Ep 13: ☎️ On the Phone | Mary McGreevy

How often have you heard "Tennyson, C.S. Lewis and Tig Nataro" in the same sentence? Well, if you listened to The Best Friend Project this week - you heard it twice! 

Get Mary's take on our talk in this episode of On The Phone. A 1990's style, kitchen wall phone with a long cord, conversation between two friends to catch up on her podcast episode comments, reflections and final thoughts on what she has learned about friendship from the dead. 

Follow @tipsfromdeadpeople, and @thebest_friendproject to stay in touch with both of us! (Look for a photo of us finally meeting on August 20th, 2026! Can't wait to see her in person. A fun side effect of starting a project about friendship has been the friends I have made along the way. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello. Hi, it's Rachel.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello. Well, hi. I haven't talked to you in so long.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

I know.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

It was so much fun to hear your interview replayed. I loved your episode. The response has been amazing. What was it like for you to hear the episode back?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Okay, this is not the most important part, but I guess I didn't realize that you had a background in TV journalism. And I'm enchanted by your voice and your hosting skills. Smooth, silky, great to listen to. I'm I just found that aspect of it delightful, among all the other things. So take that. Take that compliment because you sound great. Kind of the nuances of the conversation. So it's really, really fun to go back and listen to it. And I had forgotten some of the things that we talked about, some of the really philosophical, in-depth things that we mentioned, but also Tennyson and C.S. Lewis and Tignatoro and just the whole gamut. It was really, really fun to listen to it again. And I hope that the people you've heard from um have enjoyed it as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Oh my gosh. Okay, thank you so much. That is so, so nice to hear. Um, and I appreciate it. It's been so much fun to get to know people and to be interviewing people and to, you know, do that back research and you know, because the whole reason I'm doing this is to better understand friendship and ourselves and the patterns and why we are the way we are when it comes to platonic love. And um I do a ton of research. I'm a data nerd, and I find comfort in numbers and other people's thoughts and things like that. So it's um thank you. That means so much to me to have you say that. That's really um thank you. A wonderful compliment. Thank you. My pleasure. Well, and the compliments that I've gotten from you know the content and you and so many people who hadn't heard of you before, didn't know your page, who are now really thinking about the story of them, not like the ashes, or like, do I get buried or cremated, or am I going to heaven or hell with my soul? And is there really even a soul? You know, the people that are going, like, well, wait a minute, who will be the carrier of my secrets when I'm gone? And or, you know, even my stories are just the essence of me and what you touched on too of just letting yourself be known in this earthly life. Like we're not here forever. That we, you know, our lives are not some rosetta stone that someone somewhere is going to discover and be like, oh, this person, you know, they might know how tall we were or something, but they're not gonna know what we were all about in our earthly life. So it was a really interesting reminder for a lot of people. Surprisingly, even my husband. So it was fun to have him call me at when he arrived at a golf tournament and say he had just listened to that episode in the car. And we had like a really like a really touching conversation about how we know each other and how much it means to each other that we know each other. And yeah, so I just thank you for being you and putting the work that you do out into the world and letting us learn from the people whose stories are being left behind.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Well, that means so much to me. I love that. And he's not my typical demographic, but that's fun. I love it. Yeah, it's funny with this this content because you can get deep and philosophical and complicated, and it's really easy to start asking those existential questions about what's it all about, but at the same time, it's also utterly simple. It's as simple as knowing the tiny things that are the backdrop and the soundtrack to your life and dropping those in an obituary, whether it's for yourself or someone else. And that's that's pretty simple. And it and reading those things, or maybe hearing me talk about them, might make you think differently about a decision that you make tomorrow. And it could be a very small decision, but the hearing of these stories might make you think differently about something. And I I I love that the impact can be big or small, no matter where people are when they're hearing it.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Um, yes, absolutely. And impacts and memories and perceptions, my perception of myself is going to be different from someone else's, you know. And so when it came to the scorched earth comment that you made and how people could actually say not the nicest things about someone after they've gone away, that really resonated with people. And a couple people even shared on like their Instagram comments. I think one of the women said she did music for funerals and she had heard a whole lot of lies. You know, a whole bunch of life.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, that's right. Oh, those are the observers of history, the the church musicians. They hear it all. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, that was really great. And then Irene Netner said, My ex was a real jerk for marriages, and he was lauded at his funeral by a pastor like he was the greatest guy ever. I'm sure you encounter those types of comments all the time because of your page tips from dead people.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yes, people are highly engaged, and it's a mostly very kind, compassionate, wise, funny set of commenters and followers, which I love.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Oh, that's so good. Well, and also where we left off, you were working on a book. Is there anything that you could share, or how's the writing going?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

It's a it's a journey, as they say. Um, my book will be a compilation of 50 plus of some of my favorite obituaries that I've shared online over the last few years, and I'm working with the families to get their permission to share the stories, which is fun to re-engage with them and important um that we do this for the book. And then I'll put a little bit of commentary how similar to how I talk online about what I took from this particular obituary. But it's funny, like going back to that comment about the woman whose ex-husband was lauded at his funeral, there is a suffocating amount of etiquette around death. And I'm trying really hard when I talk about obituaries to dispel some of that. You don't have to follow a lot of that etiquette: the airbrushing, the cliches, the never met a stranger, the um obviously lauding someone who really wasn't that great in real life. But when I'm writing in the process of writing this book, I find I have found myself sort of slipping into that because I feel like, oh, writing is different. I have to sound polished, I have to sound professional. But it's been a very healthy and interesting creative exercise to go back through and strip all that out and make the language blunter, just like I reckon recommend people for obituaries, um, to strip out some of the way that I was always taught to write uh in a corporate style, strip some of that out and make it more blunt and casual and real. And it's been fun. It's been fun to try that, but it's that etiquette is so ingrained in all of us.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I think we see that same polite etiquette in conflict, in friendships, you know, because we don't want to say the mean thing. We don't want to be the jerk. We would rather ghost, no pun intended, because we're talking about death, but we would rather ghost than say the mean things. Um, and it's funny that you see that arc back in the end of life where it's like, well, we're not gonna say the mean things, we're just gonna pretend everything was fine.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Both of which, uh both of those dynamics um will leave you feeling kind of stifled because you're just not saying the true things.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yes. Stifled, invisible, alone, unsafe, like all those things. And, you know, as you say so eloquently, like, we're here once. Like, what is the point of putting ourselves through that when we could just be like, hey, what you said hurt my feelings, and I think you're kind of a jerk right now.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

You know, which I'm gonna start practicing. Um, good. Well, it's so so great. I know that you're, you know, busy with your page and your book, and I appreciate you hopping on the phone um to touch face and give us your thoughts on your episode. So thank you again for spending so much time with me. I am so excited to know you and be home in Minnesota. And so I look forward to getting a cocktail with you at Frost and hosting the summer of the new podcast.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

I'm so glad we connected and I love the best friend project, and I can't wait to hear more.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mary, and um we'll talk soon, and thank you again for hopping on the phone with me.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks, Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Thank you.