Annalouiza  
Welcome listeners episode 32. We are hosting a lovely intimate interview with Seth Viddal. Seth has been an entrepreneur for most of his adult life. After serving in the Air Force during Operation Desert Shield, he designed and sold communication solutions for government intelligence agencies.

Following the unexpected deaths of both of his parents and a younger brother, Seth was called to explore alternatives to conventional funeral services. In 2017, he sold his companies and went back to school at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He helped open the doors to the natural funeral in Boulder County in 2019. They have since opened a second funeral home and a care center in Denver, Colorado where they perform ecological dispositions.

Wakil  
Seth and the natural funeral are transforming the funeral industry. They have expanded end-of-life care options available to Coloradans by bringing water cremation and terramation to the state. The natural funeral hosted the inaugural Body Composting Conference in Denver in March 2023, which was the first global initiative to connect researchers, funeral professionals, legislators, mortuary science students, end-of-life caregivers, universities, and composting professionals. That's really exciting. We had one of those here in the Seattle area last year and there's another one coming up. So that we're hoping to participate in. So great to have you, Seth. Thanks so much for joining us.

Annalouiza  
Welcome Seth.

Seth Viddal  
It's good to be here. Thank you.

Wakil  
Yeah, so I don't know, are you planning to come out to Seattle for the one that's out here?

Seth Viddal  
I'll be there. I was there for the one TerraCon in earlier this year and I've already been invited to be on some panels for the one next year. So I'll be there as a panelist and also learning about the emerging trends in the industry.

Wakil  
Yeah, it's so great that they're doing that. Annalouiza and I are hoping we can maybe set up a little sound booth and do interviews for the podcast there. We still haven't figured out if that's going to work. 
  
We always like to begin with when did you first become aware of death.

Seth Viddal  
Yeah, I first became aware of death when I attended the funeral for my Aunt Zulma. And my Aunt Zulma was an unofficial family member. She taught me my ABCs and didn't have children of her own and was kind of adopted by my family. And I was very young when she died, about six or seven years old. And it was the first funeral I was allowed to attend.

And I remember that being special because I'd been kept away from other funerals before, kind of at arm's length. You don't necessarily let the kids know about all this mortality stuff happening at funerals. And so that was my first exposure. It really was my first example of how outsourced, how involved the professionals were with the service they were providing to our family.

Wakil  
Well, as we, yeah, as we, I hope it got recorded, the part we were talking about the, the trend toward natural funerals. And I hope we can, we'll certainly be talking more about that. So thank you.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, kind of using that experience as a springboard for who you are in this time and this space. Tell me how death has impacted your story.

Seth Viddal  
Well, I love using that as a jumping off point and it's not a story that I get to share frequently because in my current snapshot of what a funeral can be, I realized that my early exposure was there and it actually installed some limiting beliefs in me. And those beliefs were that the professionals handled the care of our family member and that there was sort of this limited selection that you sought out from a funeral home. It was either burial or cremation. 

And you generally went with whatever the trend of your family's behaviors were, meaning that you're either generally a burial family or a cremation family. so oftentimes, the only thing you're there to select is when is the visitation and what color casket do you want.

And so as a kid, that was my first experience. And then I got the chance to go to additional funerals after that. And some I was kept away from because kids weren't welcome at all of the funerals. And so what that's manifest as today is in the mid -20 teens, in 2014, 15, and 16, I was a funeral customer when my dad died unexpectedly and then a year later my little brother died unexpectedly and then about exactly a year later my mother died unexpectedly and I went back to the same funeral home. In fact, the one that had served my aunt Zulma when I was a kid all those years before because that's what you do. 

Annalouiza  
Wow!

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm.

Seth Viddal  
The family just you pick up the phone and you call the funeral home that you used last time and you probably buy a similar service to what you got the last person in your family. And when that happened over and over with my father and brother and mother, something in me broke because it felt so disconnected from what was actually possible. And it felt detached from the values that each of them had led throughout their lives. 

So basically, my little brother got the same funeral my grandpa just a few decades later. And so what this has manifested in me today is a passion for empowering families to have something, a choice that's really connected to their values and who they are. And I like to be a resource in our community. And so we make it a point to work with local providers and local materials and to really the third sort of emphasis that we bring to funeral service is our ecological impact. And so we're trying to make a difference in families' lives while still preserving a light footprint of touch on the earth.

Wakil  
Yeah, so important. So thank you. Thank you. It's so good to hear that. 

Annalouiza  
Well, that's a, that's a value too, right? 

Wakil  
Absolutely.

Annalouiza
Like the ecological piece, that's a, it's a value that our grandparents weren't really considering in part because they weren't being embalmed and there wasn't too much. It was just like, you just go do it. But so many more people right now are ecologically aware of the footprint continues even after, you know, actually walking on the planet. Now you're laying in the planet. Like what's, what is it? So yeah. So I really appreciate that. That's a, that you're naming and you're making space for it.

Wakil  
Right?

Seth Viddal  
Thanks Annalouiza. Yeah, I really believe that our bodies are made out of the stardust that we borrow when we incarnate in our forms here. And that was loaned to us from the previous generations and from Mother Earth's body herself. And so it really does make sense when we realize that at the heart of who we are, beneath our name and beneath our physical form, our identity at its scientific level is the same building blocks of nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and calcium that every living being builds its body out of. And so to recognize our place in the nature of all things and the cycle of life really lends us towards being able to offer our bodies back to that connection from which we came.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, that connection that is always existing. remembering that connection is part of remembering that connection is to take that connection to the end, to at our ending. Let's make sure we complete the connection. Yeah, so good, so important. Thank you.

Seth Viddal  
It shows up in such special ways to people's plans that they're considering for themselves. I have the good fortune of helping hundreds of families each year. And some of them are elders that have had plans in place for decades. And some of them are young people who never expected to be considering their own mortality. But when we sit down with them and we light a candle and we ask them
how they live their life. 

And when folks start describing a relationship with nature and the outdoors and plants and gardening, or maybe it was important to them that they respected the earth and they had to put solar panels on their house or driven a hybrid car. And they say, I really don't want my last act here as a person who's been intentional in relationship with life and beauty, I don't want my last act to be harmful to that system. And so people actually find joy and relief in the options that we're able to give them when they think about what they'll become in the future.

Wakil  
Yeah, that's so great. So important. So tell us a little more about the current role that you have in the work that you're doing.

Seth Viddal  
Yeah, thanks. So, the Natural Funeral is the organization that I'm a part of. We opened our very first office about five years ago. And because of this approach that we take with families, a really inclusive invitation for them to share with us about who they are and what's important to them. And because we've offered this range of ecological options, we've experienced a pretty rapid growth to where we now have three offices serving Colorado and within the next six months have plans to begin offering ecological services out of state. So the evolution of the funeral service side is growing quite rapidly. 

And it's interesting because the funeral industry has historically been very slow to react or embrace the change. You might consider that we've been burying our bodies for thousands of years in a very natural way. And we've commodified that process now to envelope our bodies in maybe precious metals in a casket or in a vault that's going to even protect that casket.

There's been this commodification of that process. And so we're finding that people really can express joy when they can step out of that system and dream into what might become of their body.

Wakil  
Mm -hmm. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so that's the work you're doing now and that sounds so good. I'm so glad that that's expanding and becoming more available. I know here in Washington State where I live, it's becoming much more available and we just signed up, my wife and I just signed up to make sure we get our bodies composted.

Seth Viddal  
Wonderful, Wakil, congratulations and welcome to the peace of mind that that often brings to people when they're able to not focus on what's gonna happen when they die, redirect that energy to the beauty of their living experience.

Wakil  
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.

Seth Viddal  
I'd love to share with you a little bit about some of the technical advances in ecological death care and the evolution of that. If I may, you hinted to one of the processes there, Wakil, that resonated with you. Folks call it either natural organic reduction or body composting, or we call it terramation, but it's the gentle and gradual biological conversion of our bodies back into soil.
  
So when we do a green or natural burial, the type that we've done for thousands of years, well before there was a funeral industry, that would be how we had returned bodies to the earth.

And that option has long prevailed, but the process of terramation recognizes that we're a more nomadic culture. We're not necessarily born and die in the same town that our parents and their parents were born and died in because we're a global economy and we have internet connectivity. We can kind of live and act and work wherever we want to on the planet.

And it really makes the reality of visiting a grave on birthdays and for picnics less of a reality than it was at a point in our past. And because of that, people still want to do what's right or what or makes logical sense to them. And if that's for their body to be ashes to ashes, dust to dust and brought back into the earth, burial makes sense.

But we can accomplish that now without actually taking up forever a piece of real estate that is watered and mowed and manicured. And instead our body can go back to the same soil from which we came, but can be distributed, can then be gifted to where the planet can most use the form of our body. 

And so rather than being in a mode and watered lawn, what might happen with a natural funeral customer or the Seattle firms are doing a real similar act of love, which is that those soil, the soil that our bodies are converted into are intentionally dispersed as gifts for agricultural projects, land restoration efforts, for reforestation projects, where pastures have been overgrazed. 

So our body is actually making an impact in the cycle of life. And there's another technology that we also offer. It's a funeral service option and it resonates with some people. It's called water cremation. It's also known as alkaline hydrolysis.

And this is more of a rapid process, more akin to a conventional fire cremation that most of your audience would be very familiar with. It's a couple of hour process. The family gets back an urn that they can scatter those remains or bury them or memorialize them somewhere. So similarly, a water cremation is a several hour process.

But rather than using fire as the change agent that we apply to the body, we use water and alkaline compounds. And what that does is it uses very little energy in the process. And rather than our bodies being converted to gas, which go out of chimney in the form of pollution or waste, our bodies are captured and the essence of ourself is maintained through that process.

And what that means is rather than going out a smoke stack, our body can be taken to a farm and applied to a field or a pasture in the form of a giving bio stimulant. So rather than being a consumptive and sort of polluting process where it's an energy efficient process that returns us to nature.

Wakil  
Yeah, that's really nice. You mentioned the time that it takes for the aquamation or the whatever. Yeah. And so how long does the terramation, how long does that usually take?

Seth Viddal  
Yeah, the water cremation process like flame cremation is a few hours and the tarimation process because it's a living process of biology takes a couple of months. Our process takes between two and three months to complete. Yeah, so it's a much less sudden process. In fact, it's a living process of biology and this all takes place in our system in a chrysalis vessel inside of a controlled climate secure warehouse, which is similar to the Seattle operators where they use a vessel in a controlled environment. Yeah, it's a pretty special way to intend your body

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thanks for sharing that details. That's really important and it's helpful.

Annalouiza  
It is helpful. And I really appreciate that these conversations around the choices we have about our bodies after life are starting to kind of crop up in different states, like Washington, Wakil's got some folks there too. And one thing I just want to point out too, that I did do a walk through the warehouse here in Denver. And I appreciated that Seth told us that once a month families can come in and just hold vigil with their loved ones who are in, what would you call it, like in stasis? Like they're composting.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Seth Viddal  
That's right. That's right. They're in the chrysalis vessels and on the last Friday of each month, we do host a tour where families can come. Sometimes it's folks who are curious about this for themselves. They've heard about it and they want some more information. Sometimes it's folks in the hospice or medical community who want to just educate themselves so they can share about this with families. And sometimes it's loved ones who have a person in one of our chrysalis vessels there who want to spend that time being with their loved one. And they often share with the families who are considering this for themselves and their hearts open into just beautiful stories.

Wakil  
Well, yeah.

Annalouiza  
I really love that. So it sounds like a lot of really good work is bringing good, this good work into people's lives. But what are your challenges in this, in this processes that you're, you're gifting us as choices.

Seth Viddal  
Well, the challenges really are the obscurity of these options at this point. So there are 22,000 funeral homes in the United States and it's a 20 billion dollar a year industry serving more than three million deaths in this country. And there are four funeral homes that I'm aware of who are termination providers, right?

So we're really just in the early, early moments of society at large, even coming to know that these options exist. But ahead of that, there's a legislative, not battle, but effort, I'll say, to be faced, which is to make it legally an option in a lot of states for these technologies to exist.

So alkaline hydrolysis is currently legal in 28 states, but it's only offered in about 12 or 13 of them. There just aren't even providers yet who are doing that. And terramation or natural organic reduction is currently legal in 12 states. And that's very exciting to me because Colorado was the second state to legalize natural organic reduction. It became an effective part of our laws in September of 2021. And so in that short amount of time, from September of 2021, we're recording in July of 24, 10 more states have passed laws allowing them, but the operators haven't yet caught up with providing the services in those areas. So I think getting the word out and you all's podcast, every conversation you have at end of life conversations brings this topic of our mortality to the forefront of the people who listen. 

And so as people become educated about these options and they may or may not resonate with them, but they'll know that it exists and they might advocate for that in their communities, that would be a way that your group of listeners could contribute to the efforts to get this available in more places.

Annalouiza  
I just had a quick thought, Seth, because this is what I'm experiencing right now, but could we ever do pets in these processes?

Seth Viddal  
What a great question. And it's interesting because the stories that I shared with you about my father's passing and mother's passing and my little brother's even my aunt Zulma for that matter, they were all sweet, sweet stories. But the deaths in my life that have impacted me the most, like the proverbial frying pan over the head, really me knock the wind out of my sails have been the deaths of my most beloved pets because they shared living space, even sleeping space and eating space at every meal and are such a dear part of our lives that we get that call very frequently Annalouiza to help people who love their pets dearly.

And I'm grateful that there are operators out there who are working on emerging answers to that with terramation and water cremation. It's not an immediate plan for my firm, but I regularly get to coach and talk with people who are considering this option for pets. And I wholeheartedly endorse that the American consumer is ready for that.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you remember Annalouiza, but Brie from Return Home said they had just started doing for pets, yeah, doing a pet version.

Annalouiza  
That's right. That's right.

Seth Viddal  
They do, yeah, friends in Seattle, or Auburn, Washington, had returned home. They did open a pet division, not at their same facility, but certainly based on the technology that they've learned implementing this with people.


Annalouiza  
I love that. Mm -hmm.

Wakil  
Yeah, so yeah, that's so great. a good question. What a good thing to know that that's happening. So you kind of spoke a little bit about what helps you feel supported, but we're also wondering like the things about, you know, supporting yourself in this work. You mentioned when we were first starting that you had just gone through something that really kind of opened your heart up and so just, you know, what helps you feel supported?

Seth Viddal  
Yeah, well, we have an amazing team that I get to work with. And we kind of have a motto or a saying that we share amongst our team, especially in really tender times. And that phrase that we use with each other is just a reminder. And we share with each other, "We are the families that we serve."

There's not a disconnect between us and them, the families that we're privileged enough to come into community with and honestly, over time, several of us have been clients of our own service with the loss of parents, right? I have team members who we've served, friends and family, of our own team.

So recognizing that there's really no boundary or barrier between the emotions that we're getting to come into relationship with in our community and each other. And that's a really helpful way to approach each day. And then the clients that we have come to us, they validate that by the conversations that we have.

There's a term, another term we use at the natural funeral, which is, it describes that privilege. And we call the term "unearned intimacy." And it is the gift of a family coming to us on what may be one of the most difficult days of their entire lives. And they haven't had time to catch their breath. Nothing is censored in their conversation. It is just raw communication that they share with us because they need help in this moment. 

And that is a sacred privilege. I'll share with your group, your listeners here that immediately preceding our conversation, I had the privilege of sitting down with a family deciding that there's a 17-year-old in the family with a terminal illness. And we got to have a sweet conversation about what would be meaningful to that young lady at the near-term demise of her physical body. 

And it is resourceful to us and it is empowering to us and actually adds to our energy when you can watch a light go on in someone's head or heart as they finally received an option that is meaningful to them. 

And so I'm answering this, Wakil, by way of saying the team of our coworkers feed us and the families who come in and allow us the privilege of experiencing something really difficult with them, that's actually very empowering to us.

Wakil  
Wow, yeah, that's a really, really beautiful perspective and kind of unique in a way from some. Thank you for sharing

Annalouiza  
Yeah. So Seth, what frightens you about the end of your life?

Seth Viddal  
Well, I'm a little bit of a control freak. So not knowing when it's gonna happen is a little bit unnerving to me. It's interesting. get really sweet, deep conversations with folks a lot. And one of the ponderances that people have is, if you could know when your death was gonna occur, would you want to? Because it might change the way we live and act for the better or for the worse.

And so people have real varied takes on that question. I'm in the bucket that I would want to know. So that freaks me out a little, but I don't want to be...

I don't want to overstate my preparedness and acceptance, but when you have the privilege of hearing hundreds, I guess maybe at this point, even thousands of stories from families, you really realize that death is a part of living and that it's actually kind of what makes living so great is if it went on forever, there'd be no urgency in creating beauty in this day, because I could always just get to it tomorrow. 

And so while I don't want to say I'm approaching death with joy, I've already shared with you, it freaks me out, I don't know when it's coming, but the fact that it's coming has enabled me to show up with a new attitude towards each day.

And I hope that, I appreciate that your podcast attempts to bring this conversation into our living day, because I really think it makes our days better. So to answer your question, death makes my life better.

Annalouiza  
Beautiful.

Wakil  
It sure does. sure does. Yeah, that's exactly why we're doing this. Yeah. That's really well done. Really well said. In a way, I think we've kind of touched on the last couple of questions about being supported and resourced. Sounds like you have a good team that helps you resource yourself. Are there any other practices that you'd want to share with us that you and your team use to resource yourself or to work through the fears that you might have?

Seth Viddal  
Yeah, so we come together as a team outside of the needs of work on a regular basis where we connect and we don't discuss the practical steps of serving families each day, but we really do check -ins with each other. 

We have a non -denominational chaplain that attends a monthly gathering where light a candle and folks are invited to share and bring their pearls, but also bring their burdens and share that experience with our team so that we each kind of know the vibration in each other's lives and what we're each going through. And we really honor that collectively we are each other's gift and each other's way to serve our community in the way that we want to.

So we honor each other. think that taking the time to do that has made our organization stronger and it makes us a little bit unique.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, I would say so. And the fact that it's like you're almost bringing ritual into the, into the connection with each other, making that a ritual that you do together. And we've spoken about ritual often on this podcast and how important it can be. 

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm.

Seth Viddal  
Yeah. Wakil, guess another, since you brought up ritual, I think that it's important to know that aside from just what we do with our bodies, that's obviously a very important consideration as families are taking these steps through grief. And so I would encourage your listeners too to be real creative in what ritual at end of life means to them because you don't just have to defer or default to the wishes of your local funeral director. 

If being with the body or having a loving, washing ritual of the body by the family is important, then I would just advocate for your group to bring that ritual in and honor that.

Wakil  
Yeah, thank you. And Annalouiza is an expert. She helps people create rituals. So it's very important. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, my favorite. So beautiful. Well, the last question, I guess, Wakil, I'll throw this out there, but what do you wish we had asked

Seth Viddal  
Such a good question.

You know what? think y 'all, I've listened to most of the episodes of your podcast and I've heard the types of conversations that you have. And I knew that that question was coming. And with no regrets, I feel whole and complete. And I feel a bunch of gratitude toward the way that you all are inviting these conversations. So you've left nothing unsaid and my heart is thankful.

Wakil  
Thank you, Seth. It's great.

Annalouiza  
I love that yes. Well, now's our precious time when we ask folks to read a poem for us. What you got!

Seth Viddal  
Well, only my favorite poem ever. There's a very lightly published poem by Sister Carol Bylock and it's called Breathing Under Water. And this poem has meant a lot to me and I am grateful to get to share it with your listeners. It says,

I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you;
not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock.
A strong house
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences.
Respectful, keeping our distance,
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always, the fence of sand our barrier,
always, the sand between.
And then one day,
-and I still don’t know how it happened -
the sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome, even
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine,
less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but coming.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.
And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door.
And I knew, then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling, you stop being neighbors,
Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance neighbors,
And you give your house for a coral castle,
And you learn to breathe underwater.

Wakil  
Mmm. Whoa, that's so beautiful. I hope you could please send us a copy of that so we'll include it in the podcast notes.

Annalouiza  
Wow.

Annalouiza  
Yes.

Seth Viddal  
I'd love to. It's meant a lot to me throughout about the 15 years that that poem's been a part of my life. And thank you for letting me share it with you today.

Annalouiza  
That is such a gift.

Wakil  
Very beautiful. Yeah. We will also add any other links you'd like, like to your organization or any books or whatever else you'd like to send us. We'll put those in the podcast notes. we thank you so much again, Seth, for making it and for coming back even though the first try didn't work.

Annalouiza  
Yes.

Seth Viddal  
Thank you,  Annalouiza and Wakil for having important end-of-life conversations.