upworthy

dying

Education

Woman's family shares video of her actively dying so people can understand to expect

"The more we know, the less we fear."

Representative photo by Ron Lach/Pexels

We don't see people dying until we do, and it's good to know what can happen.

In the era of modern medicine, we are far more removed from death than our ancestors were. That's not something to complain about, of course, but it is something to be aware of. At some point, most of us will experience the death of a loved one, and if we have no idea what to expect through that process, it can be confusing and frightening to witness.

The more we know about the death process, the less fear we have witnessing it

A hospice nurse named Julie has dedicated her career to helping families through the death process and educating people on what dying actually looks like. "The more we know, the less we fear," she says, and it's true. While many of us may want to avoid thinking about death, it's a part of life we should better understand before we find ourselves confronted with it and perplexed by what's happening.

casket in a cemetery with people standing around itFunerals are the closest most of us get to death until a close loved one dies. Photo by Rhodi Lopez on Unsplash

One woman's family shared a video with Julie with permission to show it to her audience for education purposes. "This is the most accurate video I have been sent of someone who is truly in the actively dying stages," Julie said. "No one knows what death actually looks like because when it's depicted in the movies or TV, it's false. It's wrapped up in a pretty little bow and it's not accurate."

Julie shared that this video shows some of the stages of a person actively dying—not in pain, just going through the natural death process—as the body shuts down. Specifically, it shows how a person's breathing changes and what's normal to expect. Some may find the video difficult to watch, but she does offer trigger warnings before each clip and explains exactly what's happening so people can choose how much they want to see.

Moaning and gasping while dying doesn't automatically mean pain or suffering

As she explains, this is the "actively dying" phase, and the family shared that the woman in the video did die within hours of the videos seen here. The video highlights three different breathing and vocalization phases, which Julie describes as she shares why it's happening and what it means. For instance, in one clip, the woman is moaning in a rhythmic pattern, which indicates that she's not likely in pain (which loved ones might assume) but rather that the body is self-soothing. Julie reassured the audience that what appears to be struggle or suffering often isn't when a personal is dying. Bodily mechanisms and reflexes can look scary if you don't know what you're seeing, but knowing it's very natural and normal can be enormously helpful.

Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Some commenters said that these clips were exactly what they saw during with a loved one's death, while others shared different experiences. (Much like childbirth, there are some distinct phases and stages of the process, but specifics can vary greatly from person to person, so not everyone will see the same things.) But overwhelmingly, people in the comments were appreciative of Julie's lesson and thankful to the family for allowing her to share:

"I had the privilege of attending both my parents’ deaths. I found it to be a beautiful experience. It was almost like birthing them into their next stage. It was a powerful full circle event. Thank you for educating people about the death process. And thank you to the family who allowed the footage of their loved one to be shared with us."

"My wife recently passed away, and I was prepared because of your videos. Thank You Julie."

"I've never seen a person pass. She was not in pain and I am thankful that you explained this to us. RIP dear lady."

"I’m an RN and this was very accurate. I’m glad to see the kind respectful videos donated by families used to educate people on the natural process of dying! Don’t be afraid, these people are comfortable and at peace! Thank you Julie for showing what we nurses see all of the time and are comfortable with."


man holding an old woman's hand in hospitalBeing with a loved one when they die is a uniquely intimate experience.Photo by Muskan Anand/Pexels

"My Dad passed away in 1999. Wish I had known that all these phases of active dying were truly normal. It was horrific thinking my Dad was suffering minutes before his actual death. Thank you so much for this video. It has brought me much comfort."

"I was with my grandmother when she passed, and it was exactly like this. I’ll never forget it. Honored to have been by her side."

"My brother who died from ALS was similar to the second video but I’d also add there are exceptions (as there is to everything) in that my mom smiled at me, closed her eyes, and then died without a gasp or a pause. It was literally like she just fell asleep and I remain to this day grateful for the ease of her passing. Thanks to the family for their willingness to share such a personal moment in the collective life of their family."

"As a retired nurse in oncology, palliative care, and hospice, I applaud you for the excellent video you shared to educate others on the stages seen prior to death. It's so important."

"In the last eighteen months I’ve lost both my parents to cancer. I was with them at the beginning and the very end and I must say the experience terrified me and I’ve been tormented since. NOW I know that the “stages” were “normal” and it’s brought me great comfort to know they weren’t in pain. I’m grateful that I got to be there for them both (even though they were unconscious when I arrived) but I do believe they knew that I was with them. I cannot thank you or the kind family of this lady enough for sharing this and explaining it in easy to understand way. Thank You so much. x"

"I have been a registered nurse for 24 years. The information provided in your videos is 100% accurate and you are performing a service for families and patients. It's one thing to read about end of life changes in a pamphlet, but hearing details from a hospice nurse along with supporting videos makes all of the difference. Thank you for what you are doing!!"

As Julie said, "The more you know, the less you fear." It may be uncomfortable, but learning about the dying process before you witness it first hand can prevent a lot of misunderstanding and unnecessary trauma for you and your loved ones.

You can see more of Nurse Julie's videos on her YouTube channel here.

From Your Site Articles
education
Family

A 'death box' may sound morbid, but it's actually a priceless gift for your loved ones

Anyone who's had to manage someone's affairs while grieving knows the value of a Nokbox.

Alexander Grey on Unsplash, @thenokbox/Instagram

If we don't prepare for our own passing, we leave our loved ones with a painful scavenger hunt.

"Do you have a death box?" my friend asked me out of the blue one day.

I'm sorry? A death box? Like … a casket?

"No, a box of paperwork for when you die," she said. "You need one, trust me. It's the best thing ever. I've given one to all of my immediate family members."

"It's not actually called a 'death box,'" she added as she pulled up a website on her phone. "It's called a Nokbox. Have you ever heard of it?"

I had not. And how the heck did we start talking about me dying?

As she began to explain and show me what the Nokbox was, I understood why she was so adamant about me needing one. She was right. I did need one. We all need one.

Anyone who has ever managed someone's affairs or experienced an unexpected passing of a loved one knows that grief isn't the only thing you have to process when someone dies. We live in an era of legalities and paperwork and official channels and bureaucracy, and that doesn't end when our life on Earth does. In fact, it's a big part of what we leave behind, as annoying as it is.

For instance, do your loved ones have access to your banking information? Credit card accounts? Social media profiles? Most of us would say no, as there's not much of a need for that when we're here. But what if we suddenly weren't? How would our loved ones know how to wrap things up for us?

A Nokbox—short for "next of kin box"—is an organizational system that helps those left behind avoid having to hunt through your files and electronics to close out accounts, notify lenders and other logistical tasks once you have passed away. You could create your own, of course, but the Nokbox does all the basic setup for you. (And no, this isn't an ad. I just greatly appreciate having things organized for me.)

As my Nokbox enthusiast friend explains, "After having some friends lose loved ones, I witnessed the grief coupled with immense stress that came along with trying to deal with the many tangible details left behind—what bills were there to pay and to whom, where were keys, where was a will if there was one, what were the passwords, etc."

Gifting a Nokbox to family members means they all have the same organizational system and know what to look for in the event one of them passes away. "It's the best gift you can give from the other side to your grieving family," she adds.

The Nokbox was created by Maria Fraietta, a teacher and real estate agent from Colorado, after her father passed away in 2021. Even though her father left a will, Fraietta soon realized how much of a scavenger hunt it was to find everything needed to handle his affairs. Figuring out passwords for his bank accounts, credit cards and investments meant hours of guesswork for the family. And what they experienced is painfully common.

Fraietta tells Upworthy she has sold 11,000 boxes working out of her backyard shed and shipping right from her front porch. She says when she started she held test groups in her kitchen to put together the first boxes and figure out every section that would be needed. As people gave her ideas, she added them to the list.

"A few things I forgot at first—storage units, donations to charity, and military service," she says. "I later added a Medicaid folder. It seemed weird to add a medical section at first, because the person has died. But family medical history is important. Medicaid is for you while you're living to manage what is a pretty cumbersome item. I really wanted the box to cover everything, and it does, with the exception of a separate business if people have that. (I am working on a "Biz Box.") The idea is that you can get rid of all of the other papers and files in your home so people—or you—never have to go through them later.

"It's a paper product for that reason as well," she adds. "We all still have paper in our lives, and it has to go somewhere. When you manage an estate, you'll get even more paper. Having one folder or piece of paper to mark everything you have that is digital is a huge help for your NOK [next-of-kin]. So, the product isn't antidigital, but it just keeps track of what we have in the cloud, on our laptops, etc."

The Nokbox comes in a few different choices, from the Nokbox Lite, which includes all of the instructions and labels you need but without any boxes or folders, to the Nokbox Fireproof, which includes everything you need in a fireproof file box.

Fraietta says there are dozens of things in the Nokbox that people don't think about, including in a when-I-die set of documents.

"When people see the box, they thumb through and say, 'Oh yeah, I forgot about that!'" she says. "It's different for everyone. One of my favorites is the list of key friends … let your NOK know of one 'representative' from each of your friend groups … college, book club, neighborhood friends, so they know who to notify, and that person can share with the others in that group. Along those same lines, a quick map of your neighbors is great—often the NOK doesn't know who they should notify and who has a spare key. Regarding having a will—there's a place in the box to indicate that you don't have one, so your NOK doesn't spend years looking for it. I have dozens of examples and stories of things people don't think of. When people look around their homes, they realize there are so many things that only they know how to manage."

No one wants to think about their own death, but everyone would benefit from preparing for the inevitable and enabling loved ones to grieve their passing with as few practical frustrations as possible. Imagine giving someone a gift that will save their loved ones hours of time and frustration in the midst of their time of grief. A "death box" might not seem like a very merry gift, but it truly is a priceless one. For the person who is hard to shop for or who seems to have everything, a Nokbox could be the perfect present, even if it raises an eyebrow or two.

From Your Site Articles
next of kin box
Heroes

Getting buried in this suit of mushrooms could help save the planet.

Death: It's bad for us.

People who are actually dead have to deal with that whole not-being-alive thing, which is less than awesome. But those people probably aren't reading this right now. (And if you are, please tell me your secret!)

For the rest of us, losing a loved one can be tough on our emotional state. Every loss is different, and I can tell you from experience that they all suck in their own special way.


GIF from "Beetlejuice."

But death is also bad for our wallets.

Between the coffin, the service, and everything else, the average funeral costs a whopping $7,000.


GIF from "Ghostbusters."

On top of that, death is even killing the environment.

According to Scientific American, it takes more than 30 million board feet of wood annually to produce enough caskets. There's also the issue of those 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid used each year, which contain toxic carcinogens like formaldehyde that seep into the soil once the body decomposes. (And also turns embalming into a risky career.)

Cremation isn't much better either.More than 500 pounds of carbon dioxide get released into the atmosphere every time a corpse gets put through the furnace. Based on the average cremation rate of 38%, that's nearly 250,000 tons of CO2 every year, or the equivalent annual output of 50,000 cars.


GIF from "Parks and Recreation."

What else can we do with our bodies? One option is to feed our corpses to carnivorous mushrooms that will nourish the soil with our decomposing flesh. Seriously.

That's what artist/inventor Jae Rhim Lee wants to do, anyway. She calls this radical idea the Infinity Burial Suit, and it looks like this:


GIF via Sustainable Human/YouTube.

Here's how they describe it on the official website:

"[The Infinity Burial Suit] is embroidered with a special type of thread infused with infinity mushroom spores. When buried, the mushroom spores act to cleanse the body of many toxins and gently return the it to the earth. The end result: our bodies are transformed into vital nutrients that enrich the earth and foster new life."

It's basically a bodysuit made from biodegradable netting that's woven with specially cultivated mushrooms that help breakdown the cadaver into clean compost. Lee jokingly described this suit as "ninja pajamas," which you'd think would have more mass appeal than "sustainable mushroom death suit."

More importantly, it retails for a scant $999, which is waaaaaay less than you'd pay for a standard funeral with a fancy casket. Did I mention it's also available for pets?


It's like this. Kind of. But for dead people. GIF from "Super Mario World."

But wait: It gets even weirder.

Apparently it's difficult to breed a special hybrid mushroom strain in a laboratory. So Lee has been growing standard shiitake and oyster mushrooms by ... um ... feeding them toenail clippings, loose hairs, skin cells, and whatever else naturally sheds from her body. Over time, this trains the mushrooms to, well, develop a taste for people.

OK, so it might not sound like the most conventional way to go about it. But when you start to think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

"I realize this is not the kind of relationship that we usually aspire to have with our food," Lee said with a laugh. "We want to eat, not be eaten by, our food. But as I watch the mushrooms grow and digest my body, I imagine the Infinity Mushroom as a symbol of a new way of thinking about death and the relationship between my body and the environment."


GIF via Neil Bromhall/YouTube.

Are you grossed out but intrigued? You're not alone. Lee's TED Talk has more than a million views ... which means she's onto something.

No matter how much we try to talk around it or avoid the subject all together, death is part of our lives. And while it can be sad, it doesn't have to be bleak — in fact, it can be kind of beautiful in a bittersweet way. Because it's all part of the wondrous cycle of life.

As Lee says at the end of her TED Talk, "Accepting death means acceptingthat we are physical beingswho are intimately connected to the environment. [...] We came from dust and will return to dust.And once we understand that we're connected to the environment,we see that the survival of our speciesdepends on the survival of the planet.I believe this is the beginningof true environmental responsibility."

GIF via TED/YouTube.

The Infinity Burial Suit helps us confront some uncomfortable truths about mortality.

Death might be inevitable, but we shouldn't have to pay extra for it while also poisoning the Earth.

Besides, what better legacy is there to leave behind than a better, brighter world for the next generation to enjoy with the knowledge that you literally gave your life to help the planet thrive?

GIF from "Scream Queens."

Watch Jae Rhim Lee's full TED Talk below. You might find yourself surprisingly inspired.

Trending Stories