- Alua Arthur is a
death doula who helps people, both ill and healthy, plan the end of their lives. - In 2012, she taught herself about end-of-life care and helped her brother-in-law with cancer die.
In 2012, Alua Arthur found herself in Cuba on a 14-hour bus trip. During the ride, Arthur, who said she had just gone on medical leave from her corporate law-job because of a clinical-depression diagnosis, sat next to someone who would change her life.
The woman told Arthur she had uterine cancer. Before long, they were discussing what her funeral could look like, the family she'd leave behind, and all the things she wanted to do before she died.
During their conversation, Arthur said she noticed the stranger's desperate tone and soon learned the woman didn't have someone to intimately discuss dying with. The woman said she spoke with a psychologist about what dying was like physically but she wanted to know more, like how her legacy could carry on. So Arthur set out to become the person who could provide that type of care.
Now, the "recovering attorney" is an internationally recognized death doula, a person who helps others near death plan how they want to go, and the founder of Going With Grace, an end-of-life-planning and training organization.
Arthur's first client as a death doula was her brother-in-law
Six months after her Cuba trip, Arthur's brother-in-law was diagnosed with terminal late-stage cancer.
Though she didn't call herself a "death doula" at the time, she took on the responsibilities of physical and emotional care. Arthur moved in with her brother-in-law, her sister, and their family for the last two months of his life. Once he died, she helped her sister with the legal aspects of his death.
It was through that experience that Arthur said she realized our society's fearful and ignorant attitude toward death did a disservice to life.
"When we're thinking of death, we're thinking about every aspect of our life, what type of work we did, who we loved, how we loved, what our relationships were like," Arthur told Insider.
She said thinking about who we wanted to be and how we wished to be remembered could help us strive for that in our lives, regardless of
Arthur has seen that sentiment play out in beautiful ways with her clients, she said.
A young woman decided on a home funeral, and Arthur helped cover the place in white roses. After she died, Arthur and the young woman's friends covered her body in white roses, too.
Another woman told Arthur she wanted the world to know about her brownie recipe even after she passed. In her final days, Arthur and the woman's loved ones made the brownies. Then, the woman requested her cremated remains be placed in a baking pan.
"Pick parts of the individual, who they are, and what they care about. Try to pour that into their dying because you'll find that our values in living carry us through to our death," Arthur said.
For her own death, Arthur wants a sunset and a round of applause
Today, Arthur focuses her time on training people who want to become death doulas.
Her online course walks through all the elements she's learned over the past decade, like how to navigate medicine and the healthcare system, the mechanics of dying, the funeral industry, and how to honor a dying person's legacy through rituals.
Arthur has also considered her own death at length and has a plan in mind.
She sees herself sitting on a deck as the sun sets, hues of orange and purple painting the horizon. She'll hear running water nearby and be surrounded by all the people she loved, though they won't be allowed to physically touch her.
"And then, as soon as they see I've taken my last breath, I want them to clap and be really grateful that I lived, and hopefully died, with grace," Arthur said.