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In the United States, it is now quite common for a doula to be used in childbirth.
The word comes from the Greek - it means something like "serving maid".
So a doula is a woman (mostly a woman) who helps the pregnant woman give birth.
Often she also supports the rest of the family - the father-to-be when he goes crazy with worry, the newborn's siblings who have to be kept busy somehow.
This is birth, but what about death?
Virginia Chang is a dying companion, a "death doula"
Source: private
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Virginia Chang, who lives in New York, is a death doula.
She estimates that there are now thousands of such doulas in the United States.
However, not all of them have a certificate - Virginia Chang does.
She completed an apprenticeship from the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA for short).
As she says, until four years ago she had nothing to do with the subjects of death and dying.
Virginia Chang is actually a PhD in organic chemistry;
She worked in pharmaceutical research for a long time.
In the 1990s she tracked down poisoned soil on behalf of the American government.
Afterwards she was “nothing but mother” as she says for twenty years.
But then, in 2016 and 2017, fate struck three times.
Father, mother, stepmother dead - within seven months
Within seven months, her father, stepmother, and mother died.
“One of those deaths was terrible,” says Virginia Chang, “even though it was planned.
Another wasn't so bad - considering what I knew then. "That, she says today, was rather little:" I didn't know that I had choices.
I didn't know that it could be otherwise. "
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It was then that Chang discovered a video of Henry Fersko-Weiss, the founder of the death doula movement.
Fersko-Weiss worked in a hospice.
When he was talking to a doula - an obstetrician - it became clear to him: We need exactly such people, not only at the beginning, but also at the end of life.
So he founded the INELDA association.
Virginia Chang adds: “Actually, what we do is exactly the same as a birthing doula.
We lead, we support, we educate. "
But what does that mean in detail?
Virginia Chang smiles.
“What does a psychotherapist do?
He talks. ”It wasn't more with her either, but that was a lot.
Your formulation: "We offer the dying person presence." But isn't that terribly depressing?
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Virginia Chang takes a deep breath.
“For me, death is nothing sad, nothing morbid.” She regards it as an honor, a privilege, to spend her last hour with the dying.
And she uses the big word "holy".
It is sacred to make a dying person feel that their life is recognized.
"People don't have to die alone, without respect, without their loved ones around them, without anyone hearing their voice."
"The dying do not lie"
At the end of life, according to Virginia Chang, there are no more facades.
The dying do not lie.
So: No, it's not depressed - she's more likely to find that her new job enriches her.
Most of the time, Chang is hired by the families of the dying.
At one point, however, her client was also the dying person himself: a very young person whom the doctors had told him that he didn't have much time left.
Sometimes Chang goes to dying hospices, but that's unpaid volunteering.
What is your general position on the subject of euthanasia, which is also a hotly debated topic in America?
In the state of New York, for example, it is forbidden to kill the dying, even at their own request.
In neighboring New Jersey, the legal situation is different.
Chang evades the question: Your opinion is completely irrelevant.
It is based on the applicable law and the wishes of the dying person.
These are the proposals for the new law
It is a highly sensitive topic: Can a terminally ill person be helped to die?
In the Bundestag, four groups of members of parliament have drawn up draft laws on assisting suicide.
Source: N24
In fact, her job is different anyway: the dying companion does not administer poison, but rather good words, a last handshake, and emotional support for the family.
When it comes to religious issues, too, Chang puts her own opinion behind.
"I've already meditated in a Zen Buddhist manner with the dying, read from the Bible, and even held pretty wild New Age ceremonies," says Chang.
Everything's okay if it helps the dying get across the Jordan safely.
No matter what is on the other side.
It doesn't matter if there is anything at all on the other side of the Jordan.
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Alua Arthur, head of the “Going With Grace” association in Los Angeles, also accompanies the dying.
Unlike Virginia Chang, Arthur is not a scientist but an ordained minister.
But even she does not see it as her task to impose religious ideas on someone.
“People keep asking me if I know what's waiting for them over there,” she says.
She always replies the same to the dying: "I don't know."
Doulas are mostly women, but there are exceptions.
Craig Phillips in Baltimore is one
Source: The Washington Post via Getty Images
When asked why most dieedoulas are women, she has no clear answer.
In any case, it is not due to a lack of empathy in men, says Arthur firmly.
But she thinks a lot of a quote by the writer Samuel Beckett, from the play "Waiting for Godot": "Women give birth with their legs apart, standing over the grave." Perhaps the connection between birth and death is simply closer to a woman's feeling.
She got her job - and her calling - by chance, as did Virginia Chang: after a vacation in Cuba, during which she made friends with a woman from Hamburg who she almost ran over in her car before.
In a sense, it was an encounter with death.
Another formative experience was when Arthur followed her dying brother-in-law shortly afterwards.
Her association “Going With Grace” now offers its own training to become a doula.
An undertaker in front of sold coffins at his business in Queens, New York City.
The high number of corona deaths is pushing the industry to its limits
Source: Getty Images
The coronavirus pandemic in particular has recently changed the profession of those accompanying the dying, according to Arthur.
"Much more people than before want to become dying doulas," she reports.
"In our club, the demand has shot through the roof."
And she also has clients in Germany.
In these cases she fulfills her task as a doula for the death by zooming in.
Using the laptop, she can follow exactly how the dying person breathes, how the color of his face changes, and she can give family members instructions on what to do.
Arthur even developed something like a professional utopia during the pandemic - she believes that all people should become doulas.
After all, each of us faces the point of parting with loved ones.
After all, none of us are immortal.
Virginia Chang sees things a little differently: She finds it difficult to do her job in the pandemic.
The body contact is missing.
It is difficult to accompany a dying person if one cannot touch his hand, and many dying people are too weak to react to a face on a screen.
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Even so, she remained true to her profession during the pandemic as the death rate climbed higher and higher in the United States, most recently to over 575,000 deaths.
Their main task is to support the families of the dying, to help them grieve.
Both before and after when death has occurred.
"Grief is a journey," says Virginia Chang - and it is by no means as linear as in the famous five-phase model by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (denial; anger; negotiation; depression; acceptance of death).
"Death always waits in our midst"
Then Virginia Chang has one more piece of advice for people avoiding the thought of dying: “Scientific studies have shown that people who think about mortality once a day are less prone to depression and easier to achieve their fitness goals and are friendlier to other people. "
It becomes clear: At the moment, Chang sees herself primarily as an educator and advisor.
If the plague has brought anything good, Chang says it is this: “We can no longer outsource death to the margins of society.
We now know that he is always waiting in our midst. "