Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma mea podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges the
Speaker 1: traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
Speaker 1: recorded on. No fancy words today, no jokes, no flowery
Speaker 1: metaphors and tricky punctuation, no alliteration, strategic repetition, no rightly tricks.
Speaker 1: Grief has no time for my bullshit. Loss isn't interested
Speaker 1: in how clever your sentences might be, or how they
Speaker 1: sound read out loud. Midwomen know that there isn't a
Speaker 1: damned thing that can step in and tap dance away
Speaker 1: the empty middle of losing someone you love, that it
Speaker 1: rearranges you inside and out, opens up a space and
Speaker 1: floods it with missing and with resentment or anger maybe
Speaker 1: and with longing. Grief comes to everyone, some sooner than others,
Speaker 1: with brutal speed or an agonizing crawl. The most extraordinary
Speaker 1: of ordinary in ever pains the one that can knock
Speaker 1: you of course and leave you breathless and reeling, aching
Speaker 1: and empty. For years, I've had the outrageous good fortune
Speaker 1: of still being able to touch a screen and hear
Speaker 1: my mother complaining about something my brother isn't doing, or
Speaker 1: to see my father's face all too close as he
Speaker 1: tries to work out why the image on the iPad
Speaker 1: has tipped on its side. I know how precious that
Speaker 1: is for as long as I get it, because I
Speaker 1: have sat with my beloved and held him as his
Speaker 1: excellent mother left us. I have missed an old friend's
Speaker 1: slow smile, knowing I'll never hear him laugh again. I've
Speaker 1: seen the terrible gap left by my teenage boyfriend. I've
Speaker 1: watched a wonderful man's daughter grow up without him. I've
Speaker 1: mourned the loss of babies I never got to hold.
Speaker 1: We've all felt just a little of it, or much
Speaker 1: too much. But I know my outrageous good fortune today.
Speaker 1: My children are safe on their damn screens, and my
Speaker 1: brother his means, my friend, family, and my partner in
Speaker 1: life are all still going about their ordinary days. There
Speaker 1: I go, trying to pretty up these words about the
Speaker 1: worst thing that can happen to us. Midwomen lie in
Speaker 1: bed and count their people, silently tallying their luck. We
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about it, but if it hasn't
Speaker 1: already visited, grief is looming, and so we care, and
Speaker 1: we nurture and soothe, and we hope we can keep
Speaker 1: it at bay if we just don't mention it. Today
Speaker 1: we're mentioning it because silence is lonely and grief is
Speaker 1: the price we pay for love, as a wise woman said,
Speaker 1: and a life without loss is a life without love,
Speaker 1: and mid women know that isn't worth the trade. There's
Speaker 1: the solace in sharing always, and mid women know that too.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Wainwright and I am mid midlife, mid family,
Speaker 1: mid identity crisis. And today we're talking about the thing
Speaker 1: we're not allowed to talk about. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: because someone will wag a finger at us if we do.
Speaker 1: I mean because it goes to the core of everything
Speaker 1: we're afraid of. Even if many of the women listening
Speaker 1: to this today are living there. Right now, we're talking
Speaker 1: about grief. If you're thinking that this episode sounds too much,
Speaker 1: then for you right now, perhaps you're right. But if
Speaker 1: you're thinking it sounds heavy and difficult and depressing, then
Speaker 1: you should stay because it's actually anything but thanks to
Speaker 1: our extraordinary guest, doctor Jackie Bailey is a death walker.
Speaker 1: She walks with the dying, and she brings comfort and
Speaker 1: ritual to their people. She's an interfaith minister and a
Speaker 1: funeral celebrant, and she's a writer. I met her at
Speaker 1: a regional book event last year, and after she'd stood
Speaker 1: up and discussed her book The Eulogy, in front of
Speaker 1: an audience on the panel, we were both on Her
Speaker 1: book line snaked around the block with people wanting to
Speaker 1: buy it. Why because of her own experience of grief,
Speaker 1: having lived, as she's about to tell you, in close
Speaker 1: proximity to death since she was seven, and that's given
Speaker 1: her a particularly beautiful, simple, comforting but no bullshit perspective
Speaker 1: on it. In this conversation, we talk about that, and
Speaker 1: we talk about what to do if someone you love
Speaker 1: is dying, and we talk about what to do if
Speaker 1: that person is you, And we talk about the kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual practices that actually soothe, and we talk about
Speaker 1: how there are no shortcuts to getting over it. And
Speaker 1: we talk about how to write a eulogy for someone
Speaker 1: you love but maybe didn't even like very much. It's
Speaker 1: a serious, important, sometimes funny conversation about something that none
Speaker 1: of us want to talk about apart from Jackie. Jackie,
Speaker 1: you are an interfaith minister, a funeral celebrant. Is that
Speaker 1: what we call this funeral celebrant?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I've also seen you described as a death walker.
Speaker 1: What is a death walker?
Speaker 3: It's not a character from the game of Striones coming
Speaker 3: in today's unfortunately. I mean, anyway, it depends on which
Speaker 3: I tell. Yeah, that's what Senath Farrago, who's like a
Speaker 3: you know, guiding light in the deathy kind of movement
Speaker 3: in Australia and in 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 2: Yeah, so we.
Speaker 1: Did research it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you sort of your death He's That's where
Speaker 3: I'm most comfortable. So yeah, I'm far more comfortable officiating
Speaker 3: a funeral than a wedding, for example. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: my comfortable space. It's really intimate, meaningful, authentic, or a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff is stripped away. Maybe also because I'm
Speaker 3: from a big family, so I'm really used to negotiating
Speaker 3: the or the issue that come up in that context.
Speaker 2: It's just my I wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Say it's my happy place. It's not my happy place.
Speaker 3: 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 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.
Speaker 2: Of Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: But that you For you, it was always about death,
Speaker 1: that's what I read you say, Why 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 is 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 eulogy, which is a fictionalized
Speaker 1: version of this story. But for the people listening, when
Speaker 1: you say your sister was dying from the age of seven,
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: So it was a long time.
Speaker 3: It was a long time of watching her die, obviously
Speaker 3: not thinking the whole time about Like I didn't think
Speaker 3: in those terms when I was with her, But there's
Speaker 3: always part of you waiting for the phone call in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. So nowadays my sisters died
Speaker 3: and both my parents have died, I don't really have
Speaker 3: to have that feeling anymore.
Speaker 2: I can turn my phone off.
Speaker 1: That must be a strange shift, because for almost your
Speaker 1: whole life you.
Speaker 3: Have I mean, I don't think you switch from one
Speaker 3: to the other immediately either. It's sort of like any
Speaker 3: kind 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. He's 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 sisters.
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 seven and you're the youngest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the younger, so you had a.
Speaker 1: Lot of like looking forward and up and trying to
Speaker 1: understand what the hell's going on in this big, chaotic family.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it's just what you're used to. It's
Speaker 3: just what you grow up with. But Allison was mine.
Speaker 3: Allison was mine and I was hers. She kind of
Speaker 3: looked out for me in that big, complicated, messy Catholic
Speaker 3: family household. Yeah, so when she got sick, it was
Speaker 3: really devastating for everybody. Which is kind of funny too
Speaker 3: because this may sound sort of weird, but when you've
Speaker 3: got that many kids, you kind of think, well, maybe
Speaker 3: the parents won't be so like they won't care as
Speaker 3: much because they've got so many, which.
Speaker 2: 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. But
Speaker 3: you know, Dad stopped drinking for a long time until
Speaker 3: sort of the end of his life. And Mum, I mean,
Speaker 3: Mum kept gambling. But she she was just much nicer
Speaker 3: to Alison and I than she was to my older sisters.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's that's a relative term, but yeah, she
Speaker 3: genuinely was because she really cared 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, 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 2: You're in that phase of your life.
Speaker 3: So you're switching from a medical intervention to try and
Speaker 3: make you better to medical intervention to just try and
Speaker 3: lessen your pain, make you comfortable. So those people they
Speaker 3: want to get their house in order, they want to
Speaker 3: make generally, I mean it's not always at all, but generally,
Speaker 3: once they've made that transition to going Okay, I'm not
Speaker 3: fighting the cancer so much anymore as trying to make
Speaker 3: sure I have good quality of life for this last
Speaker 3: bit of my life. They're pretty prepared to tell you
Speaker 3: what they want. You know, 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 shame way you would meet a wedding self. 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, meaty.
Speaker 2: Stories to you guys.
Speaker 3: But my job's just to facilitate, and generally what I
Speaker 3: say at a funeral is It's kind of what I've
Speaker 3: learned is that it's sort of my job to let
Speaker 3: you know that you have permission to say and feel
Speaker 3: all the things that you're feeling all of them, and
Speaker 3: do what you need to do. That's what I've realized
Speaker 3: over the years. But anyway, we were talking about people
Speaker 3: and their attitudes and their ability to talk about death.
Speaker 3: So people who know that they're dying are fairly practical
Speaker 3: in my experience, Like my mother in law died a
Speaker 3: few years ago, and she was very clear about what
Speaker 3: she wanted. When we put together the slide show for
Speaker 3: her funeral. My husband had put it together and he
Speaker 3: had recorded her telling him what to put in it,
Speaker 3: and he put that in over the top of the music,
Speaker 3: which was so it was great. She was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want it to be too sad, so do
Speaker 3: this and do that. We're 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 seeing. This last thing with any of us.
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: There'll be people listening to this who have suffered loss
Speaker 1: or are at the moment maybe caring for a parent
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: No, unfortunately, Sorry, I'm not not at all.
Speaker 1: I was just sort of thinking.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, yes and no, like you do
Speaker 3: know it's coming, so maybe it does.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've had both. So that's the other reason I do
Speaker 3: this work. I've had a lot of deaths. My dad
Speaker 3: died suddenly when I was twenty.
Speaker 1: Three, and you found him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was Christmas Eve and you had a
Speaker 3: heart attack in his sleep. So that was sudden, and
Speaker 3: that probably took me ten years to get over, I reckon.
Speaker 3: But there were other things that I had to deal with,
Speaker 3: you know, which I kind of talked about in theology
Speaker 3: with Alison and my mum who died just few months ago. Now,
Speaker 3: like Allison 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 3: It's a found in all consumed, whole of body, whole
Speaker 3: 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: I can why aren't I over it? I'm looking around
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing other people who've lost a parent or
Speaker 1: a sibling or something, and they're walking around looking normal,
Speaker 1: and I'm not. Like there is some reassurance or validation
Speaker 1: in understanding that grief is a whole 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, You're like, oh, I don't know. Lots
Speaker 3: of fatigue, but insomnia just you might be getting sick.
Speaker 3: When there is research that shows that people you know
Speaker 3: have lost a lifelong partner, there is a higher rate
Speaker 3: of death amongst that cohort in the year following the
Speaker 3: loss of their partner, which is why you hear these
Speaker 3: beautiful stories of someone dying, you know, a month after
Speaker 3: their wife or their husband or a partner has died.
Speaker 1: And people will say they died of a broken heart.
Speaker 2: And essentially they did.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's amazing. Yeah, So, is there anything you can
Speaker 1: do to help someone who's grieving. We know you can't
Speaker 1: get a shortcut, you can't solve anything. What are the
Speaker 1: practical things you can do that might actually help people
Speaker 1: in their darkest moment? I mean, I know we're jumping
Speaker 1: around a bit here, but I did want to ask
Speaker 1: you about partners, because a conversation that people I know
Speaker 1: have had for who have been who have lost parents
Speaker 1: perhaps is that if a parent is part of a
Speaker 1: couple and the other person is still there, they are
Speaker 1: sort of the primary griever, if you like. Sometimes the child,
Speaker 1: the adult child is stepping in to try and look
Speaker 1: after that person, encourage them to process their grief in
Speaker 1: a certain way. But there might be like a generation
Speaker 1: or divide there that means that the parent, the remaining
Speaker 1: pair parent doesn't want to deal with it in the
Speaker 1: way that you're trying to pushing them to deal with it.
Speaker 1: You must see these kind of family dynamics in your
Speaker 1: work around a lot. Is there anything that works in
Speaker 1: like trying to respect how other people's grief needs to
Speaker 1: play out?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you just answered your own question, Holly,
Speaker 3: just yet respecting the process and just trying to take
Speaker 3: care of when you're trying to take care of someone.
Speaker 3: So if that happens, say so, after my dad died,
Speaker 3: there was my mum. You know that generally parents don't
Speaker 3: die at the same time, and if they're still together,
Speaker 3: so one is the widow or the widower, Like what's
Speaker 3: playing out is again your thing with your mum, it's
Speaker 3: always the same, like that dynamic will just play out
Speaker 3: in whatever context and whatever the thing is going on
Speaker 3: in life, and this is the loss of you know,
Speaker 3: your dad, her husband, the same thing will play out.
Speaker 3: So with me and my mum, it was I shifted.
Speaker 3: I was all about trying to make her and my
Speaker 3: sister Allison, who she was caring for, better in all
Speaker 3: aspects of the word, better quality of life, you know,
Speaker 3: being more social, gamble less, you know, get Alison out
Speaker 3: and doing things whatever. And I drew them up a
Speaker 3: budget and I was like called all these like associations
Speaker 3: or whatever, and just classic that's just what I've always
Speaker 3: done with both of those people. And she ignored all
Speaker 3: of it, all of it, and obviously that may me mad.
Speaker 3: So you know that the same thing like kind of
Speaker 3: understanding that you, you know, the adult child, you're not
Speaker 3: suddenly wiser than your parent. You're just trying to do
Speaker 3: the same thing that you've probably always tried to do
Speaker 3: or have tried to do for a.
Speaker 2: Long time, which is a certainself and make and make
Speaker 2: them know that you know better than them.
Speaker 1: That is so true. I'm sure there are lots of
Speaker 1: people listening to this. There are lots of people around
Speaker 1: me who are going but Dad just won't move into
Speaker 1: a home or whatever it might be like, or won't
Speaker 1: sell the house, or won't go out and join the
Speaker 1: bingo group or well, you know whatever, like, and I
Speaker 1: know that he needs to do that. You can't just
Speaker 1: sit home and be sad about mom. Yeah, can you
Speaker 1: just sit home?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, I mean as long as he's still
Speaker 3: eating and you know, getting enough water and ideally enough exercise.
Speaker 3: Like that's I guess what my default is and what
Speaker 3: my advice and adverted commas is is just to address
Speaker 3: yourself to the physical needs of a person, because you know,
Speaker 3: all the social stuff and like, you just can't make
Speaker 3: someone even when they're like top of their game. You
Speaker 3: can't make them let alone when they're at the bottom
Speaker 3: of their game, you know. So you know, like go
Speaker 3: around and mow the lawn, come in and check that
Speaker 3: there's food and that it's being eaten, organized meals on wheels.
Speaker 2: If you think it's necessary.
Speaker 3: Just the physical stuff, you can do that sort of
Speaker 3: level of bossy, bossy daughter stuff of like you know,
Speaker 3: you're coming with me to the cardiologist on extent you
Speaker 3: just show up and you take them. You can do
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff absolutely, and you should and they'll
Speaker 3: they will feel loved if it's I'm thinking now of dads.
Speaker 3: Dads feel loved when you do things for them. Moms
Speaker 3: feel loved when you do things for them, but when
Speaker 3: you tell them and when you give them things. Gifts
Speaker 3: are also really a good thing to do if you've
Speaker 3: got 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.
Speaker 1: Stuff that you do culturally anyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the lasagna, the chocolate. I've got friends who every
Speaker 3: time I lose someone, they send me like a huge
Speaker 3: crate of Cadbury dairy milk.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, yeah, I've been grievy for six months.
Speaker 3: You can see it right here.
Speaker 1: But you feel loved 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 not everybody because there's Deathy's, but how very
Speaker 1: many people are very uncomfortable with this. It's like people
Speaker 1: are looking for a short cut to get through it
Speaker 1: and all the chocolate and the lazanis are useful because
Speaker 1: people need to feel loved and not forgotten. But there
Speaker 1: isn't a shortcut, right.
Speaker 3: Oh no, there's no shortcut again. It's like recovering from
Speaker 3: an illness. You know, people want a shortcut there too. Generally,
Speaker 3: you know, people who are suffering from long COVID and
Speaker 3: all that sort of thing, they can tell you how
Speaker 3: there's no shortcuts.
Speaker 2: 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. You know,
Speaker 3: all this stuff, eat well, blah blah blah. I do
Speaker 3: think you know how there's health ratings on foods. I
Speaker 3: feel like there should be a mental health rating on
Speaker 3: like chocolate should definitely have a five star 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 dream can
Speaker 3: take drugs. I'm a forty seven year old mother.
Speaker 2: Very responsible, but chocolate can.
Speaker 3: So just make sure you've got a stash because if
Speaker 3: you're really low and you just need a bit.
Speaker 2: Of a shift, get up and move to a different room.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying you have to go out for a run,
Speaker 3: because no, my knees wouldn't appreciate that. Literally, just move
Speaker 3: from the one seat to another, and that moves yourselves.
Speaker 3: That changes your physical kind of being and shifts things
Speaker 3: in your body because it's all happening in your body.
Speaker 3: It's like any kind of PTSD. You've got to know
Speaker 3: that it's happening and do something physical to.
Speaker 2: Shift the mood.
Speaker 1: I was interested that you use the language when you
Speaker 1: talked about your father's lost. 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.
Speaker 2: Probably did.
Speaker 1: But I've also heard you say that your relationship with
Speaker 1: somebody doesn't end because they're gone, which i'd love to
Speaker 1: hear you talk about a bit. But also, what does
Speaker 1: get over it 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 when I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of my dad, I didn't get over it so much
Speaker 3: as integrated. You integrate the knowledge and the fallout from it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, with my dad was complicated because we had,
Speaker 3: you know, stuff that we hadn't dealt with while he
Speaker 3: was alive. And that's that was hard losing when you
Speaker 3: lose someone when you're still fairly immature. Because that was
Speaker 3: twenty three, but I still wasn't very mature, So we
Speaker 3: hadn't got to that place where we could just kind
Speaker 3: of chat and respect each other. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 3: you never maybe we never would have. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I feel like as I got older, we would
Speaker 3: have turned a corner, but we hadn't. So I kind
Speaker 3: of in my relationship with my dad, even though he
Speaker 3: had died, I still I kind of had to work
Speaker 3: through all of that still, which is so annoying because
Speaker 3: you think, if they've died, like, surely can we.
Speaker 2: Draw a line under that? You know? Yeah, in that relationship, No.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are people who one of the in
Speaker 1: a way. Often when we lose someone, they have to
Speaker 1: then be considered to be an angel and a perfect person. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's many people, if they're losing, will have lost family members,
Speaker 1: whether it's a parent or anyone who was not a
Speaker 1: perfect angel, who their relationship may have been. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's such an overused euphemism, but complicated that can make
Speaker 1: things even more complicated in grief, right, because there's guilt
Speaker 1: that comes along with that. Why do you think we
Speaker 1: need to sort of venerate people who are gone? Like,
Speaker 1: is it okay to speak ill of the dead?
Speaker 2: Of course, of course it is. Of course it's okay
Speaker 2: to speak ill of the dead.
Speaker 3: But I guess it's like it's a one sided conversation though,
Speaker 3: so they don't have a right of reply anymore. So,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I feel like there's part of us
Speaker 3: that a sense of fairness kicks in. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: I can't really, you know, say that anymore.
Speaker 2: It's also you can't resolve it with them anymore.
Speaker 3: So saying it is just feels like leaving the like
Speaker 3: opening like you've got an open wound, which is your grief,
Speaker 3: and now you're just sticking fingers in it rather than
Speaker 3: putting like covering it with savlon.
Speaker 2: And making it feel better.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that tendency to turn someone into a saint, definitely.
Speaker 3: I've seen it at funeral after funeral, and I've also
Speaker 3: seen 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 mom 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 2: 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. I
Speaker 3: add one or two, so I love you, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I forgive you, thank you, and goodbye. That's what I
Speaker 3: always recommend saying, only if you can mean it genuinely,
Speaker 3: and you can say it at any point before they
Speaker 3: die after they die. I said it to my mum's
Speaker 3: body because I didn't make it there in time, and
Speaker 3: I said it to her casket as well. That is
Speaker 3: a good thing about a funeral. So having my mum's
Speaker 3: funeral was kind of good because it reminded me of
Speaker 3: why I do this work. I mean, thanks, Mom, but
Speaker 3: you know, having the casket there and watching it leave
Speaker 3: in the hearse the physical again, because loss has to
Speaker 3: be known in the body. So because you can physically
Speaker 3: touch someone or their casket or their ashes or their
Speaker 3: pluck or whatever, but physically touch something, the body starts
Speaker 3: to know what's happened. There's that trauma go. He wrote
Speaker 3: the book The Body Keeps the Score, Yes, about trauma.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, but.
Speaker 3: Bessel Vandercock, you know, well, he's like The Body keeps
Speaker 3: the Score is the name of his book about trauma.
Speaker 2: 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 2: I think so a bit of both.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about funerals quickly. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about a million things. But because obviously funerals is
Speaker 1: something that you that's your job. To a point, I've
Speaker 1: read that you said that one of the reasons you
Speaker 1: wanted to do it is that you wanted to give
Speaker 1: others what my sister's funeral had given me, a clean
Speaker 1: wound ready for healing. Now he used this metaphor before.
Speaker 1: It's really I've never heard a ceremony of death described
Speaker 1: like that, and yet it's so perfect that description. What
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? A clean wound?
Speaker 2: 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 atime,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So we were all like running around.
Speaker 2: You know, headless chooks.
Speaker 3: And it was perfectly respectable funeral, but it took me
Speaker 3: a long time to deal with all of the fallout
Speaker 3: from his life and death. Then with Alison, we knew
Speaker 3: she was going to die eventually, you know, she'd been
Speaker 3: sick for so long so and we had warning she
Speaker 3: was impalliative care for a few days before she actually died.
Speaker 3: We all came together and put together this beautiful ceremony
Speaker 3: that I think she would have really liked.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: So that's what it felt like for me.
Speaker 3: And it was it was her funeral that made me
Speaker 3: 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 like families can in
Speaker 1: the same way that families can find all kinds of
Speaker 1: things to argue about. What makes a good funeral just honesty.
Speaker 2: Normally just honesty, and.
Speaker 3: That includes like the good and the bad, finding a
Speaker 3: way to talk about the bad site that still feels honoring,
Speaker 3: like you're honoring your person. Yeah, I mean, your families
Speaker 3: do fight. It's kind of inevitable. Tender Funerals which is
Speaker 3: the not for profit funeral home, there was one time
Speaker 3: when they had to do two funerals for someone because
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure if they've had to do that
Speaker 3: more than once, but probably because that people can be
Speaker 3: very fractured and death.
Speaker 2: 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 there's 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 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 speaking to them the
Speaker 3: last lines.
Speaker 2: So that's it. That's a good eulogy in a nutshell, that's.
Speaker 1: Very useful working with all different cultures, I suppose in
Speaker 1: saying goodbye? Are there cultures that do death better than others?
Speaker 2: Like every other culture?
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I was going apart from uptight
Speaker 1: Western culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we're doing We're getting better.
Speaker 3: We're definitely getting better here with all the sort of
Speaker 3: the deathy movement, you know, the grassroots making demands. I
Speaker 3: think it's also this generation Gen X and maybe the
Speaker 3: boomers as well, more prepared to say, well that's not
Speaker 3: how I want to do things. Is how I want
Speaker 3: to do things, you know, and doing things which are
Speaker 3: more suited to their personality, 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 Hindu rights.
Speaker 3: I did an interfaith process with a Hindu family once.
Speaker 3: So the dad had died, but he you don't into
Speaker 3: the details. But what that culture and what other cultures
Speaker 3: do is they give it time. We moved his body
Speaker 3: back to the house, for example, back home and had
Speaker 3: the body for a period of time, and you know,
Speaker 3: every people spent time with the body. That what we
Speaker 3: tend to do in the West is rush, you know.
Speaker 3: And when I say rush, I don't just mean oh,
Speaker 3: let's have the funeral next week, although there is that
Speaker 3: it'd be nice to push that out a little, give
Speaker 3: people a better 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 rou an hour. I do think it
Speaker 3: makes a big difference. But yeah, other cultures let you
Speaker 3: and not just let you, but they kind of require
Speaker 3: you to do that, and to do sort of physical
Speaker 3: things like wash the body, wrap the body. In the
Speaker 3: Hindu tradition, you know, you walk around the body, you
Speaker 3: gal and the body in certain ways, all of those things.
Speaker 2: 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 2: But it's yeah, why are we so verbal?
Speaker 1: I know, it's interesting, Yeah, because back to the idea
Speaker 1: of if you are nursing somebody or spending time with
Speaker 1: somebody who is dying, there's often a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: to say the things. I mean, you put that so
Speaker 1: beautifully before when you were talking about that Hawaiian tradition
Speaker 1: of saying the four things. But sometimes people put an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of pressure and we've got to have this
Speaker 1: conversation that we've been wanting to.
Speaker 2: Have before they die, before we die.
Speaker 1: We have to have this conversation. Do you have to
Speaker 1: 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: it's because of American movies that we think that, but
Speaker 3: it's also like I'm going to like have the relationship
Speaker 3: 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: This 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 want.
Speaker 2: Do you know that's right?
Speaker 3: And sometimes you're like that's okay, But it's harder when
Speaker 3: they're people that you can't choose, you know, like your
Speaker 3: 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 like cellular inheritance or something. It's also
Speaker 3: because we narrate everything in our heads and we just
Speaker 3: unconsciously feel like we know roughly where the story is
Speaker 3: going to go, and then it doesn't bang. And that
Speaker 3: sort of dissonance can be really effective in fiction, but
Speaker 3: only up to a point.
Speaker 2: You don't want.
Speaker 3: The protagonist to die on page thirty, and that's the
Speaker 3: same in life. It's just interrupts that what we feel
Speaker 3: in our bodies to be the natural flow of things,
Speaker 3: especially when a child. You know, when a child dies,
Speaker 3: that's probably the hardest.
Speaker 1: Do you as a funeral celebrant, as somebody who's around death.
Speaker 1: There's some funerals harder than others. Do you do you
Speaker 1: connect emotionally.
Speaker 2: To absolutely do.
Speaker 3: And my teacher who does the death Walker trainings and
Speaker 3: at Virago, she taught us when you're officiating a funeral,
Speaker 3: you know, you might be standing, you know, straight on
Speaker 3: like this, like we are sitting at the table, but
Speaker 3: on the inside you're on an angle and you're letting
Speaker 3: all that grief and everything flow past you to its
Speaker 3: rightful recipient, which is you know, the person in the
Speaker 3: casket not you, Otherwise you will absorb it all and
Speaker 3: take it on and it's not yours.
Speaker 2: So constantly reminding yourself, this is not my grief.
Speaker 3: This is their grief and their story, and I'm just
Speaker 3: here to steward it, to witness it. I'm not even
Speaker 3: I don't even think of myself as holding the space
Speaker 3: because that's too heavy. People create their own space. I
Speaker 3: just walk with them. I think that's why the term
Speaker 3: death walker really works. It 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 be able to may well be know, of course,
Speaker 1: But is there anything 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 2: I mean, yeah, there's a bunch of things you can do,
Speaker 2: depends on how.
Speaker 3: Close you are to it. But if so, some really
Speaker 3: practical things. Do an advanced care directive and have it
Speaker 3: on top of the fridge.
Speaker 2: So and right, like get a sign.
Speaker 3: You can get this stuff from Palleat of Care Australia,
Speaker 3: I think online a sign that this is maybe more
Speaker 3: for our parents people are parents' age. But you stick
Speaker 3: that sign to the door saying my advanced care directive
Speaker 3: is on the fridge. Because if you're in your own home,
Speaker 3: it's going to be an ambo who comes to pick
Speaker 3: you up and take you to palliative care or whatever,
Speaker 3: and you want them to have that because you might
Speaker 3: have a do not resuscitate or like no medical intervention
Speaker 3: kind of request and they're going to need that. So
Speaker 3: that's a very practical thing you can also get going
Speaker 3: to get I think it's on palliad of Care Australia's website.
Speaker 3: There's like a little you can put in your wallet
Speaker 3: with the details, with similar kind of details because if
Speaker 3: you're not in care or in a hospital, you want
Speaker 3: people to be able to access that advanced care directive.
Speaker 3: Tell people what you want for your funeral, don't just
Speaker 3: put it in your will. So like have a folder,
Speaker 3: have like a plastic folder or like a recycled impossible
Speaker 3: folder whatever. But yeah, yeah, in the event of my day, yeah,
Speaker 3: I put it on top of the fridge or somewhere
Speaker 3: where you know, and put a sign as to where
Speaker 3: it is. And having that which is have your Advanced
Speaker 3: Care Directive, which is an actual document, you know, you
Speaker 3: get your GP to sign it and stuff, and then
Speaker 3: put what you want for your funeral if there is anything,
Speaker 3: particularly music, and then put you know how you want
Speaker 3: to be treated in a few days that you might
Speaker 3: no longer be responsive. I've got like a little flyer
Speaker 3: thing on my website with some questions that you can
Speaker 3: just ask yourself, but they're kind of obvious questions. Do
Speaker 3: I want to be touched? Do I want to see
Speaker 3: a minister of any faith or no faith? But do
Speaker 3: I want to see someone? Do I want the window open,
Speaker 3: I want music playing? And if so, what do I want?
Speaker 3: Oils or massages? Just because they're generally if you're in
Speaker 3: a palliative care unit, there will be some time when
Speaker 3: you can't tell people what you want, so tell them beforehand.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to me that that is a little gap.
Speaker 3: It's not in the Events Care directive, and you know,
Speaker 3: 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 that's also a good way
Speaker 1: of expressing your wishes without having to you know, that's right,
Speaker 1: and it is a good upset everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it can get people talking about it.
Speaker 3: And like you, if you've got a parent who stubbornly
Speaker 3: won't talk about the fact that they are inevitably going
Speaker 3: to die in the next ten years, then maybe break
Speaker 3: it open with well, do you want to see a priest?
Speaker 2: You know, if you know that they're really not.
Speaker 3: Religious, So that'll get them talking tell them what they
Speaker 3: don't want. Also, music is a real icebreaker on that
Speaker 3: conversation what music do you want at your funeral? And
Speaker 3: then again provoke them if they really don't want to
Speaker 3: talk about, well, I'm going to play you know they
Speaker 3: hate just Also, like a couple of things that you
Speaker 3: personally can do to prepare yourself for other people's deaths.
Speaker 3: You can do those things, make yourself an event's care
Speaker 3: directive and write you know what you would want in
Speaker 3: that event, because not to be morbid, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: you 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. And oh
Speaker 3: my god, right, you've confronted me. It's real though, it's real,
Speaker 3: and this is how I think. This is how I roll.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, Okay, I'm forty seven. I've probably got,
Speaker 3: if i'm lucky, twenty at the outer good years of
Speaker 3: work working life to take me to sixty seven. If
Speaker 3: I'm lucky, I think that's probably like the retirement age.
Speaker 3: Whatever it is, twenty good years. How many books might
Speaker 3: I get to write in that time? Takes me a
Speaker 3: few years to write one, you know, like break it down.
Speaker 2: Be real with it. Wow, you know, treat your years
Speaker 2: like a budget.
Speaker 1: That's great advice. You know, you spread you don't know
Speaker 1: if this happened to you when you had your daughter.
Speaker 1: When I had my first child, who's fourteen. Now, I
Speaker 1: suddenly see actually the only time when I suddenly became
Speaker 1: a bit obsessed with the fact that I was going
Speaker 1: to die because I look at her and now my son,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, I don't want to leave them.
Speaker 1: Like it's made me much more. You know, which I
Speaker 1: think very common is that somehow sometimes parenthood can really
Speaker 1: confront you with your mortality. You've been so close to
Speaker 1: this life. 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. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm that's how the species works.
Speaker 1: You're very interested in spirituality that isn't connected to religion.
Speaker 1: You grew up religious, though, right, and you're lapsed, yes, proudly.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I've seen 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?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I imagine it would make it easier. I imagine
Speaker 3: that's why those doctrines are really successful. Have you read
Speaker 3: the book I think it's called Mortals. It's by couple
Speaker 3: of Australian researchers. They're actually father and daughter and they're
Speaker 3: both academic psychologists anyway, and it's all about how the
Speaker 3: fear of death has shaped human society and how Christianity.
Speaker 2: 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 I can
Speaker 3: see it. Yeah. I mean it's an interesting question because
Speaker 3: faith can go either way. People can really take comfort
Speaker 3: in it. Other people in the family might feel excluded
Speaker 3: by that. Other people might get really angry that it
Speaker 3: is or isn't being done properly. So faith can. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not always a perfect good. 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: But you know your mother in law did think that,
Speaker 3: so it's great that your sister in law was there
Speaker 3: to kind of feel that with her. Yeah, we all
Speaker 3: know that our bodies return to the earth, and I
Speaker 3: think that there's just based on the facts that we
Speaker 3: do you have to hand, that's fairly kind of That
Speaker 3: gives me comfort. Child when she was little, she said
Speaker 3: to me she couldn't wait to be She doesn't think
Speaker 3: this anymore, but she couldn't wait to be dead so
Speaker 3: she could know what it was like to be the grass.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, when I said that, I
Speaker 3: don't know if we still have consciousness starting so like,
Speaker 3: don't 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's relieved because it was very difficult to care for
Speaker 1: her in 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 and if but
Speaker 3: it's kind of like modern anxiety. It's not useful if
Speaker 3: a tiger's not about to pounce on you, you know. So
Speaker 3: that 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 2: Sooner or later.
Speaker 3: Everyone is going to die, which is, you know, it's
Speaker 3: a great way to live knowing well, but it kind
Speaker 3: of is. It forces you to think about how you're
Speaker 3: behaving towards that person. I mean, it shouldn't shape everything,
Speaker 3: but if you know your parents are getting older, they
Speaker 3: are going to probably die sometime in the next ten years.
Speaker 3: If you're our age, hopefully they'll die sometimes in the
Speaker 3: next ten years. Because beyond that, it's not going to
Speaker 3: be pleasant for them or anybody probably, So just kind
Speaker 3: of behave accordingly if you can, like and manage it.
Speaker 2: So you know, maybe it's like.
Speaker 3: I really should go and see them, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: just schedule it in.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you have to go every week or
Speaker 3: call them every week, but if you know, I should
Speaker 3: really call them every week, maybe call them every couple
Speaker 3: of weeks. Just do what you can, but still do
Speaker 3: it even if you don't want to do it, because
Speaker 3: we do get into this kind of I feel like
Speaker 3: you get into you just stay in this adolescent kind
Speaker 3: of mindset towards your parents sometimes, especially if you've moved
Speaker 3: away from them when you were young. You know, like
Speaker 3: a lot of people move countries or whatever and move
Speaker 3: states and like, yeah, I left as soon as I could.
Speaker 3: Kind of think, so your relationship can sometimes founder a
Speaker 3: little bit and you sort of stay in that dynamic
Speaker 3: when you're thinking about what you should be doing for
Speaker 3: your person. So maybe just yeah, take a step out
Speaker 3: of that and think, well, what would forty seven year
Speaker 3: old Jackie think is appropriate to do this person as
Speaker 3: opposed to what would seventeen year old Jackie, Because that's
Speaker 3: 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 a close death
Speaker 1: to theirs that there years and years and they feel
Speaker 1: like 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 my dad, it took me
Speaker 3: like ten years. I reckon to not have that the
Speaker 3: heat around it. I don't know how the inflammation of
Speaker 3: the wound, it took me a long time. And therapy,
Speaker 3: lots of therapy and medication.
Speaker 2: Things, all the things.
Speaker 3: Is there like any approgate time, Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 3: so physiologically, at least a year is pretty normal. If
Speaker 3: it's a partner or someone pretty close to you. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it takes another death to unseat the previous death, if
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So it's weird, but you
Speaker 3: might be thinking about a person who's died every day,
Speaker 3: and then someone else dies and they kind of get
Speaker 3: shuffled along in the spectrum, and you have all your
Speaker 3: ghosts coming to visit you. You can ask your ghosts
Speaker 3: to leave you alone. I don't know if it's real,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know if people are actually coming
Speaker 3: back to haunt you or anything. But maybe there's something
Speaker 3: in the ritual of saying you know, that's enough, thank you.
Speaker 3: Our relationship has moved on from this, and I need
Speaker 3: you to not be around every day, but just on
Speaker 3: these particular days, your anniversary, on the Day of the
Speaker 3: Dead Christmas, like that'll do, like being clear with your
Speaker 3: person who's died as you would with someone who's alive. Again,
Speaker 3: I 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 others, and
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's me or them. Doesn't really
Speaker 3: matter that what's happening is the same, So you just
Speaker 3: have to be pretty clear. And the other thing I
Speaker 3: always do when I'm doing a funeral or I'm visiting
Speaker 3: a dead body, I always ask my noble ancestors to me.
Speaker 3: I always say, please, noble ancestors, please protect me, close
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Boundaries, like 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.
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: faith and I wasn't so that you know, had all
Speaker 3: of its dramas, inherent dramas, but so she had so
Speaker 3: much love and that protected me from a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff that my sisters probably didn't have the same level
Speaker 3: of protection from.
Speaker 2: So I needed to.
Speaker 3: Really focus on what I valued and do that and
Speaker 3: live with integrity. I think I learned that from her
Speaker 3: and the constant idea that she might die. I do
Speaker 3: think about death all the time, every day, and I
Speaker 3: do know that the people in my life are going
Speaker 3: to die. That knowledge is it's 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 you know, also, when you turn forty, you just
Speaker 3: don't take as much crap anymore. I think I've kind
Speaker 3: of been like that for like since I was thirty.
Speaker 1: That's great. Thank you, Thank you for sharing your wisdom
Speaker 1: about this with us. That's been amazing.
Speaker 2: No worries.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope you found that conversation as nourishing as
Speaker 1: I did. I have to tell you that after we
Speaker 1: finished it, we walked out into the busy Mamma Mere
Speaker 1: kitchen and Jackie, our producer, Telyissa, and I did a
Speaker 1: little like cleansing ceremony of our own. We held hands
Speaker 1: and we breathed out all the heaviness of some of
Speaker 1: that conversation. And if you're finding that that was very
Speaker 1: heavy for you too, I'm going to urge you to
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know if I'm brave enough to
Speaker 1: get an exercise book out and write down all the
Speaker 1: years I have left, but I'm going to think about it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm brave enough to face what
Speaker 1: I know. I'm already facing the inevitable loss still to
Speaker 1: come my way when my parents do die. But I
Speaker 1: know that this conversation, far from being depressing, was energizing
Speaker 1: and beautiful and profound. They're the kind of conversations I
Speaker 1: really want to have. They're the ones that really matter.
Speaker 1: If you're suffering in grief, if us is looming for you,
Speaker 1: is already there, please reach out for help. We'll put
Speaker 1: some links into the show notes to organizations who might
Speaker 1: be able to help you do that, and we're also
Speaker 1: going to put some links in the show notes to
Speaker 1: way you and learn more about what Jackie does, find
Speaker 1: the resources she was talking about, and buy her beautiful,
Speaker 1: surprisingly funny book. Please be kind to yourself. It's an
Speaker 1: overused phrase, but I really really mean it. And thank
Speaker 1: you to my brilliant producer, to Elisabethzaz for sitting through
Speaker 1: these emotional records with me, and to our entire podcast
Speaker 1: an editorial team for their support of MID. And if
Speaker 1: you like MID, tell your friends, like, Share, leave us
Speaker 1: a review, and come back next week