Death And Toxic Families

[00:00:01] I will take the casket and I will go home and we will not have this funeral. And I walked out.

[00:00:20] Death and toxic families. Okay, I want to thank you for being here. This is, I think, a hard topic because some of us do have families with issues. But I will address it, I promise. And I have, I think, some things that might make you feel a little better about your own situation. I'm Victor M. Sweeney, and this is the podcast DEATH AND where we talk about death and all the other things in our lives.

[00:00:47] Some things that make us happy, some things that make us cringe, some things that we just deal with along with the rest of life. I'm coming to you today from the funeral home and we are in the selection room with all our caskets. I want to thank you for being here. And as part of that thank you, I want to answer some questions.

[00:01:08] It's always a treat when I have folks send me questions in that I can answer that I, maybe you don't know where to go for the rest of the answer. You can't just plug it in and have AI spit out an answer. You want it from the real thing. From the guy who does the job. I don't just play a mortician on TV or do this for clicks and likes. It's the real deal.

[00:01:33] I'm here to serve. Not just my local community, but I guess you, dear listeners. You question askers. So let's jump in and see what we've got today. Here's a question from Tom Watson. My son died from suicide four years ago this May. We never recovered his body.

[00:02:00] My question is, when you do these, do you see the person who passed ever in the service appear? Not to everyone, but to you or the staff. Okay, so we're talking about something supernatural or metaphysical. The person who is deceased appear to us. Hmm. I have not, I don't really believe in ghosts or that kind of thing.

[00:02:27] If we wanted to talk about it in a different sense, though, the deceased does make themselves known in a certain way through the lives of their family. family. And I've had it happen where maybe the deceased dies and their mouth is hanging open and they're a shrunken version of maybe what they once were. And you go to the bedside and you see the

[00:02:53] daughter, let's say. And you get mom on the table and you start getting her ready. And as you prepare and embalm her, she begins to look like the daughter. And so you know what the deceased looks like because you've seen the family. And so they, in that sense, the family and the deceased kind of make themselves known through each other. Another example, not of the supernatural, but of making oneself

[00:03:18] known might be when we put together an obituary that I get a list of facts maybe from a family, but then in the sitting down and the talking and the storytelling, who they are makes themselves known. So I, while I have not had an apparition of the dead, I have had people appear, so to speak,

[00:03:47] through many different facets of their families and loved ones' lives. And I think that that is something that brings a lot of meaning, at least to me, to the profession, because it becomes less about transaction and more about discovering humanity, which is something I think that is very beautiful. I'm sorry about your son. That's about the worst. Take care of my friend. Thanks for

[00:04:12] the question. Ooh, here's a good question from Tuber767. Are bodies strapped into their caskets to prevent them from sliding toward the casket end when carried up and down church steps? Okay. Interesting question. So, no. And there is something that we actually do to prevent this kind of chaos

[00:04:39] that you're describing. So, at least for myself, I was always taught to carry a body when you're going up the steps head first. Now, some people are purists. They say feet first all the time, head first, because then when inevitably the casket tilts like this, then their feet are at the bottom. So at the very least, if they slide down the casket, they're still going to be in a more or less

[00:05:06] natural position. Whereas, imagine if you did it the other way. One, all the weight is going to go towards the bottom where the head and the chest and the torso are. So that's going to make the bottom bearers have a harder time. And then when you get the casket up and you open it, all of a sudden their head is right by the lid and their shoulders are on top of the pillow and the position is much harder to fix. It's easy to pull someone up in the casket from the open end than it is to

[00:05:32] open the foot end and be discreet about it and yoink someone down. So yes, I always go head first when going upstairs because there are not seat belts inside caskets. Thank you for the question. We always recommend Shopify. It took us from an idea to a real business. We got set up,

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[00:06:24] Well, I want to thank you for those questions. It means a lot that you have the guts to reach out to me. And I want to start by thanking the anonymous listener that actually prompted this episode. She sent her life story, told me everything, which I think is good too. I like getting a snapshot into

[00:06:49] people's lives. Not that I can do anything about it. I can't fix it all the time. Almost never can I fix it. But I can only show a little compassion. And at least for you, dear listener, you know who you are. This is your story and this is what I have to say. Before I do that, I wanted to talk to you just

[00:07:11] real quick about something I really love. There's this gentleman I know. He's a folk singer and a podcaster. He's excellent. And when I asked him what he does, he's actually a teacher by trade. He goes, oh, I'm a maker. I'm a maker. And I was thinking about this selfishly for myself. Am I a maker? Do I make

[00:07:41] things? I guess in some ways, the medium of my art is either dead human flesh or designing headstones, I guess. I carve some headstones, but I'm not very good. So does that qualify as a maker? And then as I got thinking about it and looking into it more, here's a lovely connection for you.

[00:08:05] Do you know what the Greek word for maker is? Poetas. A poet. To be a maker is to be a poet. To tell the story of lives. To sing songs and make connections where you might not otherwise make them. And I've written a little poetry. I have a journal of haikus that I write from time to time

[00:08:32] just for schmitz and giggles. But that's really what I want to share with you. The things I make. The things I dream about. Making connections where others might fear to tread because I walk every day in the death world. Now, death and toxic families. This email came in and the listener wanted to be

[00:08:58] anonymous. But it says that this is where we start, okay? And this is just one individual story. But the reality is I think there are a lot of people that live and touch on these same issues. And I know this is the case because nine out of ten families come to me with some deep personal problem between members of the family, whether near or extended. Most families deal with this. It is the extreme

[00:09:26] exception. Extreme exception. Extreme exception. To have a fully functioning, non-fighting family. Okay? It says this. A little back story. Both my parents are alive and very unhappy. It's bolded. They're married to one another still. Due to reasons of emotional abuse, I've had to go no contact with my

[00:09:52] mother. My father and I still have a relationship. My mother and father live in the same house. Do not speak to one another. Just angrily cohabitate. And it is an odd situation for us children, even before I went no contract. Okay. That is an odd situation. You're right. In the event that my father passes

[00:10:15] first, he has pre-planned, prepaid, and taken care of his pre-needs. Thank you, Jesus. My mother has not taken care of any of her service arrangements. This will be the first funeral my adult children have ever attended. But I will be uncomfortable being in the same room as my toxic mother. This is assuming dad dies first. My actual question is this. Will the funeral home be able to step in and help me avoid my mother on the

[00:10:44] day of my father's funeral? I don't mean running interference because I will hide out in my locked car until the funeral starts if I have to. But if I ask, can they seat me somewhere else? If I don't attend the funeral, will they let me see him in the casket alone without my other family around? Just want to say goodbye when the final time comes. Okay. Dear listener, I think your intentions are good. And I will tell you this. This is not the first time I've had to deal with this. I have dealt...

[00:11:14] I sometimes think that half of my job is just getting people to get along. Because here's the thing about it. Death does two things. Okay? It will either bring about the best in a person, or it will bring about the absolute worst. And there is almost nothing in between, in my experience. So people will either rise to the occasion and be bigger, or they will be extraordinarily petty.

[00:11:41] So to your question, will the funeral home run interference for you? Yes. I've done this many, many times. Just four days ago, I had a funeral. And there was the daughter of this gal and a stepdaughter. Okay? And the stepdaughter had been in mom's life the whole time. They have a mother and daughter bond.

[00:12:11] Living daughter does not really want stepdaughter around. So how are we going to get everybody along? So the stepdaughter calls me crying and says, how am I going to go to mom's funeral when Cassie doesn't want me there? And I said, well, you leave it to me. This is part of the deal is just being the middleman for everything. Not just the middleman between life and death. I will be the middleman between you and your sister.

[00:12:36] And I said, hey, look, Amy really wants to be at this funeral. And she doesn't feel like she can because of your family dynamics. And I don't know the situation. I don't want to know the situation. I would just like to ask, is you the one in charge? Can she come into the funeral home the day before, see mom and spend some time? And then you don't have to see her at the funeral at all.

[00:13:05] Now, most of the time, if I'm the one asking, the family goes, well, yeah, that victory, I guess we've trusted you this far. That makes sense. And they're cool with it. But this time something different happened. And she said, you know, despite how much she's done to our family, my mom is still her mom. And she better come to the funeral.

[00:13:35] And she doesn't have to talk to me if she doesn't want. And I won't talk to her if she doesn't want. But we don't have to have a supper time. We can get along for an hour. And there's some wisdom in that. I tell that to families all the time. We can get along for one hour. Sometimes I demand it. We will get along for one hour. That's happened to me. I had a family one time. It was a second marriage. So you had family A and family B.

[00:14:05] And family B and their mom were sniping across. I had the family sitting separately. I had family B on the left, family A on the right. Okay? Didn't have them mixed at all. And the now widow and family B were sniping across the aisle at family A before the funeral started. And I've never yelled at a family. Except for this one time.

[00:14:33] And I marched down the aisle. And I swear to you, I turned into my father. I looked at the widow, who's just lost her husband. Obviously, this is not the ideal situation. But I looked at her and her children. And I said, You will not talk to them. You understand me? You will not say another word. If you do, I will take the casket and I will go home and we will not have this funeral. Do you understand?

[00:15:01] And this poor lady, she shrank. And I went over to family A and I said, Not another word. We're done. And they all backed off. And I stood in the middle and I took a breath and I said, We will get along for the next hour. And I walked out. And you know what? We did. We did it. We did it.

[00:15:31] We got along for an hour. And maybe it's different when some guy in a suit has just had his fill. And he's scolding you as if you were a child because you're being childish. But an hour. That's all I ask. Now, to the listener's question, What can you do to ensure that maybe you have what we call private visitation? Okay? Here are some thoughts.

[00:16:01] So one, unless there is something to the contrary, The next of kin will be the one in charge of the funeral. So in this case, if dad dies first, who will be in charge? Mom. Because they're still married. Now, if they were divorced, Well, then it would fall to the remaining children. So let's say there are three children. At least in my state, it falls in equal part to the three of them. So they each have 33 and a third percent right to make all the decisions.

[00:16:30] So then we have to get two out of three. We have to have a majority to make any funeral decision. So that's nice and complicated. Now, if mom's in charge, this might become difficult. Because then if daughter, who goes no contact, will not say to the mom, Maybe she tells the undertaker, like me, and the undertaker says, Susan, your daughter would like to come in a private visitation. She has every right to say no.

[00:16:57] And if she says no, well, I can plead a cause. I can say, hey, I want everyone to get along. You don't have to see each other. You don't have to talk to each other. This is what we should do. And if she still says no, well, that's it. That's all there is. She's the boss, right? Now, there is an exception, okay?

[00:17:23] And that is if there is something to the contrary when we're talking about kinship. So, for instance, in my state, if you have a health care directive, whoever is named in your health care directive to carry out your final wishes trumps the next of kin. So as a less contentious example, I have an old man friend. He's one of my good buddies. I just love him.

[00:17:50] We make sauerkraut every August 15th. We get together on one of the great Marian feasts. And we make sauerkraut in his basement. And I bring my sons. And he usually has me on the 100-year-old cabbage cutter from his grandma because I still have good shoulders. And he helps us, you know, manufacture this and put it together. And he ferments it in his basement. And the whole house smells awful. But it tastes so good. Anyway, my buddy has 10 siblings.

[00:18:18] And he is a bachelor with no children. So when he dies, according to kinship, who will make his funeral decision? All 10 siblings in equal part. So doesn't that sound like a treat to get six of them to agree to what my buddy Mike wants to do, which is a very, very traditional Polish Catholic funeral. I have to get six of them to agree. Hopefully all of them. But that sounds like an impossible task.

[00:18:48] So as we were planning his funeral and, you know, making sauerkraut at the same time, I said, why don't we do a healthcare directive and you can name one person to make your plans who will trump all other kinship? And so he named one of his younger friends who, when the time comes, will carry out all the directives we have written down. And then, of course, if there are changes, well, guess what?

[00:19:16] That one person needs to figure out the changes instead of six out of 10. You see what I mean? So for our dear listener here, it might be wise to do a healthcare directive with your dad because then that gives you rights to their medical history. It gives you rights to help pick doctors or caregivers or nursing homes or if you will receive extraordinary treatment in your extremity.

[00:19:45] Also, in many places, it will allow you to make decisions about organ donation or body donation. And then what will happen, what the final disposition and funeral plans will be. So it might be in your best interest and possibly in your dad's, depending on his relationship with mom, which doesn't sound good, to actually have dad name you or someone else you trust as the decision maker.

[00:20:12] Because then you can satisfy yourself. You can be kind to your mother. You can figure out a way to thread that needle, get along for an hour. But then you hold the cards and can carry out your wishes as dad wrote down. You can make accommodations for yourself and for your mother. And you don't have to worry about bad blood getting in the way.

[00:20:42] So that would be my first suggestion is bring that up with your dad. Maybe if you have more than one sibling or another person you trust, maybe you put two people on the health care directive to make the decisions. Because then it's not all on you and you can kind of check and balance yourself. And if it's someone maybe outside the family, that might be wise. Because then they can look objectively at it and say, ah, we need to make sure all of our family's needs are met

[00:21:12] if you don't necessarily trust yourself to be kind to your mom in a very trying time. When you have broken families and you come together at times like these, I think it's really important to one, try to assume the best. And I know that's hard. I know especially if you have a history with someone, it's extremely hard to assume the best.

[00:21:42] And the second piece of advice I would give you if you have a challenging family and death comes knocking at your door is do lean heavily on the funeral director to be your go-between. I had a family recently where there was the mother of the deceased and the deceased ex-wife. And the deceased ex-wife was still his caregiver.

[00:22:10] So it's kind of this interesting situation, right? Now, there was some baggage between these two. And they were getting along well enough, but then they started texting each other late at night when thoughts were running wild after this death. And so I got a call the next day from the ex-wife saying,

[00:22:39] well, I'm not going to come. There's just all this baggage and I can't do this and I don't need to be there and this isn't important. Well, it is important, but maybe we could just do a second funeral, yada, yada, yada. Okay? The mom then talks to me. And she's like, well, there's all this bad blood and we have this history and, and, and, and, and. And I said, well, here's the deal. From now on, if you need something, you will talk to me. Neither of you will text each other.

[00:23:09] You will text only me. I will send out all my emails to you separately. If you have any changes to the obituary, to the memorial folder, you will send it only back to me. You will not send it to each other. We will not have any discussion between each other until we calm down. Thankfully, in this case, we had several weeks before we had to pull the funeral together. And in that time, emotions had cooled. They calmed down a little bit,

[00:23:36] but it took me almost banning contact between them for several days until we got back to that point. The thing is, situations like this are not unusual. And sometimes they're very serious. I, I have a, I have a friend who was abused by their dad. And we had the dad's funeral.

[00:24:05] And this guy had been in jail. It hurt a lot of people. More than just my friend. And this happened years and years and years ago. And I saw my friend in town, maybe the day after dad died. They didn't even know. They had gone no contact, obviously. And I said, hey, I just want to let you know, your, your dad died. He's here across the street at my funeral home.

[00:24:37] And we're going to, I'm going to plan his funeral. You can come if you like. If you don't want to come, I understand. You don't even have to forgive him. Not sure if you should, but it's your dad. I'll be set up at the church at 930. And I'll be set up earlier in case you want to drop by. And my friend dropped by.

[00:25:05] And they stood next to their dad's urn. And they said a prayer and walked out. And the only witness was my friend and me and God. But what's interesting is years later, my friend stops me and they say, you know, I haven't moved on. I don't know if I ever will. All I can do is treat my own kids better.

[00:25:37] But I'm glad I did that. And I'm glad you invited me. Because I became the bigger person in the doing of it. Not that those years of hurt were undone. Not that the abuse was glossed over. The bell can't be unrung.

[00:26:06] But when one of you in the situation, whatever that might be, when one of you is dead and is no longer around to defend oneself, there is that opportunity to become the bigger person. In some ways, it's easier because the person there who's done the wrong, who's maybe done heinous things,

[00:26:36] they're in the room, but it's different. And so it is an opportunity to become the bigger person. It is an opportunity for growth. And I'm not saying that's appropriate for everyone. Right? The bell can't be unrung. But it's times like these when the veil is thin, where the challenges

[00:27:04] are even harder than usual because there's also this strange emotional impact. Right? My friend grieving for their dad, also hating their dad. Right? Normally, the base mode of operation is just hate my dad. But now there's grief. And there's something else mixed in there too. Sort of pity. Sort of

[00:27:33] never being able to right the situation this side of life. And so what can you do but be the bigger person? Even if it's just for a minute and a half. Even if no one else sees but my friend and me. It's hard. No one ever said it was going to be easy. Just because someone isn't in the room or maybe their bones are in the room

[00:28:03] or they're in a box. Doesn't make it easier. But something changes. And maybe it's time to take advantage of that one particular somewhat devastating change of death to shift your perspective a little. Maybe even out of forgiveness. Maybe it's a pity.

[00:28:34] Maybe you shift it to simply say that when I was helpless and they hurt me now they are helpless but I will not hurt them. And those are the kind of gifts I think that you can give to the dead that maybe aren't even deserved. And are they of value to the receiver? I don't know. But they are definitely of value to the giver. For those of you with toxic families

[00:29:03] with no contact parents with siblings that are I don't know lost to drugs to homelessness to a series of bad decisions one after another. I would encourage you to think about the helplessness that comes when death arrives. I would encourage you to think about the fact that grief happens to everyone whether you have a complicated

[00:29:33] relationship with the dead or a beautiful easy one. We share it. And I think it's in the sharing that some of it is lessened. Diminished. I said the word lessened and maybe that's the lesson in it to try to build a bridge to try to be bigger. We can't all be bigger than death. It's an obstacle

[00:30:03] is it not? But I think we can pour out what love we have. Whatever that looks like. Maybe loving someone is remaining no contact. Maybe that is the wisest thing. They say that love Thomas Aquinas says this he says love is willing the good of another. Maybe simply not hating someone is enough to love them.

[00:30:33] Maybe desiring good for them even if you will do nothing to procure it. You will live on the other end of the world. You will not see them or speak to them but the simple willing of the good. Maybe that's enough. In any case there's nothing new under the sun. Nothing much surprises me anymore. Even our dear listeners conundrum of what to do about dad. I've seen it. I've seen it before. I'll see

[00:31:03] it again. I'll see something that looks on appearance different and find that the effects are essentially the same. Being in a family is hard. Living close to one another is hard. Being of the same blood is hard. One of my favorite writers Chesterton he says Christ often commands us to love our enemies and love our neighbors often because they are the same person. Isn't that the case?

[00:31:33] That the stork drops us into the world into a given family and we get to choose none of it. And yet too we don't get to choose death do we? We have little agency over any of this. And so I think it's on all of us to just be the bigger person to show love however we can even if it doesn't look the way we think. Let's reflect on that. For those of us that come from complicated families which I think is most of us

[00:32:03] when it comes down to it how can we best love those that we don't like? The perennial question. And if it comes at the time of death let us be wise and generous. Thank you for joining me today on another monologue podcast of Death And. If you've found this valuable in any way or just has made you ruminate in between the lines. I want to encourage you to like it to subscribe more than that.

[00:32:33] Share it with a friend. Share it with someone who's going through something similar to what you're going through. As Chesterton also says we're all in the same boat and we're all seasick. Until next time I'm Victor M. Sweeney licensed mortician and your guide over the narrow chasm between life and death. Thank you. Thank you.