Alison Keller loves talking about death with strangers.
As an end-of-life doula, Keller makes a living providing companionship and various kinds of support to dying people and their loved ones. As a co-host of Threshold Circles, once-a-month gatherings at Forbes Library in Northampton, she and fellow end-of-life doula Alyssa Walters facilitate conversations about death, dying, mortality and loss. These gatherings help people face anxieties about the inevitable and offer those facing death — their own or a loved one’s — a chance to learn about their options.
“Fear is contagious, and comfort is contagious,” Walters said, “so if you have a really scary subject or something that’s really frightening to you and you know a person [who is] not at all frightened by that, and if you dive into that subject matter with the person who’s not frightened, it’s going to be infinitely smoother and infinitely easier, I think, than if you try to navigate it alone.”
The Threshold Circles take place on the first Saturday of each month in the Community Room of Forbes Library in Northampton from 1 to 3 p.m. The next gathering is on Saturday, April 4.
A Threshold Circle is similar to a “death cafe” — a social gathering where people discuss mortality — though Keller avoids that label. To her, the term suggests a more “lighthearted” gathering, whereas these circles handle deeper waters.
“This isn’t a casual, drive-by conversation,” she said.
The titular “Thresholds,” then, are primarily related to death and mortality, though not necessarily exclusively. “There are so many micro-losses that we face on a daily basis … loss and grief are things we shy away from. … It would do us good as a society to grapple with the fact that when you lose your job, that’s a huge loss, and it also deserves space at Threshold Circle,” Keller said, adding that while she doesn’t typically have people attend to discuss about non-death losses, they are in fact “all interwoven in our lives.”
Keller hasn’t always been an end-of-life doula. She previously worked in nonprofit fundraising and development. She tried to get back into that work post-pandemic, but she felt “like life was asking something more” of her. A few years ago, she picked up Atul Gawande’s book “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” which is about end-of-life care, and found it inspiring.
During that time, Keller and her family cared for her late brother, Patrick, who was in the middle of treatment for a rare osteosarcoma. It was a difficult experience, but for Keller, it was also eye-opening.
“In the middle of this care circle that we sat around him, I realized that I was really being called to … hold space,” she said. Though she was caught in the midst of complicated family dynamics, she didn’t feel that she had to distance herself from those dynamics — rather, “I opened my arms to them, and I felt like I was able to really be present,” she said.
She then looked into end-of-life doula training programs and was certified through the International End of Life Doula Association.
Walters, likewise, entered end-of-life care work because she felt a calling, though it took time to define. She knew she was drawn to space of death and loss; even as a child.
“I’d feel more comfortable at a funeral than a wedding,” she said.
Two deaths and a chance encounter with an end-of-life doula on a road trip eventually led her to a certification program at the University of Vermont. Now, she finds being around death to be “really medicinal.”
“If I’m not around it, if I go a long time without it, I feel that I almost want to be closer to it again, because it reminds me of what’s important,” she said. “It reminds me of the stuff that doesn’t matter. It reminds me to make sure that I’m prioritizing the love and the caring and the connections that I have in my life rather than caring about, ‘Oh, I have to wake up at six o’clock in the morning.’”
On Wednesday, March 11, the Gazette visited Keller’s house in Easthampton for a private Threshold Circle she’d arranged to ensure participant consent. It was much smaller than a typical circle — only four participants, including the co-hosts, compared to the 20 or so at the public circle the weekend before — but there was still plenty to discuss.
To participant Alison Curphey, Threshold Circles are necessary and valuable — the kinds of conversations they facilitate would have made a difference not only in her life, but in her loved ones’ deaths.
When Curphey’s husband died, she gave him a New Orleans-style parade, complete with music. She, her family and friends wrote notes and song lyrics over his cremation casket. Her parents, however, had what she called “very medicalized” deaths in hospitals.
“The difference, I think, was, my husband could talk about death and my parents couldn’t. … I felt like my hands were tied because I didn’t know what they wanted, and so talking about death would have let me feel like I was honoring them,” she said.
She doesn’t want her own two children to have the same experience. To that end, she made a Google Doc with her end-of-life plans: she wants an eco-friendly burial next to her husband at Wildwood Cemetery in Amherst. She wants to give them as much direction as possible to spare them the burden of the many decisions they’ll have to make when the time comes.
“But it’s not definitive, because the more that I am experiencing through the conversations in Threshold, the more it brings up different ideas and thoughts” about possible options, she said.
The document also contains a note for her children to the effect of, “I want you to know that I’ve had a really good life and that I love you both so dearly and that it’s okay to be sad. I want you to know that I want you to celebrate my life, to celebrate what you remember of me,” Curphey said.
Though the Threshold Circles are not religiously affiliated, spiritual and supernatural concepts — the afterlife, for example — are often part of the conversation.
“The nature of death itself is inherently spiritual,” Walters said. “Even if you’re a staunch atheist, if you spend enough time in these worlds, you’re gonna see some weird stuff happen.”
The “threshold” in the group’s name refers to the threshold between life and death. “You see so much mystical stuff at that gateway,” she said.
“I notice this even in hospice,” she added. “You take your most grounded, most pragmatic hospice nurse, and say something [about a patient] like, ‘Oh, they’re seeing [deceased] family members,’ and that person’s just gonna get it, because you see so much of it.”
Dontay Bradford-Hall knows this to be true. He works at Harmony House, a hospice in Chicopee, where he takes care of residents who are terminally ill, helping them with personal care and various other needs — fixing their cable, making them laugh and cooking what he calls his “world-famous eggs.”
He is no stranger to “threshold” experiences. In the circle, he spoke of “keeping the spirits cool” and described residents who were afraid to look into certain corners where they saw deceased relatives. He shared stories of seeing blue jays and cardinals after instructing residents on “what to do [after death] to let us know they’re good.” It’s a reality he navigates daily on the night shift — a post many of his coworkers are too intimidated to hold.
“I’m like, ‘Think about all of the souls that have come here that we have [seen] off,’” he said. “‘You think they really would be, if they can [be] in our presence again, hurtful or wanting us to fear? How many times have we talked to them about not being afraid of what’s next?’”
“Death isn’t the bad guy,” Bradford-Hall said, adding that he wishes other people saw it the same way. Life, he said, is the force that teaches people lessons, “but death — he’s just there with his arms open. … Once we’re done getting our butt kicked by life, to prove ourselves to her for whatever reason we signed up for this for, he’s there like, ‘I gotcha.’”
For more information about Keller and Walters, visit alisonkellerdoula.com and lyswalters.com, respectively.
