We live in a culture of “death denial”. That’s what Amanda Provenzano thinks. She sees it when medical professionals use euphemisms like ‘passing away’ instead of ‘dying’. She sees it when funeral parlors use makeup to make it look like a person is not dead but sleeping. Most often she sees it when her clients’ loved ones insist their dying family member is going to pull through, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Amanda is a death doula, someone who provides practical, emotional, and spiritual support to people who are about to die. Sometimes this means that Amanda helps dying people and their families sort out their end-of-life paperwork and advanced care directives; Sometimes she helps dying people plan their own memorials. And sometimes she sits with people as they die. She says the tasks she performs are different for every person, but that her goal is always the same: to advocate for the wishes of the dying.
Amanda says that, in her experience, death is often harder for the loved ones to accept than it is for the person who is dying. “It’s almost like, in Western culture, it’s not OK to die… Like we guilt the dying person into trying to keep them here longer, with medicine and medical procedures because we, the survivors, are not capable of letting go of that person.” Because of this, Amanda recommends that people grieve by holding and touching the bodies of their loved ones after they die. She believes that talking about death openly will help people be less afraid.
Producer: Bethany Denton
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot
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HBM048: Barrie's Mental Tempest
HBM047: Peacocks Without Tails
HBM046: Crooked Skirts
HBM045: Deep Stealth Mode (How To Be A Girl)
HBM044: Distant Warfare
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HBM043: Last Chance To Evacuate Earth
HBM042: Deers
HBM041: Crossing the River, Feeling Watched
Fear of Silence
Forty Monster Bites
HBM040: The Reformation Bible Puritan Baptist Church
HBM039: A Goddamn Missionary
HBM038: Do Crows Mourn Their Dead?
HBM037: Uncertain Death
HBM036: Throw It In The Ocean
HBM035: Spirits of the Past
HBM034: The Grandmother and The Vine Of The Dead
HBM033: What One Does
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