Kiley's Dueling Doulas

A life trajectory may be the most profound and beautiful at the very edges. Member Kiley Hartigan knows all about this and has a story to share (Kiley’s Story).

Five years ago Kiley embraced an invitation from her mother, Christy, to co-create a family relationship coaching business called JourneyOn. Christy embodied every part of what they shared in each episode of their LifeProof relational podcasts. Christy died on June 23rd. She died just as she had lived, with a grace best described as victorious. May we honor and learn from a life so full that its very passing is transcendental.

We’d previously parsed the “fear of death” as a philosophical matter by distinguishing the fear of being dead from the fear of dying. The former was the subject of the philosophy of William Hazlitt and Epicurus who argued that the fear of some eternal non-existence was irrational given our non-existence before our birth posed no such existential angst. As to the fear of dying, the great philosopher Woody Allen famously quipped, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Kiley’s story allows us to speak plainly about dying, mourning, caregiving, and end-of-life choices by making the whole subject less isolating and mysterious. We might start by asking about the power of a purpose-driven life. Compare and contrast Kiley’s account with a fear that comes with a life that has largely been misspent, the subject of our discussion about Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych some years ago (in book group, forerunner to MM).

We might then discuss whether man’s anxiety about mortality is a matter of nature or nurture i.e. whether such fear is somehow innate or learned. If learned, we might further ask whether it can be unlearned. Yes, we, like other animals, appear to be biologically built to avoid threats and preserve life, but that’s quite different from existential dread.

Then comes the Woody Allen quip about not wanting to be there when it happens, opening the way to the role of a death doula to clarify options and choice, including the administration of psychedelics to ease the way. Apparently, the family chose to invoke Colorado’s Medical Aid In Dying and we can discuss that. The doula helped design what they regarded as the final “launch ceremony.”

Speaking of doulas, here’s a second and most powerful part of Kiley’s story – the injection of a birth doula in anticipation of the expected delivery of Kiley’s own daughter next month. You can’t make this stuff up but the birth and death doulas actually crossed paths on the threshold of Kiley’s home i.e. “dueling doulas” symbolizing a passing on in terms of an existential transcendence.

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