{"id":8073,"date":"2004-01-25T15:18:20","date_gmt":"2004-01-25T15:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/doula_to_the_dying.html"},"modified":"2004-01-25T15:18:20","modified_gmt":"2004-01-25T15:18:20","slug":"doula_to_the_dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/doula_to_the_dying.html","title":{"rendered":"Doula to the Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you don’t know, a “doula” is a person who assists a woman in childbirth. (Not a midwife, but more of a companion and support.)
\nA woman in NYC got the idea to train and place doulas with the dying, who had no families with them.
\nHere’s a story about one man’s experience.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nIn May 2002, when they met, Bill Keating didn’t know a thing about Lew Grossman. Mr. Keating was no social worker or minister or anything like that. He was a retired corporate lawyer in his mid-60’s, recruited into a new program that paired volunteers somewhat enlightened in the particulars of death (they were called “doulas”) with terminally ill people alone with their mortality. After all, there’s no rental agency for friends, for when you’re sick and staring death in the face.
\nBill Keating belonged to the program’s first full crop of volunteers, nine strong, and the entire enterprise was still feeling its way. So was Mr. Keating.
\nBefore it was over, something rare would happen in this room, but not what either man imagined. Right now, Mr. Keating hunted for hints. He looked at the diminished man curled in the bed and he thought, well, at least he didn’t seem to be in pain. No tears. This could work. Bill Keating resolved to go forward and see what it was like being Lew Grossman’s last friend on earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you don’t know, a “doula” is a person who assists a woman in childbirth. (Not a midwife, but more of a companion and support.) A woman in NYC got the idea to train and place doulas with the dying, who had no families with them. Here’s a story about one man’s experience. In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDoula to the Dying - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/doula_to_the_dying.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doula to the Dying - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In case you don’t know, a “doula” is a person who assists a woman in childbirth. (Not a midwife, but more of a companion and support.) 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}