May 15, 2024 • 35 mins
Lashanna Williams provides a home and care for people to die by choice through MAID or VSED.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning, Good morning, good girl, Good morning, little guy.
Where are you, little guy? Which side of the bed
are you on? Good morning, homies. It's dark at here
in Washington right now. Today is the death anniversary of
one of my most loving clients. He had als and
(00:31):
was using medical aid and dying, so he was in
control of his own timeline, and he chose to die
and just surrounded by loving friends and family and.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Music.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh my god, music, the Beatles, songs, Beatles, Oh my God,
not the Beatles. Grateful Dead, Oh Howard, I'm sorry, it's funny.
This witch needs coffee.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
This is finally a show about a death care worker.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Lashanna Williams runs a place to die in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
My name is Lashana Williams. I am the daughter of
Catherine and the granddaughter of Diane. I am a mother
and a human of this world. My role in capitalism
is a massage therapist, so it's very cushy. I get
to generally see people when they're excited to see me,
(01:44):
and they leave happy. I went to massage school and
also started doing death care and volunteering at different hospices,
and I took a couple of educational classes through this
woman in Bellingham. In Massage, I had a friend Zoe
from Alaska, who is about twenty years younger than me,
(02:07):
and was just this ball of like fun and it
was just silly and full of life. And one day
we were at lunch with one of our teachers and
Zoey said, we're going to go to birth doula school.
And I looked at Zoe and our teacher and I
(02:27):
was like, okay, I mean, if it means I get
to hang out with you, I'll go do it. And
my teacher looked at me and was like, no offense,
but I probably would not hire you for a birth
doul And I was like me either, me either. I
have no desire to take care of pregnant people, no
(02:48):
desire at all. I remember I was like, the please
tick on my hair and give me ice chips? Is
that a round ice chip? Because I really wanted square
and I know I could not even take care of me.
And my tea said, there's death du lists and I said,
what what do you mean? And she told me about
the teacher in Bellingham, and so I looked her up
(03:09):
and all of that and started to volunteer for Providence Hospice,
which was really awkward because they're a religious institution and
I was really conflicted. They limit folks access to end
of life choice on their hospice, so it was a
struggle for me to even share my time with them.
(03:33):
End of life choice is legal in eleven states in
the Continent, and it allows you life ending medications when
you have a terminal illness. Each date has like different
parameters around it, like a different waiting period and how
many doctors you have to see and stuff like that.
And in Washington, our law was just updated, so our
(03:54):
waiting period is now seven days and you still need
two physicians, but it's the feen days. Too Many people
were missing it because they don't find out until too
late that they can actually have that choice, and then
fourteen days was too long. So Providence and other religiously
(04:14):
affiliated hospices don't allow people to They don't support folks
in that process. They won't their doctors won't be a
consulting doc or a prescribing doc, and those people have
to look out outside of there, and also some of
their policies around how you end your relationship with the
people that you're volunteering with. It felt wrong to me,
(04:35):
like when someone died. That was the end of your relationship.
You didn't get to go say goodbye. Like the role
that I was in was like when they died, I
just didn't go over anymore. I filed out a report
and I got a new person. I just want to
come say goodbye. I would like to give you a
hug and say thank you for sharing your time with me.
And you know, you just lost someone. You have a
(04:58):
caring relationship with the people that you are spending time with,
and so that just felt very out of line with
my integrity. And even more so when I showed up
at a funeral and saw four other people from the
hospice at the funeral, I was like, Yeah, what are
we doing. We all care and we're all breaking the rules,
(05:20):
Like this is not okay, and so I stopped. I
stopped that and did more training with Ashley up in Bellingham,
and over time, the type of care that I provided
to elders, death care and massage sort of started to
mix and mingle. It's very much when I first got
(05:41):
started in death care. It is community care. It's not
really like a client relationships. It was more we would
experience like a traumatic or a sudden death and people
would be like, I don't know what to do. And
in small communities, when you have a person, you know,
I have a person who knows what they do, so
(06:02):
folks would be like call of Shauna. Today we are
holding our first Sunday morning m oh you are an
I ng which is a space for us to just
gather and be in our grief, not with a particular focus,
but having a space where there's a fire and something
(06:26):
warm to drink was were the two things that we
knew we could do repeatedly and be able to show
up and be present. And so that's really what my
death care looked like for years was community situations. And
then that's where we are. We are in our community
care home in South Seattle.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
A little.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Good morning, how are you?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It looks so pretty in here?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Thank you? Thank you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Would it be okay if we introduced our selves. I
would love for everybody send them all, like whatever you
want to share with folks?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Do you want to start here?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know what I want to say.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, I'm Aaron. I use the or heat pronouns. I
kind of have like a windy, roundabout relationship with ASP,
but I'm stepping more into working with you all directly,
and I just love being in Sally's house and building community.
And I'm feeling really heavy about the world right now,
(07:56):
so that's most of why I'm here.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I had a massage client who is Sally Bailey, and
Sally Bailey was the owner of this house that we're
in right now, and I would come see Sally once
a week for a massage and one day she said,
I googled you and I said, okay, what did you
What did you find? Sally? And she said, how come
you didn't tell me about all this school shit you do?
(08:22):
It's like I didn't tell you about that because I
was here for you, you know. Two thy and eighteen,
I was given the nonprofit a sacred passing by Ashley
Benham from who was in Bellingham at the time, the
school that I had studied in. The founder she said,
(08:44):
I'm going to go to a nursing school and here's
this wily teenager of a nonprofit for you, and like
any any good scorpio, I said, thank you, and we
changed it. There was a good solid base for death care.
But what I had learned over years of caring for
(09:05):
other people was that it was a very prescriptive method
that I had learned from, like it was a recipe,
and that recipe is not for everybody at all. It
was a very clear set of procedures from the founder's
perspective of this is how we present ourselves. This is
(09:26):
how we look, This is how our hair is, this
is our jewelry is, this is our clothing, This is
how we greet people. You know, don't wear more than
two pairs of earrings at once. My hair was a
few different colors and that was inappropriate. So it was
this whole. It was like a medicalized and professionalized method
(09:50):
of caring for folks dressed in community care. A small
group of us started to look at the curriculum and
just add to it, and we were adding to it
and adding to it, and pretty soon it just it
looked different. And over the last few years we have
developed what feels like a really wonderful open way to
(10:17):
practice death care for folks, to sort of give them
a pool to move in and figure out what is
your what does your care look like? In that time,
a sacred passing started our program A Place to Die.
So A Place to Die is three years old. It
is a program exactly that if someone knows that they
(10:39):
are very near the end of their life and they
want to die at home or out of a facility,
I mean, for any reason. We don't ask why. We
just welcome people. Sometimes folks they don't want their family
to have the memory of them dying at home, and
so they would like to die in a home, but
not their home. Other times, people don't have a home,
(11:01):
or they are on a hospice and want to use
medical aid and dying and can't do it, or they're
in a private care home and the private care home
will not let them ingest on site. So many people
have been moved on their last day of life to
our homes because their facility won't let them. It's painful,
(11:26):
it's not what they want to be doing. It's new,
and also everybody has been wildly thankful. And what a
place that I started as is people sharing a room
in their home. There's so many people living in these
houses that are too big for them, and our houses
are absolutely unaffordable, and there's so many people living without
(11:50):
shelter that we were like, we have to share. There
has to be people who are willing to share, and
we wound up gathering eight people. And what that means
is this person just has to share the room in
their home. They don't have to do any of the
care work. We will clean it up, we will do
all of the things. Your room just needs to be
available to us. And during the pandemic we were allowed to.
(12:13):
We received people in who wanted to be with their
family where they couldn't be if they were in a
nursing home. Could they be transferred to our places? Yes,
and then their family could come in. And so that
like we did that. That was when a place that
I started. And so then Sally was like, oh, I
want to do a death plan. So she did a
death plan and she wanted this then to be a
(12:35):
place to die. She's like, how does my house do that?
I was like, you just do that. You want to
share a room? She's like, I got all these rooms
and so I was like okay. She's like, well, actually
I want you to have the house when I die.
And I was like okay. You know, like people say
things all the time, and I just kept coming for
massage and one day she called and asked me to
come over. And I was out with my neighbor at
(12:57):
the time, and so we came over and she opened
up the door with flowers like a housewarming plant, and
the quick claim deed, that's like what what I was like,
I need to like record this for my own memory.
I feel like I'm not going to remember any of it.
(13:19):
And so we sat down and we talked about it,
and so there's a video of Sally talking about why
she did this.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Sally, will you tell us what you're doing with this house?
Speaker 5 (13:30):
I am giving it to you so that you can
help people.
Speaker 7 (13:37):
Have a place to go, a place to be before
they go, a place for their family to be before
they go.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
To be.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
I don't know, out of the churm of the housing market,
which is in human. When you say me, I mean
a sacred passing guess, but I also mean you.
Speaker 9 (14:06):
Because I trust you.
Speaker 8 (14:09):
I trust your integrity, your humanity, your steadfast, okay, stubbornness,
and I like what you're doing.
Speaker 9 (14:23):
And you've helped me so much.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
The point is it's.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Not being used by the capitalist system at We can
bypass it if we think hard enough of ways to
do this. And now I just wish that I had
enough income to take the tax deduction.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
For this donation.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Sally had had a hard time, feeling like of a
group of people, feeling belonging, and she wanted this space
to be just that. She wanted to be of use.
There's a poem by March Percy called to be of Use,
which she sent me, and she said, this is this
is what I this is my dream. And she died
(15:24):
on April twentieth of twenty twenty three. In here. She
has always been a person who just did her did
what she wanted to do, and she she did the
same thing all the way through her death.
Speaker 10 (15:54):
My mother had a very like she wasn't religious, but
she was very spiritual, and she had that feel that
everything always happens for the best, that kind of like
everything is supposed to happen, and.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
And so I was raised like that. So it's it's
very strong in me. And then once she passed, I'm like,
we that's supposed to happen. No, there's like no universe
where this is the best.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Thing that could happen. And so.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm kind of like find it's been five years, it's
incredible all the time past. So it's especially with the
pandemic and everything. Uh, but kind of finding my way
back spiritually, uh, after like something that there's no universe
for this is the best case scenario. How do you get.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Back to everything happens for a reason, and and I
can see the universe's reasons.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
I hate them, but I see them, and it's just
kind of I think that's something that would probably while
balance with grief. Also, how do you how do you
like kind of like hold up your spiritual belief.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
In the face of grief and loss.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I know, I know, Yeah, you're great.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I would like to die in a non scary, painful way.
I would like to not die in an act of violence.
I would like not to die by the hands of someone.
I don't want to die yet. I'm not afraid of it,
but I don't want to die yet. I like to
just always put that out into the universe and outside
(17:51):
of those things, I think I will be able to
see the joy in anything. If I'm at home, there's
a reason I'm at home. If I'm not able to
be at home, there's a good reason. My kids are hilarious.
My daughter will not take care of me. She's already said,
I will help Dante pay for it. We will put
you in a wonderful home. And my son is like mom,
(18:12):
I'll take care of you. I do a lot of
medical aid and dying care work. It's either medical aid
and dying or it's a traumatic death. That are like
the predominant sides of my death care work. I am
a volunteer with End of Life Washington and they are
a nonprofit that was started and successfully achieved medical aid
(18:35):
and dying in Washington State. They started with volunteers to
like just help people through the process and in the
state of Washington now medical facilities depend on End of
Life Washington to do that, and especially the ones that
are religious, and so they have about one hundred volunteers
and so people will be referred to them and they
(18:56):
send out a request can someone help this person? And
so what we do w in that situation is we
will learn about someone's condition and then work to get
them set up with medical providers and depending on what
that person wants and the volunteer's ability, like the type
of care they get shifts. Mine is like a full
(19:18):
care if they would like it. I do a lot
of things that most of the other volunteers are like,
what why are you doing that. I will sit there
and talk with someone about a death plan, do you
want to do this, what are we going to do
with your body afterwards? Where that's not a typical thing
that folks will talk about, but I know from being
in those situations a lot of times when someone then
(19:39):
dies on their medical aid and dying medicine, folks will
then look at me and say, Okay, what do we
do now. I don't want those situations. It's not fun
for anybody, and so I try to do all of
that with the people I help in advance. I predominantly
see folks with cancer using medical aid and dying. In
Washington State, medical aid and dying is not accessible to
(20:01):
you if you have Alzheimer's or dementia immediately upon a diagnosis.
So you could be diagnosed today and be perfectly fine
and just understand that this is going to be a
progressive disease, and you still do not have your choice
from that point on what Folks who have those like
Alzheimer's or dimension they often choose voluntary stopping of eating
(20:23):
and drinking, which is called VSAID, and we support that
here too, and VSAID is a longer process, but with
medical support, with a hospice who's willing to prescribe a
certain regiment of medications that hospices prescribe for everybody, the
thirst and the hunger is really easily mitigated. It sounds
(20:46):
preposterous and wild because we are so intrinsically linked to
water and food, and food means so many things to
so many people, Like not eating sounds hard and uncomfortable.
And V said, with medical support have been some of
the like Calmus deaths that I've seen. They're longer than
(21:10):
medical aid and dying and require much more care, but
it's still someone being able to make their choice and
the people who love them are there caring for them.
I have seen, like the healing for the people around
after that is so much different folks who are using
(21:32):
medical aid and dying And V said, like they say
the things they wanted to say, They see the people
they wanted to see, they do the things they wanted
to do, And while it's sad and devastating, there is
an amount of pressure that's like released from the emotional
valve that folks experience in those processes because they know
(21:57):
it's not a surprise, and just that understanding allows you
to like be present in that situation so differently.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
That's incredibly relateable. I've had similar experiences, like on a
personal level, but it also feels like that's kind of
how people are reacting at large over a lot of
things right now, just like they don't want to hear
a bummer, you know, like they just want to chug
along and like get whatever joy they can, which you know,
I can't really argue with on some level, but it's
(22:29):
also not how we You know, you have to show
up for grief and you have to show up for
the world or nothing is ever going to get better
to like take that energy to a loved line to
be like, hey, like this is sad and you need
to be here.
Speaker 11 (22:44):
Like it's it's a big ask and it sucks to
feel like the bummer. But also like if you're not
doing that, you're it just feels like you're painting without
all the colors, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Like you just you need to have that breadth of
experience to.
Speaker 9 (23:02):
Show up.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Medical aid and dying, the process of it is when
you get a prescription, you get the compounded prescription, which
is made up of a heart stimulant, a pain killer,
an anti seizure medication, a respiratory suppressant, and there's one
(23:41):
other I can't think of at the moment. But you
get this compounded prescription and it's like a dust and
you have to add a liquid to it. And so
you get that, and you get an anti anxiety pill
and a anti nausea pill. Well you take those and
you wait an hour, let your belly get sort of settled.
And everybody says that anti anxiety medicine is bullshit, doesn't work.
(24:03):
They're like, this is what they give me. I'm like, hey,
I know, you can take whatever you would like as
long as you don't fall asleep. So if you have
other tools that you would like to do, go ahead
whatever you want. Just know that if you fall asleep,
you're gonna wake up and be like what I cared
for a gentleman once who wanted to ingest his medicine
(24:26):
at four o'clock and I said, okay, I'll come over. Well,
at three forty five, his regular care person gave him
his meds, which one of them was a xanax, and
then combined with our next meds fifteen minutes later, it
put him to sleep. None of us understood, like I
(24:47):
didn't know he had those medicines from his normal care provider.
So he was like, I'm going to use the restroom.
And you went to use the restroom and fell asleep there,
so we had to move him to his bed. He
woke up and was like what it didn't work and
we were like, no, you didn't take it yet. You
didn't take it yet, you fell asleep, and he was like,
(25:08):
what do you mean I fell asleep?
Speaker 7 (25:10):
Like.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
He was so pissed, so pissed, and we were like, no,
it's right here, like you can still take it, and
he did and he took it and he took just
a little bit of it and said, this tastes like shit.
I'm not taking anymore. It's bitter. It's bitter and it burns.
It's ridiculous. With as much technology as we have and
(25:30):
as many pink amoxacillin bottles I've seen in my day,
I am livid that it doesn't taste good. But it worked,
and that was it. After the medicine, someone will be
awake for roughly five to ten minutes, and I always
tell people like that time period will go so much
faster than you ever think it will. It will feel
(25:52):
like one minute. And so it's very important when I
work with folks who are taking medal Klein and dying.
We talk a lot about that five minutes. What do
you want of that five minutes? Who do you want
in here? Is there something you want to listen to?
Is there something you want to hear? Is there a
scripture you want? Prayer like? What is important to you?
(26:15):
Those are your last exchanges with people? And everybody around
is always shocked. Even though I say it goes quick
and I try really hard to prepare folks, they are
always not ready for the speed in which that happens.
Also then ridiculously surprised that people don't die immediately because
(26:37):
they go into a coma, and then each body takes
in that medicine differently, so someone could die within fifteen minutes.
The longest person I've cared for was thirty nine hours.
That was before they changed the medicine. They changed the
way that it was mixed, and now we have not
had a death that took that long. But yeah, I
(27:02):
think it's my ability to just hold heavy things that
allows me to do this. Like it doesn't. It doesn't
make me uncomfortable to hold heavy things. It doesn't make
me uncomfortable to talk about heavy things. I couldn't tell
you how I came to be this way. I just
know that I can when people say to me frequently,
like I'll be caring for someone and they're like, you
(27:25):
have a tough job, and I will say thank you
for thank you know, thank you for acknowledging that. And
let's remember that people teach kindergarten. There's kindergarten teachers out there.
I could never nope, nope. So I feel very strongly
that we are all made for something. And if you
ask a kindergarten teacher, how can you, like, how can
(27:47):
they do that? I don't I like doing it? Like
you know, like I bet you, they couldn't really pinpoint
what makes them, what caused them to have the ability
to do that. I just really firmly believe that we
are all we all have something that we're good at,
and it's when we're able to step outside of those
lines of capitalism, the shoulds, the paths that society has
(28:10):
set up for us, that we get to discover that.
I think people are often surprised at the fact that
their body can stay home if they die at home
or if they die in a hospital, Like your body
can go back home, you don't have to go to
a funeral home. And I think people are shocked by that.
(28:32):
Why would you go home? Well, A, it's free, it's free.
You can go home. You can have a wake at home.
People can come just like they would anywhere else. They
can come and they can see you, and your body
is cared for in a loving way, and it's preserved
and it's not any of the things that people might
(28:54):
want to scare you with. You know, like it doesn't move,
it doesn't stink like it's about And people are often like, well,
I go home and then I leave that same day. No,
you can stay, like, we can cool your body for
however long you need it to be. There's a lot
of cultures that, you know, they bring folks home for
(29:17):
much longer than you would think. Some folks bring people
home for ninety days and there's a lot of care
and that is perfectly legal, and I don't think that
people know that and knowing that it does so much
having a person come home if they can. When they
(29:38):
come home, you're able to metabolize that grief and that
death so much differently because you're doing things so like
not staying not staying busy, but like doing things for
this person. You're caring for them. You get to like
you get to see that they're dead. You touch and
you feel that they're dead, you hear that they're dead.
(29:59):
All of your senses are understanding this and they have
Like there's just this time that your body gets to
process this instead of the two hours that you can
dip into the funeral home with a whole bunch of
people around, Like you get to be at home. You
get to wake up in the morning and go downstairs
and wail on the floor if you want, and then
(30:23):
get up and make yourself a cup of coffee and
go sit like you get to do what you need.
And also when people come home, it reintegrates dying into
our living because depending on your household and who lives there,
Like you get younger people who now understand we die
(30:46):
and it's not scary. It's sad someone we love has gone.
We don't get to talk to them anymore. Like, yes,
it's all of those things and it's normal. I love
the after death because because we don't know, I feel
(31:09):
like it's the one thing I get to make wonderful
in my life, and like a very nebulous, wonderful like
I know there's something there has to be, Like, this
is not it. This is just not it. It's so
ridiculously arrogant to think that this is it. I think
that there are souls everywhere, like I think they're implants.
(31:31):
I think there is a source energy that we all
share anything that is living, And to think of the
galaxies that exist out there, like I might die and
this energy might go to like four thousand years ago,
or maybe it just lives in a plant or you know,
(31:52):
like I'm not connecting my consciousness with it, but just
the energy. Yeah. I have a friend Patricia who I
went to massage school with, and she wound up getting
cancer and was in Ohio when she died, and I
(32:15):
knew she was nearing the end of her life. That
actually the day before she had called and to say goodbye.
She was like, I know, I'm going and so we
talked for a wonderfully long time. But I was in
my kitchen and I was looking at a bunch of
fabric and Patricia was an amazing seamstress. Every time I
would make something, she would look at it and say,
that's garbage. And I feel like, Patricia, that's so mean
(32:38):
and she's like, I'm just honest, like she was. And
I was looking at a piece of fabric, and all
of a sudden I heard wee and I was like, oh,
Patricia died. Like I heard her spirit do something and
(33:02):
she was so delighted. She was so delighted by whatever
it was, and she and she had died. From that
moment on, I was I was like, there's something good,
even if it's like until my conscious until I'm unaware
of my consciousness, it's gonna be something that I've never expected.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Hi, it was nice to meet you.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
You get to see you again to meet you. Thank
you for having me, thank you for hosting. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I'm gonna go to bed now. It's been it's been
a long, full week of care. Care work is it's
a lot of work, and doing it right is a
whole lot of work. Likely to go to bed in.
Speaker 12 (34:18):
A house that's not being bombed, in a bed that
is in my house that's not being bombed, and with
my animals.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So I'm thankful to wake up in the morning and
get to do something. I don't get to do it
all over again, Thank goodness, I don't get to do
it all over again. But I get to do something
and for that I'm thankful.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yeah,
Good morning, Good morning, good girl, Good morning, little guy.
Where are you, little guy? Which side of the bed
are you on? Good morning, homies. It's dark at here
in Washington right now. Today is the death anniversary of
one of my most loving clients. He had als and
(00:31):
was using medical aid and dying, so he was in
control of his own timeline, and he chose to die
and just surrounded by loving friends and family and.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Music.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh my god, music, the Beatles, songs, Beatles, Oh my God,
not the Beatles. Grateful Dead, Oh Howard, I'm sorry, it's funny.
This witch needs coffee.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
This is finally a show about a death care worker.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Lashanna Williams runs a place to die in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
My name is Lashana Williams. I am the daughter of
Catherine and the granddaughter of Diane. I am a mother
and a human of this world. My role in capitalism
is a massage therapist, so it's very cushy. I get
to generally see people when they're excited to see me,
(01:44):
and they leave happy. I went to massage school and
also started doing death care and volunteering at different hospices,
and I took a couple of educational classes through this
woman in Bellingham. In Massage, I had a friend Zoe
from Alaska, who is about twenty years younger than me,
(02:07):
and was just this ball of like fun and it
was just silly and full of life. And one day
we were at lunch with one of our teachers and
Zoey said, we're going to go to birth doula school.
And I looked at Zoe and our teacher and I
(02:27):
was like, okay, I mean, if it means I get
to hang out with you, I'll go do it. And
my teacher looked at me and was like, no offense,
but I probably would not hire you for a birth
doul And I was like me either, me either. I
have no desire to take care of pregnant people, no
(02:48):
desire at all. I remember I was like, the please
tick on my hair and give me ice chips? Is
that a round ice chip? Because I really wanted square
and I know I could not even take care of me.
And my tea said, there's death du lists and I said,
what what do you mean? And she told me about
the teacher in Bellingham, and so I looked her up
(03:09):
and all of that and started to volunteer for Providence Hospice,
which was really awkward because they're a religious institution and
I was really conflicted. They limit folks access to end
of life choice on their hospice, so it was a
struggle for me to even share my time with them.
(03:33):
End of life choice is legal in eleven states in
the Continent, and it allows you life ending medications when
you have a terminal illness. Each date has like different
parameters around it, like a different waiting period and how
many doctors you have to see and stuff like that.
And in Washington, our law was just updated, so our
(03:54):
waiting period is now seven days and you still need
two physicians, but it's the feen days. Too Many people
were missing it because they don't find out until too
late that they can actually have that choice, and then
fourteen days was too long. So Providence and other religiously
(04:14):
affiliated hospices don't allow people to They don't support folks
in that process. They won't their doctors won't be a
consulting doc or a prescribing doc, and those people have
to look out outside of there, and also some of
their policies around how you end your relationship with the
people that you're volunteering with. It felt wrong to me,
(04:35):
like when someone died. That was the end of your relationship.
You didn't get to go say goodbye. Like the role
that I was in was like when they died, I
just didn't go over anymore. I filed out a report
and I got a new person. I just want to
come say goodbye. I would like to give you a
hug and say thank you for sharing your time with me.
And you know, you just lost someone. You have a
(04:58):
caring relationship with the people that you are spending time with,
and so that just felt very out of line with
my integrity. And even more so when I showed up
at a funeral and saw four other people from the
hospice at the funeral, I was like, Yeah, what are
we doing. We all care and we're all breaking the rules,
(05:20):
Like this is not okay, and so I stopped. I
stopped that and did more training with Ashley up in Bellingham,
and over time, the type of care that I provided
to elders, death care and massage sort of started to
mix and mingle. It's very much when I first got
(05:41):
started in death care. It is community care. It's not
really like a client relationships. It was more we would
experience like a traumatic or a sudden death and people
would be like, I don't know what to do. And
in small communities, when you have a person, you know,
I have a person who knows what they do, so
(06:02):
folks would be like call of Shauna. Today we are
holding our first Sunday morning m oh you are an
I ng which is a space for us to just
gather and be in our grief, not with a particular focus,
but having a space where there's a fire and something
(06:26):
warm to drink was were the two things that we
knew we could do repeatedly and be able to show
up and be present. And so that's really what my
death care looked like for years was community situations. And
then that's where we are. We are in our community
care home in South Seattle.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
A little.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Good morning, how are you?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It looks so pretty in here?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Thank you? Thank you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Would it be okay if we introduced our selves. I
would love for everybody send them all, like whatever you
want to share with folks?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Do you want to start here?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know what I want to say.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, I'm Aaron. I use the or heat pronouns. I
kind of have like a windy, roundabout relationship with ASP,
but I'm stepping more into working with you all directly,
and I just love being in Sally's house and building community.
And I'm feeling really heavy about the world right now,
(07:56):
so that's most of why I'm here.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I had a massage client who is Sally Bailey, and
Sally Bailey was the owner of this house that we're
in right now, and I would come see Sally once
a week for a massage and one day she said,
I googled you and I said, okay, what did you
What did you find? Sally? And she said, how come
you didn't tell me about all this school shit you do?
(08:22):
It's like I didn't tell you about that because I
was here for you, you know. Two thy and eighteen,
I was given the nonprofit a sacred passing by Ashley
Benham from who was in Bellingham at the time, the
school that I had studied in. The founder she said,
(08:44):
I'm going to go to a nursing school and here's
this wily teenager of a nonprofit for you, and like
any any good scorpio, I said, thank you, and we
changed it. There was a good solid base for death care.
But what I had learned over years of caring for
(09:05):
other people was that it was a very prescriptive method
that I had learned from, like it was a recipe,
and that recipe is not for everybody at all. It
was a very clear set of procedures from the founder's
perspective of this is how we present ourselves. This is
(09:26):
how we look, This is how our hair is, this
is our jewelry is, this is our clothing, This is
how we greet people. You know, don't wear more than
two pairs of earrings at once. My hair was a
few different colors and that was inappropriate. So it was
this whole. It was like a medicalized and professionalized method
(09:50):
of caring for folks dressed in community care. A small
group of us started to look at the curriculum and
just add to it, and we were adding to it
and adding to it, and pretty soon it just it
looked different. And over the last few years we have
developed what feels like a really wonderful open way to
(10:17):
practice death care for folks, to sort of give them
a pool to move in and figure out what is
your what does your care look like? In that time,
a sacred passing started our program A Place to Die.
So A Place to Die is three years old. It
is a program exactly that if someone knows that they
(10:39):
are very near the end of their life and they
want to die at home or out of a facility,
I mean, for any reason. We don't ask why. We
just welcome people. Sometimes folks they don't want their family
to have the memory of them dying at home, and
so they would like to die in a home, but
not their home. Other times, people don't have a home,
(11:01):
or they are on a hospice and want to use
medical aid and dying and can't do it, or they're
in a private care home and the private care home
will not let them ingest on site. So many people
have been moved on their last day of life to
our homes because their facility won't let them. It's painful,
(11:26):
it's not what they want to be doing. It's new,
and also everybody has been wildly thankful. And what a
place that I started as is people sharing a room
in their home. There's so many people living in these
houses that are too big for them, and our houses
are absolutely unaffordable, and there's so many people living without
(11:50):
shelter that we were like, we have to share. There
has to be people who are willing to share, and
we wound up gathering eight people. And what that means
is this person just has to share the room in
their home. They don't have to do any of the
care work. We will clean it up, we will do
all of the things. Your room just needs to be
available to us. And during the pandemic we were allowed to.
(12:13):
We received people in who wanted to be with their
family where they couldn't be if they were in a
nursing home. Could they be transferred to our places? Yes,
and then their family could come in. And so that
like we did that. That was when a place that
I started. And so then Sally was like, oh, I
want to do a death plan. So she did a
death plan and she wanted this then to be a
(12:35):
place to die. She's like, how does my house do that?
I was like, you just do that. You want to
share a room? She's like, I got all these rooms
and so I was like okay. She's like, well, actually
I want you to have the house when I die.
And I was like okay. You know, like people say
things all the time, and I just kept coming for
massage and one day she called and asked me to
come over. And I was out with my neighbor at
(12:57):
the time, and so we came over and she opened
up the door with flowers like a housewarming plant, and
the quick claim deed, that's like what what I was like,
I need to like record this for my own memory.
I feel like I'm not going to remember any of it.
(13:19):
And so we sat down and we talked about it,
and so there's a video of Sally talking about why
she did this.
Speaker 6 (13:26):
Sally, will you tell us what you're doing with this house?
Speaker 5 (13:30):
I am giving it to you so that you can
help people.
Speaker 7 (13:37):
Have a place to go, a place to be before
they go, a place for their family to be before
they go.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
To be.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
I don't know, out of the churm of the housing market,
which is in human. When you say me, I mean
a sacred passing guess, but I also mean you.
Speaker 9 (14:06):
Because I trust you.
Speaker 8 (14:09):
I trust your integrity, your humanity, your steadfast, okay, stubbornness,
and I like what you're doing.
Speaker 9 (14:23):
And you've helped me so much.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
The point is it's.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Not being used by the capitalist system at We can
bypass it if we think hard enough of ways to
do this. And now I just wish that I had
enough income to take the tax deduction.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
For this donation.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Sally had had a hard time, feeling like of a
group of people, feeling belonging, and she wanted this space
to be just that. She wanted to be of use.
There's a poem by March Percy called to be of Use,
which she sent me, and she said, this is this
is what I this is my dream. And she died
(15:24):
on April twentieth of twenty twenty three. In here. She
has always been a person who just did her did
what she wanted to do, and she she did the
same thing all the way through her death.
Speaker 10 (15:54):
My mother had a very like she wasn't religious, but
she was very spiritual, and she had that feel that
everything always happens for the best, that kind of like
everything is supposed to happen, and.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
And so I was raised like that. So it's it's
very strong in me. And then once she passed, I'm like,
we that's supposed to happen. No, there's like no universe
where this is the best.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Thing that could happen. And so.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm kind of like find it's been five years, it's
incredible all the time past. So it's especially with the
pandemic and everything. Uh, but kind of finding my way
back spiritually, uh, after like something that there's no universe
for this is the best case scenario. How do you get.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Back to everything happens for a reason, and and I
can see the universe's reasons.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
I hate them, but I see them, and it's just
kind of I think that's something that would probably while
balance with grief. Also, how do you how do you
like kind of like hold up your spiritual belief.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
In the face of grief and loss.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I know, I know, Yeah, you're great.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I would like to die in a non scary, painful way.
I would like to not die in an act of violence.
I would like not to die by the hands of someone.
I don't want to die yet. I'm not afraid of it,
but I don't want to die yet. I like to
just always put that out into the universe and outside
(17:51):
of those things, I think I will be able to
see the joy in anything. If I'm at home, there's
a reason I'm at home. If I'm not able to
be at home, there's a good reason. My kids are hilarious.
My daughter will not take care of me. She's already said,
I will help Dante pay for it. We will put
you in a wonderful home. And my son is like mom,
(18:12):
I'll take care of you. I do a lot of
medical aid and dying care work. It's either medical aid
and dying or it's a traumatic death. That are like
the predominant sides of my death care work. I am
a volunteer with End of Life Washington and they are
a nonprofit that was started and successfully achieved medical aid
(18:35):
and dying in Washington State. They started with volunteers to
like just help people through the process and in the
state of Washington now medical facilities depend on End of
Life Washington to do that, and especially the ones that
are religious, and so they have about one hundred volunteers
and so people will be referred to them and they
(18:56):
send out a request can someone help this person? And
so what we do w in that situation is we
will learn about someone's condition and then work to get
them set up with medical providers and depending on what
that person wants and the volunteer's ability, like the type
of care they get shifts. Mine is like a full
(19:18):
care if they would like it. I do a lot
of things that most of the other volunteers are like,
what why are you doing that. I will sit there
and talk with someone about a death plan, do you
want to do this, what are we going to do
with your body afterwards? Where that's not a typical thing
that folks will talk about, but I know from being
in those situations a lot of times when someone then
(19:39):
dies on their medical aid and dying medicine, folks will
then look at me and say, Okay, what do we
do now. I don't want those situations. It's not fun
for anybody, and so I try to do all of
that with the people I help in advance. I predominantly
see folks with cancer using medical aid and dying. In
Washington State, medical aid and dying is not accessible to
(20:01):
you if you have Alzheimer's or dementia immediately upon a diagnosis.
So you could be diagnosed today and be perfectly fine
and just understand that this is going to be a
progressive disease, and you still do not have your choice
from that point on what Folks who have those like
Alzheimer's or dimension they often choose voluntary stopping of eating
(20:23):
and drinking, which is called VSAID, and we support that
here too, and VSAID is a longer process, but with
medical support, with a hospice who's willing to prescribe a
certain regiment of medications that hospices prescribe for everybody, the
thirst and the hunger is really easily mitigated. It sounds
(20:46):
preposterous and wild because we are so intrinsically linked to
water and food, and food means so many things to
so many people, Like not eating sounds hard and uncomfortable.
And V said, with medical support have been some of
the like Calmus deaths that I've seen. They're longer than
(21:10):
medical aid and dying and require much more care, but
it's still someone being able to make their choice and
the people who love them are there caring for them.
I have seen, like the healing for the people around
after that is so much different folks who are using
(21:32):
medical aid and dying And V said, like they say
the things they wanted to say, They see the people
they wanted to see, they do the things they wanted
to do, And while it's sad and devastating, there is
an amount of pressure that's like released from the emotional
valve that folks experience in those processes because they know
(21:57):
it's not a surprise, and just that understanding allows you
to like be present in that situation so differently.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
That's incredibly relateable. I've had similar experiences, like on a
personal level, but it also feels like that's kind of
how people are reacting at large over a lot of
things right now, just like they don't want to hear
a bummer, you know, like they just want to chug
along and like get whatever joy they can, which you know,
I can't really argue with on some level, but it's
(22:29):
also not how we You know, you have to show
up for grief and you have to show up for
the world or nothing is ever going to get better
to like take that energy to a loved line to
be like, hey, like this is sad and you need
to be here.
Speaker 11 (22:44):
Like it's it's a big ask and it sucks to
feel like the bummer. But also like if you're not
doing that, you're it just feels like you're painting without
all the colors, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Like you just you need to have that breadth of
experience to.
Speaker 9 (23:02):
Show up.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Medical aid and dying, the process of it is when
you get a prescription, you get the compounded prescription, which
is made up of a heart stimulant, a pain killer,
an anti seizure medication, a respiratory suppressant, and there's one
(23:41):
other I can't think of at the moment. But you
get this compounded prescription and it's like a dust and
you have to add a liquid to it. And so
you get that, and you get an anti anxiety pill
and a anti nausea pill. Well you take those and
you wait an hour, let your belly get sort of settled.
And everybody says that anti anxiety medicine is bullshit, doesn't work.
(24:03):
They're like, this is what they give me. I'm like, hey,
I know, you can take whatever you would like as
long as you don't fall asleep. So if you have
other tools that you would like to do, go ahead
whatever you want. Just know that if you fall asleep,
you're gonna wake up and be like what I cared
for a gentleman once who wanted to ingest his medicine
(24:26):
at four o'clock and I said, okay, I'll come over. Well,
at three forty five, his regular care person gave him
his meds, which one of them was a xanax, and
then combined with our next meds fifteen minutes later, it
put him to sleep. None of us understood, like I
(24:47):
didn't know he had those medicines from his normal care provider.
So he was like, I'm going to use the restroom.
And you went to use the restroom and fell asleep there,
so we had to move him to his bed. He
woke up and was like what it didn't work and
we were like, no, you didn't take it yet. You
didn't take it yet, you fell asleep, and he was like,
(25:08):
what do you mean I fell asleep?
Speaker 7 (25:10):
Like.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
He was so pissed, so pissed, and we were like, no,
it's right here, like you can still take it, and
he did and he took it and he took just
a little bit of it and said, this tastes like shit.
I'm not taking anymore. It's bitter. It's bitter and it burns.
It's ridiculous. With as much technology as we have and
(25:30):
as many pink amoxacillin bottles I've seen in my day,
I am livid that it doesn't taste good. But it worked,
and that was it. After the medicine, someone will be
awake for roughly five to ten minutes, and I always
tell people like that time period will go so much
faster than you ever think it will. It will feel
(25:52):
like one minute. And so it's very important when I
work with folks who are taking medal Klein and dying.
We talk a lot about that five minutes. What do
you want of that five minutes? Who do you want
in here? Is there something you want to listen to?
Is there something you want to hear? Is there a
scripture you want? Prayer like? What is important to you?
(26:15):
Those are your last exchanges with people? And everybody around
is always shocked. Even though I say it goes quick
and I try really hard to prepare folks, they are
always not ready for the speed in which that happens.
Also then ridiculously surprised that people don't die immediately because
(26:37):
they go into a coma, and then each body takes
in that medicine differently, so someone could die within fifteen minutes.
The longest person I've cared for was thirty nine hours.
That was before they changed the medicine. They changed the
way that it was mixed, and now we have not
had a death that took that long. But yeah, I
(27:02):
think it's my ability to just hold heavy things that
allows me to do this. Like it doesn't. It doesn't
make me uncomfortable to hold heavy things. It doesn't make
me uncomfortable to talk about heavy things. I couldn't tell
you how I came to be this way. I just
know that I can when people say to me frequently,
like I'll be caring for someone and they're like, you
(27:25):
have a tough job, and I will say thank you
for thank you know, thank you for acknowledging that. And
let's remember that people teach kindergarten. There's kindergarten teachers out there.
I could never nope, nope. So I feel very strongly
that we are all made for something. And if you
ask a kindergarten teacher, how can you, like, how can
(27:47):
they do that? I don't I like doing it? Like
you know, like I bet you, they couldn't really pinpoint
what makes them, what caused them to have the ability
to do that. I just really firmly believe that we
are all we all have something that we're good at,
and it's when we're able to step outside of those
lines of capitalism, the shoulds, the paths that society has
(28:10):
set up for us, that we get to discover that.
I think people are often surprised at the fact that
their body can stay home if they die at home
or if they die in a hospital, Like your body
can go back home, you don't have to go to
a funeral home. And I think people are shocked by that.
(28:32):
Why would you go home? Well, A, it's free, it's free.
You can go home. You can have a wake at home.
People can come just like they would anywhere else. They
can come and they can see you, and your body
is cared for in a loving way, and it's preserved
and it's not any of the things that people might
(28:54):
want to scare you with. You know, like it doesn't move,
it doesn't stink like it's about And people are often like, well,
I go home and then I leave that same day. No,
you can stay, like, we can cool your body for
however long you need it to be. There's a lot
of cultures that, you know, they bring folks home for
(29:17):
much longer than you would think. Some folks bring people
home for ninety days and there's a lot of care
and that is perfectly legal, and I don't think that
people know that and knowing that it does so much
having a person come home if they can. When they
(29:38):
come home, you're able to metabolize that grief and that
death so much differently because you're doing things so like
not staying not staying busy, but like doing things for
this person. You're caring for them. You get to like
you get to see that they're dead. You touch and
you feel that they're dead, you hear that they're dead.
(29:59):
All of your senses are understanding this and they have
Like there's just this time that your body gets to
process this instead of the two hours that you can
dip into the funeral home with a whole bunch of
people around, Like you get to be at home. You
get to wake up in the morning and go downstairs
and wail on the floor if you want, and then
(30:23):
get up and make yourself a cup of coffee and
go sit like you get to do what you need.
And also when people come home, it reintegrates dying into
our living because depending on your household and who lives there,
Like you get younger people who now understand we die
(30:46):
and it's not scary. It's sad someone we love has gone.
We don't get to talk to them anymore. Like, yes,
it's all of those things and it's normal. I love
the after death because because we don't know, I feel
(31:09):
like it's the one thing I get to make wonderful
in my life, and like a very nebulous, wonderful like
I know there's something there has to be, Like, this
is not it. This is just not it. It's so
ridiculously arrogant to think that this is it. I think
that there are souls everywhere, like I think they're implants.
(31:31):
I think there is a source energy that we all
share anything that is living, And to think of the
galaxies that exist out there, like I might die and
this energy might go to like four thousand years ago,
or maybe it just lives in a plant or you know,
(31:52):
like I'm not connecting my consciousness with it, but just
the energy. Yeah. I have a friend Patricia who I
went to massage school with, and she wound up getting
cancer and was in Ohio when she died, and I
(32:15):
knew she was nearing the end of her life. That
actually the day before she had called and to say goodbye.
She was like, I know, I'm going and so we
talked for a wonderfully long time. But I was in
my kitchen and I was looking at a bunch of
fabric and Patricia was an amazing seamstress. Every time I
would make something, she would look at it and say,
that's garbage. And I feel like, Patricia, that's so mean
(32:38):
and she's like, I'm just honest, like she was. And
I was looking at a piece of fabric, and all
of a sudden I heard wee and I was like, oh,
Patricia died. Like I heard her spirit do something and
(33:02):
she was so delighted. She was so delighted by whatever
it was, and she and she had died. From that
moment on, I was I was like, there's something good,
even if it's like until my conscious until I'm unaware
of my consciousness, it's gonna be something that I've never expected.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Hi, it was nice to meet you.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
You get to see you again to meet you. Thank
you for having me, thank you for hosting. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I'm gonna go to bed now. It's been it's been
a long, full week of care. Care work is it's
a lot of work, and doing it right is a
whole lot of work. Likely to go to bed in.
Speaker 12 (34:18):
A house that's not being bombed, in a bed that
is in my house that's not being bombed, and with
my animals.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So I'm thankful to wake up in the morning and
get to do something. I don't get to do it
all over again, Thank goodness, I don't get to do
it all over again. But I get to do something
and for that I'm thankful.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yeah,
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