The hospital room was small, with uncomfortable leather chairs. The sound of rhythmic beeps came from the life–support machine — until they didn’t.
Janet Turkula was 21 years old when she watched her father stop breathing.
“When you see somebody’s skin turn into stone, a body turned into stone, that lasts forever,” she recalled.
It was 2010. Her older brother and sister were there, but her mother had moved back to Korea when Turkula was 3, after the divorce.
“We were just the three loners,” Turkula said. “Figuring out life on our own with our dad, and then our dad was stripped away from us.”
Just 72 hours earlier, Charles “Chuck” Sturtz had been active. He was only 54. He was an Air Force veteran. He was handy. He had recently saved up money for a down payment on a Harley Davidson.
Now, Turkula was being asked about what to do with his organs.
“You see this vessel, this man that you knew — all the cherished memories, all the times that he cared for us when we were sick, and he looks like he’s still breathing,” she said. “His eyes look like he’s sleeping a little bit.”
The doctor said there was zero brain activity. Chuck had suffered a heart attack in his sleep. Turkula and her siblings agreed to end care.
“He wouldn’t want to live on life support,” she said.
She recalled the immediate aftermath of her father’s death. A team swiftly came in, put a sheet over the body and rolled him out of the room. But Turkula wanted more time with her father. Just because he wasn’t breathing did not mean this wasn’t her dad. His body, she thought, was not just something to dispose of.
“We’re like, he’s not a thing now,” she recalled. “Like, what are … Why? What are you doing? What is happening right now?”
“That experience was one piece of it,” she said. “The next experience after all of the things that we had to endure right after pulling our dad off of life support, we couldn’t even process or didn’t even know or could fathom that would be happening next.”
Before the reality of the situation had sunk in, Turkula and her siblings faced a blizzard of logistical questions.
Who is going to come to collect your father’s body from the hospital?
Would you like him cremated or buried?
Where and when are you going to hold the funeral service?
Will it be an open or closed casket?
Cash or check?
“Nobody tells you the money aspect of it,” she said. “They’re asking you these questions. And wow, we have no idea we had to pony up cash to pay for this funeral, too.”
“We thought, ‘Oh well, dad, he probably had insurance or something.’ And what do you know, not a lot of people have insurance for funerals or have preplanned.”
Turkula and her siblings did not have the money to pay for her father’s funeral. Even though friends and family were generous in the aftermath, none of the gifts they received felt practical
“We had a copious amount of really good, lovely food and flowers. And we’re just treading water here, trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for this,” she recalled. “So we just strip everything. Can’t get a casket. We can’t embalm him. We can’t rent out the funeral home for a viewing. Can’t do any of those things.”
Turkula was completely numb. Even throwing the least-expensive service put her behind on her bills. Her car was nearly repossessed.
“I just felt awful in my heart for a very, very long time,” she said. “Trauma for a very long time. You lose your dad, and then you’re like, ‘Well, here I have to pay bills. I have to work my ass off, but I’m still hurting. I can’t pay for therapy right now.’ ”
A startup to meet end-of-life challenges
This experience, the worst experience of Turkula’s life, is a story that she tells often — to journalists, like Billy Penn, and to potential investors in her startup company, GiveWillow.
While it’s not easy to share, Turkula hopes to disrupt the funeral industry and make it so that people will have the support that she and her siblings didn’t after the loss of a loved one.
The idea behind GiveWillow is simple. The Philly-born startup is like a wedding registry, but for end-of-life expenses. Funeral services are often pricey and can be confusing to navigate. Often, people receive food that they can’t actually finish or expensive flowers (that they have to watch wither and die, by the way). Why not help with gifts that families have critical need for — like a donation to help pay for the casket, or even a night of child care while funeral logistics are getting figured out?
“We come out for our friends and family, for weddings, and for baby registries,” said Ryan Oliveira, GiveWillow’s chief operating officer. “We’re OK buying a $200 Keurig, or whatever it might be. But when we have this equally big life event, when someone is lost, we throw those customs out the door and we’re just defaulting to flowers and casseroles.”
According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the median cost of a funeral in the United States ranges from $6,280 to $8,300. This figure often comes after what can be lengthy medical expenses. While some families can afford it, a 2025 survey by Debt.com polled 1,000 Americans and found that 37% said they took on debt after the death of a loved one.
“We’re all too quiet when it’s uncomfortable, but when there’s a monumental moment in our lives, like a baby or a wedding, we’re all for it,” Turkula said. “When death happens, we’re silent. We send flowers. We don’t know how to reach out. We don’t know what to do.”
Through GiveWilllow, people can ask for what they need without feeling like it’s a handout. While GoFundMe is a popular platform that people can turn to for help with funeral expenses, using it may feel somehow inappropriate. Giving a gift off a registry normalizes the practice, like wedding and baby shower gifts.
Roommates, then co-founders
Turkula and Oliveira officially launched GiveWillow last February. The two are former roommates.
Oliveira is a Temple grad from North Jersey. He and Turkula met in 2018. Turkula was renting out a room in her house in Fishtown. She figured she’d barely see the renter, as she was living at her husband-to-be’s place most of the time anyway, and could save some money. She posted an ad on Roomster.
“I’m swiping like it’s a dating app,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, Ryan looks nice. He looks like he’s not a freak.’ ”
They met up at Garage, in Fishtown, to see if it could be a fit.
“I was doing a separate startup,” Oliveira said. “She was just starting up GiveWillow. She’s like, ‘Hey, I have a startup, and this is what I’m doing.’ I’m like, ‘I have a startup, too. Oh, that’s awesome.’ So from that it was serendipitous in a lot of ways.”
After he moved in, the pair hit it off and would help each other with business ideas. They even decided to convert parts of the house into an incubator, of sorts.
“We put these giant, six-foot whiteboards in the kitchen,” Oliveira said. “We had a water cooler, you know, a coffee station, standing desk, funky lights, a hoverboard. And we really made it this really cool startup house, and we were helping each other along the way.”
At the time, Oliveira did not think that he would jump aboard Turkula’s project. For years, he didn’t.
“Life happens. She gets married. I get married. We have kids. She has kids,” he said. Turkula moved out west, near Jackson, Wyoming, but the two stayed in touch.
“She kept on reaching out, ‘Hey, you know, there’s really something here. People need this.’”
Oliveira was initially worried the idea would be too heavy to deal with on a daily basis, but eventually he joined in. He calls himself the “technology guy” of the operation.
“’After looking into the space and seeing how this funeral industry operates, it became a no-brainer,” he said. “It’s, I feel, one of the last few industries that hasn’t digitized for the better, right? Making things more simple.”
For millennials with aging parents who might have used a site like Zola for their wedding registry, GiveWillow’s interface is designed to be very familiar.
“Coming in with my product and technology perspective, I was like, well, let’s kind of … not tear it down, but let’s make this a little bit better,” he said. “It is a very emotional journey, and I think that the technology and the journey behind it has to match that. Because, you know, as you’re grieving, your mind is … everything feels heavy. Your mind is not in a good state. And that’s what we’ve tried to embody in what we’ve built today — just very hand-holding, very easy to use.”
In addition to the gifting aspect of GiveWillow, the site also serves as a space for people to write remembrances. Turkula said that one of the most meaningful keepsakes after her father’s death was his Facebook wall.
“I worked with Chuck at Lender’s and only have the fondest memories of him,” a former colleague wrote of Turkula’s father. “Words aren’t enough to say what he meant to all those he touched.”
“Chuck always had a smile, always knew how to brighten someone’s day or make them laugh,” someone else posted. “The world has lost a very special man.”
In a similar vein, GiveWillow lets people post memories and thoughts about the person who died in a centralized location where anyone can read or contribute.
‘Choose the specific help that you need’
Mikey Marin, or “Mikey the Death Doula,” works in Philly and South Jersey helping families transition during end-of-life care. She is one of GiveWillows partners.
“The thing I see time and time again is that people need help,” Marin said. “They need help with cutting the grass. They need help with dog-walking. They need help with meals. And they really just don’t want your casserole. I love the gesture, but they don’t want that. They want a gift card, or they want to be able to get DoorDash from Chipotle or something that is a comfort food that they’re familiar with … So when they explained that this is basically like an à la carte menu that you can choose the specific help that you need … I thought that that was actually practical help.”
While we typically think of doulas as people who help bring new life into the world — she said that the transition at the end of life often mirrors the beginning.
“Birth and death are very, very similar things,” she said. “They require a lot of care and attention, and it’s not just about the physical labor, but the emotional, the spiritual.”
Similarly, she believes that gifts, which are a staple of welcoming new life into the world, can be just as helpful to families when one is leaving.
A family’s experience
Already, families going through the end of life with a loved one are using GiveWillow — like the Albaughs in Illinois.
Atleigh Constance Albaugh was born on March 31, 2025. She was diagnosed with gastroschisis, a birth defect that begins in utero and can lead to a baby’s intestines developing outside the body.
“She was a very peaceful baby,” said Rebekah Albaugh, Atleigh’s grandmother. “Her nurses said, out of all the gastroschisis babies on the floor, Atleigh was the star. She was the least fussy, the most happy and congenial little thing.”
While serious, medical advances have lowered the mortality rate for the condition to about 5%, according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine. Atleigh had surgery soon after she was born.
“When Atlee was 37 days old, she passed all her tests with flying colors and was released to go home,” Albaugh said. “The cavity was very close to where the umbilical cord was attached, so where our belly buttons are. So when her surgical team sewed her up, there was really no scarring. That all became just like one belly button. So she just looked perfect and whole.”
However, within two weeks, baby Atleigh was having serious gastrointestinal trouble again. She needed another surgery.
“We’re all very prayerful and hopeful that they could put her all back together and sew her up,” the grandmother said. “But instead, the surgical team came out and told my son and daughter-in-law that Atleigh’s intestines would never work again.”
Atleigh passed away that night, surrounded by her parents, Grant and Elaina, and grandparents.
“She was 51 days old at the time,” Rebekah said. “And we miss her every day.”
Like Turkula, the Albaughs found themselves facing nightmare logistics no family should ever have to.
“Grant and Elaina are 22 and 23 and they didn’t have a life insurance policy on their child,” Rebekah said. “They didn’t have that kind of coverage for themselves that early In life.”
“Even transporting her tiny, little 2-month-old body from Peoria to Monticello, which is about a little over an hour drive, that’s a $1,500 expense to transport a baby’s body,” she said.
Despite going through the unimaginable, Rebekah Albaugh called the aftermath of her granddaughter’s death “quite beautiful.”
“Immediately, just droves of different facets of our communities surrounded us, including my friend April McClure, who works for GiveWillow,” she said. “She immediately set up a GiveWillow account.”
Atleigh’s GiveWillow page offered a list of registry items: $2,500 for a casket, $3,000 for a headstone, $3,000 for funeral services, $10,000 for medical expenses.
Everything was not just paid for — there was a large surplus.
“We can see and feel the love of God through our loss and through our suffering,” Albaugh said.
“The value of the dollar is one thing, and it does ease burdens,” she added. “But the more beautiful thing about a platform like this is it lets people express their love and show the best sides of humanity.”
Normalizing the funeral registry
Turkula and Oliveira believe that the idea behind GiveWillow is not only useful, but they hope it spurs a cultural shift. The biggest program, they say, is getting others to understand it.
“Changing the mindset has been the hardest part about this, but changing the mindset is so imperative for this paradigm shift,” Turkula said.
As a death doula, Marin has similarly faced a barrier when it comes to having people actually use the website in the wake of loss.
“I have suggested it several times,” she said. “I have not had a client use it yet … They all are kind of nodding and yes-ing. But what I’m observing is in these moments when we’re sitting bedside vigil, everybody’s just exhausted and they just have no bandwidth.”
Moving forward, she is going to change her strategy.
“I’m just going to start it for them,” Marin said. “And we’re just going to try that way. And I believe that that will be so much more successful for [GiveWillow] and for me and for, more importantly, the families.”
While Turkula recognizes this cultural barrier is a significant hurdle GiveWillow will need to overcome to be successful, she said that’s often true with new ideas and approaches.
“We are a new technology that I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out,” she said. “Remember the time before Uber, when Uber was a new concept, we all sort of were like, ‘What? You can press a button and a car will come to your door?’”
“Now we couldn’t live without Uber or Lyft,” she said.
Part of the goal is to change and normalize the culture around death.
“There’s so many factors that are going into this end-of-life realm,” Marin said. “And we as a society don’t do a great job of showing that or explaining it. So a lot of people are terrified of death and have no idea what to expect.”
Turkula believes the barrier around the death registry comes mostly from the receiving end. Once people have a GiveWillow page for a loved one, she said, friends and family will be willing and eager to use it.
This was certainly the case when it came to Atleigh Albaugh.
“I think that GiveWillow actually helped open the eyes to the general public in the sense where people lose babies often — I’ve lost three myself in utero — but you don’t think about babies that have actually lived a little while, and their parents might want to bury them, and the financial burden and strain that that takes,” Rebekah Albaugh said.
“I didn’t ever think of it, so the fact that it was kind of put out there in a gentle and beautiful way on this platform was eye-opening for a lot of people, where they were very empathetic, and they wanted to do something,” she said. “They wanted to help.”
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