WEBVTT - Death 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:09.920 If we were at a party and everybody had two beers, 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:12.520 and then I asked, what do you do for a living? Like, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.040 what do you actually say? In social setting? It depends 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:22.720 how quickly I need to leave. If I need to 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:27.920 leave soon, I'll usually say I teach sociology, which isn't 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.880 really true, but I know it's really boring sounding, so 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:37.199 then everyone's like, okay, bye. However, if it looks like 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.560 I've got some time and I know the person will 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:42.440 want to talk to me, I'll say I'm Director of 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.159 the Center for Death and Society and I do research 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.199 on death, dying, and the dead body, and interdisciplinary studies 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.600 around everything to do with death and dying. That is 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.400 Dr John Troyer, who lectures at the University of Bath 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:58.520 in England and is the m v P of Every party. 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.360 I am ess a host of Deeply Human and Deeply 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:08.120 Human is the podcast you're listening to, And a podcast 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.120 is like a balsamic reduction of pure knowledge drizzled in 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.920 through your ears to season your brain. Today's episode is 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.000 about dying and why you shouldn't put off talking about 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.240 it until you're dead. So part your hair down the 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.120 middle and your best Wednesday Adams and stretch out for 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:30.440 rigorous conversation about death, activism, the guillotine, and the ferocity 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:37.920 of human love. Love of mine, someday will die, but 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:44.040 I'll be close behind. I'll follow you into the dark. 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:49.279 You're blinding line. Okay, So back to the party scene. 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.080 How does John introduce himself when he's off the clock 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.800 in that scenario where you give him a long, interesting answer? 0:01:57.200 --> 0:01:59.320 Do you know what they're going to say next? Yeah? 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.120 Usually this is actually almost always the way it happens. 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.720 They'll say, oh God, wow, Okay, I have to ask 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.000 you this question, and then it just goes into about 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:10.880 thirty minutes to an hour or a couple of hours 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.280 of just relentless questioning about everything and anyone's ever wanted 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:15.760 to know about death and dying, which is normal. I 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.639 expect that because people are genuinely interested in it, like 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:21.720 it is a constant and if you can say anything 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.400 about humans as a species, and this might strike some 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:26.760 listeners is a bit grim, but I think it's completely accurate. 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:28.680 Is that if there's anything we're good at, it's dying, 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:36.640 that eventually it's going to happen. I met John a 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.560 bunch of years ago before he'd moved to England and 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.160 before he was a death rock star. We met in 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.160 our twenties, both of us competing in the slam poetry 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.400 scene in Minneapolis. He seemed funny and weird and smart, 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.400 an assessment that still holds. And my delivery of a 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.040 rhyming poem about metaphysics at one of our competitions must 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.840 have passed mustard because he invited me to sit in 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.560 on the defense of a PhD dissertation, and that seemed 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.880 like a terribly adult way to spend an afternoon. So 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.720 I went, and I was mesmerized listening to John talk 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:13.280 about the science and culture of death. How the first 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.280 embomed bodies were carted around the US like sideshow attractions, 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.040 how people used to pose for pictures with their recently 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.959 deceased relatives, and unless you look really closely at the photos, 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.480 it's tough to tell who's warm and who's dead. Death, 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.400 as it turns out, runs in John's family. So my 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:36.080 dad was a funeral director for many years, owned a 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.760 couple of funeral homes, worked at other couple of funeral homes, 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.640 and you know, I just grew up watching him organized, 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.920 run and do funerals. But He also taught cosmetology, so 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.560 he taught the makeup classes. Apparently he was a very 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.160 good at matching skin tone. His students would tell me, 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:53.880 it's like Dan really good at the makeup, and I 0:03:53.920 --> 0:04:00.560 was like, well, it's good to know. For the record, 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:04.480 John didn't want to follow in his dad's footsteps, and yes, dude, 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:08.000 he has seen the HBO series six ft Under. John's 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:12.119 interest was more intellectual. He wanted to investigate how technology 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.520 affects the way that society treats death and dead bodies. 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.919 For example, these days, we're living further apart from our families, 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:22.920 which means that we're dying further apart. Two and so 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:27.359 embalming services are in steady demand because by injecting a 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.440 body with preservatives, we get a shelf stable corpse that 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:35.640 allows the family time to gather. Because of this embalming technology, 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.080 the dead body in your imagination might look sort of 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.960 like a living person who's asleep, But before the Civil War, 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.240 dead bodies looked really different than living bodies. They start 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:50.520 to decompose, they turned black. Okay, quick extra credit fact. 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.320 Abraham Lincoln played a really big part in popularizing embombing 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.960 after his assassination. His body was taken across the country 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:00.800 in a special train car for public viewing, and it 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.720 was embombed more than once along the way. New technologies 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.800 can shape the way that we handle are dead, and 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.600 new political ideas can change the way that we die. 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:18.600 For example, California becomes a first state to pass in 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.760 what's called the Natural Death Act, and the Natural Death 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.440 Act states you have a right to refuse treatment and 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.480 to die naturally. And we think about that today is 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:31.880 almost being given, But it wasn't. It wasn't. There had 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:33.760 to be a law that was created and then passed 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.640 along you could tell people both medically and ethically, but 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.200 also philosophically and politically. And again I think the political 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.240 side of this is very important. You have a right 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:44.920 to die by refusing treatment if you no longer want it. 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.240 And why is that political? Well, because it was a 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:51.120 statement of autonomy. I will die as I choose. And 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.760 there's a longer history here of a break than from 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.400 religious tradition because of course, for many centuries you did 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.400 not die the way you chose. You died the way 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.400 God chose. Is well, if you say I die the 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:06.400 way I choose, that means then that the state or 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.279 whatever governing powers in place, no one will tell me 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.120 how I can die. In the nineteen seventies, universities in 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.960 the US and the UK taught sociology of death, courses 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.600 and activists fought to change our approach to death with 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:26.280 conversations about assisted suicide, end of life, rights and dignity 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.680 and death, and the living Will was invented, a document 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:32.640 that expresses a person's wishes for healthcare when they're no 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:39.120 longer able to make those decisions. I thought that all 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.280 these shifts in thinking and practice were designed to provide 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:47.480 people with a good death. John not so much. There's 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.720 been lots of conversations around this idea of a good death. 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.640 I've never been big on that terminology because then it 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.000 suggests there's a bad death. And I'm not saying you 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:59.960 can't create qualitative judgments around these things, because I think 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.240 we can talk about preferred ways of dying. But I 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.440 think ultimately what we're talking about in terms of death is, 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.000 you know, death is a phenomena you're, regardless of goodness 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:13.600 or badness, is going to happen. But I'm see I'm confused. 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.440 I mean, in some ways it feels like, oh, I 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:22.280 don't know, like why shy from normative terms, because if 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.080 I were to compare two ways of shark attack versus 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:27.120 in the arms of my beloved, like one of those 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:30.280 deaths is clearly sort of lousy and one is like 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.760 why better? Right now, I understand that the concern you 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:35.560 can come up with, and this is something that it's 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:40.600 been discussed that because once you start to create expectations 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.080 around dying, people can start to feel like they're doing 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.800 it wrong. And that's always been one of my big 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:51.240 concerns with a lot of the discussions around death and 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.440 dying in all different kinds of facets society, which has 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.360 been going on out for like the last twenty years. 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.480 It's never not been a hot topic as it were. 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.240 But I think that what happened is families, and usually 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.200 families more than the dying, but sometimes the dying they 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:13.320 can feel like they're doing it wrong. That fear that 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.680 I'm somehow messing up at this basic biological function is 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.280 one you might have also heard. In relation to childbirth, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.200 Moms can face a lot of pressures about how and 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.360 where to deliver at home, at the hospital, in a 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.000 birthing center, with or without pain meds in a tub 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.880 of water, preferably on a weekday. A lot of parents 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:35.959 hire birth doulas to help with their pregnancy and delivery. 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:38.720 Doulas aren't part of the medical team, but there are 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:41.880 a source of support and encouragement and they've got a 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.559 lot of experience helping tykes into the world. There are 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:48.880 also death doulas who help people to leave the world. 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:53.600 I die with people. I say die with them because 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.720 I feel like with every person I die with, I'm 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.480 a little closer to understanding what death is. And that's 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:02.920 just the last breath. There's nothing more magical about it. 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.680 Denise Love has worked as a death duela for twenty 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:10.120 eight years. She's also helped set up hospices and worked 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.160 as a registered nurse, and part of her motivation in 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.120 life is to help people talk about death, to be 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.440 less afraid of the whole conversation. I think the fear 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:21.040 is just too great. I could talk about it, you 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.959 might drop dead. It's just terrified to use the word. 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.360 Even most people don't ever use the word. In their eyes. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:32.040 We pass away or somebody's ill, we avoid the language 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.000 of death. Denise has spent a lot of time working 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:39.479 in the developing world with people in Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:41.840 and Thailand, which is where she was when I spoke 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.160 with her. The death's Denise has witnessed and the developing 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.640 world look really different than those she's been a part 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.240 of in Western societies. Whatever this thing we're telling everybody 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.880 is to fight, that's a lot of nonsense. There's nothing 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.440 to fight. Surrendering to death means a comfortable death. That's 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:02.599 my theory behind it. To die people often have to 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:08.560 fight with their loved ones to die, absolutely, So come on, dad, 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:10.520 you can do it. Fight it. You're going to be 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.000 seventy six tomorrow, or you know. A young pregnant woman 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.040 kept saying to her husband, could you just hold on 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:21.240 and do I have the baby? And he looked at 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.400 and he said, I can't. How do I tell her 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.720 I'm done? I don't want to do this anymore? So 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:27.280 I said, let's bring her in and tell her. And 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.120 he just had terror in his eyes. And we had 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.640 the most amazing hour of if you love me, you'll live, 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:34.360 and if you love me, you'll let me die. And 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:37.800 we had that beautiful, difficult conversation which was sort of 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:42.520 a bit heated at times, but really negotiations, so a 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.440 big death. Doller's job is getting a family talking in 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:51.160 an honest and open way. But again there's a lot 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:54.120 of disagreement, and one daughter wants this, and one daughter saying, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.240 come on, you can help you live. Let's give him 0:10:56.280 --> 0:11:00.079 vitamins and let's duce another twenty three thousand karat to 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.400 be giving kale, and it's making drink his own urine. 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:05.920 I mean, I've been through everything, and then I just say, 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.079 let's all go inside and talk to them, and I say, 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:09.480 do you want to live? What do you want to die? 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.559 I mean, nobody answer that question because it seems selfish, 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.560 and I've already told me they want to die usually, 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:18.880 So you know, I feel really comfortable bringing the family 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:20.640 and just saying can we let him go if you 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:34.559 love him? Just saying about I've always thought a lot 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.600 about death, even as a little kid, and you hope 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:39.920 that when the time comes, you can spare the people 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.640 you love pain or discomfort. But it hadn't occurred to 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:46.840 me that I might help my loved ones by releasing 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.440 them from any obligation they might feel to stick around 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.000 when someone's really sick and maybe dying. I already know 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.880 to ask, does it hurt? Okay, then let's talk to 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:02.120 the morphine nurse. Now. I also know to ask, hey, 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.040 do you just want to leave now? Because I don't 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.240 want to keep you. This is your show, so don't 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:13.760 stay late for me. That's a kindness, that question, and 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:28.640 I'm grateful to Denis for handing it to me. Our 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:33.680 next guest, Dr Sam Parnia deals in total totally different 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:42.760 sorts of questions. Do you think that there might be 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.720 a future where a good number of us died? Many times? 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.520 I think what you're going to see is when resuscitation advances, 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:53.120 then there'll be many people who can say, oh, I had, 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.080 like you know, full cardiac rest in my life and 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:57.680 nothing mattered. I was dead for twelve hours, sixteen hours 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.040 they brought me back. If our body is still in 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.520 good shape, we will be able to be revived and 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.880 allowed to live another ten or twenty or thirty years. 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.920 Dr Sam Parnia is the director of the Critical Care 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:14.120 and Resuscitation Research Program at New York University. He specializes 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.440 in bringing people back to life, and he thinks that 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.040 his technology advances will have a lot more lazaruses and 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.600 lazarettes amongst us, I asked him to start with a 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.800 working definition of death in practice, How would a physician 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:33.520 know if a patient is dead like dead dead dead. 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:37.280 It's interesting because I think most people listening will think 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.640 that they understand death and it's pretty simple. You're either 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:42.480 dead or you're alive. And the reality is that was 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:47.240 true because for thousands of years, whenever a person's heart stopped, 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:51.360 they would essentially reach a point where they were irreversibly dead. So, 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.240 to answer you a question, the way the physicians declass 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:57.760 somebody dead is that their heart stops. When the person's 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.760 heart stops, they also stop breathing, and because there's no 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.200 blood flowing around the body, there's no energy, and the 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:07.480 brain also shuts down almost immediately. So the three criteria 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.240 that they look for are no heartbeat, no breathing, and 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:16.120 absence of brain response. But as our tools and understanding 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:20.160 have evolved, the heart, breath, and brain don't always stop 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.360 on the same time. Ventilators can breathe for a body 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.440 that's unable to respire on its own, for example, So 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.360 what if machines performed the duties of the heart and 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:33.560 lungs but the brain has stopped working. Is that person dead. 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.240 To answer that question and others like it, a commission 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:44.120 appointed by US President Jimmy Carter published a report called 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:49.400 Defining Death. It said a person was dead if one 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:55.520 of two criteria were met, either irreversible cessation of circulatory 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:59.200 and respiratory functions, so like your heart stopped and you're 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.920 not breathing, or irreversible cessation of all functions of the 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:08.440 entire brain, including the brain stem. But not all the 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.680 states adopted this definition in exactly the same way. New Jersey, 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.760 for example, provides an exemption for patients whose religious views 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.640 might be compromised by declaring brain death, so their families 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.240 can ask that doctors use only the cardio pulmonary definition, 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:26.960 the heart and long one, which means that a person 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.360 would be considered dead in one state might not be 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:40.880 dead in another. As definitions get more clinical, even our 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.720 fundamental intuitions about death can start to give way. We 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:49.040 socially have defined death as this irreversible moment where a 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.880 person becomes lifeless, motionless, and they can never come back 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:53.880 to life again. But it's important to understand that's just 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.760 simple social and philosophical notions, and that as medicine and 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.640 science have evolved have understood that actually death this far 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.880 more complicated than we ever thought it could be. To 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.720 further complicate the question, not all of the cells in 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.760 your body die at the same time, So how long 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:11.880 does it take for the human brain to go offline? 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.880 If you were to be decapitated, would consciousness stop instantaneously? 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.440 That question was not at all hypothetical when the guillotine 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.680 was in vogue. The device was invented specifically to serve 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.480 as a humane method of execution, which would hardly be 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.560 true if a head severed from its body had the 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.520 chance to appreciate its circumstance. In nineteen o five, a 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:42.880 physician named Gabrielle Bourier conducted an experiment. He witnessed an 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.880 execution of a criminal, approached the decapitated head and shouted 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.320 the man's name. The doctor said that the man's eyelids 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.720 lifted normally as they would in life, the pupils focused, 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.760 and the eyes fixed on his own. Okay, trying to 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.320 play the cool former goth kid over here holding steady 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.480 in her combat boots, But I cannot fathom more chilling 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.240 experience on all of the earth than commuting with a 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:13.000 severed head. It may be difficult to demarcate the exact 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.280 threshold where life ends, but of course all of us 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.560 will die eventually, and we'll lose people we love too. 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.120 The human animal is fully aware of our own impermanence 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:25.600 and the fragility of our family and friends, but we 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:31.560 go ahead and love them anyway. John Troyer, the expert 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:33.520 and poet who we met at the beginning of the show, 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.520 devoted his career to contemplating death and dying. But all 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.600 those years of professional expertise didn't prepare him for a 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:48.640 big personal loss. So on July, my younger sister, Julie, 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:53.679 died from brain cancer at age a couple of young kids, 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.320 husband lived in Italy, so she died in Italy. I 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.199 was diagnosed in flight July, and then, you know, had 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.119 a year of life and it was shocking, and I 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.960 discovered a couple of blind spots that I had in 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.520 the context of my sister's dying process, which is one 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.600 it was clear at the end of April that she 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:17.720 was dying, like there was no coming back from where 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:22.000 she was the cancer of progress. And I knew it, 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.840 My dad knew what, my mom knew it, and no 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.440 one was saying anything about dying. Fast forward, I will 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.000 then actually be the person who tells my sister she's dying. 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:38.160 Used the word dying in July of twenty eighteen, so 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.760 sixteen days before she dies, and she was already in 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.439 the summer receiving outpatient hospice care from a wonderful hospice 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:47.600 in Italy. So as to why I was actually talking 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:49.960 about that, I don't know. Partly that's a cultural practice 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:52.159 in Italy, but too because I think, you know, some 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.040 of her friends just were they were unsure what to say, 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:56.960 and my brother in law was being told by the 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.320 counselor is like, well, you know, let her ask, And 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:01.280 I mean, they're a whole lot of things going on involved, 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.359 and it all in a way it makes sense. But 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.000 I think it was also very important to tell Julie 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.440 she was dying, because one I did, and she said, well, yeah, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:10.520 I mean I guess I knew, but thank you for 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.640 saying this. And it changed then her end of life 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.159 trajectory and care because suddenly then everyone was saying dying 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.200 and it no longer meant that we had to pretend, right, 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:26.919 how does it change it using that word? You know? 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.159 How does that change care well, I think. And what 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.200 I told my sister was, Julie, I can tell you 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.879 you're dying. You're hearing me say dying. You have to 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.640 be the one who says I'm dying because everyone needs 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.360 to hear you saying it, because you saying it will 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.560 make people take it more seriously. And she said, okay, 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:49.600 I understand. Um, That'sai. Well I got choked up, but 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.600 that's okay, Um, I'm happy to talk about because it's 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.359 it's it's interesting to me that I've gone for so 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.520 long without getting choked up about t story about the 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.280 one thing she said to me that I has always 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.720 stuck with me. You know, she says, I would do 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.159 the same for you, and and she would and she 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:11.840 would have done the same exact thing for me, and 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.159 I the thing that I think this is why I 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.440 always think about it, Like for everything I know about 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.280 death and dying, which is perhaps a lot more could 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.280 be learned than on the first to admit that for 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:28.560 everything I know, when presented in this moment, I will 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.320 always wonder why I didn't say what was clearly obvious. 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.119 And and again it's not a moment of regret. I 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:51.320 just won't I don't understand why, fellow immortals. Now would 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.120 be a great time to pause this podcast and send 0:20:54.160 --> 0:21:04.960 a text to someone you love. I'm gonna h While 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.359 Julie was dying, John was working on a book called 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.200 Technologies of the Human Corpse. He included some poems about 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:14.520 his sister, and at the end of the book he 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.359 lists a bunch of questions that you can answer now 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:20.040 to make choices about the way you'd like to die 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:23.720 and be memorialized. I'm going to paraphrase a few of 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.200 them here. Think about drotting down your responses and sharing 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.919 them with someone you love, or maybe listen together and 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:35.560 swap answer sheets. Number one, the price range I would 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:41.720 like spent on my funeral is Number two? Does someone 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.440 have all your passwords and log ins? If so, who? 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.359 Number three are there's certain songs you'd like included on 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:57.400 your funeral playlist? Number four? Do you want life support? 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.800 Under what conditions would you like to be removed from it? 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:06.159 Number five? Do you have an outfit you'd like to 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:15.560 be dressed in? I really like that last one. There's 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.879 this almost universal protocol that dead people should be dressed 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:21.719 in their Sunday best, But I suck in high heels. 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.800 I want to go out in my combat boots. I've 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:27.480 walked the world in those, I've done my best work 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:31.159 in them. I've fallen in and out of love in them. 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.280 So lace them tight and double not them, please, I'm clumsy. 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:39.919 Special thanks to Dr Troyer for his time and his 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:48.439 candor John you aren't class act. And thank you, esteemed 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.920 listener for hanging out. Our time is finite and ever fleeting, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:54.240 and so I'm very grateful you've spent some of yours 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.960 with me. Deeply Human is a BBC World Service, an 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:07.040 American public media co production with I Heart Media. Many 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:09.359 humans of great depth have been involved in the making 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:12.480 of Deeply Human, so credit where it's due to Senior 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:16.760 commissioning editor Steve Titherington, editors Rich Knight and Hugh Levinson, 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:22.119 series producers Ben Crighton, Sandra Canthal and Simon Mabn, producers 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.840 Monica Whitlock, Jemma Nuby and Hannah Moore, researcher Beth and 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:31.240 head production coordinators Janet Staples and Blaze Hesselgren, and for 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:34.879 making it all sound beautiful. Our studio managers James Beard 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:38.399 and Tom Bricknell, and the composer of the deeply human 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:41.200 theme that is in your ears right now is Nick Thorburn. 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:50.000 I think I said this already, but I'm Dessa. Thanks, 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:51.840 see you next time.