Death Companion/Doula Care
Eugene, Oregon, Lane County & Surrounding Areas | Virtual Care Where Appropriate
Non-medical, relational companioning that welcomes the whole person—body, inner life, relationships, meaning, spirit, and what feels important at this time.
There are moments in life that invite us to pause.
You may be living with a serious or life-limiting illness, caring for someone you love, preparing for an approaching death, grieving a sudden or unexpected death, or considering what kind of care you want as mortality becomes closer in proximity.
You may be choosing hospice, continuing or stopping treatment, allowing death to unfold naturally, exploring Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) or Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED), or simply wanting more room to speak honestly about aging, mortality, death, and what is important to you.
You may be surrounded by family, friends, or community, held by one or two trusted people, or meeting this time with very little support. You may feel connected to the people around you, estranged or distant from others, or deeply alone.
You do not need to already have a circle of care or a sense of belonging in order to reach out.
Wherever you find yourself, we may begin there.
My work as a death companion (often referred to as a death doula) is non-medical, relational, consent-based, and responsive to the person and the circumstances around them. It can complement hospice, palliative and medical care when those are part of someone’s life, while also making room for people choosing fewer medical interventions or a smaller, more intimate circle of support.
What Is Death Companioning?
Death companioning makes room for the human experience surrounding illness, dying, death, grief, and mortality.
Sometimes this begins long before someone is actively dying.
There may be decisions to consider, conversations that have been difficult to begin, questions about available care, relationships asking for attention, stories wanting to be told, practical things to tend, or simply a wish to have another human present who is comfortable being close to death and uncertainty.
My role begins with listening, presence, and witness.
From there, companioning may include end-of-life planning and education, support around appointments or hospice when involved, family and caregiver support, life review and legacy tending, research and advocacy, ritual and remembrance, vigil and active-dying presence, after-death care, and grief tending.
There is room for silence, humor, fear, tenderness, anger, uncertainty, creativity, spirituality, ordinary life, and whatever else belongs to the person and their experience.
My Approach to Companioning
I meet death as part of life rather than something separate from it.
My approach is relational, body-aware, consent-based, and responsive to the person in front of me. I do not arrive with a prescribed way that dying, grieving, caregiving, or preparing for death is supposed to look.
Some people find meaning through spirituality, ritual, prayer, nature, ancestry, or relationship with the more-than-human world. Others do not. Some want to speak openly about death. Others need time before words come. Some are surrounded by people they love; others are meeting illness, dying, or grief largely on their own.
All of this is welcome and has place to belong.
I listen for what is already present: what someone is wanting to choose and what they are not wanting, what brings comfort or connection, what feels unfinished, what they may be noticing or experiencing in their body, and what may be feeling most alive and deserving of deeper respect and attention.
The person receiving care remains at the center. My role is not to direct someone’s dying or tell them how they should meet death. I offer companionship, information, resources, witness, and another set of head, heart and hands when they are useful.
Beginning Before the End of Life
You do not need to be actively dying to work with a death companion.
Some people reach out after receiving a diagnosis, while considering or beginning hospice or palliative care, or while continuing treatment. Others are deciding whether they want further treatment, have chosen to stop treatment, or are allowing illness and the natural processes of the body to move toward death without further life-prolonging intervention.
You may also be well and simply wanting to become more familiar with mortality, explore your wishes, prepare for your eventual death, or make conversations about death a more ordinary part of your life and relationships.
Some are caring for a parent, partner, friend, child, animal companion, or other loved one and want another person nearby who is familiar with caregiving, dying, death, and grief.
Others want to approach death closer to the rhythms of home, relationship, family, chosen family, or community, with medical care present when it is wanted or needed rather than necessarily at the center of the experience.
And some do not have—or do not want—a larger circle around them.
We can begin with what is here: your wishes and choices, what you want and do not want, what you would like others to know if there are people involved in your care, and how you want to live while death is also part of the conversation.
Relationships, Family, Chosen Family & Caregiver Support
Death happens within relationships, and our relationships with others can be close, complicated, changing, distant, or absent.
Alongside care for the person who is ill or dying, I can support family members, chosen family, caregivers, friends, and others who are close to them.
This may include helping people orient to what is happening, making room for conversations, supporting communication and decision-making, identifying resources, offering caregiver respite or bedside presence, and tending some of the emotional and relational layers that can arise as death comes closer.
And not everyone has people they experience as family or community. Relationships may be distant, estranged, unavailable, or simply not where someone experiences connection or belonging.
There is no expectation that you arrive with other people around you. Companioning can begin with you.
Collaborative & Complementary Care
Care can take many forms.
Some people are surrounded by others as death comes closer. Some have one or two people nearby. Others find themselves largely on their own.
Professional care may include hospice, palliative care, physicians, nurses, therapists, spiritual care, or other providers. For others, care is held more closely at home by family, friends, neighbors, community, or a few trusted people. Some are intentionally choosing fewer medical interventions or allowing death to unfold naturally.
My work is collaborative and complementary to the care you choose.
I can companion someone individually, within a small and intimate circle, or alongside a wider network of support. When other providers are involved, and with your permission, I can communicate and coordinate with them while remaining within my non-medical role. When additional resources are wanted or needed, I can help identify them.
Dying does not need to be surrounded by a large team or become primarily a medical experience in order to be well supported.
My role is not to determine how much or how little care someone should receive. I listen closely to what the person wants, offer information and companionship, support the people around them when others are involved, and am transparent when something arises beyond my scope.
The person who is dying remains at the center, with their wishes, relationships, values, and way of meeting death informing the care around them.
Vigil, Active Dying & After the Last Breath
As dying becomes more active, companioning can become quieter and more immediate.
I may be present at the bedside, offer respite when caregivers are involved, help loved ones orient to some of what they may be noticing, tend the environment and relationships, support communication with hospice or other providers when involved, and help make room for the person’s wishes.
Music, silence, prayer, ritual, touch when welcomed, storytelling, familiar objects, time outside or near an open window, beloved people or animal companions, or simple presence may have a place.
After the last breath, there does not always need to be an immediate rush into what comes next.
When circumstances allow, there can be time to pause, gather or simply be, grieve, wash or tend the body, speak words, sing, sit in silence, create ritual, or begin taking in what has happened.
I can remain present through this time and help orient to what comes next.
Sudden & Unexpected Death
Not all deaths offer time to prepare.
Companioning is also available following sudden or unexpected death, when people may be meeting shock, grief, practical decisions, unanswered questions, and the disorientation that can come when life changes without warning.
Support can begin from where things are now, including grief tending, remembrance and ritual, practical orientation, support for those affected by the death, and connection with additional resources when needed.
Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) & VSED
For people who qualify for Medical Aid in Dying or who are considering or choosing Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking, I offer non-medical education and companioning before, during, and after a planned death.
Care is individually arranged around the person’s wishes, timing, relationships, and circumstances.
This may include preparation and planning, helping the person name what feels important for this time, support for family or chosen family when involved, coordination with hospice or other providers when part of the person’s care, tending the environment, ritual when desired, and presence on the day of death and after the last breath.
My role is non-medical and complements rather than replaces medical, hospice, legal, or mental health care when those services are needed or part of someone’s plan.
After-Death Care, Grief & Remembrance
Companioning does not necessarily end when someone dies.
I offer support in the hours and days following death and through grief and remembrance afterward.
There may be practical questions alongside the emotional reality of what has happened. There may be a body to care for, people to contact, stories to tell, rituals to create, belongings to encounter, or simply a need for somewhere the grief can have company.
When circumstances allow, there can also be room to slow the time immediately following death, allowing space to be with what has happened before moving into what comes next.
Grief tending may continue independently from death companioning for those who would like ongoing support.
Home Funerals, Natural Burial & Family-Led After-Death Care
For people interested in bringing more of death care back into family and community life, I offer education and companioning around home funerals, family-led after-death care, green and natural burial, and other ways of tending the body and the time following death.
These conversations can happen while planning ahead or after a death has occurred.
I can help people understand possibilities, locate resources, ask useful questions, and discern what fits their circumstances, values, culture, relationships, and community.
Life Review, Legacy & What Wants Tending
As death comes closer, people sometimes find themselves looking back as much as looking ahead.
There may be stories to tell, memories to preserve, relationships to reach toward, gratitude or apologies to express, objects to pass along, music to hear, letters to write, photographs to gather, or pieces of one’s life that simply want witness.
Legacy does not need to become a project.
Sometimes it is a conversation or a story told at the bedside. Sometimes it is creating something for the people who will remain.
And sometimes what is most wanted is simply the chance to be met as the person you are now.
Death Education & Conversations About Mortality
I also offer death education, Death Cafe’s, rituals and conversations about age and change for individuals, families, senior communities, healthcare and care communities, organizations, and other groups wanting more open conversation about death.
Topics may include death companioning and death doula care, end-of-life choices, grief, Medical Aid in Dying and VSED, home funerals and family-led after-death care, green and natural burial, advance care planning, caregiver support, and conversations about age and change.
Offerings may take the form of presentations, facilitated conversations, circles, or gatherings responsive to the needs of a particular community.
Ways We May Work Together
Care may be a single conversation, several hours of planning and support, an ongoing relationship across illness and dying, an extended vigil, or continued companioning after death.
Rather than asking you to know what kind of care you need before we have spoken, we may begin with what is happening and what kind of support you are looking for.
Pricing & Ways to Work Together
Some people need a conversation or a few hours of support. Others want greater continuity across illness, caregiving, dying, death, and the time that follows.
Sliding-scale pricing offers room to choose within the range according to your circumstances.
Hourly Companioning
$55–$88/hour
For in-person or virtual companioning when occasional support or flexibility feels most useful.
Getting Started — Planning & Early Support
$275–$400 | Up to 5 hours
For planning ahead, living with serious illness, considering changes in treatment or care, supporting someone you love, or beginning to explore what feels important now.
Full Circle — Ongoing End-of-Life Companioning
$1,050–$1,650 | Up to 18 hours
For greater continuity across serious illness, caregiving, approaching death, death itself, and grief.
Hours may be used over time as needs change—for conversations and planning, relational support, appointments or coordination when desired, life review and legacy tending, vigil and active dying, after-death care, grief, and remembrance.
Vigil & Active-Dying Companioning
$440–$700 | 8-hour shift
Extended presence through active dying and vigil and into the time after the last breath, including bedside presence, caregiver respite when needed, support for others when they are present, tending the environment and relationships, and ritual or remembrance when desired.
Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) & VSED
Hours, fees, and a companioning plan are arranged around the person’s needs, timing, and circumstances.
Vigil rates may offer a starting place for longer day-of-death support.
After-Death Care, Grief & Remembrance
$275–$440 | Up to 5 hours
For companioning following death, with room for grief and remembrance, care for those present, ritual, practical orientation, and what may appreciate tending now.
Accessibility & Social Equity
This care is offered with attention to financial accessibility, social equity, and the many circumstances people and communities may be living within.
Alongside my sliding-scale rates, I hold a limited number of reduced-rate spaces with particular consideration for people whose communities and lived experiences have not always been met with equitable access, respect, or belonging within healthcare and end-of-life care.
This includes LGBTQ2S+ people, people living with limited financial resources, and others for whom cost or systemic inequities may make this care harder to access.
You are the keeper of your own story and circumstances. There is no expectation to explain or prove your need for a reduced rate.
Reduced-rate availability varies with capacity and the kind of care requested.
Beginning the Conversation
You do not need to have clarity before reaching out, and you do not need another person to make the first contact on your behalf.
Individuals, families, chosen families, caregivers, and people preparing for their own death are welcome to contact me directly. Referrals are also welcome from hospice and palliative care teams, physicians, nurses, social workers, therapists, spiritual care providers, senior communities, and community organizations.
30-Minute Connection Call — Complimentary
A place to meet, share a little about what is bringing you here, ask questions, and sense whether this kind of companioning feels aligned.
You are welcome to reach out for yourself, for someone you love, or as someone caring for another. You are also welcome to reach out when there is no one else involved in your care.
In kinship with life, death, and all that connects us.
Willow Sat Narayan
Death Companion / Doula • Grief Tender • Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator • Educator • Body-Oriented Integration • Healing Arts Practitioner
Eugene, Oregon • Lane County & Surrounding Areas • Virtual Care Where Appropriate