As the saying goes, death and taxes are the only two things in life we can’t escape. And yet, death remains a difficult topic for many to grasp or face. Its inevitability, mystery, and potential finality haunt many minds and create existential angst. Death doula Diane Button recently appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show to help make sense of it.
In a clip making the rounds on social media, Barrymore first vulnerably shares her absolute fear of death. She asks Button, “How do you assuage people’s fears? How do you work with them to stop monkey gripping? I can’t believe how terrified of death I’ve been my whole life. And I picture it as an endless, infinite black room. As if that’s exciting to get to.”
Embrace the elephant
Button listens intently. “Right,” she answers. “So the idea is to let go of that. So you can live fully ‘here.’ Because we’re going to die. We’re all going to have to face that at some point. So it’s not really about taking away the fear so that you have no fear of death. It’s understandable because it’s an unknown.”
Button gives an example through the lens of one of her clients. “I was talking to a client the other day, and we kind of agreed that the fear of death is really the biggest elephant in the room. Of all the elephants in all the rooms. Because it’s for all of us. So the idea is…can you embrace the elephant? Can you befriend death a little bit? Can you talk about your fears and your worries so you can sort of ‘shrink’ it and put it in a corner?”
The idea, she clarifies, is not to ignore it, but not to obsess over it either. “You know it’s there, but you’re not living with the presence of it all the time.”
‘Grief is inevitable’
Many Instagrammers shared their thoughts in the comments. One writes, in part, “BEING PRESENT right where you are! Grief is inevitable. So long as you love, you will have grief! If you can find a way to allow grief to work through you, it can be a beautiful journey of honoring the love of life, while also managing the pain of the loss.”
Another had a hopeful take, inspired by the late, great Betty White. “Betty White had the best attitude about death! She thought of death as an adventure she has yet to take. She also said that death is like learning a new secret. Once gone she would finally know the secret!”
Having a meaningful life
In the full clip from the Barrymore segment, Barrymore (while holding a copy of Button’s book What Matters Most) first asks Button why she “pursued” the death doula business.
“For me,” Button answers. “It’s like opening the door for a meaningful life.”
She further explains, “I was 15, and I worked in a home for old people. And I remember just going through photo albums and just talking to people about legacy and life. And I often thought about how I was looking forward. I had so much to look forward to, while the people there were also looking back and being reflective. And I really noticed that early on. And I worked in a hospital, as well, in an emergency room where people died suddenly with no time to really say the words and share their hearts.”
End of life review
Near the end of the segment, Button gives hopeful “tools” to help navigate what can feel like an impossible topic. She explains, “A mini life review is something that we do as doulas. A lot of times we sit down and go over someone’s entire life decade by decade, but we don’t always have time for that.”
She has a backup plan. “Sometimes I like to do a mini life review, which is just imagining that you might be at the end of your life, like the last week, maybe, of your life, and you’re having a gathering, your last gathering of all the people who you love, and you just imagine people showing up. And who’s there? Like, who’s walking into the room for this final meal at the table that you’ve created for them? Because those are your people.”
She notes that it’s essential to know who these people are. She says, “It’s really important to know who your core is during the course of your lifetime. Because those are the people you’re always going to go back to, and you know what music is playing in the background, because that’s like a big part of our heart and our soul. Like, what songs connect us to the world? And then you talk about tradition and food and all the things that make us human, and then ask yourself, you know, maybe during the meal, you say to your friends and people gathered there, ‘When I die, I’m really going to miss’…and you fill in the blank. Like, what are you going to miss at the end of your life?”
Note who’s in the room
Barrymore points out that imagining who might be with us at the end of our lives may show us that we don’t need to focus so much on those we don’t see in those rooms. At the end of the day, life is truly short, so it’s worth thinking about what matters now.
