Darnell: So far, everyone I've ever met, we want to leave something here, and we want someone to know that my life meant something. Even if it was hard, even if it was tough. I struggled daily, it had to mean something.

[00:00:15] Sarah: Welcome to Peaceful Exit, the podcast where we talk to creatives about death, dying, grief, and also life. I'm Sarah Cavanagh, and my guest today is writer, filmmaker, and death doula, Darnell Lamont Walker, author of the new book, “Never Can Say Goodbye.” In this interview, Darnell recalls sitting with his dying cousin during the AIDS crisis and how his grandma's fearless, open-hearted approach to death shaped everything that followed. He explains why grief doesn't have just one face: it can look like starting a garden, running a marathon, laughing hysterically, or crying at a red light. Darnell and I also share the belief that adventure and creativity can be the ultimate antidotes to despair.

Welcome to Peaceful Exit.

[00:01:05] Darnell: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:07] Sarah: I love the term doula without borders, and I think you and I share a sort of global adventure bug. I think you're one of the few people I've met actually who's also bungee jumped.

[00:01:20] Darnell: Oh, okay.

[00:01:21] Sarah: So how was that for you? How was bungee jumping for you?

[00:01:24] Darnell: So the first time, it was my 21st birthday with my friend Nancy, it was pretty great. Like I let her be the one in charge, and so I had no idea when we were gonna just release and go. The second time I was in Ecuador, in Baños, and I'm standing on the bridge and the guy's holding my legs and he says, "Jump!" And I'm like, “You have to let me go first.” And he says, "No, no, no, you jump and then I let you go." And so I'm like, that sounds kinda shaky, but okay. And as soon as I jump, he says, "Oh, I, I forgot to, I forgot to tie you in." And I always say it's wild how fast, for me at least, I accepted death. Like I immediately just said, well, this is it. And I opened my arms and, and just started to fly. And when the rope pulled me back, I, I just, oh, oh, he, he was joking. Okay. No. All right. This was fun. But it was a good time. It was a really good time.

[00:02:17] Sarah: That seems like a cruel joke.

[00:02:19] Darnell: It was a very cruel joke. and my friend went second, so he was like, "Please don't do that to me."

Sarah: I jumped back in the '80s when they didn't have harnesses. they just tied the climbing rope around your ankles, and that was it.

Darnell: Oh my gosh, oh, how was that?

[00:02:35] Sarah: Terrifying. But actually so life-giving. It’s almost as if it’s the antidote for despair is to do things that make you fully alive.

[00:02:45] Darnell: Mm-hm. Yeah. Do it scared. You know, it's one of those... I, I was just telling someone yesterday, I was like, the more nervous it makes me, the better I feel. Like it's, it means I'm still here. Nerves mean you're alive. You know, the fear means you're alive and I, I love that.

[00:03:00] Sarah: Is there anything else you've done that makes you feel that way?

[00:03:03] Darnell: Oh gosh. A million things. I, I've hitchhiked across many countries. I've eaten in some of the strangest places — I ate at a C restaurant in LA once. Um, but like I, I think most of my life people have looked at — like when I was living in South Africa even. I remember when I first moved there and I wanted to go to Soweto to see Nelson Mandela's house. It was hard to get an Uber back, so I saw a train down at the bottom of the hill, and I hop on this yellow train and I take it back into the town. And I'm talking to a friend that afternoon, and he's like, "You got on the yellow train? People get killed on there every day." And then I probably took that train at least 20 more times, and if I go, I go, but this feels like the thing I need to be doing.

[00:03:51] Sarah: And by radically accepting your mortality, you're able to step into these situations that you might not otherwise.

[00:03:56] Darnell: Absolutely.

[00:03:59] Sarah: Let's talk about your book.

[00:04:02] Darnell: I see it's all marked up over there. I l- I love to see it.

[00:04:06] Sarah: Yeah. I love a good story, and you're a wonderful storyteller. And early in your book, you describe the first time you sat with someone at the end of their lives. What specifically do you recall about this experience?

[00:04:21] Darnell: It feels like it was just a week ago. It was my cousin, and I was 12. I was young, this was 1994. And I remember vividly most of the family just avoided him, wouldn't come around, didn't wanna be there. But how there was no fear for me. A lot of that fearlessness around the situation, especially at the time when so many people were ignorant to what was happening with the AIDS virus and just didn't wanna look into it, but a lot of that fearlessness came from my grandma, who said, "Listen, you're my nephew. You come home and you can stay here, and I'll take care of you." And I remember how we'd just sit there and watch TV. I had no memory of him, but he knew much about me. And so it was me asking him questions about, "What was happening when you were in, Kentucky? This is what's happening in seventh grade. You know, I have these friends, and this is what happened last week," and just sharing these stories. I remember when someone would come from the family, we'd sit there and eat or drink something and then they'd go and bleach the fork because they were concerned about getting sick too. And it was such a strange time, and I remember thinking, I'd never want anyone to feel like that. I'd never want anyone to feel isolated. I don't want anyone to feel alone no matter what's happening. And so that's where that was born for me, the reason I do this work, or at least one of the reasons I do this work, was born in that moment.

[00:05:50] Sarah: You're an empath with a huge heart.

[00:05:53] Darnell: Oh, I'll, I'll accept that. I'll, I'll, I'll accept that. Yeah, and it w- it was just, and I had no idea at the time that that moment or those moments were shaping my life. For me it was just, yeah, I'm just sitting here talking to my cousin.

[00:06:08] Sarah: What do you see as the relationship between facing mortality and creating art?

[00:06:14] Darnell: For me, and I say this, I, it never feels like the right word to say, but I feel like I've been lucky enough — so when I was 20, when I was 22, I was diagnosed with a blood clotting condition that could kill me at any time, just to put that out there. And so I've, I've been lucky enough to have to face my mortality every single day. Every time I take this pill that they say will keep me alive, I face that mortality. And because I do that, I have to end my day thinking like, well, if I die today, did I do all the things I wanted to do? Did I create the things I needed to create? And for me, a big part of my life and a big part of what will one day be my death is — I want to die empty. I want all this creativity that I have inside, all these notes that I have on my, on my Notes app on my phone — the last time I checked there were like 4,380 notes that go back to like 2012 — but I wanna make sure I get to as many of those as I can. And, and slowly I'm checking them off. I won't get to all 4,000 of these notes. I won't get to everything that I've wanted to do, but I will get to as much as I possibly can, and that's important for me.

[00:07:28] Sarah: Yeah, I believe you will. We talked about adventure and how that's an antidote. Does it feel for you like creating art is also the antidote to despair, after you spend that intense time with someone at the end of their lives? You really have to, like, take time to, you know, recover, if you will. That m-maybe that's not the right word, but —

[00:07:50] Darnell: I hear you though. I hear what you're saying. I think it's a way for all of us. I think we are all creative. Some of us just haven't found that, what makes us creative. For me, it's these things fuel, they act as fuel, these moments. and even with this book, it was sort of like I, I had no intentions of writing a book. And when they asked, immediately it became, oh, this is a way for me to creatively honor these lives I was able to witness at the end.

[00:08:15] Sarah: Your grandmother was a huge influence on you, and your decision to become a death doula. Do you think she sensed something in you that she thought made you a good fit for this sort of work?

[00:08:26] Darnell: She never looked at it as work. It was, this is just what we do for people we love, and I — it never looked like something she went out of her way to do. It was always just so effortless. She absolutely knew I was curious. So one of my nicknames as a kid was Curious George and a lot of the family still calls me George actually, because I, I, I, I had so many questions, I wanted to know everything and because of that, she knew she could talk to me. I think that's what started those conversations. It was when her sister was dying, and we'd sit there, and I come from a family, even still, will not talk about death. So it was just me and her who would talk about it. And she was so happy to have someone. And I, I also, if any of my cousins are listening to this, I was also the favorite grandchild. So those two things, as I grew, she'd share these stories with me. She, she'd talk to me about her own death, how she wanted to go, and I'm so grateful for that. And I think when we started having those conversations, she realized that I'd be the one in the end to get her as close to that as possible when no one else would listen. She'd say things like, “When I die, I want to, I want my body to be in the living room like they used to do." Or, “I don't want to be at the funeral home. Let them do what they need to do, but just bring me right back." I was able to give her the permission to die that I feel she needed in the end.

[00:09:56] Sarah: I think one of the reasons you might have been the favorite grandchild is you saw her and you heard her, and that's an enormous gift. You were so young — something that really stuck with me, and I think you were in middle school when you gathered friends, you'd lost a classmate, and you gathered friends in a grief circle at recess.

Darnell: Eighth grade.

[00:10:16] Sarah: Eighth grade

[00:10:18] Darnell: Absolutely, eighth grade, '95. So this was the first time we lost a friend, but my grandmother had lost many and so when my friend died, and the school at the time, they don't know what to do. They don't know what to do for 13-year-olds, and how to explain death and so they just say, "If you need to talk to a guidance counselor, the door’s open —

[00:10:35] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:36] Darnell: Have a good day otherwise, lunch will be at 12.” And my f- we're, we're falling apart. Like, this is someone we see every day, even outside of school. She lived around the corner. This was my girlfriend a year before, whatever that meant in seventh grade, you know? And so when it happens, we're at recess and everyone's crying, and it's like, "Well, maybe we should talk about Pam. What was your favorite thing about her?" And, and how necessary that was, and how we were able to be there for each other when the school couldn't. The school didn't know how to. And our parents even, I remember going home, and I don't even think I brought it up. I went straight to my grandma's house that afternoon, and I told my grandma, and she said, "Oh, maybe you should take a nap. You look tired," or, "And I'll cook some food." I, I remember her cooking like some of my favorite food. I went upstairs and just cried on the bed while she cooked, and then I came down and she would talk about it. But I know a lot of us went home, and that's where the conversation ended. And so I'm grateful that I learned how to do that, watching my grandma go visit her friends in, in hospice and in hospitals and assisted living facilities, and being there with her while she did that and seeing how she talked to them, and how she talked about them with the friends at night at her house.

[00:11:53] Sarah: Do you talk to your own son?

[00:11:55] Darnell: Absolutely. At this point, it's just a bunch of tune-ups, you know? Like he's like, "I know, I know." I'm like, "Okay. Yeah."

[00:12:04] Sarah: He’s fully planned his entire end of life and —

[00:12:06] Darnell: He feels like he has a long way to go, you know? So he's slowly getting to it, but he absolutely knows everything about my plan. He knows exactly what to do should I go before him. You know, and, and he's lost friends. He's, I remember he was in eighth grade as well when he tragically lost a good friend of his and thankfully we had been talking about it years before that even. And so when that happened, it was, "So how do you feel?" and able to talk to him and be there for him through that and let him know that it's okay to talk about it and, "Do you and your friends talk about it at school?" And he's like, "Yeah, there are some friends I can call, and we've talked about it." And it's like, oh good.

[00:12:48] Sarah: It's so great that people are talking about it. That was not happening when I was growing up.

[00:12:53] Darnell: I don't think it's, it happens now, you know? Like even now, and I think it's still very small portions of this. But I, I can bring any conversation around to death. And so we're at brunch talking about prosecco, and I'm like, "Yeah, oh, you know, would you want this served at your funeral or?” I will bring this conversation around to it because I think it's so important, I force people to, to have these conversations.

[00:13:17] Sarah: I started this work thinking I would be a buzzkill at parties, and actually everyone wants to share their story of loss. Everyone. And it's amazing, then suddenly that's the conversation. It shifts so easily to this, And especially now after COVID, it feels like people are itching to talk about grief

[00:13:38] Darnell: You give people this chance. Like they've been sitting at home and they, they don't wanna be the weird one who goes to, you know, to the grocery store, goes to the party, to talk about death. But you realize you're not the weird one, you're the one that also deals with this thing. And I, I think we're all just waiting for that one person to say, I'm the weird one. Come talk to me." And I love being the w- I love being the weird person at the party. You know, it's just like I wanna talk about this. I'm having a brunch with a friend Atlanta, and we're just gonna bring five friends each, and we're gonna make everyone sit around and talk about death. There are gonna be 10 people who haven't had a chance to talk about any of this with anyone else.

[00:14:20] Sarah: Yeah, it's fantastic. One of my inspirations, she's actually my writing partner. She's 81 years old. She started the death brunch for herself. She doesn't have immediate family or a spouse. And so she realized that her closest friends would be taking care of her at the end of her life. And so she gathered us all at a brunch, and she handed us a, just a file folder full of all of her personal information and all of her plans and all, you know. It's brought her such a sense of peace to have those plans and have them in writing and knowing the people that will take care of her, you know? That's, that's huge.

[00:14:55] Darnell: That's such a beautiful — I love that idea. But it also, you know, it, it gives us that control. Like, it gives her this control in a thing that we really have no control over. But even that, that sense of it. 'Cause we don't know how it's gonna end. Peace of mind.

[00:15:08] Sarah: it's not all on one person too, 'cause there's so much to do. In Peaceful Exit we call it your pod, and basically formally asking people, will you serve in this role? And we met each other for the first time in the pod because we were close to her from different parts of her life. So it was, again, it like brings together a kind of a diverse group of people from your life that has also been lovely to have new relationships with people that love her,

Darnell: It's, it's that building of community. Like, you know, even... when I'm gone, these people also won't grieve alone, [SC: That’s right] which a lot of us do, you know? A lot of us go home and it's, I have no one. So these are people who will call and say, "Hey, come over. I want to talk about her,” and that's love, you know? I-I say planning is love. What she's doing is, is — that's a enormous amount of love. I love that.

[00:15:57] Sarah: So after his father's death, your friend Marcus asked you, "Why haven't I grieved yet?" What are people really asking when they pose that question to you? What do people think grief looks like versus what it actually looks like in your experience?

[00:16:12] Darnell: Yeah, you know, I think one of the, one of the questions they, they wanna know and are afraid to ask is: does this mean I didn't love them as much as I think I did? Which is never the case, it's never the case. We think grief looks like falling apart in the grocery store or in the yard, or sitting in the dark for 10 days at a time without the TV on and, and doing nothing and not showering. And that's grief too. It's also going and starting a garden and running seven miles and signing up for this marathon and laughing with friends and saying, "I'm not alone. I, I do want someone to come over and laugh with and eat with." And that's grief too, and I think we really have to reframe our thinking around that. You know, we see someone laughing and we say, "Oh, she must not miss her brother at all. She's laughing, and she was out partying." And it's like, well, I needed to be with people, and I needed to laugh, and I was grieving at that moment. That's also grief. With Marcus, it was sort of helping him realize that, yeah, three years have passed, and in those three years you've grieved every day for your dad. And this is what it looked like for you. And that if your mom dies, what you thought was gonna happen for your dad might happen for your mom. And recognizing that, yes, that too is grief. I remember when my grandma died, and I mean, she — favorite person in the world. I didn't — I think I cried, I cried for about 10 minutes when I heard she was in hospice. When she died, there were no tears at all. I was, I was so happy for her. I was glad I was able to give her that permission. But a few years later, a friend from college died, who I hadn't spoken to since college, it'd been over 20 years. But I mean, I grieved, I cried for days thinking about her — it was, and I, I don't know why. I can't explain it. You know, I tried to get to the root of why I was crying so hard. And if anyone looked at it from the outside, and they don't understand what grief can look like, it looks like, oh, you must have felt more for the friend than you did for your grandma. I don't have to make sense of this. We don't have to make sense of any of this. This is just what it is. This is grief, and it can look all these different ways. I've laughed and, you know, and then years pass and I'm sitting at a red light and I fall apart for 20 seconds until the light turns green thinking about my grandma. And then I, light turns green, I wipe my face and I carry on. And that's grief too. And I, you know, it's, it's helping people realize that all these things are grief. And you don't have to make sense of it if you don't want to. You don't have to look for the root of it. You don't have to do anything but feel your feelings. Like, grief will wait. It will come out when it needs to come out and how it needs to come out. So it's just feel the feels and then when it's over, move on. And it'll come back, it doesn't leave us completely. But just welcome it when it comes, and watch it go when it goes, and keep on going.

[00:19:09] Sarah: Well, you write that grief can be full of life. Can you explain what this means?

[00:19:14] Darnell: When I feel grief coming on, it's, oh, you know, I should call my friends over, and it, it may welcome this grand adventure. It may find me bungee jumping off a bridge in Ecuador, with just rope around my feet —

[00:19:27] Sarah: With no rope, apparently.

[00:19:28] Darnell: Or with no rope at all. Uh, with a squirrel suit just flying into the wind, you know. Um, it can be that, But I think grief also itself is exactly that. It's, it's life, it's appreciation for this life that we lost that we no longer have. Even if it's not a death loss, even if it's a relationship or the end of a, of an identity, the end of a job. It's about life itself. Whatever it was we lost was big for us

[00:19:56] Sarah: You write that for people who have suicidal ideation, that a death doula can be invaluable. What is the role of a death for those desiring to end their own lives, and how have you handled this scenario?

[00:20:12] Darnell: I don't think it's any different for anyone else as far as the role goes. What happens if you do this? What do you want to happen next? What story do you wanna leave behind? What's your legacy? Let's talk about the obituary. Let's talk about the life you've lived, and how that gets honored. To be there to say, I am here, you know, and I know you want to do this, and I hope you don't. And anything you need to talk about in the meantime, I am, I am here for that. Anything you need to — If you need a hug, if you need someone to just come over and sit on the other end of the couch and say nothing, I'm here for that. But I'm also here to say, if you do this, I can make sure that the other things you want will happen, will go forth, and I will — as, as much as I possibly can.

[00:21:03] Sarah: It feels like a deep healing, that someone is seen when they feel so unseen.

[00:21:09] Darnell: We all just so deeply just want be witnessed, all of us. Not just the people who are, who think about suicide or, death, but we all want someone to know that we were here at some point. I, I, I have yet to meet anyone who said, "I just wanna slip out of here and be unknown." I mean, I'm- I'm not saying that doesn't exist. I'm sure there's someone who may say that and may want that. So far, everyone I've ever met, we want to leave something here, and we want someone to know that my life meant something. Even if it was hard, even if it was tough. I struggled daily, it had to mean something.

[00:21:49] Sarah: There's a chapter in your book entitled Life Doula. Talk about the job of a doula in helping dying people live in those days they have left. We talked a little bit about creativity and imagination, and I remember a story in the book about, he always wanted to be an artist and so you grabbed paints at the end of his life and he became the artist he always wanted to be. What often gets in our way of living those last days, and what's your role in that?

[00:22:23] Darnell: Those last days, I think we're so caught up with what we think is supposed to happen, what people tell us we're supposed to do. People think there's only one way to die. I have to, I have to die in the hospital with all these things coming out of my nose, out of my mouth, alone. I come in and I, I ask that question: "How do you want to die?" You see these people light up and say, "What do you mean? How do I-- do I have a choice?" How do you want these last days to go? This is the situation we're in. I can't get you to Rome, but I can get you as close to that as we possibly can given the circumstances. And they light up and they say, "Oh, well, this is what I want.” It gives them this moment where they say, "Oh, I can decide how to live these last few days. Oh, I want to be in my garden. I want to paint. I want to tell my story. Do we have time to write a memoir?" Yes, we do. We can speak it into this thing on your phone, and we will transcribe this thing as fast as possible. I love being able to do that. Um, I have a client now who, she's like, "This is my year. I wanna go see a giraffe. I want to have a backyard concert.I want to learn to hula hoop." Cool. I'm contacting people in Dallas, like, oh, this is a hula hoop school. All right, I'm signing you up. Like, yes, you, we are moving toward death, but aren't we all? And if there's life in us, if there's still breath and it's still possible, why aren't we doing the things that we can still do that we wanna do? It's, it's, = I asked a group the other day, like, if you knew you had a year left, what suddenly becomes unimportant and what becomes a priority?

[00:24:12] Sarah: I have a book coming out in the fall, and my co-author had this question for you, 'cause I told her I was talking to you today. She was really curious about, being male in a mostly female — I mean, most of the death doulas I meet are female. Is there something you notice that's in this work, uh, about being who you are?

[00:24:34] Darnell: Honestly, it's something that I did not notice until a couple of years ago, maybe last year, during a virtual workshop. And I think it may have been like 50 of us on the call, and halfway through this one woman stops and she says, "Can we all just stop for a second and say how grateful we are that Darnell is here as the only man?" And I looked around and I'm like, "I am." And I honestly never thought about it.

[00:25:00] Sarah: Never occurred to you. Yeah,

[00:25:01] Darnell: Never occurred to me. Since then I’ve paid more attention. We all know that caregiving historically has been, uh, been women, and I hope to change — like every time a man says, oh, you know, what you're doing is incredible. You should think about it, you should do this too. You know, I, I try to recruit. I'm a recruiter out here now. I love to see men doing the roles because men don't call me to come and be by their bedside. The wives call me, the- their girlfriends, their daughters. But the man is never the one to call me because they've put up this front for so long, they pretended to be this strong person for so long, or they, they had this one idea of strength. I get to come in and show them that this is strength, too. And I get to help be that person and create that safe space and so I, I want more of us here to do that. But this is, it is a reality and it is something that I hope changes

[00:25:59] Sarah: My father died in December, he had dementia for many years. And when he first realized he needed a caregiver, he really wanted a male caregiver, and frankly, it was very hard to find anyone. And so, yeah I’m grateful that you're out there recruiting. There's a definite need in our culture, in lots of cultures really, to show what strength is.

You wrote a beautiful book. I think storytelling is the only way to people's hearts. Especially comedy cracks people open, so you can talk about hard subjects. And in the vein of comedy, in a journal for a dying man named Calvin, which I thought that was beautiful, you bought him a leather journal. You wrote advice in this journal, and Calvin asked you to help him shake shit up.

[00:26:45] Darnell: You have to do that thing that makes you nervous, that makes you afraid, that you know will probably not kill you. You know, like I, I can't say, it, it, it might. It might, you know. There's a chance, but it probably won't. But you have to do that. What is that thing that you've been putting off? Running with the bulls, bungee jumping, jumping off a cliff in the middle of the ocean, hitchhiking across the country, or just eating at this really nice restaurant that costs a little bit too much, but you deserve it. You know, doing the things that, that make your heart beat faster. Sometimes it's telling that person that you actually love them and you've been putting that off. Just do it. Do it scared. Do it with all the fear that's in your heart, and you'll see that it didn't kill you. So many people wanna reach the end unscathed and just in one piece. People wanna go out like this giant tree, like this, a beautiful oak tree, but I just wanna go out like the stump. You know, I wanna give it all away. I wanna leave it all here. Die empty.

Sarah: So what does a peaceful exit mean to you?

Darnell: Peaceful exit means to me getting as close to the end that we want as possible with a smile, knowing that, that we did everything that we could possibly do in this life that made someone or something or even ourselves a little bit better. But it's getting there with a smile. It's getting there with, I did that. I really did it. I'm ready, I am ready to go. I, I wish that for us all. I wish we all got to the end and said, I am ready. Like I, I meet so many older folks who wake up and say, "Huh, still here, huh? Okay. Well, all right. Any day now, though, I'm, I can go." You know, I want us all to get there, and I think that's the peaceful exit. I want to get there with amazing music. I watched my grandfather, I was there for my grandfather when he was dying, and his whole thing was just eating all the foods he loved. That's the peaceful exit for me. Getting there with all the foods I love, with the people I love, with them all saying, "You really had a good life."