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43. Death Has Taught Me To Live and Love Fully - With Rabbi Steve Leder
80 Plays4 years ago
Rabbi Steve Leder- is the senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. After receiving his degree in writing and graduating cum laude from Northwestern University, and spending time studying at Trinity College, Oxford University, Leder received a master's degree in Hebrew letters in 1986 and rabbinical ordination in 1987 from Hebrew Union College.
He is the author of several books: The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things, More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul, the bestseller More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us, and his most recent book, The Beauty of What Remains: How our greatest Fear Becomes our Greatest gift.
In this podcast, Rabbi Leder shares with us about why he wrote his latest book, and how, in over 30 years of sitting with thousands of families experiencing grief, he was not prepared for the loss of his own father.
He has learned so much about grief since his dad’s recent death, primarily how much death teaches us about life. The purpose of writing this book was to “bring every reader to that one extra degree, to the deepest truths, of what death comes to teach us about life.” The book explores the tension between Steve Leder the Rabbi, and Steve Leder the son.
Contact Rabbi Leder: http://steveleder.com/
or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steve_leder/
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest or for a complimentary coaching session:
http://griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
http://instagram.com/griefgratitudepodcast
http://facebook.com/griefgratitudepodcast
Music: http://oneplanetmusic.com http://rinaldisound.com
Graphics: http://pamelawinningham.com
Production: Carlos Andres Londono
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Transcript
Understanding Grief as Waves
00:00:00
Speaker
Grief is much more like waves. There are these massive waves very close together. And with time, they grow further apart. And sometimes you get beautiful, calm seas. And sometimes, after weeks, months, years, decades even, your back is turned and a massive rogue wave comes at you and just takes you down.
00:00:29
Speaker
that's grief.
Podcast's Purpose and Host Introduction
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:00:58
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:19
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to today's episode.
Introducing Rabbi Steve Leader and His Book
00:01:22
Speaker
Today, you will be listening to Rabbi Steve Leader, who is the senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. And he is the author of several books, and his most recent book being The Beauty of What Remains, How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift. And that's the book we will be talking about today.
00:01:46
Speaker
If you Google his name, you will be able to find lots of videos online. He's been on The Today Show with Hoda and Jenna. He's a regular there. He's also been in Fox News, Maria Shriver's Sunday paper. So he is definitely somebody that people look for
00:02:12
Speaker
inspiration as well as for motivation and for knowledge.
Rabbi Leader's Personal Grief Experience
00:02:17
Speaker
And you will get a lot of that today by listening in and hearing about his own experience witnessing people going through grief as a rabbi in his 30 plus years of experience and then now him living grief firsthand after the death of his dad.
00:02:38
Speaker
So please sit back and listen. And I would actually suggest you have pen and paper for this because he gives amazing, amazing tips and knowledge of not only how we can address our own mortality and prepare for our own death, really, but also just the way in how death can really help us evaluate and value how we live our lives.
00:03:08
Speaker
Thank you again and be ready for this beautiful conversation.
00:03:16
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode. Today, I have the honor of having Rabbi Steve Leder. I was just telling him, I told you, I told you I was going to mess up. I was saying, I was like, I'm going to say, when I see the word L-E-D-E-R, my Spanish language kicks in and I want to say Leder instead of leader. And so I said, it's going to come up.
00:03:42
Speaker
And here it is, and just in the intro, I had already happened, but that is life, right? We roll with the punches. It sounds good however you say it, don't you worry. Well, thank you. We'll pretend as if I'm interviewing in Colombia, then I could pass with that lady instead of leader. Rabbi Leader, I'm so grateful that you're here and so honored to have you on the podcast.
00:04:06
Speaker
Thank you
The Book's Resonance with Podcast Themes
00:04:07
Speaker
so much. Thank you. I'm grateful that you're here. So we are here specifically to talk about your new book, The Beauty of What Remains, How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift. Just with the title itself, I was already like, oh my gosh, this is right up my alley with the name of my podcast being Grief Gratitude and the Grain Between. I was like,
00:04:27
Speaker
Okay. He thinks exactly like me about what grief is. So I am so honored for you to be able to share with our listeners about you. Thank you, Kendra. I'm a fan of yours and I'm honored to be on the podcast with you. I really am.
00:04:43
Speaker
I'm grateful. So tell us a little bit about the journey. What led you to write this book? Because you've written other books before. Yes. So what was the story behind writing this one? And it just launched January 5th. So it's very fresh off the press, people. Fresh off the press. So tell us what led you to write this book. I wrote this book, I think the best way to frame it is I wrote it as a kind of apology.
00:05:13
Speaker
Let me explain. I was a rabbi for 30 years, and before I wrote this book, at least started writing it. And during those 30 years, those three decades, I had literally helped more than a thousand families walk through the journey that we call death and loss and grief and mourning.
Insights from Rabbi Leader's Grief Journey
00:05:35
Speaker
And I thought I was doing a pretty good job, Kendra. You know, I would have given myself an A- for sure.
00:05:41
Speaker
And then my father died after a 10-year journey through Alzheimer's disease. And my dad died. And that experience indicated to me, as I put it in the prologue of the book, everything I had been teaching and saying about death, loss, grief, mourning before my father died,
00:06:11
Speaker
was just one degree shy of the deepest truth. And I wanted to write this book. I wrote this book.
00:06:22
Speaker
to hopefully bring every reader down that one extra degree to the deepest truths of what death comes to teach us about life. Because my own personal experience, when I, the book really explores the tension between Steve Leader, the rabbi, having to learn to become Steve Leader, the son. And I learned so much about
00:06:51
Speaker
loss in that movement from Steve Leader the rabbi to Steve Leader the son. That was that extra one degree of truth. And so it caused me to reassess
00:07:07
Speaker
relearn really what it's all about and and i'm happy to go through with you some of the things that i changed my view on in my teaching and feelings about uh if you want to go there absolutely absolutely and we and i definitely i want to go into each one of those but you what you said right there about uh steve uh leader the rabbi to then the son even just in the book like you start off as
00:07:33
Speaker
sharing your story of why you became a rabbi, but you start off by getting to know you as the child. Steve, you know, I feel like I got to know Steve Leader, the child, Steve Leader, the one of how it is that you even, you know, got into becoming a rabbi. Then you see the journey of you sharing all these different beautiful stories and so heartfelt and so heartwarming of being at the bedside of all these different families. And like you said, like you could feel like, oh, you're an expert, like you've been
00:08:02
Speaker
You've seen death firsthand, like, oh my gosh, you've sat through a thousand deaths, you know, of people having to deal with families. And then you can see, I'm getting chills, you know, I'm here in the process, goosebumps. Then you see, like you just said, that one degree that you mentioned, you can see that in the book because you see that beautiful transformation into going into your own journey and your own experience and you're very, very vulnerable and beautiful.
00:08:31
Speaker
sharing, and I don't want to say too much about the book to the readers because I want to make sure you read it, but of that transformation of you as then sharing your perspective as the grieving son. And I can just say you did that beautifully in the book for sure. You have no idea how gratifying it is to hear that because the challenge of this book
00:08:56
Speaker
was to create a parallel narrative. Part of the book is a field guide, a field guide to lost death, grief, mourning, to help people who find themselves in it. And we all who have experienced know what the fog of death is and how lost you are. And so I wrote the book to be a kind of light in that darkness at the same time.
00:09:23
Speaker
for it also to be informed by my own exploration of that journey from rabbi to son. And sometimes, particularly in chapter four, where I talk about an assisted suicide. That one was, yeah, that one was very, because there you wore both.
00:09:46
Speaker
That's right. But there I hopefully fully explore, not resolve, but explore the tension between Rabbi Steve Leader and Steve Leader, the human being. Oh, and it was beautifully done. It was just beautifully done. So we can get into that too. But the reassessments I made, you know, that extra one degree really fell into, you know, four or five really important
Nonlinear Nature of Grief
00:10:12
Speaker
areas. And that's kind of how the book is structured.
00:10:16
Speaker
So shall we get into that? Yes, absolutely. Go ahead. And by the way, this is something that we can jump all over. And I think that that was another thing, too, that I realized with your book. It's not in a linear mode. It's not a linear book in terms of that, you know, you kind of jump into, you know, the different timelines. But as we know, firsthand, since we've experienced it, grief is not linear, you know, so therefore this conversation is not going to be linear either.
00:10:46
Speaker
Good. Yeah. And I did kind of try to structure the book in waves, which is what I think grief is about. It was perfect. Kendra, you actually brought up the first thing I learned from my father's death, which is, as I put it in the book, anyone who thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight line doesn't understand grief, because grief is nonlinear. And I don't know how old you are. I'm 60.
00:11:13
Speaker
I'm 45. Well, then that's perfect because we have two generations here. So my generation and yours, I believe, were done a terrible disservice by this idea brought into the world by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who did many, many amazing things, including getting people talking about the stages of death and stages of grief. And preparing for it, the people that were dying preparing for their own grief, for their own death.
00:11:43
Speaker
I think, I don't agree with the concept of stages of grief because stages of grief implies first you feel A, then you feel B, then you feel C, then you feel D, and then you're done. And that's just not true. It is not linear. And it implies there's a wrong way to grief.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yes. And that's also a long way to. Cause if you miss a step, you're like, wait a minute, but I'm not feeling that. Is it, is it something wrong with me that I, I'm not like cursing at God and mad at God for this happening or like you're waiting, you're awaiting, wait, wait, when is that stage going to happen? Cause it hasn't happened yet. And yeah. So this whole idea of stages to me is just nonsense. I,
00:12:31
Speaker
I think it's much more like waves. Grief is much more like waves. There are these massive waves very close together. And with time, they grow further apart. And sometimes you get beautiful, calm seas. And sometimes, after weeks, months, years, decades even, your back is turned and a massive rogue wave comes at you and just takes you down.
00:13:01
Speaker
That's grief. Now, let's extend that wave metaphor a little further. What do you do with it? What are our options? Our options, yeah. We live in California, and you're from California. You know the Pacific. You know the waves there. Right, and so that's actually the perfect stand up. The old Steve Leader, before my father died.
00:13:26
Speaker
whenever any kind of wave was coming at me, any kind of loss, any kind of challenge, my default setting was I am going to stand up. I'm going to face that wave coming at me, bare chested, face first, and I'm going to stand here and take it because I am stronger than that wave. Now, when it comes to grief, we all know what happens when you adopt that posture. You end up
00:13:57
Speaker
turned upside down, thrashed, thrown against the rocks, gasping for air. The other choice when that wave is coming at you is to lie down, let it wash over you, and float with it until you can stand up again. And that's what I learned. That's that one degree difference that makes all the difference for me when it comes to
00:14:27
Speaker
how to journey through grief. You got full with it. So that's the first thing. Beautiful. The next thing, which is maybe too obvious to even say, but I think it's so fundamentally true for all of us who suffer a terrible loss. The next thing I learned is, you know, no matter how many times we say, I love you, no matter how many times we hug and hold,
00:14:57
Speaker
and are hugged by and held by the people we love, it's never enough. It's never enough. And that was a really important realization for me that I think only death really comes to teach us. You know, death is the great teacher. And the next thing I learned, and this is a subtle, but I think really important and permission-giving point to those of us who grieve,
00:15:26
Speaker
is I learned about the duality of memory. You know, we give a false representation of memory in the wake of death when we say things like, may his memory be a blessing, or shall live on in your memories. Well, yes, and, right, because there's a duality to memory. Yes, memory is beautiful. And
00:15:55
Speaker
It really, really hurts. Hurts. It's both. In the book, I say it's like being caressed and spat on at the same time. Some people don't even like to dream with their loved ones because of how much it can hurt. For others, dreaming with their loved ones, even that is like, oh, they were in my dreams. So some are like, please don't show up because I don't know what to deal with those emotions.
Authenticity in Grieving
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. So it's a duality. It's both.
00:16:23
Speaker
And learning to live with that duality is the gray that you talk about. That's it, right? So that's another thing I learned. Another thing I learned is authenticity. And by that I mean we so often when we are approaching the dying or the grieving
00:16:48
Speaker
try to adopt a different persona than the one that's truly ours. You know, so many people come to you when you're mourning with this, they walk in the door with this sad, long, phony face, you know, a bad acting job and whispered hushes. And it's like, who's sleeping? Wait, who's sleeping? Why are you whispering? And it's not what people need, what people need, what people want.
00:17:18
Speaker
is for us to be with them in death, who we were with them in life, because that is what assures them the bottom hasn't fallen out of the world. So what you need to do is just show up and be authentic. If you're a hugger hug, if you're a feeder feed, if you're a joker joke, if you're a listener, listen, if you're a hand holder, hold my hand. That's all, I just need you to be as I face death.
00:17:47
Speaker
who you have been for me in life. That's comforting. That's hopeful. That's real. And people don't realize that. They think they're doing the right thing pretending.
00:17:58
Speaker
and they're not. So this is more, and this particular tip or learning is not only when you're at someone's bedside or like in the case of somebody that's about to die, be your authentic self with them, but it can also then play into how you are when somebody else is grieving as well. How you are on the side of someone that has just lost a loved one. Yeah, so it applies on- That's right, and frankly,
00:18:27
Speaker
And it's frankly more important because you're going to be with the survivor much longer than you're going to be with the person who is dying. So it's even more important to be authentic. That's what people need. OK, just be yourself. You know, people call me often. I get calls that go something like this. Steve, my best friend from college was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He's got three to six months. I'm flying back to New York to visit him. What do I say?
00:18:55
Speaker
And my answer is always the same. Don't worry about what to say. I just want to share three words with you. And then I want to share two words with you. The first three words, just show up. Okay, just show up and then be real. And the rest will unfold. It'll be fine.
00:19:18
Speaker
So that's the beauty of showing up. As I like to say sometimes, it changes nothing, but it means everything. It's really true. It is. It is so true. It's not the what to say. Even now, I mean, I've experienced grief firsthand, and I still don't even know sometimes what to say, right? When somebody, if you know what I'm expressing, it's like you never know. What do I set to say? It's such a good point. After 33 plus years,
00:19:46
Speaker
more than half of my life of standing on front doorsteps before walking into a home to meet with a family to prepare them for a funeral or standing in the hallway of the hospital outside a room before I go in, even after 33 plus years, I have no idea what I'm gonna say. I just know that if I show up and I'm authentic, something beautiful will emerge.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's so perfect. Because you're in alignment. I think that that's the key. Being in alignment with who we are in the face of all these different challenges allows us, and I'm going to use this word because you use it here in terms of vessel, the body being a vessel. And therefore, even just ourselves in life, when we're that vessel, then things just flow. And as long as we're being authentic,
00:20:37
Speaker
Then it's kind of like a pure reed, like a flout. A flout. That's right. You see, I'm here as my Spanglish. I'm going to say flute. I'm going to say flout in Spanish. That's okay. Like a reed, right? So the music for it to kind of flow, it just has to be clean. So as long as we're just present, we show up, then we're real, then things will just- They'll emerge. Be clear. They'll emerge and be clear. That is just beautiful.
00:21:03
Speaker
So now, I want to talk a little bit about how did you then in the process of the 10 years with your dad with Alzheimer's, what were some of the tools you used for your own grieving process in assimilating to that grief that was to come? It's like anticipatory grief basically that you're dealing with in that kind of a situation. Well, here's the truth about Alzheimer's and dementia and other
00:21:34
Speaker
brain diseases. The people who have them died twice. My father died twice. Once when his brain turned him into a different person than my father. And then when his body died. And the disease, this might sound harsh, but I mean it to be comforting to people.
00:22:03
Speaker
When I tell them, Kendra, the disease is in charge. The disease has its own rhythm and power, and it's going to carry you along. And it's going to prepare you. And it's going to wean you. So that when the day comes, it will make its own kind of sense. In a way, it does not make sense today.
00:22:32
Speaker
because the truth is there comes a time when more is not better and when enough really is enough. And I encourage people, I guess we can go back to this idea of floating with it, to make peace with the fact and recognize and embrace even that the disease and its power and rhythm is in charge.
00:23:02
Speaker
And that's a kind of giving over of control and power and authority that I think is the beginning of embracing the lessons that death is coming to teach. I, for example, I didn't have a real conversation with my father for the last five years of his life.
00:23:23
Speaker
So I got used to living without being able to really talk to him, without being able to get his advice, without calling him to tell him a joke. You learn to live without as people diminish. The other thing I learned, which I want to share with everyone during that pretty much last five years of the 10 years of his Alzheimer's disease, and particularly the last year and a half or two, was I learned a new language.
The Double Death of Alzheimer's
00:23:53
Speaker
with my father, which is the language of touch. I learned how important touch is, how important and beautiful it was for me to just sit with him in his room, in that nursing home, in his wheelchair, sit by his side and just hold his hand. You know, I hadn't held my father's hand since I was a small boy.
00:24:24
Speaker
And I would sit for hours and just hold his hand. When I would scratch his head, it would make him smile. When I would rub his shoulders, you know, it would make him sigh. We developed a new language and it was very beautiful and I'm very grateful for it. And that never would have emerged, never would have emerged without him losing the ability, you know, to speak.
00:24:50
Speaker
Oh, that is just like so moving. And it's so true. It's like we have all these other, and it's kind of even just now what COVID is kind of teaching us even now with quarantine, right? All these different ways of to be able to keep connected with people, you know, through this time, right? It's like we have to find different languages. Like death, COVID is the challenge and lesson of essentialism.
00:25:18
Speaker
What really matters and of course, you know, this is the other thing I really you would think a rabbi would know this but you know, we all lose our way Yeah, I was actually gonna say which hats do you wear more often even like you have so many hats Yeah, I wear them all at the same time, which is difficult. It's a juggling act. Yeah, but I learned
00:25:50
Speaker
in a very deep way from the pandemic and before that, my father's death, that it's who we have, not what we have that matters. And the who we have is a very small handful of people that really matter. None of us have more than a small handful. And just to drive the point home further, I think about this particularly in cemeteries and I'll tell you why.
00:26:20
Speaker
I obviously spend a lot of time in cemeteries. I was there four times this week. And one of the things that amazes me every time is the almost complete unanimity of inscriptions on headstones. They almost all say exactly the same thing. Because when you have to encapsulate or distill a person's life,
00:26:49
Speaker
down to 15 characters and four lines each, you are engaged in an exercise of real emotional essentialism. So what do these heads don't say? Not your net worth.
00:27:07
Speaker
Not your zip code, not your grandchild's GPA, not the car you drove, right? Not if you lived in Beverly Hills, 90210. Exactly. None of it. None of it. What does it say? Loving wife, mother, grandmother, friend. Loving husband, father, grandfather.
00:27:33
Speaker
That's it. That is the essence and meaning of life itself. And that's a lesson that the pandemic I think has, and I'm not dismissing the pain and suffering for a moment. I wish it never arrived, but it has arrived.
00:27:52
Speaker
Now what? What do we make of these losses? Well, one of the things I hope we make of these losses is that, as I said, it is who, not what we have that matters, and the who is a very small circle.
00:28:06
Speaker
You touch upon so many, right now when you were talking, it reminds me a little bit even too of the... Well, right now when you were talking about who we touch, you said something that made me cry in your book and is that you were hoping that at least you'd impact three people in your life. No. Was it a rabbi that told... Was it a friend? No. Well, he wasn't actually... It's interesting. So the story you're reading on is...
00:28:30
Speaker
Is it okay for me to be staring down at those people? It might say, is it like, okay. I was like, I don't want to like see a punchline of the book. No, no. I am. I want to talk with you about what moved you in the book. That's important. Yeah. Like that I was crying too. This is a really interesting story. When I was graduating from rabbinical school, rabbinical school is a five year program after you finished college. And then you go out and get your first job as a, as a young rabbi. I was 27 years old when I
00:29:01
Speaker
when I started my first job, so I was a kid. And when I was graduating, I went to three or four of my professors whom I really respected the most, and I asked each of them, and some of them were rabbis, some of them were not, I asked each of them, what in your opinion constitutes a successful rabbi? Because obviously I wanted to be a successful rabbi.
00:29:24
Speaker
And I got different answers. The most thoughtful and important answer I got was from my Hebrew literature professor who was not a rabbi, Dr. Ezra Spice Handler, who has since died. And Dr. Spice Handler said to me, a successful rabbi is a person who deeply affects at least three people in the course of his rabbinate. And that taught me so much about
00:29:51
Speaker
as I put it in the book, based on a Yiddish expression, my father taught all five of his children. I love it. Yeah. There were several funny. Oh no, that was different. There was one different one. I was one, there was another Yiddish one.
00:30:12
Speaker
No, something of a butt. Something of a butt. Oh, oh, it's, yeah, is Besser of the Geschwierreichte. Right, which means it's better than a boil on your ass. Yeah, that's what it is. And that one, by the way, even though I was laughing first, then I was crying because then it became a reality. So I was like, oh my gosh. Right. How does he have me crying on what, laughing on one page, on one paragraph, and then the next paragraph I'm crying. So, so I love it. Sorry. So go back to your,
00:30:42
Speaker
So anyway, Ezra Spice Handler said, you know, basically what he was saying to me is a little is a lot. And if you can really change the lives of a small number of people, you're a success. And I've never forgotten that because he wasn't teaching me to think small, he was teaching me to really care.
00:31:06
Speaker
And that just makes so much sense for anybody's life. Just the fact that if we impact one person's life, that's already a legacy there in itself. The fact that something has been left behind that impacted that person, that then it's going to have an influence in their character and how they lead their lives, that then that continues on.
00:31:26
Speaker
And that's where I wanted to also talk about, well, I don't want to jump too far. Well, yeah, let's jump to that part. And then we'll go back to this other part that I just thought. About the aspect of the afterlife memory, that memory, that part, another one in tears there.
00:31:45
Speaker
take us into because you share your own letter that you wrote already to your children but can you give us please share with the audience these tips about how we can do that this in life not about like what's in our will necessarily of who got what but this afterlife memory please so what what you're referring to is something called
00:32:13
Speaker
talk about in the book. Most people by a certain age have some kind of estate plan. They have some kind of document that makes sure that their heirs inherit their material possessions, their money, after they die. The things they're bequeathing to their loved ones.
00:32:39
Speaker
So Jews since the 11th century, beginning in Germany and Italy and France, have created a second complementary or parallel document called an ethical will.
Ethical Wills and Non-material Legacies
00:32:51
Speaker
And an ethical will is a document that you write to your children and it bequeaths your values. It bequeaths the things, the non-material things.
00:33:06
Speaker
that you want your loved ones to hold in their hearts and their minds and their lives when you are gone. And I've written mine to my children and I put it in the book. It's the first time it's ever been published, first time my kids saw it. But I think it's extraordinarily important because
00:33:32
Speaker
You know, the truth is our children, our loved ones, if you don't have children, it can be your nieces and nephews, it can be your best friends. The people we leave behind, they're going to need our values much more than they're gonna need our stuff. You know, there's a chapter in the book called, Nobody Wants Your Crap. And it's really about this mistake, right? There's this mistake we make spending our lives
00:34:03
Speaker
Acquiring, acquiring, acquiring, collecting and collecting and collecting. And what you discover when a loved one who's done that dies is nobody wants all that crap. You can't even give it away. So it's really the non-material that matters most. And an ethical will is a way to bequeath the non-material.
00:34:29
Speaker
to the people we love. And that's so important. Now, with that, for example, with your dad being that he was diagnosed 10 years ago, well, he passed away. Has it been two years already since his passing? It's been about two and a half, two and a half. Two and a half years. So had he, for example, been able to write an ethical will prior to him developing Alzheimer's? No. And this is such an important point you're making.
00:35:01
Speaker
Another thing death comes to teach us is the truth of that statement. You never know. You never know when something is the last time. No baby knows the last time it'll ever nurse from its mother's breast. Brothers never know when it's happening, when the water is draining out of the last bath they're ever gonna take together.
00:35:30
Speaker
And I didn't know my last conversation with my father was my last conversation with my father, that he would be able to speak one day and unable to speak the next. My father didn't know that his last conversation was his last conversation with his son. And so I think this ethical will is doubly important because you really never
00:35:59
Speaker
No. Do you want to hear the last paragraph? Should I read it? Okay, let me just grab my tissue, box of tissues. Go ahead. I haven't. Give the listeners a sense. Yes, please do. So this is the last, just the last paragraph of my ethical will to my kids, whose names are Aaron and Hannah. Be good and the rest works out. See the world with people you love.
00:36:31
Speaker
Cherished time, it matters so much more than things. Mine with you and mommy has made my life worth living. I wish for you that kind of love now. I wish for you that kind of love when I am gone. Say Kaddish and light a candle for me when I am gone. Feel its warmth and know I love you still.
00:37:08
Speaker
It's so beautiful. How was it for them? Are they teenagers or in their 20s? Oh, no, they're millennials, 28 and 31. Oh, really? I was looking at the picture on your website. They look so young. I thought they were in there. That's an old picture. Oh, OK, OK. I was like, OK, they look in there. Does anyone pay attention to their websites anymore with Instagram? Who pays attention to their website?
00:37:27
Speaker
Thank you.
00:37:36
Speaker
The website is so 90s. How was it for them reading this part? My son.
00:37:49
Speaker
I did. My son didn't have much to say about it. He doesn't like thinking about his dad ever dying. You're mortality. Oh my gosh, we have to go back into that topic in a second. Okay. My daughter said, oh, daddy, that's so sweet. So that's how she felt about it. And she's generally more expressive than her son.
00:38:17
Speaker
Uh, but, but they were both, you know, let me put it this way. They did not give me the millennial eye roll that I get when I asked them to help me with my phone. That was good. Maybe you can ask them, can you help me update the picture on my website where people take your TV?
00:38:36
Speaker
Okay, I'll get on that. I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. It's a beautiful family picture. It was just me. I was like, oh, they look so young. No, they're all grown up. No, bless. I think any pictures I have of my children, my kids are 13 and 12, I probably have not posted many pictures. Maybe one a year that they let me kind of post, but when they were little, I have one like five pictures a day on there. No, they get very tough on you as they get older.
00:39:09
Speaker
I wanted to talk about that part when you said that. He didn't say much. That aspect of the fact that it is so hard for us human beings to talk about our mortality. We talk about birth.
00:39:24
Speaker
We plan birth. We, you know, that aspect of, you know, people, you know, when they're expecting a baby, all the plans that they make and talking about the birth plan. But we don't talk about our death. There's such taboo around it and that the fact of us talking about it or even the fact that you writing already this that you're leaving
00:39:46
Speaker
behind that there's this fear component of that. What would you say to this topic and how, yeah, what are your thoughts about this? The normalizing the conversation. Let me put it that way. I think we should start really early.
Normalizing Death Conversations Early
00:40:04
Speaker
And by that, I mean, I think, you know, writing an article on children and death and I'm going to call it don't flush the fish.
00:40:12
Speaker
And what I mean by that is we have all these opportunities, right? We have all these opportunities to start exposing children to grief and to death and to loss that we deny them. Yes. And we deny ourselves, not only them, but ourselves of that opportunity. That's right. That's right. Now, when the goldfish dies, some parents
00:40:37
Speaker
flush the fish while the kids at school, they run out and get a new one and put it in the bowl. And they pretend death didn't occur, right? What a wasted opportunity. You need to take that little dead goldfish, you need to put it in a matchbox, you need to go out in the backyard, you need to dig a hole, you need to say some beautiful nice things about that fish, how pretty it was, how it always finished its food, whatever you wanna say,
00:41:05
Speaker
and let your kids talk and then bury that goldfish and teach them how to face death, right? As opposed to keeping death at arm's distance. Now we do this as a society. First of all, 80% of Americans say, I'm sorry, most Americans, most people say they want to die at home. 80% of Americans do not die at home.
00:41:32
Speaker
And what happens when we die? A van shows up and whisks us away. And then we go to a mortuary, where in many cases, not all, but in many cases, we put suits and ties and pretty dresses on the dead, and we put makeup on the dead, all to make them look less dead. Alive. Yeah, yeah. And we say things, really stupid things, to children like grandpa sleeping.
00:42:02
Speaker
Grandpa's arresting, right? Oh, and then that makes people like, be afraid of sleeping. I'd be afraid to fall asleep. Exactly. It's a terrifying thing for kids then to go to sleep, of course. But it's also a lie. It's a lie. We don't even use the right words. Grandpa's body has died. His heart stopped. However you want to say it.
00:42:28
Speaker
So I think the answer to your question really ideally is to start very early and normalize this for people. And I also think that helping people with what we were saying earlier about showing up authentically. If you know that the job is just to show up authentically, it's a lot easier than if the job is to show up and pretend.
00:42:50
Speaker
So I think we also need to say more often and empower people more fully to just show up and be yourself, because that's enough. In fact, that's a lot.
00:43:00
Speaker
That's a, it's way more than, that's a thing. A lot of times people don't show up because they really do not know what to even do. And so they stop to even texting to check in on somebody or call them. Cause they're like, I don't even know what I'd say. They're so uncomfortable around it. Instead of honestly, like I say, I do not, this is what I say. I do not say, I do not know what to say right now. And I don't think that there's anything I could say that could make you feel better. Just know that I'm here.
00:43:26
Speaker
I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Whatever you need. I'll tell you something. How smart you are. The Navajo have a beautiful morning custom where if someone in the village dies, they go to the mourners' home. They walk in. They sit down. They stay a while. And then they leave. They say nothing.
00:43:51
Speaker
They're just physically there. And that energy, yeah, that is enough because just that, that presence, you feel it, you know that it's the, you know, the words even just, you know what, that actually just made me think of you holding your dad's hand right there. There were no words, you were just there and that was enough. And there's nothing to say anyway. What is there to say really? This is not really a time for words.
00:44:20
Speaker
It's a time for presence. Oh, so, so true. So beautiful. I could keep going and asking you all these other things, but I know you have another interview. Tell me, is there something that you want to leave to the listeners? I do want to ask you actually, if you can share a little bit
00:44:42
Speaker
One, how do people get your book? And again, the name is the beauty of what remains, how our greatest fear becomes our greatest gift. I have put it also on my website and I'll put it on the link of this podcast and then other ways in which people can get it if you want to share that. And then I want you to talk about the other book because the other book, how suffering transforms us, the one I want to also then, but that I think
00:45:07
Speaker
Sounds like a perfect book for people to be reading also right now during this time. Yes. Thank you so much for that. It's generous of you. The book, again, is called The Beauty of What Remains, how our greatest fear becomes our greatest gift. And you can obviously get it on Amazon, your local bookstore. It's always nice to shop locally. You can follow me best, I would say, on Instagram and it's at Steve underscore leader. L-E-D-E-R. So that's at Steve underscore leader.
00:45:37
Speaker
because I'm pretty engaged in Instagram. You're with millennials because you have millennial kids. You're so not so nice. I think it's amazing. I think Instagram is just amazing. And it's such a great way to communicate with people. So you can get to the bunk through the link in my bio. And I'm pretty easy to find if you just Google, you know, Steve Leader or Rabbi Steve Leader, however you want to do it, you'll find me. I don't hide.
00:46:06
Speaker
And now the other thing is the book before this book, I would say sort of the part A to this part B, is a book called More Beautiful Than Before, How Suffering Transforms Us. And it's a book about essentially, you know, we're running out of time. So I'm going to put it pretty simply. The thesis of that book is that we all sooner or later walk through hell.
00:46:34
Speaker
And there are many kinds of hell, Kendra. There's the hell of death. There's the hell of grief. There's the hell of losing a kid. There's the hell of cancer. There's the hell of your marriage falling apart. There's a hell of losing your money. There's the hell of losing your reputation. There are many forms of hell. And that book is really about the fact that we all go through hell and the point is not to come out empty handed. Don't come out of hell empty handed.
00:47:01
Speaker
Don't miss that. Don't miss that. Allow that suffering. Yes. You know, Dostoyevsky said his greatest fear was that his life would not be worthy of his suffering. That's such a powerful idea. Can you lead a life worthy of the suffering you have endured? Because then, even though you're broken, somehow you will be more whole. You'll lead a more beautiful and meaningful life as a result of the pain.
00:47:31
Speaker
And that's really what that book is about.
00:47:35
Speaker
beautiful. I'm running to get that one too. Now that I finished this, this one, it's amazing. Thank you so much. It's just been an honor to now actually get to speak to somebody I really did feel like I knew you already reading this. And so I'm like, I feel like I got to know your essence and your soul. You really did share that so beautifully here. And I just appreciate you so much for sharing now here.
00:48:02
Speaker
with our listeners. So thank you so much, Rabbi Leader. Thank you, Kendra. I've really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you for the really important and beautiful work you're doing. Thank you.
00:48:18
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode and if you feel inspired in some way
00:48:41
Speaker
to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so. Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.