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Speaker 1: Hello out louders, it's Holly wayIn right here.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Look, many of you know that I host another podcast
Speaker 1: on the Muma Mere network called mid and Today, I
Speaker 1: wanted to share a particular conversation that is probably the
Speaker 1: most meaningful that I had in all of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: No matter our age or our live stage, this is
Speaker 1: a topic that has either touched us or is going
Speaker 1: to touch us, or that we're living with every day.
Speaker 1: And it's grief, and this time can be especially difficult
Speaker 1: for people who have lost someone or of facing losing someone.
Speaker 1: If that's you, or if it speaks to you. You
Speaker 1: are going to love this conversation that I had about
Speaker 1: death and grief with Dr Jackie Bailey. She is someone
Speaker 1: called a death walker. She is also a funeral celebrant.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that I've ever had such a
Speaker 1: beautiful and honest conversation about life and death as I
Speaker 1: had with the amazing Dr Jackie Bailey. So please listen
Speaker 1: to it. Sending massive love your way and I'll see
Speaker 1: you on the end of this episode. No fancy words today,
Speaker 1: no jokes, no flowery metaphors and tricky punctuation, no alliteration,
Speaker 1: strategic repetition, no rightly tricks. Grief has no time for
Speaker 1: my bullshit. Loss isn't interested in how clever your sentences
Speaker 1: might be or how they sound read out loud. Midwomen
Speaker 1: know that there isn't a damn thing that can step
Speaker 1: in and tap dance away the empty middle of losing
Speaker 1: someone you love. That it rearranges you inside and out,
Speaker 1: opens up a space and floods it with missing and
Speaker 1: with resentment or anger maybe and with longing. Grief comes
Speaker 1: to everyone, some sooner than others, with brutal speed or
Speaker 1: an agonizing crawl. The most extraordinary of ordinary, inevitable pains,
Speaker 1: the one that can knock you, of course, and leave
Speaker 1: you breathless and reeling, aching and empty. For years, I've
Speaker 1: had the outrageous good fortune of still being able to
Speaker 1: touch a screen and hear my mother complaining about something
Speaker 1: my brother isn't doing, or to see my father's face
Speaker 1: all too close as he tries to work out why
Speaker 1: the image on the iPad is tipped on its side.
Speaker 1: I know how precious that is for as long as
Speaker 1: I get it, because I have sat with my beloved
Speaker 1: and held him as his excellent mother left us. I
Speaker 1: have missed an old friend's slow smile, knowing I'll never
Speaker 1: hear him laugh again. I've seen the terrible gap left
Speaker 1: by my teenage boyfriend. I've watched a wonderful man's daughter
Speaker 1: grow up without him. I've mourned the loss of babies
Speaker 1: I never got to hold. We've all felt just a
Speaker 1: little of it, or much too much. But I know
Speaker 1: my outrageous good fortune. Today. My children are safe on
Speaker 1: their damn screens, and my brother, his teens, my friend, family,
Speaker 1: and my partner in life are all still going about
Speaker 1: their ordinary days. There I go, trying to pretty up
Speaker 1: these words about the worst thing that can happen to us.
Speaker 1: Midwomen lie in bed and count their people, silently tallying
Speaker 1: their luck. We don't want to talk about it, but
Speaker 1: if it hasn't already visited, grief is looming, and so
Speaker 1: we care, and we nurture and soothe, and we hope
Speaker 1: we can keep it at bay if we just don't
Speaker 1: mention it. Today we're mentioning it because silence is lonely,
Speaker 1: and grief is the price we pay for love. As
Speaker 1: a wise woman said, life without loss is a life
Speaker 1: without love, and mid women know that isn't worth the trade.
Speaker 1: There's the solace in sharing always, and mid women know
Speaker 1: that too. Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife,
Speaker 1: mid family, mid identity crisis. And today we're talking about
Speaker 1: the thing we're not allowed to talk about. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean because someone will wag a finger at us
Speaker 1: if we do. I mean because it goes to the
Speaker 1: core of everything we're afraid of. Even if many of
Speaker 1: the women listening to this today are living there. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're talking about grief. If you're thinking that this episode
Speaker 1: sounds too much, then for you, right now, perhaps you're
Speaker 1: right but if you're thinking it sounds heavy and difficult
Speaker 1: and depressing, then you should stay because it's actually anything
Speaker 1: but thanks to our extraordinary guest, Dr Jackie Bailey is
Speaker 1: a death walker. She walks with the dying and she
Speaker 1: brings comfort ritual to their people. She's an interfaith minister
Speaker 1: and a funeral celebrant, and she's a writer. I met
Speaker 1: her at a regional book event last year, and after
Speaker 1: she'd stood up and discussed her book The Eulogy, in
Speaker 1: front of an audience on the panel, we were both
Speaker 1: on Her book line snaked around the block with people
Speaker 1: wanting to buy it. Why because of her own experience
Speaker 1: of grief, having lived, as she's about to tell you,
Speaker 1: in close proximity to death since she was seven, and
Speaker 1: that's given her a particularly beautiful, simple, comforting but no
Speaker 1: bullshit perspective on it. In this conversation, we talk about that,
Speaker 1: and we talk about what to do if someone you
Speaker 1: love is dying, and we talk about what to do
Speaker 1: if that person is you, And we talk about the
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual practices that actually soothe, and we talk
Speaker 1: about how there are no shortcuts to getting over it,
Speaker 1: and we talk about how to write a eulogy for
Speaker 1: someone you love but maybe didn't even like very much.
Speaker 1: It's a serious, important, sometimes funny conversation about something that
Speaker 1: none of us want to talk about. Apart from Jackie.
Speaker 1: You are an interfaith minister, a funeral celebrant, so what
Speaker 1: we call funeral celebrate. But I've also seen you described
Speaker 1: as a death walker. What is a death walker?
Speaker 3: It's not a character from the Game of Strains like
Speaker 3: first Up unfortunately. I mean, anyway, it depends on which
Speaker 3: that's what sena farrago who's like a you know, guiding
Speaker 3: light in the deathy kind of movement in Australian in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: I have to just stop you there because I've heard
Speaker 1: you on another podcast talk about deathy's. You were like
Speaker 1: talking about your work and you know your research, and
Speaker 1: you said this one's for the other Deathy's And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, step back, what's a deathy.
Speaker 3: Or the people like me who are kind of obsessed
Speaker 3: with that part of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we did research it. Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Sort of your death eas That's where I'm most comfortable.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm far more comfortable officiating a funeral than
Speaker 3: a wedding, for example. Yeah, it's just my comfortable space.
Speaker 3: It's really intimate, meaningful, authentic, or a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: is stripped away, maybe also because of them from a
Speaker 3: big family, so I'm really used to negotiating the all
Speaker 3: the issues that come up in that context. It's just
Speaker 3: my I wouldn't say it's my happy place. It's not
Speaker 3: my happy place. It's not happy, but it's my most comfortable.
Speaker 1: You sort of study to be an inter faith minister,
Speaker 1: don't you. Yeah, it's like you and you're ordained and everything,
Speaker 1: but it's a non religious role, that's right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I've seen you say that other people who you went
Speaker 1: through that with they might do things like be prison
Speaker 1: chaplains or like non religious pastors kind of is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. But that you For you, it was
Speaker 1: always about death, that's what I read you say. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that? Is?
Speaker 3: Basically because since I was seven, about seven years old,
Speaker 3: my sister was dying and it took her thirty one
Speaker 3: years to die, which was a long time to live
Speaker 3: with that possibility. So I was obsessed with it from
Speaker 3: a very young age, thinking about the meaning of life
Speaker 3: and what happens after we die.
Speaker 1: Can you give a little bit of context to that,
Speaker 1: because I've read your beautiful book Eulogy, which is a
Speaker 1: fictionalized version of this story. But for the people listening,
Speaker 1: when you say your sister was dying from the age
Speaker 1: of seven, what do you mean what happened?
Speaker 3: So she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor when
Speaker 3: she was ten and I was seven, and they thought
Speaker 3: she would only live for about a year, but she
Speaker 3: lived for another thirty odd years, gradually deteriorating though, so
Speaker 3: you know, physical and intellectual handicaps. And when she did
Speaker 3: eventually die, by then she was in a group home
Speaker 3: and she couldn't swallow or speak anymore. So it was
Speaker 3: a long time. It was a long time of watching
Speaker 3: her die, obviously not thinking the whole time about Like
Speaker 3: I didn't think in those terms when I was with her,
Speaker 3: But there's always part of you waiting for the phone
Speaker 3: call in the middle of the night. So nowadays my
Speaker 3: sister's died and both my parents have died, I don't
Speaker 3: really have to have that feeling anymore.
Speaker 1: I can turn my phone off. That must be a
Speaker 1: strange shift, because for almost your whole life you.
Speaker 3: Have I mean, I don't think you switch from one
Speaker 3: to the other immediately either sort of like any kind
Speaker 3: of I guess trauma that you're always attuned to it.
Speaker 1: So do you think from seven year old you and
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'm not going to try and be an
Speaker 1: amateur psychologist. Was very far from my area of expertise.
Speaker 1: But do you think that your need to like understand
Speaker 1: get your hands around death almost is that where it
Speaker 1: comes from? This is sort of thinking or being told
Speaker 1: this is going to happen to your sister.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, definitely, because when you're that young as well.
Speaker 3: I mean she and I were very close. I felt
Speaker 3: like she was me and I was her. You know,
Speaker 3: there's that boundary is pretty blurry with siblings who are
Speaker 3: quite close to you.
Speaker 1: Because you're from a big family family seven. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're the youngest. Yeah, I'm the youngest. So you had
Speaker 1: a lot of like looking forward and up and trying
Speaker 1: to understand what the hell's going on in this big,
Speaker 1: chaotic family. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just what you're used to. It's just
Speaker 3: what you grow up with. But Alison was mine. Allison
Speaker 3: was mine and I was hers. She kind of looked
Speaker 3: out for me in that big, complicated, messy Catholic family household. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so when she got sick, it was really devastating for everybody.
Speaker 3: Which is kind of funny too, because this may sound
Speaker 3: sort of weird, but when you've got that many kids,
Speaker 3: you kind of think, well, maybe the parents won't be
Speaker 3: so like, they won't care as much because they've got
Speaker 3: so many, which.
Speaker 1: Is not the case at all. Control these backups.
Speaker 3: And I've got an only child, and I now know
Speaker 3: that the more you have, the more it grows, the
Speaker 3: more the concern grows. So Allison's illness really transformed our
Speaker 3: whole family. It brought them back, brought them, brought some
Speaker 3: of my sisters back to the family who had kind
Speaker 3: of tried to leave. I think it brought out a
Speaker 3: better side of both of my parents, who were pretty
Speaker 3: troubled people and were you know, throughout our lives.
Speaker 1: But you know, Dad stopped.
Speaker 3: Drinking for a long time until sort of the end
Speaker 3: of his life. And Mum, I mean, Mum kept gambling.
Speaker 3: But she she was just much nicer to Alison and
Speaker 3: I than she was to my older sisters. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's that's a relative to him, but yeah, she genuinely
Speaker 3: was because she really cared about about Alison, so and
Speaker 3: I could see that, whereas I don't know if my
Speaker 3: older sisters got to see that that's part of her
Speaker 3: the way that I did up close.
Speaker 1: So when you say that you know you're comfortable around
Speaker 1: death and the rituals around death and a good death,
Speaker 1: a good goodbye, that's exactly what most people are very
Speaker 1: uncomfortable about, right that. I mean for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: they will do almost anything to avoid talking about death,
Speaker 1: talking to someone who's experienced loss knowing how to behave
Speaker 1: around it. And you must, I guess, through your work
Speaker 1: come up against that a lot. And is there any
Speaker 1: kind of pattern that you see in people that you
Speaker 1: work with around death who are whether they're comfortable or
Speaker 1: not with it? I guess does it make a difference.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to have a think about that in
Speaker 3: terms of the people who themselves are dying versus the
Speaker 3: people around them. Yeah, and before death then obviously after death.
Speaker 1: And so that's if you have a terminal illness or
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like this.
Speaker 3: Is yeah, you know care, paliative care, that's right, end
Speaker 3: of life care.
Speaker 1: You're in that phase of your life.
Speaker 3: So you're switching from medical intervention to try and make
Speaker 3: you better, to medical intervention, to just try and lessen
Speaker 3: your pain, make you comfortable. So those people they want
Speaker 3: to get their house in order, they want to make generally,
Speaker 3: I mean it's not always at all, but generally, once
Speaker 3: they've made that transition to going, okay, I'm not fighting
Speaker 3: the cancer so much anymore as trying to make sure
Speaker 3: I have good quality of life for this last bit
Speaker 3: of my life, they're pretty prepared to tell you what
Speaker 3: they want, you know. So I've met some people in
Speaker 3: that context because they want to meet the person who
Speaker 3: might be their funeral celebrant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the same way you would meet a wedding somebody. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I really do like being able to meet the
Speaker 3: person beforehand, because you don't want to get up and
Speaker 3: be like, oh, this person was and you've never even
Speaker 3: met them before. I always make the point at a
Speaker 3: funeral to say, like, I didn't know this person that well,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to leave all the deep, you know,
Speaker 3: meaty stories to you guys.
Speaker 1: But my job's just to facilitate.
Speaker 3: And generally what I say at a funeral is it's
Speaker 3: kind of what I've learned is that it's sort of
Speaker 3: my job to let you know that you have permission
Speaker 3: to say and feel all the things that you're feeling
Speaker 3: all of them, and do what you need to do.
Speaker 1: That's what I've realized over the years.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we were talking about people and their attitudes
Speaker 3: and their ability to talk about death. So people who
Speaker 3: know that they're dying are fairly practical in my experience,
Speaker 3: Like my mother in law died a few years ago,
Speaker 3: and she was very clear about what she wanted when
Speaker 3: we put together the slide show for her funeral. My
Speaker 3: husband had put it together and he had recorded her
Speaker 3: telling him what to put in it, and he put
Speaker 3: that over the top of the music, which was so
Speaker 3: it was great. She was like, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: want it to be too sad, so do this and
Speaker 3: do that, and we're all just you know, laugh crying
Speaker 3: and all that sort of thing the people around them.
Speaker 3: Some people, it varies, but some people don't want you
Speaker 3: to talk about it. They don't want their person to
Speaker 3: be talking about it, and that can be hard because
Speaker 3: if that person wants to talk about it and nobody
Speaker 3: around them will talk to them about it, you know,
Speaker 3: the last thing that they want in life is to
Speaker 3: be heard and saying this last thing with any of us. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's the first and last thing we want is to
Speaker 3: be seen and heard. And if the people who love
Speaker 3: you keep telling you that you're going to be all right,
Speaker 3: you know, and they're doing it because they can't face
Speaker 3: the pain. So it's all understandable.
Speaker 1: But there'll be people listening to this who have suffered
Speaker 1: loss or are at the moment maybe caring for a
Speaker 1: parent who you know, may not have a lot of time,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's a sort of slow process. Does
Speaker 1: it make any I don't know quite what I'm asking here,
Speaker 1: but does it make any difference to the shock of
Speaker 1: the loss when it happens for the people around them? Well,
Speaker 1: if you know that it's been coming a long time. No, unfortunately, Sorry, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not not at all. I'm just sort of thinking, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, you know, yes and no, like you do know
Speaker 3: it's coming, so maybe it does.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've had both. So that's the other
Speaker 1: reason I do this work.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of deaths. My dad died suddenly
Speaker 3: when I was twenty.
Speaker 1: Three, and you found him. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: Christmas Eve and you had a heart attack in his sleep.
Speaker 3: So that was sudden, and that probably took me ten
Speaker 3: years to get over. I reckon, But there were other
Speaker 3: things that I had to deal with, you know, which
Speaker 3: I kind of talked about in theology with Allison and
Speaker 3: my mum who died just a few months ago, now
Speaker 3: like Alison was sick. So probably took me six to
Speaker 3: twelve months physically, because grief is a physical process as well,
Speaker 3: for the cells of my body to kind of imbibe
Speaker 3: the knowledge that this person was no longer around.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about that, because that's what
Speaker 1: I mean. Obviously it's not my air of expertise, but
Speaker 1: it's yours. Grief isn't an emotion, right, It's something much more.
Speaker 1: It's a found in all consumed.
Speaker 3: Whole of body, whole of spirit experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because often people they want to know, like, they
Speaker 1: give themselves a hard time about I'm not over it.
Speaker 1: Why aren't I over it? I'm looking around and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing other people who've lost a parent or a sibling
Speaker 1: or something, and they're walking around looking normal, and I'm not.
Speaker 1: Like there is some reassurance or validation in understanding that
Speaker 1: grief is a whole body process, as you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're very like you know, we're kind of scientific culture,
Speaker 3: so we like to think, oh, there's science behind this.
Speaker 3: So if well there is, that's that's the comfort that
Speaker 3: I can offer that it is a physiological process. You know,
Speaker 3: when you lose someone, it's like a shock. It's a
Speaker 3: body shock and you go through shock. So if you
Speaker 3: just had a massive car accident, your body would go
Speaker 3: into shock, same kind of thing. When you lose a person.
Speaker 3: You know, there's neurological changes. That's why you get the
Speaker 3: fuzzy brain and you know you cannot concentrate for very
Speaker 3: long periods of time when someone's just died. Someone asked
Speaker 3: you a question, Oh, I don't know. Lots of fatigue,
Speaker 3: but insomnia, just you might be getting sick. When there
Speaker 3: is research that shows that people you know have lost
Speaker 3: a lifelong partner, there is a higher rate of death
Speaker 3: amongst the cohort in the year following the loss of
Speaker 3: their partner. Which is why you hear these beautiful stories
Speaker 3: of someone dying. You know, a month after their wife
Speaker 3: or their husband or a partner has died.
Speaker 1: People will say they died of a broken heart, and
Speaker 1: essentially they did. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, So is there
Speaker 1: anything you can do to help someone who's grieving. We
Speaker 1: know you can't get a shortcut, you can't solve anything.
Speaker 1: What are the practical things you can do that might
Speaker 1: actually help people in their darkest moment. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know we're jumping around a bit here, but I did
Speaker 1: want to ask you about partners because a conversation that
Speaker 1: I people I know have had who have been who
Speaker 1: have lost parents perhaps is that if a parent is
Speaker 1: part of a couple and the other person is still there,
Speaker 1: they are sort of the primary griever, if you like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the child, the adult child is stepping in to
Speaker 1: try and look after that person, encourage them to process
Speaker 1: their grief in a certain way. But there might be
Speaker 1: like a generational divide there that means that the parent,
Speaker 1: the remaining parent, doesn't want to deal with it in
Speaker 1: the way that you're trying to pushing them to deal
Speaker 1: with it. You must see these kind of family dynamics
Speaker 1: in your work around a lot. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: works in like trying to respect how other people's grief
Speaker 1: needs to play out?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you just answered your own question, Holly.
Speaker 3: Just respecting the process and just trying to take care
Speaker 3: of when you're trying to take care of someone. So
Speaker 3: if that happens, Say so, after my dad died, there
Speaker 3: was my mum. You know that generally parents don't die
Speaker 3: at the same time and if they're still together, so
Speaker 3: one is the widow or the widower. Like what's playing
Speaker 3: out is again your thing with your mum, It's always
Speaker 3: the same, Like that dynamic will just play out in
Speaker 3: whatever context and whatever the thing is going on in life,
Speaker 3: and this is the loss of you know, your dad,
Speaker 3: her husband, the same thing will play out. So with
Speaker 3: me and my mum, it was I shifted. I was
Speaker 3: all about trying to make her and my sister Allison,
Speaker 3: who she was caring for, better in all aspects of
Speaker 3: the word, better quality of life, you know, being more social,
Speaker 3: gamble less, you know, get Alison out and doing things whatever.
Speaker 3: And I drew them up a budget and I was
Speaker 3: like called all these like associations or whatever, and just
Speaker 3: classic that's just what I've always done with both of
Speaker 3: those people.
Speaker 1: And she ignored all of.
Speaker 3: It, all of it, and obviously that made me mad.
Speaker 3: So you know that the same thing like kind of
Speaker 3: understanding that you know, the adult child, you're not suddenly
Speaker 3: wiser than your parent. You're just trying to do the
Speaker 3: same thing that you've probably all always tried to do,
Speaker 3: or I have tried to do for a long time,
Speaker 3: which is a certainself.
Speaker 1: And make and make them know that you know better
Speaker 1: than them. That is so true. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: lots of people listening to this. There are lots of
Speaker 1: people around me who are going, but Dad just won't
Speaker 1: move into a home or whatever it might be like,
Speaker 1: or won't sell the house, or won't go out and
Speaker 1: join the bingo group or well, you know whatever, like,
Speaker 1: and I know that he needs to do that. He
Speaker 1: can't just sit home and be sad about mom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can he just sit home? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: I mean as long as he's still eating and you know,
Speaker 3: getting enough water and ideally enough exercise. Like that's I
Speaker 3: guess what my default is and what my advice and
Speaker 3: inverted commas is is just to address yourself to the
Speaker 3: physical needs of a person, because you know, all the
Speaker 3: social stuff and like, you just can't make someone even
Speaker 3: when they're like top of their game.
Speaker 1: You can't make them let alone when they're at.
Speaker 3: The bottom of their game, you know, So you know,
Speaker 3: liken't go around and mow the lawn, come in and
Speaker 3: check that there's food and that it's being eaten, organized
Speaker 3: meals on wheels. If you think it's necessary, just the
Speaker 3: physical stuff, you can do that sort of level of
Speaker 3: bossy bossy daughter stuff of like you know, you're coming
Speaker 3: with me to the cardiologist on extent, you just show
Speaker 3: up and you take them. You can do that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff absolutely, and you should, and they'll they will
Speaker 3: feel loved if it's I'm thinking now of dads. Dads
Speaker 3: feel loved when you do things for them. Moms feel
Speaker 3: loved when you do things for them, but when you
Speaker 3: tell them and when you give them things. Gifts are
Speaker 3: also really a good thing to do if you've got
Speaker 3: a grieving friend or someone like that in your life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like food, dropping off the food, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: all the stuff that you.
Speaker 1: Do culturally anyway, yea.
Speaker 3: The lasagna, the chocolate. I've got friends who every time
Speaker 3: I lose someone, they send me like a huge crate
Speaker 3: of Cadbury dairy milk.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, yeah, I've been grievy for six months.
Speaker 1: You can see it right here. But you feel loved
Speaker 1: when the dairy milk I do.
Speaker 3: It turns up, and like if it didn't turn up,
Speaker 3: I'd be kind of sad.
Speaker 1: I wonder if because we're back to the feeling of
Speaker 1: how everybody, well not everybody because there's deaths, but many
Speaker 1: people are very uncomfortable with this. It's like people are
Speaker 1: looking for a shortcut to get through it. And all
Speaker 1: the chocolate and the lazannis are useful because people need
Speaker 1: to feel loved and not forgotten, But there isn't a.
Speaker 3: Shortcut, right ah Nah, there's no shortcut again. It's like
Speaker 3: recovering from an illness. You know, people want a shortcut
Speaker 3: there too. Generally, you know, people who are suffering from
Speaker 3: long COVID and all that sort of thing. They can
Speaker 3: tell you how there's no shortcuts. You just have to persist.
Speaker 3: You have to make sure that you are getting more sleep,
Speaker 3: and just acknowledge that you your body is not what
Speaker 3: it was the day before your parent or whoever it
Speaker 3: was died. It's different, so you have to kind of
Speaker 3: like menopause or something, you have to behave differently. All
Speaker 3: the stuff eat well, blah blah blah. I do think
Speaker 3: you know how there's health ratings on foods. I feel
Speaker 3: like there should be a mental health rating on like,
Speaker 3: chocolate should definitely have a five star.
Speaker 1: Mental health rating.
Speaker 3: In my view, it is literally the only thing for
Speaker 3: me anyway that can change my mood from one moment
Speaker 3: to another. I mean, obviously, yeah, I don't drink and
Speaker 3: take drugs. I'm a forty seven year old mother.
Speaker 1: Very responsible, but chocolate can.
Speaker 3: So just make sure you've got to stash. Because if
Speaker 3: you're really low and you just need a bit of
Speaker 3: a shift, get up and move to a different room.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you have to go out.
Speaker 3: For a run, because no, my knees wouldn't appreciate that. Literally,
Speaker 3: just move from the one seat to another, and that
Speaker 3: moves yoursells. That changes your physical kind of being and
Speaker 3: shifts things in your body because it's all happening in
Speaker 3: your body. It's like any kind of PTSD. You've got
Speaker 3: to know that it's happening and do something physical to
Speaker 3: shift the mood.
Speaker 1: I was interested that you use the language when you
Speaker 1: talked about your father's loss. Then it took me ten
Speaker 1: years to get over it. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: did say get over it, probably did. But I've also
Speaker 1: heard you say that your relationship with somebody doesn't end
Speaker 1: because they're gone, which I'd love to hear you talk
Speaker 1: about a bit. But also, what does get over it
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 3: Do you think, yes, thank you for picking me up
Speaker 3: on that, because you don't get over someone. You never
Speaker 3: get over losing someone. But it's more like the Eastern
Speaker 3: European approach of you know, the grief or the loss
Speaker 3: just becomes part of you and you just know how
Speaker 3: to live with it. So when I'm thinking of my dad,
Speaker 3: I didn't get over it so much as integrated. You
Speaker 3: integrate the knowledge and the fallout from it. So, you know,
Speaker 3: with my dad, it was complicated because we had, you know,
Speaker 3: stuff that we hadn't dealt with while he was alive.
Speaker 3: And that's that was hard losing when you lose someone
Speaker 3: when you're you're fairly immature. Because that was twenty three,
Speaker 3: but I was still wasn't very mature, so we hadn't
Speaker 3: got to that place where we could just kind of
Speaker 3: chat and respect each other. I don't know, maybe you
Speaker 3: never maybe we never would have. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: I feel like as I got older, we would have
Speaker 3: turned a corner, but we hadn't. So I kind of
Speaker 3: in my relationship with my dad, even though he had died.
Speaker 1: I still, I kind of had to work through all
Speaker 1: of that still, which is.
Speaker 3: So annoying because you think, if they've died, like, surely
Speaker 3: can we draw a.
Speaker 1: Line under that, you know, in that relationship. No, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are people who one of the in a way.
Speaker 1: Often when we lose someone, they have to then be
Speaker 1: considered to be an angel and a perfect person. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's many people if they're losing who will have lost
Speaker 1: family members, whether it's a parent or anyone who was
Speaker 1: not a perfect angel, who their relationship may have been.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's such an overused euphemism. But complicated
Speaker 1: that can make things even more complicated in grief, right,
Speaker 1: because there's guilt that comes along with that. Why do
Speaker 1: you think we need to sort of venerate people who
Speaker 1: are got Like, is it okay to speak ill of
Speaker 1: the dead?
Speaker 3: Of course, of course it is. Of course it's okay
Speaker 3: to speak ill of the dead. But I guess it's
Speaker 3: like it's a one sided conversation though, so they don't
Speaker 3: have a right of reply anymore.
Speaker 1: So. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's part of us that a sense
Speaker 3: of fairness kicks in. It's like well, I can't really,
Speaker 3: you know, say that anymore.
Speaker 1: It's also.
Speaker 3: You can't resolve it with them anymore, so saying it
Speaker 3: is just feels like leaving them, like opening, like you've
Speaker 3: got an open wound which is your grief and now
Speaker 3: you're just sticking fingers in it rather than like covering
Speaker 3: it with savlon and making it feel better. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that tendency to turn someone into a saint, definitely. I've
Speaker 3: seen it at funeral after funeral, and I've also seen
Speaker 3: people get annoyed at that funeral after funeral it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, he wasn't a saint, so why are we
Speaker 3: all talking about him like he was a saint? So
Speaker 3: people appreciate a little like some truth bombs as well,
Speaker 3: to mix it up. At my mum's funeral a few
Speaker 3: months ago, my brother and I delivered the eulogies, and yeah,
Speaker 3: we both acknowledged how hard things had been, how complicated
Speaker 3: it had been, and how she had been an angry mother,
Speaker 3: but we also talked about the times where we realized
Speaker 3: that she maybe did love us. I was lucky with
Speaker 3: my mum because she was eighty eight when she died,
Speaker 3: and she had dementia but she was still at a
Speaker 3: good point in the dementia journey, where journey where she
Speaker 3: could still swallow and eat and talk and walk around,
Speaker 3: and she still knew who we all were, and she
Speaker 3: was really happy, to the point where I went to
Speaker 3: see her before she died, a couple months before she died,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I could actually come back and
Speaker 3: see her more often, because normally it was such a
Speaker 3: chore to go and see my mother.
Speaker 1: It's like that was actually quite nice, you know.
Speaker 3: And then she died, but it was good because it
Speaker 3: was like there was a part of her that could
Speaker 3: say the things that she'd never allowed herself to say
Speaker 3: for whatever read her own trauma reasons, probably, so I
Speaker 3: was lucky that I got that with her, and it
Speaker 3: meant that I could say that honestly at her funeral.
Speaker 3: And there is like this, there's this Hawaiian practice which
Speaker 3: is where they say four things to their person.
Speaker 1: I add one or two.
Speaker 3: So I love you, I'm sorry, I forgive you, thank you,
Speaker 3: and goodbye. That's what I always recommend saying, only if
Speaker 3: you can mean it genuinely, and you can say it
Speaker 3: at any point before they die, after they die. I
Speaker 3: said it to my mum's body because I didn't make
Speaker 3: it there in time, and I said it to her
Speaker 3: casket as well. That is a good thing about her funeral.
Speaker 3: So having my mum's funeral was kind of good because
Speaker 3: it reminded me of why I do this work. I mean,
Speaker 3: thanks mam. But you know, having the casket there and
Speaker 3: watching it leave in the hearse the physical again, because
Speaker 3: loss is has to be known in the body. So
Speaker 3: because you can physically touch someone or their casket or
Speaker 3: their ashes or their pluck or whatever, but physically touch something,
Speaker 3: the body starts to know what's happened. There's that trauma guy.
Speaker 3: He wrote the book The Body Keeps the Score. Yes,
Speaker 3: that trauma I can't remember his name, but Besilvandercock, you know,
Speaker 3: well he's like the Body keeps the Score is the
Speaker 3: name of his book about trauma.
Speaker 1: It's the same for healing.
Speaker 3: The body holds them to the trauma, but it also
Speaker 3: can physically it holds onto the healing too.
Speaker 1: I think so a bit of both. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about funerals quickly. I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: million things. But because obviously funerals is something that you
Speaker 1: that's your job to a point. I've read that you
Speaker 1: said that one of the reasons you wanted to do
Speaker 1: it is that you wanted to give others what my
Speaker 1: sister's funeral had given me, a clean wound ready for healing.
Speaker 1: Now you use this metaphor before, it's really I've never
Speaker 1: heard a ceremony of death described like that, and yet
Speaker 1: it's so perfect that description. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: A clean wound? So this occurred to me.
Speaker 3: So when my dad died, we had his funeral, and
Speaker 3: the wound didn't feel clean to me. It was you know,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of shock around his sudden heart
Speaker 3: attack kind of thing. So we were all like running around,
Speaker 3: you know, headless chooks. And it was perfectly respectable funeral,
Speaker 3: but it took me a long time to deal with
Speaker 3: all of the fallout from his life and death. Then
Speaker 3: with Alison, we knew she was going to die eventually,
Speaker 3: you know, she'd been sick for so long so and
Speaker 3: we had warning she was impalliative care for a few
Speaker 3: days before she actually died. We all came together and
Speaker 3: put together this beautiful ceremony that I think she would
Speaker 3: have really liked.
Speaker 1: We saw it through.
Speaker 3: We did this beautiful thing for her and for me
Speaker 3: that felt clean. I'm sad, but I'm not infected by
Speaker 3: her death by the grief virus or something. So that's
Speaker 3: what it felt like for me. And it was it
Speaker 3: was her funeral that made me want to start doing funerals.
Speaker 1: And now that you do, and as I understand it,
Speaker 1: you as an interfaith minister, you do all kinds of
Speaker 1: funerals for people of different cultural backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds,
Speaker 1: all the things. Is there something that makes the funeral
Speaker 1: good as opposed to because funerals can also be very stressful.
Speaker 1: There can be arguments about where it should be and
Speaker 1: where the weight should be, and and like families can
Speaker 1: in the same way that families can find all kinds
Speaker 1: of things to argue about. What makes a good funeral
Speaker 1: just honesty normally just honesty.
Speaker 3: And that includes like the good and the bad, finding
Speaker 3: a way to talk about the bad site that still
Speaker 3: feels honoring, like you're honoring your person. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: your families do fight. It's kind of inevitable. Tender Funerals,
Speaker 3: which is the not for profit funeral home, there was
Speaker 3: one time when they had to do two funerals for
Speaker 3: someone because and I'm not sure if they've had to
Speaker 3: do that more than once, but probably because that people
Speaker 3: can be very fractured and death brings it all out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that was the other good thing about my sister Allison.
Speaker 3: There was nothing to fight about. Everyone loved her, so
Speaker 3: she made it easier for us.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you wrote your The eulogy is an auto fiction book, right,
Speaker 1: So it's your family story but fictionalized. It's called the
Speaker 1: eulogy because your framework for it is like, the main
Speaker 1: character has to write a eulogy for her sister, and
Speaker 1: so like you must be an absolute expert in how
Speaker 1: to write eulogy. And the thing is is that for
Speaker 1: a lot of people you know, who may be suffering
Speaker 1: the loss of it becomes an extra stress, Like how
Speaker 1: do I say the perfect thing? I don't like public speaking.
Speaker 1: I'm really afraid. And what if I you know, they've
Speaker 1: been asked to do it. My brother's making me do it.
Speaker 1: What does make a good eulogy? What makes a good eulogy?
Speaker 3: So I do have it's pretty basic advice, but five
Speaker 3: minutes short makes it a good eulogy? Step one, Step two.
Speaker 3: I do think it's good to give a bit of
Speaker 3: a chronology of a life. It's interesting when you meet
Speaker 3: with a family to discuss the funeral, you're one of
Speaker 3: the first people they've spoken to about their person in
Speaker 3: the past tense, so they're starting to narrate their person.
Speaker 3: They're starting to take their memories and their thoughts about
Speaker 3: that person, and they're not like in live play anymore.
Speaker 3: They're changing the verbs as they speak, you know, And
Speaker 3: that's happening in their brains and you know, in their
Speaker 3: hearts as well, which is why it's really important to
Speaker 3: talk about the person having died, not having passed or anything.
Speaker 3: When for me, as a funeral person, going in and saying,
Speaker 3: you know, tell me about their death, how that happened.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 3: So the eulogy, the chronology, some personal stories that you
Speaker 3: might want to share, and the very end, I would
Speaker 3: always recommend addressing the person, you know, speak to them
Speaker 3: the last lines.
Speaker 1: So that's it.
Speaker 3: That's a good eulogy in a nutshell, that's very.
Speaker 1: Useful working with all different cultures. I suppose in saying goodbye,
Speaker 1: are there cultures that do death better than others? Like
Speaker 1: every other culture. That's kind of what I was getting,
Speaker 1: apart from uptight Western culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know we're doing We're getting better. We're definitely
Speaker 3: getting better here with all the sort of the deathy movement,
Speaker 3: you know, the grassroots making demands. I think it's also
Speaker 3: this generation Gen X and maybe the Boomers as well,
Speaker 3: more prepared to say, well.
Speaker 1: That's not how I want to do things.
Speaker 3: Is how I want to do things, you know, and
Speaker 3: doing things which are more suited to their personality.
Speaker 1: So you know, not going.
Speaker 3: To a church if you weren't religious, and going outdoors
Speaker 3: if you love the outdoors, and just.
Speaker 1: All that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: But what other cultures do, like for example, that kin
Speaker 3: do rights. I did an interfaith process with a Hindu
Speaker 3: family once, so the dad had dined but he you.
Speaker 1: Don't needto the details.
Speaker 3: But what that culture and what other cultures do is
Speaker 3: they give it time. We moved his body back to
Speaker 3: the house, for example, back home and had the body
Speaker 3: for a period of time, and you know, every people
Speaker 3: spent time with the body. That what we tend to
Speaker 3: do in the West is rush, you know. And when
Speaker 3: I say rush, I don't just mean oh, let's have
Speaker 3: the funeral next week, although there is that, it'd be
Speaker 3: nice to push that out a little, give people a
Speaker 3: bit of time, but also just being with the body.
Speaker 3: We don't get much time with the body in the West,
Speaker 3: and that I think really does affect how well you
Speaker 3: can and how long it takes you to absorb the information.
Speaker 3: So I do think it's like a cellular transfer of knowledge.
Speaker 3: So if you get the chance and you're okay with
Speaker 3: sitting with the person's body for even just for like
Speaker 3: half an hour round hour, I do think it makes
Speaker 3: a big difference.
Speaker 1: But yeah, other cultures let you and not just let.
Speaker 3: You, but they kind of require you to do that
Speaker 3: and to do sort of physical things like.
Speaker 1: Wash the body, wrap the body.
Speaker 3: In the Hindu tradition, you know, you walk around the body,
Speaker 3: you gal in the body in certain ways, all of
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 1: It's so sensible.
Speaker 3: To turn that process of letting go or letting that
Speaker 3: person move on on their path, and it's a physical
Speaker 3: letting go. Yeah, we just tend to think if I
Speaker 3: say the words and that's it.
Speaker 1: But it's yeah, why are we so verbal? It's interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because back to the idea of if you are nursing
Speaker 1: somebody or spending time with somebody who is dying, there's
Speaker 1: often a lot of pressure to say the things. I mean,
Speaker 1: you put that so beautifully before when you were talking
Speaker 1: about that Hawaiian tradition of saying the four things. But
Speaker 1: sometimes people put an enormous amount of pressure and we've
Speaker 1: got to have this conversation that we've been wanting to
Speaker 1: before they die. Die you have to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: Do you have to have that conversation?
Speaker 3: Well for them, I'm trying to think if I've ever
Speaker 3: managed to have that conversation with anyone before they've done it.
Speaker 3: Even when you think you have had that conversation, you
Speaker 3: still feel like you haven't. You know that there's things missing.
Speaker 3: I think that that's partly something to do with not
Speaker 3: so much like we must have this conversation, and clearly
Speaker 3: yet it's because of American.
Speaker 1: Movies that we think that.
Speaker 3: But it's also like, I'm going to like have the
Speaker 3: relationship with you that I've wanted to have my whole life,
Speaker 3: at least for these five minutes or something. That's so true,
Speaker 3: and it's like they're still the same person. You know,
Speaker 3: you have this conversation with them, They're still going to
Speaker 3: respond the way that they would have five minutes ago
Speaker 3: or something. Dying doesn't change people that much. I'm afraid
Speaker 3: that is something that you know when you grieve, and
Speaker 3: I'm not you know, I'm no grief and trauma expert.
Speaker 3: Just is just from what I've seen and what I've experienced,
Speaker 3: like you grieve what you didn't have as much as
Speaker 3: what you did have with that person. And I do
Speaker 3: think that you are still in a relationship with that
Speaker 3: person after they died, and you do have to work
Speaker 3: through that whether or not they've died, and you do
Speaker 3: have to accept that you're never going to get what
Speaker 3: you wanted from that person.
Speaker 1: Just like no relationships, you always get exactly what you
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 3: No, that's right, and sometimes you're like that's okay, But
Speaker 3: it's harder when they're people that you can't choose, you know,
Speaker 3: like your own parents or siblings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your expression of how of this cellular change and
Speaker 1: needing to almost lay hands on it? Does that explain why?
Speaker 1: I mean it seems to me we've talked a bit
Speaker 1: about deaths that you can see coming, but when things
Speaker 1: are very sudden, that can be a particular shocking process
Speaker 1: of grief, when somebody just vanishes almost is that? Why
Speaker 1: is it? Because there is no sort of transition almost.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just thinking about a loss that we
Speaker 3: had in our family, death by suicide, and that's I mean,
Speaker 3: there's all the stuff about suicide to complicate it. But
Speaker 3: and I've officiated funerals for people like that too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think you're right that the shock is part of it.
Speaker 3: It just exacerbates what's already a physical shock, just losing
Speaker 3: someone from your cellular inheritance or something.
Speaker 1: It's also because we.
Speaker 3: Narrate everything in our heads and we just unconsciously feel
Speaker 3: like we know roughly where the story is going to go,
Speaker 3: and then it doesn't bang. And that sort of dissonance
Speaker 3: can be really effective in fiction, but only up to
Speaker 3: a point.
Speaker 1: You don't want.
Speaker 3: The protagonist to die on page thirty.
Speaker 1: And that's the same in life.
Speaker 3: It's just interrupts that what we feel in our bodies
Speaker 3: to be the natural flow of things, especially when a child.
Speaker 3: You know, when a child dies, that's probably the hardest.
Speaker 1: Do you well as a funeral celebrant, as somebody who's
Speaker 1: around death. There's some funerals harder than others. Do you
Speaker 1: connect emotionally to absolutely do.
Speaker 3: And my teacher who does the death Walker trainings and
Speaker 3: at virago, she.
Speaker 1: Taught us.
Speaker 3: When you're officiating a funeral, you know, you might be standing,
Speaker 3: you know, straight on like this, like we are sitting
Speaker 3: at the table, but on the inside you're on an angle,
Speaker 3: and you're letting all that grief and everything flow past
Speaker 3: you to its rightful recipient, which is you know, the
Speaker 3: person in the casket or you, Otherwise you will absorb
Speaker 3: it all and take it on and it's not yours.
Speaker 3: So constantly reminding yourself, this is not my grief. This
Speaker 3: is their grief and their story, and I'm just here
Speaker 3: to steward it, to witness it. I'm not even I
Speaker 3: don't even think of myself as holding the space because
Speaker 3: that's too heavy. People create their own space. I just
Speaker 3: walk with them. I think that's why the term deathwalker
Speaker 3: really works resonates with me.
Speaker 1: Next. We all know it's coming, So why are we
Speaker 1: so bad at preparing for death, either our own or
Speaker 1: that of our loved ones? And what can we do
Speaker 1: to get better at it? Is there? And this may
Speaker 1: not the answer may well be known, of course, but
Speaker 1: is there anything you can do to prepare? You were
Speaker 1: just saying, how you, particularly as you get older, the
Speaker 1: inevitability of loss is ever more likely every day. Is
Speaker 1: there any practical way to prepare for that?
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, there's a bunch of things you can do.
Speaker 3: It depends on how close you are to it. But
Speaker 3: if so, some really practical things. Do an advanced care
Speaker 3: directive and have it on top of the fridge.
Speaker 1: So and right, like get a sign.
Speaker 3: You can get this stuff from a Party of Care
Speaker 3: Australia I think online a sign that this is maybe
Speaker 3: more for our parents people our parents' age, but you
Speaker 3: stick that sign to the door saying my advanced care.
Speaker 1: Directive is on the fridge.
Speaker 3: Because if you're in your own home, it's going to
Speaker 3: be an ambo who comes to pick you up and
Speaker 3: take you to palliative care or whatever, and you want
Speaker 3: them to have that because you might have a do
Speaker 3: not resuscitate or like no medical intervention kind of request
Speaker 3: and they're going to need that. So that's a very
Speaker 3: practical thing you can also get going to get I
Speaker 3: think it's on palliad of Care Australia's website. There's like
Speaker 3: a little card you can put in your wallet with
Speaker 3: the details, with similar kind of details because if you're
Speaker 3: not in care or in a hospital, you want people
Speaker 3: to be able to access that advanced care directive.
Speaker 1: Tell people what you want for your funeral.
Speaker 3: Don't just put it in your will, so like have
Speaker 3: a folder, have like a plastic folder or like a
Speaker 3: recycled impossible folder whatever. But yeah, yeah, in the event
Speaker 3: of my day, Yeah, I put it on top of
Speaker 3: the fridge or somewhere where, you know, and put a
Speaker 3: sign as to where it is, and haveing that which
Speaker 3: is have your advanced care directive, which is an actual document.
Speaker 3: You know, you get your GP to sign it and stuff,
Speaker 3: and then put what you want for your funeral if
Speaker 3: there is anything, particularly music, and then put you know
Speaker 3: how you want to be treated in a few days
Speaker 3: that you might no longer be responsive. I've got like
Speaker 3: a little flyer thing on my website with some questions
Speaker 3: that you can just ask yourself, but they're kind of
Speaker 3: obvious questions. Do I want to be touched? Do I
Speaker 3: want to see a minister of any faith or no faith?
Speaker 3: But do I want to see someone? Do I want
Speaker 3: the window open? Do I want music playing? And if so,
Speaker 3: what do I want oils or massages? Just because generally
Speaker 3: if you're in a palliative care unit, there will be
Speaker 3: some time when you can't tell people what you want,
Speaker 3: so tell them beforehand. It's interesting to me that that
Speaker 3: is a little gap. It's not in the advanced care directive,
Speaker 3: and you know, and funeral wishes are a bit later.
Speaker 1: It's also really even if that's you're thinking about, you
Speaker 1: know how you were saying before that sometimes people who
Speaker 1: are dying or know they're going to die, they might
Speaker 1: want to talk about it, but no one wants to
Speaker 1: hear it because they the thought of losing you is
Speaker 1: too awful for them. So also a good way of
Speaker 1: expressing your wishes without having to you know, that's right,
Speaker 1: and it is a good upset everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it can get people talking about it. And like,
Speaker 3: if you've got a parent who stubbornly won't talk about
Speaker 3: the fact that they are inevitably going to die in
Speaker 3: the next ten years, then maybe break it open with, well,
Speaker 3: do you want to see a priest? You know, if
Speaker 3: you know that they're really not religious, So that'll get
Speaker 3: them talking and tell them what they don't want. Also,
Speaker 3: music is a real icebreaker on that conversation, what music
Speaker 3: do you want at your funeral? And then again provoke
Speaker 3: them if they really don't want to talk about well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to play. Yeah, you know they hate Just
Speaker 3: also like a couple of things that you personally can
Speaker 3: do to prepare yourself for other people's deaths. You can
Speaker 3: do those things, make yourself an event's care directive and
Speaker 3: write you know what you would want in that event,
Speaker 3: because not to be morbid, but yeah, I mean you
Speaker 3: could die at any moment. But more to the point,
Speaker 3: it makes you understand what they have to do and
Speaker 3: what they're going through. There are Buddhist practices as well
Speaker 3: for contemplating death, meditation practices of imagining everybody dead super fun.
Speaker 3: And a friend of mine had this thing of get
Speaker 3: an exercise book and on each page like a small
Speaker 3: exercise book, right a year, so twenty twenty four to
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, like a year from now, and you'll
Speaker 3: find that you've only probably got thirty pages.
Speaker 1: And oh my god, right, you've confronted me.
Speaker 3: It's real though, it's real, and this is how I think,
Speaker 3: This is how I roll. So I'm like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: forty seven. I've probably got, if I'm lucky twenty at
Speaker 3: the outer good years of work working life to take
Speaker 3: me to sixty seven if I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably like.
Speaker 3: The retirement age whatever it is, twenty good years. How
Speaker 3: many books might I get to write in that time.
Speaker 3: Takes me a few years to write one, you know,
Speaker 3: like break it down, be real with it.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know, treat your years like a budget, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, you don't know this happened to you
Speaker 1: when you had your daughter. When I had my first child,
Speaker 1: who's fourteen now, I suddenly actually the only time when
Speaker 1: I suddenly became a bit obsessed with the fact I
Speaker 1: was going to die because I look at her and
Speaker 1: now my son, and I'm just like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave them. Like It's made me much more you know,
Speaker 1: which I think is very common, is that somehow sometimes
Speaker 1: parenthood can really confront you with your mortality. You've been
Speaker 1: so close to this, yeah, so it's yeah, wow, Okay, that.
Speaker 3: Was my first I feel like, like, yeah, death, death,
Speaker 3: I'm so familiar with death. But when I was pregnant
Speaker 3: with my daughter, that was the first time I really
Speaker 3: felt it in my body, my own mortality, that sense
Speaker 3: of passing on the flame or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I'm that's how the species works. You're
Speaker 1: very interested in spirituality that isn't connected to religion. You
Speaker 1: grew up religious though, right, and you're lapsed, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: proudly lapse. Perhaps it be very helpful in grief. I've
Speaker 1: seen it when we were sitting around saying goodbye to
Speaker 1: my mother in law, which was that My sister in law,
Speaker 1: who is a very spiritual person, was calm like a
Speaker 1: lake in that room, and all of us faithless people
Speaker 1: were a mess, raging against it, like wanting her to
Speaker 1: hold on. Right. So faith plays a very important role,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. In some ways. I've seen it also in
Speaker 1: more traditional funerals that if you do genuinely believe it's
Speaker 1: not the end, it seems easier. Do you see that
Speaker 1: it helps? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I imagine it would make it easier. I imagine that's why
Speaker 3: those doctrines are really successful. Have you read the book
Speaker 3: I think it's called Mortals. It's by couple of Australian researchers.
Speaker 3: They're actually father and daughter and they're both academic psychologists anyway,
Speaker 3: and it's all about how the fear of death has
Speaker 3: shaped human society and how Christianity. Their argument is Christianity
Speaker 3: was such a successful religion because it gave people life
Speaker 3: after death. It gave them that promise. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's true or not, but.
Speaker 1: I can see it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question because faith can
Speaker 3: go either way. Like people can really take comfort in it.
Speaker 3: Other people in the family might feel excluded by that.
Speaker 3: Other people might get really angry that it is or
Speaker 3: isn't being done properly. So faith can Yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: always a perfect good.
Speaker 1: That's not an absolute good.
Speaker 3: I think if the person had a belief, and that's
Speaker 3: a question always to ask somebody if you can before
Speaker 3: they die, But if not, then I will ask their
Speaker 3: family afterwards, is what did they think happens after they die?
Speaker 3: Because ultimately that's what you respect in that period of
Speaker 3: time before death. You don't try and impose your beliefs Suddenly,
Speaker 3: your mother in law did think that, So it's great
Speaker 3: that your sister in law was there to kind of
Speaker 3: feel that with her. Yeah, we all know that our
Speaker 3: bodies return to the earth, and I think that there's
Speaker 3: just based on the facts that we do you have
Speaker 3: to hand, that's fairly kind of that gives me comfort.
Speaker 3: My child when she was little, she said to me,
Speaker 3: she couldn't wait to be She doesn't think this anymore,
Speaker 3: but she couldn't wait to be dead so she could
Speaker 3: know what it was like to be the grass. And
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, when I said that, I don't
Speaker 3: know if we still have consciousness starting, so like, don't
Speaker 3: jump off this.
Speaker 1: People often after somebody's death there it brings up so
Speaker 1: much as disgusted and we're not talking about getting over things,
Speaker 1: but it's I wasn't there for them enough. I wasn't
Speaker 1: around enough. She just wanted me to call her every
Speaker 1: Saturday and I didn't. Or there's a bit of me
Speaker 1: that relieved because it was very difficult to care for
Speaker 1: her and her last years. Or you know, I said
Speaker 1: that thing to her once and I never got to apologize.
Speaker 1: Or it's just an enormous cloud that seems to be
Speaker 1: part of grief. Have you or in your practices, found
Speaker 1: any paths through that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I am a lapsed Catholic, so I do
Speaker 3: understand guilt. Yes, it's guilt is like every emotion. I
Speaker 3: feel like it's evolved for a reason. So guilt is
Speaker 3: just the flip side of making sure that you do
Speaker 3: right by your people and your community. But it's kind
Speaker 3: of like modern anxiety. It's not useful if a tiger's
Speaker 3: not about to pounce on you, you know, So that
Speaker 3: kind of guilt after someone's died, who is it helping?
Speaker 3: So I feel like it's appropriate to kind of go, yeah,
Speaker 3: I should have called them more often, you know, just
Speaker 3: own it, just accept it. I wasn't the best person.
Speaker 3: I should have done more. I could have done more.
Speaker 3: I'll do differently. Hopefully next time I'll be more aware.
Speaker 3: Because one thing people don't always realize is that their
Speaker 3: parents are going to die.
Speaker 1: Sooner or later. Everyone is going.
Speaker 3: To die, which is, you know, it's a great way
Speaker 3: to live knowing that, well, but it kind of is
Speaker 3: It forces you to think about how you're behaving towards
Speaker 3: that person. I mean, it shouldn't shape everything, but if
Speaker 3: you know your parents are getting older, they are going
Speaker 3: to probably die sometime in the next ten years. If
Speaker 3: you're our age, hopefully they'll die sometimes in the next
Speaker 3: ten years. Because beyond that, it's not going to be
Speaker 3: pleasant for them or anybody probably, so just kind of
Speaker 3: behave accordingly if you can, like and manage it.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe it's like I.
Speaker 3: Really should go and see them oh my god, just
Speaker 3: schedule it in. You know, it doesn't mean you have
Speaker 3: to go every week or call them every week, but
Speaker 3: if you know, I should really call them every week week,
Speaker 3: maybe call them every couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Just do what you.
Speaker 3: Can, but still do it even if you don't want
Speaker 3: to do it, because we do get into this kind
Speaker 3: of I feel like you get into you just stay
Speaker 3: in this adolescent kind of mindset towards your parents sometimes,
Speaker 3: especially if you've moved away.
Speaker 1: From them when you were young.
Speaker 3: You know, like a lot of people move countries or whatever,
Speaker 3: your move states and like, yeah, I left as soon
Speaker 3: as I could kind of thing. So your relationship can
Speaker 3: sometimes founder a little bit and you sort of stay
Speaker 3: in that dynamic when you're thinking about what you should
Speaker 3: be doing for your person. So maybe just yeah, take
Speaker 3: a step out of that and think, well, what would
Speaker 3: forty seven year old Jackie think is appropriate to do
Speaker 3: this person as opposed to what would seventeen year old Jackie,
Speaker 3: Because that's like the automatic.
Speaker 1: You know, we were talking about how there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as getting over it, right, but I there are
Speaker 1: people who maybe are so knocked by close death to
Speaker 1: theirs that there years and years, and they feel like
Speaker 1: they're not moving through it, and they're still stuck there.
Speaker 1: And they're very not stuck there. That's really negative language.
Speaker 1: They're still feeling it every day and sort of asking themselves,
Speaker 1: why aren't I getting past it? Do you think there's
Speaker 1: is that just therapy time?
Speaker 3: I mean, if it was really sudden, it was a
Speaker 3: shock that, like I said with my dad, it took
Speaker 3: me like ten years, I reckon to not have that
Speaker 3: the heat around it. I don't know how the inflammation
Speaker 3: of the wound. It took me a long time. And therapy,
Speaker 3: lots of therapy and medications, all the things. Is there
Speaker 3: like any appropriate time, Yeah, I feel like so physiologically,
Speaker 3: at least a year is pretty normal. If it's a
Speaker 3: partner or someone pretty close to you. Sometimes it takes
Speaker 3: another death to unseat the previous.
Speaker 1: Death, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it's weird, but you might be thinking about a
Speaker 3: person who's died every day, and then someone else dies
Speaker 3: and they kind of get shuffled along in the spectrum
Speaker 3: and you have all your ghosts coming to visit you.
Speaker 3: You can ask your ghosts to leave you alone. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's real.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if people are actually coming back to
Speaker 3: haunt you or anything, but maybe there's something in the
Speaker 3: ritual of saying you know, that's enough, thank you. Our
Speaker 3: relationship has moved on from this, and I need you
Speaker 3: to not be around every day, but just on these
Speaker 3: particular days, your anniversary and one day of the Dead Christmas,
Speaker 3: like that'll do. Like being clear with your person who's
Speaker 3: died as you would with someone who's alive. Again, I
Speaker 3: don't know if you're really communicating with someone who's dead,
Speaker 3: but at least you're in a way being clear with
Speaker 3: yourself in terms of what you're willing to keep giving
Speaker 3: to that relationship. And you might be the one who
Speaker 3: needs to put those boundaries around it. I mean, in
Speaker 3: my experience, some people can be stickier than I and
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's me or them, doesn't really
Speaker 3: matter that, Like what's happening is the same, So you
Speaker 3: just have to be pretty clear. And the other thing
Speaker 3: I always do when I'm doing a funeral or I'm
Speaker 3: visiting a dead body, I always ask my noble ancestors
Speaker 3: to protect me. I always say, please, noble ancestors, please
Speaker 3: protect me. Close the door behind you, something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, I don't know if it's magic or real or
Speaker 3: but what it does is it sets the boundaries, like
Speaker 3: in any relationship.
Speaker 1: You started this conversation by saying that you've been thinking
Speaker 1: about death since you were seven, fascinated by it, and
Speaker 1: you just said that it's not a bad way to
Speaker 1: live your life to know that it's finite and to
Speaker 1: know that people around you are going to die. Do
Speaker 1: you think that has really helped you live the kind
Speaker 1: of life that you wanted to live. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for a long time, because I'm a pretty anxious person.
Speaker 3: But what I realized, I don't know when, at some
Speaker 3: point in those forty seven years, was that I'm also
Speaker 3: pretty brave. I think as a result, and I don't
Speaker 3: feel brave, but I always I always do what I'm
Speaker 3: scared of because I think it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3: And I think it was people. It was my sister.
Speaker 3: It's because of my sister. She was a woman of faith,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't so that you know, had all of
Speaker 3: its dramas, inherent dramas, but so she had so much
Speaker 3: love and that protected me from a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: that my sisters probably didn't have. The same level of
Speaker 3: protection from so I needed to really focus on what
Speaker 3: I valued and do that and live with integrity. I
Speaker 3: think I learned that from her and the constant idea
Speaker 3: that she might die. I do think about death all
Speaker 3: the time every day, and I do know that the
Speaker 3: people in my life are going to die.
Speaker 1: That knowledge is always there for me.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it makes me a better person,
Speaker 3: but it makes me a more, probably annoyingly determined person.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And like you know, also, when you turn forty, you
Speaker 3: just don't take as much crap anymore. I think I've
Speaker 3: kind of been like that for like since I was thirty.
Speaker 1: That's great, Well, thank you, thank you for sharing your
Speaker 1: wisdom about this with us. That's been amazing. No worries. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you found that conversation as nourishing as I did.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that after we finished it,
Speaker 1: we walked out into the busy Mama Mere kitchen and Jackie,
Speaker 1: our producer, Telyssa, and I did a little like cleansing
Speaker 1: ceremony of our own. We held hands and we breathed
Speaker 1: out all the heaviness of some of that conversation. And
Speaker 1: if you're finding that that was very heavy for you too.
Speaker 1: I'm going to urge you to do that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm brave enough to get an exercise book
Speaker 1: out and write down all the years I have left,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to think about it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm brave enough to face what I know. I'm
Speaker 1: already facing the inevitable loss still to come my way
Speaker 1: when my parents do die. But I know that this conversation,
Speaker 1: far from being depressing, was energizing and beautiful and profound.
Speaker 1: They're the kind of conversations I really want to have.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that really matter. If you're suffering in grief,
Speaker 1: if the loss is looming for you, or is already there,
Speaker 1: please reach out for help. We'll put some links into
Speaker 1: the show notes to organizations who might be able to
Speaker 1: help you do that, and we're also going to put
Speaker 1: some links in the show notes to way you and
Speaker 1: learn more about what Jackie does, find the resources she
Speaker 1: was talking about, and buy her beautiful, surprisingly funny book.
Speaker 1: Please be kind to yourself. It's an overused phrase, but
Speaker 1: I really really mean it. And thank you to my
Speaker 1: brilliant producer, to Elisabethzaz for sitting through these emotional records
Speaker 1: with me and to our entire podcast an editorial team
Speaker 1: for their support of MID and if you like MID,
Speaker 1: tell your friends like, Share, leave us a review, and
Speaker 1: come back next week. Thank you for listening out louders.
Speaker 1: I hope that Jackie's words gave you something if they did,
Speaker 1: pass them on to someone else who needs to hear them.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for more interesting conversations over the
Speaker 1: summer break, Once you've finished listening to All Mama Mea
Speaker 1: Outloud's excellent hot pod summer content, jump over to our
Speaker 1: midfeed to see what's happening over there. We'll put a
Speaker 1: link in the show notes. And don't forget that we
Speaker 1: have loads of Mamma Mia outloud coming your way to
Speaker 1: so make sure to follow us in your favorite podcast
Speaker 1: app and you'll never miss an episode