‘I have my own funeral planned down to the smallest detail’,
Last month, Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman revealed she had trained as a death doula following the loss of her mother Janelle in September 2024.
Speaking at the University of San Francisco, the actress said grief led her to discover she had the temperament to support others at the end of life, and a desire to help people navigate loss with more openness and care.
While it may have taken a Hollywood actress to bring fresh attention to a role many are only beginning to understand, death doulas – non-medical companions who provide emotional, practical and sometimes spiritual support before and after death – have been in existence in Ireland for years. From helping families have difficult conversations to sitting vigil in someone’s final hours, their work is as much about living well as it is about dying well.
Here, five Irish death doulas share in their own words what their work involves and what it has taught them about love, loss and what truly matters in life.
Sarah Gardiner
47, Co. Louth, celebrant and death doula, echoesoflife.ie
The work of a death doula is actually the opposite of morose – it’s about hearing people, supporting them and helping them find clarity and deeper connection, and live more intentionally.
People often come to me after a diagnosis and say, ‘I want to get things in order, but I don’t know how to talk to my family.’
Sarah Gardiner
Very often, the person who is dying has accepted it, it’s their loved ones who might have their heads in the sand.
Support looks different for everyone. It might be organising a funeral or creating a legacy project. That could be recording messages, writing letters, sharing recipes, even making playlists. I had one woman who made Christmas ornaments for each family member, another grandfather left painted handprints on his grandchildren’s T-shirts.
Like a birth plan, you can have a death plan. It might include music, lighting and who you want present.
Just like coming into this world, exiting it won’t always go exactly to plan, but it allows families to focus on being present rather than worrying about other details.
I run a death café with Liza Clancy. There’s tea, biscuits and open conversation. Some people are grieving, some are dying, others are just curious. It’s not morbid at all, it’s actually the most life-affirming space.
It’s a real gift to leave behind clear instructions for your family members. Myself and my husband are in in our late 40s, and we both know what we want when the time comes. It’s written in a folder put away in my office. All we can be guaranteed is that the time will come, so avoiding it isn’t helpful – and you don’t have to wait until crisis hits to do it.
Bernadette Kenny
49, Galway, bio-energy therapist, psychotherapist and end-of-life doula, abhaile-wellbeing-therapies.com
My work can begin when someone receives a life-limiting diagnosis or in their final weeks. My aim is to support an end of life that is as peaceful, meaningful and dignified as possible.
I would love to bring dying at home back into our communities. Deathcare shouldn’t belong only to professionals – it’s part of all of our lives, and the more we talk about it, the less frightening it becomes. I’ve done my own work around mortality so I can provide a safe space to help others to do the same.
Bernadette Kenny
I’ve written my own eulogy, looked at the worst-case/best-case scenario of what my own death may look like and taken part in a living wake.
Very often, the person who is dying has accepted their death, but their loved ones may still be in denial and need support. When I work with families, everyone can be thinking differently. My role is to gently facilitate conversations so they can come together and support each other.
There’s a real peace that comes with being prepared. People feel more in control, like they are coming home to themselves. I can help people think about what they want their space to look like – the music, the lighting, who they want around them, whether they want to be touched or not when they are lying there. It’s about dignity and choice.
I’ve often seen it happen with families having their final conversations – they go into a different space, where everyone starts being very honest, because time is so limited.
I’ve heard it time and time again, people will say towards the end, it was the best time we had together. It was the saddest, but it was the time they were most present together.
Jessica Byrne
37, south Dublin, social care assistant with autistic adults, death doula and somatic therapist, @thesoulmedic.irl
I often saw death in my work as a carer and I used to be terrified of it, but it was through nursing my own dying dad that my life upended and I subsequently changed my perspective.
The grief when my dad died was annihilating, it felt like the ground was pulled from under me. He died in my arms, and while he had the best of care and I felt so honoured to do that as a family, it almost broke us.
Jessica Byrne
What people don’t understand about grief is that you don’t just get to grieve neatly, you’re in the epicentre of vulnerability. I was diagnosed with AuDHD following my dad’s death and it makes sense – I wasn’t able to mask my symptoms any more.
What I teach is learning to get comfortable with death. It shows you how precious the present is, the depth of human love and how to be okay with endings. When you face the prospect of death, you realise how strong you are and how joy and sadness coexist – in fact, they’re inseparable.
When someone is dying, community shows up in incredible ways, rallying around the family. I think we could have that level of connection all the time if we spoke more openly about death.
After my dad’s death, I became a strong advocate for voluntary assisted dying. It’s something I wasn’t sure about it until I watched my dad unnecessarily suffer when he had no cure.
One thing I’ve learned from this work is that we worry about so much in this life but really, when it comes down to it, stuff will come and go, but life itself is actually is so simple.
To love and be loved is the most important thing of all.
Liza Clancy
50, Drogheda, death doula, funeral celebrant and funeral director, lifecelebrations.ie
Death is my speciality now, but it wasn’t always. I was a PA but went into end-of-life work following my husband Kevin’s sudden death in February 2020. He died within five weeks of being diagnosed with bowel cancer. We were told he had three years, but he died in five weeks. Conceptually we all know that tomorrow is not guaranteed, but we never really think about it in practical terms, until it happens, and then that’s all we think about.
I officiated my husband’s funeral myself because the options for what we wanted were not there for us. We had the service in a crematorium, and who best to capture him than me, I guess.
Liz Clancy
When someone is dying, one of their biggest concerns is what will happen after they’re gone. Knowing there are plans or someone like me to support them can be very comforting.
I have my funeral planned and a whole set of arrangements down to the smallest of details. Everyone should do it then you’re safe in the comfort of knowing that when the time comes and you might not be able to talk people through it, they can go to that drawer and that’s where everything is. People will often write letters or build
digital memory books or record stories or messages to be given to their family afterwards. That’s a very powerful thing to do, because if you were to get a letter from your mom, for example, who passed away six months ago, it would be the most beautiful thing to receive.
Death is the only journey you can only make yourself – you die alone, even if there are people in the room with you. I think a lot of people die when they are actually alone to spare their people the trauma of witnessing it, but if people miss it, then they feel bad. Guilt and grief seem to co-exist, and they shouldn’t.
It is beautiful and traumatic in equal measures to watch someone die and it is simultaneously possible, as I discovered, to wish that somebody’s breath was their last one, but also wish that it wasn’t, because you don’t want to let them go. What continually surprises me is that in this life, we prepare for everything and yet bypass or ignore the biggest life event of all. There’s a lot of old Irish superstitions that if you speak about death you’re inviting it to your doorstep. But it’s not contagious and it’s the same with grief.
So we need less of the pitying head tilts and crossing the street – let’s talk instead about how we can all navigate this most normal thing together.
Liam McCarthy
62, Cork, celebrant, registered solemniser and death doula, liammccarthycelebrant.com
I came to this work through being a celebrant, but I realised I had been doing it for years – holding space for people at the end of life without calling it that.
There was always great respect for dying and death in Ireland. It is part of life and you would have had what was known as the local handywoman who arrived when somebody died, and they would lay them out and dress them.
Liam McCarthy
It’s more unusual for a man to be a doula perhaps but I suppose the talking and holding space are traits that people traditionally would associate with ministers of religions. I’m not religious but I would be a very spiritual person.
After a diagnosis, people can experience anticipatory grief – they worry about the milestones they’ll miss or how their loved ones will cope. There are many layers of grief for their loved ones – the caring, the loss itself and the emptiness afterwards.
Even when a death is expected, the moment that the change happens is still always staggering.
In Ireland, there has always been a tradition of caring for the dead – it was part of community life. We’ve moved away from that more visceral piece such as the wake at home, and people don’t always know how to talk about death any more.
The lessons are always the same. No one ever says they wish they had worked more – it’s always about love, time and connection.
Death is a bookend of our life and it doesn’t help to ignore its existence. Being prepared for your own death might make it easier to live with someone else’s.
