Nina de Cocq, EOLD, RMT

12/16/2025

One of the places I meet the most resistance at the end of life is around the use of medications to relieve symptoms such as pain, agitation, or delirium. The medications I am referring to, are often morphine, lorazepam, or haloperidol, which are commonly included in the comfort or relief kit provided when someone begins hospice care. What families struggle with most is the fear that these medications may cause their person to sleep more, or become deeply sedated, and in doing so, take away the ability to have conversation.

I understand that fear. Communication at the end of life is sacred. People hold tightly to the hope of one more chance to hear their voice. I have sat at the bedside of someone I love, longing for one more word, knowing it wasn’t going to come. I struggle with this too. Wanting to keep someone as awake and cognitively present as possible comes from love.

What I have learned, though, is that when someone is dying and suffering, it can keep them from leaning into the dying process with the peace they deserve. Medications are not something I push or force. I don’t believe in taking choice away, and I never want families to carry regret or guilt into their grief. But I do believe deeply in education and support, and in helping families make peace with the fact that sometimes medication is exactly what allows suffering to soften.

What I often say in these moments is this: they might not be able to respond to you, but they can hear you. You may have already heard their last words, but they can still hear yours. I believe this with every ounce of my being. I witnessed it with my own brother who was non-responsive in the ICU. After sitting at his bedside for many days, saying all the things I had left unsaid over the years, apologizing again and again, he woke the day before he died and his last words to me were, “I’m sorry too.” He heard me.

Medications at the end of life are not what end someone’s life, their illness and the disease process do that. These medications simply allow them to die with more peace, more ease, and less suffering, and I truly believe that is something every human being deserves.

I am not here to convince you, I am here to sit with you. I want you to feel heard, and I want you to be able to make peace with a decision I know can feel heavy and complicated. I don’t want you to carry something forward that turns into an ache, wondering if you did the right thing, or if you waited too long.

My hope is to educate and support you in a way that allows you to make peace with this choice, to give medication, if it’s needed, without hesitation, and to trust that your presence matters, that your words are heard, that they are felt, and that they wrap gently around the person you love, offering comfort, safety, and permission to let go.

Be present. Speak your heart.
Let your love hold them, and let them go.
Trust that your care, your words, your presence, wraps them in the gentlest comfort. And know that in this act of love, you have done exactly what was needed.

xo
Gabby

You can find this blog here:
https://www.thehospiceheart.net/post/medications-at-the-end-of-life-a-gentle-conversation

You might find my book “End of Life Tips” helpful. It is a guide for those at the bedside to be prepared for what could and might happen when someone is dying.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Tips-Gabrielle-Elise-Jimenez/dp/B0C9G8PZZ5/ref=pd_aw_sim_m_sccl_2_4/130-2232800-4346236?

12/16/2025

The horrible beauty of grief 🖤

11/03/2025

10/23/2025

Melissa Meadow offers death doula services, funeral consulting, and green burial education to help individuals and families navigate end-of-life with confidence.

10/14/2025

10/08/2025

10/08/2025

Grief is the price we pay for daring to love in these temporary bodies, and it's the most brutal, beautiful work a heart can do.

Death gets to be peaceful, even sacred. But grief? Grief is the wild, messy aftermath where you have to keep breathing even though part of your soul left with them.

If you're drowning in it right now, know that the depth of your grief is proof of how fiercely you loved. And that kind of love echoes beyond any threshold.

You're doing the hardest thing a soul ever does. And you're doing it because you were brave enough to love someone all the way to the edge. 🖤

10/08/2025

🌿 The Truth About the $2500 Mushroom Burial Suit 🍄

Pictured here is the real mushroom burial shroud, photographed at Eloise Woods in Austin, Texas, October 2016.

When the “mushroom suit” first went viral, people thought it was the future of green burial, a magical shroud that would eat away toxins and return the body to the earth faster and cleaner than ever.

But here’s the truth: there’s no scientific evidence that it actually does what was promised. The fabric was infused with kitchen lab-grown mycelium, but when tested, it didn’t perform any better than a regular cotton shroud. In fact, the founder quietly admitted the mushrooms never grew on the bodies as marketed.

Meanwhile, real green burial, no embalming, no vault, biodegradable shroud or casket, has been working beautifully for generations. The earth doesn’t need gimmicks to reclaim us.

If you want to become “one with the earth,” you don’t need a $2,500 suit. You just need a simple, natural burial.

Let’s stop selling people fantasy and start teaching them reality. 🌎 PS... Still a beautiful and heart centered burial, despite the hoopla shroud of shrooms 🍄

. Photo October 2016

09/19/2025

This is so worth the time. A very moving account. She addresses the very essence of our humanity in the face of the death of someone we love.

09/12/2025