Transcript
Speaker: Hi, my name is Jennifer Muldowney, aka The Glam Reaper, and I'm super excited to finally bring The Glam Reaper podcast to your ears and your eyes on YouTube.
Speaker: This show will focus on stories about love, life and loss, and we'll have a massive input from the funeral world since that is the world that I live in.
Speaker: Without further ado, please let me welcome this episode's guest, the fabulous Alicia, who is a guru at cleaning headstones.
Speaker: Let's get into it.
Speaker: You are famous on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker: I mean, you're going from strength to strength.
Speaker: Alicia, tell me what is it you do for a living?
Speaker: Tell our listeners what you do for a living and why I'm so fascinated with you.
Speaker: Well, I'm in between jobs right now.
Speaker: I was working in healthcare administration.
Speaker: COVID and other things have not been copacetic with that and helping my kids with distance learning.
Speaker: I just decided one day on a whim to upload a video to TikTok of myself cleaning a gravestone.
Speaker: I really didn't expect anything of it.
Speaker: I've shared this stuff on Facebook for years now and nobody pays much attention.
Speaker: So to put it on TikTok and literally have it go to like millions of views within just a few hours blew my mind.
Speaker: So the incredible thing about what we do is, A, gravestones are historically forgotten about.
Speaker: They go into ruins.
Speaker: A lot of people are choosing cremation now.
Speaker: People go less and less to graveyards.
Speaker: I know I'm Irish.
Speaker: I'm living in America, so I can't go to my grandparents' graves back home.
Speaker: Things happen.
Speaker: People move away and things change.
Speaker: But that's one part of it that's fascinating.
Speaker: And then the second part of it is it's so cathartic to watch your videos.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: There's just something, it's like, and I don't, this sounds awful to compare to this, but it is like if you enjoy watching pimples being squeezed along those lines.
Speaker: I think there's actually an official word for that, but it's, TikTok kind of has a genre of people watching cathartic things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: how they feel about it.
Speaker: And it's the sight, the sounds, like one of the guys I follow on TikTok, men with pots or men in the forest with pots.
Speaker: Yes, I follow him too.
Speaker: I love them.
Speaker: They're Irish.
Speaker: They're only living in Ireland.
Speaker: The chopping and the sounds and you're just like, oh, it looks so good.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So take me back.
Speaker: You've been doing this for a few years.
Speaker: What started this?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Well, I've been a genealogist since I was a teenager.
Speaker: So I've always been into history and obituaries and learning, you know, about people from the past.
Speaker: I was in the middle of a really horrible divorce.
Speaker: It was a very bad time.
Speaker: And doing my research one day, I came across somebody cleaning gravestones and I'm like, I don't have anything to do with my time.
Speaker: My kids are in another state part of the year.
Speaker: It was a huge adjustment for me.
Speaker: I had gone from being a stay-at-home mom and then all of a sudden I didn't have my kids with me anymore.
Speaker: I needed something that got me out of bed every day.
Speaker: I started with the first marker I cleaned was my aunt.
Speaker: It was an aunt that my grandfather had been looking for where she was buried for so many years.
Speaker: Couldn't figure out where she was.
Speaker: I found her and I'm like, well, let me start with her and kind of spiraled out of control.
Speaker: I guess it became almost obsessive because it did.
Speaker: It gave me a reason to get up every day.
Speaker: Um, it was,
Speaker: Okay, well, my kids don't need me to get up and take care of them, but I can go to the cemetery and see how clean that marker got from last week.
Speaker: Or I can start a new one.
Speaker: It was like a part of me healed every time I cleaned a marker.
Speaker: How do you decide who you're going to clean?
Speaker: I just kind of wander aimlessly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where are you based, actually?
Speaker: I am in Bedford County, Virginia.
Speaker: So you're based there.
Speaker: Do you choose graveyards and cemeteries locally or...?
Speaker: I stay local for now and just cause travel is not, um, really very easy with kids.
Speaker: And, you know, of course now we've got COVID, but, um, I stay local.
Speaker: There's a few cemeteries that I work in, but mostly like everything that I've shared on Tik TOK and Instagram, they're all within, um, it's actually a group of three cemeteries in our town.
Speaker: And it's kind of like, there's the very historic one where all the oldest graves are.
Speaker: And then it just kind of gradually goes to the newer sections.
Speaker: I tend to stay in what's Longwood Cemetery and Oakwood Cemetery over there and work with those markers.
Speaker: The newer ones, they're not as dirty.
Speaker: They don't call to me as much.
Speaker: So if I'm cleaning a newer marker, it's usually because somebody has called me up and was like, hey, can you clean my mom or my grandparents marker?
Speaker: Because, you know, they just don't look like they need the work as much.
Speaker: Do you have to ask permission from the cemeteries or the families that can use one when it just calls to you?
Speaker: Do you go and do it?
Speaker: Is there a rhythm?
Speaker: The preferred pattern is to find a descendant, then a caretaker or the property owner.
Speaker: The cemetery that I work in most of the time is a public cemetery and it might upset some people in town, but I kind of have blanket permission to clean in there now at this point because I haven't
Speaker: but damaged anything.
Speaker: It's only served to benefit the town.
Speaker: It has also motivated the crew to do more to improve the ground.
Speaker: So when I came back, when I started up again this season, they had cut back a lot of shrubs and trees and lifted a lot of markers.
Speaker: up off the ground that had fallen over.
Speaker: A lot of people don't know that tombstone maintenance is not the responsibility of grounds crews because nobody has to have a tombstone.
Speaker: So it's not usually part of the care agreement.
Speaker: So I do ask permission.
Speaker: I've only had one person that has been like, no, don't clean any of my family stuff.
Speaker: So everybody else has been very nice.
Speaker: Are there particular chemicals you can use?
Speaker: I mean, it really is.
Speaker: I'm revisiting the videos and like just the scraping down of all of it's incredible.
Speaker: You've pointed out so many things that like people get buried and they
Speaker: You know, some people will look after the tent to the grave, you know, for a couple of years and then they might pass away.
Speaker: And sometimes it can be just a spouse or maybe the kids and then the kids move away.
Speaker: And really and truly, I actually can remember very solidly because I'm clearly because of what I chose to be my servant.
Speaker: Is I remember going to my grandparents grave in Athboy in County Meath in Ireland.
Speaker: And I remember they had the most beautiful, pristine grave, shiny penny, brand new.
Speaker: And right beside, about 10 feet away, was this old, cracked, decrepit, like almost sunken in grave.
Speaker: And even as a child, I remember I used to always stand beside them.
Speaker: And I remember I used to kind of,
Speaker: almost talk to them and sort of say, I'm sorry that you got left behind or that this has happened to you because it is very sad to see.
Speaker: And I mean, one of my favorite things is wandering through cemeteries and the stories that I feel headstones provide.
Speaker: And I mean, it was one thing, actually, I was talking to a funeral director only recently that I feel like there could be a movie or a TV show in it where
Speaker: the person nearly jumps into the grave and suddenly relives that person's life.
Speaker: Because there is, there's a famous poem of The Dash, you know, mine is 1982 to hopefully a long time yet, but it's about how you use your dash, how you use the time to correlate.
Speaker: And I just think cemeteries are just so fascinating because people die young, they hardly get a chance at life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: hundred years and it's incredible and i'd say when you're doing that unveiling process do you feel anything like i don't even necessarily mean spiritual but there has to be something i guess it's been an ongoing thing for me since i started i've always kind of had a weird draw to aspect of
Speaker: being and the spiritual world and stuff like that.
Speaker: But there is, I went by the cemetery this morning.
Speaker: It's very cold here, so I can't clean, but I drive by and I walk and it's like, I almost feel like they're waiting for me.
Speaker: One of the hardest things for me, like I really like antiquing.
Speaker: You walk through an antique store and you see a stack of photographs of someone's baby or a wedding picture and they're completely forgotten.
Speaker: And that is a really hard thing for me because I grew up with a grandfather who he didn't know one set of his grandparents.
Speaker: And it was almost like a crazy obsession for him to pass down this knowledge and to make sure that people and the people in photographs weren't forgotten.
Speaker: And that, you know, and I inherited, I guess, or ended up possessing the same obsession.
Speaker: And it kind of trickles into getting,
Speaker: the same experience.
Speaker: I feel like with these people, I don't necessarily know who they are, but I feel like I'm giving them a new life.
Speaker: in a sense, and giving them another chance to be remembered and honored.
Speaker: I don't necessarily agree with burials in the modern sense, but the ones that exist now, like you said, walking through a cemetery, it's like walking through a museum.
Speaker: They're works of art, and the amount of money that someone had to spend to buy some of these tombstones.
Speaker: They're so opulent and so elegantly carved.
Speaker: And
Speaker: You know, I do often imagine, especially with the children, like what was it like for their mother to stand in the spot and say goodbye.
Speaker: And a lot of times it's not just one child, it's several children in a row.
Speaker: And that's just the reality of the time.
Speaker: So I just find the whole process very humbling.
Speaker: So I don't know if it's more of like I sense spirits there or feel connected to them or is it's just that it's just humbles me to be aware of how easily things are lost.
Speaker: you're speaking to the converted here because I organize memorials for a living and so while I'm not necessarily part of a funeral and I'm not a funeral director I get to be a part of the family in celebrating the life and doing it in a unique way that maybe isn't in a church or a chapel and things like that and
Speaker: I mean, what you've just described there reminds me of a quote that I'm pretty sure is Banksy, the artist.
Speaker: And he said that in reality, we died twice.
Speaker: The first time when we physically leave and the second time when somebody says our name for the last time.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And that, to me, epitomizes what you just said there.
Speaker: And it is so true.
Speaker: I mean, for somebody who I don't have any children, I've often thought, you know, what legacy?
Speaker: Because so many people are not having children these days.
Speaker: And we don't have that to pass down.
Speaker: I mean, yes, I can pass it to my nieces and nephews who may remember me, but probably modern day baby boomers, millennials,
Speaker: the generations that are coming to the fore now are so concerned with legacy and leaving a mark on the world whether it's TikTok viral video.
Speaker: That's right that five minutes of fame is very important to the younger generation.
Speaker: It's also much more easily attainable than it ever used to be so it's like when is your opportunity not
Speaker: are you going to get it?
Speaker: So it's just a question of when it happens.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And when you posted that video and it went viral, how has your life changed?
Speaker: I mean, has it changed drastically?
Speaker: It hasn't changed too drastically.
Speaker: I think the biggest change I've noticed is that the town and where I live, people are just more aware.
Speaker: more people stop in the cemetery.
Speaker: I went two years and nobody barely paid any attention.
Speaker: Now all of a sudden they'll stop if they see me and, oh, I just love what you're doing.
Speaker: And that feedback is nice.
Speaker: And when I went viral, I was like, I posted on my Facebook page.
Speaker: I'm like, I share this here and you guys like give me just like, okay, whatever, she's doing this stuff again, this weird stuff she's done.
Speaker: And then I put it on like, y'all don't give me this love here.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: That's really the only thing that's changed is like, I think more people have an awareness of the fact that I've done this completely.
Speaker: Like it's all volunteer.
Speaker: Nobody's paid me for this.
Speaker: I didn't do it for recognition or anything.
Speaker: I just didn't have something to do.
Speaker: It is a serious labor of love for the most part, but I have gotten paid for cleaning some markers.
Speaker: I have, um, and some people, um,
Speaker: won't let me refuse to be paid.
Speaker: So that is a very hard thing for me.
Speaker: I'm not good at accepting anything from people.
Speaker: So if I have to go back to what the biggest change for me has been, that has probably been the biggest change is being willing to
Speaker: do a podcast or go on the news twice.
Speaker: I was just really out of my comfort zone because I'm trying to, you know, I'm in a public speaking class.
Speaker: I'm like, do I have to record my face?
Speaker: Like, can I just do audio?
Speaker: I completely agree with you.
Speaker: And you're probably last because I mean, I'm doing a podcast, but this podcast has been well over a year, if not two years in the making.
Speaker: because I knew I had the idea for it.
Speaker: I knew the amazing people like yourself I wanted to interview, but I was just terrified of my own voice, my own face.
Speaker: I don't want it.
Speaker: I don't want it.
Speaker: That light.
Speaker: It's got to be done.
Speaker: And I think those people are the worst at that.
Speaker: But is this something that you think you would like to turn into a business?
Speaker: I'm trying to let it play out organically.
Speaker: But yeah, there was a few months ago before I posted the TikTok that it came up and I was like, I was really afraid that it would take away some of the meaning for me.
Speaker: it's such a silent, solitary activity.
Speaker: And it really, it really is like personal therapy.
Speaker: I've always, people, why do you do this?
Speaker: I'm like, because it's like therapy for me.
Speaker: It's in a different way.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's therapy for me.
Speaker: And I don't want to lose that aspect of it, but I'm trying to look at it more as though I'm not losing that aspect.
Speaker: It's just expanding to where I can give that same feeling to other people.
Speaker: That makes me want to see what I can do with it.
Speaker: So yeah, it's,
Speaker: I really, I mean, I'm going to leave all the links attached to this for people to check you out if they haven't found you organically already.
Speaker: Because I just was so fascinated with it.
Speaker: Do you know much about that community?
Speaker: Is it something that, like, are the chemicals you use special?
Speaker: Did you kind of formulate this yourself?
Speaker: It's a product called D2, D2 Biological Solution.
Speaker: It's the number one
Speaker: really the only product approved by the Cemetery Conservator community.
Speaker: Most of the diehards will be very upset and do not entertain the discussion of anything else.
Speaker: We don't use anything else.
Speaker: We don't recommend anything else.
Speaker: So, but aside from the D2, everything else is purchased.
Speaker: You can get it at your local hardware store, your dollar store.
Speaker: It's just soft brushes and lots of water.
Speaker: No, you know, that's, but other than that, it's a pretty easy hobby.
Speaker: and i'm not that was very socially because schools here closed in march march 13th then a few weeks later they closed parks because it was like okay we can't go to the school so we'll take our lunch to the park now you can't go to the park either
Speaker: but nobody sought to shut down a cemetery.
Speaker: And so I'd take my kids, they'd run, they'd play Pokemon Go, whatever weird game they're playing.
Speaker: And it was, nobody bothers us.
Speaker: You know, it's just amazing.
Speaker: My friend roared laughing because during that lockdown, that initial craziness, I know I work in the funeral community, but like, memorials are, you know, gathering of people.
Speaker: So I was done.
Speaker: All I did was go for walks and my runs in the cemetery.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Up and down, in and out the grave.
Speaker: And that was something I actually did pre-COVID, but a bit like you, I realized, incredible, I can still do this.
Speaker: So I kept doing it.
Speaker: But to the point of towards the end, I remember meeting a friend of mine in Brooklyn.
Speaker: he was like well where can we go for our lunch and i said well yes well that's what people used to do they used to picnic so why not yeah absolutely honest people think it's morbid i mean i've always known even if i didn't know that i was born to do this because even when i was learning handwriting and calligraphy when i was younger my what i used to write was an epitaph
Speaker: from gravestone and i remember it to this day robert herring i mean it was so i always knew i'm a bit like yourself i always have this affinity and this draw to the history and it really is incredible and yeah i mean thank you so much for just coming on and sharing this love and it was just beautiful that it's so organic i mean how many videos have you got on tiktok now at the moment i don't know how many i have on there now um because videos is video oh gosh i think it's over 600 000 now
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know how that happened.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, it's very, it's very kind of weird, but at the same time, because I haven't put much of myself, like my face out there, I still kind of feel a little private.
Speaker: Like I haven't had to throw myself out there too much, but I think I'm going to have to stick myself out there a little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: absolutely i mean this is the first time we're meeting and so lovely to see your lovely face but you know you are you're it's like the avenger in the cemetery you're just it's like you're in a costume and we don't i would definitely advise everybody to check out alicia's tiktok and again i'll leave all the links and stuff because i just think it's
Speaker: It's a beautiful thing you're doing for the dead.
Speaker: It's a beautiful thing you're doing for the living and for history.
Speaker: I mean, we're going to need another one of you in another hundred years to do all this all over again.
Speaker: Thank you so much for taking the time, Alicia.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening to the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: It has been something I've been working on and muddling with for over two years now.
Speaker: So I appreciate your time to listen in.
Speaker: Every episode will have a new guest we hope you will find interesting as they tell their own story.
Speaker: So stay tuned for the next episode or have a look through the Glam Reaper episode collection.
Speaker: Find your nugget of gold as we talk all things life, love and loss with a dash from the funeral world.
Speaker: Until next time.
