‘Heartbreaking’ last requests people make before death

A woman who left her high-flying corporate job to become a death doula has revealed people’s “heartbreaking” final requests.

A US woman has shared how she quit her high-flying job as a lawyer to become a death doula – a person who helps people organise their own passing.

And now Alua Arthur has also revealed some of the heartbreaking last requests of people she has worked with, The Sun reports.

It started in 2012 when Alua struck up a conversation with a stranger on a bus in Cuba.

The woman said she was suffering from uterine cancer and the two of them began discussing funeral plans.

Alua said at that moment she realised the woman had not been able to talk about these matters with anyone close to her.

She believes this was because people generally avoid the subject of death.

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Alua Arthur quit law to become a death doula. Picture: Supplied

A few months later she helped her brother-in-law after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

That was when Alua knew that’s what she wanted to do – help people to plan the end of their lives.

“All I knew was that there had to be a better way to give support during one of the most lonely and isolating experiences a person can go through,” she told the Cut.

“It wasn’t a hard decision to leave my job as a lawyer. The challenging part had more to do with identity and what achievement means,” she said.

Now she has become the founder of Going With Grace, an organisation specialising in end-of-life planning where she has also trained hundreds of other death doulas.

Alua has trained hundreds of death doulas. Picture: Getty

The Los Angeles-based end-of-life support team helps patients and their families plan the emotional, practical, legal, and spiritual issues that come with death.

The death doula has revealed that “sentiment plays out in beautiful ways” in some people’s final wishes.

She told Insider about one young woman opted for a funeral in a house, which was to be covered in white roses.

Another one wanted to share with the world her brownie recipe and asked for her remains to be placed in a baking pan.

Alua said: “Pick parts of the individual, who they are, and what they care about. Try to pour that into their dying because you’ll find that our values in living carry us through to our death.”

She has also said she has a plan in mind for her own death.

“As soon as they see I’ve taken my last breath, I want them to clap and be really grateful that I lived, and hopefully died, with grace.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission