An end-of-life doula on bringing the Māori rites and rituals of tangihanga to other families, her own personal journey to becoming a death doula and why ‘a good death’ can change the way we grieve our loved ones
There is nothing like the death of a beloved parent to rock the core of your life. When Shana Tibble Beach lost her adored father, Te Rau Whiro Tibble, through terminal cancer, his passing not only changed the direction of her future, but it also took her home to her past.
Growing up in Canada with a Māori father and a Canadian mother, Shana’s childhood was steeped in the beliefs and values of Te Ao Māori – and nowhere was that world more present than when someone died.
‘I’ve never seen anyone practise death the way Māori practise death.’
“As a child, I remember my father going to more funerals than he did birthdays,” she says. “Even if someone’s relation of a relation had passed away, he was there. My dad always used to talk about how important it was to honour people after they had died.”
It was the return of her father’s cancer – and the life-limiting diagnosis of being given just five years to live – that started Shana’s journey alongside her father’s dying, a journey which she says was the most profound experience of her life.
“My father was the love of my life,” she says simply. “We were inseparable, he was my best friend.” When her father received the terminal diagnosis, Shana remembers the appointment where his dying was discussed, where the plan for his physical body was laid out. His medical needs were met, she says, but his spiritual needs were not so there was a lot of work to be done. And Shana’s upbringing meant she had seen first-hand how dedicated, respectful, and community-based the Māori attitude to death was.
Held on the marae, with children running around, and the body lying in state, surrounded by whānau, the emotions and the discussions flowed freely during tangihanga. This experience was very different from the funerals she attended in Canada.
“I’ve been around lots of cultures, as Canada is very multi-cultural, but I’ve never seen anyone practise death the way Māori practise death.”
When Whiro, fondly known as Joe, died in early 2021, it was during Covid, adding a layer of complications to the procedures. But Shana and her family knew what needed to be done – they wanted to bring him home from the hospital, so that she, her brother, her mother, and her children could bear witness to her father’s passing in peace. What followed was an experience that was literally life-changing – Shana has now trained as a death doula in Canada, using her understanding and background to help other families embrace the sacred rituals of tangihanga.
“I found my calling in the death of my father,” she says. “I can’t imagine a greater honour than to be there for someone’s final breath, to tell them they mattered, that they made an impact. I hope that end-of-life doulas are going to become a common practice in life. Especially now – the world is always hungry for spirituality, and to be inspired, but I think now is the peak of those times.”
As a global society, we experienced mass death through Covid on a level not seen since the World Wars – and an unbearable number of those deaths were lonely ones. On her death doula training course in Canada, Shana notes that it was booked out – a room that included numerous health care professionals who had been impacted by witnessing too many people dying alone. Equally profound were those there to embrace their own end of life planning and normalise conversations around death and dying.
But, as Shana says, the greatest lesson she learned during her course was that she could offer something to the death doula community that was lacking in Canada – and that is the way that Māori honour and know death from a deep spiritual and cultural perspective.
“When we brought my father home, we created a space around him and filled it with photos of his life and of his family, we hung his greenstone next to his bed. And as he transitioned, my brother was there, my mother was there and we told stories,” she says. “My father died to his favourite music, with his loved ones around him, telling him that we had won the lottery in having him in our lives, all as he took his last breath.”
“We put him in his pyjamas, and we lay with him, and we kept telling stories, until we were ready to let him go 24 hours later.”
And then they stayed with the tūpāpaku, the body – again, an aspect of tangihanga that can seem surprising to others. “We put him in his pyjamas, and we lay with him, and we kept telling stories, until we were ready to let him go 24 hours later.” The time just before and just after a person has passed is the most sacred time of all – and by not rushing the process, Shana says, it allows everyone present to “say what they need to say and feel what they need to feel.”
It’s why Shana has called her death doula practice The Last Koha, because she knows what a gift this experience with her father was. “A good death – and we call my father’s death ‘a good death’ – changes your experience in how you grieve.” She wants to provide it for other families, to let them walk through the layers of ritual and ceremony that Māori have experienced for generations.
“You don’t have to be from a culture as rich as this, to embrace all these things. You can learn from it – everyone has the right to ceremony and ritual, but not everybody grew up with it,” she says. “Having someone help plan your end of life, I really believe is the greatest gift you can give someone. And the more you plan your end of life, the better you start to live in the now.”
