Janelle and Andrea take on life and death, one breath at a time, discussing end-of-life care, examining how society successfully evades the topic, and considering the sentence: “if we die before we die, then we don’t have to die when we die”. Includes a nod to cemeteries, cruises, Joan Didion, Natalie Goldberg, The Lower Fifth, Meggan Watterson, Paul Kalanithi, “The Wreck of Time” by Annie Dillard and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Also “Let Go” by Frou Frou. You’ll hear:
-Why 138,000 deaths seems less significant than one
-How to strategically prepare for death. Like, today.
-A fire ritual that will leave you reeling
-Why darks showers and watching flowers die is a good idea
-How Janelle sees death as the next great adventure
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrea: Hi, friend.
Janelle: Hi Andrea!
Andrea: So, tonight we're about death. We're talking about life and death. And in the spirit of abundant life, why don't you tell me about the golden goddess that has shown up in the foyer of your goddess temple.
Janelle: Yes, anyone who wants to see it you can go on our Instagram. The Goddess of Abundance has arrived, designed and created by the artist Sophie Howell.
Andrea: Sophie!
Janelle: And she represents, I didn't actually know she was the Goddess of Abundance until she arrived. was just the goddess and Sophie was creating her.
Andrea: And so who named her the goddess of abundance? Sophie?
Janelle: No, me! But after she arrived and what happened was that I have an Isis deck. I pull, Oracle cards frequently. They're all on my altar, different ones. And the Isis deck is one that I've had for two years. And the day after the sculpture, of the goddess arrived. I pulled from that deck and I pulled a card that I have in two years of having that deck.
I've never seen this card. I've never pulled this card. No one else I have, I know has pulled this card. And it was about the goddess of abundance. And I was like, Oh, that's who's And it's the abundance, like financial abundance, health abundance, material abundance, abundance of creation, essentially.
Andrea: Wow, that's exciting. Beautiful and it has so many textures and different accessories and parts on her body. It's quite a specimen too.
Janelle: To behold.
Andreas: To behold! Yeah, I could sit and stare at it for a while.
Janelle: I think it was you who said like, she's in, movement, right? She's in motion and she's holding a crown and the flower of life, she's elevated a little bit. So now what I'm doing is when I do the, the glitter ritual. Mm-Hmm. Which I've talked about a bunch.
Mm-Hmm. I actually do it in front of her as if she's bestowing the blessing. Of the glitter.
Andrea: I love it.
Janelle: essentially, it's me and the goddess.
Andrea: Of abundance coming forward. I have a little story about that. I went on a cruise with my family and my in laws over the holiday and My favorite part of the cruise was the silent disco that my husband and I participated in. It was so much fun, outside, all these people, all with our headphones on.
And we eventually started dancing with this woman who had two little kids and she was just really getting into it like we were and we were meeting eyes and she was so lovely. And I had my Glister with me, which is the same glitter that Janelle offers when you walk into the Goddess
Janelle: Yeah. Galaxy Glister, in case anyone wants some. so I handed some of the glitter out. I was like, oh, do you want some glitter? And people are like, what? What is it? You know, and then they're like, oh yeah. You know, and then a couple of, some like 320 somethings. And then there were a couple of guys who were like 21 who were like totally digging the glitter and dancing.
Andrea: It was awesome.
Janelle: I love this.
Andrea: Then this woman, I gave some to her and her children. And then the next day we saw her at the airport. And my husband looks at her and said, Hey, there's. the dancing lady, you know, and I was like, oh yeah, she was such a good dancer. And so we smiled at her and she walked over and she said, so much fun dancing with you guys.
And my children saw you and said, hey, there's the glitter lady. I was like, yeah, I'm the glitter lady.
Janelle: Yes!
Andrea: So that was a nice, nice feeling.
Janelle: Yes!
Andrea: Yeah. Lovely way to end the fascinating cruise. I was on. More about that later. Okay, life and death. really funny, is that yesterday when I was running, I listened to a different playlist because I need to do a new playlist for 2024.
And so I was rooting around in my old stuff and I came upon this song. That I used to love, called Life and Death by the Lower Fifth, which is a local band in Wisconsin. And I listened to three or four times over and I was like, oh, this is such a perfect thing in preparation for this episode. So here's the good news and the bad news.
I often tell my clients, we are so special and we are not special at This is the paradox of life. And I remember learning maybe five, six years ago during some Buddhism meditation classes. and reading the Tibetan book of the living and the dead, that the ratio of dead people living on the Earth compared to live people on the Earth, it's something like 14 to 1. they outnumber us. there's way more people that have died on this Earth than our living.
I think the idea, and what's maybe creepy about it, is that there are so many dead people and ashes under our feet. All the time. Many people have lived and died before us. And I think this is also just an existential whoa moment that I get sometimes. I'm like, wow, in a hundred years, hardly anyone will even know my name. great thing to face and be like, I am insignificant. In the big scheme of things it's not exactly depressing. It's just, it's a lot to take in.
Janelle: For you. Yeah,
Andrea: For me, yeah.
Janelle: would find that depressing
Andrea: I mean, yes. It is hard to think about. we're so fleeting in a sense. In the big scheme of the years.
Janelle: Yeah, I'm reminded of an art piece that I've seen that goes through the entire life of the cosmos essentially and in that particular piece it really puts into perspective like the human existence and how insignificant it is,
Andrea: Yes. Exactly. this makes me think of, , a yoga class I had years and years ago at Mudra Yoga on Pearl Street. Ann Bortz is a teacher, and she's a very good yoga teacher, and she gave us this sheet of paper that had, lots and lots of dots on And she's like, these are the weeks left in your life. It is staggeringly small. When you look at this sheet with all the dots, you're like, that's probably about it.
Janelle: It's interesting I remember my, Her ex husband did this he created a sheet of dots and this was the number of burning meants he had left.
Andrea: interesting.
Janelle: Also a finite number and he was like, oh,
Andrea: Gotta make each one count.
Janelle: yes.
Andrea: The Wreck of Time is an essay Dullard I read about six years ago, and I'll give you a sense of it. But here's the first four paragraphs of this essay. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, after his arrest, could not fathom all the fuss. What was the big deal? David Von Drill quotes an exasperated Bundy in his book, Among the Lowest of the Dead. And Ted Bundy says, what was the big deal? I mean, there are so many people. He's like, what the hell? I just killed a couple. There's billions of people on the earth. That was basically his point. So I'll do the next, the next little paragraph, little factoid. Our Howink of Amsterdam uncovered this unnerving fact. The human population of Earth arranged tidally would just fit into Lake Windermere in England's Lake District. That's just crazy. I don't even know what to think of that. feel so fucked Right. That all of us could fit into one lake.
And then, In, the Peruvian Amazon, a man asked the writer Alex Shomatoff, Isn't it true that the whole population of the United States can be fitted into their cars? Like we have so many vehicles in this country and that all the people can be fitted in their cars.
I don't know if this is actually true, but this is something that she asks in the essay. I think these, little Snippets are just giving you an idea of like, Oh, can you think about people in this big, huge way? And can you think about them in a small way? And so here's more of a news headline on April 30th, 1991, 000 people drown in Bangladesh. I'm just going to say that again, 138, 000 people drown in Bangladesh.
So an end of quote. And when I read this, I thought, jeez. How did I not hear about this? , this seems like a really fucking big deal, That's a lot of people.
Janelle: Lot of people, I've never heard about this
Andrea: No, I mean, I was only, you know, I was a junior in high school, you're a senior, like, maybe I wasn't paying attention. But still, it seems really big.
And I think part of the reason, though, that it doesn't potentially gain headlines is that It's just so hard to imagine 138, 000 people, it tends to feel like a statistic where one person dying feels like a tragedy. six people die on a plane. We hear about it. We hear their names. What did they look like?
Where did they live? 138, 000 people. it's hard to understand.
Janelle: And it was the fascinating part it was like going back and forth between the paradox of , oh, so many people, there's an insignificance, and then there's a significance. There's an insignificance and a significance in simply our existence of being human.
The thing that comes to mind is like, how can we better prepare ourselves for our own death my view of American culture is that we are extraordinarily afraid of death We're extraordinarily afraid of grief. And we do everything we can to pretend death isn't coming.
In my last several years have I started reflecting on this a lot more. My mom passed away, 15 years ago. So I was at the age of 34 faced with, a death in a way that I hadn't, ever faced before
And I would say on my spiritual journey that I have been on this question of what are we afraid of?
What has us being afraid of living is actually often that we're afraid of dying. Being afraid of dying prevents us from living.
Andrea: Okay, let's say that one more time.
Janelle: Feel as if on my journey what I've discovered is that because we have such a deep fear of death, we're actually afraid of living. Because we're afraid of dying.
Andrea: So I think what I'm hearing you say is, we're afraid of loving because we know it's going to be taken away. Is that what you're saying? meeting someone, finding a partner, loving our children, because we know that we are going to lose them.
Janelle: Are we afraid of loving? I was saying living. So let me think about
Andrea: To me, love is the biggest part of living, I guess,
Janelle: Well, I think what you're saying is true I actually think there's this piece of like, oh I have to hold on so tightly to the life that I know to the human form that I am So that I can avoid the death that's coming, this can look in lots of different ways. It can look in us the eternal American culture of like youth is always elevated that we are trying to Maintain a wrinkle free existence despite the fact that we're in our 70s We are elevating this idea of youthfulness Which prevents us from living who we are as we are whatever
Andrea: 48 year old instead of a 27 year hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I do think that is definitely true of society and I think we do a great job in our culture of putting away elderly people in a home. They don't live with us. In my regular life, I never see a cemetery. And I think that could be a result of of basic crowding of cities, or is it city planning where like, the cemeteries are like not in, you know, they're big, of course, they need to be big, and so they're, they're not in the hub of things, right?
They're on the outskirts. I mean, I know where the cemeteries are, and, but I certainly don't see them on a regular
Janelle: Yes, so it's funny. I think we're discovering this I love
Andrea: Cemetery. Oh, me too. Me too. Although, older the better. Older the better. Like, my daughter is so over me pulling off the side of the road on a road trip and being like, Oh my god, there's a little tiny cemetery, we have to go look. I mean, we're talking like, eighteen, you know, eighteen hundreds. Graves, they're like, you can barely read them. They're like little, they're crooked, they're in the ground. It is so cool.
Janelle: So cool, you know, I've been traveling to Boston a lot And I was in one part of Boston and I was like, okay, I'm gonna take a walk. And in the middle of downtown Boston, I came across this old
Andrea: Totally. I know where that is.
Janelle: And so I was like, oh, that's my perfect tourist destination. That's where I'm headed.
Andrea: Right, yeah, I miss that about, I mean, the East Coast has so much more history. It started earlier, and yeah, there's a cemetery in the middle of town, right?
Janelle: Yeah. And so fascinating. I don't know if you've heard of Calvary Cemetery. I don't know the statistics on it, but it's in Queens. And so when you're driving along a highway, I actually can sense how rolling the landscape is of this part of Queens because the cemetery you can see it like arching and undulating It's a huge cemetery It is in between like you see like the backdrop of New York City behind it You see like industrial things, but like every nook and cranny is covered in gravestones and this is where my grandparents And my aunt are buried.
Yeah, so I've seen it my whole life. I'd only visited it once or twice. But it is so crammed in. There's like, yeah, hundreds of thousands. I have no idea how many people and like layers deep are in the middle of this. It's like a very dense cemetery in a very dense city. It's fascinating.
Andrea: Wow, wow, and Yeah, it's funny because when I went to Iowa City last summer one of my main purposes and things on my list was going to see the Black Angel in the Iowa City Cemetery. It's just kind of famous. It's just like this huge black angel that towers over a lot of the graves and it was, yeah, it was a beautiful, poignant visit to go there.
Be in this kind of small town, city, but it really is a small town, in the Midwest, and just the peace and the feeling of ease and peace for me in that cemetery was huge. I don't know, I don't know if a lot of people feel that way or not, but I actually like it.
Janelle: Good feeling
Andrea: Yeah, I do.
Janelle: Yeah, I mean, I've been to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris many times. That's where a lot of famous people are buried and it's so beautiful. And there's another beautiful cemetery in Buenos Aires that I've been to. yeah, it's a multi dimensional piece of art.
Andrea: Cool. Alright. So how can we better prepare for our own Death. Where does that start?
Janelle: Yeah, well, as I said, as I've been on a journey of my spiritual awakening, the awareness of death has become irrelevant and because if I can face it, then I can choose how I want to live my life more. at Burning Man this year, there is an Eleusinian mystery that's phrased, if I die before I die, then when I die, I will not die.
I'm going to say it again. If I die before I die, then when I die, I will not die. And this is the idea of I can like Let who I think I'm supposed to be go. Let that version of me die. Then, I'm released.
Andrea: Yeah. And, and I've followed the same in the Buddhist tradition is slightly different, but it is if I can die before I die, I don't have to die when I die.
Janelle: Oh, it's exactly, yeah, it's the same. Yeah.
Andrea: just, but this concept was huge to me at the time. It's when I first, I'm like, what do you mean? And then it is releasing the sense of self or ego.
Janelle: Burning Man this year, at the temple, that phrase that I just said was actually part of the drone show, which is amazing. at night, that phrase was, , lit up by drones in the sky, at the history of Burning Man like you go into the temple and you can have the opportunity to leave something a part of you a memory It's an honor of someone else And then the idea is that when the temple burns, that burns with it.
And I walked into the temple this year and I looked around and then I saw a sign, like a relatively big sign. And it said, we love you Janelle in really big letters. I was like, okay, I'm letting myself go Like I'm letting the version of me that I thought this is what Janelle's life is supposed to look like This is what I was supposed to look like.
I'm not gonna leave that in the temple this year
Andrea: So, for you, was that letting go of yourself? Or was it letting go of an old version of yourself?
Janelle: It was letting go of whatever version of myself. I think I'm supposed to be
Andrea: Ah, I see.
Janelle: So how can we be less afraid of death?
Andrea: Well, we can start by bringing it more into our lives, mean, just on a regular basis, in a regular thought process. Seeing more cemeteries, acknowledging it. and I think there is something to our culture that, that pushes it away, so I mean, we have to actively bring it back ourselves, and I know you did a, a eulogy ritual with your family,
Janelle: Right.
Andrea: Which I think is just a great practice. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah.
Janelle: Basically, my dad, brother, and I, we all wrote our own eulogies and then shared them with one another of what we thought. People would say about us if we were to die, today, and it gives it for someone my age, right? Not so much for my dad who's 93 But it's like oh is what it's gonna be said about me what? Like the truest, best version of me, or I have an opportunity to change who I want to be for the rest of my life. So there's that piece. I also want to name that I actually think we're talking about cemeteries and death in terms of the human bit of death, but death is everywhere. Death begets life.
I mean like the death of the season, so there's lots of ways to bring in death. In this section what we're talking about is actually The death of the human like there's also other like death happens all the time, but for me There was a meme that I saw Where it said death is the next great adventure into the unknown that I was like a visceral shift in my system where I deeply resonated with that message because I'm such an adventure traveler my favorite type of experience is to go into the unknown and be like, okay, , what's gonna be here?
And suddenly when I heard, like, oh, death is just this great unknown, it really shifted my fear of it. It's like, oh, yeah, what's gonna happen on the other side of that? Can't wait.
Andrea: So positive. Yeah.
Janelle: So another ritual that I did a couple years ago that was super powerful, a fire ritual, where we were invited to write down the five most important things to us. Not only write them down, were instructed to go out into nature and find the objects that represented the five most important things to us. People or things.
So it was just a representation, right? It could have been like a pine cone or a rock or whatever. So we all gathered these things and then we were standing around a fire, and then we were instructed to put the thing in the fire we were most willing to get rid of, of these five most important things.
And then, as you can imagine, the next was like, okay, what's the second? And then what's the third? each step was like, ugh. Like more and more painful I didn't know at the beginning that I was gonna have to get rid of these things, And then what are you ultimately left with? And it was a profound exercise.
Andrea: Yeah, it was really fascinating. I mean, I wasn't even there, but then you came home and told me about it, and I have reflected on this so many times and I have passed it on to other people so many and I think to give the Bravehearts an idea of like, those things can be anything.
Janelle: Right?
Andrea: I found that they were, for me, they were people in my life and myself. That's what they ended up being.
Janelle: And what was really fascinating for me is the thing that I was the most attached to was actually the first thing I gave away. Yeah, and I was like, oh, that says something massive.
Andrea: Yeah. And the thing that brings me the most anxiety? The two things that bring me the most anxiety. Are the things I gave away first.
Janelle: And they were on the list of the most important
Andrea: For sure, they were absolutely so important to me, and they still are, and they are also the things to go first. It's such a great clarity moment for another way of thinking about d was presented to me from Megan Watterson and she is a feminist theologian. She's written a couple of different books. on Mary Magdalene and in the gospel of Mary Magdalene, so Megan Watterson speaks to that the word death in Aramaic translates to existing elsewhere, which implies that death is not an end, but a transition.
Janelle: And she goes on to state that. when we are in our mind and we are reliving our past, or we are focused on our future, we are quote unquote dead because we are actually living elsewhere. Oh, wow. The present moment is where we get to make change. And so when we are in the present moment, we have come back to life.
Andrea: Wow. Yeah, that's really profound. I mean, if that's true, we're dead so often, right? Because we're like living the past, living the future, planning, worrying, regretting. And I think that that is, this is my own, description of like, oh, when we say like, oh, my spiritual awakening, oh, I'm awakening to my life because I realize how often I have been dead.
So this also makes me think of a quote I just started reading, Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg. Again, it's been Something I've read over and over for about 20 years. Used to carry it with me everywhere. and she talks about a community that she was part of in Taos, New Mexico. she was talking about how alive it was during a time period.
And then later in the book she talks about how it was dying. And she said, but that's okay, because for things to die, they have to be alive. And she said, for her, a corporation isn't alive, it can't die because it's not even alive to begin with. corporations can be evil and they also like run our country and that's okay, so I
Janelle: I don't know. Right, well, and the Supreme Court also said that they were people. that court case.
Andreas: Yeah, so I'm not, but in general. For you to die, you must be alive, and so how can you become more alive in your life? So that when you die, you go out, go out big.
Janelle: Exactly. This is what's tying in to what I'm doing now, right? As with my company of Feel Wildly Alive. Just allowing one more bit of aliveness in our souls. Like, who knows what comes from that feeling.
So, Megan Watterson does present like a little like ritual, that's very simple about how to be in the present moment a little bit more. So, being like, how can you be more alive, which is just simply to take three breaths. The first breath allows you to return to your body. And to set the attention of dropping into your heart.
The second breath allows you to connect with what is true or ultimate for you. Your truth, your soul, whatever word resonates, and breathe here until a sense of calm overtakes you.
On the third breath, drench yourself in gratitude for doing this work and allowing yourself to be led by the love of your heart, to being in the present moment, and to feeling more alive.
Andrea: Beautiful. I was recently educated about different practices that can help us understand death and bring the idea of death more comfortably into our life. One of my clients is a death doula and Sierra, she's a lovely soul and she gave me these ideas so one of them is to pretend that you're invisible for a day. Pretend that no one can see you and no one sees you driving. No one sees you when you're walking. I don't like it at all. Like I hate it.
Janelle: Fascinating!
Andrea: Yeah. And I'm like, no. I want to be seen, another thing is to watch something in decline. That can be the seasons. It can be a flower dying. I often have flowers in my house and, I'm seeing them as they're blooming and thriving and then slowly I see them as they drop and wilt and crinkle and look sad and it's just another cycle,
Janelle: and there's also beauty in that cycle. I'm just thinking of like, oh, we only like the flowers when they're blooming, but actually they can, some flowers when they dry out are exquisitely beautiful.
Andrea: That's really true. Yeah. And there's, this reminds me of a song, it's called, There's Beauty in the Breakdown. and I remember taking a picture of this. building in the alley near my house that was clearly in deterioration, the paint was peeling off of it, it had lost its color, there were bricks missing, and I thought it was beautiful. I'm like, oh, it's in transition and then she suggested spending time in the darkness. mean, I love taking showers in the dark. Me too!
Janelle: Too.
Andrea: Showers by candlelight. I know we've never discussed this, but you mentioned take a dark shower. Just dark. Oh, just dark. I can't see the hair on my legs if
Janelle: shaving in the dark. That's not what I'm doing. That's not the point of that shower.
Andrea: It's a good idea. Take pleasure in the shower. What if you were just showering for the feeling of the hot water on your body? Instead of all the things I must do.
Janelle: In the shower. Interesting.
Andrea: So, darkness. Spending time in darkness. Spend time in the closet. Spend time under the covers. How does it feel when you're in the dark? How do you feel about the dark?
Janelle: I like the dark. I have definitely spent time in the dark, outdoors in nature, camping, Underneath the stars. feeling like the, energetic and excitement and the fear of like, what's there, what's not there. I also have a few friends who've done a darkness retreat where they are in for, I think it's like three or three days where they go into a space with other people and there is no light for three days you just lose track of time. You don't know who's there. Obviously everyone feels safe, but like, it's this like facing.
Andrea: Oh, I am so up for that. I would do that in a second. That's so interesting. I don't know why, but like it really, appeals to
Janelle: Yeah, someone was just telling me about it. So I will get you the information.
Andrea: remember when I used to run, I would sometimes run in the dark, which is probably, please don't do this. I think it's dumb, but I used to run in the dark in the park. And when I would run in the dark, I was more scared. And so I'd run faster. And that was always what happened.
Janelle: Wow, that's fascinating to notice.
Andrea: Yeah, even though, I mean, it wasn't really, you know, super scared, but, you know, it's a little more unnerving because you can't see, and it's someone out there, I mean, it's a pretty safe place, but, it definitely was like there was a, an adrenaline of fear that
Janelle: What was the
Andrea: kept me going, yeah.
Janelle: And that way what I'm hearing you say too, is that like it's the fear of the dark fear of death, right? There's a relationship between fear and death. So like if you can like face your fears Then you're able to face death,
Andrea: Yeah, that's true. It's also the fear of uncertainty, because I don't know what's ahead.
Janelle: And that's also life, right? That is also then how do you live? How can you live? with the uncertainty that we just don't know what life is going to bring us.
Andrea: Yeah, another metaphor. Life is just a big metaphor. Yeah, lots of dark. Yeah, I guess this darkness makes me think about going into the basement in my old house and there's no way I would ever go into that basement in the dark. Even if I could see what I was doing and see the steps, I was Entirely too afraid of the dead bodies in the crawl space.
Obviously there are no real dead bodies there, but this is what I pictured. It was a total bear witch basement, super creepy, not finished, and, yeah, did I really think someone was in the basement? it's not rational in any way, and yet I've seen way too many scary movies and I can recall them all with incredibly annoying clarity.
And so Yeah, I feel like, no, I'm not comfortable in the dark all the time, at all. Although I will say now, that's, you know, that's totally gone away. yeah, I don't have an issue with going to the basement, Sure, but I prefer the light on. What about you?
Janelle: What goes up to mind is that I was like, Oh yes, and I don't watch scary movies.
Andrea: Right, for this very reason, which is part of why I kind of wished I, they gave me an incredible adrenaline rush growing up, and they're so dangerous. They've haunted me my entire life. And I wrote a whole essay about it.
Janelle: Okay, let's move on. But, speaking of, maybe move on to books, movies that have made a difference to us, not ones that have made us totally afraid. so I've been reading about death for a while. And there's a lot of books that have really, really moved me on this topic. One of my favorites is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. And she writes about her year after her husband of maybe 50 years passed away.
Another book that I really loved, is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanothi. What about you?
Andrea: Being mortal, which I know is also on your list. By Atul Gawande, it feels like, required reading for anyone who is taking care of a loved one, a parent, watching them go through sickness, in their journey to death. And, yeah, I mean I read that ages ago. Ages ago. Yeah, 10, 15 years ago. And I feel like I need to reread it now, as, you know, my parents are getting older and
Janelle: Yeah, I must have read it back then, too, because my mom died 15 years ago. And I remember when she was in the late stage of her cancer and they were giving, continuing to give her chemo treatment even though there was no chance it was going to work. And I was just like, why are we doing this? why are we doing this? And, like, Talking to the doctor, talking to my family and having, yeah, it made a huge impact it showed me how afraid doctors are of getting sued for malpractice, that they cannot give the choice of compassion to their patients. two days before my mom passed away. she was getting a cancer treatment the nurse giving it was like why are we like she's like the dosage on this is so little like this is gonna do Nothing.
Why are we doing this? And It was a drug that my mom had had on her for first round of chemo, 23 years prior when the cancer first was there and my mom, when she heard what the drug was, like went into like, so much fear this. This is two days before she's passing away. And they're giving her a drug that is going to do nothing.
And in an amount that's going to do nothing and only cause her like trauma of like what it did to her 23 years ago because it was so powerful and so like while the doctor is sending my mom to get the chemo treatment She's also giving my dad like hey, like she doesn't have a lot of time left , so just prepare yourself
So here's 48 hours left in someone's life and we caused my mom trauma for the hour and a half she was sitting in that chemo treatment. what the fuck? Why couldn't have the doctor said, like, this isn't going to make a difference, like, let's just send you home. I don't begrudge the doctor, like, I feel like her doctor was very, caring in lots of ways, but she was covering her basis of, is there a treatment that, like, by some miracle might work and so is preventing, like, if I were to get sued have I done everything I could kind of like that like that the fear of malpractice is so pervasive and the impact of that on me and how I viewed the grace that I wanted to to provide my mom in the last few days of her life is definitely came into being from when my mom, from when my aunt died 10 years later.
And we were in the hospital talking about treatments and all of this stuff. And I was like, what's the quality of life she wants in her death?
Andrea: Yeah, so what I would add, I think, after reading that book is that there is this fear of malpractice, there's the CYA factor, and then there's just this also unavoidable instinctive urge to stay alive and keep people alive. And I think that is also coming from the doctor, but that, that was the, takeaway from the book, was like, wow, what the doctor says is just one factor. of the decision. They're saying, yes, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. Should we do all of that? And of course it will be a, I'm sure, as it was, I'm sure you went through, like, it will be a hard decision for me. It's like, no, of course I want to keep my mom alive course I want to keep my dad alive. And, what is their quality of life like?
Janelle: It was just reminding me. That doctor, right? This oncologist, her role is to help keep people alive, There is another classification of doctor called a palliative care specialist, and that's the doctor who helps you ask Asks you questions about the quality of life when you're dying and I remember Yeah, those questions were so impactful of releasing my dad and I of what is our responsibility Like one of the simple questions he asked was like, how did she live her life?
And what would she have wanted and that question helped us go? She would not want this surgery because this surgery Might extend her body's life, but she's still in dementia, and it's going to make her heart better, but not her brain better, and her losing her brain was like, so fundamentally what she didn't want to have happen, that it was like, oh right extending her heart isn't what she would want, and we were, it, it, the palliative care specialist, , I just have so much gratitude for my friend Adam, who even told me that that doctor existed, and how it really helped release me from the responsibility to make a decision regarding my aunts.
Andrea: Yeah, and what's new for me there is, , the contrast of the body and the mind, Because you would think, oh, no, no, we want to keep the body And it's like, okay, what was more important to her, And maybe someone else would choose something different. Like, you know, a professional, someone who's a, who's a hobby rock climber would be like, so, you know, attached to like the body and the muscles and, you know, someone more intellectual would be maybe the mind. I don't know. It's hard to surmise.
Janelle: And I think that is, that's actually the point is it doesn't matter what the outcome was. It was that the doctor asked the question and we put ourselves in the shoes of my aunt to say, What is it that we think to the best of our ability she would have wanted? And we have to then release. What we would want for her or for ourselves.
Andrea: And the other way that this happens almost in a mirror is that when I birthed my daughter, I decided to have her at a birthing center, I watched the business of being born, the documentary that I read about Ina May Gaskin who runs a farm in Tennessee where people have babies naturally, and in general what happens there is it's all about CYA, right?
So they're giving you all these. little supplements, , things to the baby, they're giving you an epidural, they're making sure that nothing bad happens to you or the baby. Which, of course, I respect and I care about. And unfortunately, all that CYA also reduces the quality of the birthing of your child.
Which is why I chose to have it, my baby, at a birthing center rather than the hospital.
Janelle: But like you, it takes away some of the feeling of it.
Andrea: Sure, I chose to not have an epidural, , and I didn't need one, and that was a better situation for me. I wanted to be not in the clinical setting. But it's really the same paradigm of like, the more the CYA and the more the fear of the malpractice, the lower the quality can get.
Janelle: And everyone, again, in birth and in death, you get to make your choices. Like, what's the birth plan? What's the death plan?
Andrea: So is there topics we should discuss about preparing for our own death logistically?
Janelle: Oh, sure. Like the death plan. I could decide. Yeah.
Andrea: And there's a death folder that we heard about at the letting go of attachment ceremony we did in the fall. Have a death folder. Maybe you have letters you'd like to write to people to open when you die. maybe you have specific requests about your death process, or if you want to be cremated. . remember, , thinking that I wanted people to dispose of my journals, at some point. And this was in my 20s.
Janelle: Yeah. Those are all excellent things. I think also being able to have a conversation my dad and I, we've gone through who he wants to speak, what gospels he wants to have read at the funeral. who, in lieu of flowers, what organization are we giving money to? Really the details of it, where, like, does he want to be cremated, does he want to be buried, a piece that I feel very strongly about is having a will, so that you are being accountable for your own life and death and not putting it on someone else to have to make decisions. About what they think you would have wanted to do and I feel really strongly especially if you have a lot of money that you do this because Otherwise, it's the courts and the lawyers who are getting all the money if there's going to be some contention.
Andrea: And it can also cause quite a bit of difficult family dynamic, heartache, when you really don't know. what to do, and you have to make those decisions amidst your grief. So this is really just, it's responsible. Responsible. Taking responsibility. I think
Janelle: It's very selfish to not have a will because you essentially then you're not facing the hard questions yourself you're making someone else face them
Andrea: Yeah, exactly.
Janelle: Okay, so like I'd also love to know For you, when you die, what do you think happens?
Andrea: I think our body goes into the ground, that's all for our body, and I believe our spirit and soul is dispersed amidst the natural world, to be re energized, a different form.
Janelle: I agree that I believe like our body decomposes, it turns back into life in another form, like all the nutrients in our body, and that our soul goes back to whence it came.
Andrea: what are our death plans and how did our cultural inheritance kind of impact those? Because I've thought about that a lot. As I've seen different funerals and different deaths and the way that they're handled or not handled, especially in different religions, different cultures. I mean, growing up in a small town, a death, in the community always was followed by, you know, a visitation with lots of people coming, you know, people with lines out the door for, say, two to three hours, and then the burial would be like just the family and close friends.
I just thought that was the way everyone did it, of course, until I went out into the world and was like, oh, this is, This is one way to think about it. And I also saw a couple of open caskets early in my life. that was totally a thing. Now it seems like I've asked that a couple of times at people and they're like no as though they would never do that
Janelle: Certainly, we've had to have, in the situation that I was in, we had to make a choice. But, is that just a Catholic thing? Is like open casket just Catholic?
Andrea: Maybe it is I didn't think about that. Yeah, it's possible But it's but it's not always because yeah, I definitely have been to catholic
Janelle: But I don't know that other religions have open caskets. I think in Catholics it's open or closed, but I don't know how many others do open.
Andrea: Yeah, maybe you're right. So, my parents have plots purchased in our local cemetery where I grew up, in Illinois, and so that is definitely where they will be buried. But I do not, and I'll be cremated. For sure. And, also a celebration of life, probably more than death.
Janelle: Yeah. One thing, I don't know if you've looked into this, and it sounds like if you want to be cremated, it doesn't really matter, but what was really fascinating was that , at this Calvary Cemetery, which we talked about earlier, my grandfather Purchase the family plot. So when my aunt died at 92 We had to like count the number of bodies that we thought had been buried there Like we had the deed for the cemetery plot and how many people could fit and then obviously like decomposition happens And so then like can you fit more in and one was a baby and one was like an adult?
And so it was a really fascinating exercise of like how many people have been buried and how many people keep you I mean, this is 75 years later so don't know if you know, like, did your parents just buy two spots? Or did they buy it from their family?
Because like our plot actually held like nine people, even though it's only looks like two.
Andrea: And I'm not sure. , I feel like I always knew after I moved away and have built a life somewhere else that I probably wouldn't be buried there. But I have a sense that they have purchased multiple plots.
Janelle: What I realized is for me is that, oh, there's a deepness, right? Like there's, the bodies are stacked. They're not like, oh, they're all spread out. So anyway,
Andrea: Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Janelle: That also for me, I will be cremated, you know, have a celebration of life is what comes up for me now. in the Catholic faith, like for my dad. They'll be awake. The wake concept is where you're going and honoring. A wake is separate from the funeral so like you have two days of Wake visitations where you're in the funeral home. The body is present. Everyone's mingling talking So this is where like lots and lots of people come and then the funeral itself is in in the church And then there's the burial so it's like a multi day
Andrea: Yeah, have you been? Is that
Janelle: Many wake. I think of your funeral. I'm actually really thinking of the wake more.
Andrea: Yeah, which is great, because it's, tends to be about that celebration. I have been to a few celebrations of life, and that definitely feels amazing to just have people talk about, their loved one. Tell stories. Yeah. It's beautiful.
Janelle: Okay. Did we do it? Did we, did we cover life and death?
Andrea: We just did an episode on life and death.
Janelle: Thanks for listening. Bravehearts, I guess, is there, is there any Braveheart homework?
I guess just as, as a reflection, like we're bringing up a topic like I, we, Andrew and I just discussed that maybe we need to redo our like podcast summary because I feel like we're venturing out into new ter new territories of. I'm going to say like taboo subjects, which is, this is not taboo, but I don't know.
When's the last time you had a death conversation with a friend?
Andrea: Yeah. And do you need to? Like, is there someone that it might be a good idea to talk about death with? So we encourage you to contemplate that. Thanks BraveHearts. Love you.