The Good Death Issue - YES! Fall 2019

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J ournalism for P eople B uilding a B etter W orld

The Story of Death Is the Story of Women I Am a Future Ancestor: An Indigenous Perspective on Healing

7 Things People Forget

to Do Before They Die

F all 2019

Making Space for Spirits Among the Living Bill McKibben Confronts Extinction

How to Have a Good Death Return to Nature: Why We Choose Green Burials

US $6.50 Canada $6.50

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t is one thing to die into a dead world and, metaphorically speaking, leave one’s bones to bleach on a desert lit only by a dying star. It is another thing to die into the actual world, which seethes with life, with agency other than our own, and, at the very least, with endless possibility. For those of us, which is probably most of us, who—with or without drugs or religion—have caught glimpses of this animate universe, death is not a terrifying leap into the abyss, but more like an embrace of ongoing life. —Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer


FROM THE EDITOR

The Death Issue When I learned that my first issue as editorial d i r e c t o r o f Y E S ! w o u l d b e o n d e a t h , I cringed a bit. No one likes to think about death, much less talk about it. In fact, death might be more taboo to discuss than even sex or money. A recent survey found that only about a third of people had discussed making wills with their partners, or their wishes concerning their funerals. It’s almost as though we believe that dying doesn’t actually happen. At least not to us. The fact is, death is a universal certainty. Yet most Americans’ interac-

Bohn

tions with it are limited to times of crisis. In a culture that’s obsessed with prolonging life, death is seen as a failure—dark and depressing, macabre and morose. Death is the stuff of thrillers and sad poems. This issue disrupts the silence around the D-word. It invites us to explore “a good death”—how to prepare ourselves and heal loved ones while we are still in the living world, how to die with grace and dignity, and how to make plans for the disposition of our bodies in a way that underscores our place in the ecosystem and nurtures the planet.

Luxton

Since working on this issue, I’ve learned that being open about death can actually calm our fears. For the first time, I’ve talked to my parents and dear friends (even Generation Z’ers!) about their own plans. I, for one, would like to be turned into fertilizer for a tree under which people can read and picnic. That sounds pretty darned wonderful to me. With these pages, our hope is that you might think differently not only about dying, but also about living. As I settle into my role at YES!, I’d like to learn about your hopes and dreams for the magazine and, well, the world. Perhaps there’s no better way to kick off that conversation than with the topic of death. Send your thoughts to laurenb@yesmagazine.org or post about your #GoodDeath on social. Happy reading and living/dying, all! y

Sagen Development of this issue’s In Depth section was led by guest editor Jennifer Luxton, associate editor Erin Sagen, and editorial director Lauren Bohn.

With gratitude,

Lauren Bohn

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that we need to make d our risk of extreme heat, change. Report after repo in despair. But there’s another option that’s goo Susan Clayton, a professor of psycho of Wooster, says getting involved with ety and depression in three ways: Wo concerns, give you needed social supp to empowered. And it can make a difference. “Grou says. “You can see real impact.” So join forces with like-minded citiz YES!U.S. BUT HOW?Action Network lis The Climate are activist groups working through e Illustrations doesn’t include the environmental g by DelphineallLee

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ups are more effective than individuals,� Clayton

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SOURCES: UTSUKUSHII KURASHIKATA INSTITUTE AND NIPPON.COM. yesmagazine org

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Mongolian herder Galbadrakh Purevsuren prepares his yaks for milking, which provides about 40% of his family’s income and a substantial part of their food. The new herder generation says the region’s climate is getting too dry; the grass grows half as high as it used to. In other regions, it has stopped growing.

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Old Ways Are New Again Mongolia’s nomadic herders are reinventing a tool from their communist past—cooperatives—to cope with capitalism and climate change. Sarah Trent and Khaliun Bayartsogt Photos by Sarah Trent

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Vivette Jeffries-Logan, left, and Omisade Burney-Scott are death doulas. They perform sacraments of soothing and release drawn from their West African and Indigenous spiritual traditions.

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YES! PHOTO BY MADELINE GRAY


Friends at the End Death doulas’ caregiving is an ancient practice. They are there to ease our dying, making death as natural and without fear and trauma as possible. Cynthia Greenlee

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i v e t t e J e ffr i e s - L o ga n a nd O mis a de B u r n e y - S c o t t are friends for life—and collaborators in death. Three years ago when a mutual friend realized she wouldn’t survive pancreatic cancer, the two central North Carolina women were within the circle of friends she summoned. Over the course of about three months, the women stayed at Cynthia Brown’s side, as the community activist and one-time Durham City Council member went about the process of dying. They rubbed her head, kept a watchful eye on her pain, and helped her decipher doctorspeak. And when her spirits appeared to lag, they’d tell her jokes and sing at her bedside. This, Jeffries-Logan says, was a good death: “If I can help someone at the end of life heal and be clear, I will. There are some things we are required to do alone, but we are not isolated. We are community people. What happens to my nation happens to me. What happens to me happens to my nation.” Jeffries-Logan and Burney-Scott are death doulas; their form of caregiving is both old and new. The ancient Greek word “doula,” meaning “woman servant” or “slave,” was repurposed in the 1960s to describe birth workers who offer encouragement, back rubs, and other assistance during childbirth.

These days, end-of-life doulas, sometimes called death midwives, are an emerging profession in the growing death positivity movement, which urges a paradigm shift for thinking and talking about death as natural and not inherently traumatic. They provide nonmedical support to help ease the final transition for the terminally ill. But it’s not merely about that culminating moment, “The End.” They help the dying and their loved ones navigate death with all its “before and afters”—including sickness, acceptance, finding resources for all the legal housekeeping, funeral planning, and bereavement. For Burney-Scott and Jeffries-Logan, it’s the highest calling. Sisters in ritual, they performed sacraments of soothing and release drawn from their West African and Indigenous spiritual traditions. Burney-Scott is African American and was initiated in the West African Ife religious practice, and Jeffries-Logan is a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, a tribe rooted in the North Carolina Piedmont region. Being a death doula “is not fun. But it’s an honor,” says Burney-Scott, a healer and longtime advocate who most recently worked as a reproductive justice organizer in North Carolina. She stumbled into the practice when her mother’s dear friend, a hospice nurse, showed Burney-Scott what to do at her mother’s passing. “I didn’t want to do it,” she says. “The thing I feared most, from when I was a little girl and even when my mom was healthy, was losing my mother. She was that mom that all my friends would talk to, the mom who could let you know [you] were the most special person in the world even when she was yelling at you to do your laundry.” Near the end, her mother made her retrieve a manila envelope containing her will, insurance information, deeds— the bureaucracy of death. But without ever using the word “doula,” her friend guided Burney-Scott in ushering out of this world the woman who had brought yesmagazine . org

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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

t ly a rg e v i e.o lus Exc gazin ces Ma Yes Dan t a Th th City h Dea - Arai e h t T Wi na First omes

bec ean de By L death gratitu f o ere Wh bration unity m e l m e co ac and

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PHOTO ESSAY :: Josué Rivas

I Am a Future Ancestor There is a larger purpose for healing. My father died when I was 7. He was tall, had a black mustache, and had a camera hanging from his neck. At least that’s how I remember him. To be clear, later when I became an adult, I found out he hadn’t actually died. Just disappeared from our lives. I thought he had died—from alcohol, stuck between his pain and his desire to be a good man. I began a healing process recently to better understand my role as a father of my own son, Tonatiuh. My son’s name means “the one that brings the light, the sun.” Digging deep into that trauma is difficult, but my traditional teachings as an Indigenous man tell me there is a larger purpose for my healing. Because all living and dead things are connected, my healing and being able to live well honors not just my ancestors, but also the future generations. For them I will be an ancestor to honor. Knowing this changes how I live my life.

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