What it means to live urgently, according to death doula Alua Arthur  

Wake up. All of us, wake up. Like, we're gonna die

I want us to live like that. I want us to feel like that. I want us to behave like it

I want us to live with the urgency of our lives. Not in the way that we must, like, go out and do all the things immediately

but to live in our lives and not just watch them pass us by

My name is Elua Arthur, and I am a death doula, an author, and the founder of Going With Grace

I've been an outsider all my life. I was born in Ghana, but we left Ghana when I was about three years old

Moving to the United States, not only were we in a new culture, race also created a bit of a distance between me and the people that live there

At every turn, I felt like somebody who sits outside of all the rest, And in my head anyway, I didn't measure up

It made me angry. It made me sad. It made me defensive

It made me frustrated. And so one way to fit in is to play by the rules

And so I chose law school. I felt like a hexagon-shaped peg trying to fit into a square hole

The sense of continuing that life felt like an anvil sitting on my chest

This led me directly into the heart of a thick clinical depression

I felt like a house guest in my own body. There was like the tiny, tiniest little pinprick of light or life left inside

I wasn sad necessarily I was hopeless and despondent I had retreated all the way deep inside my spirit I think to protect from the life that I knew

wasn't the one that I was supposed to be living. Depression had gotten to the point where it had clouded my sense of the gravity of things

Little things felt like big things, and big things felt insurmountable. I'd probably lost about 40 to 50 pounds without really trying

I was living on red wine and smokes. You could see ribs in the front and the back

My eyes were deeply sunken in. I described this body to say that this is not the body that I'm used to living in

I wasn't capable anymore of managing life at all. And finally, my friend Kristen, she saw me

She saw everything. And I let her. and when I let her see it, then I couldn't hide from myself anymore either

I was trying to escape my life. I was hoping I'd go someplace and find something that would make all this worth it

So I went to Cuba. In Cuba, I traveled for a week and a half, two weeks, just wandering around

Eventually, I made it to the bus stop where there was a woman in line in front of me

that had a red quill pen tattoo on her forearm. And we started having this great conversation

This conversation with Jessica brought me back to life. She asked what I was doing in Cuba

I said I didn't quite know. I was there to see what I could see

I asked her what she was doing in Cuba, and she said she was there because it was one of the top six places in the world

she wanted to see before she died because she had uterine cancer It was one of those moments where time just kind of stood still and I thought wait what She explained that she been ill with this disease for some time

that she'd always wanted to travel to a few places, and Cuba was one of them. I was stunned

She was only a couple years older than I was, and it was one of the very first times

that I was confronted with my own mortality, that somebody who was about my age

was thinking about her death and was doing things to actively prepare for it

like seeing the world. I asked her a lot of questions about her disease. I asked about

surgery. I asked about treatment. But then ultimately, I also asked her about death

And she answered. At some point, I asked her who she saw on her deathbed. And she said she saw

somebody who hadn't done what she'd wanted to do with her life. That broke my heart. But through

talking about death, it became more clear that she was able to pinpoint the type of life that

she wanted because of her dying. It was very instructive for me because it also allowed me

to think about myself on my deathbed and think about the type of life that I wanted. This

conversation with Jessica certainly made it clear for me how living dead I'd been for so long

When I came back from Cuba, a few months later, my brother-in-law became ill. And about four

months after that, they couldn't treat him anymore. This time with Peter, following the time with

Jessica tremendously shifted how I see life and death. It helped me see that each individual

is an entire universe into themselves and they will all meet their end one day

But if we could find a way for them to meet their end in a compassionate way

one where somebody can journey alongside them, answer their questions hold their hands hold their hearts that could be incredibly healing for all And I decided I wanted to be that somebody for other people

A death doula is a non-medical and holistic support person who does all of the emotional, practical, and logistical support

of the dying person and their circle of support through the process. I want people to know that their lives matter

and that their death ultimately will, too. Given the work I do, I've given myself a lot more grace for who I am

It allows me to live more presently. Prior to finding death work, I'd never stopped to proverbially smell the roses

or to figure out what I wanted with my life. Now I kind of lean into the weirdness and allow myself to be just as I am

that grace will ultimately allow me to reach my death a lot more full

because I'm not holding anything back anymore. Part of my motivation for doing this work is for Peter

I want his death to have meant something more than just the pain and the grief that it caused

Getting emotional talking about it. Really, I'd also say that another personal motivation for this work is, for me

a reminder that I can live fully. and one day it will be over

And... to live fully means to, you know, to have been myself

and to be able to do work that is useful in the world, still in service

It makes perfect sense to me that this is where I ended up