Theo Brandt, Death Doula

How I began

I lost three friends between 2015 and 2018 and watched a hospital keep one of them from the people who had cared for him for a decade. I trained as a doula that year specifically so that nobody in my community would have to face that alone again.

Why families choose me

Chosen family is family, and it is astonishing how often a hospital or a funeral home needs to be told so. A great deal of my work is making sure the people who actually love someone are in the room, on the paperwork and listened to — which sometimes means standing beside them while they say it to a stranger with a clipboard. Beyond that, the ordinary doula work: planning the last weeks while there is still time to plan them, sitting vigil, and helping a household care for their person at home afterwards if that is what they want. I have walked eleven households through a home funeral and I know the paperwork cold. I also run a monthly group for people who have lost a partner and been treated as though they had not, which meets in Rogers Park and asks nothing of anyone.

Ownership