Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 33: Shannon McPhetres; How Volunteer Hospice Helps Families Through The Hardest Days

Transcript

Episode 33: Shannon McPhetres; How Volunteer Hospice Helps Families Through The Hardest Days · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_05: Today, my guest is Shannon McFeeders, somebody I've known for a few decades now.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_05: And she is currently the director and volunteer coordinator for Hospice of Haynes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I wanted to bring her on today to talk about hospice.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, having recently gone through that experience with my dad and the help that they offered him and my mom and our whole family, want to get into that with you.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_05: But first, as we always do, welcome to the show.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: And then where did Shannon start off at?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: Well, what was your young life at before you came to Haynes?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_07: Before I came to Haynes, I grew up in Kenai.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_07: So another small town.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we moved there in 1980.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, so most of my childhood was there.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_05: And where were you?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: Where was your family before Kenai?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_07: My parents are both Texans.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: Texans.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_07: They are that's a common thing.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of Texans that come to Alaska.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_07: And my mom had a dream when she was a little girl that she wanted to move to Alaska.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_07: They had four kids before they did it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_07: And so I think it, I mean, the more I think about it, that was a huge thing for her to take all six of us up here, two dogs and a cat in a camper.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_05: So what were the what were the ages of the kids when they decided we're moving to Alaska?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_07: I was eight, and then my brother was about six and a half.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_07: And um, let's see, Justin would have been two.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: Dang.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_05: So you're the oldest in the oldest, yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_07: I have three younger brothers.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so let's hop in a camper.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_05: And did that did they have a job already lined up in Kenai when they went there?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_07: Actually, we spent a year in Anchorage first.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_07: Dad did have a job.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_07: I don't think he liked it, and I don't think they liked Anchorage.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_07: So we left for the summer.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_07: We spent a summer in Billings, Montana, which was Billings is a Bills.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_05: Well, so what was tough about it?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_05: I always envision Billings is a beautiful town.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_07: It was.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_07: We were outside a lot, but there were a lot of snakes, and just it was just uncomfortable for us.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_05: So I think and my dad if you're in a camp if were you in the camper the whole time?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_07: The whole time.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_05: So six, yeah, okay.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_05: I understand why that was a rough summer.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_07: So my dad did get a job then in Kenai, and we went back, and that's where we stayed.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and they're still there.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: What did you do?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_07: Uh he sells and services office equipment.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_07: So copiers, clash registers at that time.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_07: And then um he retired about 10 years ago.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_05: Nice.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: So he had a really great So what what was childhood like in Kenai?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_05: Was your did you have a big outdoor family?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_05: Were you guys out?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_07: Well, we camped a lot.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_07: Camping.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_07: We always camped uh most weekends, and you know, by the time we got to high school, we hated it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_07: But growing up, we loved it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_07: We we spent time all over uh the Kenai Peninsula.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_07: Um and then we go up to Fairbanks, maybe a little bit Denali once a year, probably.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but most of the time it was just on the peninsula and we just go for the weekend.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that there's a lot of people that travel a long way to go camping on the peninsula, so that's not a bad way to grow up.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, and this was, I mean, these were really the heydays for the Kenai River, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_07: We fish a lot.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um, my dad's biggest fish was 72 pounds.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um 72 pound king in the Kenai.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_07: And that was pretty typical.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, maybe not that big, but uh big fish all the time.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and this was before sport fishing really got big, and and before there was this battle between the commercial fishermen and um the sports fishermen.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_07: So it was kind of really wonderful, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_05: Tragic days of the Kenai.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_07: And I think uh Kenai was a small town, it was uh you know, very much related to the oil because they were fine in North Kenai.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um I think it was just I don't know, growing up it was kind of idyllic, but um it was also a small town Alaska, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_08: And um, I was just I mean, I think it was great.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_08: We had a great childhood.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_08: We really did.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_05: So what was it like the three younger brothers?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_05: Was that a handful?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_05: Of course.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_05: My sister says I was a handful as one younger brother, but I don't know if she would want a two uh two more of me to follow along.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I tell Emily that all the time.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_07: You only have one.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it was I mean, I was kind of their second mom, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_07: My mom just back she went to work when I was in high school, maybe even late junior high.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_07: And so I kind of was there after school a lot of times for them and made dinner.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I think my mom, you know, it was it kind of helped that she had an older daughter to kind of, you know, my brothers were pretty outdoorsy and wild, and I think she appreciated having the alpha in the house.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, for sure.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_05: I bet she did.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_07: But it was great.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_07: I um they were a challenge, but I think as we got older, it got better, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_07: You get closer with your siblings.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_05: When you're not fighting over to who has to do what chore and things like that and you're for your parents' attention.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of times that levels things out and makes it easier to plus hopefully we're all becoming more mature.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_05: You do hope that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that that probably helps a little bit.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_05: But you're thinking a little more a little better than a 12 or 13-year-old mic.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_05: That helps.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_07: And then the two older boys went into the military.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_07: So by the time I was in college, they were, you know, enjoying the last days of their high school and then going into the military.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_05: What branches?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_07: Uh Kevin went into the Navy and then Mitch followed along uh four years later, and he went into the Marines.
• 5:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_05: How long did they serve?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_07: Uh both of them served four years.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_07: And that was, you know, and then Kevin um left and got his engineering degree.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_07: And uh Mitch is now fighting wildlife fires.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_07: Awesome.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_07: Well, he works for the yeah, he works um as the National Park Service, but um, fighting fires was a big part of it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_05: What was that like for the rest of the family when they were in the service?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_07: Interesting.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_07: Well, my dad served too, so I think for him, that's a right.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: He had a good understanding of it.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_05: He had a good understanding.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_05: And the pride that they follow in his footsteps.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_07: And to be honest, I don't really know, Doug, because I was gone already.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_07: I was already in college.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: And but even in even in college, knowing your brothers are wherever they were at, knowing that they could be in danger.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_07: Was that ever no, because thankfully during the time they served, we were it was very peaceful.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_07: There, I mean, for me, it was exciting for them because they got to go overseas and do amazing adventures, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_07: Both of them traveled a lot while they were out of the house.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_07: Got to see some cool places.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, got to see some really cool places.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_07: So um, probably a little bit of jealousy on my part, but I didn't want to go through boot camp.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_07: No, that's not me.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: The the free travel on the government dime wasn't worth boot camp.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_07: No, none of that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_05: I can understand that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_05: That's a lot, that's that's might be free travel, but you gave up a lot in order to get it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: So where where'd you go to college?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_07: Uh what was then George Fox College, now George Fox University.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_07: And I went with a desire to be a medical missionary doctor.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_07: That was my since I was eight years old.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_07: I wanted to be a doctor.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_07: And then somewhere in high school, I decided it was gonna be missions.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_07: And I would travel the world that way.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you're gonna you're still gonna travel the world, but uh so was your family very involved with church and then was it a religious family or was that not at all?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_05: That was you on your own had that passion?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_07: So um I in junior high had a great my best friend came down from Kotzebue.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_07: She moved from Kotzebue, and I got um attached to her family.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_07: We lived even close together, like our families lived um maybe six half a mile from each other.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_07: And I went to church with them, and that's kind of where I my faith.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, which led me to George Fox.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's so after that, that's when you switch from just being a doctor to you want to be a missionary doctor.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, somewhere in there.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_07: And I wanted to travel.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_07: I really wanted to see the world and um felt like that would be a good way to do it, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_07: Because you can serve anywhere.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_07: It's a doctor.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_05: Um how much did you look into that as far as a lot.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_07: A lot.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_07: Like I was, but I also was concerned because I had to pay for college.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_07: And um, I was the first person in my family to go to college.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and at the time college was expensive even then.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_07: But um, I I didn't know how that was all gonna come together.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_07: I just had faith that it would.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: That you'd find the right path and the way to go.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_07: No doubt that it would happen.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_07: I just didn't know how.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_07: And it was hard to, you know, get the scholarships to go to college alone.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_07: I wasn't sure how medical school was gonna happen.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but it turns out I didn't need to worry about that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_05: So what where where was it along that path that you switched?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, so this is small town Alaska.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_07: Uh my eighth grade year in November, there's an airplane accident.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_07: Orion Air uh coming out of Homer.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_05: And um that's why we have these, Shannon.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's all right.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um the 21 passengers on board, 18 of them were from Kenai.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_07: They were teachers and dads and sons that were going to moose hunt in Kodiak.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kodiak, yeah.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_07: And so they were coming back with all of their gear.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_07: And the plane was too heavy.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_07: And the ones, the three that survived, were the ones that fell asleep.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_07: It was a son.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, they fell asleep, and so they were not So they were what is it?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_07: They were kind of leaning, they were probably leaning forward, and then all it hit, or and all the gear came forward and killed him, is really what happened.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_07: So um that kind of and it was like my favorite teacher and his son.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and and they happened to be, you know, friends with my brothers and played on the same baseball teams.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_07: And so this is a really big thing for Kenai.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that's that's huge.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: Because how how many people in Kenai?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, 6,000 at the time, maybe 6,000 and you look 18 and like that.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and you know, just people that we knew, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_07: A lot of people.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I'm gonna it's 18.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_05: 6,000 people, 18 people are gonna know in a small town like that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_05: Just about everybody's gonna know at least one person on there, if not multiple of them.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_07: And because they were teachers, some of them were teachers and their kids.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_07: So it was a a it was a huge tragedy.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_07: And and and I think that kind of started a series of them a few months later.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_07: Then there was an airplane crash in Kenai that had some fathers of you know, some of the men that worked on the slope.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_07: So there were maybe not I don't remember knowing any of them, but it was just after this other airplane accident, and it was more people that were affecting um, so a lot of trouble and grief, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_05: One after the other.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_07: And then in high school there were several, you know, kids, and and and it's kind of like the Haynes High School, you know everybody, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_07: We knew each of these people.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, there was a young lady that died of brain cancer.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: So we it was eighth grade when the crash.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_07: When the crash happened.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_05: Did they bring any counseling in to school?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_05: Do you remember?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: I don't remember.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: I'm sure they did.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_07: But I also think it was the first time.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe not, but it felt like the first time, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_07: It was a long time ago.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_07: Um I didn't get any.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_07: I I didn't I didn't even know that you needed that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_07: We just kind of all or at least my friend group just kind of honkered through.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_07: I don't think anybody told us what grief was.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_05: And if they had Well, and that's the the reason I'm asking that is because as you're talking about that growing up in Haynes with the number of people that you know in a plane crash, an automobile accident, whatever, some of them are a year ahead of you.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_05: Some of it involves a teacher's family, and yeah, we just kind of and you just kind of move on to the next thing.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_05: And it wasn't anything like you're saying, I don't remember anybody saying this is how you deal with grief, this is how we deal with it.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's just you go to school the next day.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: You just go, you just go back to school, and there's sometimes you know that's um I remember the one that a bunch of kids went and they had a kind of their own thing down at Clinkett Park or whatever.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_05: But we're told no, you need to be in school.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_05: You need to be in school.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_07: And it's well, it may be in part too because our parents don't know how to greet.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_05: Nobody this is in We're getting older, but we're not that old that it wasn't that long ago.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_05: I mean it was Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_05: But I do the back, it was a long it was a long time ago, but but in this looking, but in the same vein, it wasn't.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so just seeing that change since then to now, and how that's like with the slide, the number of counselors they had coming into the school and into the community and and and helping with that grief uh and that loss and that trauma compared to the times before.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: Where there was there was nothing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is that we grew up in a time when we didn't talk about it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_07: No, we didn't name it.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't, yep.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think that's um um common.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Ver very common.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I think some of the things that I struggle with, I don't know if other people do, but I know from my own experience is going through numerous traumatic incidents and never really having a conversation about it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: Just moving on to the day.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: You you got woken up at five o'clock in the morning by the dog.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um, your sister got woke you up because the dog woke her up and your house is on fire, and now we don't have a place to live, but we got a place, and so we just you just go to school the next day and you you just keep going on and yeah, differ different different things.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: You you'll one of your teachers, their spouse, dies in a plane crash, and you just you just go on.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_05: You somebody same age dies in a car accident.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_05: You just you never you never talked about it, you never got through that.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_07: Except I think that um by the time there's a series of things that happen.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_07: Again, we had a close high school.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_07: Um Kenai, the my freshman year Kenai split.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_07: So we went from 800 kids to 400 Nikiski opened a school.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_07: So now we've got a smaller school.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_07: And this is happening just right after that, you know, um, first the Ryanair accident and then the other plane accident.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_07: Um and so we now have uh, you know, however many we had high school 400.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, lots of teachers.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know everybody, of course.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_07: But we're knowing everybody closer, and now there's a lot more going on.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, now one of my dearest friends uh had another relapse of can he had leukemia as a kid.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_07: He relapses, so he's going through cancer treatment.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but now there's teachers.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_07: So now we're dealing with an illness, which is a whole different ballgame, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_07: But we're talking about it.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that um it started there, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_07: The talking about how do we deal with this illness.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_05: So the the teachers were bringing it up?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_07: The teachers, the class, right?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_07: Because now we've suffered through a couple of tragedies and we know we need to talk.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_07: Um, did we do it well?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_07: Probably not, but did we do it?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_05: Isn't that the main thing?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Is just to have the conversation.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, and to not feel afraid to be able to say to your teacher, hey, this is not my greatest day, you know, or to cry.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think I when I think of high school, I know this is crazy, but we cried a lot.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_07: And I think we had a lot to cry about, but it was okay.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_07: By the time we got to high school I got to high school, um, it was okay to do that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, which is way different than I think what may have happened here or in other places.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_05: But it and that I'm I know it's evolved.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_05: And it and I don't know when it started evolving.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_05: You know, once you're out of school, it's unless you have kids, you're not really paying attention to what's going on.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_05: I I know it's evolved over time to what I think there's very good protocols and support over in the school system now.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_05: And yep.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: And I it's it's well, I I know there's things that I struggle with because of that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_05: At the same time, I know it also built up a tremendous amount of strength and resiliency in me.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_05: The way that we handled it at the time.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_05: Was it perfect?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_05: But it's probably not perfect today either.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_05: But it it it yeah, I know it did build a lot of strength and resiliency at the same time.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_05: Any anytime you're going through tough times, I think it does that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_05: However, you get to the end of it, you get to the end of it, and you're well, you hope so.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's the goal.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_05: You hope to be stronger at the end of it.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_05: And it's easier to be stronger at the end of it if you have help.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_07: And you yep.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_05: And you're willing to be vulnerable with your friends and family and the people going through it with you.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that's what Kenai as a community did.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_07: We got vulnerable.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_07: We knew we had to.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_07: There were struggling kids.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_07: There were um yeah, things going on.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_05: So that that's kind of when it planted planted in your mind.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_07: Because all of these things happened.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um, my best friend, this dear friend that had leukemia, um, came to our high school graduation.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_07: We made all kinds of arrangements.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_07: He was going, he just had a bone marrow transplant um at children's in Seattle.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_07: And he was able to come home for graduation.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_07: So that was, you know, kind of a highlight.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_07: Um I left for George Fox that first year, probably mid-August, and he died August 17th, um, after that very long battle.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_07: So I was going into college with a huge loss.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um and what was really funny is we had chapel, of course, at George Fox.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_07: The first chapel, which is within days of me being there, um, a professor stood up.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_07: And this professor, Willie Montgomery, had cancer.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_07: He was going through cancer treatment.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_07: And I I just remember being in um that chapel, rolling my eyes and saying, I God, I cannot do it.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not taking a class from him.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not gonna get to know him.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_07: I am not gonna have anything to do with him.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_07: Because if something happens, yeah, it's gonna be devastating.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_07: Well, Doug, what do you think happened?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_05: Your next class is in with him, wasn't it?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_07: My second semester, yeah.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_05: Did he become like your mentor through Edward's Fox?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I ended up being the babysitter for a while, his baby his family's babysitter for a while.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but he also, and that's the way it kind of worked, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_07: Just all these things lined up.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_07: I had two great professors.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_07: Um, what was Dr.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_07: Allen and one was this um gentleman, uh Willie Montgomery, who uh turned the path.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_07: Because to my in my heart, all that I knew is that I wanted to be a doctor.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_07: I wanted to be involved in medicine.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_07: And then you go, that's how college works, right?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_07: You go and you find out all these other things.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_07: There's this thing called social work.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_07: There's actually medical social work, and you get to be with people and you get to, you know, um help people in their medical journeys.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_07: I was like, I I didn't know this existed.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_07: We don't have these.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, you know, Alaska's pretty small.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't know all about that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_07: So I I did end up um in a class that uh we just called them Willie, Willie taught.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_07: And um it happened, he happened to be working at an organization, McMinnville, Oregon, that was a home health agency.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_07: And they had a hospice component to it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_07: And right away in my freshman year, he approached and said, I think that you would do really well in hospice.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_07: I had no idea what that was.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_07: And then I heard, and then you know, it kind of learned it was working with dying people.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_07: I'm like, no.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Peace out on this one.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_07: I'm done.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_07: It was not gonna do it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: What did I do to you?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's not gonna happen.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not gonna do it.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_07: Well, of course I did because he asked, and I don't say well, I don't say no well, and I fell in love with it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_07: Um it was everything good about um what for me had been tragic.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_07: All those deaths had been very, very tragic.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_07: But hospice allowed me to see death in a new light, if that makes sense.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_05: It it doesn't.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's with with different people we've talked about um God kind of guiding their life and how him put he puts them in situations.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_05: And and as you're telling this, I can see you saying, God don't ever, I don't want to be involved with this guy, but he's the one that because it sounds like he survived his cancer.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_07: He did not in the end, but for how long?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_07: For a couple years.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: For a couple years.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: So you had that positive influence with this person.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_05: So you're seeing that you can survive with cancer, you can still thrive, you can still do things, and also he's the one that pushes that gives you the nudge into this hospice that you're seeing death in a whole new way now.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_07: And I got to see it from a medical model is different than what we have here, but I got to see it from the social worker's perspective, from the chaplain's perspective, from the nurse's perspective, even, you know, there was a doctor involved with that one.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I seeing that, um, you know, seeing everybody's role that they play um was enlightening and also fascinating because you get a different perspective.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_07: If you're the chaplain, you're working with families, um, their spiritual being as part, you know, of who we are.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_07: You're seeing that in a whole different way than um if you're their social worker and you're trying to get them um some of the services that they need.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_07: Does that make sense?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_07: You know, just yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_05: Everybody's got a different role.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_05: They're all critical.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_07: Because we're we're dealing with the whole person, right?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_07: Not just your physical being, um, but all of you.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_07: Your emotional, your mental, your spiritual, um, and your families too.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_07: And and so I was so thankful for that opportunity to do that.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_07: I think I did it for over a year and a half, which was unusual for so he he introduces that to you in your freshman year.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_07: Mm-hmm.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_07: My sophomore year.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_07: So I did a year and a half year and a half internship.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: Was this a really quick change that I don't want to be a missionary doctor anymore?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_05: Or were you still thinking that road?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_05: Wh when did you make the change that that might not be the best?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_07: After a cultural a cultural anthropology class, which I also loved and thought, wow, yeah, you know, that would be really fun to study people too, but that didn't fit in.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_07: Um, yeah, I I just chose probably my sophomore year to do the social work path.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_07: And I had to break it to my bear.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: That'll give me my next question.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: How did your parents deal with mom and dad?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna be a doctor.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_05: Nope, I'm gonna be a social worker.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, nothing against social workers.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_07: No, but it's a big change.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_05: Big change.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_07: Uh well, I'm sure I know my dad cried.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, but they adjusted quickly because they knew that I it I didn't go into it blindly, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_07: I had, even though that had been my dream and my plan, and I was very stubborn about obtaining it, I also didn't leave it without thought.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm guessing they had a they had an inkling that this was coming.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_05: Is you I'm I I would I would bet that in your conversations with mom and dad, you're talking about these different classes, different things you're doing, and most parents are very astute to what's exciting their kids, what makes them really tick.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and they're probably like, okay.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, something's gonna change.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: Something's gonna change.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh huh.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_05: They might not want to, they might not have verbalized it or anything like that, but in the back of their minds, yeah, when you're like, Yeah, I'm I'm changing, they're probably, yeah, we've probably figured they probably figured that this was coming.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_07: But I think they're also a little scared.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, my parents also come from a generation where you don't talk about death.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you don't even want to think about it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_07: Because thinking about it or talking about it might bring it about, right?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_07: There's a great book called Talking About Death Won't Make It Happen.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that that's a title of a book that draws you because in the ink in the back of our mind, maybe we've all had that thought, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: If we talk about death, if we uh Well, and and also I think when we talk about it with about loved ones and everything, yeah, that it's you need to be planning, you need to be doing things, but at the same time, it's not like, yeah, I'm I'm all it you don't want to offend them like you're thinking they're gonna die soon.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's like you don't know, it could be in a could be an accident really soon, could be something, but to have that conversation so everybody's prepared to do what they want and to follow the plan that they've set out, right?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard to do.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_07: It's very hard to for almost everybody, probably.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_05: It sucks.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it does.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_05: If somebody's good at it, I'd like to talk to them because it's it's not a fun process.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_07: No, absolutely not.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_07: But and I think um it's a process that takes years.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, especially with our parents, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_07: That it's something that it doesn't happen in a day.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_07: You can't just sit down for a two-hour session and have everything planned out.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_07: Because it's hard.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_07: It's hard for them, whoever you're talking to, your parents, your friends.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_07: It's hard for them to think about it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_07: It's hard for you to talk about it because you don't want to, you don't want to hurt their feelings.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_05: You don't want to like you said, you don't want it to happen either.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_05: And then it's kind of that mental block that if we don't talk about it, it won't happen.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_05: That that way that's never worked.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_05: Obviously.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_07: It doesn't.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_07: So they were, you know, my parents were a little bit disappointed I didn't do the doctor route, but I think they were also happy that I did find something.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it's you're you're still serving people, it's just serving them in a different way.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_07: And I tried a different a few different other things.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_07: I worked with kids, I've done other things, but it always seems to come back to hospice.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_05: So, how did that change?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: If you if you're kind of making this switch in your head, your sophomore year, like going on a different track, how did that change the classes you were taking where if if you're looking towards hospice, are there specific classes that you were taking, or is it more of just a social work?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_05: It was just a social work.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_07: So I didn't I did do some gerontology classes.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_07: I did work at some other places, but my focus was not hospice, it was just social work.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_07: So I I could have gone sociology, social work.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_07: I could have, you know, um, I could have gone a lot of different paths.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_07: I I think most people who end up getting a social work degree eventually get a master's and then they can do, you know, either counseling on their own or um, you know, have that um master's to to work in a private practice, maybe.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_07: I think there are a lot of different ways you could do it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_07: Um but for me, hospice always it always came back to that, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_05: So when you graduate college, are you looking for a job in hospice?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_05: Not at all.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_05: What what was opposed you've gotten your degree?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_07: Well, actually, I hadn't quite gotten my degree to my senior year.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_07: It was probably around spring break when I started panic.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_07: Do I go back to Alaska?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_07: Do I, I was, you know, Oregon's great.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_07: Do I stay in Oregon?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and I went to visit the counseling, you uh, you know, like the career counselors at George Fox.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_07: And they had this, I'm sure like all colleges had this great book of all of these summer opportunities.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_07: I thought, well, let's start with the summer.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_05: I know I was one of those that never went to the counselor's office.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_07: Well, this was really my only probably to my own detriment.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, right.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_05: Like they don't know.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: They want them to be able to tell me.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I thought they might have at least some.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_07: And they had a book.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_07: And in this book, as I'm flipping through, it's very vivid.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_07: There's like they're like job descriptions, right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_07: Or job opportunities.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_07: There's this one picture, it's a three by five picture, and um, it's in color, so probably it was the actual picture.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't know if you've seen it, it's the summer in ad, or what used to be the summer in, right?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_07: And all it had was their sign, but you could see the chillcats behind it, and they had little poppies, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_07: So it's sign poppies and the chillcat mountains.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_07: And nothing was clearer to me than at that moment.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_07: I stopped looking and I said, This is it.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_05: This is where I need to go.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_07: This is where I need to go.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_07: It was to run a bed and breakfast, right?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, which seemed kind of crazy, but I called the couple, Bob and Mary Ellen Summer, and lo and behold, he was my brother's teacher.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_07: He had moved, they had moved to Soldatna um shortly after I left, and he had taught two of my three brothers, and Mitch was even in a rope climbing class with him or or something like that.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_07: And so they knew me, I knew uh of them, uh-huh, and I was the first Alaskan that they hired.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_07: And so I came here in June of what was that, 1995?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_05: 95.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because that was something for people that aren't familiar with the summer in, that was how they ran that is they would have a young lady out of college or taking a break from college come up and run it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty like a year full year, right?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_05: Wasn't it?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_07: You signed on for a year.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: For a year.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yep, yep.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_05: And they got the summer in.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, they um advertised at the Christian consortium schools.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, and I'm pretty sure that's where most of us came from.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_07: I was probably, gosh, I might have been like the third person here.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, everybody else had already stayed, you know, had just stayed for a year.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and that's how I came to Haynes.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_05: And I feel like that so so 90 95.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, 95.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_05: You so did you grab you graduated?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_05: I graduated, graduated, you got your degree, and with your degree, you're gonna run a bed and breakfast.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_07: But when you think about it, I mean, it really does use those social skills.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's people's skills, but it it's also it's also a good segue between all the stress and everything of college.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_05: Let's come up here.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_05: There's gonna be stress in that, but fairly low-key as well, and just kind of get your feet under before you go into the next thing.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_07: You know, at the time that I went to this college, you went home every summer and you worked all summer, you raised money for your next year of college, and you did that.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_07: And then it was kind of, you know, a lot of people just went home because it was natural.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_07: And I felt like I was making a huge change.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you could go home.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_07: No, and Haynes from Keenai is really further than Oregon from Kenai, right?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's a long drive.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Harder to get here.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I don't remember many people coming to the southeast when I was growing up.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't a thing.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't make a 16-hour drive to come, right?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_07: The only time people came through Haynes is when they were moving to Alaska or coming in and out.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I felt like this was a huge thing um to be far away from home, but also in Alaska.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_07: So that was uh the first summer.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_07: And do you remember what happened that summer of '95?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_07: The airplane accident on Pyramid Island.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, is that was that '95?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_05: All all of those just blend in.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_05: It seems like I there's a couple of Alaska.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_05: There's a couple of tragedy all.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_05: There's there's a couple events that I could tell you the year that they happened, but a lot of the plane crashes and everything, I have, I could never tell you what year they are because there's been too many of them.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's true.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's true for there's been too many.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_05: So that pyramid island crash was 95.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_07: And I had fam some of some family that were somehow involved staying with us or staying with, you know, me at the summer in.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_07: Um, yeah, it was just really weird.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_07: And then of course, LAB had a little right down right down the road, they had the swamp.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, the swamp.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_07: So we had um that fall, I got to know a couple of pilots who were um connected to that death.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_07: And in the preceding years, um, you know, got to know Pat Welch really well.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_07: Um and he was best friends with Jamie.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um so I was doing that social work part of it, that I mean, not hospice in the sense of hospice, but working being with people who were grieving and needing to grieve.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_07: And I am no expert, not idiot all, as you can tell.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_07: I'm quick to tear.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_07: Um that just you're gonna call me on it.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_05: Good call you on that because just because you're quick to tear doesn't mean you're not good at your job.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it's not that I'm not good at my job.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_05: Or you're an expert.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not an expert on grieving, right?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_07: But I grieve all the time.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_05: Why uh why wouldn't you say you're an expert on grieving?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_05: What makes somebody more of an expert than anybody one or one person or another?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_07: Great question.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: Because you have that emotion and and yeah, you let it out through tears.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I don't see how that disqualifies you from being an expert grieving, Shannon.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I know, but I'm not an expert, Doug.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, because I don't know that there is anybody who can be an expert, right?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_07: Because every death is different.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, every grief is different.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_07: There's a great exercise that Liz Morance does with us.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_07: It's called the life map, right?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_07: And you map out your your losses because loss is not just a death.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_07: No.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_07: Sometimes, you know, it's a divorce or a a job or a friendship, or I mean, there's lots of loss, right?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_07: But as we we map our losses, I feel like I've done really well at dealing with some of them.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_07: And actually grieving, taking the time to work through it and to be sad.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_07: And I think others have done a terrible job at.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_07: Well, isn't isn't that life?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_05: I'm glad you say that.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's true.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_05: Even, I mean, the the best hitters in the major leagues, there hasn't been anybody since Ted Williams that hit over 40% of the pit of at thereabouts.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_05: You know, he was the last 400 hitter in the major leagues.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_05: You guys, you got guys that are getting paid tens of millions of dollars a year.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_05: And they're not uh like 350, 320 batting average.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they hit some home runs and stuff, but yeah, so you I don't think you have to be perfect in order to be successful or to know the material.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I I we can argue all day whether you're an expert, but I I I don't want you to sell yourself short because you have a lot more knowledge than most.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_05: And what I was taking out of that is it felt like you're lowering your own self-standards just because of the tears.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's a show of that's a show of empathy and vulnerability, and I think that's a strength rather than takes away your ability to deal with grief.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's what I that's what I wanted to push back on.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_07: I appreciate that, and that is true, and I feel like we have to cry.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's a release.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's it is, but it sucks.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_07: Only because society tells us it sucks.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_05: No, it sucks.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_05: I don't care what society tells me.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's work, it's work, yeah.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I'm saying.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard, it's hard work.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_05: Both the grief and the tears, and the and the emotion and everything.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_05: And now I'm tearing up.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_05: You got me tearing up here.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_05: But it it takes a lot out of you.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_08: It does.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_08: It really is work.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes I don't know which is more work, the burying it or dealing with it.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_05: Because both take a ton of energy.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_05: At least for me.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know, maybe I'm doing both of them wrong, but well, both of them take a ton of energy.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_07: But don't you feel like when you can cry or or feel whether that looks like sometimes it looks like anger, right?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_07: Sometimes our grief is anger or regret or loss, you know, just that deep sense of sorrow.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um and when we let ourselves go through it, it hurts, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_07: Sometimes we get headaches or stomach aches.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, we have physical responses.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: All the above.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_07: And then for me, it feels like there's a step.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_07: I've made a step.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_07: I might have 10 steps backwards in the coming weeks, but at least I've made a step forward, right?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_07: Because I'm able to get some of it out.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_07: I really it's it just yeah, it but when we bottle it up.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_05: I guess I'm looking at unless I I don't know.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_05: I I guess I never feel like there's that step forward.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe that maybe that maybe it is a step forward and I'm just not recognizing.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_07: Or it's 10 steps back for another few steps forward.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_07: And it goes, I mean, you know, I've seen all kinds of maps, the ones that squiggle up and down, the ones that look like cliffs and then mountains, you know, all of those.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_07: Those are all journeys, tangles, right?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_07: It looks different.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't think not feeling a step forward is okay.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_07: Because there may be a day when you say, Oh, I'm like 10 steps forward, right?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_07: That you didn't even know.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think there's there's other things that I will acknowledge that it's a step forwards and how I'm dealing with other people and never interact.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_05: But I I guess I've never I've never thought of it that way with the grief component of it and just how that 'cause it always seems like it's still there.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_07: Well, and it's still fresh.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_05: Well, this is Yeah.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, for some some other yeah, this isn't just dad pass in a way, this is others, all the others that and and some of it's probably because it wasn't addressed at the time, it wasn't dealt with at the time.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_05: And and so it I don't know, does it take longer when it when it's 30 years before you leave with it?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_07: It could.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we get that phrase complicated grief.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_07: I think they're moving out of using that phrase because grief is complicated.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but yes, Doug, I would say absolutely.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_07: And every time there's a death, and I know this from my own self, every time there's a death, um, if there's an airplane accident, I you know, I don't know why, but that's a tough one for me.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_07: It's a real tough one.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think that's well the no the number of people that you know uh it doesn't surprise me that that would be a tough one.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_07: Well, but then too, because you also muscle memory in sports is a real thing, right?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_07: We know that.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_07: But it's also a real thing for our emotions.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_07: So for me, it's an airplane accident or you know, a cancer death.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_07: Um those are what we call triggers, right?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but but it brings back the deaths that have happened before that maybe we didn't deal with completely, or maybe we did and we just didn't finish, or maybe those are just so in our bodies that we're never going to be completely healed from that.
• 42:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_07: We have better uh counseling, we have better ways of dealing with grief and trauma, but it's still grief and trauma.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_07: And some people will get the help.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I was just gonna say.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_05: It it's only help if they uh use the service.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I've so as we're talking as we're talking about this, I've also been reading a lot late recently and listening to people with their own personal using um some of the psychedelics to under doctor supervision and stuff.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh god crap, I can't remember the name of them, but like uh like ketamine, you know.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_05: No, oh like ayahuasca.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_05: There's a couple others I can't remember what they were, but that they've been extremely helpful dealing with some of the the the brain trauma, the the PTSD from veterans, especially.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that they've been able it, it's not available in the United States, they've got to go to Mexico, or they've got to go to other countries to do it, but it's been extremely helpful for them going through that process.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_05: And uh so it's hopefully they'll keep making progress in that and figure out ways to heal some of this trauma that we that we as humans inflict on each other.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_07: Right, right.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_07: There's not enough.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I feel like there's enough that we don't have to do that.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um there's enough natural trauma, but yeah, we do we do a really good job in many ways of inflicting trauma on those around.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: As well.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, let's back off of that for a little bit.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_05: So we're back in Haynes.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_05: Your first year with the summer.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_07: Summer in.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_05: Need to go back to a lighter topic for a little bit.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_05: Otherwise, I'm gonna be a puddle of tears here for a long time.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll break we'll break it up so I'm not a total mess here.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um well what was that other we had the plane crash?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_05: But but the rest of it for running the in.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_07: I loved it.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_07: It was so cool, right?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_07: That was I I mean, bed and breakfasts aren't a thing anymore.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but it was really fun to get to meet people from all over the world.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_07: Um and you know, I had breakfast with them, but then we'd have conversations and uh, you know, in the evening they would like I lived on the site, so um it was my home as well as theirs.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um it was great to meet people.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_07: And I met Barb Blood the second day I was here, and she um, you know, at the library, because even then we had a great library, we've always had a great library.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_07: Um I got to know a lot of people in town.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_07: I I loved living here.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: How did you build that that friends friendship circle up?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_05: Just I mean, you meet Barb at the library, but how did as a newcomer to Haynes, how did you start building that friendship circle?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I just walked everywhere.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_07: Like I walked to the post office every day, I walked to the grocery store every day.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_07: I met I don't know all kinds of people I met.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_07: Um and and part of it was just being in town.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_07: And and then I started working at the school.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_07: I had enough time in the fall that I was at lunch aide.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I worked with um Janice Studley and um Rose.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_07: There were a couple other people, yeah.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_07: And so I got to know people through the school, their kids.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, you know, that's a great way to know people is through their kids.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um, yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_07: And and I felt like I had a real connection to the community.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_07: So when my I don't even remember when they asked, but um, they always the summers would say, Okay, do you want to stay on?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_07: And I immediately said yes.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_07: For another year.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_07: Right away.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I was here for two years.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_05: So it was the second year just making more friendships.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_05: What was the thing?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_07: So, and I had a great um group of friends.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um at the time, the farm had a college.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_07: There were a lot of young people in town.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I don't know if that's the case anymore, but um, you know, we had little groups that would get together and do dinners and um I didn't have we laugh about this.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_07: I was making no money.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it was really I was probably the poorest I ever was.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but that didn't matter because you always had top ramen, and my mom would send me cooks smoked salmon.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_07: So um, you know, there was You were living large.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you got to smoke salmon and then forget about the rest of it.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_07: Good.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_07: So um, yeah, we just got together and make dinner, you know, all of us were in kind of that same situation.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_07: Um Susan was here at that time.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_07: We'd have dinners up a couple times a week.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_07: So it was a really great.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_07: I loved those years.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and then I knew that I need I know what it was.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_07: I now remember why I left.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I started dating a pilot, which was probably not my sort.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_07: But again, not all kinds of.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_05: Is this a negative against pilots or is it because of the trauma?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_05: Is that why that was a bad thing?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_07: I just knew that.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was probably the yeah.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_07: Anyway, let's edit that out.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Leave it in, Sam.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: We've got her husband that's I I will have no control over the edit of this one.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: Sam always does that, but I have a feeling Shannon's gonna be looking over her shoulder on this one.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_08: So right?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: The multi-hour could be a 15-minute video when it comes out.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: Take that part.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um, yeah, that's why I left.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_07: My time was up.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_07: I moved to Ohio.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_05: With the pilot?
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_07: Uh I followed the pilot.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_05: Followed the pilot.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_07: But I taught preschool, did my own thing.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_07: And then I'm in Ohio.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_07: Uh Hamilton.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_05: That's a big, big change from Alaska to Ohio.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_07: It was huge.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but I mean, I lived in Oregon, so it wasn't like I'd never lived outside of Alaska.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_07: But Ohio was.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_07: Way different.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_07: Way different.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_07: It was hard.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_05: That was a big leap.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_07: It was a huge leap.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_05: That was the crazy things we do for love.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_07: I know.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_07: But I I mean, I also think it was really great.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_07: I again, I mean, I kind of tend to, I feel like I bloom where I'm planted.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_07: And I made great friends.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um, in fact, I worked at this preschool where there was an elderly lady there.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_07: She and I became pen pals, and um we wrote each other Christmases for probably almost 30 years.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_07: Wow.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_07: And she passed away.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_07: Her kids wrote me and told me about it.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but you know, just developed really good friends even in the midst of that.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_07: And I get to see a different part of the world.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, Ohio is Ohio's different parts.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um parts I've been are beautiful, but it's different.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_07: It's very different.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_07: Farmland.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_05: Farmland.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, which was great.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think there's a lot of benefit to that.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_07: And it was fun to be do preschool.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I think that that was for me also something I would refer back to when it came to our own kids.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_07: Being a teacher is um its own social work.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_07: Don't tell them, but it is.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_05: So how long were you in Ohio?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_07: Nine months.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_05: Nine months?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_07: Just long enough for the school year.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_07: And then I said, that's it for me.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_05: That's it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_07: Mm-hmm.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I went back to Was it was the relationship over or was the relationship still going, but you didn't want to be in Ohio anymore?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I didn't want to be in Ohio anymore.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and oddly enough, I did still follow that pilot all the way up to Kotzeview.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_05: So he got a job in Kotzeview?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_07: He got a job in Cottsieview.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_07: I followed, but it didn't, you know, at some point that didn't work out, and I stayed in Kotzeview for three years.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_05: And those were in Kotzeview.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_07: First I was a health educator for Mini Elick Association, and then I ran the Boys and Girls Club for a while.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_07: And then I went back to run the health education department for Mini Elick again.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_07: Because that's what I really loved.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_07: You know, it comes back to medicine and and social work and that.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_07: And and kind of teaching too.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_07: Those all kind of wrapped into one.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_05: What was it like to live in Katsapia?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I loved it.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_07: Did you loved it?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know if I could do it now.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_05: Well what was the best part for you?
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_07: Um, the people, of course.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_07: I got involved with a great church.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um I was traveling to all the villages.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_07: There's 12 villages in the Nano region.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_07: I went to every single one of them multiple times a year.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_05: Most of that by plane.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_07: On a tiny plate.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I was gonna say.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: So you're being you're being forced to get outside your comfort zone with this plate thing, aren't you?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_07: I am.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_07: And um there was a lot of prayer for me.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_07: It was really hard, but at the same time, I didn't think twice.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_07: I well, that's not true.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_07: I did think twice, but I didn't not do it, right?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_07: I and some of my best experiences were on the plane.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_07: Like I will never ever forget the caribou uh herd from Shung Nak and Ambler, right?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_07: And watching it.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_07: Just slide over and watch it over it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that was the most I would have loved to have been on the ground, but the next best thing was being in the air and seeing that.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_07: Um Katsubu is beautiful and not so beautiful, right?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_07: Uh the tundra on in the fall, most beautiful thing ever, really.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_07: Uh the people are wonderful, friendly, kind for the most part.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_07: Um village life is hard.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_07: And I found I was a veg, I was kind of into that vegetarian world.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_07: And Katsuviu vegetarians are really good.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: Was that a hard, hard thing to manage in Katsubiu?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_07: It was.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_07: I think I don't remember what the price was, but like lettuce was out of this world, right?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_07: Uh fruits and vegetables.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_07: And and they came in by plane, so they actually probably got them sooner than we do here.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I think blown in.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_05: It was fresher than ours.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, but it wasn't a priority.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_07: Like that wasn't, you know, the grocery stores, fruits and vegetables wasn't really a priority to carry.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_07: Uh so I don't think I've been there long before I started a co-op.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_07: I don't even know what gave me that idea.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but I knew that I wanted fresh stuff, and so surely others did.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_05: Hang on a second before we go too far into this co-op.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_05: When did you were you always a vegetarian group?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_05: When did you start being a vegetarian?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I was gonna say.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_05: When did this vegetarian thing come?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_07: I think after I left here.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_05: And it started in Ohio.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_07: It kind of started in Ohio.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, think about it, Doug.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_07: They don't have Alaskan fish or they did have some pretty good beef.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's right there, right?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_05: You didn't have it.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_05: So you're Alaskatarian.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_05: You like the caribou, the moose, or whatever.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_05: You're the fish.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I did.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_05: Then when you lost that, it's like you need some plants.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_07: Plus, I've been to Ukraine in '94.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_07: I know I skipped that over.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_05: That's kind of a big piece here that we missed.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_07: It is.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_05: We'll go back to that.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_05: So I'll I'll remember to go back to Ukraine.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_05: So you started developing a vegetarian lifestyle in Ohio.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_05: So then you're going to Kotzebue.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_05: That makes it extremely difficult to live a vegetarian lifestyle.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_05: It's a co-op.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_05: Started a co-op.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_05: So you're flying the stuff in yourself.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_07: And at first, well, uh yeah, I guess I did start.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, there were probably a couple people, but by the end of it, I think there were at least 50 of us.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_07: Because remember, you know, Katsubu is one of those places where a lot of people come from outside to work, especially in the hospitals and the schools.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_07: So there were probably 50 of us at the end.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and by cope, I mean like pallets, like maybe five or six pallets were coming in.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_05: How often?
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_07: Once a month.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_05: Once a month?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_05: So you got your job, uh-huh.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_05: And then you got five to six pallets of it's all coming in at once, or is it coming in like weekly?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_07: It would come in once a month.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_07: Is that right?
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_05: Are they they're flying in, right?
• 55:13
  unknown: Mm-hmm.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_05: So you got there, Alaska Airlines brings the jet in and uh Shannon, we got six pallets.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_07: They would bring it to the church.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_07: There's this big room in the church, and I would um work with there were others of us that would get together and we'd um separate all the orders, and then people would come and pick up their orders.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm just 50 people, five to six pallets.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's a lot of produce per person.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_07: I know.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_05: That's a lot of sinking produce.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_05: How'd you get that stuff to last for a month though?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_07: That's I don't know.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, no.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_05: Because there's stuff that shows up nicely after a week on.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, by that time we were doing staples too.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, okay.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: You had your own little grocery store.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_07: Health food store, basically.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_07: And it's still going today.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_07: Still going today?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_05: Nice.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_07: Good job.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it's just, you know, it's easy.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_07: Those kind of things.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_05: 30-year business started by Shannon.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I don't know.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't really a business.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_07: Made nothing.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_07: I think we go back to that nonprofit thing.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's still a business.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of businesses that don't make any money, Shannon.
• 56:28
  unknown: Oh.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_08: It was just a service.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_07: But it was fun.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it costs me all the things about it were fun.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_07: We did health fairs at every um village.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_07: I was either known as it depends on what I was doing.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_07: Like when I would come in the fall and do germs, you know, hand washing, I was known as the germ lady, Miss Germ Lady.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_07: Or um I did nutrition classes.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_07: I ended up teaching uh sex education at some point.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_07: You know, so all the health the health education department at Mini like handled health for all of the schools.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: All the schools.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_07: It was really fun.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_07: Really fun.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_07: So much fun that when I came here, some wonderful person wrote a grant for me to do that here for a year.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_05: So after three years in Kotzeview, was it now coming back to Haynes or where what got you coming to Haynes?
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_03: Does it happen to be the guy on the other side of the cameras here?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_07: But interestingly enough, it wasn't him to begin with.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_07: We we joke, but we're not really joking about it, that we're an arranged marriage.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_07: So it it it kind of leaped.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_05: I've heard I've heard this story before, but I don't think everybody else has.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_05: So let's let's let's get the Sam and Shannon story on tape.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_05: You can't cut any of this out, Sam.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_05: It's gotta it's all gotta come out of here.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_07: So from my perspective, how it worked is I um came back is there another perspective other than yours?
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_07: No, there should be.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_05: I would think, well, I would think I would guess yours is the correct one, right?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Shannon, maybe?
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe so.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see how Sam reacts as you go along with this.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm trying to think of where to even start.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_07: So while I was the summer innkeeper, I had lots of people come and stay.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_07: One of those persons was this wonderful person, um, Geneva Volum, who happened to be Sam's grandmother.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_07: And she and her friend Martha came to stay for like I felt like two weeks, but I don't remember how long.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and she told me all about her her grandson, Sam.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_07: And I just nodded.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_07: So great.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_05: Grandmothers are good about that.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_07: Grandmothers are really great about that, right?
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_07: And I didn't think anything about it.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, maybe a year later, I went to Juno and um happened to stay with Sam's family because they had a home where lots of Hanes people would come and stay with them.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, and I happened to be there with some of their friends.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_07: And um one evening um Sam's mom was talking to Sam in the computer she had an office.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_07: She was talking to him on the computer, telling him that they had somebody here at their house who um he should probably meet.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_07: And he's like, Well, I'm nowhere near there.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_07: You think he's a long ways away.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_07: And meanwhile, his dad was on the couch um telling me about how wonderful Sam was, and I really should meet him, and I uh that's great, really nice.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: See, I at this point you're kind of like, what is wrong with this guy that everybody is so is it is is he this amazing, or is there a flaw that everybody's just trying to sell him really hard?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_07: No, right?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_07: No, I didn't think I mean because when you're a single person in in Haynes in the 90s, everybody was trying to set you up with somebody, right?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_07: You don't remember that part?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_05: I don't I don't remember that part.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was hoping someone would try and set me up, but that never happened.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't, Doug.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_05: There's probably been a couple attempts, but I I didn't think they were serious.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, yes, and neither did I really at the time.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_07: But um, I then worked with um uh Rose Benham and uh Jan Janice Dudley at the school while I was here, and uh they convinced Sam to contact me after I'd been here for a visit, and he wasn't here.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_07: Um so he did.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_05: So was he he was back teaching?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_07: He was teaching.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_07: We it's kind of like we left.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_07: I he I left.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_05: So you kind of left when he was coming in on, yeah.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_05: So we never uh I So you'd come back for a visit and he was gone, so you didn't meet then.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_07: And eventually those ladies broke Sam down and he um contacted me in Kotzebue of all places.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_07: I get an email.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know what they said about me.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_07: But none of it's true.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_07: So I I feel like we at least knew people.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_07: Like I could ask people about, I mean, I'd heard about his parents.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_07: I'd met his parents, I knew who he was.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_07: So it wasn't entirely, but it kind of was.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_07: And we started writing back and forth.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_07: And of course, I was working with a group of women who were they thought this was the coolest thing ever, that people could actually have a you know a beginning part of the relationship.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't quite writing letters, but it was right, it was typing letters.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_07: So he they'd hear the little ding on the computer.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_07: What'd he say?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Was that was that Sam?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Was that Sam?
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_07: So they they helped in that process.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_07: And then Sam came to visit me in Kotzebue on spring break.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, when I believe it was like 40 below.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was really that's impressive.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_05: Most people go south during spring break to go up to 40 below.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there must have been some nice emails you wrote.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_05: You must have done a heck of a job on this.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_07: Well, and we're older.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't, you know, it was a different ball game for us.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_07: Or at least I felt like it was.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't um we'd both had our, you know, those silly things that you do when you're young, and we'd have done all that, or done at least some of that.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_07: And it was different.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah, he was pretty serious to come to Cotsu.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_05: That's some commitment there, right?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_07: And I had high school friends who took him on a um uh like a on their ATV for a ride, and he had um a strip of skin to get a little frostbite because he didn't his coat and gloves didn't match up, and but you know, he had a I think a great time.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_05: Katsubu really showed itself beautiful that week and yeah, the ladies at work impressed with your health.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_07: They were so excited.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: Shannon's leaving.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're posting they're posting the job.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, I think they do, yeah.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_07: And I really feel like three years in Kotzebue for most people is a really I I felt like I had done a long stint there.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I I, you know, loved every second of it really.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_07: And I think the hardest parts were the weather, um, and that it's also a small town Alaska, right?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_07: Those things that make it hard here or anywhere made it hard there.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_07: Um, my dad came and visited me, but everybody else was afraid to.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_07: My brothers didn't come, my mom didn't come.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_07: You know, they were a little afraid to.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the brothers are marine and they're afraid to go to Kotseview.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it wasn't in their wish list, really.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_07: You should go see.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_07: But I think everybody should go to Kotzeview.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_07: I think everybody should see northern Alaska.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_07: Because it's beautiful.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_05: I I haven't been to Kotzeview, but I've been north of the Brooks Range, and that is it's just amazing.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing, totally different kind of beauty than we have here.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_05: It is a beautiful spot.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_07: And it takes a strong person to be there, I think.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_07: I think that you're pretty resilient to use that word earlier.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_07: Like that word.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_05: So when what was your plan?
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_05: So you're coming to Haynes, hopefully to develop a relationship with Sam.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_07: What else?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_05: That was it?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_05: That was the game plan.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_07: Kind of brutally happens.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_07: Apparently I wasn't afraid to do that.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_07: Now that I'm saying it to you out loud, it's really embarrassing.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_05: Well, why?
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_05: It just for me it shows the strength.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yes.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_05: Do you have that faith that uh I'm gonna make it I'm gonna make something work?
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_05: And you didn't everywhere you went, you've made something work.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_07: That's true.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know, with the summer in, you might not have been making the most money or whatever, but you made some great friends.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_05: You had absolutely you had some wonderful experiences here.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_05: And in each time, each place that you've talked about, you're you've kind of been like, well, I just kind of went here and saw what happened.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_05: They were great experiences for you and helped shape who you are now.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I really did just come to see what happened.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_07: And and I think that the that by the time I came, I knew that we were I think we both knew that it was a long-term thing.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I'm thankful.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_07: I loved Haynes.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't really want to, you know, I think it was great to be back and and funny how Haynes works.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_07: I'm trying to think how many years that might have been in between five or six, but you come back and it's like you were here last summer.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_07: Because you can just but but you the commu here this community is really good about welcoming people back.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_07: I think a lot of people have come back.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_07: And it's really um it says a lot of who Haynes is that that they welcome people back, right?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_07: And that Haynes continues to call people, right?
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_07: How many of us have come on a whim and stayed?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_07: Lots of people.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_05: I knew two that came up here and that led to me being here.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, right?
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_07: Did your parents come separately?
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_07: No, they came together.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_05: They just got married.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_05: They got married into July and August 13s.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_05: They had teaching contracts and they figured, you know, let's try it out.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_05: Newly married, they can nine months anywhere, we can we can make it work, see what happens.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_05: That was 1964.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I think that's a pretty common story that people just come.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_05: Made it made it work for a long time.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_05: Still, yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_05: So what did you do when you got to Haynes?
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_07: Worked at the school.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_05: Went back to the school?
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_07: I went back to the school.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_05: So was was Hospice of Haynes when was Hospice of Haynes founded?
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_07: 1996.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_05: 1996.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_05: So they while you were gone is when they had established.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_05: And was Liz kind of behind that?
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_07: There were five women.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_07: Um, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_07: Uh I don't believe Liz was on the very beginning.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_07: Um, Beth McCready, uh Lisa Schwartz, uh Christy Long that's at how now, um Joni Wagner, I believe also the first.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_07: And then Liz came on very shortly after that.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_07: And um, yeah, that was the beginning, 1996.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_07: And they started it because there was a need.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_07: They knew that people needed some help.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_07: Usually um, people who were here by themselves that didn't have family um needed some extra attention.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_05: And it's volunteer.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_07: It is.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_07: So we are unique hospice that we are all volunteer.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_07: I'm the only paid position at this point.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_07: There have been in the past others.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but everybody who provides services is a volunteer, and that makes us unique.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_07: It allows us to do a couple of different things.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_07: If you um if you were to be given a six-month diagnosis, or anywhere else, if you were to do hospice, you'd have to have that six-month um terminal diagnosis.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_07: And that means that your doctor suspects that within six months you're going to die.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_07: That's to get you Medicaid services, right?
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_07: So if you were in anywhere else, that's how it would work.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_07: If you have a um a medical model, as we call it, uh, which means a team is addressing you.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_07: We that's the social worker we talked about, the chaplain, the nurse.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_07: There's a team of nurses, and then a doctor oversees or kind of um supervises everything.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_07: So that team, they get paid for their services.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_07: Um, they're billing Medicaid or Medicare or even private insurances to some extent.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_07: So a medical model, uh, those services are offered free to people, but they're getting compensated or reimbursed for like the services that they provide.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_07: Ours is different.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_07: Because we're um all volunteers, we don't have to have that six-month diagnosis.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_07: Um and what does that mean?
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_07: It means that somebody can have, you know, if if somebody is sick enough or their family needs respite care, right?
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_07: They need somebody, perhaps they're aged as well, and caring for somebody all the time is really difficult.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we don't have to have that sick six-month diagnosis.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_07: That gives us some flexibility, right?
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_07: Somebody can be on a hospice for three years.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_07: That's okay.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_07: Um, if you still need the services and are volunteers, we can still find volunteers to cover that, then we can and will.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_07: So it gives us a lot of flexibility in how we provide services here in town.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_07: Um, mostly what we do for hospice is respite.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_07: So we're not providing medication, we're not um, we're not providing nursing services, we're just filling in when families need a break, right?
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_07: Or sitting with clients so that people can get rest or do errands or you know, take a walk, right?
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_07: That's really interesting.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_05: So what how how do most people decide to volunteer with hospice?
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_07: Thanks for asking.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_07: Usually they have had experience with hospice.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they've been on the other side of that.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_07: They've been on the other side.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_07: Their mom or their dad back in Ohio or somewhere has had hospice and they see how incredible having people that are with you, right?
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_07: We're with you.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_07: If somebody is, we're with that family, and I think you tell things, I think you would say things to your hospice volunteer that you don't feel comfortable saying to your friend, maybe, you know, or a casual friend, right?
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_07: Um, my dad's dying, or my my spouse is dying, and I I'm scared, right?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_07: Hospice, they've they've had enough training that they know how to handle that tough question.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_07: What do I do?
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_07: What do I say?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_07: How do I how do I do this?
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_07: So I think it's a neighbor or friend coming in to step alongside someone who's going through that really tough experience of their loved one being at the end of life, right?
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_07: And and we get to be there for the whole family.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_07: I think hospice in general always is, but we get to also be there for the whole family, right?
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_07: We're not just accepting a client, we're accepting their family and to care for them as much as we can and to help them go through a really tough experience that um everybody goes through at some point, I think, but we don't always share, right?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's scary.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I I can say this.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_07: We um Sam and I had the opportunity recently to be with a friend in Juneau who was dying, to be with her and her family.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_07: It was precious, right?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we weren't there as hospice, but we had some skills that really helped us in that, right?
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_07: And even though it was, I mean, I've been training for for a long time.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_07: I've been doing this for a long time.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_07: But when it's someone who you love, even all that training, you hope it's muscle memory, right?
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_07: You hope it kicks in.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I think that it was a really wonderful experience because we weren't afraid.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_07: We knew it was gonna be tough, we knew it was gonna be gut-wrenching, and we were willing to step into that with them, right?
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_07: We were willing to say or give a hug or hold a hand or um touch.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't realize that you know, people that you know um you don't know what they're gonna do when they're faced with that, right?
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_07: When their loved one is dying.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_07: And sometimes they're afraid.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_07: And so to say to your friend, it's okay if we hold your mom's hand, or it's okay if we brush her hair, or it's okay if we brush her teeth.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_07: You know, it's okay that we touch her, because she's she may or may not know that you're doing that, but it's gonna make you feel better too, right?
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_07: Because sometimes we're afraid to do things that seem like are we gonna hurt her?
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_07: Are we gonna no?
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_07: You're not just you know, step into it.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_07: It's tough, right?
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_05: And so when you have a new volunteer, what's the training process?
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_07: Uh we have an 18 to 20 hour course.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_07: And so now we've um it used to, we used to try to do it over two weeks.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_07: We've changed through the years, right?
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_07: Trying to get more people to do this.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think everybody should take this 18 hours because in that 18 hours, you're gonna learn how to be with someone who's dying, but you're also gonna learn a little bit about your own grief and how to deal with it.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_07: You're gonna learn how to be a good um advocate for people.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_07: You're going to learn how to um express uh to be able to talk and to listen, to actively listen.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_07: Because that's a lot of being a hospice volunteer is actively listening, you know, letting somebody talk and just talk because they need to get it out.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_05: So the you said you changed it from two weeks on the weekend.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_07: So now we can do it.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_07: No, just one weekend.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_07: We can do it a Friday night.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_07: Usually all uh Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday evening, or some variation of that.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh just to break up those hours and how how often do you do that training?
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I'd like to say every spring.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't do it this spring.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_07: Um uh, but we hope to be either do it this fall or or next spring again.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_05: How many volunteers do you currently have?
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_07: Good question.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um in the summer, I think we have about 15.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_07: In the winter, that drops to probably nine.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_07: And and that doesn't mean, you know, sometimes we have um it varies, right?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_07: Most of the people I there there's kind of like a a process, right?
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_07: In the spring, there's also often several people that are on hospice.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_07: And um in late winter, those are the two times, right?
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_07: That really so there's act you can actually see trends on winter's a really hard time, yeah.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_05: And that's when I guess that should that shouldn't be a surprise, but it's it's still a surprise.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_05: So late winter, early spring.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_07: And they kind of coincide, right?
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um, sometimes the fall is busy.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and and and so we also have trends with even in our community.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_07: And I would like to get it so that it's a little bit different.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_07: I would like us to accept hospice help before we need it, before we really need it.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_07: Because what often happens is somebody will get a diagnosis and then they wait because they don't, you know, either they don't need hospice or hospice.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_07: It's one of those words that just stops us, right?
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_07: When we hear the word hospice.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's like I'm dying.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_07: Who wants to admit that, right?
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_07: Or who wants to face that?
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_07: That's tough.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_07: So um, one of our rules is we never call anybody.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_07: I would never.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, people will be referred and I will say, are you certain that they know hospice is going to call?
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_07: Because again, if I say, hi, this is Shannon McFeeders from Hospice of Haines.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, if they don't know that's coming, that I can imagine that would be for a lot of some people wouldn't be a big deal, but for a lot of people they'd be the heck you call me for.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_07: Right, right.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's gotta be a tough dynamic to navigate.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_05: Because you you you're trying to you you know you want to be there helping.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_05: But at the same time, that's to be the one initiating it.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_07: It can be.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_07: There's always been awkward moments.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but at the same time, my hope is that someday we're comfortable enough with that that we can So what what do you what are the benefits of people calling you earlier?
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_07: They get volunteers who get to know the client, right?
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_07: People develop a relationship, right?
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_07: They may be coming every Tuesday to read a book, your favorite book, and they'll read that book for a couple months.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um they're coming every Thursday so that they can sit with you or be with you in the garden, or you know, until you can no longer go to the garden.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_07: But they're developing a relationship with you.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_07: So those last weeks and days, um the family knows the volunteers and the client knows the volunteer, right?
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_05: So when when should they be reaching out?
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_07: When they get a diagnosis.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_07: And maybe, maybe it isn't, maybe people aren't getting the diagnosis a long time.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_07: But sometimes what happens for us is we get a call three days before.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_07: It's really hard.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_07: Not that we can't.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_07: I think we've done a pretty good job of getting people, you know, um, initiated right away and getting there, but that's not enough time to develop a relationship.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_07: Does it happen?
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_07: Can we deal with it?
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_07: But I think ideally, if you have a diagnosis that is potentially a, you know, an uh uh end of life, call hospice, you know, ask and and and we are getting more and more family members who are calling and saying, what services do you offer?
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_07: Like we have beds.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's uh that was gonna be my next question.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_05: So besides volunteers coming, sitting with sitting with individuals going through this with the family, with patient besides beds, what what else, what other services is hospice providing?
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um several different we have several different programs, but for hospice clients, we have beds.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_07: So I think we're the only ones in town right now that have them.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_07: Um we got a grant through COVID, so we have several of them, which is great.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_07: There's a team that's known as the bed team, and they will deliver this bed, they'll set it up, they'll help the family kind of make room for it.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it comes with what we call a bed bundle, which means there's um a mattress that has air circulating, which makes it more comfortable.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, there's sheets, there's um, I'm trying to think, there's a lift blanket that will help when somebody has become bedbound that helps, you know, you lift or two of two people to lift, um, move that person a little bit easier.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_07: So we have some resources in that sense.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_07: That that team will come and set up the bed, and then later after the death, they'll also come and collect the bed.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I think that's one of the greatest.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_07: That team is incredible because they really set the tone too, right?
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_07: They're coming into a home.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_07: Getting a bed to your house is really difficult.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_07: It's really difficult because it's that one more step, right?
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_07: You've made the call, you've gotten hospice involved, and now this bed is coming.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_07: Now, that bed can mean a lot of comfort, right?
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_05: It's not so that's the way I looked at it.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_05: When when we got the one for dad, that it was making making him more comfortable, making things easier for my mom.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_05: It and it was just it was a great step.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_05: And to be able to have that to move him into at that stage was a tremendous help.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_07: I I think that's how I like to look at it, Doug, too, Doug, is that um you're helping the caregiver.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_07: Because getting in and out of bed and that can be really hard on bodies.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_07: And so um, I feel like that bed is a huge, to me, a relief, right?
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_07: That you get some help.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, it raises up, it lowers down, it makes the person more comfortable.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_07: Not everybody feels that way.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but the other part of it is that it's in an area, usually it's set up in an area of the house that's central.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_07: People pass through, you know, usually you don't have room or it's hard to get into the bedroom.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_07: So it's put in the living room.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_07: And that makes that person in a central spot where everybody has access to engaging and easier to spend time with.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_07: So even though I think the fear of it keeps people from doing it sooner, when it's actually there, it can provide comfort, ease, um, better access, right?
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_07: It's a lot easier to give care when you've made a space for that care to happen.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so I think that team that sets it up and takes it down, tremendous help.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, we're always looking for volunteers to do that.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, I think it's become part of our training uh in hopes that more people will want to do it.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_07: Um, because the other thing that happens with hospice volunteers is we start aging ourselves, right?
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, um, yeah.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_05: Once you volunteer for a hospice, you don't stop aging.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_07: Bummer.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_07: I know, right?
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_05: That could have been a big selling point.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_07: It doesn't happen.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_05: So Yeah, no, there's yeah.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_05: It's natural, it's gonna happen.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_07: And this is my 21st year.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_05: So if somebody So you've been doing it for 21 years now.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_07: Here in Haynes, yeah.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_07: So if somebody started the same year I did, you know, that I I think even that, um, that's a long time to be a volunteer, but um most of our volunteers stay until they can't stay, right?
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_07: They either move away or um because they've developed really good friendships and really they're playing a role that is unique and really, really special.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_07: And everybody who becomes a client, I always say to them, you know, I think they're a little worried.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_07: Who's gonna be my volunteer?
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_07: So you always get to choose, right?
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_07: You you get the final say.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_07: If it's if it's a relationship that's not working for either one of you, we have options.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_07: You don't have to be with somebody, you know, but everybody who's a volunteer really wants to be a volunteer.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_07: Not only have they taken the 20-hour training, but they've thought about it.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_07: It's not something that you just willy-nilly decide you're gonna volunteer at.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_07: You've really thought about what that means.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_07: And um, so our volunteers, well, our volunteers are incredible though.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_05: Well, no, for me to to I've I was thinking about that after after the help, you know, with everybody coming and sitting with my dad and everything.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, man, that'd be a great way to give back.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_05: But boy, I don't know.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_05: I you do I I don't know if there's still too much grief for them dealing with that to deal with that again with other people.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I just it's hard.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_04: I was I was amazed that that people can keep going back and doing that.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_07: That had to be yeah, that's a it's a really it's a gift.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_07: I I think for me that's the easiest way to think of it because they're getting as much as they're giving.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_07: Really.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I'm I'm extremely grateful for all the people who do that.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_05: I man, I don't I don't think I'm just at least at this point in my life, I'm I'm not strong enough to do that, I don't think.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_07: But that's okay.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_07: And and we actually there are volunteers who come and take the training.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_07: So our training is free for everybody.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you can become a volunteer or not.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_07: So I think again, I'm gonna say I think everybody should take the training because it's a life skill, right?
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_07: Um, all that we cover is a life skill.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, I would.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_07: Because I would say take the training.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_07: And you never have to become a volunteer.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_05: We'll see if I'm strong enough to take the training at the time that you offer the training.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_05: You won't be the only one.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_05: It might take a couple invites for me to show up.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, okay.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_05: But that's but I think that's normal to people feel whether or not I end up volunteering, I'd like to learn more about it.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_07: And that's what it's for, is to also learn.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_07: Now, the other thing that we haven't even talked about is that Hospice of Hains is not just hospice.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_07: We also have a bridge program.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_07: And they started this back in um, gosh, I don't know, early 2000s, when there was a grant for faith in action, is what it was called.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_07: Um so it was probably about 22 years ago, because it was probably about the time I took the training that this grant was really rolling.
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_07: And what came of it was there was a group of people in town who were falling through the cracks and they didn't have services that probably needed services.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_07: And this would be people who might have um macular degeneration, right?
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_07: So their eyesight is failing um sometimes rapidly, and they're not able to do things that seem normal to us, like shop, right?
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_07: Because they can't see what's on the shelves, and they can't even read their grocery list, possibly, right?
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_07: Or without, you know, heavy magnification.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, or the new Newspaper.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_07: So we have volunteers who go in and work with those people.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_07: They might read the newspaper to them.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_07: They might pick help them pick up their mail, read their mail to them, take them on errands and shopping, take them on car drives, right?
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_07: So that bridge program for many years until COVID, and maybe even through COVID, those first couple of years, has been sort of the bread and butter, right?
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_07: This is if um volunteers don't feel comfortable sitting bedside.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_07: It's okay.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_07: How about taking somebody grocery shopping?
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_07: Or how about taking them on a car ride, right?
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_07: Because as we age, who takes us on car rides?
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_07: Who, you know, if we can't drive anymore, some of us love to go see the bears.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_07: Or um what are all the I mean, we used to take our friends out uh just to see what all the changes around town, right?
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and so we need volunteers to do that too.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_07: And sometimes what happens is volunteers start that way, and then their favorite client starts aging and they don't want to leave.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_07: Does that make sense?
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_07: You know, they want to be there till the end.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_07: And so sometimes our bridge volunteers kind of ease into the hospice aspect.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_05: So how how is how is all of this funded?
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_06: Good question.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, because there's your salary, all the coordination, all the resources with the beds, those are grants and stuff, but there's still got to be funding.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_05: I know, yeah.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_05: I know you have the big sale at the beginning of the big rummage sale.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_07: The bike race.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_07: We participate, we have a checkpoint for the bike race.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so you get a donation from the bike race.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_07: So it's all donations and grants.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_07: Mostly donations, right?
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_07: That's how we're funded.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_07: Um yeah.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_07: So it, I mean, people care about their community and they care.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_07: So we've um, you know, a few legacy grants, but mostly just ordinary donations and um fundraisers that we do.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_07: We have a booth at the fair.
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_07: Fair.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, a little pie booth or a little dessert booth.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so there's those are a rummage sale, the bike race, and the pie booth are the three main fundraisers.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_07: We also have different events.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_07: Like my favorite event is what we call light the night.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_07: And we usually do it in October.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_05: It's really cool.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's really cool.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it's also hard.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's yeah.
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_05: It was went to it the first time last October.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_05: It was something I was not aware of.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think I've heard of it, but um, yeah, my mom wanted to go, and so I I brought her, and yeah, it was it was very shortly after dad passed.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_05: It was very expensive.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_05: It was, yeah.
• 1:31:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and we'll be back this fall.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_07: Good, good.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, so it's it's a remembrance night, right?
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_07: And it's a time to um I say light a candle, but it's you know, it's not um an actual candle candle, but it's a light.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's a little that was my one uh I wanted to light a candle.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_07: I know.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_05: I know there is something I wanted real flame.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just joking with you.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_05: Our family's kind of pyromaniacs.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_03: We like we like building fires.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_08: I'll have I'll have a special few candles because they're in a jar.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_03: The stuff that was there was the little electric candle things were perfectly fine.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_03: I just gave you a bad time.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it's just a great, I think for me, it's a way to say I remember and I care.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_07: The first couple years we did it, used to be out on the track.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:31:52
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think that was a very visible, like we, you know, Beth put up tiki torches around the track, and it was a very visible, but for some reason the weather has always been horrible.
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_07: Always raining, wind blowing.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_07: So real fire is hard to do.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_05: Well, last year at your house, or at the house next door, your little gardener.
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_05: A little gardener.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was chilly, but it wasn't no, it's wonderful.
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_07: It was the best year ever.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_07: As far as the weather.
• 1:32:25
  SPEAKER_07: But I think it's just a great event to say, hey, we remember, we care.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you write a name, you write a note, you make it visible, you don't, that's your choice.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_07: But then you get to put that out there somewhere.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_07: And and for a few hours that light burns and it reminds us that uh there were and and most people, some people come and say, How many can I light?
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_07: And the first couple of years, I was like, Oh, I only have you know, so many, but now I say as many as you want.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_07: Because for some people, they wanna they want to do every loss that they've ever had, or every loss that's meant something.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_07: And that might be 10 lights, or it might be one light with 20 names, right?
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we've had both.
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:33:16
  SPEAKER_07: And I think for some, and I say this every year, there is always people who come that absolutely need to come, they need an outlet, they need a way to say, I remember this person mattered, and I want I want to express that in a way, right?
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_07: That's I think there's something about ceremonies that's important.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_07: And I will never forget, and I'm gonna say this because it meant so much to me.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_07: When um Sam's dad died, um, it was really hard to find a way to really express that, right?
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_07: My loss.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_07: And I called Vince Hansen and I said, I'm not Catholic, I don't, it's not my realm, but I believe that you have really good ceremony, right?
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_07: I believe there's a ritual, there's a there's a a program almost, and I need that.
• 1:34:16
  SPEAKER_07: And it's funny that some of us need that.
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_07: Vince graciously put together something just for the four of us, our family.
• 1:34:26
  SPEAKER_07: And we went over there one night, just the four of us, and we lit candles and and he said beautiful words, and that was what I needed.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know if the kids or Sam needed it, but I needed it, and it was so beautiful and important.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't how did you recognize that that's what you needed?
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_07: Good question.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_05: It just came to you that this is something that would be beneficial to you?
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_07: And I think as as as the um it wasn't my dad, you know, he was he was my father-in-law, but he was my dad of heart.
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_07: And and I think that's I don't know that there's like layers of you know how people I don't know, I needed that as a daughter-in-law.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_07: I need it to express.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_05: No, that's I agree a hundred percent.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_07: It's I'm just and we have customs, but they don't always fit.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_05: The reason I'm asking is trying to figure out because there's days that I'm it doesn't seem real.
• 1:35:39
  SPEAKER_05: It's been what, seven months, eight months?
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_05: And so does that would a ceremony help?
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_05: Would something else help?
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_05: Does talking about it help?
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_05: You know, when go visit the grave.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um But there but even then it's like this doesn't it doesn't feel well it's a hole, it's a loss, Doug.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's that's what I was wondering.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_05: Is there how did you feel that that was something that you needed?
• 1:36:12
  SPEAKER_04: It just came?
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think that was God guiding you?
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_08: Well, probably.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think that's a good thing.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when it leads you to Vince, I mean Yeah.
• 1:36:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um Vince is a good resource for that.
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_07: Vince is a great resource for that.
• 1:36:25
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I think um Try everything.
• 1:36:33
  SPEAKER_07: You know, if I I I think that that's also true.
• 1:36:37
  SPEAKER_07: I I feel like I've had to grieve enough that um I also have to find I'm trying to think of how to say it.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I I think that yes, listen to your heart.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_07: You know, um and the more we listen, the more we hear.
• 1:37:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um what if people don't trust their heart?
• 1:37:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um well where do we go from there, Shannon?
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_05: I'm asking you, I'm asking you to.
• 1:37:25
  SPEAKER_07: Um, sometimes you're gonna need a friend to talk, and sometimes you're just gonna need a friend to hold your hand.
• 1:37:32
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm gonna say to you this to you, Doug, and I said it's right here.
• 1:37:37
  SPEAKER_07: I'm happy to sit to always sit with anybody who wants to talk about their loved one.
• 1:37:41
  SPEAKER_07: Because I love hearing stories, and I think that that's a huge way for us to express ourselves is to tell stories.
• 1:37:49
  SPEAKER_07: What made your dad what was your favorite thing about your dad?
• 1:37:55
  SPEAKER_04: We don't have enough time in the podcast.
• 1:37:58
  SPEAKER_07: See, but I'm happy to hear that story.
• 1:38:00
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I would like for us, and I think there are people who are okay with that, right?
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_07: Um I still think we live in whatever reason, a culture where that's not something that we ask often.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_07: I sometimes hold myself back and I don't say enough.
• 1:38:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um or I'm I'm trying to do better at saying, hey, I've been thinking about you, and I've been thinking about your you know, your dad or whoever it is that you lost.
• 1:38:38
  SPEAKER_07: And tell me something because I think when we tell stories too, it it's relieving.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_07: We laugh a lot.
• 1:38:51
  SPEAKER_07: We have a a rule that we we need to, and and I um when Steve died, um our kids were young, uh and we wanted to make sure that they remember him.
• 1:39:06
  SPEAKER_07: And even if they don't remember him, right?
• 1:39:09
  SPEAKER_07: Right, yeah, like we have uh in fact, I was just walking through my garden today weeding, and I thought there's the um stones that Steve brought to our house.
• 1:39:22
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, and we wanted to make sure and put them in the garden, right?
• 1:39:25
  SPEAKER_07: So there's little, I mean, we do little things, we bake recipes, right?
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_07: We um tell stories over and over, we um laugh.
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_07: I think laughter's a huge medicine.
• 1:39:39
  SPEAKER_07: I think that's even biblical, right?
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_05: Some of the the big thing for me, this uh for for Christmas being Scandinavian, we always make lefsa.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_05: And I usually don't stay very long because it's something you've done forever or well no, it's just it's it's it's hard now.
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_05: It was hard before.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_05: Because usually being single during the holidays, you got family and everybody's happy, and then you couldn't go home by yourself.
• 1:40:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard being there, so I usually don't stay very long.
• 1:40:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um and my my nephews give me a bad time because I just go over there and eat the lefts and leave.
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_05: Like, how come you don't have to roll it out or do anything?
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but my cousin Darren was back with his girlfriend uh last month, and he wanted to make lefson with her, and so we had a family night, and everybody's like Tyler's like, you just gotta eat and run again.
• 1:40:41
  SPEAKER_05: But my dad was usually the one that did most of the turning.
• 1:40:44
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_05: When I got there, there was nobody doing the turning, and so I was it was very comforting for me, and I did every single one of them, but it was just kind of like okay, dad's not here now, so I guess I'm the one that's flipping the leftsa.
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I got the tur I got the stick, and I'm I'm gonna practice and and it it it was a different time of year, so I don't know if that was part of it, but it was very comforting to be doing a family event like that, and then kind of sitting in my dad's place and doing that.
• 1:41:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, um it was a mo I tried to hide the motion, but I think I did pretty well while I was up there.
• 1:41:25
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not doing very good of it right now, but it yeah, it was very special.
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_07: And it's a way to keep our people near and dear to us, right?
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_07: How happy would your dad be that you were doing that?
• 1:41:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, he there's a couple, he was probably saying I cooked them too long.
• 1:41:53
  SPEAKER_05: That was probably what he was gonna stuck on the um with with the rolling pin, he would have criticized us for that.
• 1:42:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:42:02
  SPEAKER_05: But uh, yeah, no, it's yeah.
• 1:42:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's important.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_04: Trying to find those things.
• 1:42:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:42:09
  SPEAKER_07: And sometimes you're gonna I mean, obviously succeed and get it.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_04: And other times you'll we'll see how it turns out at Christmas this next year.
• 1:42:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_06: Definitely.
• 1:42:28
  SPEAKER_05: I knew this was gonna be tough, Shannon.
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_05: You were worried about it for you.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_05: I think I was more I was twice as worried as you were her emotions than I was.
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_06: It's okay.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate you.
• 1:42:46
  SPEAKER_07: Thankful.
• 1:42:49
  SPEAKER_07: Thankful that we get to walk through that.
• 1:42:53
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and through the through the whole process, you and Sam both were extremely helpful, not w not just with hospice and arranging volunteers and and all the volunteers that came up and sat with my dad.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_05: It was very meaningful for him and uh and for my mom.
• 1:43:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, it was it was very, very worthwhile having hospice for that.
• 1:43:25
  SPEAKER_05: And it and it never having gone through that, not really understanding it as well beforehand, yeah, gives much greater appreciation for the job the organization does.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um after experiencing that on a first hand basis.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_05: So besides volunteering and fundraising, what what else can people do to assist hospice, to to let friends know?
• 1:43:54
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, who do they who do they contact?
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_05: What's what are the what are the other things?
• 1:43:59
  SPEAKER_05: What are we what are we missing about hospice Ken Haynes here that I'm that I haven't asked yet?
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_07: The education piece.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_07: So uh last no, I did it for two years.
• 1:44:11
  SPEAKER_07: So this last year I did not, but the previous two winters, in the darkest, deepest part of winter, January through March, we did a taking care series, what we call taking care, and they were mini workshops.
• 1:44:24
  SPEAKER_07: So we did those mostly at the library.
• 1:44:26
  SPEAKER_07: There might have been a well, like we showed a movie, I think, at Tilcat Center.
• 1:44:30
  SPEAKER_07: And, you know, the first year maybe five to ten people came.
• 1:44:35
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and this was just our educational piece because we've gotten fewer and fewer people doing the volunteer training.
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_07: This was our way of saying, this is important information.
• 1:44:45
  SPEAKER_07: We're gonna put it out there in a little mini piece.
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_07: And if you just want to do this one piece, you can.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so we did trainings on um, I'm trying to think all the trainings that we did, how to be a caregiver, how to be with a grieving friend, how to um last year we did some classes on what it is to address like hearing, right?
• 1:45:08
  SPEAKER_07: And how to address some of those things that come with aging.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_07: Our goal, not just our goal, I think there are several organizations in town who are trying to do this.
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_07: Haynes needs to be a place where we can age in place.
• 1:45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:45:21
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_07: That we can we can go our whole lifespan here, or we can go those golden years, right?
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_07: All the way to the end.
• 1:45:30
  SPEAKER_07: I think that um that's our goal is to really help people do that, especially those people who want to, right?
• 1:45:38
  SPEAKER_07: Sometimes for medical reasons, people are taken out of town and they can't die here.
• 1:45:43
  SPEAKER_07: But um, everybody wants to be in home in their home, either in their home or, you know, maybe at HAL or um with a loved one.
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_07: But everybody wants to be loved until the very end, I think.
• 1:45:58
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that's my thought that we all want that.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_07: And so let's let's help people do that.
• 1:46:05
  SPEAKER_07: And and that educational piece, I think people came to classes last year that were um, I mean, they even helped me, right?
• 1:46:13
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I did a class on how to talk to your loved ones.
• 1:46:18
  SPEAKER_07: And then after I took it, I went, maybe we need to have a few more conversations.
• 1:46:23
  SPEAKER_07: My parents are great.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think they've reconciled themselves to the fact that they have a hospice daughter or a daughter who's involved with hospice.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_07: So they have these conversations all the time.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_07: But I feel like every year I learn more about what my parents want, what we're going to do, how we're going to handle it, what it's going to look like.
• 1:46:43
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I have more questions, but I also have more answers.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_07: And I get a little bit braver about, in fact, they might think I'm far too pushy.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_07: But I I feel like it's important that we talk about this, not just, I mean, with our spouses, with our with our significant others, with our um siblings, right?
• 1:47:05
  SPEAKER_07: What do what about siblings that don't have a a caregiver, right?
• 1:47:11
  SPEAKER_07: Or or somebody.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_07: What's what's gonna happen then?
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's good to just start the conversation.
• 1:47:16
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe it fits.
• 1:47:19
  SPEAKER_05: Tyler and Justin and Dylan and Kaylee is trying to be nice as possible and hoping they'll think of me kindly when things go south and take care of their uncle.
• 1:47:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, of course.
• 1:47:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:47:29
  SPEAKER_07: But how do we have those conversations too?
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_07: Do they know what you want?
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_07: Do they know you know how you feel about it?
• 1:47:39
  SPEAKER_07: Well, you better start telling them now, just so they're prepared.
• 1:47:43
  SPEAKER_03: They'll be putting any raider football on while I'm on.
• 1:47:46
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:47:47
  SPEAKER_03: Control the foot.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_07: I can hear it.
• 1:47:49
  SPEAKER_07: Last sense to go is the hearing.
• 1:47:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:47:51
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:47:51
  SPEAKER_07: I'll know if you change the chat.
• 1:47:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way they would be evacuated to have Raiders on instead of the Seahawks or something.
• 1:47:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's just good to have this conversation.
• 1:48:00
  SPEAKER_07: So we do mini classes occasionally too.
• 1:48:03
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and those are all grant funded.
• 1:48:07
  SPEAKER_07: Uh yeah.
• 1:48:08
  SPEAKER_07: So I think um Hospice of Hains is covers a lot of territory.
• 1:48:16
  SPEAKER_07: And I also uh I field questions all the time.
• 1:48:21
  SPEAKER_07: I'm happy to have somebody call and say, um, you know, either my my parent is aging or um my friend, you know, I I think now we get some calls about people who have friends, right?
• 1:48:36
  SPEAKER_07: That don't have family.
• 1:48:38
  SPEAKER_07: Well, what do we do for this person?
• 1:48:39
  SPEAKER_07: How can we help them?
• 1:48:40
  SPEAKER_07: What, you know, how can we um and unfortunately I'm going to say the hospice also has limitations, right?
• 1:48:47
  SPEAKER_07: We really do need to have a primary caregiver involved.
• 1:48:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um how do you how do you get that?
• 1:48:54
  SPEAKER_07: Good question.
• 1:48:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um is that a matter of funding?
• 1:48:59
  SPEAKER_07: No, it's a matter of somebody stepping up, right?
• 1:49:02
  SPEAKER_07: So if somebody's not married, they have no family in the area, um then uh they may need to ask a friend to be uh their caregiver, right?
• 1:49:16
  SPEAKER_07: If they want to stay here.
• 1:49:18
  SPEAKER_05: I was thinking you're a primary caregiver.
• 1:49:20
  SPEAKER_05: I was thinking for some reason I was thinking physician aspect of that, but not necessarily this would be you need somebody that's in the house taking care of them.
• 1:49:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 1:49:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I gotcha.
• 1:49:29
  SPEAKER_05: Or at least um stopping by stopping by regularly helping ones.
• 1:49:34
  SPEAKER_07: That's you know, end of life, that's gonna get tricky.
• 1:49:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's pretty much somebody full-time.
• 1:49:40
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:49:41
  SPEAKER_05: And you don't have that capability right now.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um, the thing about death, it's kind of like birth.
• 1:49:47
  SPEAKER_07: You don't know when it's coming.
• 1:49:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and you don't know when it's gonna happen.
• 1:49:52
  SPEAKER_07: I can say that it has happened in the past that we were able to cover 24-7 for a period of time.
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_07: Do I think that that could happen?
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_07: Now it would be very difficult.
• 1:50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:50:02
  SPEAKER_07: Just our um, as with all agencies, you know, we don't have as many volunteers.
• 1:50:09
  SPEAKER_07: Um I don't know that it could happen, but I know I don't also know that it couldn't happen.
• 1:50:16
  SPEAKER_05: But we'd like to have so the key part of that is more volunteers and volunteers with a different skill level, maybe.
• 1:50:24
  SPEAKER_07: Uh that's probably part of the piece, but the other part of the piece is that everybody needs to be thinking about the end of their life.
• 1:50:30
  SPEAKER_07: And um uh cultivating a friendship with somebody younger than you is not a bad idea, right?
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_07: Somebody who can help you with grocery shopping, somebody who can help you.
• 1:50:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I think it's harder and harder to manipulate uh systems, right?
• 1:50:51
  SPEAKER_07: So who's going to um, and I say this because I've been somebody's person and it was really difficult for me, um, even as a power of attorney, to navigate some of the systems that we have that are so digital, right?
• 1:51:06
  SPEAKER_07: So who's gonna fill out your um Alaska permit fund or do your taxes or help make sure that your bills are paid or um get your medication, right?
• 1:51:17
  SPEAKER_07: If you can't drive anymore, who's picking up your medication?
• 1:51:20
  SPEAKER_05: Is that something you're gonna do a class on?
• 1:51:22
  SPEAKER_05: Or have you done a class on that?
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_07: I have done, yeah.
• 1:51:24
  SPEAKER_07: And and sort of just thinking about um, I think each of us needs to have people and not just even if we're married, that doesn't mean that that person's gonna be able to do those things, right?
• 1:51:36
  SPEAKER_05: So Yeah, usually they're pretty close to your same age bracket.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_05: Could be suffering the same.
• 1:51:41
  SPEAKER_07: Mm-hmm.
• 1:51:42
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, yep.
• 1:51:44
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, if you um have young friends or or um, I've even had I I I think this is there was a group of um friends that got together and decided that they were going to be each other's people.
• 1:52:00
  SPEAKER_07: So they were, I don't even know what their ages were, but they were a group of, you know, retired people who said, we're gonna be each other's people, we're gonna be each other's powers of attorney.
• 1:52:09
  SPEAKER_07: And if one of us needs it, there's at least two of us to step in and do something, right?
• 1:52:15
  SPEAKER_07: So that was what a brilliant plan, right?
• 1:52:19
  SPEAKER_07: They all had relatives that lived um in the lower 48.
• 1:52:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, if you need to be Medevact in the middle of the night, is your power of attorney living in Texas going to be able to help you?
• 1:52:33
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 1:52:33
  SPEAKER_07: Navigate that system.
• 1:52:35
  SPEAKER_07: So I think that having a group of friends who say, we're gonna be each other's people, what a brilliant idea.
• 1:52:42
  SPEAKER_07: You know, and and they may need to get other people at some point.
• 1:52:47
  SPEAKER_07: Who knows what that's gonna look like as the years change.
• 1:52:49
  SPEAKER_07: But for the moment, they're filling in for family.
• 1:52:54
  SPEAKER_07: They're being each, and that's what I think Haynes is it happens here.
• 1:52:59
  SPEAKER_07: It happens often, and I think we can do it, right?
• 1:53:02
  SPEAKER_07: That we can be each other's people and um look out for each other.
• 1:53:08
  SPEAKER_07: And that may mean I'm gonna go, you know, you may need somebody to go on a trip with you to get your um eyes, your cataracts taken care of.
• 1:53:17
  SPEAKER_07: Great.
• 1:53:18
  SPEAKER_05: You know, somebody to travel with you to do that, your friend can do that, or your there's people in Haynes that are listening to this and they're like, that's a great idea, like to help find some people.
• 1:53:30
  SPEAKER_05: Is that something if they called you, you'd be able to kind of tell them the things that they need to be working on?
• 1:53:35
  SPEAKER_05: Are you a resource for that?
• 1:53:36
  SPEAKER_07: I think so.
• 1:53:36
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not gonna do, I mean, you're probably the legal stuff, but I will certainly help them set them up with a friend or answer questions about what the what what are the things that they need to be aware of going forward.
• 1:53:49
  SPEAKER_05: And okay.
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 1:53:51
  SPEAKER_07: And I think we all need to be.
• 1:53:53
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I only learned in the last couple years that if you turn 60, you should put your name on the Alaska Pioneer Home list.
• 1:54:01
  SPEAKER_07: 60.
• 1:54:02
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't know that.
• 1:54:03
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, apparently it felt like an unspoken rule.
• 1:54:06
  SPEAKER_07: It's like, really?
• 1:54:07
  SPEAKER_07: But yes, you know, so there are certain things as we age, if we can help each other along in that process, right?
• 1:54:14
  SPEAKER_07: You know, me saying to you, Doug, have you put your name on the Alaska Pioneer list?
• 1:54:18
  SPEAKER_05: I got three years before I need to do that to me.
• 1:54:20
  SPEAKER_07: I know, but it's just a crazy little thing.
• 1:54:23
  SPEAKER_07: But if we're 60, are we thinking about that?
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe not.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_07: But pretty soon we're then 70.
• 1:54:29
  SPEAKER_07: Hopefully.
• 1:54:30
  SPEAKER_07: Hopefully, right?
• 1:54:30
  SPEAKER_07: Hopefully that keeps growing.
• 1:54:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:54:32
  SPEAKER_07: We but to age in place, what do we need to have?
• 1:54:36
  SPEAKER_07: What how can we look forward and ahead of us to be set up for that?
• 1:54:42
  SPEAKER_07: And and that looks different for every person, right?
• 1:54:45
  SPEAKER_07: But every person should be thinking about it.
• 1:54:48
  SPEAKER_07: And how can I help you?
• 1:54:50
  SPEAKER_07: How can I help um, you know, my best friends?
• 1:54:53
  SPEAKER_07: How can I help the person down our neighbor down the street that doesn't have anybody?
• 1:54:58
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, kind of, I feel like we're just as responsible for our neighbors and our uh people that we don't really even know as much as our family.
• 1:55:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I and I think that's one of the I it might be other places too.
• 1:55:14
  SPEAKER_05: But I think that's one of the things Haynes does well.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_08: Yep.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_05: Is looking out for our neighbors and looking out for people.
• 1:55:20
  SPEAKER_05: I see it all all the time in the grocery store, people coming in, helping other people or getting groceries for whoever's sick, or you know, it's it's it happens, and I like the idea of having that out there that there's other planning besides just helping them with groceries or going to the mail, that there's some other things that are a bigger decision making that has needs more foreplanning for it um to be really effective in the later years.
• 1:55:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:55:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and they might not have anybody to do it with them.
• 1:55:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:55:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:55:52
  SPEAKER_07: And some of us don't want to.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_07: I I we, you know, we've met our fair share of people who um you know, I and I think it's fair to say this that sometimes our job in hospice is to help the caregiver more than even the client, right?
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_07: Because um for many caregivers, it can be a very long journey, right?
• 1:56:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and that looks different because you're you're aging too.
• 1:56:24
  SPEAKER_07: So not only are you caregiving, but you're aging.
• 1:56:27
  SPEAKER_07: And um, you know, I I think even as my parents age, I'm watching this happen and I'm thinking, okay, we have to be mindful of not only the person being cared for, but the caregiver.
• 1:56:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um extra mindful.
• 1:56:48
  SPEAKER_07: Because not only is that a huge emotional burden, but it's also a physical burden.
• 1:56:53
  SPEAKER_07: And and I think that, and mental, right?
• 1:56:57
  SPEAKER_04: Watch that firsthand for 38 years.
• 1:57:00
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's huge.
• 1:57:02
  SPEAKER_07: And um so I'd like to think our job, and my job in particular, is is to um, as I go about the community, um however, to encourage caregivers.
• 1:57:15
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I really think, you know, uh, if anybody called and said, I'm tired, okay, let's see what we can do for you.
• 1:57:23
  SPEAKER_07: Let's see how we can help.
• 1:57:25
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think we're um pretty that that's also the flexibility of having volunteers.
• 1:57:30
  SPEAKER_07: I never know what somebody's willing to do, right?
• 1:57:34
  SPEAKER_07: Because we've had some strange requests.
• 1:57:36
  SPEAKER_07: I'm like, okay, I'll put it out there and see what happens.
• 1:57:40
  SPEAKER_07: And most, if not all, of those requests are usually met because people step up.
• 1:57:47
  SPEAKER_07: We have some amazing people.
• 1:57:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:57:51
  SPEAKER_05: So is what's one or two things that you would like to see people either have a better understanding about the end of life process, or being is it being able to talk about it more often?
• 1:58:09
  SPEAKER_05: What are what are some things that you think that were lack the the people that haven't gone through it or even the people that have what can we do better?
• 1:58:20
  SPEAKER_07: That's a good question.
• 1:58:21
  SPEAKER_07: Um, always compassion, right?
• 1:58:24
  SPEAKER_07: Always having compassion on those people that are going through it.
• 1:58:28
  SPEAKER_07: Um, what can we do better?
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_07: I think talk about it.
• 1:58:31
  SPEAKER_07: I think make it um demystify it a bit, right?
• 1:58:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um because it feels scary.
• 1:58:39
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't know that it should.
• 1:58:42
  SPEAKER_07: Why are we scared of it?
• 1:58:43
  SPEAKER_07: It's part, I mean we all know it's gonna happen.
• 1:58:46
  SPEAKER_07: We know it's gonna happen.
• 1:58:48
  SPEAKER_07: And and uh maybe the fear, most of the fear is that we don't want it to happen, you know, right?
• 1:58:54
  SPEAKER_07: We love someone so dearly that we don't want to be without them.
• 1:58:59
  SPEAKER_07: Um so the more we talk about it and plan for it and think about it and and prepare, maybe that takes away some of the fear.
• 1:59:12
  SPEAKER_07: I hope.
• 1:59:13
  SPEAKER_07: I think it does.
• 1:59:14
  SPEAKER_07: But um it's a cultural thing too, right?
• 1:59:19
  SPEAKER_07: And maybe we're not the best culture to do in dealing with it and thinking about it and planning for it.
• 1:59:28
  SPEAKER_07: Um I don't know.
• 1:59:30
  SPEAKER_07: I think that's part of why I want to do the classes all the time.
• 1:59:34
  SPEAKER_05: Have you done any studies of other cultures that you think might do it best better?
• 1:59:39
  SPEAKER_07: No, I've some for grief.
• 1:59:41
  SPEAKER_07: I think grief is handled better in other cultures.
• 1:59:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um which which culture do you think handles grief the best?
• 1:59:47
  SPEAKER_07: I think the clinkets do.
• 1:59:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I love some of those traditions.
• 1:59:52
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that um I'd like to, you know, to hear more about that.
• 1:59:59
  SPEAKER_07: And I'd like for us to be able to have, I think, share those stories, right?
• 2:00:04
  SPEAKER_07: Share things.
• 2:00:10
  SPEAKER_05: No, but it would be great.
• 2:00:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, we've talked about it through the years and we'd love to do it.
• 2:00:14
  SPEAKER_07: So if anybody's listening that says, we'd love to do it.
• 2:00:17
  SPEAKER_07: I'd love to, yeah.
• 2:00:18
  SPEAKER_05: We just talked to Harriet a couple weeks ago.
• 2:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: And I think you know, having a conversation with Harriet or Kimberly and Kluckwan or something, and just maybe all three organizations work on something on.
• 2:00:31
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's not a it's not a race-based thing where all humans are dealing with it, and we can learn from other cultures on ways to deal with it.
• 2:00:41
  SPEAKER_05: And for some people it might not work, some people it will.
• 2:00:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:00:43
  SPEAKER_05: Like you said, you wanted the more of you wanted a different, more ceremonial or more tradition Yep.
• 2:00:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like a ritual or ritual or whatever to deal with it, a tradition to to deal with it, and learning from another culture that might do it better.
• 2:00:58
  SPEAKER_05: Why why not explain?
• 2:01:00
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I mean, even um, you know, the Spanish cultures that have Day of the Dead, when, you know, they honor those people that they've lost.
• 2:01:09
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, I think we can learn from all of those.
• 2:01:12
  SPEAKER_07: I love hearing stories of of how um not just different people, but different cultures deal with it.
• 2:01:20
  SPEAKER_07: Because I think it is important that it's a cultural thing too, right?
• 2:01:26
  SPEAKER_07: But as a human race, we we might need all of those, right?
• 2:01:31
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like sometimes I think that we all respond to different stimulus.
• 2:01:39
  SPEAKER_05: And whatever it is, it doesn't hurt to try different ones to find out what it is that works just because it eases the pain and the yeah, mm-hmm.
• 2:01:50
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly, right?
• 2:01:52
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think that's uh really important.
• 2:01:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:01:57
  unknown: Hmm.
• 2:01:58
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I'm gonna switch gears on you now.
• 2:02:00
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 2:02:00
  SPEAKER_05: I need another break from hospice.
• 2:02:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:02:03
  SPEAKER_07: Ukraine.
• 2:02:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 2:02:04
  SPEAKER_05: What was what was your time like in Ukraine?
• 2:02:07
  SPEAKER_05: Because that was that was 95.
• 2:02:09
  SPEAKER_07: 94.
• 2:02:10
  SPEAKER_05: 94.
• 2:02:11
  SPEAKER_07: So they were, if I remember correctly, they were three years from independence from the USSR.
• 2:02:17
  SPEAKER_07: I was and George Fox.
• 2:02:19
  SPEAKER_07: Again, this is one of those things I think.
• 2:02:22
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, so this was the second year that this program had been done.
• 2:02:24
  SPEAKER_07: Every year, junior year, they have what's called juniors abroad.
• 2:02:28
  SPEAKER_07: So they do a whole bunch of different trips.
• 2:02:30
  SPEAKER_07: And I always thought, as I was a fresh, or I should say, since my freshman year, I thought, well, I'll do the 23 countries in, you know, 25 days trip.
• 2:02:40
  SPEAKER_07: Because of course, I've never been to Europe.
• 2:02:42
  SPEAKER_07: That'd be so much fun.
• 2:02:43
  SPEAKER_05: 23 countries in 25 days?
• 2:02:45
  SPEAKER_07: Just kidding.
• 2:02:46
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was something where they did uh they just went all over Europe.
• 2:02:49
  SPEAKER_05: They went all over Europe.
• 2:02:50
  SPEAKER_05: The trains and here we go.
• 2:02:52
  SPEAKER_07: Here we go.
• 2:02:52
  SPEAKER_07: So there's that trip.
• 2:02:54
  SPEAKER_07: And then um, my sophomore year, they they took a trip to Ukraine and they worked with uh a language institute.
• 2:03:02
  SPEAKER_07: It was kind of an exchange.
• 2:03:04
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm trying to remember the first year.
• 2:03:07
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know if the kids actually came, I don't remember if the Ukrainian kids came to the US.
• 2:03:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but my roommate at the time went over.
• 2:03:16
  SPEAKER_07: She had a miserable trip.
• 2:03:18
  SPEAKER_07: There were bugs, there was heat, there was, you know, not good food, or at least it made her sick.
• 2:03:24
  SPEAKER_07: She had a horrible time.
• 2:03:25
  SPEAKER_07: I'm like, not going to Ukraine.
• 2:03:28
  SPEAKER_07: It's funny though.
• 2:03:29
  SPEAKER_07: You see the pattern?
• 2:03:30
  SPEAKER_07: Whenever I say, I really don't want to do that.
• 2:03:32
  SPEAKER_07: God says, I think you should.
• 2:03:36
  SPEAKER_05: You should be telling her I really don't want to win the lottery.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_05: That would be terrible.
• 2:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: Please do not win the lottery.
• 2:03:46
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, I really didn't want to go to Ukraine.
• 2:03:48
  SPEAKER_07: It didn't sound like a fun trip.
• 2:03:50
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't even remember what it was that convinced me that it was the right trip to do.
• 2:03:54
  SPEAKER_07: But when my juniors abroad time came, I ended up going to Ukraine.
• 2:03:59
  SPEAKER_05: And you had choice.
• 2:04:01
  SPEAKER_05: This wasn't a sign for you.
• 2:04:02
  SPEAKER_05: You had a choice.
• 2:04:03
  SPEAKER_05: And so from the year before, your roommate had a terrible experience.
• 2:04:07
  SPEAKER_05: By the time I came to sign up, you're like, I'm going to Ukraine.
• 2:04:10
  SPEAKER_05: Somehow I ended up sign me up for that.
• 2:04:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 2:04:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um, obviously, probably called.
• 2:04:19
  SPEAKER_07: And I uh was with 12 other students, two professors.
• 2:04:24
  SPEAKER_07: We um traveled to Ukraine.
• 2:04:29
  SPEAKER_07: I remember uh Kiev.
• 2:04:31
  SPEAKER_07: We were there in Kiev and worked with this institute, a language institute.
• 2:04:36
  SPEAKER_07: So all of the kids that were in their group spoke English.
• 2:04:41
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, English was the language that we used.
• 2:04:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um, while we were there, we took Russian classes, interestingly enough.
• 2:04:49
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I did not do well.
• 2:04:51
  SPEAKER_07: I spoke Spanish and not Russian.
• 2:04:53
  SPEAKER_07: I couldn't make the conversion.
• 2:04:56
  SPEAKER_07: Um, but we spent the first week in the dorm with them.
• 2:05:01
  SPEAKER_07: They had a dorm like a floor that they had uh reserved for us.
• 2:05:05
  SPEAKER_07: And so we lived with these 12 students and their two professors and our two professors, like a family.
• 2:05:12
  SPEAKER_07: And it was fascinating.
• 2:05:14
  SPEAKER_07: There was a language barrier.
• 2:05:17
  SPEAKER_07: Um there was even for uh you know, Alaska standards, it was pretty rough.
• 2:05:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um the shower situation, I just remember being in this dark concrete room, and it was very, I mean, you know, different standards.
• 2:05:39
  SPEAKER_07: Um but the people, oh my goodness, Doug, they were so gracious.
• 2:05:45
  SPEAKER_07: Everyone was as sweet and as kind could be.
• 2:05:48
  SPEAKER_07: I don't think I met any person that we didn't well that's um most of the people, 99% of the people that we met were incredibly gracious and you know, just wonderful.
• 2:05:59
  SPEAKER_07: But we also had um, so we had one week at the dorms, then we lived with families.
• 2:06:05
  SPEAKER_07: So we had a roommate and we lived with their family, and then we spent maybe three weeks with them, and then we spent one week in western Ukraine.
• 2:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:06:14
  SPEAKER_07: So we were the first group that had ever, American group that had ever been in this waste western Ukraine town called Chernobyl, not Chernobyl, but Chernobyl.
• 2:06:25
  SPEAKER_07: And um I I think there we actually saw a little bit of the Russian mafia uh that was still in play there.
• 2:06:34
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that was a different experience for us.
• 2:06:37
  SPEAKER_07: But we um spoke with their school.
• 2:06:39
  SPEAKER_07: We were, you know, of course, the school asked us to come.
• 2:06:41
  SPEAKER_07: Part of that was also if Americans had come to the school or people would want to come to the school.
• 2:06:48
  SPEAKER_07: So there was always a little bit of play, right?
• 2:06:50
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 2:06:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they're using these guys for advertising stuff.
• 2:06:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think that was going on more than we knew, probably.
• 2:06:58
  SPEAKER_07: But the families that we lived with and spent time with were fabulous.
• 2:07:03
  SPEAKER_07: The first question my Ukrainian mom asked me was um, did my family still have slaves?
• 2:07:12
  SPEAKER_07: And I was so taken back by that.
• 2:07:16
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't even um I think it took me a long time.
• 2:07:19
  SPEAKER_07: And of course, her daughter was translating for us, and I just remember being embarrassed.
• 2:07:26
  SPEAKER_07: And and then I thought, oh, you grew up during Soviet times, and you were told a lot of things about Americans, and we spent the next three weeks debunking every one of those myths, and and not just for her, but for us, because I don't know that we had the true story, right?
• 2:07:48
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I think that the friendships that were developed then, I didn't realize how lifelong they were going to be.
• 2:07:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um in 94 with not just Ukrainians with the different Ukrainian families you're talking about.
• 2:08:04
  SPEAKER_05: So how with that three weeks from either family, were you with the same family the full three weeks?
• 2:08:08
  SPEAKER_05: Same family.
• 2:08:09
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, yeah.
• 2:08:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, you know, and my um Ukrainian mom one night I came home and she had these leaves strung across my bed.
• 2:08:18
  SPEAKER_07: And I remember looking at her and saying, What is this?
• 2:08:21
  SPEAKER_07: And she said, These are so that you will stay here forever.
• 2:08:25
  SPEAKER_07: And then she proceeded to hit me with them.
• 2:08:28
  SPEAKER_07: You know, I got a whole treatment.
• 2:08:30
  SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
• 2:08:30
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and I laughed about it.
• 2:08:32
  SPEAKER_07: And and also I was so enduring, right?
• 2:08:35
  SPEAKER_07: That was a tradition of theirs.
• 2:08:37
  SPEAKER_07: She was sharing with me.
• 2:08:38
  SPEAKER_07: She didn't want me to leave.
• 2:08:39
  SPEAKER_07: And to be honest, I really wasn't sure I wanted to leave.
• 2:08:42
  SPEAKER_05: Uh-huh.
• 2:08:42
  SPEAKER_07: I loved every second of the city.
• 2:08:44
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it sounds like a PCU is still there.
• 2:08:46
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:08:47
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 2:08:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:08:49
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 2:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: Still there.
• 2:08:50
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 2:08:51
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 2:08:53
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I learned how to be, I'd never been on a metro station before.
• 2:08:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, every crevice of your being is pressed up against somebody else's.
• 2:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we packed them on, right?
• 2:09:06
  SPEAKER_07: And I didn't speak the language, but I never felt like that's not something I remember.
• 2:09:11
  SPEAKER_07: Um, of course, we had our translators with us at all times.
• 2:09:15
  SPEAKER_07: All of our friends were always with us.
• 2:09:17
  SPEAKER_07: But um it was just an incredible experience.
• 2:09:21
  SPEAKER_07: Incredible.
• 2:09:22
  SPEAKER_05: Outside of the house and stuff, what kind of social stuff did if it was it mainly sightseeing where you can go to the house.
• 2:09:28
  SPEAKER_05: How about that?
• 2:09:29
  SPEAKER_05: We just give their lives bronze and stuff.
• 2:09:32
  SPEAKER_07: We took classes.
• 2:09:33
  SPEAKER_07: Um, food was kind of hard, but also um I knew how much trouble they went to get it.
• 2:09:41
  SPEAKER_07: Like, um, this is why I don't eat meat.
• 2:09:45
  SPEAKER_07: Uh like one picnic dinner, they had boiled the chicken, and and I knew that they had to go to a special store to get you went to the meat store to get the chicken.
• 2:09:57
  SPEAKER_07: You went to the produce, whatever it was, to get that, right?
• 2:10:02
  SPEAKER_07: Every the mom who made that meal spent hours getting everything.
• 2:10:07
  SPEAKER_05: Getting everything cooking it.
• 2:10:08
  SPEAKER_07: So we were very appreciative of every meal we ever got.
• 2:10:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um and you know, you'd pass by the meat store and so I think different food safety standards.
• 2:10:23
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 2:10:24
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:10:25
  SPEAKER_07: All well and good.
• 2:10:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, the food was fine.
• 2:10:28
  SPEAKER_07: I remember uh various things like the ice cream was wonderful.
• 2:10:32
  SPEAKER_07: Um, they had compote, like they would boil down fruit, right?
• 2:10:36
  SPEAKER_07: So you'd make the juice, you'd use the juice and add it to your tea.
• 2:10:39
  SPEAKER_07: And um various, I mean, they always had something special for us.
• 2:10:43
  SPEAKER_07: They pulled out the red carpet for us.
• 2:10:47
  SPEAKER_07: And I knew that that was not easy for a lot of those families.
• 2:10:50
  SPEAKER_07: And so I'm so very grateful for every one of those families that participated.
• 2:10:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I hope that we brought, you know, joy to them.
• 2:10:58
  SPEAKER_07: I know we um spent months gathering um things like peanut butter and band-aids, and uh we took a lot of uh medicines that they couldn't get that we could buy off the counter, right?
• 2:11:11
  SPEAKER_07: Vitamin C's.
• 2:11:12
  SPEAKER_05: And you brought that with you then with it.
• 2:11:14
  SPEAKER_05: We brought that with us.
• 2:11:15
  SPEAKER_07: So we went full luggage and most of it was not ours, you know.
• 2:11:20
  SPEAKER_07: Very little did we bring um because we were wanting to bring so much for them.
• 2:11:25
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:11:25
  SPEAKER_07: Um I I hope, I think that it was important, you know.
• 2:11:29
  SPEAKER_07: I I think that uh those were things that they still couldn't get at that time.
• 2:11:33
  SPEAKER_07: They were still, I mean, they were a brand new country, really.
• 2:11:37
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, but they were not a brand new people.
• 2:11:40
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that that was also what we learned is the pride of the Ukrainian people.
• 2:11:45
  SPEAKER_07: I am not surprised at anything they do.
• 2:11:50
  SPEAKER_05: So getting to that.
• 2:11:52
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:11:53
  SPEAKER_05: With are you still in touch?
• 2:11:55
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 2:11:56
  SPEAKER_05: So what happened is we spent with the invasion, yeah.
• 2:11:59
  SPEAKER_05: They all still Safe?
• 2:12:01
  SPEAKER_07: So far.
• 2:12:01
  SPEAKER_05: So far.
• 2:12:03
  SPEAKER_07: We spent five weeks with them there.
• 2:12:05
  SPEAKER_07: And then they came over to Oregon.
• 2:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they came to Oregon.
• 2:12:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:12:09
  SPEAKER_07: And that also was great fun.
• 2:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:12:12
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, most of us at that time were older, we were all older students.
• 2:12:16
  SPEAKER_07: So some of us had apartments.
• 2:12:17
  SPEAKER_07: It looked different, right?
• 2:12:18
  SPEAKER_07: We didn't have our families there.
• 2:12:21
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so we divided up everybody differently.
• 2:12:25
  SPEAKER_07: But we had so much fun showing them Oregon.
• 2:12:28
  SPEAKER_07: Um, most of them had not been to America, even outside of Ukraine at that time.
• 2:12:34
  SPEAKER_07: So it was really wonderful to have them there.
• 2:12:36
  SPEAKER_05: But just that that short after independence, you had the resources and everything, the money to be able to travel was not there.
• 2:12:44
  SPEAKER_05: They didn't have those resources.
• 2:12:45
  SPEAKER_07: No.
• 2:12:46
  SPEAKER_07: So this was an incredible opportunity for them and for us.
• 2:12:49
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, how wonderful.
• 2:12:51
  SPEAKER_07: You know, I was sad that we couldn't come to Alaska.
• 2:12:54
  SPEAKER_07: But um, Oregon's also beautiful.
• 2:12:56
  SPEAKER_07: And so we had so much fun.
• 2:12:57
  SPEAKER_07: We spent a lot of time.
• 2:12:59
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we took trips like to the coast, and we'd all the whole group again.
• 2:13:03
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I don't even remember how I got through my classes because I think that that was our focus was them being there.
• 2:13:09
  SPEAKER_05: Was them being there and just making it the best experience.
• 2:13:12
  SPEAKER_07: We celebrated all the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, you know, all the American holidays, the way we did them, we celebrated while they were there so that they could get a taste of that, um, which made it really fun.
• 2:13:25
  SPEAKER_07: Really, really fun.
• 2:13:27
  SPEAKER_07: Uh yeah.
• 2:13:28
  SPEAKER_07: And um, one of our professors, you know, that went with us, she opened up her home.
• 2:13:33
  SPEAKER_07: And so we had all of the meals there and stuff.
• 2:13:35
  SPEAKER_07: It was just really a neat experience.
• 2:13:38
  SPEAKER_07: And and then they went home and they did their thing and we did our thing.
• 2:13:42
  SPEAKER_07: And it wasn't until 2014 when they had internal issues and clashing.
• 2:13:50
  SPEAKER_07: And well, Facebook.
• 2:13:52
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we can say a lot of things about Facebook, but I am super thankful because it reconnected me with a lot of those that group.
• 2:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:14:01
  SPEAKER_07: Mm-hmm.
• 2:14:02
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, some of us from or uh from George Fox, but most of mostly people in Ukraine.
• 2:14:08
  SPEAKER_07: Mostly from them, yeah.
• 2:14:09
  SPEAKER_07: So like five of us have kept five Ukrainians of myself have kept in touch for a long time.
• 2:14:15
  SPEAKER_07: Um, how wonderful, right?
• 2:14:18
  SPEAKER_07: Facebook, it's instantaneous.
• 2:14:20
  SPEAKER_07: And they could get it then.
• 2:14:22
  SPEAKER_07: By 2014, it was as familiar to them as to us.
• 2:14:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um, so when trouble started in Kiev, um one of my friends, she desperately needed things.
• 2:14:36
  SPEAKER_07: And so Sam and I started making up boxes and sending them.
• 2:14:40
  SPEAKER_07: And she got them.
• 2:14:41
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it was amazing that they could get them.
• 2:14:43
  SPEAKER_07: But we would um, I remember in the middle of the night texting, you know, a lot of conversations back and forth because it was right in the center where most of them lived.
• 2:14:54
  SPEAKER_07: And the clashing and the and the violence and all of that was happening right there.
• 2:15:00
  SPEAKER_07: And so it was real time for us to talk about.
• 2:15:03
  SPEAKER_05: And you get you're getting a first hand account of everything that's going on.
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_05: How hard was that for you?
• 2:15:08
  SPEAKER_05: Scary being so far away knowing somebody you care about is in the middle of that.
• 2:15:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:15:14
  SPEAKER_07: I thought that was scary.
• 2:15:16
  SPEAKER_07: I had no idea what was coming, but I thought that was scary.
• 2:15:19
  SPEAKER_07: But also, we could help, right?
• 2:15:22
  SPEAKER_07: We could send stuff, and it got there.
• 2:15:25
  SPEAKER_07: Because all the systems and broken groups.
• 2:15:29
  SPEAKER_05: I know, right?
• 2:15:30
  SPEAKER_05: In the middle of a war and it's getting to the address.
• 2:15:34
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:15:34
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, that was the wild thing about it.
• 2:15:36
  SPEAKER_07: And also very confusing.
• 2:15:37
  SPEAKER_07: Like, how are they getting this when this is going on in the middle of their city?
• 2:15:42
  SPEAKER_07: But they did.
• 2:15:45
  SPEAKER_07: And um, so through that we like reestablished friendships, and now we all had kids the same age and and um life experiences, right?
• 2:15:54
  SPEAKER_07: And kind of kept in touch.
• 2:15:56
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and then um we recognized long before they did that something was changing.
• 2:16:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um, was that 2021, February of 21, I believe, is when it was.
• 2:16:09
  SPEAKER_07: And um, I contacted all of the ones that I stay in con close contact with and I said, I just want you to know, it sounds like from our news that there could be an invasion soon.
• 2:16:22
  SPEAKER_07: And most of them had not heard anything.
• 2:16:25
  SPEAKER_05: Really?
• 2:16:27
  SPEAKER_07: Just the way their system works.
• 2:16:31
  SPEAKER_07: Whether the government didn't know and wasn't telling people, or whether they did know and they just weren't telling people.
• 2:16:39
  SPEAKER_07: I I'm not sure.
• 2:16:41
  SPEAKER_07: To this day, I don't know exactly which one of those was, but they didn't know.
• 2:16:46
  SPEAKER_07: And one of them who's become like a sister, her husband worked for UNESCO, and um they recognized too that something was happening, things were changing, embassies were pulling out, you know, it was kind of escalating.
• 2:17:05
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and so a week before the invasion, her family left.
• 2:17:10
  SPEAKER_07: And I can't tell you, I mean, I ask everybody I know to pray.
• 2:17:14
  SPEAKER_07: I said, there has to be some divine help on this one because it's gonna be difficult for them to get out.
• 2:17:20
  SPEAKER_07: They sailed through every border.
• 2:17:25
  SPEAKER_07: Really?
• 2:17:25
  SPEAKER_07: Because nobody believed it was going to happen.
• 2:17:30
  SPEAKER_07: Nobody.
• 2:17:33
  SPEAKER_07: And a week, a week before they left as if they were going on vacation.
• 2:17:42
  SPEAKER_07: And they immigrated to the Netherlands.
• 2:17:45
  SPEAKER_05: So they're still no longer.
• 2:17:47
  SPEAKER_07: She yep, they decided to stay.
• 2:17:50
  SPEAKER_07: And for her it was she wasn't sure her daughter goes back.
• 2:17:56
  SPEAKER_07: Um but she was just recently there and had to spend several nights in the metro station underground because the bombing was so bad.
• 2:18:06
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know that she'll go back.
• 2:18:08
  SPEAKER_07: I think that was a a real thing, right?
• 2:18:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um, the rest of them that are there, they're probably serving.
• 2:18:18
  SPEAKER_07: You know, they don't talk much.
• 2:18:20
  SPEAKER_07: They are so I I don't know if they're strong, stubborn or just strong, right?
• 2:18:29
  SPEAKER_07: But to talk to them, they talk about their daily lives, they talk about um and they and it's like, wait, wait, wait a second.
• 2:18:37
  SPEAKER_07: You had to leave your home last year because the Russians came in and took over your home and they destroyed various things.
• 2:18:46
  SPEAKER_07: You know, you had to rebuild your house, and you're talking about dinner like it's we have dinner.
• 2:18:55
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, right.
• 2:18:57
  SPEAKER_07: They rebuilt their lives, and yet it's still going on.
• 2:19:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's still going on.
• 2:19:02
  SPEAKER_05: And is that that and that's the thing that that strength and resiliency, and we've talked about it a lot through this.
• 2:19:11
  SPEAKER_05: It it amazes me that the things that as humans we can endure that we can endure and continue on.
• 2:19:19
  SPEAKER_05: And I I think that was one of the things that drew me to history was the struggles that humans have endured over the you know, you're always striving to be better than the previous generation, but the different things that whether it's conflict, disease, the different way we've treated different peoples, you know, that's you're talking slavery and everything.
• 2:19:41
  SPEAKER_05: How long did it take us to figure that one out and and get abolish that in the United States?
• 2:19:46
  SPEAKER_05: And and then the generations afterwards where um you're still not considered a human being just because you have different colored skins.
• 2:19:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like we look at it now, it's like, seriously, what took you guys that long to figure that out?
• 2:20:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 2:20:02
  SPEAKER_05: But you all I also look at when you go through these great struggles, and then when you come out of them, this that strength and resiliency usually flowers into just these amazing creative generations that I I don't know what it is that triggers in the mind or whatever, but the greatness that comes after it.
• 2:20:26
  SPEAKER_05: The greatness that comes after it.
• 2:20:28
  SPEAKER_05: And it it sucks that we have to have all these huge struggles to get to that point.
• 2:20:34
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 2:20:34
  SPEAKER_05: But that's a comforting thing for me when I see like when COVID was hitting.
• 2:20:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 2:20:39
  SPEAKER_05: After a couple weeks, I forget who it was that came in and they're like, man, that sucks.
• 2:20:43
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, man, I just I can't wait for what comes next.
• 2:20:45
  SPEAKER_05: And like, what?
• 2:20:46
  SPEAKER_05: This is this is not good.
• 2:20:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, well, no, I yeah, this is gonna suck.
• 2:20:50
  SPEAKER_05: But what's what's what's that?
• 2:20:52
  SPEAKER_00: What are we gonna learn from this?
• 2:20:54
  SPEAKER_05: What are we gonna learn from this?
• 2:20:54
  SPEAKER_05: What's gonna be that leap forward that we have, whether it's in the arts or wherever it is, there's gonna be something that a hundred years from now they're gonna look back and it's like, look what happened after that that struggle.
• 2:21:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:21:08
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't seen what it is yet because I know I don't think we're there yet.
• 2:21:13
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think we're at that point.
• 2:21:15
  SPEAKER_05: There's more beyond COVID that we're dealing with.
• 2:21:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yep.
• 2:21:19
  SPEAKER_05: But I know there's gonna be something amazing at the end of it.
• 2:21:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I hope that's true for Ukraine.
• 2:21:23
  SPEAKER_07: I pray for that.
• 2:21:25
  SPEAKER_05: I pray for that as well.
• 2:21:26
  SPEAKER_07: Because we're we're also talking, so um, the students that we were with in '94, they were kids during USSR.
• 2:21:36
  SPEAKER_07: So they grew up in that trauma, right?
• 2:21:40
  SPEAKER_07: And then they had the the the trauma, but also the freedom that came in '91.
• 2:21:46
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and they had this period of really wonderful.
• 2:21:52
  SPEAKER_05: Russia had invaded them before, too, before this one.
• 2:21:55
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:21:55
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:21:56
  SPEAKER_07: So they've had some, they've had some freedom and how tasted that, and now it's taken away from them again.
• 2:22:02
  SPEAKER_07: And and so I I, you know, one of the students in particular, there was a lot of fear, right?
• 2:22:11
  SPEAKER_07: And mistrust.
• 2:22:12
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't think that ever left.
• 2:22:14
  SPEAKER_07: And so there hasn't been a generation.
• 2:22:15
  SPEAKER_07: I'm waiting, right?
• 2:22:17
  SPEAKER_07: These there hasn't been that generation gap that we seem to have, right?
• 2:22:21
  SPEAKER_07: Because they just went from one trauma basically to the next.
• 2:22:26
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm hoping for the they haven't had that reset.
• 2:22:29
  SPEAKER_07: No, not really, no, not long enough to not a generation.
• 2:22:34
  SPEAKER_07: No, yeah.
• 2:22:36
  SPEAKER_07: So it's continued on for them.
• 2:22:38
  SPEAKER_07: Some I have high hopes, and you know, that that good things will come for them.
• 2:22:44
  SPEAKER_07: Because they're really an incredible people, and they're a lot like Alaskans.
• 2:22:48
  SPEAKER_07: A lot, right?
• 2:22:50
  SPEAKER_07: It's a different climate, but it's the same culture, I think that as far as there's many similarities between Alaskans and Ukrainians.
• 2:23:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:23:03
  SPEAKER_05: So so what have we missed in the Shannon story?
• 2:23:05
  SPEAKER_05: That what what what should I have asked you about that I didn't ask you about, Shannon?
• 2:23:10
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 2:23:11
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 2:23:11
  SPEAKER_07: I think isn't that all of us that we get to grow and continue?
• 2:23:15
  SPEAKER_05: Someday I I we we do we I I hope we all continue and grow throughout, but to this stage in your life, is there is there something major, something really cool, fun, sad that we've missed that our kids?
• 2:23:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean yeah, yeah.
• 2:23:31
  SPEAKER_05: I mean you have two wonderful kids.
• 2:23:32
  SPEAKER_07: We do, but we didn't we didn't come by them easily either.
• 2:23:35
  SPEAKER_05: That's yeah, do you want to go down that road?
• 2:23:38
  SPEAKER_07: Not really.
• 2:23:38
  SPEAKER_07: Um I mean but I'm also I'm also not afraid of it.
• 2:23:42
  SPEAKER_07: Um you know, we what we've learned through that journey, and and I thank Haynes for being patient with us.
• 2:23:50
  SPEAKER_07: The first time we we dealt with infertility, and the first time we did an IVF, we didn't tell anybody.
• 2:23:57
  SPEAKER_07: And of course, it when it failed, we were devastated, and nobody knew that.
• 2:24:02
  SPEAKER_07: Because infertility is a lot like um, or miscarriages or you know, that which comes because everybody thinks having children is so easy.
• 2:24:13
  SPEAKER_07: And and to this day, I try really hard not to ask people when they first get married, when you're having kids, when you're having kids, because in the end, it may not be that easy for them, right?
• 2:24:26
  SPEAKER_07: It might be a journey that's really difficult.
• 2:24:29
  SPEAKER_07: And that question, there's a lot of loss and grief that can come with that question there, right?
• 2:24:35
  SPEAKER_05: So for spoken from experience, isn't it?
• 2:24:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, yes, and and I know, and so when we um we did have um we our IVF was not successful, and I painted the inside of our house looks so glorious by the end of the summer.
• 2:24:54
  SPEAKER_07: Every single inch of our house.
• 2:24:56
  SPEAKER_07: That's how I dealt with my grief that that summer.
• 2:24:59
  SPEAKER_07: Um and by fall, or when we started to try the process again, um, I made sure that we told people.
• 2:25:08
  SPEAKER_07: Um, our our close people who would be So you had a support system.
• 2:25:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, so we had a support system and all the difference in the world.
• 2:25:17
  SPEAKER_07: Even if it had failed, it would have been a completely different experience because we had a net, we had a support system.
• 2:25:26
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm thankful that that also brought out people who said, Oh, we struggled with that too, or hey, my niece is struggling with this.
• 2:25:35
  SPEAKER_07: Do you mind talking to her?
• 2:25:36
  SPEAKER_07: Of course not.
• 2:25:37
  SPEAKER_07: Of course, I'd love to talk to her about it.
• 2:25:39
  SPEAKER_07: I can't solve her problem, but I can talk with her, right?
• 2:25:45
  SPEAKER_07: And and I think for both of us, that's opened up doors that we didn't know.
• 2:25:51
  SPEAKER_07: That we um could walk alongside people that were also experiencing that, and and I think that that was a special we didn't know it at the time.
• 2:26:01
  SPEAKER_07: Of course, it's just a hard thing when you're first when you're going through it, it's just hard.
• 2:26:06
  SPEAKER_07: But when you're on the other side, then you get to see that glory that you just talked about, or that um maybe fruit, you know, that comes from doing something hard is being able to walk alongside other people who have struggled with it.
• 2:26:20
  SPEAKER_07: And science has come a long way.
• 2:26:23
  SPEAKER_07: We do have two beautiful children, but they're not children anymore.
• 2:26:28
  SPEAKER_07: Two young adults.
• 2:26:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:26:30
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that's a that's the thing I I I've seen it on shirts, and just even before I saw it on the shirts, just you never know the battle somebody else is waging.
• 2:26:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yep, there's so many battles that are going on in everybody around us.
• 2:26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:26:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's you know, just be kind with your words and your actions.
• 2:26:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, do not know what that other person is dealing with.
• 2:26:54
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
• 2:26:55
  SPEAKER_05: And you don't have any right to know what if they want to share it with you, then fine.
• 2:26:59
  SPEAKER_05: But there's no way we don't always know you don't always know what other people are going through.
• 2:27:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's so true.
• 2:27:06
  SPEAKER_05: So do you there's no way to to measure this, but do you think you appreciate the kids more after going through what you do?
• 2:27:16
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely, yeah.
• 2:27:16
  SPEAKER_07: And we've told them, I mean, that that our story, you know, they know their story uh to some degree, like they care, right?
• 2:27:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, but I think in us telling them that we wanted them to know that we chose them the same kind of way if if we had adopted them, you know, in some ways.
• 2:27:37
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's very similar to adopting, we chose you.
• 2:27:39
  SPEAKER_05: We didn't we could have given up and not had kids.
• 2:27:42
  SPEAKER_05: We we kept battling a lot of things.
• 2:27:44
  SPEAKER_05: Went through a lot to make sure you're here.
• 2:27:47
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 2:27:48
  SPEAKER_07: And so, you know, know that our love comes not only from our it's just there's a lot to it.
• 2:27:54
  SPEAKER_07: It's complicated, but it's deep love because we made the and not just us, our family, our friends, a lot of people made a very concerted effort and prayer and whatever else that came, you know, to make sure that they were here and loved and that they knew they were loved.
• 2:28:12
  SPEAKER_07: And and I think that we see the fruit of that and we're grateful, very grateful.
• 2:28:17
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, not just for them, but for um that process too.
• 2:28:22
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, crazy, very crazy.
• 2:28:28
  SPEAKER_07: And now we get to be grandparents, and we're super excited to have you.
• 2:28:33
  SPEAKER_07: Because everybody says, and see, I also also thought people would say, Oh, wait till you're grandparents.
• 2:28:38
  SPEAKER_07: And I thought, wait, I love being a parent.
• 2:28:41
  SPEAKER_07: That's a pretty special thing.
• 2:28:43
  SPEAKER_03: But now that we're are you nyiling in now, you're like, oh, I can't you're not even a grandparent yet, but you're already seeing that grandparents are gonna be better than being a parent.
• 2:28:53
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I think somebody recently explained it to me like this, and I think this is where I agree with that.
• 2:28:59
  SPEAKER_07: You get to see your kids, because they probably will look something like your kids, you get to see your kids in in your grandchildren again and see them being parents.
• 2:29:14
  SPEAKER_07: So I'm hoping that it is everything everybody talks about, but even if it's not, I feel like it's going to be, right?
• 2:29:21
  SPEAKER_07: I'm w we just spent six weeks with them and um it was pretty beautiful, right?
• 2:29:31
  SPEAKER_07: In a weird way, because you don't I don't know that we can imagine it.
• 2:29:35
  SPEAKER_07: When they're babies, you don't imagine this part of it, and I'm not even sure that there's a prep that comes for it, right?
• 2:29:43
  SPEAKER_07: There's maybe there's books, but I haven't read them.
• 2:29:46
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe you should write it.
• 2:29:47
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe, yeah.
• 2:29:49
  SPEAKER_07: All the stages on that.
• 2:29:51
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
• 2:29:52
  SPEAKER_07: Again, I I just want to experience it.
• 2:29:55
  SPEAKER_07: I'm excited.
• 2:29:56
  SPEAKER_07: Really excited for them too.
• 2:29:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:29:59
  SPEAKER_07: But mostly for us.
• 2:30:02
  SPEAKER_05: It's alright, then it's alright if you think you're getting more joy out of it than them.
• 2:30:06
  SPEAKER_05: That's fine.
• 2:30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:30:08
  SPEAKER_05: You've you've you've given up a lot.
• 2:30:10
  SPEAKER_05: You can say I haven't done a lot to raise them to the point that they're at.
• 2:30:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:30:14
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 2:30:15
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:30:16
  SPEAKER_05: There's no problem in you getting joy out of something.
• 2:30:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:30:18
  SPEAKER_07: But I was thinking of something else, Doug.
• 2:30:20
  SPEAKER_07: Um, dinners.
• 2:30:21
  SPEAKER_07: I think this is how people get to know each other.
• 2:30:23
  SPEAKER_07: Dinner over the table.
• 2:30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 2:30:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:30:27
  SPEAKER_07: We've had a lot of people at our dinner table.
• 2:30:30
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that it's a good way to- I've been at your dinner table.
• 2:30:33
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:30:34
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's a great way to get to know people.
• 2:30:37
  SPEAKER_07: I'd like to see.
• 2:30:38
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think it happens here.
• 2:30:40
  SPEAKER_07: I think it happens here more than we know about, right?
• 2:30:42
  SPEAKER_07: Whether it's with family or friends, but that conversation you have over the dinner table is amazing.
• 2:30:50
  SPEAKER_07: You never know what you're gonna learn about somebody.
• 2:30:53
  SPEAKER_07: Never know.
• 2:30:55
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you know another way to get to know people?
• 2:30:57
  SPEAKER_07: Fish?
• 2:30:58
  SPEAKER_05: Start a podcast.
• 2:30:59
  SPEAKER_05: Ask them a bunch of questions.
• 2:31:02
  SPEAKER_05: What if that works too?
• 2:31:03
  SPEAKER_05: It seems to be working.
• 2:31:06
  SPEAKER_05: I've learned a lot about people.
• 2:31:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:08
  SPEAKER_07: Well, and also you've set aside time.
• 2:31:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:12
  SPEAKER_07: How great that you've set aside time to spend with people.
• 2:31:16
  SPEAKER_07: That's it, really.
• 2:31:17
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it doesn't matter whether you're having coffee or um a podcast.
• 2:31:23
  SPEAKER_07: You're setting aside time for people.
• 2:31:25
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that means a lot.
• 2:31:26
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:26
  SPEAKER_07: It does.
• 2:31:27
  SPEAKER_05: It's a good way to connect.
• 2:31:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:29
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:29
  SPEAKER_07: And learn.
• 2:31:31
  SPEAKER_05: Hopefully.
• 2:31:33
  SPEAKER_05: I hope I never stop learning.
• 2:31:35
  SPEAKER_05: Me neither.
• 2:31:36
  SPEAKER_05: That's kind of one of my goals.
• 2:31:37
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 2:31:37
  SPEAKER_05: Keep learning.
• 2:31:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:31:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:31:41
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:42
  SPEAKER_05: So anything any any last words of wisdom for us, Shannon?
• 2:31:46
  SPEAKER_07: I think I'm I'm looking over here.
• 2:31:47
  SPEAKER_05: I think we've You you've tapped the well.
• 2:31:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:50
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:31:50
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I I really appreciate all that you've shared with us.
• 2:31:53
  SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah.
• 2:31:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's I no, I I really do.
• 2:31:56
  SPEAKER_05: I know you're hesitant about doing this.
• 2:31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:31:59
  SPEAKER_05: But I think talking about death, talking about hospice, talking about a lot of the things we were talking about, grief and things, I think more people need to have those conversations.
• 2:32:12
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe if they hear us talking about it, maybe that'll get some people to either reach out to hospice, reach out to their friends or neighbors.
• 2:32:19
  SPEAKER_07: Um Yeah.
• 2:32:21
  SPEAKER_07: Because in the end, it's not just a good death that we want, it's a good life until we die.
• 2:32:27
  SPEAKER_07: We want to thrive.
• 2:32:28
  SPEAKER_05: We want to thrive till the end.
• 2:32:30
  SPEAKER_07: And there are ways to, I mean, no, I think having people walk alongside of us part of the way that we can do that.
• 2:32:38
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm I'm glad that all these ladies in town talked Sam into email and that you responded and came back to join our community.
• 2:32:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:32:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's been great having you here.
• 2:32:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 2:32:50
  SPEAKER_06: Thanks, Doug.
• 2:32:52
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Shannon.