From Public Affairs Specialist to Thanatologist

Washington, D.C.

After grieving the death of her young daughter, Patricia Boies resolved to help others deal with the death of a loved one.

With no warning, after a lifetime of perfect health, my daughter Gina collapsed in the hallway outside her fourth grade classroom in Seattle, from what turned out to be a massive cerebral hemorrhage. She survived the three-hour surgery to stop the head bleed, as the neurosurgeons called it, only to remain in the deepest coma and completely paralyzed, with no possibility of recovery.

Three days after her 10th birthday, my husband and I climbed onto the bed with her and held her while she died. She was our only child. Most of my energy right after my daughter died went into preparing for the public celebration of her life, and planning what I would say. It still amazes me how grace poured down during this period, and when I read now the words that I spoke then, I am struck by how they represent what I believe and feel today, eight years later.

After the celebration, I knew I had to dive down deep. I had already quit my job. I worked in the garden, the place I most encountered Gina. I kept writing in my journal, with Gina as my muse, chronicling the grief and the glory, the shock and the questioning, the search for meaning.

Mostly, I surrendered. I wanted to feel whatever I was feeling with utter abandon, to stay fully present to the pain and the joy – and how amazing to feel joy as well as pain. It is because of this surrender that I emerged enriched, emotionally and spiritually.

Although I tried to get back into the project-oriented public affairs work I had been doing, and did so for a time, I realized that I was being drawn to work in the field of death and dying. Gina’s death broke my heart wide open. I knew I had to do something with the compassion that fills me for people facing their own death or grieving the death of somebody they love.

My daughter’s death led me to seek a career in thanatology, the field of death and dying. In 2007, I obtained a certificate in thanatology from one of the few institutions of higher education offering a comprehensive program. I joined the Association for Death Education and Counseling and will make a presentation on my personal experience at their annual conference in 2009.

Over the past year, I have been working at a hospice in Washington, D.C., first managing their volunteer services program, and now doing community outreach to increase awareness of the benefits of hospice.

Although death and dying are intertwined with life and living, talking about death is still largely taboo. I want to write and speak on death and bereavement, to help make it an everyday subject of conversation. I want to help lessen the fear of death in our culture and offer hope to those who mourn.

See Patricia Boies' profile