08/13/2026
Virginia Chang has been seeing Eleanor, a 101-year-old woman, most weeks, since January. Eleanor has been widowed for more than two decades. Nearly all of her friends are dead. She was admitted to hospice, but felt lonely, discarded. When her hospice learned this, they sent Chang. Chang is an end-of-life doula: a trained, nonmedical professional who cares for clients who are dying. End-of-life doulas—or death doulas, a term that some favor—may advocate for their clients’ medical or clinical needs. They may help with shrouding, funeral preparations, or grief support. At heart, they are guides to the unknown.
In the past decade, more than 10,000 people across the globe have trained as death doulas. Some attribute the rise in the profession to the fact that nearly a fifth of Americans are 65 or older; others, to the apparent increase in cancer rates among people under the age of 50, or fears engendered by the COVID pandemic. “In a broader sense, though, the end-of-life-doula movement can be seen as the latest chapter in a societal reconsideration of death that has been under way for more than fifty years,” Alexandra Schwartz writes. Schwartz spends time with the guides who remind us that death may be the end of life, but dying is still a part of living: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Tlxx8K
