SYCAMORE TWP., Ohio — Nick Mundy had always been scared of dying.
Last summer, he was in the hospital. He’d been sick for 11 years, but now his cancer was killing him.
His wife knew the plan, or at least part of it. She knew Nick wanted to die in their home, the same one he grew up in.
But Shelby wasn't sure. The rest of his plan wasn't what most people would consider normal. She asked him again.
"Please," she remembers her husband saying. "Don't let me die here."
They went home, and they invited their friends and family.
“We chose not to have a normal funeral,” Shelby said. “But people were walking in here, and I don’t think they understood what somebody actively dying means.”
For Shelby, it meant cleaning her husband and placing flowers around his body. It meant dressing him in shorts — not a suit. For her, it meant not shying away from death — but leaning into it.
“People don’t understand how beautiful it can be,” Shelby said.
Meet the death doula who inspired her in the video below:
Nick's oldest son, Taylor, sat with him until the very end. And after Nick died, it was hours before the family called the coroner to take him away. That’s because Nick had hired a death doula.
“People have heard of a birth doula. A death doula does a similar thing,” said Jen Blalock, who worked with Nick. “I am helping a person meet their death. That’s what I did.”
After his death, Blalock developed a relationship with Shelby, partly because she was so moved by the experience.
“Everybody got to see death up close and personal,” Blalock said. “And this is the whole thing. People just don’t know that you can hang out and linger with your loved one — and it is such a healing time.”
The bed in which Nick died is gone. Now, the room is a play area for their three boys, with a bookshelf in one corner and a record player in another. But the pictures and mementos remain, more than a year later.
Shelby points to a picture of Kobe Bryant one of her children put up. Next to that is a Krispy Kreme sign. She laughs.
“I love walking down the stairs and saying good morning to him,” Shelby said. “It’s not something for me to fear anymore.”
Upstairs, Nick's son Braylon has his own memorial for his dad. There’s Lego cars, a football card and the durag his dad used to wear. Plus, a note he once wrote him, which ends with "I love you so much."
“This doesn’t take away the pain,” Blalock said. “The grief is still going to suck.”
But before Nick died, Shelby said he told their friends he was no longer afraid.
About the "Before I Die Festival"
Shelby is now working as a death doula, inspired by her own experience. If you want to learn more about it, Shelby and Blalock are putting on what they call a "Before I Die Festival" later this month, to educate the public about death doulas.
You can get tickets at this link.
The festival is from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Oct 18 at Heart of Northside.
