Tag: death

Chatting with my father’s G-d

I am 69 years old and I have been living with multiple sclerosis for the last 29 years. During that time, my disability has affected my spirituality, and vice versa.

I grew up with Orthodox Jewish maternal grandparents in the same house as my less-than-Orthodox parents. Spirituality is about love if it is about anything, and my earliest memories of spiritual experience are all tied up with my love for my grandfather and his for me.

I was very close to my grandfather, Shmuel (Samuel) Silberberg. He died when I was 12, but until then, for as long as I can remember, I sat with him in the synagogue in the rows closest to the ark. There was a sense of belonging – those old guys were connected. Looking back, it is funny that I had a strong sense of belonging where I definitely did not belong. Young girls were not wanted there. But my grandfather belonged, and it was clear to all that he thought I belonged with him. He was not argued with. Even my father, Moishe (Morris) Novik, sat with the other 50 regular guys in the middle toward the back. He sat where he belonged, which was not up front with me and the old guys.

After my grandfather died, there was no more sitting with the old guys in the synagogue. I got sent upstairs to sit with my mother and the rest of the women. It just wasn’t the same. There was one row of old women who had that aura of belonging, but the other women were chatting or moving around. My connection to Judaism drifted away.

Around 1978, I went to visit my parents in New York. To my chagrin, I realized that my children, ages 8 and 6, knew nothing about being Jewish and knew plenty about Christianity. Oops. If I didn’t give them a sense of being Jewish, our dominant Christian culture would move in. When I returned to Vancouver, I searched for a place our family would fit. For a single, lesbian, politically active welfare mother, this wasn’t easy. But the children and I persevered, and we found the Peretz Shul (officially the Peretz Centre), a progressive secular Jewish place of education and culture. Our Jewish identity was saved – we had an anchor. I came to see spirituality as the sense of belonging that I remembered and that I needed for my children. Every Sunday I took them to the Jewish school and, once a month, there was a potluck lunch following. The kids had secular bar and b’nai mitzvah, and all was well.

By 1988, the woods and physical movement were my spirituality. My son had moved out on his own and my daughter was staying with family in California, so I hiked, cross-country skied, and spent time in British Columbia’s backcountry. The woods and mountains were my holy places, my grounding and my anchor. I found it impossible to wander in the beauty and not feel in every fibre of my body that I was part of something so much bigger than I.

Enter primary progressive multiple sclerosis. In this type of MS, disability gets steadily worse, without pause or remission. And my world was – and is – turned upside down. In the midst of this chaos and uncertainty, where was my anchor now?

In 1989, I took a medical leave from the travel agency I owned and moved to an A-frame home on friends’ property in Mission, B.C. No electricity, no running water. I chopped lots of wood. My MS moved slowly. I could happily live in the bush while trying to sort out what it all meant. I was blessed to find a weekly aboriginal healing circle, through the Mission Indian Friendship Centre, that warmly welcomed and grounded me.

Back on the farm, I walked with the dogs to the waterfall and talked to G-d, the G-d who was and is very much my father’s G-d. He had a personal relationship with G-d and, as a kid, I learned from watching him. When we went to the cemetery, he chatted with his dad and mom. He would stand by their graves and have long, friendly conversations, and I would watch with awe how the talks were never solemn, just friendly and intimate. When he was done, he would always ask if I had anything to add. I would shake my head and he would smile. There was never any pressure that I should talk.

The important lesson I learned was that it is OK to talk to dead people. And they will listen – they are interested. I spoke about this lesson at my father’s funeral. When one of my children or I had a problem, some people would say, “I’ll pray for you.” My dad would say, “I’ll talk to my friend upstairs for you.” He was just a regular guy who spoke about his friend upstairs in the way he would talk about any neighbour. For me, as a child and even now, this relationship is soothing and comforting.

With the chaos that MS brings to my life, sometimes a breakthrough comes when I can step back from the insurmountable roadblocks and see them instead as stepping stones on my path. This is difficult for me. My first impulse is to kick, scream and deny every new loss. Yet it is crucial to see the stepping stones so I can move forward. I remember that from hiking.

In 1990, I was back on my porch in Vancouver and missing the aboriginal healing circle. I thought, “Wait, I have my own ritual.” Around this time, my son, who had just become a father, said, “Mom, it’s time to go to synagogue.” And I said, “I know where to go.” We went to Or Shalom, where I found much grounding and a sense of community. I told a friend at Or Shalom that I hadn’t been to synagogue in 30 years. She just said, “Welcome home.” And home it was to me, my son and my granddaughter. Over the years, people have asked, “How did you manage to get your son to come to synagogue?” And I tell them it was his idea.

A few years later, in 1994, I wanted a way back to the woods. I had heard of therapeutic horseback riding, and I thought that, with the horses, I could get there. My first lesson, just 10 minutes of riding, felt great. I was convinced that this was going to sort out my hip joints, legs and back. That happened, and the surprise was that my soul and psyche were also woken up. I always felt like I had just done something grand. I, who don’t often feel proud of myself, suddenly felt quite proud for getting on this obstinate horse, Brew. He was an elderly, beautiful chestnut gelding. But strong-willed, like me. Before I got on a horse, I would always have a minute where I thought, I am insane to climb all the way up there. But, as soon as I got up there, I felt wonderfully alive. The day I rode Visteria, a big 16-hand chestnut mare with an amazingly smooth walk, it was like gliding along on top of the world. My hips unlocked and I felt my spirit rising.

For a few years, those horses were my anchor, my connection and my strength. Riding gave me back the joy of moving. I began to realize again how much my sense of spirituality was connected to physical movement. Hiking, long walks, swimming and horseback riding put me in a place where I could be connected to G-d, where I could feel myself part of a larger whole. But, with MS, there was one loss after another. I went through several aids: cane, then walker, then scooter, then horses.

Before the MS diagnosis and the losses in mobility, did I talk to G-d? Not much. The first conversations I remember happened in my year in Mission, during my daily hikes to the waterfall, with G-d and the dogs my daily company.

Now, with my mobility much more compromised, I still find G-d time where I can. The conversations now centre on “meaning.” What does this new life mean? What am I supposed to be doing? And so often G-d answers, “Go write.” I complain about the endless health maintenance that leaves so short a day, and G-d answers, as she always has, “Go write.”

Can I say exactly where spirituality is in my life and what it means for me? I am still a tad confused. Primary progressive MS slowly and persistently takes stuff away, so, in the 29 years of the illness, I have reinvented myself over and over and over again. The long hikes are just a memory, and I don’t often get out of my house to my synagogue anymore. Now that my physical movement is so limited, will I find a way to grow more spiritually?

Still, when I need spiritual guidance, I ask my father to talk to his friend upstairs. My father smiles and says, “You can talk yourself now, you know.” We both know that I do have my own conversations. But I still like using him as my go-between.

Ellen Frank was a writer, activist, mother, grandmother and retired travel agent, author of Sticks and Wheels: A Guide to Accessible Travel on the Lower Sunshine Coast (Ouzel Publishing, 2006), Taking the Reins (Kindle, 2011) and several articles published in anthologies and in periodicals, including the Jewish Independent. She lived with primary progressive multiple sclerosis from 1988 to her death in January 2017.

Jewish view of afterlife

Rabbinic Pastor Simcha Raphael will be a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Or Shalom for a Shabbaton Nov. 25-26. (photo from Simcha Raphael)

Later this month, Congregation Or Shalom is hosting a Shabbaton featuring Rabbinic Pastor Simcha Raphael, a bereavement counselor and expert in Jewish beliefs and sacred practices around death and the afterlife.

Founding director of Da’at Institute for Death Awareness, Advocacy and Training, Raphael also has a psychology practice specializing in grief counseling and bereavement support, and is an adjunct assistant professor in the Jewish studies department of Temple University in Philadelphia. While in Vancouver, he will participate in various educational activities at Or Shalom, sharing observations from his decades-long study of related Jewish wisdom and customs.

Raphael’s interest in the afterlife began in personal experience. When he was 4 years old, his Bubby Mina died. As was common for children at the time, he did not attend the funeral or shivah, but he was told that she had “gone to heaven.” In his young mind, this meant she was still alive and accessible and, for years afterward, he found comfort in talking to her.

Years later, when the rabbi was 22, a good friend died in a car accident. Heartbroken, Raphael found that he had a continued sense of his friend’s presence. This experience, together with his childhood memories of talking to his grandmother, came together as both a question and an inspiration. Raphael was already studying psychology and world religions – he turned his focus on what Judaism says about the afterlife.

Then, as now, many Jews and non-Jews wrongly believed that Judaism does not have anything to say about the afterlife. But, as Raphael investigated the textual tradition, he found that the Torah, Talmud, kabbalistic writings and Jewish folklore all painted a very different picture.

“In the world of the Chassidim, the world of the Ashkenazi shtetl, there was no question about the reality of the spiritual realms and their interaction with this world,” Raphael told the Independent.

As many Jews eagerly embraced modernity, these traditions were suppressed or forgotten. With the encouragement of his mentor, Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, Raphael undertook to unveil these traditions for modern Jewry. In his now-classic Jewish Views of the Afterlife, published in 1994, Raphael provided a comprehensive discussion on these issues for a popular audience. A 25th anniversary edition of the work with a foreword by Arthur Green is expected in 2019.

Raphael has found that traditional rituals and beliefs around death can have therapeutic value, whether those dealing with these transitions believe in a tangible afterlife or not. “For example,” he said, “traditionally it is believed that the soul stays behind for seven days after death, preparing to leave. Mourners can be encouraged to take this time to say things they wished to say to their loved one, whether they literally believe their words are heard or not. I have found that this practice has great value for people.”

At the upcoming Shabbaton, Raphael will share rituals like this one, as well as explore the rich traditional lore Judaism possesses around death and the afterlife.

Raphael’s teaching program at Or Shalom runs Nov. 25-26 and is called Judaism and the Mysteries of Life, Death and the World Beyond. He will address what the Hebrew Bible, Jewish custom and the kabbalah can tell us about death and dying. On the Saturday, at 7 p.m., he will offer a community talk called Twilight Between the Worlds: Jewish Ghost Stories, which will take place at Celebration Hall at Mountain View Cemetery.

For more information about and registration for the Shabbaton weekend, visit orshalom.ca/shabbaton2016. Admission to the Saturday night cemetery event is free but seating is limited, so an RSVP is requested to orshalom.ca/jewishghoststories.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Between parent and child

When my father died in 2014, I was already familiar with the notion that mourning progresses in stages. These include denial, anger, grief, bargaining and, finally, acceptance, and they are widely recognized by the therapeutic professions.

Two years after my father died, however, I could make an argument for one more item in this neat list. This item is: paperwork. Paperwork that can take months or years to complete while other tasks are shelved, children get older and family relationships unravel.

And so it was that I didn’t really start grieving for my father until two years after his passing. This was the point at which I was finally able to look through my father’s archive. He had a wealth of his professional writing, as well as mementoes from his life in Israel – things I had never seen, never heard about, photos of people I didn’t recognize. Here, now, was another kind of loss: his memories, the languages he spoke, the cultural narrative of the Egyptian Jew who became the halutz (pioneer), the farmer and a soldier.

My grief was further complicated by my father himself: complex, secretive, angry, hard to fathom and even harder to love. But, as hard as it was to love him, it has been just as hard to let go of this contradictory, loving, gifted and extraordinary man, who spoke nonchalantly about his life being “nothing special,” while simultaneously and relentlessly craving recognition for his life’s work.

How was I to experience my grief, work through it in the tidy way suggested by the literature, without feeling like a hypocrite? Every time the sadness bubbled to the surface, another voice cried out, yes, but…. And yet, and yet, and yet.

My father loved trees. He loved the smell of them in Egypt. He loved planting them in Israel, shortly after its independence. After immigrating to England, he started a conservation charity to encourage children to do the same. He spoke fondly of his favorite plants, naming them with relish, acer palmatum, acacia, copper beech, pyracantha, weeping willow, honeysuckle. He talked about them the way other people talk about their friends, and his belongings reflected this after his death. One of his books was called Meetings with Remarkable Trees. It suited him. His meetings with remarkable trees had started when he was still a youngster.

It was also appropriate because, as straightforward as his relationship was with trees, his relationships with other people were confusing and painful. He was seldom content, often angry, and his brain was constantly besieged by business ideas, political observations and diatribes about the state of world affairs. I never saw him make a new friend. He called nobody from his old life and nobody called him. A staunch Zionist, he regarded orthodoxy with disdain. He refused to join the Jewish community and kept us apart from it, too.

But, when he was nurturing his plants, he was in touch with something sacred; this was his worship, his peace and his prayer. He could stand perfectly still, just watching the arc of the water landing on the dry earth, listening to the birds and the wind in the willow tree, utterly alone and completely at peace.

At other times, I tried to look after him. I tried to be his caregiver, his protector. So, with him gone, I felt myself to be – even with a multitude of other responsibilities – rather redundant.

By the spring of this year, I found an uncomplicated way that I could commune with my father: I nurtured my own garden. I thought of him as I watered, listening to the wind in the trees and watching the droplets creating rainbows. The water trickled down the spines of the squash leaves, pooling at the roots. I listened to the birds, felt the sun on my back, remembering the ice-cold glasses of water we’d enjoy together in the summer, the way he taught me to transplant trees, how I was always surprised by how much water he’d use. “Do you really need that much?” I’d ask.

He would collect seeds with a strange sort of compulsion, from public gardens, with no particular method – he would never store them properly or label them but there they were, stuffed in the bottoms of his pockets. Like me, now, collecting foxglove, chive, kale and garlic seeds for next year. Always thinking of the next harvest, another step toward self-sufficiency. “We made the desert bloom. We grew watermelons there.”

When I went to visit my mother this summer, I noticed that her own honeysuckle plant was growing wildly out of control. It had become so heavy that the lattice was falling off the wall of the house and it was beginning to encroach on other plants. The flowers were beautiful and the aroma intoxicating but, according to my mother, the vine was basically a weed. I offered to prune it back for her and was startled when she showed me how much could come off. Like a cautious hairdresser, I asked her, “Are you quite sure?” And she was. Besides, she told me, it would grow back in no time.

As I started to cut the branches, I realized that a good part of this monster was already dead. The branches overhead broke apart in my hands, dropping dry leaves in my hair. It was more than 30 degrees outside and, with older tools and a ladder pitching on the gravel, it was slow-going. I tried to avoid cutting live stems but soon grew too tired for mercy. I hacked at the convoluted, weedy vine and snapped the brittle trunk as perspiration ran into my eyes. As I did so, it occurred to me that something about the honeysuckle felt very familiar. In short, this tangled, complicated plant was very much like my father – extravagantly beautiful, complicated and with no respect for boundaries. One might almost say, parasitic.

And then I noticed what looked like a bundle of dry leaves tucked in the back. On closer inspection, I realized that it was an abandoned bird’s nest, carefully woven from the tiniest twigs with only the smallest space left to hold a few eggs. Right in the middle of that tangled mass of dead foliage, there was a sanctuary. Like our relationship – painful and nearly impossible to navigate but, at its heart, like that nest, there was something to treasure.

In the end, grief is not so much affixed to the image of the parent we have lost, or even the relationship we had. We are not grieving the relationship we could have had, either: we are acknowledging the gifts they did pass on.

My father, teaching me to cut and paste magazines; to write business letters with punchy opening lines; to edit my work, to edit it mercilessly until it was taut like a tightrope, without a single unnecessary word. Sure, he was a merciless critic, but this quality has served me well.  Even as I revisit each sentence of this essay, it is an act of memory, a gesture of thanks to my father that I am so particular, so careful with my words and so determined that they should fall in, militarily, if possible, with my meaning.

In the end, this is how we find grace in grief when our relationship with the dead was challenging – toxic, even. We can choose how we remember, how we grieve and, ultimately, how we live, once our beloved relative is gone.

It is not simply an act of respect, this mourning. It is an act of gratitude, as we thank our lost ones for what they did give us, as we visit all of the unconditional love we can muster for that ancient connection, between parent and child.

Shula Klinger is an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.

Film on Jewish burial process

If you have ever wondered what will happen after your death – when your soul leaves your body but you have not yet been buried – a new film by Saul Henteleff walks you through precisely that experience.

The 30-minute documentary My Jewish Death was screened at Winnipeg’s Limmud festival on March 13. In the film, Henteleff plays a recently deceased person who is taken through the steps of a mock tahara, the Jewish ritual wherein the chevra kadisha (burial society) prepares the body for its final rest. Tahara is done by volunteers and is the main focus of the movie.

The film, which took 10 years to make, includes interviews with several local rabbis, as well as the executive director of Winnipeg’s Chesed Shel Emes, Rena Boroditsky, who was present at the Limmud event, along with Henteleff, to answer questions.

photo - Saul Henteleff’s documentary shows how a chevra kadisha prepares a body for burialy
Saul Henteleff’s documentary shows how a chevra kadisha prepares a body for burial. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

When asked how it felt to play the role of someone who has died, Henteleff said, “I felt very well taken care of. I also think about the filmmaking … everything is broken down into steps. It’s, thankfully, pretty continuous from beginning to end, but we’d start and stop and reshoot. I tried to hold my breath. There are a few things going on there. More so, I had a chance to reflect on it as the edit was coming together.”

When asked if the film changed him, Henteleff replied that he was very skeptical about the whole concept before he started. “When I heard Rabbi [Neal] Rose talking about the afterlife, there were things about it that I just found to be ridiculous. As I was going through the process and the power of these things, that’s when my mind changed and my feeling about the whole thing shifted.

“These are things we hold as a community – I’m Jewish – that we identify with. I saw the value or importance and the respect that it carries: sand on the eyes, the pieces of clay sprinkled on the eyes and groin. These things have been going on for centuries … if we take it seriously, it’s very important.”

Many attendees expressed their gratitude for the film having been made and described it as a “must-see film for Jews.”

In the documentary, it is explained that men are buried with a tallit (prayer shawl) supplied by the deceased’s family, while women are generally not.

While Boroditsky assists in the tahara in the film, in reality, only men perform this ritual for men. “There was some artistic licence taken for the film,” she said. “Normally, we have women who look after women and men who look after men.”

At the screening, Henteleff shared that he was trained before the making of the film and has been volunteering with the chevra kadisha for three or four years now. He also said there were a number of people who were not comfortable with him undergoing the ritual.

“It’s pretty controversial, even when we have a conference and we do a demonstration,” said Boroditsky. “Should we do a demonstration on a live person even though we don’t wash her? Should we cover her face? To do tahara on a live person, not everyone felt comfortable with that. This film is one of a kind.

“The basics of tahara are the same. Around the world, it’s trans-denominational – Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox – the basics of tahara are the same…. Some of the prayers may be different, depending on who is doing it and the outfit might be different; one more piece, one less. This is one of the things in Judaism that is universal and very similar all around the world.”

Any Jewish person being buried in one of the four main Jewish cemeteries in Winnipeg must have the ritual performed. People who are buried at the Temple Shalom cemetery at Chapel Lawn have the option of having tahara done at the Chapel Lawn funeral home by trained members of Temple Shalom.

As for the casket, Boroditsky said, “A kosher casket is made from wood with no metal pieces, and usually has rope handles. It’s held together with dowels and glue, no nails. So, that can be what they would call a plain pine box.

“In Toronto and Montreal, where it is more of a commercial funeral home, they offer … a full range of caskets. In every other community outside of Toronto and Montreal – Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver – we have a choice of one casket. Our caskets are $550, to keep things as low cost as possible.”

In the case of infants less than 30 days old who have passed away, there is no tahara required. Boroditsky speculated the reason for this as having to do with the fact that, back when the rules were made, infant mortality was very high.

“If you mourned a year for every child, people wouldn’t have been able to live,” said Boroditsky. “Certainly now, the Conservative movement and Reform movement have developed rituals for services for infants, for stillborns and for babies. There has been some movement in that.”

My Jewish Death will be distributed widely in coming months. The trailer is available on YouTube.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Caring for people at life’s end

Henry Fersko-Weiss, president of the International End of Life Doula Association. (photo from Henry Fersko-Weiss)

Doulas offer support to expectant mothers, guiding women and their partners through the childbirth process and into their first steps of parenthood. Now, a similar concept is gaining ground to fill a need at the end of our lives.

Fear, exhaustion and uncertainty often leave us unsure of how to best support a loved one during their last days, while we also try to deal with our own impending loss.

The idea for end-of-life doulas was conceived by licensed clinical social worker Henry Fersko-Weiss, who works in hospice care in New York and New Jersey.

“There seemed to be a gap in the services that were traditionally available to people,” Fersko-Weiss told the Independent. “As wonderful as hospice is in the U.S., where most people die in their own homes – which is the ideal, unless there’s a cultural reason not to – that’s when people really need help the most.

“They recognize that death is very close and now they can’t avoid thinking about it. They are exhausted and the care demands have increased. They need more help than they were able to access through normal programs. So, I started to think about how to figure this out … and, at the time, a friend of mine was learning how to become a birth doula.”

Fersko-Weiss had not heard about doulas before then. But, as his friend shared with him what she was learning in her training, he increasingly felt this would also be an ideal way to approach the end of life.

“There are a lot of tremendous similarities between birth and death, clear differences as well,” he said. “I became intrigued and started learning more about birth doulas. And, I took the training myself, so I would learn exactly what they were learning.”

By then, Fersko-Weiss was convinced that there were many tools, techniques and principles of care from the birthing world that could be transferred in a very positive way to the end-of-life sphere. So, he went to Carolyn Cassin, the chief executive officer of Continuum Hospice Care in New York City, where he was working at the time, and presented the idea to her. She encouraged him to follow it through.

By 2015, Fersko-Weiss had established a not-for-profit organization that trains and supports end-of-life doulas.

“Currently,” he said, “my work is focused on promoting the use of end-of-life doulas through organizations that care for people at end of life, as well as training people publicly and helping them to achieve certification through the organization that I head: the International End of Life Doula Association.”

To create the program, Fersko-Weiss incorporated some of the concepts from the birth doula training, such as visualization and guided imagery, techniques used by birth doulas to help ease pain.

“I started building on that and writing the training, looking for material that would support some of the things that were important and created a model of the different phases of care that this would offer,” he said. “At that first training, I had 17 people. Once we went through that first training, which was a weekend – which has become the standard for us, about 22 hours – we went on and kept training, and developing the program, and serving patients and their families.”

There are three phases to the model Fersko-Weiss has created, the first of which is summing up and planning. This occurs as early as possible, when the patient and the family are shifting their focus to end-of-life comfort care and away from a cure.

“But, even if they were still focused, to some degree, on a cure, parts of what we do would still make sense, probably even months before somebody would be at the point of dying,” said Fersko-Weiss. “We work on exploring the meaning of their life, as they look back over their life, and help them think about what they might want to leave behind as a legacy that reflects that meaning that they’ve uncovered or what they think is important for their loved ones and friends to remember them by or to carry into their lives.”

Psychologist Erik Erikson has examined the different developmental stages that we go through within our lifespan and refers to the last of these stages as “integrity versus despair.”

“When somebody is dying and facing death, they are automatically propelled into that final developmental stage, no matter what age,” said Fersko-Weiss. “In that stage, they have to contend with coming to the point of a positive completion of their life as they go through reviewing their life. Or else, they move towards despair, anguish and feeling that their life either didn’t matter or didn’t fulfil their dreams.”

The other aspect of the first phase of Fersko-Weiss’ program is planning what one’s last days of life will look like. This entails finding out what would be most helpful to them and their family to allow those last days to unfold in a way that honors who they are, carries deeper meaning for everyone involved and makes it easier for the person to approach death.

The second phase of the program is when the person is actively dying, which generally comprises the last two to four days of life.

“We stay with people as much as possible, around the clock,” said Fersko-Weiss. “We help them understand what is coming next. We support the family emotionally and spiritually, and we assist with physical care in a basic way.

“We will stay [with the family] through the death,” he continued. “We will wait hours afterwards to give them time to process it and have the death experience sink in a bit. We sometimes call the funeral home for them, or friends, if they are too emotional. We stay with them through the body being removed from the home and also up to the point where they feel more comfortable being on their own.”

Phase three of the program has the doula returning to the family three to six weeks following the death to review and tell the story of the dying process. This helps the family see some of the many beautiful and loving things they did together during that time, reminding them how things went, as they may have not have been thinking clearly during that time due to the pain of loss.

“This is done as a way to reframe some of the negative pieces that they are carrying that may be coming back to them over and over again in their mind, and help them to begin the very early stage of grief, understand what grief work is about,” said Fersko-Weiss. “We help them through some of the early grief work and then refer them to programs in the community or within the organization that were perhaps involved with the care as well. We may, at that point, do a final ritual to bring closure to our work with them.”

The end-of-life doula service is provided primarily by hospice and out-care programs, which may be part of a hospital. Fersko-Weiss is working to spur interest in this service at assisted living facilities and nursing homes. This type of care is also starting to be done by groups of people getting together to provide the service to a dying person and their family.

Fersko-Weiss has been teaching at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Toronto, doing a compressed form of the doula training he offers in the United States. Students attend classes one weekend a month for six months, and graduate as certified contemplative end-of-life-care practitioners.

“My understanding of hospice in Canada is that many people are very underserved,” he said. “There are a lot of people who are dying without the ability to access hospice care in Canada.”

Fersko-Weiss has also been working with a Canadian organization called the Home Hospice Association.

“They are still in the process of forming, but their intention is to provide home hospice in Canada and to solve the problem of lack of access,” he said. “Their intention is to build into that program the utilization of end-of-life doulas.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.