Commentary: I am a Black man and a death doula. This work chose me
I was 9 years old when my great-aunt, Greta Mae, or Ma Mae as we called her, died of lung cancer. I was too young to visit her in the hospital, but my mom would come home with updates that went from “she’s not doing good” to “it’s going to be any time now.”
On what she knew would be her last visit, my mom came home to tell me that night would be Ma Mae’s last. She told me how Ma Mae was surprisingly in better spirits that evening, after having seen her mother, who came to tell Ma
