Remembering Ritual

Tracy: You look beautiful.

Joél: I appreciate it. Thank you. I had to pick up my grandma this morning. She’s 88, still sharp and mobile. Amazing.

Tracy: Nice. And welcome as an official End Well speaker.

Joél: I’m so excited.

Ritual, Made Usable

Joél: What’s alive for me right now is ritual, and how hard it is for people to embrace because we treat it like something external. I’ve been working with a “spirit-to-spirit” method I learned through my teachers. We can use different words, spirit, essence, core, but it has three levels:

• You: Thank yourself. Feel where your essence lives, or doesn’t, in your body.
• Guides and ancestors: Acknowledge them and ask for direction.
• The All: Whatever you believe in, even the void, thank it for making space for you.

I’d love to teach that and then do a small ritual onstage so people leave with something they can actually use.

If I could title the talk today, it would be Culture Is the Medicine for Grief. Beliefs about death and what we’re “allowed” to do are taught by culture, or by the absence of it. In some languages, that’s ancestor veneration. In others, it’s speaking names, lighting candles or singing songs. Different words, same heartbeat.

Permission to Slow Down

Tracy: I’m also thinking about people caring for someone at home. When the person is no longer breathing and the time of death is called, families often feel confused: Am I allowed to touch the body? What are the rituals? Can I mess it up? Do I just let someone take the body away?

Then guilt sets in later: I didn’t know what to do.

I hope you can help give people permission, even without a formal ritual, to touch, sit with and venerate the body long enough to allow some closure and make that passage less abrupt.

Joél: That brings up action steps. Slow down. You don’t have to make decisions in five minutes, or even within 24 hours.

Medical professionals are trained to rush. You can exercise autonomy and honor that space. For those caring for the dead, we can also ask how we accommodate that space when it isn’t being given elsewhere.

Tracy: People can ask for time that is legally theirs. The hospice nurse can call the time of death, and the body doesn’t have to go immediately. But you have to know to ask.

Joél: Yes. And I want to be explicit: Sitting with the body can be traumatic in some circumstances, including trauma cases or very difficult deaths. I don’t want to give people false hope. I want to empower them with choices.

From my perspective, the moment someone takes their last breath, they enter the ancestral realm. Veneration can begin then through slowing down, taking time and holding space, within the bounds of what is safe and right for that family.

Calling Before the Last Breath

Tracy: Do you see one person in the circle of care who is more willing to do the preparation, the “Who do we call? What happens?” work, even when others aren’t ready?

Joél: All the time. Often it’s the oldest daughter, and sometimes the oldest son. Sometimes no one wants to talk. Sometimes estranged families hand everything to administrators or lawyers.

That, too, is ritual. It’s the rhythm of how our families solve problems.

With a found family, the legal dynamics really matter. Naming who is empowered to act can be an act of love.

Tracy: When a family reaches out before a death, how do you guide them?

Joél: I ask questions so they can educate me about their needs: their religious and cultural beliefs, what they are and are not comfortable with, and who the dying person wants in the room.

Then I give them options. That differs by state. I’m licensed in two states, not 50, so I’m careful there.

When someone is actively dying, I do my best to connect them with a death doula. Death is not a solo sport. It’s a team effort with multiple layers.

Sometimes, the most helpful thing is simply being on the phone and listening. People need to feel like they’re doing something. Talking is doing something.

What the Dead Teach Us

Tracy: Have the dead taught you? Do bodies teach you?

Joél: Yes, constantly. Bodies communicate. Not verbally, but spiritually and somatically. You have to listen.

I’ll get a prompting while doing cosmetics. I’ll mix two colors, and suddenly it’s her lipstick. Families ask, “How did you know?”

Or I’ll say a phrase or suggest a song, and everyone breaks open.

It isn’t performance. It’s attention.

Tracy: Maybe part of the fear around dead bodies isn’t only safety myths. It’s the intensity of the unknown.

Ritual can protect our minds while we open ourselves to mystery. Touch the hand. Say the words. Light the candle.

Joél: You’ve got me thinking in action steps.

First, slow down. You don’t have to make decisions in five minutes. In a medical system that rushes you, reclaim your autonomy.

And for clinicians, even when you’re trained to move quickly, how do you hold space when a family needs time?

Tracy: You have so much amazing wisdom to share. I can’t wait to hear your talk.

Joél: Thank you for inviting me.

Tracy: Thank you.