Listen to Episode 11 here

NED BUSKIRK 

Ned Buskirk is the creator and host of the You’re Going to Die (YG2D), a movement intent on bringing people creatively into the conversation of death and dying, while helping to inspire and empower them out of the context of unabashedly confronting loss and mortality.  Its current form as a half open mic/half curated event is held every month in San Francisco’s Mission district. YG2D has given way to a larger manifestation of its title, a movement that encompasses more than simply open mics and live shows, but is now also an online international community creatively engaging with our shared mortality and all its inevitabilities.

SARAH CHAVEZ (TROOP) 

Sarah Chavez (Troop) is the executive director of the Order of the Good Death. She writes and recreates historical and cultural recipes for her blog, Nourishing Death, which examines the relationship between food and death in rituals, culture, religion and society. She co-founded Death & the Maiden, a project that endeavors to explore the historical and cultural roles women have played in relation to death. Sarah and Death & the Maiden co-founder, Lucy Coleman Talbot were recently nominated for the Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death Award at the Good Funeral Awards. Sarah  is also an author and advocate for improved care and support of families experiencing infant and child death.  

MUSIC ATTRIBUTIONS

TRANSCRIPT

OPENING SEQUENCE

MUSIC: "Cool reggae party" by juanitos

D.S. MOSS

Those that have known me for a while- know that I have a knack for spotting trends. 

I came up with YouTube before YouTube, created an immersive theatre experience years before Sleep No More, spotted both the beard and rum trends and now this. 

Dying, of course, is pretty much the oldest and most predictable trend, but ad agency Sparks & Honey identifies Death Positivity as a top cultural trend of 2017. 

But what exactly is Death Positivity?

AMY C

I think, initially, when some people hear that, "What? Death being positive? How could it be?". We are so programmed to think of death as a loss, as deprivation, as a separation that is difficult to navigate. That is still a fact, but folks working in death positivity believe that there are gifts to the end of life.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Sarah troop

Oh my god, I don't know if I can do it in a sentence... I would say that it is being fascinated with death and our relationship to death and mortality and not being ashamed of it and talking about it. That's my sentence.

BESS LOVEJOY

I mean, I didn't come up with that term. I use it sometimes. I was initially put off by it, but more and more I embrace it. To me, it has a similar motivation to the idea of sex-positive. Sex-positive is easier  for people to understand because sex is more fun than death is, but they're both facts of life. They're going to happen. They're essential to the human race. They are defining...

Rather than pushing it to one side and assuming it's never going to happen, the idea is to confront it openly and honestly.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Yeah, I get that...

...The conversation's not to ...

BESS LOVEJOY

We're not encouraging you to kill yourself.

MUSIC: "Cool Reggae Party" By juanitos

D.S. MOSS

No. The death positive movement, or death positivity, is not about being happy with dying. It is, as Spark & Honey puts it,

- conversations and innovations around how to make death a more positive experience for both the living, and the dead. 

In this episode I chat with some super star death influencers about discussing death, home funerals, baby showers, bedazzling coffins, Gram Parsons, meaningful ways to incorporate food - and cocktails - into a memorial..and much more. Please join me in Episode 11 of The Adventures of Memento Mori: Death Positive 

OPENING BUMPER

MUSIC:  "Memento mori" by Mikey ballou

Female announcer

From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, A Cynic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.

CHAPTER 1: YG2D INTRO

MUSIC: "You are going to die" by Andrew Blair

NED

First of all, thank you guys for your patience getting you in here. I didn't anticipate the bottle neck thing with the entrance and the beer and wine more importantly. That was a bottleneck. Which is a pun actually. You can talk to me afterwards if you don't get it. 

NED

Hi, My name is Ned Buskirk. I run, I'm not sure there's a title that I hold with this thing but the movement is You're Going To Die. 

D.S. MOSS

Ned was one of the early supporters of the podcast and earlier this year I went out to San Francisco to check out his monthly event, YG2D - you're going to die.

NED

In the beginning of the show I like to switch the focus onto them so to start the show we all in unison say I'm going to die and then I feel better about all of us carrying that weight for the next two hours. Then we launch off.

D.S. Moss_mono

...Does it come off with reservation? Does it come off with almost like a confident proclamation? How does it typically sound?

NED

Communal.... There's an ease to it that we've agreed, even if you didn't know I was going to make you say it, we've agreed just in my request that we're ... This is where we are.

D.S. MOSS

Typically, a YG2D event is an open mic - an open space where people can share their thoughts and feelings and work. This particular YG2D was special. Instead of a typical location it was held in the sanctuary of a church and instead of an open mic it was a presentation of Claudia Bicen's thoughts in passing accompanied by the music of Andrew Blair and the Saxophones. 

You can listen to my affection for Claudia and her Thoughts in Passing project in episodes 6&7.   

I've posted the full recorded event on our show's YouTube channel if you'd like to listen because this is not about that, per se.

It's about Ned Buskirk and his seemingly accidental you're going to die movement. 

CHAPTER 2: HOW IT ALL BEGAN

NED

For a long time I thought it was an accident how I came into this movement...

D.S. MOSS

Years ago, as part of a masters program, Ned hosted an open mic in the living room of his apartment. 

NED

It was packed but it was just a space for people to share creatively and get not necessarily their own stuff out but just get up and share what trips them out, what inspires them. It wasn't overtly death related at all.

D.S. MOSS

But there was something about it that kept people coming back and back and eventually it outgrew his living room. 

So, he got a new venue. And the new place had some interesting characteristics. It was a little sub-street level cafe that had wood panels for walls. People literally had to take stairs 6 feet under to enter.   

NED

Really when things shifted is when it got named what it's named now.... it wasn't because I wanted to create a show about death and dying and mortality. I was organizing an event using the open mic to help a buddy raise some money for a cause. 

D.S. MOSS

To make the fundraiser more legit....he needed a name. So his friend asked him...why do you do it? Why do you put on this open mic? 

NED

I remember vividly how hardly a beat passed and I looked at him and I said you're going to die. He looked at me knowingly and that's where it stuck.

D.S. MOSS

And so now Ned has an event called You're Going To Die that he hosts in a wooden underground space, but it still wasn't really about death, until...

NED

What really made that shift most important to me and really made the conversation of the night a death and dying conversation is when my mother in law died. 

D.S. MOSS

The video of this is on the YG2D website and I recommend you check it out. But I'll describe it -

He gets on stage and tells the audience why the open mic is important to him as an artist and for artists. And then...

...he talks about death. He talks about the complexity and absurdity of that relationship. Our inability to truly comprehend our own mortality yet it's always there with us...

...and how through the loss of his mother-in-law and his mother he's creating space in his life and in the world to talk about it.

NED

I didn't know until then really how to speak in that show. I didn't know how to host and MC. It was fine but it was awkward for me. I couldn't position myself confidently.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Very genuinely thought...That genuineness and sincerity I think trump's confidence.

NED

Thanks.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

...I don't think somebody that confident, unless you're a funeral director, unless you're a mortician, somebody that confidently talks about death comes across well. It's not something that anybody is an expert on.

NED

Yeah, I agree...

Being more overt about it, externalizing a lot of that stuff, I've gotten exponentially more confident about saying that I don't have the answers. Saying that I'm not an expert but confidently being able to say let's just go. I'll tell you what I got cause I got it. I've gone through the loss... You got something or something is coming that you're afraid of and I want to talk about that too. It's okay. I don't mean it's going to be okay. It's going to be really bad. Ultimately. Inevitably. It's okay for us to say so.

CHAPTER 3: TALKING ABOUT DEATH

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Let's talk about that for a second because even with the podcast it's probably the same thing where you are asking people for interviews or even just telling friends, family or peers what this new project is. I think doing a podcast on death there's an automatic like oh you ... What's wrong? Right?

NED

Yeah totally.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Man their reaction is quite funny... there is this, I don't want to talk about it. Then you end up talking about it...

NED

I wonder if you sense like I do that people don't realize that that's where they want to go. They don't realize that this is a conversation that their being needs. This living being that's half death already, that's dying all the time... 

I did want to add one other thing about maybe when you say about your podcast when I say You're Going To Die, that's what it's called. My measurement for the value is that people react that way. Do you know what I mean?

D.S. MOSS_MONO

...You almost want that drawback because with that drawback you're getting a perspective...

...Maybe an example of this is that my mom doesn't listen to the podcast.

...She has a friend that she works with who's really into podcasts and I think she even does her own...blog and reviews. My mom says to her, "I don't know how he got that way." Like this is a weird thing to be talking about. I think that perspective is weird.

D.S. MOSS

So let's cut in here for a second. I got a little judgy there. I understand how talking about death can be seen as weird. I was probably just being a bit passive aggressive because my mom doesn't listen to her son's podcast. 

NED

Yeah. My dad is kind of the same way. Even a little more intensely you know. It's not like a lighthearted resistance. When I first told him about this show he's like, "Dying is for the dead." 

It's really hard to be confronted by your mortality. I understand it's really hard to lose someone. I don't have answers actually much around that. What I valued more than anything when my mom died is someone saying okay I'll be in that space with you... 

That's why it gets tricky because we think we're supposed to fix it and talk about it and say this and here's the answer and say that it's going to be okay when in fact it's not been okay since my mom died. That doesn't mean that I don't have a great life and love being alive and it doesn't mean that a lot of good things came from it but it's not okay that my mom died.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Has it having this enlightens you or caused you to live a more fulfilled life?

NED

When someone says to me do you think that I will feel better about death when I come to your show? That's not, I don't actually think that is necessarily what could happen. It might happen. It's not what I intend necessarily. What I do expect and maybe even intend is that you feel more alive.

MUSIC: "you are going to die" by andrew blair

I leave a show every time having cried and having laughed like deeply, joyfully. That's what you're going to die for me. I feel like that's what it is for people...

Sometimes we'll be surprised by it but we want to go there. We need to go there.

D.S. MOSS

And if you're ever in San Francisco you should go there too. Check out www.YG2D.com for the schedule. Stick around cause up next we have the leaders of the Death Positive movement - the Order of the Good Death.  

CALL TO ACTION 1

MUSIC: Emergency exit by Dr. frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

Ever wonder what Elvis's last words were or the most outrageous methods of living forever? Discover titillating titbits about mortality by visiting "The Adventures of Memento Mori" YouTube channel and be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party.

And be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.

All of this, and more, can be found on our site remembertodie.com. And now, back to show...

CHAPTER 4: ORDER OF THE GOOD DEATH

MUSIC: "Royal flush" by Keshco

SARAH TROOP

I'm sure you get this as well, that when people find out what you do, everyone wants to talk about, but they do it in a very quiet way. They pull you over into a corner at a dinner party and ...they tell you about a death experience or a question that they have. You end up being this weird vessel for people to pour all the death questions and anxiety and curiosity into.

D.S. MOSS

The death conversation about death conversations continues with two members of an organization composed of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists that explores ways to prepare our death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality. 

SARAH TROOP

The Order of the Good Death was founded...by Mortician Caitlyn Doughty in 2011 and because she saw such an unhealthy attitude and way that we were coping in our society with death. Being really afraid of it. She really wanted to change that.

My name is Sarah Troop. I am the executive director of the Order of the Good Death

There are essentially three different parts to The Order. There's The Order itself and then there's Death Salon, which is the practical arm of The Order.

D.S. MOSS

Death Salon is where The Order comes to life in the real world through lectures, performance and various experiences. It's kinda like SXSW, but smaller, and without overt branding, and about death.

SARAH TROOP

Then there's also what I also refer to as the heart of the work that we do and the heart of what Caitlyn has founded here. That's her funeral home, Undertaking LA. That's the place where what we preach is really able to come to fruition by involving the families and helping them care for their dead. 

CHAPTER 5: WHAT SARAH DOES

D.S. MOSS

Besides the Order of the good death, Sarah has her hands in a few different death related projects. One of the most fascinating is work around the relationship between death and food.

SARAH TROOP

Although it seems really weird, like, "Ew! How is that related?" If you think about it, our funerals are a marking of a passage. A rite of passage in our lives. We have rituals and feasts for all of those things. Whether it's a graduation or a birthday or a wedding, we build rituals around that. Food always plays a part or a role. I found that very interesting in the different ways that we incorporate food into our death rituals and into our funerals, as well.

D.S. MOSS

The blog is called Nourishing Death and has articles from "An Ice Cream Truck at the Funeral"....

to....the recipe for Irish Wake Cake. 

SARAH TROOP

The other work that I do is when this movement got started and there seemed to be a lot of chatter and just my own personal observations and that of a lot of colleagues, too, about the abundance of women at these events. Or that we were hearing from. Or that were entering the death care field. Or were interested in exploring death through their art.

I created a platform on a website with my partner, Lucy Talbitch, called "Death and the Maiden". We feature everything from interviews to profiles of women working in various ways with death. Could be anything from a mortician to an embroidery artist.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

You know, I had this same conversation or at least a part of it earlier this afternoon...

...I was talking about the order of the good death and... I had just said that it's predominantly women...Why do you think that is?

SARAH TROOP

In having a lot of different discussions with women that are working with death, as to what motivates them, it really is an individual thing. I think part of it is that death care always fell under the umbrella of women's work. It was usually before our death care, particularly in the United States, was industrialized, so to speak, and made into a business done by quote on quote, professionals.

D.S. MOSS

Before that time it was typically the role of the women to care for the corpses. To prepare the bodies. To dress them. To wash them and to make all of the food. 

SARAH TROOP

Then came the rise of the undertaker and taking that role out of the home and putting it into a business setting done by professionals really pushed women out of it. There was very much the attitude of, "This is not work that you can do. This needs to be done by professionals." I think we're just starting to reclaim that because there's a space for us now to do so.

CHAPTER 6: TROOP - DEATH + MOVEMENT

D.S. MOSS

So everything we've discussed so far: YG2D, Nourishing Death, Death and the Maiden are ways in which death positive manifests, but what about the movement itself? 

SARAH TROOP

When this kind of thing first started taking off or inklings started to begin. It really seems to come down to right about 2011 or so. Where two big key things happened, which was founded the order of the Good Death. Right around that same time, the Death Cafes, the concept for that started to come to fruition....People have really, internationally, all over the world, have really been taking up this conversation of death over the past few years. To where it really has become a movement. 

MUSIC: "Preamble" Glass Boy

bess lovejoy

I became a member of the Order through Twitter, basically, because when I was researching my book, I was tweeting a lot of the strange things that I was finding.

D.S. MOSS

Back with Bess Lovejoy author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Face of Famous Corpses.

BESS LOVEJOY

...I actually don't remember how this happened, but Caitlyn Doughty...The presiding genius of the death-positive movement, let's call her. She found me on Twitter, I think, and just reached out at a certain point and said, "Hey, would you like to be a member of this?"

CHAPTER 7: LOVEJOY BOOK

D.S. MOSS

Rest in Pieces is a book that tells the true post mortem stories of some of history's most famous figures. If you're into astonishing historical facts, go get this book. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

How did Rest in Pieces start up?

BESS LOVEJOY

Well...I used to work on a book series for 5 years with a guy named Ben, and the series was called "Shot's Almanac". It was a trivia series...

...We spent a lot of time reading the news, looking for interesting stories to gather up...I came across the story of Jeremy auto icon, which is now at the University College in London and Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher, essentially had himself stuffed after death. He's in a cabinet. 

When I started researching that ...I got interested in this idea of the last wishes of famous artists or writers.

Frequently, those wishes wouldn't be carried out. Something would intervene, there'd be some kind of catastrophic failure. I thought that it would be really fun to collect a whole bunch of these stories.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Did you come across anything about Gram Parsons?

BESS LOVEJOY

Yeah, he's in the book.

D.S. MOSS

And that's why you should always read the book before interviewing the author. If you don't know of Gram Parsons aka, the Cosmic American, he was an alt country musician who OD'd in the early 70s. His death story goes that his road manager promised him that when he'd died he'd burn his body in Joshua Tree. And well, it doesn't really go that well.

BESS LOVEJOY

)Gram Parsons is a perfect example and there's examples like that that go back 100s of years. I thought it's really interesting to see how ideas about death change over time and how that's reflected in some of these stories of famous corpses.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

How has, in your time in the death space, how do you think it has changed, over the last 100 years?

BESS LOVEJOY

Well, I think it's interesting because things sway one way and then another. I think now we're seeing an opening up. I think we're getting more comfortable with talking about death than we used to be.... I like to think the death-positive movement, for lack of a better term, has been part of that...People like to talk about this idea that death is a taboo. I don't think it is.

D.S. MOSS

So quick story - I was recently invited to a baby shower. A baby shower of an ex girlfriend, which is a whole nother story.

But, anyway, I went.

And as I was nervously walking up to the door I kept saying to myself, don't talk about death, don't talk about death, don't talk about death, don't rub her stomach without asking...

So there I am standing in the living room of my first baby shower being introduced to the baby daddy along with his father and the baby daddy says to me "oh, yeah I recognize your voice from the podcast." And his father then asks, "Oh, yeah, what's your podcast on?" 

Oh, shit here we go...Death. 

And he says, "I love death" and so began the death conversation. At a baby shower. 

So, I agree with Bess, it's not as big of a taboo as you may think.

CHAPTER 9: LOVEJOY - ENLIGHTENMENT

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Since you've written it and since you've been, I think, a little bit more engrossed or embedded into death, have you found any sense of, I don't know, touch more enlightenment in the way you live throughout your day? 

BESS LOVEJOY

To some extent, but it's something that comes and goes. It's a conversation you're continually having. I think there's this poet,...

MUSIC: "Gorilla" Glass Boy

...Maybe it's William Burroughs. He talks about taking death out of your pocket and having a whole conversation with it and being like, "Hey baby, how are you doing?" Then putting it away again. I think it's something that comes and goes continuously? Do you know what I'm talking about?

D.S. MOSS

I do know what you mean. It's really just the willingness to look at it that matters. Bess later realized that it was Bukowski not Burroughs and the poem simply goes...

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how are you doing? When are you coming for me? I'll be ready.

CALL TO ACTION 2

MUSIC: "O Cerebro do Morto" by Dr. Frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

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CHAPTER 9: DEATH CAFE

MUSIC: "One way ticket" by emeterians

D.S. MOSS

Are you single? Are you looking for a place to meet other like-minded singles? Well have I got a place for you...a death cafe.  

Started by Jon Underwood in London in 2011, death cafes are social franchises where people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. You can find them in just about any city these days.

Amy c

They always move me and I always find myself thinking about the people in the week after the Death Cafe's complete and it's always its own thing...I'm fascinated by the fact that this inquiry into the end of life touches everybody and touches young people...

My name is Amy Cunningham and I'm a progressive funeral director in New York City. I help families all over New York State plan end of life rituals that articulate the personality of the deceased and celebrate their values.

D.S. MOSS

Besides being a full-time funeral director at Fitting Tribute, NYC, Amy is the host of the monthly death cafe at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn.

I recently went for the first time and was joined by twelve other people where our discussion touched on ghost bikes in cycle culture, buddhist funerals, American fear-based politics, spiritual insecurity, death in the media and surfer funerals.

The conversation and people were both fascinating and never once felt overly deathy or depressing. And surprisingly, the majority of people there were in their 20s and 30s and very very early 40s. 

AMY C

I tell older people that we're in good hands with the folks I meet in their 20s and 30s, our future caretakers, because I think there's a death awareness and real desire to know more about how death informs our lives on the part of these people who I think of as young.

CHAPTER 10: Her Backstory

D.S. MOSS

After the cafe I had a chance to catch up with Amy about her work as a progressive funeral director.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Let me ask you this. In your short time I guess in your job as a funeral director, are you seeing a shift in this, young people participating or has that always been there? 

AMY C

I think new people are flooding into the funeral business. It's not an easy business to penetrate, but folks in their 20s, 30s. I'm also meeting women though and men called to funeral work after they've had a career in something else. 

D.S. MOSS

Amy is one of these people, midway through life she transitioned into being a professional funeral director. 

AMY C

I was 54 years old when my elderly father down in South Carolina started saying that he was getting ready to die. He kept falling off his treadmill. He was one of those Jack LaLanne kind of exercising men of his generation. At the age of 94, I got very tired of life and the fact that he kept saying this is all too expensive. As a Republican he was saying, I just don't want to live anymore because it costs too much. He was, in a way, a very enlightened man. It was hard for us to hear. He kept saying, "I don't fear death, I've had a wonderful life". So, anyway, long story short, he did die in the care of hospice pretty much on his own terms and in the days following, we gave him and planned for him a very beautiful memorial service that in the end had a Dixieland dirge...

MUSIC: "Sweet Georgia Brown"

...a very mournful procession of eight musicians out the door of the Presbyterian Church and then when they reached the sunlight of the front door of the sanctuary, they burst into very jubilant Sweet Georgia Brown and dad's favorite Dixieland numbers. So, I came out of that experience, came back to Brooklyn, as a writer so uplifted, still sad that dad was dead, but uplifted by this fantastic service that seemed to honor him so perfectly. I turned to my husband and said, "I'm sad that Dad is dead, but damn we really aced that funeral for him". I wonder what it would be like to help other families.

CHAPTER 12: DEATH + FUNERAL

D.S. MOSS

And so she did. Amy was trained by traditional men who embalm and conduct funerals the old fashioned way, but she saw her contribution to the industry as giving people back the right to have their own experience and to educate people on their options to include green and home funerals. 

AMY C

Funeral directors, for the last few decades, have in their own sweet masculine way taken experiences away from families to take the pain off of them and what we're finding is that families today are saying, "No, I want to be with my mother's body, take care of it after death, bathe her, dress her, I want to have that proximity to the moment" and no funeral director should sweep in and take mom to their place with their prep room, embalming, chandeliers on the ceiling, and dark carpet. Why do I have to go to a strange place after a loss? Why can't I keep death in the home? Why can't I manage as much as I'm able to? So, people are really crying out saying, "I want my own experience and I want to be with my parents, with my husband, with my loved one at this vitally important time".

D.S. MOSS

Amy's also passionate about slowing the roll a bit. For me, before I started this show, I really only knew of being embalmed and buried or cremated. So I chose cremation, as do more and more people do these days.

But Amy points out that even if you decide to cremate you still have time to spend with the body and that the corpse itself is not a dangerous thing. In fact, it can be a beautiful thing. You can bath, comb the hair, groom and dress your loved one and get them ready for the next step. They don't have to be rushed to the crematory upon death.

AMY C

The funeral is the launching pad for the bereavement year. In the old days, bells were told, the community was involved, the news of the death was a big deal. I feel like funerals are spectacles and in the best sense of the word. It doesn't mean they have to be expensive, but I recoil from the request to make the funeral into nothing.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

One of the saddest stories, which I'm sure a lot of people can relate to, a friend of mine was telling me about when his father passed, they didn't have much money....The mother then associated like your representation of how much you loved that person with how expensive the casket is. That's kind of a sad state. If you didn't have the money, like $10,000 for something you're just going to put in the ground just to show somebody that you actually loved the person. 

AMY C

The work I'm doing with pine boxes or cardboard caskets is wonderful because I invite the families to decorate them or bring in letters that they wrote the night before to the deceased and then we tape them onto the casket and it becomes a vessel of significant value without having spend a lot of money on it.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Bedazzling the pine box.

AMY C

Yes. We did it just this week. I had three kids decorating their mother's casket, four kids, with markers and as we watched the casket descend into the cemetery, it was marvelous to see that they had sent their messages to mommy along with her body.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

So, since you're like a new breed or I guess an enlightened breed of funeral directors. You get a lot of like the old traditional old-school funeral directors that...think that your ways are not right.

Amy Cunningham

Yeah. They might think I'm anti-industry or that I'm out to damage the casket business. What I'm really saying is that I just want the funeral paced in a different way and I want the consumer better informed before they buy anything. 

D.S. MOSS

And as I wrapped up my conversation with Amy I asked if she had anything else she'd like to add and this is what she said.

AMY C

I'm really impressed with how much people love each other. We all read about how fractured the family is today. I don't quite see that in my work, which surprises me...

...and maybe it shouldn't because there's a lot of love to go around and the funeral can bring that out.

MUSIC: "Sweet georgia brown" by colliery Band

D.S. MOSS

And that ladies and gentlemen, is what you call death positive. 

OUTRO

D.S. MOSS

Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori....Finally, some positivity. 

Thanks to Ned Buskirk from You're Going to Die, Bess Lovejoy and Sarah Troop from the Order of the Good Death and Amy Cunningham from Fitting Tribute, NYC.

Please check out all of their death positive work at www.remembertodie.com.   

I am D.S. Moss. Back again in two weeks for more...The Adventures of Memento Mori.

CLOSING BUMPER

MUSIC: End with our theme music

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die.