Death-midwife helps handle dying
Terry Skovronek is a "death midwife," offering green burials and nontraditional home funerals. On Jan. 21, she'll host her regular Death Café, open to the public, where people can talk freely about their fears and hopes surrounding death and dying, burials and rituals - all over tea and cake, from 7 to 8:45 p.m. at the Bucks County Free Library, 150 S. Pine St., Doylestown.
Terry Skovronek is a "death midwife," offering green burials and nontraditional home funerals.
On Jan. 21, she'll host her regular Death Café, open to the public, where people can talk freely about their fears and hopes surrounding death and dying, burials and rituals - all over tea and cake, from 7 to 8:45 p.m. at the Bucks County Free Library, 150 S. Pine St., Doylestown.
Death Cafe's website (deathcafe.com) describes it as an international group run from London whose gatherings now take place in North America, Europe and Australasia.
Her crowds have been growing, said Skovronek.
"This movement is brought to you by aging baby boomers, the same people who brought back natural childbirth and breast-feeding. Knowledge about death and dying is the next logical step," said Skovronek, who lives in Doylestown and makes and restores coffins and shrouds and oversees home funerals for her clients.
What's prompting the fascination with alternative body dispositions and environmentally friendly burial?
"It's a change of mentality in end-of-life care. People are living much longer, the cost of medical care is high, we prolong life almost inhumanely," she said. "Studies show the actual process of dying is very spiritual, almost like birth. The ailment may be horrible, but death is not."
Evi Numen, a visual artist who is exhibitions manager and designer at the Mutter Museum in Center City, also is in training to be a death midwife, or death guide.
In October, the Mutter hosted an event featuring Megan Rosenblum and Caitlin Doughty, cofounders of Death Salon (deathsalon.org), which also arranges public events that encourage discussion of "mortality and mourning and their resonating effects on our culture and history."
"Like a birth midwife, an end-of-life doula serves to guide the dying person and their family through the death process, as one would in the hours leading up to and during a birth," Numen said.
Why become a death midwife? "My partner was killed in a terrible car crash. I survived," Numen said.
She spent the next decade in fear.
"I had to confront death. I had to understand how it happens, how to respond to it mindfully, and how to help others do so, as well."
Numen took a class through INELDA, the International End of Life Doula Association. The organization offers tiered training in which one starts as a vigil doula, attending to the dying person in the last days.
"We usually spend time in someone's home but don't administer medication, unlike hospice. We play music, we spell the families, and we never leave the dying person's side," Numen said.
Embalming chemicals damage the environment, she said. Embalming became popular during the Civil War so dead soldiers could be sent home, but other Victorian-era burials were quite different.
"Working in a medical museum, I know what chemicals are used to preserve tissue," Numen said. "Prior to the Civil War, most Americans died at home, were visited during a wake for a few days, and the body was treated with ice, herbs, oils and flowers."
In her new book, Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth, environmental philosopher Suzanne Kelly writes that the $15 billion modern funeral industry uses 20 million board feet of hardwood, 64,000 tons of steel, and 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid a year.
"There's a grassroots movement to help people out of this world in a different way," said Skovronek, who serves on the National Home Funeral Alliance board as well as the board of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.
Even her lingo is a throwback: A coffin has six or more sides and gets narrower at the toe, similar to those in movie Westerns; caskets are the rectangular boxes used by the funeral industry today. A cemetery connotes connection to a religious institution; a graveyard does not.
Skovronek creates personalized shrouds out of fabric and digs graves herself.
Beginning slowly. Not ready to contact a death advocate? "Let's Have Dinner and Talk about Death" is a project created out of the University of Washington to foster conversations about end-of-life decisions. (You can even assemble your own dinner using downloadable instructions at http://deathoverdinner.org). Friends can discuss their fears and last wishes - years in advance.
Fran Solomon runs a website, HealGrief.org, that runs free obituaries and, she explains, removes their burdensome cost.
She and her husband have already discussed their wishes.
"We are Jewish and he's 16 years my senior, so I anticipate living beyond my husband. I thought I'd be sitting shivah mourning his death with Jewish deli food in my home. At which point my husband said, 'Hell, no! I want Chinese food!' "
215-854-2808@erinarvedlund