Transcript
Speaker: And it came out of a deep desire to help people get more prepared for death and their end of life.
Speaker: Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney aka the Glam Reaper herself.
Speaker: On today's episode we are well I guess we're doling some cards out.
Speaker: We have the gorgeous Lisa from the Death Deck and so we're going to find out all of what that is which I love it.
Speaker: So hi Lisa welcome to the Glam Reaper show.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Hi, Jennifer.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here today.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: So tell us, I have my coffee.
Speaker: I am ready.
Speaker: It's cold here in New York.
Speaker: I'm ready to hear about this, the Death Deck.
Speaker: I don't know if we're going to get this episode out before Christmas because it is a great Christmas gift, I think.
Speaker: Even if we don't get it out before Christmas and it's after Christmas, everyone needs to get their hands on one.
Speaker: So tell us, what is the Death Deck?
Speaker: Let's start with that.
Speaker: So the Death Tech was created by myself and my business partner, Lori, about five years ago.
Speaker: And it came out of a deep desire to help people get more prepared for death and their end of life.
Speaker: Lori and I met when I was the hospice social worker for her late husband, Joe.
Speaker: And so they were in their early 40s when he died of pancreatic cancer.
Speaker: And so they thought they were prepared with documents and that sort of thing, but they had never talked at all.
Speaker: about death and dying and what he might want while he was dying and afterwards in terms of salvation of life, cremation, all of these important topics.
Speaker: So we created a fun and lively way to start the conversation with the hope being that if people start having these conversations now, before a medical diagnosis or a medical crisis, that people will be more prepared and be able to make decisions for each other and
Speaker: And just have a general comfort because we're so afraid about talking about death and dying and it doesn't have to be that scary.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And it's so interesting because Irish people, I'm from Ireland originally, and Irish people are renowned for being good at talking about death.
Speaker: And I've said that's been said to me so many times and I'm like, but lads, we're not.
Speaker: We're good at the wake and we're famous for the wake.
Speaker: This idea that we're great at talking about it.
Speaker: We're absolutely not.
Speaker: You know, we're very superstitious.
Speaker: We sort of push it to one side.
Speaker: So and it's interesting because 15 years ago when I started this business, like everyone thought I was mad.
Speaker: Obviously, I was coming from the wedding planning, like a totally different background.
Speaker: And everyone thought I was crazy.
Speaker: And then 10 years ago, I wrote my first book and
Speaker: if the appendix of my book is kind of similar to what you're touching on but I just think what you've come up with this new format of doing it in a in a in a kind of a it's not you're not gamifying it but in a you know we're all used to playing cards at Christmas and Thanksgiving and you know when we get holidays together with family we usually there's a deck of cards somewhere around the house and different games and so I feel like the death deck
Speaker: kind of associate a fun time, a family time with obviously a very, very serious topic.
Speaker: Do you find your clients, are they more funerals industry people or are they Joe Public, as I call them?
Speaker: Are they, you know, the person who has, you know, just happens to have maybe an interest?
Speaker: Well, you know, there are some aspects that we did gamify the cards in the sense that you can partner up and guess each other's answers.
Speaker: And that's my favorite way to play because people think they know each other, like their spouses and their family members.
Speaker: And it turns out that most of the time people haven't talked about these topics.
Speaker: And so they don't know each other's answers.
Speaker: But to your point, you know, we have...
Speaker: A lot of our clientele or people who are purchasing the death deck are death doulas, advanced care planning folks, people who are trying to get people to start thinking and talking about these topics, life insurance,
Speaker: financial planning, all of the industries that are adjacent to death, some with the funeral industry, like the pre-need people who are trying to help people start thinking about these topics as well.
Speaker: But I would say it's more before death people.
Speaker: We're trying to get Joe Public to pick up our deck.
Speaker: It's been a tricky one.
Speaker: It's been a tricky one.
Speaker: You know, our goal is that there be a death deck on the shelf at Target next to all the other games.
Speaker: And it would just be kind of, sure, let's pick up this, like Cards Against Humanity.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: for humanity kind of thing um yes I like that that's a good one do you think you do you think you could just because I know I've been approached so it's it's interesting this conversation because I've been approached over the years by people trying to get into this space and the one thing I sort of I'm always happy to give them whatever advice I can because I think it's a tough space to break into and but one thing I'm always warning them is
Speaker: disrupting the business disrupting the industry like a lot of people sort of when they start out come out with that and I'm like that's not a great it's not it's not very helpful in a sense because it is old old industry and people are not going to change overnight in terms of they're not suddenly want to talk about death because it's a very scary topic and it's scary insofar as
Speaker: thinking you're to yourself you know whether it's your partner or your family or your kids that you won't be around to see them graduate or whatever it might be and so you know I've had people approach me about you know how they're gamifying it in terms of apps and things like that pre-plan because I do pre-planning workshops myself like that's wonderful but let me tell you it's very difficult and it's going to be a slow burner so I think it's great that people are trying to do it I'm just like some people who've
Speaker: I've had conversations like you're not going to be a millionaire overnight.
Speaker: You know, this isn't going to go from zero to hero like a Facebook or just, you know, you can call yourself a death disruptor, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: It's just it's not something that's palatable for people.
Speaker: It's just not.
Speaker: I mean, I'm sure you probably know from your experience in a hospice, never mind with the death deck.
Speaker: Do you guys have any plans to make it an app or are you sticking with the physical, the tangible card?
Speaker: Well, you know, that's a good question.
Speaker: We're back and forth on that.
Speaker: Apps are expensive.
Speaker: I think that there's a lot of movement right now in the death space, right?
Speaker: There's TikTok hospice nurses.
Speaker: There's TikTok funeral directors.
Speaker: There's all sorts of people kind of trying to
Speaker: Getting a pretty big social media following, right?
Speaker: And then in People magazine, they're talking about death doulas and there are more conversations about human composting and these things.
Speaker: So I think we're making good progress.
Speaker: I also think that it's still really hard to sell a product that is talking about death and dying.
Speaker: You can make it as fun as you want, and people still have to get over that hump of purchasing.
Speaker: We did create a second deck called the EOL deck.
Speaker: It's similar.
Speaker: There are also multiple choice questions, but this is more designed for people who are at the end of their life, so hospice, palliative care, people of advanced age, and it's kind of the more sensitive deck because
Speaker: The Death Deck, our original product, has a lot of humor in it and asks about all sorts of topics related to death and dying that are top priority for a hospice and palliative care patient where we're really just trying to understand what they want their dying experience to look like.
Speaker: So I think there's actually more opportunities with us in that space in the sense of like it's a tool for end-of-life care professionals.
Speaker: But, you know, the goal still is...
Speaker: You know, if we all get on the tutu train together of normalizing death.
Speaker: We just said if we all get on it together, but
Speaker: They're in the big, you know, the quantum leap that is.
Speaker: I don't, you know, I don't foresee that happening in the next decade, honestly.
Speaker: I feel like I feel like we have made absolute strides.
Speaker: I mean, even when I go home to Ireland 15 years ago, like I didn't leave 15 years ago.
Speaker: I'm nine years here in New York and I still am back and forth and I'm very much in touch with everyone back home in Ireland.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: it's a slow burner.
Speaker: It's doing really well.
Speaker: And I feel like exactly as you said, I mean, you know, I've personally, you know, whether it's the podcast or what I'm doing over here, have featured in many, many magazines and TV shows and radio shows and everything.
Speaker: And because I talk about it in such a normal and kind of a bit, you know, upbeat way, I think people are like, oh, what's going on here?
Speaker: I mean, I just recently got featured in RSVP magazine, which is a magazine in Ireland that is
Speaker: renowned for only sort of high end events and sort of weddings and it's a gossip magazine but not really it's like all the celebrities sort of it's RSVP so it's always about events and stuff so the fact that I got a two page spread in Ireland I was like wow okay alright
Speaker: Because those people are not going to be thinking about death or celebrants or memorials or death doulas or any sort of, they're not going to be thinking about that.
Speaker: So to get that and to sort of have them flick the page and be like, oh, and reading about it and the article, I have to say, was very well written.
Speaker: And so it's palatable.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think the key is is we're we're more comfortable with having these conversations because we work in the space, but it's making it palatable for Joe Public, you know, and that's what I try and do with the podcast, even though I think the majority of my audience are from the funeral space.
Speaker: But that's OK, because I feel like the more of us that are on the train and going in the right direction, you know, the rest will jump on board.
Speaker: Now, the deck, tell me, give us a little, I guess, sneak preview or, you know, give us a couple of the questions, if you can, that are in it that maybe are your, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we have multiple choice questions and open-ended.
Speaker: And, you know, you can imagine why we use multiple choice questions, because as you remember from school, it's easier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, so we do have some, about 30 of the questions are open-ended, but the majority are multiple choice.
Speaker: We also use them multiple choice so we can insert some humor into the answers.
Speaker: So let's see here what we want to talk about.
Speaker: After I kick the bucket, announce my death on social media, A, pretty quickly, I'd like everyone to know ASAP.
Speaker: B, never, please don't tweet my device.
Speaker: Or C, whenever, I really don't care, I'm dead.
Speaker: Which would I choose?
Speaker: Oh gosh, I would probably go with A. I would have to go with A, I feel like.
Speaker: I feel like, yeah, I have too much.
Speaker: Between work and my personal, I am on social media a bit.
Speaker: Yeah, it would probably help.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: Okay, give me another one.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, these are all, it is amazing what you don't think of.
Speaker: Growing up, my family dealt with death.
Speaker: A, by talking openly, sharing feelings, stories, dark humor.
Speaker: B, in a no-nonsense sort of way.
Speaker: Shit happens, you move on.
Speaker: Or C, keeping it bottled up and avoiding any discussion.
Speaker: Well, I'm Irish, so I can tell you the entire country of Ireland is probably going to be C. I don't know, maybe there is the odd family out there who would go for A or B, but...
Speaker: Yeah, even that I do what I do and my nickname is the Glam Reaper for 15 years, even talking about it with my family is like blood from a stone.
Speaker: I'm like, guys, come on.
Speaker: I did get my mum to sit down and do a pre-plan.
Speaker: As anybody who's listened to the podcast enough knows, I did get her to sit down and do a pre-plan with me when I started.
Speaker: And that was an amazing, bonding, beautiful experience, which I'm always talking about and trying to encourage people to do.
Speaker: My dad still refuses to even talk about it.
Speaker: The most I got from him is he wants the littlest money spent in any form of anything.
Speaker: He wants all the money put behind the bar.
Speaker: So if he can go into like a black sack and into the back garden, that's what he wants me to do.
Speaker: He did even reference that.
Speaker: He said, just throw me in the back of my pickup truck and just bury me somewhere.
Speaker: I was like, Dad, I mean, that's illegal.
Speaker: I can't get arrested.
Speaker: So thanks, Dad.
Speaker: That's your legacy is me getting arrested.
Speaker: So yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker: How about you?
Speaker: You know, I grew up on a farm in northern Michigan and death was kind of part, death is part of farming.
Speaker: It was more of a, my family was pretty open talking about death and dying.
Speaker: My dad was also diagnosed with
Speaker: leukemia at 40.
Speaker: He's 71 now.
Speaker: So he's lived 31 years with leukemia.
Speaker: But I was pretty young.
Speaker: I was only 18 when he was diagnosed.
Speaker: And so it's been a very, he was afraid initially that he was going to die because he was pretty sick at diagnosis.
Speaker: But here he is 31 years later.
Speaker: So I
Speaker: Because of the farm and the diagnosis, it became more open and communicative in my family, which I think is how I ended up in hospice.
Speaker: And yeah, so I want to come back to that.
Speaker: But actually, to your point about farming, that's so true because obviously in Ireland, there's a lot of farming too.
Speaker: I'm from Dublin, which is the capital.
Speaker: But I used to visit my grandmother telling some shit.
Speaker: Well, she's dead now, bless her.
Speaker: But
Speaker: be rolling in her grave and like, don't be using my story.
Speaker: But I remember as a child waking up in the middle of the night on M&M.
Speaker: I woke up to her in the middle of the night.
Speaker: She was drowning kittens.
Speaker: She was as in they they were born deaf and blind and it was
Speaker: In her mind, and this is, I mean, this is 35 years ago.
Speaker: So in her, the way she was brought up was it wasn't, the life wasn't for, you know, I mean, it was terrible.
Speaker: I mean, God, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker: I think this on line about their misery was the fact.
Speaker: Yeah, that was the thing.
Speaker: I mean, it was like, I'll never forget watching her kill a chicken.
Speaker: And the chicken ran around with no head for like the few minutes afterwards.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I mean, she was she was an incredible woman and her husband, she had seven children.
Speaker: Well, 12 actually in total and five, you know, miscarriages and child loss at birth.
Speaker: But that was just, you know, that was their generation in Ireland.
Speaker: It was just that's what they were grew up.
Speaker: So very Irish women of that generation were very, very tough.
Speaker: And her husband died when she was very, very young.
Speaker: My dad himself was only 16.
Speaker: And so she, you know, raised all these kids on her own on this farm.
Speaker: So, you know, she did what she had to do.
Speaker: But I remember waking to, oh, God, yeah, hearing screams.
Speaker: I couldn't talk to her.
Speaker: Like, I did not talk to her.
Speaker: I mean, I'm such an animal.
Speaker: I couldn't understand this.
Speaker: This was brutality to me.
Speaker: And it, you know, and today in today's society, it is, you know, she'd probably be reported.
Speaker: God almighty, thank God she's six feet under.
Speaker: But it was just sort of what they did, you know.
Speaker: So yeah, you're right.
Speaker: I mean, there was a bit more of an acceptance of God, it was a bit brutal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Partook in butchering chickens.
Speaker: So I.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And people, I'm very sorry to all the vegetarians out there, but I will say, I was in 4-H, so I always had an animal in 4-H.
Speaker: Most of my friends were farmers.
Speaker: We got up and fed the animals before we went to school.
Speaker: There was really a commitment to the livestock and to making sure that they were well cared for.
Speaker: And I do think that there's a lot of
Speaker: gains that I made or that I experienced, you know, these life lessons and all of these moments along the way that really taught me about responsibility and about understanding where your food comes from and all these important things.
Speaker: But I think it also did...
Speaker: help normalize death and dying a little bit easier.
Speaker: You know, we had like an animal, a pet cemetery and a livestock cemetery on our land.
Speaker: And so it is interesting to me to meet other farmers and hear other people's kind of experience with death and dying.
Speaker: I never kind of thought about it really until you said it.
Speaker: And it is it there's the recommendation of, you know, with kids nowadays that if they have the goldfish, you know, to not sort of sanitize it when they they've died to sort of take the child through it.
Speaker: So they start to get a little bit more acclimatized to death and dying and, you know, and grief and all that.
Speaker: And I think when you're raised on a farm, exactly that you kind of you experience it as part of life.
Speaker: And that is death is a part of life.
Speaker: You know, sometimes it comes too soon.
Speaker: Sometimes it comes not long enough for some people.
Speaker: I mean, it is what it is.
Speaker: And so I do think it's very interesting.
Speaker: And I do think, you know, while we probably did lose some vegetarians and vegans there, also what does frustrate me a little bit about today.
Speaker: And even I especially now that I'm living in America is this sort of sanitized version of, well, you don't think about where the chicken on your plate came from or the steak or, you know, like.
Speaker: That is there is somebody back along the line doing the things that, you know, you and I just sort of talked about.
Speaker: And so should we ignore that?
Speaker: And in some ways that actually touches a little bit on what a lot of people would say has become the death care industry in America is that it's become let's put it behind closed doors.
Speaker: Let's not know it even existed.
Speaker: You know, let's.
Speaker: direct cremation people are sort of saying that's what that is that the body is just sort of taken away and suddenly comes back in the ash form or whatever and then that's it and so people are not going through the grieving process so kind of a lot of what we're saying really without us I don't think planning it is it's applicable to both
Speaker: Yeah, like I don't, I feel like we should face up to all the good, the bad and the ugly parts of being a human being, which is, you know, a lot of us are carnivores and, you know, this is a part of life.
Speaker: And even the book, I'm currently writing my fourth book at the moment, it is about trying to
Speaker: help people to see that life is finite and that if you accept that life is finite and that you know unfortunately death is coming for us all no matter how much money you've got in the bank you know that you actually live life and love more and you know so you getting up to feed the chickens or whatever it is there's still a circle of life there it didn't mean that there was any less air or you know given to them and stuff
Speaker: Well, that's one of our other messages with the death deck is, you know, and I think this, if we want to use the term death positive movement, is this reality that if we really contemplate the fact that we're going to die and that our time is finite,
Speaker: then are we living the lives we want to be living?
Speaker: Are we creating the legacy we want to be creating?
Speaker: Are we feeling fulfilled in our relationships?
Speaker: I think there's a lot of therapeutic practice.
Speaker: I'm a social worker.
Speaker: And so I think there's a lot of gains and insight that we can take from really contemplating our mortality.
Speaker: One of our cards asked about if you would write your own obituary.
Speaker: And at one of our death overdrafts events, which are like out in the public at breweries and we're playing the death deck and we have random people kind of coming in and out.
Speaker: There was this gentleman who was in his early 30s and he had had a history of addiction.
Speaker: And he said that he has been writing his own obituary every year.
Speaker: And he's doing it as an exercise to make sure that he is feeling good about what would be written about him and the life that he's leading.
Speaker: And that guy just kind of he made me pause because I thought, wow, I hadn't thought of, you know, that exercise and doing it repeatedly as an exercise in am I living the life I want?
Speaker: Well, I love I absolutely love that because that's actually one part in my book is asking people to do that.
Speaker: And I've done it.
Speaker: I've done it for myself.
Speaker: And I don't well, I don't do it every year.
Speaker: I renew it maybe every like three years or so.
Speaker: Like I go back over it and I exactly that.
Speaker: It's like, well, what would people say about me?
Speaker: And.
Speaker: You know, and it's not to delve down into the what other other people think is is important to me.
Speaker: You know, it's not to kind of go down that rabbit hole because that can that can open a can of worms.
Speaker: But it's more are you living the life that that best represents you?
Speaker: Because this is you writing your own obituary.
Speaker: And that's what I think is so important about pre-planning and thinking about these things is it's told everything is told from your point of view and nobody knows your life or the people who've passed through your life better than you.
Speaker: You know, even your closest partner, your mom, your whoever's your child who lives with you.
Speaker: Still, nobody has walked, you know, and ever in history will again will walk in your shoes and experience that moment with whatever is emotionally going on with you in that time.
Speaker: I mean, it's wild.
Speaker: You know, think that literally there will never be a me doing this with you even right now.
Speaker: Like this will never happen again in history.
Speaker: I mean, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker: So so that's amazing.
Speaker: Well, listen, I think that's a wonderful note to end it on.
Speaker: And the obituary writing, we're going to send everybody off.
Speaker: And to write their obituary.
Speaker: That's your task for today, guys.
Speaker: Lisa, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker: We're going to put all the information for the death deck down below and people can contact you if they want to.
Speaker: But most importantly, get out there and buy the death deck.
Speaker: And we've got the EOL deck, two ones.
Speaker: And yeah, thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And follow us on social media.
Speaker: We try to give a lot of resources and education and, you know, make new friends in this space.
Speaker: So I get the death deck too.
