End of Life & Grief Services
Navigating the processes at the end-of-life, whether it is a family member, friend or cherished pet, can often seem challenging and overwhelming. This service is also extended to those with cherished pets.
Easing the Journey Through End of Life
We offer various levels of service from assisting the client and family in preparing for the next phase in organizing their personal property, sourcing resources to tie up unfinished obligations and documents if needed that express their final wishes, rituals that bring ease and reflect the uniqueness of the individual and acknowledge the transition/passing as being important as birth would be sitting with the client in the final hours, liaising with family and medical teams, speaking about end of life where sometimes no one knows how to, or is comfortable with, such an intimate and important topic. We at Integro Wellness Institute know that unwanted as it may be, a ‘good death’ can be seen as a ‘well death’ and can provide enormous relief to both the person who has passed and their loved ones.
Support for End of Life Transitions
We can tailor a package to take some of the overwhelm off the person passing and their family with services covering compassionate, holistic support to ease stress and emotional and/or physical pain during the process, to help prepare rituals for this transition, create meaningful expressions of wishes for the person who is passing, arrange for the logistics of organizing, sourcing and supervising trusted cleaners, packers and movers, funeral service preparation and liaising with funeral homes and even conducting the service (Astrid is an Ordained Minister), whatever may be needed to be directly done or outsourced during this process of change, we can tailor a plan to enable practical and emotional comfort and support during this tender phase.
What is an End of Life Specialist?
An End of Life Specialist helps address, where mutually agreed to, the physical, psychosocial, spiritual and practical burdens placed by a terminal diagnosis or advanced age on the patient and family.
“When I was a Charge RN in wards and small private and psych hospitals, I always found it a profound and sacred privilege to be with someone who was passing. In nearly every single case, the patient did not have any known relatives and I was in each case, the only one who was with them during their transition. There was one private Nursing Home I worked at and I adored the Matron for insisting the dying patient was never left alone and that the charge sister had to make it their shift priority to be with them (another rule was there was never any excuse for a bed sore at change of shift and wobetide any members of a nursing shift that manifested on a patient, no matter how thin their old skin was, a decubitis ulcer). It was my way of doing things to speak to the patient with quiet encouragement and tenderness, sometimes singing, as though they were just born, and to thank them for their life, gently massaging their hands… these quiet and sometimes long passings were some of the most poignant and meaningful moments I recall from Nursing”
-Astrid Dean
