Annalouiza (00:01.304)
Greetings, fellow listeners, those on the sacred path of living. This is the Reverent Mother Annalouiza Armendariz here to share some time with our new friend, Dr. Bob Baugher. On this episode, we are so delighted to get to know Dr. Bob. He's a retired psychology professor from Highline College in Des Moines, Washington, where he taught courses in death education, suicide intervention, understanding AIDS, intro to psych and human relations. He is the co-author of eight books and more than 150 articles on grief related topics. Bob has given several hundred workshops on coping with grief during the past 30 years.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:51.388)
Wow, so good to have you with us. I was really honored to meet you when you were the speaker. We had an inauguration of a wind phone in a local cemetery. In case you aren't aware, wind phones are something that's been around for a while now. I think they've said there's like 800 of them around the world. We actually did an episode on that if you go to, let's see, episode, season, which one was it? Yeah, season three, episode 11 with Russell Young.

He had installed one at his local church and we got to talk to him about it. And he can go there and learn a lot more about it. But Bob did a great job of speaking to the importance of this kind of an idea, a way for us to communicate, sit down and talk on a telephone with our loved ones who've passed. It was a beautiful project of a friend of ours, Pamela Belier, who is the creator of the Griever's Library. And you can learn more about her in another episode. It was also season three, episode 17.

So Bob, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Annalouiza (01:53.334)
Yes.

Bob Baugher (01:54.252)
Thank you. Thank you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:56.212)
We like to kind of check in with folks and find out when you first became aware of death.

Bob Baugher (02:02.19)
Wow. Yeah, I got a great story about this. was like, I grew up in Seattle and Beacon Hill and a bunch of his kids were playing. I was six years old and we were playing in the woods and this cat either had died or kind of stumbled in and died in front of us. And we buried the cat. So like a couple of months later, we're playing in that same area of the woods.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:04.448)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (02:29.344)
And one of the kids who hadn't been there when the cat died started digging up around the area where the cat was. And we said, no, no, don't do that. That's it buried that cat. And all of a sudden he goes, hey, wait a minute. Look, there's some of the cat right there. We had these sticks and we started digging it and we pried the cat out and it was like cardboard, you know? And I always thought, you know, something dies and it just remains the same. that was my first.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:35.518)
Hehe.

Annalouiza (02:45.441)
Hahaha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:52.574)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (02:53.069)
Yep.

Annalouiza (02:58.488)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (02:59.114)
aunt says, no, this car looking cat didn't stay the same. So that was a long time ago.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:01.097)
Ha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:04.957)
Yeah, something changes for sure.

Annalouiza (03:08.03)
Yes, fascinating. And it's still there kind of right. So, but so that was the formative moment when you understood that death is happening. How has death impacted the story of your life? Where has it been?

Bob Baugher (03:11.246)
Yeah

Bob Baugher (03:23.214)
Well, I'm back up a little bit. I'm just putting together a whole thing on Instagram when I was typing up earlier today the story of when it all started for me on getting involved in death. February 4th, 1975, I always get this. This is the first thing I say to my students in the death class. And then I point to a student and I say, so where were you in 19...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:50.62)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (03:50.841)
hahahaha

Bob Baugher (03:52.047)
And their eyes were like, no, I wasn't even. So I answered the phone and my mother was yelling and screaming and crying. She said, father's in the hospital. He's dying. My dad was 52 years old, a workaholic, never had time to be sick. And here he was like dying? Like what? So I jumped in my car, headed to Harvard View Hospital, got there. Here's my mom there with my.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:54.771)
You

Bob Baugher (04:19.048)
brothers who were in their 20s and my sisters who were teenagers and my mother gestured over and I look over there's my dad's line in a gurney chaos at harvard view hospital people running around and so they were able to stabilize him but he apparently had a at that point we didn't didn't know for sure a massive stroke and his whole left side was paralyzed and they thought he might die and so that night when he was stabilized my mother said to me will you

see about sending up a funeral for your father tomorrow. Or for your father at some point, go there tomorrow. said, okay. So here I am, you I'm almost 30 years old. All my cousins and aunts and uncles were alive. I hadn't been touched by death. And I'm driving to this funeral home, I'm saying to myself, I don't know much about death, loss, grief, let alone how to set up a funeral.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:51.54)
Well...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:11.572)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:15.796)
Ha

Annalouiza (05:15.978)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (05:16.344)
So I talked to the guy, was in West Seattle and he was nice about it. And as it was, my dad came out of a coma after a month, had to learn how to walk again and ended up living with the stroke, of course, another 28 years. died, yeah, know, maybe longer than some of the doctors who said he may not make it. And so then now fast forward several months and I'm in my office.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:32.488)
Wow.

Annalouiza (05:32.578)
Wow!

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:38.858)
Right? Yeah.

Annalouiza (05:39.032)
Yeah.

Bob Baugher (05:45.164)
back then teaching part time at Seattle Central Community College. And there's a knock on my door and this woman says, hey, I'm on a committee and we're giving money grants for people who want to create a new class. And I said, well, I'm part time here. She said, no, no, it's open to anybody, you know, write a proposal. So I did. But, you know, teaching a class on death. She got back to me and said, so the committee is really into committee is really interested. How much money do you want for this grant?

I had just started teaching, I was so naive, and I said, I don't know, how about like $400?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:20.424)
You

Annalouiza (06:21.277)
my gosh. Oof.

Bob Baugher (06:22.414)
She kind of smiled and said, OK. And then the committee said, yeah, we accept. And that summer, 1976, I earned about $0.50 an hour, know, putting together this class and so on. And so then they said, OK, we're going to offer the class January 1977. About a month before that, they said, we're sorry, we left your class out of the quarterly. Oh, great. You know, back then it wasn't online. It was all paper.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:32.134)
haha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:47.123)
Haha.

Bob Baugher (06:51.32)
And they said, we're going to pass out a bunch of flyers and we'll see how class goes. So now it's January 77. I walk into my classroom. It's a Wednesday night. There's nobody there. I'm thinking, great, I did all this work on, you know, putting together this class. And then this woman comes walking in and she goes, your classroom's been moved down the hall. I go down. Yeah, I go down the hall. 40 people are sitting there.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:53.853)
haha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:12.369)
Haha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:18.57)
Wow. Wow.

Bob Baugher (07:20.034)
That was it. That started me on my whole career of teaching and getting involved and, you know, helping people with grief and loss and so on. That's my story.

Annalouiza (07:20.29)
Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:29.002)
Hmm, beautiful. Wow. That's great. Yeah, I was thinking, you know, 50 cents an hour is kind of what most professors, know, adjunct professors make, I think, actually, that's probably a pretty good wage. Yeah.

Annalouiza (07:31.096)
That is amazing.

Bob Baugher (07:39.566)
Yes. Yeah. That's why I said $400 because it was about half of what I got for teaching a whole class. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:47.248)
Right. Yeah. Well, also the other thing that was funny that I thought when we were, when you're talking about your dad was sort of forced pre-planning, right? We always talk to people about planning ahead. so this kind of made you plan ahead with it, whether you wanted to or not. So when, when it actually came, when the time actually came, maybe you has a better idea of what you were doing probably by then for sure.

Annalouiza (07:56.46)
That's right.

Annalouiza (08:00.44)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (08:00.525)
Yes.

Bob Baugher (08:05.495)
we decided with the funeral we had it all down.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:08.362)
Right, right. Very good, very good. Well, thank you. Let me get to the... And this is why we have editors. So yeah, tell us more about the teaching role that you had and maybe what you're doing currently, your work as a teacher and then as, know, what's keeping you busy in your retirement years?

Bob Baugher (08:31.638)
Well, very busy. I retired two years ago after teaching 50 years. My first class I ever taught was 1973 and my last one was 2023. And but I have this whole list of things that I've been doing and involved with the local Widows group. They had their 50th anniversary a couple of years ago. So I was involved in that. And I'm also involved with the local chapter of the

passionate friends, parents who've lost a child. And so they have me doing a lot of things as well. And I've learned so much from both those groups over the years. I just got an article published, co-authored with a sociology professor, Dr. Hillacher at Michigan State. The article is called, well, I'm not going to get it exactly right.

because she changed the title a little bit, but it basically focuses on a term that we wanted people to be aware of called griefism. And it's prejudice against people who are bereaved. Right. You know, your loved one dies and you get three days or maybe they give you a week, but you better take it now. You know, when really you need to take it a month from now and how really

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:39.614)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:43.794)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (09:43.853)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:50.9)
Hehehe.

Annalouiza (09:50.999)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (09:55.351)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:55.422)
Yeah.

Bob Baugher (09:59.022)
this prejudice against people who are bereaved is built into our society. So we wrote a whole 10 page article on it. And it, I think, really resonated with a lot of people and I think we're going to be seeing a lot of it. And of course, you know, I learned that from bereaved people themselves who, they're in the grocery store, their child died, you know, six months ago and they look over and they see a neighbor and their neighbor is gone, right? They don't want to...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:07.145)
Wow.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:17.353)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:26.236)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Annalouiza (10:26.775)
Right.

Bob Baugher (10:28.064)
shays that people say to them. you know, in movies we don't see grief very, you know, the heroines, heroines, you know, boyfriend dies and she cries a little bit and then we never hear about her grief again. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Annalouiza (10:30.604)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (10:41.696)
Right. There's a cutaway, right? There's a cutaway to like a year later. Like she's happy. She's doing great. Yeah. You know, that's actually a really, a very real thing that I've just recently experienced through a friend of mine who's, who had a sibling who committed suicide. And this was like a year, two years ago. And she just recently told me that in two years she had never been told that she could take time off for grief. Like the, and the, and the company actually has a grief and bereavement.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:43.562)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:07.187)
Well.

Annalouiza (11:11.724)
like time that you could take off, but she was never offered this ever. And she's like, and it's the same boss that she's had for, you know, five, 10 years, whatever. And she's like, he knew how hard this was and he just, he kept it shut. Like he did not want me like taking time off. It's like, took all my PTO during this time whenever I had to like just sit down and cry. And I was like, how horrible, right? It's devastating that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:15.454)
Hmm. Wow.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:32.234)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:36.232)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (11:40.19)
So many people in this world are probably going through this, in our culture for sure.

Bob Baugher (11:43.33)
Yes, absolutely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:43.442)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll definitely put a link to that article for you in the notes so folks can get to it. That's great. Yeah, you told me a little bit about that when we met. And I've been thinking about that a lot since then. And certainly we see evidence of this a lot in our culture. And it's a problem, which is why we're here. That's why we're doing this. yeah, yeah.

Bob Baugher (11:48.396)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (11:56.889)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (12:02.83)
Good for you. Good for you to be here to open people's eyes and giving them to think and so on. Yeah, a couple other projects. I'm co-authoring a book on the overdose death of a child. Mom had contacted me a couple of years ago. She read my book on coping with guilt during bereavement. And she contacted me and said my 19 year old son had died.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:08.809)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:19.242)
Mm.

Bob Baugher (12:30.804)
years before that and we parents have huge amounts of guilt. So we wrote a book, we're still, we're almost done with it. We had 30 parents who themselves had experienced the death of a child through overdose to contribute to the book and it's really, I think, to be helpful to a lot of people because it validates a lot of what people are going through and, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, how this

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:35.657)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (12:39.224)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:47.882)
Mm.

Bob Baugher (12:58.796)
child died, but especially if an overdose, all the rehab issues and the lying and cheating and stealing. And in some cases you don't know what your child was using and in other cases you do and all the craziness that goes along with that. So, so we're looking hopefully in the next year or so to get that, get that published. And then another book is a friend of mine who actually went to high school with my wife and I met him through my wife and

Annalouiza (13:02.7)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:05.865)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:17.29)
Great.

Annalouiza (13:17.943)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (13:27.854)
He's one of these people, maybe you experienced this, then in five minutes we clicked just like that. Yeah. And it names Eddie. so now fast forward, you know, 30 some years later, he's dying with a form of Lou Gehrig's disease. Lou Gehrig's disease is ALS. What he was dying from was PLS. And he came to live with us. So I took care of him.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:34.378)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (13:34.668)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (13:54.19)
for a month, 24 hours a day. We found a group home for him and so on. And then a year later he died. But in the meantime, I wrote a book about it. you know, we'd love this man and he loved us and to watch him day after day want to die. You know, he was 49 years old when he died. This is many years ago. So I'm looking to get that book published. I've sent it off to 19 book publishers.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:02.826)
Mm.

Annalouiza (14:09.88)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (14:15.96)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (14:20.216)
Ha

Bob Baugher (14:20.326)
And that was three months ago and I got rejected by five so far, but one. So yeah, cross fingers. So that's kind of what those are some of the projects that I've been working on.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:33.854)
That's so, so wonderful. Thank you for sharing those. I'm really looking forward to seeing those get posted and sharing them with our audience too. Such important work.

Annalouiza (14:34.028)
All right. Yeah.

Annalouiza (14:42.154)
Yeah, it is important work and it's rich work that you're doing rich. And, you know, I'm sure you get to like us, like get to connect with a lot of people with really deep, meaningful stories. And, you know, I love that you find these parts, you know, bereavement and coping with guilt. Like those are topics we don't really talk about when we think about how do we grieve. Right. So what are some of the challenges that you find when you're

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:47.7)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (15:10.678)
working on these different projects with these different folks. What do you, what do you feel like you come home and you're like, this is an issue.

Bob Baugher (15:17.228)
Yeah, when I first started in this, I thought that I would take home the pain that I experienced when I was going through tenure. The committee looks at what you're doing and how you're teaching and so on. And so they said to me back then in 1988, said, you're working with people who have traumatic brain injury. You're working with people whose death of a child, working with people who've lost a spouse.

And I'm saying, yeah. And then I saw weird looks on their faces, like, oh my goodness, is this guy, you know, we just hired this guy, is he going to make it? You know? So I quickly jumped, kind of jumped up and said, well, look, I run three times a week. have a healthy marriage. My wife supports me. I have two kids who are doing okay and so on. And, you know, they began to breathe a little bit and it's like, okay, this guy's going to make it.

Annalouiza (15:49.069)
Hahaha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:55.786)
You

Annalouiza (16:03.456)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:09.054)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (16:11.608)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (16:13.25)
But I feel fortunate in that I can hear people's stories and feel that I can find some ways and some cases to help them out and yet not take it home with me as well. I've experienced my own losses, my mother and father and a couple years ago my niece, 35 years old, died. so I feel very fortunate to be able to get back up again and help people.

Annalouiza (16:21.932)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:40.178)
Mm-hmm. That's great. Yeah. I love that. And getting out and running. Yeah, that's... I don't run, but I walk. I'm a little slower. Yeah, right. But I feel like that's... Yeah, for me, that's also one of the ways that I can just settle in and go sit down by a creek or something if I need to. So thank you for sharing that. Again, we always like to ask that question because people need to know there's a lot of ways to resource yourself and it's really important.

Annalouiza (16:40.374)
Mm-hmm. That's so lovely.

Bob Baugher (16:49.218)
Good. Yeah, money's lower now, yeah.

Annalouiza (16:59.094)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (17:03.063)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (17:09.176)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:10.602)
pay attention to that, not just blow through it like you're some Superman, because none of us really are. Yeah. So that's great. Sorry. OK. Well, thanks so much for that. Is there anything that frightens you as you've been working in this world of death and dying for this many years? Is there anything that frightens you about the end of life?

Bob Baugher (17:18.968)
Here we go.

Bob Baugher (17:35.792)
about the end of life? No, I give out a death anxiety survey to my students and then I look at it myself. So there's like 16 different things that people would be fearful about death, dying in pain, dying a violent death, dying without finishing important things in life. And the one that keeps coming up for me, which I know is for a lot of people is

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:36.937)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:51.722)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (17:57.837)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (18:04.876)
The thing that I'm concerned about is leaving my wife. This woman, by the way, what's today the 25th, four days ago was the 60th anniversary of our first date. Now we were married four years later, but I posted it on Facebook and got a bunch of likes and all of that. But this poor woman in a way who's ended up marrying a guy, she married a guy

Annalouiza (18:07.97)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:08.02)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:20.37)
Whoa.

Annalouiza (18:20.545)
Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:28.34)
Hahaha.

Bob Baugher (18:34.67)
who was a cashier at a grocery store. I was lucky she married. We were talking about that last night. And so I went on and she supported me all the way through my education and all of this and my career. And so once in a while we'll be in the kitchen and we'll look into each other's eyes. And one of us will say, I wonder who's gonna go first. And when I tell my students that, they go, oh, no, no. It makes that moment more important, right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:36.894)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (18:54.49)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (19:02.77)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Bob Baugher (19:03.31)
that we do have each other. And she always teases me because she wants to be cremated. I'm not a big fan of being cremated, but she said, well, buddy, if you go first, you're going to get burned.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:03.582)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:15.082)
Hahaha!

Annalouiza (19:17.504)
I love you. I love you too. It sounds like conversations in my home.

Bob Baugher (19:22.644)
Really great, yeah. That's it. Talk about death. Yeah. Yeah, my students in my death class will come back and say, so last night we were eating dinner and I said to my parents, what kind of funeral do you want? Talk about that. it's that death class you're taking. We don't want to talk about death. Yeah. So again, good for you guys to be doing this stuff because we need it. You know, our society is still not ready for it. When I started

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:26.25)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:26.872)
Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:40.244)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:44.542)
Yeah, yeah.

We do.

Annalouiza (19:47.51)
We do!

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:50.975)
Yeah.

Bob Baugher (19:52.29)
You know, the death class years ago, back in the 70s and 80s, I thought, you know, by the time we get to year 2000, we'll have death education in every high school, maybe grade school. They'll be talking about it, and you you know, we all know. Hasn't happened. Has happened. Still reluctant. Can't do it.

Annalouiza (20:02.52)
mmm

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:03.562)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:07.956)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (20:11.256)
That's right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:13.598)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's, and I'm so glad you're doing that. And you know, that people are starting to think about it's starting to grow. We're seeing a little bit of growth in the discussion anyway. And, and this kind of thing helps a lot. And the class classes that you were doing and other places and the doulas that are out there now talking to people and, teachers that are doing classes. And so, yeah, as you said, it's something that needs to happen and people need to think about it and plan for it.

Annalouiza (20:15.416)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:41.404)
more planning you can do and helping. And I love that you're having this conversation with your wife. And Annalise and I are having that conversation with our families as well. And Annalise always says, can get invited back to dinner parties sometimes.

Annalouiza (20:54.008)
I don't, because I'm the one who will be at a dinner party and you know, what do you do? What do you like to do? Like, death and dying. Like, like, and people are like,

Bob Baugher (21:00.066)
Yes!

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:03.65)
Right.

Bob Baugher (21:06.926)
When I first started teaching the deaf class, was at Seattle Central where they have a deaf program. And so when I, they said, so what class are you teaching? I said, deaf and dying. deaf and dying, no, death, death. Once in a while on the first day of class, a lost student will come to my class and open the door and they'll say, what class is this? And I'll say, it's a class on death. Boy, they're out of their curriculum. Laughing like, no, we don't want to deal with that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:19.55)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (21:19.992)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:32.65)
Thank you. Have you found in your work with younger people that they are less willing to talk about it or are they beginning to be more?

Annalouiza (21:33.302)
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's.

Bob Baugher (21:36.832)
yeah.

Bob Baugher (21:45.71)
You know, people ask me in general, know, compared to 50 years ago, you know, where are the students today? And, you know, the students I get, of course, self-selected. They want to sign up for a class on death. Some of them have taken other classes from me and say, well, I've taken this guy before, you know, it must be a good class. And it hasn't changed much. They aren't, they are as willing to talk about it as before. The only thing that I...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:56.308)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:06.794)
Thanks

Bob Baugher (22:12.12)
find mainly different is before class, rather than them talking to each other, they're on their phone. So that's the big change that I've seen. once they get started, they are as eager and willing to do the homework. I give them some pretty heavy homework assignments. One of them I give is called a deathbed fantasy, where they are required to imagine

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:19.336)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:19.617)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:30.783)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:36.298)
Mmm.

Annalouiza (22:36.684)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (22:39.458)
that they are on their deathbed with 20 minutes to live the age they are now. And they are then asked to put who do they want there, list all the people they want there, who do they not want there, and what would they say to the entire group, and then what would they say to each person one at a time. And one of the things I say to them is, so here's your best friend standing at your deathbed.

Annalouiza (22:43.029)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:51.7)
Yeah

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:00.937)
Well...

Annalouiza (23:01.206)
it's so beautiful.

Annalouiza (23:07.692)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (23:07.83)
I want you to say more than, amen, it's been cool.

Annalouiza (23:11.256)
You

Bob Baugher (23:14.509)
All the things that you did with your best friend and you know, and are you gonna tell him that you love him and so on and so So that's just one of the assignments and I tell them ahead of time this has about a 50 % tier rate about a half all students who do this assignment cry So if you have tears on the paper that you submit, I'll give you extra

Annalouiza (23:18.124)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:30.077)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:33.674)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:37.285)
Hahaha

Annalouiza (23:40.269)
You know, it's great that I forgot about this because when I volunteered for Denver hospice, we had that as part of our training and we had to write it down. Like, you know, imagine your death, who's in the room, what's going on. And I mean, I did that like 15 years ago and that story that I wrote in that hour is a story that I consistently tell my kids to remember. This is how I want to die. This is where I want to be. This is how I wanted to like, so it's become like this like ritual.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:02.026)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (24:09.784)
that I tell them all the time, right? So, because it's so important, like that is what I want. And so.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:11.924)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. I love that. And it's one of the things in the class I do on end of life planning that I talk about a little bit. Think about those things. But also, I love the idea of maybe adding to the class, take some time and write this down. And just like you made it in assignment, this is an assignment for between now and our next class. Start, write this up and think about this. And the one thing you said too, which we found is very important is who don't you want?

Annalouiza (24:30.978)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:44.756)
be there.

Annalouiza (24:45.377)
Yes.

Bob Baugher (24:45.804)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And at first I said, well, you know, everyone should, and then my students started saying, no, there's some people I don't want to be there.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:53.77)
Right? Exactly. Yeah, that often comes up. Well, do you have any other great examples of assignments that you give? are...

Annalouiza (24:54.008)
Yeah, yeah.

Bob Baugher (25:01.454)
Yeah, here's a good one. This happened about 20 years ago. I was at a friend of mine's house for a Christmas party and I had a Santa Claus outfit. So I went in the other room, changed into Santa Claus. Everyone's taking pictures. So later on I changed back and this woman comes up to me and said, you don't know me, but my sister and my mother took your death class about five years ago.

And she said, in fact, while I was sitting on your knee, I text my sister and said, you won't believe whose lap I'm sitting on, your professor. And she said, so our mother died a couple of years ago and we're sitting there going, you know, what kind of funeral do we want? And she's, and my sister goes, wait a minute, mom and I took that death class and they went into her stuff. And one of the assignments is, you know, what do you want for your funeral?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:38.654)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:53.128)
Haha.

Bob Baugher (25:58.644)
and they were able to pull out that piece of paper. Yeah, isn't that cool? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:01.652)
Great. Yeah. Yeah. As you said, yeah.

Annalouiza (26:02.912)
amazing! I love that! you have done great work in this world. I love this.

Bob Baugher (26:09.538)
Yeah, I felt very fortunate. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:12.51)
But as you said, it should be required classes for everybody.

Annalouiza (26:14.925)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (26:14.996)
Yeah, yeah. Another another assignment they have is they have to go to a funeral home and and I say all you have to do is walk in, ask for a pamphlet and leave. You know, don't expect a tour. If you want a tour of a funeral home, you call ahead of time and ask for a tour because quite often they're busy. don't know someone just died or whatever. And then later on in the quarter, we we as a class go on a tour of a funeral home.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:21.748)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (26:21.879)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (26:44.416)
And I say, if you bring someone with you, you'll get a one point bonus. Yeah. And so it's very powerful. Here we are in the casket selection room and here's a student, 20 year old student with her mother and father. And as they say, what kind of casket do you want? know, father goes, you know, I kind of like that. mean, powerful stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:59.945)
Mmm.

Annalouiza (27:00.283)
Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:03.049)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (27:06.048)
Wow. So cool!

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:07.983)
That's great. Yeah, Another...oh yeah.

Bob Baugher (27:10.85)
Another one had to go to a cemetery. And years ago, I had them do a rubbing, you know? But now everyone's got a phone, so I say, want you to go to the cemetery, find your favorite tombstone, and take a selfie. And I give you these pictures of them in front of some tombstone or whatever. I got a quick story with this one. A student came up to me when she heard the assignment and said, I am so afraid of going to a cemetery.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:16.841)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:23.25)
Hahaha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:28.062)
Hahaha.

Bob Baugher (27:38.35)
I want to go, I know it's important to go there. And I said, I'll tell you what, she's a woman in her 30s or so. I said, I'll tell you what, how about if I go with you sometime? She goes, really? Yes, I'll do that. So we go to the cemetery, we walk around, I take a couple of pictures of her. She completes the assignment. And as we're driving back, she says to me, you know what, one of the things that I do, I have a talent. She says, I am...

put makeup on dead bodies. Like, what? Yes, I'm very good at makeup. They bring me a picture and so on. Sometimes they pay me and sometimes I just do it. I said, you're afraid to go into a cemetery. I didn't do this. She's laughing like, yeah, true story. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:20.562)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:25.332)
That's really funny. Wow, yeah, so interesting what people fear. Well, let's see.

Annalouiza (28:25.762)
that is.

Annalouiza (28:32.854)
Yeah. The last question.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:36.842)
Well, there's a couple more there. Yeah, why don't you go ahead with that one? The resource. Oh, you did resource. That's right. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. Good. Thank you. Thank God for our editor. So yeah, we always like to give everybody a chance at the end to just tell us if there's anything you wish we had asked you about, any other stories you'd like to share.

Annalouiza (28:40.386)
Well, we've already, he already did, yeah, so.

Bob Baugher (28:54.678)
that's good question. Now, you know, I love the question, how do you do this? You know, and I do have this good support system, especially with my wife to, you know, listen to me talk about some of the tough issues and sometimes cry because, you know, you realize that, you know, people hurt. I do have a website. It's my name, www.bobbauer.com.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:00.82)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Baugher (29:22.712)
They can go on there. And as you mentioned, I've written more than 150 articles relating to grief and loss. I get an email from one of the parents whose children have died and said, last night at our meeting, we talked about hatred because some of the people, their loved one was murdered or whatever. And so we thought, hey, let's call Dr. Bob and have him write an article on hate.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:47.05)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:50.762)
Wow.

Bob Baugher (29:52.226)
Well, a lot of these articles that I've written are ideas that, you know, people said, and all my articles are like two pages and people are welcome to download them and use them for any way that they want. that's.

Annalouiza (29:54.551)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:03.51)
That's great. Thank you. Yeah. We'll definitely have a link in the show notes where people can get to that. That's excellent. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Bob, if that's right way to... If that's the way you prefer. It's been a great pleasure getting to meet you and we are looking forward to what's coming next. We have more wonderful guests next week, so I hope everybody will tune in for that. so what about this poem? Let's see if I've got it here.

Annalouiza (30:03.8)
Wow

Annalouiza (30:13.592)
Thank

Bob Baugher (30:15.886)
That's what they call it. Yeah.

Annalouiza (30:21.364)
Yes.

Annalouiza (30:32.396)
Yes, I've got it here in front of me. Yep. Sure.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:33.361)
I've got it. Yeah. Do you want to read it? I mean, sometimes we read them twice because they're so cool. So maybe we'll do that.

Bob Baugher (30:39.726)
This was a poem, I'm not a big poet, my daughter is, but she was impressed. Hey, dad, you wrote a poem. This is when my mother was dying. In May of 1991, she was 67 years old. She was in her bedroom dying of cancer. my dad was, it was starting to sink in that his wife, know, the dad who had the stroke and his wife was gonna go.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:46.396)
Annalouiza (30:49.132)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:06.474)
Thank you for setting that up like that. That really sets the scene. Yeah, go ahead.

Annalouiza (31:10.86)
Mm-hmm.

OK, so this is by Bob Bauer, and it's called Staying and Leaving, Just Staying and Leaving. I watch him across from me at the dining room table as he contentedly chews red-sauced spaghetti. Suddenly, with fork in midair, his stroke-worn face freezes unblinkingly. Long saliva strands drip from lip.

to spaghetti plate below, tears well and silent screams from grief parched throat. In bedroom down, rug worn hall lay his wife, my mother, fading from his desperate grasp, her face frozen, no saliva, no tears, no scream, her pain ending his.

Just beginning.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:17.588)
Yeah.

Bob Baugher (32:18.552)
Jeez, that even gets me to hear that again.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:21.111)
It's so, so well written, so beautiful.

And her face frozen, no saliva, no tears, no scream. Her pain ending is just beginning.

Annalouiza (32:29.973)
No scream.

is.

Bob Baugher (32:35.726)
I got a quick story on that. A couple of months after my mom died, my dad would, for years, have been coming with me to go teach at Highline once or twice a week. So we're driving along and I say, dad, you know, you're a widower. His mother died when he was six. I said, you're a widower, like your dad. You know, have you ever thought about getting married again? He said, no.

No, not really. In the meantime, I had taken over all those finances and all that, and I see him more often after my mom died. And he said, no, I don't think I want to get married again. Then he brightened up and he said, besides, I already feel like I am married. I go, what do mean? He says, I feel like I'm married to you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:21.741)
Hahaha!

Bob Baugher (33:24.503)
we had a big laugh about that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:26.504)
That's great. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Substitute. Substitute wife. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you and your and your wife and your mom for that matter. Thank you so much, Bob. I really appreciate you joining us today. I really all the work you're doing is incredible and wonderful. And I'm looking forward to checking out the website and our audience will be doing so as well.

Annalouiza (33:28.216)
that's so funny. I like your dad.

Bob Baugher (33:35.81)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (33:46.614)
Yes.

Annalouiza (33:51.182)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:55.603)
Like I said, I'll let you know when it's going live. It's probably a few months, but probably in October. But we'll let you know. yeah.

Annalouiza (34:03.788)
Thank you so much too. You're a delightful prof. I like that. I want to go to school again.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:07.134)
Yeah.

Bob Baugher (34:11.114)
Thanks. Yeah, I really, it's really a kaffir when people hear some of the things I say, I want to take your class, you know? Yeah.

Annalouiza (34:17.311)
Yes, yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:17.712)
Yeah, exactly. Definitely. Well, yeah. All right. Well, take care. Thank you so much.

Bob Baugher (34:22.018)
All right, you too. All right, bye bye.

Annalouiza (34:22.508)
Thank you so much.

Annalouiza (34:27.424)
Again, why can't he be my neighbor? I know I really just enjoy his voice and the life that he has in sharing death and dying bits for so many people.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:28.234)
Yeah, never fails.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:38.302)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:45.192)
Yeah, such a radiance and presence and gift that he gives to all his students and all the people that he's met and the people he continues to work with. He's still working with people helping out and being there and, you know, the articles he's written. And so, wow, thank God for people like him. I'm looking forward to meeting more people next week. yeah, yeah. And ours as well. All right. Stop this one.

Annalouiza (34:47.371)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (34:57.144)
That's right.

Annalouiza (35:01.463)
Hahaha

Annalouiza (35:05.046)
Yes, may the goddess bless his journey so that we can keep get more of his wisdom out in the world.