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A Talk With the Author of
'Matters of Life and Death:
Finding the Words to Say Goodbye'
(For a review of and excerpts from Carol Wogrin's book, see the May 2002 issue of ICFM)
As do cemeterians and funeral service providers, Carol Wogrin, the author of "Matters of Life and Death: Finding the Words to Say Goodbye," deals every day with a subject most people would rather avoid. Yet, like most people in our industry, she loves what she does. In a recent interview with ICFM, Wogrin talked about her book and about the role of funeral service providers in dealing with end-of-life issues.
ICFM: Do you find that when you tell people what you do for a living, they are taken aback that you choose to work with the terminally ill and their families?
WOGRIN: Yes. I think we have a culture in which people like to stay as far away from the idea of death as they possibly can, so the idea of choosing to work with it in any way makes lot of people tend to back off.
ICFM: Why did you choose to start your career working with terminally ill children?
WOGRIN: When I started out at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, there was one floor that had all the oncology, all the children with renal failure and other life-threatening conditions. It seemed challenging and exciting, though in retrospect, there are plenty of other units in that hospital that would have been challenging as well. I never really knew exactly what drew me to it, but I loved it.
I worked on the floor for about a year and a half until I had gotten a little bit drained by the frequent misunderstandings between physicians and families. The physicians always wanted to do more and more, telling parents they had to keep trying experimental drugs and fighting for their child's life. In those days, a much higher percentage of the children diagnosed with cancer were terminally ill than today. And the parents would be saying, "Why are they doing this to my child? Why do they keep torturing him or her? Obviously this treatment isn't helping and they're ready to die. Let them be."
My struggle with that situation caused me to leave for a few months to work in the emergency room. But as soon as I left, I realized these things were happening whether I was there or not, but I no longer could make a difference. A few months later, I went back to work on the oncology floor. From that time on, I had a different perspective, and have loved it and felt very committed to it ever since.
ICFM: What is it that you enjoy about your job?
WOGRIN: Death is a very meaningful part of our lives; it's really one of the parameters that defines our lives. To be allowed to participate in people's lives around this very difficult and meaningful time feels like a privilege. And at the end of the day, you know what you did and why you did it. I think we need that in our work -- to feel like what we do makes a difference.
For me, it's having a sense of the support that dying or grieving people need, and of how to provide it. I also know they probably aren't getting this help from a lot of other sources, because our society shies away from the topic of death and dying.
ICFM: Do you ever feel you're approaching burnout?
WOGRIN: I don't generally feel burnout due to the individuals and families, to being allowed to step into people's lives. The sense of burnout tends to come from working in systems that are problematic, when people don't have the resources they need, and with problems in the education of physicians and nurses. You feel sometimes like you're beating your head against a wall.
ICFM: What struck me most about your book is that it's full of practical advice, with specific examples to help people follow that advice.
WOGRIN: I certainly wanted it to be a practical book. In fact, I was really pleased when we went to various people to get endorsements, just about everyone used the word "practical" or "pragmatic." I hoped to make the advice practical but not so much prescription, because people's experience is so individual and personal that if the advice is too prescriptive, it's not useful. I tried to give people enough ideas so they can figure out what they want to do.
ICFM: You recommend that small children not be allowed to place treasured items into the casket for burial with the deceased. Why?
WOGRIN: You don't want well-meaning gestures to cause further trauma at such difficult times. The custom that has gotten very popular of "stuffing" the casket is a great one, because people really like to do it. It's a way of including in the funeral ritual a final chance for people to give something to this person they loved. The idea there is this piece from you that will stay with them is very helpful to people.
But young children don't understand the permanence of death; don't allow them to place something they value in the casket. If a young child puts their favorite stuffed animal in the casket, it's a lovely gesture, but there's going to be a problem at bedtime, because they are going to want that toy. They just don't have the cognitive development to understand the idea of permanence or irreversability.
(Wogrin's alternative: Ask the child "to think of something that she won't want back later, such as a picture she's drawn, or a photograph, or a poem she's written, to place in the casket.")
ICFM: Do you have any advice specifically for funeral service providers?
WOGRIN: Funeral directors often are involved in preneed planning. In my experience, often when people go to plan funerals, it's because a family member is sick. I'm sure there are people who plan funerals well ahead of time, but I see it more when the family really believes they're going to need a funeral before too long.
This is a time when people are feeling very vulnerable and scared, and the family tends to be more fragile. Developing a level of comfort in talking with the dying person and in supporting a family in crisis is a very important skill for funeral directors.
The main skill is listening, and just as important, helping people listen to themselves, which is part of why I wrote the book. I think people in our culture are not very good at thinking about and listening to their own voice, to what they really want. People get really bogged down by the "shoulds."
I think funeral directors who are helping people think about this ritual that really is going to commemorate their lives can encourage people to think about what kind of legacy they want to leave and how to capture that in ritual.
When dealing with someone caring for a dying family member, they need to understand how overwhelming and exhausting caregiving is, how much people feel like they don't really have good models and support for helping someone through the final stage of life.
I think more funeral directors are becoming involved in aftercare, as well, so they also need to develop skills for working with the bereaved beyond the time right around the funeral. Because we have a culture where people grieve so privately, no one really knows what normal grief is. Often when people talk to me, they start out with, "I don't know if this is normal, but ..." and then complete the sentence in a million different ways: "I'm crying too much," "I'm crying too little," "I'm thinking about it too much," "I'm thinking about it too little."
Whatever it is, they think the way they're going about it is abnormal, because they compare how they feel with how they see other people act, and people tend to act based on role models. In our culture, the role models are very much "keep your feelings to yourself, return to business as usual a few days after the death," so that's what people expect of themselves -- and it's not usually how the process goes.
ICFM: Any other words of advice for the people in the funeral and cemetery industry?
WOGRIN: In preneed planning, you can, in a sense, model conversations for families. If the funeral professional is able to talk comfortably about end-of-life issues, that models it for the families. People often think it's so hard to talk about death, but we need to remember it's not really death we need to talk about, it's life -- our life and the lives of the people we love. We need to talk about it, because life ends.
It's really having conversations about who this person is, what their life has meant, how have they touched people, what their legacy is going to be. It's helpful to address this in saying goodbye and in planning for death, because that's what people will really hold onto and keep with them.
In a sense it's very life-affirming to acknowledge the reality of death, because that's partly what makes our lives so precious, the fact that that they are time-limited and fragile. When we acknowledge that fragility, we make better choices. When we realize our time is limited, we think more seriously about what we want to do with it.
Carol Wogrin can be reached at cwogrin@mountida.edu. The Web site for the National Center for Death Education can be reached by clicking here.
Copyright ICFA 2002
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