Okay, good afternoon, everybody. This is our special summer reading
program. And we are talking to Mary McCreevey today who is joining us from Minnesota.

And she is a social media superstar that has a TikTok account called tips from dead people.

And it's a very catchy title that kind of, well, you see it and you're like, oh, what's
tips from dead people? And then you watch a couple of videos and they're fabulous. 

So I thought Mary would be a great person to talk to us about obituaries and just the whole
cloud of why obituaries are important and why we should maybe all write our own obituary.

So Mary, if you would like to take it away, I will quit talking.

Thank you so much, Jamie. And thanks for having me. I just in the previous 10 minutes, I've
learned so much about the Wolfner library and the services available to people. 

And I'm happy to know that it makes me feel so happy. So all I see are avatars, which is totally
fine. But just know that you can stop me from rambling at any time. I would love here. 

I'll put my glasses on. If you put stuff in the chat, I'll find it and we can have more of a conversation
too. But I thought I would start by just telling you a little bit about my background and how
I fell into this very strange chapter of my life. 

So I am originally from South Dakota, as I mentioned.
And I've, as an adult, I've lived all over the country in Wisconsin, Indiana, New York,
Texas, and now Minnesota. And as I would travel to these different places, I would
have good jobs, decent jobs that I cared about. 

But I wouldn't ever say that I was the kind of person when they tell you to find your passion. I don't think I ever really did that. And I come
from a family of very high achievers. I don't know if any of you guys can relate to that. And I
always sort of had this feeling that maybe I wasn't doing anything noteworthy or doing something that
would land my obituary, for example, in the New York Times, as we were just talking about.

And that kind of as a competitive person in today's achievement oriented culture, that always kind of
bugged me. So that's part of my story. And I part of my job, I did social work for a while,
and then I made a transition into doing video production. 

So I was a producer, director for a small, women owned video production company in St. Paul for the most recent, about 18
years. So alongside that, in South Dakota, my mom was the briefly, the obituary editor for my
hometown paper, the Sioux Falls Argeus leader. And I was a young kid then, but I paid attention
to what was happening and started reading the obituaries. 

And that has been a lifelong hobby, but only recently one that I talked about, because I really thought it was just too kind of quirky
or peculiar. I'm not sure. So a few years ago, I was in the midst of a very stressful work project,
and I thought I don't have like a craft that I do. I'm not artsy craftsy. 

I don't have a, I'm not musical. I don't have those skills. But I thought I need something creative to do. So I'm
going to dig out all the obituaries that I've saved over the years, because I would flip out
good ones in all the cities that I lived in. 

I'm going to figure out why I saved them, and I'm going to share them on social media. 

And I really, I really didn't care. And honestly, probably still
wouldn't matter if people watched, because it was something that I wanted to do for myself.
I have three daughters in their twenties. So they were my in-house geek squad. 

And I asked them about the different platforms and what they thought of as the pros and cons. And if I were going to
do this project, they would recommend. So their first reaction, of course, was like cringe. Why
would our mom ever do this? But they ultimately helped me out and are now my biggest supporters.
So at the time, they recommended TikTok. 

And they said, TikTok is a place where you can be a little
messy, a little bit less curated, a little bit less polished or advertorial or whatever.
So I did a quick lesson on how to post a TikTok video. I had never done it before.

And I started just sharing good obituaries that I had collected and that I thought maybe could
help people like me who weren't sure if they had followed the right path in life or were looking
for something different or just it was good writing. That's kind of really didn't have an agenda. I
took me about two minutes to come up with the name. 

I'm sure a branding agency would probably have told me not to say tips from dead people and put a happy tombstone as my logo. But I did. And
I went along for a couple months just posting a couple videos here and there. And then I don't
know as the algorithm does one of the videos that I posted, which if you, I mean, I can tell you
which one it was, it was the most unlikely video of all. 

I posted it and went to bed. And then the morning I woke up and it had over a million views and like over 5,000 comments just in that
one overnight. So somehow that video caught a wave and then TikTok started putting me on a faster
highway. And then I quickly got up to, I think almost a couple hundred thousand followers and
people from the media started calling public radio, public television, newspapers, like,
what's this crazy little thing all about? 

It was kind of like how they interview the person with the largest ball of twine. I just think people didn't kind of know what to do with it. It's weird,
but let's, let's do a story on this. But then I got asked to do a keynote speech at a hospice
providers convention. This was a year and a half ago. And I worked really hard on it because I am
not a public speaker. I didn't have that experience. 

And I thought if this is something that I really,really enjoy, I'm going to try to do more of these. But it was just sort of like a test case and the
speech was an hour long. And I loved it. It was great. I've really great interactions with the
people there. There are, I think there are about 450 people in the room. So my first speech.
And so since then, TikTok, you know, is kind of circling the drain. 

So I've started posting on Instagram, if you want to, if you're someone who has Instagram, but not TikTok, feel free to
follow me there. I think throughout the course of this year, I'm going to try to branch out to
Facebook. I had resisted some meta stuff, but I really do think that probably my demographic is
still on Facebook. So anyway, this is a long winding way of introducing the whole tips from
dead people concept. 

And I brought with me some four different obituaries, two of them are self written, if that's the direction you want to go in, two of them are just funny and fun and really
well written. But I thought I would just pause for a second and see if anyone has any questions
or you want to talk about obituary writing in general and newspapers. I have lots of thoughts
about the way newspapers run their obituary sections and that model and why it's dying.
So anyway, before I just babble on, I just thought I would check and see. 

Can I see others already? A
couple of things. 



Okay, so how do you find the obituaries you use? So initially, like I said,
they were all mine that I had just collected cut out from physical newspapers over the years.
But once that first video kind of went viral, I have never, I do still look at the obituaries
all the time because it's still my, the hobby that I love the most in the world. But I haven't
really ever had to source my own anymore because all of a sudden then my DMs were flooded with
obituaries from listeners, viewers, and my email inbox. 

I set up tips from dead people, Gmail account, and that was kind of flooded with submissions too. So now I set up like a little
spreadsheet or whatever. And now I just like put them all in there and I put tags in there. This is
funny. This is savage. This is short. This is long. This is poignant. 

Addiction, suicide, you know, all these different things. And just depending on the mood, whatever strikes me,
that's how I choose what to do for that day. And I try to do two or three a week.
Yeah, that's, so that's kind of, that's kind of it. So I can talk a little bit about
the kind of obituaries that I choose. 

And again, just throw stuff in the chat if you want to, or you can use the hand raise or Jamie, if you want to interrupt me at any time, please do.
I think part of what fascinated me early on, even as a kid about obituaries, is that there was more
between the lines than was actually written. 

Because of the pay to play method of doing obituaries as classified ads, essentially in newspapers, people default to short, they default to a template
that they've seen other obituaries, they default to etiquette and politeness and don't speak ill
of the dead and all that kind of stuff. 

So when I would come across an obituary where there was something a little bit more, or there was a little mystery or gossip or something that spoke to me about my own journey and the path to happiness or whatever you want to call it, that's what I
would be interested in. And that's what I'm still interested in. 

So when I'm sifting through obituaries and I kind of try to decide what will engage my viewers and what's interesting to me, I pick
people that are non-famous and where their obituary is more than a resume or a template.
And you really feel at the end that you get to know the heart of that unique person,
the good, the bad, and the in-between. 

So I'm as fascinated by the negative obituaries as I am by the ones that are all positive. And I've never done this before. I've thought maybe at some point I should do like a 10 steps to writing a good obituary kind of infographic. But if I were to
do that now, what I would say is don't Google how to write an obituary. Because or AI, actually AI
is a separate topic that I can talk to you about in a second. 

But all of that shared digital knowledge
takes you back to the templates that everybody has already done. And it's my true belief that
if you have a more honest, authentic obituary, it can help you with the grieving process for those
left behind. It can probably contribute to a better death if you're the one writing the obituary for
yourself, knowing that your story is going to be well told. 

And big picture maybe changing the way
that obituaries are written just a little bit could change the way we think about death and life
in general. Like what is success? What is failure? Is it your resume that matters the most? Is it your
awards? Or is it the fact that, you know, diet peach snapple was your favorite drink? And I come
down hard on that last part that the more details, the more little things the better. Sometimes I'll
tell people who are struggling to write an obituary and they message me, just start with a list of
the things that you hate and the things that you love. 

Often that's all you need. Good stories will flow from there. Actually, if you want, I can throw in my first obituary here because it's
to that very point, if that's okay. So settle in. This is story time. I know you guys are used to
stories. So in this book club, so this is Trish. And this is one of my favorite ones. I use this
in the speeches that I give now. This is Trish. She never let the truth get in the way of a good
story. Patricia Gail Donahue, aka Trish or Strap, age 46, living in Squamish, British Columbia died
January 2nd, 2015, just outside of Lilloot. 

I mess up words all the time. British Columbia on a return trip home from her cottage at Bridge Lake. Trish was born in Sarnia, Ontario on April 1st, 1968, and was certainly nobody's fool. Trish went to St. Patrick's High School and then attended McMaster
University. Trish or Strap's generosity, Nuno bounds, as on one occasion, whilst shuttling her
friend to a party, Trish literally gave her the clothes off her behind and then returned home
without her jeans. 

Her God-given resourcefulness, coupled with her common sense, gave Trish the
skills to help anyone in need. After her husband Sage and Trish made their way out west to fulfill 
a need for steeper slopes, she worked at Whistler Blackcom for 15 years in a variety of capacities,
where she was known to have a coke and skittles for breakfast in the slack shack. Although she was
a committed employee, she found company policies tedious and as a result, broadened her work
experience at a rapid pace. 

I love that line. Her service standards at the keg were second to none. Trish was relaxed and confident in her parenting style, but always knew how to intuitively meet the needs of her children. She was real and distributed advice, but was never preachy or judgmental.
Not one to get caught up in the hubbub of parenting trends, she was grounded in her values and opinions.
She was old school and good school. 

She was consistent and loyal. Trish loved, loved, loved. Vanity Fair, Sudoku, The New Yorker cartoons, White Lilies, David Sedaris, Underdogs,
Square-shaped bullet points, Akupa T, The Long and Lean Trouser from the Gap,
K. Thompson, Predicting Futures, Square-faced Cartier Watches, Cold Potatoes, Poetry,
Capri Blue Candles, Interior Design, and Scratch and Wind Tickets. 

In reverse order, she equally found these things excruciating, The Dentist, Tight Spaces, Small-Minded People, House Plants,
The Song Jezebel, Kai Yu because everyone hates that bald kid, unmatched socks, anything laundry,
composting, fluorescent lights, tinted glasses, skinny jeans, gray roots, and hard butter.
She rarely shanked it. True story. 

That's Trish. So of course it's a great obituary,tip to toe, but you could just probably take those last two paragraphs of what she loved and didn't
love and I would be in love with Trish. Sometimes I think like, okay, if you're at a dinner party
and you have random seating, who would you rather sit next to? Like a CEO who's talking about KPIs
and deliverables or someone like Trish where you could go deep on cold butter and skittles and
David Sideris for the night. 

So reading a lot of these obituaries at this point,thousands and thousands really started to change my competitive brain around the idea of success
and failure. Like I can be very generous in my heart towards someone like Trish and say she's
fascinating. I want to sit next to her at dinner. 

She's a success, but when you when you turn the mirror on yourself and you want to say the same thing about yourself, at least for me, it was always
a little bit harder because I would say, well, that's fine for them, but really, I should be doing
something like I should be getting awards. 

I should have done the same job like all my siblings did
all through adulthood. But in the course of reading thousands of stories like Trish's, but also ones
that are different from hers, my competitive brain has started to change. And that's why I
talk about this all the time. 

I believe in the power of an authentic obituary that is real and
full of tiny details. I believe in the power of that story to change people's lives for the better.
And it may just be that you take some of that pressure off yourself to find your passion.
No one would ever say that Trish wasn't a success, that obituary oozed love. 

What are we here on Earth for? So that's an example of the kind of obituary that I'm really, really drawn to,
why I'm drawn to it, and why I believe this content has resonated so much with the people that are
following me on all these channels or asking me to speak. So yeah, and I mean, I have had people
tell me that at this point, it's like teachers who all of a sudden start to teach the kids of their
first students, I've had people tell me that watching my account has changed the way they
wrote their obituary for their loved one. 

Like they went back to the list of obituaries that I share online. I have a link tree where every obituary that I've ever shared is on that link
and use that to write their own loved one's obituary or their own obituary like pre-writing
in a different way. And I can't even tell you how good that makes me feel. I mean, truly this started
off as just a very peculiar hobby that I just thought would just be me, myself, and my little
phone and a lonely TikTok account. But to hear that kind of thing, you know, this, this
little journey has absolutely changed my life. 

So, does anyone want to take off their mute and ask any other questions? Otherwise, I can share with you a couple self-written ones that I love,
and I don't know if it might get you thinking about your own obituaries. I highly recommend
just keeping a note, whether it's written or on an app or whatever, of the things that you want in
your obituary sharing with someone or even pre-writing your own. 

I love it so much. So, so maybe I'll just jump into that. So, I have two self-written obituaries. You should tell me if
my voice is starting to bother you and take a break and have you ask some questions. So, these are
two very poignant ones that are of a different tone and you'll see what I mean immediately.
Okay, this first one is James.

Yes, most of your library to everyone call and you are doing a great job. I love it.
Thanks.

Thank you, James.
Appreciate it. Okay, well, I just, I want to make sure that I'm not as babbling and that I answer
the questions that people want answered. So, okay, this is James. If you are reading this now,
it means that my tired heart decided it was time to quit beating on or about December 1st, 2024.
If you knew my fascination with recurring numbers, you will realize that I was 62 years old,
I was born in 1962, and I lost my beloved mother when she too was 62 years old. The number 24
appears in both my birth and death dates. 

If you thought of me as your friend, I am grateful beyond measure. If you were kind to me in high school, I have never forgotten your name, your words,
your actions, or your helping hand. Perhaps you know I was the only one of my immediate family
to obtain a high school diploma. 

If you shared a meal with me, welcomed me into your home or
included me in a family celebration, know that I treasured and spoke of those memories often.
If you gave me a job because I was loyal, punctual, and dedicated, know that it was the highlight of my life,
early employment at Lisa's Lamp Lighter and Jet Car Wash set the stage for my 20-year career with
Hertz and Avis as a rental car agent at Burt Mooney Airport. Here I found lasting friendships and
an appreciation for my favorite pens, my beautiful penmanship, and my excellent customer service.

If you were one of my Avon ladies, please know that I delighted in sharing new products with you
and being able to sit and visit. Your support throughout two decades allowed me to repeatedly
earn coveted awards and prestigious national recognition within the company. My mother Carol
was a top seller also, and together we made quite the team. 

If you reached out to me when my mother died in 2002, you truly understood my devastation, abandonment, and sense of hopelessness for the
future. She was my rock, my role model, my biggest cheerleader, and my stability.
Together we loved all things Christmas, especially hallmark ornaments.


She and my grandmother taught me everything I know about cooking, baking, living, and surviving
the insensitivities of the real world. Both would have supported my pride affiliation.
If you asked me my favorite meal, it would have to be savory, safe-wife, fried chicken, and mashed
potatoes, accompanied by a Coca-Cola served in a frosted coat glass from the freezer.
If you knew me well, you knew that I had uncanny affinity for recalling precise dates, numbers,
events, and people. Some found that annoying, others were in awe. It was both a blessing and
occurs to me as I found my mind constantly obsessing over details. 

I was consumed with writing things
down. I could easily have wall-papered my entire home with bits of paper covered by my endless pen
notes. If you took the time to engage in a conversation with me, I hope it was meaningful,
even if I was accusatory, obtrusive, short-sighted, or abrupt. If you eventually found my obsessive,
repetitive ramblings, or paranoia annoying, I now understand your hesitancy and frustration
about maintaining a friendship or taking my phone call. 

If you were still patient with me, over and over, and were persistent regarding my well-being, I can only thank you for not giving
up on me. If you caught me on a good day, I hope I was able to be the best version of me.
If you could write my life story, it would not be complete without mentioning my unwavering
love affair with older cars, especially my Monte Carlos dispersing those cars in 2023 and selling
my mom's home with 60 years of my memories was the second hardest time in my life. If you made
it possible for me to have dreams of a new home and a new life, thank you for the gift of hope.
Although my mind worked over time, my failing heart could not keep up with the rigors of making
that final move. If you responded to the 911 call and found me deceased, I thank you for treating the
situation with dignity and respect. 

Butte Silverbo has an amazing, very impressive group of young adults on staff who took exceptional care of the scene at the scene and above all calmed my frightened dog. If we shared a love of animals and you supported a no-kill policy at the animal shelter,
then you'll be happy to know that my beloved puppy, my faithful friend and constant companion, has already been adopted by a nice family. 

If you have been misunderstood and mistreated by others for your uniqueness, I hope you will find a support system in your future. Stay strong, life is not kind to the tender hearted, the soft spoken, and those who struggle with their differences.
If you can choose to be anything in the world, be kind and live by the golden rule. Lastly, if you find someone to grow old with you and share in your journey through life, treasure and nurture that relationship by staying healthy both physically and mentally so you can care for those you love, no services are scheduled at this time. 

So I can't see people's faces, so I just want to make sure that that's not too much. I felt like that was, I mean, obviously so impactful and poetic. And he was able to own his story in a way that most people don't get to. Most of the time, our stories
are defined for us quickly and under pressure by the people who are left, if an obituary gets written at all. And so, you know, in a couple generations, no one's going to remember any of us, which is the truth that I don't actually find to be that sad. 

So I love when someone just goes all out and tells the whole story with all the nuance. I believe it's cathartic for those who are
writing it and, like I said before, for those who are left behind. So that's James. The notes that
I keep for my obituary will not be like that. Like that, first of all, I don't know that I could
write anything that sort of rhythmic and poetic, but my stuff is she loves cross-repuzzles,
she was punctual to a fault, she, you know, those kinds of very little details, more along the lines
of trishes, if it was self-written. That's kind of where my heart is. 

But I mean, when I read obituaries like James is on social media, it gets a lot, a lot of feedback. And I do sometimes read
ones for people who are going through addiction or did go through addiction or died by suicide. And
the community that has built up around tips from dead people, I do not have to deal with online
trolls. I don't know, honestly, I don't exactly know why I have escaped that. But the community
that comments on my videos is kind and supportive, like 99%. 

Someone once told me that I looked like Nicholas Cage in his bad years. So I mean, they didn't get that kind of random
comment. But for the most part, it's a very, very nice community. Do you have a question, Jamie?
I just want to say that when I watched you read that obituary for the first time, it really choked
me up. And it choked me up again when you read it just now. That person obviously had
a hard time fitting into society. And I was impressed that they were able to share that much
in their obituary because that felt a little vulnerable to me, to be that open in your obituary.
And I like the fact that he mentioned the hymn in his mom sold Avon together. That is just too
cute. You know, it's very sweet. Just selling Avon. Yeah. 

It's a very sweet obituary.
Yes, Mary. Yeah. This is Pam. And I do have a question. You said you do this on Twitter.
And what else? Not Twitter. I mean, I don't want to reveal too much, I guess. But I
blanked my Twitter accounts once it was taken over by X and so it's TikTok is the main one. But I,
like I said, not everybody's comfortably on TikTok. And I think after this fall or maybe next March,
it may not exist. So I started Instagram. I think there's around 22,000 or so followers on Instagram.
So I don't think that one's going to go away. 
  
And so I don't think my account will ever go away.
And I think this year, I will probably kind of reluctantly. But in some ways, okay, add Facebook.
And can I just throw something in? Yeah. Because with being blind, we have to use the screen reading
program. Okay. I cannot use Instagram. It doesn't, I just, I fight with it constantly.
What about YouTube? Because I was thinking about adding that one too.


Now YouTube is, yeah, YouTube or Facebook both work really well. I just want to throw that out
there, T. because I'm sure you did it. And no idea. No, no idea. And I'm grateful for that
information. That that actually makes me feel better and is a great reason to hop on Facebook.
I mean, meta pushes Instagram content to Facebook and vice versa. So it was probably going to happen
anyway. But I want to make a concerted effort, I think, to grow a Facebook community. I just,
I have heard from other social media people that I've met at different meetings that
Facebook is a little diceier when it comes to that online community and like the free for all of
comments. But, but I think it's, I think it's worth doing. 

So yeah, it TikTok, Instagram,
Facebook, I do have a YouTube account. And I also have a sub st ack page. Back in January,
when TikTok was going to get banned for the first time, I quickly set up the Instagram account and
sub stack. And although I'm not a writer per se, I have found it kind of interesting and fun.
That's a good challenge for me to try to write a few things on sub stack. I mean, I'm not reinventing
the wheel or anything. It's just some of my random thoughts. But that's another, another way to
touch the name. 

What is that? I've never heard of that. 

Oh, sub stack. It's kind of like the it app for the moment. I think it's like, it's a newsletter slash blogging platform.
You can grow a community, you can write essays, and it started off as a very, a place mainly just
for writers where like actual authors and literary people would hang out and share each other's posts.
And it really was kind of the home for writers. But in the midst of all this upheaval with social
media, sub stack has become or they're trying to become more of a social media place. And I don't
know how I feel about that. But like news organizations and very prominent people are all getting on
sub stack. But it is a written form. 

And you give your email address and then you will get a newsletter
delivered to your inbox. You a lot of people like me, I don't charge. A lot of people will, that's how
they make money is that they'll charge people whatever five bucks a month for their sub stack
newsletter. I don't, I don't mean, I'm not at a point in my career where I need to be worrying
about that too much. So I, I don't, I just enjoy, and I just want to build a community. And
through that community, my goal would be maybe if people want to hire me to do speeches,
that's something I really, really enjoy.
Hold on one second.

Yeah.
Anyone else before I maybe share a couple other obituaries, do you have thoughts about
is anyone keeping notes for their own obituaries?
I, I'm a writer and I have really struggled because most of the platforms take a lot more
technical knowledge than I have possessed. I have a Facebook account, but I started it years ago
because my mother was one of 10 children, actually 12, but two of them died when they were quite young.
And so she had, she raised five of us and Oliver Siblings had large families and keeping track of
my cousins and my nieces and nephews.

 And now that I'm a great grandmother, keeping track of my
grandkids, they text rather than phone. They're likely to post photographs with no comments.
So I have no idea what half of what they're posting is about.
So, but I, I do Zoom host for a couple of organizations. So they're, I know, I know many people that
are online doing all kinds of things. And from what I understand, Facebook is, is a little tougher
than it used to be, but it's still not horrible. 

The one of the organizations I work for as a Zoom host
is the American Council of the Blind. They have a TikTok feed and they have a
YouTube and YouTube seems to be pretty easy for most people.
Okay.
That's good to know.

Once you sign up for them, you know, you get the notifications and
I have a YouTube account and I have
posted a couple of my TikToks over to YouTube in their, what's called their shorts. I've only
done like four. So it's, it looks kind of skimpy when you're over there.
Yeah.
The issue with YouTube and video content is that for YouTube to support and push out your video,
they want it to be horizontal and TikTok and Instagram are the exact opposite. So
I just need to, actually what I should do is hire like an 18 year old. I'll make a video and then
have them format it for all the different parts in five minutes.

When I'm hearing from the, the techie types that try out new things, there's one called blue sky
and there is one called, um, yeah, threads and, but I haven't heard that, that, that is
particularly accessible. I've seen that the sub stack that you've talked about because as a
writer, people will forward me stuff that they think I might be interested in that's there.
Um, it's, I'm trying to think of the other one. Mastodon is kind of, um, more popular than it.
Um, but I don't know. I haven't trained myself in any of them.
Yeah.

But those are the ones I know.
The upshot is that we can't ever fully rely on just one thing.
No.
At all. I think blue sky is the sort of, it was created as sort of the liberal alternative
to what became X, formerly then on his Twitter. So it's, you know, it's just a reflection of the
world that we live in, I guess. Um, but actually this might be a good time to talk about in terms
of obituaries, the business of obituaries. Um, you have a choice. Obviously when you're writing one
for someone else or for yourself, you can pay to put it in a newspaper or there are some
community newspapers that still do it as a public service for free.

Smaller towns, usually the newspaper in Berkeley, California made a commitment,
I don't know, 10 years ago or so to make all obituaries free and no surprise, they're awesome.
Like because it's free and sort of you can tell an unlimited story, people do. And of course,
Berkeley has an amazing cast of characters, but, um, and the editors of that newspaper report that
their subscriptions went up, which to me, that's just a no brainer. If you make obituaries,
a lost leader and get people to your site through that storytelling, you remain the kind of the
history, the, the heart of the community, but that's not newspapers can't give up on a profit center.
And just like the way Craigslist took away their classified ads, I have a feeling that in a
generation people won't be paying for the newspapers to do this. 

So then the next opportunity for you
to post an opportunity, uh, an obituary would be with the funeral home or cremation provider.
I've seen a lot of online, um, obituaries that way from friends across the country that
they'll post them on their, their page. Yes. And it's technically free because you're not paying
extra for it. It's just obviously the services that they provide are expensive, depending on the
type of funeral or cremation you choose. Um, but the advantage and there's nothing aesthetically
pleasing about any of those sites, but the advantages that you can tell a long story and you can add
pictures and there's comments and so forth. 

A lot of those funeral homes and newspapers have a
financial relationship with a company called legacy.com, which you probably have seen. And they act as
the backend obituary archive for probably 80% of American newspapers and for increasingly a lot
of those funeral homes too. So if you post what you think is on like the newspaper or the
funeral home site and a week later it ends up on legacy. That's why I don't love legacy, but I
actually use them a lot to share obituaries simply because it's free to go there. Um, and then the
last category of place that you can post an obituary are there's free startups. Um, there's a bunch of
obituary startups around the country that you could use as well. 

Um, so it's kind of an interesting
ecosystem. I really choose not to focus too much about that in my videos because I just,
for me, the artistic value and the psychological value of this whole project that I'm doing is
about life advice. Yeah, I think it's a lovely thing. It's a lovely thing.
Better and seen making you feel in telling your story that you are enough and that it's better
to tell a broken honest story than airbrush something. That's my, like, I know. Well,
when I was asked to give an obituary for my uncle and then my grandmother and all of that,
I've written the things, but they've just gone on funeral cards, not, um, because when I tried
to give an obituary to the local paper when my grandmother died, I said she was a foundling,
which she was. Um, but they took that as, as her maiden name. 

They just didn't hear it all.
Oh, dear. My grandmother was left on a doorstep as a newborn. Um, she was wrapped in an Irish
linen petticoat and, um, she was only a few hours old. And so one of the mysteries, of course,
then of, of my white heritage is whose baby she was. You know, where did that baby come from?
And when I was born with congenital glaucoma, it always made me wonder if her mother was blind
and at the time she was an unwed young girl and the family disposed of the baby by just taking it
out of the house and leaving it somewhere. Um, so, you know, that's, it's one of those mystery
things that I'll never know. Right. Right. And it's okay to tell that story. 

It's okay to just
have a mystery. It's okay to have an obituary that has a mystery in it. I've shared a couple
obituaries recently. I don't know if you saw these Jamie, but what I would call scorched earth.
Basically, the world was a better place. The world will be a better place because this person is gone.
They were a terrible parent and I, you know, it's like the etiquette part of me, the polite part of me
is kind of like, I, when I do that, I don't think I would do that. And I get nervous when I post
those because I think now the trolls are going to come out. This is too little and the dead person
didn't get a chance to defend them. Just say their sense. 

Yeah. However, if I do a video like that
and it gets, I don't know, 30,000 views and there's 400 comments, for example, 395 of those comments
will be, I support the person for telling their story. If they wanted something nice written about
them, they should have been nice. They should have healed those relationships while they were alive.
The obituaries for the people left behind and this is their story. They shouldn't have to paint
over it and pretend like it didn't happen. So it's like, I don't know, I've probably done 15 of those
over the course of this couple of year project. And that's the pattern every single time. I'm always
a little bit surprised by it because I'm just more of a polite person. But I actually agree with them.
And I agree that let's have more sunlight in these stories and have them be less.

I am a forgiving person, I think. So, you know, I will write things in an autobiographical sense.
But I usually wait till the person is gone because I know that, for example, if I had written some of
my story when my mother was alive, it would hurt her because she would have felt she could have
protected me better. And I think that, you know, you don't want to hurt the people you love.
Right. And everybody have to tell you truth sometimes. Sometimes. And I mean, it's, I don't like,
I'm not going to boss anyone around. I mean, I think everybody's needs and situations are different.
And I celebrate that fully. But I do love more evocative, more truthful obituaries when they
are occurring. And I don't know if my sample size is just skewed, but I feel like it's happening more
and more. And I'm, you know, I'm for it.

At least there is a historical record. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to have fewer and fewer of these
with the death of the newspapers. And because it's too easy to lose online.
Yeah. Archives.
Yes. Yep. I do agree. And I mean, there's places like find a grave, but that's a whole other topic.
And there's all, yeah, there's all kinds of unethical actors in the business of death space. And
yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what the next generation brings. Okay. So I have a short,
funny one that I thought might be good. And then if you want, I can end with another self-written one.
But Jamie, if you have any other questions or if there's anything else you want me to cover,
or would you rather send me read a couple of these or what would you prefer?

I think it's good to read them. I did want to say that one thing I wanted to bring up was
somebody I know talked about, like how they put on your gravestone, your birth date and your death
date. And then there's the dash. And they say the dash is the story. So if you are thinking about
writing your own obituary, you should think about your dash. Yes. Like who really cares what
day you were born? We want, we want the meat of the story. We want the dash. We want to know all your,
you know, life things. So yeah, yeah. And that was a percent agree with that.

And you always say in your videos that the little things are the big things. And that stuck in my
head. And as I go through my life, I try to remember that the little things are really the big things
because the world seems to be on fire right now. And that kind of gives me a little bit of self-preservation.
And I mean, there's definitely that angle that finding joy in the little things that's us absolutely
an act of self-preservation. And the other thing is I think like Walt had mentioned the New York
Times obituaries. Sometimes I read those because they're well written and I like to read them. 

I
don't really share them online because they're usually of like famous people. So there's some
semi famous people. But there is sometimes a negative effect where you're reading this long
thing of a very like wealthy accomplished person. And it leaves you feeling like I have felt so many
times kind of like, okay, well, what if I do want to just talk about something not as great. So
I think the little things elevating the little things has many, many good effects and those being
just a couple of them. Okay, so this is Marie. And I think this is directly related. 

All right,
Marie Ann McNally passed away March 1st, 2020, not your ordinary obituary, not your ordinary mother.
My mother loved her scratch offs. I have many memories of me driving her so she could scratch
her way around town. We would spend hours doing this regardless of time constraints or social
obligations. She once told me of an instance where she stopped on her way to work and got a winner.
So she went to the next store and got another winner and so on and so on. She never made it
to work that day. She just spent the day scratching her tickets. 

That was my mom, the ticket lady.
She did things on her terms. My little mom offended off a would-be mugger one day when a man
reaching through her driver's side window while she was scratching a ticket and tried to grab her
purse. She grabbed him by the arm and punched him in the face probably while using her very
colorful vocabulary to assault him with. You didn't dare cross her because she would go from zero
to MMA fighter in 2.2 seconds. She was only five feet tall, but you were certain to face
imminent death if she got her hands on you. She's been known to roll down her windows as we drive
by the Scientology headquarters and spit out profanities at the top of her lungs. She loved a
good joke, the dirtier the better. She would tell jokes that would make you blush. She had a very
eclectic sense of style. She's been trying to push off an embroidered leather poncho onto me for years.
She loved animals, hated spiders, and she cared immensely for those who were lucky enough to know
her. She loved usher, hated Kanye, and thought Clint Eastwood was a quote, sexy son of a bitch.

She loved to love you from a child. Surely if you were around her too much, you would get on
her nerves. She loved cars, old and new, and she loved white castle burgers. She is being sent off
in eternity with some of her favorite things. She certainly would bust out laughing if she knew
what was going with her. May you finally rest in peace, mama, and go high up in the clouds where
you belong. 

That is an example of the little things are the big things. Her job wasn't even
mentioned once. Oftentimes I'll say, please don't let your obituary be something that could be
posted on LinkedIn. Hers is a great example of that. 75% of her obituary is about scratch off
tickets. You can tell her daughter wrote this and it's just like she's talking, almost like doing
a voice memo into the phone or talking to a friend. Nobody edited this. This isn't like done in the
AP style. It's just her. I love that so much. That's the kind of thing that in this big, kind of crazy,
big punishing, insensitive world, this is the kind of thing that makes me feel better.

I love it a lot. I have one more, which is another self-written one. Maybe this has given me inspiration
in the years since I first found it or was sent to me. In terms of writing something about myself
and because I just feel like it speaks for a lot of us. 

Okay, this is Liz.

As a girl growing up in Gatorich, this is in Canada, life could be fun. My pack of girlfriends
had hand-stemmed competitions in the rolling waves of Lake Huron, wiener roasts under the old
saltbird bridge, and bike hikes where we would eat our sandwiches and practice smoking cigarettes
to enhance our charm and allure. Life in Gatorich could also be exciting, like the day in March when
I rescued my friend after she fell through the ice on the raging river. The two of us had long
ago shed blood to make ourselves blood sisters, but that rescue made her my sister by choice,
my choice, maybe not hers. Gatorich life could also get tedious, just driving around the square
the way we did again and again. But things weren't always fun for me. So when I felt sad or afraid,
I'd pray, please change something in my bedroom so I know, I'll know, things will be okay. 

It didn't have to be something big, but secretly I was hoping for something quite spectacular, like
changing my little brown bed  to solid gold. My second sister by choice was a woman I met in Waterloo
when we started our teaching careers at the same school in the early 1970s. We not only shared an
apartment, it became classmates where we earned our psychology degrees. We also tended our way
across Canada to Victoria, BC, and back. In a very cramped car, I gave her the title sister by choice
because she's the least judgmental person I've ever met. And that was a good because we spent a lot
of time together and I have a few flaws. I found another sister by choice in an adult swim class
at the Waterloo Y. We earned our star six badges and went on to get our bronze medallion thinking
we'd like to advance to our bronze cross. We showed up for the first class, hearing the laundry list
of clothing we were to bring the next week, layers of bulky stuff and shoes for swimming lengths.

She and I shared a look, walked off the pool deck, and went for a beer. I left Waterloo
and moved to Toronto at about the same time my swim class sister moved west. I took up a new
career in advertising and was at my desk when my BC friend called. She'd given my number to Steve,
her husband's boss. That blind date turned into a lifelong love affair. Marying Steve is the best
thing I've ever done. I've never felt so loved. His embrace is my fortress and the source of my
ecstasy. Best of all, we were blessed with two wonderful sons. They're the source of my delight.
We moved a lot to Australia for over a year then back for another stay in Waterloo where we
met lifelong friends. We got a goofy dog. Then we got a goofy horse. My dream come true. 

We moved again to the shore of Georgian Bay where last of all we got another goofy dog. Wherever we went,
we were a happy family. In retirement, Steve and I have settled in Sarnia, a small friendly city on
the shore of beautiful Lake Huron. Back in 1995, when the kids were seven and four, I was diagnosed
with breast cancer. Treatments, surgery and a solid compassionate medical team got me this far,
but cancer has returned. Still, I have blessings to count. I'm not alone on this path. I have an
enduring romance with a steadfast partner. I have devoted sons whose love for me is pure. I am
Canadian. I voted. I have a free library card. Hey, I'm a member of the UCC of Canada, like me,
imperfect but trying. I had enough years to forge a loving relationship with my mom.

Interesting. I've lived a small but important life. I broke the chain of domestic violence I grew up
with. As a girl, I had asked God to change something in my bedroom as a sign that everything would be
okay. Now, when I wake up and look around, I see that everything has changed and I have lived
happily ever after. So when I'm gone, whenever you see a little blue butterfly or a blazing sunset,
whatever brings you joy or gives you cause to wonder, pause, smile and say there goes Liz.


It feels like a nice one to end on, doesn't it? That's a good one. Yeah. That was a good one.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Mary. This has been wonderful and I'm going to go home and get me a little notebook
and start thinking of what I want to put in my obituary. Thanks for your obituary. I love it.
I'm so grateful to this group for showing up. Jamie, for getting in touch with me.

The subject line of your email was something like crazy idea from a follower and I love that's an
immediate open for me. So I'm really glad you did that. Please contact me, anyone. If you have any
questions, my email is tipsfromdeadpeopleatgmail.com. Yeah, this was a pleasure. Well, thank you so
much, Mary. Does anybody have any questions before we close? Anything they'd like to say?
Yes, my name is Camille Gibbons and I would like to know that is there an audiobook available
tips from dead people? Well, I don't have a book yet. Yes. I think you need one. I think you need one,
Mary. Well, I will tell only in this group that I am in the midst of writing a proposal to write
a book. I have no idea if anyone will pick it up. It's a complete lark, but I'm going to write
the proposal and I'm going to send it out to publishers and I'll see what they say. If it happens,
I'm sure it would be a long while, but it may not happen. I don't know. I feel like it's a very
small chance, but I'm putting it out there in the world. 

I think that would work because all of the things you are sharing are public domain since they were published somewhere.

Yes, and fortunately, my husband is an intellectual property lawyer, so I feel like I have that part
covered. But so there isn't a book, but I wonder if some, I would imagine that sub-stack might have
some kind of audio component. And like someone said, maybe Facebook would have, my videos are
usually anywhere from three to six minutes long. So it  's not that long. If there's an audio
transcription of it, I'm sorry to say I don't know the answer to that question.

Well, sub-stack does have the ability to do audio because I follow a poet and songwriter there.
And she often sings things and accompanies herself on her guitar.
Well, we will keep in touch, Mary, because when you get that book deal and you get that book,
I want us to get it recorded so we can share it with all the Wolfner people.
That'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So love that. So thank you so much for this. And I'm going to stop
the recording now.