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Voices of Arizona: How this death doula offers families support at the end of life

Susan Wielechowski testified before lawmakers asking them to update the tool that ALTCS uses for its preadmission screening.
Kathy Ritchie/KJZZ
Susan Wielechowski testified before lawmakers asking them to update the tool that ALTCS uses for its preadmission screening.

KJZZ’s Voices of Arizona is a special segment where we shine a spotlight on everyday Arizonans who help make our state an extraordinary place to live. In this segment, we introduce you to a death doula, a person who helps a dying person, and those around them, get ready for the transition.

When we think of doula, we might think of someone who offers support during pregnancy and labor.

But a death doula, like Susan Wielechowski, owner of Circle of Life Alzheimer’s Homes in Prescott, offers support to those at the end of life.

"Everybody's worried about death and they think it's so ugly and death is beautiful, it's beautiful. So it sounds very abnormal, I guess," Wielechowski said.

But dying can take time and some families struggle to sit with their loved one, so she will prepare the space with photos and candles, "So the family can come in and spend a you know an hour with them and then walk away again. And they're not stuck having that memory of how bad her breathing was or how this was so they can come in and say that was really a beautiful thing," she said.

Her desire to do this stems, in part, from her work and her own experience with her mother. "They're not seeing what, I guess I had to see, and left me you know the last two hours I couldn't be there. The breathing was just… and it was my mother, so I'm hoping I'm making it a little easier for the families," Wielechowski said.

KJZZ senior field correspondent Kathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.
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