Kerikeri woman brings death-walking to Northland

Linz Hart is bringing deathwalking to Northland. Photo / Jenny Ling

A career in death-walking isn't one many are willing to take up. But for a Far North woman who's recently taken up the role, it's all about helping people die well. Jenny Ling reports.

She's a trained chef, artist, celebrant and storyteller – now Linz Hart-MacDiarmid is bringing the art of death-walking to Northland.

It's not for the faint-hearted, spending time with the dying and being there for grieving loved ones.

But for Hart-MacDiarmid - who sees her role as combining doula work, with death-walking and being a funeral celebrant – she's lived through it enough to know how to make a difference.

Linz Hart-MacDiarmid is bringing the art of death-walking to Northland. Photo / Jenny Ling

She cared for her mother during the final two years of her life, looked after her dad before he passed, and was a full-time carer for a friend during her three-year battle with cancer.

She now wants to help people in the North "die well".

"It's part of my own personal journey," she said.

"I know it's an inevitable end, and it's going to happen to all of us so the more grace we find within ourselves allows us to die well. I'm not out there to make people feel better but I have the emotional capacity to just simply be and be quiet and to listen.

"It's about acknowledging that it's okay to feel really shite about the deep grief that you feel when someone dies, but we need assistance to help us navigate through that difficult time."

Also known as a death doula or a death midwife, death-walkers support people who are dying, similar to how a midwife supports a birth.

Their roles vary from simply being with the dying person and listening to them, to liaising with family members, working with the funeral director and talking to the bereaved to create a ceremony.

"It's someone who walks with someone else and their death journey," Hart-MacDiarmid said.

"That might be the dying person or their family or friends. I also offer guidance, give information and empowerment and basically enable them to be as open and courageous as they can, in dying well. Perhaps they've been given a diagnosis and are coming to terms with it.

"And it's about bringing something slightly more sacred to the process ... if the family want me to write a eulogy or they feel they can't talk at the funeral I'll help. It can be a really tough time."

Hart-MacDiarmid became interested in death-walking after her mother Betty Tomlin died in 2018.

Betty was living with Hart-MacDiarmid for the last two years of her life before moving to an Auckland hospital where she died 12 weeks later.

Established Christchurch death-walker Melanie Mayell said it's great to have a deathwalker in Northland. Photo / Supplied

"Even though my mum had put things in place, we still felt unprepared. I ran the service and realised afterwards that there were things I would have done better. You get swept up with everything when someone you love dies."

Hart-MacDiarmid also looked after her dad when he died eight years earlier in 2010.

Earlier this year she completed her training through the New Zealand Celebrant School which covers hands-on ceremony work for marriages, funerals, professional practice and crisis and trauma.

She also took part in death-walker training with the "rock star of the death and dying world" Zenith Virago, a celebrant and community death-walker of more than 25 years who runs the Natural Death Care Centre in Byron, Australia.

The 64-year-old received her registration from the Department of Internal Affairs in July which also allows her to officially marry couples.

As well as death-walking, Hart-MacDiarmid is now intent on "bringing ceremony to life's milestones" by crafting ceremonies to suit each individual.

They can be anything from a conventional marriage to a "hunter provider" ceremony Hart-MacDiarmid is creating for her brother-in-law to acknowledge his hunting skills and will be celebrated over a family meal with food he's caught.

It's about understanding and respecting someone else's culture and way of being, she said.

"We live in a time when ceremony and attention to rites of passage is no longer the focus that it used to be. It's important we get back to incorporating ceremony and ritual as part of our lives. It doesn't have to be a marriage or funeral - there are so many other options."

Originally from Auckland, Hart-MacDiarmid moved to Kerikeri five years ago with her wife Robin.

The former chef with a master's degree in gastronomy ran a busy cafe in Herne Bay and once starred in the Ready, Steady Cook TV show hosted by Kerre Woodham in the late 1990s.

Hart-MacDiarmid said her love of food has often spilled over into her death-walking role.

From 2014 to 2018 she ran a "cancer kitchen" called Hart, Mind and Food, creating menus and food for people with compromised immune systems including those with cancer.

While mainly an online business, she ran it from the Kerikeri Packhouse Market when she moved North in 2015.

But it's Hart-MacDiarmid's holistic approach to death and dying that's the main focus of her work.

That means "no sanitising and no alienating loved ones from the process".

"It's providing as much inclusion with the bereaved as well as the deceased one's wishes. That might mean not having anything to do with a funeral director. I'm not dismissing the fantastic job that funeral directors do but it's nice to have options."

There are no official figures on the number of death-walkers or death doulas in New Zealand, because they do not need to be registered.

Established Christchurch death-walker Melanie Mayell said it's still quite a new career path.

Mayell has also been running monthly death cafes in Christchurch for several years and has helped establish cafes in other parts of the South Island.

She contributed to the book called Death and Dying in New Zealand published in October 2018 by Christchurch's Freerange Press.

Mayell, a photographer and writer who completed her death-walker training with Zenith Virago five years ago, said it's "fantastic" that someone is now practising in Northland.

"It's really great for the community. It will help with education and awareness, as people become more familiar and start exploring the options, hopefully well before they need anything."

As a society in general, Mayell believes we've lost the language around death, loss and grief.

"We don't know what to say and how to support each other, whether it's a lost job, relationship, or lost health, we tend to back away. It's really hard for people, it creates separation and distance and is not very kind. When we can do death well we will do all endings well - and death is the ultimate ending.

"We're brought up in a very death-phobic society; it's not the real world. Everything dies ... Life is finite, make the most of every day."

At the end of the day, Hart-MacDiarmid said it's important to come to terms with "an inevitable situation".

"In life we are prepared for every journey ... and yet we're not prepared for our ultimate journey. There are things that we can do to make it a little bit easier. The more familiar we are with the inevitability of death, what it does is enables greater joy in living."