As people we don't normally want to even think about death, and least of all we don't want to plan for our own death or someone else's. "Fear Not the Reaper" is a nonfiction episode in which a licensed funeral arranger in Las Vegas demystifies the taboos of talking about dying and death. (S06E06) 29 minutes.

Podcast Transcript:

Host: Hello and welcome. The name of this podcast series is “Taboo Truths and Tales.”

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Host: “Taboo Truths and Tales” is hosted by Madera Desouza. That's me. Some of you may know me by my nickname as Woody. Whatever you want to call me, I welcome you here to this podcast.

Narrator: Hello, I'm your narrator, Sam Glass from blackbearvoice.com in Las Vegas. In this episode, “Fear Not the Reaper,” you will hear Woody, the creator and host of this podcast series and a candid conversation with an employee who works within the Las Vegas death industry.

Woody: And now, here we go with this episode. “Fear Not the Reaper.” My guest today is Megan Sweeney in Las Vegas. I am in Las Vegas. She is in Las Vegas. Megan, hello. How are you doing?

Megan: I'm doing very well. How are you?

Woody: Not too bad at all. We're recording this in August. I happen to have been at a place last night where you were also, and we talked about this. You used a phrase, death education, to talk about a recent experience you had in Las Vegas conducting a class. I was fascinated by that. What in the world is death education? And why would someone, why would someone bring you in to teach a class?

Megan: That death class that I teach, It's very informal. I will just put that out there. There's nothing scholastic truly about it. But what it is, its people coming and asking me questions and I answer them. Those questions can range anywhere from when, you know when my mom died, we did this. What does that mean? So just some general questions about the death process to I would like to be in this industry. How do I get in this industry? A couple of the classes that I taught were on specific topics. So there was one where I talked about the history of death all the way back from the Egyptians beginning and bombing to how the Victorian people did it.

Woody: So Megan, let me give the name of this place that you gave the classes at Cemetery Pulp in Las Vegas. Those of you listening, it's the word cemetery followed by P-U-L-P. Cemetery Pulp. They are on Facebook, Instagram and they have a website. cemeterypulp.com. I wanted to explain why you wouldn't just be like out on Las Vegas Blvd. Giving classes. I'm sure that would be just as fun.

Megan: That would be just that that I think that would be more fun probably.

Woody: But you would be arrested in maybe in ten minutes’ time.

Megan: Yeah.

Woody: So alright so now that we got to death education and the class question I had about why you would teach a class, I really would like to find out--like you know we all, when we're kids, people like grownups come to us and say have hey, have you thought about what you want to be when you grow up? What can you share with us today about how in the world you came to choose the line of work that you ended up choosing as an adult?

Megan: Well, I would love to say I was a person that wanted to be a Princess when I was little. From the start, I've been weird. If you would have walked up to me when I was 8 years old and asked me that question, I would have looked you in the face and said I want to be a homicide detective. I was obsessed with that for a while. I even tried to pursue law enforcement. It is not for me. And I did some soul searching and realized what I was really intrigued by was the death in the homicide part of being a detective. And yeah, once I realized that, it was just kind of a quick spiral. But I was the kid that was always intrigued by death and dead bodies and that whole process of it. So from the beginning, I think what really solidified it for me was I had a friend very close to me that had ended her own life. And when I went to her funeral service, it went truly horrible. It was, it was not a good experience. And that kind of flipped the switch in my head of I want to make sure no one else encounters this. And it kind of let me down the path that I'm at now.

Woody: I would not have, you know, if I were writing this as a fiction. I would imagine, you know, like The Addams Family and those characters that we've come to love from Addams Family. But that has nothing at all to do. You never, you know, you didn't say, well, you used to dress in black or goth clothing or anything. I imagine that had nothing to do with your personal life dressing up.

Megan: I mean no. And for most of my childhood, actually, I was terrified of all things scary. I cried in Blockbuster at the scary Movie titles. I could not go into a Halloween store. I was actually terrified by most of it, but still intrigued by death. Of course, that changed with age. But yeah.

Woody: We know each other in real life. It's not that I picked you out of a lineup or something. But you once said to me you used this particular phrase and it really stuck with me. You said it was referring to the people in the funeral industry. You said we speak for the deceased. Can you talk about that? Because that made an impression upon me. And you know, you've kind of gotten to this. You started this when you mentioned a friend of yours who took their own life and you became aware of the shortcomings I guess at the ceremony. So how when you say we speak for the deceased or you might even say in your own, you know, personal pronoun, I speak for the deceased. What does that mean? What does that mean to you?

Megan: I think this goes really well unfortunately with younger deaths when there's a lot more mystery and when the death itself is unexpected. I think that's where that phrase would come more in can be with because it gets to a point where the only people that are there at the same level, so to speak, as the decedent would be the funeral team were on their side making sure that everything is prepared and ready, at least from a funeral home standpoint. I encountered this phrase more when I worked for the coroner's office here because that was more of uncovering what happened to these people that died tragically. There were often times that young people would pass due to an accident or they would be found somewhere. And it was our job at the coroner's office to find out what happened and to speak and to tell their story of how they came into our care and what happened to them to die tragically.

Woody: When you say young, I'm thinking people that are around your age who are not yet even thirty. Would that be accurate?

Megan: I think at least what I see every day, I think a young death is anything under 80 years old.

Woody: Megan, Why? Why do you say that? What? Because that really defines things. I'm thinking, you know, like a celebrity's teenage kid or something, you know? But yeah, up to the age of eighty you say, wow.

Megan: Well, OK, maybe in the seventies range. But I mean there are days where I come into work and there's a file on my desk of somebody that came into work here and they're fifty-three years old And everybody I cannot tell you one person that's with me in the office that sees that and thinks too young. So that's what I mean by a younger death. I think a good decade to pass away and is in your nineties. You've seen it all. You've done it all. But I think sometimes I still see like today there was a thirty-eight-year-old that passed away and that is too young. That is way too young.

Woody: As people we don't normally want to even think about death and least of all we don't want to plan for it our own death or someone else's. So it would make sense that when people arrive at that day in the funeral, you know the location where the ceremony is being held, they're completely blindsided because they didn't think about it. Is that does that figure into just not just, but not planning? Is that a significant problem? Or is it that grief just takes over?

Megan: No matter what kind of planning you may have done? Yes. Grief does not care how much that you put into this time. A lot of people have told me, you know, I the rock of the family, you know, they were on hospice. We knew this was coming. I didn't think I'd react like this. But the truth is you never know how you're going to react until that time comes. I've spoken with people who seemed completely fine and unfazed and there was one family I spoke to today that asked for the weekend before they even heard my name again. They needed days before they couldn't begin taking those next steps with me. Yeah.

Woody: And when you when you say those next steps, you mean they come in from the very recent experience of having someone pass and then they have to arrange for what is it they are arranging for. I understand. You know, I've heard of cremation and then the burial, picking a place to be buried or a method and so forth. Is that what kinds of things do you talk about when they come in?

Megan: When people come in, something as simple as starting the death certificate with your funeral director to if it's just going to be a cremation, you know, we'll pick out an urn. If it's going to be full funeral services, then we will go through everything of picking a casket, discussing clothing and makeup, discussing flower arrangements, music to be played, whether you would like a clergy number, like a priest or a rabbi present, you know it's going through every single detail of the funeral. Prayer cards. If you want different colored linens for catering afterwards, what food do you want for that catering? It is a lot and it's very, very overwhelming and grief oftentimes gives people like memory issues, short term memory. I've had full conversations with people and then the next day they can't recall me at all. And you know, we just start from the beginning.

Woody: You help people through that, those kinds of things?

Megan: There's not too much we can do of course, from our point of view. But you know, we do remind families all the time. In very simple, small ways. It's, you know, asking if like when I make the first initial call to a person after they've lost somebody, you know, it's when their loved one is in our care now. And I'm calling them to answer any questions to set that arrangement appointment. I can usually tell right then and there if they're gonna be strong enough to come to the meeting by themselves in that time. If people are absolutely a wreck, you know, I'll encourage time to themselves or I'll say you can always bring a support group with you to the meeting. Our room can seat five or six people, so bring family and friends to help you through this. Or even something as small as instead of saying goodbye, you know, have a good day. We always say take care, and we beg our families to please take care of themselves as much as they can during this time.

Woody: When you approach this, like if you were giving advice to people listening, even though it is something that we just as a culture, don't like to think about death, let alone plan for our own death, what do you say to people that don't want to make any plans or have any contingencies set up and then just wait for something to happen and then they act? What do you say to that kind of approach?

Megan: I say the one thing guaranteed in life is death. You can try and avoid it and not think about it as much as you like, as much as your comfort will allow. But at some point, every single person in their life will have to confront death, whether it's a loved one or their own. And those conversations with your family and friends are insanely difficult. But it is much easier to have that conversation with your family, whether it's, hey mom, do you want to be buried or cremated. Easier to have that now. Then something absolutely unfortunate happened and you're stuck thinking, what do I do? It's very important, even down to if it's something as simple as finance, it is much cheaper to plan ahead for your funeral than it is to wait. I have, I'm going to say something. There's one thing that a family that I met with months ago said to me, and it stuck with me and it was this, this older man and his mom had passed and when I had option to bring certain documents into our meeting, Social Security card, ID's, marriage certificate, things like that. He said, Yep, I've got it all here in the binder. And then he laughed and he said, oh, I should reference the binder is something that mom had made years prior, just putting together all of our information, their plans, their cemetery details. Then he started to cry and he said even in death, my mom is still taking care of me and making sure I'm all set up and prepared.

Woody: Yeah, wow. So what happens? And I'm, I'm certainly curious about this just because I'm a curious person. But I would say this probably happens more than people planning down to every detail as far as what happens after death, what happens if they don't plan what? What are the things that go wrong? I mean, we can limit it to just Las Vegas or just Nevada, if you, if you will. But what happens if, if a person is in denial or whatever and they just don't make any plans, What happens to that in that kind of a situation then?

Megan: I mean, to put it simply, it all falls on the next of kin. Whoever is left in your family or the executor of your will, if you have a will, they would be the ones to make all of those choices. Now the problem with that comes to one, sometimes people aren't financially prepared. So then, you know, the state social services will take over and handle the process or let's say the next of kin or your children. Every single child has equal say. So if you have six kids and half of them, say burial, we want Dad buried and the other half say no dad wanted to be cremated, now we're at a complete standstill. We can't do anything until they either completely come to an agreement, all of them, or one of them gets a court order saying no proceed with burial. So I have had situations where then the family that's left over cannot make a decision and then we're stuck for weeks, if not months.

Woody: Well, what happens in in those situations where, you know, depending on the faith of the person who has passed. I know that I was raised Roman Catholic, but I know that in other faiths there's a limit to how long you're supposed to go before the final whatever in in various you know, how does that work if someone has to be, you know, if there's a deadline of, I don't know, I'm making this up forty-eight hours and then you don't have a consensus in the in the survivors. What happens then?

Megan: Well, I have been in that situation. There are a couple religions off the top of my head, like Orthodox Jewish people or people of the Muslim faith. A lot of times there's a seventy-two-hour time frame of when they would like you to be buried. Now that poses its own stressful process because I mean between you and me and everyone listening, the permit that lets us do what we need to do, bury or cremate and take five to seven days. So it's already a crunch if there is, you know, a time frame. But in the if family is undecisive and they're still working with the time frame. We just have to put it as simply as possible as if you want them buried within two days, you need to make up your mind. Or if it's. If you're not, if you're going to let your pride come in between what you know you would like to be done with your loved one, then we're going to wait those time frames. We try and follow them as closely as we can, but we have to follow the law first and foremost.

Woody: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. This leads me to ask you what do you do to cope yourself? You know you're a, you're a living, breathing human being and you have emotions as we all do. How do you, how do you manage your own emotions when you work in an industry that is dealing with, you know, you encounter people every day who are suffering and sad or grieving and that kind of thing? What do you do for your own emotional well-being?

Megan: Well, I have a lot of friends that are also in the industry, so a lot of times we will just kind of vomit our emotions on to each other. A lot of times it's just kind of recuperating. We have this thing in the industry called compassion fatigue and essentially that is just all-day gifts and there's a phrase sometimes that argues that it's you know you can't pour from an empty cup and working in this industry all you do is pour into other people and it's really hard to refill your own cup. But sometimes what helps me is having a really hard to heart moment with one of the families that I'm helping, whether they give me a huge hug and you know, they thank me for everything that does so much more than people realize. Thanking your funeral professional. It is. It is rare that it happens and what it is, it is such a wonderful thing. We have a therapy dog actually at my funeral home. His name is Snickers and he's a very good boy and he's there for the families that we serve and for my colleagues. I will oftentimes spend my lunch break sitting on the ground playing with him and it does recharge me.

Woody: Yeah, well, that's nice. Now you mentioned knowing people, having friends who are colleagues in the profession here in Las Vegas. What? How do you get together just because like you go to a restaurant or you go to a movie or a concert or do you have get togethers for?

Megan: The professions specifically, we don't, which stinks because I think that would be really cool, but I'd see the closest. It would be like maybe a professional funeral conference that comes to town. But yeah, it's there's nothing formal for all of us. I mean there's symposiums and expos and things, but I think a lot of the times we just a lot of the funeral homes, despite being you know head-to-head competing companies and things like that, we all have a sense of we're on the same team. So when we do encounter each other, we have that moment of relation there and connection and friendship and. Yeah and we just going our ways.

Woody: Yeah. Well so I asked you about the emotional aspect. What about this day-to-day living? How do you like if you tell someone that what you what you do for a living is that, how does that impact upon people's reaction to you? Because when you know, I think about, I would say I don't see you dressed all in black or all in white when I've seen you out in the world. But does what you do for a living affect your living?

Megan: Well, OK, I love talking about my job and I love talking about what I do. I have a couple of shirts that I will wear when I want people to have that conversation and ask me, hey, do you work at a funeral home? And I will happily go on a rant about that even. For instance, when we met, I openly said to the entire room that I work at a funeral home and it's very fun. But there are sometimes where compassion fatigue is weighing on me heavily that day. Or maybe I just had a bad day where I will tell people if they ask what I do, that I'm a teacher, I will lie to their face. But simply because there's usually one of three reactions when I say I'm a licensed funeral arranger, I work at a funeral home, Most people will, will say, oh, you know, thank you so much for what you do. Someone has to do it that that's a big one or you'll hear, oh, that's really cool. Like, how'd you get into that? I want to do that. I love the show “Six Feet Under.” That's another one. And then the third response, which is very common, is, oh, you know, I work at a funeral home. And then it's the person immediately, oh, you know, my great aunt died two months ago. And it was a really horrible process. You know, she got hit by this bus and. And now I'm hearing all about your grief. And sometimes I'm not prepared for that. Sometimes I am and I'm here for it. I'll talk through it. But when I'm not, I'm not.

Woody: Yeah. And then you're, you know, when you're at work, you're at work and when you're not, you're not. And why would you need to have all that outside of work? I guess it would be too much. I don't know if I could handle, you know, taking home if you will, the emotions of the day.

Megan: Sometimes it's fine. Sometimes I encourage people to because like you mentioned before people don't like talking about death. So sometimes people will hold on to their grief and they'll bottle it up. And when they meet someone that's OK with talking about death, suddenly it's I can finally get this off my chest. And then they just throw it up at me and I'm here for it. I've done that to other people. But there are times where I say I'm a teacher and I'm not ready to talk about that.

Woody: And then if they ask what do you teach? You just say I teach mathematics.

Megan: Yeah, it's English. I am a professional English teacher that I told you.

Woody: Now, you mentioned television, a television show “Six Feet Under,” which was one of my favorites. I guess it was, what, fifteen years ago maybe, or more? What do you think about when you see the showbiz or Hollywood depictions in television or in movies, when you see those depictions fictional about your industry? How do you respond to those?

Megan: It's very easy to tell who's done their research and who hasn't. There are some shows like “Six Feet Under” that I'm very grateful for because that does take a lot of the scariness away from the funeral industry. There are people that expect us to all dress like grim Reapers or act like Wednesday Adams. And then they watch these shows and they realize, OK, they're just people just doing a job. It's not as scary as it seems, but there are some shows where I see it, and I'm like, you've never stepped into a funeral home. You've never been around a dead body. What Are You Doing? One show that I think actually nailed it on the head was a show called “The Haunting of Hill House” on Netflix. One of the family members owns her own funeral home. So it's a little different because it's like her family owned one and funeral homes kind of varied by state but just her process of talking with families and the arrangement process, it shows part of it. It shows a funeral that she holds herself and I think they did it perfectly.

Woody: Yeah, I'll have to watch that.

Megan: Yeah, it's good. And I'm very biased when I say this. Some of the funniest people I've ever met have been death professionals. There's definitely a side to you need dark humor and you need humor to get through. To see what we see every single day. You have to be able to still laugh. And it is very, very dark humor. And of course we're never laughing at the decedent itself. But I think a comedy with that, the juxtaposition of death and humor, it's so wrong, but it's so right. Yeah, it gives you some air to breathe, pun intended. It comes through the test subject to be able to laugh about it well.

Woody: And that that fills in some detail to what I was thinking of in the sense of telling stories. It was a comedic point of view, like “Six Feet Under” always did. And if I recall correctly, they always had a rather gruesome death at the beginning of every episode. Yeah. And after a while you began to sort of wow that. You know, I've been watching for a month and I've seen four episodes. That means I've seen four deaths. And I think you'll be maybe you become more, I don't know, you become more accepting that death is just a normal thing.

Megan: The only people that think about death, of course, are the living. And there are some people that dedicate, if not waste, a lot of their life worrying about death. They're worrying about it so much before death even come. And I mean I'm dedicating my life to death.

Woody: Yeah. But you're not a storyteller. I mean we're talking today and you're reviewing anecdotes but you are in the business to help people to help your--. Do you refer to them as customers or clients? I mean I know decedent. You used that word. What do you call the survivors? You wouldn't use the word survivor, would you know?

Megan: No. I refer to them as families. We'll say, yeah, we have a family coming in today or there's a family here with specific people. You know, we'll say their relationship to the decedent is, you know, the next of kin or maybe wife or mom or dad. But it's family. There are families. I got you. OK.

Woody: Megan, has been delightful. I really, I mean, as you know, we know each other in real life because we do see each other out in the world. I really am always engaged by what you have to say and the things that you talk about. But today, I am especially glad that we have had this chance to record this and share it around the world. So I do want to thank you for that very much.

Megan: Well, thank you. I always enjoy talking to you. I do.

Woody: Well, maybe we can have a show. Or we did. Wait a minute. All right. Megan, you have what's the phrase you say, “take care.” I will say “take care,” because you never would say something that is ghoulish.

Megan: You would never say see you around, you know, because that implies no, no, even worse, even worse. If you say, “have a good day,” could you imagine?

Woody: Megan, thank you again. And you take care. OK.

Megan: Oh, you too.

Narrator: Thank you. You've been listening to “Fear Not the Reaper,” an episode meant to demystify the taboos of talking about dying and death. “Fear Not the Reaper” was produced and directed by Madeira Desouza, also known as Woody. I'm your narrator, Sam Glass from blackbearvoice.com in Las Vegas.