untreated—what have I done with my life, what have I made of my life, what do I value? What did I come to do? It was looking at those big questions through the lens of death as a way to help me understand my illness and ultimately as a way out of illness.

In one of your videos, you say that talking about death makes you feel more alive. What do you mean by that?
Looking at a body that life has just left, you see the incredible stillness of it with the understanding that that person will not speak any more words. They’ll never touch somebody again. They’ll never get to look at their niece or listen to her laugh. They won’t eat another orange. When I’m in my own life, doing those things, I bring so much more presence to it and a lot more gratitude. It’s very life-affirming. Because I think, Ah, I’m actually still living. It also is a nice reminder that we don’t know how much time we have left. So it’s like, I’m here now. Let me do it now. Let me break up with that guy. Let me go to Fiji.

What would you like your own death to be like?
I would  like to be elderly, not too old. I still want to be able to enjoy moving around and being able to engage with living. I’d love to be in my own bed, hopefully on a deck someplace, in the house that I’ve owned and lived in for a while. I want to be outside, for sure. I’d like it to be around dusk. I want my family members to be around, but I don’t want anybody to touch me, because I think that might ground me in earth and I want to feel free to fly. I want to smell some frankincense. I want to hear water trickling somewhere—just trickles, though, not a rush. I want to look at the colors in the sky and appreciate them one last time. I want to be able to look in the faces of the people that I loved, having already told them how much they mean to me and how full they’ve made my life; that loving them has been the greatest part of living in relationship with them. And then as soon as I die, or when it looks like I’m not going to breathe again, I want them to clap.

“We learn how people come into this world, but we don’t learn how people go out.”

“Talking about your death won't make it come—it's already coming.”

How young is too young to have a death plan? In an ideal society, would everyone have an end-of-life plan regardless of their age?
Yes. Up until 18, parents are largely responsible for decision-making. So after that point, particularly as kids are going away to college or starting to set up their own life and their own accounts [they should have one]. It’s also, I think, important to instill in adolescents this idea of death and dying. Not that it’s gonna stop them from making stupid choices, but maybe it’ll make them more thoughtful.

How should the average person go about getting a death education?
People can start simply by doing their own end-of-life planning. That’ll start teaching them about some of the things that it takes. It’s really important to spend some time thinking about who would make your decisions for you. What are your thoughts on life support? I think the pandemic really helped people start thinking about that because there’s all this talk about ventilators. Think about what you want done with your body. What kind of [funeral] services do you want? Just give any direction, because even saying you want sunflowers as opposed to peonies can create a theme for a service. Get clear on who should take care of your pets. Do you have a will, do you have a trust? Where are they? Because people hide those things away and nobody ever knows. All your finances—who’s on your bank accounts, where are your retirement accounts, do you have life insurance? What are your passwords to your cellphone, to your computer, all your online banking, email passwords? Start to put some of that stuff down on paper and you’ll get yourself a bit of a death education doing that.

If you don’t do anything, the people who love you the most—the people that are going to be hardest hit by your death—are going to have to make decisions and try to figure out what you might want. [Not doing anything] is a self-centered approach, which we struggle with as a culture as a whole. We look so much at the independent person rather than thinking about the fact that we live in community. We’re going to die in community, and that community is going to be responsible for wrapping up your life when you’re not here anymore.

Try to think of it this way: Talking about your death won’t make it come—it’s already coming. It just makes you prepared for when it does.