What Direct Care Work Has Taught Me: Death Is a Part of Life

Tracy Dudzinski

My mother-in-law’s death this summer was a blow to my whole family. Nothing can really prepare you for the loss of somebody you love. But helping her through her last months made me realize how much my work as a CNA has taught me about death.

I never thought much about death before I became a direct care worker. When I was forced to face it, in those days, I turned away as fast as possible. If someone close to me had died, I would avoid going up to the casket at the funeral home. Sure, I cried and mourned the death, but I distanced myself from it.

I also distanced myself from people who were close to death. When I became a direct care worker, 13 years ago, I would trade residents with other workers to avoid anyone who seemed close to the end. Sometimes I would even take on two residents in exchange for one who was dying.

I’m not sure when things started to change. Maybe it was the first time I helped wash a dead person. The nurse asked me to get her ready to be picked up by the funeral home, so I went into the room, scared and unsure where to start. I got so worried I started to cry. (CNA training does not prepare you to deal with the dead.)

Then one of the more experienced aides came into the room and helped me complete my task. She told me something I would never forget: that this was the last good thing I could do for this person.

Since then, I have seen a lot of people die, and I have lost my fear of death and people who are dying. I guess that I just faced up to the fact that this was part of my job, put on my big girl pants, and learned how to deal with it.

Once I’d made that decision, I found it wasn’t so scary. I also realized that getting to be part of the end of someone’s life was an honor. I have sat with many dying residents and comforted them, holding their hand and reading to them, telling them that it was okay to go and the people they left behind would be okay. I even spent all my breaks with one gentleman who had no family, so he wouldn’t be alone near the end. Some of the people I sat with imparted some real wisdom to me, too.

I learned that people can sometimes choose when to die. One gentleman who was surrounded by family had been hanging on for what seemed like forever. When it was time for him to be repositioned, we asked the family to step out in the hall so we could freshen him up. As we started to turn him on his other side, he took his last breath. I believe he was waiting until his family was out of the room to die.

I learned that just being there can help a dying person and their family. I once stayed after my shift ended to sit with a daughter as her mother was dying, since I knew that my presence was comforting her. We visited a little, but most of the time we just sat quietly waiting.

I learned that being there can be particularly meaningful for the people you are already close to. I hit it off right from the start with a resident named Melvin. He would wait for me to help him to bed each night I was there, so we could watch the news together before finishing his cares. When his health started declining I sat with him often, and we would talk about anything and everything. Toward the end, Melvin told me not to forget him and I told him he would always have a special place in my heart.

Melvin died on my weekend off– I think he was waiting until I wasn’t around. I was crushed when I learned about his death, but very honored when his son asked me to be a pallbearer for his father. I knew that I had touched their lives, and been a comfort to Melvin as he neared death.

My husband and I were his mother’s primary caregivers for the last 1½ years. For the last four months of her life, we moved in with her so she could stay in her home until she died. If it weren’t for the lessons I had learned in my direct care work, I don’t think I would have been able to deal with that.

We had never seen eye to eye, but during those last four months I grew very close to my mother-in-law. She had open heart surgery years ago, early in my CNA career, and I helped care for her afterward, but I hated it. Helping her bathe and taking care of her needs was almost unbearable for me.

During the last months of her life, taking care of her was much easier. I think it was because I had much more CNA experience under my belt. It also helped that her attitude toward me changed after she developed dementia. For some reason, toward the end, she thought I was the cat’s meow. She would thank me profusely each time I gave her a shower.

Something about her needs, maybe just how basic and clear they were, helped us come to a new understanding and overcome our difficulties. She wanted a bath and I could help, and we both knew how important that “little” thing was.

I have come a long way from avoiding the casket to carrying one. I used to fear death, but now I accept it as a part of life. I even talk about death differently now, using direct language instead of euphemisms: I’ll say someone died instead of saying they passed on.

Thanks to direct care work, death is no longer the elephant in the room for me.

Tracy Dudzinski
Board member
Direct Care Alliance