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Good Intentions Can Still Hurt at the End of Life · Groove with Portia

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Guru of Portia, the podcast that uncovers the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: hidden treasures within grief. I'm your host, Portia the producer,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm inviting you to join me on a transformative
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: journey where we will exchange laughter, of course, the best
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: medicine of them all, Reflect on cherished memories. Remember that
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: time that the little boy grabbed my hand instead of
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: his mother's at the amusement park? Yikes. And of course,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: discover gratitude while navigating one of life's hardest challenges, loss.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: So get ready to grew with me, Portia, the producer.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Let's dive in. Hello everyone and welcome back to Groove
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: with Portia. I'm your host Portia Booker and as always
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to keep up
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: with all things Groove with Portia. So some of you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: may know this about my story with my mom making
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: her transition but one of the things that my mom
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: had told me and my brother since I was a
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: little girl was her final wishes. Yes, she had always
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: told us from the very beginning what she wanted. And
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, that is not the case.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are too afraid to approach these
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: conversations because they think it's going to eventually or come
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: forth in five minutes. But we know that's not the case.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I remember when my mom actually made her transition, as
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: beautiful and as bittersweet as it was, It was easier
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: for us to honor her wishes because we knew in
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: advance what she wanted. She wanted to be cremated. She
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: told us, don't put all the money in the ground that,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you pay for a funeral and all these
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: different things. That was my mom's mindset. But we still
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: had an amazing, beautiful balloon send off for her at
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the lake. But for my audience, for you guys today,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: are you being proactive? about having your final wish conversations,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: or are you going to continue to wait until it's
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: too late? Let that sink in. So today I have
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a treat for each and every one of you today.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Those of you may have heard of the Death Deck.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I have been following this amazing individual for a couple years,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: ever since both my parents made their transitions. She's also
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the founder of several other death decks that are very
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: important to our world today. So without further delay, welcome
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to Guru Portia, founder of the death deck, Ms. Lisa Paul. Lisa,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: how are you?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I'm great. Thank you for having me on, Portia.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Lisa, I know it took a little bit of planning
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and organizing. Both of us are kind of always on
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the go. You're saving the world often in the hospice
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and death space. And of course, here I am here. Lisa,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I knew I wanted to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: talk about today is you are that individual who wears
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the superwoman cape. And what I mean by that is
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: we're both the same way. We wear the cape to
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: help other people, but we often find ourselves wearing the
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: same shoes as the people who we serve at some
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: point in our journey. And Lisa, I know you spent
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: two decades in the deaf space, helping people with their
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: end of life transitions, making conversations a little easier. And
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I know also you experienced the transition of your mother
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: as well. And I'm curious for our audience, how did
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: being the daughter instead of the hospice social worker help
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: change what you thought you knew about preparing for loss. Wow.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: You're digging in right away.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You got it right.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: You got it right. You got to warm me up
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: a bit for a second.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That's what we do on this show. We go deep.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: We find our groove and we help other people to
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: see what that road was like through our adverse moments. Yeah. No,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I love it. I'm just, I'm I love to use humor, so.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Bring it.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I just want to clarify a couple things.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: I want to make sure. I am the co-founder of
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: the Death Deck. I started the Death Deck with Lori
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Lo Cicero. And so she was the wife of a
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: former hospice patient. And so together we kind of combined.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: And at that point, I hadn't had a lot of
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: significant conversations So we kind of used her personal experience
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: and my professional experience to create the death deck and
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: the end of life deck. And then in 2023, or sorry,
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: in 2024, I took over as the owner and since
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: then have created our additional deck.
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  Speaker 2: So just to clarify that.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: And then, yes.
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  Speaker 4: So I was taking care of my mother-in-law, Kay. She
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. in May of 2020, which
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: we all know what May of 2020 looked like.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And it was a really.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Challenging time to be dealing with a metastatic pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: And she decided to pretty quickly that she was going
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: to go straight to hospice. Um, she had talked to
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: the oncologist. They had basically told her you can maybe
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: get an extra year if you do a lot of treatment. Um,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: and so it was a hard decision, but she came
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: to that decision. Um, and she, we ended up, My
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: husband and I flying back and forth from California, taking
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: turns one month of being the primary caregiver, and then
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: her daughter would come on the weekends. And so I
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: thought I knew what caregiving was. I had already been
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: working in hospice about 15 years at that point. And
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: had supported a ton of caregivers and walked them through
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: the end-of-life journey of their family member.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: And then I found myself anxious.
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  Speaker 4: Always afraid she was going to fall because she loved
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  Speaker 4: to get up in the middle of the night and
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  Speaker 4: sneak around when I couldn't be right by her, you know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: writing letters and things. And I'd catch her and then
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  Speaker 4: there was like, oh.
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  Speaker 2: You know, you're hovering over me and the ins and
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: outs of those moments.
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  Speaker 4: But I also learned it humbled my experience. It humbled
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: me in really deep ways because I came in with
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: kind of this expectation that I was going to help
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: her have like this best death. Like I'm working in
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: this space. I know all these wonderful resources now. We're
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: going to do legacy work.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: We're going to make videos.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: She was a Midwest woman, so they don't exactly always
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: say it directly. They just say, okay, honey, I don't
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  Speaker 4: feel like doing that today.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And so that was right.
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  Speaker 4: And luckily, I had a brother-in-law.
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  Speaker 3: I have a brother-in-law who.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: Was who was able to help me see the light
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: in a very, you know, nice, but very direct way
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  Speaker 4: and said, basically.
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  Speaker 2: Can't you get a hint? She doesn't want to do
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: that stuff.
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  Speaker 4: Telling you what she wants to do by how she's
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: spending her time. And like, why do you keep bringing
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: it up, making these videos and these things?
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  Speaker 3: Like, she's always going to tell you, like, that's not
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: what she wants to do.
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  Speaker 4: And I'm like, yes, but her kids would really appreciate
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: that later. You know, I'm thinking like grief process, I'm
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: going all the steps ahead, running it back.
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  Speaker 2: What can we do now? And she really.
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  Speaker 3: Taught me that.
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  Speaker 4: It's absolutely not the opinions or thoughts of the helper
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: or caregiver or other person. It really has to be
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  Speaker 4: that person's experience, their transitioning.
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  Speaker 3: Their process.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 4: And, and it was, it was humbling. I, I really,
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: you know, looking back, I, I've written her letters afterwards, apologizing. And,
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: you know, because I, so many things that, we can
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: do come with good intentions, but they're harmful.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: And that was an example. You know, I put this
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: out as stress on her. She didn't need just because
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: I had this.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: Idea about how she could make everything better. But like,
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: as though that's her responsibility as this woman to keep
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: making everything better.
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  Speaker 2: And even in her dying.
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  Speaker 3: Process, right?
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  Speaker 4: That wasn't fair. So I learned a lot from that experience,
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  Speaker 4: and I'm sure I'll keep messing up in different ways,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: as I have when I've helped other people here. There
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: are humbling moments that I think we learn from them,
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  Speaker 4: and I think we just keep trying to hold at
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: our center that people have different beliefs and thoughts and
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: how they want to spend their final time.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: And even if they want to acknowledge it at all,
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  Speaker 2: it really isn't up to us.
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  Speaker 1: Lisa, I could tell that this was not easy for
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: you to really dive on because we're both in the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: same boat. We want, I'm the same way. I wanted
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to take videos. I wanted to, and which I did. I,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I have the very last conversation that me and my
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: mom had an hour before she transitioned. I have it
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: recorded on my phone. And one of the things that
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I got to tell her was thank you. Thank you
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: for being my mother and, thank you for keeping your
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: foot up my butt to get me through college and
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: everywhere else and to be a good human and to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: remember to be of service. And I told her that
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to call anybody else, my mother, but her.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And she said, thank you, darling. We did it. We
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: did it till the end. And shortly after that, she
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: drifted off to sleep because of the morphine and that.
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  Speaker 1: But I think about how grateful I am for that.
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  Speaker 1: But I have so many other things of my mom too.
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  Speaker 1: She's been a guest on Group with Portia a couple
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of times, but I know other people, especially in the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: world today, Lisa, we were talking a little bit about
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  Speaker 1: how so many people who are embarking on their new
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: endeavors of whether it's being a death doula, a minister,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a hospice nurse, social worker, any of those things, they're
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: being flooded with all the shoulds. Oh, you should do this.
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  Speaker 1: You should do that. But as you've already alluded to,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: it boils down to what the person who's transitioning wants.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
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  Speaker 4: And, and, and I think when you're passionate about something,
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: it's really hard to accept that people are like.
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  Speaker 2: You know, that's great, but not for me. It's like, no, no,
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  Speaker 2: it is for you.
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  Speaker 4: It's just, uh, this impulse to, um, to convince people, right?
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  Speaker 3: It's like, no, no, I believe this with my heart.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: You should too.
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  Speaker 4: And again, that's, um, I think it's human nature and
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  Speaker 4: also I think it can cause harm when people are
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: trying to show us or tell us like, that's not
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: for me.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and you hit it. That passion can sometimes really
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: blind you, like love is blind type of thing. I mean,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: you're so passionate about what you do and you're trying
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to apply that same passion if you want to call
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: it algorithm to everybody, but it doesn't work, right? Lisa,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: before we continue with the conversation, if our audience wants
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to get a copy of the death deck, obviously, if
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: you have any upcoming events that they can attend that
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you're doing, how can our audience connect with you, Lisa?
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can find our three products at the
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: death deck.com. Um, and you know, I'm speaking at a
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: bunch of different places coming up in the fall, but, um,
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: in general, you can just learn a lot about my
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: work and, um, and all the stuff at, at my website,
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: the death.com. Um, I will do one mention of, of, uh,
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: something that I'm involved in. That's a real passion of mine.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: I work as a, um, volunteer facilitator for the humane, um,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: the Humane Prison Hospice Project, which is a wonderful organization.
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: I personally have been supporting women incarcerated in the Chino
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Correctional Facility, and we go every month, and then we
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: have annual trainings to help them learn how to care
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: for other incarcerated women who are ill, dealing with mental health,
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: dealing with death and dying. And it's been one of
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: the richest experiences of my life. And so I just
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: encourage people to kind of look them up and see
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: they are expanding.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: They've been in.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: California men and women's prisons and now in Michigan, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: there's plans for.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Further expansion.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: So if anyone's interested in getting involved in that, you
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: can find out the information on their website.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: Excellent.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And Lisa, I appreciate that. I mean, because, and that's
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a whole conversation and a half about the stigma that
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: lingers around the prison population. And, you know, there was
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a woman that I met years ago. She is working
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: on a book of all the different, I don't want
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to call them inmates, I call them guests, all the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: different guests who are there that she's talked to and
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: they're creative. Some of them have taken their old recipes
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: that are generations old, or they've drawn comic books, or
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: they've written poetry that she's compiling into this book to
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: show a different side of who these individuals are.
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, there's so much creativity within the incarcerated system, like
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: these women that we support. And I'm talking specifically about
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: women because that's who I'm working with.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: But, um, The creativity.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: They've been, you know, putting on memorial services for their
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: peers who have died in prison, which is excruciatingly hard
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: because then these women are picturing themselves dying in prison.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: And so there's so much grief around that, and yet
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: they are showing up. They're creating, like, flowers out of
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: tissue paper. They're, like, pooling resources to– create these really meaningful, um,
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: books with their thoughts on the person to give to
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: the family afterwards, um, you know, how they've impacted them.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: And so the creativity and the spirit of some of these, um,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: individuals who are faced with so much daily grief and, um, to,
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: to say the least of everything else that they have
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: to deal with. Um, It's just remarkable. It inspires me
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: greatly every time I go.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And Lisa, I appreciate you sharing that because you're right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: They're human too. I mean, the grief of every day
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: being confined behind these four walls, not being able to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: see your family. If you have kids, you know, one
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: of my recent interviews that I did was with a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: woman who was in prison for years. And she.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Barely kept a relationship with her kids during that time
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: because they were younger. And now this lady is working
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: on her PhD. I mean, talk about a full circle moment.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, see, these are the things that need
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: to be talked about more often. But there was still
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: grief in her journey of, am I going to be
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: able to have a relationship with my kids when I
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: get out? Do they even want to be bothered with me?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: What are people saying in the street about why I'm
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: in here and what are my kids going to think? What,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: you know, what is my future going to look like
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: if I'm trying to get a job in my dream field?
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: But some of these entities have laws and regulations that
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: barge me, even if I have an expunded record. So,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I just, I just think about just different
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: entities that prevent people who may have had a mishap
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: in their life, but it shouldn't dictate their entire future. No,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it shouldn't.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: And, and, and when you're talking about kind of the
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: other side, um, when someone is released, that's one of
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: the barriers, especially for people for.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Compassion, um, compassionate release.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Um, I can't tell you how many women over the
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: age of 75 are in this facility in Chino. They're everywhere,
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: walking with walkers, canes, hunched over, very, very fragile health
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: in these women. And yet somehow, I mean, we have
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: a person in their 80s in our group who's supporting
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: other people.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: And it's like, yeah, what are we doing?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: What are we doing?
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: What are we saying as a society?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: What is this little old lady going to do? You know,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: like it's so hard.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: But one of the barriers with compassionate release, which isn't
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: the case of the people I know, but I know
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: that it is the case for a lot of people,
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: is that they don't actually have a place to go
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: once they get released from prison. And so humane is...
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: has currently been working on a pilot project of basically
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: like a group home in LA that incarcerated men are
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: going to, who will then be cared for by previously incarcerated.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Men as part of the program.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: And I think that's such a beautiful model and like
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: one that could be replicated for those people that are actually,
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: you know, fragile and sick and need help when they
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: are released. But for everyone else that doesn't need that,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: It really is like, where are you going to go?
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: How are you going to get money? How are you
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: going to survive outside?
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: So, yeah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think we talked this whole podcast about this.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But that's the beauty, right? Lisa is there still, I mean,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: you brought up some of these women are 60 plus
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and And probably they've been in there for what? Longer
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: than 30 years. So probably if they have kids, their
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: parents are gone. Any friends that they don't know who's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: still around to support them. They may not even get
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: a phone call or a letter. Right. So think about
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: also the grief of when they're thinking about their mortality.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Who's going to show up for me at my funeral?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Who's going to remember what I did? Who's even going
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: to remember my name and put good things to it
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: instead of, oh, you're just another serial killer. Right. So,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's pertinent still to to the conversation today,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: because what's our focus realistically with this population? What does
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it say as a society today? where we're having conversations
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: about we want to spend thousands of dollars on a funeral,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: but most people won't even take the time to know
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: what their loved one's final wishes are, yet alone these
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: individuals who don't even have anybody to remember what they
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: did in life other than what their prison sentence is.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Now, I will say a lot of people make really
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: deep relationships.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: With their peers.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: And what I've seen, we had a woman die recently
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: who was.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Infamous, right? She was one of those high profile people.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: And she was never gonna be released, partly because of that.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: And yet this group of women who had supported her
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: towards her end of life, because she was sick for
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: quite a while, they had so many things to say
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: about her.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: They created this whole book.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: For her family of memories and who she was in
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: the prison and what kind of role she served in
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: their lives, which I heard back from the family, because
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: I actually have a friend who's friends with them. And
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: so we were able to get things uh, I, to them, um,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: about what the women had said and, and written and things.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And so, um, yeah, they.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Use some of those words at her funeral because, because
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: they didn't, they didn't know, you know, because these are
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: the people that she spent.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: The last 40 years with. So, um, so.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: I, you know, there's so much that needs to change.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: I think the frustration, um, The hardest thing of doing
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: that work is the frustration with the helpless feeling that
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: I have every time I leave. And I feel like
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: this isn't okay, like how they're being treated, how long
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: people are, how fragile they are and they're still locked up.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: Just so many aspects of it that it's I think
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: about our society and what we're doing.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Wrong all the time.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: All the time in 2026, what aren't we doing wrong?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Know.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: And Lisa, I think about too, especially with these women,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: this woman will just call her Jane the great, because
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: obviously she made her name so big that she couldn't
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: leave from the four walls. I mean, these women who
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: became her peers are, recognize the good qualities within Jane.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And they documented that. And I'm curious for you, Lisa,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: for other people who are tuning in to this show,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: do you think that more people can take the initiative
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: instead of waiting until someone's on their deathbed to really
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: start asking questions and documenting their life of who they
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: were and the things who the things that they've accomplished,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: because I think sometimes we wait until the last minute
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and then there's no pictures. There's no anything about where
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: you went to high school or, you know, the, the
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: funny moment of you walking down the street, you slip
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: on a banana peel, a squirrel comes and attacks you
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: just all types of weird things.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I, um, that question set my mind on all
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: these different resources that are now available to help people
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: do things like that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Um, because.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: You know, I, I think our, our fear, our fear
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: and avoidance of death, um, keeps us from doing a
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: lot of things that would make our transitions easier, you know, um,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: including having, um, you know, writing out information that's going
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: to be needed for that obituary. You know, there's information
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: on a death certificate that in hospice, I started, you know,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: giving people the list so that they could start asking
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: now because once the person's gone, they're not going to
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: have that information that is required by the state, you know.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: To issue a death certificate.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: And so, There's also the practicality of what's going to
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: happen to the home and what's going to happen to
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: the estate and what's going to happen, who's going to
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: get into their accounts? How are you going to get
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: into their email if you don't know any passwords?
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Preparation that helps make for a peaceful, less conflict-filled end-of-life experience.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: But I think our.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: Our fear of bringing up a topic that other people
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: don't maybe want to talk about or, you know, what
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: you think I'm old, you're trying to kill me, you know, um,
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: there's lots of different responses that people have sometimes for
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: these conversations. But what I, what I found is like,
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: this is what's going to help me later. And I
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: hope you can, I hope we can just kind of
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: get some of this stuff done to make it easier.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: For the future you.
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: Know and.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: And I also find that we think we don't want
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: to talk about death and dying we think that this
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: is like too morbid and all these things that I
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: hear all the time but I'll tell you, we just
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: had a, um, an event called death over drafts where
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: we bring the death deck into breweries.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, I went around death drink too.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: I went around asking people, you know, a question and
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: I'm just like, you know, these random bodybuilders who were there.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And, um, and, and at first they gave me the.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Look that everyone gives, which is like, you know, what,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: what is this?
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: What are you bothering me with?
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Um, But then they had, I mean, they talked for
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: like 15 minutes about their answer. So people are thinking
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: about death. People are thinking about someone in their life
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: dying one day. They're thinking about their own mortality. They're thinking,
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: you know, they have thoughts and opinions on what happens
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: after they die, of how they, you know, what disposition
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: they want, cremation, burial, or more progressive green options. So.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: People actually do want to talk about this. They just
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: sometimes need ways to do it. They need ways to
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: access the conversation to make it a little easier.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not when we're at the funeral of someone else
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: or when someone makes their transition. You know, Lisa, you
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: brought up.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: No, but maybe the next week.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: It made me think. You know, Mom, while we were
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: at that funeral.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: It made me think. And I don't know these things
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: about you.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Could we maybe like, you know, next time I come over,
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: could we kind of talk about some.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Of the things that I might need to know?
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: Right. Yeah. Because those moments are actually good. We just
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: don't want to do it at the funeral. Right.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: That's not appropriate.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: That's not appropriate.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: That's dead wrong. I've got lots of puns, Lisa. I mean,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and I won't go too deep on them, but some
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of my friends that are close to me, they know
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: my sarcasm and humor. So when I'll answer the phone
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: for a phone call from them, I'll say, hey, it's
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the city morgue. And some of them will be like,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: you stab them, we slab them, or we kill them,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: we grill them. So it just depends. Some of my
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: friends who know me, I answer the phone with that often. Well,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and then all those spam calls I was getting for
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a while, I would answer them and say city morgue.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: And then they'd be like, oh, the morgue. Listeners, that's
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: a good tip. Yes.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: I'm like people not to call you back.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. I'm like a city morgue and, and some would
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: be like, Oh, and then they hang up like. but
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that's what I use. But Lisa, let me ask you this.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: I have one final question for you. And I don't
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: think too many people touch on this aspect when you
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: brought up about the estates and obviously when someone transitions,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: not having passwords and things, What is your take on
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: individuals and leaving their social medias alive when they've transitioned?
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Because I think there's a lot of conversation that are
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: starting to percolate about that. but I wanted kind of
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: your take on that because I think that's the way
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: we're moving is, you know, social media keeps going and
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: with so much automated software and things, you can keep
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: your social media going for years and nobody would even
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: know that you died.
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: Oh, that just made my stomach feel weird. I'm going
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: to tell you, that's my, my, my physical feeling of
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: when you said that, um, I understand why.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: Um, some families choose to keep, um, their social media going, um,
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: while the person is not, you know, while they're sick.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: And after, and after they die, um, at least for
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: a bit, um, I think that there's, I recently had
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: a friend die who was, um, the owner of a
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: local wine bar. And so, you know, his service had
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: 1500 people at it. And so his page, you know,
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: you can still tag him. You can still share a memory.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: And I think it's one of the ways that the
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: community is kind of grieved together is through that sharing
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: of pictures and tagging and everything. However, you can memorialize
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: Like on Facebook. And you can turn it into an
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: account that people instantly know.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: That they're dead.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: Because I think it gets kind of scary into now
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: that we're in the age of AI and all of
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: these different ways. Do I think we should use the
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: likeness of someone after they died? I don't.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: I don't. Personally, don't use my likeness.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: Don't create a bod of me that's going to then
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: console you in your grief. No, don't do that. I,
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: you know, yeah, that feels gross to me.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Personally.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: And it has become a hot topic, the topic of– Yeah,
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: people creating bots of their previous spouse most often is
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: how it's being used. And people having conversations with them.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: And then.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: They're still alive in some sense. And they're getting their
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: social needs met in a way. And I think that's
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: a tricky thing too. If someone is 90... I might
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: have a different take on them using something like that
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: in their final years than someone my, you know, 50,
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: who if.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: I died, my husband's still young. I don't want him
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: creating a bottom me.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: A bot of me, a bot of me to, to
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: then interact with and keep him company the rest of
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: his life.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Like I want him to have a full life.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Lisa Frankenstein then.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: No, no, I don't.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And also like, dear God, just let me be dead.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: You know, like I got to support you in afterlife too?
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Like, no.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Your husband gets a secret spousal allowance from you. Yeah. Lisa,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it because I think that's a conversation that
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of people really need to think about and
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: have as far as their social media accounts. Now we
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: do have my mom's Facebook still around. I haven't memorialized
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it yet, but it is still around. I still tag
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: her in things, but people know the way that I
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: write my posts, they know that she's gone. They know it.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: So it's not weird, creepy. Hey, I'm still here, but
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: not really.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: And I think, again, I think social media, especially in
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: the age that we are.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Where people, you really got to work for people to
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: leave their house. Um, You know, we.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Have gotten to a point, at least in the world
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: that I'm living in, where, yeah, it takes a lot
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: to get people to leave their house and get off
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: their phone or get off their device.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: And so I.
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: Think through that, we are isolating ourselves from like collective
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: grief experiences.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: And we are moving that.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: Collective grief experience to the screen like we've moved everything
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: else to.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: But I will say that that's better than no collective grief.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: I think– and also we can connect with people who
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: don't live by us and who– which, you know, nowadays
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: everyone lives all over the place too. So there's– I
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: think there's good in each of these things, but I
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: do think that there needs to be conversations ahead of
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: time because some people would potentially have a real problem
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: with social media being kept alive or with a bot
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: being created, you know, and those are preferences that you
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: really– you really need to talk to your family about.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: And they can change.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: And then you have a different conversation.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: You might be thinking you're for it now and then
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: see what happens once this starts really becoming a thing
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: and then change your mind, right? So that's the point
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: of having these conversations about end of life and about
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: what happens after you die is that once you can
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: just get a little comfortable with it, then you just
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: keep returning to the conversation. It doesn't have to be
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: this big sit down thing.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: It's just- it's just part of life. And like, this
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: is a thought I just had.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Don't ever do that to me.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be a bot, you know?
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: But it takes getting comfortable with talking about death and dying.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And that's really why.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: We created the death deck was just to give people
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: a more fun, playful way with a lot of humor
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: and multiple choice questions.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: So people can get to the point of just being
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: able to drop a, drop a comment like that.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, Hey, you know, death is a funny thing.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: It is no point. I mean, there's some funny parts
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: to it, but there's also, um, some messy parts.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And I mean, it's not all what it's cracked up
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: to be literally.
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, well, Lisa, this has been a beautiful conversation.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: We will have to definitely have a part two because
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I think the, um, The social media conversation is essential,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to death, dying, figuring out your
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: final wishes. And also, what does that collective grief look
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: like in the next four or five years where so
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: many of us are behind screens now? And even though post-COVID,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: we have more access now to get around, but we're
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: still sitting in one spot. Yeah. Well, everybody, that was
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Lisa Paul, the co-founder of the Death Deck that you
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: heard from today on Guru of Portia. And that concludes
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: our conversation. And until next time, everybody, peace and hair grease, everyone.