SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back, everybody, to End of Life Conversations. Today we are having Nikki Smith come and speak to us because most of us have never experienced being with a loved one at the end of life, sitting beside them as they are dying. So we find ourselves struggling to discuss this. The moment arrives and the silent and con silence and confusion can feel very overwhelming. In this episode, Nikki the Death Dool walks us through how death doulas can support families, why this role exists, and how it's quietly changing the way people experience the end of life for the dying and for the people who love them.

SPEAKER_05 0:41

And we're we get to be on her uh podcast too.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

That's right. She's fun.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

Yeah. So what we're going to talk about in this episode is what a death doula actually can do for you and and what they don't do. What the, you know, the kind of the boundaries around what they can work with you on. Um, how you can support your a dying loved one uh when you even when you don't know where to start. This can really be helpful. And then how to start that conversation before there's a crisis, because that's really what this is all about. That's right. So Nikki is an end-of-life guide, an advocate, and a death positive voice, really helping individuals and families navigate one of life's most universal and often avoided experiences.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

And most avoided, yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:25

So if you've ever felt lost or scared or unprepared around the ideas of death and dying, this episode can really give you something to hold on to.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 1:34

So join us.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Stay tuned. Hello. Well, welcome all to End of Life Conversations. I am the Reverend Mother Ana Luisa Armendaris, and we are looking forward to our conversation today. I especially am. We had an opportunity to join Nikki the Death Doula on her podcast and are thrilled to return the favor today. Nikki is an Inelda certified doula. Inelda stands for the International End of Life Doula Association. And she's a grief coach, and she's serving the terminally ill, the dying, elderly, and their loved ones with dignity and respect.

SPEAKER_05 2:14

And I am the Reverend Joaquil, David Matthews. Nikki is we had such a great time on her podcast, so we're really looking forward to this. She told tells us that her goal is to help others embrace the end of life and communicate open and openly and honestly with their loved ones. Great idea, right? She can take the burden and hold space so that you can focus on what makes think what matters most to you in your final days and leave this world in peace. So what a wonderful thing. So we will send a link to uh Nikki's stuff in our podcast uh notes. And uh let's get going here. All right. How are you doing, Nikki? It's so good to see you.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

I'm doing well.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

It's so good to see you guys again. This is exciting. What in your life inspired you to do the work as a death doula?

SPEAKER_05 3:00

Yeah, how'd you get going in this? How did this happen to you?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, yeah. That's always a great question. And I feel like every time I answer it, I answer it differently.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Oh, good, good.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Um a lot of different things I think led me down this path. I the farthest back I think I can go, when I was in high school and early on in college, I had a job in a nursing home. And uh one of the jobs I, one of the things I got to do was companion work where I would just be with somebody. Um and this this particular place had independent living, assisted living, and nursing, like skilled nursing and memory care. So it was kind of like an all-in-one type facility. So I was in all different aspects of it. But on occasion, I would be doing companion work. So I'd just be with one person for my eight-hour shift uh in the nursing facility or in memory care. And a couple of times they had me sitting with somebody who was actively dying because they had, you know, if that person didn't have family or whatever, they had kind of a an unspoken rule that they didn't want anybody to die alone. So I was 17, 18 years old at that time, and it never felt weird to me. I remember going to school and telling my friends, they're like, What did you do over the weekend? I was like, Oh, I was sitting with this great lady, she was dying. And they were like, What? I was like, and for me, I'm like, oh wait, is that weird? That's weird, isn't it? You know, but I don't know. It I just thought it was beautiful. So that's like the farthest back I can go. But uh in more recent years, I've had a lot of loss in my life. I lost my brother very unexpectedly in 2015, and a good friend of mine died just a couple years prior to that from an overdose, and I've lost people to suicide. So I've lost a lot of people that I was close to in my life, and that's just when I started noticing where we lack as far as grief care in the United States specifically. Um, and just like society as a whole, we don't we don't talk about death, dying, and grief. So when we're faced with any of those things, it's hard to talk about. And with the losses I had, like some of them were traumatic. And you can't just go up to your random friend and say, you know, I I have nightmares about what my brother's final hours look like, and my friend who took their life. Like, I can't stop thinking about what was going on in their brain in their final seconds when they did the thing they did that ended their life, like what that was like. And those are the kind of subjects that you bring it up and people recoil. Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

And I know I'm preaching the choir with you guys, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just like I I feel so strongly about destigmatizing the conversations, like not saying we have to shout from the mountaintops, but we should not be so scared to talk about those things that that scare us, that stick with us, that live in our brains rent-free and and and bother us because we don't talk about it, it's just gonna sit there and fester, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:58

Yeah, yeah. We all um, you know, we help each other out by by making this less difficult to talk about. We can all be better community, we can be better people for with each other. So yeah, that's such a great point. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_04 6:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:12

Well, why don't you tell tell us a little more about what your work is now, what you're doing these days, and and and uh what's what's what's the most thrilling part of what you're doing? What's the most uh let's say heart fill heart filling, fulfilling maybe.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Oh my gosh. I I mean I love all of it. There's if there's that's the great thing about being self-employed, is if I find something I don't like, I don't do it anymore. But but overall, I've been recently started uh facilitating workshops. I wrote a workshop around death planning for anybody at any point in their life. And the the purpose of this workshop is to not just have a list of like the the paperwork, the legal things you need to have together, your living will, your power of attorneys, all that. But the other things we don't think about that we want to have planned for our final days because you know, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. If I'm hit by a bus and I'm in a coma, and you know, at that point where they're gonna have to, you know, decide whether to risk give me life-sustaining treatment, which I've specified I don't want, how do I want to be treated in that space?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

You know, what what what can these people do to honor me and my loved ones specifically, like emotionally, spiritually, what all these other things we don't think about that we might want at the end of our lives that we can have planned out. And the I mean, the greatest gift you can give your loved ones is a plan. So they don't have to guess. You know, I don't have children, I have a niece and a nephew, and I know them fine, but they don't know me as intimately as I know myself or my husband may know me. And if they have to make these decisions, I don't want them to have to guess.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

They can just look at my my death plan because I have a death plan written out, it's in a folder, they know where it is, so they can pull it out and say, This is everything Nikki wanted, and here's where what she wants done with her remains, this is what's already taken care of, and it's done.

SPEAKER_05 8:01

Yeah, yeah, that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

It's it's it just strikes me that, you know, I we three are really trying to help folks who are encountering this with loved ones or themselves, right? So it's this is such an important place. It just occurred to me as you said that is that we don't communicate expectations for a lot of uh roles that we have in our life in general. And you know, I was just thinking, like, you know, it's almost like we're writing a manual and every individual has like we've always talked, oh, you know, there's no manual to parenting, there's no manual to daughtering, or you know, yeah. So, you know, there is this aspect of it that uh kind of elucidates the potential we have in community to both have our needs met and support those others to feel confident that they're making the right the best choice for you. Yeah. Um, that's really like I, you know, I'm so sorry that I'm just having this epiphany. I'm like, wow, I need to write like like you know, my own, like, this is how I expect to be treated as a mother. This is how I expect to be treated as a neighbor, you know, because we don't have enough information from people and we kind of, you know, don't even think about it.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah. Well, and in my case specific, I love you. I'm always open to using myself as an example. Like I said, I don't have children. I have a niece and a nephew, and they are love, they have kids of their own. They both have families too. And it, you know, I say like a lot of other people, I don't want to be a burden to them, right? But I also respect, I don't want to deny them of the opportunity to care for me if that's something they want to do. If they are like, we love you to pieces, we want to do everything we can to make your experiences better. We will care, we will be our caregivers. Great. I will embrace that and I will allow them and they at least have now guidance of how I like to be titled. Um and if they don't, I'm okay with that. You know, I'm at peace with that. I want to be, I don't want to be a burden, but if they want to take that role on, I will gladly accept it.

SPEAKER_05 9:59

Yeah, and as long as they know that, as long as you've let them know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

And that's a great thing. We have the conversations.

SPEAKER_05 10:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's something we talk about in the classes that we do too, that's um that it's called an ethical will.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Yeah, I'm very familiar with ethical will.

SPEAKER_05 10:13

Yeah, it's it's basically that that idea, like like what Ana Luisa is saying, writing a manual, you know. This is what I wish somebody would have told me about how life goes, you know, and how and and how um and how much I want you all to know how much I care about you and how much I want you to forgive me for the things I did, and I want to forgive you for the things you all these kind of things that don't necessarily go into a legal document, but that it's more like a letter. We had somebody a while back that talked about two letters, right? One letter was all this stuff like, yeah, do this with me, do this, but the other one was just love letters. Love letters to your friends and to your loved ones, and just saying, Oh, I you know, this is what I'd like you to know. And yeah, I love that. I love uh Ana Luisa what you're saying about it's a manual, like how would how would uh how do I do how do I mold along, you know?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and I it just occurred to me too that my daughter in high school had such a hard time uh interacting with her teachers and she's autistic and has a lot of sensory issues. And she actually wrote a comic book for her teachers describing all the pieces of what triggers her, how she feels inside, and some you know, workarounds that people can use to uh to help her because she was she's like sometimes I'm so overwhelmed I can't say anything. And so, you know, her teachers were like, this is the best thing I've ever gotten because it gives me a checklist. So I mean, we should all have little check little manuals for you know I love that idea.

SPEAKER_05 11:44

It's a great idea. We should definitely do that. Put that on my list.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

I know, right? I need to make a couple of those myself.

SPEAKER_05 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

So what are the biggest challenges that you find in your work at day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Uh Will, so I'm in Columbus, Ohio, and we're not exactly known for being the most progressive part of the United States. Uh so a lot of people are not ready for what we do as death doors. I'm not saying nobody cares. I I've I have clients, I I've worked with people, but on the whole, I still get a lot of resistance when I talk about death and death planning. I have gone into like nursing facilities, assisted living, independent living to talk to them about you know what it is I do, but also I'm big on, I'm a huge advocate for self-care for staff, a place, you know, people that work in this place because turnover rate is like 80% in Ohio. It's ridiculous because nobody's getting paid well, they're not getting treated well. But are they addressing grief for their staff? And a lot of times they're not. So anyway, I'm the squeaky wheel. I'm always in there yelling. Good. Good. You know, when I talk about what I do, I get a lot of like, oh, okay. And I I feel like people, not everybody is as open to what I do as they are maybe in other areas of the United States. And that's okay. Maybe.

SPEAKER_05 13:13

Maybe, yeah, maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

I know, maybe not, but um, and I'm not I'm not here to push agendas on anybody. I'm just here to to meet people where they're at. And and I have I've worked with people who are at end of life and they are fully, they're ready, they're accepting of their own mortality, but their family or their spouses are not, and they don't want anything to do with me. They don't want me around. And, you know, I'm not there to be like, well, tough noogies, I'm here, you know. I'm I want to meet them where they're at. You know, what what about this is scaring you so much? Why are you so resistant to this? And a lot of times it's fear, yeah. It's sadness. You know, they they don't want to accept that their person's not going to be there anymore. So I can help them address their grief and their anticipatory grief with that as well. So I think that's the biggest part is just the resistance to talking about any of this stuff.

SPEAKER_05 14:02

Yeah, yeah. Can you can you think of an example you could share with us, like a a real life example of um when you've been maybe in a in a facility like that and people needed to have better self-care of um ideas that you've come up with that have helped them or the things that or or just a family maybe, um something that's helped kind of shift the perspective?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yeah, I so everybody's gonna be unique. Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

I've absolutely had, oh, I feel like every family I've dealt with, if there's adult children involved, one or two of them are okay with things that are happening, and the other two are absolutely not. And then they start fighting with each other, and then they start fighting with the person who is dying, and that's not a good situation. So just at least, if nothing else, if there's an impartial third party that can show up and say, Hey, let me let's talk. Why, you know, what's bothering you today? Let's talk about you specifically, and then the other people, what is bothering you specifically? But a lot of times what is happening is one or two children are doing all of the care and the other ones are not. Right. And they either feel excluded or they just don't want to deal with it because of denial. So everybody's feeling anxious about the other person.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So getting them to at least understand and see the other, the other person and what they're doing and what they are not doing. And again, I'm not there to shame anybody, but just to show them like, here's what's happening here, here's what's happening here. And we just take a moment to objectively look at it, look at all of that. And the ones that are caregiving nonstop 24-7, like, hey, why don't we get a respite care in? Because if they're in hospice, hospice has programs for respite care. They can put them somewhere so the family can take a break. I'm like, let's get respite started so you can take two days off. Yeah. That sees a lot of that anxiety right there.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

Yeah, which kind of points to the fact that as dualists as as end-of-life workers, we're we hold a lot of different hats, right? And one of them is an arbitrator or a facilitator, you know. Yeah. So yeah. So that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Or a family counselor. Yeah. You know. Uh I do appreciate that you notice who's doing which jobs and trying to, you know, find ways to kind of see have help them see each other as like we're we're doing this as a team. Even though it looks like some of our heavy lifting is real actual heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Right. But uh Well, and I I I see the animosity, especially with siblings, when one is doing all the actual physical hands-on 20 and the other one's like, well, I'll pay the bills. And it could just be that they aren't emotionally ready or capable to do that hands-on work. And to get the other one to see that their sibling just they can't mentally or emotionally handle that right now, not where they're at. And that's not, you know, that's not a bad thing. It's just where they are. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:02

Yeah, yeah. We had um we just actually were just gonna post a new uh episode this week. Um, somebody had four types of grieving.

SPEAKER_04 17:11

Yes, that's what I was thinking about. I love it.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

For griever types, and and it's you know, it's it's being able to kind of understand that and help each other understand that about each other is a good way. There's the other kind of I don't know, impactful uh statistic we heard was that 61% of siblings never talk to each other after their parents die.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 17:33

You know, and um and that it kind of points to again what we're talking about is having those conversations, having somebody a third party, like you said, who could say, well, you know, this is how they're grieving. Um and and let's see if we can't find a way to to love each other through this, you know, or can support it.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

We're all right. Like whatever we believe, like that's right. What I'm feeling is right, you know, right, quote unquote. And you'd it's hard to look at somebody else's manner of grieving or living or coping or whatever and think that that's right because what I'm feeling is right, what they're feeling is wrong. Right. No, you're both right. You're just processing things differently.

SPEAKER_05 18:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, I I just it makes me so sad that families struggle so so intensely and drastically.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Um, so anyways, I just I was just thinking too of a gentleman I spent his last two months with him. And he the very first day I met with him, he was like, you know, my wife and I are fighting. And I was like, Well, what are you fighting about? And he was like, Who's gonna clean the litter box? And you know, he was at home, he was very ill, but he was still trying to amble about. And I said, Well, do you think it's really about the litter box? You know, and and I said, Have you talked about the fact that you have weeks to live? Like it seems like cleaning the litter box should be low priority for both of you. Like, find somebody to clean the litter box, right? And you know, I sat with him, I was doing Reiki for folks at that time, and and I did Reiki on him, and I said, Listen, you know, if you find a way to talk to her about you dying, because he said, We haven't talked about it. We literally have not talked about how I've got weeks. And I was like, I think that's what the cat box is about. And so um the following week I showed up and he's like changed the course of everything. He's like, everything is a lot better since we sat down and talked about that. And again, it's like, you know, holding those spaces with siblings, like, mom's dying. Oh my God, you know, well, she's ready because she's been sick or whatever, and I'm not ready to let her go. And you know, what can we do to make you feel better? Like, there's conversations are so needed, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Absolutely. And honestly, the time to have those conversations is way before ending. Right. It just doesn't happen. Again, circling back, we all have these conversations as a society, but oh my god, if everybody could just be on the same page well before that happens, all the better.

SPEAKER_05 20:02

Yeah, it makes it a lot easier. Yeah. Have you run into um well, your own fears or other people's fears? What do you think is um you you spoke about this earlier. You said something about maybe part of it is people are afraid, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

What do you think the fears are? Or what's what are your own fears for for the end of life? Do you have any yourself? Or I you know what do you think? Yeah, when I ask the Jagamet, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, yeah. There's there's I mean, it changes.

unknown 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

But when I ask people, especially when I'm working with somebody who I can tell has a lot of anxiety, I'm like, well, what specifically is it that is that's scaring you? Because I, you know, I want to understand where the fear is coming from. And I think the two main things people are most afraid of are suffering, pain, yeah, or what comes after, right? And I said, Well, I can only control one of those. Um and even I like I can't do a lot myself, but that's where hospice comes in, you know. If you've got a great hospice team, your pain will be managed and you will not suffer. Um, and educating families on things like that, because so many people are scared of watching their loved ones suffer. I don't want to watch mom suffer. I don't want to watch dad suffer. I said, if you've got good care, they won't. They shouldn't, right? And like I've emphasized good care because I've seen bad care too. But a lot of that's education then. Like, well, you know, what specifically are you afraid of the gasping? Because there's sometimes there's gasping and active dying, and just educating the family on yes, you might hear that, you might hear some gurgling noises, you might see some things coming out of mouth and nose, and that's scary to look at to us. It's very different for somebody who's actively dying. They can't feel that when somebody stops eating, their parents stops wanting food. That's okay. That's the body's way of saying it's shutting down now. One time it's going to shut down. And I get so many people like, I don't want to starve mom to death. You're not, she's not gonna starve. They don't feel hunger. Once the body's dying, they don't feel hunger like we do. It's not, it's just a matter of having those conversations well ahead of time or what to expect to help alleviate those fears before they even arise.

unknown 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:11

Right. Exactly. That's right. That's that's a really great point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

So education. Education, right? So you're uh you've had a week with a lot of families who have been doing a lot of heavy grieving. How do you leave that moment and take care of yourself?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Honestly, the for me personally, and again, everybody's different. For me personally, silence helps me helps me decompress. I need like utter like I'll get noise-canceling headphones if I can, but just pulling myself out of a situation and going to my car and closing the door and sitting there, just that act of closing the door, you know, when you hear a lot of noise and you close a window and there's like an instant of silence, that feels so good to me. So if I can just have quiet time where none of the that my body is not inputting sounds and sights and smells, and I can just turn that off for a moment, that that does a huge shift immediately. But um I silence swaddle. Silence swaddle. Oh, that's good. I like that. Um but I if I need time to grieve, I take time to grieve. I grieve all my clients. Of course I do. I'm a human being. If I didn't, I think I would be very bad at this job. Um but allowing myself that opportunity to recognize that yes, I am grieving and I'm allowed to grieve, even though this wasn't my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, doesn't matter. I'm still allowed to grieve them and take that time. Take a day off if I need to, take a half a day and just go for a walk somewhere, stay at home and lay in bed and just let my body do what it needs to do to grieve, and you know, get up the next day and do what I can.

SPEAKER_05 23:56

Yeah. Yeah. We we we are doing all not only ourselves, but everybody we're with a favor by taking care of ourselves that way. And that's why I think that's why it's such an important thing that we always want to hear from each each other, you know, what what do you do? How do you do it? And how do we help each other? How do you help each other do that? That's the other part. You said at one point you said this is one of the things you do when you go talk to groups is um how how are you taking care of yourselves? And give them some ideas about how to take care of themselves.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

So absolutely and decompress like uh not decompressing, um what's the word? I don't know what the word I'm looking for. Anyway, um processing, but I have a group chat with all the death doulas in Ohio. We started a group chat a long time ago. Good. So when we one of us has something difficult we're going through, we can chat with each other and like ask for advice. We're just like, man, I just need to vent for a minute. Here's what's going on, or I'm really upset right now. My client just died. Like, it's a great way to process is really a great idea. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

That's a great idea for anybody doing this work, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

It is a great idea, especially since some hospice centers, the one I was at, they drilled it into us that we were not allowed to ever talk about our clients or any of the pieces of this. And so they only hosted like one day a year when all of the uh volunteers would come in to get to talk to each other, and that was it. But they're like, no spouses, no family, no neighbors, nobody gets to know this. And I'll, you know, that really hinders quality self-care, right? Because you're not able to be like, this is really hard or this really affected me. So I'm really glad that you started that that text uh chat with folks, because not everybody needs it every time.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

And when you need it, it's there. That was so I volunteered for a few years the suicide hotline here in Columbus, and um, that was a huge part of it, is you have to debrief. Like that was the word I thought of course, debrief.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

And especially if you have a difficult call. There's you're never alone in the room. There's always two, at least two, if not three, people in that room answering calls. And if you have a difficult call, you debrief with your shift partner. If they're not available, they have two or three people that are full-time staff that are on call. You can call them on the phone and talk through it. Never, they're like, do not hold it in, do not take it hold off, talk it out, talk it out. Because we dealt with some heavy, heavy stuff there.

SPEAKER_05 26:19

Sure, sure, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that happens, you know, I think that the idea, this there's this whole fear around privacy and stuff, that that's why I think hospices have these rules, right? But it's very it's quite possible, and we've done this with our spiritual direction, you know, we have groups that meet to kind of go over stuff. It's quite possible to be to talk about what's going on in your life without uh without violating HIPAA, right? Without, you know, and without saying who you're talking, you know, the name of the case.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

I'm not gonna say I'm dealing with this person at this address, right?

SPEAKER_05 26:51

No.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

No. You don't have to use names.

SPEAKER_05 26:56

Even without, yeah, even without federal regulations, we know better than that, right? So so anyway, yeah. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's great. Is there um anything else that you wish we had asked you about? Oh before we're done.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Oh, I could just talk all day.

SPEAKER_05 27:12

Okay, yeah, but we we we have such a good time.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, yeah, there's nothing else I can think of. Like I just enjoy, I love your show and I love that you guys do this. I love that we all do this because what a blessing to help destigmatize these subjects and to get if even if one person walks away from listening to this, it says, Wow, maybe I should think about this. Then job done, right?

SPEAKER_05 27:36

Yeah, maybe I'll go talk to my my spouse, my friends, my mom, my yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, let your wishes be known.

SPEAKER_05 27:43

That's what we hope for, exactly. Well, you um you offered home to read this one of our favorite poems by Saint Mary.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Saint Mary Albert.

SPEAKER_05 27:53

Do you want to do that?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

We're gonna go see a movie, a documentary about her on Sunday. Oh, do you want me to read it? I don't have it in front of me, but I can pull it up.

SPEAKER_05 28:01

No, we've we got it here. We can read it.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 28:04

Um sometimes it's good to read them twice, even. So but do you want us do you want to do it, um, Anna Lisa or do you want me to?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Sure. If you end up doing it twice, we could take turns then.

SPEAKER_05 28:14

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

So when death comes, Mary Oliver. When death comes, like the hungry bear in autumn, when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snaps the purse shut. When death comes like the measlepox, when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity and wondering what's it gonna be like, that cottage of darkness. And therefore, I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, pretending as all music does toward silence and each embody a lion of courage and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

That last line is my favorite part of the I I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

SPEAKER_05 30:04

Yeah, exactly. And I think I I would if I was I would just repeat the last couple of parts because it's so so beautiful. It really strikes me deeply. All of it.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

I love yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

But yeah, but when it says when it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. Yeah, I was the bridegroom. That's the that's a Sufi idea that we're the that when we die, we're getting married, you know. I was taking the world in my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened and full of argument. I just don't want to end my end up simply having visited this world. So beautiful, so beautiful. Thank you, Saint Mary. Thank you, Saint Mary.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Thank you, Nikki for offering that as a as a sweet piece today.

SPEAKER_05 30:52

Yeah, I really appreciate it. It's been such a pleasure, as always. We love hanging out with you and we love your work, and we really um we look forward to keeping in touch. So tell all your friends.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

I will. Thank you so much for having me. This is wonderful.

SPEAKER_05 31:07

Yeah, we'll let you know when this goes on. Yeah. All right, much love. Adios.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Thank you. Thank you guys. Have a great rest of your day because it's early for you. Yeah.

unknown 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:18

Relatively.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

See you later.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

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 Top Tech. Each guest additional information will be found in the podcast. 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.