Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
DEATH CAN BE AWKWARD (especially for the living)
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Ami joins Ross to discuss some awkward moments during funerals and related activities. Tangents include: funeral squirrels; dead kisses; Lurch; cremation options; coffin deer; funeral food; mix-ins; secret doors; and advice on possibly what not to wear to a service.
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
A secret door opens up. What?
SPEAKER_01There's a secret door in the wood paneling?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, there is. And you're gonna think I'm making this up, and everybody listening to this, anyone who knows me, thinks I'm making this up. But the guy who opens the door is straight out of Hollywood casting as The Undertaker.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Creepiest looking dude. Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder, what and why? I'm Ross, your host, and today I'm excited to have my dear friend and all-around funny person, Amy. Hi, Amy.
SPEAKER_03Hi, Ross. So nice to talk to you today.
SPEAKER_00It's a pleasure and welcome everyone. Please help us grow our community. And at the end, I'll tell you how to do that. But let's get to our discussion. Now, Amy, we know something about humans, and that is sometimes they die.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00In fact, we are at about a hundred billion dead all time and counting. So that means over 90% of the people that have ever lived have died.
SPEAKER_03Have died, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's uh it's pretty high probability.
SPEAKER_03Seems like right at 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really close. Um, but we still got seven or eight billion alive right now. So, you know, there's always a chance. There's always a chance. So this episode we're gonna talk about um, we're gonna be talking about topics about death and um people in our lives that have passed away. We also are gonna be uh not discussing in any depth, but we're gonna be mentioning suicide. So if those topics are um difficult for you to listen to, this would be a great time to Scooby-doo and take a listen to cuddle parties. That's a fun one.
SPEAKER_03Gosh, that's a good one.
SPEAKER_00Or PayPig. Look up PayPig. Those don't talk about these topics. So um, you know, when it's someone in our family and someone we're close to, it can be obviously a deeply felt and moving experience. We're not gonna be focusing so much on the grief part. There's plenty of places for you to get help with your grief uh or your trauma associated with a close one passing away. Uh, we're gonna focus on some of the weird things that kind of happen in the process of going through grieving, planning funerals, attending them, memorials, all of that stuff. And the the bottom line is this is my this is what I'm offering you, Amy, is that sometimes death can be awkward for the living.
SPEAKER_03Everything in my life is awkward, so I don't know why death wouldn't be too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you do sort of attract awkward situations.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Um, I wasn't planning to really talk about this, but one time, um, so I had a great uncle who I wasn't super close to. Um, he was essentially my grandfather's brother. I didn't spend a lot of time with him, but he was just uh one of these guys that was always around. But uh when he passed away, my father was in another part of the world. I think he was in Australia or something. And so he contacted me and said, Hey, can you go to the funeral in New York and represent the family?
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And at the time I was living in uh New Jersey, so that was I was the closest family member. So I go ahead and say, Yeah, I'll do that. And um, it was everything was nice. You know, an Italian funeral, there's there's a certain number of givens. One of the givens is that the spouse, if she's still living, needs to throw herself dramatically on the casket and scream and cry.
SPEAKER_03Yep. We've we must have some of the uh some Italians in my family that I'm unaware of because that has occurred at a funeral I've been at, so we can move on for the moment, but I I can add that in. I've had that experience.
SPEAKER_00And uh my uncle, they at the service before, so it's an open casket, and everybody walks by, and uh you have to kiss up the dead person.
SPEAKER_03What? Where like on the face? Does it matter?
SPEAKER_00Where where else are you gonna be? What where what other body part are you looking for?
SPEAKER_03A hand, a shoulder? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00That seems weird.
SPEAKER_03Does it? I don't know. I don't want to put my face on a dead person's face.
SPEAKER_00You're gonna go searching around the coffin looking for a part you like?
SPEAKER_03I think I'm just gonna fake it, to be totally honest. I'm gonna lean in and pretend I did it and move on. Or maybe I just can't be Catholic or or Italian, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Um, well, Italian, there's a big overlap between Italian and Catholic. I think so. I just went full-on uh dead kiss on my great uncle because I was being observed very closely. Because I was the backup representative of my father.
SPEAKER_03Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. Would it have been normal, like in your normal goings on with this person? Like if you saw them, would you kiss them when when they were alive? Like, is that a thing?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So it's just when the person dies that you kiss them. I'm just making some notes. I'm just taking some notes.
SPEAKER_00You know, the other thing that's interesting, I'm starting off with two weird tangents that I didn't mean to start out with, but have you ever noticed how hungry everybody gets at a funeral?
SPEAKER_03Um, I am from South Carolina. So um the greatest part of death is uh making a casserole. So, yes, I have always assumed that when someone dies, you immediately become just ravenously hungry.
SPEAKER_00Do you think it's because you know we're confronted with death in a very, very concrete and specific way? Because normally we can kind of stay in our little denial bubble and think we're gonna live forever, but we're looking at a dead person in real life and maybe even just kiss them up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um that eating is a way to sort of reaffirm our own hot health and vibrancy. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I can buy that theory. You're right. It's not I I mean, I remember consuming food at funerals, wakes, uh, the days leading up, the days after.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's almost like a wedding where you're kind of just watching the clock, waiting for the you know, the food time.
SPEAKER_03The next meal. So yeah, I think that's probably right.
SPEAKER_00The the way it would really work for me, maybe I need to write this in my will that when I go, I want people eating kebabs while they're at the funeral.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yes. I think people should have plates of food as I'm being buried.
SPEAKER_00I want, you know, what I want is uh, you know, like at a ball game where there's somebody walking around hawking hot dogs and stuff. So it could be that. It could be the kebab hawker, but he'd be like, get your kebab, red hot kebab. Who wants a kebab?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I need more like a lunch lady situation because uh we're more of a casserole kind of a family. So yeah, somebody's gonna be scooping out stuff into bowls at my Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wait a minute. This is really distasteful, probably. But what if, okay, if it's an open coffin, what if around the deceased are like bowls of food?
SPEAKER_03No, I don't want that. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's a little too it's too far.
SPEAKER_03I know you and your family like to get in the coffin and lay down with your dead relatives, but I'm I'm I like to leave a little space between me and a dead body.
SPEAKER_00Now, Amy, um you've mentioned on the podcast a couple times before that your husband passed away uh how many years ago now? Is it 10? 10 years?
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah. So this January it will be 10 years.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I know that there was a lot involved. I mean, I don't know uh in detail, but I have an awareness that there was a lot involved for you to navigate that and to recover from that tragic event. But I'm wondering in the process of dealing with that and taking care of your kids, because you had three kids who had to process all of that as well. So there was a tremendous burden on you. In the process of navigating all of that and trying to keep everybody safe and sane, did anything like weird happen?
SPEAKER_03Um it did. I recalled a couple of things. And so one like logistical note is so my husband and I, at the time uh that he committed suicide, we were living separately. I was living with our three kids, um, and he was living in the in what what had been our home. Um and we had been separated for around nine months. And um, in that time period, he had gotten there, he was dating somebody that he had known for a long time. When that started, I can't tell you, but it the relationship had concluded prior to his committing suicide. But anyway, I felt like it was important that I invite her to the funeral because they had been friends and they known each other a long time. I didn't I didn't have much care for her, but I knew that she also loved my husband. Um and I knew I felt like she probably was not of the personality to just come to the funeral, or maybe I did think she was, and I wanted to make sure I was in control of that. But I I reached out to her, invited her to the funeral, which felt like the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_00But that's I mean, I'm just hearing this, and it's it sounds incredible to me that you would have the internal fortitude and the graciousness in your time of highest grief to be thinking about your husband's what we call her a girlfriend or female friend or whatever she was at that time? I mean, how did you find the how did you find the the depth of feeling to it to to extend that olive branch to her? That's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I mean, was it reflexive?
SPEAKER_00Did you just sort of think, well, that's the right thing to do, or did you have to think about it?
SPEAKER_03I thought about it for a long time. I much like you, I can sort of remember sitting in uh what was my backyard at the time. The house was full of people. We were totally surrounded by friends and family. That all that food you're talking about, food and I remember people bringing like if anything we asked for just showed up and drove. Um so I was sitting in the back, the house was full of people, and I think I had kind of gone outside to kind of take a moment and I started to think about her and what this much and what it must be like for her, honestly. That like I said, I reflected on the idea that you know she had lost him. And you know, for me and my family, and in that moment, like he there like holding a grudge did not feel like it didn't feel productive, it didn't feel helpful. And so I it just seemed it did seem like the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I'm impressed.
SPEAKER_03I'm impressed. Well, I appreciate that. I certainly tell you that uh to tell you this. So that's now that you've been impressed, now I'm gonna make fun of her for how she showed up at the funeral. So she was she was an attractive woman, I'll give her that for sure. But she showed up at my husband's funeral. Who and with she had also two or three children, one of which was fairly young, maybe in the like three or four, I can't remember. But I have the I don't remember seeing her, you know. Of course, there's there's lots of people there, his friends, our friends, my friends. Um, uh, and we were at this reception in the basement of the church where there's again more food, plates and trays of of lots and lots of food. And she walked by and she was wearing either a red velvet strapless dress with a split up the side, wearing spike heels, like three very tall heels in my more generous spaces in my mind. My thought is here's something she was a nurse at the hospital. So, you know, maybe in her life with kids and a busy job schedule, she didn't go out very often, right? So she didn't have a lot of dresses. Okay. So this was her going out dress.
SPEAKER_00It was her nicest thing, maybe.
SPEAKER_03It was her nicest thing, maybe. And in my least generous spaces, I'm thinking she was like, Well, there's gonna be a dun bunch of doctors there, so it's time to move on. Mama's gotta get these bills paid.
SPEAKER_00Whoa. So to explain, to explain that last comment, your husband was a doctor, so there were doctor people that were gonna be there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you think maybe she was thinking, Well, next up, I think it's always interesting when an ex shows up at anything. Um I understand the sentiment though that that drove you to thinking, well, that would be the right thing to do. And I'm sure I don't know if she said anything to you, but she probably appreciated the gesture.
SPEAKER_03So she will actually come back up in a a different story about an awkward thing that happened when you let's hear about it.
SPEAKER_00Let's don't leave us hanging.
SPEAKER_03Right. So um I I think one of the most unpleasant parts of death is that like 24 hours after a person dies, like if they if particularly when they were young, so my husband died, he was in his 40s, yeah. So he had a will, but he didn't have like specific directives, and he died pretty suddenly. So there were not, so there's all these, and as I'm sort of getting at, there were some unusual uh states of of connection between he and I. But I I I was we were not divorced, we were still married. Yeah, so all of the planning falls to me as the person who I think at his death I still probably knew him best, honestly. But you have to make all these funeral arrangements while you're you know getting the shock and grief of what's just happened, and it's expensive.
SPEAKER_00Uh it's like it's like someone dies, you're dealing with that, and all of a sudden you're planning a party.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but like a crappy party, like a death party.
SPEAKER_00It's not a fun party, but you have all the things that go into like planning an event, suddenly you're managing all the stuff.
SPEAKER_03Right. Because if I could have buried my husband in a bounce house, that would have been a lot more fun.
SPEAKER_00Whoa, is that a thing you can do?
SPEAKER_03I don't think so. I'm just saying picking out a like whatever $8,000 coffin is like not what you want to do a day after space.
SPEAKER_00Is that what they cost?
SPEAKER_03It was rid I really think that like the funeral costs as I remember them were $10,000 plus. Wow. So you've got because you've got you don't just have a coffin, you have to put the coffin inside a giant metal box, and then you have to pay for the space for that giant metal box to go into.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_03And just as a to make things even more fun for us, my husband's parents wanted to have him. So he was born and grew up in North Carolina. Well, they wanted to have him taken back to North Carolina to be buried. And I knew that he did not want to be buried. He wanted to be cremated, but I was not gonna, you know, here's his father who's also grieving, and I want to be respectful of him, and this is his son. So we had to have him his whole his body transported back to North Carolina, which I think that alone was in the like $3,000 range. So it's all very expensive. It's not a fun time. Um, you're trying to balance lots of people's thoughts and feelings in this. And so, as part of the uh, so you go to the funeral home and you're making these choices and you're looking at caskets, and it's just terrible to think about. But as part of it, the folks who are getting the funeral together asking, you know, what was your husband like, what were his likes, what were his dislikes, because do you want anything like on the casket, flowers or decorations or whatever?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03And you know, in that moment, I was like, well, you know, he was an outdoorsy person. He really liked hiking, he liked the mountains, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So when that was, and I think the next day was the funeral, or maybe two days later. Uh, I can tell you this, and this is a this is maybe gruesome, but not really gruesome, but this might not be something some people so he was not embalmed. Uh so that was that was my compromise to having him not be cremated, was to have him not embalmed. But the thing is, if you you know, the nice thing that embalming does for a person, it kind of makes them into a wax figure.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um, if you don't do that, it the body starts to break down pretty quickly. Like yeah, it's uh so we were we were on a ticking time clock, like because he did his mom wanted to have an open casket, so there was an open casket part, and then we closed the casket and that, but it it was it was not looking good. I'll just I'll I'll leave it at that. There was a lot of makeup, and I think there was a lot of pulleys. You would not have wanted to have to lean in. I'm gonna I'm gonna go there with you as well.
SPEAKER_00Nature, nature is efficient.
SPEAKER_03It is, and it was time, time was a passing. So anyway, we had this first part where the family went in. I I went in, I did not let my children go in. I I made the choice that I I didn't feel like that was the image I wanted them to have of their dad. So we closed the casket and then they put this uh I I think they call them a spray, the funeral spray that goes on top of the casket. So there's this lovely thing. Well, as part of that spray, they had chosen because he was outdoorsy this seven point eight, it have it to be eight point, this eight-point buck statue, a kind of felted animal that was sitting on top of his casket.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what? Okay, wait a minute. So this was a a real deer, or was it a a stuffed deer? Was it a so yeah?
SPEAKER_03So do you know what flocking is? So if you imagine, yeah, so you've got like a plastic thing, and then on top of it, uh it has like a thin layer of like fur.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03So it was a statue, a plastic statue. Let's call it about a foot tall.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03And it was very realistic with the whole rack of deer antlers on top of its head. And that's what was sitting on top of his casket once they closed it up.
SPEAKER_00Was that sort of surprising to you?
SPEAKER_03I, you know, in that moment of you want a like you want a relief, I think. I think you know, the grief it can be so heavy and so hard. So in that moment, it was extraordinarily humorous. And and so welcome. And, you know, I love humor. I love laughing. I cope a lot with with humor, of course. Um, so I found it very funny. His mom also found a lot of humor in it. So we were laughing at the steer. I did take it off of the casket um because I thought it was ridiculous and not really representing it. It made him look like he was a big buck hunter or some kind of big game hunter. Like you might have well put an elephant on top of it. So I actually took it down and and um for the longest time we had it in a box of of things that were his uh that we that we kept. And every once in a while I would set it out and um just have it in some someplace in our house because I I found it humorous. But his uh uh lady friend showed up for the for the viewing. So this is, I guess, the before the funeral. Yeah, that's so that's the day before the funeral. So she showed up, she was looking uh very distraught when she arrived. And so I thought, well, I'll lighten the mood by telling her there's this plastic deer on top of the thing. And I told it to her, and there was no reaction. Like she looked at me like I had grown a second head. She had no idea what I was telling her or why, or why I thought that was was funny. I mean, I think for her in that moment, she was not, she was not having jokey time at that moment. So I knew immediately she was also humorless. So yeah. So yeah. Uh so that was pretty awkward. That whole situation went.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I I it's interesting. It's like listening to a priest or an officiant give a speech about someone and they don't know who they're talking about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh, I've definitely.
SPEAKER_00And you know, they've obviously chatted up with a uh with a with a family member, or more likely than not these days, it's a quick phone call or an email, and then they just try to work in. Well, you know, uh old Joe, he really liked uh he loved tennis. He liked refrigeration.
SPEAKER_03It's like they took a quiz on Huffington Post and like, you know, he would have been a Hufflepuff if he had uh if he'd had a house.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes it's it to me, it sounds like more like a mad lib, you know. They have all the things they're just putting in, you know. And he really liked funny cabbage. Everybody's like, uh, it's to me that's like the worst thing is for the efficient, the priest, whoever the rabbi, whoever it is to try to talk about someone they really don't know. Like, just I don't want that at all.
SPEAKER_03No, just don't say anything. I think it would be be better.
SPEAKER_00The people who know me don't even really understand half of the stuff about me, anyway. That's one of the things I wanted to touch on is how you can find in the darkest moment there will be something that will happen in this whole preparation process and the going through this rigor role that it can be extremely entertaining, funny, or just a relief. My uh experience uh that I want to share has to do with my father.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00I talk about him a lot here and there on the show, and mostly I make fun of him or I'm critical about him, but he was a pretty extraordinary person, suffice it to say, and lived uh uh an incredible and full life. He did not get cheated out of life, he was this complex person who was bigger than life, and you always knew where he was when he came into any room. Yeah. And I think that one of the greatest goals you can have as a human in this world is to be seen and to be remembered, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you can be seen and be remembered and you're not Hitler, you know, you're not doing the Hitler thing, but you're you're trying to do do something positive. Right. Um, that's that's what we all should be shooting for, you know, make a difference, um and uh, you know, bring some positivity, bring some happiness. And he he brought that um and more. And uh anybody who met him always walked away with a memory, no matter what, even though if it was a weird memory, including you.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say, I can confirm that this is absolutely 100% true.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because he thought you stole from my house.
SPEAKER_03He did, he definitely thought I stole some things from your house. But I still adored him, honestly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that really tall lady is ripping you off. I thought, I I just don't think so, dad. I just don't think so. But every single person who ever met him has a story, even if whether it's good or weird or bad, it's it's they all have something. And just, I mean, I could go on and on, but I won't, because it's really not about telling his story right now. But I will say that when he was in his nine early 90s, I had two high school friends come up to visit me, and it was their idea to go and visit him at the assisted living center where he was living, near where I live. It's like, let's go see your dad. And we hung out with him, and he was delighted. But you know, that's that's just a reflection of the impact he had on people in my life or people that he met. So um he was kind of a drama queen. Uh, my sister calls him King Baby. So he liked a lot of drama, but he died with no drama. He just one day his heart gave out. He was fine one day and the next day gone.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00And uh um, you know, I was there, I was there quickly after he passed. And true to form, I didn't want him to get cheated. I kissed him after he was dead.
SPEAKER_03Okay, good. Well, I think that's important, and I still feel uncomfortable, but I feel like it would have been uneven.
SPEAKER_00Exactly what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we knew my sister and I live here, live close by, so we kind of had to take on all of the processing of everything that happens, planning. You know, it's just so much that you have to do, and it falls on the shoulders of people who are are who are just really upset, but you still got to push through. Um, but at least I had her to share the load with and to check things out with. Then we found out that there were options for cremation that I did not know about.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Tell me about the options for cremation.
SPEAKER_00Well, option one is the flame out, which you're familiar with.
SPEAKER_03Uh could you be more specific? I am definitely familiar with the flame out, but I need for you to say specifically what it is.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, they they stick you in a uh really super hot oven and reduce you to ashes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But what I didn't like about that is first of all, it's not great for the environment.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And second of all, uh you don't know what kind of mix-ins you're getting.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Because there's remain there's ashes, you know, they they're putting people in this oven all day long, and they're yeah, they're supposed to be scraping out the ashes, but you know, it kind of depends on the person doing the cleanup that day, and maybe they're like, uh, whatever.
SPEAKER_03Is this is this is that is that true? I feel like that that they would be more thorough than that.
SPEAKER_00That they would you just don't you don't know unless you do it yourself, you know. So you're you got body smog, and then you also got we don't know, we don't know if if those ashes we have, that sack of ashes, we don't know.
SPEAKER_03In my mind, I'm sort of picturing something that looks like a Weber grill, and there's just a just a lot of things going on. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's like like when's the last time they cleaned it out? So I I so we found out there was something called alkaline hydrolysis.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Tell me what that is.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna give you my understanding of it. So you put the body in a tube of heated water and some other junk, you start a machine, and the body is basically broken down to its basic elements that I call goo. It's probably not really called goo, but you get the idea. So then they dry out the goo, they slap it in a ziploc, and off you pop.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00And that seemed better to me because it was high-tech, and my dad always loved the latest high-tech thing.
SPEAKER_03Well, then I say that that's the choice to make, yeah.
SPEAKER_00The other thing is you can only get one person in a tube at a time, so you're most likely to get back ashes of your real person that you want.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um, and then it just sounded kind of cool. You know, it sounded like a little wicked witch, you know, liquidator, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we went, we went ahead with the juice box method, and um, we were given a date, and you know, I wondered, like, I was hoping it would be okay. I mean, it was seemed like pretty new, and it was new in our area. That was the thing. It was we were told, like, well, you know, they haven't been having this technology in this area very long. So um, but we wanted it to go well, and I decided I needed to be there to make sure, you know, I want to see that it's him going in the tube, I want to see that it's you know goes correctly. Okay. So on the appointed day we show up at this place, and they do a little bit of everything at this place. They do regular cremations, they do this hydrolysis thing, and they also do animals. It's all on a sign outside this building. This building looks like something. If you were shooting like a bee horror movie, you would have scouted this, you would have scouted this location.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because it looked not really good. It looked like a big, sort of broken down, haunted warehouse. And if you were scouting this location, you'd probably tell the director that that you'd have to reject it because it's too stereotypical and nobody will buy it.
SPEAKER_03No one would believe this is an actual stout.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's it looks a little haunted.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Um, and it just looks like anything you want to drop off there, they're gonna roast it. Animals, horses, humans, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_03No questions asked. That's what the sign says. Drop off your dead, no questions asked.
SPEAKER_00So we're already feeling a little skittish about it because we're like as we're doing this new thing, and now we're at this place. And then there's a little office that you go into, and it looked like something out of the 1970s with the green shag carpet and the wood paneling, the crummy wood paneling, and a really, really old person who could be, you know, from a different century, uh working there. And when we told them why we were there, there was a lot of like, uh, you know, they whenever you're in a situation like that, you want people to act confident, even if they don't know what's going on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, please pretend you know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yes, like sell it, sell it to me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, be confident.
SPEAKER_00And this this person's like, uh, what now? You're here for what?
SPEAKER_03Oh no.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and and then there's calls to other people, like, uh, they're here. You know, it's just like so. That was that was weird. Um, there was a guy there from the church, like a representative of the church, because they were helping manage this process for us. So he was he showed up and he was trying the whole time this whole thing went on, he was trying to be like the voice of calm and happy. Like everything's normal, this is great. Yeah, it's a little weird, but don't worry. Yeah, that that kind of guy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we're waiting. I'm looking at my sister, and she knows me really well. So I'm giving her the look. I don't have to say a word. The look says, okay, this seems messed up.
SPEAKER_03I don't want this, I don't I don't like what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00It's just like, I don't know where this is going. All of a sudden, I told you about the wood paneling, a secret door opens up. What?
SPEAKER_01There's a secret door in the wood paneling?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, there is. And you're gonna think I'm making this up, and everybody listening to this, anyone who knows me, thinks I'm making this up. But the guy who opens the door is straight out of Hollywood casting as The Undertaker.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00The creepiest looking dude, tall, gaunt, pale, hair, slick back. Everything about him said, I've got five embalmed bodies that I dressed and placed around my kitchen table.
SPEAKER_03You know, they're having Christmas dinner right now from four decades.
SPEAKER_00So he looks at us and he speaks very quietly.
SPEAKER_03Oh, of course he does.
SPEAKER_00We're not quite ready yet. We will take you back when we have things arranged. And he goes away. So I'm like, Does he go back through the secret door? Oh, yeah, he disappeared. Oh so now there we are sitting there with the weird receptionist, the happy church guy who's like, uh, well, you know, Jesus Christ. He's trying to jolly everybody along. And my sister and I are like, wow, we've got to follow this on him. And we're glad we're there because we really have no idea what's going on. Yeah. So finally, the door, the magic door opens again, and then we're invited to follow him through these like darkened hallways. Oh my gosh. You know, like a maze. And we finally end up in this huge, huge warehouse space. Like it's so big. Uh, literally, you could have three professional football fields in there. Oh my gosh. It's that big. It's cavernous, it's mostly empty. Mostly.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Now I was expecting going into some kind of high-tech, sterilized room.
SPEAKER_03That's what I was picturing in my mind, like something out of the Matrix.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Guys in like white coats, technicians with clipboard, scientists, computers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like in any old movie, like they have these giant computers, and the things are whirring and blinking. That's what I was expecting.
SPEAKER_03And I kind of uh envisioned your dad in a tube in the middle of the room just floating there like normal.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're kind of close. So we're in this cavernous, dark, dingy space. There's a few, there's a few vehicles parked in there.
SPEAKER_03Inside the space?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it's huge. I mean, um you have to really imagine a like an airplane hangar, but even bigger. And there was a hearse in there, maybe it was full, I don't know, but that was parked. There was a forklift sort of unexplainably or inexplainably dwizzing around in the place. I don't know what they were forking, but there's forklifts. Um, then though, at the other end of this huge, dark, weird, creepy space, just sort of standing there like it just arrived and they just unpacked it was this bright, shiny tube and hardware. So think of shiny steel circus cannon.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So it's not see-through. In my mind, it was gonna be a glass tube. Okay, it's no, no, no, no. It's okay. That's probably better. That's a better choice.
SPEAKER_00I think it's better given what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, you're right.
SPEAKER_00Better for me, anyway. But outside the tube, there's a bat a metal basket suspended in the air, just outside the tube. And in the basket was my dad.
SPEAKER_03What? And okay, hold on. Wait a minute. So Lurch did not let you know before you got to that point that your dad was gonna be suspended in a basket next to a tube.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, that's so funny they called him Lurch because that's exactly what I was calling him. Uh so yeah, so Lurch didn't tell us anything, he was not a man of many words. He was strong, strong on the creep, low on the words.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I go up to it, and there's my dad. He looks pretty normal.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00I don't know where he'd been the last couple days. I don't know what they'd done to him, but he looked like he was asleep.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00And because he had lived a very drama, because he was king baby, he was a drama queen. I went up to him and I said, Okay, this is your last chance. If this is some kind of epic play for attention, you better snap out of it. And knowing him, there was a 50-50 chance, you know, that he was gonna pop up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's just like, ah, yeah, I really got this whole place. I rented it, I rented the whole place. Lurch is an actor friend of mine.
SPEAKER_00Or, or I can't believe you kids were gonna put me through this. You kids are no damn good. You're out of the wheel. So, so uh looked like all systems were go, and there were some people in there to help do things. They weren't wearing white coats though, but they're there were people to do things, and uh, you know, so they said, Are you ready? And we said, Yeah, we're ready. And my sister and I are there, and there's probably like six or seven people there. Okay, and um it's pretty quickly became clear that nobody there had done this before. No, no, it just uh so they slip, they they lower the cage, this basket rather, into the tube. So they so he goes in there. So I saw him go in, yeah, and then there is a it looks like the uh torpedo door or something from an old movie where you close it and then turn the handle to lock it down.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00It's all made out of steel, it's very shiny. And uh the guy who's in charge of closing the door, um, you have to close the door with some force. And uh he does so, and it makes the loudest bang you have ever heard. Like it was ear splitting in this cavernous spot, absolutely ear splitting, but it doesn't close. Yeah, so it doesn't close. He's it so he does it again, slam, and I mean it's loud, like metal on metal, super loud.
SPEAKER_03Again, no warning, nobody says closing or there, nothing.
SPEAKER_00No, no, so it's jarring, yeah, and then he does it again. Now the the guy from the church, you know, Mr. Happy, everything's okay. He starts looking concerned because he's afraid, I think. My read was he was afraid that my sister and I were gonna freak out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I think that would be reasonable if you did.
SPEAKER_00But he had no way of knowing, of course, that living with my dad all those years, we'd been trained, maybe by accident, to handle just this kind of situation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_00Anything weird with drama, like I mean, they could have shot him out of that cannon into a puddle of mountain dew. I mean, we wouldn't have blinked an eye. They could have all like lit themselves on fire and ate donuts, and we would have been like, next, please. Yeah, what's and now what? So we were we were just like rock steady, and he's like the the uh the church guy's like, um, are you okay? Are you everything okay? And we're like, Yeah, come on, keep going.
SPEAKER_03We're just waiting on the thing to happen. Is it gonna be loud again?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the guy trying to close the thing couldn't do it. And so he suddenly says, I'm gonna go get Bill.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, no, we don't need to add a new person to this next.
SPEAKER_00So apparently, Bill is like in charge of yeah, he's the master of the tube or something. I don't know, but everybody's like, Oh yeah, Bill, Bill, get Bill, you know. So he leaves, Lurch is gone, we're left with these other like helper people, and it's very awkward because I'm saying nothing because I got no chit-chat in me. You know, you know how it is, you're in this moment, you don't really feel like chit-chatting. And I don't know what anyone could say anyway. I mean, what are they gonna say? Like, oh, uh, is that your dad there? I guess he's uh dead.
SPEAKER_03You you get the kebabs, or are you just uh going for you going for kebabs after?
SPEAKER_00We have some in the back.
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, no good falafel place.
SPEAKER_00That hearse over there is filled with kebabs right now. Uh so finally Bill comes and it's like, okay, problem solved. Bill is the master of the tube, and he comes, he literally like rolls up his sleeves like he's gonna do one of those circus like hammer weight things, or you try to ring the bell. And he winds this thing up and really slams it bam, so loud, like it's ear splitting, it's jarring. If it wasn't so loud, it wouldn't even be a story, but it was so incredibly loud, and guess what? It still doesn't close. No, and then he does it again and again, and so finally, like he is like starting to sweat, and everybody looks very nervous because they can't even operate this stupid thing. And so finally, I can't take it anymore. So I say, I can do this. And everybody looks at me like, you don't work here, you don't, you don't, you're not tall and gaunt, and you don't your hair isn't slicked back, and you don't look dead at all, sir. Yeah, you're not creepy. Uh, but I said, I can do this, and they kind of shrug their shoulders like, well, we got nothing.
SPEAKER_03So you might no choices, so sure.
SPEAKER_00So they like give it a try. Yeah, it's like give it a try, junior. And uh I went up there, slammed and turned in one try, and it was closed. Did you really? Yeah, it went just like that. And I felt great because my dad would have loved all of that. He would have loved that they couldn't do it, he would have loved that uh his kid is the one that just did it in one try, and he would have loved all the drama. Like he didn't die in a dramatic way, but this part was there's a lot of drama.
SPEAKER_03There was a lot of yeah, he saved it to the to this part, right?
SPEAKER_00So then I figured I might as well go for broke and I say, Can I start the machine?
SPEAKER_03Yes. I mean at this point, you probably have a quarter share in the whole place.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking for the 401k at this point. Yep. Because I'm like, yeah, what's the profit sharing situation here? So they show me what to do, I do it. I hear the machine start, the goo process of starting. It takes about six to eight hours to do it. So I didn't stick around for all the rest.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I can't tell you with certainty that they didn't mix in a beagle or a malamute in there.
SPEAKER_03It seems very I mean, at that point, they were just probably so excited that someone knew how to close the vessel. They were like, let's just put it all in.
SPEAKER_00But you know, um, my dad was a big dog person, so he really wouldn't have minded having a couple of hounds in there with them. The only sadness about it was the person that would have enjoyed this story the most was my dad, because he loved hearing me tell my crazy adventures. And this one he was at the center of, he would have loved all of it. He would have thought it was just absolutely fantastic. Um, but I'm telling all of you uh as a substitute for telling my dad, my dad, and maybe if I float this out into the ether enough, somehow, magically, it will find its way into the goo.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I don't know what your life after death beliefs are, but um I I don't know. I sort of have a feeling that sometimes those things kind of get to our loved ones somehow.
SPEAKER_00I do believe in the legacy that you leave behind, and that's how you are immortal. And that's why I think it's so important to be seen and to be remembered.
SPEAKER_03There is one uh story I want I want to share with you, one other story I want to share with you. Um, so my mom had a good friend when we were I I was probably in my teens, and so they were in their 30s or so, and she got cancer and passed away. So she was also pretty young. Um, and again, uh vibrant, wonderful, beautiful person who passed away. So it was very tragic, and my mom was very sad, they were very close. Um, but at the funeral, for whatever reason related to that, they had the front doors open for the church. So, you know, there's very somber the organ music, and people are crying, and her husband's there, and all this, you know, it's very um just a very serious moment. And in through the door, the open doors of the church, a squirrel enters the church.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03Yep. And uh so people become aware that there's a squirrel in the church, and the squirrel becomes aware that it is no longer outside. And so both the people and the squirrel are unsure of how to alleviate the situation where the squirrel is not in a space where it needs to be. So it does what any normal squirrel would do, it panics and it just starts running down the various aisles where people are trying to sort of keep it together because this is a very somber moment and they're you know reflecting on this lice life lost.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But there's a squirrel running through. So people are screaming and picking up their legs, women are you know getting up into the pew. Men too, that men, women, others are getting up into the pew as the squirrel is making its way down from aisle to aisle. So one of the ushers finally, I I don't know if he gets an object or something, but he's trying to scooch this squirrel out of the church. So, of course, at this point, the whole service has stopped and it has just become about the squirrel and its location and how to get it out of the church because nobody wants to harm the squirrel, they just want to get him back outside. So there's uh all this commotion, they're moving him out and they're trying to get they fight finally at some point. I don't know if they capture him, but somehow the squirrel finally gets out of the church. Um, and there's a moment of laughter and relief, and you know, everybody sort of enjoys this moment that was unexpected and unplanned for. And my mom said, of course, the thing that Emily would have enjoyed so much this moment of people not being so serious and bunged up and sad for her loss, but enjoying the sort of unexpected, joyful uh occurrence that uh happened. So I I think it was a nice release for the folks who were there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think it's a good idea to release some kind of woodland creature in the middle of a funeral, just to like just break everybody down a little bit and get them out of that that sad space. I think that should be an L an intentional element of the service is a random creature of some kind is let loose into the audience that kind of is like a paradigm shift that just kind of just changes everyone's mood from uh the somber, grieving, sad state to a maybe a frightened, agitated, panicky state.
SPEAKER_03Yes, where they're screaming and trying to get on top of some something or someone. I I would like to make this a uh a request. Yeah. This may this stand as a living will that there be a live creature of some sort released into whatever memorial type service might be held after my passing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, that's done now. Yeah. And I'm thinking like a squirrel, everybody thinks squirrels are kind of cute until they're inside. That's true with a lot of animals, but a raccoon, I think, would be amazing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But I like the idea of it, at least a beaver, a trained beaver, maybe.
SPEAKER_00A trained beaver, yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of those around.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Amy. I appreciate you being here. Thank you, Ross. And thank you, everyone, for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, we'd sure love your help. You can follow the show, as we say, on Instagram and Twitter. You can rate us on Apple and give us a five-star rating and glowing review. And you can support us on Patreon as well. This is totally independent. We're just the little guys here. We're not famous, and we don't know anything. It's a good combo. So we have that going for us. And um, and all as always, I say you can send us an email. I'm gonna do a mailbag episode soon if we can get people sending us questions that we answer about ourselves or about the podcast. These are all things I would like to do. So start sending us your emails, and we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are shopping for just the right casket gear or just someone slamming a cremation tube, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.