← This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
How To Have A Good Death with Suzanne B. O’Brien, RN | 292
00:34:57
Suzanne B. O’Brien, RN, joins us to explore what it truly means to have a good death—from the top regrets people share at the end of life to the power of forgiveness and how we can live fully with no unfinished business. With insights from her work as a hospice nurse and her book The Good Death, this conversation will change the way you think about both life and death.
Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
T-Mobile Advertiser
If you love your phone but not your carrier, just switch to T Mobile. You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator to compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT&T. So switch and keep your phone, keep your number and keep more of your moolah. @t mobile.com up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [00:30]
Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
- [00:35]
T-Mobile Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [01:24]
Nicole Khalil
I am Nicole Khalil, and on this episode of this is Woman's Work, we're going to cover a topic that I don't want to talk about and you probably don't want to hear about. Bet you're excited to hit play for this one, right? Okay, that might not be the best way to kick off an episode, but it's the truth. Because we're going to talk about death. And I know just hearing the word makes most of us want to change the subject, stick our fingers in our ears, or scroll Instagram until we find a cute dog video to distract us. But here's the thing. Death isn't something any of us can avoid. No matter how many things we think we can learn from the blue zones, no matter how much anti aging methods we employ or how many medical advancements we make, it's the one certainty that we all have. We just may not know the when or the how, only that it will happen. So why are we so bad at talking about this inevitable thing? More importantly, in our avoidance, are we missing out on the lessons that death can teach us about how to truly live? So today, with some discomfort on my part, we're diving into how to have what our guest calls a good death. I think I have an idea of what that might mean, and I'm assuming it's not about avoiding the inevitable, but embracing it in a way that brings peace, purpose, and maybe even some perspective. But my ideas about this topic are all conceptual because I've been fortunate to not have experienced death at a deeply personal level yet in my life. And yet I know it's coming because again, death is a certainty of living to guide us through this topic. As someone who's not just comfortable talking about death, she spent her life working to make it better for everyone. Suzanne B. O'Brien, RN, is the founder and CEO of Doula Givers Institute and has been at the bedside of more than 1,000 end of life patients. As a hospice and oncology nurse, she's taken those deeply human experiences and turned them into a mission to provide high quality end of life education and care to patients and families worldwide. Oprah Magazine named her a humanitarian Ambassador for her work, and she's here to share insights from her new book, the Good Supporting your loved one through the end of life. Suzanne, thank you for being our guest and for talking. Well, I'm going to speak for myself about an uncomfortable topic that is so important, so I'd love to start by asking, based on your experience, should we be talking about death more? Are we missing things by avoiding it A thousand percent.
- [04:11]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
So if I may, and I know this might be a spoiler alert for the episode, but when you talk about death, you're talking about life because they're not exclusive of one another. And the minute that I started working with those at the end of life, my whole life changed in the best way possible. And we can dive deeper into that as we go on this episode. But to answer the first question is.
- [04:33]
Nicole Khalil
Absolutely so that was something that I was thinking going into this conversation, given your experiences. God, it sounds so heavy. You know, sitting at the bedside of over a thousand deaths. I would imagine that there is a heaviness, a sadness, a hard element of that, and yet it's obviously given you so much good. How do you handle that paradox?
- [04:58]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah. So first of all, thank you so much for having me, Nicole. And I love your podcast because, you know, I love it's time for the female energy to step forward. And how we do that is listening to our heart individually and then collectively for the world. And that's how I found myself working with those at the end of life because I finally started listening to this calling that I had. I had no end of life experience and I was being called to go to hospice as a nurse and it didn't make any analytical sense. And the minute I did that, I knew that that's how life works is following your Intuition, following your calling. And yeah, there were very hard end of lives. And I'll tell you why they were. First of all, it's always going to be difficult to say goodbye to someone physically in this form that we love. That's just part of it. But it's a thousand times, if not 10,000 times more difficult today because we don't acknowledge that death is a part of the existence. So when it does show up, it's like this crisis for everyone. So I was seeing, and am still seeing a lot of end of life that are really challenging, that shouldn't have that added stress to it now. At the same time, I would see occasionally back in the beginning, an end of life that was beautiful, something that happened that was so connected. And I thought if people could see that, if they knew end of life could be like that, they would never be afraid. So I'm going to tell them.
- [06:22]
Nicole Khalil
Okay. I couldn't agree more with the concept of following your intuition and trusting yourself. So thank you for being an example of that. And I have so many questions about those experience. But I want to start with first something that I saw you had said in my preparation for our conversation. And that is what all people, regardless of age, religion or culture, realize at the end of death. What is that?
- [06:48]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Okay, so now I've been honored to work with people all around the world and in different cultures and religions. Why? Because end of life touches us all. Right? So one of the things in our just bringing that back to how much more similar we are than different. Super important, right? That death teaches us that. But what was happening is that there was a certain point in the end of life journey where I call almost people get their, what I call their spiritual eyes. So it's almost as if they have one foot in this world and one foot in the next. And if I may for a minute is that we're holistic beings. We're mental, we're emotional, we're physical and we're spiritual. And at the end of life, it really seemed, because again, I work from a big pool that I can teach from that. As the physical body was diminishing, it was almost as if their spiritual body was growing. And there was one point in that journey that they had all this new awareness, like a new perspective. And so they would say the following. That there is no death. That we're all connected to one unconditional, loving energy, that there's no judgment. And that everything that happened in their life, even the most painful things, were meant as an opportunity for growth. People were saying this who had lived a certain way with a certain religion that they practiced by, and it turned into more of a spiritual awareness. But if we're not paying attention to people at the end of life about what they want you to know, by the way, time is your greatest commodity, and we just don't know how much we have of it. We're doing something wrong if we're not paying attention to that wisdom because they're not trying to sell you anything. And we can really talk about what makes a good death. And what really does make a good death is a good life, a fully lived life. Not missing it because the regrets. And right now, statistically, death is the number one fear in the world. For my patients, it wasn't the fear necessarily of the death. It was that they got a time limit left and that they didn't use their life the way they know they were supposed to. So they were full of regret. They do not want us to miss on that. And that's really important.
- [08:51]
Nicole Khalil
So that completely aligns with. When I was studying confidence, that's my favorite topic. And it talked so much about how the thing we regret most are the things that we don't do. The conversations we didn't have, the forgiveness we didn't give, the risks we didn't take, the dreams we didn't chase, all of those things. So I want to talk about the good death and what it tells us about life. But before I do, what are some of the top regrets that you heard people share on their deathbed?
- [09:25]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
You just said one of the major ones. And if people that listening to this podcast today take away one thing, it's forgiveness. I really want you to understand the transformational power of forgiveness for people. The end of life. Now, what happens at the end of life, I feel like, is everyone's stuff bubbles to the top. It's almost like it wants to be worked out. And when they get that higher perspective, they're able to look at situations that happened in their life with a different lens. And that lens affords them an ability to look at it for the opportunity of growth. And forgiveness is something that does take place there, and it literally transforms the person. So the minute I was seeing that, I said, wait a minute. If we. And we all have it, it's called the human experience, right? We all have forgiveness to give, and we all have forgiveness to receive. And I thought if they could change their life at the end of life through the power of forgiveness, what do I need to look at? Am I carrying things? And so I really did an inventory. And by the way, it is the most transformative tool that we have in life because when, when we're carrying things with us, we're. It's like carrying backpacks with boulders in them. And it really prevents us because everything is energy and it prevents us from moving forward in those dream that purpose if we're blocked from holding onto resentment, holding onto guilt, holding onto. I wish I had. So forgiveness is one of the best tools you could ever use for. And it's for yourself which is not always understood. It's not for the other person, it's for you. It literally frees you of energy being drained. And it's just amazing.
- [11:00]
Nicole Khalil
Couldn't agree more and easier said than done, I think, especially for those of us who may conceptually know that death is coming, but it doesn't feel imminent. Right. When you know you only have a certain amount of time. So any tips on applying what we're bound to learn at the end stage of life to today?
- [11:20]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah, and it goes back to like your question again previously. I went off on forgiveness because it's such an important, important moment to understand. But when you're saying, what are the regrets? The regrets are, you know, I wish, I wish I had not lived in fear. And when I mean lived in fear, I mean fear of stepping out of their comfort zone and really following their heart. And that's where the growth is, by the way. And so when we talk about that. So super important. So if I may invite your listeners to a little exercise if. And I know this is a hard one, but just stay with me for a minute. If your life were to end tomorrow, what would be the major things you regret that you can think about? I didn't write that book. I didn't talk to my sister. I didn't do this. What is that? Because those are going to be your indicators of what to take action on now because we don't want to get there. And so when I cleaned up my own and really got to what I wanted to do, never in my life did I think we'd have this international institute. It's not what, what was the main role. The main role was just following the heart to the next step. But I'll tell you that when you do the. The journey takes on a magic and an essence that you can't find unless you step out of that small human space that we're in. So think about what you would regret now. Those conversations, just like you said, the things that you'd want to do and go do them.
- [12:48]
Nicole Khalil
I like that shift on focusing on what we'd regret. I think sometimes we think at the end of life, what would we do? And then you start thinking about, oh, I would move to this country and spend all of my money. And it's like, okay, but we can't live that way from day to day. We can't live as if this is our last day from that perspective. But thinking about it from the lens of what would I regret most, that's something we can do something about today.
- [13:14]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Absolutely. And that's what I did. So I was like, oh. And I wanted to try everything and travel everywhere and do whatever comes into my, you know, the flow of my alignment, what I call that heart alignment. And it's just been a magical journey. So that's really important. And again, the people at the end of life, the number one thing that they say to me is, I thought I had more time. Take that away. We have to take that away because we know that this journey is not going to be the same. And here's the thing. The people at the end of life, the beautiful, sacred 100 years ago, we used to die at home. People cared for us. The skill of how to care for someone at the end of life was hands down, generationally. We've been dying for thousands of years. By the way, we know how to do this. It's only in the last 100 that it got really medicalized and removed. And when we remove seeing something and the truth about it, a fear surrounds it. But if you go back into history, death used to be revered as a sacred rite of passage, just like birth, marriage, and death. And there are beautiful ritual and beautiful things that happen in that space that we need to know about because it creates quells fear. And it also just may open you up to that. There's a much bigger picture going on in this beautiful thing called life that we've been gifted.
- [14:37]
Nicole Khalil
You know, that's really interesting. And I think it is very much a part of the fear or discomfort that I experience. Because you're right. I mean, again, I don't. I haven't done the research that you have or the had the experiences that you have. But I feel like now when we think of death, we almost always think of hospitals and things that we can try to do to delay or prevent. And it feels cold and scary. And that's not to say that there haven't been some great medical advancements that help us live longer. And that's wonderful. But there is this sort of flip side of the COIN that makes us inexperienced and disconnected from the power of the experience. Am I?
- [15:24]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
You're spot on. And this is what I want to say is that there's a very fine line between extending, keeping people alive and living where the quality is never going to be there and it can almost cause more discomfort. But I also want you to know this, and this is really important and why the book was written is that hospice care, which is a beautiful model of care in theory is our end of life provider in the United States. 98%. This is a survey by Medicare. 98% of the hands on end of life care is done by family caregivers when they usually don't know the first thing about how to do that. You just said I don't know. I haven't done the research, I haven't been there. The time to learn. This is not when you're faced with it that when we're frightened and we're in it nothing. And I just go in as a hospice nurse and put band aids on. So as a hospice nurse I was making visits for 60 minutes once a week if that person was stable. The model doesn't work. But here's the great news that death is not a medical experience, it's a human one. And we were doing this for thousands of years. And so this book and the trainings are bringing that back and there's so many that are offered for free so that you have the tools. And by the way, there's threaded with beautiful stories. People have talked about it healing their grief from 20, 30 years ago, inspiring about life. Like we say, get to it. So there's many beautiful things about stepping into this space.
- [16:55]
T-Mobile Advertiser
If you love your phone but not your carrier, just switch to T Mobile. You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator to compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT&T. So switch and keep your phone, keep your number and keep more of your moolah. @t mobile.com up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days with device into eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [17:27]
Nicole Khalil
Okay, so I want to take our conversation twofold. First, you know this idea of creating and experiencing a good death for ourselves and the people we love, basically teaching us some of the things Maybe we knew 100 years ago that we don't know Anymore today. And then the second part is what we can learn about living. Before I dive into that, let me just double check. The biggest regrets is around forgiveness and feeling like wishing we wouldn't have lived in fear. Are there any other regrets that we should know about?
- [18:02]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah. Not forgiving people, not letting people love you fully, not loving other people fully. And I feel like all of this is in that nucleus of living in fear and unforgiveness. I really do. Because when we're hurt, it's almost like prison walls. Like prison walls get. And we have. This is. This is called the human experience. This is what people have told me, is that we go through these trials and tribulations and also beautiful moments to evolve, to experience, to grow, to expand. And if we keep making a wall every time we get hurt and shutting down, Shutting down what I want, shutting down what is in my heart because I don't want to get hurt again. We miss the whole entire journey, and forgiveness is the tool to remove that. Yeah.
- [18:45]
Nicole Khalil
So what do we need to know that we don't know anymore about how to have a good death?
- [18:51]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Live life each day like one little lifetime. And that's my wisdom, and that's what I do. Because if I know that one day the journey will not be the same, I don't know when that day will be. I want to make sure that I don't miss today. And that means just making sure I connect to gratitude, to presence, to the awe and wonder of this experience. Right. And then also, how can I show up to be of service? Where's that calling me? Because I will tell you, I believe that everyone is here for a reason, and everyone has a gift to share. And it's. That's, I think, what people, again, the regret is, oh, I had this impulse of I was supposed to be an artist or a florist or whatever that was, and we didn't live that. And when you follow, and it might not make analytical sense, it usually doesn't. But when you follow that guided. What I call guided inspiration and take action. It's almost like breathing for the first time. So if you follow your heart, what you want to, you know, connect with your gift, but then make sure each day you're in presence, you're being thankful. You stop and smell the roses and what's around you when that day comes, hopefully we can all say, okay.
- [20:06]
Nicole Khalil
And in your experience, you mentioned that you have experienced some good deaths. Is that the sort of commonality that they have, that they lived a good life, that they didn't have a ton of these regrets that they didn't have a ton of forgiveness they still had yet to give. Or that was it.
- [20:26]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
That was it. Nicole. So when I first was witnessing a good death, it was like I was like, okay, what made that? Because everything is not going well. What made that? And it was that, number one, that the awareness that one day their journey would not be the same as it is today and that they didn't have a lot of stuff to unpack, so that was critically important. And then to add for you, what makes a good death. And I think this is another thing that if, you know, I called a doula giver's pearl, if your listeners can take away understanding what quality of life means to me. And so what makes that day, that one little lifetime day, have joy. And when that's not attainable anymore, maybe I can't speak to my loved ones or recognize them or do anything for myself. That would be the benchmark where I wouldn't want extensive measures to be taken to keep me alive. And then deciding for myself, yes, I would like to be home. I'd like to be surrounded by my pets. I'd like to have warm blankets, please. I'd like my pain to be no higher than a 2 or 3. If possible, I'd like chocolate ice cream all day for my meals. Like, this is super important. And then thinking again about, you know, how you'd like to be celebrated. There are lots of choices that we have, and it's really important that we choose when you do. By the way, it's one of the greatest gifts you can give your family because this is so hard for them already. And if you give them a blueprint and a roadmap how to support you, it makes that experience almost a hundred times easier.
- [21:53]
Nicole Khalil
And I wonder how many of us have that for ourselves or the people in our lives today. Like, I think of if you have living parents or a spouse or a best friend or for yourself, has this been communicated? Are you having this conversation? I'm going to guess the answer is no. For most of us it is.
- [22:14]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
So statistically, 23% of people they say, have done what's called an advanced directive. That's a document where you put your wishes. But only half of those people even know where they are, so it's not something. And again, back to your comment. And it's correct. Have we maybe unknowingly created this huge fear around death with the verbiage we use? As medical professionals? Lost his battle with cancer, he you have to Fight. You have to fight. And have we set up an impossible thing to win? Because we know if it's a battle, no matter how we prolong, how much we prolong it, it's never going to be something that we can outrun. By the way, you shouldn't have to, you know, it is a sacred experience. I think bringing back that awareness, I think bringing back the sacred awareness of death brings back the sacred awareness of life. And I think that's how we change the world.
- [23:06]
Nicole Khalil
You said several things in there, but I think this is such an important conversation to have. So what might be some examples? We ask ourselves or our loved ones? Is it about pain tolerance? Is it about quality of life? What does that mean? What are some of the most important questions we ask so that we can be aware? Because you're right. I think for many of us, the question is, you know, what would this person want? And we will feel better. Obviously not happy. It's still. Grief is still there. But I think we'll feel better if we know that we are delivering on what this person would want. And without a conversation, we're just best guessing. So what questions should we be asking?
- [23:50]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Okay, so you want to ask this question, mom, if you're at a point where your quality of life cannot be improved so there's no reversing a disease process, where would that be? Where would that benchmark be? And then on top of that, so pick that. What's important to you? You want to give the person back control. So you want, you know, for something that seems like the person is. I don't want to talk about it. It's like a loss of control and all that. Give them back control. So say what's important to you, what makes your day. And so for my mom, it's playing bridge and talking to her friends and going to lunch. And if she weren't able to do any of those things, that would be that her quality of life wasn't there, where she wouldn't want extensive measures. Then. Then let's flip that and say, now what? How comfortable do you want to be? Where would you like to be cared for? What's important to you? The shows that you want to watch, the music that you want played, visitors, all of the things that you can layer there that you really want to tailor it. There is a list that we have, so when you share with your listeners some show notes, we have a lot of free things that are. One is called the nine question Document. That's a free document that you want to ask your Question. These are the nine questions that I have heard repeatedly that incompletion will allow for a good death. If you ask your loved one these nine questions, where do you want to be? How do you want to be treated? What's important with the conversations? How do you want your ceremony to be? How do you want to be celebrated in your life? Those kind of things. It's all there. And that's really, really important. And get it in writing.
- [25:24]
Nicole Khalil
Yes. Okay, that makes sense, especially if you've got siblings or other family members involved, right?
- [25:31]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah. Because fear has a really weird way of like letting us hear something different than somebody else did, depending the same conversation. Have the conversation, if you can, in a group setting with your family and loved ones, have brownies and cookies and all of that yummy stuff, and then put it in a document so that it's crystal clear. Because when it does show up, sometimes it's really, you know, a moment that you want to revert back and say, okay. And the most loving thing we can do, Nicole, is to support mom and what she would want, even if it's different, what I would want. And that gives me a tool and a roadmap to say, I'm doing something to help Mom. This is the best thing I could do at this moment. It could also be the hardest thing.
- [26:06]
Nicole Khalil
Yeah, and that is exactly going to be my follow up question too, which is, what do we do when what, you know, the person wants goes against what we would want or our beliefs or something like that. And I think you answered it, which is ultimately this is their experience and we get to honor that. And then the second thing is what to do when someone is unwilling to have the conversation. You know, if you bring it up with a parent or spouse and they're like, oh, that's too dark, or I don't want to talk about it, or whatever. Any advice about how to help them be more open to the conversation?
- [26:43]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah. First of all, I think you need to meet people where they are. So maybe that first time that you're attempting that conversation, you know, they're like, oh, hold on. And then you're like, okay, you know, but this is really important. And then what I would say is to come back and say, mom, we love you so much and we want to make sure that we have everything that you want to, you know, to make sure that you're comfortable and that everything to uphold that. And so even just, if you even just ask her, where would she want to be cared for if there's no reversing a treatment and like, you know, comfort bring in all those things, even if you get that one done. But if you can say to her, it's one of the greatest things for you all, so you know exactly, exactly what to do to honor her wishes because you love her so much. Usually people will step into that space after that initial, sometimes shock, which it might be at the beginning. And a lot of people do sometimes say that. You know, I've had a lot of older people say that their adult children shut them down from having the conversation that they want to talk about it. And the children are like, mom, don't say that. It's not going to happen. And it's like, stop. But I, I would like to share a interesting bedside story, if I may, please, from this so that. Yeah. So that people can really be invited into this space of what I have been privileged and honored to see and why I'm not afraid of death and why this is so important. In the oncology unit, there was a woman who came in. She had gallbladder cancer. She was being treated with chemotherapy. It had brittled her bones to the point that her. She fractured her hip. So I was working a Friday, Saturday, Sunday shift, and she came in on Friday, her and her sister. She was about 46 years old. Everyone really panicked, of course, and I knew building the trust was really important for them right away. And then by the end of Saturday's shift, I moved her from a bedside commode back to her bed and she was short of breath. And that was a new finding. So we both sort of knew in that moment that something was happening, but really didn't know what. It turns out that night they did testing and she had a blood clot that had broken off and went to her lung. And she had a pulmonary emboli, which is not a good thing. By Sunday, the end of Sunday, Sunday, she was breathing heavy. And I remember walking into the hospital room with the doct do rounds and this woman said to the doctor, I just want to thank you for everything you've done for me. And I turned to look at the doctor's face and tears were going down her face. This woman, Maureen, was essentially telling the doctor she was going to die. And that night the doctor, of course, was out of her mind wanting to fix this and there's nothing they could do at that point. That night they said that Maureen woke up from a nap at about 11 o'clock and said, get my sister. I'm transitioning with like all the excitement that you would have told an 8 year old child, you're going to Disney World. Her sister comes into the room and she goes, I'm transitioning. And I don't even know if I knew that term back in that day. So this is what I want to say. What did she see and what did she know that completely not only removed her fear, but made her excited about that next chapter. And this is just one of the examples. There are so many beautiful moments that people talk about seeing loved ones at the end of life being connected to encompassing love, that have we removed one of the greatest teachers about life. And is our fear of death completely unfounded?
- [29:55]
Nicole Khalil
Yeah. Powerful story and invitation, I think, for all of us to, I don't know if reframe it seems like a silly word, but just really to reestablish our relationship with what death might be, what it could be. And also I think what I'm hearing that we didn't say directly is there is this sort of communal, collaborative component of it. I'm guessing nobody you've sat by has wanted to die alone. I would imagine that's something we all want as the people we love and the people who we've lived with to be around us. Is that fair?
- [30:34]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
It is fair. It's a sacred experience. And when you're in that, it's so interesting because when you're in that space, sometimes there's just such a feeling of connectedness and love and something so much greater. And time, as you and I know, it sometimes feels like it disappears. So it is a communal event, it's a loving event. And one of the things that I really share with people is, you know, not to rush that moment, to take that in. Because right now we have traumatic grief that we're dealing with. And why we have traumatic grief is because we have no knowledge of this thing called end of life, which by the way, is talking about life. So when it does show up, it's a crisis usually, and goes very fast. And then people are stuck in this moment and if they don't know, they have the funeral home come and the person's gone. They don't even know what just happened. We have to slow all this down for really bringing back ritual in the natural way. And by the way, it teaches you everything you need to know about how to live. And that leads to the good end of life.
- [31:36]
Nicole Khalil
Also, it sounds like, you know, yes, death happens in a moment, but for those left behind, for the grieving who are still living, there is an ongoing element of it. You know, end of life services Celebrations, what these people would want. I also, for whatever reason, thought of, like, the passing down of things, the financial aspect and. Cause I've seen a lot of siblings get completely torn up over those types of things. Should that be part of the conversation of what a good death looks like for each person?
- [32:08]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Absolutely. And that's something for you and me to do now. So this is something that I need and this is my responsibility to think about. It's my responsibility to think about quality of life to me, where I'd like to be, what that looks like. Then for my items that I have, where those passwords are allocated, where deeds to houses are. I have a peace of mind planner that can. Has everything for everyone if they want to go through the five categories. All the things we don't think about, because right now, if we pretend it's optional, it shows up. And families are usually thrust into the next phase of it, which is a scavenger hunt, which is so much stress, and they usually end up fighting and it can be just awful. And so avoid that. But this is my responsibility. So I have my. And I have love notes in there that sometimes, you know, you'll have that great day that you're thinking about a family member, some magic moment, writing that down and just putting that in my box that they're going to get at the end with everything.
- [33:04]
Nicole Khalil
I love that.
- [33:05]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yeah. But it really does have all the practical things as well that we don't think about. Again, your Facebook password. I mean, things that they need to know about and where you want things to go and who you want them to go to so there's no fighting over it.
- [33:21]
Nicole Khalil
Right. It feels like more often than not, it's the women who get, get called on. Parents, siblings, even, like in laws. Right. The end of life experience and what we can do to invite men into this conversation. And what if there's anything as women we kind of need to protect ourselves from because it can sometimes be too.
- [33:43]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Much because we have this aging population. There's. There's a silver tsunami. It's women that are showing up, their mothers, their wives, they're working now, they're taking care of, you know, the aging and end of life. And it's not okay. So. So yes, it's okay because we want to show up, but it's not okay that they do it alone. It's really important that we have support that people know I need to say I need help. And I. And that's a, that's a strength, it's not a weakness. And also if you're in that dynamic, sir, you need to say, how can I support you even if I can't physically do it? Can I pay for some help? Like, we really do need to get on the page.
- [34:17]
Nicole Khalil
Absolutely.
- [34:18]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Because women are killing themselves trying to fit this role, and it's not okay. It should never be this way.
- [34:24]
Nicole Khalil
Right. My last question is, any final advice, or maybe a reiteration of advice you've already given, of how we can shift from radical avoidance to radical acceptance of our own mortality and death?
- [34:39]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Yes. I want you to take a deep breath and we'll just. That's always a good thing, right? Take a deep breath. Let it out. And I want you to take this in. I think we simply just forgot that death is not a medical experience. It's a human one and it's a holistic one. And here's the thing, it can go well, really, really well, with the right education, kindness, and support.
- [35:05]
Nicole Khalil
Suzanne, thank you for an incredible conversation for your brave and wildly important work. I know more people are going to want to learn about this work, so the book again is called the Good Death, available on Amazon or wherever it is that you buy books. Let's keep our local book bookstores in business. And you can also go to the website thegooddeathbook.com we'll put that and all other information, including links to free resources that Suzanne mentioned in show notes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- [35:35]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Nicole, thank you so much. You have an amazing podcast. I'm so glad that you're doing this.
- [35:40]
Nicole Khalil
Because of conversations like this. So thanks. Okay, friend, as we wrap up this episode, I want to invite you to have the conversations that we so often avoid. The ones with the people you love about what a good death means to them, what it looks and feels like, so that you can show up for them in the best way possible when the time comes. And while you're at it, give yourself the same gift today, because it's the only day that's guaranteed. Ask yourself, what would I regret most? What's missing? Or what would I need to do to feel like I'm truly living my life fully? Take those answers seriously because they hold the key to a life where things that matter don't go undone unsaid or unloved. Death is part of woman's work because it's part of the human experience. And my deepest wish for you is both a fully lived life and also a good death. This is woman's work.
- [36:43]
Unknown Speaker
For everything you do. The all new 2025 Chevrolet Equinox is the SUV to help you do it. It has the technology you need, including an 11.3-inch diagonal touchscreen with easy access to your apps, maps, music and more. The cargo area is loaded with possibilities including folding split bench seats and hidden underfloor storage for flexibility. There's even an all new trim named Active, with a rubber rugged, off road inspired design for those whose passion begins where the pavement ends. And the equinox is number one for new vehicle quality among compact SUVs in 2024, according to J.D. power, the all new 2025 Chevy Equinox. It's everything you want in an SUV. Learn more at chevy.com equinox J.D. power Award based on 2024 models for J.D. power 2024 U.S. initial Quality Study Award information, visit JDPower.
- [37:36]
Suzanne B. O'Brien
Do.