Tender Funerals is changing the culture around death in Australia

In this conversation with Amy Sagar. We talk about her personal story that started with Amy joining the  funeral industry at the age of 16 and what personally lead Amy to join the not for profit organisation Tender Funerals as their first Funeral Director. This was a really juicy conversation where we talk about death as community care and how meaningful and transformational it can be to involve community at all levels of the death and grieving process. We talk about rituals and ceremonies that can be held to honor and revere our loved ones who have died.

You’ll hear us discuss:

• Amy's personal story about how she joined the funeral industry at age 16
• How caring for the dead can be transformational
• Rituals for grieving and saying goodbye 
• Different options for caring for our family members body
• How rituals after our family member has passed can create a gentler bereavement
• The impact community death care is creating
• Death literacy starting with our children and how to navigate talking about death

MEET AMY SAGAR

Amy Sagar is a Funeral Director and has spent 15 years supporting families and communities in caring for their dead and creating meaningful funeral ceremonies. Amy was the founding funeral director of the not-for-profit funeral home Tender Funerals which recently featured on ABC's Australian Story.

"Provide care for that person, which means washing and dressing their body. It's a ceremonial last act of caring for someone's body. When we have the funeral ceremony, that's the final thing that happens before the disposal of the body, We can hopefully get to a point at the end where we can say goodbye, let go of that person so that their body can be cremated or buried. But if we're only saying hello to their body for the first time in that ceremony, it's harder to say goodbye."

Connect with Amy
Instagram - @my.wilder.self

Connect with Tender Funerals

https://tenderfunerals.com.au
https://tenderfunerals.com.au/illawarra

Instagram - @tenderfuneralsillawarra
@tenderfunerals

Connect with Rachael Rose

Instagram: @the_rachael_rose

Website www.rachaelrose.com.au

"It's absolutely different for everyone. Part of grief is joy, bliss and laughter. They are all within the spectrum of grief, if we let our children see the full range, then that also normalizes that for grief. You don't have to always be sad."

Full Transcript attached

Music by Edwina Masson 'The Feminine Spitfire'

Transcript

Amy Sagar Tender Funerals

[00:00:00] 

[00:01:00] 

Rachael Rose: Today I speak with Amy Sagar. Amy is a funeral director who has spent 15 years supporting families and communities to care for their dead and create meaningful funeral ceremonies. Amy was the founding funeral director of the Not-for-Profit Funeral Home Tender Funerals, which recently featured on ABC's Australian story.

In this conversation, we obviously speak about death because death is not a dirty word, and Amy is trying to change death culture. We talk about death as community care and how meaningful and transformational it can be to involve community at all levels of the death and grieving process. We talk about rituals and ceremonies that can be held [00:02:00] to honor and revere our loved ones who have died.

And Amy also provides some insight into how to navigate talking about death with children. I'm gonna leave it there because this episode is so juicy. I just want you to dive straight in and. Know that these skills, they're innate within us. We know how to care for our loved ones when it comes to birth, when it comes to death, but something along the line has been lost in translation, and so we can bring it back.

We can bring community care back for birth and we can bring community care back for death. Enjoy. Welcome to together. Amy, I am really excited to have you on. I feel like we have been Instagram [00:03:00] friends for a number of years, and. I've come from the background of birth work and you are in death work and there are so many similarities in birth and death and honouring it as a rite of passage. So I'm just really honored that you are here today.

We were meant to catch up in person years ago and it never unfolded, but I feel like maybe this was the way it was supposed to go. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to work for Tender and who Tender funerals? Illawarra are as well?

Amy Sagar: Yeah. So I'm Amy Sagar, and thank you so much for inviting me and welcoming me onto podcast. Because this is all part of how we change their culture. So I see you for that and I appreciate that as well. I'm coming [00:04:00] to you from Dharawal Land, in Port Kembla. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, which I'm sitting on today.

All of the history that comes with that as well. I am a funeral director and I have been a funeral director for 15 years now, which is wild because I started when I was 16, so I'm still in young, feels like I'm not old enough for anything to have been 15 years ago yet. But Here we are. I started my career as a funeral director in the traditional funeral industry, and I worked through all the different roles in the industry working with families who'd experienced loss, attending funerals.

I learned to drive on funeral vehicles cuz I was a teenager. And we sort of drew the line at putting an l plate on the hurst. And then I worked in the mortuary, which is really where I wanted to end up. That was my original goal. So wanted to be in mortician and Inal. And I worked through a few [00:05:00] different funeral homes as different companies got sold.

Moved across, which meant that I got to work in different roles and ended up doing all of the on call, transferring the deceased into our care. So I worked in all of the different aspects of it, but what I found in that time was that we were very rigid in what we could offer, and the few people that knew how to advocate having access to their debt were given access.

But a little bit. Begrudgingly, like it was an inconvenience for the funeral home. And I really didn't like that. I, because the people that I did get to work with in, in caring for their dent, and that would be people who had that in their cultural practice like our Islander community.

They were incredible and they knew what they were doing and they weren't traumatized, and it was clearly very beneficial for them. And so I wanted to see more people have access to that, which I wasn't allowed to offer in the traditional funeral [00:06:00] home that I worked in. And I had a few other values across in that time.

But it informed everything that I knew. And so I'd come to this point where I was like, I wanna see a change. I started writing a business model for something different, and then someone in the death literacy community that I knew said, oh, there's a documentary coming out on SBS that I think you'd like.

It's called Tender. And I watched the documentary and it was about a community in Port Kembla that were part of a community center and they wanted to open a not-for-profit funeral home and they wanted their community to have access to their dead. And I was so relieved cuz I was like, Ugh, I don't have to do it.

I can help do it. That would be amazing. So I dedicated all of my energy into supporting that project. Which at that stage I didn't even have any intention of running. I just wanted to see it exist in the world. But over time I [00:07:00] volunteered on that project for two years for them to get to a point where they could open.

And then I left the traditional funeral industry after eight years to join tender, Iora and run. So I was the only funeral home, the funeral director. That was employed in tender for the first 12 months. So it was myself and our incredible leader Jenny Brisco Huff, and she was the general manager of the community center that made the whole project happen.

And she drove that project for seven years before it opened. So she was responsible for rallying our community in getting it funded. Cause it's a. And so Jenny and I would I would be in the office during the day and occasionally if I needed help picking up a body from somewhere, I'd call her and she'd join me.

And then she'd go back to the community center and I'd go back to the funeral home and do what I needed to do on my end. And then we grew and our community started calling on us more and more. And now we've been open for six years. [00:08:00] I went on to be the general manager of tender funerals and then took maternity leave to have my babies.

So I've come back as a funeral director now so that I can work part-time and also be home with my babies. So, to introduce tender funerals and what whereabout is, we believe that everyone should have access to a funeral regardless of your financial status, and that funeral should be beautiful regardless of your financial status.

The beautiful funerals look different for everyone. So there's no cookie cutter for that. It's really about understanding what your options are, having them all available to you, and then picking from those options what is best for you and the person with that. So it's very simple. It's actually going back to an old way of doing things.

We haven't invented the wheel. We're just going back to what used to happen. Because what used to happen when we died is that our families would care for our bodies. And it's only in the last [00:09:00] few generations that we've sort of stepped away from that. Now culture's become very removed from death and we care about our people who've died.

And so we are just giving people that option again. And it's interesting because you look at most of the other cultural groups around the world, and most of them do choose to look after they're dead. But our Anglo Australians are just so removed from that practice. But the incredible thing that's happening is that now that we are giving people those options again, people are taking it up and they're having transformative experiences of that.

So it's it's all leading towards healthier bereavement for people because they're not going into financial debt for something that is not necessarily of value to them. They're making informed decisions they're having Empowerment. They're experiencing empowerment in depth and having funerals that they and their whole communities can feel proud of.

So we're connecting people back to their communities as well.[00:10:00] The way we see it is if we can do funerals and teach our community how to do funerals, eventually they might not need us. And that would be an incredible thing that's tender.

Rachael Rose: Amazing. I put it out there to my Instagram community if they had any questions for you. And I received dozens of responses and most of them were really just how, what, why we can care for our dead in our home. It can look different to what funerals I've attended. Where do we begin? Just tell us more and.

Probably, I would say some shock as well. Some shock at the people would want to do it, and then almost immediately oh, of course we would want to do it. So yeah, I think it's really innate in all of us these practices and these rituals and holding death as [00:11:00] ceremony. It's just that you've said, like you said, we've lost it over a few generations, but we can revitalize it and we can bring it back and there are thriving cultural practices today that are still. Looking after, they're dead in the most beautiful ways. So if a family member has died, What options are there? I mean, that's a huge question I know, but for most people it would be, okay, I'll look up the local funeral home and we'll pick out a casket and we'll have a ceremony, and that's kind of it.

What are some alternatives?

Amy Sagar: The first thing I normally ask people when they call me to say that someone's died is I say, where is your person now? And they will either be in a nursing home, in the hospital, in the coroners, or at home. [00:12:00] And if they're at home, I say to them, do you want them to leave or would you like them to stay?

Because I think what most people don't realize is that in New South Wales you can keep a ho, a body at home for up to five days after the death. And you do that using some kind of refrigeration. So yeah. And then other parts all around Australia, you can hire a cool plate. We have two cool plates, which is, it's a refrigerated metal tray that slides underneath the torso of someone and it helps keep their body cold.

So that's what's, and if you don't have access to a Kool Vape, you can use dry ice or blocks of ice packs from the freezer and get creative. So you still have access to that. And then for some people they might have been caring for that person through a permanent illness experience, and for that care to end, the moment that they die is like a stark end in [00:13:00] departure because it's like, not only have they died, but then their body is taken away and they're no longer.

Entrusted to have the capacity to care for the person, when actually they're probably one of the most skilled people to, to care for that body. So it's just an opportunity to have a continuation of that care and a completion of that care, which for some people, might feel very complete. However, the other people caring is incredibly exhausting and it comes as a relief when it ends.

And there's absolutely place for that. And for those people, they would be so ready to say goodbye to that person's body and for them to be taken to the funeral home. So it's not even about there being a right or a wrong, it's about knowing what your options are and deciding what's right for you.

You've got your call plate, and then if the person died in a nursing home, in a hospital, or in some cases when they're in the AL Court, you can take their body back home after if you want to. So there's always that option. But I do seem to [00:14:00] find that it's very popular for the people who are continuing that care.

It's all circumstantial though.

Rachael Rose: If a body was in a hospital or in the coroners who pays for the transportation, like just the practicalities around that.

Amy Sagar: The family would end up paying in for it. The funeral director would be engaged to go and do the transfer. So, cause we've been engaged to go and bring that person into our care, we drive there we collect the person and bring them back to the funeral home we have for that. And same for the coroners.

We go to the coroner's court and go to the mortuary there to be able to bring the person back into our care. In some cases, if the bodies had to travel to a different morgue for their investigation, then the coroner might cover that, but that's really an unusual case. It's not the norm.

Rachael Rose: You've mentioned that laying hands on the [00:15:00] deceased can be a really transformational experience for loved ones and it can influence the trajectory of grief. Can you tell me a little bit about what you mean there?

Amy Sagar: Yeah, I think for most people they've never seen someone who's died before. And so we know what death is as a concept, and then when someone we know and care about dies, it's like they've disappeared in a way into like that great abusive mystery of they're dead, but we don't know what that looks like or what that feels like or where they are now.

We just know that we're not gonna see them again and there'll be a ceremony at some stage. But what can be helpful is if. We can go and see the person who's died. And then when we participate in caring for their body, is we do, we lay our hands on their body and doing this helps that [00:16:00] information come to us of allowing our body to catch up to what our mind already knows.

So it's like, I know that this person's died. Well, this is what it feels like they have died. They feel different. They look different. It's still them. They still look like them, but there is something different here. And so it allows us to catch up with the reality of it, but in a way that provides informational feedback around it.

And in a way that's not scary. It doesn't have to be scary. We have this This thing in our society. I remember when I was 16 and I was seeing the first body I had ever seen and I was in work placement in the funeral home. And then for me it was big cuz it was like a career defining moment.

If I can handle this, I can do my dream career, but if I can handle this, then that's not gonna work out. And I just remember all of the things that were going through my mind was [00:17:00] like, the only times I've really seen death is in Hollywood movies and it's zombies and vampires and it's not really in a normal way not really in a relatable way.

And of course my logical brain knows that and understands that. But when that's the only influence that you've had, there is still a little part of me that's like, Is something gonna happen?

Should I be afraid here? Like, there's that little instinct in you when that's the only input you've had. And I grew up incredibly death literate.

And I remember when I saw this little old man in his coffin and he was in, in his suit. It was almost like the world's biggest anti-climax because I was like, oh, sad. It was just a. He's not a vampire. It was just so ordinary, and I had so prepared myself for the fact that [00:18:00] it might be traumatic that I hadn't considered, but it could be ordinary.

And so I, I always keep that in my pocket because that is, You know, in some ways the experience of a lot of the people that I see every day coming and having that experience for the first time, and what we say to people in those times is that you're about five minutes away from not being afraid anymore because you're going to come and you're gonna see that's still your person and you're not going to be afraid then.

So it's sort of like this work is like changing death culture and then saying that actually it's incredibly ordinary. And it is profound and it's deep, but it's also ordinary.

Rachael Rose: That just makes me think of birth because I will often refer to birth as the most extraordinary, ordinary day of your life like it is. It is a physiological, biological process. It is normal and it has been misrepresented in popular culture [00:19:00] and Hollywood and a lot of women go into birth with fears around birth and what birth will look like and.

I also think about as a doula, one of my favorite moments after a birth is, Wiping a woman's legs down. So often there is blood involved in birth and sometimes that blood is more scary, but often it is just a part of the process of birth. And there's this moment when they're holding their baby in their.

In this love bubble and whoever has attended the birth will get a warm washcloth and a bowl of water and just lovingly wash that blood off the woman's legs. I had it done to me as well, and I remember just thinking, oh, this is so sacred and holy and normal as well. So, Is that something that you see families do as well?

[00:20:00] Actually wash and tend to the bodies?

Amy Sagar: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a little bit like you said earlier with the feedback that you got for the questions for this interview because what we find here is most people come to us because we're an enough at funeral home and they don't always realize the full scale of what we're going to offer them.

And so I suppose you would say they are not necessarily coming to seek something different. So they're often surprised by it, but in a really great way. And so when we say to people I wanna talk about your person now, and I wanna talk about the sort of mor treat care that they may receive here.

And I'd like to have a really franken fearless conversation about that. And I go through all of the options and I explain, we're not attached at all to any of the decisions you make except for the fact that you are making an informed decision, which is why we're telling you all of this. And we'll explain to them that they [00:21:00] have the opportunity to provide the care for that person, which means doing a washing and addressing of their body.

And the washing isn't even because they're dirty. It's more of a ceremonial act as the last act of caring for someone's body. And then we dress them. And they might wanna do that themselves. They might want us to join them in doing that, or they might wanna do that themselves without us in the room at all.

Or they might say that they don't want to be part of that mortuary care for us to do it on their behalf. Or they might say they have been coated and potted enough. Leave them be. And so it just depends on what people, I just say to them, what does say about those options? What feels right for you?

And most people have never even considered washing and dressing the body before. And so they have an instinct of , oh no, our family don't do that. Thanks, but no [00:22:00] thanks. But what we found is because they've got that information, They might ask us a few hours a day later. I've been thinking more about it.

I'm really unsure. Can you tell me more about that option? And then we talk to them about it, pretty much everything we've just spoken about today so far. And they say, oh, okay maybe we will try that, but we want you in the room to join us. And then those people come and do that, and they have these.

Completely profound experiences and experiences where they sort of go like, I can't believe I wasn't gonna do this and this is the best thing that I could have ever done. And what we found is that when we had a funeral, the funeral ceremony, that's the final thing that happens before the disposal of the body, which means it's before the cremation of the burial. And it's really. In a helpful ceremony, we [00:23:00] can hopefully get to a point at the end where we can say goodbye, let go of that person so that they, their body can be cremated and buried. But if we're only saying hello to their body for the first time in that ceremony, it's like you're trying to say goodbye, not.

Not be reunited in a way. So if you have a process where you're spending time with the body and you're washing and dressing them and potentially even seeing changes happening in their body after they've died, such as early stages of decomposition, which sounds awful, but actually can be very slight then we can and ourselves reach a point to say, oh, it's time for them to go.

It's time for their body to go. Which is really the power as well of having someone at home for a period of time because you can start to see those little minor changes happening and sort of realize that we are not a mor and we can't hold onto them forever. So then they come to the point where they go to the funeral and there's so much further down their process because they've already [00:24:00] had this experience.

So, it's not for everyone because there are some people that really do not want to do that, and I think that if you make anyone do something, they don't wanna do it. It's gonna be really traumatizing. But if you don't let someone do something that's really important to them, it's equally traumatizing. And so it's just about giving people all of those options and letting them navigate that in a way that's right for them. And also allowing space for them to change their mind because the process of grief is it's a journey and it's different every day and it's different in every moment. And so there needs to be space for people to change their mind depending on what's right them each day as well.

Rachael Rose: And usually funerals take place quite quickly, so, the funerals that my family's been involved in, so much focus has been on the organization and the preparation and the choosing this, and the choosing that, and it's almost like the grief is on [00:25:00] hold while the practical stuff is happening. And then I'm just thinking like, yeah, they're saying hello and goodbye at the same time in a very public setting, when we have all of these other cultural and societal layers around.

Expressing our emotions and showing vulnerabilities and crying and being angry and loud. And so funerals that I've been at, there's been stifled cries and there's been apologies for feeling. And I just think the more that can happen in, in, in moments with families and communities before the big finale of the funeral, I feel like that makes a lot of sense.

Amy Sagar: Yeah, absolutely. And it is an incredibly busy time after someone's died, but what we can do is we can work to be a community planning a funeral rather than one person planning a funeral. But the benefit of that is [00:26:00] that, There's a few benefits actually. Often the funeral director is the main support person.

They're the ones who are being relied on for everything being the, all knowing of what all the options are and how to get all of the options and the runaround person and all of that, which is helpful. And when I was a traditional funeral director, I used to love when people would say to me, thank you so much.

I could not have done this without you. But now when I come from a model of community empowerment, I think I have completely disempowered that community by being that one person. And if a family leaves a funeral now and they say, okay, bye. And they go to their community and say, we did such a good job.

I think, ah, we've done it. That's a good funeral. And the way that we achieve that is that when we sit down as a funeral director to arrange the funeral, We make a list with the family and we say, here are all the things that need to happen for the [00:27:00] funeral and need to be done, see to-do list. And that's like, there needs to be catering for the week.

Someone has to order flowers, someone has to do printing, someone has to do design work, not has to, could, might do if that's what they want. We need food at our house. The kids are hungry and I can't fathom cooking for them right now. All of those little things, we're gonna have a funeral in the backyard and you know what the lawn could do with the mow and someone should do something about those weeds.

So you just put all of it on a list and then we say to families, Do you know who your community are? And most people will say no, because it's like, what's your community? That's like, I have friends, but we say to them, everyone who sent a message to say, I'm so sorry for your loss. Let me know if you can do anything.

I'm sending my condo condolences. That is your people putting their hand up and saying, I identify as your community, so there is your force that's around you. So then you can, as a gift to your community, offer them the list [00:28:00] because all of them are on the outside feeling incredibly helpless and just itching for something to do to try and help to make it better because they're seeing you, you know, a point of potential distress.

And so by giving them something like. The kids only have oatmeal and we are outat milk, and I can't let them go into the shops. But then they're like, oh, please let me get the milk because I just am, itching to do something. But what it does is that then starts a conversation, there's a communication that happens, which is like, do they have a type of brand?

I'm, is there a special shop that you want it from? When are you available for me to drop it in? But. In that communication, they have connected with someone who's bereaved, where bereavement is often an incredibly isolating time and sometimes people dunno what to say and feel incredibly nervous about saying the wrong things.

So they say nothing. [00:29:00] But if they can communicate about milk, there's being an in and they sort of see that's still the same person and they can still communicate like a human being. But they might have some different fluctuations about them. And it means when they go to the funeral, there's something to talk about.

Oh, do you need more milk? I was in the shops the other day and I thought of you, you can just send me a message if you ever need more milk. It's building a supportive community around you so that when the funeral's over and the funeral director disappears, they don't even notice because what we've been doing is we've been strengthening the muscles of every person in that community on what to do when someone dies and how to support someone in bereavement.

So if the funeral director is that main person, then we leave. The core people buckle and the community still don't know how to communicate with someone who's bereaved, what to do when someone dies and how to support each other or what's helpful. And the person often struggles with [00:30:00] asking for help or saying what they need, but if we look at it as like we're giving everyone a gift and they're meeting it with immense relief, then that changes the whole thing.

Right. The knock on impact of that is that when you come to the funeral, you've got the neighbor going, those flowers are for my garden. I feel so proud to have had a part in this ceremony. And then you see someone else saying I make that thing for the wake, and I feel so happy that I got to contribute to this ceremony, that in a way that this ceremony belongs to us.

To everyone. And then what happens is one of their neighbors die and they'll say, oh, you know, mum died and we just dunno what to do. And they'll go, I know what to do. We just need a pen and paper and we'll figure this out. So it's like having these waves. Every funeral we do is an opportunity for [00:31:00] people to learn what to do when someone dies, and that's how we change death culture and that's how we become an informed community.

So it is, it's so big and it's on so many levels, and it all just starts with one person.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, I've got tears rolling down my cheeks because that's so beautiful. It's such a vulnerable time to ask for help as well, but it's one of the most important times. And again, I just think of birth and mothers in the postpartum period and how we are trying to change the culture around showing up for mothers and taking care of mothers.

And a lot of it is just teaching the skills that have been lost over generations. And I think about the ripple effects of what you are doing is like, You wouldn't even be able to count the number of people that have been impacted and lives benefited from the death and the treatment of the death as [00:32:00] important, and everyone banning together.

It's like exponential. And I love too that it's. It's very centered around your local community in Port Kembla. But these people are connected to people all over the world. So they'll tell their friends who live on opposite sides of Australia or the globe, and then these ripples upon ripples about how to take care.

It's huge. It's huge, Amy, because yeah, we are, we feel allergic to death in some ways and that. Oh God, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. Well, it's so practical. Go get the dog food. Like that's what I need. And that's a really big deal. And if everybody has their little part to play, I just think it's phenomenal.

 Communities also come together in different ways and tender funerals in that they'll do other rituals before the funeral. I've seen like they'll paint. Beautiful coffins or they'll have different types of funerals. I loved in [00:33:00] the Australian story interview one man arrived at his funeral in the back of a ute.

I just love that you are giving permission to make. Ceremony. Look however it needs to look for that family. Can you tell us a little bit about the fact that we could have a funeral in our backyard if we wanted to, or at the beach it doesn't need to look how we think it needs to look.

Amy Sagar: Yes, absolutely. I really believe that in a way anything can be sacred if you hold it as sacred. And so really anything goes as long as it's in context to your own people. There's no blanket rules for anything. So in our mortuary, I would never swear, but if a family came in and swore at they're deceased because that's how they communicate, that's how it should be done.

You know, it's, and so it's just like everything is in context to the person, your relationship with the person. Did they like motorbikes? Maybe we should put them on a motorbike to go to their funeral. [00:34:00] Did they really love a nice clean, slick rehearse? Where they off? Did they like, do they want a funeral on Friday the 13th?

Because we can do that. Because it's like anything goes, it's just about opening up the conversation around what was their personality like? So that's what I normally say to people is I understand a little bit about them, and I say, now tell me about their personality and their interests, and then. Hobbies were, and then I say, if you could dream up like the perfect funeral for this person, what would it look like? And I often have to tell people to be careful about joking because I can make it happen normally actually be coming in on a skateboard. So it's like people sometimes want us to deliver the family.

What's possible. But it's like saying how long is a piece of string? So I try to break it down. Were they religious? Do you think they wanted all, would've wanted a funeral indoors or outdoors? [00:35:00] Is it like, what's your vibe? You do a live check, like, was it a party? We've got a funeral coming up that's actually a bush do and they're doing a camp out and But it's so endless.

It is so incredibly endless. And we have lots of different types of coffins. We can see them on our website, which is from very traditional looking to environmentally friendly to more creative options. And some of them are DIY so that people can paint them, they can write on them during the ceremony, they can weave flowers and ribbons into wo problems, and.

There's so many options and sometimes it does come down to identifying their community. If they were in a community of artists, they probably would really like the opportunity to dee someone's coffin in saying that you don't have to be an artist to do that, that it's so endless. It's so endless.

Rachael Rose: One of the other questions that came through a number of times was involving children in the grieving process and [00:36:00] in rituals. I. Where do we start? Is it honest conversation? How much can children handle when it comes to talking and being around death?

Amy Sagar: Look, children are so resilient, they're incredible, and they're also very observant. Probably more so than what they've given credit for sometimes. I think you're absolutely right. It has to be centered off honesty and true. And it depends always on the child's age and their previous exposure, understanding to death.

I always advocate for death literacy in children before a death has occurred. I was raised that way, so I can tell you that was helpful. Not traumatic. I can't guarantee there won't be a funeral director when they're older, but I think that part of me becoming a funeral director when I was 16 is because it was already an ordinary thing in our life.

And so I was just raised knowing [00:37:00] about the the different. Family members that were dead and the causes of their death and the details of their suicides as a very ordinary thing. And most adults around me were very surprised by that. I remember observing that as a child, but not really understanding that it was a taboo thing.

And so it serves to, to prove that children aren't born with that taboo. It is a learned thing in our culture, in our community. And so if we can just be really ordinary about it, they will just pick that up. So I have a a four year old who is like my greatest case study because I have been teaching him about death from the moment he can.

Talk even before then really, and just weaving it into ordinary parts of our conversations. And we look to nature, you know, look at that beautiful tree that's alive and that grew from a seed. [00:38:00] And then look at that tree over there and it's that tree's dead. And look at these leaves on the ground.

They've been dropped from the tree in these aren't alive anymore. And so it nature is an excellent teacher about death in a way that doesn't have the emotional connection. Relative. And then if we teach that then means that when grandma dies, we can explain Grandma died, like that tree died. So that tree still exists, but it's not alive anymore and it's changing.

It's not growing new leaves. And then as the children are at different stages, you can have conversations about grandma's body. Grandma's not breathing anymore. Her body stopped working and children ask the funniest questions about death because they'll say things like, what did grandma's eyes look like now?

I dunno why but IED that so many children. I don't know what [00:39:00] that's about. It's fascinating though, and I just answer as honestly as I can and if I dunno the answer, I say, I dunno the answer to that. But maybe we can ask someone who does. So I've worked with a lot of families answering questions with their children as we approach going and reviewings and things of their loved ones and Like, so say they ask about the eyes, you could say, you know, we can see her eyes.

Her eyes, but her eyes can't see us anymore. And they're and then they normally say, what do I look like if you open them? And we could just say they just look a little bit different in color. They start to eventually look a little bit cloudy, but otherwise much the same.

And so it's like, You don't have to shoot it down. You don't have to go too far into it. And I normally answer children with little slices of information rather than a big, convoluted answer. Because if I give them an in, that's like an invitation for them to explore further or to be like, [00:40:00] yep, done. Moving on.

 I don't have to go too far into it. And most of the time they're so fleeting in all of it that it's like, We're gonna go see dead grandma. Now we're so excited to go see Dead Grandma. What's it gonna be like? What are her eyes gonna look like? What happens if we open our eyes?

Okay. Alright. I'm pretty bored now. Like you've answered my questions. I'm ready to move on. And their parents are like, I'm still shadowed, like I'm still nervous. Questions. And you just moved on.

Rachael Rose: Oh, that was my three and a half year old at my birth. Like, you know, after a while at first was like, oh mommy, you're amazing. You're doing so well. Oh, pat your hair. And then a couple hours later, this is boring. Can I watch blue? And it's like, they live. So in the present moment that. We try to overlay our experiences on theirs because we want them to be sad, but they'll express it in their own way.[00:41:00] 

Amy Sagar: And then a week later they'll be doing something completely unrelated and ask you the deepest question about it. And it's like, where did come from? And then they'll move on. It was nothing. And you're like, you've just brought everything back.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, someone asked me like, she's just had the recent death of her father and it was very sudden and she's in a grieving process herself and she has two young children, and she wanted to pitch the question like, does she grieve openly in front of her children? Is there too much? Should she hold it in?

Obviously you can't answer that in a definitive yes or no, but what are your thoughts on grieving in front of children?

Amy Sagar: I think that our actions sometimes speak louder than our words, and that everything we do is teaching our children what to do. And so if you want your children to feel like it's okay for them to cry when something's wrong or when they're sad, then you need to role model that [00:42:00] and you need to be able to communicate that as well.

 It's just as simple as, if you're sad, you can cry and you can say to your child what you're experiencing. I'm feeling sad because my dad died and I miss him. And you don't have to go too far into it unless they're asking questions and needing more information because it's like you don't wanna put it all on them.

But I do think that it's really healthy to have expressions of that for them to see, because this is what sets their expectations of what happens when someone dies because. One day they will be grieving one day, someone they know who will be grieving and they'll be like, well, I have a a guide around this on what to expect.

And it's absolutely different for everyone, but I really have to add to that. Part of grief is joy and bliss and laughter. They are all within the spectrum of grief, and so [00:43:00] if we let our children see the full range, then that also normalizes that for grief. You don't have to always be sad.

And they get to see that sometimes you're sad and then you can move back to being happy and then you can move back to be sad, like you don't have to be sad the whole time. And all of that is just that information that we don't think that they're picking up, but they sort of do. And so it's just about if you're feeling it and it's your truth, you can express it.

And if you need to communicate with your feeling, what you're feeling with your child, have an outlet beyond your child for deeper conversations around it. But I think that it all belongs.

Rachael Rose: I love that. If somebody is listening to this and they had a funeral that was more of the traditional lens and they didn't have a lot of hands-on or ritualistic elements to that death [00:44:00] dying process and the grief process, I imagine it's never too late to bring reverence in. What are some things that people can do after the fact, after a funeral has been and gone, maybe on anniversaries or even on other auspicious states?

What have you seen that your community does in the long term for grief?

Amy Sagar: Yeah, I think long-term grief is so underrated in a way people move on or people think you move on, but you don't, in some cases think you're right. Auspicious days especially are wonderful days to be able to celebrate the person who died or mourn the person who died or publicly remember them in a way that feels safer.

And you're also right that it's never too late. You can always do that, and that might look like having a memorial, which is public with a lot of people to some kind of event. And that might look like a dinner, [00:45:00] might be drinks, might be around a campfire might be in a women's circle, or it could be in any other sort of setting that feels right for you, both formal or informal.

Or it could be private just yourself, which is where you could do ceremonies where you sort of mark a moment in time. You take pause. You might want to light a candle or light an incense stick. You could do some kind of reflection, memory work, anything you want to share with them, tell them, forgive them for, ask them to forgive you for.

Any of those things can be done in rituals at any time. Could do it at the beach and sort of release it into the waves or you could release pets into the ocean, sort of watch them drift off and they can hold anything that you want to send out. It's so endless and it's a bit hard to know.

What's possible when you're not familiar with different types of [00:46:00] rituals and ceremonies, but you can even Google letting go ceremonies or honoring ceremonies to see what comes up, but understand your purpose in what you're wanting to achieve in a ceremony, because that will probably drive what you do in it.

But if you are wanting your community to have an expression of the person. You together have a open mic and say, oh, everyone, I want you to share your favorite memory of my mom, or everyone. I've created an email account and I want everyone to email me your favorite memory. So I've got all of that all sent.

Email me every photo you have. There's so many creative ways that you can do anything like that.

Rachael Rose: Thank you, Amy. This has been a beautiful conversation. If you could leave my listeners. With any final words about death, culture, death as a rite of passage, what would it be?

Amy Sagar: I think it would be to know [00:47:00] that even if you are not with a tender funeral, Everything that we have spoken about is accessible to you, with the exception of perhaps, the not-for-profit funeral. But there are different decisions that you can make to advocate for and informed a more affordable funeral.

But more so if you want to transport your own deceased, if you want to take their body home. If you want to participate in caring for their body, or if you want to have a creative funeral that doesn't fit the cookie cutter experience of funerals in Australia generally. It's just about knowing that you have that option in New South Wales and many other parts of the most other parts of Australia, and advocating for that with your funeral director.

And if your funeral director can't do it, then they're not the funeral director for you. You just move along to the next one and ask them what they can do.

Rachael Rose: Thank you. If anyone would like to [00:48:00] support Tender funerals, what's the best way?

Amy Sagar: We've acknowledged that we were on Australian story even before Australian story. When we opened. We were getting calls from all around Australia, from communities saying, we want to have tender funeral. So we've been working with those communities to open tenders all around Australia and then after Australian story that exploded into many communities.

Driving, opening their own local funeral home. That's a not-for-profit. So we've created a social franchise around that where they're all not-for-profits and we have many of them currently fundraising to be able to open attended funerals. So you can go to the website, which is www.tendfuneralsaustralia.com au, Google it.

It'll come straight up. And all of the different sites are there, so you can make a donation to any of them. You might be interested in your local area. And that goes a really [00:49:00] long way receiving those donations cuz it goes directly to when are able to establish tenders or if you are making donations to existing funeral homes you can nominate for that donation to go towards operations or for that donation to.

Go towards paying for someone's funeral who can't otherwise afford a funeral. Cause we have benevolent funds to make that accessible for people. So, , you've got quite a few choices there and we are always so grateful for those donations because that's in a way our community taking ownership of all of this as something that, that stands to.

Rachael Rose: Community care is death work. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you so much, Amy.

Amy Sagar: Thank.

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