Why Facing Death Early Can Make Life More Peaceful
Written by Sabio Janiak, Founder of Mastering Harmony
Sabio Janiak is a psycho-sensory specialist and human behaviourist, and founder of Mastering Harmony. He guides individuals to rewire stress-driven neural patterns, resolve trauma, and restore emotional balance using cutting-edge neuroscience and holistic methods, empowering lasting clarity, resilience, and high-performance living.
Grief can feel like a wound. It can also be a receipt for love, a reminder that someone or something mattered. I was twelve when I first sat beside someone dying. Years later, I realised that day had quietly shaped the rest of my life. It began a question I am still exploring, when we cannot prevent a loss, what can we offer each other? My family's experience and my training as an end-of-life doula have made me believe there is value in asking that question long before a crisis forces us to.
A family story across two generations
My great-grandmother was in the final days of her life. My grandmother, her daughter, sat beside her, and I was there too. I did not know how a boy my age was supposed to behave in that room. I remember being quiet and present, feeling more grown-up than I had ever felt before. I could not make her better, but somehow I understood that my company mattered.
That feeling stayed with me, even after I stopped thinking about the day itself.
Now, the grandmother who sat beside me then is 92. She has dementia, is immobile, and needs care around the clock. My mother carries most of that responsibility, with my father alongside her. Her days revolve around my grandmother's needs, and the responsibility continues long after the visible tasks are done.
I live in London, while my family is in Poland. I participate as much as I can, but my parents carry the daily work. I know the sadness of distance, of showing up in fragments, of loving someone through a screen and a plane ticket when I want to be in the chair beside the bed.
My grandmother's dignity has not diminished with her changing abilities. My parents' need for rest, support, and lives of their own matters too.
What anticipatory grief feels like
There is a name for grief that begins before someone dies, anticipatory grief. The end-of-life educator Stephen Jenkinson puts the deeper truth of it simply, "Grief, it's how you love all of those things in life that end." Anticipatory grief is what that looks like while someone is still alive, sadness about changes already happening in the relationship and everyday life, alongside fear of what's still to come.
It may feel like a constant sadness or arrive in waves. There can be anger, guilt, or numbness. Experiences differ, and grieving beforehand does not necessarily make the eventual death easier to bear.
In my family, uncertainty is part of the weight. We know that life is changing, but we do not know how long this chapter will last. There is no single moment we can point to and say, "This is the hard part." The difficulty stretches across ordinary days, alongside the care that still needs to happen.
Why we avoid thinking about death
I understand the wish to look away. Saying that someone will die can feel like abandoning them. We may fear upsetting a parent, frightening a partner, or opening a conversation we do not know how to finish.
In my own experience, though, leaving something unspoken does not make it disappear. It can leave each person carrying questions alone while everyone tries to protect everyone else.
Giving mortality a place in my life has made some decisions clearer. It asks me what I am postponing, which relationships need attention, and what I want to create while I have the opportunity.
I still feel fear and sadness. Yet I have also found relief in being able to speak honestly. That is the kind of peace I mean, having more room for what is true, even when it is painful.
What end-of-life doulas do
Years after sitting beside my great-grandmother, I trained as an end-of-life doula.
The National End-of-Life Doula Alliance describes the role as providing non-medical support and guidance to individuals and families, working alongside other caregivers and medical teams. Doulas can offer companionship, help people explore their wishes, and support informed choices. Their role complements clinical care.
For me, training gave language and structure to something I had first encountered as a child, being present can matter when we cannot change what is happening. It also deepened my understanding of the care, boundaries, and practical knowledge that responsible support requires.
Willingness to stay matters. So does recognising when someone needs help beyond what we can offer.
Love and grief can exist together
Watching these experiences unfold across generations has changed how I understand the relationship between love and grief. We may grieve a person, a partnership, a pet, a home, or a future we expected to have. Sometimes we miss what was beautiful. Sometimes we mourn what never became possible.
This is why I keep returning to the idea of grief as a receipt for love. It's not a measurement. No one needs to grieve longer or harder to prove a relationship mattered, but it is a signal, the ache is evidence that something real was there. Even grief that carries anger, exhaustion, or unfinished business is still, underneath, proof of attachment. A person can love someone and feel worn down by caring for them. Both things can be true, and neither cancels the other out.
What we can offer when we cannot prevent loss
I often return to a phrase, almost nothing can be done, and a lot can be done.
There may be little we can do to prevent the eventual loss. There may still be a great deal we can do about loneliness, practical burdens, and conversations that have become difficult to begin.
We can ask what would make today more comfortable. We can listen to a fear without rushing to explain it away. We can notice when the person providing care needs someone to sit beside them too.
This is the question at the heart of Soul's Dignity, "What remains possible here?"
How I make space for inner experience
My own practice centres on guided self-exploration, drawing particularly on Carl Jung's active imagination, which involves engaging consciously with inner images and the feelings they evoke.
In a session, I may invite someone to notice an image, sensation, or imagined conversation and explore how it develops. Its meaning belongs to their experience, I do not decide what it must mean. We leave room to question whatever arises.
I also draw on perspectives from Internal Family Systems, which approaches inner experience through different "parts" of the person. One part may want to speak about death, while another wants to avoid it. We can become curious about what each response is trying to protect.
Where appropriate and agreed upon, I may incorporate Havening Techniques®, a method designed to help the brain let go of a distressing memory's emotional charge. The idea, in simple terms, is that some memories, especially difficult ones, get stored with a kind of stuck electrical signal attached to them, so the body keeps reacting to the past as though it were still happening. Havening uses a specific, gentle process to help settle that signal, so the memory can be recalled without the same intensity attached to it. I offer this process with the intention of supporting steadiness, while paying attention to how the person responds.
These influences inform my individual approach, I am not offering each as a complete therapy model. The purpose is personal exploration, with the person's consent and pace guiding the work. It does not replace medical care or specialist mental health support.
The question of the soul
Alongside the practical realities, I carry a spiritual question, how well do we know the deepest part of ourselves?
I have encountered the idea that, near death, a person might become aware of an intimate presence they recognise as their soul. I cannot verify that account or describe it as an established part of dying. I hold it as a possibility that raises questions about how we live now.
I wonder what it would feel like to encounter an inner beauty very different from the harsh image we have carried of ourselves. Would it feel familiar? Could shame make it difficult to accept? Could we begin exploring that relationship while we are alive?
These are questions, and they matter to me. They invite me to consider whether knowing myself more deeply could help me take responsibility for my life without reducing myself to everything I regret.
I once asked my grandmother whether she believed in the soul, in something beyond this life. She told me she did, somewhere inside, she felt there was something more. I recognise that openness in myself, alongside questions I cannot answer.
I want to make space for this exploration without asking anyone to share my beliefs. For one person, "soul" may describe a spiritual reality. For another, it may express their deepest sense of identity or connection. Someone else may prefer different words altogether.
No particular belief or moment of recognition is required for dignity. Spiritual exploration, where it is welcome, should follow the person's own questions and understanding.
Beginning before a crisis
Facing mortality early can begin with one conversation, at a pace you can manage. You might ask yourself what remains unsaid, or who you would want beside you if you needed care.
With someone you love, you could begin gently, "Would you like to talk about what matters to you as things change?" Their readiness matters. Leaving the invitation open can be enough for that day.
It also helps to look at what is needed now. Who is carrying the care? What support would give them some rest? Is there a wish, worry, or practical question the family has been avoiding?
These are small ways of giving uncertainty somewhere to go. We can take them while there is still time to listen and respond.
The kindness we bring with us
I've noticed something, and I think it matters.
The kindness we practise during our lives seems to stay with us at the end of our lives too.
I've heard this from a lot of people caring for an ageing parent or grandparent, the person has become harder to be around. More demanding. Less thankful. Quick to criticise the people doing the most for them.
I think there's a reason for this. Kindness isn't something we just have. It's something we practise over years, like a muscle. If someone spends their life working on patience and gratitude, that tends to stay with them, even when everything else gets harder. If someone hasn't done that work, ageing can strip away whatever was covering the difficulty underneath.
I want to be careful here because this isn't true for everyone, and it isn't always about someone's character. Illness, pain, and conditions like dementia can change how a person acts in ways that have nothing to do with who they really are.
My own grandmother is proof of that. She has dementia. Through all of it, she has remained graceful. Kind to my mother, appreciative of everything she does, and humble about needing help at all. Watching her, I don't see someone who has lost herself. I see someone whose kindness was already built in, strong enough to hold, even now.
I think that's the real lesson. The version of ourselves we bring to the end of our lives is mostly the version we spent our whole lives building. That's one more reason I believe in this work, getting to know ourselves, facing our mortality, and practising gratitude and patience while there's still time for it to become who we are.
Where this leaves me
My grandmother is still here. Somewhere in Poland, right now, she is being washed, fed, and sat beside by my mother, the way her own mother once was sat beside by her. I don't know how much time is left in that sentence. Neither does anyone. That's the whole point, and it's also the whole gift, if you let it be one, none of us knows, which means none of us has to wait for a deadline to start being honest about what we're carrying.
If any part of this story is close to where you are, you don't have to sit with it alone. You can start that conversation with me here.
Read more from Sabio Janiak
Sabio Janiak, Founder of Mastering Harmony
Sabio Janiak is a psycho-sensory specialist and human behaviourist, and the founder of Mastering Harmony. Over the past two decades, he has worked in 88 countries as a therapist, musician, and workshop facilitator, exploring the connections between sound, art, the nervous system, and human behaviour. He specialises in trauma resolution and nervous system regulation, helping individuals rewire stress-driven neural patterns and restore emotional balance. Using holistic modalities and applied neuroscience, Sabio empowers people to cultivate resilience, emotional clarity, and self-regulation. He continues to evolve the Mastering Harmony Method through individual sessions, group workshops, and practical training programs.
