[00:00:00] Patrick: Working in this industry. It's just been a lot of reframing of how I've thought about stuff and really putting things into perspective of what's important and how you spend your time, and who you spend your time with and what you do.
[00:00:11] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create an inviting space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you currently believe to be true in this episode.
[00:00:37] My guest is Patrick Gigliotti. Patrick is a hospice care consultant with Compassus Hospice and Palliative Care here in New Jersey. We talk about the work he does and some of what he has learned about life while working with hospice. We also get into some more personal stories. In this episode, both mine and Patrick's, I'm working with getting more comfortable, sharing more about myself without the fear of judgment.
[00:00:59] And today's episode is one where I debated on deleting parts of it and then decided that we talked about important topics, and I want to live by what I say in my intro. I hope to challenge some of your beliefs about life. Thank you for joining us for this conversation and if you have any feedback or questions, I'm happy to hear them.
[00:01:17] You're always welcome to email me. Today I have my friend Patrick Gigliotti with me. Patrick, and I know each other through in-person networking actually. And we're just gonna have a conversation today about what your beliefs are about death and dying and grief and all that good stuff. So thanks so much for coming on Patrick.
[00:01:35] Patrick: Thank you for having me, Jill. I've been excited to do this. Can
[00:01:37] Jill: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, like where you're from originally, if you wanna share how old you are, anything like that?
[00:01:44] Patrick: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, my name is Patrick Igl. I am actually a hospice care consultant with Compassus Hospice in Palliative Care here in New Jersey. https://www.compassus.com/
[00:01:53] I am 34. I just celebrated my 34th birthday recently. I have a bachelor's degree in biology. That's my background. My. Goal originally was to be a physician. That was kind of my goal going into college and from high school, and that was really what my passion was, to really be more on the clinician side of things and really be the one that was treating patients and seeing patients.
[00:02:11] And that was just always where I thought I would wind up. College came and went fast. When I finished college, I wasn't ready for medical school. My grades weren't good enough, I just wasn't mentally ready. So I started a Master's program at the University of, well back then it was U M D and J before Rowan bought it, and I started a master's program in biomedical sciences and halfway through the program I just quit.
[00:02:34] Honestly, I had a lot going on in my life. I was still deeply in the closet. That was like definitely affecting just my whole life in general and it just wasn't the right time for me. So I kind of pushed that to the side. I stopped that. I had always worked in the hospitality industry, so that's kind of where I landed for the next five, six years.
[00:02:52] Working in the hospitality industry, I was around people, but it wasn't in the way that I wanted to be around people and to help people. So while I was very good at it and I enjoyed the work, it wasn't meaningful. I was trying to figure out how can I get into healthcare? 'cause I really didn't have much experience other than just going to school for biology.
[00:03:10] So I went, got my master's wound up at a home health company, and then wound up in hospice. And if you would've told me 10 years ago that I was working in hospice now, I would've told you, you're crazy. But it's probably the most rewarding work that I could think of. The things that we do and the things that we help people with.
[00:03:29] It's really, really meaningful work. And the first thing people say to me is, oh, how do you work in hospice? It must be so sad. And honestly, it's sad, but there's so much good and happiness and laughter and light that comes out of hospice. Hospice is just as much about living as it is about dying. So for me, that's what I'm always telling patients and families.
[00:03:49] That's the beautiful thing about hospice is that it really is bringing that light and that life and the things that you don't think about that necessarily are associated with death and dying.
[00:03:59] Jill: Yeah, I agree that hospice is very much misunderstood by the general public and I got into death doula work because of my experience with hospice.
[00:04:09] When my grandmother was sick and dying, I couldn't have done it without the hospice staff that came out and they helped and talked to me and helped me to understand what was going on. It was a really beautiful experience for me to be there with my grandmother at that time during her life, and I couldn't have shown up the way that I did for her if I didn't have hospice.
[00:04:33] Supporting us through the entire journey. And people do think, well, hospice is just for when you're dying. And you know, even worse when God forbid people to say, oh, hospice comes in and they kill people. And I'm like, no, no they don't. I promise you that is not what hospice does. But it really is a different type of care that hospice helps provide to people that are dying, as well as their families.
[00:04:58] And in New Jersey, it's something. It's covered by Medicaid, correct? Everybody can access hospice through Medicaid? Is that how it works?
[00:05:06] Patrick: So it's actually Medicare. So Medicare is the first kind of the first person that will pay, and then if they don't have Medicare, then Medicaid will pay. But both are completely covered under the benefit.
[00:05:16] So hospice is a completely covered benefit under both Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid usually comes into play when we have patients at our nursing homes. Because Medicaid is paying for the nursing home stay, that's usually when the Medicaid piece kind of comes into it. But the actual services are covered under Medicare, which is nice because like you said, everybody who's worked and has paid into Medicare, it's a benefit that everybody has paid into.
[00:05:38] Most of the population has Medicare Part A benefits and would be able to utilize and cover hospice. So that's why for me, it's always about educating and letting people know that there is this help out there. It's all about getting the patients the right level of care at the right time. We're not out there just trying to put people on hospice to make money.
[00:05:55] I know there was an article that came out recently, I think in the New Yorker, that really painted hospice in a really negative light. I was really upset about it because while there is fraud and abuse just like there is in every industry, it really painted the whole industry in a very negative light and made, it was like this money grab and this for-hustle profit scheme.
[00:06:14] That's not what it is. There are companies that are not-for-profit. There are companies that are for-profit. I mean that same thing in every healthcare setting, that's every sector of business. You're gonna have nonprofits and for-profits and it has no determination in the care we put on the patients or anything like that.
[00:06:28] It's just all misconceptions. It's nice that we're having this conversation now, ironically, because did you see that President Carter had just elected to go into hospice?
[00:06:35] Jill: I did see that, and a lot of people in the death doula space have been talking about that decision, and especially the fact that he's, I.
[00:06:44] Being so public about it, I think is wonderful. Making it normal because it is normal.
[00:06:49] Patrick: That's what I'm saying. I think it's awesome. It's great for the community in general and just the whole population because people are asking, people are talking, people are, oh, what's hospice? Oh, they're Googling, they're researching.
[00:07:00] And that's how people learn and that's how stigmas change and that's how things come more into the forefront. So I think that this is nothing but a positive for him. It's wonderful that he's able to get that time with his family and focus on the quality of life and comfort at home. It's great for the general public to now just be able to see somebody who.
[00:07:20] Is a well-respected figure. He was a president of ours, so for him to be able to elect to do something like that, maybe people won't see it so much now as giving up or giving up hope, because that's something that I'm constantly discussing with patients and families and the general public, is that idea and that notion of giving up hope.
[00:07:41] I always try and say, coming onto hospice or hospice care, it's not giving up hope. It's realigning what you're hoping for. Instead of hoping that your illness is going to be cured, you're realigning your hopes to be able to have that quality of time with your family at home, or to be able to maybe do that one thing that you never got a chance to do or rekindle with that family member.
[00:08:02] There's a lot of things that come with it, and again, I think it's just great to be able to just bring more awareness. That's why we're doing this, right? It's just about awareness.
[00:08:11] Jill: I love the way that you worded that about it is not giving up hope. It's just in some ways being more realistic about what is going on right now for that person.
[00:08:25] And unfortunately, I've found that even sometimes with doctors, and it's not with any malicious intent, but they're not being totally honest sometimes with their patients about what. Their options are for treatment, what the realities are if they go through this treatment, is it going to extend their life?
[00:08:44] Is it just going to essentially make the rest of their life really painful and not necessarily what the person would want for the end of life? And hospice really does come in and kind of focuses more on the quality of a person's existence, and people don't usually utilize hospice as early as they should, at least from what I've seen.
[00:09:09] They tend to wait right until the end when really hospice coming in months earlier could make your quality of life so much better for you and your loved ones.
[00:09:20] Patrick: Absolutely. It's the number one thing that we hear. The number one thing we hear from patients and families when the patients pass is, we should have called you sooner or we should have got you involved sooner.
[00:09:29] We wish we would've called you before. That's the number one thing that we hear. There's been studies shown that doctors have the overwhelming majority in terms of their. Influence over patient's decisions in terms of like their recommendations and that patients are very likely to go with what the doctor is recommending.
[00:09:47] But unfortunately, it's been shown that doctors are terrible prognosticators. They really don't do a good job at. Prognosticating what the disease trajectory is, and most of them get zero to little training in end of life, hospice, palliative care, all of that. And that's a big initiative that has really been being pushed out just all across the country.
[00:10:09] I also work with the N H P C O. There's other organizations that I work with, and that's a huge initiative right now, to try and push out mandatory education for physicians when they're in school, because right now there's no mandatory education. It's interesting to me that as a internal medicine physician or really any physician that you, you can go through school and have no training about end of life unless you want it, and there's electives and stuff. https://www.nhpco.org/
[00:10:33] But my cousin just went through medical school and just graduated and is going into a urology residency and I had a very long conversation with her about what kind of training she got and she said absolutely none. She went to a very prestigious medical school in New York City, so if she's not getting the training there, then I find it very hard to believe that they're getting training anywhere.
[00:10:54] I think it just being mandated is probably the best way to go.
[00:10:59] Jill:What is it you said N H P C O. What's that?
[00:11:02] Patrick: Yeah. So that's the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. So that's an awesome organization. There's great resources on there for caregivers, for families. Um, there's really awesome, awesome stuff on there.
[00:11:13] So anybody who has a chronic illness or end of life patients or anything, there's wonderful resources on there. It's an advocacy group, so they do all kinds of work with different organizations and just all kinds of stuff. So my involvement with them is I'm on the next generation Leadership Council, so it's an organization that's focusing on the next generation of the hospice and palliative care workforce.
[00:11:35] So training, advocacy, recruitment, which is really trying to get the word out about the industry. It's one of these things where people are scared. I was scared to come into this industry. I would never have thought that I would've been working in this industry. But again, it's just getting the word out there, letting people know the wonderful work that we do and how rewarding it is, and those are the things that draw people in.
[00:11:55] At the end of the day, the people that work in this industry, I feel like we all have a common thread if you will. There's just something that when you work in this industry that you have to kind of have, it's one of those things, you can't put your finger on it, but it's, it's, it's there.
[00:12:07] Jill: We definitely are in some ways a different breed. People that choose to work with somebody at the end of life, because the reality is, as much as I am very death positive and I try to make sure people have conversations, the reality of it is that the end of life. Can be very overwhelming for people. It's an experience that is unlike anything else that you're gonna live through when you're human, right?
[00:12:32] When you get to that end-of-life phase, if you're lucky enough to get there, not a sudden death, like an accident, you. Have to really go through a mental process of accepting what's happening. And if you're somebody that's holding space in this area and you're seeing that every day and you're talking to people every day that are going through that process, there has to be a way that we can process it ourselves and in some ways be separate from it.
[00:13:02] Also, we have to be really vulnerable and connecting with the people in order to be effective in this space. And so it's definitely an interesting way that we have to navigate through all of it. I love it and I heard about Death Doula the first time on a podcast, so hopefully there are people out there that are gonna listen to these interviews that I do, and maybe now they're gonna hear you talking and be like, wow, maybe that's something I wanna do.
[00:13:27] Because we do need more people. In this space, especially in the United States as all those baby boomers age. 'cause they're getting there, they're in their seventies, and we're gonna need more people doing this type of work.
[00:13:41] Patrick: I mean, it's a real concern. It really is like just being able to have the workforce to support the need.
[00:13:47] That's huge. That's gonna be the biggest challenge in the next 10, 15, 20 years moving forward is going to be, do you have the workforce to support the need for all of these baby boomers and all of these people that are aging that wanna age in place and that wanna age at home or wherever they call home and to be able to provide that support, that's gonna be the biggest challenge.
[00:14:09] We need nurses. We need social workers. We just need people in this industry that understand it, that connect with it. Again, it's not for everybody. You're not going to get every person to work in hospice. It's not a reality. But I think that just educating people about what we do and, and the different things that come along with it, that's the best that we can do.
[00:14:27] Jill: And providing resources for the caregivers is something that is going to be even more important because most of us at some point are gonna have to care for somebody that we love, that is facing the challenges that come with the end of life. And most of us aren't ready for that. We're not prepared at all.
[00:14:45] And so having those resources, having a place to go to, to understand what is going on, what needs to get done, and maybe even equipment and like things that people might need at the end of life. You kind of get sent home from the hospital and you might have a drain in your body and nobody knows what to do with it because the hospital's not necessarily training your caregiver on how to properly take care of it.
[00:15:10] And so having those resources, which is why I think it is more important too, that people understand that palliative care and hospice are available. They are different as well, that you can have palliative care while you're still going through different treatments, you know, cancer treatments, whatever else.
[00:15:28] But then once you get to that point where maybe you're not doing the treatments anymore, bring hospice in early because they can help with all these things that may, as the caregiver, I might have to take care of things that I have no training on. And so hospice can really help and death ISTs can help with that.
[00:15:45] And like the resource that you just talked about, you know, there are resources online that you can use to help understand what you're going through.
[00:15:53] Patrick: Yeah, I think that's what it is. It's just such a challenging world to navigate. The healthcare world in general is just so complex. I was just talking with another organization the other day, and we are the worst state to die in, in terms of costs. The worst in the entire country. It costs 20% more to die in New Jersey than it does anywhere else in the country, which is crazy. It's, it's incredible. We have so many resources. We have so many things available to us, and the fact that our state is doing such a poor job at the end of life speaks volumes.
[00:16:29] I think it speaks to the fact that we are not putting emphasis on the end of life. We're not talking about it enough. We're not discussing it enough. We're not bringing it to the forefront. And that's what I think is the problem. And it's also a fragmented healthcare system, which is a whole other issue.
[00:16:47] Obviously. It's not one singular thing, it's just the fact that even with the hospice usage, so if you look at hospice utilization in different states, you look at a state like Delaware, which is. Within the top five. I'm not sure recently. I haven't looked in the last couple of years, but I know they're always very, very high up on the list of hospice utilization.
[00:17:06] Whereas you look at us and we're always towards the bottom, the very, very bottom. So it's interesting. We're right next to each other and we're worlds apart. In terms of end-of-life and utilizing hospice care. So for me, it's interesting when you look at statistics and numbers like that, I'm a big numbers person, so when I see things like that, to me, it's just jarring and it just shows that we need to do a better job.
[00:17:28] Jill: We need to have the conversations more about death and dying in an open, honest way. I know most people that are in my friend circle, we don't talk about these things. Now I kind of force them to talk about it because what else am I gonna talk about? Exactly. But especially in the past, I have friends who don't go to funerals because it's too much.
[00:17:51] They're not talking to their parents about this. Nobody's having these conversations. And then when we have to face these decisions, we're so unprepared because we've never talked about it. That things are just not, they're just not going the way that they could be going for a lot of us. And the conversation, I understand it can be scary at first because we've never done it, but like a lot of things, once you start doing it, it gets easier.
[00:18:16] Absolutely. It's just maybe at the beginning it's scary and that's it. Like do you talk to your friends, your family, about their end-of-life stuff? 'cause I know sometimes I'm always like, do you have your paperwork in order? Have you talked to your loved ones? Mm-hmm. But. I'm not sure if I'm the total weirdo that I do that to all my friends or like, do you have those conversations too?
[00:18:35] Patrick: It's funny, I maybe not so much the end of life, like in terms of that, but I do, I have tons of hospice conversations and palliative care and just what that is and what end of life looks like. I guess I do have end of life conversations. It's funny 'cause that you say that 'cause I'm always talking to people about it because it always comes up somehow I feel like.
[00:18:53] That's the thing for me, when you're talking to somebody and they mention their grandmother's been in and out of the hospital and like, oh, well, what's going on? To me, it always just comes up. Maybe just because I work in this industry, there's always a way to bring it up and because it could listen, everybody knows somebody who has a chronic illness.
[00:19:08] I mean, every single person does, and there's no way that we don't. So I think there's education to be had because we all know somebody who has a chronic illness who's at the end of life or has aging parents or who's older. So all of these resources could be beneficial for, for everybody. And it's interesting, like what you said, do we have these conversations with our parents?
[00:19:28] And you know what? If we're not having conversations with them, then somebody else is. And wouldn't you want to be the one that's having that conversation with your parents? And I know I would rather have that conversation with my parents than it be a person in the hospital that they've never met or that doctor in the hospital that they've only met one time because they might not have the full picture.
[00:19:48] That's the thing that's a part of the problem with the healthcare system and everything in general at the end of life, is that everything is so fragmented. The cardiologist is looking at just the heart issues. The pulmonologist is looking at just pulmonary issues. Whereas we're not looking at the whole person.
[00:20:03] It's the same thing that we talk about with patients that are close to the end of life and are going in and out of the hospital. We say to them, yeah, you might be going into the hospital and they might be putting a bandaid on something, let's say, but are you actually gaining more than you're losing? Because every time you go into the hospital, you're losing a little bit of something, whether it's function from laying in the bed for a day and a half straight, not getting up and moving.
[00:20:24] Or it's an infection that you acquire from being in the hospital or whatever. Sometimes you really have to look and sit and weigh the risk versus reward. I think that's where it becomes uncomfortable a lot of the time with the conversations because what's hard to say to somebody like, Hey, what is important to you and what do you really expect out of your treatment?
[00:20:42] And out of these repeated hospitalizations or just this aggressive treatment. Again, it's uncomfortable, but just like you said, you do it a couple times and you just start those conversations and you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I think with anything in life, if you're not comfortable being uncomfortable, you're not gonna grow ever.
[00:21:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:21:01] Jill: I agree. And the hard part is that most of us don't know how to have the conversation. We don't know the questions to ask our parents. We don't know the things to even say to them, because we've never had the conversations, but there are resources out there. There is a lot of different people that can assist with the conversations.
[00:21:23] There's a lot of written resources. The info's out there, and if people need help finding it, they're definitely welcome to contact me. But again, there's people all over that we'd be able to help them find what they need to have the conversations. Because it reminds me a lot of like sex education in this country.
[00:21:39] I mean, this is something that I've kind of in a lot of ways been like connecting to each other where it's the same thing. If we don't talk to our children about sex, somebody's going to, if it's not us, it's gonna be their friends or maybe a half-assed conversation with a teacher. But we don't have those conversations either because it makes us uncomfortable and we don't really know what to say, and we've not probably had them ourselves because our parents didn't talk to us about it.
[00:22:07] And it's the same kind of thing that. You have to get a little bit uncomfortable sometimes if you wanna make sure that the people that you love are safe and they're happy and they're as healthy as they can be. It's partially just having really tough conversations, but there are resources available for all of these things to kind of help with the conversation. It's not like today with the internet you could find anything if you really want it.
[00:22:34] Patrick: Absolutely. And I love that you had the correlation between sex education and the whole end of life, death, and dying, because I've never thought of it that way, but you're so right. There really is such a strong parallel between the two.
[00:22:46] It's so true. There was always such a stigma attached to talking about it and you know, and you're right, it's the same exact thing. If we're not talking to kids or younger generations about sex and that kind of stuff, then somebody else will be friends, whoever. So it's the same exact thing. We wanna make sure that our parents' wishes are really met, or just anybody in our family, anybody who's at the end of life, you know, we wanna make sure that our wishes are met at the end of life. We really need to make sure that, you know, we're talking to people and we have our documents in place, and we have our things in order because New Jersey's not a next of kin state.
[00:23:17] Just something like that. It's really important to make sure that you have these conversations and you have your wishes documented and that you know what you want is properly executed on.
[00:23:27] Jill: And that understanding of what your state allows and doesn't allow because yes, every state is different, and Jersey with the next of kin, I'm not even sure if most people even know what that means, but it's something that I didn't know either until I got into this space and that I was like, oh, these are things I need to think about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_of_kin
[00:23:45] Because I actually started, I shouldn't really say that. I didn't think about it before that, uh, Terry Shiavo, when that was like early two thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case
[00:23:55] Patrick: I remember that, that was a huge thing. I remember that.
[00:23:58] Jill: That was a huge thing. And my husband and I were not married yet, but I remember seeing that and being like, we better get something written down because I do not want that to happen.
[00:24:09] And we're not married, so like, god forbid, my family that I don't ever really talk to comes in and tries to say, oh no, we have to keep her hooked up to these machines. Nope, I don't want that. So I did have at least something written down, but there was still so much more that I didn't know and I didn't understand until I got into this space.
[00:24:29] And it is different for every state. So it's definitely good to hire a lawyer. Yes, it's gonna cost you a little bit of money. And if you really can't afford a lawyer, At least get it written down. One woman that I talked to from a local law office, she joked even write it on a napkin.
[00:24:44] Like just get it written down somewhere. Yeah. Maybe not a napkin.
[00:24:48] Patrick: Type it up and take it to a notary. Most banks have notaries. I mean, that's an option. There are a million things that people could do. You can go online now and, and draw up those documents yourself, like very easily. You just kind of fill in your name, date of birth, the pertinent information, and there are a million ways to do it.
[00:25:03] Jill: Something is better than nothing. For sure.
[00:25:06] Patrick: Absolutely. I know, and truthfully, it's interesting that you say this, 'cause for me, I'm a gay man who lives with my partner of 15 years and we're not married, and if something were to happen, I have no paperwork in order.
[00:25:19] So for me, like I'm super susceptible to mm-hmm. Something happening. And God forbid, if I were to be hospitalized or I wasn't able to make my wishes known, it would be a mess. Luckily we have a nice situation, but still, it doesn't matter. I've been with my partner for over 15 years now, so I wanna make sure that he's the one that is making any decisions that need to be made because he's the closest person to me.
[00:25:42] It's so important to make sure that you at least have something written down because you know you don't wanna leave yourself susceptible to any type of issues, whether it's medical, financial, anything at all. And we've all seen the movies and the stories where something happens and families start fighting and bad things come up.
[00:25:58] And we all want to think that it's not gonna happen, but it does. And the unfortunate reality is it more often than not, it does. Even working in this industry, I see the infighting with the families and just the discontent and the discord that arises. So I think that making sure that you have. All of your wishes are in order and all that stuff is super, super important.
[00:26:18] Even more so if you're in a more susceptible population, like the LGBTQIA plus community, definitely wanna make sure you have your stuff in order.
[00:26:26] Jill: Yeah, 100%. 'cause that's actually, I guess it was like a seminar that I had done with a local law office, Bratton Law, was for the LGBTQIA plus community, including polyamorous people, because I realized how little, I understood what would happen if my partner was sick and in the hospital and my husband and then his partner. There are a lot of moving pieces in my relationship that if one of us was to get sick and is in the hospital, I don't know what would happen in New Jersey. Like legally, can we visit each other?
[00:27:05] Can we be with each other when some are married? We're not married, you know? So I was like, I'm gonna see if somebody will have a conversation with me. And it really was interesting because the more that you live outside of societal norms, the more you really should think about these things and get them written down.
[00:27:23] That's one thing too as well, that oftentimes if you're in the LGBTQIA plus community, you might not have your traditional family. You have more of your chosen family because your traditional family may not approve of things, and so you end up with like a chosen family that nobody is legally bound together because until recently if you're gay, you couldn't legally marry each other.
[00:27:47] And so what does that mean for all of us? And so it is really, really important and kind of like more personal questions, how about your beliefs about death and dying? Were they different when you were younger versus what they are now? Because again, like I know when I was younger, I grew up in a religious little bubble, and then now I am definitely not in that religious little bubble. I have a very different life, and so my views have changed.
[00:28:15] Patrick: Throughout the course of my life, it shifted a bit. When I grew up, it definitely was focused very much on religion, but I never connected with that. As much as I would go to church once in a while and I went through all of the steps and I was confirmed and all of that, I never felt connected to Christianity and to Catholicism.
[00:28:32] That just was never a religion I felt connected to. Still to this day, I don't really feel very connected to organized religion. That's not something that I feel very connected to in general through the ones that I've studied and researched and just kind of dabbled in. I'm much more of a spiritual person.
[00:28:48] I'm much more into spirituality and just a bigger picture type of thing. That's kind of mysticism. Things like that have always been much more intriguing to me ever since I was young. So I think that that's just why. I've always gravitated towards more of a big picture thinking and then working in the hospice, seeing death a lot, and not at the bedside per se.
[00:29:08] Because you know, I'm not a bedside clinician, so I'm not seeing it day in and day out, and I'm not going to pronounce people, but I do see it. And there are times when I have seen death and I've had family members that I've seen that have passed, and I've been very close to death many times. It's different.
[00:29:22] It really makes you think, what happens. I really don't know. I really have always had a belief of a type of reincarnation or something like that. I've always been very intrigued by that, what that looks like per se. I'm not sure, but I've always kind of felt that that's been my kind of belief.
[00:29:39] I don't know. As I said, I've always had a much more spiritual kind of look at death and dying and all that, as opposed to it being a very finite process.
[00:29:48] Jill: I would agree that there's always been a little part of me that even when I tried to be Catholic, you know, and I say that in the way of like, yes, I was born and raised in the church, and then I did go through that phase where I was like, all right, I'm gonna like give this my all, like I'm going for it.
[00:30:07] There was always part of me that kind of was like, I'm not sure about this. Like heaven, hell, purgatory kind of idea. I don't just, I don't know. I don't know for sure. I mean, maybe that is the truth, who really knows? But I like the idea in some ways of reincarnation. Sometimes the reincarnation almost scares me because I'm like, I don't know. It would be kind of nice to just die and go to heaven and not have to do this again. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like what? What if I come back?
[00:30:34] Patrick: I know what if? Well, for me it's always been like a past lives kind of thing. I've always felt like I've had multiple, it sounds crazy, but I've always felt like I've just, I've lived multiple lives, different times, different situations, scenarios, and that's always been how I felt ever since I was younger.
[00:30:51] I've always felt that there have been other things, and especially when I met Lou, when I met my partner. It's just weird. We both felt the same way. We just felt like, oh, we've known each other before. So it's weird. It's weird how you have these beliefs and things that just stick with you. Ever since I was younger, I always just can remember having a very like more spiritual view on everything and really thinking that it's not so much like, oh, you're here.
[00:31:16] You do good, you do bad, you die. You go to heaven, you go to hell. And then that's it. You know? Because for me, I just think it's a much more cyclical process. That's what we say this life is. It's the circle of life. It can't be the circle of life and then death. Everything is a circle. So that's kind of how I look at it.
[00:31:33] Jill: Yeah, it's true though that we view everything else in cycles. I mean, everything goes in cycles in nature. Right now we're going through the cycle of winter, moving into spring, and we do that continuously. So why would human existence be like the human body? Yes, of course, like this dies. But even that, If we have a more natural burial, it still goes through a cycle, right?
[00:31:57] Eventually the body would break down and then it would become part of the earth, and then, you know, all of the bits and pieces of us would've become something else. Yeah. So why would the soul or the part of me that I would say makes me, me like the Jill without the name. Why would that be any different?
[00:32:14] Why wouldn't it go through another cycle? I don't know. And I love talking about it. I love thinking about it. 'cause I don't know for sure. And I like how you said when you met your partner, the two of you felt like you. It's almost like that feeling of when people say, you're meant to be together because part of you is like, oh, you're the part that I was missing.
[00:32:32] Like we knew that we existed somewhere somehow and now we found each other again. And I've had that feeling with partners as well as just with friends, with like people that I've randomly met in like weird places or in weird ways where like as soon as you meet you're like, oh, I've been waiting for you.
[00:32:52] I don't know what that means. But it feels like part of me was like, oh, there's that person that I've been waiting for all of this time. And maybe it is because we were together in a past life, and I know when I first started talking about past lives with my husband, one of the things that he had said was, I.
[00:33:10] The population is increasing, right? We're getting more humans, so how would that work if we are reincarnated? But now there are more and more people, and I find that an interesting thought, and I've definitely thought about it a lot. I mean, he said this to me probably 20 years ago, and I still think about it sometimes, and I'm like, maybe that's part of what's like.
[00:33:32] In some ways wrong with like the way that we all, not all of us, but the way that a lot of us feel where we don't feel settled. We don't always feel whole. We feel like we're always looking for something like maybe the souls do split up into multiple people over time. Maybe the people that we feel that connection with.
[00:33:51] Maybe we started as one person like thousands of years ago, and then with like. Over time, we've just kind of broken up. I don't know, but it's fun to think about.
[00:33:58] Patrick: No, it's awesome. That's what makes these conversations fun because you say something, I say something and we just kind of feed off each other.
[00:34:05] And I think that that's an awesome way to think because I've never thought about it that way. Maybe it could be, like you said, starting as one entity and then splitting and just all these different things that you don't think about sometimes, and. I think that's a really cool way to think about it. And I mean, again, we don't know what's gonna happen and we don't know what has happened, but it's fun to talk about and I think that talking about it at least makes us more comfortable with everything.
[00:34:29] I think that when you talk about it, you're more comfortable. When that does come, we're all gonna die. Every single person listening to this, everybody here. We're all gonna die. It is what it is. Do I wanna die today or tomorrow? No. But if it's my time, then it is what it is. And I know that I've put in a lot of great work on the earth, and that's all you can hope for.
[00:34:52] And that's all you can do. You can only do good and do your best. That's what we're here for. We're here to do our best. To help people and to live our life and have fun. And that's the other thing too. We wanna have fun. We only have one life overall. At least. We only have the one life that we know of right now.
[00:35:06] So we should be enjoying that and having fun amongst making sure that we're doing all the other things that we're doing.
[00:35:13] Jill: I like to think of it as in, even if I come back, even if, again, the part of me that makes me Jill, without the name comes back in a different body and maybe I will come back with my husband and my children in their next form.
[00:35:29] We're not gonna be the same people we are right now. So I want to try to enjoy the relationship that we have now and enjoy. Being in the body that I'm in now and the fact that like overall I am very lucky, I'm very grateful. I have a fairly healthy body where I can move and I can swim. There are all these amazing things that our human body can do that we often kind of take for granted because I think we get so stuck in.
[00:35:58] The negative things of like, yes, sometimes I get really terrible migraines and it makes me wish that I was not alive, and that's a terrible place to be, but it doesn't happen to me that often. There are some people that live like that all the time, so I'm trying to be really grateful for the body that I have now and for.
[00:36:15] My children and all these other things because even if we come back again together, we're going to be in a different situation, in a different dynamic. I mean, who knows? Maybe my daughter's will be my mom in the next lifetime. I love that. I don't know for sure. I know sometimes that makes some people nervous, but I actually like that.
[00:36:34] I don't know for sure and that I can have conversations with people that have a variety of different beliefs. I don't necessarily think, oh, well that's stupid and they're wrong. 'cause I don't know for sure. Like, maybe when we die, maybe we are gonna go to heaven or hell and God's gonna be sitting on his throne.
[00:36:51] Like, I don't know. I don't think that's likely, but I don't know. And so I like to have conversations with people and just think about it and learn. And again, that's part of the joy of being a human is experiencing things in this body that we couldn't experience in a different form. You know, if it was just our spirit or our soul.
[00:37:14] 'cause maybe ghosts exist too, I don't know. But they're certainly not having the experience that I'm having, even if they're still here in this space. They're very limited as to how they can interact with us. And so I'm gonna enjoy it as much as I can now, within reason, of course, without hurting other people or potentially hurting myself, having that fun.
[00:37:32] Patrick: Of course. And I think one thing from working in hospice over the last four or five years is just you have to be grateful for what you have. And yes, you have to live every day to the fullest and like it's your last to within reason. You wanna do that thing that you wanted to do, do it. If you want to eat that ice cream, eat it.
[00:37:49] You know what I mean? You just have to take the experiences and the opportunities that are given to you when they're given to you because you don't know if it's gonna be the last one that you're given. I think that is the hardest part, is that you don't know. For some people it's great, but I think for most people the unknown is scary.
[00:38:03] From working in this industry, that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned because I'm very Type A and I'm very regimented and I like scheduling, and I like things to be this way and not deviate. But you know what, you can't be like that sometimes because life is fluid and things change, and you have to be adaptable, and you can't let small things really affect you negatively because.
[00:38:23] Really at the end of the day, is that worth getting that upset about whatever you're mad about or whatever you're upset about, or whatever's holding you down. Because guess what? You could die tomorrow and the last day that you were here, you could have been spent just upset and angry and miserable. And do you want that?
[00:38:36] I wouldn't. I don't want my last day on earth to be spent miserable and upset and just negative in any way. And listen, everybody has crappy days. Everybody's pissed off. Sometimes we all get there. But you have to just really, in that moment, you have to really just think to yourself, like, listen, is it worth it?
[00:38:52] Is it worth it for me to be this upset? And just really reframe how you think about things. That's really what a lot of this is too. I think that working in this industry, it's just been a lot of reframing of how I've thought about stuff. Really putting things into perspective of what's important and how you spend your time, and who you spend your time with and what you do and all that good stuff.
[00:39:12] Jill: And living your own version of your life, not the version of life that somebody wants you to live, whether it's your parents or your community around you. 'cause if you even said at the beginning that when you were really in the closet, You couldn't even function getting through school? No, because it takes so much energy to hide who we really are, and it just feels bad.
[00:39:34] I mean, there's no other way of saying it. It feels bad to pretend that you're something that you're not, because we feel like we have to in order to be accepted by our family or our community or whatever else, and yeah, it's not easy to live. Your true, authentic self. And when you live your true, authentic self, sometimes some people are not going to like it, but it's because they're not living their authentic self.
[00:39:59] So it makes them feel threatened that you are, and they can't do the same thing for whatever reason. And it's 'cause again, life is short. You know, I don't wanna spend my life. Potentially hiding all these parts of me because I'm afraid of what people are gonna say. And I have done that in the past. And in some ways I am still guarded about, of course, I'm out here now on this podcast like telling everybody and their mother my business, but in some ways within my community, because I live in a small community.
[00:40:31] I am still a little bit guarded about certain things about my personal life, but it's more because I am afraid that people will treat my children differently because of it. But what's gonna make my children the happiest and the healthiest adults? It's that if they feel loved and supported at home, if they feel like they can be themselves, because I'm not afraid to be myself.
[00:40:55] If they feel like we can have open, honest conversations, that's what's gonna set my children up for being able to face whatever comes their way. We're all gonna meet. Negative people and negative situations, we can't completely avoid it, but the more that we feel comfortable in ourselves and the more that we're living our own life, the more that we can meet these situations and not necessarily have it ruin our day or our week or our month or our entire life.
[00:41:23] Because it does happen to people that their whole life is ruined from whatever they can't control that is outside of them.
[00:41:29] Patrick: I've always felt this way of just not having to do things because it's the normal or the straight way to do things. I've never objected to getting married, but that's why I've always kind of been like, eh, about it because.
[00:41:41] For me, it's just such an expected and a heteronormativity, like with the wedding and this and that, and it's like I've never been that person. I've never been the person to just color inside the lines. But for Lou, it's important to him. He wants to get married. He wants that commitment. He wants to have that family feeling.
[00:41:56] That's great. I don't disagree with that, but I've never felt compelled to. Follow the path of this heteronormativity and this normalcy, I guess you will. That's not how I live my life. I live my life the way I wanna live it. And just like you said, there are things about my life that I'm not super open about a lot of the time because there are people that are not understanding and they're very judgmental.
[00:42:17] And especially being in this type of a small industry, there's a lot of. Things that people don't understand. What's interesting, the whole polyamory thing, because it brings up so many different dynamics with the whole end of life. You have multiple partners. You have multiple people grieving the same person, but from the same standpoint, when you go in and you're a hospice care worker, you have the spouse.
[00:42:36] That's the spouse. You're always dealing with the spouse, but if you have more people involved, then it becomes a whole different dynamic. In terms of providing that type of support you would provide to the spouse, to the partner or multiple partners, or the spouse and the partners. Yeah, so it's really interesting that you brought that up because I've never thought about it that way.
[00:42:56] I would never have thought of that. I've never had a patient that was in that situation, and it's not something that I'd ever thought of myself. But it really is interesting.
[00:43:04] Jill: And it's becoming, I don't wanna say more normal, but I think it's becoming something that. It's more understood, I think. Yeah, more understood and more people are coming out of the closet with polyamory, and so it is something that we're gonna have to face as a society as well as working in the end of life because like What about assisted livings?
[00:43:27] What do you do there? They usually will have something set up for maybe a husband and a wife, but even what about two husbands or two wives, or somebody that maybe has two partners? Mm-hmm. How's that gonna work? Yeah, we don't know and we'll hopefully figure it out as we go. But it's definitely a conversation that I think needs to be had within our space of work of like, how are we gonna navigate this?
[00:43:55] Especially when there are still people that fear what they don't understand and so, yeah. Absolutely. So that's, that's a whole nother conversation.
[00:44:04] Patrick: I was gonna say, talk about a conversation that nobody will wanna have polyamory at end of life. Yeah. That's awesome.
[00:44:11] Jill: Well, I'm here for it, and I will have those conversations as I need to. But you know, right now, thankfully I don't need to have that. Not yet, but one day I probably will.
[00:44:24] Patrick: I think again, it's just really about educating and getting the word out and bringing these conversations out to the forefront and just talking to people. That's what it is.
[00:44:33] And just like we've been talking about, the more normalized it becomes the better the conversations and the outcomes will be. That's what it is too. It's about the outcomes. The more that we have these conversations and the more that we're comfortable, and then we'll have better conversations with our family members, and we'll be able to make sure that their wishes are met and we'll make sure that things aren't falling through the cracks in the fragmented healthcare system, and we'll make sure that they're not just going with this company because they're being recommended by the hospital because that's the only company that they use.
[00:45:01] We'll kind of hopefully remove some of these biases that. There are so many that are hidden within the healthcare system, and so many of these backdoor relationships and secret handshake deals and things that nobody even would think to know about until you're actually really deep in the system. Again, that's a whole nother conversation, but just being able to have these conversations, it'll really make sure that we're having the best outcomes for our family members, our loved ones, and anybody that's involved.
[00:45:25] Jill: 100%. I agree.
[00:45:28] Patrick: I wanna thank you for having me on here. We've been wanting to do it for a while. I have tremendous respect for you, what you're doing. I'm excited to see where this takes you and to see the tremendous work that you're doing, and I'm so happy for you and everything that you've been doing, and it's been great to collaborate with you and kind of work with you.
[00:45:44] I think that there's a good future in store for you and for me and everybody in this field to really just. To really succeed and to help each other. That's what it's about as well, is really to just be collaborative partners.
[00:45:56] Jill: I agree. We need to work with each other and I do. I appreciate meeting you and getting to know you, and I'm sure we will work together even more in the future.
[00:46:04] But thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. My guest next week is Kristi Sue Bishop Kristi Sue is a rebirth, witch, and a grief mystic. The death of her ex-husband led to complicated grief and a feeling of being alone. Since she didn't fit the title of being a widow, this difficult experience set her on a journey of working with her grief.
[00:46:27] We have a heartfelt conversation about death. Grief and how she found healing through this difficult time in her life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five-star review.
[00:46:47] Your positive feedback, help recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep. The podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.
[00:47:07] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one-time contribution. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death. Clearly.