Maturitease: A Hyde Park Haven for End-of-Life Care

Morley Musick, contributing writer, May 26, 2025, Hyde Park Herald

Maturitease Incontinent Skin Care Boutique, a new salon for end-of-life caregivers, is set to open next month at the Del Prado building.

Its owner Coprice Jones brings 30 years of caregiver experience — including as the hand-picked death doula to Maggie Daley — to bear on her new venture, which she said will offer her own line of skincare products and adult diapers, jewelry, self-authored books and other products that offer “dignity, respect, and grace” to the dying.

“I’ve found that some of people’s greatest needs, when they are entering the other world, is for dignity,” Jones said. “You can’t always get that in a hospital or a nursing home. Everything I do is about offering that.”

Born in Chicago and raised in Grand Rapids, Jones found her way to caregiving after studying to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). She immediately fell in love with the job: “A lot of people will look at CNAs, caregivers, and think, ‘oh it’s so low paying, it’s kind of a low job.’ But I just found it was my calling.”

After working for years at Rainbow Hospice, Jones decided to return to school at the International End of Life Doula Association to become a certified death doula — a unique kind of caretaker who helps the dying to embrace the end and die comfortably.

“A birth doula ushers you into the world, but I tell my clients I birth them out of the world,” Jones said.

A series of fortunate connections led to Jones being considered and quickly hired as the death doula for Maggie Daley, the wife of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

“I knew it was a serious opportunity so I brought in my resume on gold-trimmed paper. No one was smiling and they just rained down questions on me. But I got called right afterward on my way out. They said, ‘We want you,’” Jones recalled. "After that, so many people were coming in, celebrities, and politicians, but I didn’t even notice. When I work, I have my blinders on, like a horse. I go in and I nail it.”

Work with the Daley family enabled Jones to cultivate a wide network of clients all over the Gold Coast neighborhood and to foster close ties with Northwestern Hospital, from which Jones now receives referrals. She demonstrated her doula techniques on her granddaughter in the store, laying her out on a small blanket on the marble floor, and tucking pink sandals under her head to demonstrate where she would place pillows on patients in order to alleviate pain.

Mimicking the motions she would use to anoint patients’ heads, Jones prayed over a small vial of olive oil that she would massage into the scalps of her clients while singing, mostly Christian songs.

“A lot of my patients are atheists and that’s fine,” Jones said. “But this is my faith, and I need to bring my whole being into caring for you.”

Decades attending to the dying have taught Jones valuable lessons about the processes that unite everyone as they pass.

“Mothers will never, almost never die in front of their children,” Jones said. “Fathers will sometimes. Right before people pass people always say they want to go somewhere. Their eyes open wide and their kids think they want to go outside, to the store or something. But no — they want to go to their spiritual house, not the physical house. They open their eyes wide right before they pass and look into a corner of the room.”

Jones emphasized that while people come into the world in many different ways they leave it in largely the same way.

“They all use the same medicines from the same pharmacies. They get the same treatment, the same drugs. They want the same things,” she said.

Jones added that she hopes that neighborhood residents and caretakers will view her salon as a community space, a place to talk about dying, sensitive issues around incontinence and anything else about the end that might be difficult to process.

In the interest of making older clients feel at home, Jones has decorated the salon with antique furniture. Amidst vases filled with blue flowers are fruit crates containing glass bottles, as well as a wooden wheelchair, an old clothes press, and a cabinet that displays copies of her memoir, “The Unwanted Sex: The Triumph!”

The book details her experience overcoming sexual assault at 13, her pregnancy at 16, her confrontation of her rapist at age 34, and the spiritual life that enabled her to move past these difficulties to become a successful death doula. In the face of such intense challenges, Jones shows remarkable warmth and strength, and the book’s prose shines with frankness.

“I’ve been through a lot, and I’m with somebody through every part of dying,” Jones said. “I’m the last person to leave, because I do the postpartum and get the body ready for the morgue. I go to every funeral. We celebrate the beginning of life with baby showers and celebrations, but I believe the same is just as important for the end of life.”

Maturitease Incontinent Skin Care Boutique, 5305 S. Hyde Park Blvd., will host its opening ceremony with the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce at 12 p.m. on June 13.