Ep. 5 - DEATH

Transcript:

Christian Shaefer: Death care doesn't go away. It doesn't matter what's happening around us, death care doesn't go away.

Voicememo (Matthew & Michele): "My parents never really sheltered me from what death really was. They used to take me to the cemetery a lot."

"We would talk about these people who are mostly just names on a gravestone to him. Some of them I had never even met. They died before I was born."

"I used to ask them all sorts of questions like, 'Do the bodies lay face up, smiling or face down? Do their ghosts sit on the tombstone the same way you'd dip your feet into a pool?'"

"One time I asked him what kind of gravestone he would like and he said he wanted one of those digital signs like restaurants have."

"I never really had a grasp on what death really was."

"Then about six years ago, when Matthew was nine or 10, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer."

"Almost every day after school, I would go and visit him in the hospital. I remember the first day he was admitted he was feeling good and happy. And I remember a few days before he died, he wasn't talking, his hands were cold and he was barely moving."

"And we didn't shelter him from any of the information either, just like my parents did with us."

"That really got me to understand what the process of death was. And it wasn't always peaceful. And not every death is as quick and painless as I thought it was."

"And I know all kids are different. And what works for one doesn't necessarily work for all. But sometimes death comes to a family, even if you aren't ready for it."

"There was some funny memories I'll never forget, like when my grandpa wasn't supposed to drink orange juice, but he managed to get his sister to sneak some in to him. And then when it was taken away, he made the funniest face ever. If I were to have been sheltered from everything and would have been sheltered from those good moments to."

You're listening to "The Talk", a podcast where we explore the possibility of creating a radical new communication environment between parents and children. An environment that's open, honest and candid. And where nothing is off limits.

Christian Shaefer: I'm living the worst day of everyone's life every day. And that concept is...people don't understand it. You know, when you go to family dinners and..."Oh what did you do today?" I went to, you know, four funerals today.

Christian Schaefer has more experience dealing firsthand with death than most people. He has a degree in mortuary science, is an EMT, and serves as a forensic investigator with a county medical examiner's office in upstate New York. The last time I saw Christian, he was in eighth grade. He was a trumpet player in the middle school band I directed as a young public school teacher and was always smiling and always singing. My favorite memory of Christian from that time is conducting him as The Town Crier in a school production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, a role to which he brought a sincerity and vulnerability rarely seen on a school stage.

C.S.: Theater...that was my...in high school, was my claim to fame. I always had thought that I wanted to go into technical theater. I started researching it and I was like oof, the salary's kind of low and if I have to live in New York City, you know, am I going to be able to do it on twenty, twenty five thousand? And oh, wait, I have to go get a bachelor's degree and spend a hundred thousand. Okay, the numbers aren't lining up. And I didn't know where to go from there. So I was standing in the kitchen with my mom going over colleges and I said, "You know, I think I'm going to be a funeral director." And then from there, it was just more or less a joke. You know, people would ask, "What are you going to do?" I'm going to be a funeral director? I didn't know what they did. I had no idea. So I graduated and took a year off. And then next thing you know I'm calling the mortuary school in Syracuse trying to figure out what funeral directors did. I had become an EMT and so I really liked the medical and the science portion. And then...the funeral, the production, the putting on a show, oh, and I get to use biology and anatomy...And I was in. I figured it out and off the DC I went. I worked at a funeral home and then went to mortuary school from there.

Jeremy: What happened during that year off that you took? I mean, did you purposely do that to sort of clear your brain and find a path, find a direction for yourself?

C.S.: Exactly. I had really no direction. I was very scared going to college, so I just stayed home. I did a little little traveling, but nothing too crazy. Worked, and that was pretty much it. And it was probably the best decision I've ever made.

Jeremy: Were your parents pretty supportive of that decision?

C.S.: 100 percent.

Jeremy: Yeah. Good. That's good to hear.

C.S.: 100 percent. They were they were concerned with, you know, getting a degree in theater and making a living. But death care doesn't go away. It doesn't matter what's happening around us, death care doesn't go away.

Jeremy: Later in this episode, you'll hear a conversation with Liz and Allison, sisters who lost their mother when they were very young. I asked Christian what kind of challenges he sees in families where a parent is lost and how the communication around that can affect the mental health of those children.

C.S.: When you take that perspective of that nuclear family dynamic and you take one part away. So now you have dad: he is now managing his own grief and he's trying to walk through the grief of his children, trying to understand, you know, what they're thinking and how they're responding versus where he is in his own grief process. And you look at the family roles, you know, what did mom do? And now dad has to pick up where mom left off. You know who's going to read the bedtime story? Well, Mom always read the bedtime story and now Dad's going to read it. And those little things in life that the finality of death is not necessarily there, but the normal routines are greatly impacted. So then as you you travel through the next few years, all those questions that those four and five year olds didn't even know that they had at the time, they just kind of float underneath. And then get compounded upon to, you know, depression and anxiety. And where is this all coming from? Well, yeah, it's coming from mom's death. We understand that. But but why? You know, what was the challenge there? You see that a lot with that situation. So it's tough all the way around. From my funeral director background, talking about death every day, it's not as scary. And that's what the literature tells, you know, is to have open and candid conversations regarding death. But people are afraid of death, whether they're, you know, five, six, seven who don't really understand it. And, you know, the bad guys die. Versus, you know, the adults who have had bad experiences. It's traumatic, it's scary, there's fear. I mean, nobody wants to talk about it. It's a taboo conversation and it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Jeremy: Can you talk a little bit about the way that our culture views death and the way that it's sort of sanitized and mystified and what that does to our psyches in terms of the way that we think about it?

C.S.: We've built this black veil of death, you know, over top of the funeral home and the funeral industry, and we increasingly keep adding to that level of fear that's associated with death. To protect. To protect what happens after death. I don't know how well the community would take, you know, tours of the funeral home or, you know, really exposing it to to that degree.

Jeremy: Yeah, like school field trips.

C.S.: Yeah. Like, “hey we're going to go down to the mortuary today!” But on the same token, why can we not do that? Why can't we be that open to death in what we do? You know, you look at the Egyptians and you look at all these people who took really active roles in death care and the whole funeral rite, that we do not do. You know, you show up to the funeral. Everything is laid out very nice. We've already hidden all the bad and we've made it the best possible. The pretty flowers and all that. But there's a lot of cultures, they take a more active role and perform the ritual washing and things like that. But Christianity stays far away from it.

Jeremy: Yeah, we do that in a lot of areas of life, too, I think. You know, when you look at the way that the Christian and Puritan tradition just cover up bodies in general. And I don't know is there's there's something there that's maybe an attempt to kind of separate us from the parts of us that are animal? I wonder if that's part of it.

C.S.: I wouldn't disagree with that. It even goes to power. We're so powerful that this doesn't touch us. You know, we live on forever, all those different things that we create to keep it from hurting me. It's not going to happen to me. The grieving process starts at the funeral. The funeral is not for the dead. The funeral is always for the family. And, you know, when a family would come and say, you know, “I don't want to have a funeral”…OK...but now the next question is, do you want to have one funeral or do you want to have a thousand funerals? So you can come to the funeral home, we can go through the process, all your friends and family and coworkers can come. Or you're going to go to the post office, you're going to have a funeral at the grocery store, you're going to have a funeral at the family reunion. All of those places that you don't want to have a funeral, you're ultimately having a funeral. Many times at the funeral home, making arrangements and getting asked, you know, “Well, what do we do with the kids?” And nine times out of ten, the families wanted to hide more than I was encouraging them to. You know, "Oh, we need to get a babysitter." No, no, no. We don't need to get a babysitter. We need to figure out a way that we can incorporate small doses, privately, because children need the same process of grief as we do, depending on the age, of course. I spent a lot of time with children I didn't even know. I would sit on the floor in the funeral home and we would draw pictures and they would tell me stories and I would walk the children up to the casket, you know, with mom and dad or whoever. And we would place things in the casket. I would have the little ones tell me, you know, what was your favorite memory? Or, what are you going to miss the most? And encourage that process of grief at the funeral home. What the parents and the families did after they left me, I don't know, but I like to think that addressing that fear right at the root, incorporating the children, hopefully they would take that home and continue to incorporate those feelings of grief and walking their children through grief in a safe manner. You know, it started with me. That's my hope.

Thanks so much to Christian Schaefer for chatting with me about his experience. Next up, I chat with Samuel Issah about cultural perspectives on death in Ghana and about what children there are expected to know in preparation for the deaths of their own parents.

But first, I want to say thanks for listening to "The Talk" if you're enjoying what you're hearing, we'd love to invite you to help support us. We are a fully independent podcast, and so we rely on your financial and moral support to allow us to continue bringing these important conversations into the world. Head on over to buymeacoffee.com/coffeetalks, and you can throw us as little as three bucks, or you can join our coffee club and make a $9 monthly or $90 annual commitment. By becoming a sustaining member in this way, you'll be entered into raffles, get access to special content and receive a discount on "The Talk" merchandise. And if supporting us financially isn't possible right now and you'd still like to help, giving us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, or just telling a friend how much you're enjoying "The Talk" goes a long way.

In 2002, I spent the summer after my sophomore year of college in Ghana. I was there with an organization that brings literacy, education and Bible translation to mostly rural populations in the country. For several weeks, I was paired with a Ghanaian student, Samuel Issah, and we stayed in rural villages assisting the local program facilitators, and for me, learning about the culture. During that time I witnessed the funeral of a community member who had died, which consisted of days of dancing, singing, and celebration. The contrast between that experience and the ways I had seen funerals and death in the U.S. was striking and has always stuck with me. Samuel and I became good friends and have kept in touch over the years, and I talked to him for this episode to get a bit more insight into the ways children in Ghana learn about death and what it means to them.

Samuel Issah: So when you are a child, unless otherwise you are the first child of you father, you are usually the last person to hear of the death of your parents. Because they will want to control crying and weeping. And it is believed that children are not able to control their emotions and for that matter, they are likely to wail so much if they are informed of the passing of their parents.

Jeremy: Why don't they want that? Why don't they want that expression of grief and mourning?

S.I.: Depending on the age of somebody, it's not allowed or encouraged at the funeral. You know, for instance, we have we have two concepts of death, and our belief is that death is something that is supposed to come at old age. So when it comes earlier mourning is allowed in that particular context. But if somebody is aged like the age at which my father died, 84 years, they don't expect people to come there crying because for them, he had finished his assignment on this earth, and he had to move to the next world. So my junior sister, for instance, was not home. She was still in school when it happened. And they didn't tell her about it until they buried [him]. Yeah, they did not. They rather told her, "Your father is sick and needs you home." They went to the school and brought her only for her to come and meet the grave.

Jeremy: Wow.

S.I.: We have two forms of funerals in Ghana too. We have what we call the fresh funeral. That is the early stages, like the burial rites. And then depending on the status of the fellow in society, we usually come back for one week's celebration of the funeral. So for the burial ceremony she was not there to witness it. And because she's considered a kid, I mean, she is not considered to have any significant role in the performance of the funeral. The adults will handle that.

Jeremy: Yeah, how did she feel about that when she when she arrived and that process had already been undertaken?

S.I.: She felt very bad, especially that she did not see her dad before he was laid to rest. Even the funny thing is that culturally they don't allow women to get close to the corpses. You know, all these are the socially constructed, you know, prescriptions.

Jeremy: Yeah, but that experience was different for you because you are the eldest of your siblings and you are your parents' son. And so I'm curious what kind of role you played in that process.

S.I.: I had to sleep with my father's corpse because he passed on around 3:00 p.m., and because he was a chief. They don't bury chiefs in the night. Culturally, the corpse could not be left in the room alone. It is not a sign of respect for the corpse because when they have to bury a chief, there are so many cultural rites and rituals they have to perform before the event will take place. So I just had to put a bed close to him in the room and that was where I slept. Secondly, among the Dagombas there are days on which when people die, they don't encourage burial on those days. The myth behind this is that it has a kind of spiritual connotation that if you bury somebody on a Wednesday, it means that you are likely to get another death within the clan coming up immediately. And my father passed on Wednesday, so they had to wait for the burial to take place on Thursday morning. And I am the boy, and the only boy he had. So it was my responsibility to ensure that he had the respect needed before he was laid to rest. So I couldn't go to my room to be sleeping while he was locked up in his room alone.

Jeremy: Did that feel like a way for you to spend a final few hours with him?

S.I.: Aside [from] the fact that you are getting another opportunity with him before he leaves, it's also an honor. You know, and they believe that you are showing that he was never alone. He had people who shared his life with.

Jeremy: Yeah. How long ago did your father pass on?

S.I.: That was about five years ago. So I always spent time with him, and getting some traditional education, you know, so at least as of the time he passed on, I was culturally prepared for the responsibilities that came along with my losing my dad. Because nobody really tells you these things at the federal grounds.

Jeremy: You have to know.

S.I.: You have to know. As a boy growing up, that is why we have the expectation that you try to sit close at your dad, to be learning some of these cultural things because it's like, it's a taboo for people to be talking about it, you know? So there's no formal education on this, but the expectation is that when you are within the realm, you should be able to know the expectations on you in such a situation.

Jeremy: Yeah. Have you started communicating these kinds of things to your kids?

S.I.: Yeah, yeah. I talk about it.

Jeremy: You do.

S.I.: I talk about it. I mean sometimes they get scared. For instance, Jeremy will wonder why I am talking about dying. You know, that's why I don't have to die. So I ask them, "Do see your grandfather again?" and they say "No." I say, "Do you see your grandmother again?" They say "No." I say "That is it." At a point I have to leave you, and you have to be on your own. It's a topic they don't like. Their expressions will change, and then they are really wondering what it means to have a life without a father. You know, "I will leave you, your mom will leave you, we will both leave you and you have to be on your own." But it's a scary topic for them.

Jeremy: Were you very young when you started learning about it?

S.I.: I was 14, 15 years. Then he started spending a lot of time with me, especially in the night. We usually talk about this when the women are asleep, metaphorically. Meaning that women are not supposed to be part of that discussion. And this is also a reflection of our social placement of women. So in the evenings, he will sit with me and chat and he tells me this is what is supposed to happen, and this is what should not happen and all these kind of things. Like how he wants his funeral to be performed. I mean, they were equally difficult for me at that stage. But I think it was also good because I just preparing me to understand that I may not have the opportunity to learn about that from anybody but him. So when my dad died, I had to be part of the preparation for burial by going in to help the undertakers to wash him. And technically the undertakers could not wash him without me, so I had to go and take part of it. When it is the mother, it is the first daughter who will be helping with the preparation. And then I had to go in, just to see her already dressed and to pay my last respects.

Jeremy: Yeah. When someone dies in our culture, the whole process is very shrouded in mystery—the process of embalming and burial. The family will talk to the undertaker and will talk to the the people who are running the funeral. But that's sourced out. The family is not involved in the processes with the body or anything like that. And in Western culture, to think of spending the night in the room with your father's corpse, it's such a foreign idea to us because as soon as someone dies, they're gone. They're at the undertakers, and then three days later, you see them in makeup and a suit, in a coffin. And there's no...

S.I.: Wow.

Jeremy: Yeah. There's no connection with that process.

S.I.: Wow.

Jeremy: And so I think that's a little bit of what causes people to not want to talk about it because it's sort of purposely sanitized. So there's not so much of a connection. And so I think that's something that creates a fear because of the mystery surrounding it.

S.I.: You don't participate in the process.

Jeremy: Right.

S.I.: It's interesting that in your case, you can just hand over a corpse to somebody, you know? Not everybody has the right to see a corpse in Ghana when you die. Only very close relations are allowed to see the corpse.

Jeremy: Do people in Ghana fear death? Do they see it as a as a natural part of life cycle or is there a fear of it?

S.I.: That is interesting. They see death to be part of the life cycle. And, you know, Christianity and Islam are also very strong in Africa. And then those two religions also believe that death is part of our existence. So our people understand that OK, death is something that everybody will taste, but the timing will make us fear it or otherwise. They believe that death should not come early because you are expected to grow old before you die. And that is why we have the concept of 'bad death' in Ghana. Anybody dying without a child—that death is considered a bad one. Bad in the sense that it has come earlier than nature would have expected. So whether death is seen as something being scary or otherwise is dependent on the age of the person involved. They say that nobody dies in Africa without a cause.

Jeremy: Without a cause.

S.I.: Without a cause, yeah. And that is why, when a young person dies, issues of witchcraft will come in.

Jeremy: So there will be suspicion of some kind of foul play.

S.I.: There was be suspicion that there is foul play somewhere. Because in our cosmology, death is supposed to come when you are at least old, and that is when God causes death. So any death that comes early is not caused by God, it's caused by another person. And that is the challenge in this society.

Thanks so much to Samuel for being willing to provide this insight into Ghana's cultural perspective on death.

I want to say a quick thanks to those of you who sent us voice memos for this episode. At the beginning of the episode, we heard from Matthew and Michele, a mother and son, about the ways they've talked and learned about death as a family. The reason we include voice memos in every episode is that we want "The Talk" to be a reflection of our listeners questions, challenges, struggles and triumphs. Our next episode is all about money, and I want to hear from you. I'm really curious about whether your family talked about money and finances when you were growing up. Who taught you the value of saving money? Or maybe you felt completely adrift when it came time for you to start making financial decisions for yourself. And if you have kids of your own, how do you have conversations about money that will set them up to have a healthy relationship with it as they get older? If you'd be willing to share your story with our listeners, would you consider sending us a short voice memo and telling us about it? You can send your voice memo to thetalk@thetalkthepodcast.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

In 1992, when I was 10 years old, two of my second cousins came to live with us for about five months, Liz and Allison were three and four, and my parents had agreed to take them in while their mother, my cousin Marie, was sick with lymphoma. Marie died that fall at age 23, leaving her husband and three daughters behind. I have vivid memories of those few months that Liz and Allie spent with our family. But after the funeral, we largely fell out of touch. A couple of months ago, 28 years later, I sent Liz a message asking if she and Allie would be willing to talk about losing their mom and about how experiencing that loss has impacted the way that they talk with their own kids about death.

Jeremy: I'm pretty sure that the last time I saw either of you was probably at your mom's funeral.

Allison: That is impossible because neither of us attended.

Jeremy: Ok, but around that time.

Allison: Probably. Yeah, I was four. She was three. So we've got like kind of little wisps of things, but we weren't really old enough to fully grasp what was going on. And I don't think anyone in our lives was really going out of their way to make sure that we did understand.

Jeremy: Including your dad and other people who were close to you?

Liz: Least our dad.

Allison: I hate to say it, but dad is kind of at the bottom of the communication pile. I would say he did, arguably the least of anybody to help make us understand.

Jeremy: Well, I can't even begin to imagine or grasp what he must have been going through at that time. You know, not that that excuses him from from communicating with you about it, but it's just horrifying to imagine being in that position, you know? During the time when when you all stayed with us, what was the awareness of what was happening with your mom? Did you know she was in the hospital? Did you know she was ill?

Allison: We knew that she was ill. I don't know how deeply we understood that she was ill. I think she had turned 24 in October and then she died a little before Thanksgiving, so we knew that she was ill. We visited her in the hospital. I don't recall having specific conversations around it, although I also don't remember her dying. I don't remember becoming aware that she had died, I don't remember anybody telling me that she had died. But we knew she was sick and we knew that she was going to die. She told us that herself.

Jeremy: OK. Wow.

Liz: I don't think I understood when I was at your house. The memories that I have were just kind of being shuffled along at that time. You know, I think especially as a three year old, you're just looking for routine and kind of adapting. And so I just have a memory of happiness. I don't associate it with thinking about her sick, I just think it might have been a little bit confusing. And not really understanding what's happening, but just acknowledging the present. Along for the ride.

Jeremy: Right. The fact that you were so young when when all this happened, it makes total sense that your memories are spare and vague at best. But I'm wondering if there was a time maybe as you got to be older children or in your teenage years when you started to really wonder about your mom. And who was in your life who told you about her?

Allison: I don't ever remember not wondering about my mom, even when she was alive and well.

Jeremy: What do you mean by that?

Allison: You know, when you're a little kid, your parents are your whole life. It's the center of your world. You want nothing more than to know everything about them. But there's only so much that you can, like, tenably grasp as a young child. So I guess I just don't ever remember not wanting to know about my mom. Obviously it was escalated quite a bit after she passed because then it's also tinged with loss and grief and wondering who was this person? How am I like this person and I'll never even know it?

Jeremy: Yeah, I imagine for both of you that that's an enormous question. You know, what parts of her are evident in your characters and your personalities and to not know that...

Allison: Particularly when we were younger. I would really grasp onto if anybody was like, "oh, you have your mother's eyebrows, or your mother's sense of humor, or your mother's patience." Liz, what do you think?

Liz: When we were very little after she passed a lot of how our grandparents would—I don't want to say fluff it, but—kind of made it more pleasant was with, "Oh, but she's an angel now." "Oh, but you know, she's in heaven now". And so for a long time, I was kind of running on that fuel. And then once I started to become, you know, 10, 11, it was kind of like, this is really messed up. Why did God do this? You know? And I started to question, I guess, everything. And I started to get more inquisitive and I wanted to know more about her or about me and about what happened. So I would say about that time, for me.

Jeremy: Did you ask people in your life? Did you ask your dad about her or your grandparents?

Liz: I did. I remember asking my dad what color eyes she had and he said, "I don't remember."

Allison: Yeah. As far as, like, asking about our mother, learning about her history, learning about her side of the family, whatever. Most of our information came from grandma and grandpa. Grandpa lost his mom when he was like five or six to breast cancer. So he understood that loss. And his father had made it a rule that they were not to talk about his mother. So it was extremely important to grandpa after mom died that we talk about her, that we remember her, that we look at things that she loved, that we talk about things that she liked. It was very important to him and also to grandma. They were really the ones that led the conversations. And to this day, I would say grandma is still the one that really leads those conversations.

Jeremy: Yeah. Liz, we started going down this road a little bit, but I want to hear a little bit more about when you were a teenager and kind of where that line of inquisition sort of went for you emotionally. I mean, not just informationally, but how did that develop as you started to get older into your teenage years?

Liz: I just remember experiencing a lot of anger with God, and I kind of drew away from God for a while. Like, this just shouldn't have happened. And I think through puberty and through my teenage years, I started to get very angry with my dad for just being so distant and for not answering questions. So I would say out of the three of us, I was the first to tell him, "I hate you", you know, and slam a door. And I definitely rebelled. And I think I just needed someone to be there and and talk to me. And that was pretty consistent. It was a need that I needed from a younger age. I would say my sisters kind of did better with accepting the terms for how they were. I was a little bit less able to do that.

Jeremy: Yeah. Allison, it sounds like maybe you...

Allison: Have something to say?

Jeremy: Would like to clarify from your end.

Allison: The three of us had very different ways of adapting to what was going on around us. I figured out right away that the less space I could take up, the more valuable I seemed to be. I was constantly commended for being so mature and so independent. So nobody has to worry about Allison—Allison's got it, She's good. And so I just kind of continued down that path after mom died, of feeling like resources are really limited. You know, our dad is now a single dad, and even if we're with grandparents were with whoever, it still felt like every time that I didn't need adults I was getting a pat on the back. And so that's what I continued to do. Liz wasn't content with that. You know, Liz wanted to know...

Liz: I wanted a mother, I wanted a mother.

Allison: One of our favorite stories is Liz singing a song when Grandma put her to bed called the I Hate Grandma song. I mean, she just had no fear, no shame. It was really pretty admirable. Liz knew what she wanted to say. She knew what she wanted to do. She knew who she wanted to be. And for the most part, she knew what she needed and what she was entitled to, which is pretty remarkable for a kid that age. Just unfortunately, the people she expressed it to weren't capable.

Jeremy: You mentioned before that you did have some access as kids to therapy after your mom passed. Would you tell me a little bit about that?

Allison: Liz, do you really feel like your therapy was directed at helping you deal with the loss of mom? Because I feel like you went to therapy specifically to address specific behavioral problems.

Liz: I think that I went to therapy and addressed a lot of trauma that was...losing a mother was inclusive to that. Yes, I did.

Jeremy: Who initiated that when you were when you were a kid?

Liz: It was actually after the divorce of our first stepmother. That first marriage was really pretty bad. And I think my dad probably had a lot of pressure to take me, from his family, because it just it ended pretty badly.

Jeremy: Yeah, I'd love to pivot a little bit to kind of the way that all of this has informed the way that both of you present the idea of death with your own kids.

Allison: I've been looking forward to this part.

Jeremy: Allie, you have one kid?

Allison: One son, yeah.

Jeremy: And you said he's on the spectrum, is that right?

Allison: Correct, yeah. I think it's very interesting how differently we handled that. So, I mean, I tend to just be, in general a little bit more logical, rational, factual in my day to day life. And I don't want to say that Liz is ruled by emotion, because she's not. But she has a very strong heart and it leads her places and she follows it. So for me, dealing with death with Ryan, I don't remember ever not talking about it with him. Because he is on the spectrum he had a lot of speech delays. So there was a long time that I think he could kind of understand what I was saying a little bit more than he had the ability to discuss with me. But from the time he was little, we've always talked about how death is a part of life. It's inevitable for everyone. It's something that is going to happen. We hope it's not going to happen soon, but people get sick. Sometimes accidents happen. It's tragic, it's sad because you're going to miss that person, you're not going to get to see them again. But it's not something that should ever be totally unexpected. And as I'm saying that out loud, maybe that's my way of trying to prepare him for certain inevitabilities that I learned much differently. We do talk about heaven, although I have to admit I don't really believe in it. But I know that when I was a kid it was really helpful for me. He's on the spectrum, so he is extremely frank, so occasionally he'll go, "Mom I have to tell you something: you're going to die." Yes, thank you for that reminder. But he's like, "but it's OK mom, because you're going to go to Old Lady Heaven."

Jeremy: Great, good.

Allison: Yeah. "And then you're going to get to see your mom, and you're going to get to see your grandpa and you're going to get to see (insert 12 cat names)". So I think what my goal is, is I want him to be comfortable discussing it. I want him to be OK with coming to me and saying like, hey, somebody is really sick, or whatever is happening. I'm nervous about it. I want us to be able to talk about that. But I also want him to know that, like. Everybody is going to die, and it's hard when you don't have that person anymore. But it's something that we should all expect. You had mentioned that you wondered if our mother's death had shaped our own ideas about mortality. Yes, since the day she died, I counted down the days until I turned 23. Because I thought I was going to die. And when Ryan turned five, which is the age that I was and my mother died... Fortunately, I was in therapy by then, but I felt like I needed to throw him the biggest, most beautiful birthday party because I might not be here for the six party. It was tough. I'm in a much better place now, but I will openly, freely admit that until I could cross those thresholds, until those happened, I just kept thinking, "My days are numbered."

Jeremy: Yeah. Liz, is this kind of emotional journey familiar to you as well, or, can you talk about how you experienced some of these things?

Liz: For me, it was very similar. I definitely felt like I needed to have kids early. I had my daughter—my first daughter—when I was 19. I will say I was the best mom in the world for her first four years of life. And I just lived for her and I just felt like every day was this precious gift, and it was very scary. And getting past age 23 for me was also this monumental moment where I felt this relief. It definitely pushes me as a mother because I did not have a mother and because I lost my mother. It changes your outlook on being a parent. You know, the days where I'm tired, the days where I just am exhausted. You know, I'm in multiple college courses, my husband is in another country, I've got my kids home doing school five feet from me, trying to do my school. And certain days I just want to scream, but then I know, like, I have to do better because I didn't have a mom. And so I want them to have the best mom. We do have very open communication about hard things, you know, sex, drugs. I didn't have that as a kid. I don't sugarcoat things, but I keep it on their level. But, it's funny because going into this podcast, I was like, "oh, I'm so open with my kids." But then when I kind of zoomed in on death and thought about it, I was like, you know, I definitely pad the topic of death for them. We talk about it and they do know about my mother, but I try to keep them from...I guess, to protect them from having to stress about that. You know, my one my youngest reminds me a lot of myself as a kid and she'll say, "Mommy, I don't want you to die." And I notice that my answer is, "I'm not going to die for a long time."

Allison: That's dicey. How could you even say that?

Jeremy: Well it's something that...I mean, so many parents that's like their go-to response.

Allison: Why would you say that?

Jeremy: You're right. It is dicey, but it's safe. It feels safe.

Allison: But does it feel true? Like, Liz, when you say to your daughters, "I'm not going to die for a long time." Do you feel like you're being honest?

Liz: I feel like I don't want her to lose sleep. Yes, people could die. Yes, I could die. We talk about it and I am honest about it, and she knows that, yes, something could happen, mommy could die, we know people that have died, we've dealt with death. But I just I'm like, you know, Mommy's OK. I'm OK. You don't have to worry. So it's interesting because I go about it so differently from Allison.

Allison: Yeah. That I went to school for psychology, so statistics was a big part of my education. So I tend to frame a lot of what I say in terms of statistics. So Ryan has asked me like, "Mom, when are you going to die?" I'll say things like "probably not for a long time." Most likely the statistical probability is that you don't need to worry about this. So unless circumstances change, there are additional variables we've not accounted for that come to light then we can discuss. But today, with the current data we have available to us, it's pretty unlikely that I'm not going to survive the night.

Jeremy: I know that you all grew up in religious or faith based homes and communities like I did.

Allison: Not as much.

Liz: Only in the beginning.

Jeremy: Ok, tell me about that. What I'm curious about is, like, how being part of that community shaped, as children, your view of death. And, you know, we've been mentioning heaven and hell and and is that a consideration when you when you talk to your kids about it?

Liz: I do still believe in heaven and hell. I do think that even if I didn't, I would still give my children that because I want to give them that innocence and freedom of having to worry.

Allison: Comfort?

Liz: Yeah, I just don't want them to have to worry about disappearing. And so we were very religious in the beginning. Actually, after we moved away, when my dad got re-stationed, he became pretty atheist.He did not want anything to do with God, church, anything. And so ultimately, at the end of the day, where I stand now is I don't know. I don't know what's true. I do know that when I am going through hard times in my life, when I turn to church, it helps me. When I "let go let God" I think it gives me some type of freedom also of being in control of everything which I struggle with as an adult.

Jeremy: And Allie, I feel like you fall somewhere slightly different on the...

Allison: A little bit. I can wrap my head around the idea of when we die, we just simply cease to exist and I'm OK with it. But I don't know that kids really can. And the older I get, the more I feel like I don't think I'm doing a disservice to my child by telling him about cat heaven and old lady heaven, because it's something that makes it palatable to him. And I know that as he grows and as he learns, he's going to reach his own conclusions.

Jeremy: Sure. Yeah.

Allison: And I'm going to encourage him to explore whatever avenue is of interest to him. What do you think? What do you do with your little ones...

Liz: I was just going to ask...

Allison: ...on that topic?

Jeremy: I can follow both of your paths through sort of childhood and teenager-hood in terms of church involvement and stuff like that. And it was very similar to for me. I took a pretty hard departure from faith and for a while became like kind of an asshole about it, you know...

Allison: Oh, like an asshole atheist?

Jeremy: Yeah, like like an evangelical atheist.

Allison: "I don't believe in it. But also, you're all wrong."

Jeremy: Right. Right.

Allison: Yeah, been there.

Jeremy: It took me a number of years to kind of come back around to the idea of appreciating and understanding the value of faith communities, which I do, and appreciating them primarily for their community purpose and their community function, you know? And I consider myself an atheist. I don't believe that, you know, like you said, I think when we're gone, we're gone. But I also...

Allison: It doesn't diminish the time that you spend here.

Jeremy: That's true. And I also have found a way of talking to my kids about in a way that really works for me about it, which, when I talk to my kids about it, we talk about recycling. We talk about the fact that, you know, your body is made up of carbon and that..

Allison: Like The Lion King!

Jeremy: Right, like the circle of life! And so when you die, you go into the earth and your carbon is recycled. It's eaten by animals and bacteria, and then you become food for plants.

Jeremy: So you become part of those plants...

Allison: Used to form a new living organism, yeah!

Jeremy: I think they understand that. I don't think that's terrifying for them, you know, I hope. But to me, that's something that feels kind of beautiful and poetic and honest too, you know? So that's kind of how we've framed it.

Allison: Well, I mean, I guess I kind of feel like no matter what I tell my kid, if it's something that I accept to be true, then I feel good about saying it. And I feel honest about saying it. I feel like then I'm having a real conversation with my kid.

Jeremy: And lose what you said rings true to me, too, that we can't really know. None of us can really know. So we're all doing the best that we can based on what works for us, what comforts us, what we believe to be reality. And it's like this mishmash of all those things.

Allison: Liz does a really great job of sharing with her kids in a way that's appropriate for them, what she believes and what works for her. And you know what? Liz has happy, well-adjusted, beautiful, brilliant, lovely kids. And Liz tells her kids her truth, right?

Liz: And my truth helps me.

Allison: So, I mean, all you're doing is giving your kids your tools, right?

Jeremy: Yeah.

Liz: We all are.

Jeremy: It's pretty evident from this conversation, but the other piece of this is encouraging our kids, once they're at that point, to analyze what we've told them.

Allison: Absolutely.

Jeremy: Raising them in a way where they know that these decisions are things that they get to make about what they believe and what they value.

Allison: Question everything. Somebody tells you something? Great, but how do they know? How was that information acquired? Who was it acquired from? Maybe it's great. Maybe it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe it needs to be put in context. I don't know, but everybody has something to say. Yeah. Alright, Jeremy you have a great night.

Jeremy: I'm going to sign off. Thank you both.

Allison: Liz, I'll call you in a second.

Liz: Bye! Have a great night!

Thanks to Allie and Liz for this conversation. After a seemingly impossible 28-year interval, I'm so thrilled and grateful that this conversation has rekindled communication between cousins with whom I share distinct and formative early memories.

Jeremy: I'm going to choose all the, you know, all the interesting juicy bits and take out all your "ums" and "likes".

Allison: I want to be bleeped.

Liz: You're going to take out the "ums" and "likes"!

Allison: The "ums" and "likes"?! Good luck!

Jeremy: Thanks so much for listening to "The Talk", thanks to Christian Shaefer, Samuel Issah, and to Liz and Allie for being guests on today's episode. I'd like to invite you to head over to thetalkthepodcast.com, and sign up for our newsletter by clicking "contact". You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetalkthepodcast. And if you'd like to support us, you can do so by visiting buymeacoffee.com/coffeetalks. Dana Gertz created all the original artwork for "The Talk" and a final but not feeble thanks, goes to my wife and our kids for asking me thoughtful questions every day that help shape this podcast. Goodbye.