Jill Bodak on Caregiving and Medically Assisted Death

Jill Bodak, an osteopath in Toronto, Ontario, shares the deeply personal story of her father’s stroke in 2020, which flipped her world upside down. His stroke happened unexpectedly while skiing on the other side of the country, and what followed was an intense two-year journey of caregiving. Initially told that he wouldn’t survive, her father defied the odds but was left in a severely compromised state, requiring Jill to become his primary caregiver.

Over time, her father expressed that he no longer wanted to live, which led them to explore medically assisted death, a legal option in Canada. Jill’s writing throughout this period focused on family, grief, and caregiving. Her book, Loved Into Being: Reflections on Stroke and Being Indestructible, emerged as both a tribute and a conversation starter on end-of-life rights.

She speaks about the emotional complexity of caregiving and the challenging role reversal, explaining that her father's vulnerability during his recovery was a beautiful yet heartbreaking contrast to the physically active person he once was. Despite the overwhelming daily demands, they found moments of humor and connection—laughing together even when words failed.

Jill reflects on how this experience has deeply impacted her approach to wellness and the preciousness of life. She emphasizes the importance of understanding mortality and how it reshaped her perspective on treating the body and the mind. The journey through her father’s illness and eventual medically assisted death was both transformative and filled with moments of profound connection.

Her story offers a touching and honest look at caregiving, family dynamics, and the complex emotional landscape of end-of-life decisions.

Get her book here. https://www.amazon.com/Loved-Into-Being-Reflections-Indestructible/dp/B0BPGPKZJW

On Instagram. https://www.ins

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These shirts are designed for those of us who believe in open, honest conversations about death, dying, and grief. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jill Bodak: I bring mortality, more so than death, capital D, death, but just mortality into the overall day to day understanding of what it means to be in a human body and what it means to feel the preciousness of your own aliveness. 

Welcome back to Seeing Death Dlearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach.

[00:00:20] Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:39] In this episode, I sit down with osteopath Jill Bodak from Toronto, Ontario, to discuss her father's unexpected stroke in 2020 and Jill's time as her father's primary caregiver until he chose to use medical aid in dying. Jill shares intimate reflections on caregiving, the emotional complexity of role reversals and the moments of humor and connection that kept them going.

[00:01:04] Her book, Loved Into Being, Reflections on Stroke and Being Indestructible, captures these experiences and opens a powerful conversation on end of life rights. Join us as Jill reflects on how this journey reshaped her views on wellness, health, and wellbeing. mortality and life. Thank you for joining us for this conversation.

[00:01:25] Welcome to the podcast, Jill. Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. And why don't you start us a little bit first with just some background about who you are, if you want to share where you come from, anything like that. My name is Jill. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

[00:01:43] And I'm an osteopath here, which in Canada is a hands on manual practitioner working in the alternative health care space. In 2020, my dad had a stroke halfway down a ski hill. He was on the other side of the country. I experienced that catastrophic world inverting type moment where one minute you're doing one thing and the next minute your whole life is different in flying across the country to be with someone who is dying.

[00:02:14] And my dad ended up not dying as predicted from that stroke on the ski hill. For the next two years, I became his primary caregiver and director of his health and decision making. He lived in a very compromised state after that brain injury. Through that time, I was writing a lot about family. I was writing a lot about Grief, loss, and overwhelm, and caregiving.

[00:02:40] After a year and a half or so of his recovery, he started to express in the ways that he could that he didn't want to be alive anymore. The book that I had been writing as a recovery story, or as a tribute to caregiving, found its meaning when I realized that it was going to end with my dad having a medically assisted death, which in Canada, is a part of what healthcare is becoming here around end of life rights and end of life care.

[00:03:07] So we navigated his choice together and he died in our living room on December 6th of 2022. And then the book was released, it's called Loved Into Being, Reflections on Stroke and Being Indestructible is the subtitle. And It has been used as a fundraiser and an anchor for conversation, a point on podcasts to talk about end of life rights, talk about what it's like to be with dying, when you don't want it to happen, when you do want it to happen, and when you're in the long stretches in between those things.

[00:03:46] It's really changed the way I work with wellness, the way I treat people's bodies, the way I interface with what I think it means to be well, and how I bring mortality, more so than death, capital D, death, but just mortality, into the overall, um, day to day understanding of what it means to be in a human body and what it means to feel the preciousness of your own aliveness.

[00:04:09] It's beautiful. And I'm sorry that you had to experience that with your father as a child and as a mother. I can imagine it being tough on both ends that your father finally got to that point where he was like, I don't want to live like this anymore. I can understand. How old was he at the time? He was 61 when he had his stroke and he was 64 when he died.

[00:04:34] And how old were you when you were caring for him? 32. Yeah. 35 ish. That's very young, you know, for both of you. That's very young. I know. I feel like I was a wannabe adult and then I was like a real adult, like a, a steep learning curve at that time in my life. And that switch of roles from going to be the child to now being the caregiver, the parent, in a lot of ways, is really difficult for so many reasons.

[00:05:05] And what did you find for you was the hardest part of caregiving for your father? I think hardest was to process the loss while you're doing the task. Okay. There isn't really a way to separate time and space when you're hands on with someone who's so dependent on you being pretty much 24 hours a day, like, it's through the nightcare, and moving someone's body so they can go to the bathroom, cleaning someone's body, of seeding someone's body.

[00:05:42] For me, when it was my dad, who's twice the size of me, there was a physicality to the demand and a relentlessness to the demand that didn't have really any space to properly be with the loss and the devastation and the heartbreak that was happening. simultaneously with the heavy lifting. That was like, if I think of the word hard, that's what I think of.

[00:06:07] That's just really hard. And then there also is the piece that's disorienting or psychological, which I think you're naming around the role reversal. I didn't find the role reversal hard, like it wasn't manual, but it is disorienting and it is It's also requiring some sort of processing. I was only available for through writing.

[00:06:33] I have a long history of using movement and using meditation and using breath work and had lots of tools to draw from. But for me in that space, there was something about writing that was almost like talking to myself or talking to a good friend. That was the only way I could find to do the processing, especially because when you're in those states, I might have a minute at 530 in the morning, and I don't get to call a real friend at 530 in the morning.

[00:06:58] So I was using that tool as a way of self reflecting. It was different than hard, but it was a really big part of it. Were you somebody that liked to write before this experience? I kind of knew always that I could. I've never thought of myself as a bad writer, like, oh, I couldn't possibly, but I'd never used that as a tool of expression.

[00:07:19] And when I was doing it, I didn't know it would become something. It was, I remember I had 400 pages of captured communication with myself. Before I said to someone, oh my god, this could be a book. And then I was like, wait a second, maybe this is a book. Did you write by hand or did you write on a computer?

[00:07:40] A little bit of both. Especially navigating hospital times and changing locations. I had a journal with me that was just pen and paper. And then there were periods, because of the time frame, my dad's stroke was in January, January 27th of 2020. And then COVID happened. And so we were also navigating different care facilities.

[00:08:04] And then periods of isolation where I couldn't be at the care facility, limited access to him and then sending him home with me. So in the times where we were physically separated, I was writing on the computer in the morning, almost, almost out of like, I don't even know what else to do with myself when I can't be near someone that I had been like, we would go from like, Intimately dependent upon one another to absolutely out of contact, especially because he was nonverbal after his stroke.

[00:08:33] He could say only a few words. You couldn't call him. You had to connect with him. You had to be very close, like you needed your whole body to do it. Yeah, that's something that I don't think a lot of people understand sometimes with illnesses that people lose the ability to verbally communicate. And then when they can, you physically do need to be so close, like you need to properly put your ear up to their mouth.

[00:08:58] to hear anything that they're saying, and how much that drastically changes your interaction. You have to rely on other things. You have to rely on other senses so much. And what did you, or did you find anything that brought joy out of the experience that maybe surprised you? Because a lot of times we just look at caregiving and illness and things that fall into that space as just sad and difficult and hard, but there is sometimes joy in parts of it.

[00:09:34] So was there any of that that you found along the way? Yeah. And I think that's also, I really appreciate that question because you kind of have to know something about it to even know to ask that question or that that. That's probably true. And I think for people that go through something like that, to be asked about the joyful parts is really nice, but the average person or anyone who hasn't been through any of that wouldn't even know that there are exquisitely beautiful moments and gut wrenchingly hilarious moments.

[00:10:05] For me, there were moments, especially around the communication. where the ridiculousness of the amount of effort I was putting in to figure out what he was trying to say, and then the simplicity of what the actual message was, was so hilarious, like, please turn off the light, but it took me. Half an hour and I'm like doing interpretive dance and playing charades.

[00:10:33] And it's like, so, so ridiculous that you can't not laugh. And one of the most beautiful things that survived in my dad's brain was his ability to know when something was funny and to be able to laugh together, which isn't linguistic, right? He didn't need words to be able to laugh. So when something was funny and we could laugh.

[00:10:56] It was piercing joyful because it was a way that we could connect in the same place in the same time on the same topic and we could laugh and it was magic when those things happen. I remember one morning trying to get him ready to go to some doctor's appointment and whatever he was trying to say, I was like, You want coffee, you need to go to the bathroom, or you're thirsty, we forgot your pills.

[00:11:22] I'm guessing, I'm guessing, I'm guessing. Then finally, he sometimes can splurt out a sentence, it would be random, but I would call it getting a hit. Like, in baseball, I was like, oh, we got a hit, like something came through. And he said, do we need pants? And I, I was like, yes, yeah, we do totally. We need Pam for this.

[00:11:47] Yeah. And he didn't have them on and I was just like trying to figure out every other element of it not realizing that he was just like, Do we need pants for this outing? Yes. I could see where that would be funny to finally have that come out and be like, Oh, well, yeah, of course we need pants while you're trying to figure out all these super serious things.

[00:12:06] Like, did I forget your pills? Yeah, exactly. And I will say that just in the, in an overarching way, because before his stroke, my dad was He was young, he was in his early sixties, he was retired from teaching. He was very active and athletic. And so to lose his physicality was absolutely devastating to his sense of self.

[00:12:30] But what remained underneath there was like a kind of sensitivity or emotionality or vulnerability I never saw in the first 32 years of knowing him, and that was also unbelievably beautiful to get to spend two years with him. With that softer version of him, even though he didn't like losing his physicality We were able to connect in that time on a level that that there was just no access to in his in his sort of Like grizzly bear.

[00:13:06] Yeah, I like that when we are with people that are ill and in a different state There is a level of vulnerable. Can't say the word Vulnerability that we don't typically see in everyday life and that's one of the things that I try to tell people is that I know it can be scary. I know it can be overwhelming when somebody that you love is changed by an illness, but it gives us this opportunity to connect on such an intimate, vulnerable level that we can't do in everyday life.

[00:13:39] And if we can mentally, emotionally prepare ourselves for the situation and relax into it, at least a little bit, we can find the beauty in this situation. It doesn't mean that we want them to be that way. It doesn't mean that we want the situation to be what it is, but it is what it is, and so fighting against that and staying away, that breaks my heart when I hear people say, Oh, I just can't be near my person.

[00:14:04] Like, this is too hard for me. And I get it, I'm not judging, but it just seems like it's a lost opportunity to really connect with the person that you love in a way that is so real and so raw and so vulnerable and just so intimate and we don't typically do that in our day to day lives. Agreed. I'm glad that you were able to get to that point with him.

[00:14:26] And with his stroke, so it took away his ability to speak. Did he have no movement at all? It completely destroyed his body, but his mind, for the most part, was still there. Yeah, it was fascinating, the things that did and didn't work, because the things that did work worked a hundred percent perfectly, and the things that didn't work did not work, but it's not so linear.

[00:14:54] With brains, you know, like there would be things that he could understand so fully that I was like, I can't believe you can understand that, like maps of the city of Thunder Bay where we lived, not to look at, but like in his mind, he had a fully intact understanding of the whole city, like memorized, it was there, it was, he knew where we were in the city if we were driving around and how to get to everyone's house that we ever knew, or like, it was just like, oh, that's all That's, that's there, but if you handed him cheese and a cheese grater, he didn't know what to do with those two things, or that you have to crack an egg in order to cook it.

[00:15:30] So, It was, like, really trippy to be with the reality of the way his brain worked. When his stroke first happened, we were told that he would be in a vegetative state if he were to continue living, and that his brain would swell. There was no medication given. It was as bad as a stroke can be, and we were just waiting for his brain to swell and for him to die.

[00:15:52] So that's when we first got to Kelowna, which is where he was in British Columbia. We were waiting, they said it would take maybe five days, and then we waited five days and he was awake and not dying. Then people there started to shift, like, well, I guess if you're not gonna die, then let's see what we can get back here.

[00:16:12] And so he went from fully paralyzed on his right side, and non linguistic, to after a year and a half of, every possible kind of therapy. I know that he would be proud to say that he could walk and he never gained any function back in his right hand and arm, but he could also listen to a conversation and mostly understand.

[00:16:37] You could talk to him. And he could talk back in yeses and nos and the occasional word, or he would try to use words, but lots of times the words that came out weren't the words he intended to say. So there was a kind of aphasia happening around his speech. By the time he died, I had communicated with him so thoroughly that I really felt like his communication was great.

[00:17:04] There wasn't really anything we couldn't figure out or get through. Emotionally, I got good at guessing. I got good at how to ask questions so he would answer them successfully. I got good at decoding what he was trying to say. I just learned so much about how to be with that way of communicating. It's made me a very good parent to a toddler.

[00:17:22] I have a two year old. Since he's died, when I go back and watch videos of us speaking, I can't believe how disabled he is. From inside it, I could no longer see what the problem was, in the sense of like, there wasn't anything I felt like we couldn't do. And now, looking back, I'm like, oh, he could really hardly say anything.

[00:17:41] That communication had so much to do with our bond and our ability to be vulnerable and close to each other and like, wrestle it out. We're going to figure each other out, even if it takes a really long time. Do you think he felt any shame in the fact that his daughter was taking care of him? Was that something that he ever tried to get across to you?

[00:18:04] Not that I think maybe he even would, even if he felt it, but I'm just curious. Again, as a parent, I think Having my son take care of me in such an intimate way would probably be a little difficult for me. It was something that the two of you experienced. Yeah, I will say that he felt definitely uncomfortable in general with requiring care.

[00:18:27] Like, that was very hard for him. He and I had a very athletic sort of relationship, as in he had always coached me and taught me. And a lot of our dynamic was around skill acquisition and task completion. In the role reversal, I took up teaching him and caring for him in the way that he had taught and cared for me.

[00:18:51] It was, it felt natural. I did it exactly how he did it. And it was a lot of coaching and closeness and teaching and patience. And there was, we were never uncomfortable together in that, even in the, in the very unusual physicality of the things that we had to get done around, like changing him and showering him and drying him off and shaving his face and shaving his head.

[00:19:16] And none of that, I think for him or for me ever felt uncomfortable. It was very practical and loving. in a total role reversal. And I, I think the role reversal was intolerable to him. It's a part of why he didn't want to be in the world anymore. There was a point where seizures started about a year and a bit after his stroke.

[00:19:36] The stroke recovery was going really well. He had crushed any expectation for what he would ever be able to do. He was far beyond where anyone ever thought he would go with that kind of brain injury. When the seizures started and, and we all sort of realized, like, It would be only a fight from here to even maintain where we were at.

[00:19:57] There would be no more gains. The seizures were losses every time. He would sleep for several days afterwards. And in a stroke body, if you don't move for several days, the mobility he had gained becomes so spastic and rigid. He was constantly having to start over with his mobility. That was intolerable to him.

[00:20:15] When we were doing recovery, when we were coaching each other, that was okay in the intimacy of it. When it was like, Oh, this is all there's ever going to be. And it's just going to be this for a slow, slow decline that could, when a 64 year old body take 10 years, especially because of how strong he was.

[00:20:33] That was a no for him. And that was when he started saying to me, he has three kids. I'm the eldest of three. My sister and I did the majority of the hands on caregiving. We both work in care professions. That was when he started to just say no. I think he couldn't stand the thought of us living our lives.

[00:20:52] That way, caring for him for 10 years, even though we both said we would have done that forever just to keep him. I understand that the nature of who he was could not tolerate that level of need and that requirement of his daughters for. An uncertain period of time. And how did that feel for you when he first communicated that medical aid and dying or not going on the way that he was once that really got clear for you what he was thinking?

[00:21:22] How was that emotionally? I think I already knew it didn't feel shocking. It was a balanced equation. Like the math on it for me made sense. And it's never something I would have suggested to him, but just watching him struggle and suffer. By the time he started to be able to express that, I had an inclination of what he was trying to say long before he could come out and say it.

[00:21:48] He had to work pretty hard to get that out clearly. I think he was trying for a while. And when it clicked for me, it was like, yeah, makes total sense. And, shit. How am I going to do this? How am I going to, what do I have to do to my insides to be able to tolerate, not just tolerate, but to really do this with him, to be there with him, not just, not just let it happen in that way, where you miss the whole thing because it's so upsetting, but to really walk through that with him and be there for it.

[00:22:23] It was a kind of look at the sky moment of like, Please someone show me how you can adapt to an idea like that painful and scary and made total sense. Did anybody in your family have a hard time accepting it? Any of your siblings or was he still married to your mother? They were not married. My mom and dad, my mom did become quite involved in his care over the time after he stayed alive and she realized how involved Her children would be in his care.

[00:22:58] They had a beautiful and miraculous reconciliation just around, like, her showing up. She was very present in his care. They had a really beautiful friendship by the time he died. By the time he died, she was his favorite person to be around, which was so sweet to see. It was probably me and my sister in the beginning, but at the end it was definitely my mom that he wanted to just drink coffee with and watch something on TV.

[00:23:23] It's very, very sweet with regards to the medical assistance in dying my family. Everyone really saw him like there was the understanding that he still had enough ferocity in him that if we didn't help him die, it really felt like he was going to try to do that on his own. And that was intolerable to all of us.

[00:23:46] The thought of him trying to take care of His needs on his own and being successful or unsuccessful was just, that's the absolute worst case. It's him dying and us choosing to help him so that that could be loving, graceful and gentle was a far improvement from what he was saying would happen if he was just left to his own devices.

[00:24:11] His mother, we call her Nana, my grandmother, she's still alive. And my dad and her ended up sharing a care home together for the last year of his life. They stayed in a two bedroom assisted living space together before he decided he wanted to die. And it was hardest on her. So, um, she would say that she did not agree, but also that it was his decision.

[00:24:37] So there was that piece of it. There wasn't friction or arguing. But there was the capacity for at least her to say, I don't, I don't think that's the right, that's not a choice I would ever choose. I, I wouldn't choose that for you. And also, I, I won't, I wouldn't dare try to stop you from making your choice.

[00:24:56] Yeah. And as a mom, I'm like, Oh my God, that's terrible. I can't even imagine how that would feel, but it is beautiful that she was able to support it as best as she can. And that if that's what he wanted. Yeah. But what a terrible experience for a mother. I think, yeah, it broke her and, but I think my dad's stroke broke all of us in some way.

[00:25:19] Like that was the big, that was the big loss. And then there was kind of like the final. And I think for my Nana, that changed the, the rest of her life. And yeah, I don't think she'll ever come back from that one. That was painful. And then in Canada, when somebody chooses, like how does that process work?

[00:25:41] Because I know it's legal in New Jersey, so I know how it works in New Jersey, but I don't actually know how it works in Canada. So Canada is, I think it's the medically assisted. Death capital of the world, we have some of the most liberal and accessible laws around medical assistance in dying. The way that those requests are set up right now is that someone is able to express their desire for medical assistance in dying, goes through a process, and then Referral to their family doctor and then to a doctor who assesses whether they meet the criteria for medical assistance in dying.

[00:26:20] The criteria off the top of my head are basically like you're either dying of a terminal illness that no one can cure and you're seeking medical assistance in dying because you're in incurable pain in an incurable situation, and in order to end that suffering, you qualify for a medical assistance in dying.

[00:26:43] That's called Track 1 MAID. You have a terminal illness, and you need access to relief from that. And then we also have Track 2 MAID, which is far, far less common. Something like 97 percent of MAID requests are Track 1 terminal illness. Track two made is when you have an incurable illness but it's not killing you immediately, meaning that your death is not foreseeable medically.

[00:27:10] If you have stage four cancers and they've given you three months to live, that's track one made. If you've had a stroke and you could live indefinitely in that way but there's nothing they can do to improve your quality of life, which is the situation my dad was in, where he was experiencing what they call intolerable suffering, but had no clear calculation of how long that suffering might last.

[00:27:35] Track two means that you qualify for medical assistance in dying, but you don't. You have to wait 90 days from your request. There's a long contemplation period because you're not dying immediately. So they put this three month gap in there. You're assessed by a doctor to make sure you qualify for track one or track two.

[00:27:54] And you're assessed by a second doctor to ensure that they've explored every medical option that they couldn't possibly make your life any better. with anything that we know how to do or have to offer. And then you set a date that's 90 days from your assessment, and then you work for 90 days, and then you have access to that medical assistance in dying, either in a hospital or in your home.

[00:28:19] Is it something where a doctor or nurse or somebody assists with the family? You know, and at the moment of the person taking the medication, or is it just kind of like, here's the medicine, family caregivers have to deal with it. How do they typically do it? The medical assistance in dying that we have access to here is not pills that you take on your own, which I know in America, some places you have to be able to take the medicine yourself.

[00:28:45] Here it's done intravenously. A nurse comes to the hospital or to your house in the morning to place IVs in each arm and then they come back a couple of hours later just to make sure that those IVs have, they're in and they're good. So it's not a rushed thing. They come in the morning to make sure that the ports are set up and then they came back at lunchtime, um, doctor and a nurse.

[00:29:07] I think there are a series of five medications that are pushed through those IVs in the arms that put you off to sleep and then turn off your heart. Kind of like a 10 minute, 15 minute process. Were you and your whole family there when it was occurring with your father? Yeah, anyone can be there. So, There's also time, not for all made requests like some people, some people, they're very fast and the person needs to be out of suffering very quickly.

[00:29:38] But in our case, we had so long. So long to wait and imagine what we would want to do and who we would want to be there. So my brother and my sister and I, my mother, my dad's mother, and two of his sisters were all there that day. The night before, it was December in Northwestern Ontario, which is very wintry.

[00:29:58] My sister and I put out a Facebook announcement a couple of nights before, I think, but the night before he died. We had a candlelit vigil in the yard for him where he was a beloved high school teacher in that community. Hundreds of people came and lit candles and sunk them in the snow. We had a place where people could take shots of whiskey and there was a bonfire in the driveway and people wrote notes and left them in a fishing cooler.

[00:30:25] Uh, blessings for his safe passage, but also memories and, and ways that he had touched their lives. That notice was also such a gift to us to be able to let the community love him before he died, and to feel the support, the sense of, of being held by community for my family, knowing that was happening for us.

[00:30:46] It was a beautiful way to call ritual and community. And we had people light candles all around the world, people who couldn't make it to the yards. It was really beautiful to see the pictures and receive the videos of candles burning in Thailand and candles burning in Australia and candles burning in Spain.

[00:31:02] And. Candles burning on the West Coast and the East Coast. It was more so for his family even than him. It was really comforting. The night before he died, he was having lots of seizures, but he came to the window after everyone had left and we got to watch this sea of candles burning in the snow. It was really lovely.

[00:31:20] It was like, he felt good. It was a good thing to have done for him. It's beautiful. And after the process was done, after he officially died, was there anything that your family did as a ritual together? Was there anything you planned ahead of time to do or was it more, we're going to see how we feel at the time?

[00:31:42] Yeah, there were lots of little things like we had made an altar of candles and pictures that he could see when he lied down on the couch. We kept that lit, and I had put a prayer underneath the couch cushion where he would lie down. There were lots of ritual moments, but they were all quite personal, like, they just, Came along with us for the ride.

[00:32:03] I had been gifted these Japanese clay balls from a Monastery a friend of mine had given me three and told me that they were wishing balls I had smashed two of them when people in my life had died the third one I had written my dad's name on long before he decided to die, but I knew that it would be his And so I had it with me that day when he died and so when he was gone, my sister and I rang a bell and then smashed this clay ball on the floor and my sister played this really beautiful trumpet music when they were taking his body away.

[00:32:40] That period of time was also really nice because The doctor leave and we had instructions for how to call to have the morgue come and take his body, but we didn't have to do it immediately. And so that was like the juncture of time that we didn't know how we would feel. Like would we make that phone call right away?

[00:32:59] Would we make that phone call in 20 minutes or two hours or two days? And it felt really healthy in a way that I think is missing from our culture to just be allowed to house him there. And not be in a hurry to do anything. So we made an agreement, my siblings and my mom and I, that we would each just say when we were ready to make that call and we would wait until the last person was ready, so we each sort of chimed in as it was like, Okay, I don't feel, I don't feel like there's anything left for me to do here with this.

[00:33:33] And then, I think he stayed for, you know, four or five hours, maybe, with us and ordered takeout food and had some scotch. And we had two babies. My son was nine months old and my nephew was four months old. So there were two babies there crawling around on the floor and sitting and bashing at things. And that also felt really healthy, like, around our culture's relationship with death, and that this grandfather figure was there, and he died, and we could be together, and calm, and take a minute, that part of it felt really healthy.

[00:34:10] healthy. I was really thankful for that. It's beautiful that you were able to communicate ahead of time with the family of how you would be able to communicate when you were ready. And without there being that pressure, like, well, I'm ready. So everybody else has to be ready to like, no, I'm just letting you know that I'm ready.

[00:34:28] So that, you know, that's. Really? That's lovely. And how are you feeling now? You know, it's been a few years. How have you been processing? How are you, not that you move on, but moving on from caregiving for sure, right? You're not caregiving. And even though you have a child, which is a whole different level of caregiving, but how's this process been for you now over the last few years?

[00:34:52] I think it's, Incredible, in the most neutral way you can say that word, like not incredible, wow, amazing, wonderful, but incredible in the fascinating, full, ongoing process of grief and watching meself turn into whoever I am or going to be beyond that. Beyond that time, I think it took a year for me to really, even though I wrote a whole book about it and released the book and talked about the book and did a bunch of podcasts and public speaking events, it took a year for me to, I remember the moment of being like, Whoa, something really happened to me in that first year after he died, I couldn't feel that there had been an impact as time separates us.

[00:35:39] From when we were doing that to me now, more and more, I'm able to look back and see how extraordinary the impact was on every facet of who I am. I'm visited by him and by grief in unexpected moments now, sometimes like this. Punches and bunches and sometimes so lovely, like seeing an old friend, May long weekend.

[00:36:05] It was just May long weekend in Canada this past weekend. And that was my dad's pinnacle of the year. It was opening weekend for fishing. And he always had an extraordinary time with his friends. It was the best adventure of the year, May long weekend. I'm just coming out of that and feeling very thankful that this discussion is a few days after that weekend.

[00:36:26] I feel like I've been looking at lots of pictures and really feeling his nearness and his far away ness, which I think is like a part of the processing, how to understand what it means when someone is gone. Also, how the grief, or the memory, or the contact with him is what it's like to spend time with him now, which is a beautiful learning for me.

[00:36:54] In the beginning it was very painful, and now it's like to be visited by you. is to miss you and remember you, but also be so filled up by how much of you is in me all the time. And that's what it's like to spend time together. It soothes the sense of him being gone somehow, when I can feel him so full inside of my body or my memory or the way that I parent.

[00:37:18] The way that I feel on my long weekend. That's beautiful. I'm glad that you can have those experiences now. If somebody would like to get a copy of your book or reach you, how would they be able to do that? The book is on Amazon and it ships to the States and to Canada. Some people in the UK have bought it.

[00:37:36] It's called Loved Into Being. The best website to use for me, I have some that are associated with my different clinical practices, but jillbodak.com is just a central landing page where you can redirect yourself towards the book, towards my educational offerings, and towards my clinical practice. So it's, it's a good, It's a good place to start if you're looking to get in touch.

[00:37:59] Or basic Instagram, which is @jill.bodak. Gotta love the social medias. Yeah. And I will put links to all of it in the show notes so people can just easily find it and click the links to find you and your book. But thank you so much for taking your time. I enjoyed hearing about you and your father and your journey together through a really difficult situation.

[00:38:24] So thank you. Thank you for holding space for stories like these. I think it's something that we need more of in our culture. And that's why I started the podcast, because I wanted to get these stories out into the world to help normalize it and make it a little less scary for people to face on their own.

[00:38:43] Whenever that may be in whatever form that may be. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. In my next episode, I'm joined by Kelly Butler, founder of Community Death Care Ottawa, who has worked in death and dying care for 30 years. Kelly shares her journey, which began with hospice work in Atlanta.

[00:39:06] And led to her creating a collective that empowers families to reclaim death care from the medical system. We talk about her organization's mission, which hosts grief rituals, home funeral demos, and natural burial talks. Kelly discusses the evolving role of death doulas, the importance of mindfulness and end of life care.

[00:39:26] And how acceptance plays a crucial role in facing both death and global challenges like climate change. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review.

[00:39:46] Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.

[00:40:06] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo, if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of seeing death clearly.