Affordable and Environmentally Sustainable Death Care with Liz Dunnebacke

In this conversation, Liz Dunnebacke shares her journey from the entertainment industry to founding Wake, a nonprofit focused on affordable and environmentally sustainable death care. She discusses her personal experiences with death, the challenges of navigating the death care system, and the emotional impact of choices surrounding death. Liz highlights the crisis of unclaimed bodies, the legal complexities of death care decisions, and the need for greater access and affordability in this essential service. We delve into the complexities of death care, exploring personal values, financial barriers, and the emotional toll of losing loved ones. We emphasize the relational nature of life and death, advocating for community support and awareness in navigating these difficult topics.

Liz Dunnebacke (she/they) is the founder and executive director of Wake, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information and resources that support meaningful, affordable, and environmentally friendly end-of-life care. Liz comes to end-of-life work following a career in the entertainment industry. 

Since moving to New Orleans in 2004, Liz has served on the boards and staff of several New Orleans-based nonprofit organizations in the arts and education sectors. Since 2013, they have worked to develop national resources for sustainable and affordable end-of-life care, serving on the board of the Green Burial Council and forming the Equitable Disposition Alliance. Liz holds a BA from Brown University.

Wake Website
Equitable Disposition Alliance

Transcript

Wakil David Matthews (00:02.317)
Welcome, everyone. Today's episode, we will be speaking with Liz Dunnebach. I should have asked you this. How is that pronounced? Is that right? Dunnebach. OK, start again. Welcome back, everyone. On today's episode, we will be speaking with Liz Dunnebach. Liz is the founder and executive director of Wake, a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide information and resources to support meaningful, affordable, and environmentally friendly death care.

Liz Dunnebacke (00:09.382)
Then I'm back.

Wakil David Matthews (00:31.329)
This comes to end of life work following a career in the entertainment industry.

Annalouiza (00:36.674)
Since moving to New Orleans in 2004, Liz has served on the boards and staff of several New Orleans-based nonprofit organizations in the arts and education sectors. Since 2013, they have worked to develop a national resource for sustainable and affordable end-of-life care, serving on the board of the Green Burial Council and forming the Equitable Disposition Alliance. Liz holds a BA from Brown University.

Hello and welcome, Liz. So good to see you again.

Wakil David Matthews (01:08.643)
Yeah, yeah, great to meet you in person. Well, two dimensions anyway. Some day in person, hopefully. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us. We always like to be, yeah, we always like to begin by asking when you first became aware of death.

Liz Dunnebacke (01:09.41)
Great to see you.

Annalouiza (01:14.242)
I didn't either.

Liz Dunnebacke (01:14.732)
Yes. Yes.

Liz Dunnebacke (01:23.352)
Thanks for having me.

Liz Dunnebacke (01:30.126)
It's such a great question because I think about like my earliest memory of death and that was going to a funeral, my grandfather's funeral when I was nine.

And that was really, you know, remarkable because my family of origin, I didn't grow up and my family did not practice religion, but both my parents were raised in the Catholic Church. And so my grandfather, there he was, embalmed and laid out. And I remember being sort of afraid of the body, touching his hand and afraid of the coldness of it.

But I realized that it was really before that. I had a sister who died before I was born. And I don't remember being told about this. As far back as I remember, I had known this. And I remember, you know, she had died when she was nine of cystic fibrosis.

And I had two older brothers who were her younger brothers and they remembered her. And I have early memories of, going up to my mom and saying, I can't believe you had a daughter who died. Don't you miss her? Isn't it so sad? And she would, I remember her just sort of, my friend called it the deflective chortle. She would say, that was so long ago. I don't even really remember that time. And when I think back on it, that was, you know.

It was within, easily within five, 10 years of Kathy dying. So it hadn't been that long. So that death, it took me probably more than 40 years to realize that the death of my sister before I was born really profoundly marked my family in ways that no one spoke of and probably most weren't even aware of.

Annalouiza (03:09.472)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (03:21.612)
Sure.

Annalouiza (03:22.786)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's such an interesting, like, awareness that you've taken over the course of your life around that chortle, that specific reaction to that question, right? So, I mean, it's, you've tuned into an aspect of the life of grief, too, right? So, how has death impacted the story of your life beyond that, then? Beyond that incident? Beyond that marker?

Wakil David Matthews (03:26.124)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow.

Wakil David Matthews (03:35.584)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (03:40.013)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (03:47.096)
Exactly.

Liz Dunnebacke (03:55.97)
Well, so that was sort of, as I said, for so long, really below the surface and I didn't think much of it. And, you know, I had this whole, this career in a totally different industry. But when my mother got...

a terminal illness in 2012. I feel like that was sort of the beginning of my awakening really, because it was about two years until she died. And over the course of that two years, I just, the scales fell from my eyes. It was like, you know, I can't believe this is happening. What is this? This is some terrible tragedy, but wait, I guess I knew she was always gonna die.

Wakil David Matthews (04:28.514)
you

Wakil David Matthews (04:37.378)
Thank

Liz Dunnebacke (04:37.71)
Was I not prepared for this? And then we were all gonna die. This is really what this means. I mean, it's so trite, but I like to say that you can divide the world between those who really get it and those who don't yet. Just because they haven't sort of confronted it.

Wakil David Matthews (04:54.53)
Very true.

Annalouiza (04:57.729)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (04:57.986)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (04:59.092)
And her death really, because I was so up close to it from the sort of managing the disease process with the hospitals and the doctors to all of the logistics and having her and my stepfather kind of get their ducks in a row, which they weren't. you know, and then being the executor of an estate, which, you know, this term winding down an estate is like a euphemism for something really awful that goes on for years.

Wakil David Matthews (05:23.426)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (05:29.174)
And I just kept being, I always say that I always felt like I was inventing a wheel. Like, why am I inventing a wheel? Everybody dies. How is this so complicated? Why are there not more resources for people? And that was really the beginning of like, has to be, things have to change. We have to do things differently. And then, know, for, so what was that? 2014 when she actually died. And I think it was 20.

Wakil David Matthews (05:34.636)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (05:56.75)
19 when I decided that I was going to start this small grassroots nonprofit organization in New Orleans, because I knew nonprofits and I was like, if I keep it small, I know there'll be community need, you know, ever more. And I felt like such an amateur, but that's how you start. And you just start it and you lean in and suddenly you realize there's tremendous need. And you just start kind of meeting people.

where they're at and you learn pretty quickly.

Wakil David Matthews (06:28.47)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love what you said about winding down. It sounds so easy. But it takes so much. know, we do a lot of our work, a lot of our conversations are exactly about that, about how do you get ready and what could you do as a gift to your beloveds to be prepared. And so it sounds like that's part of what you're doing now. Can you tell us more about your work, your role and what you're doing? Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (06:35.022)
Exactly!

Liz Dunnebacke (06:54.958)
Yeah. Yeah. So in 2020, I founded, again, a really small nonprofit here in New Orleans called Wake. And the mission of Wake is to provide information and resources. I think you read it in the intro, but information and resources to the community to support meaningful, affordable, and environmentally sustainable death care.

Wakil David Matthews (07:24.438)
So good.

Liz Dunnebacke (07:24.556)
And those three things can really be in tension with one another.

Wakil David Matthews (07:29.962)
Yes, Yeah, especially the affordable. Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (07:33.128)
my background. mean, exactly. The affordable is, and that really emerged. you know, I had been on the board of green burial council and was really, I still am really into, you know, really, you know, environmentally friendly disposition, which in some cases is quite accessible. You know, you don't, it doesn't have to be a certified green burial, but if you find an old fashioned cemetery that, doesn't use cement liners and you just go in.

without being embalmed in some kind of a biodegradable container, you can have green and it's not that expensive. But pretty quickly, once I started doing this work, I realized that the biggest need was gonna just be around access and affordability. there is, especially in urban areas, just like it's a crisis across the US.

Annalouiza (08:19.68)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (08:27.144)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just as an aside, too, were you at the funeral super conference last year?

Liz Dunnebacke (08:35.566)
I couldn't make it. I was watching it. I was live streaming it.

Annalouiza (08:38.794)
Okay, there were a few groups who were also trying to get that information out for folks to find ways for affordable death care, right? Like it is such an enormous need. yes.

Liz Dunnebacke (08:46.637)
Yes.

Wakil David Matthews (08:49.506)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (08:49.868)
I'd really love to actually give a plug because I'm one of the co-founders of a group that spoke that day called the Equitable Disposition Alliance. And the EDA is really just a study group, a collection of people that are working on this issue of affordable, just basic death care and the affordability issue. Funeral Consumers Alliance, this is part of what they do and they've been working

Annalouiza (08:59.04)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (09:18.99)
for a really long time on the funeral rule and sort of advocacy at the federal level. The EDA, the current project is really cool. We've been trying to document what happens to unclaimed bodies in the two most populous counties or regions of all 50 states. And it's amazing from like, even in Louisiana, we have parishes and not states. From one parish to the next, what happens to a body is completely different.

Nobody knows about this. It's truly a crisis.

Wakil David Matthews (09:48.642)
All

Wakil David Matthews (09:53.462)
Wow, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (09:53.772)
What does happen to our bodies that are unclaimed? mean, because people usually choose not to claim because they can't afford it, right?

Liz Dunnebacke (10:00.622)
The vast majority, yes. Some people refuse to claim because they are estranged from their person. A lot of times people have issues because they don't realize that, especially if you've had those like, know, healthcare powers of attorney made in life. And so you have your chosen family or your friend or your life partner.

making decisions about your body all the way up until death, and then nobody realizes, including the hospital and the hospice staff, that all powers of attorney expire at death. And so what happens is it becomes about your legal next of kin. And if the person's estranged from their legal next of kin, it can't be circumvented unless the body is left for a certain period of time. they'll let, in Louisiana, they'll let another interested party come forward, but only after they've exhausted that.

So yeah, there's sometimes people are John or Jane Doe's, they're not able to be identified, they're not able to find next of kin. There's a number of reasons why people go unclaimed, but yeah, the vast majority is because they can't afford it. And we work with these families and we're just sort of like, okay, let's make a GoFundMe and see if we can come up with thousands of dollars. And the term that's often used in the industry is indigent death.

and it has, you know, it feels like a misnomer in many cases because I've come to find, I mean, what is the definition of indigent? I would say it's just whether you happen to have the cash on hand or the headroom on your credit card at the time when your loved one dies.

Wakil David Matthews (11:29.153)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (11:38.218)
Right.

Yeah, yeah. think it's also what you said about power of attorney ending on death. I wonder, I'd be really interested to know, maybe you know, if that's case everywhere or if there are different laws in every county and different state laws in every state. And if so, because we do work with people creating their health agents,

Annalouiza (11:43.084)
Wow. Yes.

Liz Dunnebacke (12:08.119)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (12:08.226)
and creating people in advanced care directives asking people to be their health care agent. I'd be interested in how that affects, how that's affected if that is also true that they still have to go back to the family because that's quite often the case, as you said, that the family has been estranged for whatever reason and the people don't want them to show up at their funeral or, you know, the memorial or their wedding either, wedding with the divine.

Liz Dunnebacke (12:32.362)
at their funeral.

Annalouiza (12:33.354)
After what he did.

Liz Dunnebacke (12:37.678)
It is true. It is the case in every state in the US. All powers of attorney expire at death. I always thought it was the durable kind was the kind that went after death. no, they said, I think the durable and this, don't know if there's some nuance between states, but in Louisiana, the durable power of attorney is just for when you are incapacitated, which

Wakil David Matthews (12:42.946)
Well, the power of attorney specifically, huh?

Wakil David Matthews (13:04.524)
Right.

Liz Dunnebacke (13:05.268)
begs the question, what is a non durable? Why would you need it? But I guess if you're traveling or something like that, you might get a non durable power of attorney. But yes, they all expire at death. And so this is really a need. And this was a big piece we worked on at Wake. The statute exists in Louisiana law, for example, that you can name a person to make disposition decisions for you.

And that person gets first priority, but in short of that person being named, it just defaults to legal next of kin, which is something like spouse, majority of your adult children, majority of your adult parents, a majority of your siblings, and then cousins at some kind of, you know, a menu like that. But what we were able to do, so, you know, I know some estate attorneys that write this in when they're doing

sort of get, you people are getting their ducks in a row and they're getting their end of life paperwork. They might write in a disposition of, you know, the right of disposition for somebody. But the problem with this, and I often find this to be the case with people putting their end of life wishes and their wills, is that a will is not usually read until after the funeral. And so a lot of these choices and decisions aren't known.

Annalouiza (14:21.216)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (14:21.474)
Correct.

Liz Dunnebacke (14:27.702)
And so what we did is we partnered with, there's a pro bono project as a nonprofit legal assistance organization here. We just partnered with them to make a simple form. It's about two pages. It does have to be notarized, but it just allows you to designate somebody. And so we, when we do our advanced care planning clinics and when we do workshops and when we work with clients, we just add that to the, you know, to the other documents. And I'd be happy to share that. We just need one in every state.

Wakil David Matthews (14:44.354)
Mm.

Wakil David Matthews (14:54.144)
That's great. Yeah, please. Yeah, yeah, please do.

Annalouiza (14:55.318)
Yeah. Yeah. The little disposition, the right of disposition goes to this person, right? that's wonderful.

Liz Dunnebacke (15:02.648)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Wakil David Matthews (15:02.914)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I know in our advanced care directors that we work with, it often has a line there, you who do you want to have as your care agent? And that may be the same thing. thank you. Yeah, we definitely want to add that to our list of resources. Thank you for that. That's great. And what a wonderful work. It's so good that you're doing that work. Yeah, brilliant.

Liz Dunnebacke (15:12.044)
Yes.

Annalouiza (15:20.738)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (15:22.774)
I love it. It feels like a real calling. I mean, I feel pretty lucky to be doing this.

Wakil David Matthews (15:27.836)
Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Annalouiza (15:30.07)
Well, we were just talking about some of the challenges that you face with this kind of work, access, information, people not understanding what, you know, like some things mean durable powers of attorney. But can you talk about other challenges that you find in doing this kind of work?

Liz Dunnebacke (15:48.578)
Yeah, I I think I probably couldn't overstate the issue of access for reasons of affordability. I mean, if you think about it, and I'm always, this is my soapbox, I'm always like, death care is healthcare. And literally just, you know, at least until disposition happens, you have a body that needs to be dealt with. And yet,

Annalouiza (16:02.019)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (16:04.865)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (16:13.033)
Right? Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (16:16.524)
And we always, when we give this talk to people, especially when they're like social workers or nurses in hospice or palliative care, we try to help them understand that like these families are moving out of one system of care and into another without realizing it. And the healthcare world, as uneven as it is, there are...

options for people. You you can walk into a hospital and receive treatment. I mean, I get that it's uneven, but you can get that. can, you know, almost virtually every citizen can receive hospice, for example, at end of life.

When death occurs, there is no public option. You are turned over to a for-profit industry and it's, you got to pay to play. There's many great players in that space, but it's going to cost you a lot of money. And so, you know, what that means practically for families is that, you know, they're not getting the treatment for their loved one that they want.

Annalouiza (17:01.026)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (17:07.03)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (17:10.304)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (17:24.026)
and they're not able to sort of lay them to rest. And what I find is that there's all this sort of knock on effects of that. They feel disenfranchised from a sense of closure. I mean, I work with families if we can't come up with the money, even for like, and many families here, for example, we could come up with the money for a direct cremation, but that's such a horrible thought.

to them. I mean, this is a very Baptist town. This is a very Catholic town. It's very strong in its death ways and its death care traditions. And a mother would no sooner cremate her son than she would abandon him. I mean, it's effectively the same thing to her. It's a horrifying thought. And so there's this disenfranchisement that happens that

reverberates. And so then I try to encourage people, well, let's have some kind of a memorial service. Let's do something. Because we're often helping people, we can make funeral programs for free. So often we're sitting with them, trying to help them write an obituary and pull the photos for the funeral program. And that is a really tough thing to do with somebody who's in like fresh grief. But it's like, let's do something. Let's gather at a park or at a church. And you know, we've got people who are

Annalouiza (18:34.39)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (18:34.7)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (18:41.986)
I've got volunteers who can be celebrants and we can do it with the community, but a lot of people feel like, if I couldn't get the death care that I wanted, then I don't deserve to have any of this closure. if you are living with a lot of death around you and a lot of it is disenfranchised, I think there's a lot of trauma that sort of gets.

Wakil David Matthews (18:56.034)
Hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (19:10.985)
is the result of that.

Wakil David Matthews (19:12.864)
Yeah, yeah, it builds up, I'm sure. Builds up over generations, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (19:15.67)
Yeah, exactly.

Annalouiza (19:15.872)
Yeah. Yeah, it's astounding to me to think, and I've never actually thought about this because my sister who passed a few years ago wanted to be cremated. That was her choice. And so I followed suit. And it just occurred to as you're talking that my father is very much against cremation. And I think he was really angry about that choice, but he didn't have a choice because I was the disposition of the body.

Liz Dunnebacke (19:27.426)
Right.

Annalouiza (19:43.702)
gal from my sister, right? So I just did what she wanted. And it really does beg the conversation again and again. Like, what are your values around the disposition of your body? And then the barrier of financial resources to get what you want. Yeah, I hear it, and I'm thinking about it very clearly in this moment.

Wakil David Matthews (20:08.522)
Yeah, and a regular check-in. you make that decision, tell everybody, and then they forget. the people that you asked to be your health care agent moves or doesn't want to talk to you anymore or dies themselves. You've got to just always be thinking about updating that and keeping that up to date. That's one thing we preach over and over again.

Annalouiza (20:14.945)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (20:15.022)
Right.

Annalouiza (20:21.548)
Alright, four.

Liz Dunnebacke (20:21.976)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:28.3)
Yeah. Well, no, well, just having, you know, whoever's going to attend to the body, like also the financial burden of that could be extraordinary. And, know, I want to honor that. And, my gosh, how am going to do this? Like, it's really heavy all around.

Liz Dunnebacke (20:28.866)
Yeah, I remember. Go ahead.

Wakil David Matthews (20:38.465)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (20:45.922)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (20:49.582)
I feel like that's real. lost when I lost my father and my brother. My mother had designated. I had asked her what she wanted and she wanted cremation. I was so deep in green burial when my dad died and I so wanted to do that for him, but I didn't have that kind of money. just it was going to be thousands of dollars more. And that was just not an option. And, you know, luckily, he didn't feel strongly about it. He was like, do what you want.

Wakil David Matthews (20:49.825)
Can be.

Liz Dunnebacke (21:17.708)
But yeah, mean, honoring what your person wants, honoring what you want. then, know, famously when my grandmother died, she had told everybody that she wanted to be cremated and she wanted her ashes spread in the Feather River in California.

And so she was 92 when she died and it was 115 degrees in August in the central valley. And there I am with all of her nanogenerion friends tottering down to the river. I was like, this is not practical. And I took that to heart. All my death care plans, I have a whole folder in the front of my filing cabinet that says when I die. And it's got some advanced.

Wakil David Matthews (21:40.48)
you

Liz Dunnebacke (22:00.206)
care planning documents in it, but it also is like where I can tuck a little song that I like as an idea for a playlist or something. But one of the things I tell to my kids and my husband is like, at the end of the day, this is what I'd like, but just do what you need to do. Like I'll be dead. It's okay. Give him permission.

Annalouiza (22:04.512)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (22:07.104)
Yeah, great.

Annalouiza (22:14.466)
Yes, yes, yes. I have only said that to my kids, although recently, and I think I mentioned it to another guest, was that after our cat passed away last year, there was an intense conversation between my two kids of body disposition for Beowulf. And my son was really against burying, and my daughter was against cremation. And even though it was my daughter's cat, they had a very long conversation.

Wakil David Matthews (22:15.2)
Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (22:43.064)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:43.082)
about what it meant and what were the values for each of them. And I realized like, I have given them permission to do whatever is easiest when I pass, but honestly, I better make a choice so that they don't waste time bickering about it. Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (22:52.866)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (22:54.03)
Yeah, at least they know what you wanted. That gives them some points on one side or the other. The other thing we've learned about cremation and remains is that those are toxic, especially if you put them in a creek or a pond or something, they can kill everything in the pond. I think rivers probably... Yeah, exactly.

Liz Dunnebacke (22:59.606)
Yeah, that's helpful.

Liz Dunnebacke (23:08.46)
Mm-hmm. the trees. Everybody wants to, I mean, we did that, you know, we did it with my mom and we buried it, you know, we put the ashes around the tree and the tree died. I mean, it's really, it's just...

Wakil David Matthews (23:18.496)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I know. It's something to be aware of, right, when you're making these decisions. Right. So important. Yeah. Really good. So thank you. This is great. I'm really appreciating this. obviously, you're our people. yeah. Right. We've been here. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:27.254)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (23:40.302)
Yes.

Annalouiza (23:40.514)
We're sitting here laughing because we know

Liz Dunnebacke (23:44.014)
Yes, you get it or you don't. The good news is if you don't get it, you will.

Annalouiza (23:46.786)
you.

Wakil David Matthews (23:47.989)
I love that, what you said earlier. Yeah, that's right. And there are resources. There are people like Liz and all of us out here trying to give opportunities for people to understand it better. Is there anything that frightens you about your end of life?

Annalouiza (23:51.81)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (23:55.682)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (24:01.165)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (24:08.366)
Yeah, think it scares me a lot. I feel like, sometimes I feel like I can lean right into the moment when somebody's dying. And sometimes I just feel traumatized and terrified. And I like to share that far and wide because I like to tell people that there are no experts on this subject. I have a teacher who said,

Wakil David Matthews (24:29.57)
Absolutely.

Liz Dunnebacke (24:37.39)
Death care is sacred work, but it's not special work. You know, we're all going to lose people and we're going to muddle through as best we can and we'll really rise to certain occasions and we'll, you know, not to others and that's okay. In terms of my own death, I think what I have a lot of like stickiness around my people. I don't want to lose my people.

Wakil David Matthews (24:42.86)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (24:54.976)
Right.

Liz Dunnebacke (25:07.482)
and so like kind of leaving the sweet old world, I think, well, maybe I'll be energy and I'll be still moving through this same sweet old world, but, but I don't want to lose these people. I'm very attached to them.

Wakil David Matthews (25:20.394)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. And that's the mystery, right? I know when you said your teacher, my teacher has a great saying, he says, we're all just bozos on this bus. I think he stole that from somebody else. it sort of fits all of life. know, we're doing our best, but we're just we're all just stumbling along best we can. And hopefully we're all there. I mean, the community that you talked about, the community is so much part of how we manage to keep going.

Annalouiza (25:24.811)
Lovely.

Liz Dunnebacke (25:27.906)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (25:34.722)
Thanks for watching.

Liz Dunnebacke (25:40.622)
Totally.

Annalouiza (25:51.712)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (25:52.728)
Totally. Boza's on the bus. I love it.

Wakil David Matthews (25:53.194)
Yeah, thanks for that. That's really good.

Annalouiza (25:55.444)
I love that too. I gotta remember I am definitely a bozo on the bus.

Wakil David Matthews (25:57.379)
Yeah, good stories. Oops, everybody froze.

Liz Dunnebacke (26:00.695)
All of us.

Annalouiza (26:01.792)
Yeah. did we lose Wakil? It looks like Wakil. there he is. He's back. Now you're moving.

Wakil David Matthews (26:06.902)
Yeah, we're back. I'm moving. Yeah, you guys, all of us froze up. yeah, OK. Yeah, OK. Hey, well, thank God for editors.

Liz Dunnebacke (26:07.468)
he's frozen.

Annalouiza (26:11.624)
but we can't hear you. now I can. Wow.

Liz Dunnebacke (26:13.612)
I can hear him.

Liz Dunnebacke (26:20.622)
you

Annalouiza (26:23.938)
So Liz, this mission that you have at this point in your life that is probably all encompassing because you're probably talking about this any chance you get and doing the work. So how do you keep resourced as you move along day to day, week to week? when you have those hard, well, you know, they can all be of hard. But when you have those moments when you're like, I'm really tired, what gives you

a safe space to stand in.

Liz Dunnebacke (26:57.422)
Hmm, it's definitely that this is a journey for me. I am not very well skilled at this stuff. I, it helps for me that, you know, I'm of a certain age that this is a second career for me. So I've sort of been through that whole rodeo of like being a workaholic and never putting it down back when it really didn't mean nearly as much as it means to me now.

And so, and also being, you know, being older and my energy being limited, I really have to make space in my schedule, usually unsuccessfully, but I have to try to create a little bit more margin. And I think just getting, having a sort of a sense of what normal emotional regulation is like for me. So, you know, sleeping.

Wakil David Matthews (27:38.838)
Hehehe.

Liz Dunnebacke (27:54.99)
quiet, finding some quiet time, exercise, meditation. I don't do a lot of any of those things, but I do them regularly. And I feel like I have to kind of check back in with that. But I mean, there's times, I mean, I remember I got really sick.

the winter before last. And I mean, it was maybe like RSV or something. I was so sick. I hadn't been that sick in years. And I kept thinking, like, it was on the, kind of on the tail end of some really difficult deaths I'd been dealing with at work. And I kept thinking, this is grief. I think this is just grief taking me down. And I just had to sit in that hole. You know, I just had to be sick for a while.

Wakil David Matthews (28:35.201)
Let's go.

Annalouiza (28:35.34)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (28:41.035)
Hehehehe

Annalouiza (28:45.718)
That's something that I've not heard yet on our podcast, but it is true that there is resourcing through going through the grief, through the stopping everything, through the illnesses that we encounter when we're spent. think that's a really great way to acknowledge that resourcing is sometimes going through illness.

Wakil David Matthews (29:03.34)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (29:14.006)
Yeah, yeah. And body will stop you if you need to be stopped, We certainly all have experienced that, I think. Yeah, yeah. So very important. Well, thank you. It's been really wonderful. We always like to end by asking if there's anything you wish we had asked you about, anything else you'd like to share.

Annalouiza (29:19.212)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (29:21.08)
Totally.

Annalouiza (29:24.552)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (29:40.008)
I just would love to have a call to arms. That's not what I really mean. But I guess I want to know, can we all ask ourselves, how can we make death care more available and more accessible to people? Because it's really an issue, certainly across the US.

Wakil David Matthews (29:46.028)
He

Annalouiza (29:48.918)
Thanks.

Annalouiza (30:01.996)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Dunnebacke (30:02.958)
and really sort of looking at your community and trying to understand like how many people go unclaimed every year and why and what can be done about that and what resources are available and what advocacy needs to be done to change the face of this. Death care is a growth, it's a growth industry.

Wakil David Matthews (30:22.39)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (30:27.198)
It's going to get bigger.

Liz Dunnebacke (30:28.768)
It's getting bigger and we have got to change this model of how we're doing it. It is unsustainable. So where are the barriers and how can we remove them? I kind of want to invite everybody to consider that and how we can.

Wakil David Matthews (30:33.858)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (30:42.946)
That's so important. And we'll definitely have links in the podcast notes to the work you're doing and the different organizations, any organizations you'd like us to link in there that people can go to to find out about how they can participate in this. It's so important. Yeah, I totally agree. I know we have something here called the People's Memorial. It's a co-op of funeral homes. And I would imagine that they may be involved in that here in the Seattle area.

Liz Dunnebacke (31:00.28)
Great.

Wakil David Matthews (31:11.202)
or Washington state. that's another one that I think is an example of people trying to create more affordable death care. And on a, you this is something you buy into and there's such a huge difference when you're part of that than to what normally happens. There's no, yeah, yeah, there's no trip to the used car salesman. know, which I so much appreciate. Anyway.

Liz Dunnebacke (31:28.534)
Yeah, PMA, they do amazing work.

Liz Dunnebacke (31:35.886)
Exactly, exactly.

Wakil David Matthews (31:39.83)
But yeah, that kind of thing would be great. And we will definitely put that in the podcast. It's such a great call to work. It's a call to work. Yeah. Really important. Great. Anything else you'd like to share with us?

Liz Dunnebacke (31:48.172)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (31:54.05)
Well, we just gotta share her poem.

Wakil David Matthews (31:56.053)
Yeah, well, it's a quote that she sent to us. You want to read it yourself?

Liz Dunnebacke (32:00.43)
Sure. Let me see if I can pull it up here. So this, I've just come across this a couple times. This is the wonderful Death and Birds blog. It's a substack by, I think, Chloe Hope. And I've read a few of them and I really enjoy them. And this most recent post just really...

It really brought me there. And there's this just the last paragraph from this post. The post is called Shapeshifting Animals. And the last paragraph says, dying is as relational as living, because life and death are not two separate things. And the relational dance of loving while mortal is a peculiar choreography.

forgiveness, devotion, remembrance, love. They're all shape-shifting animals. Death bids me to honor life, to love it best I can. It is love after all that makes life and death bearable. It is love which makes that well-walked path worth walking.

Wakil David Matthews (33:13.834)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (33:15.786)
That's so solid for me. like...

Wakil David Matthews (33:17.782)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very well put. I'm definitely going to check out Chloe Hope and encourage her to, we can befriend or we can partner, what's the word? What is it on Substack? Whatever it is on Substack. Because we just posted our first newsletter on Substack. So we're jumping into that. So yeah, I think I just sent an email. You might have gotten an email about it. Maybe buried in piles of emails.

Liz Dunnebacke (33:19.948)
Yeah, that's good stuff.

Liz Dunnebacke (33:31.181)
Yeah.

Liz Dunnebacke (33:34.972)
you did?

That's great.

Liz Dunnebacke (33:45.454)
I'll look for it.

Wakil David Matthews (33:47.572)
Anyway, yeah, yeah, definitely everybody, we invite you all to find us on Substack and subscribe or partner up with us. thank you so much, Liz. Yeah.

Annalouiza (33:58.74)
And yeah, and I encourage everybody to have more conversations about all the things.

Wakil David Matthews (34:05.283)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check out what we offer with Liz and find out what's going on in your hood. See what you can do. All right. Well, thanks again. I'm going to stop the recording.

Liz Dunnebacke (34:13.966)
Exactly.

Thank you so much.