The death doula prepares ice packs to place under the guest's body after they have died, “The stuff we do is sacred. You have to go into a room and tell someone that they’re dying. You cannot fuck this up.”
Preparations for the guest's death start before their arrival. Although the house feels far from a clinical establishment, underneath the soft-colored bedsheets are heated mattresses and the beds themselves are adjustable, like those found in hospitals.
The family meets with the death doula.
View from the guest room.
At 11:15 am, the pharmacist delivered the medication. The package he delivered contained both the pre-meds- to stave off nausea -and a compound for the process of medical aid in dying, designed specifically to induce death.
In any other circumstance consuming a compound containing such great quantities of medication would be considered an overdose. In this case though it is exactly the correct dose, literally what the doctor ordered: a medicine to end acute suffering.
The guest’s husband decided to sit vigil for three days, as is Buddhist tradition, to ensure that his wife would be reincarnated. “You know what she said to the family just before she died? I’ll see you soon.”
“She went to hospital for a bad cold on the 13th of February. While she was there, they found stage 4 lung cancer. It had metastasized and it was everywhere, even in her brain.” Just two or so weeks after the guest caught a cold from her grandson, everything had changed. She arrived at this house determined to die.
“The biggest ritual is making sure that things slow down,” explains the death doula.
On the subject of transporting bodies, the death doula remarked, “I used to have a Corolla and I loved my little Corolla but you can’t fit a body in a Corolla.”
"There's so many different ways of people feeling and owning their dignity in their dying. I think we just offer one way that tries to stick to what the dying person has asked for," explains the death doula.
South of Lake Washington is a neighborhood of gentle hills and winding streets lined with family homes. Wrapped in the morning fog these houses are glowing and faded. Each house is made for life and living except for one.