Accent Funeral Home

Supplied photo Share Adjust Comment Print Death doulas have a team approach and work with palliative care volunteers and health care professionals.File photoSunday morning in late November a group of women gather around the dining room table of Joy Wirta’s home in Capreol.Some of them are social workers, others are volunteers in palliative care. One young mother of two is a new birth doula. Despite different backgrounds and experiences, these women share the same calling: they want to become death doulas.“You are pioneering this in the North,” Wirta tells them.Wirta is the owner of Dragonfly Advisory Services, a small business that provides support and guidance to families after the death of a loved one. Wirta is also a recently trained death doula. While birth doulas traditionally help women through the pregnancy, birth and post-partum process, death doulas are striving to provide the same support and companionship through illness and end of life.“Being a death doula candidate is more like a calling versus a career change,” Wirta said afterward. “Anyone who has had the opportunity to help someone die that best death possible will understand it is a humbling experience and one that I am honoured to take part of. I cannot think of anything more rewarding than being there at someone’s most vulnerable hours. No one should have to die alone.”Death doulas are non-medical professionals and Wirta thinks they will help alleviate some of the pressures on the health care system, especially the lack of personal support workers in the North. That’s why Wirta wants to bring a mobile death doula training program to the region, in association with the Home Hospice Association, a charity organization that has offered the program since fall 2017. The women who have gathered at Wirta’s home want to learn more about the program (while some have already enrolled in the program offered in Toronto) and want to know where they might find wo...

And he was just — when I first saw him here in Texas, I thought, there is somebody I would love to work for, if ever given the chance. And thanks to him, he gave me the chance.And I will tell you just one thing about leadership that I learned early on from him. And it kind of was an indicator of how he was going to be as a leader.One of the first assignments I had was to write a press release, in which I made an error. And it wasn't an insignificant error. And the next day, I thought he was going to fire me.So, I went into his office. I saw the press release on his desk. All he did was this. He pushed it across the desk and looked at me and he said, "Hey, pal, I know, on the next one, you're going to knock a home run."At that point, I would have walked through a bed of burning hot coals barefooted for that guy. Now, to me, that was — I didn't — probably didn't fully appreciate it at the time. But that was leadership. That was motivation. That was inspiration. And I think that was just a microcosm of what was to come in his career.Chris Buckley, I see you nodding your head. As someone else who has written words for the man, I'm curious, what was that experience like, especially for someone who was so incredibly modest and didn't want to talk about his accomplishments?...