May 6, 2025 • 27 mins
LIFE’S BOOMING SERIES 6: Dying to Know
Episode 6: Finding the funny side
Many of us are embracing more humour following the death of a loved one. But how do we make space for laughter without feeling like we’re getting it wrong? Comedian Michelle Brasier and grief counsellor Marianne Bowdler share their experiences.
About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors.
Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death.
In this episode, we explore the psychology behind our fear of death and how humour can help us face it. From heartfelt eulogies that land a laugh to finding the line between lightness and respect, we look at how Australians are using comedy to cope, connect and heal.
Michelle Brasier is an award-winning comedian, writer and performer known for her sharp wit, musical talent and deeply personal storytelling. After losing both her father and brother to cancer, Michelle channelled her grief into her stage show Average Bear (on ABC iview), and book My Brother's Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag, which blend humour, vulnerability and hope.
Marianne Bowdler is the clinical services manager at Griefline, where she supports Australians experiencing grief, loss and trauma. She draws on years of experience to explain how laughter, when used thoughtfully, can offer relief, connection and healing.
If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au
Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube
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For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast
Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency
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Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
TRANSCRIPT:
S06EP06 Finding the funny side
James: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death, but it's not all doom and gloom. On this episode we're going to embrace the funny side of grief. Forty-seven percent of the over 50s want to embrace more humor following the death of a loved one, according to an Australian senior's cost of death report.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and
this season we're talking about death, but it's not all
doom and gloom. On this episode, we're going to embrace
the funny side of grief. Forty seven percent of the
over fifties want to embrace more humor following the death
of a loved one, according to an Australian Senior's Cost of
(00:26):
Death report. Helping us navigate this somewhat confusing terrain are
two women who built their careers around talking about death
in very different ways. Mary Ane Butler is a grief
counselor and clinical services manager at Griefline who's worked extensively
supporting marginalized communities through bereavement, attachment, and loss. And Michelle
(00:47):
Brazier is a comedian, writer and actor. Her frank and
fearless brand of cabaret comedy has never made death funnier
and has taken her all the way to Broadway. Marian, Michelle,
Welcome to Life's Booming. What's grief? Li who calls.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Griefline. We interpret grief very broadly, so grief is any
response to a loss, so we lose lots of things
we might be you see a house flooding down the
river after a flood, could be redundancy, could be bankruptcy,
mister keys, the dog might have gone missing, so anything.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So do people think to call you in that sort
of thing? More and more?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And also ecological grief, which is that kind of nostalgia
that we have for how the climate used to be
right and the landscape that was and the beach that
used to be a barn here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So I was sort of an existential grief.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Grief is existential?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And then what what can you offer? What happens when
I call?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's that annoying concept, doesn't we hold space? It's about
listening without judge, and it's about enabling people to actually
shine a torch into the darkness of the sorrow and
the anguish that they might be experiencing. I mean, I
think a lot of times you might be a young
(02:16):
mom and you can't really be grieving because you've got
to look after the kids. There's lots of times when
you can't express your grief, and it's quite helpful to
be able to talk to a neutral third party who
can be supportive.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They be cultural issues as well in some cases, yes, yeah,
And who's on the end of the light, like, who's listening?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
A lovely band of volunteers. Yeah, so we have hundreds
of volunteers, and oftentimes it's someone who's been through a
significant grief experience and therefore they know what it's like
and they want to support somebody else. Or it might
be students who are trying to learn something a bit
beyond psychology, a bit more about existential scenes.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, Michelle, you know about grief.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I know about grief. I'm an old hatock grief for
such a young dog. I yeah, I talk about this
publicly all the time. To do a little recap, we
talk about this all the time, you and I. But
I my father was diagnosed when I was eighteen with
cancer and he died a week later. And shortly after that,
my brother was diagnosed with a similar cancer and he
(03:26):
died a few months later. And I am now assumed
Lynch syndrome, which is a genetic what's the word I'm
looking for a mutation? Yeah, predisposition. It's a predisposition to
certain types of cancers. And so I'm always being poked
and prodigen and things and getting things, you know, cut
(03:50):
out in early intervention, which is really lovely. But it
means that brief has become a good friend of mine.
And I make shows about all kinds of things, but
one of my most successful that you can watch on
ABCIB that became my book. It's called Average Bearing. It's
about it's about grief, but it's also about hope. And
I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that grief is
(04:13):
always a bad thing, and I think that it's a
really wonderful way through something, in a really wonderful way
to honor something. So I try to make the shows
that are funny about things that are sad.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, what did you even know of grief? I mean
they are eighteen, nineteen years old. I mean I'm thinking
of nineen year old me. I wouldn't had a clue.
I never even know what it was.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I didn't know anything. I mean I hadn't. My nan
had passed away, but she'd had Alzheimer's for my whole life,
and she'd died when I was quite young, so I
didn't really have any experience of grief except the dog.
And even the dog I had been told had gone
to the farm, classic right, And I truly thought that
the dog had gone to the farm until I was
about twenty six, and I went, oh, no, but yeah,
(04:56):
so I hadn't really had any any life experience of grief.
Haven't really had any life experience at all. I mean,
of course, I think, you know, it really hit me
in the face. I had just gotten out of hospital
myself because I'd been in a buyer and had had
third degree birds and had to learn to walk again,
and I was surrounded by a lot of grief there.
But I didn't know it was right around the corner
for me. I saw people lose people all the time,
(05:19):
and I was, you know, starting to wise up that
maybe the world wasn't quite so simple. But when I
lost my dad so fast, grief became a very fast,
you know, friend and a big element of my life
and something I was so interested in because my friends
weren't going through it. It was very strange. I think
when you're young and you lose somebody, if you're the
(05:40):
first one in your friendship group, it can be really isolating,
or you can choose to make it a place if
you joined a club you didn't want to the dead
dad club, as I loll it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But you had no prep for it. I mean, be
something if you had cancer for a few years, yeah,
you know, you prep you'd have a chance to talk
to your mother about it and everybody about it, that
start to realize this is what's going to happen. You know.
It must have been just like so it'd be like
any of a disease itself, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Well it is. I mean, I think it just happens
when it does happen so fast like that. It was
an assault on the sensus. And I have a chapter
in my book that's called the Actual Stages of Grief
because that's how I've experienced it, and I talk about
how the world becomes small, like the world just closes
in and you find yourself, you know, just assaulted by
(06:33):
all these ideas and they don't feel real until you
finally eat a piece of pizza again. And you know,
I think it was a really fast introduction into perspective
and a really quick life lesson and being curious and
(06:54):
trying to open yourself up to as many experiences as
you can because you don't know how long you have.
And I mean, Dad was just that that was the
canary in the coal mine. I didn't know it was
going to lead to my brother and all the you know,
we didn't realize it was like a first domino. I
was like, oh, this is the bad thing that happens
in my life. It didn't feel like a marker. But
now it's very clear that that was the point where
(07:16):
my life changed and continued to sort of tumble them down.
But I'm still really grateful for, you know, the things
that I've learned from grief and the way that I've
learned to honor people.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, Mary, can we prepare for grief? I mean, is
it something that it should be something that's part of
all of our lives and we think about what this
might mean, or is it just something that you're going
to have to experience it when it happens.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's spectacularly unhelpful to say the dog's gone to the farm.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yes, man, I suppose it's not a bad place to start,
is it. People often feel like having the guinea peak
or the dog is a good way to teach children about.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The exactly, and it's how do you have those conversations.
I think very little children and are quite interested and
curious about death because you find like a dead beetle
or a dead bee and you're like, what what is
life that now has departed from this dead beetle or
what have you. It sort of disappears for a bit,
and then it comes back in the teenage years where
(08:16):
you can get, you know, very emo and neolistic and
want to get skulls and crossbones.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Touch Grandma dies when you're a teenager, Yeah, that's not uncommon.
Is that that's about the age.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And I think it's more helpful now because we tend
to take the children to the funeral, whereas back in
the day when children were really excluded from any of
the processes around death or even from going to visit
grandma in hospital, and we don't want your memory of
her to be with all the tubes and what have you.
And then it's just not real and you try and
(08:49):
explain to your a young child and they're like, yeah, yeah,
I get it, I get it, but if she coming
to my birthday, there's that sort of you didn't quite
get it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
But I feel like that's that's that's learning about death,
not necessarily about grief. Grief is what you're going to
feel that you know, grief is the price we pay
for love, or grief is you know when you're still
trying to love with the person's in't there, Like, those
are the things you can't know that until it's your
mum that dies or your wife that dies.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Right, Well, I think literature can help we develop our
empathy from reading, but really nothing prepares you till you
go through it.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think even the grief of losing a relationship can
be really right. Any grief your first experience of grief,
and I think it's just wonderful to have someone on
the other side of it who can say, I went
through it. Here's how it felt, Here's what the aftermath
was like. Here's what it was like when all the
flowers died and people stopped bringing lasagna and they forgot
that I was grieving and they moved on. Here's what
(09:54):
that pocket is like. And here's what it's like five
years after. And here's what it's like ten years after.
And that's what I I think the stories bringing value
is going, hey, it's fine, and here it is and
I survived, and here's how like day to day. Here's
how I think that's really beautiful because I remember just going,
how am I ever going to be okay? How is
this going to be okay? And calling people that I
(10:16):
knew that were older than me who had lost people
and saying, can you just please tell me it's going
to be okay and tell me why and tell me
examples of how it's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And then the only downside of that is that you
can get this sort of narrative of this is the
way to grieve, and then what we hear and many
stories that people have different ways agree. Yeah, yeah, it's
not everybody like when I grieve, I kind of cry
a river and then get a headache, right, Wish.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
That went true, But that's that's just it.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But not everybody does that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, well this was this, you know. Elizabeth Koble
Ross was very popular and talked about for many years
with the seven stages of grieving. But there is no
fixed You might be angry for a minute, you might
be angry for a week, you know, like there's nothing
to fixed about it is that the duration neither the
duration nor the order exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And you might feel all the emotions or the same.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Time yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Or none of them or no.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And that's something that a lot of people don't talk
to you as well. You might feel just numb for
quite a time, and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that.
It is it is an interesting thing to go through,
but such a beautiful and human thing. I mean, I
love how we make meaning of things that aren't necessarily
meaningful as people, and I think that's how we add
value to our lives and honor those who have died.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But yeah, when we say that, what do you mean
we will make meaning out of do you mean we're
making meaning out of grief? Because grief is very meaningful,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, just meaning out of the little things. So like
taking control of your story. And I suppose this is
my experience, but I always tell the story of my
when my father was dying and he had been diagnosed
with cancer and I had just learned to walk again
and got out of the hospital, and I had this
feeling that I should go home to my countrytown where
my dad lived. I was just like, I just feel
(12:05):
like I should go. I feel like something's gone wrong
because they'd said to us there'll be another Christmas, which
is another thing. You go, okay, and that's a bug,
and you go, okay, you're right right, I've been promised
at least another Christmas. And I had this feeling in
the middle of the night that we weren't going to
get another Christmas, and then we weren't going to get
another twenty four hours. And I got in the car
and I drove, and my brother called me in the
middle of the night and said, you know, I've just
(12:27):
gotten back to Wogga. We've booked you on the first flight.
Dad's asking for you. He's not good. And I was like,
you can can to the flight. I'm in Aubrey, I'm
an hour away. I just knew. And I'm not religious.
I'm not you know, I don't necessarily think I'm super
spiritual or anything like that. But I make meaning where
there is none. In that I felt I had to
(12:48):
be there, and so I was there. And when I
say there is none, it's because I would have been
on the first flight in the morning anyway, and I
would have seen him, and I would have got to
say goodbye anyway. But there is so much beauty and
poetry in driving through the night, because I had a
feeling and it could have meant nothing. It could he
could have not gone, and he did. He went the
next day. But that's where we put meaning, you know,
(13:09):
as somebody who's not religious. I can see the value
of religion and the value of faith in going well.
I don't have necessarily religion or faith, but I have
this meaning in stories. You know. It's that it's the
meaning and then the humor that undercuts all that meaning.
And I think that's what makes it human and that's
what makes it special.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, Marianne, you know, perhaps we can only learn to
grieve when it happens to us. We could learn we
could all learn to deal with other people's grief. Right
as a society, are we well equipped with dealing with
the grieving.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Kind of saying.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Because our statutory bereavement leaves only two days, is it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I don't have real job, so I don't know, so
that's not two days two days, and so workplaces struggle
to know how to support yes, people, And we do
trainings for like you know, how to support your colleagues,
how to support the team mate's, how to cope in
the in the office.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And yeah, a lot of there's a lot of interest
because people just that we don't know, we don't know
how to support the team.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So, you know, I'd struggle to know whether to say
something or not. Hygiene from me don't want this mention
in the workplace. But then I should have said something,
and then it's all too late.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I don't think it's ever too late. And I think
that it's the struggle that's about you. It's not about
the person who's grieving. And you can go to a
person and just say would you like to talk about
this or would you like to leave it? That's not
going to make a person cry, And if it is,
they're so close to crying that they're going to cry anyway.
And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with crying. We sort
of want to just hold it. It's a Britishness in this,
I think, but you want to hold these emotions in.
(14:49):
I just think we can't treat people who are grieving,
or who are dying for that matter, with cotton gloves wet,
you know. And that's why I make these shows for
people to come and laugh. And I have so many
the audience members who are actively dying and they come,
they're like, tonight might be the night let's go. I like, yes, Like,
let's have a laugh. If you only have twenty four
hours left, the least I can do is give you
(15:10):
a laugh. Like I think that we need to invite
people into grief and into dying. And you know, it's
the problem with our society is that we go, oh,
and you know people who are dying so often, and
i'd sure you, maybe you even have this experience, but
people get diagnosed with cancer and people just back off
because they don't want to say the wrong thing. People
aren't going to be upset with you saying the wrong thing.
(15:31):
They're going to be upset with you for disappearing in
that tiny little period where they needed you the most.
You'll get it wrong, and that's fine. They'll tell you
how to do it right, and you'll fix it like
an adult, grow up.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That is that fundamental thing, is it? We're too scared
of getting it wrong. I'm sorry for your loss. Oh God,
was that terrible thing to say? Like maybe maybe it
is a terrible thing to say, but it's better than
not say anything.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Or in the.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Workplace where everybody's looking at the children's photos from the
holiday and then the colleague whose child died and yeah,
and the colleague will say, you know, I think about
my child every moment of every day. It's not like
you've done something to remind me.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I'm fully aware.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, I know my kid is dead. Yeah, I don't
need you to remind mean, I know it's okay.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And I think one of the best things you can
just say is I've got your back.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
But I suppose this is the kind of thing we
could all help one another with. Is this could we
could be We could all be a little more instructed
in this.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And I think there were perhaps if you look at
the English Victorian tradition, it's like now they're wearing black.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Now they've got a little bit of purple.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Now they've got jet jewelry, now that they're all these
signifiers that let us know how far you know, how
long ago the morning process started. We don't know anything.
We can't tell by looking at a person what happened
last week, what happened ten years ago?
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah? Yeah, does humor help?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Absolutely? We would look at the distress. If you're just
going to go a bit sciencing, the distress that you've
experienced in grief is called situational distress. You know, a
thing happened, then you got distressed, and part of that
would be a very low mood. For example, if you
do nothing to break the low mood, that can run
(17:22):
into depression. And that can run into a major depressive disorder,
and then.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
You're sort of stuck.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But the best thing that will kind of doesn't take
away the distress exactly, but it ruptures that is comedy
is having a laugh, because it alleviates the mood, it
alleviates the tension. You feel more connected, and certainly in
a comedy show, you just feel connected to everybody else
in the room.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, yeah, and you went, I mean you went to it.
It is you. I mean, I'm the same. I tend
to talk in humor. Yeah, you know, that's my tone.
My predominant tone is to try and be funny. And
so therefore, whatever happens, you know, I had cancer, I
was automatically making jokes about it. I still do. You know,
so you but is it more than that, Is it
(18:06):
more than just your way of speaking, your way.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Of b I think it. Yeah, I think it is.
You know that second nature. You can't if you're a clown.
You're a clown. You can't turn it off. Then you
shouldn't turn it off unless you want to. But I
also back on the science y stuff. You know, there
there is such a similar physiological response that we have
to crying as we do when we're laughing or when
(18:30):
I'm singing. It's just it's our release. It's you know,
all this vagus nerve stuff. Just getting it out. A
release is so valuable. And if that release can be laughter,
you're not going to get a headache as quickly as
you will with the tears. And so maybe it comes
along with the tears, and maybe they need to be
friends and they need to you know, be together, and
(18:51):
it's it's the cast and we need it as animals,
we need it. So I think that's why.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's so it's off of a truth as well, Like
I think, you know, some of the best laughs she'll
have is at a funeral, Oh my god. Yeah, because
you will tell each other truths about the person and
about your relationship to them, and somebody will start telling
you a story and go, oh my god, they never
told the story like that. Yeah, like all those sort
of things. It's fantastic, you know, it's humor is often
(19:19):
truth telling.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And the reason it's so funny is because it breaks
the tension of this wild ritual of funerals that we have,
that is it doesn't really suit us as a society.
It's somebody speaking on a microphone that doesn't really work,
and they don't know how to use the microphone. They're
making a speech. They're not a good speech, right, they
shouldn't be making a speech. Somebody else should be making
a speech. It's never going well, and that's kind of funny.
(19:40):
My dad's funeral was excellent. He went, he'd made we'd
made this playlist of his favorite songs for him to
be carried out of the church too, and un wutuingly,
there was like a bit of a mix up and
that playlist didn't play when he was carried out of
the church. It played as he was lowered into the
ground in the cemetery, which we have been fine had
the first song not been Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash.
(20:05):
And it was the funniest thing that's ever happened. And
my family was in hysterics. Everybody else taking it very seriously,
didn't know what to do, didn't know how to touch it,
trying to keep it away. But the rest of us,
the one who really really knew him and really loved him,
were in there having a laugh because it was like,
this is absurd. He would have loved He would have
loved it, and death is absurd and so with life.
And that's fine, you know. I think we just need
(20:27):
to go gentle with ourselves and with the people that
we're trying to help, but gentle with ourselves in our
own approach to it, you know, let yourself have a
lot that hard.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. I sometimes think that that death is the ultimate
joke because we we live like it's never going to happen. Yeah,
so he's all of us live every single day as
though we are never going to die. How do you
think people react to you? You know, like I'm thinking
of you know, Lasani won't bring back my dead dad,
your famous song about the fact that you know, while
(20:57):
grieving you'll get a lot of the sun. Yeah. Yeah,
people react like have you had people just go this
is too much, I can't deal with this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I've never had that reaction. And I've done the show
so many times people have watched it on TV and
I've never gotten a d M saying this is rude
or this is wrong, you know, disrespectful. It's always the
people in the show, like the people who have grieved
that think it's the funniest. I even say after that
I do that song in the show, I say, if
(21:25):
somebody next to you is laughing quite loudly at that.
I'd like you to turn to them and say sorry
for you're lost, because that's you know, it is. It's universal.
It's so universal. So no, I've never had somebody complain
about me not taking death seriously.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Has it helped you?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, if I didn't have humor, if I took myself seriously,
I would be terrified every moment. I'm already terrified. Look
at the news, you know, I look at the news. Sorry,
that was bad advice. Don't look at the new, but
do vote well. But I just think, you know, I
(22:06):
don't know who I would be if I if I
took things seriously, if I took myself seriously, or I
would have such a difficult time, and I'm already stressed
about every lump and bump, and you know, it's it's
really scary. I'm scared of dying. But it means that
I think I live my life like I am going
to die tomorrow. And that's the gift that I've been
given by grief.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
But I also not your own diagnosis. Yeah, we should
just emphasize that again, you are living with the threat
that the same thing that happened to you about your
brother and father.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Can happen, Yes, exactly. And I think knowing that even
though everyone could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and
it really doesn't make me any more likely than anyone
else at the end of the day. But it's a gift.
It's a gift, the gift of perspective of knowing that, like,
you're only here for a short time, so you might
as well make it a good time. And that's true
of anyone. It doesn't matter if you live to one hundred,
(22:55):
it's probably still going to feel sure.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, if you're like you, Yeah, we kind of know that,
but we don't really live like that. Do we marry it?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We don't, but there's good reason to think that we should.
In the world of grief literature, we talk about the
loss of the assumptive.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
World, the assumptive world, the assumptive world.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
As a child, we assumed it would always be a
Sunday afternoon, and we'd go home and have tim dams
and everything would be the same day after day. And
then the first time you sort of meet death, it's
like the rug's been pulled out from under you, and
you can't assume that anymore and then suddenly you're unsafe
and you panic. But I think what's a curious moment
(23:41):
for all of us was the pandemic gave the whole
world and everybody. We all collectively lost the assumptive world
at the same time. So now we're sort of on
shakier ground. But when we come back to just each
and every one of us, Yes, I think it's helpful
to understand that we are immortal, and when you get
(24:02):
your head around that, then you can I think fully
be present in the moment and enjoy things.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But there's always a lot of people say about the
pandemic years is perhaps particularly that first year, particularly if
you weren't in Melbourne. But that first year was also like,
isn't this great? We're all living this together. We are
all now understanding that can we more, We're very mortal
and can be threatened. Oh my lord, our governments are
all working together. But it always seems as like as
(24:27):
soon as we could get over that and forget all
that we did.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, we did, we did.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think we just we're looking for someone to blame,
I mean, not to get into that sort of existential
divided society crisis that we're in currently. Don't look at
the news. But yeah, COVID was interesting to see how
people reacted to it and the grief. I talk about
this in my book as well. But I say I
was born at the end of history because I was
(24:52):
a nineties kid and they were calling it the end
of history. They were like, the war is done, the
wars are done. We're done during the wars, where do
in peace? Now we're smarter than that. We've sorted it out,
and you can be whatever you want to be. And
this is before we knew my generation wasn't going to
be able to afford to hours and we really were promised.
And it's why I've been successful in my career because
(25:14):
my parents were like, yeah, I guess you can do
whatever you want now, that's what they're saying. And I
was like, well, I believe you, which I'm lucky I
did and sort of followed my nose to where I've gotten.
But I think there is an enormous amount of collective
grief in every generation. But I think it really like
hits my generation very hard because we can't believe we
(25:35):
were lied to, like you know, and I think we
were feeling that and then COVID came and I think
everyone sort of started to feel that. But I mean,
everyone's different, has their own set of circumstances, and I'm
speaking very generally, but it is difficult.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
But across the board, anxiety went up, especially of your generation.
And some people would think that what lies underneath all
anxiety is death anxiety.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think that's really true.
It's definitely my man anxiety. You know.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You know, we've been talking about grief as you know,
it's it's something I suppose we probably always sort of
these sort of emotions as something that defined us. To
find humanity, that's what that was, what makes us human.
We've had all those stories of some like elephants grieving
and things, haven't we Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Absolutely, or and you see it with your pets as well.
They'll go searching for the person who's not there.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You should let your dog sniff the dead person or
the other dead dog should do that so they know
what's happened.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, And last year I read that blue tongue lizards grief,
which I'm still very touched by that.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, it was a lizard was trapped on our fence
and died and the mate just stayed with it for
I think three or four days.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Wow, So everything does not just mammals. Yeah, yeah, not
just the cold blooded one to do too, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Do you think mosquitoes are grieving? Got a lot too.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So when you when you wack one, just guess.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Sorry now I'm sorry, sorry, I feel all sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's really sad that you cover its. Marian, thank you
so much, thank you, thank your lovely conversation. Michelle, lovely, thank.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
You, thank you so much. Well.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Thanks to our guests Marann Butler and Michelle Brazier. You've
been listening to season six of Life's Booming Dying to Know,
brought to you by Australian Seniors. Please leave a review
or tell someone about it. Head to seniors dot com
dot au slash podcast for more episodes. May Your Life
Be Booming. I'm James Valentine.
Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and
this season we're talking about death, but it's not all
doom and gloom. On this episode, we're going to embrace
the funny side of grief. Forty seven percent of the
over fifties want to embrace more humor following the death
of a loved one, according to an Australian Senior's Cost of
(00:26):
Death report. Helping us navigate this somewhat confusing terrain are
two women who built their careers around talking about death
in very different ways. Mary Ane Butler is a grief
counselor and clinical services manager at Griefline who's worked extensively
supporting marginalized communities through bereavement, attachment, and loss. And Michelle
(00:47):
Brazier is a comedian, writer and actor. Her frank and
fearless brand of cabaret comedy has never made death funnier
and has taken her all the way to Broadway. Marian, Michelle,
Welcome to Life's Booming. What's grief? Li who calls.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Griefline. We interpret grief very broadly, so grief is any
response to a loss, so we lose lots of things
we might be you see a house flooding down the
river after a flood, could be redundancy, could be bankruptcy,
mister keys, the dog might have gone missing, so anything.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So do people think to call you in that sort
of thing? More and more?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And also ecological grief, which is that kind of nostalgia
that we have for how the climate used to be
right and the landscape that was and the beach that
used to be a barn here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So I was sort of an existential grief.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Grief is existential?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And then what what can you offer? What happens when
I call?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's that annoying concept, doesn't we hold space? It's about
listening without judge, and it's about enabling people to actually
shine a torch into the darkness of the sorrow and
the anguish that they might be experiencing. I mean, I
think a lot of times you might be a young
(02:16):
mom and you can't really be grieving because you've got
to look after the kids. There's lots of times when
you can't express your grief, and it's quite helpful to
be able to talk to a neutral third party who
can be supportive.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They be cultural issues as well in some cases, yes, yeah,
And who's on the end of the light, like, who's listening?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
A lovely band of volunteers. Yeah, so we have hundreds
of volunteers, and oftentimes it's someone who's been through a
significant grief experience and therefore they know what it's like
and they want to support somebody else. Or it might
be students who are trying to learn something a bit
beyond psychology, a bit more about existential scenes.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, Michelle, you know about grief.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I know about grief. I'm an old hatock grief for
such a young dog. I yeah, I talk about this
publicly all the time. To do a little recap, we
talk about this all the time, you and I. But
I my father was diagnosed when I was eighteen with
cancer and he died a week later. And shortly after that,
my brother was diagnosed with a similar cancer and he
(03:26):
died a few months later. And I am now assumed
Lynch syndrome, which is a genetic what's the word I'm
looking for a mutation? Yeah, predisposition. It's a predisposition to
certain types of cancers. And so I'm always being poked
and prodigen and things and getting things, you know, cut
(03:50):
out in early intervention, which is really lovely. But it
means that brief has become a good friend of mine.
And I make shows about all kinds of things, but
one of my most successful that you can watch on
ABCIB that became my book. It's called Average Bearing. It's
about it's about grief, but it's also about hope. And
I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that grief is
(04:13):
always a bad thing, and I think that it's a
really wonderful way through something, in a really wonderful way
to honor something. So I try to make the shows
that are funny about things that are sad.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, what did you even know of grief? I mean
they are eighteen, nineteen years old. I mean I'm thinking
of nineen year old me. I wouldn't had a clue.
I never even know what it was.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I didn't know anything. I mean I hadn't. My nan
had passed away, but she'd had Alzheimer's for my whole life,
and she'd died when I was quite young, so I
didn't really have any experience of grief except the dog.
And even the dog I had been told had gone
to the farm, classic right, And I truly thought that
the dog had gone to the farm until I was
about twenty six, and I went, oh, no, but yeah,
(04:56):
so I hadn't really had any any life experience of grief.
Haven't really had any life experience at all. I mean,
of course, I think, you know, it really hit me
in the face. I had just gotten out of hospital
myself because I'd been in a buyer and had had
third degree birds and had to learn to walk again,
and I was surrounded by a lot of grief there.
But I didn't know it was right around the corner
for me. I saw people lose people all the time,
(05:19):
and I was, you know, starting to wise up that
maybe the world wasn't quite so simple. But when I
lost my dad so fast, grief became a very fast,
you know, friend and a big element of my life
and something I was so interested in because my friends
weren't going through it. It was very strange. I think
when you're young and you lose somebody, if you're the
(05:40):
first one in your friendship group, it can be really isolating,
or you can choose to make it a place if
you joined a club you didn't want to the dead
dad club, as I loll it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But you had no prep for it. I mean, be
something if you had cancer for a few years, yeah,
you know, you prep you'd have a chance to talk
to your mother about it and everybody about it, that
start to realize this is what's going to happen. You know.
It must have been just like so it'd be like
any of a disease itself, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Well it is. I mean, I think it just happens
when it does happen so fast like that. It was
an assault on the sensus. And I have a chapter
in my book that's called the Actual Stages of Grief
because that's how I've experienced it, and I talk about
how the world becomes small, like the world just closes
in and you find yourself, you know, just assaulted by
(06:33):
all these ideas and they don't feel real until you
finally eat a piece of pizza again. And you know,
I think it was a really fast introduction into perspective
and a really quick life lesson and being curious and
(06:54):
trying to open yourself up to as many experiences as
you can because you don't know how long you have.
And I mean, Dad was just that that was the
canary in the coal mine. I didn't know it was
going to lead to my brother and all the you know,
we didn't realize it was like a first domino. I
was like, oh, this is the bad thing that happens
in my life. It didn't feel like a marker. But
now it's very clear that that was the point where
(07:16):
my life changed and continued to sort of tumble them down.
But I'm still really grateful for, you know, the things
that I've learned from grief and the way that I've
learned to honor people.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, Mary, can we prepare for grief? I mean, is
it something that it should be something that's part of
all of our lives and we think about what this
might mean, or is it just something that you're going
to have to experience it when it happens.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's spectacularly unhelpful to say the dog's gone to the farm.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yes, man, I suppose it's not a bad place to start,
is it. People often feel like having the guinea peak
or the dog is a good way to teach children about.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The exactly, and it's how do you have those conversations.
I think very little children and are quite interested and
curious about death because you find like a dead beetle
or a dead bee and you're like, what what is
life that now has departed from this dead beetle or
what have you. It sort of disappears for a bit,
and then it comes back in the teenage years where
(08:16):
you can get, you know, very emo and neolistic and
want to get skulls and crossbones.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Touch Grandma dies when you're a teenager, Yeah, that's not uncommon.
Is that that's about the age.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And I think it's more helpful now because we tend
to take the children to the funeral, whereas back in
the day when children were really excluded from any of
the processes around death or even from going to visit
grandma in hospital, and we don't want your memory of
her to be with all the tubes and what have you.
And then it's just not real and you try and
(08:49):
explain to your a young child and they're like, yeah, yeah,
I get it, I get it, but if she coming
to my birthday, there's that sort of you didn't quite
get it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
But I feel like that's that's that's learning about death,
not necessarily about grief. Grief is what you're going to
feel that you know, grief is the price we pay
for love, or grief is you know when you're still
trying to love with the person's in't there, Like, those
are the things you can't know that until it's your
mum that dies or your wife that dies.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Right, Well, I think literature can help we develop our
empathy from reading, but really nothing prepares you till you
go through it.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think even the grief of losing a relationship can
be really right. Any grief your first experience of grief,
and I think it's just wonderful to have someone on
the other side of it who can say, I went
through it. Here's how it felt, Here's what the aftermath
was like. Here's what it was like when all the
flowers died and people stopped bringing lasagna and they forgot
that I was grieving and they moved on. Here's what
(09:54):
that pocket is like. And here's what it's like five
years after. And here's what it's like ten years after.
And that's what I I think the stories bringing value
is going, hey, it's fine, and here it is and
I survived, and here's how like day to day. Here's
how I think that's really beautiful because I remember just going,
how am I ever going to be okay? How is
this going to be okay? And calling people that I
(10:16):
knew that were older than me who had lost people
and saying, can you just please tell me it's going
to be okay and tell me why and tell me
examples of how it's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And then the only downside of that is that you
can get this sort of narrative of this is the
way to grieve, and then what we hear and many
stories that people have different ways agree. Yeah, yeah, it's
not everybody like when I grieve, I kind of cry
a river and then get a headache, right, Wish.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
That went true, But that's that's just it.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But not everybody does that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, well this was this, you know. Elizabeth Koble
Ross was very popular and talked about for many years
with the seven stages of grieving. But there is no
fixed You might be angry for a minute, you might
be angry for a week, you know, like there's nothing
to fixed about it is that the duration neither the
duration nor the order exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And you might feel all the emotions or the same.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Time yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Or none of them or no.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And that's something that a lot of people don't talk
to you as well. You might feel just numb for
quite a time, and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that.
It is it is an interesting thing to go through,
but such a beautiful and human thing. I mean, I
love how we make meaning of things that aren't necessarily
meaningful as people, and I think that's how we add
value to our lives and honor those who have died.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But yeah, when we say that, what do you mean
we will make meaning out of do you mean we're
making meaning out of grief? Because grief is very meaningful,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, just meaning out of the little things. So like
taking control of your story. And I suppose this is
my experience, but I always tell the story of my
when my father was dying and he had been diagnosed
with cancer and I had just learned to walk again
and got out of the hospital, and I had this
feeling that I should go home to my countrytown where
my dad lived. I was just like, I just feel
(12:05):
like I should go. I feel like something's gone wrong
because they'd said to us there'll be another Christmas, which
is another thing. You go, okay, and that's a bug,
and you go, okay, you're right right, I've been promised
at least another Christmas. And I had this feeling in
the middle of the night that we weren't going to
get another Christmas, and then we weren't going to get
another twenty four hours. And I got in the car
and I drove, and my brother called me in the
middle of the night and said, you know, I've just
(12:27):
gotten back to Wogga. We've booked you on the first flight.
Dad's asking for you. He's not good. And I was like,
you can can to the flight. I'm in Aubrey, I'm
an hour away. I just knew. And I'm not religious.
I'm not you know, I don't necessarily think I'm super
spiritual or anything like that. But I make meaning where
there is none. In that I felt I had to
(12:48):
be there, and so I was there. And when I
say there is none, it's because I would have been
on the first flight in the morning anyway, and I
would have seen him, and I would have got to
say goodbye anyway. But there is so much beauty and
poetry in driving through the night, because I had a
feeling and it could have meant nothing. It could he
could have not gone, and he did. He went the
next day. But that's where we put meaning, you know,
(13:09):
as somebody who's not religious. I can see the value
of religion and the value of faith in going well.
I don't have necessarily religion or faith, but I have
this meaning in stories. You know. It's that it's the
meaning and then the humor that undercuts all that meaning.
And I think that's what makes it human and that's
what makes it special.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, Marianne, you know, perhaps we can only learn to
grieve when it happens to us. We could learn we
could all learn to deal with other people's grief. Right
as a society, are we well equipped with dealing with
the grieving.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Kind of saying.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Because our statutory bereavement leaves only two days, is it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I don't have real job, so I don't know, so
that's not two days two days, and so workplaces struggle
to know how to support yes, people, And we do
trainings for like you know, how to support your colleagues,
how to support the team mate's, how to cope in
the in the office.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And yeah, a lot of there's a lot of interest
because people just that we don't know, we don't know
how to support the team.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So, you know, I'd struggle to know whether to say
something or not. Hygiene from me don't want this mention
in the workplace. But then I should have said something,
and then it's all too late.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I don't think it's ever too late. And I think
that it's the struggle that's about you. It's not about
the person who's grieving. And you can go to a
person and just say would you like to talk about
this or would you like to leave it? That's not
going to make a person cry, And if it is,
they're so close to crying that they're going to cry anyway.
And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with crying. We sort
of want to just hold it. It's a Britishness in this,
I think, but you want to hold these emotions in.
(14:49):
I just think we can't treat people who are grieving,
or who are dying for that matter, with cotton gloves wet,
you know. And that's why I make these shows for
people to come and laugh. And I have so many
the audience members who are actively dying and they come,
they're like, tonight might be the night let's go. I like, yes, Like,
let's have a laugh. If you only have twenty four
hours left, the least I can do is give you
(15:10):
a laugh. Like I think that we need to invite
people into grief and into dying. And you know, it's
the problem with our society is that we go, oh,
and you know people who are dying so often, and
i'd sure you, maybe you even have this experience, but
people get diagnosed with cancer and people just back off
because they don't want to say the wrong thing. People
aren't going to be upset with you saying the wrong thing.
(15:31):
They're going to be upset with you for disappearing in
that tiny little period where they needed you the most.
You'll get it wrong, and that's fine. They'll tell you
how to do it right, and you'll fix it like
an adult, grow up.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That is that fundamental thing, is it? We're too scared
of getting it wrong. I'm sorry for your loss. Oh God,
was that terrible thing to say? Like maybe maybe it
is a terrible thing to say, but it's better than
not say anything.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Or in the.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Workplace where everybody's looking at the children's photos from the
holiday and then the colleague whose child died and yeah,
and the colleague will say, you know, I think about
my child every moment of every day. It's not like
you've done something to remind me.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I'm fully aware.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, I know my kid is dead. Yeah, I don't
need you to remind mean, I know it's okay.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And I think one of the best things you can
just say is I've got your back.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
But I suppose this is the kind of thing we
could all help one another with. Is this could we
could be We could all be a little more instructed
in this.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And I think there were perhaps if you look at
the English Victorian tradition, it's like now they're wearing black.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Now they've got a little bit of purple.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Now they've got jet jewelry, now that they're all these
signifiers that let us know how far you know, how
long ago the morning process started. We don't know anything.
We can't tell by looking at a person what happened
last week, what happened ten years ago?
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah? Yeah, does humor help?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Absolutely? We would look at the distress. If you're just
going to go a bit sciencing, the distress that you've
experienced in grief is called situational distress. You know, a
thing happened, then you got distressed, and part of that
would be a very low mood. For example, if you
do nothing to break the low mood, that can run
(17:22):
into depression. And that can run into a major depressive disorder,
and then.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
You're sort of stuck.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But the best thing that will kind of doesn't take
away the distress exactly, but it ruptures that is comedy
is having a laugh, because it alleviates the mood, it
alleviates the tension. You feel more connected, and certainly in
a comedy show, you just feel connected to everybody else
in the room.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, yeah, and you went, I mean you went to it.
It is you. I mean, I'm the same. I tend
to talk in humor. Yeah, you know, that's my tone.
My predominant tone is to try and be funny. And
so therefore, whatever happens, you know, I had cancer, I
was automatically making jokes about it. I still do. You know,
so you but is it more than that, Is it
(18:06):
more than just your way of speaking, your way.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Of b I think it. Yeah, I think it is.
You know that second nature. You can't if you're a clown.
You're a clown. You can't turn it off. Then you
shouldn't turn it off unless you want to. But I
also back on the science y stuff. You know, there
there is such a similar physiological response that we have
to crying as we do when we're laughing or when
(18:30):
I'm singing. It's just it's our release. It's you know,
all this vagus nerve stuff. Just getting it out. A
release is so valuable. And if that release can be laughter,
you're not going to get a headache as quickly as
you will with the tears. And so maybe it comes
along with the tears, and maybe they need to be
friends and they need to you know, be together, and
(18:51):
it's it's the cast and we need it as animals,
we need it. So I think that's why.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's so it's off of a truth as well, Like
I think, you know, some of the best laughs she'll
have is at a funeral, Oh my god. Yeah, because
you will tell each other truths about the person and
about your relationship to them, and somebody will start telling
you a story and go, oh my god, they never
told the story like that. Yeah, like all those sort
of things. It's fantastic, you know, it's humor is often
(19:19):
truth telling.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And the reason it's so funny is because it breaks
the tension of this wild ritual of funerals that we have,
that is it doesn't really suit us as a society.
It's somebody speaking on a microphone that doesn't really work,
and they don't know how to use the microphone. They're
making a speech. They're not a good speech, right, they
shouldn't be making a speech. Somebody else should be making
a speech. It's never going well, and that's kind of funny.
(19:40):
My dad's funeral was excellent. He went, he'd made we'd
made this playlist of his favorite songs for him to
be carried out of the church too, and un wutuingly,
there was like a bit of a mix up and
that playlist didn't play when he was carried out of
the church. It played as he was lowered into the
ground in the cemetery, which we have been fine had
the first song not been Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash.
(20:05):
And it was the funniest thing that's ever happened. And
my family was in hysterics. Everybody else taking it very seriously,
didn't know what to do, didn't know how to touch it,
trying to keep it away. But the rest of us,
the one who really really knew him and really loved him,
were in there having a laugh because it was like,
this is absurd. He would have loved He would have
loved it, and death is absurd and so with life.
And that's fine, you know. I think we just need
(20:27):
to go gentle with ourselves and with the people that
we're trying to help, but gentle with ourselves in our
own approach to it, you know, let yourself have a
lot that hard.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. I sometimes think that that death is the ultimate
joke because we we live like it's never going to happen. Yeah,
so he's all of us live every single day as
though we are never going to die. How do you
think people react to you? You know, like I'm thinking
of you know, Lasani won't bring back my dead dad,
your famous song about the fact that you know, while
(20:57):
grieving you'll get a lot of the sun. Yeah. Yeah,
people react like have you had people just go this
is too much, I can't deal with this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I've never had that reaction. And I've done the show
so many times people have watched it on TV and
I've never gotten a d M saying this is rude
or this is wrong, you know, disrespectful. It's always the
people in the show, like the people who have grieved
that think it's the funniest. I even say after that
I do that song in the show, I say, if
(21:25):
somebody next to you is laughing quite loudly at that.
I'd like you to turn to them and say sorry
for you're lost, because that's you know, it is. It's universal.
It's so universal. So no, I've never had somebody complain
about me not taking death seriously.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Has it helped you?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, if I didn't have humor, if I took myself seriously,
I would be terrified every moment. I'm already terrified. Look
at the news, you know, I look at the news. Sorry,
that was bad advice. Don't look at the new, but
do vote well. But I just think, you know, I
(22:06):
don't know who I would be if I if I
took things seriously, if I took myself seriously, or I
would have such a difficult time, and I'm already stressed
about every lump and bump, and you know, it's it's
really scary. I'm scared of dying. But it means that
I think I live my life like I am going
to die tomorrow. And that's the gift that I've been
given by grief.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
But I also not your own diagnosis. Yeah, we should
just emphasize that again, you are living with the threat
that the same thing that happened to you about your
brother and father.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Can happen, Yes, exactly. And I think knowing that even
though everyone could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and
it really doesn't make me any more likely than anyone
else at the end of the day. But it's a gift.
It's a gift, the gift of perspective of knowing that, like,
you're only here for a short time, so you might
as well make it a good time. And that's true
of anyone. It doesn't matter if you live to one hundred,
(22:55):
it's probably still going to feel sure.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, if you're like you, Yeah, we kind of know that,
but we don't really live like that. Do we marry it?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We don't, but there's good reason to think that we should.
In the world of grief literature, we talk about the
loss of the assumptive.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
World, the assumptive world, the assumptive world.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
As a child, we assumed it would always be a
Sunday afternoon, and we'd go home and have tim dams
and everything would be the same day after day. And
then the first time you sort of meet death, it's
like the rug's been pulled out from under you, and
you can't assume that anymore and then suddenly you're unsafe
and you panic. But I think what's a curious moment
(23:41):
for all of us was the pandemic gave the whole
world and everybody. We all collectively lost the assumptive world
at the same time. So now we're sort of on
shakier ground. But when we come back to just each
and every one of us, Yes, I think it's helpful
to understand that we are immortal, and when you get
(24:02):
your head around that, then you can I think fully
be present in the moment and enjoy things.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But there's always a lot of people say about the
pandemic years is perhaps particularly that first year, particularly if
you weren't in Melbourne. But that first year was also like,
isn't this great? We're all living this together. We are
all now understanding that can we more, We're very mortal
and can be threatened. Oh my lord, our governments are
all working together. But it always seems as like as
(24:27):
soon as we could get over that and forget all
that we did.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, we did, we did.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think we just we're looking for someone to blame,
I mean, not to get into that sort of existential
divided society crisis that we're in currently. Don't look at
the news. But yeah, COVID was interesting to see how
people reacted to it and the grief. I talk about
this in my book as well. But I say I
was born at the end of history because I was
(24:52):
a nineties kid and they were calling it the end
of history. They were like, the war is done, the
wars are done. We're done during the wars, where do
in peace? Now we're smarter than that. We've sorted it out,
and you can be whatever you want to be. And
this is before we knew my generation wasn't going to
be able to afford to hours and we really were promised.
And it's why I've been successful in my career because
(25:14):
my parents were like, yeah, I guess you can do
whatever you want now, that's what they're saying. And I
was like, well, I believe you, which I'm lucky I
did and sort of followed my nose to where I've gotten.
But I think there is an enormous amount of collective
grief in every generation. But I think it really like
hits my generation very hard because we can't believe we
(25:35):
were lied to, like you know, and I think we
were feeling that and then COVID came and I think
everyone sort of started to feel that. But I mean,
everyone's different, has their own set of circumstances, and I'm
speaking very generally, but it is difficult.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
But across the board, anxiety went up, especially of your generation.
And some people would think that what lies underneath all
anxiety is death anxiety.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think that's really true.
It's definitely my man anxiety. You know.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You know, we've been talking about grief as you know,
it's it's something I suppose we probably always sort of
these sort of emotions as something that defined us. To
find humanity, that's what that was, what makes us human.
We've had all those stories of some like elephants grieving
and things, haven't we Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Absolutely, or and you see it with your pets as well.
They'll go searching for the person who's not there.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You should let your dog sniff the dead person or
the other dead dog should do that so they know
what's happened.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, And last year I read that blue tongue lizards grief,
which I'm still very touched by that.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, it was a lizard was trapped on our fence
and died and the mate just stayed with it for
I think three or four days.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Wow, So everything does not just mammals. Yeah, yeah, not
just the cold blooded one to do too, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Do you think mosquitoes are grieving? Got a lot too.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So when you when you wack one, just guess.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Sorry now I'm sorry, sorry, I feel all sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's really sad that you cover its. Marian, thank you
so much, thank you, thank your lovely conversation. Michelle, lovely, thank.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
You, thank you so much. Well.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Thanks to our guests Marann Butler and Michelle Brazier. You've
been listening to season six of Life's Booming Dying to Know,
brought to you by Australian Seniors. Please leave a review
or tell someone about it. Head to seniors dot com
dot au slash podcast for more episodes. May Your Life
Be Booming. I'm James Valentine.
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