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E15: Exploring Death: Traditions, Thoughts, and Personal Reflections · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining us.
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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to episode 15, simply entitled Death.
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Yep. So this time I want to share some thoughts and even a few feelings with
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you guys on the topic of death.
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And specifically, well, no, not specifically. We'll talk a little bit about,
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you know, when you lose homies in combat versus when you lose family members and things like that.
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So let's get to, let's start.
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You know, these days there are different ways to go about burying someone or
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getting someone in the ground or cremated or whatever.
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And different people sort of celebrate, I don't think celebrate is the right
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word, but they do that differently based on, I don't know, tradition and stuff like that.
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And so a traditional funeral service, for instance, well, there'll be a formal
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ceremony probably held at a funeral home or a church or someplace like that.
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And normally they'll do like this open casket viewing, this open casket viewing.
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And I know people have done that for years and years, and I think that goes
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back to like the Civil War, perhaps.
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Where did we get that embalming tradition from originally? I think it's maybe
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Egyptian or something like that.
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But I can tell you here, folks, right now, that I'm not a big fan of the embalming and the viewing.
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I think it's morbid. I think it's a little awkward. The person that you are,
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the body that you're looking at, no longer belongs to the person that you loved.
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So that's just simply a shell.
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And I believe that stuff kind of evolved just the way business does.
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Somebody saw an opportunity to make a profit doing that, so they started doing
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that as a normal practice.
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That's what I believe happened. At any rate, so you might have a service at
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a funeral home or a church and then a viewing of the body.
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Family members will get up and say words possibly or the just a preacher or something like that,
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and it's okay and it's good i believe that
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that you know like all these
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others i'm going to talk about i believe they are more for the family members
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than they are the dead well 100 100 they're more for the family members than
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they are for the dead and then another it's gaining a lot attraction over the
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past couple of decades is cremation.
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That's the way my mom wanted to go. And that's the way I mean, my wife have discussed.
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Now, the caveat there is if I go, if I could be put on a Viking funeral pyre
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and shoot flaming arrows into my corpse, then that's what we're going to do.
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But I don't think that's legal.
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My daughter does have some interest in this topic, however.
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And she and right now i think she says that the only place in america that it's
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legal to do a funeral pyre on your own property is in divide colorado isn't that weird.
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But anyway cremation i think that's what my wife and i are gonna we're gonna
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do kind of ease the burden on the family that way. It's cheaper for sure.
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And I don't want my family standing over my embalmed corpse,
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like some kind of weird wax museum.
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But yeah, cremation. Scatter the ashes or keep... I have my mom's ashes in a
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box up in our living room next to a picture of my son and and my firstborn grandson.
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So there's other ways to do it. And that's just what I think is more.
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And well, let's talk cremation. Well, hold on. Let me get through this list here real quick.
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And then in a more secular way, right? If you guys don't have any burial traditions
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or you think they're overly religious or whatnot, there are people that do the
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celebration of life, you know, where folks will get together,
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and at a pub or at someone's house
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or at a park or anywhere or maybe this didn't wherever the deceased's favorite
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place was to get together and tell stories while you listen to music share memories
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you know maybe have a couple drinks and just talk about all things you loved
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about that person and then you,
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you know, effects they had on your life, you know, things like that.
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So that's a pretty good one. I like that. I think that's good.
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And then there's, and this is where my daughter is particularly interested,
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but there's the green burials.
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So there's a movement out there afoot, and there's a few books that have been
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written recently on these echo-friendly sort of burials where you are naturally,
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excuse me, you're naturally put back into the earth, either in a biodegradable
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coffin or some, some, some form of shroud or something.
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And then nature and you're put in the ground and then nature,
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nature takes you back, you know, and you decompose and become a part of the,
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of the earth that, you know, from when she came.
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And that, obviously, that probably appeals to the environmental activists out there for sure.
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But I think that's a very interesting way to do it,
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to put the natural body back into the earth to then become essentially recycled earth.
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You know, I don't know. It's interesting. It's interesting to think about.
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And and then here i did i did a little search and i did a thing there then they're
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talking about virtual memorials and online tributes and things like that i don't think that,
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takes the place of of an actual celebration or remembrance or anything like that,
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i guess if families all spread out and things you could do something on but
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But, yeah, I don't think that, I don't think that's, I think it's appropriate,
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but I don't think that's as appropriate as the only means to memorialize your fallen.
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All right, so now let's talk about the traditional funeral service real quick.
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It gets on mine. It gets on me. It bothers me a little bit the way it's done. and it always has.
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Since my grandfather died when I was probably a senior in high school,
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I'm trying to think if I was familiar with death before that.
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I did have a buddy that died. I didn't go to his funeral though.
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I didn't know too many people that had passed prior to that. My other granddad died.
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My uncle died. All of these deaths, I was somewhere else and I wasn't able to
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go to the funerals except for my, my granddad.
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So, and they did a, they did the normal cremation and all that stuff.
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I didn't have any say in that at all.
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His, his family, his daughter and sons are the ones who did all that.
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At any rate, let's talk about the practical, let's talk about practical application real quick.
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Now, in many, many places, especially rural type places, you know,
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there's cemeteries next to churches or on church property and that kind of thing.
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Here in Rome, we have the Myrtle Hill Cemetery, which is a big,
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you know, it is just what it says, a big giant hill.
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And it goes back pre-Civil War.
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And that's interesting. Let's get dystopian here for a few minutes.
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In the future, and I don't know, maybe near future, hopefully not,
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at some point, these cemeteries, a lot of them, they take up some significant acreage.
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And, you know, we can build cars, we can build all kinds of things,
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but we can't build more land. There is no more land to be had.
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Once it's explored and then once the government gets its hooks or once a private
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development firm gets their hooks in it, that's it.
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The land at that point only gets recycled and reused, repurposed.
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It exchanges ownership for housing development to a shopping mall to whatever to whatever.
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So the practical application of these big cemeteries and urban areas,
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I just feel like at some point in time, they're going to be sold to the highest bidder.
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And all the headstones are going to be, who knows what, removed.
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But guess who's not going to be removed is the caskets of the dead.
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They're just going to build right over top. And that brings me to,
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I didn't think about this until just now.
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I want to say the movie Poltergeist. It was a scary movie in the 80s,
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maybe even late 70s or early 80s.
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Yeah, I think they built a housing development on top of some Indian burial
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grounds. And that's what was the haunting thing.
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Interesting. Yeah. I think that's a long-term sort of thing to think about. Yeah. I don't know.
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I think cremation. Yeah. That's easy peasy.
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You, you carry your loved one with you, or you just simply go scatter their
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ashes, scatter the ashes in the ocean or on the mountains or wherever they chose.
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So the practical application to that burial. Yeah. I think that eventually is going to be a thing.
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I think premiums on graves are going to skyrocket.
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It's already very expensive to bury a loved one, folks.
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It's already very expensive to bury a loved one as it is, let alone when real
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estate prices start skyrocketing even more than they have.
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I think that's a thing to think about.
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So we talked a couple of different ways to put somebody to rest.
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I kind of like the idea of the green burial. I definitely like the idea of cremation.
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And the celebration of life can be done however you do that, right?
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Virtual tributes can be done no matter how you do that.
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But I think the green burial, the cremation, And I think those are the ways, the two ways to go.
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So at any rate, let's get back to traditional funerals here.
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My Aunt Pat recently passed away, Patricia Mills, and I'd say she had a difficult life, I'd say.
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I'd say the Mills family in general, especially back in the older days,
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70s and whatnot, had a pretty rough go of it.
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We were all brought up on the low end of the economic spectrum, for sure.
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And but i i'm about to get into some
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personal stuff here at the funeral and it
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was an open casket viewing and all that stuff and
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i you know i didn't mind that i mean i i i don't i don't care for it but i simply
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didn't go up and look at the at the corpse at any rate a funeral it's it can
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be a solemn sort of place to, you know, sort of atmosphere.
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But here's the news, folks. I'm about to give you some lessons that you can take away, right?
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When you go to a funeral, when you go to a funeral, turn your frigging cell phone off.
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Yeah, turn your cell phone off. Don't just turn notifications down or don't
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just do what you think was bare minimum so that it might not go off during the
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service because there was an incident at Pat's funeral.
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And I'll go ahead and tell you, I was the culprit.
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I wasn't the culprit with the cell phone. I was the culprit of the,
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of the near incident because the guy sitting next to me, his phone went off
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three times, three times folks.
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Now I'm not going to elaborate on this guy too much, but to tell you this.
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He wore Crocs to a funeral. Yeah.
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So if you don't have enough respect to put on a regular pair of shoes and to
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turn your cell phone off, don't go, man.
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Don't go. Nobody's going to miss you. So yeah, I very, in a very plain spoken,
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well, in the way that I do, I simply told him if he didn't turn his phone off,
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I would beat him to death. And he turned his phone off.
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But not before three different notifications went off. Turn your goddamn cell phone off at a funeral.
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Right. As I get older, I think about it a little more, a little more. My own mortality.
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My wife's thinking about it more and more. My wife has MS and she has, you know, random issue.
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MS is a very unpredictable thing.
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And so it causes her to think about things a lot. I can tell you this,
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though, as an older person with children, not even with children,
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just with family, the best thing you can do is prep.
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Do the preparation yourself. It sounds morbid, I know, but get life insurance
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at least enough to cover the expenses and things like that.
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Don't leave your family held in a bag for $10,000, $12,000, $15,000. dollars.
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Prep, you know, make a will. You might not have anything, but I'm sure,
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you know, most people, for most people, it's about the sentimental things.
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It's not necessarily about the stuff.
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And, you know, they want to leave
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sentimental things to certain people and things like that. Make a will.
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Take the guesswork out of it. Now, I know, generally speaking,
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people don't don't like the idea of having to think about making their own will.
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But I got news for you. In the Army, we had to update our will every time we deployed.
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Yeah. You got 20-year-old kids sitting there writing out their will and their
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death plan and where they want to be buried and what music they want playing
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at their funeral and all those things.
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So what that does to young couples
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is forces conversations that wouldn't otherwise be had for 25, 30 years.
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So I'm not saying that to say to be flipping about it.
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I'm just telling you, it's not too early to be thinking about it.
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It's not too early to be thinking about it.
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Folks, I'm telling you right now, life insurance is absolutely critical.
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Even if you can only get a $10,000 policy, whatever, life insurance is critical.
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All right. I'm sorry. I had a little technical difficulty there.
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Prep. Make your will, especially if you got kids or a lot of kids.
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Make your will. Make your will out.
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Name names. social security, you know, you know, the people who,
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who you want to handle your business, name an executor.
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It kind of defaults to the spouse or if there's no spouse, then the oldest child
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as the executor, but, or an only child.
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If you're, if there's multiple kids, you gotta, you gotta go claim that.
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You gotta go up and say, I am acting on behalf. And you have to go to probate
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court and all those things.
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And these are a bunch of things that as responsible older adults,
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we can, we can just, we can settle
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so that our kids aren't out there struggling to try to figure it out.
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Because let me tell you what trying to figure all that stuff out does on the
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fly is that it takes, it bumps aside the grief, right?
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You don't have time to sit and think about
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the loss of your mom or dad because you're out
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here trying to go to this office and that
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office and get this signed and that and you're
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trying to figure that out and you're trying to deal with the with the
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cemetery you're trying to deal with the funeral home and you're trying to figure
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all this stuff out who's paying for what what what happens first etc and never
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mind where they lived right now you got to go clean the house out and do something
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with their stuff and you've got to,
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you know if they were renting holy moly now you got to you got to pay this guy
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the last month's rent you know it's just there's a lot of stuff going on folks
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there's a lot of stuff and nobody wants to think about it and until it's time
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to think about it and then it's and then it's a very stressful process,
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a whole lot of problem solving that you could have got ahead of.
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Now, that being said, folks, planning, you know, you can do this in almost any
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aspect of life, not just death.
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However, that's the final problem solving.
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That's the final problem solving task right there, test, right?
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Can you organize your mom or dad's death without losing it and beating up family members?
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Look, I'm being a little funny here, folks. I'm not trying to be morbid about all this.
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I'm trying to give you practical things to think about, especially if you're over 50, right?
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If you're over 50, these are practical things to think about.
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So prep, make sure you got life insurance.
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Make sure that they can find it. Make sure it's in a logical spot in a desk
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drawer or a file cabinet that is labeled life insurance.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. make sure you have usernames and passwords written down for
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various things like your bank,
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or whatever online portal you have for your life insurance for that matter your
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vehicle if you're still paying on a vehicle your house if you have a mortgage
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on the house yeah all these things all these things you're the ones you leave
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behind are going to have to figure out.
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So help, help them out with that. Why not? Why not?
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So these funerals, uh, I told a little story of this guy with the Crocs on at the funeral. Yeah.
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Now look, generally speaking, funerals, you know, people, people cry.
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By the time you get to the funeral, this person's been dead for,
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you know, five, six, 10 days, maybe.
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When you go to this funeral, are you going there to, to openly mourn to show
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everyone how sad you are?
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Or are you going there to celebrate the life of your loved one?
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And I get it. Some people just, you know, death is, it's just such an emotional event.
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And that's another argument against the open casket for, in my opinion.
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You know, You're sitting there looking at a dead body in a casket.
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To me, that's morbid. To me, to walk a, you know, eight or 10-year-old kid up
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to a dead body and say, oh, look, don't she look so natural?
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I mean, no, I don't think so.
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So, family, are you there to mourn? Yeah, a little bit. But like I said,
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by the time you're viewing an open casket, it's been a good week,
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almost a couple weeks even.
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What I'm trying to say by that is don't fake the funk. Stand around.
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Fellowship with the rest of the family. Love on people. Hug on people. How you been? Catch up.
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Yeah. Oh, I'm going to miss Pat. She was awesome. Yes, for sure. A hundred percent.
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But if you were one of those, if you're up there crying, if you're up there
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moaning and crying because now you don't know what you're going to do with your
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life because the person who took care of you is past.
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I don't know what to tell you. And I'm saying this as an adult to an adult.
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If you're a grown ass man and now you're crying, not necessarily,
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yeah, because you lost someone, but now you don't know who's going to take care
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of you, you need to go re-examine your life. Go re-examine your life.
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Yeah, folks, death, It brings out good. It brings out bad.
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Now, I've known people, well, close people, actually, that may have had a little
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money and had some life insurance.
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And then there was...
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I don't know, a little insurance fraud, people trying to get over on other people,
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to make sure that they get all the money.
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So that's the ugly side, right?
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Never mind being rich or whatever. Just having a life insurance policy that's
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got $25,000, $50,000 on it, that's enough to bring ugly out in family members. Yeah, that's enough.
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And watch out. You know, those types of people, yeah,
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you have to watch out for those types of people who will let the money dictate
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how they act and who they're willing to screw over or who they're willing to lie to.
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It's so frigging tragic, man. I mean, like, it's so frigging tragic. It's unreal.
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So, the good and the bad. Death brings out good and bad in people.
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The family deaths especially so as a person you know over 50 it's not too early
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I don't care if you're 30 it's not too early to get life insurance and to do
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a will actually the earlier you get life insurance the better but and to do
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a will because we all know we've all lost people young right,
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motorcycle crashes or or other things it's not too early get ahead of the game
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make your will get life insurance,
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organize your stuff that it's helpful in that time when people need the help
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the most is after your passing.
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They need the help the most to make sure your stuff is all squared away.
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So good and bad. Don't let the bad come out.
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Don't let the bad come out, folks.
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Mourn how you have to mourn, if you have to go for a drive and cry because you
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don't want anybody to see you cry, then go do it.
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But don't pin it up inside and don't let it come out in other nefarious ways.
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You know, grieve however you do, but do get it out. Do get it out.
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And ensure you know i don't want to question anybody's
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like deeper motives but make sure
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it's the grief that is what's getting out and not just your anger because now
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you have to take care of yourself all right well so family look i know i know
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it's kind of negative but i had a very negative experience recently and that's what it was and.
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Am I the asshole? I mean, maybe, probably, but I didn't wear Crocs to a funeral,
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and I turned my cell phone off.
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What about homies? What about when you lose homies in combat?
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Right now, I mean, I don't even know how many guys that I know,
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whether I was good friends with them or just knew them or just worked with them
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in proximity or anything like that.
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I probably know 15 or 20 guys that have died either in combat or to suicide.
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And yeah, so what about when your homies die? So specifically on our last few
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ops before I retired, or not few ops, few deployments before I retired.
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We lost Misha Golan and then the next rotation after
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that which we lost Ryan Sartor
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um and those were good homies you know and
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Mike Tully I know there's there's a handful of guys that that I was good buddies
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with that that died and it hurt every single time and yeah there's nothing wrong
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with shedding a tear for your homies at all but get you know when a guy dies
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on deployment guess what,
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you still get up the next day you know you still got to go do all the things that you got to do,
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now they'll do a memorial you know they'll do a flight line or they'll do a memorial service.
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For the guys and get them on the bird so they can get back to the states and
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all that And I think the Army is very good.
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That's one of those ceremonial things that the Army gets right,
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I think, is the way they treat their dead and the deference and the respect
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given to a fallen soldier.
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Yeah, Ryan Glover, Andy Byers, that are coming to mind on one deployment.
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So that's a
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totally different game when it's when it's homies versus
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when it's family it's just it's just a different it's
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a different thing and usually when your homie gets killed in combat you'll do
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the memorial and then you'll go back once you guys get home from deployment
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you'll do sort of a memorial to memorialize kind of like all the guys that died
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on that rotation or whatever.
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And sometimes we'll see their family members. They'll come to participate in those.
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Some of my buds were buried in Arlington, others in their hometowns and things like that.
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I'm not getting into how they choose to be buried, whether it's cremation or
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freaking getting embalmed and whatever.
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I'm just saying the way the Army does it is good. They show the respect. They show the respect.
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And the service members normally show their respect.
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All of them, even if they didn't know the guy, they'll still,
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you know, stand quietly and let people say the things that need to be said and
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feel the way that they need to feel.
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So when you lose homies, so let's get into another thing about that, in fact.
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You know, there's still a lot of suicide within the special operations ranks
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or even after you've gotten out.
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And some of that, I think some of that comes from what's this thing called survivor's
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guilt, especially if a dude got killed on an operation and you were on that
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operation, you might feel like, why him? You know, things like that.
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I say this about that. You can what if things to death.
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What if I was just over here? Or what if we would have just gone here first and done this first?
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You can what if something to death. and it's really...
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Crass by saying it's a waste of time, but you absolutely can't change what has passed.
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You absolutely cannot change what has passed.
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And usually, I mean, guys get killed for a reason, right?
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Like we were getting shot at or something, or there was a rollover or whatever.
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You might be able to find a reason
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that that happened but you shouldn't you got to be very careful about assigning
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fault and now the military will do that man they will do a an investigation
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and try to figure out who's responsible and you know i tell you that's,
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that's sort of a double-edged sword there and then you do want to know how and
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why a thing happened, especially if it was like fratricide or something like that.
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People want to know those things. Our heroes were heroes, right?
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Whether they died in combat or even suicide.
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But yeah, you like to know why.
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There's closure there that some people really need that.
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You just can't fathom going through life wondering why,
30:29
why, why, and then blaming yourself and the
30:32
absence of answers blaming yourself so i
30:36
encourage you all of my military homies
30:39
to be mindful of that
30:42
and and get away from that survivor's guilt don't don't fall into that trap
30:48
it's not your fault it's not your fault unless you literally pulled the trigger
30:54
it's not your fault and especially if you guys weren't even on the same operation like Thank you.
31:02
Feel bad that you didn't get killed in combat and your homie did.
31:07
Think about it this way. Do you think if your homie got killed in combat that
31:12
he would want you to get killed too?
31:14
Chances are no on that, right? I don't want my best homie.
31:18
I don't want Timmy Haynes to be killed because I get killed too.
31:25
Do you understand what I'm saying by that?
31:27
So think about your homie who you lost and don't, don't have survivor's guilt.
31:34
Be thankful that you're alive because I know that your homie wants you to be alive.
31:40
All right. Now, if you want to go make sure his kids are squared away and,
31:46
and all that, that sort of thing and help the wife, you know,
31:50
take care of the, the yard and that sort of thing.
31:53
Yeah. Do the things. They're not superficial.
31:56
You know, any help is appreciated, I'm sure.
32:00
But try to avoid that trap of the survivor's guilt, guys. Please, please, please.
32:07
And I don't know how much of that you can attribute to suicide rates,
32:11
but I'm sure there's got to be some in there.
32:13
I know a few guys who struggle with it. I know a few guys who struggle with that. I never did.
32:19
And it's not because I'm a selfish a-hole. I have faith in Jesus and God,
32:26
and I believe that things happen the way they happen for a reason.
32:31
I don't have to know what that reason is.
32:34
You know, I may not even be capable of understanding that reason,
32:39
especially if it's a divine reason.
32:42
But I do believe things happen in the way they happen for a reason,
32:47
whether it's a, yeah, who knows why, right?
32:51
Divine reason why, but it's there. And you think, well, God,
32:55
how does God make bad things happen?
32:58
God don't necessarily make the bad things happen, but good can come from it
33:06
if you allow it, if you're open to it. You have to be very sensitive.
33:10
When we're talking about faith and things like that, and you know,
33:13
I'm no master here, and I'm just telling you what I think.
33:17
You have to be very sensitive to what the Lord's trying to tell you in these
33:23
times when your homies die or your family members die.
33:29
You have to be very sensitive to what the Lord might be trying to say.
33:33
There may be a lesson there that is profound.
33:36
There may be some revelation that comes to you that just blows your mind that
33:44
will change your life forever.
33:45
But if you're not open to it, if you're too busy blaming yourself or someone
33:50
else, and you're so overcome with grief and you're not handling it healthy in a healthy way,
33:56
you might miss the blessing that would have come from it.
34:01
So just be mindful of that, that blessings can come from that.
34:06
I know it doesn't seem logical, but it's possible and likely even.
34:11
I tell this story sometimes. I was, we were getting ready to go out.
34:15
I was the B team operations sergeant on one of the rotations and we were doing
34:20
QRF for a team that was, that was, uh, getting ready to go out on a,
34:25
you know, in a pretty, in a hairy spot.
34:29
And we were getting ready to roll out and we were getting jocked up in the, in the talk.
34:34
And then there was a support guy and he, he and me are, we're still good friends
34:40
to this day, but he, he, on the way out, you know, I was cutting a joke or something.
34:46
I don't know what we were, we were laughing and, and, and cutting up on the
34:50
way out to, to go to the airfield. Yeah.
34:54
He stops me. He's like, hey, Ed, don't don't you ever get nervous about going out and doing that?
35:00
And without skipping a beat, without even slowing my stride,
35:04
I looked at him. I smiled at him.
35:05
I said, no, man, I believe in Jesus and kept moving because that's the way you have to think, folks.
35:11
Now, that don't mean I'm going to go out into the middle of a raid and start
35:16
acting a fool and think I'm invincible.
35:19
But God gives us the tools we need to succeed. Right. And if it is your time,
35:25
I'm a strong believer that it is your time.
35:29
So I'm not going to overthink that bit too much. I'm just going to go do my
35:33
job to the best of my ability.
35:36
And knock on wood, thank God, you know, of all the deployments I did,
35:41
I never, never been shot.
35:44
So, so yeah, I think faith has a, has a lot to do with not only the way you
35:49
feel about your own mortality, but the way you handle it when other people around you, close to you die.
35:57
Yeah, it can be a traumatic, especially emotionally traumatic. I know that.
36:03
I'm not minimizing it at all, folks. And I'm not telling you to be flippant
36:09
or casual about it. It's not that at all.
36:13
I'm just telling you to be thoughtful.
36:18
And yeah to be thoughtful and and
36:22
consider what what the person you're mourning the
36:26
way you behave and the way you carry yourself after that right is that in a
36:32
way consistent with the the way you think they would want be proud of yeah are
36:39
you behaving in a way that you that your loved one or your homie that they would
36:44
be proud of once they've passed.
36:49
Survivor's guilt. Yeah, that's a thing. Avoid that trap.
36:54
So I tell this sometimes, and we came from Colorado.
37:00
I retired in 2020. My wife and I were still on the fence, whether we'd stay
37:05
in Colorado or come back to Georgia.
37:08
We opted to come back to Georgia because my mom and dad were divorced, but my dad lived here.
37:16
My mom lived in South Carolina, so we wanted to be closer. And my grandma lived
37:20
here with my, with my uncle.
37:24
So that was the three people other than my wife and kids, those were the three
37:29
people most important to me.
37:31
And so we wanted our kids, even though they all did not directly come to Georgia
37:39
with us, they all kind of filtered in later.
37:41
We wanted our kids and especially our grandkids to have access and to be close
37:47
to my mom and dad and my wife's mom and my grandmother.
37:54
So I came early. I did a little Advan and my wife and kids were still in Colorado.
38:03
Is that correct? No, no, no, no. That's not correct.
38:07
My kids were still in Colorado. Colorado, my wife was, was with her mother and
38:13
we, we, we came, we were, we got to Georgia in about August of 2020, I think.
38:19
And I want to say it was the very end of September when my dad died.
38:26
So my daughter-in-law was pregnant and he was born in January, young Emmett.
38:32
And so my dad, That broke me down a little bit That my dad never had an opportunity
38:38
To meet his His grandson And then not It was maybe,
38:46
Three months later In December My mom died Yeah.
38:53
It was on her birthday or the day before her birthday, and she died.
38:59
And I remember my cousin Angie called me, and she was all tore up.
39:03
She lived in South Carolina near my mom.
39:07
And so again, yes, my mom was in poor health, and she was a hard-living woman, but it tore me up.
39:15
I felt immediately, I was like, well, she's no longer in pain,
39:20
and her life is no longer burdened with what's going on here.
39:25
But it tore me up that she wouldn't get to see her grandkid born.
39:31
And then Emmett was born in January, and all that COVID nonsense,
39:38
my grandmother was in a nursing home.
39:42
Um, and we, I think he was probably six months old or so.
39:51
And he, we had a chance, a couple of opportunities for him to,
39:56
to meet his great grandmother.
39:58
And, uh, and then not long thereafter, she died as well.
40:02
So fortunately my mom's mom is still with us and happily married.
40:08
She got married not too long ago.
40:09
So anyway, so there's my feel sorry for myself story on death when it comes to family members.
40:19
Now, I'm not even, that was my mom and dad and grandma.
40:23
A few months, let's see, my Uncle Ronnie died before my dad.
40:29
I don't think it was a year before maybe.
40:32
And I was there for that. And I'm trying to think it was my wife there for that as well.
40:36
Yeah, I think my wife was there for that. I think we were visiting,
40:40
we were on leave or something for that.
40:44
So my Uncle Ronnie passed, and then my dad and grandma.
40:51
So anyway, the things that hurt me so bad, it was literally that they didn't
40:59
get a chance to meet their grandson.
41:01
My dad was, I don't think he was in that bad of health.
41:05
He was trying to do better with himself. He was trying to go walking and things like that.
41:09
But good people, after years and years and years of smoking and just generally
41:15
unhealthy, you know, eating habits and things like that, that's what happens.
41:21
My Aunt Pat probably smoked up until she went to the hospital.
41:28
Around. And probably even when they sent her home from the hospital,
41:31
she probably even smoked.
41:34
She was a, that was it. She was a diehard smoker. She was going to smoke period,
41:38
no matter what you say to her and her mom as well.
41:41
But well, I don't know. I think, I think Mama Mills probably might've stopped
41:45
smoking before her death.
41:47
So yeah, my uncle Ronnie, so my, my, my other grandmother died,
41:52
not, I want to say, was it 18 or 19?
41:57
Nah, I might've been 18 or 19. Then Ronnie died.
42:01
And then my dad. And then my mom. Then my grandma. And now my Aunt Pat.
42:07
So, yeah, family death. And for each of those folks, for each of those,
42:13
I knew that they left their pains down here.
42:17
They knew that they, I knew that they left their troubles down here.
42:20
And that it was probably more, you know, it's sad that we're not going to get
42:26
to see them anymore. but it's not sad for them, folks. They're not in pain.
42:31
They are now their best selves.
42:39
I believe. That's what I believe. So, yeah, death.
42:44
I'm not crass about it, folks, and I'm not flipping about it at all,
42:48
but my perspective might be a little bit different.
42:52
My perspective might be a little bit different because I can tell you this,
42:58
I value life. I wrote a paper.
43:01
I got to look and see if that's still published or if I need to republish that
43:06
on the Jinto podcast.com.
43:10
I wrote a paper talking about the value of life and valuing life.
43:17
And in my time in combat, I have, we have dropped bombs on dudes.
43:24
I've shot dudes, but every time that a life gets taken, even when it's a bad
43:33
guy, now I know this is going to be a little, I'm not getting mushy here.
43:36
I'm just telling you the fact of the matter is that that guy, that bad guy.
43:41
Now, I've never shot at anyone who wasn't shooting at me, folks.
43:45
I'm going to go ahead and put that out there. I don't lose sleep over combat.
43:50
I've never killed women and children. All right. I didn't walk around with a
43:54
bag full of hand grenades, blowing up randos.
43:58
But every time someone dies, that's a life extinguished, folks.
44:04
And in other circumstances, that that person may have been well it was definitely
44:11
someone's son or right or,
44:14
Definitely someone's child, possibly someone's parent and sibling.
44:21
And under different circumstances, that person might have been a frigging,
44:26
he might have been the local youth soccer league coach, or he might have been the local art teacher.
44:36
You know what I mean? Now, you can argue about Islam and stuff like that all day long.
44:42
But I'm telling you this. My point is taking life for granted and taking it
44:49
needlessly, they're both bad.
44:53
If you have no respect for life and no empathy for other humans,
44:57
then you're probably some psychopath.
45:02
But if you are a combat operator and you've been out there and you have taken
45:07
life, You know, yeah, it was probably out of necessity at that moment, right?
45:14
But if you enjoy taking life just for the sake of it, you probably need a little bit of therapy.
45:22
There's probably a problem there.
45:25
Appreciate life. Yeah, appreciate life. Now, let's get back on to the funeral practices.
45:34
The celebration of life folks where people gather in
45:37
a non-standard place it could be
45:40
a pub you know what i mean it could be your favorite mountaintop
45:44
it could be out on a boat yeah it could be a lot of places but that celebration
45:49
of life where you invite whoever you invite you know whoever the close the close
45:55
family and close homies were to me that that seems like an appropriate thing,
46:02
to get together and celebrate life.
46:06
Tell stories of your loved one that passed. Talk about their favorite things.
46:11
I'll tell you, one of my most, I don't want to say fond memory,
46:15
just a memory of Pat at all, was the fact,
46:19
well, because first let me tell you that the Mills house, usually there was
46:24
at least six folks living in one house at one time, sometimes up to nine.
46:30
But Pat would always black out her windows with like shades or like even,
46:37
you know, garbage bags or something, just black them out so that the room was completely dark.
46:44
And so that when she went to bed, like she didn't see anything.
46:49
And then the other thing that, another thing that it is a funny memory about Pat.
46:55
And it was, this was throughout my childhood, by the way, is that she was horrified of spiders.
47:01
Even, even daddy long legs, even, you know, harmless spiders.
47:06
She was absolutely horrified. And all the Mills boys,
47:12
Would always Yeah, they would always like toss a Grande long leg on her or something
47:18
Yeah, anyway That was one of my fonder memories Of Pat there,
47:23
But A celebration of life, yeah That seems right to me You know,
47:29
play their favorite music Talk about your favorite times together And the things they liked.
47:37
Yeah Yeah, be happy. Be joyous about it.
47:41
And be joyous because, yeah, like I said earlier, they're no longer in pain.
47:46
Whatever pain there may have been, it no longer exists.
47:51
They're not tormented anymore by some of the trials of the world.
47:59
You know what I mean? The world can be ugly, man.
48:02
And some people take that to heart. a lot of the ugliness some people take it
48:07
to heart yeah I think celebration of life I think that's the way to go I like that I like it a lot.
48:16
And short of a Viking funeral pyre, then my wife and I are both,
48:21
we choose to be cremated.
48:24
And then the family can do whatever they like after that, or just stick us up
48:29
on the shelf, you know what I mean? Next to my mom, I guess.
48:34
Anyway, don't be selfish. Don't be a selfish family member. When you go to a funeral, be gracious.
48:43
Do what you, you know, mourn the way you want to mourn or be joyous even.
48:48
Be the one joyous person in the crowd of mourners if you want to.
48:52
But be respectful. But be respectful of other people's time and be respectful
48:58
of the deceased that, you know,
49:03
you got your cell phone turned off and you're not wearing Crocs and a pair of
49:08
frigging white athletic socks.
49:11
What else? You guys got any opinions on that? So, you know, something I didn't talk about.
49:16
I talked about homies in combat, but I have a fair amount of police friends
49:23
and acquaintances here in Georgia.
49:26
And there was a fellow, a cop got killed several months ago that one of my friends knew him personally.
49:35
And that hit him kind of hard, man. It hit him hard. I'm not telling you,
49:39
you have to take death in the same way that I take death at all. Not at all.
49:46
Everybody, it's different for everybody I know, but it does affect people differently.
49:52
The only thing I would say is, yeah, it might hit you hard, but make something
49:59
positive out of it, man. Make something positive out of it.
50:03
In it because that'll hurt you in the long run.
50:07
Try to make, try to make something positive out of death.
50:12
Now I'm not going to name names. I know a guy here in Rome and what I didn't
50:17
know about him until later was that he lost a young son and I don't know how old he was.
50:25
When I say young, I want to say, you know, maybe seven or something like that.
50:29
I don't know the details on it because I don't want to, I want to know,
50:34
but I don't want to sit down and just ask about it.
50:37
But man, I can tell you this. If I lost one of my kids or one of my grandkids
50:44
now, I might not be quite so cool and calm and collected about it.
50:49
Initially anyway, I would, I mean, I just can't even imagine.
50:53
I can't even imagine right now.
50:56
And I don't want to. I'm just, now that
50:59
I'm thinking about it like oh my god I don't
51:02
know what I would do I can't even imagine I
51:05
can't fathom that level of pain that I think I would probably feel so I'm giving
51:12
all this advice I'm talking all this junk but I'm telling you right now if I
51:16
lost any one of the six people that are most close to me right this minute,
51:25
I would probably be a frigging wreck. I'd probably be a wreck.
51:32
Differently, folks. It hits people differently. Yeah.
51:37
Think about it. Think about it. Don't dwell in it and don't go dark every time
51:42
somebody don't answer the phone call, you know, and you think,
51:47
oh my God, there's been an accident.
51:49
You know, don't dwell in it and don't jump to darkness, but do be a responsible
51:56
adult and consider the things you need to do to prep, to prep for your death.
52:04
Get that life insurance, folks,
52:06
if you don't have it, so that you don't financially burden your family.
52:11
And hopefully maybe leave them a little extra so that they're living at least
52:17
can be financially not a big problem.
52:20
And then the will, do that up, man. Where do you want to be buried?
52:24
How do you want to, do you want to be cremated or embalmed or do you want a Viking burial.
52:32
Do you want us to put you on a Viking ship and push you out to sea and set it on fire?
52:38
Or like the natives. My wife, she's got native blood in her,
52:43
and we talked about putting her up on a platform and wrapping her up in the
52:50
Cherokee cloth and all these decorative things and doing that.
52:55
If it's legal, folks, we're going to do it. I can tell you that.
52:59
But what I'm saying is be responsible.
53:02
Get your affairs in order before it's too late.
53:05
How and why and where that you want to do all your death ritual.
53:13
To help your family be easy on it.
53:17
Now, I'm sure rich people got lawyers to handle this kind of stuff, probably.
53:22
But your average working class and lower working class folks don't have that, folks.
53:29
We don't have that kind of stuff. Is it because we don't think about it? Possibly.
53:34
Is it because we know we have no generational wealth to pass forward,
53:37
so it's not that big a deal?
53:39
Maybe. But even then, just the cost of funeral expenses, that's worth the life insurance right there.
53:47
That's worth the life insurance right there.
53:50
So I'm sorry that this was a somber episode, but think about your death.
53:56
Get ahead of the game when it comes to the administrative stuff.
53:59
And then think about the deaths that you knew of in the past,
54:04
or even if you've recently had homies die or family members die.
54:08
How did that affect you? was it somebody really
54:11
really close or was it just an extended family member or
54:14
or what did you process all that in
54:17
a positive way or did you go hit the
54:20
booze and get sauced up and become a a nuisance
54:23
to everyone around you i don't
54:27
know think about it get ahead of the
54:29
game folks don't leave your family holding the bag when your time comes and
54:35
guess what you don't know when it's coming so be ready be ready folks because
54:42
if there's one thing that everybody on this planet does what is it yeah.
54:48
Die. Bill Gates is going to die. Elon Musk is going to die.
54:53
So, you know, be ready, folks, as ready as you can be.
54:58
And I'm saying that on this administrative level. You might consider introducing
55:03
yourself to Jesus if you don't know him.
55:05
If you don't know Jesus, you might want to introduce yourself.
55:08
And you might not. You might be a whatever.
55:13
Whatever you think is going to happen to you at the end of life.
55:16
Who knows? The great unknown. That's what it is.
55:19
But at least for the worldly part of that, be ready. Don't leave your family holding it back.
55:25
Have a plan. Play some funny music at your funeral just to get a laugh.
55:32
All right. All right. Look, I'm sorry that was somber, folks,
55:36
but it was weighing on me. It was weighing on me. I'm sorry it was somber.
55:41
So if you got any comments on this stuff i'd love
55:43
to hear them if you if you've got some homey combat
55:47
stories you want to tell me you know i'd love
55:50
to hear them if you got a family member recently passed or
55:53
or just passed years ago and you want to or describe
55:56
something that from that you know please share
55:59
you can you can find me at edgarmills at
56:02
ospreyshooting solutions.com you can
56:06
submit questions comments and papers
56:09
if you want to write a paper you can submit
56:12
that on the junto podcast.com and
56:17
what do we got coming up shooting wise osprey shooting
56:19
solutions we got a pistol workshop coming up not next week but the following
56:23
week and then we'll have a workshop the following week after that and then in
56:29
august we have a pistol workshop a rifle workshop a pistol workshop and a wild card day.
56:37
Did I say wild card day for July? We've got a pistol workshop coming up and
56:41
then a wild card day at the end of July.
56:45
And then a pistol rifle and a wild card in August. So those are good.
56:49
Hey, there's a lot of bang for your buck there, pun intended.
56:52
There's a lot of value per round.
56:55
Those are inexpensive four-hour training days that expose you to good stuff.
57:02
We really focus especially the workshops we really
57:05
focus down on on specific fundamentals
57:09
and specifically for this next workshop that
57:12
we're going to do I want to say July 19th that is going to be a pistol workshop
57:17
and we're going to be working from 25 yards and beyond we're going to be working
57:22
on visual focus acceptable acceptable sight confirmations and trying to push speed at distance.
57:31
Yeah, we're trying to push speed even at those distances.
57:35
So look out for that kind of stuff. Come on out. Participate.
57:40
We do a free half day of training for local police agencies.
57:44
And when I say local, I mean, you know, North Georgia.
57:48
We've got, I've got one agency, a fellow reached out from me from that agency.
57:54
And those guys are going to come out and take me up on that real soon. And I'm excited to do it.
58:00
What do we got coming up from two team guys is I want to say September.
58:07
We had a May land navigation course that we, that we rescheduled.
58:12
It looks like that's going to be rescheduled for September. So it shouldn't be too hot.
58:17
The terrain should be pretty, pretty good.
58:20
It's not going to be quite fall yet. So there's still going to be plenty of
58:23
foliage, but the weather should be pretty good for us on that.
58:27
And we will be opening that up to other folks.
58:30
So once we do set the date for that, I'm going to open up probably three or
58:36
four spots for, for other people to sign up.
58:41
And then on the Junto podcast, what do we got coming up?
58:45
Well, we've got this episode and then I've got to do a follow-up,
58:51
but I'm trying to get the Floyd County Sheriff over here with us.
58:57
I got to do a follow-up with him.
58:59
And then probably before that, we're going to have a friend of mine,
59:02
Ricky, on who's a police officer trainer.
59:06
And we're going to talk about some cop training and stuff like that.
59:12
So please follow us on all the socials.
59:15
Please share with your friends and whatnot. And please reach out and give me feedback.
59:21
Always am eager to get feedback from you guys. Other than that,
59:26
hey, treat each other well.
59:28
Be good. I'll.
59:30
Music.