Hello and welcome to Life Lessons from Death, a newsletter for people and organisations curious to know what death can teach us about living and working well.
In our professional and personal lives, change is a constant and endings are a part of life. We can fight this – and lots of us try to - or we can learn to ride it. If we can ride it, we will find that every ending holds the seeds of something new, the chance to learn and grow.
As Founder of London funeral directors Poppy's, I’ve had more than a decade of insights from death, and it has transformed me. Now I want to invite you behind the scenes so you can learn too.
This week, I'm celebrating Ozzy Osbourne's gleaming goodbye, I'm noticing how self care makes us sustainable in our work, and I'm exploring the strange and murky culture of bad humour that comes with death.
I post updates fortnightly so please do subscribe and share widely.
Ozzy says goodbye
Not everybody gets the chance to say goodbye properly. Sometimes because the end comes without warning. Sometimes because you think you have more time. And often because it's simply too hard to do it.
But The Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne, frontman of Black Sabbath who died yesterday, absolutely and thoroughly did.
Three weeks ago Black Sabbath's original band members - including Tommy Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward - played to 42,000 fans at their Back to the Beginning concert at Villa Park in Ozzy's hometown of Birmingham. This was a good goodbye and this is why:
🤘 Ozzy was thoroughly himself. The music. The black throne. Ozzy shouting, 'are you ready? Let the madness begin!' This is a man going out his own way, being himself right to the end. He's showing us: ageing and death don't need to mean becoming someone else, a lesser version of ourselves. We can be who we have always been right until the end.
🤘 He was alongside friends and descendants. Bands who grew up alongside Black Sabbath, like Metallica and Guns N' Roses, joined the concert for the Prince of Darkness' 'final bow' alongside younger bands shaped by them. This gathering of peers - the people who were in it with you, and also descendants - the ones who came after - was a moment to honour the past and celebrate the future.
🤘 An opportunity for gratitude. During the concert Ozzy thanked the fans who supported him from the beginning, speaking to the crowd 'you've no idea how I feel - thank you from the bottom of my heart.' And the honouring flowed the other way too. Metallica's James Hetfield said 'without Sabbath there would be no Metallica, thank you boys for giving us a purpose in life.'
🤘 A separation of the personal from the private. Clearly Ozzy Osbourne isn't only the Prince of Darkness. Clearly he is also a dad and husband and friend. We don't know what goes on in private (although he showed us a lot with The Osbournes!) but this is a chance to honour his public persona. His death, surrounded by family, was private. That bit isn't for the rest of us.
I believe so strongly in the power of a proper goodbye, of an acknowledged ending. But I'm curious to know what you think and feel. Have you noticed how people do or don't, or can or can't say goodbye, perhaps especially before they die? What impact has this had on you? I'd love to know your thoughts.
Taking great care to give great care
Tomorrow, 24 July, is international self-care day and I'm reflecting on the journey Poppy's has been on to embed the understanding that in order to provide the very best care and service, and to do so sustainably, we must be experts in taking good care of ourselves and each other.
A highlight in this journey was the work Jenny Winfield led us through in understanding secondary trauma last year. The understanding that repeatedly witnessing other people's suffering and trauma, as of course we do, has an impact on us that must be tended to. And one slide really stood out for me. It was a quote from Brené Brown:
'The most surprising thing in my research was that the most compassionate people were those with the strongest boundaries. Boundaries are a prerequisite for (ongoing) compassion and empathy. Nothing is sustainable without boundaries.'
It is hard to hold boundaries and practise self-care when you are starting a business from scratch, and perhaps more so when that business is about supporting people in crisis. I know I took a LONG WHILE to get this right and I'm still learning. I remember many mad times.
I was on call for 'out of hours collections' (where we collect people who have died in the night) for two weeks in every three from when my first baby was a fortnight old. I went back to work when my first two babies were eight weeks old. I viscerally remember feeding my babies their 2am bottles whilst working through work problems in my head night after night. Where would the money come from for this? How could I best communicate with the team member who had to leave?
I don't share these stories with pride. I wince when I remember how I used to live. I took my health and wellbeing for granted. I pushed myself too close to the edge on too many occasions. I was lucky that I didn't fully career over it.
Which makes me particularly proud of the experts the Poppy's team have become in caring for themselves well. Here are some of the things I notice:
🚧 Taking boundaries seriously. We are known to our clients for our willingness to flex and stretch, to see what is possible and we absolutely love a challenge. And sometimes things aren’t possible. We’re confident to hold boundaries where we need to.
⏰ Going home on time. Taking holiday seriously. Switching off and encouraging others to do so. Thank you Clare Montagu and Rebecca Wilson for role modelling good boundaries here.
🎉 Having fun together. In the last year we have danced at a Scottish ceilidh and we have painted canvases to brighten up the work spaces. Thank you Nichola McGuire for nudging us into fun and adventure.
🧠 Taking the time to understand ourselves. We made a particular leap with the four seasons work Pat Joseph (she/her) facilitated beautifully for us, teaching us about our own preferences and styles of being, and others too, so we can acknowledge and support each other better.
🗣️ Peer support. I have learnt a lot from the way our team members constantly check in with each other, after a funeral or after a challenging phone call. Quick moments that create a culture of holding each other. Thank you Victoria Mellor, Hannah Ditch and Amy Szott and others for demonstrating what is possible.
These are just some of the things we practise, but how about you? What works and what doesn't? Are you getting better at it or are the demands of life and work getting in the way?
Weird death humour
It’s quite common for people to crack really strange jokes when they find out I work with death.
A few years ago I was supporting a young man to come and see his dad who had died. I explained how his dad would look and what the experience in the room might feel like. The young man went in and came out ten minutes later and said to me, 'it isn’t him’. Because I am never in a joke-cracking mood in this environment, I misunderstood and thought he meant ‘it doesn’t feel like him anymore’ so I started to empathise, explaining that that was a completely normal reaction. He looked a bit horrified and followed up with, ‘oh no, I'm sorry. I was pretending you’d brought out the wrong person.’ I was completely baffled and confused and my face must have shown it because he said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.’
Recently a journalist I had been talking to for work sent me a video on Instagram with the note ‘in the worst possible taste’. I felt a gut sinking feeling as I started to watch. The super weird video revealed a woman pretending to be a funeral director who tells this long winded, really quite boring story where the punchline horrifically finally reveals that she has removed and swapped the heads of two dead people. It wasn’t funny at all. It was grim. I struggled to figure out how to respond. I didn’t want to shame the journalist but at the same time I definitely didn’t want to go along with it. I settled with ‘I hate this so much. No wonder people have such a poor view of funeral directors’. She came straight back with ‘ever since I sent it to you I have felt horrible. I’m sorry.’
This kind of thing happens to me a lot. I work to have a compassionate approach to it, not to judge, even though sometimes it is quite uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of. I know that death is taboo. We don’t know how we feel about it or how to talk about it. And so when it comes up, a tonne of repressed feelings, questions and thoughts flood into the vacuum and kind of spurt out. We're kind of like toddlers testing boundaries I guess.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this phenomenon. What do you think is going on? Help me figure it out!
Okay friends, until next time.
About the Author
I founded Poppy's in 2012 to make outstanding care the norm when someone dies. Running a young company through the 2010s, I experienced pretty much constant organisational chop and change. Along the way I had three kids, now aged 10, 8 and 6. In 2021 I went through a leadership succession, recruited a CEO and changed my role to Founder & Chair. Change, endings and fresh starts are my buddies and friends.
Poppy's is a funeral directors, based in London, with a fresh approach to funerals. Instead of following rigid traditions, we listen to what you want and need. Instead of hiding behind closed doors, we’re open about how we care for the living and the dead. At Poppy's, we’re by your side every step of the way.