Stan and Clarence chat about life lessons they've learned and their experiences with death, grief, and loss. Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships. More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's show is life lessons about death, which is kind of the opposite of health, I guess. But it's part of the health conversation for sure. And Clarence and I have some great perspectives that we're going to be talking to you about today. So stay tuned for that.
We've got a great crew that really drives us in a creative way and professional way, research way. Maddie Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard do our background research, along with Sheridan Nygaard, who also does our marketing for us. So thank you to all of you. Then of course we have Matthew Campbell, without his technical expertise, we would be dead in the water. Okay.
No pun intended for this show, but he's got great expertise and thank you to all you guys. You're the best team that we could possibly have. Then of course, the best of all is Clarence. Clarence and I are having a great time doing this together. It's an opportunity that we've, we've taken advantage of that we've wanted to do for a long time is just chat about health.
And we've been doing it now for about a year and a half. This will be close to our 60th show. So it's been, Clarence, it's been just a treat, a treat working with you. So thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, so let's get going on today's show. Life Lessons About Death.
But I wanted our audience to know that this is going to be a really different kind of conversation and dialogue. And there are some things that we're talking about. Death is a very serious issue. But some of the things that we say might seem a little bit irreverent, but it's not meant to be that way. It's just meant to be about our experiences with it.
Yeah, and it's to get everybody thinking. And, you know, ironically... Health is, you know, health and death go together. Okay. So, and, you know, it's interesting, too, as you get older and we as human beings live longer than we did certainly in the past, it takes on different angles. And we'll get into that. All right. So... Boy, how do we get started on this? All right. So here you go.
Clarence, talk to me about a life lesson that you learned perhaps at a younger age, because we both had issues at younger ages where we had to address death. So let's hear your story.
All right. My first story is this. We can't have life without death. And so it's part of the process or the circle of life. And so therefore we should not be surprised at it. I think the thing that I've learned, one of the things I've learned about death is that it comes at different stages at different times for people. And we sometimes are angry,
because we feel like people did not have the opportunity to fully live their lives. But who's to know? I mean, I thought I never lived to be past 16. I mean, I honestly thought I would die before I was 16. And then I thought I would not live to be 21. But then one day I was 28 and I realized, oh, I'm getting old.
And all of a sudden it's like, I realized that, you know, I'm living and I could die. And so it's been quite a journey for me in terms of accepting the fact that you live, you die.
You know, it's interesting. For many years, I worked with youth in a psychiatric setting, actually. And I remember having discussions with kids who were suicidal. And which was, you know, it was quite sad. And, you know, I remember walking away from the hospital once and thinking to myself, wow, a lot of these kids, especially, you know, teenagers have the illusion of immortality.
OK, it's not going to happen to me. You know, I got many, many years in front of me, et cetera, et cetera. But yet I remember talking to some of these kids who faced death. They saw death. Somebody dear to them passed away. And then all of a sudden that so-called illusion of immortality that these younger people had was compromised. And it was a wake up call for many of them.
So let me tell you a couple of things. And, you know, Clarence and I kind of share a little bit of this together. I have made a distinction as I've gotten older between a death that is sad and a death that is tragic. And let me give you an illustration. My father passed away when I was 24 years old, okay? And to me, that was, it was devastating. It was sad and tragic, okay? And I remember
sitting in the hearse, going to the cemetery. I was sitting next to my uncle and he put his arms around me and he said, Stan, you will have a hole in your heart for the rest of your life, but you will learn how to cope with it. And those words of wisdoms have stuck with me for a long, well, forever, okay?
Another thing that I learned, and then Clarence, I know you have good stories on this too, was what people say to you. I believe that people, friends, colleagues, family, whatever, when you have lost somebody, they feel compelled to say something like, I'm sorry for your loss.
Whether that's said right to you in person or even through vehicles that we have now, social media or what have you, sorry for your loss. And I'll be honest with you, for me, that statement, I understand the intent. Don't get me wrong. I understand the intent, but for me, the statement became almost vacuous where it kind of lost its sense of meaning.
On the other hand, I remember distinctly a very, very dear friend of my father's when my father passed away and he came to visit us at our house. And there were a lot of people in our home at that time. In Judaism, you do this thing called Shiva, which I can talk about later. But he came into the house and all this verbal banter was going on in our home.
And he came in and I knew this man very, very closely in all he did. was put his hand on my shoulder. He did not say a word, but let me tell you, I can still, to this day, feel his hand on my shoulder. Nothing was said verbally, but that to me stuck with me more than anything. Clarence, so things that you've gone through,
Yeah. So, Sam, I think this is why our conversation started, because we started talking about some cultural things. You know, you talked about Shiva. And I talked I talked about, you know, in my in my my culture, my faith, people come in and everybody is very religious.
And, you know, they'll come in like they'll say if a young child died, they'll say, well, something like, well, you know, God needed another angel. I'm like, what? You know, or they might say something like, oh, I really understand how you feel. What? You don't understand how I feel. Yeah.
uh you know uh you need to be strong now i mean it that people come in with this whole idea about when it comes to death people come in and they want to be supported but sometimes we say some of the silliest things and i think that was why how how we got into this conversation again is because of some of our experiences i you know in in you know sometimes in my um
In my experience, I'll put it like that, in my experiences, I've seen people that do not necessarily particularly care for the person inside the casket, but they want to put on a show at the funeral to talk about how much they miss them. You know, I mean, and it's like, I don't know. I think when it comes to death, people have different perspectives about it.
And they sometimes do things that are not helpful, even though they try to be helpful. And so I think this kind of conversation of talking about death is so very, very important because you have to, I believe that you have to have some kind of settledness in it for yourself. I know that in my, I'll tell you my story.
In my personal life, I have been very clear with my family that when I die, I want to be planted as a tree. And they are like, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? No, I want to be a tree. I'll be an oak tree. I really don't like squirrels, but I'll be an oak tree or I'll be a pecan tree. I'll be something. But I think that, you know, I've come to that place where I've had, uh,
the time to get that resolved. I know that in life, the only thing that's certain, taxes and death. Right, right. So having this kind of conversation with you was helpful for me in terms of really kind of sorting through some things.
Sheridan, do you have a comment?
Yeah, I wanted to circle back to what Clarence was saying earlier about how a lot of people kind of, think that they're immortal and don't have plans necessarily for dying. But it sounds like Clarence does have some sort of a plan. And I think it's important for everybody, even I'm only 24.
But I have a plan for when I die, because like we've been talking about, it's one of the only certainties in life. And not having a plan only further burdens the people that you leave behind. So just having a plan, like what you want, like your final arrangements is a really important thing.
having a will, um, a living trust, having beneficiaries, having a plan, even though it's not easy to think about is so important for both making sure your wishes are granted, but easing the pain on the people that are left with this burden.
You know, and that's a, that's a theme that, um, Dr. Barry Baines talked about when we had him on our show, um, previously on, um, living wills basically is what that's about. So, um, To your point, Sharon, yes, there's a will. In other words, what you really want. And by the way, wills are something that can change over the course of your life. Another is power of attorney.
In other words, you don't want to leave. It's like when you die, you don't want to leave a headache with everything. And then there's a healthcare directive. And I have a little funny story to tell about that. So my son is an attorney and my daughter is a quality improvement engineer in the healthcare arena. So when Janet and I were putting together all this stuff, if we're both gone,
So we talked to my daughter, Anna, and we said, Anna, all right, you want to be power of attorney or what do you want to be? And so she, kiddingly, she says, what the hell do I know about the legal stuff? Abram's the attorney. Let him take care of all that. He can't stand the sight of blood. I'll take care of the health care side of the equation. So that was easy.
But for our listening audience, it's something that you really should – look at carefully and do. And it's kind of, I guess it's uncomfortable because you're thinking about these things. On the other hand, if you think about it in the positive way of not leaving a headache behind when you pass away is really a gift more than anything.
You know what, San, I think that, you know, you talk about the uncomfortableness of it, you know, I think in the shared in her research, she talked about the fact that we have somewhat segregated death from ourselves in a certain kind of way is that, you know, when I was younger, I, you know, and you and I both seasoned, so, you know, death was, you know, sometimes people had people in their home that people, they died in their home.
But now people are dying in, you know, in hospitals. People are dying on their own. I mean, I don't know, euthanasia, I guess, it might be another word for it right now. Everything is so politically charged. But, you know, so we got all these kind of things. People don't like to talk about it because, as you just said, everybody feel like they're going to be immortal.
You see, okay, I'm going to say this. Okay, so you might not like me after I say this, but you see people who are very, very seasoned trying to look like they're very, very... Generation Z. Is that the last one, Z? I mean, like, come on. Come on, you old. I mean, we're old. So, I mean, let's keep it real.
But I also think this, is that the language that we use, you know, I'm talking to people right now, and all they talk about is people transitioning. You know, they don't want to say death. They don't want to talk about death. They want to talk about, oh, they transitioned.
i'm like okay where they transition to right you know but they won't say that and so i'm right and so i i in my personality and style and i think i have to be very honest about this in my personality and style i always tell people this everybody grieves differently so you can't you know you know a lot of times people think that we all when somebody dies we all go fall out we're going to
me, you know, crying, you know, I don't do that. I just sit and I just, and I will cry, but that's how I do it. And so no one can come to me and say, well, you didn't love that person. No, that's just how I grieve. I think that sometimes we don't give people permission to grieve in a way that's most appropriate for them without us having some judgmental thoughts about them.
And so I think when it comes to death, we need to have this conversation and people need to tell you, this is how I grieve. And so it ain't personal. I mean, it is personal. And so don't judge me because I don't grieve like you do.
Correct. You know, so, you know, to your point, you know, Clarence, we discussed that Everybody deals with death differently. It can be in thought. It can be in tears. It can be going for a walk. It can be just about anything. And I think what we all need to realize is just that. Everybody deals with it differently. I'll give you a for instance.
When my father passed away, I remember picking my aunt up at the airport, his sister. And the minute she got in the car, she said to me, I need to see him. my father passed away, which really struck me as strange, really strange. So I said, okay. And I drove her straight to the funeral home where he was lying in a casket. And she went in, she was in for about five minutes
came out and said directly to me, okay, now we can go. So that was her way of dealing with it. It was a sense of closure, I guess, whatever, but nothing should be judged when it comes to this stuff.
You know, interesting enough, though, Stan, I mean, since you talked about your father, I'm going to tell a story about my mother's death. And again, I have always warned the listeners that I'm not being disrespectful. But my mother had relatives that, you know, she grew up with. And when...
when they came to the funeral, it's almost like, I don't know, I've read in Jewish culture, there are wailing women. Is that true? There are people that wail? I don't know. Some cultures, they wail. Yeah, those are in the, yeah, ultra-religious aspects. Okay, okay. Well, in my particular case, this relative almost pulled my mother's casket over you know, grabbing on it and wailing.
I'm like, oh, this is crazy. But unfortunately, you know, but what was so funny was that some people said, oh, she really loved her. I'm like, you know, so I'm saying all this stuff to just say that people do things differently and we need to talk about that.
And I agree with you that we need to have this conversation and say, look, and this is what I told, this is what I told, okay, I'm going to tell you, really tell you the story, because that's what this is about. I told my wife, my family, that when I die, I only want two people to speak at my funeral. And after that, they can go out and have a party. Make me a tree. That's it.
Because my life, my life would have been lived. You know what I'm saying? And if you, if you're not nice to me while I'm alive, don't come to my funeral. So that's how I feel about it. So I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't be putting this out on the internet, but that's how I feel about it. If you don't like me, leave me alone.
Right. That's how you feel. And that's great. So, okay. Let's talk about chronic and acute. Okay. So some people many people have chronic health conditions. Pick one. Cancer, just for argument's sake here. And they're dying from cancer.
And what happens, good, bad, or different, I have no way of judging this, but good, bad, or different, for the family, let's just talk about the family, for somebody who's dying with a chronic
disease there's a a readiness factor that plays out okay in other words over the long period of time whatever that period of time is when this person is is dying um the family has a chance to um accept it okay and um And when it happens, it's not, shall we say, unexpected. OK, in that sense. All right. All right. Not that it's not sad. Don't get me wrong.
And it's just that you have had more time to, quote, prepare.
All right.
Then there's the other side, a chronic illness. excuse me, an acute condition where somebody dies, you know, suddenly from a heart attack. And boom, it's like, you know, it's the shock that comes with that. Okay. However, you know, there are pros and cons to both sides.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, somebody dies quickly, done, let's move on. Somebody who's had a chronic disease and it's lingering a long time has stressful aspects for the families. So, you know, I'm sure you've witnessed that, Clarence.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a great reason for us having this conversation is that, you know, death is certain. You know what I mean? And so I believe that sometimes people feel like life has been unfair to them if somebody dies when they're 27, 28, you know. But I think that that is part of life. the price we pay for life. We just don't know when. And so we have to be prepared for that.
And that preparation gets into a variety of different things of how people see death, how people see the afterlife. I mean, all those kinds of things are things that are important for people to discuss. But from this perspective, I just think that for those of us who are alive, it's how do we support people during this period of time and how do we want to be supported during this period of time?
And so, like I said, Stan, what gets me sometimes is that people think that they know how I feel. People think that they will say things like, well, it's just time to go. People say some really, really strange things and so, But I think that it's important for us to talk about what could be said are things like, you know, I'm so sorry for your loss.
And as you just talked about, put a hand on the shoulder. Or just sit and be quiet. And don't have any opinion about this person other than the fact that you're there to support them. Or sometimes a hug.
Just a simple hug. is something that is quite meaningful. Let me tell you about something. I won't mention names. I went out with a very, very dear friend of mine yesterday for lunch, and His father recently passed away. And, you know, I told him that we were going to be doing this show today. And I said to him, I said, you know, it's interesting.
As I think about it, it's like I didn't know his father really well. I knew him, but not closely by any stretch of the imagination. So when we went to the funeral, I didn't go there. For his father, who I might have known. Okay. I went for my friend. Right. I went for my friend, which is a different level of support. Okay. You recognize the loss and you are there for your friend. Okay.
And it's not... it's not as directly connected. So there's that type of dealing with death as well.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I was listening to a young man who was talking about, actually talking about death this week. And he was talking about he had his fiance, somebody in his fiance's family died. And for two weeks, the whole family went over to his grandmother's, over her grandmother's house. And they stayed there, you know. And he could not get that.
Like, man, he said, you know, after two days, you know, I'm like, okay, you know. But there are some people that that's how they grieve. And so when we, you know, in this world in which we live, which is much more diverse than what we have ever, what we've ever, you know, what we've always talked about in the last 20, 30, 40 years.
We're going to run across people that are going to experience this particular topic in different kinds of ways. And so we have to be open to the fact that people are going to be experiencing this if we want to be supportive. We have to be flexible. And that's how I feel about it. I just got to be flexible. I can't, you know, I don't know how you do it, but hey, I'm here for you.
Just like you did. I'm here for my friend.
Right, right. So some cultures accept death a lot differently than we do here. Right, right. In some cultures, death is absolute happiness, right? I mean, it's just like, you know, and I'm not, frankly, I don't know what it is about our culture where we see it as incredibly sad, tragic, that whole thing. Or on the other side of the equation, there's cultures that are happy as hell. Okay.
I mean, they aren't happy to say goodbye, obviously, but they're truly happy because they look at these things as reasons for celebrations of life.
You know what, Stan? Let me say this. I think you bring up a good point. I think sometimes in our culture, and this is my personal opinion, I think sometimes in our culture, we think that we can buy our way out of death. Okay, I mean, you know, and I was kind of alluding to the, you know, the person who is, you know, more seasoned, trying to act like they're younger, that kind of thing.
And they think that that type of thing is going to protect them You know, as long as I stay young in my head, you know, I'm okay. And that's not reality. And so we have, in our culture, we have this disassociation from death. We don't want to talk about it.
You know, people that are dying, we want to put them in a room and we want them to stay over there because they, you know, they messing up my vibe. They messing up my groove. You know what I'm saying? And so when we get to this point,
Once again, why we're talking about it is that there's just so many emotions and there's so many different ways in which to go about this that we think of health chatter as health chatter. We need to just open up the conversation so that if somebody is thinking about it or not thinking about it, perhaps we could provide them with some starting points.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, share them.
Well, I was just going to say, Clarence, you're completely right. The medicalization of death and how much farther we've gone in just advancements in medicine, even in the last 100 years, people are dying differently. People used to die a lot younger of illnesses that I think it was the average age of workers was like 24 was when they would die. Obviously, it's much, much later on now.
So as that shifted, and people realize that medicine is keeping us alive longer, it's a lot easier to put it put the thought of death out of our minds and somewhere in the abstract future, not as it being a finite point in all of our lives. And also there's taboos on conversations about death. We don't use like we've been talking about terms like, oh, they died.
We say, oh, they passed on or they passed away. We avoid we use euphemisms and we avoid the blunt truth of it, which is really doing us a disservice. because people aren't being realistic.
And then we also, like you said, segregate the dying from the rest of society in homes, like hospice care or nursing homes, even though a majority of people say they want to die in their own house with their loved ones around. So there's a disconnect between what people actually want when they die and what our society is doing.
And I think that that's one of the big reasons people are afraid of death. It's because people aren't dying how they actually want to die. We're not talking about it and we're pushing people away. It's just not a good combination right now.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting. I got to tell you a good one. So this last weekend, we were with some friends down in Wichita, Kansas, and we were sharing pictures, you know, from our lives together, you know, at weddings and all this kind of stuff. And our friend was pointing to particular individuals on these pictures. And to your point, Sheridan, She said, oh, he's dead. She's dead.
He's dead. She's dead. You know, all these people are dead. Okay. She didn't say they passed away or they're, she was that, I guess that blunt, how we look at it. Just, she's dead. Okay.
But you know what, Shane, I want to say this. I want to say this though, Shane. You brought this up before. You talked about, I think your uncle died You know, there'll be a hole in your heart that will never.
Right. That will always be there. Right.
And I think that for a lot of folk, they don't really process that like you did. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people, you know, hold on to that death, you know. 10, 15, 20 years in a way that I think is somewhat unhealthy at times. Okay.
I mean, I can't tell you how, again, I can't tell you how to grieve, but I think it's okay to not look at it as, you know, as a, necessarily as a disruptor, but as an opportunity to say, I had the opportunity to enjoy this person for whatever period of time that there was. I had a time to enjoy them. They brought joy into my life. I will miss them. But you don't have to agonize, I think.
And I want to put it like that. Again, this is my personal opinion. You don't have to agonize and beat yourself up for 10, 15, 20 years over something that you had no control over. Or you can't do anything about now. You can't do a thing about it.
Right, right. Yeah. So here's a couple of things I also want to bring up. Violent death or suicide. Okay, so my wife and I had a very, very dear friend that committed suicide. She literally walked... Yeah, I mean, she was depressed and she walked in front of a bus and got killed. Okay. I remember when we were both at the synagogue, our synagogue was packed, you know, because this was...
it was deemed really, really tragic and sad. And I remember my sense was that all these people were gathered around in the synagogue because they were trying to get their head around it. Give me some, give me something that helps me make some sense of this that happened. And, um, Our rabbi was eloquent. He said that for her, her death was like the plague of darkness.
It was so dark for her that when she put her hand in front of her face, she could not see it. It was that dark. And you know what? That did it for me. That helped explain, give me some reason or explanation for it that I carried with me to this day. When people get that desperate, Sometimes things are so dark for them that they can't see the hand in front of their face. So that's suicide.
Then there's violent death where people get, we've talked about this, shot, gun violence, or in wars. Think about people that have shot somebody in battle. And what they take away from that, whether it's the enemy, it doesn't matter. You're still killing somebody, okay? And think of the sense that they have in their head, the ideas that they carry with them, probably for decades,
the rest of their lives. So there's these aspects as well. So Clarence, have you been involved with or known of any kind of what I would call violent deaths or suicidal deaths.
I have, and I've seen things where, you know, I've had a cousin that drowned. And, you know, it's really a, it's a sad time. And I think that part of what happens, I mean, when you first started talking about the suicide piece, Sam, I thought about the fact that, you know, again, now we can talk about, you know, health. in this conversation because there's some people that are mentally unhealthy.
Yeah. And and there are some people that are struggling with some things that they feel like they just cannot overcome. Some people have chronic diseases and they want to just I want to end this. I mean, I'm just I'm just that tired. And I think that when you get to a point where you feel hopeless and helpless.
Yeah.
Or I'm ready.
I'm ready to die.
Yeah. Then you have to you have to people people make decisions that that we may not agree with. You know, or we may not understand, but the reality is that whatever they do is final. So the thing that I think about this conversation, and I go back to what Sheridan was saying earlier, was that you know, you need to have some kind of plan in place. You need to be, you need to talk to your folk.
I mean, the reality is that we don't want to talk about it and we don't have to have it as deep as what we're trying to do here. But, you know, you need to be letting people know like, hey, this is, you know, this is, this might happen. I might get, I might be in a car accident. If that happens, you know, this is what I want you to do, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
And, but we're scared. I think we're just scared as, as,
as as this is going to be primarily american uh uh i think that we're just scared to talk about this because we think that our materialism will keep us alive forever or that doctors will come up with a pill right that's going to keep us alive or you know or or and i'm like okay i mean i i can't i can't fight with you about how you think i'm just saying though um
I don't think it's realistic, but that's my opinion. And I can say it like that.
You know, years ago when I first started in the field of public health, my interest was around prevention. To your point, Clarence, I remember discussing with a dear colleague of mine, Mike Bazerman, we sat in his home for, oh my God, it must've been four hours talking about this. And I told him I was really interested in prevention and health promotion.
And he said to me, Stan, the ultimate form of prevention is preventing death. Because basically what we're really trying to do by doing all this prevention stuff that we talk about in a variety of our shows is putting off death, right? Putting off sickness. But to your point at the very beginning of the show, Clarence, was guess what? It's final. It's a truism no matter what and for everybody.
You know, one thing I want to bring up, too, is link with another show that we did on pets. We had Dr. Nicole Heinrich on. And, you know, many of us have pets, you know, dogs, cats, whatever. And, you know, we have to, you know, at some point put our pets down because they're sick. Yeah. And let me tell you. I don't know about you guys, but for me, putting a pet down is absolutely brutal.
On the other hand, I've taken away from that when I've done it in the past, incredible lessons learned from them. These dear pets that we all have and what they are saying to us non-verbally. And you know what? Those are things that we all can hold dear. They're really incredible, incredible lessons.
Yeah. You know, Stan, I tell you what, I heard that story before and I think I'm revealing myself again. The only pet I don't cry over is squirrels.
I have no sympathy for squirrels. But they aren't your pet either.
They just happen to be around my neighborhood. But other than that, I understand the dog and the cat, but the squirrel, no.
Here's the other thing I wanted to bring up is cemeteries and burials. People choose to get buried or taken care of in different ways. You know, whether you're, you could be cremated and some people feel that that's just the way it is. Some people do that because they feel it's more friendly for the environment. Okay. Some people get, get buried in very, very fancy caskets. Okay.
Really fancy ones. I mean, you know, and.
Their cars even. Some people get buried in their cars on their motorcycles.
Yeah. I mean, it's just like, okay. And then there are others, like for instance, like my father was buried in a plain pine box. And the idea behind that in Judaism is dust returns to the dust. And that's basically it. Nothing fancy. At that point in a person's life, death, we're all the same. At that point, it doesn't really matter. Some people- I will tell you this, Sam.
Worms don't discriminate.
Exactly. Exactly. Right, right. You know, the other thing is what people do after somebody dies, you know, like they donate to a particular cause. Okay. Somebody died from cancer. So people donate to the cancer society or the donor's choice. Okay. You know, whatever, but that's a sense of, I guess a little bit of a sense of closure for people.
Yeah.
Flowers is another thing that people deal with. Yeah, sharing it.
Just a note on donation and having plans for that, if that is something you choose or you are interested in. I just went through this process as I lost my aunt this summer to a fairly traumatic situation. She had a thyroid issue and she was in the hospital, in the ICU. She was doing very well after her surgery and then she was less monitored. She ended up aspirating and then having a heart attack.
They revived her, but she had no brain activity. So while she was technically alive, she was deemed brain dead or in a permanent vegetative state. These situations are something that most people never anticipate being in in their life. And I found myself in this situation and We were presented with whether or not we wanted to donate her organs because she still had a perfectly fine set of organs.
You can even donate your skin or your retinas can go to several people. So you can give with the gift of your organs, you can give the gift of eyesight. of skin to children who have issues with their skin. Like there are so many different ways that you can donate.
And this is something that you should discuss with your family and indicate either on your driver's license or in paperwork that you have prepared ahead of time. But even if you think this will not happen to you, it is a possibility. It happens more often than you would think. And it is something to be prepared for. It is very, very tragic in that situation. There's no good way to go about it.
um but it is something to keep in mind that not all death is just dying uh death can look like brain death death can look like a lot of things um so just be prepared for pretty much anything because we never know i know that's that's a that's a subject that we could have as a show is on organ donation yeah actually actually you know human works with life source which is there you go yeah yeah that's exactly who we used was life source and they were fantastic they were a
fabulous company to work with. They made me and my family very comfortable. They gave us a little heartbeat in a bottle, which was really, really sweet. They just really handled it with grace. Without them, I don't think we would have been able to handle the process.
Interesting enough, I want to just say this. I know this is turning into an advertisement for LifeSource. LifeSource has been one of our oldest and best partners for human. So we have been with them for two centuries. We were in the 20th century with them, 21st century with them. I mean, so we've worked with them for a long time. And so you're absolutely correct in death.
I mean, one of the ways that we can continue to leave a legacy is to think about organ and tissue donation. So watch this, I love this particular show. I know that for sure.
And we'll get them. We'll get somebody on the show. That's a great, thank you for bringing that up. That's a great, great angle. One thing you alluded to, Sheridan, that I want to make sure that we cover is, and certainly what I found, maybe Clarence, you have too, is that when somebody passes away in your family, let's just say,
I found a lesson that I learned is this, is that there appears to be always somebody that takes the bull by the horn and deals with all the details. Okay, while everybody is kind of mourning or crying or being upset, there's always somebody that has to tend to the details. And I remember, I was that for my father. And then it was about two weeks later that I just lost it. Okay.
So those kinds of things happen. Yeah, Clarence, go ahead.
Yeah, no, I agree with that. So we have to be attentive to those who are struggling with us and understand what their needs are. I do want to say this, though. I mean, we've been talking about death. I want to say this to the living. Don't work yourself too hard. Because once you finish, somebody else will take your job. You know what I mean?
So, you know, in terms of death, I mean, we also want to enjoy life. Absolutely. But we also know that we will have this opportunity. So, yeah.
You know, there's a lot of things to be happy about in all the things we do. And maybe one of the lessons from a show like this is that, you know, it's okay to sit back, smell the roses, and appreciate them while you can. Because once you're gone, that's the end of it. That's the end of it.
And appreciate people. I mean, I think the other part, too, about this thing around death. I mean, there's so many people when death comes, they are grieving over the lost opportunities of having resolved issues. I mean, some of the issues that we have in life are so trivial and so simple. Like, well, I like blue. Well, I like red.
You know, I mean, let those things separate us from enjoying one another uniqueness because all of us are different.
you know, all of us have a unique personality and style, but just because I don't like what you like the way exactly the way that you like it doesn't mean that I should make, you know, 20 or 30 years of drama because when that person dies, you're going to go back, you're going to look back and you're going to examine yourself and you're going to say like, I could have done this better.
So my point is, you know, for the living right now is, uh, You know, give me my flowers. Yeah, give me my flowers now.
Exactly. And if you don't like me, stay away. Don't come to my funeral either.
You know, I'll tell you, Clarence, for the years that we've known each other. Yeah. I don't know how many shows it would be for me to just list out. all the different things that I've learned from you, okay, as a dear colleague and friend, that you've brought so many different perspectives to the conversation. And I don't know how to say how much I appreciate that.
I really, really won't leave you. Last comments.
Clarence. Yeah. My last comment is thank you very much, listeners, for listening to us. I know that I have been venting and I've been I don't know what I've been doing. I don't know what you call this kind of show, because I knew that it was going to be different. But and I hope I hope you don't think bad about me because of the way I think. But what I told you is all real.
I just believe that death is inevitable. But it's also important for us to learn how to live.
Absolutely. Take advantage of it when you can. Sheridan, thoughts?
My last little thought, I think that I've learned a lot from death. I've been around death a lot in my life, unfortunately. And it's something that I've really had to dwell on for the good or bad. But some of the good things that I think I've started to see is Take an inventory of your life. After someone dies, you usually have this moment of reflection. Take an inventory of your own life.
Think about how you're spending your time, who you're spending your time with. Are you working yourself to the bone? Are you not seeing your family, your loved ones enough? Are you not taking your dog on enough walks? Think about what you really, really want. And if you don't like the answer, you need to change it now. You cannot wait until you have more time or more resources or whatever it is.
You need to start the process now. It's a slow process, but you will find your life to be much more rewarding if you continue to take inventory on things like this and be really when you come to the time where you know Death is coming sooner probably than later. You want to be happy with the decisions that you have made in your life and you don't want to have any loose ends.
So now is the time, no matter how young or old or anything in between you are, now is always the time to start thinking about that.
You know, given that this show is called Health Chatter, that is an ending note on how to be healthier, right? in the lives that we all have. So I wanna really thank all the ideas that have come out today. It was really a good show. And I hope our listening audience appreciate us. And for our listening audience, we've got great shows coming up. Clarence and I recently got together.
We have a list of over 20 different topics that we're going to be doing for our health chatter. So Keep tuned in. Check out our website, not only the website for Health Chatter, but also Human Partnership, which I failed to mention at the front end of the show. That's one of our, is our major sponsor for Health Chatter. So with that, be happy and keep health chatting away.
Hi, everyone. It's Matthew from Behind the Scenes. And I wanted to let everyone know that we have a new website up and running, HelpChatterPodcast.com. You can go on there. You can interact with us. You can communicate with us, send us a message. You can comment on each episode. You can rate us.
And it's just another way for everyone to communicate with Stan and Clarence and all of us at the Help Chatter team. So definitely check it out. Again, that's HelpChatterPodcast.com.