Death Companionship

While sitting with a dying friend four years ago, William Roberts was struck by the grim isolation of the deathbed. "It seemed to me," he says, "that dying people were treated in a cold, almost cavalier manner." Suffering from diabetes, Roberts, now 50, quit his job a year ago as a partner at Spencer-Roberts, a California political public relations agency, and resolved to do something about the way people die. The result is Threshold, a new Los Angeles business that has trained and will supply "death companions" to help ease lonely, dying clients out of the world. The cost: $7.50 an hour, of which the companion keeps $3.50.

So far, Threshold has graduated 15 companions, who are now in "field training"--working without fee in a nursing home. Fifty more companions, mostly women in their 30s and 40s, are about to complete the eight-session course on the problems of bringing comfort to a dying stranger.

Threshold is frankly commercial.

"We believe in free enterprise," says Jim Rosner, 30, president of the firm and another former employee at Spencer-Roberts. Rosner and Roberts used their public relations know-how last fall to push their training program. They put on a low-key ad campaign, supplemented with plugs by some of the nine staff members on local talk shows. Seven hundred would-be companions responded. Threshold has not yet advertised for paying clients, however, preferring to build up a stable of trained companions first. The applicants are psychologically screened to eliminate the unstable and any religious enthusiasts intent on deathbed conversions.

The training program was devised by Robert Kavanaugh, a former Roman Catholic priest who is now a consulting psychologist at the University of California in San Diego. During the three-hour weekly class, the teachers stress the fears and ambivalences of the dying, discuss problems of suicide and euthanasia, and use the techniques of role-playing and psychodrama to illustrate possible relationships between a dying customer and a paid stranger trying to be a friend.

Any dying bequests made to a companion will automatically go to a nonprofit corporation that Threshold is setting up to pay for companions to the indigent. The company is also branching out to sponsor workshops on dying for hospital personnel, the terminally ill and the general public. There may be more services to come. "Dying is spectacular," says Roberts. "I've even thought of making some kind of production out of it --like having the Mormon Tabernacle Choir come sing at your bedside, if you could afford it."

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