Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:02.519)
Welcome back friends. I'm the Reverend Wakil David Matthews and today we are happy to meet Curt Meinhold. Curt is founder of LilyList, a platform designed to help individuals capture their life stories and create lasting legacies. Something we talk about a lot on this program. His career is built on a fountain. I was going to start at that part again. His career is built on a foundation of human connection, storytelling and practical support.

Bridging technology with deeply personal experiences.

Annalouiza (00:34.079)
Hello, and I am the Reverend Mother Annalouiza Armendariz. Curt tells us that Lily List is a true passion project shaped by a lifetime of experiences and insights. Growing up in environments where loss was part of life, Curt recognized the profound impact of preserving memories and sharing life stories.

This understanding led him to conceptualize Lily List, not just another tech solution, but as a means of fostering connection, reflection, and legacy. What began as a simple idea, creating lists to support end of life planning, has evolved into a platform for capturing the stories that define us. So excited to talk to you today, Kurt.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:18.411)
Yeah, it's such a meaningful thing to be working on. Yeah. Well, we always begin by asking when you first became aware of death in your life.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (01:19.646)
I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (01:29.014)
Early on, I don't remember the exact age. I do remember one of the first times my father kind of stopping me before I was going outside to play and saying, you know, your grandmother died. And I didn't quite know what that meant, but I sort of could tell it was upsetting to him. you know, I was six maybe seven.

And so I just kind of stood there for a little bit and said, okay, can I go out and play now? And he was like, okay. So I did, but soon after that, you my father committed suicide when I was eight or nine. I had a friend die in a house fire soon after that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:05.055)
Right.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (02:21.002)
I had a stepbrother die of AIDS, my youngest brother died at 19 in a car accident, all of these things. I realized at a pretty young age that death was kind of the flip side of the ticket to life, right? So you get a ticket to come in and then there's the opposite side of that when you have to leave at the end. so yeah, I...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:35.735)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:40.939)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (02:44.546)
That was, so I don't know if that answered your question, but that's kind of my introduction to it. And from at least teenage years, I knew that I was going to die and everyone I knew was going to die. The, you know, many famous quotes about, you know,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:48.117)
Absolutely.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (03:05.614)
Alan Watts, the only thing, one of the things that we have to remember is you and every person, you and every person you see will soon be dead. And so it's been, I think it was maybe a little bit dark for periods of my life, but on the flip side of that, it's been a motivator for me. So the ability to say, try to get as much done as I can while I'm here.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:14.859)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (03:36.342)
I think you might, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:37.793)
got muted somehow. There you go.

Annalouiza (03:38.153)
I know I muted it because there's a lot of noise here. So yeah, thank you for sharing that early experience. And I'm really sorry for those losses. Those are really intense kid experiences. I was so sorry, I'm being distracted here. Just wait. How has death impacted the story of your life?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:41.737)
Yeah

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:51.179)
Yeah, a lot of them, yeah.

Annalouiza (04:08.408)
and how you came to be here in this moment with Lily List.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (04:14.635)
I think the biggest impact was the motivational aspect. My mother said, has told me multiple times that, you know, she's, she was always worried I was somebody who burned the candle at both ends as it were. So I always had full-time jobs. Plus when I, when I was coming up, I wanted to it. I wanted to be a rock star. That was my.

My teenage years, I left home at 16 and I played in bands and like many people that played in bands, I understood the lifestyle more than the business of it. So, but I spent a lot of time doing that. And for many years of my life, I was working 50, 60, sometimes 70 hours a week, particularly when I was doing startups in the nineties.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:53.239)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:06.88)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (05:07.705)
but I was also still going to rehearsal three times a week and we were still doing two or three shows every month. And, it, it, it's been something where it's, it's just been like, try to get things done. Now I grew up in a sort of low income environment and some of the things I think about now was.

Annalouiza (05:12.447)
Wow.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (05:34.296)
people who came up with some resources, one of the benefits of say proper education at a young age or into your 20s is you kind of learn to build a garden that can be tended to and you build that garden in a way where you you plant this here because that's best and you turn this over here and you do that. My garden was just kind of

whatever grew grew. And so I ended up spending a lot of time just just chasing after things and not really understanding prioritization, how to prioritize things, how to put effort where it was most impactful. And, you know, I spent a lot of time my teens, my 20s, even into my 30s, just working really hard, but but not working really smart. And so that was just something not directly from the understanding of death, but

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:05.045)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:26.049)
Hmm. Hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (06:33.121)
that motivation to try and get stuff done without that knowledge of how to prioritize things was difficult at times.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:36.694)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:43.529)
Yeah, yeah. I can certainly see that as a result of your understanding of death because there's a sense you got to get it done, right? And we've had people say that, that the one thing they fear is that they haven't created their legacy yet, right? Yeah. And I appreciate the band. I see your...

Annalouiza (06:48.287)
That's right.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (06:57.433)
The crazy part now is that the way I think of it is, especially I had in last five years, two of my friends die, one very close music partner, they were both under 50, and we had both of my wife's parents die in the past year.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:13.559)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (07:17.255)
I'll just be honest here for better and worse, but my worry now is that I don't fear death and I don't fear dying young. I fear living too long.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:28.855)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (07:32.832)
yeah, especially, well, my kids are always thinking like, mom's gonna try to check out as soon as she gets a chance. know, like kids, let me go. I'm so excited to get to the other side. And my daughter has, you know, said it for years. Like, I'm gonna take care of you so you live to be over a hundred. Like you cannot go, you know? And I'm just like, I kind of don't feel like doing over the hundred thing. Yeah, like I wanna go home.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:41.77)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:55.691)
No thank you.

Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (08:02.091)
Well, we had my two friends, one of them died of a stroke and one of them died of cancer and they were young and it was unexpected, but it was quick. And it was sad, of course, but my in-laws, one died of dementia, one had a myriad of health issues that really kept her kind of housebound and then chair and bed bound for a number of years. And watching...

Annalouiza (08:09.833)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:27.072)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (08:30.463)
not only them go through that, but the impacts it had on family and everything else. Yeah, that's been one of my kind of, I don't know, worry is too strong a word, but it's one of the things I think about.

Annalouiza (08:34.387)
Family.

Annalouiza (08:44.926)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:44.951)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. think all of us, I can agree that it's one of the things I would like not want to have happen for my family, Yeah. So tell us more about Lily List and that work that you're doing and exactly what people are getting from it. Yeah, I'd like to hear more about that.

Annalouiza (08:50.399)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (08:54.067)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (09:06.581)
Yeah, a few driving factors on that. Coming up with this lower income status, I saw a lot of people pass and there weren't really resources there with regard to financial side of things. There was people die and they got a baseball card collection or the CD collection.

my brother died at 19 and you know I took over his CD collection and introduced me to Tupac Shakur and Lil Lunt and all this music that I never would have listened to and I still put on Tupac Shakur today.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:42.961)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (09:51.423)
That's awesome.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (09:54.562)
But the real impact of my youngest brother was he came, I think I was 13 or 14 years older than him. So my father died, my mother remarried, they had Michael quite a bit after, there was four of us, know, the old Irish twins. We were all within about a year of each other. And then Michael came, but we grew up in a turbulent environment and...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:02.316)
Mm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (10:24.619)
He really brought, you know, his legacy to me is that he really brought a sense of something bigger than the environment, something that was more important than the environment. He was a young kid and you wanted to protect him and support him as he went. And so that was something that really impacted me at a young age while he had no idea about it, but that was.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:37.824)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (10:53.997)
That was what it was. And I think one of the big impacts of his loss, particularly to my parents, because when I was growing up, my parents had substance abuse issues. My mother met my stepfather in AA, and they, you know, he had four kids from a previous marriage. She had four kids from her marriage, and they were both clean and sober and did everything, quote unquote, correctly when they were raising Michael. And of course, he was the one that ended up.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:11.863)
Thanks

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (11:23.405)
passing in this car accident. And so it was really impactful. And when he died originally, I was working in technology and I built a website and friends and family would connect there and we could share photos and do all of these things. And it was really healing and a really good outlet for all of the people. that was 2003 when that happened.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:25.29)
Hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (11:50.35)
And I've carried that with me and I've watched over and over again when people without resources, you know, the people right around them, they kind of carry those people with them. They carry the lessons with them, but everything else is lost. Now, the flip side of that is even people with resources. My wife's parents, her father started showing signs of dementia just before COVID and then COVID hit and him and his wife were

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:59.862)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (12:19.479)
basically just set aside to themselves. They weren't interacting, yeah, isolation. And they weren't really interacting with anybody. And we saw that really expedite the symptoms and make it a lot worse. And so by the time she thought, I'll try to capture some stories, he really couldn't put it together in a way that made sense. So I find that we're all left with kind of...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:33.899)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (12:47.853)
random photos and voicemails. Voicemails are big now. Everybody's got voicemails that they keep. But we lose that essence of who they were. What were the songs or books that inspired them? What were the things that were really important that guided them? And recipes are a big thing. How do we do all of that? So with Lilly List, our goal is to really try to...

Annalouiza (12:54.269)
Right, right.

Annalouiza (13:03.774)
Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:04.737)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:09.983)
Yeah, yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (13:16.627)
A, give people the ability to capture that before they go if they want to. Or B, we're just about to launch tribute pages. And tribute pages allow families to work together and collaborate to then actually capture that essence and have a page that's out there. That's not the, excuse my language, crap that Mark Zuckerberg and everybody else does, but something that's really focused on the individual.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:21.109)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:25.207)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:44.747)
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.

Annalouiza (13:46.592)
Kurt, I have to say, like, we've done, you know, so many podcasts, but your story has me weeping, which is very unusual. And I want to just, I want to bow to you because you have not only experienced so much diverse loss, but you've stepped in to help support so many other people.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:02.327)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:13.366)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (14:14.207)
and creating this legacy piece because I think that that's, it is so true. When people go to a funeral or a wake or a celebration of life, there are those stories that are passed around, but then we forget how to carry those stories for another little bit of a generation, right? Which is like, mean, our day to day in our culture is like that. I retell the stories, the very few stories that I've got from certain grandparents and uncles or whatever.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:31.628)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (14:44.127)
I really appreciate that you are curating a semblance of stories for people who really need it. And right now more than any other time, I feel like we need a story of our ancestors who have traversed through their stuff, right? Like, I really appreciate this.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:51.424)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:59.687)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, in our class.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (15:03.981)
I sincerely appreciate that. The other piece is again, like with my brother is, is how can we actually carry that beyond ourselves? So I've got the legacy that he sort of, how did he impact me and what does that mean? But even though he didn't live long enough to have his own children and things like that, but how can we continue to reach his friends? How can we continue to reach their children? How can they carry on?

Annalouiza (15:27.646)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:30.313)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (15:30.473)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (15:33.663)
And so that's a big piece of it is that generational connection. So that's, that's where we are. And yeah, David, I apologize. I didn't mean to cut you off there.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:37.367)
Absolutely.

Annalouiza (15:38.623)
Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:40.522)
Yeah.

No, no, that's fine. That's so well said and so important. And I really appreciate, Anna-Louisa, your vulnerability. And it is rare. I'll just mention that that's a rare thing for Anna-Louisa. But it's so good. Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (15:46.505)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (15:52.425)
was like, I got goosebumps too. And I was like, what's going on? But truly Kurt, I think that you are an angel. I really do.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:04.823)
Yeah, yeah, I think you're doing it. Well, and it reminds me that when we...

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (16:06.541)
I don't take compliments very well, but I appreciate it. So, thank you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:14.007)
It reminds me that when we do our class on end of life planning, we talk about, think that it's actually in the Jewish tradition, they call it an ethical will, which is similar to what you're, it's sort of what you're talking about, but people don't know what that is and people don't think about that. And so I love that you're creating a space where people can just, you know, have the motivation and set the intention and really do the work. That's certainly going to go in our list of resources for folks. So I appreciate that very, very much.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (16:44.029)
One thing I do want to call out before I forget, because my brain's old enough, I forget quickly right now. one thing we learned, so I came out of technology and particularly product management. So we did a lot of discovery, customer interviews, things like that. Death has really become something that people have to bear on their own these days. And it's really...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:48.791)
Absolutely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:07.711)
Mm. Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (17:12.151)
That's a really sad part to me. We've separated death to such an extent right now where it's like, life is something that's shared and collaborative and all that. And as soon as you get close to death, it's like, you're just stuck away in this bed until you go. And one of the things we learned very much and the reason we built these collaborative aspects into Lily List is these aren't things that people want to do solo.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:24.831)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:37.749)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (17:37.865)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (17:37.878)
In some ways they don't want to do them at all, but if they are going to do them, they don't want to do them solo. And so I think that ability to really collaborate and use the people you love, the people that can support you around it. Again, Alan Watts, who I think in his personal life was basically a jerk, but he had a lot of really great insights into life. know, one of the things, this is...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:42.582)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:55.671)
Thanks

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:00.119)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (18:05.377)
The last album I put out with my music partner who passed away in 2020, we had some Alan Watts quotes in the first song on the album. And at the end, you know, he says that, you know, one of the things that is, and I'm paraphrasing, but one of the things that's really important is the ability at the end of life to be able to give up and find somebody if you have to that can help you to get to that point.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:27.255)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (18:31.425)
because by giving up, helps you to really understand what life is really about. So dying actually gives you the opportunity to understand what life is really about. And I find that very powerful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:31.576)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:36.854)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:42.977)
Very powerful. Yeah, yeah, surrender. that's such a, yeah. Ultimately that's done for us whether or not, you know. Another thing you mentioned earlier was that people do this solo and the other people that do something solo tend to be the caregiver sometimes. So there might be a caregiver, but they often are alone and need these resources too. So I think that this collaboration that you're creating is just...

Annalouiza (18:45.745)
Surrender. That's right. And like leave all the attachments, right? Just it's done.

Annalouiza (19:08.479)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:11.585)
going to be so useful and so helpful for people in many different spaces. So thank you again. That's a beautiful thing.

Annalouiza (19:16.339)
Yeah. Yep.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:20.747)
All right, you're back.

Annalouiza (19:22.891)
yeah, so what are your biggest challenges with doing this? What do you find hinders this good work?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:31.671)
Or slows you down.

Annalouiza (19:33.352)
It slows you down.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (19:35.852)
There's challenges on many fronts, as with everything. You know, again, I've always had this sort of entrepreneurial spirit with music and on the humanity life side, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The things that we learned and learned from each other were, mean, human that I've ever learned has come out of my music experience and the collaborative aspects with other people.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:03.574)
Mm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (20:05.857)
From a business standpoint, we failed miserably. And so I was always working originally as a printer and then into technology. And I've worked for 30 years doing websites and applications and AI and machine learning and all these sorts of things.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:09.143)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (20:09.491)
Hahaha

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (20:28.557)
For Lily List in particular, one of the biggest challenges I've had in my life is again, going back to my early childhood, I didn't grow up in environments with many resources and I didn't grow up in environments where you were told that you were doing a great job and there was a lot of that emotional support and thoughts on wellbeing. I remember to this day as like a, I don't know, six or seven year old and

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:45.024)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:50.027)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (20:58.475)
We used to have water heaters. used to have to go in the basement and turn the water on to fill it off and then turn it off. And I thought I turned it off and I didn't and the basement flooded and the landlord was down there and my mother said, go ask if you can help. And I went down and said, you know, my mother said to come down and see if I can help. he said, you helped enough already. And like those types of interactions, you know,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:04.609)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:19.542)
Ugh.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (21:24.661)
you carry with you. And so for me, I have to this day, this deep imposter syndrome and I manage it a lot better. But the way that I've kind of gotten over it is not to say I'm as good as everyone else, which is what everybody tells you you should do. It's that I'm no worse than anybody else. And that's been something that has really

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:26.327)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:33.399)
Mm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (21:53.836)
you know, when you're in that mindset, you second think a lot, second guess, right? So is this the right thing? Who should I talk to? This person gave me this feedback. Is that real? you know, whereas a lot of friends of mine who came up in different environments are just like, hustle, just keep going, just keep moving forward. so that's been a piece that's a hurdle. On the other side is...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:59.711)
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:09.533)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (22:22.517)
I don't know, America's in a strange place. I kind of feel like we are moving back. We're moving into a second Gilded Age in my opinion. And this, don't want to get political at all. I don't really pay attention to politics that much, but the concentration of wealth makes it very difficult to find funding these days unless, you you really have to have that network to be able to move forward. And so,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:25.77)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:32.641)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:45.537)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (22:50.253)
To me, those are kind of the biggest challenges. The flip side of that on the helpful side is a fantastic, wonderful woman, Shannon Smith, who's my co-founder of Lily List and much smarter than I. we were like yin and yang. The things that I'm terrible at, she's great at. And so she's been amazingly helpful. And then again, meeting my wife, who I met in 89, we got married in 2000, but.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:08.129)
You

You

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (23:18.337)
We've now known each other much longer than we haven't known each other in our lives. And having that support, that long-term support, I think is probably the number one thing that kind of blunts some of those challenges on the other side.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:21.409)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:33.363)
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Well, you've kind of done a good job of answering the question we usually ask next is how do you take care of yourself? But that's fine. No, no, no, no apologies. You're helping us out here. But I think you mentioned this earlier and a little bit, I'd like to maybe talk a little more about what does frighten you about the end of life for yourself.

Annalouiza (23:39.721)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (23:41.746)
your apologies if I'm diving for you.

Annalouiza (23:43.613)
No, it's a conversation.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:57.705)
Is there anything more that you'd like to talk about in that regard? far as, I mean, what you were saying earlier was just that you haven't, you know, we've heard many of the people say this, that you haven't done enough or you haven't created the legacy of your own, right? Is there anything else that frightens you around the end of life?

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (24:13.069)
I'm again, honestly living too long. That's what frightens me. I don't want to have 10 years of not being able to care for myself, but still being kept alive. I'm a proponent of physician assisted suicide. I feel...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:16.203)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:24.118)
Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:28.321)
Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:33.91)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (24:38.989)
I mean, I'm only in my 50s now, but there's days I just, feel tired. I feel like I've lived quite a bit. I feel like I've lived almost three or four lives at this point. And that's not to say like I'm hoping to die or I want to die. I've never been suicidal in my life, which is good. But I, you know,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:44.737)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:50.047)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (25:08.941)
I think that there is a, again, that's how we've separated death and life. We've really made it something most people are fearful of. And you guys have done a lot of these conversations and maybe you can speak more to this, but it was interesting. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine who's in his seventies and he's been having heart issues and he's going in for another procedure. And I told him, said, know, when I had some time in my twenties, just...

stopped being afraid of dying. I don't know why, but it made life a lot easier in some ways. But I mentioned that to him and he said, you know, he worries about his wife and leaving her in a difficult situation. But I think when I hear things like that and I hear them regularly, it's just another way of saying I'm afraid of dying.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:45.239)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:56.983)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (26:08.077)
because, you know, as I said, my wife and I met in 1989 and I know she would have a difficult time if I dropped dead tomorrow, but I also believe she'd figure it out. Like life goes on, people figure it out and take what you can and live the rest of your life and be happy living the rest of your life. You know, life and death is a shared experience, but it's an individual thing at the end of the day. And so...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:20.299)
Right, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:25.578)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:29.152)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:37.024)
Absolutely.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (26:37.751)
For me, I really don't worry about dying. I probably have a little bit of fear of what that process looks like, having seen it so often. But beyond that, I'm not too worried about the death part. And I think maybe, know, societally, we'd make better decisions if more people were less afraid of it.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:45.542)
Right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:52.791)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:01.395)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've talked about a couple of times the kind of stigma around hospice, the stigma around dying, the stigma about, you know, you've got to fight cancer, you know, and you've got to win against cancer. And this whole, I mean, really, it's a big part of what we're doing here. And thank you for bringing that all up because it's so important for people to recognize that, yeah, this is a part of life and living. Annalouiza, you were talking about pointing out the planet the other day for somebody, right? You want to say that, mention that real quick because that was a great

Annalouiza (27:28.894)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:30.763)
brilliant way of putting it.

Annalouiza (27:32.362)
Well, I mean, it was just yesterday when I was at a ceremony and I got to talk to the mayor's assistant and he asked about what I did and he was doing that little chat before the thing started. But he was his initial piece when I said I I support death dying in a myriad of ways. And and he again recoiled a little bit. He's like, God, what a depressing job. Like, you know.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:57.503)
You

Annalouiza (27:59.712)
Do you have to do it? And I just started on my spiel. said, this is one of my most beloved areas in the world to speak about. we kept talking. And then he said, I just don't like it. When people die, it's such a big deal. And I said, let's look around right now. It's like the leaves are falling. Those leaves are dying.

There's death around us. The breath that you just exhaled is a small death for you. I was like, people are dying every minute of every day. And just because we don't know that we don't feel like this, big heaviness of it, but death happens all around us every single minute, right? And I was like, the sooner you get to acknowledge that, the easier it'll be to contain.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:43.411)
Every moment.

Annalouiza (28:50.687)
the really close relationships that will end up dying in the future, right? So he was, think he suddenly, did, he did this like look around, he's like, my God. And I was like, yeah, stuff's, everything's dying all the time.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:56.406)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:02.231)
Nature. Yeah, nature is the greatest teacher, right? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (29:08.492)
Yeah. I think a big thing relates to that, at least in my opinion, is, you know, the way that I think about it is my brother who died at 19 or my music partner that died at 47, it comes down to the death is hard and it's sad. quite frankly for me, what's really difficult is when our pets die and we have to put our pets down.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:32.117)
Mm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (29:34.124)
That's because they don't really know what's happening and the communication isn't there. but, that's really hard. But when I think of my brother who was 19, when he died, I do wish that he, he'd had more life, but at the same point, I wouldn't, if I had to trade his, his early death for, for, let's say the, the, the alternative is not having known him at all.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:36.747)
Right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:49.014)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:02.069)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (30:03.345)
I am, that's an easy trade. Those 19 years that I got with them and the impact he had on my life, which is maybe a selfish way to look at it, but that is worth a lot more than it would be to say, never having known him at all, because I don't know how I'd have turned out if I'd not known him at all.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:07.403)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:14.783)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:23.841)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (30:25.853)
Right. Kurt, I'm just going to keep weeping today.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:26.967)
Such a beautiful way of putting it. Thank you. Wow. I love that. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (30:36.269)
.

Annalouiza (30:37.651)
So, Kurt, when you're going through all these things, how do you keep yourself resource? What do you do when it gets a little too heavy?

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (30:48.597)
I just go away, I walk away. I mean, that's the only thing that you can do. I do still play music, not nearly as much, but it's funny when my wife and I met, you as a teenager and in my twenties, I was, I don't know, wild, maybe even a bit overly wild. And what...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:50.956)
haha

Annalouiza (30:51.293)
Yeah. Or you play music?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:54.871)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:10.753)
You

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (31:17.453)
I consciously, had friends that were sort of going to jail for things. And what happened with me was I consciously was like, I'm gonna end up like these people unless I change. And so I consciously just started making myself not get upset at things. So somebody cuts me off instead of chasing after them like I maybe would have been want to do when I was 19. I would just...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:21.91)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:37.089)
Hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (31:46.474)
slow down and stop. So my wife sometimes jokes that she thinks the pendulum swung too far the other way. And I can come across as not caring as much as I should about certain things. But honestly, when things get really bad, I was doing sort of consulting work before I started Lily List and

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:52.855)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:58.263)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (32:09.419)
You know, if a day was just really bad, was, there was client issues and, know, I led a team of 20 people and maybe there's 10 client issues in one day and you're just on call after call of being berated and trying to sort things out. You've got to have that 15 minutes where you get up, walk away, go for a walk with the dogs or go in the backyard with the dogs and throw the ball and then come back. again, that, that ability to disconnect and.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:33.473)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (32:39.137)
because you can really get tunnel vision into these things that at the end of the day don't mean anything. They really don't mean anything. And what does mean something is to get outside into nature and talk with a neighbor or talk with a friend or play with the dogs. Those are the really important things in life. And it doesn't require a two week vacation to Aruba. It requires sometimes just 20 minutes. know, sometimes it's

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:41.611)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:45.269)
Yep.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:58.956)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:02.771)
You

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (33:08.333)
two in the afternoon and take the dogs outside and open a beer and sit out there and drink a beer with them. And that's what you got to do. And that kind of resets. It's like the reset button on the brain and then you can go back and tackle whatever you have to.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:13.079)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:22.038)
Yeah.

Yeah, such an important thing to remember. Yeah, I think sometimes a two week vacation is more stressful. You got to take a break afterward. Yeah. Well, thank you. That's really everything you've shared with us has just really been deeply inspiring and moving and we really appreciate you. Is there anything you wish we'd have asked you that we didn't get around to?

Annalouiza (33:30.335)
Absolutely.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (33:31.477)
Yeah,

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (33:49.698)
That's a good question and not something I think about when I join podcast interviews. No, but I would be curious here in just a bit more, you know, some of the things I know I saw a reverend in your name, David and Anna Louisa, if I'm saying that correctly, if I'm not correct me, but you know.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:54.775)
I'm

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (34:16.41)
How did you guys get to the point where you're interviewing me?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:22.819)
Wow, that's a great story. Yeah, it seems like that's two people in a row now have asked us that I think. That's kind of funny because it usually, usually don't. That's great. I appreciate that. Do you want to tell the story real quick?

Annalouiza (34:36.745)
Well, I mean, we started out in seminary always talking about death. And then, you know, we just have built this relationship where we can be very honest and open and curious about these conversations. And so when after seminary, we were meeting on a weekly basis to do some teacher to teacher, student to student learning. Right. And we'd always almost always Wakil is that true?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:59.095)
Right. Yeah.

Annalouiza (35:05.329)
almost always some, some, yeah, something about death would kind of like bubble up either. Like it didn't even matter. Or like, you know, us holding space for the dying climate, the planet and our mother earth and the trees or river who's passed, you know, it's like, so suddenly I think one day is like, you know, we should just have a podcast and just have people talk about death and dying. And that's where we kind of started thinking about.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:05.397)
That's true, almost always.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:10.465)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:17.953)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (35:31.613)
why would we do this? And part of it is that we're so comfortable with all aspects around the end that why not invite people to also share so that hopefully more people will be out there and think, you know, it is an important conversation to have with loved ones. And if I am scared, I'd like to figure out why and, you know, find ease.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:50.325)
Yeah. And the reason we kind of go through those questions is it really helps people normalize this conversation in a way that they don't maybe don't have that choice. We were both in interfaith school seminary. So we're both, I think you can say interfaith and no faith companions with people and grief companions. so, yeah, we worked in, I worked in hospice and Louisa worked in funeral stuff. we were

Annalouiza (36:00.049)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (36:06.323)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (36:13.395)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:20.151)
kind of naturally comfortable. guess death positive is the way some people call it. Yeah. And so, yeah, we just felt like it's an important thing for people to start to get more comfortable with. So that's thank you for asking.

Annalouiza (36:32.159)
Mm-hmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (36:34.133)
Yeah, no. And I also apologize. I kept calling you David. I didn't notice the Wakil in front of your name. I did see also that when you booked for Lily List, it came across as David. So I apologize for calling you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:41.45)
No worries.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:50.155)
Yeah, no worries. go, either one is good. It's all good.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (36:54.445)
One other question I have is so given your focus on death, which I say not as a bad thing at all, and I apologize also if I'm turning into the interviewer here instead of the interviewee. If you think about it, if you found out you were going to die tomorrow, is there a word or phrase that you feel would align or sum up?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:06.889)
No worries.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (37:22.733)
where you are today.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:24.855)
Yeah, well in fact my wife has a terminal diagnosis right now and I'm so I'm kind of living and this you know we started all this and we started classes and everything else well before that happened so it has sort of come into my life as a as a reality right and the one the word I come back to every time is surrender and just acceptance and surrender kind of a yeah

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (37:30.893)
wow.

Annalouiza (37:36.861)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (37:51.284)
Yeah. I, you know, for the last month in my, on my morning walks, I have prayers for, for a while there. Wakil was teaching me about Sufism. And so was like, I'd have my, my wazifa and they still kind of bubble up actually. It's like, Ooh, there's, there's one for today. But you know, I wake up and I start my prayer time during these walks and it's been interesting to me that the word attachments keeps coming up during my walk.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:07.229)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (38:19.069)
And so I keep thinking about it. And I'll just literally say it out loud, attachments. What are the attachments that I have to release? What are the attachments? And I just figure it's spirit teaching me something. But if I were to get a call today that tomorrow is it, I would be delighted.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:34.167)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:42.561)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (38:43.517)
I really would be, I just, I mean, this is why I think my kids always worry about me, always wanting to check out as fast as I can. I'm given a ticket, I'll take it, thank you. But part of it is that I think it has a lot to do with my theology, my spiritual experience, and that I know that I'm going back into the...

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (38:43.757)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:53.291)
You

Annalouiza (39:06.097)
into the community of beloveds. Like I have literally experienced that in prayer time and lucid dreaming and all these different ways. And so I know what I'm going where I'm going to. And it's OK. And I'm delighted that I've experienced this. I'm delighted that my life has spoken into other people's lives. And hopefully I will make an impact, whether small or long term. But delight.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:33.591)
Interesting, yeah, it's a great word.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (39:34.797)
Well, yeah, I appreciate it. I connect with both of them. Acceptance and surrender, I think, is a great way to think about it. And then the one thing I say, Annalouiza, that some people like and some people don't is I'm not going looking for death, but if it knocked on the door, I'd open it.

Annalouiza (39:42.662)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (39:54.976)
Yeah, absolutely. that's how I, I totally, that's what I feel as well. again, it's like this also life is an umbrella and it's birth and death, right? It's not, I don't know. just, I don't feel it. Like it's really strange and like something to be afraid of. But I will say Instagram reels a couple of days ago had Guillermo de Toro. Do you know who that is? The director.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:56.959)
Open the door.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:19.851)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (40:20.247)
Yeah, yeah, the Moffey direction.

Annalouiza (40:21.969)
Yeah, and so somebody was interviewing him and she went on and on about his movies and they touched the very dark and primal aspects and yet he seems to be a very nice and happy person. And I loved what he said. And she said, well, where do you think this comes from? How do you hold that? And he's like, first of all, I'm Mexican.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:36.567)
You

Annalouiza (40:45.427)
This is all of our lives. We are joyful and we live life to its fullest and we celebrate death and think, yes, there you are too. You're part of our life. And I'm like, yeah, Guillermo, boom, that's it. I'm Mexican.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (40:47.319)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:48.405)
We celebrate.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (40:59.509)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:59.708)
That's right. Yeah. Good answer. Good answer. Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (41:04.557)
Well, thank you both very much. I love it. And I'm so happy to have met you and to have talked to you. if I could do anything.

Annalouiza (41:10.483)
Yes. Reach out again, Kurt, because I really, something is telling me that you and I have like a soul contract somewhere because I feel like I've met you before.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:12.449)
Gotcha.

Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:20.011)
Yeah, I think so.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (41:20.397)
Yeah, I'll definitely connect with you guys and if there's anything I can do to support you as you go, let me know.

Annalouiza (41:28.285)
Yeah, but wait a second, the poem, do you have your poem? Are you ready to read your poem?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:28.503)
Yeah.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (41:32.679)
I didn't know I was supposed to read it. I sent it, but I did not appear.

Annalouiza (41:35.709)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:35.841)
Yeah, well, we can read it too, but if you'd like to, it's up to you.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (41:40.17)
I'm going to let you guys read it because my mother-in-law just died about a month ago. And so my wife is actually in England right now, which is where her mother lived. And they did a memorial service on Saturday and that was the poem she read. So the woman, the person that wrote the poem was the high school teacher of my mother-in-law and she was her favorite poet. And

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:46.689)
Okay.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:57.771)
beautiful.

Annalouiza (42:04.863)
Mmm.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (42:08.877)
If you don't mind, you can read it and tack it on at the end. She sent it to me. I read through it, but I did not prep at all to read it. So if you want, I'll let you guys run.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (42:19.139)
yeah, we can read it. We're glad to do that. Yeah, so you can stay and listen if you want or you can sign out, but we would love to just go ahead and read it. Do you want to read it, Annalouiza? Yeah, go ahead. And sometimes we read them twice.

Annalouiza (42:19.443)
That's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (42:29.981)
Sure. Do want to stick around? Kurt, do you want to stick around and listen? All right. All right, so this poem is called Atlas, and it's from, who is it? is the name of the poet?

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (42:37.003)
I'll hang out, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (42:48.424)
U-A-F-M

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (42:48.659)
It's UA. Yeah, UA. Yep.

Annalouiza (42:50.289)
You a fanthrope? Okay. And it's from Safe as Houses, the Peter Lu Poets from 1995. It's called Atlas.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (42:52.055)
Phantorp. Yeah.

Annalouiza (43:02.867)
There is a kind of love called maintenance, which stores the WD-40 and knows when to use it, which checks the insurance and doesn't forget the milkman, which remembers to plant bulbs, which answers letters, which knows the way the money goes, which deals with dentists and road fund tax and meeting trains, and postcards to the lonely.

which upholds the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living, which is atlas. And maintenance is the sensible side of love, which knows what time and weather are doing to my brickwork, insulates my faulty wiring, laughs at my dry rotten jokes, remembers my need for gloss and grouting, which keeps my suspect edifice upright in air.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (43:49.975)
you

Annalouiza (43:59.784)
as Atlas did the sky. Mm. It is really, really good.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:03.743)
That's really, really good. That's really, really good.

Permanently rickety elaborate structures of living. Yeah. Maintenance.

Annalouiza (44:13.087)
That is love. my God. It's beautiful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:15.285)
Yeah, yeah, that's so good. So down to it. Really thank you so much. Well, we really appreciate you Kurt and we'll say goodbye and just can just hang on a minute. Make sure you're all recorded. I think everything is up. Let me just double check. Yeah, it looks like it is. All right, well, if it doesn't finish with you, I'll send you a note on how to do it. You just basically log back on for a few seconds, but it should be good. Thank you again and we will be in touch.

Annalouiza (44:22.697)
Thank you, Kurt.

Annalouiza (44:43.817)
Thank you, Kurt. Yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:45.207)
Yeah, thanks for all you do. All right, take care.

Curt Meinhold, LilyList (44:45.528)
Thank you both, we'll catch up soon. Bye.

Annalouiza (44:47.647)
Okay, bye.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:53.087)
Okay.

Annalouiza (44:53.225)
I don't know. I just, I feel like there are so many Kurtz in the world too, who have gone through so many deaths and experienced, like felt so many things, right? And I feel like this legacy work that he's doing is really important for everyone, but especially those kind of folk who have felt like kind of...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:03.35)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:17.024)
Everybody.

Annalouiza (45:22.525)
on their own journey and it seems so bizarre, right? Like, I don't know. I feel like he's kin. I feel like he's my kin for sure. Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:25.271)
Yeah, yeah, so lonely, Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Anybody that can get tears out of you is a... I know, I know, I love it, yeah. No, it was such a beautiful story and I just really appreciate him and he's so down to earth, know, and he's just like, this is just what I've learned, what I'm doing, you know, so how cool is that? Yeah, and we'll definitely want to add those to our resources list for now on, so.

Annalouiza (45:34.171)
It's so rare. It's so rare.

Annalouiza (45:43.155)
Yes!

Annalouiza (45:46.664)
Yeah.

I just,

Absolutely. just, you know, I hope any listener out there who has a loved one, you know, can get started on this because I do also appreciate that they're not doing it alone, which is what we tend to do when we want to memorialize our loved one. Like in general, people don't have the time or forget the stories at the moment when you're being asked. But if you could just kind of curate the recipes and the songs, like it just, it's so lovely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:04.405)
Right.

Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:16.629)
Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. Yeah, I think it's even going to be a bigger emphasis on when I'm talking to people about planning because, you know, it's we kind of we kind of go over that say that's a good idea, but to stop and say there's actually a way to go online and really think about, you know, exactly what you need to do is it or just do it yourself, but just to really think about all the pieces that you can add to that. So important. Wow.

Annalouiza (46:32.605)
and start the process.

Annalouiza (46:39.165)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:43.681)
We are blessed, we are blessed, we are so blessed. And I love you. Take care, have a great day, adios.

Annalouiza (46:47.463)
Absolutely. I love you too. All right. Adios.