Death over Drafts debuts in Orange County, pierces veil surrounding end of life care
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Barbara McMurray’s family, like many others, rarely talked about death. It remained taboo, even while her father’s health slowly began to decline.
They never took the time to plan out the details surrounding his final rites or talked about how his remains should be taken care of. So when he died at the age of 87, she and her relatives were left to guess and debate among each other over what he would have wanted.
For the record:
10:38 a.m. June 6, 2026An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Dr. Donnie Moore and said death doula Barbara McMurray was from Laguna Hills. She is based in Laguna Beach.
“What were you thinking? You thought you were never going to die if you didn’t talk about it, if you didn’t plan for it?” posed McMurray, a death doula based in Laguna Beach providing support to people nearing the end of their lives and their loved ones. “That’s the one thing I would like people to understand. It’s healthy and it’s liberating to talk about what you want for your own death.”
That’s why she and other members of the Orange County Deathworkers Alliance partnered with Meadow Memorials and the Death Network, a San Diego-based education and support collective, to host Death over Drafts at Honey River Brewing in Anaheim on Thursday. They were joined by Lisa Pahl, a hospice social worker who helped create a party game called the Death Deck, and Donnie Moore M.D., founder of San Diego-based Autonomy Health.
More than 50 people attended the gathering in Anaheim Thursday night, and similar events typically have a high attendance count, according to Tim Ringgold, an Orange-based music therapist specializing in grief and a member of the Orange County Deathworkers Alliance. That illustrates the importance of normalizing conversations about dying.
“I didn’t really know what to expect, but it sounded like an environment that was open to having hard conversations,” said Anaheim resident Glinka Alvarado, a first-time attendee of Death over Drafts whose partner died unexpectedly at the age of 26 about a year and seven months ago. “It helps to find community, and it helps to find what answers you can.
“It’s bittersweet because you never find comfort in knowing other people are going through something uncomfortable and sad,” she added. “But it’s a human experience, so it makes me feel a little less alone … everybody here appears to be very like-minded, trauma-informed and have a lot of care in their hearts.”
Death over Drafts was created in 2019 by death doula Stefanie Elkins to offer a safe and informal space for people to open up about topics traditionally regarded as off-limits in polite conversation. It has been hosted numerous times in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, and it made its debut in Orange County on Thursday.
Death can be especially hard to talk about in O.C., according to Ringgold. He’s lived in Orange for 22 years and, in his experience, the topic comes up less frequently than it does with friends from elsewhere in Southern California. He said that might be because of a more ”performative” culture locally that has a tendency to emphasize discussions about wealth and achievement while downplaying anything that might undermine the outward appearance of success.
“There’s this joke about death and taxes,” Ringgold said. “Look, I have a great accountant. Tax avoidance is a strategy, but death avoidance is impossible.”
Discussions about the end of life are even more important now, with as many as 60% of funeral directors in the country preparing to retire and fewer people enrolling to study mortuary sciences, said Penny Waugh, a death doula and founder of the Death Network. Meanwhile, a “silver tsunami” of baby boomers reaching the end of their lives is set to peak in the next five to 10 years.
“Those two things combined is setting us up for probably lots of delays, even more limited options than what are currently offered in most funeral homes,” Waugh said.
Grief management, financial concerns associated with death and numerous alternatives to traditional cremation or burial, like eco-friendly water cremation or human composting, were discussed on Thursday. One of the most prominent topics that evening, and perhaps the most controversial, was the practice of medical aid in dying.
Referred to in the past as assisted suicide, it’s a procedure available to terminally-ill people diagnosed with less than six months to live that has been allowed in California since 2016. It’s also permissible in 12 other states and Washington, D.C. That includes Illinois and New York, which both passed laws legalizing the practice in the past year.
Those who choose that route must be at least 18 years old, of sound mind and demonstrably capable of making their own decisions. Those who undergo the procedure ingest a cocktail of drugs that puts them into a deep, painless sleep as their bodies shut down.
Dr. Moore’s practice has specialized in palliative care and medical aid in dying for about three years. He said that although many of his patients are in pain, that’s not the main reason they make the decision to end their lives.
“Their symptoms aren’t really the driving force behind it,” Moore said. “It’s wanting control, wanting agency, wanting autonomy over their body, really wanting to control their death the way they were in control of their life … Most of my patients are at a certain point of readiness. Where they stand in their condition, they’ve had a completed life, whatever that means to them.”
McMurray’s brother-in-law, Bob McMurray, chose medical aid in dying in 2021 after struggling with cancer for a year. It’s part of why she chose to become a death doula.
She was among a group of his closest friends and family who were present to watch him die, surrounded by flowers, photos and love. They marked the occasion with the meditative and melodic hum of Tibetan singing bowls and the recital of poems specifically chosen by the patient.
“We were all enjoying his life and celebrating it while he was still there, which is kind of a beautiful thing to not wait until the funeral to say all the nice things about the person who can’t even hear them,” McMurray said. “... And he was like, ‘OK, it’s 2 o’clock, let’s get this show on the road.’ It was the one thing that he could control, how his endgame went down.”
Those who choose to undergo medical aid in dying gain the ability to exit the world on their terms, McMurray said. But whether families choose that route or to allow their loved one’s diagnoses to run their course, everyone with elderly loved ones ought to consider the details surrounding how their lives will end, said Anaheim resident Crystal Su, a marketing professional who attended her first Death over Drafts gathering on Thursday.
“My mom is in her 70s,” Su said. “All of my friends in that same age range, our parents are really at that place where they’re going to be gone sooner rather than later. So these are really important conversations for us to have because everyone has to have these conversations about how the rest of their days will pan out, how they want to be memorialized. And I see so much hesitancy and reticence among my peers to discuss this.”
