With most people now preferring to focus on celebrating life rather than mourning at funerals, we explore the new ways people are choosing to commemorate loved ones, and hear first hand experience of what it's like to grieve in the public eye, with acclaimed author Blanche d’Alpuget, widow of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and experienced funeral and life celebrant Evelyn Calaunan.

About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. 

Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death.

Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table.

Blanche d’Alpuget is an acclaimed Australian author and the widow of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke. In this episode, Blanche reflects on public and private rituals of mourning, what it means to say goodbye well, and how grief reshapes us. Her latest novel, The Bunny Club (her first murder mystery), is out now.

Evelyn Calaunan is a celebrant who has conducted more than 600 ceremonies, including living funerals that are heartfelt gatherings held before death to honour a life while the person is still present. Drawing on her background in palliative care and community work, Evelyn helps individuals and families create ceremonies that are deeply personal. 

If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – [email protected] 

Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube   

Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts 

Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify 

For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast 

Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel

--

Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone  and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

TRANSCRIPT:

S06EP04 Going out with style

James: Hi, I'm James Valentine. Welcome to Life's Booming. This season is Dying to Know. We're having the conversations that are often the hardest to have with people who've experienced life's one great certainty, death. 

It touches everyone, but how we honor our loved ones in death is changing, with most of us now preferring to focus on celebrating life rather than mourning at funerals.

So in this episode, we explore some of the new ways people are choosing to commemorate life, as well as hearing first hand experience of what it's like to grieve in the public eye. Generously sharing their professional and personal stories are our guests. Evelyn Calaunan is an experienced celebrant who specialises in living funerals.

And Blanche d’Alpuget is an acclaimed author and widow of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Evelyn Blanche, welcome to Life's Booming. 

Blanche: Oh, thank you, James. 

James: Evelyn, you describe yourself as an end of life celebrant. What exactly does that mean? What do you mean by end of life celebrant? 

Evelyn: So I've done, I've done ceremonies, as well. I used to be a wedding celebrant and I've married a few couples where one of the partners was diagnosed with a terminal illness, so I would do the ceremony and that turned out to be sort of a life celebration and they just wanted to marry before one of them died. And then I've done a ceremony where the person was actually dying and we did it.

The end of life sort of life celebration for him. And he passed away, I think, 10 days after, after the ceremony. That's why I think it's, it's best just to celebrate life now, like have those milestone birthdays or whatever birthday number you're turning and have a great party now - why wait till you have a diagnosis or a terminal illness that's looming?

So it's important to have those, those celebrations now. However, in saying that, sometimes people are diagnosed and like, ‘Oh God, I didn't have that party. So I want to have something now.’ 

I did do a life celebration for my girlfriend who was diagnosed with cancer. And I did a little bit of a ceremony and a ritual and I shared a poem and I was getting a bit too sad for everybody there - cause we were really… It was like a 70s party, we were all dressed up and enjoying each other's company. And then after a while we could tell people were really getting upset because of her diagnosis. And then she came on the microphone. She said, ‘Okay, okay. That's enough, Evelyn, let's go on to karaoke’, you know, so, yeah, 

It turned out to be a lovely celebration and she wanted to invite people there from all parts of her life and just be able to have a good party with them while she was still feeling well. 

James: Yeah Yeah

Evelyn: And I've done about 600 end of life ceremonies. 

James: It just sounds like 600 sounds like a lot 

Evelyn: Yeah, but in the context of 17 years, that's really not.

James: I think the thing that struck me about that number was, does it get routine?

Evelyn: Not really. I mean a lot of the script is or the script that I have – I mean, there's only so many ways you can say I'd like to welcome everyone here today. So I'll write a ceremony and I might say, ‘Oh, you know, Joe Blow leaves behind his loving sister’, and then the parents will come back and say, ‘Please take loving out, they couldn't stand each other!’ 

So, you know, there's a lot of adjectives that are changed because I kind of make my ceremonies quite flowery and people like to change that and make it more real. So yeah. 

James: Blanche, you had the experience of, in a way, one of the biggest funerals and biggest moments of public grief in Australian life, the death of Bob Hawke and the funeral and memorial service of Bob Hawke.

How much did you and Bob plan those events together? 

Blanche: Not at all. No, no. That was all left up to me. 

James: Right. So you planned those events. So my understanding is Bob knew he was dying, right? You knew it was, say, a year before, that kind of thing, you knew it was, it would, it must have been coming.

Blanche: Well, you don't know exactly when. When he started dying, it just fell like an axe. It was very sudden, out of the blue, we were having dinner. And he was in a bad way. He was in a lot of pain from peripheral neuropathy, so he was on morphine tablets and the fentanyl patches. Obviously it was going to be at some stage, but suddenly we're having dinner and we finished dinner and he got up from dinner and he actually went into the living room and actually threw up and he was in enormous pain, suddenly.

And he got on the floor and said, ‘Oh, it's unbearable. The pain's unbearable’. And I said to him, ‘Yes, Bob, you're dying.’ And that was, so that was the beginning. 

James: How did he take that? Like, how did he take his death? So the, the imminence of his death? 

Blanche: Well, he'd said all along, I have no fear of death. And I used to think all along, wait until you get there.

[laughter]

It's one thing, not fearing death. It's another thing fearing dying, and dying can be difficult. Being born is difficult, life is difficult, and dying can be difficult too. But then I think it's wonderful, when you actually… Because I believe in the spirit and the soul, and I've seen enough of people dying to be convinced of it, there's an absolutely uplifting feeling as, as it goes, as it leaves the body. 

James: What did he believe, particularly at that point? 

Blanche: I sort of badgered him with my ideas for 25 years, so [laughter]. He'd started off an agnostic and he was still probably agnostic, but when he died, he wasn't.

I mean, I could see it on his face. He didn't say, ‘Oh my God, I can, I see heaven’. But there was such a heavenly look on his face. As I saw on my mother's face. 

James: What do you see, Evelyn, the difference between, do you see a difference between those who are dying and have belief and faith and those who don’t. How does that express itself?

How do you see it play out? 

Evelyn: What I've seen or what I've experienced talking to families is that that they could see at the end that they, if they were quite sick, cause I always ask, I always ask my families, how was it the last few days? And they always say to me, that, you know, just about a few days before they died, they had this really lucid moment where they sat up and we had a really good conversation. And, and then a few days later, they passed away. 

And another thing that I actually really would like to share is that most of the families, they get really upset if their person hasn't passed in front of them. They're waiting for that moment.

But I have found in all of the many funerals I've done, I would say about 80%, if not more, the loved one usually passes away when someone will just go out to the toilet or go… I've had to explain that to families because they're, they're so upset. Like, ‘you know, I was sat there, I slept on, by the side, the side of the bed of my mother, and I was holding her hand and I, I just had to go to the toilet. I come back and she died on me’ - you know, but it's so common. 

 James: Why are you nodding Blanche? You heard this a lot too.

Blanche:  Oh yes, it's very well known that because the loved one is hanging on emotionally, psychologically to the one who's dying. And so, the dying one can't leave, and that has to grab the moment. Do you agree with the Evelyn?

Evelyn: Yeah I definitely agree with that, and I've heard the stories too many times to not discount that, and I think at the end of life, I think we just kind of resort to being kind of like cats or dogs – you know how they go to a corner to die. I think we kind of are like that as well.  

James: Yeah. Did you, were you there with when Bob died? 

Blanche: Yep. Holding his hand. I'd done a very foolish thing before. I'd spent all day lying down beside him, and he had pneumonia, he developed pneumonia. And I had an appointment with an acupuncturist and I went to see her.

She took my pulse, which is the first thing you do with acupuncture, and she said, What have you been doing? And I said, I've been lying down with Bob, he's dying. She said, You've got no pulses. You'll die. She said, You've given him all your life energy and you must stop. And you can only hold his hand. You mustn't touch any more of his body than that. 

And indeed, while I was lying down beside him, his breathing improved, his color came back, he started – he was, had morphine, so I was in a morphine sleep – but he just started to look good. And as soon as I just moved away from him, he went back into pneumonia and dying.

James: Yeah. Did you see the moment? 

Blanche: Yeah. Oh yes. 

James: What was that? 

Blanche: It was marvelous. It was… He gave a huge sigh, and then I felt the room was full of angels. It was very, very uplifting. It was very thrilling. And the same thing with my mother actually. I was with her when she died. And it was so exciting, I wanted to ring her up immediately and say, Hey mum, guess what I just saw? 

James: She probably knows. She probably knew. What kind of descriptions do you hear of the moment?  

Evelyn: Yeah, I hear the same as well, that when they finally took their last breath, they just looked so peaceful and they looked without pain.

But in saying that, because I am, I do the funerals like, you know, a few days after they die, a lot of things happen at the funerals too, like, you know, birds brushing up against the window when you mention their name. Or, you know, light fluttering in when you're doing a reflection. I've witnessed a lot of that or even electrics going out during certain motions and then someone will ring out, ‘Oh, that's mum, she always wanted to make a big scene, you know.’

So I've witnessed a lot of that to know that there is something beautiful, you know, beautiful on the other side. And I feel when their body is still here on, on the, on the plane, like that time from when they die to when the funeral, I feel there's, their essence is really all around us. And some of the essence does come out at the funeral and some of the things people say… yeah, it's just beautiful. 

James: It's a fusion, I suppose, like I'm feeling a sense of a fusion of a, of a spirit and whatever that might be, but also our huge consciousness of them. You know, there's so much consciousness all the way, there's suddenly, you know, sometimes hundreds, thousands of people will be thinking about this person and remembering, you know, that, that's also a life force in some ways, isn't it?

Blanche: Yes. I remember at Bob's, at the private funeral, I had no idea what I was going to say. And suddenly I looked in my handbag and there was a piece of paper with a poem on it. And there was exactly the right thing. I hadn't seen the poem before, but it was exactly the right thing to read in the circumstances.

James: Had someone popped it in there, or? 

Blanche: No. 

James: Mmm. 

Blanche: Weird. 

James: Weird. 

Blanche: I'm weird. [laughter]

James: I suppose I wondered about the experience of grief when it's going to be that public. And I do, there's a public funeral, but there was also, there's an immediate, sorry, private funeral, but there's also an immediate public thing you've got to deal with, with media and with the nation learning all that kind of thing.

Blanche: That was a nightmare, a real nightmare. I think I probably had a thousand emails and texts, for starters. And I was really grieving, really, really upset. So I'd go up shopping and burst into tears over the cauliflowers. [laughter] I haven’t got anything against cauliflower. 

And I didn't have a moment, really, to grieve properly. I mean, I had the odd moments, but it was so busy, once he died because of who he was, and everybody wanting a slice of the salami, basically. 

James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you handle it? 

Blanche: You just do James. When stuff gets thrown at you, you just handle it as best you can. Whether I did it well or ill, I don't know. 

James: And so then what, how did you handle your grief? Did you have to do that later? 

Blanche: Unfortunately. And I got… So the next year I got breast cancer. And I do think that was grief. 

James and Evelyn: Mm. Yeah. 

Blanche: He died in May, I moved out of the house in September, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in February.

James: Yeah. Yeah. That's too much, isn’t it 

Blanche: Well, it's life, you know, you just got to accept it.

James: Because it seems sort of unimaginable, like just having to have so much to process, you've got a whole, there's a whole other complication…

Blanche: …and people still come up to me. Almost six years later. And say, I wish he was still here. Yeah. That's quite common. Especially as we approach an election! [laughter]

James: Well, yes, I could feel that too! And is that, is that a nice thing? Is it nice having, to be remembered like that?

Blanche:  Oh, yes, because it's all, it's always very civil and kind.

Evelyn: And I think people feel like they know him, even though he wasn't, you know, their husband or father, they wanted a piece of him. And I think they wanted to fully grieve and honor his life. And that's why having that public funeral was very, was very necessary.

 

Because I do think memorials, or anything, is necessary, even if you just for five minutes, it's like, let's just stop and think about whoever's past. We need that. We need that. And I've seen too often, in my… over the years, where a lady's past, was in her 80s, and what was going to be put in the coffin with her were ashes from her stillborn child. So she never did a ceremony for that. And I remember her husband was telling me, You know, she always talked about her stillborn. 

And they never knew what to do with the ashes. And so I think, if they would have had just a little bit of a ceremony honouring that child, or the stillbirth, that would have helped for them to go further. So we just need it, we just need moments to get together…

James: Tell me more about why I think it's necessary. What, what, what is the… Because a lot of people will say this thing, ‘Look, cardboard box, put me out in the, put me out with the rubbish. You know, put me in the top paddock, let the crows have a go’, you know, like you get that sort of expression.

But then you're, you know, what you're saying is it's very important, not even, not just for the person that's died, almost more for everybody else. 

Evelyn: I think funerals, end of life ceremonies, are really important for the people who are left behind. Like just us being together and honoring that person in a space and having this sort of energy directed towards this person that we love. 

But people, they don't want to have these ceremonies. And I don't, I don't know if it's an Australian thing, you know, cause I've heard that a lot, just put me out on the, you know, on the trash and I'll be, I'll be right, mate. But I think honoring that person is really important just for those who are left behind.

James: Think it's Australian, a little bit Australian? 

Blanche: Yes, I do. And it's because we're so secular. 

James: Right. 

Blanche: I think. 

James: Well, I think a lot of the, a lot of the discussions we've been having here, or the point of these discussions in this, in this series has been because we've lost, you know, if half of us were Catholics and the other half were Anglicans and, you know, there were a few other sects alongside, that gave us the structures and gave us the ritual to the funerals.

Whereas these discussions, a lot of it has been about, well, if you're not that, and that is an increasingly larger proportion of the population, well, what is it? What are you marking? Why, what is death? What is the funeral? What is the ceremony for? What, what's the funeral for?  

Blanche: The funeral is to celebrate the life. And I might say that although I want an, an, an inexpensive casket or coffin, I don't want a nothing funeral. I want ‘When the saints go marching in’, played at the end of it!

James: it. Yes. 

Blanche: Fun. 

James: Yeah. Did Bob have much planning in the memorial? Did he think about that?  

Blanche: None. Unlike Gough [Whitlam]. Gough planned his funeral down to the last tea. Bob left it entirely to others. He didn't even think about it. 

James: Right. And what, what hand did you have in that? Was that something where it was hard to express perhaps your love because there's protocol, there's stuff that had to be done?  

Blanche: Oh, well, there were a number of formal speakers who had to be there, and I wasn't one of those.

The one person representing the family was his eldest child, Sue, and then all the rest were pollies. 

James: And did it feel like you, did that feel like a memorial of Bob Hawke or the Bob Hawke you knew, or the Bob Hawke we knew?

Blanche:  It was the Bob Hawke the public knew. But there's also a lot of, as you were saying, a lot of information in that.

Evelyn: Yeah. And, and I'd like to share this that, at a funeral, at least 80% of the guests there will find out something new about their person that they never knew. And we can all relate to that. So it's very common. And even sons and daughters, I've found, they know very little about their parents from before they were born.

So, you know, they don't even know these basic sort of questions when you ask them. They'll know where they were married, but they don't know the basic questions. So I think there is a need to talk about, you know, talk about our lives more, not talk about death, but talk about our lives more so that our children, you know, know about our lives before, you know, death.

James: I think it's one of the nice aspects of funeral is [to] find that relative you don't know very well and have a chat. So much will come out. Great stories will come out. And it will be those things like, What do you mean they did that after the war? What are you talking about? You know, because often they will never say it. How, Blanche, how do you think we should talk about death?

Blanche: Positively. It's inevitable and, and therefore to be, not to be feared and, and shrunken away from, but to anticipate with a certain degree of excitement. Look, I think it's a great adventure, because we don't know what's going to happen afterwards. But if you have a positive attitude, it's really worth looking, looking forward to. 

James: Yeah, if you go in with the positive attitude, I think they'll be pleased to see you. There's that nice Blanche. Come on in, we’ll have you there! 

Where should we, where should we be talking about death? When should we talk about death, Evelyn?

Evelyn:  Well, I'm one of the very low percent percentage of people who actually enjoy talking about death and I've been doing funerals for such a long, long time, and I find something really interesting is that I feel I live my life really quite fully, because you never know what's going to happen around the corner.

And I deal with all ages, you know, from just a baby to someone who's really old. But, you know, deal with suicides and people die in accidents. So I know that life is really quite brief, and is briefer than we even think, you know? And, uh, yeah, so I, uh, I don't know… what was the question? 

James: I mean, I think this picks up a little on what Blanche was saying about, you know, it's a secular society. It's an even more secular society than it ever was. We're even more removed from death than we ever were. Go back a few generations, you know… 

Blanche: And death was at home. 

James: Death was at home. 

Blanche: It's been medicalised. 

James: Exactly. It's been kept at home. You know, the body would be in the home. Children would die. You know, we're around death a lot more.

So now it's separated from us and then we don't even talk about it. So, and I suppose I'm interested in sort of, when, you know, should it be in schools? O should we talk about it more? Do you talk to your parents about their funeral plans? Like, when should we talk about death? 

[00:22:36] Evelyn: I think we should bring it in as soon as possible because we have animals that die. We just need kids to know what it is to die. Grandparents who died and, you know, bring it, bring it in as soon as possible. 

In elementary school, high school or, you know, we just need to get that conversation going. Unfortunately, we only think about it when we're diagnosed with something or if we lose a loved one. We think about it then. We think life, we can live life infinitely, but then something happens. So I know it's probably not the topic that people want to talk about, but there can be something quite beautiful. Like when we start talking about our funeral songs, when we just start talking about our lives. I think it's, I think it's quite exciting. 

Blanche: I think it's exciting, too. But obviously for kids, it's when they're grandparents die - well sometimes they're already adults when their grandparents die - but if they're little kids, start talking then. 

James: Yeah. Well, you increasingly, like when my grand-, when my first grandmother died, I was maybe seven or eight or something like that, it was not done to take the children to the funeral.

Blanche: That's right. 

James: The children were not to be going to the funeral. But now I think we do go, No, bring the children to the funeral. I think that's changed. 

Blanche: Yes. And I think that's positive. And especially if it's an uplifting funeral. 

James: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Or even if it's, even if it's not, I mean, children should experience that too, shouldn't they? They should understand the breadth of that emotion.

Blanche:  But whether it's uplifting or not doesn't depend on the nature of the death. 

James: No. 

Evelyn: I do think that sometimes when a person does die tragically, accident, or suicide or even murdered, there should be this, there should be like an authenticity about saying what happened, but really just the one sentence, because I know that you want to address the elephant in the room because people often say, Oh, God, how's she going to do this?

So I often say, you know, there's no words of comfort, you know, that we can really say that, you know, she's died tragically and you do have to use the word died. She's died tragically, but that's not who she was. This was just an event that was, you know, just took her life. We're not going to focus on that.

We're going to focus on, you know, what she loved to do, the music she loved, the people she loved. But I do think you do need to address that. You can't sugarcoat that. So sometimes celebrants and priests, they do make it all about the death, but I do think it is important to address the death, and be transparent about that.

And then you focus on the celebration. 

James: I use the word died all the time too. Like I'm a daily radio broadcaster, when I’m remarking on people I say they died yesterday. They died. 

Blanche and Evelyn: Yeah. 

James: This person died. He passed, passed away. I don't like it. I didn't…

Blanche: …Neither do I. 

James: They died. Died. Yeah. And it, it, it sort of seems to, I don't know, it makes it…

Blanche: It's a euphemism, 

The euphemism sort of, I don't know, it takes away from the solemnity of the event, almost, and the significance…

Blanche: I agree

James: I think we were talking before about, we don't think people want to talk about death. I think people love talking about it. Like, and again, on the radio show, we do it quite often.

People love it. You know, they write in, they're engaged. They want to talk about it. I did it to… I was with a friend the other night and for some reason it came up and I made the, I started talking about, you know, my beliefs or whatever. And you see the friend just suddenly stopped and went, Well, this is interesting.

You know, like, this is better than just, How was the footy, you know… 

Blanche: I never thought of that!

James: It sort of, the whole conversation, it sparked… we had a whole new level in the relationship… And I think that that's what these conversations are about, is hopefully they encourage, you know, other people listening to have, to talk about death.

Blanche: And a positive attitude. 

James: Yeah. Evelyn, how have funerals changed? Yeah, perhaps even in the course of your 17 years, over the 600, but also, yeah, maybe getting to remember your grandmothers or something like that. How do you think funerals have changed? 

Evelyn: Well, funerals have definitely changed in the last few years, mainly because of COVID, and we're using technology more.

And also what I've noticed as well is that there are people who will have a private cremation and then have a huge memorial, maybe not a week or two after, but maybe in a month or two after. So they're giving it a longer time to have, like, more of a bigger celebration of life. And, so my father died suddenly in 1997, and my mum was taking photos, and this was the camera, and I thought that was, I was so angry with her.

James: Taking photos during the funeral? 

Evelyn: She was, taking the funeral, yeah. It was, she was really upsetting me. But I'm so glad she did because I cherish those photos. So I think it's become more mainstream for people to take photos of the coffins, even, you know, film, film the ceremony. It might not be livestream, but they'll film the ceremony.

So that's actually been more, something that's been more in common. 

James: The video tribute is a, is often a big part. Now there'll be three or four minutes of photos and video.

Blanche: Yeah, that's normal, isn't it? 

Evelyn: Yeah, that's normal. And I try not to have too many tributes because,, you know, after five to six minutes, the audience tends to tune out and I've seen too many funerals… even if a person's a really good speaker, it's really got to be sort of short and sharp.

And I know that sounds horrible, if someone’s lived 90 years, but you can do it in three to four minutes or even to five minutes. 

James: Yeah. Wow. Well, a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much. Blanche, you are, you know, remarkably still full of life. Books are pouring out of you. The Bunny Club, available now, wherever books and libraries exist.

What's The Bunny Club about?

[laughter]

Evelyn: It sounds naughty actually.

James: It's sex and murder. I'll say it. It's murder and sex, right? 

Blanche: Right. 

[laughter]

James: Well, it's a very engaging read, and it's been a very engaging conversation with you as well. Thank you so much for coming. 

Blanche: Thank you, James. 

Evelyn: Thank you so much. 

James: Thank you to Blanche d’Alpuget and Evelyn Calaunan. You've been listening to season six of Life's Booming, Dying to Know, brought to you by Australian seniors.

Please leave a review and share this show with someone you know. Visit seniors. com. au slash podcast for more episodes. May your life be booming. I'm James Valentine.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.