I am gratified to read that death is getting so much attention these days. As an Episcopal priest who preaches almost every Sunday, I get a particular question more often than you would think: "Why do you preach about death so much?" Part of me wants to volley back, "Well, because our entire faith hinges on a death..." but I refrain from that. Instead, I point out the irony: I don't preach about death. I preach about what our dying and death can teach us about our living and our life.
But in a Wall Street Journal article published in the first week of 2025, Ben Cohen writes, “Don’t wait until the end to decide if you are proud of your life. Do it before it’s too late. Do it while you can still do something about it.” While the article focuses on billionaire entrepreneur Ron Shaich's annual practice of reflecting on his life, Cohen uses this discipline to suggest to his readers that a regular review of one's life can produce a more successful and fulfilled life.
You are likely starting to see more and more articles about dying, death and preparing for both. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Baby Boomer generation. Thinking about death in the air and water. Yet we are still uncomfortable with the subject. Our culture, so steeped in the fear of death, colors our perspective on the matter such that mention of this natural process of life always conjures negative reception. Hence the question I get a lot. What a tragedy. For what better tool, what greater exercise for cultivating gratitude about one’s life is there than contemplating one’s death?
Imagining your death and more importantly, imagining how you might reflect on your life as you lay in your deathbed is the greatest act of stewarding one’s life well. Added bonus? There are people who will do this alongside you. In our death-phobic culture you may be hard pressed to find a conversation partner in this endeavor. Family may think you are dwelling on dark matters. Friends may redirect the conversation. Spouses may be too pained to consider your end.
Death doulas are your answer.
You seek out a wedding planner to plan a wedding. You seek out a counselor to discuss matters of life transitions or relationship issues in addition to mental health struggles. You seek out death workers to help you navigates matters of dying and death. Death doulas offer you a space in which to reflect on the second of life’s greatest transitions, with birth being the first.
Cohen’s imperative, “Don’t wait until the end to decide if you are proud of your life” could be reframed in terms of stewardship, how you caretake your living time. We need reminding that our bones are brittle, our lives are brief, and the good stuff of living lives in the compost of hard questions, close conversations, sharing dreams and embracing vulnerabilities. The apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the Church in Corinth, “When we are weak, we are strong.”
Cohen’s article is one in a growing company of writings and urgings that encourage the via negativa, the wide road of difficult things, as a means of living more abundantly now. A death doula can help you forge this journey.
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