A friend recently offered me the chance to take her slot at what sounds like a an Oasis Reunion Tour-level, in terms of getting tickets, class for would-be death doulas. A death doula, just for the record, is, according to the Internet, is “a trained non-medical professional who provides emotional, physical and educational support for someone nearing death.” I hope my friend remembers she mentioned offering me the slot because I’d very much like to do it.
A series of strangely vivid dreams I’ve had recently floated the prospect of attending the class back to the top of my mind. They weren’t dreams about death: one was about going to see Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, who, it turned out, was now running a tiny shop where he restored old books but to a truly dreamlike degree — the print on the pages was clearer, the kerning more precise, the paper more fresh but still the same paper, printed with the same ink! The other was about a book called THE SECRET. No, not that one! This THE SECRET was about a brief period of American history, a relatively recent period, I want to say “the 1980’s,” that was completely inaccessible to people living today because of this, that and the other thing, but also due to some missing “files.” In the dream, I said to someone, “What I think is really important are those missing files,” but they didn’t agree; in fact, they acted like I was missing the point entirely, the same way I always do — that’s how it felt in the dream — and then I woke up with this thought in my mind: “I wonder if Portia remembers she mentioned offering me her slot in the death doula class?” (Portia, for the record, is, according to the Internet, not her real name, it’s just the a name that came to me, and I’m no Shakespeare buff. Isn’t that strange? “Portia,” just for the record, is, according to the Internet, a character from THE MERCHANT OF VENICE who is “beautiful, gracious, rich, intelligent, and quick-witted, with high standards for her potential romantic partners. Her character,” says the Internet, “is a clever blending of opposites: the gay and the serious, the feminine and the masculine” — that’s my friend to a T!) I bring all that up just to say I might as well assume I’m always dreaming, the associations rise up so readily and always seem so surpisingly accurate. What are we doing when we’re awake OR asleep, when we’re dying OR living? And what do we want at all those times, which are all one time, from others?
The Internet is a LITTLE help. That’s all it ever it is. It says a death doula provides “emotional, physical, and educational support to people nearing death.” Well, we all have different ideas about what that kind of support would be and what receiving it would mean, a fact I feel confident will be discussed on Day One of the death doula class by either the Liam or Noel Gallagher of death doulas. She’ll say, “First, Virginia, know that this is a person-centered practice. No matter what you learn here over the course of the next 80 years, know it’s the contours of the actual person nearing death that will provide the most pertinent framework for your death doula practice ON THE DAY.”
Amen to that!
When I think, Cookie Monster-style, about what ME want from a death doula (which is to say, what ME want from everyone, all the time: COOKIES!) is this: 1) credible encouragement; 2) dependable help with infrastructure; and 3) information that sounds true enough that I don’t waste time wondering.
By “credible encouragement,” I mean: I don’t want to be told that thing people say on TV all the time, “You can do this,” because we don’t know yet if I can, do we, Jack? And what does “do this” even mean when it comes to dying or living or sleeping or waking anyway, JACK? Seems like no one’s done their homework around here, DOESN’T IT, JACK? NO! I don’t want to be told, near the moment of my death, “You can do this,” I want to be told, “This CAN be done,” but here’s the catch, Jack: only a person who’s done it would know that, right? If we’re being ruthlessly reasonable? So my ideal death doula has to be dead: not a corpse and not a ghost (I don’t THINK) but an individual who has already somehow done the work of AGREEING TO CEASE, because only a person who’s “done it” can say “This CAN be done” and be believed.
So “credible encouragement” turns out to mean not so much the right words as the right practice of being. As the death doula (says me) agrees, as I near death, to cease being necessary, to cease, in fact, being anything, so do they mysteriously make a bobsled run, if you will, that I can ride down with intent as opposed to slide down screaming. If the death doula can consciously ride their own pulling-away, they make space for the person nearing death to consciously ride their own. It might sound like a paradox but even from here I know it’s right for ME. Which is all it has to be. Liam will say so. Or Noel.
WONDERWALL, since you asked, isn’t song me like. The melody is tired, not as in “been done before” (although it might be, God knows everything’s been done before at this point, at least in what some used to call “The First World), it’s “tired” as in, “always dragging you back to the bottom.” Even after it leaps “…and after all,” it drags you back to the basement, the killing floor where it lives, back to the rag and bone shop of the heart, its cryptic title, which is a word that means almost nothing. The whole song means almost nothing —
Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you By now you shoulda, somehow, realized what you gotta do I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now Back beat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out I'm sure you've heard it all before but you never really had a doubt I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now And all the roads we have to walk are winding And all the lights that lead us there are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you But I don't know how Because maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me And after all You're my wonderwall Today was gonna be the day but they'll never throw it back to you By now you shoulda somehow realized what you're not to do I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now And all the roads that lead you there were winding And all the lights that light the way are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you But I don't know how I said maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me And after all You're my wonderwall I said maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me And after all You're my wonderwall I said maybe You're gonna be the one that saves me You're gonna be the one that saves me You're gonna be the one that saves me
— but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Virginia, because it’s a really hard, short way from “nothing” to “almost nothing;” it’s the same hard, short distance, I bet, from being NO ONE to being a good death doula, and covering that short distance well, going that far and no farther, is, I just bet, hard.
After credible encouragement, as I near death, I think I’m going to want some dependable help with infrastructure. What do I mean? I don’t want someone rearranging my pillow all the time so that it’s suddenly less comfortable than the weight of my head finally made it after the last time someone “helped.” I want chances to weigh in with blinks on the volume of the ambient music. I want my diaper changed regularly, if things have come to that. I want to be as free as possible to just DIE, which I suspect (unless I’m lucky enough to die quickly, and nowadays fewer and fewer people are lucky that way; even if you have the kind of stroke that used to kill you fast, you’re likely today to suffer for weeks while your loved ones and the medical establishment “help” you) is going to be like riding a very well-designed world-class roller coaster. I don’t want to have to manage things or people while I’m nearing death, thanks — or nearing life, for that matter. Because the one thing a good death doula knows is this: what the dying need is what the living need. Dying is living. All a death doula IS is someone who’s chosen to focus their interest in becoming a good person any which way on the last few minutes of other people’s lives; it’s not so much about death as it is about LIFE, about how to be present and help.
Finally, I want good-enough information from someone who seems to know what they’re talking about. If my heart starts racing as I near death, I want someone to tell me, “That’s normal. That’s your body getting as much blood to where it needs to be. Your body is doing its best to keep you conscious. Why it does this, i’m not really sure. No one is. We call it ‘the will to live,’ but what does that mean? Maybe our bodies think consciousness has a value and try to prolong it? Who knows? Your body’s done such a good job for so long. Should we thank it?” If someone said that to me, I’d believe it enough to go along, even if the person talking was obviously partially kinda full of shit. But remember, as we near death, we might need less and less from a death doula, so just a peaceful, quiet presence might be more than enough, or less than enough, and might be finally, as we finally, as we — but that sentence ends before we get to know what the writer was going to say, and that’s…
…where WONDERWALL comes in. If the consciousness singing the lyrics of WONDERWALL is to be believed, It’s aware that something is coming for you: a thing you started, or at least took part in; and now it’s time to pay the piper. It’s unwilling, this singing consciousness, to sing exactly how it feels about you or the role you played in this now-diminished process. It’s unwilling to disclose anything about itself except this: that It sees you as something that may have a crucial role to play in its salvation and that THAT’S why it can’t say to Itself or you how it feels. You’re too important to the singer to risk hurting or helping. To It, you’re an immensely important incomprehensible entity. As I said, the song means almost nothing — but this is why it’s so damn popular.
It’s mostly just THERE. You can sing along to it at virtually no cost to yourself except for the time and the permanent chi it takes to sing. You don’t have to admit you’re hurt to sing WONDERWALL, you don’t have to admit that you love or loved and lost, you don’t have to admit that you care AT ALL, no, all you have to admit to sing WONDERWALL convincingly is that you’re aware of some other being and rendered almost silent by the off-chance they matter.
Noel Gallagher, who wrote WONDERWALL, has said he wrote it about his then-girlfriend Meg Matthews, but I think it was really about — even if Noel didn’t and doesn’t know it — his brother Liam, the one he knew would have to sing his song if his song was going to get what it deserved; the brother he was stuck with, couldn’t control, didn’t understand, couldn’t help, couldn’t change but for some reason ordained by Fate or God or Chance, needed. The reason the Oasis reunion tour is such a compelling story is, even if you read it as the most cynical move ever, it speaks to how these brothers need each other so badly that they’ve gone and admitted it in their action if not in their words. It’s a humanizing moment in the life of a band whose suspended animation, suffered by all who cared, lo these many years, is finally a real “nearing death” — by starting again, together, they are, finally, AGREEING TO CEASE.
WONDERWALL, if and when it’s played live during the band’s upcoming tour, won’t mean the almost nothing it used to. It will mean, whether the Gallagher brothers like it or not: We needed each other to do this. And that’s enough.
My friend Portia is somewhere in Mexico right now, living her best life. She doesn’t read Fancy!, but her partner does. Maybe he’ll let her know I’m still interested in her slot at the upcoming death doula seminar. Maybe not. No matter what, I’m glad I remembered I wanted to do it, glad those two dreams about books, about the past, about what can be restored before the end and what can’t even be retrieved woke me and made me remember — we are all here to be good death doulas, to provide credible encouragement, to help with infrastructure and good-enough information and then stay out the way. What we call “mental health” or “self-actualization” is mostly just learning, like a good death doula, how to help in these few key ways and then get out of the way; of ourselves, first, then others; it’s a matter of learning how to care for ourselves and others so we’re all a bit freer to concentrate on our dying as it nears, ever nearer, which is to say, on our living, as it nears, HERE IT IS.