Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Five point fifty five am. I quite literally just woke up.
Speaker 2: I'm probably gonna drift back a little bit more, but
Speaker 2: I am ready for a new day.
Speaker 1: Good boarding at six oh five am, still in bed,
Speaker 1: clinging to my beetlejuice and my ft and y pillows.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm just getting ready for my shift at the
Speaker 1: Greenwood Cemetery in the crematory. I gotta be there in
Speaker 1: about an hour and.
Speaker 4: A half, so.
Speaker 1: Not too groggy. It definitely had some of those dreams
Speaker 1: where I thought I was already awake, because usually for
Speaker 1: a shift, I'll be up at five thirty.
Speaker 4: But we're gonna do it. This is finally a show
Speaker 4: about a coordinator at a crematorium.
Speaker 5: Gabrielle Gatto works at the Greenwood Cemetery in New York.
Speaker 4: I'm Gabrielle R. Gado.
Speaker 5: I'm the coordinator of public programs at the Greenwood Cemetery
Speaker 5: in addition to a crematory worker on the weekends. And
Speaker 5: I'm thirty years old. I just turned thirty, can you tell? Okay,
Speaker 5: So when I first started working here, I just had
Speaker 5: a handful of keys, and then slowly but surely working
Speaker 5: between so many different departments and being entrusted with a
Speaker 5: company van and needing to get into so many spaces.
Speaker 5: I mean, listen, this is an actual skeleton key. I
Speaker 5: got a gate key. I was hey, it was so fun.
Speaker 5: I was just like, wow, they like really trust me.
Speaker 5: They trust me with the key to the gates of
Speaker 5: the cemetery and they're like, yeah, well, how else are
Speaker 5: you supposed to get in to, like get in on
Speaker 5: time for work?
Speaker 4: And I was like, that's true.
Speaker 5: I have been working at Greenwood Cemetery just a week
Speaker 5: before in New York City lockdown, so I've been here
Speaker 5: since March twenty twenty, coming up on four years now.
Speaker 5: There was a position open here and I said, okay, cool,
Speaker 5: I'll still be working in events. And then there were
Speaker 5: an events because we were right at the height of
Speaker 5: the pandemic. So I kind of scaled back, and I
Speaker 5: realized working with the burial orders and cremation orders and
Speaker 5: helping out in the crematory that I was doing something
Speaker 5: really purposeful, and that's so many people. There's just a
Speaker 5: lack of education surrounding death, dying, grief and loss. And
Speaker 5: then to realize, oh my goodness, I'm in a space
Speaker 5: where I can and you know, take some responsibility for
Speaker 5: making sure I know the answers to some of those questions,
Speaker 5: so I could really show up for people. And then
Speaker 5: I looked back and I'm like, oh, Uncle, Vinnie, Aunt Julie, Grandma,
Speaker 5: and Grandpa. I can look back and be like, oh,
Speaker 5: my goodness, yes, of course, like these are people that
Speaker 5: showed me, you know, what a good death was, or
Speaker 5: what grief was, what loss looked and felt like on
Speaker 5: a large scale, and that I'm like, oh, Doug Gabrielle,
Speaker 5: like you took a class senior year of college called
Speaker 5: Living with Dying Studies, But I mean I took the
Speaker 5: glass because I was like, cool, I get to watch
Speaker 5: all of six feet under and like it's a class.
Speaker 5: I think there was a part of me that this
Speaker 5: type of knack for the work is maybe intuitive or
Speaker 5: just as natural to me. And that could go back
Speaker 5: very easily to the fact fact that you know, my
Speaker 5: first memory is being at a funeral, right, Like it
Speaker 5: could simply just be hey, you know, this is such
Speaker 5: a source memory that it kind of just makes sense
Speaker 5: to me. So yeah, there's this part where I am like,
Speaker 5: I want to read every single book about death, dying,
Speaker 5: grief and loss.
Speaker 4: Watch every single.
Speaker 5: TV show, movie, work with every medium, talk to every
Speaker 5: artist that's working in that space. But yeah, I think
Speaker 5: there's a part of it that I'm like, I just
Speaker 5: get it and I can meet you there. I can
Speaker 5: hang out in that space. Oh, there's bogged on another
Speaker 5: part of the Greenwood family. Hey Boged on Big family.
Speaker 3: Busy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so listen, I have a request. Can we get
Speaker 4: an extra box of tissues? Okay? Great?
Speaker 6: I'm like.
Speaker 4: Here at the crematory at Greenwood.
Speaker 5: It could be a slow day, but it also could
Speaker 5: be a rapid fire, very quick day.
Speaker 4: Lots of families coming in.
Speaker 5: So on a typical Saturday like today, we've got funeral
Speaker 5: directors coming to drop off to sdents, but also have
Speaker 5: services with families. We have funeral directors coming in to
Speaker 5: pick up cremated bodies to return to the loved ones.
Speaker 5: But also we are an active cemetery and a National
Speaker 5: Historic landmark, So people are coming through these gates, coming
Speaker 5: through our offices not only asking where their loved one services,
Speaker 5: but where's the bathroom, where's the trolley coming? You know,
Speaker 5: where's my tour guide? So we definitely have to wear
Speaker 5: many hats working in this office. So as of today,
Speaker 5: we have done ninety seven thousand, three hundred and twenty
Speaker 5: three cremations here at the Greenwood Cemetery. Right now, I'm
Speaker 5: writing down our ninety seven, three hundred and twenty third
Speaker 5: cremation Marion here. And basically what we do is everybody
Speaker 5: gets assigned a number along with their name and what
Speaker 5: funeral home that they're coming from, if it was a
Speaker 5: service or not, what time they came in specifically, and
Speaker 5: we have a pretty iron cloud system, I would say here,
Speaker 5: so there's checks and balances at every office. The paperwork
Speaker 5: comes through that, it makes its way to Gemma and
Speaker 5: I in this office here, and then to the back
Speaker 5: of our incredible crematory operators, which today we've got Jojo
Speaker 5: and Alex.
Speaker 4: They're a great team.
Speaker 5: And they'll make sure that the paperwork stays with the
Speaker 5: deceited the entire time.
Speaker 7: I got so remains Paul, Alison Noovo and Tom says.
Speaker 8: Hello, whole lot of good morning. I'm Alexander Ornandez started
Speaker 8: here two thousand and six.
Speaker 4: We whacking.
Speaker 8: They don't make them like me, they don't. I'm built differently.
Speaker 8: We'm a Creamer's horror operator. Today we have to deal
Speaker 8: with services and families taking the deceased that come in.
Speaker 3: But it's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: With a mailman. We work in any type of weather.
Speaker 8: It's no rain, sleep, so it's like you get to
Speaker 8: see it all. Blizzards we work in blizzards is which
Speaker 8: is insane. But that that alone is like, you know,
Speaker 8: just to be like, oh, I'm outside, I'm not cooped
Speaker 8: up in the office stressed the hell out. I mean,
Speaker 8: because don't don't don't, don't get it twisted. It becomes
Speaker 8: overwhelming too when you're even out in the field because
Speaker 8: you got a lot of responsibility you got to do.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying, make sure your job gets
Speaker 8: done the right way in safety issues.
Speaker 4: It's a lot.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it's awesome. I wasn't rated well. I was
Speaker 8: doing something else that wasn't really benefiting my life, to
Speaker 8: be honest at one point. So it's like my brother
Speaker 8: works were he was like, oh, we're hiring at the cemetery.
Speaker 8: It's like, no, I never thought of it. I mean,
Speaker 8: the deaf people don't bother me because they're dead. The
Speaker 8: people that are alive we got to worry about in life.
Speaker 8: Those are the ones we got to fear. But it's like,
Speaker 8: you know, it's like when you tell people you work
Speaker 8: at a cemetery, they get freaked out, like, oh my god,
Speaker 8: you work. Like dude, they're dead already. They're not going
Speaker 8: to do anything to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so you're dead, you died. What happens next?
Speaker 5: So funeral director comes in depending on what the family
Speaker 5: wants with the dead person wanted.
Speaker 4: The funeral home is the ones that are going to
Speaker 4: transport the body.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 5: We have a beautiful heart loading bay, so they'll come
Speaker 5: in through there. Crematory operators will meet the funeral director
Speaker 5: in the back, bring the casket, bring it into the back,
Speaker 5: and then either place it into one of our chapels
Speaker 5: for services or get staged and ready to go into
Speaker 5: one of the retorts once all of the proper paperwork
Speaker 5: is assigned to it.
Speaker 4: To be an urn that be seen.
Speaker 5: Sometimes we've got a service in the front, the caskets there,
Speaker 5: the flowers are there, Maybe there's another ritual, there's singing,
Speaker 5: there's a faith based leader there. The family is giving
Speaker 5: the eulogy in there as well, because maybe especially if
Speaker 5: it's a cremation, they chose not to have a wake
Speaker 5: or the viewing services at the funeral home or parlor. Right,
Speaker 5: so we'll bring some of the family and the casket
Speaker 5: into the back right in front of the retort. Our
Speaker 5: operators will open the doors. It's a steel door that
Speaker 5: comes down and you know, you could see the stone
Speaker 5: and where the fire is about to you know, really
Speaker 5: start getting going in there, and we invite the family
Speaker 5: if they want to to do that last part of
Speaker 5: the ritual to press which it's kind of cinematic, but
Speaker 5: it is this big red button, right, so they could
Speaker 5: the button, so the door could come down and they
Speaker 5: could be there right until the very start of the
Speaker 5: cremation and then if they do a lact of witness
Speaker 5: and that's you know, a little extra logistics on our end.
Speaker 5: I've learned so much about just people from different backgrounds
Speaker 5: and cultures and faiths to be able.
Speaker 4: To be entrusted to be part of that.
Speaker 5: But some people have specifically asked, Hey, is it okay
Speaker 5: that I'm there for you know, ten full minutes, because
Speaker 5: that's how long the prayer takes. And being able to
Speaker 5: carve out that time and space talking to Gemma, talking
Speaker 5: to Jojo and Alex in the back, Hey, like we
Speaker 5: need a full ten minutes for this witness.
Speaker 4: You know, could we accommodate that?
Speaker 5: How could we work that out in our busy schedule today?
Speaker 5: It is an honor and a privilege to bear witness
Speaker 5: to a witness. I will absolutely say that I've heard
Speaker 5: wailing like I've never heard before, and that's a testament
Speaker 5: to how deep of a loss that that was for someone. Right,
Speaker 5: I've heard chance prayers I'd never heard before. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm just super Italian. So like my whole thing is
Speaker 5: like it's a time to mourn, a time to dance,
Speaker 5: Like we've all, you know, heard that in the church.
Speaker 5: But I haven't seen Chinese rituals before. I haven't seen
Speaker 5: you know, the elaborate costuming or you know of like
Speaker 5: maybe a Hindu faith. So it's humbling to be able
Speaker 5: to bear.
Speaker 2: Witness to it all.
Speaker 5: Douglas death work is ancient work, and if you look back,
Speaker 5: it is a lot of women. You know, women are
Speaker 5: the ones that in their communities really showed up for
Speaker 5: death and for grief. Right, So I do get excited
Speaker 5: about how much ritual we can bring to these experiences.
Speaker 2: What per here?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm Gemalabachetta, and I am the senior crematory manager
Speaker 7: here at Greenwood Cemetery. When I first came to the
Speaker 7: cemetery and I remember thinking about the crematory, people would
Speaker 7: say to me, oh, no, they would never allow a
Speaker 7: woman in the crematory.
Speaker 4: And I was like, why, what are you talking about?
Speaker 7: Why because I'm a woman, and now the entire staff
Speaker 7: in the office is women. I mean, we have male operators,
Speaker 7: but any one of us could jump in there and
Speaker 7: help the guys out, like and we have.
Speaker 4: We have done that on a hectic day.
Speaker 7: We'll run back and we'll help out with the flowers,
Speaker 7: cleaning up, taking a body in.
Speaker 4: I mean, we are able.
Speaker 3: To do all of that. It's just a.
Speaker 7: Great feeling to be able to look out and.
Speaker 3: Be like, hey, that's us.
Speaker 7: Also, this is the fun office.
Speaker 3: The crematory office is the fun office.
Speaker 7: If you spent the whole day here with us, you
Speaker 7: would see how many funeral directors just love to hang
Speaker 7: out with us in this office.
Speaker 9: You're definitely part of a regular day here. I'm Monique
Speaker 9: Walker and I do livery with Woodward Funeral Home. And
Speaker 9: over here we have Miss Linda Linda Thompson, and.
Speaker 10: I am the manager slash owner.
Speaker 3: She rolled with my father.
Speaker 9: She was a funeral director who rolled with my dad,
Speaker 9: who's no longer here, And my dad was a friend
Speaker 9: of her dad's and that's how he got into the business.
Speaker 9: So we're the daughters of two elder gentlemen who decided
Speaker 9: to do this business in the livery and as funeral director.
Speaker 10: I was a funeral director coming into the business in
Speaker 10: the late seventies. I've been licensed since nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 10: I was a young young girl, very young. So I
Speaker 10: have been here all these years and it's a crazy world.
Speaker 10: And things have definitely changed, yes.
Speaker 9: Most, but we try to hold onto tradition, yes, And
Speaker 9: as much as things change, some things remain the same.
Speaker 9: And there's a reason for the tradition and the way
Speaker 9: we do things, and the grace and the empathy and
Speaker 9: the style and the class is something we never want
Speaker 9: to let go.
Speaker 4: Oh, this huge typewriter.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you about this huge typewriter that we
Speaker 5: have in agrevatory. So it's an IBM Wheelwriter one thousand
Speaker 5: by Lexmark. So our typewriter is where we type those labels.
Speaker 5: It also, I think helps with our margin of error
Speaker 5: because when you're physically you know, clacking away.
Speaker 4: Here's just.
Speaker 5: Say cremated body of.
Speaker 4: And then get their name in there. But I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna lie.
Speaker 5: There is a little like I feel like I'm in
Speaker 5: Madmen and I'm like clacking away at the typewriter.
Speaker 4: It's kind of fun.
Speaker 5: It's a little antiquated, but I think, you know, we
Speaker 5: are a Brooklyn institution that is one hundred. We just
Speaker 5: had our one hundred and eighty fifth birthday this year.
Speaker 5: So since numbers are very important here, I won't lie.
Speaker 5: Usually I make a little song out of it, and
Speaker 5: I sing the person's cremation numbers, so I make sure
Speaker 5: it's matching on all the paperwork. There is a strange
Speaker 5: little way I feel like I'm honoring the person. You know,
Speaker 5: I'll be like they last lived in Queens, like their sisters,
Speaker 5: their legal custodian.
Speaker 4: Like I don't know.
Speaker 5: Also, we don't have an insane amount of information about
Speaker 5: these folks, right, but there's still a story there.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, wow, Like the family's gonna come in
Speaker 4: at noon.
Speaker 5: Maybe they needed extra time because they've got family coming
Speaker 5: in from all over the world.
Speaker 4: I wonder if I've ran by their apartment. Maybe I
Speaker 4: know their son from the coffee shop. Like I have
Speaker 4: this whole narrative.
Speaker 5: In my head just from like this small bit of
Speaker 5: information or just you know, I look at their ages.
Speaker 5: I think about who I know that is that age.
Speaker 5: I try and like help that ground me, and you know,
Speaker 5: instead of just flying through the paperwork and be like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, Harry James, you know, rest in peace.
Speaker 5: He was only seventy two, but he was married. He
Speaker 5: lived a good life out there on Eastern Parkway, Douglas.
Speaker 2: Here we are.
Speaker 5: See dash nine seven three two four. All right, You're
Speaker 5: never alone if you're in this office because these two
Speaker 5: cabinets in front of us. Here is where the cremated
Speaker 5: remains in their boxes sit until the funeral director and
Speaker 5: or family comes to pick them up. So I'm never
Speaker 5: alone when I'm in here. I'm like, all right, let's
Speaker 5: see who's here. Oh John, Okay, it's weird. It's like
Speaker 5: these people are dead. I'm like, maybe i'll name my
Speaker 5: kid that one day. It sparks this conversation of like
Speaker 5: life and names and legacy.
Speaker 7: Sometimes when you're doing this whole day, you can't get
Speaker 7: the numbers out of your head. So I've woken up
Speaker 7: out of dreams with cremation numbers in my head, and
Speaker 7: of course being Italian myself, my first thing instinct is
Speaker 7: I gotta play that number.
Speaker 4: I gotta play that number.
Speaker 3: Oh my not.
Speaker 5: I love that you associate the lotto with being like
Speaker 5: innately Italian American.
Speaker 4: Tell me it's Italian thing. No, no, I'm telling you
Speaker 4: it definitely is.
Speaker 7: Yah.
Speaker 4: See I get it.
Speaker 7: The numbers was always was big growing up. My father
Speaker 7: used to play the numbers. My mother used to play
Speaker 7: the numbers. Or guess what I play the numbers?
Speaker 5: Do?
Speaker 3: Now? Well?
Speaker 4: You know why?
Speaker 5: I think why we play the numbers is because you
Speaker 5: never know when your numbers up, so you gotta live.
Speaker 4: Well you can't.
Speaker 3: Good point, dear Gabriella.
Speaker 7: But for me, I feel that it's important that the
Speaker 7: creamines be placed in a cemetery. You cannot even imagine
Speaker 7: how many times we get calls from people of I
Speaker 7: just found these cremains in a locker or a storage facility,
Speaker 7: because people forget so if they're in a semi terry,
Speaker 7: there's going to be something there that says you walk
Speaker 7: this earth, whether it's the face of the niche that
Speaker 7: has the person's name on it in the dates or
Speaker 7: the urn that you see that has the engraving upon
Speaker 7: the urn. There's going to be something that says, Harry
Speaker 7: James walk this earth and was here. Everybody that walks
Speaker 7: this planet should be memorialized.
Speaker 3: They should be remembered.
Speaker 7: It shouldn't be they were here now they're gone. Everybody
Speaker 7: should be remembered. So when you're in a cemetery and
Speaker 7: you look at some of the headstones that people probably
Speaker 7: haven't had a visitor for maybe centuries, it's okay to
Speaker 7: say that name out loud because you're remembering that person.
Speaker 5: One of our security guards actually on his brakes, he
Speaker 5: would walk around and look for super old stones and
Speaker 5: just say the name's out loud because he wanted them
Speaker 5: to know that, you know, their names had not been
Speaker 5: said for.
Speaker 4: The last time. We had a death cafe the other night.
Speaker 5: It's pretty much a bunch of strangers hanging out drinking
Speaker 5: tea and coffee and cookies, talking about.
Speaker 4: Death, dying, grief and loss.
Speaker 5: But we were kind of talking about signs and what
Speaker 5: gives us comfort, and I'm like, listen, I always make
Speaker 5: the joke like the Plumber and the Death Duel are
Speaker 5: asking the same question, like where do we go?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I hope everybody gets what they
Speaker 5: believe is the other side. I hope everybody gets, you know,
Speaker 5: what they want out of death and what they believe
Speaker 5: it to be is right before I got the job here,
Speaker 5: I'm like birds sitting for a friend for extra cash.
Speaker 4: Like birds sitting, I'm like, what am I doing with
Speaker 4: my life?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: It's pouring rain. I'm like, you know, let me just
Speaker 5: like you know, I'll get a car home. Something's like, no,
Speaker 5: you gotta walk more. And I have this presence around me,
Speaker 5: and I think of my uncle Vinnie, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: all right, Uncle Vinny, Like if this is you though,
Speaker 5: like is this like vulnerable woman walking around New York
Speaker 5: City alone? Or is this like my uncle spirit is
Speaker 5: with me? Like what is the energy this is giving?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: And I'm like, all right, listen, you gotta give me
Speaker 5: a sign that's abundantly like clear, like explicit as you can,
Speaker 5: more than you ever have before. And this voice in
Speaker 5: my head is just like two more blocks. It's torrential downpour.
Speaker 5: So I'm all right, fine, I'm already like what.
Speaker 4: Am I doing? Fine? I walk two more blocks. The
Speaker 4: second I hit the second block, the fire.
Speaker 5: Truck with his name on it drives by a lot
Speaker 5: of times in the FDNY is when someone dies, their
Speaker 5: name may be placed on one of the fire trucks
Speaker 5: from like they're the engine that they were last at.
Speaker 5: So in my uncle Vinnie's case, you know, they put
Speaker 5: on his firetruck in loving memory of Vincent Arra and Garo.
Speaker 5: I've never in my life had a moment where I
Speaker 5: literally like it took my breath away because I was like,
Speaker 5: that is the most explicit sign you could have given me.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's your name right there right.
Speaker 5: He died of nine eleven related cancer. He had leukemia.
Speaker 5: We got fifteen years with him after.
Speaker 4: Nine to eleven.
Speaker 5: But he, oh my god, this man his car broke
Speaker 5: down on the Brooklyn Bridge, like they still sprinted towards
Speaker 5: the fire because he was like, my guys are in there,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, whatever that was, whoever that was, however
Speaker 5: that came to be. I will always have a moment
Speaker 5: that truly took my breath away that I found so
Speaker 5: much comfort in that really cracked me open. I hadn't
Speaker 5: cried like I hadn't had one of those good heaving
Speaker 5: cries about my uncle until that moment, and I was
Speaker 5: so thankful for that access point to let that kind
Speaker 5: of grief out. I mean, I was crying as hard
Speaker 5: as it was raining that day, and I felt connected.
Speaker 4: She's coming for a drama. Oh okay, yeah, yeah means her.
Speaker 9: No, I'm like, I won't see anything in here.
Speaker 4: There she is, there, she is. She has talk about fashion.
Speaker 4: Look at you, we're just talking about I can't.
Speaker 3: Even show you what I have the hers right now.
Speaker 3: Well not it's no longer there.
Speaker 6: But I do quite unique funerals because we're in the
Speaker 6: service business and you have to empathize and sympathize and
Speaker 6: service your families.
Speaker 3: And even if it's like a little over the top,
Speaker 3: you do it. You do it.
Speaker 6: Today wasn't over the top day. We had two people
Speaker 6: in the front seat. In the back it was.
Speaker 3: His pooch.
Speaker 6: And the family said it would mean a lot. It's
Speaker 6: only a two block run, and she was so adorable.
Speaker 6: Didn't walk nothing with its owner until very last minute.
Speaker 3: And I have to take him back to the crematory,
Speaker 3: thirty one year old boy.
Speaker 6: And mom's in the harsh and.
Speaker 3: I told her prayer to the Virgin mother.
Speaker 6: She lost her son at thirty three, not thirty one,
Speaker 6: so she'll give her strength and for the two weeks
Speaker 6: before Christmas. It's horrible, but somebody's got to do it.
Speaker 3: And this is what.
Speaker 6: It's about doing with the family requests. We got one
Speaker 6: shot my business, it's one shot.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 6: My name is Doris Virginia Ahmann. Yes, my last name
Speaker 6: means the end. I'm of Batalian descent. I owne a
Speaker 6: Polish funeral home in a mixed.
Speaker 3: Fag neighborhood here in Park Slope, Brooklyn called Jerike Park
Speaker 3: Slope Funeral Home.
Speaker 6: I am the president and the director, the chief cooked
Speaker 6: and bottle washer, and I do everything from the cleaning
Speaker 6: lady to the night crew.
Speaker 3: And it works.
Speaker 6: And I'm doing it for here almost thirty five years.
Speaker 6: Wait at the time that I don't know, Yeah, I know,
Speaker 6: I don't look it. Yeah, get married.
Speaker 3: And have kids.
Speaker 6: You'll never make it. Jesus Christ died, Mohammad died. Everybody dies,
Speaker 6: it's just a transition from one to the other. I
Speaker 6: lost one of my partners. He was fifty Pegrida cancer.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 3: I got so many signs from him. I told him.
Speaker 3: Go to your sisters. They think I'm nuts.
Speaker 6: A lot of people get signs, a lot of people
Speaker 6: read about the Attabaudy experience.
Speaker 3: A lot of people do believe in that.
Speaker 6: I tell my families all the time, go online, read them.
Speaker 3: There is something to it. There's something to it.
Speaker 6: I don't believe it's just over the body physically gone,
Speaker 6: but the soul, the spirit, we go somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'll bet.
Speaker 6: My bottom dollar on it. I'm not afraid to go
Speaker 6: whenever that may be. Don't want to go tonight. I
Speaker 6: got a Christmas party, however, gotta go a pleasure.
Speaker 4: Love you to have a good weekend. Same this kid
Speaker 4: was only seventeen.
Speaker 5: It's so my family doesn't really Uh, they didn't really
Speaker 5: get it at first, you know, they're like, why do
Speaker 5: you like? It must be you know, I'm gonna just
Speaker 5: impersonate my mother right now. It must be so depressing.
Speaker 5: I'm worried about you doing this every day, Like is
Speaker 5: this really what you want to be doing every day?
Speaker 5: Like isn't it a lot? But to me, it's just about, hey, yeah,
Speaker 5: maybe that was too much and I need a little
Speaker 5: bit of a reset.
Speaker 4: Maybe I just need a macho latte.
Speaker 5: It could be Wow, I really need to be on
Speaker 5: the couch like in a fort like of blankets and
Speaker 5: have nobody look.
Speaker 4: At me or talk to me for a weekend.
Speaker 5: So it's being able to evaluate and when you come
Speaker 5: up to it identifying oh this is a machilote day
Speaker 5: or this is a okay, I got to go buy
Speaker 5: some bath bombs. We need candles, we need quiet, we
Speaker 5: need incense. So yeah, I mean, this work can be
Speaker 5: heavy sometimes, but I wouldn't want it any other way
Speaker 5: because that means that I'm.
Speaker 4: With the person or people.
Speaker 5: Truly, it's about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable truth that
Speaker 5: we're all going to die.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So we've got these funeral directors that come in every day.
Speaker 5: You know, some of these folks just have just some
Speaker 5: great ideas and advice on how to look at death,
Speaker 5: what to prepare for. I mean because sometimes simply I
Speaker 5: talk to them and they're like, yeah, it was kind
Speaker 5: of rough. We had to make a lot of decisions
Speaker 5: rather than you know, go through the motions a little
Speaker 5: bit more easily when the family came in after the
Speaker 5: death occurred.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: It sounds silly, but you know, in this field, we
Speaker 5: kind of term it unnecessary grief. And that's the paperwork
Speaker 5: that wasn't done before. And that's the small things like
Speaker 5: I want a wood casket or I don't care, I
Speaker 5: want a cardboard box. It's all those Oh my god,
Speaker 5: well I'm dizzy with grief. I didn't have that written
Speaker 5: down anywhere. I had to make all these decisions.
Speaker 4: On the spot.
Speaker 5: And then you know, maybe there's guilt associated with that,
Speaker 5: or confusion or just grief.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: We talk about the good death a lot, right, and
Speaker 5: I think part of the work we do here is
Speaker 5: helping people realize the services that are out there for
Speaker 5: you to get like that good death and for you
Speaker 5: to get what you want and have your family and
Speaker 5: you know, get what they need and want out of
Speaker 5: the experience. And my uncle Vinnie, like he got to
Speaker 5: die in the living room you know that he built.
Speaker 5: He was like, hey, go get my fedora. And I
Speaker 5: was like why, Like you're dying, like what's going on?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: And I got us fedora. I put it on him
Speaker 5: and he's like, all right, get everybody around me. We're
Speaker 5: going to watch The Godfather together one more time. And
Speaker 5: I was like what, Like why are you cracking jokes,
Speaker 5: like being silly, like you know, you're leaving, like maybe
Speaker 5: in a few hours, maybe in a day, maybe in
Speaker 5: an instant. No, I want to watch The Godfather one
Speaker 5: more time with my family and carge us to take pictures.
Speaker 5: He's like, this is a family occasion. We're all here
Speaker 5: together for this big life and death event. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, my uncle Vinnie taught me that. He taught
Speaker 5: me what a good death is. He taught me this
Speaker 5: can be not a sad thing.
Speaker 4: This could be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm on my way out, but like, let's hang
Speaker 5: out one last time. This is what it could look like,
Speaker 5: this is what it could feel like. And that's you know,
Speaker 5: I think part of why I was crazy enough to
Speaker 5: be like, yeah, I want to work at a cemetery
Speaker 5: because I want to spread the gospel of death education
Speaker 5: and give people agency in their deaths. Because I think
Speaker 5: we think about agency in our life so much. We
Speaker 5: work with that, we talk about that, we can textualize it.
Speaker 5: There's a way to do that for our deaths as well.
Speaker 5: I think about my own death like all too much.
Speaker 5: But I actually enjoyed doing so because for a lot
Speaker 5: of reasons. You know, we heard today especially from funeral
Speaker 5: directors and the like. It really does help your loved
Speaker 5: ones and helps you confront your own mortality when you
Speaker 5: think about what you want in death. The funny thing, too,
Speaker 5: is the more you think about what you want in death,
Speaker 5: the more you think about what you want out of life,
Speaker 5: and you work harder and have a whole different perspective
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 5: One of our security guards. But George started off as
Speaker 5: a Greenwood volunteer and now is like just a staple
Speaker 5: of the institution.
Speaker 12: I don't think that it's just I like being helpful.
Speaker 12: My name is George Orgrigez, and I've worked here total
Speaker 12: of nine years. I'm actually the patrol officer today. We
Speaker 12: have several night creatures. We have skunks number one, that's
Speaker 12: our main line of defense. If you run into one,
Speaker 12: you're marked. Two raccoons, three groundhogs. They're not much night creatures,
Speaker 12: but they could scare you if you cross their burrow.
Speaker 12: And then we have possums, which are our last ditch
Speaker 12: line of defense because they look like death donned over.
Speaker 12: These are creatures that have died and they come to
Speaker 12: life to scare.
Speaker 3: The crap out of you. And and that's it.
Speaker 12: Those are the four guys that are out there, along
Speaker 12: with the owls and bats and so on. I don't
Speaker 12: get creeped out at here at all. Ever, if you're
Speaker 12: coming here and you have family here, or family that's
Speaker 12: going to be interred here, you're joining a larger family.
Speaker 12: Everyone here is now part of the human family that's Screenwood, right,
Speaker 12: So from Horace Greeley to your your aunt or uncle
Speaker 12: or mother and father, they're now all together. So if
Speaker 12: you're looking for someone, take note of people or stones
Speaker 12: around you, because they're family too, and and you'll they'll
Speaker 12: help you get there. They'll help you find your grave, easy, easy, peasy.
Speaker 4: I love that though.
Speaker 7: That's because I think there's this idea that a cemetery
Speaker 7: is like cold and alone and creepy and live.
Speaker 12: It's living. You got trees, you got grass, you got
Speaker 12: the various animals we have, and people who visit are
Speaker 12: bringing their energy, their life into it anyway, right. And
Speaker 12: the guys who work in the grounds, people who work
Speaker 12: in the office, they're all bringing life in here. So
Speaker 12: wherever we are, there's going to be life.
Speaker 4: William B.
Speaker 7: Afternoon, all right.
Speaker 5: I would love to be composted if possible, Like you know,
Speaker 5: I should be part of the family sauce one day,
Speaker 5: like put me near a tomato plan.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm home after a day at the creamatory, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful. I'm ready to do it all again tomorrow, but.
Speaker 11: For now, I'm gonna let my honey pumpkin candle for
Speaker 11: Marshall's glow, cling to my beetle juice pillow and kind of.
Speaker 4: Just take it all in before.
Speaker 2: Before sleep
Speaker 4: Doora deserr honly to really