Preserving Family Stories with Ralf Ellervee

Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant, hosts Seeing Death Clearly and talks with Ralf Ellervee about preserving life stories as a lasting legacy that supports grief, healing, and conscious living. Ralph shares how interviewing his grandfather—an Estonian surgeon deported to Siberia at age nine—showed him how easily memories can be lost, especially with dementia, serious illness, or unexpected death. 

He explains why long audio recordings often go unused, while a printed book with photos becomes a timeless keepsake families reread and pass down. Ralph describes how his company, Ethos Books (ethosbook.co), evolved from in-person interviews and writers into an app that guides storytelling, lets users skip or edit answers, and can use AI to identify old photos and add context. 

Jill also connects this work to her funeral and end-of-life planning conversations, and offers a complimentary 30-minute call for support.

00:00 You Die Twice

01:56 Meet Ralph Ellervee

03:34 Grandfather’s Siberia Story

04:59 School Project Spark

07:20 Why Books Beat Audio

09:23 Hard Memories Matter

12:28 From Service to App

15:06 Don’t Wait for Dementia

18:00 Family Voices Together

21:43 Photos and AI Context

24:59 Timeless Power of Books

29:05 Every Life Matters

32:19 Stories at End of Life

37:20 Legacy and Second Death

41:16 Where to Find Ethos

42:03 Closing and Next Steps

 Homepage: http://ethoslifestories.com/

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theethosbook

 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethos.book/

Transcript

Ralf: [00:00:00] There's this saying that you die twice. First of all, when you actually pass away, and then the second time when your name gets mentioned the last time. I don't know how it feels yet, but I saw from the side that feeling is a very good feeling that my name will not die. My memories will not die. All of the experiences mattered, and they're here to stay.

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant. Here on my podcast, I have conversations with guests that explore death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where we can challenge some of the ideas we might already have about these topics and approach them with a little more curiosity and a little less fear.

Today's guest is Ralf Ellervee, whose journey into preserving family stories began with his grandfather, an Estonian surgeon who was deported to Siberia when he was just nine years old. After interviewing him and hearing his incredible story, Ralf realized how easily these memories can be lost if we don't take time to capture them.

In our conversation, we talk about why audio recordings often end up sitting on a hard drive, while a thoughtfully written book with photographs is something families will actually pick up, read, and pass down. We also talk about how his company has evolved from in-person interviews and professional writers to an app that guides people through telling their own stories, giving them the freedom to skip questions, edit answers, and even use AI to identify old photos and add historical context.

But this conversation is about so much more than technology. It's about preserving the stories that make us who we are. It's about having these conversations before dementia, serious illness, or an unexpected death takes away the opportunity. 

Ralf: And it's about the gift those stories become for the people we love today and for generations we may never meet.

Thank you for joining us for this conversation. 

Jill: Welcome, Ralf, to the podcast. Thank you for coming on. I know we are on [00:02:00] very different time zones, but I'm actually not sure where you are. So tell me a little bit about you, where you're at, whatever you want to share. 

Ralf: So hi, I'm Ralf. Currently I'm in Estonia, which for those who don't know, that's in Eastern Europe or Northern Europe.

It's 5:00 here, so quite a big time difference between you and me. So I deal with life stories. That's the main reason that I'm also here in this podcast. I, couple of years ago, back when my grandfather was still alive, I managed to sit down with him and do interviews with him. Then I found out how hard it is to actually take these recordings and turn them into a book.

It took me around four months to do. Then when I spoke to others, then I understood that a lot of people have this issue of their elderly family members are passing away, they want to save something, but the capturing methods are just [00:03:00] not convenient and it takes so much time, so I decided to start doing this as a business.

I have been in the life story business for three years, I would say. But the grandfather's book, actually the first recordings I did over 10 years ago, and they stood in a Google Drive folder for many years before I took it upon myself to write a book about him. I'm not a writer per se, so I was just a regular guy beforehand, and that maybe gave me a unique view on why this business should even exist.

Jill: Were you very close with your grandfather when you were growing up? 

Ralf: Yeah. So we have a family cottage that is every single Estonian has one. You on the weekends drive there and the grandparents usually live there during the summertime when it's warm. And I used to spend all of my summers there with him and also most of my weekends during when it was

And he was a very great man. [00:04:00] He got deported to Siberia when he was nine years old together with his whole family and they were put to work at labor camps. So he lived through a lot. After 10 years they were able to come back but then it was already the Soviet times and their big family farm got taken away and everything.

So he lived through all of that. He lived through the fall of Soviet Union and when we got our independence and then also built like our family, a big beautiful family. So he, yeah, he went through a lot and he just was so knowledgeable and he was a surgeon. He saved lives for a living. So yeah, that's why it was especially important for our family to save his stories.

And then he passed away from COVID so in 2020. So yeah, I was able to save his stories couple of years before that and then I wrote the book like I think couple of years after his death. Yeah. 

Jill: What [00:05:00] motivated you to sit with him and talk about it and record the stories? Because I know a lot of people we don't think about it till somebody's- Yeah

sick and then at that point, not that it's too late- Mm-hmm ... but it's not really the ideal time, right? We should probably do these things now while we have the opportunity. 

Ralf: So I was in a way forced to do this because my parents first of all they really wanted it to be written down. But they were also... But then at our school, in our school curriculum actually, there was a course you could take where the teacher knew about the worth of saving elderly's life stories and he pushed us all to do these interviews.

That was the start of it. Obviously it was like, like a small bit but that kickstarted the whole process of me going to his place. I showed him how to type on a computer and I also recorded it, the stories. Then my cousins took the same course and he continued to interview him. So it like school was the reason why I [00:06:00] actually started.

So I was back in high school actually at that time, over 10 years ago. But the finishing touches I think we already saw that it's a problem, a lot of families here in Estonia. So in Estonia, every other person knows somebody who has been deported to Siberia. It's like basically in the US I think World War II vets or something like this, very important group of people.

You didn't have to sell the idea of saving their stories. It was of national importance basically. Everybody understood exactly why you need to write their stories down, and that kind of kickstarted it. And then I think when we saw that it's a bigger problem in our society, then I took actually the time to turn these recordings into text and into a book.

Jill: Yeah, 'cause now I'm thinking about how my kids are... Let's see, one's in ninth grade and one's in sixth grade. They're about that age, and I'm like, man, how cool would that be to have them do a project like that and even maybe go into their [00:07:00] school and kind of get a group of kids to go and interview their grandparents.

Mm-hmm. Because I wish I would have done more of that with my grandmother when she was alive. I have some of the stories in my head, but they're not really written anywhere. At this point now I'm not even sure how accurate they are, right? Because our memories are not very good, honestly. Yeah. And so it's really great that your school did that to get you started down that path, and I like the idea too of not just having the audio recording or the video recording, but then also- Mm-hmm

having the written format, kind of having both of them, because it is also really nice to hear somebody's voice though when they're gone. 

Ralf: But these, what we saw, a lot of people actually here in Estonia happen to have these recordings, 'cause I, I understand that this school course is actually in basically in every school around here.

But the, the voice recording is undigestible. If you have six to 10 hours of recordings, then you're not going [00:08:00] to listen through them. But like a book that you can look at the pictures and go skip to a chapter that you particularly like, that keeps you coming back and honoring that person again and again.

So I'm very glad that I have the book here in my hand. It's, definitely it's like a shrine to him. Everything that he meant, you can hold it in your hand, so yeah. 

Jill: And do you have the main copy and then is there like other copies that your family has, or like how did that part work out? 

Ralf: Yeah. So interestingly, I think in the beginning I bought seven copies or five copies or something like this.

I gave them to a couple of family members. But then since I started doing the life story business and showing ads on Facebook and everything, people recognized my name, people recognized my grandfather's name from these ads because I was just telling them about my grandfather's story. And then Estonia has a very small population, so everybody knows everyone.

It's like a small village. So random people started calling me that, [00:09:00] "Hey, back in the '60s or '70s, me and your grandfather, we used to work together at a hospital. Can I also please buy his book?" And these started popping up every couple of months, somebody called me with that request. But I think it was unique since I was showing a lot of ads here, so people saw it in their mobile feeds.

"Oh, Vladimir, somebody I ... Somebody I used to work with." So, yeah. 

Jill: What's your favorite story that your grandfather shared with you? 

Ralf: Oh, he ... I don't even know whether I have a favorite, but I have these really harsh stories or really uncomfortable maybe to talk about here. Like for example, when they got put into this train wagon.

It was the same train wagon that they brought the Jews to the concentration camps, exactly the same type. Then they took off to Siberia and he told me that he was nine years old and he saw that on the way there his grandmother passed away, and how the Russian soldiers took her [00:10:00] naked and just threw her out of the door there.

We don't know where she's buried at because she was just thrown out somewhere. My grandfather has a very positive look on life. I think after all he has been through, to see a big beautiful family, nice house, everything, he was very grateful. So he always told these stories from as positive of a POV as possible.

So yeah, it wasn't hard for him to tell these stories. But it was important for us to know what happened and for the society not to forget that, "Hey, we went through this." 

Jill: Yeah. And that's not something that I ever knew happened in that area of the world. I only know of the Jews in World War II and it happening over there, I had no idea.

Yeah. And so I'm over here now listening to that and being like, "Oh, wow. All right." We all need to have these stories preserved, right? As humanity as a whole, we need to preserve these [00:11:00] stories and understand. Because if not, we will continue to repeat it. And so I love that you wrote those things down. 'Cause sometimes I think we only wanna focus on the good things.

Mm-hmm. Let's just keep the positive stories. Nobody wants the sad stories, but we need all of it because that's part of what makes us human. So I love that you- Mm-hmm ... actually have the hard memories as well as- Mm-hmm ... the positive memories in there. 

Ralf: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And we, when we started this as a life story writing service and first clients start coming in, then the Siberia stories were...

we wrote very often about them. So it was people from that generation, especially here, I would equate them more to the Silent Generation in the US. So they're a bit like- Due to the Soviet Union time, they're a bit like, not directly, but technically was a baby boomer, but I would- Mm ... more equate him to a silent generation.

They are very like non-emotion in that sense that life was hard. That's how it was. We need to [00:12:00] talk about it. No sugarcoating it. So yeah, I got to hear a lot of these stories how people went through a lot. But we got other more positive stories as well from the people who were born a bit later, after the wars.

Some were famous architects, some were famous politicians, some were... Didn't really have business people in Soviet Union during socialism, but somebody who did it underground or something like this, or resistance members. Very interesting life stories. 

Jill: And do you do the interviews with people or how are you collecting the information for people that go into their books?

Ralf: Yeah. So here I should bring out that this distinction that we used to have a life story writing service where an actual interviewer would come to your home and do the interviews face to face. I also personally used to do a lot of interviews as well. Then you get around six to 10 hours, typically covers like a regular person's life.

[00:13:00] And then we would give the audio to a writer who would then write it into a biography. But now we have moved forward with this and like a tool that we have developed is a life story writing app that does exactly the same thing. But you, the interview is being done by your phone. So it asks the same questions, you answer it by voice, and then when we have enough, then you press print and you get the same book delivered to your doorstep.

That was the motivation or what I was missing four years ago when I was writing this book. Took me the whole summer, but it could have been done with a couple of clicks. So that was the motivation why even to build such a thing. So yeah, it's mainly you tell the stories. That's, we get the info. 

Jill: But there is set questions that are asked so that it kinda helps people.

'Cause I feel like that's one of the things that stops people is they don't really know what to talk about. Like where do you start? What do I [00:14:00] focus on? And so in the app, there's actually questions that are set so people kinda have a prompt to at least get started with what they talk about. 

Ralf: Yeah, exactly.

It's, yeah, you are interviewing me right now. We started off by introducing ourselves, quickly getting to know each other, getting a really short overview of what you did in, during your lifetime. And then when we hear that, ooh, you went to Siberia, okay, we have the historic context as well added there. And then we start going in depth with the stories about Siberia or your wedding day or birth of your first child or whatever.

So that's how we ask the questions. And you can, there are some questions that you want to skip sometimes. That's also possible when we touch a topic that maybe you don't wanna talk about. That's fully fine. And you control everything that goes into this book. So yeah, you can leave stuff out as well if you overshare it maybe.

Jill: Yeah. 'Cause sometimes we do tend to overshare a [00:15:00] little bit and not necessarily want people- To hear all of those stories. But I know there's this idea too of how healing it could be for people, especially as they're aging and they're nearing the end of life, to not just share the stories, but to share them with people that they love and that they care about.

I think that's something that is very important, and I try to encourage all people to do it because none of us know when the end of our life is gonna happen. 'Cause like your grandfather, he got COVID. Yeah. That was pretty unexpected. For all of us starting off 2020, we weren't expecting what happened to happen.

Mm-hmm. And so for so many people, there's this idea of, "Oh, I'll do that later. It's not that important." But we never know, and so we should start doing it now. 

Ralf: Yeah. It's even worse is dementia. The person is still alive But you understand that you're not getting these stories anymore. And [00:16:00] that I then saw people regret that a lot.

When grandpa passes away and you couldn't save the story, then it's okay, life happens sometimes. But especially when, for example, when you have small children as well, and your parents are getting dementia, then your children remember them only as this, and they don't have the context of no, grandpa actually was a actual human before that and had these w- intelligent and all of these stories and lived through a lot.

And then people really regret not doing this five years ago. So yeah, we have had that a lot. But it takes a couple of years, so people start noticing that their parents are not as sharp anymore or memory is not as strong. Then the first signs of, okay, he or she is aging, we should do something about it.

So it's important to catch that moment as well because then it's still doable. With a good interview you can still get the facts out. You can, even if the dates go back [00:17:00] and forth and some stories get told twice and stuff like this, or even if facts are a bit wrong, then it's still better to get that than to not get that.

Because you as the son or the daughter, you can also add corrections of, okay, I actually do remember how he told the story like 10 years ago. This changed, that changed, and that already fixes the story. But what we saw actually is that people did not even read the books when they got done. It was more of a you're buying insurance or you're buying this feeling of even if something were to happen, I have something.

Mm-hmm. You put it into the cupboard and there it stays, and then as it was with my grandfather, when they have passed away, then you take it out every year on their birthday and you read it, or when you go to the cemetery you bring it with you. Then it starts to take on more and more value. Not right after the book gets written, so yeah.[00:18:00] 

Jill: And do people have the ability... Say I was doing this with my mother, right? Mm-hmm. And I wanted to create this b- book with her stories and she's recording the stories, is there the ability for me to share some stories or to have some of her friends or other family members also share some stories that can then go into the printed version of the book?

Or is it mainly just them telling their story and that's what gets printed? 

Ralf: Not all features are built out, but our long-term vision is to make it so that, for example, grandmother talks about her sister, who is still alive. We understand that she's talking about her sister. Most, if you think about your life, how many events have you been to where all of your siblings are with friends or with family?

Actually, most. You share a lot of memories. So we catch that, and we're able to send a link to them to tell their point of view of that story. And then you have, I always bring this example, of [00:19:00] father proposing to a mother. You hear about secretly measuring the finger and then ordering the ring and then losing it, and then being nervous.

That tells, and then the excitement and like this positive energy of getting proposed to from the mother, and these stories create this one plus one equals three effect. Mm-hmm. That both of these stories actually elevate each other, and the output is something more grand. But long term, we want to actually have the entire family so that you, your parents, your spouse's parents, you with your spouse, your children, everybody has their stories written down to some extent.

That's what we're building. 

Jill: Yeah, 'cause it, it's making me think of, I do funerals, so I'm a funeral celebrant, and part of what I think makes them so meaningful and so different than other funerals that a lot of people have been to is I do interview the family, and friends, or whoever wants to share. And I collect a variety of different [00:20:00] stories, different points of view, different relationships that the person who died has had with different people, and then I weave it together to tell a full story of the person.

And it's something that honestly I really love it even, where I feel like I get to know people. Even if it's somebody that I knew, I get to know them in a different way by hearing how their sons or their daughters or their wives or their cousins, whoever it is, I get to hear parts of them that I didn't know because I didn't have that relationship with them.

Mm-hmm. And so that's what it's making me think about. But in the long run, I don't get to actually talk to the person who died, right? It's unfortunate. I do have one person in Philly- that he doesn't have any family. He's a friend of mine. We're working together. I actually had him do all the questions with me that I would do so that when I do his funeral, I'm able to tell his story, and it comes from him, and it comes from his point of view.

And then of course, [00:21:00] like some of our friends, we're gonna add little bits here and there. But it's really neat to weave together a story. I do give out a printed copy to the main family member, but how cool is that to have the full book that really- Yeah ... goes in depth? 'Cause of course I'm not gonna stand up there for three hours, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So we're not gonna go that in depth, but I love that. 

Ralf: Yeah, no, we have had this experience as well where obituaries were written based on the book, and it was so much simpler, because especially here in Estonia, obituary is written by the family actually. But the family is in grieving, so it's very difficult.

And usually they're short, and usually they're very shallow, sadly. But that kind of gives depth to that as well, so yeah. Definit- 

Jill: And so you said in your books there's also photos and things included, because especially now we take so many pictures on our little digital devices, and that's where they live.

They don't actually ever get printed. Nobody really gets to see them afterwards. So your books [00:22:00] include photos as well as the written words that the person said and then wrote down. 

Ralf: Yeah. That year 

Jill: I had even a map there ... 

Ralf: yeah. So for example, from my grandfather's I put the map where his or our family's old farm building was, and the exact coordinates and everything.

That's something also I do not like, that you go on a trip to some place, you go trip to Italy, and then you come back with a bunch of photos, and then in a couple of years you don't remember what you did there anymore. And to save this juicy stories that you have, that's also what we try to do as well.

With the app you can pick a photo and talk the story of what happened there, and it even understands. It uses AI to look at the photo and to understand that, okay, you were on a vacation, probably in Italy somewhere. Tell me a bit more about it. And then you talk about it, and then it actually automatically puts it into the text as well at the correct place.

Wow. A lot of very interesting and cool features like that. Yeah. But yeah. 

Jill: That is super cool [00:23:00] actually, because there's a lot of photos I have. My grandmother traveled a lot after my grandfather died actually. It's like one of those things where he died, and for whatever reason she was just, "Now's my opportunity to do some of the things I've always wanted to do."

And she loved him dearly. It wasn't like she wasn't grieving and sad, but she did a lot of traveling with her girlfriends afterwards. And I look at these photos and I'm like, "I have no idea where it is." Because of course they're all thrown in a box. So even though she did get them printed- Mm-hmm ... they're like, they actually were in an old suitcase.

So literally it was an old suitcase of just random photos, maybe a name on the back, but I don't know where it was. And so it would be kinda neat actually to use AI to look at the picture and see if it can pick out things that I wouldn't know to look for- Mm-hmm ... and say, "This is when she went on her trip to The Bahamas," or, "This is when she was in Hawaii."

'Cause to me it all kinda looks the same, where I'm like, I don't know. It's a color photo, but not great color photo, 'cause this is like '70s, early '80s. [00:24:00] And so yeah, that's kinda neat to be able to use AI to help- pick out some of the information to tell you more about- Mm-hmm ... the situation that was happening.

Ralf: And it's, it's still very important for if you have elderly family members. And the suitcase full of photos, literally every single family that I've visited has this suitcase, mine included. Very important to mark down on the back of the photo what happens there, who these people are, because people physically or visually change so much as well that the way you look like in your teens versus now at 80 year old, you're not able to put the two together.

Or it's very rare. And then, yeah, when they pass away, just you're left with a bunch of random people there on the photos. And also other physical old media as well. Reels and, like the old movie reels and stuff like this. Nowadays we don't even have VHS players anymore. Nobody even has a CD player at home anymore.

So yeah, digitizing all of that. In that [00:25:00] sense, I really like the book as a format. It's timeless in that sense. You don't, uh, put it on CD that 10, 15 years go by and nobody even has a player anymore, or a USB stick. Maybe in a couple of years everything go into the cloud and then you lose a stick and that's bad.

But a book does not have batteries. It always works. You can always take it, read it, put it back. So yeah I really like the book. And it's something physical. I think that's ... Everybody appreciates. In the beginning even, since we're young and we want to be high tech, we offered like audio books and websites that you can build, like a Wikipedia website for your family member.

But at the end of the day, people understand books. They wanna hold something, it makes sense, and it's timeless, and it can withstand a couple of hundred years even actually when you store it properly. So yeah, I have had this ... One also a reason why I started this. I had this opportunity when I was living in Germany.

There was a friend of [00:26:00] mine who came from this ... It wasn't like a royal family, but like local dukes or whoever, but they used to be in the 1700s. And his great-great-grandfather wrote a full-length autobiography about himself, and he had the foresight to explain the everyday life as well to somebody reading it two, 300 years into the future.

And it was very interesting and that kind of taught me as well that when in my very own grandfather's book, a language that's, that was used about, uh, when he talked about Soviet Union and the stuff there with the ... There is like a Soviet Union lingo that made sense to him. But for example, to my children, to my grandchildren, that just got lost in time.

In all of the books, we make sure to explain everything that could lose its value or could lose its meaning in the next couple of hundred years. So we tell to the family as well that [00:27:00] people in the year 2180 will read this book Guaranteed. And then the gravitas that your family name will have to have that lineage back there will be, like, especially cool, and you are the one setting that tree to grow from there, so- 

Jill: It is true too that we have things.

I have VHS tapes from when I was, like, probably about 12 or 13, and they were weird because they were even smaller because the video recorder was, like, a small camcorder. You actually have to also have the tape thing that you put it into that then would go into your VHS. I have no idea if these things will ever be watched because I don't know what to even do with them, and it is a shame because I'm sure my kids, now that they're that age, they would probably love to see me at their age being goofy with my friends just like they're doing with their friends.

I don't know what to do with them 'cause they are- Uh- ... just there now. 

Ralf: Yeah. I know that [00:28:00] in the US there are a couple of services That I have researched that actually deal with digitizing all sorts of old media. You put them all into the box and you send it to them, and they send back either a link to the cloud or send it on a hard drive or something like this.

And it doesn't matter what you send, like VHS, old film photos, negatives, stuff like this. Uh, I did it for my parents or my great-grandparents' photo book. I sent them off to have digitized as well. And it wasn't too expensive. I would say that it's a good Christmas present to the family that you have now everything in a digital format that you can just put it on the TV show during Christmastimes or a show during birthdays, stuff like this.

I think that it's a good present to give to the family as well. 

Jill: Yeah, actually that is a good idea, to take some of these things and put them together, 'cause yeah, who knows, even some of it I'm like, "I don't even know what's on it." I'm sure my mom and my [00:29:00] grandmom, and there's like- Mm ... other people that are on there, that it will be lost if not.

So yeah. And this idea too of how your friend in Germany, the family had a reputation and a story and everything else, 'cause I think so many people think, "I'm not that important. Why would I write these things down? I'm not that important." But to your family, you are that important. And again, even to history, when your great-great-grandchildren read these things, it is going to be important to them.

You don't have to be famous, you don't have to be wealthy, you don't have to have grand stories, because what we did in our day-to-day life is going to be so interesting to them. Because I know I can look back and think of some of the stories that I heard from my grandmother about growing up on a farm with no electricity- Mm-hmm

and no indoor plumbing, and she had to go to an outhouse to use the bathroom, even in the middle of the night. That kind of stuff, I'm [00:30:00] like, "Oh, that is so far removed from what I have lived, and especially what my children have lived." And so it is important that we write these things down for our family members to just read and know where they came from and what they came from.

But a lot of us think, "My life's not that important. Nobody's gonna care." But there are definitely people that will care, even if not really now, in the future 

Ralf: Yeah, that my life is not important is I think I heard that a lot. Most people say that, but it's the children. It's your immediate children who see the value the most.

Usually you are already at the end of your life and your children are then middle-aged, so they are the ones that take it usually upon themselves to do that. But yeah, when I, for example, read my grandfather's book, it really humbles me each time. If I am going through tough stuff, I read first or the second chapter where they got taken away to the [00:31:00] camp and I think to myself, "Hey, I'm here, I'm warm, I have a roof over my head.

Good job. Everything's fine, actually. I should calm down, and it's nothing like he went through, and he was happy and he was always in a good mood." So in that sense, it's good to read. And with the outhouse as well, and next time you go to the pre- bathroom, you think about that, like 

Jill: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think about that actually a lot.

When I take a shower at night, I take a hot shower at night. It's like one of my things that I need to do it before I go to bed, right? It just kinda like- Mm-hmm ... calms me down, it relaxes me. And almost every single night when I take a shower, I think of how grateful I am that I can just turn a little knob and hot water comes out.

Ralf: Yeah. 

Jill: And we don't always focus on that. We get so caught up in focusing on all the things that are wrong in our lives and in the world around us, and so sometimes having that reminder, because again, I heard that story so much from my grandmother. They weren't taking hot showers at night. [00:32:00] Not when you didn't have indoor plumbing.

To hear it over and over again, and we do forget sometimes and get stuck in our own stuff, right? So it is nice to have that physical reminder, sit and be able to read it, and be like, "Oh, no, my, my life is pretty good." 

Ralf: Yeah. Maybe you can talk about how- Your job has been overlapped by life stories. Have you had any experiences with life stories and with people you deal with?

Jill: Oh, yeah. And that was actually one of my favorite parts. I volunteered in a hospital for a couple of years, and what I would do is go in and sit with people that were potentially dying, but also I would sit with a lot of people that were maybe just given the news that they were going to die. Whatever treatment they were doing is not working anymore.

So they were in that kind of transitional phase [00:33:00] of just now realizing. And a lot of times what they would do is we would start off and talk about that a little bit, and then I would kind of ask some questions and be like, "Oh, what did you do for a living? Do you have children?" Just to shift the conversation away from a really heavy topic, and not forget about that heavy topic- Mm-hmm

but just maybe flow back and forth between the two. And man, I would just hear the stories of people's lives. And one of my favorite things that I tell people was a woman that was telling me, again, she had just been given the news that treatments weren't working, that she probably only had a few months left.

And so it was around Christmas time, and she started talking about how she would always make Christmas cookies, and this was gonna be the first year she wasn't gonna be able to make them. But then it just expanded from there, and she told me about her entire life. And because I was a volunteer, I could sit there for hours.

And I don't think I said more than a couple words to her. I just sat and I just [00:34:00] listened. And at the end of it she said to me, "You are so wise. I just feel so much better. You are so wise." And I'm thinking, "Thank you." And I said that to her. I was like, "Thank you, but I really didn't do anything. I just let you talk."

And so it's amazing how giving people this space to talk through not just their fears and their anxieties, but also to talk through... And again, it wasn't all good stuff. She told me all the things she regretted, all the things she wished she would have done, and then also the good stuff. It just made her feel so much better to be able to share it.

And so that's part of my favorite things with this work. Because I don't like, like chitchat, right? I don't like the, "Oh, so softball," or, "My job sucks," or, "My husband sucks," or whatever it is that people tend to talk about. I wanna talk about the real stuff. And people that are dying, they wanna talk about the real stuff.

That chitchat is not important to them. Mm-hmm. And I love it. I love that depth and that [00:35:00] connection that you could build. 

Ralf: I think you would be a great interviewer for life stories as well, because that's exactly how most of them went, that in the beginning people need help in the first hour, but then it's just like you press play and the person just starts talking because they know.

They understand that you just talk about your life. And what I also saw is that when you get done, when you tell all of these stories, people find out somehow or rediscover that actually they did quite a lot, and they did enough To be, now they're like free to pass away because they feel like, "Okay, I think I did enough."

Most people don't have regrets. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it's some bias that we only interview people who are generally happy in life. Mm-hmm. But I think maybe when you're at the end and you understand that you are at the end, mostly look at the positives or the negatives go all away. The reality or the everyday reality goes away and people start to [00:36:00] romanticize a bit, which is nice in my opinion.

It gives an i- full stop to the end as well, so. 

Jill: Yeah. That's an interesting point too, how sometimes the reminiscing and thinking through your life can give you, I think, probably two different perspectives. Even if you do talk about some of the negative things, you also realize that there was a lot of positive, right?

So like you're not just focusing on the parts that you regret, you're also thinking through how many good experiences you had, which does allow people, I think, to feel better about the fact that their life's coming to an end. And I think for so many of us, we get to the end and there's this, "Oh, I'm out of time now.

I didn't do some of the things I wanted." But going through this experience of kind of reviewing your full life and saying, "Okay, so maybe I didn't do X, Y, and Z, but I did a whole lot of other things that I never expected." Mm-hmm. And so I could see how that [00:37:00] would allow people to then feel okay about letting go and moving on to whatever comes after this, 'cause nobody really knows for sure.

But like ending this life and moving on to whatever comes next can feel a little bit better when you've reviewed everything that you've done in your life. 

Ralf: Exactly. Another interesting point which we saw or found is that there's this saying that you die twice. First of all, when you actually pass away, and then the second time when your name gets mentioned the last time.

And that is also something that was like a motivating factor of, okay, if I write my stories down or I leave a mark, then the second death will never come. There was a witness to my life mattered, and it will stay. It will not be forgotten. So that also, like when the book got done, then people took a deep breath out, and that feeling [00:38:00] was...

I don't know how it feels yet. Hopefully for a long time I don't feel that. But I saw from the side that feeling is a very good and a very nice feeling that, okay, my name will not die. My memories will not die. All of the experiences mattered, and they're here to stay. So that's especially strong for people who don't have children, for example.

Jill: Yeah. Yeah, because their name will live on- Mm-hmm ... in one way or another. And I'm thinking too now even for, again, like a historical society, I know at least in the United States, a lot of towns, there's like a historical society, that it would be kinda neat to have some of these books about the people that lived in your area, right?

So that even if there isn't family there anymore, 'cause a lot of us also move around a lot, even if there's not people that still live there, then that story of the town, of their experience could be kept. So yeah, that's kinda cool too. 

Ralf: I think there are definitely some parts. So [00:39:00] I'm coming to the US- This summer to expand my business there and we are going to Utah.

There they already have a lot of, lot of this digital infrastructure as well, and family search and stuff like this where they have written down their parents', grandparents' life stories. But I think their religion also plays a big role in there to study and learn about your family histories. They do it a lot there.

And I think even BYU has a full, like, section where they learn and they teach and they research family history. That's very interesting. And it's good. They do know a lot more about where they come from, and this family name has this weight as well. You're not just somebody. No, you come from a lineage.

You're a dynasty in that sense, so it's a powerful feeling. For example, a very funny story or interesting story. When I started showing ads and stuff like this, I was able to go to the national TV as well to talk about [00:40:00] life stories. And a person I never, ever met, a relative very far away, our common ancestor was, like, 1800, something like this.

He was an old man who saw me from the TV and called me, and he told me that I have every single family member, like the family tree mapped out. Like, there used to be, like in the 1800s, like four brothers. They all took different family names, so mine took Ellervik. And he, his great-grandfather or great-grandfather took another family name.

So he had done it for all of the four brothers, which was very interesting. He printed it all out. It's, like, huge, like 24, 28 of family trees. And then now I basically know every single person in Estonia with this family name, which is crazy to also think about. And that gave- Wow ... me this, or our family name this, like, power or confidence or this feeling of, okay, [00:41:00] this is a dynasty.

This is, like, something like I'm a, I'm part of something bigger. And it was, like, randomly. On a Tuesday I got the go call. I went to his place and I got it, I got, like, a foot thick folder of it. So very interesting. Definitely something that people should do more. 

Jill: That is interesting. But we are actually at the end of our time.

So why don't you tell me where people can find you, find out more about your company. I don't think we even said the company name. Um, and I will put links in the show notes too so people can easily find it. 

Ralf: The company that I run is Ethos Books. The company website is, uh, ethosbook.co and there you can access the- Nice

life story writing app if you want to try it out. Instagram, Facebook, everything should come from a quick Google search as well. So yeah, and you'll put the links as well. 

Jill: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Ralf. This was really interesting. I enjoyed having this conversation with you. 

Ralf: Me as well, likewise, and I hope we'll [00:42:00] stay in touch and maybe talk about this more in the future as well.

Jill: If you've been listening to my podcast for a while and you hear me and my guests talk over and over about how important it is to create a plan for the end of life and to have the conversations with your loved ones about what's important to you, and you're thinking, "Okay, maybe it's time. Maybe I should actually sit down and figure this out instead of just hoping it all works out later," I get it.

These conversations can feel overwhelming or scary or just like something you'll deal with another day, but you don't have to do it alone. If you want help creating an end of life care plan for yourself or for someone you love, maybe it's your aging parents, a spouse, whoever it is in your life, you can book a complimentary 30-minute call with me and we'll just talk.

We'll get clear on what's going on for you and what the next right steps might be. There's no pressure, just support. The link's in the show notes whenever you're ready. And if this episode made you think of someone, a sibling, a friend, or another caregiver, feel free to share it with them. Sometimes these conversations are easier to start when someone else opens the door [00:43:00] first.

Thank you for being here. The fact that you're even willing to listen to this kind of conversation means a lot.