Grief Turned to Art | The Power of Poetry to Heal Death and Dying

In this conversation, Annalouiza, Sarah Sawyer, and Gus Reid explore the profound themes of grief, death, and the healing power of poetry. They discuss Andi's posthumously published poetry collection, which candidly addresses end-of-life issues and the complexities of grief. The dialogue explores personal experiences with death, the impact of Andy's work on readers, and the significance of open conversations about mortality. Through readings of Andi's poems, the group reflects on the nuances of grief, the role of humor, and the societal challenges of coping with loss. The conversation highlights the importance of emotional expression and connection in the face of death, ultimately celebrating Andi's writing as a source of comfort and understanding for those navigating their own grief journeys.

Links:  

ToSeeYourselfAsYouVanish.com
Book-  Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/ag24mhn
            Wesleyan Link: https://www.weslpress.org/9780819502070/to-see-yourself-as-you-vanish/
Instagram

Article on the cancerletter site about Andi, written by Gus:

The discount code (QWR35) is for 35% off (Hardback, Ebook, or both!) versions of To See Yourself As You Vanish. (click the Wesleyan link above).  Preorders help with the algorithms, so if people order before Sept 9th, that's great for us, but honestly, all orders are great for us! We just want Andi's work in the hands of the readers.

Transcript

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Annalouiza (00:01.72)
Greetings, friends and listeners. Welcome back. On this episode, we are honored to host Sarah Sawyer and Gus Reed. Sarah is a writer and longtime friend and colleague of Andrea. She is also a chaplain focused on psychedelics and end of life, and who is based in Boulder, Colorado. Sarah reached out to us about her friends post-humously, post-humously, I can never say that word, post-humously,

Posthumously published poetry work. To see yourself as you vanish. In her last three years of life, Andy wrote this fierce, frank, and witty poetry that explores grief, treatment, and end of life issues. She says things most of us are afraid to speak out loud, and she shares them in hopes that it will support others on their journey.

Gus Reid (00:40.769)
Thank

Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:58.811)
Yeah, it's such a beautiful collection of poetry. We're also very happy to meet Gus. Gus Reed is Andy's husband. Gus is a software engineer who works on proton radiation equipment called a place called Mevion based in Boston, Massachusetts. Andy's book of poems is genuinely moving, especially as I'm currently caring for my own wife who's terminally ill. And she's also, as Andy was, Ashkenazi Jewish.

So some parallels there. and I think that's maybe part of the reason it struck me is so deeply as I was reading this poetry. I've been really looking forward to this interview and the opportunity to hear more about this poet, this remarkable person and his wife and his friend. And so yeah, thank you so much for joining us, both of you.

Annalouiza (01:50.318)
Yes.

Gus Reid (01:51.649)
Thanks for having us.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:53.79)
So we like to start, this kind of gives us a feel for everybody, just, and you can take turns about when you first became aware of death.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:06.545)
Maybe I should pick somebody so you don't have to. So Sarah, why don't you go ahead.

Sarah Sawyer (02:09.2)
That'd be great.

Sarah Sawyer (02:13.02)
Sure. So I come from a long line of pastors and social workers, which means that, well, it doesn't mean that, but as a child, my dad would bring me along to services and hospital visits for people who would enjoy having a kid around. So I've been around funerals pretty young age. I've been on a few cancer journeys with close friends and family members.

My uncles were activists during the AIDS crisis, so I got a lot of really great modeling of dealing with death and grief and community grief then. So it's sort of, it's been around for me.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:56.349)
Thank you. Gus, how about you?

Gus Reid (02:59.361)
Well, I was thinking about this. I think, like a lot of people, it would have been the death of a pet when I was pretty young. The child, was our cat Misty for me. I remember that my sister wrote a poem about this cat, which has since become kind of famous within our family. We loved our cat Misty. We gave him the best.

Sarah Sawyer (03:07.92)
and

Annalouiza (03:07.97)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (03:13.73)
Mm.

Gus Reid (03:29.067)
but his liver packed up and so did the rest.

Annalouiza (03:31.866)
Hahaha

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:32.202)
Ha

beautiful. That's great. Thank you. That's great.

Gus Reid (03:39.585)
So, yeah, I think.

Annalouiza (03:41.848)
So, yeah. Go ahead, don't go ahead, yes.

Gus Reid (03:45.651)
That was it.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:46.757)
Okay, thank you.

Annalouiza (03:49.016)
So yes, pets have a way of informing us on death. And that poem definitely kind of stamped this idea into your being. Gus, can you tell us about how death impacted your whole life? Like how did it kind of weave into your life to bring you to this moment?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:56.029)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:09.915)
more recently. Yeah, obviously.

Gus Reid (04:14.401)
I mean obviously Andy's death was my biggest loss.

It, yeah, mean it pretty much just just arrived on our doorstep one day, in early 2018, 18, 2019.

She was called into her OBGYN's office and had a feeling and asked me to come with her. So that's when she was diagnosed. And I guess that wasn't death at that point. was, you you still have some chance, some opportunities for management.

of the disease, yeah, was really overshadowing the rest of her life.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:23.847)
Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Gus Reid (05:24.447)
I guess that was that. From that point onwards, I guess I was the primary carer for a person who was dying.

as much as I was flatly in denial about it. There are certainly places in the book where I show up where I think that the point of view, like the writer's point of view, is much more she knew what was happening in ways that I was determined not to.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:40.017)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:53.969)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (06:00.45)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:00.605)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I do want to invite you at any time during this conversation, if you have one of those poems you'd like to share. kind of that this is really about Andy and her work. So, you know, I'm just there's not one in there that I wouldn't think appropriate at any time. But if you especially you're welcome to do that and offer any that you like. And especially at the end, you know, pick a one or two that you'd really like to share.

Annalouiza (06:10.894)
you

Annalouiza (06:21.996)
So good.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:30.727)
But yeah, Sarah, do you have a thought about how it's impacted your life, death in general?

Sarah Sawyer (06:36.516)
Yeah, I think I've been on journeys with people and I find that I'm comfortable talking about death and that I'm comfortable being there for it. for a lot of my friends, I'm the only person they know that has any kind of faith tradition and isn't evangelical about it. So I get a lot of calls when things happen.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:00.967)
You

Sarah Sawyer (07:05.916)
And death and dying and grief is certainly one of those times I hear from people. So as I get older and my parents get older and my friends get older, I thought it would be good to be better at this than I am, which is when I started CPE. So CPE is chaplaincy training for people who wouldn't know that. So yeah, it's been around for me and continues to be around.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:20.669)
Mm.

Annalouiza (07:23.47)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:27.879)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:35.74)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, both of us have gone through CPE. So thank you. But thank you for defining that. That's a good thing to do when you're on a broadcast like this. Can you tell us more about the well, currently what you're doing, but also more about just the story, if you'd like to share about why you asked to come and talk to us today? Yeah. And we just started Sarah again.

Sarah Sawyer (07:41.872)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (08:00.364)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (08:05.124)
Yeah, I think your podcast really stood out as one talking very openly about death and grief and in a variety of ways. And that's very much half the audience for whom this book is for and maybe even more than half. I think really, mean, Gus, I want to hear you talk about this too, but a lot of her writing was very traditional poetry writing, a lot of memoir, a lot of

Annalouiza (08:22.252)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (08:34.086)
you know, writing for the poetry audience. And this is a little bit different. This is writing for people who, it's a lot different for people who share her experience, for people working with people who share her experience, for people who love people who share her experience. So we're really interested in getting this book to that intended audience of hers. And that was one thing that just really drew me here.

Annalouiza (08:49.602)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (09:03.43)
to you and your listeners.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:04.636)
Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely post the information about the book. Gus was saying earlier it's probably going to be published in September. So we have a newsletter. We'll put it in there as well as on the podcast notes. So thank you. I can't wait to get my own copy. Thank you. Thank you for sending the pre-copy for us to look at. It's so beautiful.

Sarah Sawyer (09:12.86)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (09:17.062)
Thank you.

Annalouiza (09:19.234)
Yeah, me too.

Yeah. And this is just really quick bounce off of Sarah too. You know, this book is for a lot of different readers. I'm a, I'm a, you know, wannabe poet. So it's for poets. It's for humans who want to talk about language and semiotics and what does a feeling actually have when she rails about like, seriously, we're going to use that word for this. Like, you know, like I read the word about dueling.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:34.781)
You

Annalouiza (09:51.81)
like battling cancer. And, you know, I really appreciate that she she has paved this ginormous super highway to talk about real things that everybody alongside the road could totally identify with. So I just want to put that out because this is one of the best poets that I've read in quite a while. And while Keela and I read a bunch of poetry. So yes, like Gus talked to us about this story.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:53.319)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (09:53.594)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:10.332)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:17.233)
Yeah.

Gus Reid (10:23.178)
Sure. Yeah, as Sarah says, if you read Andy's earlier books, especially the first one, it's a much more academic piece of poetry. The language is denser. This, it felt like she started writing this in kind of that mode. A very good friend of hers was part of a group of poets who were writing together during COVID lockdown.

which was really what got her writing again. a number of fragments and poems came out of that, but the book didn't really start taking shape until she was reading it with cancer support groups.

And that's really when I think she realized what her audience needed to be. And that set the way that she wrote the book and how the poems were pulled together. I guess it was individual poems. It didn't become a book in her lifetime. It was a big stack of poems is what she left us.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:31.943)
Hmm.

Mm.

Gus Reid (11:37.62)
But yeah, she had that as an audience. She was getting a lot of feedback from people that struggled to express how they felt. And Andy was a really great writer. She was expressing things that, I mean, often it wasn't even that they didn't have the words to do it, it was that they kind of didn't want to say some of the things that she was saying, even though that she felt them.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:53.245)
Yeah.

Gus Reid (12:08.179)
There's not a lot of comfort in the book.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:10.491)
No. Yeah, it's very, very straight up.

Gus Reid (12:14.623)
She was quite blunt. She was mad as hell about it. And a lot of that comes through in the book, I think. I don't know, maybe it's not my place, but I think especially women can be socialized to be quiet about those kinds of things and not really express how they're feeling. I'm sure many men as well, but...

Annalouiza (12:36.919)
Yes.

Gus Reid (12:43.153)
Andy had this specific kind of gynecological cancer that defined really who she was reading for and writing for.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:53.917)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anger is a very legitimate response, certainly one that I've run into in the work I've done. I'm sure Ana Luisa has as well. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, is there any... Maybe this is the time. Do you have a poem that you'd like to read? What do you think, Ana Luisa? Should we jump into that?

Annalouiza (13:19.862)
Absolutely. mean, I just, yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:23.525)
I know.

Gus Reid (13:25.567)
Sure, I was... go for it.

Sarah Sawyer (13:26.116)
I would like to add just one little thing onto what Beth said that I think pertains maybe specifically to women or maybe is more likely in women. don't know. But this need to take care of how everyone else feels about your death, right? Like I'm leaving this for my, so that it doesn't, so that you're all not sad, so that everything is fine. And one of the things that I so appreciate about this book,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:40.486)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:48.571)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (13:55.608)
is that these poems are not doing that. There is not a moment of it. And a lot of people in their lives, I've seen, you know, even talking to me about their death, like they want me to feel better about it, but I don't, I don't need, you know, I don't want people to have to, well, they don't, you know, but I appreciate that this work doesn't do that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:58.898)
No.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:09.021)
Ha ha ha.

Annalouiza (14:09.294)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:19.195)
Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, there's no cuddling people. It's right in your face and it's just perfectly... Yeah, so...

Annalouiza (14:19.438)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (14:27.437)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (14:30.341)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:31.951)
Appropriate I think. Yeah

Annalouiza (14:33.646)
It's appropriate. what I really, I mean, I just read like three of her poems before I jumped on here, but I, I, love language. I just absolutely love how people can use it well. And most people don't know how to use words or they overuse them. Right. She cuts it down to the very like finite edge of what a word actually means. And she's going to have to explain it to you. It's almost like she's telling us, Hey, dummy, like this isn't a battle. Like,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:49.863)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:55.954)
See you.

Annalouiza (15:03.512)
You know, I didn't get up and pick up my sword. Like I appreciate that because I, this is, I rail against this with everything. like, stop talking. Like it's just, it's like, you're not using language correctly anyhow. So you're not, muddling the image, but I believe this person actually knows how to wield the pen and say it and express it and teach us. And also, you know, pull it all out of herself, what she's feeling. So I'm like, I bow to.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:10.35)
Hahaha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:16.125)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:24.882)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:30.968)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (15:32.78)
I bow to this entity.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:35.291)
Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Sawyer (15:36.86)
Should we read language as a virus? Is this a good time to do it? I know. It's a fan favorite.

Annalouiza (15:39.586)
That's the one I just read. man, I'm so sick of language because I love that one.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:40.957)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (15:47.28)
Gus, do you want to read it? Do you want?

Gus Reid (15:48.495)
sure. I just pulled it up, actually.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:51.485)
Synchronicity.

Sarah Sawyer (15:51.599)
Okay, great.

Annalouiza (15:51.8)
Great, so good. Kismet.

Gus Reid (15:54.665)
Yeah, so I can do that.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:57.149)
Hmm.

Gus Reid (15:59.679)
Languages and Virus

The first rule of fight metaphors is there are no fight metaphors. The second is will you just stop kidding yourselves? It's not like you didn't already know how to be insufferable pilgrims, radiant with judgement. They say, she lost her battle with, like it was a duel she entered at dawn, like she was ever in possession of a pistol. There is no fight against, there is live with, for as long as humanly possible. And that's another thing I think you ought to examine.

Why some lives are more salt in the wound than breath on the beard of an iris? There is the solitary devil of her disease. There are swing sets, volcanoes, the time she hurt her foot tripping over rocks near the river. How about mineral then? How about saying she has gone to the quarry, having found the dolomite of her dreams, having found the perfect shade of ochre? To die is not to lose. Survive is not akin to conquer.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:07.953)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:17.648)
Yeah, I'm so glad we get to share this. It's so important. Thank you. I was telling Ana Luisa earlier when we were talking about it, I'm going to have a hard time reading any of these because I'm a crier, you know. Ana Luisa said, I can do it. So I'll let her read anything from us.

Annalouiza (17:22.318)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (17:39.63)
I'm a quiet weeper, not a cryer, so it's easy for me to finish a poem.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:41.917)
yeah, beautiful, beautiful.

Gus Reid (17:47.972)
It took me a while to be able to get through any of them, as you might expect, which made editing an interesting process.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:53.755)
Yeah, absolutely.

Annalouiza (17:55.118)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:57.956)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. That's something I'm still working on.

Annalouiza (18:03.63)
Well, and you know, I think poetry should be part of more people's daily lives. I was just mentioning to Akhil that I met somebody whose wife also has a cancer just this weekend. He came to my yard sale and he proceeded to tell me all the details. And what I noticed is that his eye was twitching and his eyes were full of tears.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:19.357)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (18:30.936)
And there was a part of me, as people were milling through the boxes of my memories, of my detritus, I wanted to say, let's just sink down and cry together, because you could feel how much he wanted to cry. And I feel like trying to read aloud one of these poems could actually be the medicine. We could just be like, just read this.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:53.664)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:57.618)
haha

Annalouiza (18:58.21)
Just let it go where it goes. You don't have to finish it. Just let's like go as much as you can and have it integrate into you. And it's so good.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:07.025)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (19:07.9)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:10.375)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:11.95)
Do you have a favorite poem, Sarah? Of hers? One of many.

Sarah Sawyer (19:14.588)
That's certainly one of them. I marked a few to read. And one I really love is metastasis, which has a lot to say about grief, which I could read or we could talk about.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:16.369)
Hehe.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:32.861)
We could do both. Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:32.91)
I'd love to hear it. Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (19:34.096)
Okay.

Metastasis. Grief is an apple with many varieties, only some in season. The lush catalog of absences you live with now, plus nostalgia for healthier selves. Where winter holds its hostages, the driveway under ice, the woodpecker who goes on pecking anyway because it can. The magic of disappearing friends is harder to believe than you might have imagined.

harder to swallow. Even had you been able to imagine the sort of all this, even had you found comfort in the labyrinth, joy in the exile, trust in the first tart slice.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:32.913)
Yeah, talk about that a little bit. Why is that? What did that say to you or either one of you or all of us?

Sarah Sawyer (20:39.58)
There's so much that I love. I love the image of the apple and the varieties of apples and how they're all a little different. Some are good for this, some are good for that, some, you know. And I think grief is that way. It's never exactly the same. It's always different. It's changing. There are varieties of it. So I find that a beautiful big

big picture image and then compared with this very, very daily life talk about the disappearance of friends. You know, that measurable thing that happens that you hear about, it is hard to believe when it happens. And it's hard to swallow, you know. I think those...

Annalouiza (21:20.014)
friends. So, Agic, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:31.985)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (21:39.268)
I love the blending of that. And I do carry that Apple image around with me.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:44.519)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (21:48.706)
Yes, it's almost like it's cognitive dissonance when people when when people disappear because your mind doesn't actually understand what just happened. It's like those videos of the pets who behind a sheet the parent disappears and like, wait, what happened? You know, it's like we sometimes hear about a death and we're like, wait, is that real? Could that really wait? I just saw them or they're still in my there's still a phone number still my phone, right? Like, it's just very strange to

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:02.81)
Ha ha ha.

Sarah Sawyer (22:03.386)
Right. Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:08.775)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:16.104)
Right.

Sarah Sawyer (22:16.604)
Right.

Annalouiza (22:18.786)
to metabolize a loss. And yet when we go through those little slivers of grief, it is a very different grief that all of us will experience with that particular individual, right? Or the death of whatever.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:28.103)
Yeah,

Sarah Sawyer (22:33.99)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:34.193)
Yeah, yeah, they're still on Facebook, you know. Right? know? Yeah, I agree. I mean, we've heard that before too. it's, I remember, and this is another thing we've heard and it's similar to what you're talking about, that there's that sense of how can the world continue to act normal when that person is not in it? I had felt that with my mom and I've had other people tell us that too, just to, you know.

Sarah Sawyer (22:37.478)
Right? Right.

Annalouiza (22:38.613)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (22:52.134)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:01.733)
walk outside and see cars going down the street and think, what the hell is wrong with these people? Don't they know that the world just turned upside down? And I I felt like that when my wife was diagnosed, the same kind of feeling like, how can life continue the way it is when the world just got flipped? So, Gus, was there anything in that poem or the one before that really struck you that, or maybe another poem you want to share?

Annalouiza (23:09.134)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:21.155)
Yeah.

Gus Reid (23:30.238)
Sure. Metastasis, that last line always reminds me of Andy's baking because he was a baker. She always baked an apple pie for Thanksgiving and that first part flies. So now I've started doing that, although my apple pie does not hold a candle to

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:36.285)
You

Annalouiza (23:41.464)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:50.201)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (23:53.71)
but I love it because she's right there with you baking.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:56.37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very good.

Gus Reid (24:02.396)
Yeah, I had something else I was gonna say. What was I gonna say? right. Something you were talking about was the connections of grief and that everybody has a different grief. And one of the things that I found helpful was finding connections to other people who had shared some of...

the same grief and the same kinds of experiences. Especially through history. I'm a bit of a folky, you can tell by the beard. And there are a lot of what's the night visiting songs where they're usually come down to us as ghost stories where people are learning that their lover has died because they were visited in dreams and they learn that way.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:41.604)
Hahaha.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:59.473)
Mm-hmm.

Gus Reid (25:00.803)
And having gone through that and having had the dreams after losing Andy, I found that I think meant, and I find examples of this, like many of these were written by people who had lost people and had subsequently had those dreams where while you're asleep, you don't know they're dead. They're just visiting, you're hanging out. And when you wake up, you remember that they have died.

Annalouiza (25:23.628)
Hmm

Gus Reid (25:30.661)
And you can find traces of this in some of these songs. It feels like we've lost touch with some of that. I don't know whether this is a topic that's come up on your podcast before, but I know it's a common feeling amongst, like in modernity, that we're not really in touch with death the way that people who, you know, in past centuries were. And there's one specifically, Lowlands, which is a sea chanty.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:46.535)
Mm-hmm.

Gus Reid (25:59.452)
And the final verse in it is what really drives home this guy's been through this. is, as I awoke, I heard the cry, watch on deck, watch ahoy. And it means, you you've just had this awful thing happen to you again, and now you've got to get up and go to work. And that felt so, I just kind of felt the connection to

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:18.279)
Great.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:25.861)
Right, beautiful, yeah.

Gus Reid (26:26.289)
know, over the centuries that feeling hasn't changed at all.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:32.199)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Annalouiza (26:32.226)
Right. We still hold that feeling, whether it's acknowledged in modernity, it's not. And I will say my sister died in 2019 and that was when Wachula and I were in seminary together and I had a week long class and one afternoon I just couldn't do it. just, I was, I had just done the funeral and, you know, taking care of my kids and did all this thing. And finally, I just was like, I've had it. I need to just go for a long walk. And I was in Berkeley.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:38.332)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (27:01.742)
you know, just walking, like random walking. And after a while I started, and I love how I framed it for myself. I was like, I was bawling like a calf, like walking down, you know, Shaddock or whatever with my little backpack and like open mouth crying and like snotting and just like stopping every once in a while and bending over and crying. And not a single person would look at me, not a single person.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:12.743)
haha

Annalouiza (27:29.646)
you know, came up and said, Are you okay? Nobody. The only person that did is I stopped to get a drink and I was like, I think I would have a champagne to just celebrate, you know, this moment. And I, and this person was like, really, what are we celebrating? like, just, I don't, my sister just died. Like, I don't know. Just like, we're just, I'm here. She was the only nice person to me that day. She was like, she asked about my sister, but there was it like in all of Berkeley, not a single person wanted to acknowledge that somebody was walking down the street crying, you know.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:49.479)
Well.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:58.183)
Well.

Annalouiza (27:59.19)
So modernity does not allow grief to be out. know, it really is like you got to get back up there and grind, like get back a hoy, like get on deck and just start working again. What are you talking about? So there is something that is very lost in our world where the loss of some body does not bring forth like all hands on deck to just, you know, surround you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:03.441)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:13.542)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:27.633)
to help.

Annalouiza (28:28.778)
uplift you or listen nothing or see you.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:30.481)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met a retired professor of gynotology, death psychology, yesterday. And he and a friend just wrote an article called Griefism. He said, you know, there's racism, there's all these other things. He this is what you're talking about exactly, that we back away and we don't want anything to do with people when we see them in grief and we ostracize them. And that seems to be the kind of the culture.

which is what we're doing here is trying to get over that and create a different way of being with people. I do remember when I was, I flew home when my mom died and I was in the airport waiting for get picked up and weeping openly. And somebody did actually walk up and ask how I was, I appreciated. So yeah, but you're right. And most of the people standing around me were like,

that guy's going crazy. Get away from him. Well great, we could do some more poetry. We could also ask this next question, which I forget which one it is.

Annalouiza (29:31.402)
I hope he's not in the seat next to me.

Gus Reid (29:44.125)
offer one more piece of poetry if that's okay.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:47.077)
Yeah, that would be perfect, please.

Annalouiza (29:47.212)
Yes, please do.

Gus Reid (29:49.295)
made me think of this one. The dazzling odds.

Gus Reid (29:58.533)
Knowing what you know, the scuttle that finally breaks you, is not the image of your partner blinking at your empty kitchen chair remembering pancake sundaes, but the genuine epiphany of your own absence. Radiators still thumping through winter, black eyes still marking the roads with the motor of you missing. Not knowing what you can't know, do not deprive yourself of the chance that some stream is already rising. Some neon light burning in the body dares to untether itself and waits.

the junction of here and not here. Not even science knows everything. What you're certain is rust in one light is easily ornament in another. Believe you'll live beyond expectation. Amplify the thought inside you.

Annalouiza (30:54.776)
Yeah, it's cognitive dissonance, but the radiator's still thumping.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:55.527)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (31:00.092)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:01.147)
Yeah. Well, can just really imagine how much good this will do for the people who are able to find it. Especially, hopefully, they will be listening to this, but the people who are in this mode. So yeah, I really am glad we get to help make sure it gets out there. So beautiful. Thank you.

Annalouiza (31:21.454)
Are these poems going to be also listed as an audible book?

Sarah Sawyer (31:28.656)
There is plan for an audio book. I can find out more and let you know about that. There is plan to have one.

Annalouiza (31:31.288)
Go good.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:31.483)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:36.583)
Wow, you gotta get a really good narrator for that.

Annalouiza (31:42.998)
reader, yeah. Well, I can just imagine like sometimes, you know, and I had a poetry teacher once say, you should never read poetry in your head, you have to actually read it aloud. And I feel like, you know, this is, this is really beautiful language that needs to be heard and not just like, you know, just processed through the brain.

Sarah Sawyer (31:44.23)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:52.935)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:06.171)
Yeah. And also something I've been taught and I witnessed David White, the poet David White do this in person, reading it twice or repeating lines as you go. That's really been profound to me in the past. So we've done that actually on the podcast. We usually end with a poem and sometimes we'll do it twice just because it seems to, know, especially if you use two different voices, it seems to just kind of give you another chance to

Sarah Sawyer (32:06.182)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (32:26.894)
You read it twice, yep.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:36.157)
to hear it again. yeah, any of those you want to read again, you're welcome to or anymore. Those are great. I just read, actually I read it to Andaluisa when we were talking earlier. There was one called Charming. Really, again, just really beautiful. I don't know if I'm capable of reading it, but maybe I will. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah, here it is. OK, it's called Charm. That's right.

Sarah Sawyer (32:51.323)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (33:04.43)
here on this.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:07.227)
Alright, let's see if I can do this. Yeah, that's right. I'll take a minute and breathe. So this is, Thank you, my friend, for the gift of scarabs to ward off evil. But honestly, that ship has already left the harbor. I say this not from the depths of a depressive episode, but from a sliver of wise mind from the peaceful center.

Annalouiza (33:10.039)
If you can't, it's okay.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:35.792)
If there is another alphabet to turn to, I'd like to know it. The one I have now, though vivid, is what they used to spell my diagnosis. So those are the letters I live by. Besides, there's hardly a need for talismans when truth is anyone can be perfectly fine one day and terminal the next. What brand of starlight is that?

which aurora's particles were charged with that decision. Just as celestial objects come and go from view in the night sky, diseases decide their visibility. There's not much more to it than that. Despite the language of warriors and battles, which is not to say you shouldn't charge at it with everything, stand where you can stand.

Hang your hat on the slim ratio of stars, but don't trust too much in amulets or inklings or resolve, prayers placed on bird wings or in the house of your chosen Lord. There's no proof they have bearing on a cell gone rogue, by definition, a loner out for blood. Measure out gratitude with yardsticks and hope you are dead wrong.

Annalouiza (35:01.486)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (35:09.07)
think Andy's a semiotician. She has such strength in using this language. Oof.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:14.097)
Yeah, what a gift, what an incredible gift.

Annalouiza (35:20.686)
Okay, what kill?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:23.271)
Sorry, did you?

Sarah Sawyer (35:24.27)
Yeah, I'm thinking about a conversation I had with one thing to know is that Andy showed a lot of this poetry with people in retreats. And the retreat now includes poetry as part of their retreat. They had such a response to this work. So they opened by reading a few poems, and then people write their own poems. And one of the women who wrote her own poems is

has really taken to writing poetry and was writing quite a bit. And I have been talking to her via email a little bit. And she was sort of apologizing to me for like not agreeing with Andy on the poems going like, I feel like I want to fight. And I was like, can, you can, you could have said that to Andy like that is. So we had this conversation about the fight language, she felt differently about it. And one of the things that I

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:10.139)
Hahaha.

Sarah Sawyer (36:23.494)
that I also love about this work is what a conversation opener it is. It's to conversations that, like we were saying before, maybe people are loath to have.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:27.259)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:35.751)
Yes, exactly. Yeah, this line despite the language of warriors and battles, which is not to say you shouldn't charge at it with everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (36:38.766)
do like that.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (36:44.796)
That's what reminded me.

Annalouiza (36:49.93)
And honestly, I really wish she had fought with Andy, right? Because there is, this is what it's about. whatever, you know, it's all on a continuum of the flavor of death responses that you might also have, right? Just as an aside, like I'm going to do a surgical biopsy tomorrow and my kiddo

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:58.673)
Yeah, it's opening it.

Sarah Sawyer (36:59.772)
Mm.

Sarah Sawyer (37:08.56)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (37:16.664)
Yes, was saying, I talked to my brother and we were like talking how you're so death positive and you're so excited to die that you would never do chemo. there are happy. My teenagers are like, like, what are we going to do if she has cancer? And I was like, well, it's interesting that we could, we have this conversation, right? Like the values that we hold and it's everything. But I think more people should have those conversations because the opposite is also true. Like the assumption that everybody does the exact same thing when they're faced with the.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:24.411)
You

Annalouiza (37:45.1)
with a disease or like a barrier that happens to you from a health perspective, like there are options. are conversations that can be held. Like not everybody is going to pick up your pistol and go for it. why not talk? Why not throw it into the ring and say, let's talk about this. I'm not OK with that. Tell me more on all of these topics. So I wish that person had made

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:08.711)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (38:14.287)
brave enough to actually go in the ring. Rink.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:17.501)
Right? Yeah, maybe I'll be that brave. Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (38:22.54)
May we all be that brave. Absolutely. You know, even yeah, all of it. I don't know. I just I do appreciate that.

Sarah Sawyer (38:24.326)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:32.667)
Yeah, well we are getting close to the time we want to finish up, but I want to give you one opportunity to tell us anything you wish we'd asked you about and or share another poem or two.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (38:51.185)
Gus, is there anything you wish we'd asked about or?

Gus Reid (38:57.243)
think it covered most of what I was thinking we'd be talking about.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:02.429)
Yeah.

Gus Reid (39:05.455)
hard to think of something. Did you have an image there?

Sarah Sawyer (39:09.124)
talk about what you do a little bit.

Gus Reid (39:11.701)
I guess so. I never think I'm very interested.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:15.005)
It is, and it's appropriate even.

Sarah Sawyer (39:15.866)
I think it's interesting.

Annalouiza (39:18.177)
It is interesting.

Gus Reid (39:20.847)
Yeah, I mean I work in the cancer treatment industry, particle accelerators, make radiation therapy machines, which didn't make it a bit weird, I guess, coming to work while Andy was sick and shortly after she died. It's an unavoidable topic here, there's no way to kind of bury yourself and pretend that you're just kind of working on

adverts for social media or something.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (39:53.702)
Mm-hmm.

Gus Reid (40:00.666)
the details of what we're doing is like there's always, the patient is always involved. You're always thinking about that. Why is machine downtime bad? Because people have to reschedule their treatments. Why do you need to improve patient throughput? Because nobody wants to be in there for more than 10 minutes. It really sucks in that room. All of this, I certainly think that having gone through some of

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:22.929)
Mm.

Gus Reid (40:29.657)
or gone to some of Andy's treatments with her, although she never had radiation. It did give me an appreciation for what people who are being treated are going through, being an engineer here, I'm always three steps removed from it, even though they're always front of mind. But just having a person to put in that mental model of who you're caring for.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (40:56.221)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gus Reid (40:57.371)
I mean it's useful but also it's hard because you always like it just keeps coming out, you know.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:03.857)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, thanks for doing that work too. That's so important. And we were talking about this earlier before we started about the technologies keep getting better. So there is, gives people some hope. It certainly made a difference for our, for my life because it's extended my wife's life for at least a year now. And maybe, maybe we'll see maybe longer, who knows. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing that guys and thanks for doing that work.

Annalouiza (41:05.741)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (41:33.965)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:35.495)
Well, you can't think of something else to ask or to tell us about it, we'd love to have a poem or two to end or maybe read one twice or something, you

Gus Reid (41:44.699)
Sure, guess since we were talking about what I do, it seems like clinical trial would be a good time to finish.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:48.701)
Hmm.

yeah.

Annalouiza (41:51.825)
yeah.

I'm scrolling through them here, so I've just thought that one.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (41:57.304)
haha

Gus Reid (41:59.695)
Yeah, it's one of my favorites as well. love the imagery in this poem. Clinical trial.

In exchange for a public chance at a longer private life, you give them not your body, but your body's one error in calculation, the swerve, detour, blunder unique to your system. You give them the soft scribble of your consent. In exchange for a future where you might run among penguins, or consider the altitude of a lark, his small brown body racing vertically into the sky, you agree to be watched like a hawk.

Asked hundreds of times if you're okay, if there's anything they can get you. Longer life, most people think. Glass of water, most people say, since there is often some small thing lodged in the throat. You remember that larks sing when they fly, unlike any other bird.

Annalouiza (43:04.504)
So.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (43:08.069)
Larks sing when they fly unlike any other bird. Yeah. I love the line too about being asked what you want and what you need and the answer is water when the real answer is I need a longer life. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Sarah, is there another one you'd want to share to finish up or maybe Annalisa, do you have another one you'd like to read too?

Annalouiza (43:17.332)
for water. Life.

Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (43:29.596)
Sure. What have I done with my hat? Do you want to read one?

Annalouiza (43:34.422)
Well, Sarah, you haven't had a chance. Why don't we start with you?

Sarah Sawyer (43:39.354)
I guess I would just say really quickly one thing about Andy is that she was really fun. She was a lot of fun. This book is a snapshot of a time when she was not well and angry and...

Like she was goofy and very caring and very wanted to hear about your cat, you know, like she was a lot of fun. I think sometimes about this time, Gus, when you two were seeing trick or treaters and a trick or treater had come up to get candy, you know, and looked at her and said, Velma. And she went.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:11.74)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (44:12.258)
her.

Sarah Sawyer (44:26.212)
She was just wearing her normal clothes. She just kind of looked like Velma and she was so delighted by that. It was that kind of very... So I just like to say that for perspective.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:33.639)
Ha

Annalouiza (44:35.708)
Ugh.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (44:40.189)
I appreciate that a lot. It's wonderful to hear. And actually, it does come through, even though a lot of this is pretty hardcore. But there's certainly a sense of kind of a sarcastic look at life. I don't know if sarcastic is right word, but just thinking about things deeply and really being willing to. Yeah, exactly. Just a twist.

Sarah Sawyer (44:42.553)
Sure, a lot of.

Annalouiza (44:53.826)
know that I'd call it sarcasm though. No.

Annalouiza (45:03.469)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (45:03.77)
Yeah, there's that sort of turn. Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (45:06.69)
Mm-hmm.

Gus Reid (45:09.114)
That's the thing that we kind of had to push for a little in the book. The earlier edits were, didn't have any of, or had taken out a lot of our sense of humor. We definitely pushed to put some of it back.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:18.247)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (45:19.024)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:22.033)
Yeah, yeah, you can see, you can feel that in some places for sure.

Annalouiza (45:22.348)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (45:26.636)
And also her attention to the detail of life. Right? Like I'm over at plain okay. You know, can I read that one really quick?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:31.495)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (45:39.43)
Yeah, go ahead.

Sarah Sawyer (45:39.781)
I would love that.

Annalouiza (45:41.262)
Plain okay for Lisa. How to return to the world its breath, gorgeous with sweet peas and the history of sweet peas. To return with your ghosts absorbed or in exile. How to go, ears more open, to the harsh ascending sermon of red wings. Return without policing the body.

How to say now, you're OK, minus all griefs, parentheses. OK, for a person with cancer, parentheses for a fatherless child. OK, for a person talking in circles scratching at air, parentheses. Like, she's noticing so much all around her.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:33.885)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So...

Sarah Sawyer (46:36.956)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (46:38.963)
Anyhow, ugh, I'm so grateful to have met her today.

Sarah Sawyer (46:44.614)
We're grateful for a chance to talk about the work. And one thing about that poem is Lisa is Andy's sister who catches babies. She's a nurse, but she's, know, and I find it so interesting that her work is really about bringing people into the world. And Andy's work at this point is very much about helping people leave it. Like I find it really.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (46:53.019)
Mm-mm.

Annalouiza (46:56.277)
really? She's a midwife? Okay.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:07.761)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (47:12.418)
Yes. It's called life.

Sarah Sawyer (47:14.972)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was not an intentional thing at all, but it's.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:16.205)
Yeah

Annalouiza (47:21.208)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Sawyer (47:23.002)
It feels significant to me.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:23.293)
That's great.

Annalouiza (47:26.446)
that I picked that one because now it's like we've gone full circle.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:29.201)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Sarah, why don't you finish us off with one more and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, we could just keep reading these for the next two hours. But yeah, I know we do. And we've got to and we want people to get it and read it themselves. And so we will certainly give them a way to do that.

Sarah Sawyer (47:30.267)
Yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (47:35.001)
Okay, one more.

Sarah Sawyer (47:40.24)
now.

Annalouiza (47:41.132)
We have another podcast, my friend.

you

Sarah Sawyer (47:52.496)
I'll read trying to meditate.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (47:55.263)
yeah.

Sarah Sawyer (47:58.214)
trying to meditate. Each day you wake wishing what is is not and that's no way to live. Even the doctors with their glassy words tell you to trust the dark coming on early in winter. Even if it sounds ominous for your life in its current state. Even if it feels like the very sun being severed, trust night time. But that other lurking

The elephant not just in the room, but every human corner is suspect. Adore it, they say, like the ancient puzzle it so clearly is. That's fine for fables and cones, but you are so through with tests of every kind. Even the ones that don't require a needle to access your port. The world asks so much of you, as though you are its daughter.

even as it yells and yells at you coming up the driveway, replaying all your errors and nightmares in its hatchet voice. You keep hoping it still loves you in a way you can't yet see.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (49:17.201)
Yeah.

Okay, wow. This is going to be something that I'll return to a lot. I haven't shared it with my wife yet, but I think I will soon. See how she feels about it. Anyway, I really appreciate you both and appreciate you, Sarah, reaching out to us and Gus being willing to spend this time with us. It's a big thing that went on in your life and we're all working with.

Annalouiza (49:22.87)
Yes.

Annalouiza (49:36.162)
Yes, I did too.

Annalouiza (49:41.208)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (49:48.327)
So I really appreciate the willingness to share your stories and this beautiful poetry and sharing Andy with us. Thank you so much. So I will...

Annalouiza (49:55.554)
Yes.

Gus Reid (49:57.348)
Thank you for having us on the spinner. been an absolute privilege.

Sarah Sawyer (49:58.044)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (50:02.8)
I'll stop the recording. Yeah.

Annalouiza (50:03.212)
Yes, privilege is mine.