Alua Arthur on Getting Real About Death
"Because we live, we get to die."
Well hello there, fellow mortals!
This week on the Soul Boom podcast, we’re thrilled to welcome Alua Arthur, “the most visible and active” death doula working today. The conversation between Alua and Rainn makes for a powerful episode and we hope you get a chance to watch it.
A self-described “recovering attorney,” she is most known as an author and speaker leading the way to a more compassionate and insightful approach in end-of-life care. As a companion to this week’s podcast episode, we’re excited to share an excerpt from her book Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End.
In this evocative passage, Arthur explores the inevitability of death with a blend of raw honesty, vivid imagining, and poetic beauty. She invites us to reflect on our own mortality, not with fear, but with a sense of wonder and appreciation. Arthur’s vision of her final moments—filled with vibrant sunsets, the soothing presence of loved ones, and a celebration of life—offers a deeply personal and profound perspective on how we might all approach the end of our own journeys. Perhaps at the end of all our journeys is simply the beginning of yet another. Alua alludes to this idea, pointing out that, “when we think about taking a trip someplace we’ve never been, we can anticipate it joyfully. We can do the same with our deaths, if we choose to…” (Note: if you are drawn to Alua’s evocation of death as the next leg in our travels, you may want to check out our inaugural Soul Boom Dispatch which featured an essay from Rainn on this very theme. That first newsletter accompanied our Angela Kinsey episode, in which both Rainn and Angela speak in deeply human terms about their own encounters with death and the loss of loved ones—also definitely worth checking out. Additionally, the chapter “Death and How to Live It” in Soul Boom the book is fantastic, if you haven’t picked up a copy yet)
Steve Jobs wrote: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.” Attributed to many traditions, the saying “Die before you die” gets to the core of this sentiment. Alua’s vivid and rich reflections serve as a powerful reminder to live with intention and embrace the full spectrum of our human experience. As you read her words, perhaps it will inspire you to contemplate how you want to shape both the remainder of your life and your final farewell.
Until next time,
The Soul Boom Team
“Glitter Wave”
From Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
By Alua Arthur
I think about my death almost every day. Sometimes it’s because I am doing something kind of ridiculous like roller skating in the kitchen. I almost slip, and I imagine knocking myself out on the counter. Sometimes I think about my death because I’ve just stood at the gateway between this world and whatever comes next, witnessing the death of another. I still wonder how a human can have a spark of life in them, which then evaporates like a puff of smoke. And sometimes I think about my death because my entire life is leading up to that mystifying moment.
None of us knows what happens when life is over. Many of us understandably choose to fill that space of not knowing with dread, out of the fear of leaving the only place we have experienced. Yet, in our everyday lives, when we think about taking a trip someplace we’ve never been, we can anticipate it joyfully. We can do the same with our deaths, if we choose to, adding sensory detail so lush we can feel it in our bones.
Here is what I choose:
In the moments before my death, I am lying in my own bed, which is on a deck outside. My senses are fully engaged, to the extent my dying body can handle, since this is the last time they get to take in the sights, sounds, smells, and touch that I’ve come to treasure.
Allowing my eyes to feast on their last sunset, I want to see watercolor oranges, luscious pinks, and vibrant purples as the day dies into night over the treetops. I want to hear the wind fluttering through the leaves while the trees sway in their decades-long synchronized dance. I only hear the quiet chatter of my loved ones and the sound of softly running water, from a creek just below.
Orange and yellow sunflowers surround me on the deck, along with some peonies, which I can still smell from my deathbed. Nag champa amber incense floats gently into my nostrils. I can also smell the trees and the dank, musty earth. My last meal hopefully included a fried ripe plantain, though my declining body likely hasn’t wanted food for weeks.
My friends and family do not hover, but they keep an eye on me in case I say something memorable. With my luck and sailor’s mouth, my last words will be “Holy fucking shit!”
A soft fleece blanket covers me, and I’ve got on cozy socks. I hate cold feet and shudder at the thought of that being one of my last earthly sensations. My lips are moisturized, as is my skin, because I’ve got caregivers who know that I don’t go anywhere ashy, especially not into my death. Gotta keep my body looking as chocolatey as it can. And I better not be wearing a bra.
My affairs are wrapped up and my loved ones know what to do with my possessions and my remains: I want a green burial. Place my body directly into the earth, covered only by a hot-pink and orange raw silk burial shroud, no more than three and a half feet underground so the bugs can devour my cellulite and dispose of my body naturally. They also have instructions for my funeral. It must be outside with my jewelry decorating low-hanging tree branches. I want those in attendance to grab a piece and wear it home.
Brightly colored Gerbera daisies are on the tables, and photographs I’ve taken from my travels are all around.
I want my mourners to wear an outfit they feel like their most fabulous selves in, and to drink a whole lot of tequila, to dance, to cry, to sing, to laugh, and to comfort each other.
I’ve left my beloveds with one most important directive: to tell the truth about who I am. Honor the richness of my lived experience for what it is—a blink of time in a pinprick of a body on a speck of a planet in a vast, vast universe. I want them to acknowledge the hugeness and the tininess of this.
I hope my loved ones say that I lived in love and that I did my work. I want them to say that I encouraged them to stretch themselves into the edges of their lives and that I was not stingy. They better not make me a saint. I am just as equally a sinner. I want them to feel proud that they gave me the grace to be human, and I want them to acknowledge when I was not the best version of myself. I reserve the right to change my mind, to acknowledge my mistakes, to shift my beliefs, and to grow until my death. I can be generous, loving, intuitive, purposeful, bold, and goofy. But I can also be righteous, petty, greedy, stubborn, judgmental, and impulsive. I’m a whole person.
I want to die safe: safe in body but also safe in my being, free to express discomfort and fear when it arises; safe in the knowledge that my loved ones will hold me there. They feel safe too. They speak freely with me about their grief over my impending death and allow me to feel my own grief about leaving. My tears fall without a need to wipe them away. And if I haven’t learned it before, at my deathbed, I will feel no shame about the depths of my emotions.
I might be scared to leave behind everything I have ever known and loved, but I’m also ready. At my death, I am devoid of every last ounce of skill and talent I have cultivated. I am, finally, used up.
I want to die in gratitude. I’ve moved fast my entire life, yet I want to saunter into my death like a tipsy woman might walk to a lover across a dark room. I go in surrender.
All of my questions about my life are over. No more concerns about whether I was good enough to be loved as I am. I know that I was.
No more worry about what others think about the choices I made. Any doubts I had about how I used my time are vanquished.
My ongoing struggles with depression, doubt, and impulses toward mayhem have finally ended. I can no longer run away from the burdens I’ve created. It is done.
My body, in its perfect size and ability, carried me through this life and I’m now at the moment of its death. It knows how to die.
My breathing has slowed down significantly, and my heart, weakened, is doing its best to pump blood to failing organs. My central nervous system has also slowed, yet the system of nerves, veins, and arteries that map my body start to tingle, as all of the dopamine, serotonin, DMT, and other feel-good chemicals course through me. I’d always wondered if dying feels bad, but in fact this feels good.
My sensory experience is growing thin, but inside my body, all of the sensations and emotions I experienced while living are starting to gather up. Slowly crescendoing, I begin to feel every joy, sorrow, excitement, grief, embarrassment, orgasm, shame, freedom, guilt, and glee that I have ever felt. I also feel the little things, like the squish of a frog I stepped on in Nairobi under my bare feet, the rising heat in a car after the windows have been closed on a summer day, and the opening notes to Stevie Wonder’s “As.” Most prominently, I feel love in its aching beauty. Love for myself, for my imperfect life, and for the humans, animals, plants, and insects that journeyed alongside me. This is it.
I’ve lost connection to the outside world, as my consciousness starts to swirl inside my body and move toward my heart center. My loved ones who have gathered to hold vigil hang on to my every breath. They do not have to wait long, as I release one final, soft exhale. My lungs rest and my body reverts to matter.
Following my instructions, my beloveds clap, in celebration of the life I loved and the grace with which I let it go. But I can only hear them very faintly. My senses have dulled.
My consciousness expands outward, past the edges of my body, which can no longer contain the depth and breadth of my human experience. It is no longer responding to external stimuli or perceiving myself as separate from others. As the cells inside my body die, my consciousness expands bigger and bigger like a helium balloon. I am beginning to experience the freedom of death. The freedom in not knowing and enjoying the ride anyway. Just when I’ve felt every single sensation my human body has ever felt and cannot take another instant, the “I,” as I know myself, bursts into a firework of brightly colored, glittery confetti. It fills the atmosphere with flecks of every conceivable color.
When the confetti reaches its apex, having been hurled into the atmosphere with the impact of my life force, it scatters slowly, like soft snow. These pieces of confetti represent who I was as a human, as I am an amalgamation of everyone I have ever met and every experience I’ve ever had. The pieces of confetti land in greater concentration on the people who loved me, and in lesser concentration on the people whose lives I touched. It will cling to them just like glitter does, getting stuck in every crevice of their being. This is how our dead stay with us.
In these flecks of glitter falling from the ether, I can see my dad eating the cardboard veggie burger and my mom hot-glueing stars onto my Burning Man boots. Those are gold pieces of glitter.
I see six-year-old Bozoma hiding under the table while the “Thriller” video plays, and Ahoba cute and pregnant with my nephew Jahcir. I also see his feet, which grew before my eyes from pudgy, dimply stumps to a size 13. They are bronze, red, and navy.
Aba’s thoughtful and caring nature twinkles through, in rose-colored bits of confetti.
I see Kip’s big ole smile in blue glitter flakes.
In yellow, I see my friends and former partners—the laughs we shared, the mirrors we held up, and the pain we carried for each other.
Looking up and around, I see Ms. Bobbie eating her oatmeal cream pies, Ken’s gold skirt, Tash’s teeny-weeny gap in her teeth, Nancy’s hair barrettes. I see Jack’s love for his sons, Justina’s Pomeranians, Dora’s work plaques, James’s baby mamas, Summer’s baptism, Akua’s dancing arms, and Leslie’s decorative spoons—all represented in sparkles of colorful confetti. And many, many others.
All around, I see Peter. Everywhere. I see his love of the Ghanaian condiment shito that he puts on everything, as well as his cool leather jackets. I see him throwing Lael into the air and see her delight in orange confetti. I see his inability to turn down any challenge I suggest and his love of Boston sports teams. Those flecks are turquoise. But in deep magenta, I see the pain his death caused and the hole I carried throughout my life in his absence.
All of the little pieces of me that didn’t stick with anyone, like my secrets and old hair bonnets, drift down and gently crash into each other in a massive wave of glitter. Big swells of the brightest and most vibrant colors undulate across eternity as far as I can sense, moving to a rhythm as familiar as my walking gait.
Slowly, the pieces of glitter confetti that once made up the magically mundane earthly experiences of Alua Adwoba Arthur are seamlessly enveloped back into the wave. Even the littlest pieces get swallowed and gobbled up, becoming part of that grand cosmic expanse once again. And “I” am no more.
I have returned to all that ever was and all that ever will be. It is complete. And I am safe.
There is joy.
There is peace.
There is rapture.
There is pure, abiding love.
There was my individual life, now extinguished, and indistinguishable from the billions who have come before and will die after.
This is my hope for when I die.
I hope death feels like riding a bright glitter wave, but I don’t know. And since I don’t know if I’ll have it in my death, I will make it with my life. I look for the glitter in everything.
We can spend our lives fretting about our deaths, or we can use our brief time to sink deeper into the experience of being human, for all it entails. The good, the tricky, the impermanent. We can acknowledge that our death will one day come and use that knowledge to create a life so whole, so honest, so juicy, that it is worth leaving. I have seen over and over human beings’ personal reckonings in the final moments of life. It begs the question: What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?
Without our deaths, none of it would matter. There would be no context for what we do. When we live in relationship to our mortality, it adds direction to our actions, truth to our words, rapture to our experience, authenticity to our being, and maybe pounds to our hips. We can make choices that resonate with the core of our being, free from societal expectations and the judgments of others.
While our lives and choices may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, they are not. With the dizzying serendipity that must occur for us to be born, the fact that we live is a miracle. If the best that we do on any given day is roll over in bed—so long as we make peace with our choices from the perspective of our deaths—there is cause to celebrate. A daily practice of being with mortality gives us the glorious opportunity to refine our priorities, redefine our values, and bring wonder and mystery to this wild ride of our unique lives. This allows us to reach the end downright raggedy, satiated, and drunk on life—but ready to go home ’cause the party is over and our feet hurt.
This is what I wish for all of us: a life that feels like the miracle it is and a death that serves as a period on a satisfying sentence. Because we live, we get to die. That is a gift.
Excerpted with permission from Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End by Alua Arthur. Published by HarperCollins, 2024. Alua Arthur is a death doula, attorney, speaker and author best known for her compassionate approach to end-of-life care. Through her work, she empowers individuals to embrace their humanity and find meaning in every moment, particularly in life's final chapter.
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