End of Life Conversations: Normalizing Talk About Death, Dying, and Grief
Death touches us all, and yet our culture rarely makes space to talk about it openly. Why is it so hard to have honest conversations about death, dying, and loss with the people we love? What do we do with grief when it inevitably arrives?
End of Life Conversations exists to both normalize conversations about dying, death, and the outcome of grief and to serve as witnesses to the diversity of deaths that are sometimes uncomfortable and tragic for family and community. We are here to support those difficult conversations and teach others how to lend a hand, a shoulder, or an ear during acute grief moments.
And weekly, we share a conversation with our friend Sam Zemke about something that is currently speaking to us.
Whether you're supporting a loved one through a terminal illness, searching for the right words to start a difficult conversation, or simply curious about what a more death-positive life might look like, this podcast meets you where you are. No question is too strange. No path looks the same.
Subscribe, reach out, and join the conversation. Because the time to talk about it is now.
We want to thank our excellent editor, Sam Zemkee. We also acknowledge that we live and work on unceded indigenous peoples' lands. We thank them for their generations of stewardship, which continues to this day, and honor them by doing all we can to create a sustainable planet and support the flourishing of all life, both human and more-than-human.
What's in store for the next chapter of End of Life Conversations?
As we step into our fourth year, we're expanding the conversation about death, dying, grief, and loss. Rev. Ana Luisa and Rev. Wakil reflect on why talking about death remains so difficult, how we can find language for grief, and why it's time to make room for the experiences of death and loss that don't fit the stories we usually tell.
Not every death is peaceful. Not every loss is expected. And not every experience of grief can be easily explained.
In this episode, we explore how to talk about death and grief, support someone through difficult loss, and understand why end-of-life planning matters for ourselves and the people we love.
We'll also discuss the importance of holding space for people experiencing traumatic loss, unexpected death, and complicated grief. These conversations aren't always comfortable, but they can help us feel less alone and better equipped to support one another.
Whether you're a death-positive professional, a caregiver, a writer, an artist, or someone navigating grief and loss, this conversation invites you to join us as we explore the next chapter of End of Life Conversations.
In this episode:
How to talk about death and grief
Supporting someone through grief and trauma
Why end-of-life planning matters
Making space for difficult conversations about death and dying
Expanding the conversation beyond the idea of a peaceful death
This podcast helps anyone dealing with loss. It can guide you with end-of-life planning and death-positive resources.
Check out our introductory episode to learn more about Annalouiza, Wakil, and our vision/mission to normalize and destigmatize conversations about death, dying, grief, and loss.
And we would love your feedback and want to hear your stories. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.
We want to be transparent that we use AI tools to help us with titles, show notes, editing, and introductions.
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SPEAKER_01
All right. Good. Yeah, please.
SPEAKER_06
Okay.
SPEAKER_01
You're on.
SPEAKER_06
All right. Well. We have been doing what the Reverend Joaquill and the Reverend Annalouiza have been sitting here for three years. This is the beginning of our third year?
SPEAKER_01
Beginning of our fourth year, yeah. We're coming up in our fourth year.
SPEAKER_06
Yes. We have been um here in service to opening up our conversations to all of you to hear our talks about death and dying. Because Joaquila and I have always, ever since seminary, have been very comfortable discussing loss and grief and trauma. We we just have always been very comfortable. And we started this podcast as a way to encourage other people to start feeling comfortable with these difficult conversations because sometimes people are confounded by how to move through the death of a loved one, even though that's that's that will be all of our experiences as human beings, as animal beings, I guess I would say. And we want you all to find language through our conversations, how to start talking to each other, how to start framing your loss, your grief, your imminent death, how to talk about it with loved ones. And so as we begin our fourth year here at End of Life Conversations Podcast, we realize that we've been giving you all the tools by introducing you to the people in the death industry, the doulas, the chaplains, authors, poets, authors and poets, all of these people are in service to you, to us. And I wanted to start expanding these conversations because what happens is that we end up in this kind of dreamy state that all of us will have perfect deaths, safe deaths, wholesome deaths. And the reality is that, and I we should think about the statistic for this, but how many of us are going to die with great difficulty? There will be car accidents, there will be bike accidents, there will be uh you know, surgeries that go awry, there will be sepsis, murder murders, murders, there are war. Yeah, there are people who die in the woods, there are school shootings, people who die in prisons. People who die in prisons. And and what I really want you as a listener to understand is that we're not changing so much as expanding the role of these conversations because the other part of that is how do we support other community members who experience these deaths that feel either shameful or too heavy to actually share with people? How can we support them? What happens to the parent who loses a child in a school shooting?
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
How can we sit and hold that space for them too?
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
How can we talk to the the sibling of someone who has committed who has died by suicide? Right?
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
So end of life conversations is not going away. What we are doing is expanding the the type of conversations that we will be able to have with our brothers and sisters along the path.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, this is our weekly dispatch, and we welcome you to to always to pay attention and listen to it. I mean, and the weekly dispatches will continue too. We'll bring Sam, our editor, in, and we'll still try to do as much as possible, do these conversations like what's front of mind. But what's front of mind today is is Annalouiza and I really trying to think about what do we want to do to expand the the reach and the um the perspectives. And and that's, you know, it's been it's a little hard to define sometimes. But and and we aren't going to quit talking to people who have really great ideas or are doing really good service or written a really cool book or whatever. Um, but we are probably not gonna do as much of that uh because we do want to really reach out. I would love to uh meet somebody on death row and talk to them about that or uh or who's in in prison for life and talk to them about what does that feel, what what is that loss like?
SPEAKER_06
Um and and how we can support them too, right? Like exactly how how do how do people on death row need us to make sure they know they're not forgotten?
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
SPEAKER_06
Right? Like there are so many aspects to this that we do have to hold hands and and you know, join hands to help everybody else out. We cannot do this alone.
SPEAKER_01
Yep, exactly. Yeah. And and and there's so much out there when we start thinking about that, there's so many uh examples, whether whether we've experienced them or not, of um of like we said, not necessarily we we all we always we often talk about good death, a good death, but it's really few very it's a small percentage of people who are able to have a good death. It takes privilege for one thing, and it takes um access to planning yeah, access, yeah, planning, exactly. And we know that there are statistics about that. We know 80% of people have never planned for this. And as I've been out, you know, in my when I went to a farmer's market and set up my little grief booth, there's probably a larger percentage of people who just went, oh no, I'm not talking about that, you know. And and we know it's like 80% of people who've never done an uh advanced care directive and they've never made any plans.
SPEAKER_06
Or even spoken to their family.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or even had the conversation, right? Which is where we started. And what that results in is I don't know if I'd call it a bad death necessarily.
SPEAKER_06
I just say it's it'll be a difficult death.
SPEAKER_01
It'll be difficult. That's a way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. It won't be smooth, it'll be hard, there'll be a lot of conflict. We've seen it. We've the other statistic we know is 60, over 60% of siblings never talk to each other after their parents die.
SPEAKER_04
That's right.
SPEAKER_01
Um, and and that's just an indication of why what we're talking about here. Deaths don't necessarily go smoothly, and it really does require doing that, doing the work.
SPEAKER_06
Right. And I will say this isn't a scare tactic to our listeners that if you don't get this stuff done, it's gonna bode poorly for you.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
What it means is that you have the tools available to you right now to do the work, to start a conversation, to write down a few things, let friends and family know what you're thinking. Um, you don't have to pre-plan your funeral. You don't have to buy the plot if you can't afford it. You don't, there are so many things that are not available to us as middle class or you know, folks who cannot financially access some of this these services.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
But what we can do is tell people and write it down and take it to your bank, have it notarized. That is what you want. You want, you know, X, Y, Z for your in the time of your death. And and even that, it's we're all on our own path. No matter what, you know, we've also heard of people who have made all the plans in the world and things still can go sideways.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_06
And so this is not about creating it so it's gonna be a hundred percent A plus well done. It's gonna be well done no matter what, if you make a little bit of a plan.
SPEAKER_01
It's gonna be the best.
SPEAKER_06
It could be the best.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And I and that's true, you know. I think it just reminded me, I was talking to my uh the dentist's receptionist the other day, and and they said, Yeah, I'm doing all the things. So when I come back next time, they'll tell me I did a good job, right? Keeping my easy clean. Yeah. And she said, Yeah, but you know, people always do all the things, or a lot of people do all the things, and they still come back and they still have stuff problems. You know, she says, Don't put it on yourself, right? So I love what you said about you know, take it easy on yourself. Um, and and we don't want anybody to be stressed out or guilted by this at all. But that we we do want to make sure you understand all of the ramifications of taking care of this or not taking care of this.
SPEAKER_04
Right.
SPEAKER_01
And and also understand what people are going through who haven't had the the the um either the capacity or the ability or the time. And when somebody commits suicide, you don't have the time to have d do the planning. The planning goes away. And even if they're not planned.
SPEAKER_06
So but I'm gonna stop with that when somebody chooses to die by suicide.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Well put.
SPEAKER_06
And at some point we should probably talk about that too and why that that matters to people, but that'll be one of our episodes.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, taking your own and ending your own life, you know, they they that's why they they changed the language in the medical aid. Medical aid dying. Yep. Yeah. Um, it's your choice. You made that choice. And um, so so having made that choice, all this planning, all these ideas are not gonna make a difference. There's gonna be a whole lot of repercussions. And we want to explore those. We want to understand them so that everybody has not only knows about them, and this isn't um, you know, what's it what did the word, what is the word Sam used the other day? Um disaster porn, you know, or uh, you know, uh trauma porn or whatever, you know. We aren't doing we aren't doing the the rubber neck, you know, we aren't gonna throw out stuff that we may have some issues.
SPEAKER_03
Trigger warnings.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we may have some trigger warnings. Yes, we certainly will if it's needed, um, which we haven't had really up till now.
SPEAKER_04
Right.
SPEAKER_01
So um that maybe be a difference right there. But it's for the purpose of folks um really being aware of the whole spectrum of this of death and dying and loss.
SPEAKER_06
And for me, it's it really does come down. It's still my mission to help people normalize that in the spectrum of life, there exists birth and death, and it's all good. It's it really truly is a natural part of being inform, in corporal form. And so I don't want to dissuade people from joining us. I would encourage I would encourage curiosity.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
You may not be interested in, you know, you know, athletes who die. I don't know if that's a thing that we'll talk about, but you know, but we can always glean a bit of information to help us in our day-to-day life. You don't know who you'll be sitting next to on an airplane ride or um a uh a restaurant, and you'll suddenly hear it and you'll be able to have the language to support somebody. And what a gift to be comfortable to say the things, knowing that that's how you can do it.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, excellent.
SPEAKER_06
More than anything, it's I really I want to engage in a variety of ways and not just through teaching our listeners all these service industry death industry people. I want to engage with fiction writing and poetry and you know what to say in case somebody has a family member who died in an incident that wasn't that isn't spoken of with ease. I want to gift the world uh a panoply of ideas and just practice these, just practice some of these, and and you were you're gonna be so uh you are also going to be ministering people.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
Uh just because we're both ordained ministers does not mean that that we're any different or special. You as a listener can also be a fabulous listener and support others as they go through their life journey.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that's the biggest reason for doing this is that ripple effect that we that each of us, each of you, will create this ripple of people that now have heard this and know about this and and think about it, and therefore can help others learn about it, know about it, and think about it and and face these things which are hard. Many of them are very, very difficult. Um and and people tend to not want to do things that are difficult. I totally get that. I'm one of those.
SPEAKER_06
I'm not brilliant.
SPEAKER_01
That's it. I've learned a lot from you. Um and you know, really that's that's part of my learning in the last several years has been to be more um vulnerable and to be more open to stepping into things that are are uh dang dangerous even or difficult, and um being able to say things to people that people maybe don't want to hear, um just out of the fact out of the responsibility I have as a the pinnacle of privilege, basically. And um and and just not be afraid, have that courage. And uh and it's hard. I I you know, I mean I th I don't know, maybe it's uh maybe I would say rather that that um that everybody has us, but I think you know, there's it's a preservation survival. In order to survive, we know we have to make people love us, you know, and and maybe won't they won't love us if we tell them they're wrong. So, but who knows? Uh I don't t pretend to know anything, frankly. And I just think that you know, we really, really are feel our ministry in this world and our mission in this world, our service that we want to pre do in this world is to help people know about these things, understand these things, even if they're not pretty. And um and so therefore they can help others with the same thing that we're trying to help people with. So the service continues. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
And it is it is courageous to talk about hard things, but it shouldn't be courageous because it should be very normal.
SPEAKER_01
That would be wonderful, yeah.
SPEAKER_06
It would be wonderful. And so for those of you listening who just kind of shudder at the idea of to talk to a parent about end of life, I hear you and I see you, but the more you practice, even in small sips, yeah, um, you know, it gets easier. It really truly does. Courage is just building up those, the foundation of saying yes to the occasions when you're called in.
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely. Yeah. We're doing uh happy hour for sad people here in the Seattle area where I live, um, which is one of those plays, you know, and there's desk cafes, there's all there's all sorts of other opportunities. But again, the the idea of it isn't to come in and just share the horrible things going on in your world, but just to be with people who are going through loss um in whatever way. And just have a you know time together. It doesn't have to be talking about these things. You can share it if you want, but you don't have to either. But just know that there are people um who are also going through stuff and that you want to be in community with them.
SPEAKER_03
That's right.
SPEAKER_01
And and that's a beginning. That's the first step.
SPEAKER_06
Right.
SPEAKER_01
And then from there more.
SPEAKER_06
Yeah, and they also want to recognize that you know, again, we we are not just speaking to the end of life being the elder years, the August years.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
You know, folks who are our grandparents who are going to be passing. Uh, I don't remember the statistic I read a while ago, but you know, we still continue to have excess deaths because of COVID.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
Um, people still end up with long COVID or have health issues that get triggered by the virus.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
SPEAKER_06
And they die sooner. We've had a lot of young people dying in the last five years due to unrelated, unknown situations. And um, don't think that death is for the aged, you know?
SPEAKER_04
Sure, yeah.
SPEAKER_06
Death comes for all of us at any moment. And I know that it catches so many of us by surprise. And yet uh we're here to say, you know, revel in the moment, support those who find themselves in acute, you know, sadness and grief. And we're gonna get through this together. We really will.
SPEAKER_01
It's the only way we'll get through this, yeah. And I hope we can have some conversations with some younger people who've lost friends, and because it that certainly affects I I have I have many experiences like that with young people who've really been devastated by the loss of someone their own age. Um it's hard to go through, and it can really affect you. And um, I think that's another wonderful opportunity for us to expand our the spectrum of our conversations.
SPEAKER_06
So yeah, it is it is um I think that it might be a little less difficult for older when an older person dies because we make this assumption like, oh, well, they're old, you know, they've lived a full life. And yet uh I would really argue that um it is it's sad when people lose a person no matter what. And it seems a little more fraught at the younger ages, and people generally don't know how to talk to our youth about what's going on. There's an assumption that they're resilient and they'll just like push through. But you know, resilience is just putting up with the bad stuff over and over again and not say anything about it. And so let's like support even the young people who have uh have had a loss in their lives. You know, I've met a couple people recently who've lost a parent at a younger age, and that's also very surprising for folks. Like, I don't understand why, and it's hard and I still miss, and yeah, yeah, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and we've had some we have had some really good conversations with folks um in some of our first episodes, in fact, about loss of children, you know, and that's one of the hardest ones. I don't know. I it's a it's hate to use the word hardest because everything's hard, but it is really a challenge, and and I'm and there are people doing that work, which is great. We've interviewed those people. But I think having the conversations with the people who are generally affected by it would be another expansion, and we ought to do that.
SPEAKER_04
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01
So if you have ideas, yes, if you have stories, if you know people who have stories, any of the things like we've talked about or even stuff we haven't thought about, we would love to hear from you.
SPEAKER_03
That's right.
SPEAKER_01
So please uh like, spread the word. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_06
And keep joining us, don't I am hoping to really mix it up with our both our podcast and our substack because I know that you're not reading it because you think you know what's coming. So surprise you and keep you on your toes.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah. Expect to be surprised.
SPEAKER_06
That's right.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and we look forward to uh more and we look forward to more conversations with all of you. So thank you so much for being a part of our community, and let's uh continue to to reach out and have this conversation.
SPEAKER_06
So yes, come back again.
SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
SPEAKER_06
Adios, adios.
unknown
We are gonna die, gonna die. We are gonna die.
SPEAKER_02
We are gonna die. Why don't we help each other prepare for me? Without death, there can happy laugh. End of love, conversations, conversations at the end of life. Death and time gets the life, conversations at the end of life.
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