Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Confronting Mortality: Our Journey Through Death and Its Meaning
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What meaning do you assign to death, and how does that shape your emotional response to mortality? This profound question forms the heart of our exploration into the psychology of how we process death and the unconscious programming that determines our relationship with life's most inevitable experience.
Drawing from personal stories—including my father's recent passing and his remarkable choice to determine his own death date through medical assistance in dying—we examine how our minds create frameworks for understanding mortality. As hypnotists, we recognize that our emotional reactions don't come from death itself, but from the meaning we attach to it—what we believe it says about us and our place in the world.
The conversation reveals stark contrasts in how we experience death. While some have attended dozens of funerals throughout their lives, developing nuanced perspectives on mortality, others have minimal exposure, leaving them unprepared when loss inevitably arrives. These varying levels of engagement with death create vastly different mental frameworks and emotional responses.
We challenge Western medicine's approach to death as "the enemy" that must be fought at all costs, sometimes keeping people alive well past when they might naturally "expire." This raises profound questions about quality versus quantity of life, and when allowing death might be the more compassionate choice.
By examining our "death program"—our collection of beliefs, emotions, and responses around mortality—we can determine whether our current mental framework serves us well or creates unnecessary suffering. This self-examination isn't about inviting tragedy but understanding our emotional landscape around an inevitable aspect of human existence.
Have you considered what death means about you? Perhaps it's time to look more deeply at your own programming around mortality. Join us for this thoughtful exploration of life's most universal experience, and discover how bringing death out of the shadows might actually help us live more fully.
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I think that you know, it's one of those insights of hypnosis where things don't really affect us unless we can see a connection to ourselves right. There's an event that happens and then there's an emotion that comes out of the meaning of that event, and the meaning is really a function of our connection to the event. So I think that part of the process of understanding why do I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions that I have about death, can really be impacted by who was this person that died and what was their relationship to me and their death. What does it mean for me? What does it mean about me? What does it mean for me? What does it mean about me? And I think, when we trace our experiences of death backwards that way, there was a death and how did it in any way impact me or relate to me, and then that meaning will stimulate an emotion.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Coffee with Hilary and Les. We are a couple of hypnotists who have created a podcast about freeing our minds from old ideas, old thoughts and old habits, those old things that interfere with our ability to make fresh, new choices. It's time for us all to create the life of our dreams, okay we are on the line.
Speaker 1:On the line. Again, again, we start and start and stop and stop. We're not at the lake today, no, no lake today, no weather report, although it's beautiful. We're in at the lake today no, no lake today, no weather report, although it's beautiful, we're in the office trying to move this gruesome conversation about death along.
Speaker 3:Gruesome.
Speaker 1:Death. It's become my fixation. We're coming to the end of April and April has been a month in which there was my father died and we did a funeral, and people from across the country came to town for his funeral and many of them had never really had much of a close experience of death before Nieces and nephews. It's a relatively new thing for them.
Speaker 3:And you've had like a ton of death experience. Like growing up you had like the wagons.
Speaker 2:I never killed anybody. Horse-drawn buggies that took bodies, didn't you have to like? Now you're being harsh person, have to like lay in the living room for a week or something just to make sure they were gone.
Speaker 1:Here we are laughing at death.
Speaker 3:Oh fuck, oh my gosh. Am I allowed to say that?
Speaker 1:I might even leave that in the mix Just to provoke people. We're talking about an interesting topic. Anyway, I've really enjoyed well, I enjoy when we have podcasts where we sort of dig into a topic and we just slowly, bit by bit, sort of examine as hypnotists where our thoughts come from, where do our feelings get generated, how does all of that really come about. And you know, the mind in every kind of experience you can imagine, collects those experiences and files those experiences away, really interconnected, based on the emotion that each of those experiences has contained for them. And I think that we as human beings all around the world, with different views on death, we all collect experiences of death.
Speaker 1:And, yes, I come from a big family. That uh came from a big family and so I had like a dozen aunts and uncles. I had, um, you know, a few dozen cousins and um dozen cousins, and we did the same thing. We're a big family and we all had a whole bunch of kids. My dad had 20 grandkids and so it was. It's just a lot of people, and when there's a lot of people, there's a lot of experiences, and one of those experiences I've been through a lot is the experience of death. My dad is the second last of his generation, so we have one more aunt, the Energizer Bunny we call her. She's like 97. She just keeps on going. She's got a very simple philosophy in life, and it's's just beautiful is that she's got things to do today, so she might as well get up and go about doing them.
Speaker 1:And she's very social and she's she's very engaged in other people, and that's just beautiful and that just gives her a reason to get up every day and keep on going. But she's the last one of that generation. Right the last one of that generation Right.
Speaker 1:And with that means that since the time I was 12, I've been going to funerals, and my mother being the second youngest of her family and my father being the youngest in his family, it meant that I had lots of older aunts and uncles and lots of older cousins, and so for me, I've had a lot of experiences of funerals and deaths and with that, also outside the family, you know friends and them having their own family members that pass on. That were, you know, friends to me, close to me. So I can say that I've been to just way too many funerals really, and I have tons of experience of death and that has given me the opportunity to really think about death and really think about what it means and, most importantly, what it means to me now. I think your experience of death is interesting because it's generational what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:well, not a lot of people can say that they knew their great-grandmother.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my great-great-grandmother died just a couple months after I was born, and then my great-grandmother died a couple years ago. She was 97, I, I think around there and, yeah, I, I mean, this funeral for your dad was probably my second funeral that I had been to in 40 years. So you know, so you've been avoiding them. No, I don't avoid them. I just have such a small family that, um and um, we don't have funerals in the way that, um, I don't know is normal. I don't know like, when my grandma, my great-grandmother, died a couple years ago, there wasn't a funeral really. It was, you know, she had ashes done and they were given to her son and they were put in the ground next to her parents and spread around a little bit, but there wasn't like a funeral in that sense.
Speaker 3:And, knowing my nana and knowing my mom and you know I can't even see them having funerals we just wouldn't have funerals in the same sense of, you know, lots of people gathering and stuff like that and my dad's side. We haven't really had any deaths that I can really remember in that way. So it's, yeah, it's, it's been interesting. So, of course, at your dad's funeral, I'm checking in with your sisters. Am I doing this right? Am I wearing the right thing? Am I right? Because I don't want to be, I want to do it right, right. There's a word that I can't quite latch on to right now, but yeah, I just hadn't had that experience in that way to know what was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's, you know, funerals and the things we go through after death, and that really shapes, I think, a lot of times what we think of death. I think that, you know, it's one of those insights of hypnosis where things don't really affect us unless we can see a connection to ourselves Right us, unless we can see a connection to ourselves right. There's an event that happens and then there's an emotion that comes out of the meaning of that event and the meaning is really a function of our connection to the event. So I think that part of the process of understanding why do I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions that I have about death, can really be impacted by who was this person that died and what was their relationship to me and their death, what does it mean for me, what does it mean about me? And I think, when we trace our experiences of death backwards that way, there was a death and how did it in any way impact me or relate to me, and then that meaning will stimulate an emotion. So you know it's, it's uh, there are deaths going on every day. Um, thousands and thousands of people are going to die every single day. Most of them we won't even hear about.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the way people die impacts the way we think about death. Right, that you know. When somebody dies, you know we have wars going on around the world. When people die in war, it's funny how we think of their death differently if they're a soldier than if they were a civilian. Right, it changes the way we think about their death because it has a different meaning, right, and the meaning is what really determines our emotional reaction to it. When we hear about, you know, um, war, when we hear about, uh, like, tragedies, events like my mind keeps going back to the tsunami that took place so many years ago on Boxing Day in in Bali and Indonesia and and the impact it had on a lot of people emotionally, because it was kind of like out of nowhere and people spent some time thinking about what it would be like to be, one minute, you know, enjoying a lovely day on the beach and then the next minute, to be overwhelmed by a tsunami that is going to kill.
Speaker 1:I think the number was like 100,000 people that's hardly a number we can even fathom right and have this event that goes through. You know, just you know, a few years past covet, and we were literally counting the deaths, paying attention every day to how many people died, and the way that was happening changed the way we saw their deaths.
Speaker 1:The meaning we put on their deaths. We put on their deaths and so you know it's. It's, I think, just to see that simple relationship between the meaning we put on somebody's death and the emotions that evokes and how that shapes our views of death. Right, and these things come at us often by surprise, right, seldom do people say I'm gonna die on Tuesday, which is exactly what my dad did, but we'll talk about that later but most of the time it's Somebody died.
Speaker 1:Now, when somebody's really sick and they take months till they finally pass, right, we look at that differently. We say, oh, it wasn't death relief. Right, it's that meaning that we put on it that shapes it. And there's so many different meanings, anyway, is what I'm driving at. There are so many different meanings we can put on people's death and that will shape our beliefs about death and that, like any other experience, accumulates in our subconscious mind and over years and years, if we experience more and more people passing under wide and varying circumstances, we start to have a broader and broader interpretation of what death is. It's almost circumstantially driven. It's the situation of the death that we care more about than the actual death itself that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm having a hard time with this topic, Not that I'm not like a sad hard time or scared hard time, but I guess I'm having an interesting time wrapping my mind around. I guess sort of an interesting time pulling myself away from my own meanings and views and looking at it from a perspective of change or, you know, of thinking of how do I think about this differently? Or what kind of meaning? Yeah, I don't know. Well, you know, A little turned around.
Speaker 1:Part of the reason I want to talk about it is that you know I can drop this big topic and say we're going to talk about death and there's going to be all kinds of reactions, and those reactions to that are really a function of what your past experience with death is.
Speaker 1:And then, knowing that there are people that you love that die. There are people that you know that die. There are people that die in circumstances where you can kind of expect that they're going to die, and there are people who die in circumstances that are completely surprising and catch you off guard, who die in circumstances that are completely surprising and catch you off guard, and each of these contributes in a way to your program around death, and I just think it's really valuable to examine that in yourself and say geez, how do I feel about death and what are my experiences of death? Right, and you know like, for me, you know, being young, the first deaths were all cancer and heart attacks mm-hmm right.
Speaker 1:They were all cancer and heart attacks and they were all relatives. There are people that I knew and I loved but I didn't live. I loved but I didn't live with them, and because I didn't live with them I didn't have that same kind of personal meaning.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then one day I go to school and I find out that this guy, that Bruce, he took his own life.
Speaker 1:And I'm like 15, 16 years old, and I had never experienced that before and there were, I think there was as many emotions of curiosity and being just caught so off guard by it. Right, because it didn't match any of my past experiences of death and I'm still only a teenager, and I think it's really important to realize that when you're young, you just don't see death the same way as when you're old. You just can't it, just it isn't attached to you in any way. When you're young, if you think about death at all, it's like so far in the future. Right, like this is not a topic I need to be concerned about. Right, right now I'm trying to decide what I want to study in college.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm not going to be thinking about my death, so it has not a lot of personal relevance to you, right, and then spin to the other end of the timeline, right, and I have just recently lost two of my buddies from law school who were the same age as me and passed on and although I'd heard of other people that I practiced law with that passed on, these guys I knew I lived with these guys, we were, we were friends the whole of our lives and that and that was completely different. Because now it's very relevant to me, Right, Because now it's people I know, Now it's people I love experiencing a tragic event an earthquake or a tsunami or a fire or a flood or any number of ways you know of volcano that people find themselves in these tragedies and we hear that you know 23 people passed, or we hear that you know 180 people passed. These aren't really relevant to us personally, and so it's really easy to hear about death that way and not be terribly concerned with it. It's just something we hear about every day.
Speaker 1:If you were to ask, pretend you're asking the people listening a question, but ask me the people listening a question but ask me well, I think the first question that I, that we've already talked a bit about, is you know what is your experience of death and what are your, what are your past engagements with it, it?
Speaker 1:But then I'd ask you know, what does death mean to you, about you? Right, that's the magic thing, right? When we're talking as hypnotists, we talk about events and their meaning and the emotions that they generate. And the meaning we put on them is often so unconnected to ourselves that they generate virtually no emotion. And it's when events that we connect to ourselves, we say this event means something about me. That's when big emotions are generated. That's when emotional reactions take place. That's when big emotions are generated. That's when emotional reactions take place. That's when we can experience trauma, when the emotion is so intense it's beyond our coping ability, right? So now take this idea of death. And we've been passive about it, we've been calm about it. We just talk about other people dying, we talk about the fact that you know, this is all triggered by me, having watched my father die. But what does death mean to you, about you? And how does that create emotion within you? Look at your own emotions now, asking yourself what will it mean when I die?
Speaker 3:what will it mean to myself when I die? Sure start there as if I know afterwards what it meant.
Speaker 1:I thought just using your own emotional impact, Like if you take that question seriously right what kind of emotions does it create in you?
Speaker 3:Well, if I'm answering your question properly, um, I think about how it's it's affected me over the years. Um, now I see it as not not calming or anything, but a little more peaceful than I used to see it. In my 20s we had someone close die and I had panic attacks. Afterwards I had to go see somebody to help with those.
Speaker 1:Did you see the connection to yourself? Mm-hmm. You want to share that?
Speaker 3:Yes, sure, so they. There was a couple connections. They died very quickly. They had cancer and basically they had a little bit of back pain and then went to the doctor, tylenol, strong Tylenol, and then it just wouldn't go away. And then I can't remember how long later but they were diagnosed with cancer and then a month later they were dead.
Speaker 3:So this to me at that age I mean at any age, I'm sure it is a big thing, but that terrified me that someone healthy, that I thought of as healthy, could just go that quickly. And I was scared. I was scared of, you know, cancer. After that. I was, I was, yeah, I went through a lot of emotions. So for me, I was scared of my own health, I was scared. You know, if I'm relating it to me, there was parts of me that was now scared of like well, see how fast that could happen, like that could happen to you, isn't that scary? You know all the fears and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Then there was a part of me that this was kind of the beginning, I suppose, of my spiritual journey in a sense, was I went for the panic attacks I went, of my spiritual journey in a sense was I went for the panic attacks. I went to a spiritual psychologist or anyway, and my fear was this is kind of silly, but my fear was how do you get out of the body? Isn't that interesting? Like how, how do you, how does your spirit, soul, release from the body? And uh, I guess part of my panic attacks were thinking about that and feeling like I was trapped. And so that was one of my first spiritual experience.
Speaker 3:I had an out-of-body experience when she helped me go through a meditation and I popped out of my body and was up above looking down and I was like, oh, that was easy and I, oh, my God, I came back out of that experience and just was like crying so bad nonstop. She wanted to keep working with me to like train me and stuff, and I just never went back. I was terrified Not terrified, but like it was such a jarring experience that I just didn't know what to do with it at 21,. You know. So, yeah, and that, yeah, that's sort of how that death made me feel about myself in that time. You know if I'm relating it to myself.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's the point right. Yeah, see some kind of connection to ourselves and we have some some fear or some concern or some resentment or some anger about the idea. You know, we, we, we are surrounded by death every day. Yeah, literally millions of people die in the world every day. It's a very common experience and it's 100% natural, because if you're born, you're going to die.
Speaker 1:It's just a fact. Up to this point it's inarguable. There are no eternal bodies on the planet. Some have lived a long time, but it's an inevitable truth about our physical existence. But how we interpret it and how we view it changes how we feel about it and how it relates to us. You come to the table with a natural spiritual inclination to see a human being as something more than a physical body.
Speaker 1:On the flip side, there's people out there who see that a body is just a body and there's nothing more. And there's nothing after death. And there was nothing before death or before birth, and there's nothing after death. And there's this little blip of time in the eternity of time, the billions and billions of years that the planets existed, and that's going to impact them completely differently. You know somebody who and this is my point those of us who have a comfortable set of beliefs about death interpret death as it relates to ourselves differently than those who haven't really considered the topic, who maybe haven't experienced death in terms of family and loved ones and friends, maybe haven't experienced, you know, long, terminal illness, have, of course, read stories and heard about people dying, but there isn't something for them to relate to and there isn't something for them to view themselves, and so they have no reason to engage the development of a mindset around death so what do you think is the product of that?
Speaker 3:do you? Does someone like that ignore death? Like you know, just go through life and are they ignoring death?
Speaker 1:well. I've known people, I've met people in my life who, if you bring up the topic of death, they want you to just shut up. I don't want to think about it, I don't want to care about it, I don't want to spend any time dwelling on it. Right? There are other people who I've met who are maybe a little I don't know, maybe they're twisted like me. They want to talk about it. Let's talk about this. This is not talked about enough. We don't get comfortable with death.
Speaker 3:Especially in the Western world.
Speaker 1:Well, and I'm going to say with Western medicine, one of the things that I discovered through this process with my dad is that there is, you know, at one with my dad is that there is. You know, at one point my dad was very clear that he didn't see his life and the way he was living as having a lot of value. He was I don't want to breach his privacy but his body was not under his control anymore. He couldn't walk. He couldn't walk, he couldn't think clearly all the time. He couldn't control getting to the bathroom and those kinds of things that were really hard on him. He wasn't able. His eyes were going, his hearing was going. He couldn't follow the TV because he had to turn it up till it was like the top volume. He couldn't read much anymore because his eyes just. We got the big print books and things and that helped, but it was just really hard to read. And reading was his thing, his whole life. He loved to to read. So he was reaching a point where his life wasn't having any value. In his interpretation, you know, he would say things like I don't know why I'm still alive, I don't know why I I have to go through this um, and so he was quite happy to sign the do not resuscitate order that if I start to go, don't bring me back.
Speaker 1:But he was in the hospital in the end because he fell and broke his hip, which just added to the frustration and the pain and the questioning that he was going through and the questioning that he was going through, and he was at the hospital and the whole medical system is trying to keep you alive. I've got friends in the medical system who say death is the enemy. Right Anything to stay alive, and I'm not sure that that's healthy, I'm not sure that that's natural, that that's normal. Death is a natural process. So at what point do you let people die? And at what point in the hospital my dad was going and the nurses didn't know what else to do except treat him and bring him back.
Speaker 1:And you know, modern medicine keeps us alive a long time after we would normally, let's say, naturally expire, expire. So you know, to see that, to see that our system is sees death as the enemy, will not allow death when it appears to be possibly an appropriate um, an appropriate time and um, we are embedded in that system. So this, to me, was interesting things to think about, interesting things to talk about, especially with medical professionals who aren't even really wired to think that death is okay. And we did get to meet medical professionals that did think that way and we met lots of medical professionals that wouldn't even consider the idea, and so, again, you know these are life experiences, I mean I don't know what it's like to be a nurse in a hospital, a doctor in a hospital, surrounded by people who are in the process of dying or have experienced things that could kill them, right, and they've been trained right.
Speaker 1:Their ideas are deeply ingrained and I find this fascinating. I find the spectrum of people's thoughts and beliefs about death to be fascinating, but, as a hypnotist, I always go back. What was the program that led you there? What were the series of experiences that you've had surrounding death that have brought you to your place, of the way you interpret death when you can be comfortable with with it, if at all, and when you can't be comfortable with it, if at all?
Speaker 3:yeah, just so. Yeah, we're not. We're not trying to convince anybody of anything, we're just sort of asking thought-provoking questions about the mind.
Speaker 1:I believe and this is where we left it last time I believe that we have a program, that every one of us has a set of mental thoughts, a set of beliefs, a set of emotional responses to these ideas, and that they come from our past experience and they're often handed down generationally. You know, the way mom and dad thought about death is the way their children think about death, and moms and dads who protect their kids from death and don't let them go to funerals versus moms and dads who say, yeah, kids from death and don't let them go to funerals, versus moms and dads who say, yeah, of course you're coming to the funerals, because this is just part of life and this is what you're going to go through. You're part of a family, you're part of a circle of friends and loved ones and you're just going to experience, over time, these funerals, these deaths, these losses.
Speaker 3:I don't even know, honestly, what my family did or how they thought. I couldn't tell you what my dad thought, what my mom thought, not at the time anyway, like not what they thought at the time, because there were no, that I know, of funerals to go to.
Speaker 1:Because there were no, that I know, of funerals to go to. I know what it would be like to be in a family where that discussion was open and wasn't triggered by family members passing on, triggered by, you know. Here we are watching the news report on the train derailment where seven people died Right. Well, what does that mean? What does it mean for them? What does that mean for me? If it doesn't mean anything about me, usually I can just ignore it and I don't have an emotional response and I just find this stuff really, really fascinating. And so for me I would say, you know, that's the next question. If the first question is that we asked in the first podcast is well, what are your experiences of death and what are your experiences of learning about death? And start to get an awareness of what your thoughts are about death and start to, in my opinion, become aware of how that has become a program inside you, that, how that is a belief system that you have assembled based on your experiences, and then to take that, the next step.
Speaker 1:Well, what can death mean about me? How does death relate to me? What about my death? What about my loved ones dying? Death is no longer a stranger Death is now part of my life.
Speaker 1:Because, for me, death is very much part of my life because I've yeah, I've been to countless funerals. I've literally it's, it's gotta be. Well over a hundred people that I've known and loved have died, and I've probably been to at least 60 or 70 funerals in my life and I've probably been a pallbearer 20 to 30 times at funerals, and so I have this sort of I don't know. I have a body of experience and those experiences have forced me to examine the idea. Right? So if you examine the idea, how does death relate to me and how does death relate to those I love, and you start to become aware of, okay, these are my experiences of death and this is maybe my collection of beliefs about death. Now it's, does that serve me? Right? This is a program and what effort have I put into understanding death? What effort have I put into the experience of death? Understanding, understanding that, because there's a whole world out there that we you and I have personally gone out of our way to experience, which has shaped us, and people will say it's shaped us spiritually. So if we just take that word spirit and just say spirit is everything that isn't physical, right. Spirit is everything that you can be aware of, that you can embrace, that you can use for your own peacefulness. Spirit is that whole world that can't necessarily be subject to scientific proof, right?
Speaker 1:I believe that when people take time to examine death, they are forced to face that which we might call spiritual. But I think it's a progression and I and for me, you know, um, my desire in doing this podcast is, in part, um you know, catharsis for myself, a process of talking and thinking this stuff out loud. Um, that's the selfish part. The unselfish part is an awareness that there will be, and there are, people who suffer as a result of the idea of death. There are people who suffer because they haven't really spent any time understanding what death means to them. There are people who will suffer when they get surprised by the death of people that they love, and that there are many people that are listening, I believe, that have been diagnosed with illness and been told you might die, and they've had to face that question directly about themselves, the fears, the angers, the resentments, the confusions, a whole world of emotion, and I think that everyone can be served by taking the time to learn more about death and sharing each other's experiences of death and saying, well, what does that mean and what does that mean about me and what kind of emotions am I feeling and what does that mean about my interpretation of this idea? And I think there's a lot of value in that because the cold hard fact is it's coming for all of us. Hillary and Les offer both in-person and online hypnosis services for clients all around the world. If that interests you, please visit our website, wwwsomhypnosiscom and sign up for a free consultation or send us an email at info at psalmhypnosiscom. It's coming for all of us and it's coming for everyone that you love. You know.
Speaker 1:I think one of the best things I did through this process of my dad's you know, process of demise, process of passing was I was just really open with my kids. I did my best to talk to them about it and they went out of their way to talk to me about what was going on for me. And I needed to be really open with that, because what they were watching is inevitably their future experience Me watching the end of my dad and they will have to experience the end of me and knowing, as a hypnotist, how all of these ideas are shaped by our experiences and by the emotions we attach to them. I saw it as very important for me to be gentle but forthcoming with my kids about what I was going through and what my dad was going through gone through and what my dad was going through and what it meant to him to die and what it meant to me for him to die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a lot of value in putting your mind to it before you have to.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And what's you know and you know'll just finish by by throwing this out there because it's, you know, bringing us to the next podcast that we'll do in a couple of days. You know, I want to be forthcoming by saying my dad reached a point where he chose to die. He picked the date, he got a doctor that would help him and we call that medical assistance in dying, or made here in Ontario and he said enough's enough, I can't take this anymore. And so we actually had an appointment and we could all myself and my five sisters, we could be there and attend to him on his last day, and that's just completely different experience. Yeah, because it's one thing for somebody to call me and say, hey, les dad's dead. It's another thing to say, hey, les dad's going to go on April 2nd. It's at four o'clock, we're're all gonna get there about 11 am anyway. I don't think it has to be a downer, but I think it's really worth examining our own programs yeah so what does death mean about you?
Speaker 1:What does the death of those you love mean about you? And in examining what it means about you, you start to get an idea of your emotions. And when you start to get an idea of your emotions, then you start to get some insight into your program.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's a great topic for anyone listening. I know Les is talking a lot and I'm not, but that's just because I'm just really thinking about it. I'm struggling with it a little bit, but I'm going to give it some thought and I'll be probably more talkative next time.
Speaker 1:Just fire up some of your reactions right now from all my yapping.
Speaker 3:I think that it was interesting going through watching your dad go through the process. I think it brought up a lot for me that I didn't know was there when he first chose to go on April 2nd. It brought up some of those old emotions of fears and things about myself, you know, my future and I. It was sort of, for me at least, it was a calling to to really get back into my spirituality. So, you know, I dove into that for a bit. I felt better, I felt okay, I'm okay now and then it was an interesting process.
Speaker 3:You know, seeing you go through what you were going through, what the family was going through, each individually Afterwards, my own grieving that I didn't realize or recognize was going to happen. Um, and to your point about talking about it before uh, in, you know different ways. Um, some people say yeah, let's talk about this, and some people say no and they turn a, turn away from it. What I learned in in I always, a lot of the time I go back to my hospice training, volunteer training, and think about how they told us lots of families will not, um, will not look at this, will, they'll be scared to look at it. Um, uh, part of bereavement training. I learned I didn't do it yet, but bereavement training is helping the family like get to the point of way before the death, because it's not just after the death that stuff, it's before the death is helping the family go through writing who's, you know who's in charge of stuff that's happening and if something was to happen and nobody wants to think about it.
Speaker 3:But what then ends up happening is something catastrophic and everybody's running around in fear now because nobody knows what to do. So to have it all laid out beforehand, even though it's scary for a lot of people, is, yeah, it's a good thing to do. It's funny I think about just a side note, thinking about wills and I think, oh, maybe I should drop a will. But I have this like superstition and I I'm sure it's gotta be across the board that if I drop a will then that means like I don't have much longer left. It's a weird superstition. Um, so I you know I avoid doing that because because I don't want that. But that's just a superstition, it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to me it's just, you know that that, um, insightful awareness of your own program, wow, that's the way I think about that, is it? That's the way I feel about the process of writing a will. That's the way I feel about death, Right, I'm, you know, just being aware of the process of writing a will. That's the way I feel about death. Right, I'm, you know, just being aware of your own emotions as it relates. I think it's a good beginning.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I do, in the next podcast, want you to touch on if I'll bring these notes. But if you're open to it, touching on this idea, I'm going to botch it if I try to say it.
Speaker 1:But this idea of what is better, guilt or resentment after the fact, yeah, it's a big idea, talked about it with some friends After the fact yeah, it's a big idea, talked with it with some friends. Yeah, I think that you know part of the goal here is to lay it out in sequence and have the listeners say Okay, I'll do a little bit of homework, I'll do a little bit of thinking about this, I'll look at where my program comes from. I'll look a little bit of thinking about this. I'll look at where my program comes from. I'll look at my experience, I'll look at how this relates to me and how I feel about the idea.
Speaker 1:What if I lost my best friend? What if I lost my mother or my father? What if I lost my child? What if I lost somebody really close to me? And I don't think that's inviting those things to happen. I think that that is an awareness of your own emotional experience and program as it relates to death. And it's until you know what your program is, you don't really know if you like it or you don't like it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, if you don't like it, I want to talk about in a podcast the things you can do to open yourself up to a whole bunch of ideas, because I really believe that we celebrate birth and we avoid death.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think they're both worth celebrating.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm done for now.
Speaker 3:Good job, I'm done. I'm done All right, we'll see you later, thank you.
