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<\/p>\nBarbara McMurray\u2019s family, like many others, rarely talked about death. It remained taboo, even while her father\u2019s health slowly began to decline.<\/p>\n
They never took the time to plan out the details surrounding his final rites or talked about how his remains should be taken care of. So when he died at the age of 87, she and her relatives were left to guess and debate among each other over what he would have wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were you thinking? You thought you were never going to die if you didn\u2019t talk about it, if you didn\u2019t plan for it?\u201d posed McMurray, a death doula based in Laguna Hills providing support to people nearing the end of their lives and their loved ones. \u201cThat\u2019s the one thing I would like people to understand. It\u2019s healthy and it\u2019s liberating to talk about what you want for your own death.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why she and other members of the Orange County Deathworkers Alliance partnered with Meadow Memorials and the Death Network, a San Diego-based education and support collective, to host Death over Drafts at Honey River Brewing in Anaheim on Thursday. They were joined by Lisa Pahl, a hospice social worker who helped create a party game called the Death Deck, and Daniel Moore M.D., founder of San Diego-based Autonomy Health.<\/p>\n
More than 50 people attended the gathering in Anaheim Thursday night, and similar events typically have a high attendance count, according to Tim Ringgold, an Orange-based music therapist specializing in grief and a member of the Orange County Deathworkers Alliance. That illustrates the importance of normalizing conversations about dying.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lisa Pahl, left, a hospice social worker and co-creator of the Death Deck, mingles with an attendee during Death over Drafts at Honey River Brewing in Anaheim on Thursday.<\/p>\n
(Eric Licas)<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really know what to expect, but it sounded like an environment that was open to having hard conversations,\u201d said Anaheim resident Glinka Alvarado, a first-time attendee of Death over Drafts whose partner died unexpectedly at the age of 26 about a year and seven months ago. \u201cIt helps to find community, and it helps to find what answers you can.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet because you never find comfort in knowing other people are going through something uncomfortable and sad,\u201d she added. \u201cBut it\u2019s a human experience, so it makes me feel a little less alone \u2026 everybody here appears to be very like-minded, trauma-informed and have a lot of care in their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Death over Drafts was created in 2019 by death doula Stefanie Elkins to offer a safe and informal space for people to open up about topics traditionally regarded as off-limits in polite conversation. It has been hosted numerous times in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, and it made its debut in Orange County on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Death can be especially hard to talk about in O.C., according to Ringgold. He\u2019s lived in Orange for 22 years and, in his experience, the topic comes up less frequently than it does with friends from elsewhere in Southern California. He said that might be because of a more \u201dperformative\u201d culture locally that has a tendency to emphasize discussions about wealth and achievement while downplaying anything that might undermine the outward appearance of success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this joke about death and taxes,\u201d Ringgold said. \u201cLook, I have a great accountant. Tax avoidance is a strategy, but death avoidance is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
A lighthearted message adorns a pillow in a pink hearse parked outside of Honey River Brewing during Death over Drafts, an event aimed at destigmatizing conversations about death, on Thursday.<\/p>\n
(Eric Licas)<\/p>\n
Discussions about the end of life are even more important now, with as many as 60% of funeral directors in the country preparing to retire and fewer people enrolling to study mortuary sciences, said Penny Waugh, a death doula and founder of the Death Network. Meanwhile, a \u201csilver tsunami\u201d of baby boomers reaching the end of their lives is set to peak in the next five to 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose two things combined is setting us up for probably lots of delays, even more limited options than what are currently offered in most funeral homes,\u201d Waugh said.<\/p>\n
Grief management, financial concerns associated with death and numerous alternatives to traditional cremation or burial, like eco-friendly water cremation or human composting, were discussed on Thursday. One of the most prominent topics that evening, and perhaps the most controversial, was the practice of medical aid in dying.<\/p>\n
Referred to in the past as assisted suicide, it\u2019s a procedure available to terminally-ill people diagnosed with less than six months to live that has been allowed in California since 2016. It\u2019s also permissible in 12 other states and Washington, D.C. That includes Illinois and New York, which both passed laws legalizing the practice in the past year.<\/p>\n
Those who choose that route must be at least 18 years old, of sound mind and demonstrably capable of making their own decisions. Those who undergo the procedure ingest a cocktail of drugs that puts them into a deep, painless sleep as their bodies shut down.<\/p>\n
Dr. Moore\u2019s practice has specialized in palliative care and medical aid in dying for about three years. He said that although many of his patients are in pain, that\u2019s not the main reason they make the decision to end their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir symptoms aren\u2019t really the driving force behind it,\u201d Moore said. \u201cIt\u2019s wanting control, wanting agency, wanting autonomy over their body, really wanting to control their death the way they were in control of their life \u2026 Most of my patients are at a certain point of readiness. Where they stand in their condition, they\u2019ve had a completed life, whatever that means to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780713971_173_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Dr. Donnie Moore of Autonomy Health addresses attendees of Death over Drafts, an event aimed at destigmatizing conversations about death, at Honey River Brewing in Anaheim on Thursday.<\/p>\n
(Eric Licas)<\/p>\n
McMurray\u2019s brother-in-law, Bob McMurray, chose medical aid in dying in 2021 after struggling with cancer for a year. It\u2019s part of why she chose to become a death doula.<\/p>\n
She was among a group of his closest friends and family who were present to watch him die, surrounded by flowers, photos and love. They marked the occasion with the meditative and melodic hum of Tibetan singing bowls and the recital of poems specifically chosen by the patient.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all enjoying his life and celebrating it while he was still there, which is kind of a beautiful thing to not wait until the funeral to say all the nice things about the person who can\u2019t even hear them,\u201d McMurray said. \u201c… And he was like, \u2018OK, it\u2019s 2 o\u2019clock, let\u2019s get this show on the road.\u2019 It was the one thing that he could control, how his endgame went down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who choose to undergo medical aid in dying gain the ability to exit the world on their terms, McMurray said. But whether families choose that route or to allow their loved one\u2019s diagnoses to run their course, everyone with elderly loved ones ought to consider the details surrounding how their lives will end, said Anaheim resident Crystal Su, a marketing professional who attended her first Death over Drafts gathering on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom is in her 70s,\u201d Su said. \u201cAll of my friends in that same age range, our parents are really at that place where they\u2019re going to be gone sooner rather than later. So these are really important conversations for us to have because everyone has to have these conversations about how the rest of their days will pan out, how they want to be memorialized. And I see so much hesitancy and reticence among my peers to discuss this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barbara McMurray\u2019s family, like many others, rarely talked about death. It remained taboo, even while her father\u2019s health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,142822,339,142824,57121,6223,1637,142823,47717,611,592,7641,4610,2429,48938,72],"class_list":["post-348964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-barbara-mcmurray","tag-death","tag-death-doula","tag-draft","tag-end","tag-life","tag-life-care","tag-medical-aid","tag-orange-county","tag-people","tag-practice","tag-thing","tag-thursday","tag-topic","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}