SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, you know, I've been wondering why grief feels so isolating here in the United States. I wonder what we could learn from cultures where mourning is shared collectively instead of carried alone. In this really fun episode, we get to explore the powerful differences between North American grief culture and communal mourning traditions in Malawi, Africa. In their culture, they use stories, movement practice, uh ritual, music, and conversation to work through their grief. They do it together. We explore how that collective grieving in villages or in the whole village fosters resilience, healing, spiritual connection, and a sense of belonging after loss.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

That's right. What a lovely time with a great storyteller, Masanko Banda. We are going to be talking about the Malawi funeral traditions and communal mourning, why many people in the United States grieve in isolation, healing grief through movement, storytelling and music, how we can honor our ancestors and the collective remembrance. And there are practical ways to support grief in your own community. This conversation is for anyone navigating grief, supporting others through their loss, working in death positive spaces, or just searching for more human humane ways to mourn and heal together.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:34

Join us.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, stay tuned. Welcome to this episode. Today we are very blessed to be able to meet and talk with Masanko Banda. Masanko learned the fine art of storytelling and dance from his elders in Malawi. In their company, he spent many long days and nights listening to stories and dancing to music that captivated his mind, nourished his soul, and strengthened his spirit. Masanko earned a degree in theater and dance from the College of Worcester in Ohio, and his master's degree in culture and theology from Holy Names University in Oakland, not far from where we went to seminary.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

That's right. After graduating, Masanko chose to devote his life to using dance, storytelling, music, and drumming to inspire people of all ages to work together to bring about peace, social justice, and cultural understanding. Masanko shares his stories, sermons, and music with many audiences around the world. For his work all over the United States and the world, he was awarded the unsung hero of compassion commendation by his holiness the Dalai Lama in May of 2001.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

That's phenomenal. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Very good, very good.

SPEAKER_04 3:00

So happy to have you.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah. So wonderful to be here. Thank you, Ana Luisa and uh Wakill. Am I pronouncing your name right? Anna Luisa? Yeah, are we how are we doing with yours?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Masankong is good. Okay. Yeah, great. Well, um we we like, you know, I think that everybody's lives and and your work probably as well is related to death and dying. You know, we we have so we like to just know from just kind of start with how has death affected the work you do, or how's death could contributed to um the the way your your life has unfolded.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

Wow, that's a very interesting question because I can say that throughout life, I mean, one of the things, oh one of the things when people ask me how it is different living in the United States and living in Malawi, one of the examples that I give is that of how funerals are approached in the two countries. I lived in Mala uh I lived in the United States for thirty years, and I think in the entire thirty years, I attended five funerals. Whereas in Malawi, that would not be possible. You know, in Malawi, you attend a funeral because somebody in your community has passed away, regardless of whether you know them or met them. You know, so we attend funerals by neighborhood or by village or by church. And in, you know, to such an extent that when we went through the AIDS uh pandemic and crisis in the 90s, you know, kind of late 80s, early 90s, and most recently when we went through COVID, as families, we had to say, okay, there's five of us in the family. Anytime we hear uh we get a phone call that somebody has passed on, we will take turns into the funeral. Because if we go to each funeral, then none of us are going to work or none of us are going to get anything done. So we would have schedules. Okay, today, Masankwe, it's your turn. And then the next day or the day after that, because you know, people were dying, you know, during AIDS and then during um COVID, at that rapidity, we had to say, okay, one day and then two days later. So I can say that on it on a kind of like uh everyday basis, those are the differences in the two arenas. Yeah. Personally, I would say April 10th, 2010, when my father passed away, that was my first time when I felt like my feet had been taken from under me. Luckily, I was 30, you know, my in my late 30s, so I was a grown-up. Um but there was a sense of oh, my foundation has shifted. Yeah. And in actual fact, I have now become the foundation. Wow. So there was a real yeah, there was a real body feeling that oh, I am now the foundation. I am now the elder, and began to approach life from that perspective of being an elder. So as an adult, that was definitely uh something very significant. And what it did is it put my work in the perspective of I used to get my wisdom from my father and pass it on. And now I'm getting my wisdom from him as ancestor. Ancestor. And combining it with the years of wisdom that he had given me, and that then infused my work. But I do want to say really quickly, when I was nine years old, that was my first instance of having somebody walk out of our house in Blantyre in southern Malawi, where I grew up. And two weeks later, they came back in a coffin. So that was my first experience of somebody walking out of our house, coming back two uh weeks later in a coffin. And, you know, my grandmother gathered, I mean grandf my father gathering all us kids and letting us know that our grandfather was no longer going to be with us. Because we were children, we didn't go to the graveyard or to the church service. But what they did was before they carried him out to the hearse, they put the coffin on the veranda. My dad stood on one side, my uncle, his younger brother, stood on the other side, and one by one, they lifted us up and passed us over the coffin. And I distinctively remember that my uncle let go of me seconds before my father grabbed me. But I had no sensation of falling. So, in other words, between my uncle letting go and my father grabbing me, there was a period of time when none of them were touching me, and yet I didn't fall. It was explained to us later that because this was our first significant passing, it was a way of ensuring that his spirit would continue in us children, grandchildren who were left behind.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Wow, what a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_04 10:37

Yeah, that is so very interesting. How and how culturally we care for the spirits of our children instead of shielding them from the possibility of unknowns, but and that's a blessing.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

It's like exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 10:52

So it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Right. Yeah. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

So I really appreciate this story on so many cultural, personal, world stories. Would you mind telling me what you're currently working on?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

How many different things. Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

You know, I I um being in the what I call the gig economy, I've been in a constant state of, okay, what's next? So I've just finished what I call my January, February, or my winter swing, which is mostly West Coast, California, and Seattle, uh, where I met Raquel. And now I'm going back to Malawi, which is where I also have a home, Malawi being my home country. So I'm going back to Malawi, and uh when I'm in Malawi, I am a consultant. So, in other words, I engage more of my left brain, but still a lot of the creative right brain infused. So I work with organizations like the United Nations, Red Cross, um, GIZ, all of the agencies that provide various aspects of education, health, assistance to Malawi. And I work with them on aspects of team building, leadership development, capacity building, and uh uh community, not community service, but uh service delivery, proper service delivery to their clients. So that's what I'll be doing the last week of March. The first two weeks of April, I'm working on a project. This is now my fourth year, where we are working with young agripreneurs, which is the new term. Not entrepreneurs, but agripreneurs. And these are young people from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini, Tanzania, Malawi, Madagascar, Lesotho, who are saying we can't get traditional jobs because unemployment is very high. But if I have two acres of land or five hectares, I can grow something or I can rear pigs or sheep or goats and make a living. And so to bridge the gap between the knowledge they have as farmers, but the, you know, but lacking the skills of presentation, proposal writing, economics. So I'm working with a colleague from Germany, uh, an organization called Andreas Herms Academy, which is working together with the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions to train young people in how they can work the land and be profitable and be able to say, this is my living. This is how Africa to make a living. So I'll be doing that the second week of April. And then I come back to the United States, and when I come back to the United States, I've got a whole series of things lined up. I've got a week-long um interplay retreat for black, indigenous people of color that's happening in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

Um, I've been waiting, wait, wait, let's just I'm gonna stop you right there because this is what I'm very interested in. Yes. I'm interested in the interplay.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:15

And this is how you and Joaquil have met. But could you tell us a little bit more specifically what you just said? It's like POC, interplay. Like, tell, explain to our listeners what it what is interplay and how is it beneficial?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, and real quickly, before you do that, my um daughter and son-in-law live in that part of Pennsylvania, I think, just north of uh Philadelphia. Is it north of Philadelphia?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

North of Philadelphia. Pittsburgh, oh, okay. Maybe a little further away. But they are young agreeneurs. Oh unfortunately, those are not people of color. Anyway, go ahead, please. Please uh answer.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Um Interplay is an active creative practice for unlocking the wisdom of the body. It was started by Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton Henry about 32 years ago in Oakland, California. And essentially, all of that, you know, you know, active creative practice for unlocking the wisdom of the body using dance, music, and storytelling. The central premise is that all of us at some level can find access to our songs, can find access to our music, and can access our stories. What's missing is how do we manifest or how do we give an outward expression to the songs, dances, and stories that we walk around with. And so interplay helps people, facilitate people's connection to their stories, to their songs, to their dances in community. So we have interplay communities all over the United States, all in parts of Europe. It's now blooming in East and Central Africa. I'm bringing it to Malawi. I mean, it's also in India, in Thailand, in Australia, and in New Zealand. Yeah, Thailand. Yeah, I mentioned Thailand, yes. So communities get together and they have whether it's a day-long interplay event, some of them just meet for two hours, and then occasionally we will have what's called an intensive as opposed to intensive. And intensive is more like, let's not, you know, let's not take ourselves too seriously. But they'll have an intensive that can be around a theme, or it can be around a collection of people who are, say, teachers or chaplains or pastors, or just people in the ordinary, you know, different uh careers in life who want to find a place where they can get together with other folk to sing, to dance, to share stories. Within the program or within the practice, we have what's called a life practice program that allows people to go more depth into the material, to learn the tools of interplay, but also the forms of interplay. So the life practice program is about a year-long program which has the secrets of interplay at the beginning and the secrets at the end, and then they do various workshops in the middle. And if you do the life practice program, then you can infuse interplay into your work. When you graduate from the life practice program, you go into the secret of leading or the certified to become a certified interplay leader. And when you become a certified interplay leader, then you can actually hang a shingle that says I'm an interplay leader. You can come to me and I will teach you interplay, which is what I am. I've been a certified interplay leader now for about 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah, yeah. And I'll just give witness that he's a great leader. We had a really good time together when he was here in Seattle. I really appreciated that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. Very interesting, very good. Um, something popped into my head, and I'll see if it comes back.

SPEAKER_04 20:04

But Ana Luisa, was there anything else that you're I remember we had a guest who was an interplay leader? Yes, we did. And we we talked about how it supports the grief process. And I'm just like, you know, can you speak to that? Sure is. That is very interesting to me.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

Yes, yes. Um, we have uh one of our colleagues, Dr. Sheila Collins. Now, Sheila, Dr. Sheila Collins um lost two children during the AIDS pandemic. And out of that grief, she has written, I believe, two books. The Art of Grieving was the first one. Um, and even as I'm saying that, I'm forgetting now the title of the second one. But in the art of grieving, what she has done through her process is to bring an artistic approach to grieving. When somebody is grieving, whether it's an individual or whether it's a family, more often than not, there's kind of a two-phase. There's the immediate aftermath. Something has happened, you've lost a loved one, and you kind of go into what I call automatic mode. You know, we need to, you know, arrange the funeral, the memorial service, and all of that, and the person's, you know, uh, you know, inform family and acquaintances. Once that is over, there's now this empty time. People are no longer calling. Um you're not busy with the post-death rituals. How do you then find a way to deal with this, what I call deeper grief that is not surrounded by activity? Interplay gives us tools where you can find a way to be with the stories that come out. Tools of how you can share the stories in a way that doesn't bring you down, but in a way that, you know, I won't say builds you up, but in a way that brings in the healing process. So when you get together with a group of people, there's songs that you can share, there's stories that you can share. And we have this thing called dancing on behalf of, which is one of the forms that you know has been created by Interplay. And dancing on behalf of can be dancing on behalf of a colleague that has lost a job, dancing on behalf of somebody who is not feeling well. But it can also be dancing on behalf of a person that has recently gone through a bereavement, which then also works in terms of dancing on behalf of the soul of the person who has become an ancestor, but also dancing on behalf of those who have been left behind so that their burden can be in a way lightened. So that's what I have found where people really are able to lean into the tools of interplay. Like the tool of affirmation that says you don't have to explain how you're feeling, but just know that whatever it is you're feeling is valid, even if you can't give it words. Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Um, we have a tool.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 24:29

Well, we're just well, I I'm gonna stop you right there for like this because I I we we are hoping to help folks who are in the grief process. Yes, yes, you know, people who have passed. And um, I realized recently that there are times when others can't bear our grief. Others can't bear our story.

SPEAKER_03 24:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 24:52

And sometimes we can't bear our own story, right? Right. And we like shuffle it deep, deep, deep inside us. So I am like very curious about interplay as a place where people who are struggling, articulating grief with language, which sometimes is so limited, yes, um, to find an interplay group, you know, in their communities and see if this is a good medicine for moving through their personal grief or responding to the grief of a loved one, right? Like because I feel like you know, now we're learning more about somatic, somatic therapies and understanding that our bodies have more information for us that we're neglecting because we don't have the language, we don't have the skills or the the the mentors to show us. I will say when my sister died, I had a spiritual director, and out of nowhere, I just I commented that I've been having toe pain since my sister had died. And she stopped and she said, Have you told your body your sister's dead? And I was like, Hello. No, because she said, You have articulated what happened in your mind, and your heart understands it because it's broken, but your body that is functioning and you know, doing the work has not been told that something has changed in our plane. And she's like, spend some time talking to your body. So I'm really delighted by what I hear Interplay can do for all of us in terms of creating more language that's not like spoken language.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Yeah, we get we get times together in Interplay to to dance, uh, you know, to move, to to share with movement or to combine movement and song, to make up songs, to make up stories.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Um, it's all just very um improv uh improvisational and beautiful in that way that you really do you have all these different, and as he was saying, there's all these different tools that they offer.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

Yes. For example, um, I mentioned the COVID pandemic. Um, unfortunately, one of the victims of the COVID pandemic was my mother. Uh my mother passed away on the 26th of August uh 2020. Four weeks later, I was in the United States on my what I call my fall swing. So I was um I was in, I went to the leader gathering, um, and then I I went to a few other, and what I found was that it wasn't necessarily I mean, people knew because I had posted on Facebook and I had sent a message to the for the different forums. So people knew that my mother had passed from COVID. However, when we when I was together with interplayers, we would be sharing stories, and people would be sharing stories about their mother, either also deceased or alive. And I found this curious, what I call liminal space where I could be with my grief, I could dance with my grief, but I could also be comforted by the stories of others. And it wasn't a competition, it wasn't like I'm grieving more than you're grieving. It was like we are all grieving. Yeah, all the time. And and the other beautiful thing was we are all celebrating the beauty of motherhood.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:52

And so in September and in October, while I was here, I got to have these spaces where we would sing and we would dance, and stories would come out that were very soothing to my spirit and Anna Louise, very soothing to my body, you know, helped my body, you know, uh, to understand that this person that had given me birth, that had, you know, at whose, you know, at whose breast I had, you know, gotten my initial nurturing and who had guided me through my teen years, was now no longer there in the physical form. It was there in the ethereal spiritual form. And the reminder, you know, that my grandmother, you know, again, when my grandfather passed away, and my grandmother didn't say, Oh, your grandfather's in the clouds. What she said to me was, Masanko, from here on out, if you whisper your grandfather's name, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, he will hear you. And if you hear very, and if you listen very closely, you will hear him too. And I was nine years old when I got that. So here I am uh many, many years later, going, no matter where I am, my mother hears me and I hear her as I as we interwove our stories together and our dances. So, yeah, I mean, interplay is really a place where you can go and you will find a community that will help you hold the story that you have, help you cry the tears that you need to cry, help you have the laughter that wants to come out.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, yeah. To see, um, I I was noticing that uh Sheila, we did actually interview Sheila on uh Sheila called.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Oh, wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Episode two. Yes, yes, um episode two of uh season four, so be sure everybody check it out. Um but it I think something would be interesting. Um, I didn't want to interrupt though, Anna Luisa. Did you have something else?

SPEAKER_04 31:27

I just have one more comment about this. And I because I'm trying to, I think I'm gonna try to like interplay might be a really great place to offer people who are grieving, right? This is a very uh when people are just kind of stuck in in their grief and don't know where to turn to, therapy, talk therapy. But I was what I wrote down was like um our culture centers themselves in everyone's story. When you say my mother just died, my response is well, my sister died too. Right. So because for some reason, nobody is allowed to have that story be the story that we just sit with.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:09

So people I notice a lot, and then and I notice in just all kinds of conversations. If I'm like, my you know, my plumbing just went bad. Oh, my plumbing went bad two years ago. And I'm like, okay, that's not really interesting to me. It's not very helpful. I may not care right now, but it is a very American technique to come to to talk to each other. I've just started noticing that more and more. Yes, and so and you know, I'm so sorry, especially with white people. Like they always love to be like, oh, I've had that experience as well. And I'm like, have you? What I like about grief in interplay is that it doesn't center the story of one individual, but it centers the collective's grief. It centers the collective's joy, exactly centers the collective's like lived experiences rather than saying there is a hierarchy of a story, right? Is what happens. Like, you know, you go to therapy, it's a one-on-one talk therapy, and all we talk about is your personal grief, which is important and it matters, but in the grand scheme of this billion-year-old life, you're you're not that special.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Everybody has death, yes, everybody has pain, everybody lives through a grief. That is absolutely true. And so I'm gonna check out Interplay.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

Yes, and the other thing, just based on what you were saying a few minutes ago, one of the things that I have learned from Interplay is that when somebody says to me, My brother just died, my father just died, my go-to next thing is to say, What do you need? Do you need to share with me a story? Do you need me just to sit with you? And that has come out of the interplay practice where the big thing is listen more than you speak. Right. So listen more than you speak. You know, do you need me to do a dance on behalf of? Now, if within the uh confines, and I say confines, or within that experience, if it comes out that the person asks me and invites me to share from my perspective, right when I can bring up I just lost so-and-so. You know, but that's not my go-to, you know, you're right. That's not going to be my go-to place because I realize that in that moment, that person doesn't need to hear who else has lost.

SPEAKER_04 35:00

No, no, no. And it's an acute grief moment. Yes. It needs to be tended in a very sweet and swaddled way, right? Oh, yeah. I do appreciate that because I generally, you know, I the go-to is I'm really sorry for your loss. And I just, you know, I bear witness to them, but I don't ask them, I don't invite them to tell me more, which uh that's a really great practice, I think. Yeah. But I want to also say, like I have talked about this over the years. Like the the really truly greatest gift you can give to somebody who is dying or who is um grieving the loss of someone is to listen.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:39

Listen. Listen.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

Slow down.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

That's true with every loss, every kind of loss.

SPEAKER_04 35:44

Every kind of loss. Yeah. So anyhow, Waquil.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:48

I'm just like, wow, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

I don't know. I appreciate that because it really did give us a chance to learn more about that. And I I that's, you know, when I met him that that was Masonko, it was such an incredible um time. We had a what not two hours, so I think almost two hours together. And we also do have retreats. Actually, the first time I did um this interplay was with my wife at a retreat. And um, she's been doing it for years, and she kept saying, You could you'd like this, you should try this. You know, yeah. So the first time I did it, I went to the whole week-long thing, and I was like, oh yeah, this this is this is really a wonderful um way to just spend time with yourself to live, like we were talking about earlier today. Um, but I think that one of the things that maybe we we we are kind of getting toward the end of time, but at the end of our time. But I wanted to give you an opportunity, first of all, to share anything else that you feel like you would like to, but also um one of the reasons that I think one of the perspectives that you can bring that we can't is the perspective of your culture and the culture, the different cultures that like we often we we've had interviews about people um talking about different different cultures and different ways that people approach death, and being aware of that as a death worker, right? As somebody working, you know, in funeral services or as a doula or whatever, um, just to be aware that everybody's culture is not the same. So I think it's always good for us to hear about. And you already shared some of the um the differences and that you know it's like it's a almost an everyday happening or much more often happening because it's a village thing. And so are there any other aspects of the culture of Malawi that might be?

SPEAKER_03 37:29

You know, um the understanding uh if you think of the village, okay, I mean, Malawi is, I would say, 40% urban, 60% village. So there's still a lot that is happening at the rhythm of time and at the rhythm of temperature. So one of the things is as death happens, the family begins to gather. Um, somebody is sick, um, they have most likely gone to the hospital and come back from the hospital. The hospital has said there's no longer anything we can do. We don't have a formal hospice like you have here in the United States, but we have kind of a local hospice. So the person is kept as comfortable as possible, as pain-free as possible. Possibly they've been given pain meds from the hospital. When they pass, there isn't always easy access to a mortuary. And so for the village, it's how can we most expeditious expeditiously and honorably give our recently deceased a good going home. And so they will begin to send the message to the village, usually with drums, um, but there will also be people who will go notify the chief, um, notify the elders, and everybody will gather. And as people gather, understanding that somebody has just been bereaved, as they come, they come with what I call full hands. Somebody will bring uh flour for making our local, our staple carbohydrate, somebody might bring a chicken, somebody might bring a goat, um, somebody will bring firewood, and they will gather at the house of the deceased. The women will get together to prepare the body as best as they can. And given that the ark is going to be, you know, so say they pass on at 10 o'clock in the morning, and so they're looking at 10 o'clock from one day, that by 12 the next day, they must be going to the graveyard, because that's about as much time as they can keep the body without becoming um too decomposed, as it were.

SPEAKER_04 40:20

Right.

SPEAKER_03 40:21

And so they'll wash the body and they'll get the clothes that they'll dress the body in, and they'll be singing, and um, as people come, there'll be the greetings of allowing the people to understand what happened, what was the illness, um, and you know, you know, and so and you know, so then and then um the next day they will then start now the funeral ritual. Church people will come, more often than not, the person belonged to a church, so the church is involved, and the church and the chiefs get together and map out the funeral rites. The prayers at the house, um, the prayers at the grave site, and you know, and the and at the grave site, the young people, we call them the grandchildren, even though they might not even be that person's grandchildren, but the young people, they go to the grave site and begin preparing the grave, which usually has already been pre-selected. Each family has their section in the graveyard. So that has been pre-selected and they prepare the grave, and and then the funeral takes place from the house. There's the, you know, the final viewing of the body, the prayers at the house, then they go to the grave site. Sometimes the church will come to the house, sometimes they'll bring their body to the church. It just depends on what they agree, and then they go for the actual internment. And they do the internment, they do the flowers, and then they go back to the house. When they go back to the house, we have a ceremony that's called sweeping. And it's sweeping both in terms of physical, let's leave this place as we found it, but it's also sweeping in terms of the family coming together and saying, Look, we've just lost somebody. How are we moving forward? Especially if that person was maybe the chief breadwinner, or if he was indeed a chief or the head of the family. The family comes together and they discuss. And also, it's a time to bring up issues that might have been happening in the family, and they discuss them and say, going forward, let's not carry this anymore. Our person has gone. Let's bury, let's bury the things that need to be buried with this burial and start a new leaf. Yeah. And then uh, and then people disperse. So that's kind of the transition. Now, Malawi has nine different uh ethnic groups, and each one will have its own variation on what I've just shared with you. But pretty much that's the way the things go. Um, you know, family coming together and making sure that when they leave, they have buried whatever disputes and disagreements they were.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Right there is the biggest best part right there, you know, because we we just heard a statistic the other day that in the United States, um, sixty percent of families quit talking to each other. after the after a funeral. Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:02

It's the death of a parent, of a parent, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

And the death of a parent. Yeah. Yeah. It's that's and that's so such a wonderful lesson for all of us to exactly let's a part of our uh grieving process when we lose something or somebody is to let's let's see what else we'd like to bury. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

I have to say uh last year for the Denver Film Festival there was a movie from um Zambia and it's called On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. And it is the death of uh of an elder of an uncle and they did exact you could see this in this movie. Yes the whole process and then finally literally sitting there and like talking about the beef that they've got with the dude that just died. And it I don't particularly care for the ending and yet I appreciated that people did come out and and say you know this is actually what happened.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

And I was like oh like oof so good movie good representation but just as you just mentioned yes yeah well is there um anything else that you would like to share with us before we sign off um I think I think what's important is just to understand that when you know if you think of a stool that has three legs bereavement is one of those legs going away and that the person for a while has to find what that third leg is going to be again death shifts us as I said foundation so just to remember that death really shifts our foundation and grieving is about trying to find our new foundation and that's where the last quote the quote that I sent to you which I didn't able to find but if you can because we will retalize us to live in the moment. That's right really quickly one young person that I spoke to about 20 years ago told me about his thesis which he went and talked to people in hospice and asked them out of your life what would you do again or what do you regret not doing none of them said I regret not working anymore or having more cars most of them said I regret not spending more time with my children. I regret not playing the trombone more I regret not singing more or dancing more. Exactly dance or walk have a nice meal do those things often because things that people regret at the end of life.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

So true so true so important.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

I'm writing it down for myself too because I'm going to share it. Okay go for it uh some people want it to happen some wish it would happen and others make it happen this is by Michael Jordan exactly so I gotta remember this first make it happen that's what we've got yeah live your life phone call today not tomorrow yeah okay yeah yeah yeah give that hug give that smile yes thank you so much for this I really appreciate it yeah Asanko is such a pleasure thank you and I look forward to seeing you so I hope to see you yes I look forward to seeing you both again yeah well if you're ever um up in Denver be sure to talk about Louisa I think I will be coming to Denver this year so I would be sure perfect to know yeah yeah and I know you'll be back here so all right thank you so much yes thank you for last conversation about thank you for joining us today thank you to Charles Heastan the composer of the original music you are listening to now and of course thanks to you our audience and all of our amazing guests please come back next week for another great episode share this with your friends family and community we hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky and Substack for each guest additional information will be found in the podcast notes and of course if you have a good end of life story to share please reach out. We're always eager to hear from you