Season 3, Episode 3: The (Burial) Plot Thickens

In this episode, hosts Daniel Pewewardy and Sara Dixon talk about the often-avoided topic of death in recognition of #ReadICT category 9: a book about death or grief. Joining them on the podcast is journalist Hayley Campbell, author of All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work. They discuss what led her to writing a book about a topic that makes many people squeamish, which job she could (or couldn't) do if she had chosen to work with the dead, and why we should take more afternoon strolls through cemeteries.

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcription. Some errors may occur. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

[MUSIC]

SARA, VOICEOVER: Hey Daniel, do you know what time it is?

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Is it hammer time?

SARA, VOICEOVER: No, it's time for another episode of Read. Return. Repeat. Heeeey!

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: All right, maybe I'm not sure about your comedy skills yet. We’ll work on it.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Hi, everyone. I'm Sara Dixon.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: And I'm Daniel Pewewardy. Today's episode explores category nine, a book about death or grief. We're recording it during Big Read season here in Wichita, and this year's pick is Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Chast's memoir goes through her own experiences caring for her parents at the end of their lives: the good and the not so great, both funny and sad. It's a terrific read, even if you aren't celebrating Big Read with us.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Today's guest is Hayley Campbell, author of All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, and Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work. Through numerous interviews, Campbell takes us on a journey through the death industry's typically invisible workforce. It's both morbidly fascinating, and sometimes pretty gross. So fair warning, parts of this interview might gross you out.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Millions of people die each year. And yet, still we don't want to talk about the things that happen once we're done living. And that's the lesson we've learned through this year's Big Read. Death and grief deserve to be acknowledged so we can understand and heal. It also might help us not be so scared of what happens. This book opened my eyes to some things, even if I maybe grimaced the whole time I was reading it.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Hayley Campbell is an author, broadcaster and journalist. Her work has appeared in WIRED, The Guardian, Buzzfeed and more. She lives in London with her cat, Ned. And that's where she's joining us from now.

SARA: Hi, Hayley. Welcome to the show.

DANIEL: It's so nice to meet you.

HAYLEY CAMPBELL: You too.

DANIEL: Thanks for joining us.

HAYLEY: Thank you for having me.

SARA: Yeah, absolutely.

Tell us about your book. How did you get interested in this like physicality of death?

HAYLEY: I think because no one would tell me about it. I was, I've been told I was weird kid but I really don't think so. I think I was just a kid who had a lot of questions. And those kids can sometimes come off sounding weird, but I think they're just curious. And most of my questions were about death and dead bodies. Even when we were walking to school, and I'd see dead birds or something, I had lots of questions about them. But those questions get a little trickier when you're asking about a dead grandma or something. So whenever I would ask questions at school, I was -- you know, I went to a Catholic school so I was told about heaven and things like that. And it all got a bit confusing around Easter when Jesus would come back, and then I'd want to know, like, "Yeah, but what did he look like when he came back? Because he'd been dead for a couple of days." That kind of questioning will get you kicked out of out of school, the priest’s little lessons after class. But yeah, I was just curious. And when I got older, I became a journalist. And one of the really good things about being a journalist is you can exploit your position to go and investigate things you're personally really interested in. And if you've got a book project, people are really generous with their time and will show you things and invite you in places that the general public isn't allowed to go. So this is basically me doing that: finally figuring out the answers to stuff I wanted to know when I was a kid.

SARA: We didn't send you this question ahead of time. But I was genuinely curious: when you were writing the book, and doing all of your interviews, were they in the same order that you present them in the chapters?

HAYLEY: No, they weren't. But they kind of happened all over the place. But I put them in a way that made sense, because sometimes it's... it's really hard. They all happened quite close together. Well, they happened kind of in clumps. But there's so much in them that you don't really get a chance to process them at the time. So it was, I put them in an order that made sense, that helped me process it and made sense in a storytelling way. But yeah, that was really tricky because I was kind of at the mercy of other people's schedules. And when you're working, when you're trying to weasel your way into the backrooms of places that don't generally let people in, you have to go through a lot of character checks. Not official ones, but I felt like I would I was being checked out. You know, I'd have to have phone calls with them before I’d go to see them or maybe meet with somebody else they knew before they before I went to their place of work. So that takes time. That's why the book, when I initially sold it, I very boldly said, "Yeah, I can do it in a year." And it didn't take a year. It was more like four or five.

SARA: Yeah.

DANIEL: Yeah, I thought that was interesting that you said that they like checked you out first. Because it's like, it's not -- this isn't, it's not like a secret so much. It's just, it's a thing that happens in our lives that we have these people that work in this industry. But like, yeah, there's, you know, they have to be cautious about what, you know, who they bring in and show things to. So that's what yeah, I didn't think about that.

HAYLEY: Exactly. And traditionally, you're not -- you know, they don't get questioned about it much. So if somebody comes asking questions, I think it's, they've sort of been trained to regard that as strange. And I had to prove myself as not being, you know, one of the kind of tabloid news reporters who'd write something salacious and gross. I had to... I think it helped that I was willing to get my hands dirty, to be part of the jobs and actually hang around for a long time. It wasn't just trying to get some shocking headline. I had to prove that I cared.

SARA: Yeah, it was interesting reading it like and trying to see it through your eyes. And I was like, "Man, I'm so glad I'm not there right now."

DANIEL: Yeah, you really got into it with them. So like interviewing all these different people, you talk to like, I think it was 12 in the book.

HAYLEY: Well, it was more in real life. They're the ones who made it in.

SARA: A couple people in the same chapter.

DANIEL: So did you find any common thread in the personalities that people are drawn to working in the death industry?

HAYLEY: Yeah, I found that they were all very practical. And also very funny, which is something that you don't... you know, the traditional idea of a funeral director or people who work in the, in the death industry is someone who's very solemn and very quiet and very, very respectful. And that is also true. But all of that is balanced out with them being really funny. And I think that's a kind of way of surviving in this industry that can be so sad and... and so bleak. But I found that the people who were involved with the really, really dark stuff -- the disaster cleanup people especially, the ones who are digging up mass graves and trying to identify people after tsunamis and natural disasters like that -- those people were the funniest. So I think that says something about the power of humor and the way it can sustain us in horrible situations.

SARA: Yeah, I think that was probably the chapter that stayed with me the most was that recovery cleanup crew. Because at first I thought that it was... well, nevermind. You know what? If you want to know, read the book because it was really interesting.

HAYLEY: No, what did you think?

SARA: Well, at first, I was like, wow, somebody would think to go into business, right to -- you go into business to make money. And they're making money and profiting off of these awful things. But like, thank goodness that they're doing that because no one else would want to do that. No one would want to have to go in and clean up mass graves and recover bodies from a tsunami. I mean... I mean, it was just surprising that I felt like my emotion changed from the start of the chapter and the way that I felt about them.

HAYLEY: Yeah, but that, that is true for so many of them. You know, somebody has to do this job. And even with something like the death masks, nobody has to do that job. It's not one of the essential death jobs. But Nick, who's the sculptor who makes these death masks, sees them as something important. And, you know, he even said to me he'd rather he didn't have to, but it felt like some kind of calling. So again and again, I found people who did find this work hard and would rather not do it, but saw that somebody had to, and that they personally would be able to handle it. Like the bereavement midwife as well. She was another one, you know? She, she trained to be a midwife, and then she was actually frightened of being around when a baby would be delivered as a stillborn or who wasn't going to be live -- wasn't going to live for very long. She was, as a young midwife, she feared that moment. But then she channeled that and was like, "Well, this is this horrible situation. I can learn more about it and I can make it better. I can't fix it, but I can make it better." I just think that is heroic to take a situation that no one would want to be part of and to make it your entire career. That's huge.

SARA: Yeah.

DANIEL: That is yeah, that's I feel like sometimes when you experience the people that get into those -- like, I have a friend that specifically takes on chronically, like adopts chronically ill pets. And they were, they were... they were, they were scared to do it. But now they do that, they give them a home and they help, you know, like, take care of them, like basic for their last years and things. I think it's interesting that like people do like, the... if they can survive the trauma, they may be like, be like, I could do this as like a, like, some kind of service for people.

SARA: And people in palliative care and you know, and all of those things. I think it's all kind of tied together. Your book just happens like after.

HAYLEY: Yeah, there's more. People don't know that there's more.

SARA: It was fascinating.

HAYLEY: Thank you.

SARA: Gross but fascinating.

HAYLEY: Thank you.

SARA: So we all thought your chapter on the executioner was particularly interesting, especially being somebody from the UK. And I think you said you grew up in Australia, so definitely not part of this American justice system. What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching that chapter, even if you maybe didn't include it in the book?

HAYLEY: Hmm.

SARA: He was an interesting character.

HAYLEY: He was. I found him really sweet. I think the most surprising thing was that the executioner was an incredibly sweet man who just wanted to take me to Red Lobster.

[LAUGHTER]

SARA: Okay, and we're going to talk about that too, because of the fact that like, my one rule while reading this book was that I shouldn't be eating. And then three chapters take place in restaurants.

HAYLEY: I know, I know.

Well, I am vehemently against the death industry -- the death penalty. And so I was coming at it knowing that, you know, people do those jobs. And there is, there are a lot of people who work behind the scenes to carry out the death penalty. And it always struck me as... well, like with all of these jobs, that we never really hear about it. When you hear about somebody being killed, they don't say how many people were on the team and who carried this out and then how they then go on with their own lives. So I've found it fascinating ever since I learned it was a thing. You know, executioners are people in cartoons with hoods over their heads and they're just mysterious. So I wanted to meet one in real life. And yeah, he was sweet, and, and really nice, and told me horrifying things. You know, he was sent around the country, when he was -- when he had that job, helping other death teams kill people better. And nothing I learned about this system is good, it is all horrifying.

And I... it really upsets me that people take on that job and what reasons they might have for taking it on. For him, he was... he did it, he didn't even do it for the money. And, you know, he rejected the extra pay he would have got for each death. And I've seen some people criticizing that chapter because they were saying, "Oh, this chapter would have been okay if the journalist didn't get involved and... and spout her opinions all the time." But how can you not have an opinion on that? And speaking to him, he was a man who was... he had so many contradictions in what he was saying that I was just trying to get to the nub of how he felt. But like I say in the book, there were a couple of moments where he did reveal, I think, how he felt about it. And I think the most telling ones were that he... he couldn't look at himself in the mirror on the day of an execution because he didn't want to see himself as the executioner. And also, he never told his wife. And I think I... I think that's huge, huge.

DANIEL: You kind of talked about how when he went around them like to other places. And the book makes several references to the compartmentalization of the death industry, as many of the roles that were traditionally them in a family or an individual in a specialized role, are all by being absorbed by funeral homes. As capitalism tends to favor efficiency, like making things better, like you said, and turning things into a one stop shop, do you feel that the tendency that consolidate threatens the quality of the death care industry? Like this capitalistic need to like make things more efficient and better? Do you think that's a threat?

HAYLEY: Yeah, I think it has threatened it. And the way we do death now is weird. In the past, we used to be more involved in our own family's deaths, in dressing the bodies and being part of that and it's been taken away from us. But I think you know, there's a movement. The death positive community is trying to get the word out. You know, Caitlin Doughty and, and people like that are trying to just get it into the mainstream idea that you can be more involved in the funerals of your loved ones if you want to be. And that was what I wanted to do with my book as well. I didn't want it to be a manifesto saying you should be more involved. But I want people to know that they can if they want to, and what it might be like if... if they asked to be. Because you are allowed to go into a funeral home and dress your people, it's just that's not really advertised or put on the list when you go in for the meeting because most people will go, "Well, why would I want to be part of that?"

But one of the first things I did for this book was, I helped dress a dead man for his coffin. And I found it a completely profound experience. And that was with a complete stranger. And I found it really special that I was there for his last moments around because he was going to be cremated the next day, so he was going to no longer exist, and I was there, putting on his shirt and lacing up his shoes. And it really felt like this moment of quiet, caring. And now it's... I'm, I'm adamant that I'm going to be like that with my own family. I know what it's going to be like. It'll be different with somebody I know. But I know what to expect. So with my book, I wanted to show people how, you know, how gross the gross bits were, and how not gross the bits you think are going to be gross are. You know, there are bits that are so much less bad than you can imagine in your mind. It's just... you know, it's like, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you see a coat on the back of your door, and you think it's like a guy coming in, and you turn a light on and it's just a coat. I think that a lot of my book is just that, you know, turning the light on and going look, it's just... it's just this, it's just a person, it's not frightening at all.

DANIEL: I think that was one of the beautiful aspects I found reading the book was that like, I think at one point, you said the one guy that was working with the bodies made sure they had socks and underwear on even if they heard that the family forgot to add them to the clothes. And I thought that was like the level of care and dignity that the dead are given by the people that work in this industry was like... I was, it was happy to see because you know, like, again, like if you would have asked me, I probably would have thought they just treated like work. Like it was just another thing that they had to do. But it was cool to see that there are people that put care into their job and treating the bodies with dignity. And I thought, oh, that was nice.

HAYLEY: Yeah, and I'm sure there are the people who just go, "It's just a job." But the people I spoke to were the ones who had really thought about their roles and why they did what they did. And I loved that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he buried someone without underpants on. I thought it was lovely.

SARA: Again, it's like, you know, you don't think about the people doing these jobs. But if they don't do it, so who else would? And so the fact that they do take that special care with people? I don't know. It was nice.

And you talked about you wanted to turn the light on. And I very much as somebody who stays away from all dead mammals, like they, it all grosses me out. And so I was like, oh, it's actually not that bad. Like there's some gross parts, right? Like, I still didn't eat while I was reading this book, but I did feel like very much like, that's, it’s not as bad as like, I thought it could be. It's not this like unspeakable horror. It's just natural.

HAYLEY: Yeah, it is. Although in person, it smells a bit more.

SARA: Yeah. Oh, gosh.

HAYLEY: Just reading it. Yeah, I didn't really sit in smell-o-vision or anything.

SARA: Thank goodness. I'd have been like in that respirator the whole time.

So we talked about like the capitalization. Let's talk about the ethics. And we didn't -- I mean, a lot of the people in your book are like we just said very much in it because they care about being part of these people's last moments above ground. Is that a good way?

HAYLEY: Yeah. That's fair.

SARA: And then we do touch on like the body snatchers, the experimentation on dead people without their consent. But that's all in the past, right? Are you aware of any situations where -- this comes into play a lot with your Mayo Clinic chapter, which fascinating. And obviously they're not doing it. But are there any other situations that you uncovered in your research where we might consider that to be an unethical use of people's moments above ground?

HAYLEY: Yeah. It was after I finished my book, actually. This was in late 2021, I think it was October, there was news that a guy called Jeremy Ciliberto, I think his name is. It hit the news that he had acquired a medical cadaver and in a hotel in Oregon, I want to say, was charging 500 bucks a ticket for people to see a live autopsy of this person who was I think it was like, the guy was in his 90s and he had died of COVID and he was like a veteran and his wife had donated his body to medical science, which is what his wishes were. But she didn't know that then the body had been bought by this guy who was then putting on a live show. I believe the police investigated him, but there wasn't any actual law that he had broken. So it was just a weird, ethically shady, middle ground of just being a bit gross. And, you know, the wife hadn't been told that her husband's body would be publicly dissected in a theater. He hadn't signed up for that. He had signed up for essentially what happens in my Mayo Clinic chapter: teaching young surgeons. But I kind of understand why the guy did it, the guy who put on the show, even though I don't agree with how he did it. You can't do that kind of thing without consent. Consent is a huge, huge thing in this. But I understand the... the kind of urge to see an autopsy, to put one on. I had that same desire to see what one was like and to be there for one. And I think it... we’re so separated from death and the actual practicalities of it and what happens. And so I completely understand why someone would want to go and see that. It was just done the whole way, the worst way possible, which is just you know, in the hotel's ballroom in front of an audience.

By the way, the crime scene cleaner I interviewed, he said that he never puts his bags on the carpet in a hotel because every hotel room has had something horrible happen in it. And this autopsy happening in like the convention room at the hotel is not an unusual thing. There are, you know, medical companies will do demonstrations for people in those same rooms with body parts. So I think the main thing that's come out of this book for me is being completely grossed out by hotel carpets.

[LAUGHTER]

So I pass that on to you.

SARA: Thank you for that tip.

DANIEL: I'll stick to Airbnb. There's at least less people --

SARA: I don't know.

DANIEL: Maybe not.

SARA: You know, as librarians, we tend to check for bedbugs. But now you're saying no bed, no floor. Man.

HAYLEY: No, it’s all bad.

SARA: What's left?

DANIEL: The gore in this book, you know, you actually hold human body parts and you saw some really gross things. How did doing this research and like these interviews change your perception of death and like, you know, I guess like the things that go along with it and bodies and how you -- were you already there or did it like give you another like, added level of understanding?

HAYLEY: Actually seeing body parts hasn't really changed my opinion or feeling around death, but it has changed my opinion of like, being alive. It's, it seems so impossible. And so unlikely. We are just bags of meat, bags of meat and gross stuff. And somehow we live. So that sticks with me a lot and also how fragile it all is, that all of those things working at the same time... again, it just seems so unlikely. So there's that. And also if I hear that people have... people I know have a cancer diagnosis or something, I can actually picture the body part that that is a not in, you know, a sort of cartoon diagram way but like I might have touched it or held it. It just, like body parts feel more real to me now. You know, I know what hearts look like, I know what rib cages are like. So if I feel my own ribs through my skin, I can picture what that is and that is strange knowing that you are a bag of meat. I'm still wrestling with that one, I think.

DANIEL: Do you feel like that you have like less health anxiety because you know all that what the insides look, though? You have a mystery pain, you're like, oh, that's just my vertebrae --

[LAUGHTER]

HAYLEY: Oh no, I still do the bad Googles that you're not supposed to.

SARA: Yeah, that's, it's a lot. I read that, I pretty much read your whole book like you were talking just now and if anybody's watching the video, I'm kinda like grimacing and like, feel like there were several parts of the book or I'm just like, eww.

HAYLEY: You don't think you could have been able to handle the autopsy, then? Would you have left the room?

SARA: Yes. I wouldn't have asked to be in the room, honestly. Not my jam. Just... and I'm okay with that. Like, there's, that's not going to be the profession for me. And I think the world’s a better place for it.

HAYLEY: Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. I went in and now I've told you what it's like so it’s fine.

SARA: Now I'm good. Yeah, satisfied that curiosity.

DANIEL: So, like, the death masks chapter I thought was really interesting that this is like continuing this age old tradition of making these death masks. So like when new technologies, we're finding new ways to like immortalize people and like we're on the cusp of A.I. and like what, like a lot of researchers refer to as like, the singularity happening. How do you feel about digital immortality? Do you think it will change society's views on death and grief? Or --

SARA: But I also think digital immortal -- immortality, immortality? And I'm sorry, I'm cutting in. But I think it also has to do with like our Facebook memory pages and those kinds of things. So like A.I., it's kind of its own new beast that we're dealing with.

HAYLEY: Yeah. Well, the whole chatbot thing has come out of somebody grieving for somebody and trying to make a like A.I. version of their friend by feeding in lots of messages and emails and so they'd be able to talk to their dead friend.

SARA: Did it really?

HAYLEY: Yeah, there was a piece in WIRED Magazine about it years ago.

DANIEL: Oh, that's wild.

SARA: I missed that one.

HAYLEY: So it comes from a kind of death avoidance thing, you know, the inability to accept what's happening. So A.I. creeps me out on a general level. This isn't related, but I'm... you know, I see, I know lots of writers who are worried about every time there's an article saying, oh, you know, we'll be able to write novels on A.I. now, so we don't need you novelists. I think it's strange because I think novels and books tell us things, you know, about life in the world and... and what everything means. And if you're just feeding the world's novels into a chatbot, it's just telling us what we've already got, what we already know. And so there's nothing new coming out of it. So I don't love that.

But on a, on a Facebook level, Facebook is becoming the biggest graveyard in the world. And I don't know the statistics on it. But Dr. John Troyer, who wrote a book called Technologies of the Human Corpse, gives a talk about Facebook and social media and what is gonna happen to us and... and how Facebook is this huge graveyard. And he's got some frightening statistic of how many dead people versus live people there are on Facebook. And it's mostly dead people, it's frightening.

DANIEL: That's wild.

HAYLEY: I want all of my stuff to just disappear when I die, I don't want people trolling through stupid pictures I posted in 2014. I want all of that stuff to just go away. But I don't think we as a culture have totally figured out what we're going to do with... with our social media. The memorial pages seems like a holding, a holding... you know, a temporary measure, but I don't think it's fully there.

SARA: Well, and what happens when [whispers: Facebook goes away?]

HAYLEY: Rejoice.

SARA: Like, you know, it's not gonna last forever.

HAYLEY: No. And there are you know, sometimes if you walk around cemeteries, you see those little codes on headstones that you can... I forget what they're called.

SARA: Like a QR code.

HAYLEY: A QR code, yes. You can see that on --

SARA: They have it on headstones?

HAYLEY: Yeah, on newer headstones here, sometimes you and so you can click on it and it takes you to a webpage about that person. But to me, that seems very... you know, it's... it seems very of our exact time and maybe it will last for like 10 years at the most. It seems like the zip drive of, you know, headstone technology. It doesn't – taking you to a web page.

SARA: Eight track?

HAYLEY: Yeah, yeah, it's the MiniDisc. It's gonna go away, I think. But you know, maybe I'm... maybe I'm completely wrong. And maybe in the future, we will have holograms of people dancing above their own graves. Who knows? But I just seem... I feel like all the technology stuff like that is is not really getting to the heart of, of what is truly frightening or what is upsetting us about somebody dying, which is that they're going away. And I think we need to focus on the fact that they've gone away and not ways to kind of...

DANIEL: Keep them around.

HAYLEY: Keep them around in a way that is bogus.

SARA: That's fair. That's interesting. You know, I... my mind is going in like 15 different directions. But basically, I'm just like, "Yeah, that's exactly what it is." And I think that you in as your book kind of goes towards the end, the cryo, the cryo chapter, I think you get into that a little bit more. I'm telling you, like, speaking from a, like a vegan's standpoint, death that grosses me out. But if I can read your book, then all of our listeners need to pick it up and read it because it's fascinating.

But we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we've got some more questions for you about your writing and your book. So --

DANIEL: We'll be right back.

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SARA: Hi, we're back.

DANIEL: Welcome. And yeah, so I'll jump into this question. So like, your dad worked on From Hell with Alan Moore and you wrote a book about Neil Gaiman. So you were kind of around the British comic invasion. For people, the listeners not familiar, like in the '70s and '80s. British comics, like 2080, which had Judge Dredd kind of like changed how we viewed comic books from being something that was kind of for kids and made for more adults. Like the reason we call them graphic novels now kind of comes out of that. And so like, I guess, being around that in that environment, do you feel like that influenced your writing kind of like at all?

HAYLEY: Um, yeah. I grew up around a bunch of weirdos.

[LAUGHTER]

I think what influenced me the most about them is that none of them like went to university and did the course in the thing. They just decided that they would write these things. You know, they just, it's kind of a punk ethic. And Neil Gaiman talks and talks about this a lot. Like he just... when he was a teenager, he decided to join a band. He couldn't play a guitar, but he picked one up and made some noises with it. And he did the same kind of thing with writing. And I think it's... I think it's funny that the people I most admire or have grown up around with, as writers didn't go to university and do all that stuff. And I know you speak to young writers now and they think they've got to go do this course or get on that course. And like, there's a kind of set path to success to being a published writer. If you do everything right, you will get a book. And I think what comics have taught me is that there's no set path to success, you kind of have to make your own and it's probably going to be really rocky and strange. And whatever way you got in may be completely different to the way somebody else got in. So yeah, it's just changed my... I think it made me more frightened to go freelance and try and be a writer because I had seen people really struggling in real life, whereas I think some people who maybe haven't grown up around writers think that oh, all writers are rich. And you know, once you have a book out, you'll have loads of money and loads of time and you can just, you know, flap around doing whatever you like. And it's, the writer’s life is kind of frightening and I think that's what it taught me.

SARA: Maybe if you're Danielle Steel. You can just like take nice author photos.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm sorry, that has nothing to do with anything.

Okay, out of all of the people that you interviewed for your book, and there were a lot of them, and they were all very different, who was the most memorable for you?

HAYLEY: I think I've mentioned her already but the bereavement midwife just because her job is so important. And also it was a job I did not know existed before I started writing this book. I had a big list of all of these... I had a, you know, big cork board. It was like I was planning a murder. I had, you know, index cards and bits of ribbon. And you know, I was going crazy with this list of people I wanted to talk to. And bereavement midwife was not on there. Because you really only find out about her job if you are losing your baby. And then suddenly you... this other world opens up and you're kind of exiled. And the reason I found her was kind of therapeutic because as I write in the autopsy chapter, I... the thing that really shocked me the most in this book was seeing the body of a baby. And it wasn't when the baby was in pieces, it was just when it looked like a baby, but something was wrong. You know, it was... it was dead. It was... it was, it was a big moment. And it took me a long time to figure it out. But one of the ways I did was going to speak to her because she... she deals with dead babies all the time. And what I loved about talking to her was finding out that it was her fear as well that sent her to the bereavement ward. And the reason she was there is because she found it so frightening. And because she wanted to try and get a grip on it and help other people because she knew how frightening it could be.

But yeah, she... I think about her a lot and... and knowing what she does for a living and knowing how often people now lose their babies, which I didn't know about. I think I spend most of my friends' pregnancies being mostly terrified. I try and hide it from them. You know, I'm excited for them. You're having a baby, but I'm terrified. I think I carry the terror for excited women around me. I try not to let it ruin any parties. But I don't know how to get rid of it. Now I know. Now I know, it's just, you know, that's just part of me now.

SARA: You and the terror?

HAYLEY: Yeah, could you?

SARA: Could you imagine yourself doing any of these jobs if you had chosen... I mean, any of them over being a journalist and writer?

HAYLEY: I really liked being in the mortuary dressing people. Something I don't think I'd be very good at in the death industry is a funeral director has to deal with the living a lot. And living, grieving people. And that, to me, seems like the trickiest job. At least in the mortuary you've got... it might be, you know, it might smell bad, it might look bad. You have to get your hands dirty, but it's quiet. And you... you get on with your work. Whereas so much of a funeral director's life is dealing with the living and that is something that I couldn't do, I don't think.

DANIEL: Like the customer service, you have to be good at your job always. There's no messups.

HAYLEY: Always because this is a, this is a memorable moment. And I used to be a waitress. I was a bad waitress. I got fired and I worked in shops for like 15 years. So working with customers is... I know, I know what I'm not great at. And I'm not sure I would be... I would want to be around, like for them. I'm not sure I'm the one for the grieving people. But I think I’d do a pretty good job in the mortuary. I can handle it, I know I can handle it now.

SARA: Okay. I'd choose none of them. But no one asked me that.

HAYLEY: Really? Not even the death masks? Death mask seems like a nice, you know...

DANIEL: I have ADHD and I would forget to put the straws in and I would have so much fear that I would be making a life mask and I would end up making a death mask. Like the one guy that had the messed up nose, I was like, I couldn't do this job. The pressure, I’d just be minding my business and not paying attention.

HAYLEY: But which one could you do, do you think?

DANIEL: I could... yeah, robably, probably that I could probably do the funeral director job. I'm really good with customer service. And I've done like, I've worked with people before. My friend is a funeral director and like, he's talked to me about it, I could do it. Like... yeah, I've done like... I do standup comedy, too. So like, I can, like, I think I can deal with the grieving. I've been around. Like, I could do it appropriately. And working here customer service and stuff.

SARA: [INDISTINCT] a bad joke.

HAYLEY: Yeah, but also, you're funny. So you've got that bit covered. So funeral director.

SARA: Oh yeah. There you go. Good job.

If I had to pick one, maybe like the intake at the cryo place, just because --

HAYLEY: Oh, that seems very quiet. And yeah, it wasn't... there were no smells, it was --

SARA: It was like hopeful instead of like, sad and grieving, even though grief was part of it. If I had to. But rather, I really, I'll just, I'll just stay being a librarian. That's fine with me.

So actually, one of the things that you wrote in the very first chapter, it may have even been in your introduction, but it stuck with me the whole part of your book. And when I told people about this book, I was like, you know, this was like, mind blowing for me. And it's the fact that the first dead body you see should never be somebody that you love. And, of course, like, you're not advocating that we go take our children to mortuaries, but like, you know, it is kind of a fundamental thing and it affects how we view death and those that we have lost. So in an idealized society, in your opinion, what does a healthy relationship with death look like?

HAYLEY: Well, I think I was very lucky because I've had the chance to see a dead body. The first dead body I saw was that guy I dressed in the mortuary and it was a funeral director who invited me in to see it. And she actually does want to bring children into her mortuary. So her idealized vision of a society dealing with death is she wants to give children a chance to process the idea of a dead body before they have to, and then you, you are met with the... you know, it's two waves of emotion. You've got the grief of like, if your mum dies, you've got the grief of losing your mum, and seeing a dead body for the first time and all the horrors that you've imagined this might be. Like, that is a mess of emotion. So the idea that you could kind of sort it out as children and come to terms with it in a way, I think kids are really strong in a way we don't give them credit for. And it's possible that... you know, if Poppy had been around when I was eight and I had all these questions, and she had said, "Come and see a dead body," maybe I wouldn't have grown up to write this book. Maybe I would have figured out everything I had to then. But when I started this book, I was in my early 30s and I hadn't seen a dead body. And part of doing it was I wanted to see one. And they're so hard to come by that you have to do something as insane as write a book proposal and sell it to a publisher to try and have a reason to do that.

I just think the dead are hidden in a way that they shouldn't be. And I'm not saying that we should do what they... you know, there's a... there's a little town in Indonesia that takes their dead out of their tombs once a year and dances around with them, you know, puts new clothes on them and... and that's right for them. And I'm not saying that in the UK and America, we should be hauling our dead people out of their graves and giving them new shirts. That's not right for us. But I do think that just dead bodies not being as separate as they are would help. Like here, they're put in little chapels and you have to go for a special ceremony to see them. And sometimes you're not even offered that and it's just strange. So when the actual coffin turns up, which is closed here in the UK, you spend so much time thinking about what I do, what did they look like in there, instead of focusing on the eulogies and all the stories that people are telling you, just focusing on something as silly as what do they look like in that box? I just think there's so much just being more open with the practicalities of here is what they look like and here is what we've put them through would help.

So in an idealized society, I think that the tradition of sitting with the dead, you know, like Jewish people do. And I think there's something Irish people do too, as well. And there's still Irish wakes. There's something in that, because it's not the shock or that, you know, you're not seeing somebody for 30 seconds and then going away and still being frightened. You're sitting with them. And you're like, "This is a, this is just a person, it is just a dead body." Being with a person who is dead for hours, like I was, you kind of forget they're there. Like, it becomes such a normal thing that you can just carry on having a conversation. And they are in the room, but they're just like another person in the room. You stop thinking that's a dead body. You go, oh, that's Adam, or whatever their name is. It's a strange thing. But it's one of those strange things that it's kind of hard to describe until you go through it. And I think more people should have the chance.

SARA: Yeah, yeah. I don't know, nothing to add. That was fascinating.

DANIEL: Good job, well said.

And you kind of talked, we talked about the death positivity movement and things. Like just for the people listening is there like things you might suggest they do to help with like -- I mean, they obviously can't go to a morgue. But is there anything you think people can do? Because everyone, death is an inevitability and something we're all gonna have to prepare for. Like, do you have any suggestions for helping people prepare, especially people with their parents that are older and like that, like, what would you suggest to someone you know?

HAYLEY: Well, it's a really personal thing. And I for me, so I can only really speak for me, but I find that more knowledge is more comfort. So something I find -- she's a friend of mine. But Caitlin Doughty, all of her Ask a Mortician series on YouTube is amazing. Because people ask her the kind of questions that... sometimes the kinds of questions that you could only ask sort of anonymously on the internet because you might feel a bit stupid asking them to somebody's face. If you had a funeral director in front of you, and you ask the kind of questions, you'd go, they're probably going to do a face at me, so I'm not going to. But Caitlin is so warm and open and will tell you everything you want to know. And she's spent her adult life telling everybody what actually happens. And I find just knowing more stuff, the banal reality of what death is like, is really comforting. So I would say that. You can also go for nice walks in graveyards, I find that helps. But it's more just knowing exactly what happens that I find useful.

SARA: I'm just... I don't... okay. So you mentioned Caitlin Doughty. Is there anyone else out there that if we wanted to read more about the death care industry, favorite books, podcasts, any documentaries that you might recommend to our listeners?

HAYLEY: Well, I've already mentioned Caitlin's books. Both are great. From Here to Eternity, she actually goes into detail about that place in Indonesia that deals with their bodies every year. John Troyer's Technologies of the Human Corpse. He's a professor of death -- that is a thing -- here in the U.K. That's really interesting. He goes into the history of embalming. And so you get to see a more historical thing there. Also, Mary Roach's Stiff is the classic one. But she's just funny. And, and her hers is specifically about what happens to cadavers. They don't all end up at the Mayo Clinic teaching medical students. The one that sticks with me most with Stiff is that some of them end up as human crash test dummies in car manufacturers. It's really interesting. You would find it really gross. So maybe, if you haven't read it yet, maybe don't. But it's one of my favorites.

SARA: That's part of being a librarian is that you just kind of have to be open to other people's wants and needs. And so, you know, I don't let my opinions color my recommendations.

HAYLEY: Also, there was a... there's a little children's book called Death, Duck, and the Tulip. Have you ever seen it?

DANIEL: No.

SARA: No.

HAYLEY: It's beautiful, it’s by a German guy. And it's about, you know, it's about death. And it's for little kids, but it's one of those little children's books that's just so beautiful, you want to frame every page. Gorgeous.

SARA: Well, I think that's probably, you know, a really important topic for children's books because there are... and that's what the beauty of books really, I mean... I work with adults but I still see it and I'm just like, "Oh man, that's a really great idea that somebody had that idea to write a book about such and such hard topic for kids, you know?"

HAYLEY: Yeah.

DANIEL: I think it's a good place for adults to start too, like I'm like, I'm gonna go read that book. Especially with like really difficult subjects. I'm never, I'll never shy away from reading a picture book first.

HAYLEY: Yeah, this one will make you cry. Warning.

SARA: We cry a lot anyway. [LAUGHS]

DANIEL: We showed the Academy Award short that won best animated short, the one, the horse the duck or whatever.

SARA: Oh, it was so good!

DANIEL: And now like it was a book and now like my Instagram reels keeps taking snippets from it. And I see them every morning and I'm going... [INDISTINCT]

[LAUGHTER]

So do you have any upcoming projects or anything? What's, you have a new, like working on a next your next book or anything yet? What's new with you?

HAYLEY: Not yet. I've gone back to magazines for the meantime. I write for film magazine here in the U.K. called Empire. And yeah, so I'm just interviewing people who make movies. That is really easy compared to people who deal with dead people. Yeah, the most difficult thing in their job is like, "Oh, the set was a bit windy that day." And I go, "Oh, okay. I'm so sorry."

SARA: Rough. Rough stuff.

HAYLEY: What a rough life. Yeah. Yeah. But that's me for the minute. One day I'll write another book. But I haven't figured out what yet.

SARA: Okay. Well, we'll definitely include links to your book, links to your website in our show notes. As well as including all of the wonderful resources you just shared with us. Yeah, any final thoughts, Daniel?

DANIEL: No, it was just great to have you on the show and talk about your book. It was wonderful meeting you.

HAYLEY: Yeah, you too. Thank you so much.

SARA: Yeah, thank you. And I hope people do pick it up because it is... it is good to know about, right? It's something that we typically do avoid, but it is just something that you got to know about it.

HAYLEY: That's what I keep saying.

SARA: Be ignorant all your life, people.

No, it's fine.

DANIEL: I think yeah, I think as someone that has a lot of anxiety, it was actually kind of like I did feel like reading, reading I did kind of like feel better about the inevitability of death after reading it. So thank you for that.

HAYLEY: Oh, good. Good. Everyone's got different reactions and I love hearing them.

VOICEOVER: The Wichita Public Library offers free programs for all ages. Our children's department offers storytimes for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. For teens, there's always fun stuff going on from escape rooms to learning how to code. Adults can work on their job skills with our technology training classes. You can even get certified to use the Library's 3D printer. No matter what you're into, there's a library program for you. Find out more by checking out our event calendar at wichitalibrary.org/events. Your Wichita Public Library.

JENNY, VOICEOVER: Here are some reading recommendations for category 9, a book about death or grief, from library staff and our community of readers in the ReadICT Facebook group. To join in on the fun, log in to Facebook and search for the group #ReadICT challenge and click join. You can also find more reading recommendations for this and other categories by visiting wichitalibrary.org/readict. Want to submit your own reading recommendation to be featured on the podcast? Call our book review hotline at (316) 261-8507. Leaving a review is easy. Just state your name, location if you are outside Wichita, category your recommendation is for, title and author of the book, and a brief reason why you recommend this book.

IAN, VOICEOVER: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. This is a memoir dealing with the grief of losing a mother as well as the grief of losing culture with that loss. I completely related to this book.

The Winners by Fredrik Backman. I love Fredrik Backman’s writing. He has just the way of putting you there. I was angry, sad, scared, felt joy, love and grief. Oh, the grief.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. It's a good one. Years later, a podcaster delves into the murder of a former roommate at her boarding school. She wonders if the right person was convicted and looks at the sexual abuse and murder of women: what has changed and not changed.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. This was the 1978 Newbery Medal winner. It had the most moving, authentic depiction of grief that I've come across in a long while.

Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas by Jim Minick. This book helps tell the story of Kansas’s deadliest tornado that hit the small town of Utah in 1955, killing 82 people and injuring 270. more, more than half the town's population. This book tells the story of the survivors and their memories. Having done research in the archives on this subject, it's a story that needs to be told concerning local and community history. The book would open the conversation to the 1955 tornado outbreak which wiped out Udall, Kansas and parts of Blackwell, Oklahoma. From my experience, these communities are still affected by the twin tornadoes to this day unfortunately.

Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage. A quirky, profane, disturbing and compelling story set in wartime Lebanon about a philosophical young man who inherits his father's sacred duty to secretly collect and cremate the bodies of heretics, hedonists, religious rebels, outcasts, and other undesirables. Warning: the book has strong sexual content.

JENNY, VOICEOVER: Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro. This book gripped my imagination from day one. The story of how unacknowledged, unspoken trauma and grief infiltrates every aspect of our lives is a cautionary tale for us all.

Battlefield Angels: Saving Lives Under Enemy Fire from Valley Forge to Afghanistan by Scott McGaugh. Really excellent if you are into the history of medicine or military topics, probably not for the squeamish.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. This novel is about the death of Shakespeare's son and how he incorporated his grief into the play Hamlet. It was a good read.

The Lifted Veil by George Eliot. In this 1859 novella, the narrator contemplates fate, science, clairvoyance, gendered expectations, and his imminent death. The story nestles satisfyingly into the Victorian horror genre, as it was written well after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and well before R.L. Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Eugenides tackles a difficult subject with genius storytelling. The book never felt maudlin or emotionally overwrought, even as we watched from a distance this family and their house fall apart.

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur. This is a collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung, most of them involving the death of someone. My favorite is the title story about a man who makes cursed objects, but they were all really good. I would definitely read the author's other books if they get translated.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Given the subject matter, I don't really want to say that was like a fun interview, but I actually really enjoyed talking with Hayley.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Yeah, she was really quite delightful and pleasant for somebody dealing with such like a difficult, sad topic.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: For sure.

A list of the books discussed in today's episode can be found in the accompanying show notes. To request any of the books heard about in today's episode, visit wichitalibrary.org or call us at (316) 261-8500.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Thank you to Hayley Campbell for joining us for today's recording. We'd also like to thank those who shared recommendations for category nine.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: This has been a production of the Wichita Public Library and I think thanks goes out to our production crew and podcast team.

SARA, VOICEOVER: To participate in the ReadICT Reading Challenge, please visit wichitalibrary.org/readict. Stay connected with other ReadICT participants on the ReadICT challenge Facebook page, find out what's trending near you, post book reviews, look for local and virtual events, and share book humor with like-minded folks. To join, search ReadICT challenge on Facebook and click join.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: And don't forget to log your books in the reading tracker app, Beanstack. Each month you log a book in the challenge, you're eligible to win a fun prize. If you need any assistance signing up or logging books, give us a call, reach us on our chat, or stop by your nearest branch.

SARA, VOICEOVER: You can follow this podcast the Spotify app or stream episodes on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe and share with all your friends. Catch you next time.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Thank you, bye!