0016 - The Weight - Dana Trent - “Death, Dessert, and Paperwork”

Show Notes:

Perhaps the weightiest topic there is is the one that we all must face: death. Much of our lives can be spent evading this reality until it comes crashing into our lives somehow. What might it look like to adopt a posture towards death that not only makes us more prepared, but helps us live life more abundantly? To engage this question, we welcome Dana Trent! 

Dana Trent is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and professor of World Religions and Critical Thinking at Wake Tech Community College. An ordained Baptist minister, Dana served as a hospital chaplain in what is known as the “death ward,” where she accompanied individuals and their families through the passage from life to death. Inspired by this experience, as well as the death of her mother, she authored the book “Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life,” where she reflects on this experience and her lessons from it. 

In her conversation with Chris and Eddie, Dana discusses how churches and individuals can engage the topic of death and grief in a more meaningful way, especially with the backdrop of a deadly pandemic. She also helps us consider how “humor and tears are not mutually exclusive” and how even in the midst of grief and death, joy and levity can be found.

The Weight - Afterthoughts:

We've realized that a lot of great conversation actually happens AFTER we say goodbye to our guests and turn the microphones off. So, we decided to turn the mics back on (and a camera) and create a new segment called, Afterthoughts.

This will live on our new YouTube channel and you can find our Afterthoughts on this episode NOW!

Resources: 

Dana Trent’s Book “Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life”

https://www.amazon.com/Dessert-First-Preparing-Death-Savoring/dp/0827206690

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Dana Trent on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaB690iTPH2896cywwyh3Jg

Dana Trent on Instagram:  @jdanatrent

Dana Trent on Twitter:  @jdanatrent

Dana Trent on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jdanatrent.author/

Dana Trent on the web:  https://jdanatrent.com/

Full Transcript:

Chris McAlilly : 0:00

I'm Chris McAlilly,

Eddie Rester : 0:01

and I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly : 0:02

This is The Weight. 

Eddie Rester : 0:04

We're glad you're with us. Today is a holy conversation in some ways, I think, because it deals with a very difficult, difficult topic for all of us. It deals with a conversation around death and how we deal with death and grief.

Chris McAlilly : 0:20

If you're dealing with death and grief in your personal life, you just need to be aware of that. It could potentially be one of those conversations you need to save for a different time. We don't want it to trigger anything for you. But if you're not experiencing that acute pain and grief right now, I do think it's the kind of conversation I think will help you navigate stuff that has happened or also anticipate how to live well, in the midst of the reality of death and grief, which is something that we talk about, against the backdrop of the global pandemic.

Eddie Rester : 0:58

About reclaiming time, as a finite resource but one that we can value if we think clearly about death.

Chris McAlilly : 1:08

Yeah, but don't think that we're about to wallow down in our

Eddie Rester : 1:12

No 

Chris McAlilly : 1:12

feelings for 

Eddie Rester : 1:13

I get made fun of 

Chris McAlilly : 1:14

for 45 minutes. We make fun of Eddie as we always do, and it's great. It's a really, really good conversation. I think you're gonna find Dana delightful.

Eddie Rester : 1:23

Let's be honest. There's some topics that are too heavy for 20 minutes sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.

Chris McAlilly : 1:31

We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.

Eddie Rester : 1:42

If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it too. Today, our guest is Dana Trent. Dana is a graduate of Duke Divinity School--yay for that. Also, she teaches at Wake Tech Community College, World Religions and Critical Thinking. Her recent fourth book is one that we want to discuss today and we'd encourage you to get it. It sounds heavy, but it's, it deals with a heavy topic in a, you know, I think not "light," that's the wrong word, but I'll give you the book. It's "Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life." So, Dana, welcome.

Dana Trent : 2:20

Thank you so much for having me, Eddie and Chris. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Eddie Rester : 2:25

Well, you wrote a book about death. So help our hearers, our listeners understand what's the focus of the book and how did you get to a place where you wanted to write this book?

Dana Trent : 2:40

Um, so the focus of the book is absolutely, you know, dealing with modern grief. What does it look like for us in the 21st century to be modern grievers? Especially during a pandemic? We're going to get to that. But certainly, you know, death is different now than it ever has been. 100 years ago, our loved ones, you know, died peacefully at home, or they died of an illness at home. And now death is tucked away in healthcare facilities and hospitals and assisted living facilities. And so I really felt that it needed to be brought back to the forefront. Because the truth is, death is something that affects all of us. The death rate is 100%. We are all terminal as Kate Buller says, and so why not spend some time talking about it. And this was a lesson I learned as a 25-year-old, Deaf chaplain working in the intensive care unit at UNC health care. And so I felt it was time to bring forth these lessons that my patients had taught me. And also my mother had actually just had a brief ICU illness and died suddenly after a two-week stay in the hospital. And so I was able to take the lessons from chaplaincy and apply it to her death to help give her what I would call a good death. And then in turn, I hope be a companion to readers in their death journeys and their grief journeys, especially for such a time as this during our global pandemic.

Chris McAlilly : 4:13

I would like to spend a little bit of time thinking with you about that, as someone who spent a lot of time really focusing energy and attention and research on topics of grief and death from a religious or spiritual perspective. How are you receiving the news? How are you experiencing this particular moment of global pandemic?

Dana Trent : 4:38

Hmm. I think that it has heightened our grief. I think we are experiencing both a collective grief and an individual grief. We have anticipatory grief of an uncertain future and also an actual-lives grief, the actual deaths that have occurred as a result of the pandemic. And so what we're experiencing and what I see on the media are actually the five stages of grief. I see it as denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance. You see this. You can actually see it cycle through and COVID. And now we're landing on a sixth stage, as we're reemerging out into the world and slowly reopening states of finding meaning, you know, as we, you know, slowly returned to what might become our new normal routine. What meaning are we bringing back with us? What are we emerging with? What have we learned about ourselves? And most importantly, death is no longer tucked away. We talked about that. It's, we see it. We see it in the headlines every day. Never has there been such a time in our memory, our recent memory, when we are getting active, updated death stats above the fold, so to speak, on every major newspaper online. It is in our faces every day. And so therefore the grief is visceral. And therefore we've got to learn how to navigate it. And that is our invitation to befriend the normal yet paralyzing fear that we have of death--our own or others--to embrace the mystery of the afterlife and also to feel the visceral grief of a door firmly shutting. It's hard. It's a hard reality for us to adjust to.

Eddie Rester : 6:30

You know, I find myself numbed. As you talked about, we were faced with those numbers every single day. Every day, I go to the Mississippi site, and I see the numbers and I don't even think much about them anymore. I just look: are they going up? Are they stable? Are they, you know, where are they? And I think we've kind of hit that place of, for a lot of folks, of numbness with this. But I think that's culturally part of it, anyway. As you were talking about 100 years ago, I thought about reading William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." 

Dana Trent : 7:04

Yes.

Eddie Rester : 7:04

Probably the only book of his that I understood, but only, but only because I had a teacher who helped me understand it. But the difference of just this family's grief--the woman dies, they're in the home and, you know, surrounded by people and there's this journey that they go on. But all of us are isolated from that on the best days now, like you say, people are tucked away. But we're truly isolated from it now, not just with COVID patients, but anyone who dies in a hospital or nursing home is dying alone now, and distanced from us.

Chris McAlilly : 7:39

I think about that. Just the institutionalization, you know what I mean, of I guess, first illness and kind of the rise of... My wife works for a healthcare provider. She's a social worker in a hospital and so I'm incredibly grateful for those who are, you know, making sacrifices and also risking themselves to care for patients in ICU and in hospitals across the country. And at the same time as a pastor, what I've sometimes experienced, I mean, so what you have, there are human beings, offering, there's these beautiful moments of humanity in the face of real illness and death. But the environment sometimes can feel antiseptic, and not all that human, you know? It's because we're dealing with with tubes and numbers and charts and data. And now that's, you know, as we're talking about that, as I experienced the news right now, I see it. There's almost like a disconnect. It's before us, and yet we're trying to manage it, you know, in the way that we do everything else, with data and analytics. It's a form of kind of technological knowledge that is abstracted from the reality itself a little bit. I think that comes down quite clearly when you have someone in your own life who passes away or somebody that you know and love. Can you talk a little bit more just about what gave rise, what motivated your engagement? How did you decide, "This is a book that I need to write right now?"

Dana Trent : 9:31

Yes. Well, and going back to your initial comment, you're exactly right. There's a sterilization of death now. And the data that rips away the humanity of it rips away the deep empathy because it's still at arm's length, right? We cannot be physically present in the room when someone passes away. At least family members cannot at this time, even chaplains. And so it's, you're right, it's at arm's length for sure. And I think what I was I wanted to convey in the book, of course having no knowledge that this pandemic would ever happen. Never in my wildest dreams would I like, think of this scenario. I was trying to depict for people what death looked like, because I had the honor of being a death chaplain, what we call a palliative care chaplain, a comfort care chaplain for an ICU that had the highest death rate in the hospital. And they had that death rate not because they didn't do their jobs, but because they actually did their jobs very well. And so after a year of residency, I had sat with 200 patients, as they transitioned from life to death. And talk about what a unique place of honor, to be bedside with someone as they make that transition. To be a doula, a midwife for their family as they hold that grief and those rituals for the person. It was just, it was so incredibly peaceful and comforting, and it took the sterilization out of death that made it real and made it accessible. And I wanted people to see that. I wanted people to understand what that felt like. Because, you know, the secret about death is that it teaches us how to live. And that's exactly what my patients taught me. And there's no better time for that lesson now. And so I'm grateful that this book is out. It's available for folks. As Eddie said earlier, it's a heavy topic, but I approach it with a sweet lens. And the sweet lens is the lessons that my patients taught me, as well as the lessons that my mom taught me. But we're definitely using a different script as Sally Bates, who's a dear friend, who's mentioned in the book and also a Duke graduate, 

Eddie Rester : 11:45

She started in my year.

Dana Trent : 11:50

You know, it's not the same

Eddie Rester : 11:51

She and I were first years together. 

Dana Trent : 11:51

Oh, good, you know Sally! Wonderful. Yes. And Sally is an amazing chaplain. And so you know what she says in the book, that you approach every scenario with a different script. And that's what we're doing right now. The script is different. But my hope is that this book can be a companion for folks on this journey. Even during a pandemic, when the script--we're writing it as we go, literally writing it as we go.

Eddie Rester : 12:15

What are some of those lessons for you that you were able to apply to your mom? You talked about a good death. I want you to talk about that eventually, what good death can look like for us, but what are some of those lessons that you learned through that year as a chaplain?

Dana Trent : 12:32

Yes, that's a great question. So you know, as a fellow Duke graduate, when I graduated when I was 25, I was so arrogant. You know, I knew my church doctrine. I'd studied Hebrew and Greek. And you know, and I had had Hauerwas and Wainright and, you know, I just thought I was hot stuff. Well,

Chris McAlilly : 12:53

You're not the only Duke grad. I have to endure this on a daily, weekly, yearly basis, with with Eddie Rester here. The you know, the residual arrogance 

Eddie Rester : 13:04

Don't let Chris

Chris McAlilly : 13:05

I'm sorry to interrupt you

Eddie Rester : 13:06

Don't let Chris fool you. He's also got it. He finally had to follow me and got his D.Min there. But anyway, go ahead. And we're sorry for interrupting you.

Dana Trent : 13:12

No, no, no, no. So you all understand this, you know exactly what I'm talking about, this Duke arrogance that we have, you know, and we earn it, right? We earned it because we read five books in two days. Right? Five books a day. But it's, you know, when you walk into the room of a dying person, all of that goes out the window, all of it. Because no one wants to hear Hebrew or Greek or church doctrine. They don't want dogma; they want presence. That's what they want. The dying person, the dying person's family wants presence. Now in a pandemic, presence looks differently, right? And so that's what we're figuring out now. But the number one lesson that I walked away with as a chaplain sitting with 200 patients was that being present with the dying person is what matters most. And so handing ourselves that sticky note, right, when we walk into a situation like that, when we're grieving losses, of "presence matters." Being still, being with the person, being of comfort that looks differently now, of course, but that is the number one thing. And also, I'm going to add to that, that what my death mentor used to say to me, "None of us is getting out of here alive. None of us." And so the sooner we start to think about death, the sweeter our lives will be, especially in a time now where everything that we used to take for granted has been stripped away from us. And so there's no better time to get back to basics.

Chris McAlilly : 14:51

Can you push into that a little bit more and talk about why it is that death is a teacher of, one of the best teachers of life and how to live well? Why do you think that is? What is it about that reality? And I guess being aware of it that leads to a richer or sweeter life, as you mentioned?

Dana Trent : 15:13

Hmm, great question. It's the lesson that time is our only non-renewable resource. You know, once time has gone, it's gone. And death is about time. It's about an ending. It's about being finite. It's about living in a body that is going to give out one day, but also being a spirit, a soul that's going to transcend this body and living in that duality. And time. Time is the fulcrum. Right? And so the sooner that we realize that it's limited, the sooner we begin to spend it wisely. And the pandemic has certainly taught us that to be sure. We are having to look at in the mirror and think about all the ways we spend our time wisely and not so wisely. 

Eddie Rester : 16:07

I've talked to so many parents during this season, who, you know, one early on said, you know, right now we would have been travel baseball, travel volleyball, trying to squeeze in cheer practice, recitals, all this stuff. And he said, it's kind of nice, that we don't have that crush, working against us. And if there's been any gift of this season, I think it's been we've gotten time, a sense of time back, maybe, you know. And I worry what happens as we reopen and things restart, if we're going to lose that lesson of the finiteness of time.

Dana Trent : 16:49

Me too. Me too. Yes, I totally agree. That's, that's a beautiful word. And, you know, time is the country in which spiritual practices grow and thrive, and that is from Wayne Muller in his book on Sabbath. And time is what reorients us to God and what reorients us to our true center, which is the triune God. And I do worry though, as we return to whatever the normal looks like, we're going to be impatient and impatient is going to lead to some mistakes, and some forms of emotional and theological violence towards others, spiritual violence. And we're going to miss some really important lessons and being finite to people because we're ready to get back out there and go and buy and do, when instead we can lean into the lessons of what it means to be privileged to have time to think about grief to talk about this--even talking about this is quite a privilege that we've got space to do this. But normally, we're so busy, we don't even think in those terms. Right? You all I'm sure experience that as pastors and a busy community. It's, you know, our folks, our parishioners don't even have time to think about spiritual practice or depth or the meaning of life, which is really what this conversation is about. You know, how do we make meaning as human beings, muddling through a pandemic?

Chris McAlilly : 18:21

The Sabbath stuff is one of the directions that I wanted to get into a little bit more because beyond your work on grief, you've also spent time thinking about Sabbath and Wayne Muller is, I don't know if those listening are familiar with his work, but there's an image from his work that my brother-in-law likes to use. My brother-in-law works in a nonprofit, taking an old old dying congregation in East Nashville and kind of turning it into a kind of a community space for folks who live in the neighborhood. And one of the things he said when he started that work is that he was moving in so many different directions, he couldn't really see what was going on. And there's this image from Wayne Muller's work on Sabbath. He talked about walking out into a mountain stream and just kind of moving around it and just kind of stomping up all the silt and the dirt from the bottom of the river. And in such a way that you can't, you literally just can't see your way through the mountain stream. And the thing to do in that situation, if you want to see any trout, is to simply stop. To be still long enough to actually see what's really going on. And I think it just speaking as a parent, as a father, I think for me, what I've realized is that my vocation as a pastor obscured my ability to actually see my children in the way that I really want to see my children if I want to be a father, if I want to live fully into my vocation as a parent and a father. There is a kind of reorientation because you also notice, you know, my three year old is now eight and going to be 18. And the time is moving so quickly. So there's a reorientation not only to the people that are close to me, but also how short the time really is that I have to invest myself into that. To experience this moment with my three-year-old. We're not having any more kids, Eddie.

Eddie Rester : 20:28

Really?

Chris McAlilly : 20:29

No.

Eddie Rester : 20:29

Are you sure? 

Chris McAlilly : 20:30

We're not having any more children. And so this is the last time. And so I'm kind of more consciously aware of that. This is the last time I'll experienced this with this child of mine who is two. and I don't know, there's kind of preciousness and sweetness to that. And I think that's one of the things that I like about your approach to to death and grief. The point is not to wallow. 

Dana Trent : 20:59

Right.

Chris McAlilly : 20:59

It's rather, and I think one of the ways that you do this is with humor. Why is humor so important to you? As a means of engaging the realities of life and death?

Dana Trent : 21:10

Yes, thank you. Well, I have to credit Sally Bates with that, going back to Sally. Sally and I love gallows humor. She is one of my of course closest friends, and I worked with her and for her at Duke Divinity School. And so, you know, finding humor in this because death is funny. Because it's the mundane smacking against the transcendent, right? It's the idea that you've just lost your most important person, your beloved, the person that you know that you can't live without and then you've got to sit in a funeral home and fill out paperwork and plan a funeral and pick out you know, urns and coffins and it's just absurd. The whole thing is absurd. It's like, you know, assembling IKEA furniture in a wind tunnel. It just it's impossible, when you think about such a spiritually profound milestone as someone transitioning from this physical world to the spiritual world. And then you got to like, go pick out, you know, accoutrement for their memorial service, and a guestbook... And so the humor to me is what my mother always found delightful. And so that carries on through me. She was a nurse and so she always thought that bodies and death, that it was all sort of absurd anyway. She was extremely religious, very, very Baptist. But you know, also kind of just very down-to-earth when it came to, this is a body and it's kind of funny, and you know, and we're all going to die. So let's have a good time and let's eat dessert first because time is short. You know, going back to time. It's like no have dessert first. This is your non-renewable resource so you know, get out that cake and bring me a fork.

Chris McAlilly : 23:01

There's a funeral director in our neck of the woods named Steve Holland and Steve, I'm going to have to send this to Steve Holland. Because at Steve Holland's funeral home, and I've worked a great deal with him and they do a phenomenal job. What people say about Steve is that they'll say, "I don't agree with his politics, but he did a great job with grandma." 

Eddie Rester : 23:24

That's right.

Chris McAlilly : 23:24

But when you do a funeral with with Steve he hands out koozies to everybody with a logo of the funeral home and the koozies have on them, you know, "Holland funeral home will be the last to let you down."

Dana Trent : 23:37

Oh my gosh, I love it! I love it! I think I'm gonna have to contact Steve to get one of those koozies 

Chris McAlilly : 23:45

Oh, yeah, I'm sure I can. We can make that happen. He also hands out cigars. He is a character. 

Eddie Rester : 23:51

He's a character.

Chris McAlilly : 23:52

He's a a character. But the thing that he gets is that humor is one of the ways... Humor is humanizing. And it humanizes. And it connects people across ideological differences. It's one of those things that is the great equalizer, in the way that death is. But it brings people together. It's just one of those things. And I think that's one of the things that I appreciate that you're pushing. I think particularly people have faith and communities of faith to think about is, how do we move death from something that we're dealing with individually and kind of, we're kind of huddled in this private space, and we're individuals kind of dealing with this reality and despairing on our own, and bringing it back into the public and into the community so that we can do this thing together. That's hard, but it's also...

Eddie Rester : 24:43

There's joy, laughter.

Chris McAlilly : 24:44

Yeah, there's joy and laughter and there needs to be the ability to, you know, to engage the different dimensions when they come and to receive them, but also, to remember. To be able to tell stories and to offer those memories as well. Can you talk a little bit more about that, about how you want to see how communities, either communities of faith or groups of friends or people that want to not just kind of be isolated in the face of death, particularly in a pandemic? What are ways that we can, I guess, communalize? I don't think that's a word, "communalize ."

Eddie Rester : 25:26

You just made it a word.

Chris McAlilly : 25:27

Yeah. How do you move death back into the community, in the 21st century?

Dana Trent : 25:33

Yes. And I love that word. I think we should we should trademark it. That's what, I mean, we do, people, we just make up words.

Eddie Rester : 25:40

Put them in titles of books and stuff.

Dana Trent : 25:42

That's right. "Communalize," I love it. Yeah, no, I think it's both-and. Everything is nuanced. It's never black and white. It's always both-and. Always, always. What I say in the book is that laughter and tears are not mutually exclusive. They just aren't. Because that's not the way life works. Life is a Venn diagram of all of these feelings and experiences. And right now in a pandemic, I would argue that these feelings and experiences, if we're really paying attention, all of it's heightened. It's like everything is heightened, if we're paying attention. And so as a community, as faith communities in particular, one of the things that we can do is hold space to pay attention. That is really important because it is so easy right now, because folks are not physically together in faith communities, it's so easy for them to disconnect, right? To sever or to become satellites, to sort of be floating out there disconnected and isolated, and not even really be conscious of it. It just happens, right? There's other things on their mind. And so what I have seen faith communities doing, and also communities doing, is holding space for people, providing a lens--what Mary Oliver calls "the rich lens of attention"--of looking at the situation. What it means for us as humans. How do we make meaning of it? How do we understand it? How do we get a chuckle in every now and then with a funny meme or a TikTok video or, you know, somebody's grumpy comment about something? How do we bring some levity to it, but also, how do we understand the seriousness of it? And how do we recalibrate our lives so that when we emerge from this, much like Sabbath emerging from Sabbath, we emerge as different people, people that have grown and learned from it?

Eddie Rester : 27:45

We talk about finding ways to be present, I think that's one of the challenges right now. I've done a couple of funerals during this season, and it's just hard on everybody, from the funeral director to the families, to the friends, to the church. We had a beautiful moment early where one of our beloved saints passed away, and people lined the parking lot with their cars. So when the family, the little remnant of the family, got to come out of the sanctuary, they got to see the faces and walk through the parking lot to see those who had loved their one that they had lost. But, you know, just the inability to touch and to have the... You know, visitations are hard, but as my funeral director friends will tell you, one of the most necessary moments. 

Dana Trent : 28:38

It is.

Eddie Rester : 28:38

And those are stripped from us right now. So, any ways that you have seen people or churches doing this well, to being present, to do what Mary Oliver talks about?

Dana Trent : 28:50

Yes, well, first of all, I love that idea about the parking lot. It's a beautiful visual in my mind, and I think about, I'm glad we're talking about this because I think about my own mother's funeral almost three years ago. And I'll never forget sitting in the front pew next to my husband, and my cousin dragging a chair to sit on the other side of me so that my husband and my cousin flanked me, and both of them just holding me like in a cocoon, just feeling you know, the pressure of their touch and their hugs and their arms around me, keeping me upright as I just cried for the whole service. And to think that people don't have that right now, just you know... I can feel that viscerally in my gut. But I want to reassure people that just because it's not happening now, doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. It doesn't mean that memorial services can't happen six months from now, and how we might rethink our death rituals. So let's talk about the future and then we'll come back to present. So in the future, my hope is, that, you know, if we have memorial services a few months out, how much that can actually help the bereaved. Because so often as people go through what I call the grief train, and they're a few months into it, so often the calls have stopped coming. The visits have stopped coming. The food has stopped coming. The cards, you know. And they feel very isolated. And so how wonderful and beautiful it might be to think about what we might be doing for our bereaved six months from now, especially when they really, really need it, a physical touch in. And then coming back to the present moment. Certainly, you know, we've seen an uptick in Zoom funerals, and uptick in bereavement meals, how to do those virtually, how to have phone conversations, phone calls, good old-fashioned letter writing, flowers, food, lighting candles, showing pictures that help ignite stories about loved ones. Those are always really helpful. And I have seen Facebook become a really beautiful tool for grief. I have seen folks step up and really offered community, both in the church setting, on church Facebook pages, but also individually to folks who are grieving loved ones that they've lost during the pandemic. So in some ways, our technology that we sort of, typically, as the church, see as our foe, right? Is becoming our friend. And it might very well be the life source that keeps faith communities alive and thriving into the future. And can you imagine what it must have been like in 1918, with the influenza that lasted two years without these tools? And we are so fortunate to have these tools. And so I think we just merely have to continue to be creative about using the tools that we have to honor loved ones and also support the bereaved.

Eddie Rester : 32:02

One of the things that Chris and I've talked about in the life of the church, real briefly, is that All Saints Sunday in November has to look different this year, I think, for the church. And I don't know where we'll be in terms of the pandemic, but I think that's a moment for the church to leverage in a different way this year, to name the folks, if we're able to do some gathering at that point, to be able to bring the body together to honor those we've lost this year in a, hopefully, a way that would be more faithful going forward even. Maybe it's all, maybe All Saints is needed to be more than it's been in most of our churches.

Dana Trent : 32:46

Yes.

Eddie Rester : 32:47

We may need that moment as well.

Chris McAlilly : 32:48

For those that don't know what All Saints is, why is that? Why do you feel that, Eddie or Dana? What is it about, I mean, I guess for me, so just tell folks a little bit about what All Saints is, if they're not familiar.

Eddie Rester : 33:02

All Saints Day is November 1. It is the day after All Hallows Eve, which most of us call Halloween. And it was a day where the church, going back for some 600 or 700 years--it might be longer than that, my church history is fuzzy. But don't tell my teachers that from Duke. 

Dana Trent : 33:21

Yeah, I won't tell our Duke professors. 

Eddie Rester : 33:22

Yeah don't tell them that. But it was a day when the church got together to remember the saints it had lost over the past year and to name them in a significant way. It's a way of remembering that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and that cloud of witnesses is beyond just the live people in the room. It's why churches attach themselves to cemeteries and why churches now attach themselves to columbariums. It's a reminder of this greater cloud of witnesses.

Chris McAlilly : 33:51

Anything you'd add on that, Dana, that you would just fill out in Eddie's fuzzy church history?

Eddie Rester : 33:59

She's been to seminary sooner than I have.

Dana Trent : 34:01

Right, no, no Eddie you were spot on. And many, you know, oftentimes our rituals in churches today look like literally saying the names of the folks that have died in the past year and then being together. And what I love about this thread, and I know we're going to unpack it--and Chris, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, too--is that isn't it beautiful to see the ways in which the liturgical seasons and holy days are speaking to modern challenges like a pandemic? The way that Lent spoke to the pandemic this year. The way that I'm calling Leaster, as opposed to Easter, 

Eddie Rester : 34:38

Yes.

Dana Trent : 34:38

Leaster and also Lentacost. I'm really feeling that we're doing a Lenten year, that we're going to stay in the wilderness. But I love... Thank you, Eddie, for grounding us in these church rituals that you don't necessarily have to be a church historian or even a, you know, faithful church-goer to be able to lean into these rituals. These are for everyone. And so yes, I think you're spot on with All Saints Day. And then Chris, I'd love to hear, too, what your take on how this might look for us this year.

Chris McAlilly : 35:09

Yeah, I'm still pondering it. But I think the thing that I've realized about my own life is that I don't have... I've been asked by our... I and others in my generation have been asked to basically create meaning in our lives from thin cloth. And sometimes I don't even know where to start, you know. And I think what I found, so I grew up in the church, I grew up around some of these rituals. I don't know that I really thought of them as is providing the kind of power and space for individuals and communal for... individuals and communities that I do now. And I think, I guess I'm about 10 years into ministry. And having moved through these seasons several times, it's easy for them to become redundant and routine. I think All Saints, as a time when we're remembering the saints who have died and gone before us, is an opportunity for us to remember it, to engage memory as a source of hope for the church and for our individual lives. I mean, I think when I think about the life that I want to offer to my children right now, I think about my grandparents, who... both of my grandfathers I've lost, so right now I'm spending a lot of time in the yard and I'm teaching my sons how to whittle and I just had a flood of--not both of my sons. My older son. 

Eddie Rester : 36:55

I was gonna say, you're giving Micah a knife?

Dana Trent : 36:58

The three-year-old?

Chris McAlilly : 36:59

I'm giving the almost-nine-year-old a knife. And he's earned that. He's earned that. But I remember, I had this flood of memory that came in the other day, as we're sitting there on the front porch. I remember my grandfather whittling a slingshot for me. And there was something about that memory, that gave... I want to bring all of the life of my grandfather forward for my children, because they're not going to know him in the way that I did. And the only way that they're going to have access to him is the way in which I tell those stories and those memories. And I think All Saints as a church ritual, as a moment within the year for a body of, an assembly of gathered people in a community, is a way to do that. Not just with one person, but to do that with all of these people. And there's something about that, that says you don't have to talk about it. You know, you don't have to engage, like, "I've been feeling all of these emotions that are really present and heightened right now." But what you can do is to be grieving with other people. You know? And I think that's what, that's what I need. I need space to do that. And I do think, I agree with you, Dana, that technology provides something, that without which we would be feeling it. 

Dana Trent : 38:24

Oh, yes. 

Chris McAlilly : 38:25

But I also think it, you know, I think there's this, the thing that it doesn't provide is bodily presence and embodied community. And I think that's one of the things that I heard in what you said, that light a candle, send the flowers, write a letter, those tangible physical... I mean, that death is nothing if it's not bodily. I mean, I remember when my grandfather passed away, he was a mechanic and he ended up in travel business. He worked with his hands. I remember holding his hand and knowing that all of that work and all of his love came through. I remembered all the times he gave me a big bear hug, and all the times that he was, he was so present with me in his love, in his body. And I think that's what we don't have right now is the ability to offer the kinds of embraces that you would offer in a visitation. And that

Dana Trent : 39:21

That's right.

Chris McAlilly : 39:22

I mean, that sucks.

Eddie Rester : 39:23

Mm hmm.

Chris McAlilly : 39:24

As a pastor,

Dana Trent : 39:25

It does.

Chris McAlilly : 39:25

that we're not able to provide those opportunities for people. And yet, there's still, you know, I think that's what I love about your book, is that you're pointing people to not just one thing, it's like a whole, it's like a recipe book for all these different ways that folks can. I think it will, you know, kind of ignite folks' imaginations for thinking about new ways to maybe cut some ritual out of whole cloth. To mix metaphors.

Dana Trent : 39:57

No, that's lovely. But yes, no, I really appreciate that. And that's, I love hearing about your grandfather. And that's, that's what it's about. Like, that's how people live on thruough us. And Judaism has this beautiful ritual called a Yahrzeit ritual, which is a lighting of a candle on the anniversary of a loved one's death. And you keep the loved one alive by saying their name. That's how you keep their memory alive. You know, much like all of our little children have seen "Coco," you know, if you've ever seen that movie, you all probably have seen that movie since you have children. 

Chris McAlilly : 40:31

Eddie's saying no.

Eddie Rester : 40:32

My kids are older. I've got (one in) college. I think they've seen it, but they were, I...

Chris McAlilly : 40:36

You've gotta get, you gotta get up with the times, man. Coco's a great movie.

Dana Trent : 40:38

Yes. Great. Those are two wonderful traditions, you know, that demonstrate to us that saying the names, telling the stories, in the absence of of bodily physical presence, is how we keep the memory alive. And that's how we grieve. And right now we've got a couple of tools. We've got tech, rituals, and holy relics. And you know, that's what we have to work with right now in our toolbox. Those are the ingredients in our recipe. And my prayer and my hope is that you're right, we will find creative ways to continue to work with those tools and those ingredients to grieve and honor our loved ones and strangers, you know, people that we've never met that we need to continue to honor and hold space for. Going back to the, we talked about the data and headlines, right so that it no longer becomes a sterilization of mind-numbing numbers. But these are people. These are people with names and lives and stories. And so how can we honor that with the tools that we have at hand right now?

Eddie Rester : 41:45

One of the things that I found just fantastic about your book was that it's not just a memoir. It's not just storytelling. It's not just helping people think. But you actually offer practical resources. Really the last half of the book, more than the last half of the book, is these resources. So as you think through them, what are some of those? Well, one, why did you include the resources? And two, what are some of those resources that you would point people to right now in this season?

Dana Trent : 42:16

Oh, yeah. Thank you so much. And that was my editor's decision. My editor, Chalice Press, and they said, you know, it would be really helpful if we put all the resources--practical and spiritual--in one place for people. So not only are they getting the personal narrative thread of all of the stories--you know, we didn't even talk about Undertaker Jake and the Ashes to Ashes Road Tour--but all the humorous stories and all the deep stories, but also like at the end of the day, what can we hand the reader that's useful and practical for them? And so, you know, I have an introduction to the resources in "Dessert First," and so many of them are very practical, like paperwork, you know, what do you need to be doing right now. And, you know, it may seem sort of counterintuitive, a pandemic is actually a really good time to start a conversation about end-of-life care. And that's probably the last thing people want to talk about. So starting with humor is a good place to start. You know, starting with dessert. Having a conversation about if you have an elderly grandfather, you know, living with you in the home, who is 92. You know, statistically speaking, that person is more at risk for COVID than you know, your, I don't know, 39-year-old who's very healthy and has no underlying health conditions. So both of them should be having the conversation, but it might be grandpa who needs to start it. Or it might be the 39 year old who needs to start it. And so we have we, you know, added ways to start that conversation, including blaming it on me. I want everybody to hear that. You may blame it on the author. You can say... Or blame it on The Weight podcast. Say, "I was listening to this podcast. Ugh. You know, this crazy lady was on there..."

Eddie Rester : 44:04

"I don't like the hosts at all, but"

Dana Trent : 44:06

Right! Right. "They're arrogant Duke graduates." [laughter]

Eddie Rester : 44:11

That's right.

Dana Trent : 44:12

But you know, it starts the conversation. And then lots of practical information on what kind of paperwork you need. But then really getting down to the nitty gritty of: what do you want at the end of life? What religious, spiritual, and sacred rituals do you need? Now, those are going to look a little bit different. You know, we talked a lot about physical contact, but there are some things that could still be put in place, especially when working with community funeral homes, like your friend Steve, who knows, you know, what he can and can't do right now, and it's this. And then thinking about, you know, bereavement. Thinking about grieving the loss. And this might be where many of the readers are as they read this. What rituals can they be doing right now, to grieve a loss? Whether it was someone who died six months ago or six years ago, or 60 years ago. "Desert First" was originally a grief notebook that I actually started in hospice counseling. And it turned into a book. And so just writing down a little bit each day, like an Ignatian Examen almost, of what was happening in my grief journey led to this companion book. And I'm so grateful for that. So thank you for that. And lots of practical things, you know, lighting, candles, writing notes, and then also some theological resources. So different traditions have different things to say about death and afterlife. And so what are those things, you know, in the most general sense, so people can learn a bit about Christianity and other traditions and the afterlife and what sacred texts have to say. So we packed a lot in that resource section, but the point is that people can dip in and out of them. We want them to see "Dessert First" as a book that you keep on your shelf, and you read it a page at a time, a chapter at a time, and you may put it down for a month and come back to it, but it is there for you. It is a companion. And so that's the purpose of that resource section.

Chris McAlilly : 46:15

Dana, thank you so much for your time today. We really enjoyed the conversation with you. And are there any, for someone who may be, you know, having a hard time right now, is there anything that you would offer to them in closing, kind of a last word for someone who may be kind of really struggling?

Dana Trent : 46:37

Yes. In closing, you know, I would say that pandemics, grief, and death, they all shred our hearts like a spiritual cheese grater. You know, that's very real, what we're feeling. But also to know that, you know, grief comes in waves. It changes shape. And it's present, but we will not drown. Especially if we are surrounded by community, whether it's virtually or in our homes. As long as we stay connected as best we can, we will move through this together.

Eddie Rester : 47:16

Dana, we really appreciate it. The book for our listeners is "Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life." Pick that up. You'll be very glad you did, today and maybe even 10 years from now. So, Dana, blessings to you. Tell Sally Bates I said hello. She'll probably tell you stories that you don't need to believe.

Dana Trent : 47:34

Oh, I love it. I can't wait, Eddie. Thank you so much, Chris and Eddie, for holding this space for me and for many others. You're appreciated.

Chris McAlilly : 47:42

Thanks, Dana.

Eddie Rester : 47:44

Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.

Chris McAlilly : 47:54

This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight.