End of Life Doula: Someday, the day will come when I can no longer write.

I have completed a three-day intensive training called End of Life Doula Training.

As a preamble, I have been volunteering at a local hospice since shortly after moving to the town of Hilo.

What I mainly do is companionship. I visit patients' homes or facilities, and if the patients are in a condition to talk, I talk with them. Sometimes I make a simple lunch, and other times I just sit next to the patient for an hour.

The training I participated in this time was hosted by this hospice.

It may be the first time many of you have heard of it, but in a nutshell, an "End of Life Doula" is a person who has the role of supporting the dying and their families.

To provide support, you cannot do so without knowing what actually happens to a dying person (both physically and mentally). Therefore, I have been learning some quite intense content over these three days.

Living in a place like Hawaii, I sometimes feel that "Hawaii-like" stories are expected on social media, including Note, but since "death" is one of the themes I believe I will continue to learn about for the rest of my life—until I die, in fact—I think it will be a topic I touch upon on Note from time to time.

There are many things I want to write about, but today I will share just one.

During the training, we did an exercise where we wrote down four each of the "things," "people," "actions," "nature," and "things I want to do before I die" that are important to us on small pieces of paper, and then, in a situation facing death (which the instructor describes vividly as if it were happening to us), we "discarded" them one by one. We actually tore up the paper and threw it away.

And in the end, we let go of everything and die.

It is the ultimate choice.

Even if you think, "I can't throw this away! I want to keep this forever!" in the very end, it is mercilessly torn away from you.

You cannot take anything with you.

"Writing" remained until quite the end.

The things that are important to me, the things I absolutely cannot throw away, and the things I do not want to throw away became clear, but what I felt intensely after doing this exercise was,

"Someday, the day will come when I can no longer write."

That was it.

I was able to understand that as a realization from the bottom of my gut.

That's right.

You and I, certainly, 100 percent,

the day will come when we can no longer write.

Being able to write is wonderful.

So, even though my brain is quite tired today, I tried writing like this.

I'm sorry for talking about things like "dying."

But I think I will end up writing about it again.

Aloha!🌺