t’s exciting to see the exponential growth of end of life practice, something we in the home funeral movement tried to imagine years ago when we took up this work. Now, just as we envisioned, families are increasingly seeking to change the way they meet the challenges inherent in planning for and managing the death of a family member, and they are looking for guidance and support in fresh ways that span both the dying and funeral periods.
But what we learned then that holds true even more today is that death is the great divide, at least as far as systems go. Some end-of-life care practitioners train for both pre-death and post-death, with an intention of meeting families’ needs with a seamless home-based continuum of care, a philosophy we have cultivated and supported wholeheartedly. But there is a problem that needs to be addressed, and quickly, and it falls to end-of-life doulas and their trainers to fully understand.
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