This is the death episode. Its a pleasant romp through the grave yard as we discuss everything about the death industry with a local pro. We talk death, dying, the funeral industry, decomposition, ghosts, weird stuff that happens at funeral homes, blood clots, predatory business practices, and the existence of heaven and hell, and so much more.

FEATURED GUEST Melissa Meadow (mortician and funeral director)

Melissa Meadow is a local mortician and funeral director. She came to the PNW from Texas to shake up the funeral industry and she is already making waves. In this episode she will talk about her professional history, her personal philosophies and she might even announce plans for a brand new facility that will be something that most people have never seen before. You don't want to miss it.

Ramble by the River Links:

• Website
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• Episode catalogue
• Business: ramblebytheriver@gmail.com

Melissa Meadow Links:

• Facebook
• TheEnd.green

Music:

• Home Early, Dylan Sitts.
• Puzzle of Complexity, Jo Wandrini.
• Trumpet Man, Timothy Infinite.
• Still Fly, Revel Day.

Copyright 2022 Ramble by the River LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Jeff Nesbitt: Gotcha bitch Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Ramble by the River. Pardon the interruption, but I'm doing some pest control cuz there's a couple fucking flies in here and I just won't have it. I won't stand for it. Not on this show, not on my watch. Saturday, November 26th, the year of our Lord, 2022, and we've got a great show for you. This is the death episode. We talk Death, dying, the funeral industry, decomposition, ghosts, weird stuff that happens at funeral homes, blood clots, predatory business practices, and the existence of heaven and hell.

Jeff Nesbitt: You can find all that stuff as well as the most recent episodes at Ramble by the River dot. We've also got links there to the entire catalog. So if you wanna hear any episodes from the back catalog, just go to Ramble by the River dot com and check it out.

Jeff Nesbitt: Ah, feels good to be here. Back in the studio once again. Doing what I love. Recording a podcast. It's been a crazy. Truly, truly unprecedented in my life. I've seen fires and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I couldn't find a friend, but I always dreamed that I would see you again.

Jeff Nesbitt: Well, I mean, not technically late. We're supposed to meet at four 30. It's only 4 0 5, but I was hoping he would get here half an hour early. You know, a guy like me, I take the initiative, I get there a half an hour early and set up a podcast studio. You know, I just call me old fashioned. That's just the way I do it.

Jeff Nesbitt: So the truth of the matter is that Jeff is in fact not late and I am early, which is kind of a nice change up, you know, a lot of these podcasts I get out here, you know, probably about an hour before the guest shows up and thinking that will be plenty of time to set up my things.

Jeff Nesbitt: But no, it is definitely not, because you gotta be laying cords, you're plugging plugs, you're connecting docs, you're connecting wifi, you're putting out gaffer's tape, you know you're arranging chairs, you're putting out mics. There is so much shit to do. I could really use a roadie and a young, Jamie. That's the dream. Huh? You podcasters out there. You know it. If you know, you know Jamie's the dream. These fucking flies are driving me nuts. Oh my God.

Jeff Nesbitt: Actually now, the more that I think about it, they're very much like witches. Kind of gross. Why are flies? Oh yeah. They land on shit and rotting stuff. At one time, were maggots. They're like one of the grocer organisms that we come in contact with on a regular basis. Right up there with rats. Fuck rats, soulless little beasts.

Jeff Nesbitt: I want no part of rats. I don't want them in my life. I wanna, I wanna rat free life. I've lived with rats several times. Don't care for it. I do not care for it. Two stars. Do not recommend. I would give it a one star, but it is entertaining and you're kind of afraid a lot. If you're afraid of rats, which I was at the time.

Jeff Nesbitt: I'm not anymore for some reason. But you know, you live and you learn and sometimes you heal your fears of rats, say a.

Jeff Nesbitt: They weren't that big though, not compared to me. I'm a human.

Jeff Nesbitt: and then there was the cabin ho, the beach cabin. That's what really gets me. I don't even like to think about it. It still sends a shiver down my spine every time. I could still hear the scratching, the squeaks, the thuds. It's K geek.

Jeff Nesbitt: Anyway, the speech cabin was small, probably the size of the studio, and the walls were thin . There was no attic or anything. The roof was really thin. It was probably six inches thick Somehow these rats were getting inside and they had created basically like a rat farm in the ceiling slash roof of this cabin while I slept below.

Jeff Nesbitt: They lived their little rat society.

Jeff Nesbitt: While I tried to sleep, I would hear them. Dragging stuff into their den and eating it. These thin walls, it was like that paneling that was really like everywhere in the eighties. That cheap wood paneling with the thin vertical black lines on it. That real like okie coloring. Everybody loved it.

Jeff Nesbitt: That was a hot look back in 87. Truly the only upside to having to listen to those rats scratching all night , pulling squirrels in, having their way tearing little beasts apart eating them for dinner. Generations rise and fall.

Jeff Nesbitt: It was truly disgusting to me. I mean, you get so accustomed to the sound of people's love making from television and pop culture and The sounds, the sounds. People make the sounds everywhere you go, eh, eh, eh, completely recognizable. You know, you never mistake it. You hear the sounds from a mile away.

Jeff Nesbitt: You know what it is. And when it is your sister, it is disgusting. It is truly disgusting,

Jeff Nesbitt: filthy, just filthy.

Jeff Nesbitt: It made me understand how some guys like get all protective and I don't know, want to make sure nobody bangs our sister. I never really felt like that. I was like, I hope whoever ends up with my sister's art, they're nice guys and they treat her well and bang real good so that they enjoy their life and feel good.

Jeff Nesbitt: He was cool, but, uh, didn't care for that soundtrack. All right, let's move on. Fuck. Where is Jeff? He's supposed to be here in 14 minutes. Why did I start this so fucking early? Damn it.

Jeff Nesbitt: You know what? I'm gonna pause the recorder and just wait till Jeff gets here.

Jeff Nesbitt: Jeff? Yeah. How's it going man?

Geoff Hylton: You expecting

Jeff Nesbitt: somebody else? Uh, no. But you can never be too careful.

Geoff Hylton: I like the blue.

Jeff Nesbitt: Would you shut that hatch? It, it's shot. Okay. What blue This.

Geoff Hylton: Oh, the lights? Yeah. I just got some, uh, blue lights from my house. Cool. I love

Jeff Nesbitt: the l e d strips. They're great.

Jeff Nesbitt: stomach it, huh? Not for the effort. Lip. What? Why? Not enough spit glands up there

Geoff Hylton: for some reason. Like the spit doesn't pool in it.

Geoff Hylton: So, but, uh, no, I'm, uh, I was talking to my mom about this last night, like, I ain't, I've chewed off and on for a long time, but it's bad.

Jeff Nesbitt: How come so much more now? I don't. Did it get better somehow? Did they up their game

Geoff Hylton: Maybe. Maybe more nicotine in there. I

Jeff Nesbitt: could smell it from here. It smells pretty thick.

Jeff Nesbitt: I know. Yeah. What do you got? Mint, winter, green. I didn't have to ask .

Geoff Hylton: It's funny. I couldn't stand it at first. It used to. Reminds me of Paul all the time, like his breath would always smell like winter, green. I found it disgusting.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. Uh, but no, I'm getting my ass kicked by the nicotine addiction right now. Yeah. That's a bad one. It is. It's the worst one. That's what I hear. I just keep thinking about, it's like it's gonna, well, we have a lot of friends that al chew. It's like it's gonna get somebody.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: So, yeah. Gotta at some point need to do something about it.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Dude. What, what can you do? Nicotine gum and

Geoff Hylton: yeah, there's uh, there's really like the fake chew

Jeff Nesbitt: Are you using actual tobacco? Yeah. Oh, you're not just doing the patches. Those little, like what it was in.

Geoff Hylton: There's, uh, like Zen and a couple other brands that are like nicotine pouches.

Geoff Hylton: And then there's actually like Chew in a pouch. There's lozenges, there's lots of options. You can go, there's snooze.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Do they still make those cool little aluminum cans? I, you know,

Jeff Nesbitt: Aren. Was that a lie?

Geoff Hylton: For some people they were a lie.

Geoff Hylton: I know some people that, that fit a lot. Some people don't fit much. Yeah. If I taste it, if I feel it in my throat, I, I don't want that. Do you spit or swallow like on the reg? If, if, uh, like right now I don't have to make the choice. It's just there. Like I don't have to. Cause it's not getting

Jeff Nesbitt: all juiced out.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. As long as I don't work it or anything.

Geoff Hylton: It's fine, but

Jeff Nesbitt: does it even work then if it's just up there? Just chill and dry?

Geoff Hylton: It sure eats my gum away, so it must be working. Oh, that's the little

Jeff Nesbitt: broken glass shards. Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Put in, possessed that, uh, urban, urban legend, which is, I wouldn't

Jeff Nesbitt: put it past them.

Jeff Nesbitt: They don't need that shit, man. They have chemical burns. Yeah, just like that. The, it's caustic. It's just, you can feel it. No, you can't. It burns you.

Geoff Hylton: I don't know if this is so much true for winter green, but like mint for sure. It actually opens up your, your skin

Jeff Nesbitt: and your breath. .

Jeff Nesbitt: It makes your nasal feel open up.

Jeff Nesbitt: hear it in my voice. Me too. Me too. . do you have a deviated septum or any kind of nose issues? Yeah. I got your nose broken,

right?

Geoff Hylton: Yeah, I got a deviated septum. Yeah. See how

Jeff Nesbitt: crooked my nose

Geoff Hylton: is? Oh yeah. Right there.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. I can

Jeff Nesbitt: see it going off that way. I never knew that's what that was really. I have just always thought, you know, just classic case of ugly dude. Right. Um, but born crooked. Yeah. I think I have a deviated septum and I wonder about how great it would feel to have, uh, you know, not be a receptive. Well,

Geoff Hylton: I've heard from guys who made the switch and it sounds, it sounds wonderful.

Geoff Hylton: It does, huh? They rave about it. They do, but I mean, you could see mine. This one's, oh yeah. Pretty closed off. Um,

Jeff Nesbitt: I get good breath most of the time. Most of the time. But I get bloody noses and shit. Oh

Geoff Hylton: yeah. I don't get, even when they've been broken, I've never got a

Jeff Nesbitt: bloody nose. I have a constant runny nose that just never goes away.

Jeff Nesbitt: Me, especially this time

Geoff Hylton: of year. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Does it ever make you self conscious, like when you go to Kiss a Girl?

Jeff Nesbitt: Um, that's why I grow the

Geoff Hylton: mustache and you're. I could feel,

Jeff Nesbitt: I know it's there. Just soak it on up. It, it does. It makes me feel self-conscious when I go to speak in public, cuz I'm constantly either sniffing or, or rubbing my nose with a napkin or let's face it, probably my hand.

Jeff Nesbitt: I go

Geoff Hylton: back of the hand and, uh, somewhere on my pants.

Jeff Nesbitt: Well see What matters is the move you make after you wipe, you gotta pause. If you go straight to the pants, then everybody's gonna know that guy's wiping bug. Right? But if. Just go back to your regular hand gesturing life. It only takes about five seconds for people to forget and then, you know, back at the pants, back at the hand meet, and then you're clean.

Geoff Hylton: I do leave it alone a lot too. I'll just give it a quick wipe and leave it on my hand. Oh, yeah,

Geoff Hylton: Like urine? Yeah. Oh. You know, I don't think I've, I've heard that.

Geoff Hylton: Don't do that shit in my house. I mean, shouldn't you flush everything down? Yes.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, that's, that's what I'm saying. I hate

Geoff Hylton: it drives me up the wall.

Jeff Nesbitt: Especially, I mean, let's face it, it's. Men Sure do. Leave the toilet seat up. They are guilty of that. But women don't flush the toilet.

Geoff Hylton: It's funny cuz the number one perpetrator in my life who will go nameless and won't do that to 'em, is a man.

Jeff Nesbitt: Do you live with any women?

Geoff Hylton: No, I don't live with any men either.

Jeff Nesbitt: That limits your sample size? Oh yeah, that's true. So is it chaa? No. You gotta train.

Geoff Hylton: No, no. Somebody

Jeff Nesbitt: else. Yeah. I've had a lot of sisters

New Jeff: and daughters

New Jeff: in my life and I've also had a lot of wives. Yeah. All of these women just leave a big, old, sloppy pilot of those paper and do nothing with it.

New Jeff: Yeah. It's unnecessary. I don't

Geoff Hylton: get it. What's, what's the,

Geoff Hylton: It's a powerful motivator.

Jeff Nesbitt: Well, we'll find out Uh, but how you been. Good. I haven't really talked to you much since, uh, the last time we did a podcast and you moved right after that.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's been a while, or you moved before that or after I moved around the same time.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. I think it's been like two months. A little over two months, but it's nice. It's great. I like being out there right next to Alex and Alex.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That's gotta be pretty good. Yeah. They're in Arizona

Geoff Hylton: right now, right? Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Coming back here shortly. I think an hour or two. Nice. Yep.

Jeff Nesbitt: Nice. I've just been working, doing podcasts and living life.

Geoff Hylton: How's the new job? Didn't get it. Oh, didn't get it.

Jeff Nesbitt: The job, man. Yeah. Who'd have thought? What the hell? Yeah. What the fuck? They didn't give it to me. I must not have deserved

Geoff Hylton: it. Uh, it doesn't always work

Jeff Nesbitt: that way.

Geoff Hylton: would be nice if you could find out why. Just like constructive, I don't wanna say criticism, but it could be right. It probably is. Like, this is why we didn't choose you.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. Maybe it's something you could work on.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Or maybe it was just circumstances, you know, there's a lot of, uh, Backdoor deals. There's a lot of jobs that are posted because it's illegal not to post them. Yeah. And in reality, they already know who they're hiring. Yeah. And they probably already talked to 'em and it's all lined up and you never know.

Geoff Hylton: It's, it's more, it's magnified like in a small town, the, you know, what's the correct word? Nepotism. Um, but it's, it's everywhere.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. It's more visible in smaller organizations. But yeah, it's everywhere. And they did drag it out for six fucking. That was ridiculous.

Geoff Hylton: Maybe their man wasn't getting his shit together.

Geoff Hylton: They were trying to maybe like, come on man, we can't drag this on. We're gonna have to hire the other guy.

Jeff Nesbitt: And evaluate it and look at the strengths and weaknesses. Also, it was weird to try to write down references cuz my best references are still like the ones that I used to get the job I have now. Right. 10 years ago. Over 10 years ago. Yeah. When

Geoff Hylton: you're basically in charge, it's hard to get a,

Jeff Nesbitt: yeah. Who, I don't know who to ask.

Jeff Nesbitt: It doesn't matter really. It would've been a major shakeup in my life, regardless of whether, whether or not it was a good move, I, I wouldn't even find that out for a long time. Right. But I, I'm happy where I'm at, so I'm not super worried about it.

Geoff Hylton: any graves? No, I've been on a Dr. No one dying, huh? No, they die. They just don't. Burials are way down.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. They're just melting them and swimming pool, turning

Geoff Hylton: them into water.

Geoff Hylton: All kinds of,

Jeff Nesbitt: they got some tech out there now, man. Kinds of things. There's some cool, cool tricks that they got. Tricks to the trade. The death trade.

Geoff Hylton: I'm gonna go with, uh, straight. I wanna be buried. You wanna be buried? Keep

Jeff Nesbitt: it simple. Yep. Yeah, me too. What kind of coffin?

Geoff Hylton: Pine, nice wood. I don't know. I haven't thought

Jeff Nesbitt: that it's a dilemma for me.

Jeff Nesbitt: I, I would prefer cedar, but you know, it'll never rot. You'll be in there forever.

Geoff Hylton: That's, that's true. Well, the quality of cedar, this, you know, these days, you know, cuz the get that wide grain bullshit. Yeah. From what I understand with Cedar has to reach a certain age of maturity to develop all those

Jeff Nesbitt: properties.

Geoff Hylton: what an amazing wood. Oh, it's the best wood of all. It is. It's my favorite.

Jeff Nesbitt: I mean, I've never really worked with. Some of the other great woods like Sequoia or Redwood, um, I haven't like chopped them up and made kindling out of them like I have with cedar.

Jeff Nesbitt: I love cedar. I love chopping it. I love smelling it. It's like, it feels like a warm friend. Yeah. It's, it's a very like, welcoming vibration coming from that wood. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Good for frequency. Mm-hmm. do, especially when it's alive. Oh yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. I hug a tree. Makes it, I'm a tree hugger. Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: All the time. There's one up at Fort Columbia in particular, not a Cedar, but. Nice.

Jeff Nesbitt: Doug Fur. That's what I was gonna guess. They got a lot up there. Yeah. Some good size ones too. Yeah. Up by the reservoir. Yeah. Yeah. That's a cool little gem of a spot. Oh,

Jeff Nesbitt: it really is. Yeah. One of my

favorites.

Jeff Nesbitt: We should probably not let people know where that is.

Jeff Nesbitt: I'm gonna, I'll bleep that out. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: I never did. Yeah. There's always, it's been open since I've been going there. Yeah. Five years. Yeah. No, it's been open a little while, but yeah, when we were teenagers it was locked.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. They had a fence there. Somebody like knocked the fence down.

Geoff Hylton: They finally said, have at it. Yeah. I hope it's stable. Don't drown. . Yeah, it's deep and cold.

Jeff Nesbitt: Poppy almost fell off that thing like the backside. Down into the waterfall.

Geoff Hylton: That would, that's a

Jeff Nesbitt: long fall. That would kill a human. A dog might bounce back.

Jeff Nesbitt: She was young

Geoff Hylton: too. Well, I almost saw a human fall off it not too long ago. That's so scary. It's pretty skinny up there when you get a lot of people moving around. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: And the edges are slumped cuz they're full of vegetation. So like the cement ends, but it doesn't look like the edge is, is foggy and it's all

Geoff Hylton: wet and covered in moss and Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. And there's nothing to grab onto it. You're up high.

Geoff Hylton: One of these days, some real fallen up will go the fence again. You ever push

Geoff Hylton: pretty cold. Yeah. Yeah. It is the right person. I would,

Jeff Nesbitt: it's fun. I like to grab the kids and like, act like I'm gonna throw 'em in, but then not, and then throw the dog in for real.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. So we can all have a good laugh. Yeah. Dog's idea. Yeah. Otherwise they don't really know, especially when it's covered with Duckweed Uhhuh. Uh, Daisy did walk right in there one time thinking it was like a, a golfing green . Yeah. Duck

Geoff Hylton: weed's cool Shit. It uh, it adds to the beauty. Yeah, it does

Jeff Nesbitt: up there.

Jeff Nesbitt: It really does. That's a nice trail all around. Yeah. That whole Salmon barry's up there during the right time of year are just gangbusters.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful place for sure. Good vibes. It.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Yeah. So you know Melissa, Melissa, the mortician Meadow? I do,

Geoff Hylton: yeah. Through business

Jeff Nesbitt: dealings. I do, yes.

Geoff Hylton: Working on the death game. Yep. It's a small, small community.

Geoff Hylton: biz to . To be honest, I probably shouldn't speak too much about her. Um, Yeah, I don't really, um, it's very, very weird situation. Um,

Jeff Nesbitt: is it because she heard your dad as a ghost?

Jeff Nesbitt: No. Did you know about that? No, I didn't.

Geoff Hylton: Nevermind . Um,

Jeff Nesbitt: okay. But she deserves the voice. Yeah. She had some pretty good ideas. Yeah. I like the, I like the. Pacific County death. Um, I forget what she called it, but we'll put it, I'll put it in here.

Melissa Meadow: a not for profit funeral home and conservation burial park in Pacific County.

Jeff Nesbitt: She's got, she's having, she has a cool plan. I hope it works out for her. And, um, but yeah, I brought you in cuz you know, like, you know the death game, right?

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. It's not, there's no, there's no

Jeff Nesbitt: silver lining to it. Yeah. It's pretty depressing. . It is

Geoff Hylton: pretty depressing. I see. It slowly suck the joy out of people's lives. Mm-hmm. , whoever's

Jeff Nesbitt: around it. We did talk about that actually. I asked her if it, it's depressing to be doing that all the time, and she said, oh yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don't, you haven't been Digg Graves cause people are all getting burned,

Geoff Hylton: right? Yep. Or I don't know what else they're doing with them.

Jeff Nesbitt: So you're just pretty much just not having to be surrounded by death all the time. That's gotta

Geoff Hylton: be nice. No, it's, uh, the old man's still down there and Oh, he is?

Geoff Hylton: As long as he's down there,

Jeff Nesbitt: it's, uh, so he doesn't own it anymore. Is he still, is he funeral

Geoff Hylton: Like it's provided a good life for me, but it affects more people than just him when he's in that world. Yeah. Cause it affects his mood

Jeff Nesbitt: and it's hard to connect with the person when they're. Deep, dark, and depressed.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. And it's what he's talking about all the time. It's like, what's going on with you?

Geoff Hylton: Oh, you know, when he starts talking about somebody dying, it's like, man, I don't wanna, yeah. I

Jeff Nesbitt: don't wanna hear that. You know, and it's always that,

Geoff Hylton: always, because that's his work. Yeah. It's his, it's his life. Poor guy. But we make our choices. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's good at it too. Oh, I know.

Jeff Nesbitt: In a lot of ways.

Jeff Nesbitt: But that is not really that good for him overall, like probably really draining on his soul.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, absolutely.

Geoff Hylton: That sucks. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, uh, it's definitely not a good thing, but he's got some fulfillment. Oh, I bet you know, there's, he, he looks, he looks at it differently than I look at it.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah, that is true. Somebody has to do it. You don't want 'em

Jeff Nesbitt: piling up and it needs to be somebody with some reverence and with some. Understanding perspective, ability to read

Geoff Hylton: people. Yep. No, especially in a small town. And sometimes you're just gonna get it wrong. Um, and it's just not, the whole situation won't go well from start to finish, and you have to be able to handle that.

Geoff Hylton: There's gotta be some awkward days. That's, that's the main reason why I never wanted to take it over. Was dealing with the, the families. That's, yeah. That's tough.

Jeff Nesbitt: Well, Jeff, I'll be honest, this is not taking, uh, the direction that I was hoping for. I was hoping you'd talk up the death business cause we're, you know, we're here to

Geoff Hylton: promote it.

Geoff Hylton: You gotta find another guy. I'm burned out. Uh, I didn't ask to be born into this life. Like, why couldn't have my dad have been a like owned Radio Shack or. Well then

Jeff Nesbitt: he'd be outta business by now. Yeah,

Geoff Hylton: It's like a novelty thing at this point.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, there was one in Long Beach for a long, or seaview for a long

Geoff Hylton: time. Yep. Long time. There was one in Astoria. I used to go by remote controlled cars that were connected by wire. From the controller to the car, um, you

Jeff Nesbitt: had to run along

Geoff Hylton: with it. Yeah. Yeah. And the, it'd take like 12 hours to charge a battery and it wouldn't last very long.

Jeff Nesbitt: Or it would use 25 D batteries and it would last for some ridiculous,

Geoff Hylton: not, not efficient at all. and I was happy to have it, but boy, how technology has changed,

Jeff Nesbitt: man has it. Oh, the drone stuff and all that stuff. I'm getting my drone license, by the way. Are you? Yeah. That's my next thing. Oh, that's good.

Geoff Hylton: Mm-hmm. ? Mm-hmm. . What does that involved you? Gotta

Jeff Nesbitt: take some tests, learn, do some courses, obstacle course, learn. Learn the rules.

Geoff Hylton: Is that like F FAA stuff? You gotta deal with ffa. I was thinking like the Future

Jeff Nesbitt: Farmers of America. No.

Geoff Hylton: Aviation. Aviation.

Jeff Nesbitt: Aeronautical. One of the two. One of the aides. It's the Federal Aviation Administration. or association, it doesn't matter because it, whatever, whoever made it, if they would've picked any of those, it would've worked fine. Right. You know what we're talking about? The people in charge of the planes.

Malcom: Its the FAA. The Federal Aviation Administration. And if you are planning to become a licensed drone operator, you should probably know that.

Jeff Nesbitt: That's why I said I'm going to be certified. I'm not certified yet, so I don't have to know what all the, the acronyms mean, you know? Right. You know? Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Nobody's gonna hold it against you.

Malcom: Yes. They will. I certainly did.

Malcom: Okay. I didn't know either.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yes. Sometimes people don't know things. It's okay. Yeah, it is okay. It's okay.

Geoff Hylton: So do you have a drone?

Geoff Hylton: I've never seen it. It's new. Is it? Nice? Did you get a nice one?

Jeff Nesbitt: It's, it's like, it's a good one. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It wasn't that expensive though.

Jeff Nesbitt: I can just fly it in 10 minutes Yeah. And be done. And that's what I wanna do. Yeah. Some of the places

Geoff Hylton: you go or hell holes awful.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Yeah. Baker's Bay. Oh man. Imagine how fast I could survey baker's. Yeah, but there are rules about how, how you can use them. So I was gonna like, do you have to,

Geoff Hylton: that's why I gotta get certified.

Geoff Hylton: You can't just fly it over somebody's property,

Jeff Nesbitt: can you? I'm not gonna be flying it recreationally, so , I'll have to have like a flight plan uhhuh and take a lot of records and, and label the drone and register it and all that stuff, huh? Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: Does it have a transponder? Can they track the drone?

Jeff Nesbitt: we find out that China's actually been in control for 25 years or something like that. It, we just, we just didn't.

Geoff Hylton: That is an interesting idea.

Jeff Nesbitt: There's a Chinese police station in New York City.

Geoff Hylton: What kind of authority can they have? Just over the Chinese?

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't know. Go ask them. Huh? It's, it's Isn't that strange though?

Jeff Nesbitt: I didn't know that. Yeah. I don't know what their deal is. They're Chinese. They don't speak to me because you hear of like

Geoff Hylton: embassies. Everybody's got embassies everywhere, but not a police station. Maybe we.

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't know. Who knows if it's even true.

Malcom: The overseas service stations were created in the name of combating transnational crime, especially telecommunications fraud, which has already seen the arrest of a large number of Chinese nationals living abroad. Their stated tasks also include the provision of administrative services, such as the renewal of Chinese driver's licenses, the report said.

Jeff Nesbitt: I might have made the whole thing up. Oh, but you don't know. I don't know. 25 years from now, you could be like, I should have listened. sitting

Geoff Hylton: Chinese, sitting in Chinese

Jeff Nesbitt: American jail. Yeah. Reading fortune cookies all or making fortune cookies all day long. Do they really make those in jail? Right? They do, don't they?

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't know. I think those are made by prisoners. I wanna say they are. It seems like a

Geoff Hylton: machine would be the most effective

Jeff Nesbitt: prisoners can use.

Jeff Nesbitt: In 2008, a fortune cookie said, help. I'm a prisoner in a Chinese bakery.

Geoff Hylton: do. I guess that wouldn't, wouldn't really be funny if it was true. Some board that's child crying out for help in a pit mine and China making fortune cookies. That's pretty funny.

Jeff Nesbitt: Maybe that's where the rumor comes from. Yeah.

Geoff Hylton: how do you

Jeff Nesbitt: feel about that?

Jeff Nesbitt: I know they make license plates.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. And they do, uh, you know, they have 'em fighting fires and each other Yeah. Gladiator school. Yep.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yep. And nobody talks about it.

Geoff Hylton: They don't let you, what a horrible place to be. First two rules.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Prison. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Going to prison. Yeah. Not gonna do it.

Geoff Hylton: And they're not all created equal.

Geoff Hylton: No, no. I'm glad I didn't.

Jeff Nesbitt: Have you seen a movie everything Everywhere. All at once? Nope. You should check it out. It's good.

Geoff Hylton: Okay. Everything everywhere at once.

Jeff Nesbitt: Everything everywhere. All at once. It's, it's really. But yeah, it's about the, like this Chinese lady, uh, maybe not Chinese.

Jeff Nesbitt: She's an Asian lady. Wanna get that right? . And I'll have to go back and watch the movie. It's been a while. She might be Korean. yeah, I don't know. But she can jump timelines and like through the multiverse. It's like let's see, what's that? Marvel wine about the multi. Captain Mysterious Mysterio

Geoff Hylton: Benedict.

Geoff Hylton: Cumberbatch one. Yeah. Koach

Jeff Nesbitt: Cumberbatch. Yeah. I can't remember his name. What is it? Is it Captain Mysterio?

Geoff Hylton: Uh, no, I think it is. It's not Captain. Dr. Strange. Ah,

Jeff Nesbitt: yeah, yeah, yeah. Dr. Strange, captain Mysterio and the multiverse of Madness. Mysterio

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, that's right. That's right. And it's, boy, it's been a long time since I,

Geoff Hylton: it's his south park. Yeah, me too.

Jeff Nesbitt: You know what? I bet holds up the Kanye West one where they make fun of him cuz he likes fish sticks. Yeah. And he was so mad.

Jeff Nesbitt: He's still mad about it. Uhhuh . He doesn't get over shit. No, it's.

Geoff Hylton: I listen to the podcast is him and Lex Friedman. It's good, huh? Um, yeah, I, there were times where I found it very hard to follow along. I mean, he's a very interesting, interesting guy and, uh, he's got a very interesting way of expressing himself and his ideas.

Geoff Hylton: And, uh, there were times where it, uh,

Jeff Nesbitt: lost me. Well, there are also times where you're like, yeah, this makes. And then a little bit later, like, no, he's lost it. He's crazy. Yeah. And then he'll go back in and be like, oh, no, no, no. That does, that does. He's okay. Yeah. I think that's the thing with really intelligent artist type people.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah, I didn't get that at all. I, I found him to be very intelligent. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: I think so too.

Jeff Nesbitt: Not as intelligent as Lex. No. That guy is awesome.

Geoff Hylton: But I chopped it more up. Like I struggled to understand him at times. I chopped that more up to like me. I was like, I'm not on his wave.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, like you don't think that there's a massive conspiracy to control the music industry . Wasn't even

Geoff Hylton: so much about that.

Geoff Hylton: Like an individual topic. It was more just like the way. express himself, the way he would elaborate on a particular topic. There'd be times where I'm just like, I like reading a book. Sometimes you read the page and then you're like, I don't remember anything I just read. Yeah. That would happen to me when he was speaking.

Geoff Hylton: Mm-hmm. , you know, he'd get to a point and I'd be like, I, yeah, I got lost. You know, just quit my attention. It wouldn't keep my attention.

Geoff Hylton: Right. Yeah. But no, I found a movie very intelligent.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. I, I thought that was a great podcast because it illustrated who he is. Yeah. Like you get to see his flaws and the good stuff about him is visible as well as the bad stuff. Yeah. It was, anything else going on cool in your life?

Jeff Nesbitt: No. I mean, you've been lifting, you look big.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. I'm, uh, you know, like 2 40, 2 45 right now. Damn. Um, yeah, going out at it completely differently, like focusing on time domains. , like instead of manipulating like reps and weights, I've been manipulating rest. As a way to try and improve things. Like for example, I've never been good at Pullups.

Geoff Hylton: And I've never really made much of an improvement. So what I'm like trying to do now is, Say I can do 10 pullups, I'll do five as quickly as I can, like as powerfully as I can. And then for a minute I'll do really light banded pulldowns. Um, really keeping the lots fresh, really, really light. Trying to clear fatigue.

Geoff Hylton: Well, it's like, why can't I do 11 pull up? You probably can, but what's but what is stopping me from doing that? I'm strong enough. Mm-hmm. . Pull myself up 10 times. Like, what, what's stopping me from pulling myself up one more time? And it's the fact that I just get tired. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Uh, do you get muscle fatigue or does it start to hurt your joints?

Geoff Hylton: I can go straight back into five pull ups. and I'll do, you know, five, six rounds that, and then the next time I do it, I'll use a slightly heavier band. Mm-hmm. , the goal being eventually I'll get to the point where I'm doing pull downs during that rest period with oh, much as much weight as my body weight.

Geoff Hylton: And then when that happens,

Jeff Nesbitt: so does it still work as a clear and. When

Geoff Hylton: it's the heavy. Uh, I, I believe it will. Cause you can, that that's something that can build up, you can develop, you know, you can train. That's cool. Um, clearing fatigue and clearing lactate.

Jeff Nesbitt: I gotta get back in shape. I've, I've been working out, been doing kettlebells Oh, nice.

Jeff Nesbitt: And walking and hiking and picking mushrooms when I can, but, It's hard time to find time walking. Yeah. Walking's great. Yeah. It's also, it's hard to get the calories. I don't, I don't want to eat all the time, but speaking of eat, let's go eat those steaks.

Geoff Hylton: Yeah. I don't eat all the time. That's my number one drawback.

Jeff Nesbitt: Do you wanna go see if those New York steaks are still good? Yeah, they've been in there for almost a week. I'm worried, but I think we can go eat those.

Geoff Hylton: Well, that's a fine line cuz you want 'em to be a little aged like Yeah, a little stank on it once they start breaking down a little bit.

Geoff Hylton: So when they get nice and tender. Yeah,

Melissa Meadow: [00:00:00] Now I kind of feel bad I didn't bring my dog. I'm usually shadowed by ker at the dog, like always. But my landlady wanted to keep him today, so I was like, yeah, go ahead.

Jeff Nesbitt: The dog. Um, I've done a few podcasts with dogs. It's, it's difficult. Okay, good. Well then I'm glad I didn't breathe. They breathe very loudly and they scratch themselves a lot and you hear it all. But catch they, uh, they do add some, some color.

Melissa Meadow: a bet.

Jeff Nesbitt: All right. Yep. Those are for you.

Melissa Meadow: I've always been that person that had to go like that left.

Jeff Nesbitt: Me too. I still do all the time. Yep. I think it's cuz I was doing the Pledge of Allegiance. That's what I used to do. I would pretend I was doing the Pledge of Allegiance to figure out which one was the right and then the left, you know, by default would be the other.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yep. Right on. Yeah. . Yeah. Okay. Uh, so I'm gonna make myself a quick drink. Go for it.

Jeff Nesbitt: cool. Do you know, just know him from the funeral game or?

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. I haven't gotten to know him outside of that,

Jeff Nesbitt: but, well, he's, that's really where Jeff shines.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, he's really good at that.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Uh, that world best damn grave digger I've ever seen. I'm, I mean, I came from Texas and I've seen 20 years of grave digging. They were pussies in

Jeff Nesbitt: Texas. Geoff Hylton is like the John Henry of grave digging because he's like, they won't get a machine because he can beat the machine.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. every time. Mm-hmm. , get one of those fancy steam grave diggers,

Melissa Meadow: How long have you lived in Chinook? About

Jeff Nesbitt: six years. Where were you before that? Uh, I bounced around the peninsula a lot, but mm-hmm. . I, I left to go to college and that's about it. Yeah. I've lived here. So you grew up here? I, I did, yeah. Oh, very

Jeff Nesbitt: And you came from Texas? Mm-hmm. . Wow.

Who is Melissa The Mortician? (Marker)

Melissa Meadow: So I'm just looking for that to not

Jeff Nesbitt: go red or, yeah, if it goes red, which you'll hear, I'm too close or too bad. Too close. Yeah, but okay. They're good, Mike, so you can get pretty close and not blow 'em out Too bad. Right on. Yeah, it blows. I'll turn on a compressor. Nah, we don't. All right.

Melissa Meadow: I'm only used to this kind.

Melissa Meadow: That means I got the right one on Amazon. If you have one, then I'm doing

Jeff Nesbitt: the right thing. I have liked that mic quite a bit. It's pretty good. Awesome.

Jeff Nesbitt: All right, so welcome to the

Melissa Meadow: show. Thank you.

Jeff Nesbitt: Cheers. Mm-hmm.

Melissa Meadow: ding.

Jeff Nesbitt: Glad to have you on. You're not our first mortician. Oh, I doubt it. Um, it's, or don't doubt it. You're actually our, probably our third person in the, in the funeral game. Yeah. Because Geoff Hylton, who we were just talking about mm-hmm. is, uh, kind of born and raised in that world. Mm-hmm. .

Melissa Meadow: Um, so we should set the record straight since we just set on, on the record that we were talking about him.

Melissa Meadow: We should say what we were talking

Jeff Nesbitt: about. Probably. Okay. Well, boy, that's gonna hurt him. . That's gonna hurt him real bad. You better tell him.

Melissa Meadow: Kermit misses him so bad. Oh my goodness. It's just a shame. Um, I said that he was the best damn grave digger I've ever met, and I've been in the funeral game over 20 years and I came from Texas.

Melissa Meadow: Those guys are

Jeff Nesbitt: pussies and they're known for their graves.

Jeff Nesbitt: That's how I praise Jeff

Jeff Nesbitt: All right. So looks like we're coming in pretty good here.

Melissa Meadow: I hope he's blushing. Oh, I'm

Jeff Nesbitt: sure of it. Good.

Melissa Meadow: It's my goal to get him on video digging a grave so I can speed it up,

Jeff Nesbitt: uh, and put it on TikTok. Oh, that would make a good one. Yeah. Of a time

Melissa Meadow: lapse. Yeah. I really wanna do that. I, someday, someday

Jeff Nesbitt: it's gonna happen. Yeah. Jeff, get on. Oh, he doesn't listen to the podcast. No.

Jeff Nesbitt: He'll never know. I'll tell him. We'll have to shoot him a text. Yeah. Okay. so first of all, congratulations. I just looked on your social media and saw that you are now a, uh, three state dual license. Holder as a funeral director and an embalmer. Yes. That's a lot of

Melissa Meadow: certifications. Yeah. It just so happens these two states are so close to each other that why not get Oregon as well?

Jeff Nesbitt: exam again? Are you gonna end up back in Texas at some point? No.

Melissa Meadow: No. Mm-hmm. I don't want to ever , I don't ever wanna move back to Texas.

Melissa Meadow: Now if I duplicate what I'm planning on doing here in Texas, yes, I'll go back there to help that get off the ground. But this is home now. This is

Jeff Nesbitt: home. So what is that that you're planning here? I saw something about that too. I was very

Melissa Meadow: curious. Yeah. Okay. So I am opening the first non-profit funeral home.

Melissa Meadow: Conservation burial park combo for people and pets. Wow. In the us, in the whole United States, the only thing close to this model, , is out of Australia.

Jeff Nesbitt: It was that an inspiration for you?

Melissa Meadow: , but People's Memorial is a co-op. So this actually is the first not-for-profit funeral

Jeff Nesbitt: home. Wow. That's a, I mean, it seems like a no brainer. Great

Melissa Meadow: idea. I know. It was always gross making money off of grief. And I say that coming from a corporate background in death care, not a small town.

Jeff Nesbitt: So what is, what is your background?

Melissa Meadow: That's initially what got me into death care was being able to take sadness and make beauty from it in a [00:07:00] way. and what ended up happening from that was I begin to find out about green burials, natural burials, and I begin to question why are, why are we doing this? Why are we putting these people in these plastic liners or these concrete vaults?

Melissa Meadow: and why are we putting these chemicals in them? , that's going down our drains. And, and the more questions I asked, The more I upset

Jeff Nesbitt: people. Oh, upset. The interesting order, huh?

Melissa Meadow: Yes. Uh, and so that made me wanna push even more and ask even more questions. So that kind of spun it out, and it created the modern mortician, which is my online persona, where I educate people on all the eco-friendly and legal forms of disposition that they can get.

Jeff Nesbitt: And that looked awesome to me cuz the idea of being embalmed . the process makes sense to me. The reasoning behind it has never made sense to me at all. Same with mummification to some extent. Like it seems like for a long time humans have tried to resist the process of becoming part of the earth again after, after life.

Jeff Nesbitt: And I think that sounds like the best part of death. I don't Like the, the thought of being filled up with chemicals and preserved in that state, which I don't think that's me anymore at that point, really. But, um, still, I just, it doesn't, it seems unnecessary. And

Dirty Secrets of The Death Biz ( )

Jeff Nesbitt: You're burying it. No one's ever gonna see it again. Like, why or they shouldn't be. Well, I have an answer for that.

Melissa Meadow: I would love to hear it. So my 20 years in the funeral industry have taught me that the reason that they push for embalming is because it's going to lead to additional sales. It's going to guarantee an open casket funeral almost a hundred percent of the time.

Melissa Meadow: they train us, in our apprenticeships, in our first job in a funeral home at a removal. They train us to ask for permission to embalmment the removal. People are distraught, people are upset. They're gonna agree to anything because we're the professional. It's automatic guidance.

Jeff Nesbitt: Here, I'm gonna adjust that thing for you just a little bit.

Melissa Meadow: Right on. Okay.

Jeff Nesbitt: yeah, go on. Where was I? So you're talking about how they Right at the death? Yes. They start with the, the upsells.

Melissa Meadow: It's the same thing. We can wait until the next day when the family's awake and informed. yeah, so that was always something that really kind of, Bothered me besides the fact the upselling. one of the corporate funeral homes I've recently worked for, they would send in the salesperson first before the funeral director.

Melissa Meadow: So you'd have the cemetery salesperson out there trying to sell 'em cemetery property with multiple spaces, like a little lot for the family. And after they'd lock that in, then they'd send the funeral director in, well, the family's already dropped 20. Geez. And then by the time I'm in there, they're mad , they're big mad, they wanna go home.

Melissa Meadow: They don't.

Jeff Nesbitt: And what's your role in this, in this scenario?

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Yeah. So you're just doing the admin stuff and it's an additional, how?

Jeff Nesbitt: It's thousands of dollars.

Melissa Meadow: Thousands and thousands. Wow. Yeah, it was disgusting. that's when I found out about Titan Caskets, because people started shopping online for caskets and they've been doing that for several years now. Cuz I've heard of the Costco caskets before. Hmm. Where people can go online to like Walmart or Costco and they can order a casket.

Melissa Meadow: Well, this Titan Casket company, they provide. Costco and they provide for Amazon and they are small business. Mm-hmm. . And they have purple caskets, yellow caskets, red caskets, green caskets, plaid caskets, anything you could want. Eco-friendly caskets, wool caskets, cardboard caskets, everything that they can drop ship direct to the funeral home.

Jeff Nesbitt: companies. Is that the same titan that makes the rings?

No.

Melissa Meadow: Okay. No, but, um, wouldn't it be cool if it was? Yeah, it'd

Melissa Meadow: Who's other

Jeff Nesbitt: Morticians? Um, Liz Hylton and, um, and Jeff. I counted Jeff even though he's not a mortician. He's, he's the grave digger, body carrier.

Melissa Meadow: Um, I never got to work with Liz, but I will say that a family did tell. About how she went to their home with them to pick out clothes for their person from their closet.

Melissa Meadow: And just hearing that story about her was like,

Jeff Nesbitt: amazing. She's a very, very sweet lady. Awesome. I'm gonna go listen to her episode. It was good. She, she understands what people need when they're dealing with tragedy like that in a way that makes me super nervous. I, I would have such a hard time dealing with people grieving cuz I don't know that I know how to grieve really.

Melissa Meadow: I'm like a little teensy bit autistic. But on top of that, I do better with people when they're off their game when they, and that, that's probably the autism

Jeff Nesbitt: in me.

Jeff Nesbitt: I also am a teensy bit autistic and I have noticed the same thing I do Good in crisis. Yes. Like when, when nobody knows what the fuck's going on. Mm-hmm. And then I have a leg up cuz I'm used to it.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. Yep. That is when I shine. So, um,

Jeff Nesbitt: you can read, you read people like a book. Yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. That's probably a really useful skill in that

Melissa Meadow: It is, but it's also very sickening when you work for bad people.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh yeah. So it's very useful in sales. Yeah. It is. And you think they were exploiting your

Melissa Meadow: And so that, that was the last place that I worked before I came out to the Peninsula. It was like, let's do this.

Jeff Nesbitt: Did you already have your plan in place when you came out here?

Melissa Meadow: I had had the business plan for this for over five years, and I knew I wanted to be on the coast. I didn't know where. So when I came out here and saw how beautiful the area is, like I fell in love with Chinook the first time I drove through to go to Astoria.

Melissa Meadow: I was like, I like this a lot.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's a cute little town. Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: I like it here. And the more time that I've spent outside in nature and meeting people in the community out here, this area deserves it. Like so, deserves it.

Jeff Nesbitt: That's great to hear. Yeah. So tell me more about your plan.

Melissa Meadow: Okay, so I'm gonna open a nonprofit funeral home for people and pets that offer sustainable options, including water, cremation, whole body burial at sea, and old fashioned burial, which is also known as natural burial.

Melissa Meadow: Every pet is individually cremated, so it's not like I, I've heard that currently. Multiple pets are cremated together, and you might get your pet back, um, depending on what you work out with your, your arranger. This, this offering will be a hundred percent of your

Jeff Nesbitt: pet back. Oh. So it's like they, they throw, you know, maybe 50 dogs in the thing and you, they give you a 50th of the

Melissa Meadow: ashes.

Jeff Nesbitt: container. I'm not familiar with water. Water burial. Is that what it was?

Jeff Nesbitt: Yes. Water cremation. Water

Melissa Meadow: cremation, yes. So, lemme tell you all about water cremation because this is really, really cool. Water cremation is the new eco-friendly form of disposition. Um, it is legal in 17 of the 50 states. Each state has to legalize it one at a time. Um, I left a state where I tried for four years to get it legalized and came to a state here where it was, along with the natural organic reduction, which we can talk on in a minute.

Melissa Meadow: But the water cremation, the body is placed on a tray that is put into, um, it looks like a. Big opening for like a washing machine. Do you like go in the front of it, but you're on a tray and then you shut the door and the water comes in and it's 95% water, and then 5% sodium hydroxide and potassium, and that's your corrosive.

Jeff Nesbitt: have. Okay. So it is, yeah. Okay. It's like soap without the fat. Yeah. So it's just washing those, washing the structure apart. Yes. And just everything

Melissa Meadow: disintegrates.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah, it re it. Well kind of, so it duplicates what happens in ground in a ground burial in six months. Within six hours. So it's like you turn into wrinkly fingers when you're in the bathtub. You just keep getting liquidator and liquidator. The water part of this that's left when you consider your 85% water anyway, it kind of looks like urine with a little bit of a gray tinge to it ever so slightly.

Melissa Meadow: And um, sometimes it's got shimmers in it because this liquid is full of amino acids, peptides, salts, fats,

Jeff Nesbitt: every metals. If they're in

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Yeah. What do you

Melissa Meadow: mean? Okay. So like a hip implant, right? Mm-hmm. , when we get those out of a flame, cremation, they're burnt up. Like you'll have to see my Instagram post. I'll have to show it to you or I'll give you the link to, to share, but they are like burnt chart up. Well, funeral homes can recycle that and they get paid for

Jeff Nesbitt: it.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, the titanium doesn't break down.

Melissa Meadow: Right. Okay. Right. Even the gold, the teeth sometimes it's still

Jeff Nesbitt: there. Oh,

Melissa Meadow: chaing. Yes. So they do get paid for this recyclable material. Um, but when it comes out from water cremation, it's whole. Mm-hmm. , like we would be able to give the family the little caps of the teeth back if they

Jeff Nesbitt: wanted them.

Jeff Nesbitt: And they're clean and everything too,

Melissa Meadow: huh? Yes. Sterile. A hundred percent sterile. Oh wow. Yeah, so they look like the day they got installed, even breast implant come out whole

Jeff Nesbitt: So everything water soluble just disintegrates in whatever's not is still there. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. Oh, that must be, must be a trip. So like clips and stuff that you had in. Oh, bones don't go.

Melissa Meadow: Bones are left too. So what happens at the end of the process is that they are pulled out just like after flame cremation.

Melissa Meadow: And they're pulverized in a cremator. Mm-hmm. . So instead of looking like sand or kitty litter with flame cremation, it looks like T

Jeff Nesbitt: powder. Wow. Just

Melissa Meadow: totally broke down. And it's pH neutral, so it doesn't actually harm plants because flame crematory remains real acidic. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Negative, bad. Oh wait, is it acidic?

Melissa Meadow: Lie? It's, it's pH negative. Okay. Um, so like the flame crematory remains are acidic. Yes. They kill plant life. So when people say, Ooh, plant me with a tree, kind of, you can't do that because it will kill the tree unless you do like a healthy mix of.

Jeff Nesbitt: If you just put a corpse in the ground with a seed, it would rot the seed.

Melissa Meadow: Yes. So that's actually the thing I've done. Um, there's a, people see these online all the time. These, these egg things where the body's all like folded up in the field.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's picture, but it's not real. Right?

Melissa Meadow: Oh my gosh. These things are so not real, but it gets people talking about it.

Jeff Nesbitt: I've talked about it multiple times on this podcast,

Melissa Meadow: but you, you talked about it and now you know that it won't work. Just like the mushroom burial Charlotte is bs. But these products, the problem they don't think about is when the roots touch the body as it's heating up and decomposing. Just like with composting, it's gonna kill those roots.

Melissa Meadow: So you have to factor in for that. And all these people with these great ideas aren't putting the science behind it. So

Jeff Nesbitt: it has to rot before it can make new life.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. So if you compost a body first, whether indoors at one of the big facilities are outdoors, or you were water cremated first, or even flame cremated and, and then put into the ground with a healthy mix of soil, then that's how you kind of get involved with trees.

Jeff Nesbitt: That sounds pretty good.

Melissa Meadow: Sounds really good. Here's a freaking awesome part. So we've got fires going on in Chinook right now, right? Terrible. Well, if my place were open right now, the fire department could go pick up a big old 30 gallon thing of affluent, the liquid from Pet Cremations. And it's considered a wet water.

Melissa Meadow: It fights fires.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Yep. And it's dog slurry. Just like a

Melissa Meadow: liquid dog. Yeah, a liquid dog. Your dog could fight fires, you know, and be a part of nature forever.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. All those war hero dogs that they just, uh, euthanized after their service, they could have used them to be heroes again. Yeah,

Melissa Meadow: that's beautiful.

Jeff Nesbitt: from Texas. I, I, you know Willie Nelson ?

Melissa Meadow: I, um, saw him once, but we cremated his brother.

Jeff Nesbitt: Really? Yeah. Wow. That's a bit of a claim to fame. Yeah. Um, did he look like Willie? I mean, before he Little bit. You did.

Melissa Meadow: It's just the Beardy

Jeff Nesbitt: stuff. Um, what's the last thing you want to hear after you just finished blowing? Willie Nelson? Uh oh, no, I don't know. I'm not really Willie Nelson. Oh, yeah. No. You know, I don't know where I heard that It was recent.

Melissa Meadow: use for Aldehyde? So there's a couple different brands. Enigma, champion, Dodge,

Jeff Nesbitt: frigid motherfuckers are just like the pesticide people. Mm-hmm. . They use names that are like real awesome and in your face and like, Ooh, that sounds like something I wanna be around.

Jeff Nesbitt: But it's not.

Melissa Meadow: Now they have social media where they interact with even me on social media because they know how big of a following I have and I play nice. But yeah, it's,

Jeff Nesbitt: it's getting bad. Are they made by Bear or Monsanto or any of those do Agro or any of those companies?

Melissa Meadow: So Pierce Chemicals is in bed with Wilbur Vault who got a big money boost from Warren Buffett.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, Berkshire Hathaway. Yeah. And it's subsidiaries. Yeah. That's a big boost. He's a, he's. Good at money.

Melissa Meadow: And then afterwards you're gonna wanna have this person, the director

Jeff Nesbitt: on the show. Hold on. Yeah, I am. I just read today that Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway have to pay $200 million to help them remove Klamath Falls Dam. Which is cool. That top name, I know that name. You do. I don't know where I know it from.

Jeff Nesbitt: I'll tell you after the show. Okay. Okay. Yeah. the people with all the money seemed like they could do a lot more, uh, uh, as far as, you know, not poisoning everybody and mm-hmm. fixing all that shit that they messed up mm-hmm. or that their dads did at least.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. So maybe one of them will. , buy me that million dollar property out there in Chinook so I can start sticking people in the ground.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: going on there? Cremation rate has skyrocketed. So the funeral industry ignored cremation for years and years and years, just like they're ignoring water, cremation and composting right now, like most traditional funeral homes will not tell you about it.

Melissa Meadow: but people are getting wind of it online from their friends, different things like that.

Jeff Nesbitt: So do you have to have like certain licenses or permits to do burials certain ways? Could you do a Viking burial or could you put me on a raft, light me on fire and push me out to sea? or, or would that require a special permit?

Melissa Meadow: Uh, require special planning. Okay. We can do it. Here's what we have to do though. We have to cremate you first and then we put your cremated remains on a carved boat. The sky out in Long Beach carves boats. I found him on Facebook. I need to connect with him again. Um, because I brought it up in a Facebook group.

Jeff Nesbitt: have it sink. Oh, so the boat has to be shaped a certain way so it burns Right. Still floats and then eventually sinks.

Melissa Meadow: Yes. And he did it and two people from the Facebook group went and bought it from him.

Melissa Meadow: And I haven't even seen these boats yet. Wow. That sounds really cool. . But I need to go

Jeff Nesbitt: see 'em. But yeah, so you can, you can get cool. Well you can do cool stuff.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. I even wanna have open air cremation out here at some point. I feel because, um, the native land that it. Would be a possibility to be able to offer that.

Melissa Meadow: Um, they do open air cremation in Crestone, Colorado, and I've been there and done some research.

Jeff Nesbitt: I wonder if the native peoples of this particular land did that

Melissa Meadow: or they did. They there is actual, I'm gonna have to actually, I'm, I don't wanna say for sure a hundred percent. I feel like somebody gave me an article that that was done out here, so I'm gonna

Jeff Nesbitt: find this wouldn't surprise me.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. . Um, but yeah, it'd be interesting to know what their. Practices around death are

Melissa Meadow: Oh, yeah. Where people are buried around here. I know. Well, Jeff's probably the one that knows that stuff more, more than I would at this point. But I'm going to find out. I'm going to learn it all.

Jeff Nesbitt: I dug a few graves with Jeff and, uh, it's hard work.

Jeff Nesbitt: That's a lot of dirt. They have to move six feet deep and I don't remember how it doesn't like 10. How long, how long is a, is a casket or the liner? 10 feet?

Melissa Meadow: Um, he's going about seven and a half feet long, I think.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, that's not bad. Well, the body's gotta be over six

Melissa Meadow: feet long. Usually about six. The caskets are 52 inches.

Jeff Nesbitt: Hmm. Okay. So. Oh yeah. That some people are gonna have their knees scrunched up in the front of

Jeff Nesbitt: my God. I just pictured Kathy Bates in misery hobbling Ed Harris. Oh my God. Oh my

Melissa Meadow: God. Now there's some former bosses. I wish I'd done that too, but No .

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Um, but anyway, when I dug the grave with Jeff, um, or I, I've done a few, but this one in particular, I remember because we dug it down to six feet and right when we got to six feet, which is where we were planning on stopping, we hit a cement floor.

Jeff Nesbitt: Which was actually, uh, the top of a, a casket or a cement something, uh, sarcophagus. I don't know what the proper term. Liner. Liner, yeah. It was big though. It was like, um, the took up the whole hole. So the grave was already filled and it was just buried super deep. And said, that's not the first time that's happened.

Jeff Nesbitt: and there was no marking. There was no, no, it wasn't listed. There's no way to know who's in that box.

Melissa Meadow: That's happened in every cemetery out here in Pacific County. Every

Jeff Nesbitt: There's some, some Shay stuff going on in the olden days. Maybe that too. I mean, why were they burying people so deep?

Melissa Meadow: It was, that is ridiculous because even these days in the corporate cemeteries, they're not going that deep unless they're gonna double stack 'em, which doubles their money. Why not? They should.

Jeff Nesbitt: They have been, yeah. Especially like couple plots, like we're two side by side. I'd rather get my wife laying on top of me anyway. There you go. That sounds way better actually. Really probably without anything in between us. Two, just, I mean, assuming we died together,

Melissa Meadow: but they're all full of water. Just know that that's okay.

Melissa Meadow: So am I Okay. ? Yeah, we all float here.

Jeff Nesbitt: What culture throughout history including our own, do you think has the most um, off the wall death practices?

Death through history (Marker)

Melissa Meadow: Definitely the Egyptians, especially with the crap that's going on right now where they're about to unearth. Cleopatra. Really? She said, no man will ever find my grave.

Jeff Nesbitt: down there. Oh shit. And they found it.

Melissa Meadow: Is it confirmed They think that this is her area because it is underneath other things that they had no clue. They just found like a whole bunch of them sarcophagus

Jeff Nesbitt: kaha. isn't it crazy that Cleopatra's life was closer to the iPhone than it was to the building of the pyramids?

Based on current evidence, according to Google. Cleopatra was born around 69, a D.

And she died. In 30 BC. So she was only. 39 years old.

Sad.

According to national geographic also via Google. The pyramids of Giza, which are the main pyramids that you're thinking of. We're built roughly 2,550 BC.

Whereas [00:31:00] if the pyramids were built in 25, 50 BC.

From that time up to the birth of Cleopatra would have been 2,481 years. That's bigger. I got it right.

back to the show.

Jeff Nesbitt: Really? Yeah. What? That's isn't that bizarre by a lot? Um, we're not, we're not that old. I mean, Our history that we know of is not that old lately, though. I've been questioning that because I'm watching this Graham Hancock thing. Mm-hmm. it, I think it's on Netflix. Uh, ancient apocalypse. Okay. He thinks he's a, he's a historian slash journalist and he thinks that there was an ancient civilization that was advanced and had technology that we don't even have that existed, uh, 12,800 years ago.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's the tale of a ancient meteor that broke up and smashed the fuck out of earth. That's awesome. Yeah, it's a cool show, but, uh, it, it kind of, it questions all of the archeological record and it completely, uh, pisses off archeologists because they're, you know, their career is built on a story that, that they helped to build based on such tiny, minuscule amounts of evidence, and they attach their identity to it, and then all of a sudden new evidence comes out.

Jeff Nesbitt: Like this finks having water erosion on it. Yeah. Oh. From like, I don't remember what the numbers are last podcast. I said the wrong thing I think, but yeah, a long, long time before, uh, we are aware of there ever being like jungles around Egypt.

Jeff Nesbitt: But it's pretty cool. Lots, lots of shit that, um, we're learning new stuff all the time. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's

Melissa Meadow: pretty neat. It reminds me of funeral directors. It's like these old guys, the old guard does not wanna let go the way that things have been done. Just like they didn't wanna let go of embalming to make way for cremation and they don't wanna make way for the water and the flame.

Melissa Meadow: I mean, and the organic reduction. So very similar. The old people. Yeah. Old guard. It's just the old guard. They don't want things to change because that's how they make money. That's how it's been. And it's

Jeff Nesbitt: comfortable. Yeah. Young people can get involved in that just as easily if they're benefiting from that system.

Jeff Nesbitt: But it's hard to get in. Yeah. Unless you're old. Yeah. very true. Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: Uh, the one in Seattle is co-op and the Australian one's non-profit. This will be a non-profit, a non-for-profit. Okay, cool, cool. funeral home and burial park.

Melissa Meadow: So it'll be a place for people to be buried that don't have income, or if they don't have a place to bury or cremate a pet. Um, it'll also be a place where people wanted, like the most prime little spot in the woods for burial. They could choose it.

Dead Pets (Marker)

Jeff Nesbitt: What would be the funding mechanism?

Melissa Meadow: Um, our funding mechanism is going to be a baseline for services, what they cost, but with a qualification for how to get the no cost services.

Melissa Meadow: most of our income will come from pet. Generating like merch sales and things like

Melissa Meadow: They do. And you lose more pets in a lifetime anyway than you do your people companions. By training people how to take care of their pets and death, like offering home vigils before cremation or offering, transporting from the vet to home for a final goodbye. Provide a complimentary

Jeff Nesbitt: portrait.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. And all kinds of different things that you can do that just aren't being done.

Melissa Meadow: ,that will help us to be able to provide the property and the free services for other people. We're still working all of the pieces out. Have you considered

Jeff Nesbitt: taxidermy? No, not yet. Let them keep their dog.

Melissa Meadow: I have my cat. Really? I do. Um, I This is a story, story time. Okay. So my best asbestos kitty, her name was Bella Lagosi.

Melissa Meadow: They're, they're not real material. It's like fabricated material, right? Synthetic. Yes. So I buried her in a beater like blanket. Well, years go by, the burial park gets sold to somebody and I'm like, I want my cat

Jeff Nesbitt: back. And the blanket.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. So me and two friends go with shovels and we go and we dug my cat up and then we get her out and it's nothing but soil and bones and I have some of her soil.

Melissa Meadow: Wow. It's amazing. But the bones, we collected them, we took them to my friend that did water cremation in Pflugerville and I kept some of the bones, gave them to a taxidermist who mounted them inside a beautiful glass jar. She's. She's got butterflies on her. It's just beautiful. It's like her skull and a few

Jeff Nesbitt: different pieces a hundred years from now somebody's gonna find that and they're gonna be like, people used to be so weird and they're gonna think that we were all

Melissa Meadow: like that.

Melissa Meadow: Well, when I have my burial park, I think at some point I might bury her there,

Melissa Meadow: Oh man, it's gonna be a nightmare when Kermit dies. I'm gonna be wearing him around my shoulders for

Jeff Nesbitt: weeks. Yeah. You sign up for a pet, you're just like, here we go. Heartbreak. One decade away. Yep. At the most. Yep. It's like sad. I just lost my daisy last December. It's been almost a year now, and it was horrible.

Jeff Nesbitt: She got cancer and I was like, I'm pretty sad about it because I think I gave it to her by stressing her out too much. We, we renovated our house and she, it's probably just. The devil trying to attack me and make me sad. Yeah. Because it's not my fault we had to renovate our house. Your house. It's not your fault.

Jeff Nesbitt: And, um, it was, it was really hard. You're really sorry. Yeah. It, it was way harder than I expected. I, I always thought it was gonna be, um, easy because it's a dog and as much as I loved the dog, I, uh, I just did not anticipate it hurting as much as a human. And it does. It's shockingly does. Oh yeah. It doesn't go way quick either.

Jeff Nesbitt: Maybe two weeks ago I was hanging out with my wife and my daughter, and, uh, we were talking about whether or not she's ever seen me cry. And I, and she said she hadn't, and I was like, I'm pretty sure you did see me cry when Daisy died. And, she's like, well, how did Daisy die? And Oh, yeah. She told me it was my fault that Daisy died. That's right. Oh my goodness. And, um, I was like, it definitely wasn't my fault. She got cancer. And she's like, well, you gave her the cancer. And it made me cry again.

Melissa Meadow: Huge. That's why it was so important for me to incorporate pets into what I was doing from day one. Like

Melissa Meadow: people think of 'em as family. Yeah. Especially in this day and age.

Jeff Nesbitt: And I've worked for so many funeral homes that didn't treat it that way. Like one of the people that I worked for in the past several years, , a community member's dog died and I was like, oh, I'll, I'll put it on our, on our, on our website.

Jeff Nesbitt: will, there's a way.

Jeff Nesbitt: It seems like the community aspect of it is important to you. It is. It really is. What, what motivates that?

Melissa Meadow: I was raised, , basically by my grandparents and my mother. , every weekend and summer I would be with my grandfather at the cafe in small new home, Texas, small town, new home Texas, like listening to him and all the old men talk business.

Melissa Meadow: Or we'd be at the farm store, or we'd be out in the field like on the tractor, like coing cotton or transacting business at the bank. Like I was raised in a small town atmosphere where we went to like the small town football games every Friday night. Even though I didn't go to Highschool in junior high with these kids, I really appreciated it.

Melissa Meadow: It just didn't feel good. It felt gross. And

Jeff Nesbitt: so like a business. Yeah. Not like something that was a crucial part of life.

Melissa Meadow: It didn't feel heart based anymore. It felt dirty.

Jeff Nesbitt: And that, and you think that that is something that is a crucial part of, of funeral care is heart based?

Melissa Meadow: Personally, yes. I don't think everybody needs that.

Melissa Meadow: Not everybody needs that. Some people are like, oh, just throw me

Jeff Nesbitt: in a ditch. Their family might not think that though. Right. I, I would say that is mostly the case. I, I bet a lot of the people who are like, oh, I don't care. Just throw me in a ditch. I bet 99% of their families would really care.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: One of my most. Memorable green burials was back in Austin, Texas. Um, after the gentleman died, I brought a cardboard casket to his home and set it up in the living room with like markers and paint and things. They had a camera set up with Zoom, so the kids were talking to each other about what to paint on the little cardboard casket.

Melissa Meadow: He was lying and stayed in his bedroom. We had some, like, until I got there, his wife had. Bag of freezer or frozen peas on his belly . So I mean, you can even improvise Uhhuh, but these days everybody's got gel packs. So you just a few gel packs strategically placed just to keep 'em, keep 'em fresh, just keep 'em cool, keep the temperature, the core body temperatures, just a little bit cool.

Melissa Meadow: You don't have any emergencies or anything.

Jeff Nesbitt: No problems. That makes a lot of sense. That sounds way, way

better.

Melissa Meadow: It's just they seem more at peace when I see 'em later.

Jeff Nesbitt: They get to process it on more than just a conscious level. Like the deep levels get to see it and really understand what's going on. Yeah. That that person might be gone.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. So that's why if, if I'm able to offer that through pets first, like showing people you can have interaction with them after they're dead and say goodbye and things like that, maybe people will feel more comfortable about having that for their people too.

Jeff Nesbitt: And they came and checked on us and made sure she was gone. And then I drove her out and I had already dug a hole. And, um, just, I did it all by myself. The act of, you know, bringing her to the hole and putting dirt on her, it was very visceral, like real, like putting the dirt on her body. I remember feeling very emotional, like, just to see the, like, it's not just the, uh, the fact that I've lost this relationship.

Jeff Nesbitt: It, it's the fact that it's, this is a old thing that's happening right now. I'm, this is a process. I'm engaged this, this feeling, this process is bigger than me. This is something that people have been doing forever. And I'm like, I'm doing that human thing. I'm being a human right now and this is real. And I loved that feeling and I kept telling people like, it was a beautiful death if there is such a thing.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. It's, I, I see that in the death care that I do. And that's what I wanna bring out here. Um, the years that I had, like watching people lower their own loved ones into the ground for natural burial, um, yeah.

Melissa Meadow: It's just, it's a whole different thing than what we've been conditioned to think is normal.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. How does this affect the way that you see your own mortality?

Melissa Meadow: Um, . I'm still scared. I don't wanna die before I get all these things done that I wanna do. It drives me, I think, it drives me to get these dreams done.

Jeff Nesbitt: Have you tried psychedelics? Yes. Did those affect the way you see your own mortality?

Jeff Nesbitt: beautiful. I think that's a. A good impulse because you're, you're just, you're not ready. Like you understand what you're here to do and you're, you're doing it.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. , it's like, yeah. I remember one time I almost got hit by a truck. Uh, I was riding my bike and I was struck by the fact that the thought that went through my head, I was probably like 13. And the thought that went through my head when I thought I was gonna die was, oh fuck. I'm not gonna know how Harry Potter four ends.

Jeff Nesbitt: Cuz I was reading Harry Potter and I was really into it. Mm-hmm. . And that's what I cared about as like, I wasn't finished, I wasn't ready to go. Yeah. At that time of my life, that was my task. I think that we all have a, a task and if you don't, you're depressed and you feel aimless and, and it's, it's a bad feeling.

Melissa Meadow: The next step, um, is. I don't even know.

Melissa Meadow: the next step is I've got it set up in five different phases. We've got our board, we've got our committee members, , then we have to get money together. So phase one kind of consists of a storefront, , and a van and a mortuary cot. That way I can take individuals to refrigeration across the river, , with another provider.

Melissa Meadow: And then I can take them to the water cremation facility until we have our own built here. The water cremation facility is currently in Kent, Washington, but I wanna have one built out here in

Jeff Nesbitt: Chinook. Oh wow. So that's like four hours away, right? Or

Melissa Meadow: Hmm, three and a three something. It's three. Three, yep.

Melissa Meadow: It's.

Jeff Nesbitt: But's, do you do it in batches or do you just every time you wanna do one?

Melissa Meadow: But the goal is that we wouldn't be in a storefront very long, that we would have a place that had a footprint to put in the first machine. Within the first year, so I wouldn't be driving to Kent. Yeah. Um, because we can get our own machine installed as soon as we have space

Jeff Nesbitt: for it. So then you just need a regular van cuz you're really gonna be just moving one at a time.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. . Yep. That makes sense. That's cool. So do you have to find backers or do a, a funding round? How do you do, how do you do a project like that?

Melissa Meadow: Um, we are building something out, possibly on start engine and then I also have, uh, tiers that people can join in on. So since it is a non-profit, they can either choose to invest and get their money back on it or they can choose, uh, to have a tax write off a big, beautiful tax write

Jeff Nesbitt: off.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Those

Melissa Meadow: are some great options. I know, right? And, and you're helping the earth.

Melissa Meadow: We should be ready to get donations going as soon as our federal is approved, but currently everybody should watch www dot the end.

Melissa Meadow: Green.

Jeff Nesbitt: You own that website? I do. What a great domain. How did you get that? I Googled it. The end seems like it would be taken. That's a steal.

Melissa Meadow: The end.com was taken, but I'm not a.com. I'm I'm dot green.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, you can do all these cool dot whatever's now.

Melissa Meadow: It's nice.house dot oo. Well that one's a known one, but it was dot, I don't know.

Melissa Meadow: There's dot Life. I thought about doing the end.life. That's kind of a good one. It was already bought. Oh, it was too expensive at the time. Yeah. I might go get it later.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wait, I already forgot the one you actually have, what is it? The end dot what? end.green. Dot green.green. I like that. I'll remember

Melissa Meadow: now.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Sustainable Funeral Care. We put people, pets, and planet over profit.

Melissa Meadow: Mm. The big, big goal for this is, okay, imagine like 10 to 20 acres of burial land like forest where people are buried in the ground marked with flat flagstone markers and GPS coordinates. You have different sections walking past. Then there's even little like cabins on one section where if people wanna come back the year after you've been buried and plant a tree, they can stay in one of the overnight cabins or somebody has died in Seattle and the family's all gonna get together the next weekend out here for a burial.

Jeff Nesbitt: That sounds wonderful.

Melissa Meadow: And not just here. I want it to take off to other places. Like I have other cohorts, co-founders, other funeral directors that are gonna take this same model and they're gonna replicate it in Maryland, California, South Carolina, Texas.

Jeff Nesbitt: So what, it almost sounds like a, a death summer camp.

Jeff Nesbitt: Like the, the fun part, right? Like, I mean, with death, doulas and ghost yoga. Goat yoga. Oh, well, do you worry about ghosts in these cabins?

Melissa Meadow: You know what? That would be kind of cool to, to advertise it as ghost yoga in October.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: I wanna take note of that.

Jeff Nesbitt: Goat yoga. That's, that's a real thing,

Melissa Meadow: right? Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: And then the goats could like keep the cemetery like cleaned up.

Jeff Nesbitt: My, , in-laws were. Taking pictures with goats on their backs. They have little mini goats and they were talking about goat yoga. I thought they were just making it up.

Jeff Nesbitt: do yoga.

Jeff Nesbitt: You, you don't, you're not concerned with goats. The fact that they have soul's dead eyes. They do scare me a lot. They scare me. They definitely scare me. Goats, rats and bats. Those three animals are, uh, they don't have souls. I'll say it,

Melissa Meadow: I'll say it. I had a pet rat and he was really smart and really sweet.

Jeff Nesbitt: Rats. Okay, I'll take that bat. The pet ones, rats do have souls, but they're still fucking evil. Okay. But they do have souls. You can say them because they're intelligent and they have relationships and moods. Yeah, like they're, they're, I have a psychology degree. Mm-hmm. . So basically all of pop psychology, pretty much most of it's done with rats. Ah. Um, so everyone who thinks they know a lot about psychology, you just know about how rats think. Mm-hmm. Um, So yeah, I, I can see the benefit of rats, um, but also they get tortured in that, uh, in lab setting. It's pretty sad.

Jeff Nesbitt: you'll round 'em up and bury 'em with them.

Melissa Meadow: No, they live out their life there. It's a hospice for pets. Oh, cool. And then also wanna eventually like a little cabin hospice place.

Melissa Meadow: You know, like if you can't die at home or you don't wanna die in the hospital, you get to go die there. And then you can just push you out the door into the hole.

Jeff Nesbitt: Build a shoot.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. , have you seen the shoot at the fire department in Long Beach? No. They have a slide. Really? Yeah. You should go. That's really cool.

Melissa Meadow: I was too scared to go down on Halloween. I was face painting out there. Mm-hmm. . And they had people going down the slide. These kids were like,

Jeff Nesbitt: they had to put a big bumper at the bottom. Do you, were you face painting just cuz they needed somebody or are

you

Melissa Meadow: an artist? Um, I used to face paint at Six Flags for years.

Melissa Meadow: Oh, so you're an artist. I am an artist, yeah. Are you good at it? I'm very good at Faith painting. Wow. What do you paint? Uh, I like do unicorns and like swirly things.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, those are probably a big hit.

Melissa Meadow: And you'd try to go through your line as fast as you could to see who could sell the.

Jeff Nesbitt: What's your favorite thing to draw or paint?

Melissa Meadow: It really was the unicorns.

Jeff Nesbitt: The unicorns? Yeah. Do you still do any kind of art other than face painting?

Melissa Meadow: Well, um, I should, I have art supplies. My have been depressed for the last

Jeff Nesbitt: six years.

Jeff Nesbitt: Very, very, very. That really puts a, a hamper on your artistic abilities. Totally. Creativity in general.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. I'm just starting to be creative again.

Jeff Nesbitt: How so? Six years is a pretty long time. Mm-hmm. and you, are you coming out of it now? Yes. Yeah. Is this project kind of a part of that?

Jeff Nesbitt: A hundred percent.

Jeff Nesbitt: Having purpose is huge.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's like the crabs in a bucket. Yeah. And they all want, no one's gonna let another crab outta the bucket. I try to be a crab who's just trying to push the other crabs outta the bucket. I want people to be happy. Go, go be free. I think that shit is infectious. Yeah. The more people you're surrounded by who are genuinely happy, the happier you will feel.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yep. It. It's common sense. So what else, , do you do to fight the depression?

Dogs Can Smell Death (Marker)

Melissa Meadow: Hmm. I get out with my dog a lot. So Kermit is usually, like I said, my sidekick. What kind of dog is he?

Jeff Nesbitt: He's a border colly, Ossie mix. Oh my God. He's probably such a shit sometimes. He's amazing. Brilliant,

Melissa Meadow: amazing. He goes a smart dog.

Melissa Meadow: I'm like, I'm coming to look at this dog. And I scooped him into my lap and he just sat there and it was like, that was my guy. And I took him home and he went on a death call with me that night and I introduced him to his first dead buddy. And the way I did that, I put him on a cot next to the decedent and we were at the crematory and I was getting ready to place them in the refrigeration, and I just uncovered her face and I was like, look.

Melissa Meadow: And he leaned forward and he just kind of sniffed her and he was like, cool. He can tell when things are dead. He

Jeff Nesbitt: knows I'm Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I, I know dogs can tell when somebody's pregnant, they can tell when somebody has cancer. Mm-hmm. , they can tell when somebody's carrying drugs, obviously. Um, they can tell when you're high.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. So that immersed him immediately. And then when I started going on removals, after I got him trained, he became the first certified therapy dog in death care in the state of Texas.

Melissa Meadow: Cool. Yeah, and he's the first one out here too, so. Hmm.

Jeff Nesbitt: Um, so he's a dual state, uh, death guy too.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. He hasn't practiced in Oregon yet, but Okay. We'll get him there. Um, so yeah, he. Really good with working with people. Like knowing, you know how you've seen dogs when you're sad, they go up to you, they put their head on you.

Melissa Meadow: Some of the feedback that I was getting from the last funerals that he worked were just, people were like, I wanna tell you, your dog just came right up to me and just seemed to know I needed him. I was like, yeah, he's really good at that. .

Jeff Nesbitt: Does he know it's his job? Uh, yeah. This, it's crazy how good they get it.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's kind of just there. Yep. And, and not all the time either. It's just like with people, you connect with some of them and some of them you don't. Right. For real. It's pretty interesting.

Interesting Line of Work (Marker)

Jeff Nesbitt: How do people usually react when you tell 'em what line of work you're in?

Melissa Meadow: Um, it's been a mixed bag. They're either grossed out or they're intrigued. Mm-hmm. and I'll drive it either way. You know, if they're grossed out, I'll continue to push it. Um, just because you have to talk about death. You should.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. Cuz you're, it's a hundred percent guaranteed you're

Jeff Nesbitt: going to die. Yeah. And so are all the people you love mm-hmm. , you might as well think about it every once in a while. Mm-hmm. . And it doesn't have to be horrible. No. It can be special. It can be, it can be something that we don't dread. Yep. Like, especially if you think about the afterlife.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. , what are, do you have, specific opinions about what you think happens afterlife?

Melissa Meadow: Um, I don't believe that's the final end. Um, and then working in death care with so many different religions and so many different cultures and what other people believe, you can take a little bit from everything and make something whole. That's what feels right for you.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. I think you kind of have to mm-hmm.

Jeff Nesbitt: we have too good of access to information. Mm-hmm. , that's something that cultures have not faced in history that we know of. To have this much information and this many choices in everything of what you're gonna eat, who you're gonna worship, who you're gonna fuck, who you're gonna, you know, it, it's all of it.

Melissa Meadow: all the time. You know? That's why women say, I don't know.

Melissa Meadow: When you ask 'em where they want to eat,

Jeff Nesbitt: they just want you to pick.

Melissa Meadow: We're just tired. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Decision's too many . That's the classic scenario too, because that's the case. You, the woman just wants the man to just, just pick, but pick the right thing. You idiot . And that is true . Cause if you don't,

Melissa Meadow: are there really women that care where you pick?

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't care. Oh, that's what you say. I, oh this. If we're in a car driving looking for somewhere to eat and you say that to me, it's a trick. 100%. Okay. There's no way I ever believe it. Okay. Also, if I tell you I don't care where we eat. It's not true. I do care you like, I just don't want to, uh, pay the price that comes with choosing.

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't want to have to. You got it. I don't wanna have to pay, I don't wanna have to deal with your sour attitude. If we go somewhere that has shitty food that you don't like, okay. Yep. I agree with you. Case it's it, but that's fatigue. It's just cuz you're tired. Yep. Tired of processing emotions of your own end of other people.

Melissa Meadow: I like cheese. Oh god, I love cheese. Yeah. I need to find a really good trickery board on the peninsula. I heard salt

Jeff Nesbitt: had one. I think they most likely do, but that seems like something you should make at home. Like you could really get it really, really bad.

Not all Human Bone Meal is the same (Marker)

Melissa Meadow: When I have my goats that do yoga, I will have goats that make cheese.

Jeff Nesbitt: Cemetery cheese. Oh, that'll be good. I love goat cheese.

Melissa Meadow: That's how we'll make money. We'll sell cemetery cheese. We'll sell cemetery flowers that are grown from our affluent ,

Jeff Nesbitt: and you could even have cemetery soap.

Melissa Meadow: Oh my gosh, I'm

Jeff Nesbitt: gonna talk to Diane because you can get the, the chemicals wholesale. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh yeah. And you know you're gonna have an access to fat as well. Yes. Fight Club Cemetery soap.

Melissa Meadow: Oh

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. and, and such. Have you heard of any crazy ways that people ? Use the bodies after they're no longer people.

Melissa Meadow: So there are laws currently with the human compost where it can be dumped to where it can be used. it's not supposed to be in the city limits.

Melissa Meadow: In small amounts, you know, families can have little sections of it. But that, that begs to question, you know, are they're not gonna want people growing stuff in this. And then what is the grade of the compost that's coming out? So we should kind of talk about the composting that's going on right now.

Melissa Meadow: there's two different ways that it can be done. It can be done in a warehouse or it can be done in a natural burial park. And the example I'm gonna give you is Harland Forest in Clicky tat County.

Jeff Nesbitt: Am I saying that right? Yeah, I think so. Click at that. It's, it's probably native.

Melissa Meadow: I'll always go click it.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah, those. And so he has this thing set up on a track and the decedent is laid in there on some local mulch where he sources it from there. And then every couple of weeks it's rotated on that, on that long wheel thing. And he's got pictures of it on his website done out there, over the course of three to nine to six months, depending on what time of year it is.

Melissa Meadow: And you get the bones broken down properly from the t. The grade may be a five, you know, but then you've got some of these facilities. There's three different ones that are out there now. One of them is Earth Funeral, which is the one I've partnered with for the future to provide composting to clients that want it.

Melissa Meadow: They were coming back with chips, bone chip in them. They're. So one of the companies has an auger set up inside. They don't, you hear about the composting, human composting. You don't hear about the auger, you don't hear about the bone grinder. And that's what they're not being transparent with people about.

Melissa Meadow: Besides the fact that you're keeping your body in a vessel indoors for two months.

Jeff Nesbitt: Is it less

Melissa Meadow: sanitary? It's not that it's less sanitary, it is pretty sanitary process. Um, but what's happening is halfway through the process, if you're not being, you know, twirled around by the auger during the process, you're getting dumped out on a conveyor belt, sorry.

Melissa Meadow: And then put through, have you ever seen those metal grinders that like eat cars? Yeah. They put all the material through that. It's like a big crunching thing that processes the bone that's not resting in

Jeff Nesbitt: Cause doesn't, don't the enzymes and bacteria and stuff have to actually break down

Melissa Meadow: the matter so that they're having problems with the grade of the soil.

Jeff Nesbitt: Um, oh, that's what that means.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's all the intel have been given. Um, but

Jeff Nesbitt: um, so it's just ground up people. It's not decomposed people.

Jeff Nesbitt: Correct. And

Melissa Meadow: that's not the same thing. They're not being transparent with people about how the process is done. So people need to do their research if that's the kind. Disposition that they want. Where also are those materials being brought in Canada, Ohio, you know, for their, they're not getting it from their land, they're bringing it in.

Melissa Meadow: and it's definitely not at $5,000.

Jeff Nesbitt: That sounds actually re relatively cheap.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. That sounds really. . That sounds like definitely the easiest option for most people.

Melissa Meadow: And it's the most toxic. Really.

Melissa Meadow: Well, outside of the embalming, you're putting all of these precious metals into the air. Mm-hmm. . Um, what is melting, um, is going up. Mercury being the main one. Um, and then just the fossil fuels that it's burning, you know, going through the

Jeff Nesbitt: stack. How long does it take, , to heat through somebody?

Jeff Nesbitt: Completely. Six hours. Wow. That's longer than I thought. But that makes sense cuz it takes a long time to cook a Turkey and that's not going to burnt.

Melissa Meadow: Yep. You get down to the bone and then you scrape the bone out after it cools down enough and process it in a blender. But not a big cruncher like the composting thing.

Jeff Nesbitt: I've gotten emotional watching cars be crushed that way. I can't imagine. Yeah. I can't imagine a human. I know . We really did have, uh, one of those car crushers on my, my dad ran a body shop when I was a kid. Oh, wow. And he, a friend of his, had one of those car crushers and he set it up out front. And so eventually we had a lot full of cars and they were getting crushed all the time, but we crushed our family van after that.

Jeff Nesbitt: I, we had been like our childhood van and uh, I remember feeling like, oh, that's so sad to watch that get crushed. It's like one of our family members get it crushed. Who's our buddy? Um, so that's a great analogy.

Melissa Meadow: Well, how cool that you were there for its final disposition. Yeah, exactly.

Jeff Nesbitt: Like you sent it to the afterlife.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. , like, uh, it's, I have pockets in there that I keep my shit. It's like, it's, it's part of me. Yeah. It's not, not necessarily like my partner, it's like my coat. Mm-hmm. , . Especially in a rural area where you have to drive everywhere. Yep.

Jeff Nesbitt: Do you ever have nightmares?

Melissa Meadow: Uh, about my job? About anything? Um, yes. So it's been a while since I dreamed I noticed it. Whenever I smoke marijuana, I don't dream as much and marijuana is my coping mechanism.

Jeff Nesbitt: or you at least don't remember 'em. Yeah. That

Melissa Meadow: and they're not as vivid. Yeah. But earlier in my career I used to dream, um, about sending people to the wrong funeral.

Melissa Meadow: Different

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Or having the wrong clothes on them and, and why aren't their pants on? Right. We're late .

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Do you have any of those recurring nightmares that those, uh, like archetypical ones, like you go to school without your clothes on, or, uh, all your teeth fall out or anything like that?

Jeff Nesbitt: No. You've

never

Melissa Meadow: had one of those, huh? Well, when I was younger, I used to have this recurring dream about going to this witch's house.

Jeff Nesbitt: I have one of those too. Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: Let me hear yours. Oh, so it's like, it's, we go to her house and there's, I'm trying to get through it. It's almost like a video game puzzle kind of thing.

Melissa Meadow: You have to get through, and I'm losing family members along the way. And, uh, I, I've never gotten all the way to the end with everybody. It's always been me at the end. And so kind of, you know, you look back at it like now, maybe that's what I was talking about.

Jeff Nesbitt: Why were witches so scary before Harry Potter?

Jeff Nesbitt: I know. I was

Melissa Meadow: terrified of witches. Oh, it was Wizard of Oz.

Jeff Nesbitt: Interesting. Yeah. And I'm not gonna list them because as the nature of synchronicities there insignificant to everyone except the person who's experiencing them. Right. Um, so nobody wants to hear that shit. But, uh, suffice to say, I've been having a lot of them. The Wizard of Oz is popping up all the time.

Jeff Nesbitt: I think the original way it got started is cause I was talking about how somebody who worked on the film killed themselves on the set, and you can see his body's shadow hanging in one of the scenes. He hung himself on the set. Familiar. Yeah. That's just spooky. And there's lots of dark stuff like that on the, on that movie.

Shady Business (Marker)

Jeff Nesbitt: Uh, Hollywood, it probably still do. Hollywood's a fucked up dark place.

Melissa Meadow: So it's a funeral industry. Yeah. .

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Is there some, uh, some shady shit going on? A lot That's, well, what, what is some.

Melissa Meadow: Um, so for the third quarter, SCI exceeded their sci is the big global company that buys up, um, mom and pop funeral homes.

Melissa Meadow: And, I call 'em the Evil Empire.

Jeff Nesbitt: They're the Monsanto of funeral homes.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so they had over three times what they expected for their third quarter earnings this year, and they're like, oh, I don't know what's going on. What, what's happening?

Jeff Nesbitt: I could tell you, Uhhuh, what is it? I won't.

Jeff Nesbitt: Okay. I want people to be able to hear my podcast. Okay. . Okay. But I know what's going on. Oh,

Jeff Nesbitt: um, a lot of people dying. Mm-hmm. all cause mortalities. Well, like 16% in

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, the boomers.

Melissa Meadow: The boomers are coming.

Jeff Nesbitt: That actually makes me feel better. Yep. I have been wondering why so many more people are dying this year. It's the boomers. The boomers are finally starting to die. Thank God. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Oh my God. There our economies. Are

Melissa Meadow: they listen to you? No. Okay, cool. ,

Jeff Nesbitt: nobody does . Uh, no lies. Whoever's listening to this right now.

Jeff Nesbitt: Thank you so much. We love you . And if you're a boomer, I love you too. And I don't want you to die. That was a joke.

Melissa Meadow: We want to have plans for you. We don't want you to die unplanned.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. When you do die, I want you to have a good, beautiful burial. Yes. Uh, but yeah, I was thinking it was because of Covid and, and covid related deaths such as, you know, the vaccines killing people and things like that.

Melissa Meadow: I can tell you what my experience was working in death during all of this. Um, the people that were having Covid put on the death certificates that I worked with, it was obvious that's what they died of.

Melissa Meadow: Okay? But I don't know about other cities. .

Jeff Nesbitt: Well, I mean, the hospitals admitted a lot of, uh, the deaths were comorbid. Uhhuh, maybe somebody had a heart condition and covid we're gonna get the covid money, so we're gonna write covid

Melissa Meadow: like. Right. And on top of that though, the families too, they didn't know, a lot of families didn't know if somebody died of a heart attack but also had covid or pneumonia and had c Yeah.

Melissa Meadow: They can get reimbursed by the government for the funeral expenses.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Yep.

Melissa Meadow: So go ahead and do this. Go ahead and do all of this. Oh, they're

Jeff Nesbitt: just gonna pay you back. Classic insurance scam. Yeah. Not a scam, but classic insurance exploitation.

Melissa Meadow: I will say that I know of at least three instances that that happened at the corporate funeral home that I worked at in Tacoma when I was there.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, I, you know what? I don't think that's horrible. Of all the ways that you could, you know, take advantage of situation, I think that one's probably the least, uh, the least gross way. Yes. Morally gross. I don't, I don't know. That may not be true. It sucks to take money from the government when you don't actually need it, but in that case, they kind of need it.

Jeff Nesbitt: And if you, if you want to spend the $7,000 and get the fancy stuff, I don't know. I could forgive that for sure. Um, but yeah.

New Blood Technology (Marker)

Jeff Nesbitt: Did have you done any, embalming lately?

Melissa Meadow: The last time I embalmed was about three years ago.

Melissa Meadow: Yes, I've seen, no, I've been in the embalming room within the last

Jeff Nesbitt: year.

Jeff Nesbitt: Ooh, please tell

Melissa Meadow: me more. So these, this is something that I am seeing. Um, blood clots were always a thing. , but they're kind of stringy

Jeff Nesbitt: and made of blood, right?

Melissa Meadow: Well, yeah, but these,

Jeff Nesbitt: the new ones aren't all blood, right? They're made of like rubbery shit.

Melissa Meadow: I don't know necessarily that it just looked

Jeff Nesbitt: different.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. I've read an article that said that like calamari,

Melissa Meadow: oh yeah. That is kind of close.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Interesting. But yeah, they're new.

Melissa Meadow: Yeah. Yuck, . Yeah. It is pretty gross. When you're embalming somebody in a big old clot comes out, or, or nothing. When you're embalming a body, the whole point is to get the distribution of fluid throughout the system.

Melissa Meadow: They, um, that big vein, that vein, the jugular. Huge one. Yeah. Okay. Right into your heart. Okay. So these two big old forceps go in there and we just like clamp and pull, clamp and pull to grab those clots and pull 'em out.

Jeff Nesbitt: It look like pieces of liver, big chunks

Melissa Meadow: coming out. Yes, it's disgusting. Ooh. Yeah. Why wouldn't you just wanna be buried instead of like poked at all that stuff?

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, really. It's crazy, but. So, yeah, I wonder how it got started, like how that originally became the standard.

Melissa Meadow: I can tell you. Oh, I would love to know. All right. So Abe Lincoln died and then they pickled him. But before that, in vinegar, no arsenic. Um, but before that, they had the Civil War, right? And so they were trying to figure out, oh my gosh, how are we gonna get all these dead soldiers back home?

Melissa Meadow: Embalm, their embalming works. You'd see a dead guy sitting outside the embalming tent. Yeah. Displaying his wares. You know, like this

Jeff Nesbitt: is how good I embalm. Wow, that's intense. It's nuts. Death was more normalized

Melissa Meadow: then, huh? Yeah, because it was still in the home. Uhhuh, you still had funerals happening in the home where the living room is.

Melissa Meadow: It used to be the parlor in the home now that, that's when they called them funeral parlors because they took it out of the home.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh my God, that's interesting.

Melissa Meadow: The cabinet makers, um, made caskets and stuff like that, so it was really the furniture makers that were the funeral homes. So many of the funeral homes out here started as furniture makers.

Melissa Meadow: I believe the first funeral home out here was in either Chinook or Oaco, and it started as

Melissa Meadow: That's really awesome. So, but yeah, that's what they did. they kept death at home until they started embalming people. And so then when a Lincoln died, they took him on a tour day, tour day death where they took his body to a bunch of different stops and every time they stopped, they'd re embalm him.

Melissa Meadow: So he looked fresh

Jeff Nesbitt: and fly. That job must have sucked.

Melissa Meadow: I know. Can you imagine this? Disgusting. But anyway, , he looked great and it became the popular thing, and then they took death out of the home and put it in the funeral homes, and then it became corporate, and then it became very salesy and slick and

Jeff Nesbitt: gross.

Jeff Nesbitt: Is Lennon still in a glass viewing case in Russia somewhere? How, how is he involved?

Melissa Meadow: Um, so my understanding is that they take him out of this case and they just open up the stitching and they reinfuse him.

Jeff Nesbitt: Just drain him out and fill him back up. Huh.

Melissa Meadow: Mm-hmm. and it's gonna go out of the body and into the casket. So imagine somebody's buried in a metal casket, where's that liquid gonna go? It's just gonna slosh around on the bottom of the casket for all eternity. Mm-hmm. . So same thing I think they have to dry him out. And he may be at a point where they actually do like a dry rub on him or something.

Stolen Death? (Marker)

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, you know what they could do? Polymerization? Yes. Have you been to the body's exhibit?

Melissa Meadow: Oh my gosh, yes. Okay. So there's two different ones. Fuck. There's ones with the Chinese

Jeff Nesbitt: prisoners and there's, that's one I saws.

Jeff Nesbitt: I don't like that one. It's, I don't like it either. It's creepy. Yeah. And then what's the other one? Gun. Hi. A German guy. Yes. I saw the Chinese one.

Melissa Meadow: He's, he's the one that started the ization process. He's amazing. Um, initially I signed up to be Plasticized, so I hope they don't find my body. When I die,

Jeff Nesbitt: you're gonna be put into a humiliating position.

Jeff Nesbitt: I know. Like

Melissa Meadow: probably having sex with somebody, like

Melissa Meadow: the lady. The dude holding his brain on top

Jeff Nesbitt: of the horse. Yeah. Yeah. The guy playing basketball.

Jeff Nesbitt: Looked like he was about to miss a lay in. Easy lay in. Yeah. Yeah. Humiliating stuff. But yeah, they they don't really tell you where they got the bodies.

Melissa Meadow: Exactly. No. Now the Urvan Hagen, his, were all ethically sourced, supposedly. However, the Chinese ones, they were all like prisoners of

Jeff Nesbitt: war or something.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, yeah. Scary . Yes, it is. Also, how do we let that happen? I don't know. Because maybe it's because it's for science in a way. And also morbid fascination. Yeah. Like the freak shows. It's like modern day freak shows. We'll tolerate atrocities if they've already happened and they're not hurting anybody now, but they're still kind of cool to look at.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. most of the time organizations that will kill you and, you know, fill your body with plastic and put you on display. Most of the time those kind of organizations aren't that nice. And they might do it again. Yep.

Melissa Meadow: Who knows? I think Gunther Bon Hagen actually died. I gotta google that cuz he was really sick for a while.

Melissa Meadow: I wonder if they're gonna

Jeff Nesbitt: plast his ass. They fucking better

Jeff Nesbitt: They would have to.

Melissa Meadow: That's only fair. Oh yeah. Oh, we don't have internet in here. No. Internet. It's, it's,

Melissa Meadow: I'll update you. Dead. Dead zone.

Melissa Meadow: Do you believe in ghosts? Um, uh, yeah. My d my four year old daughter also wanted me to ask you if you believe in zombies. Mm.

Jeff Nesbitt: I asked her if I could change it to Are you concerned about the possibility of zombies?

Jeff Nesbitt: Yes. And she told me, no, you do not change it. Okay. So you don't have to answer that question. Okay. but do you believe in ghosts? Yes, I think so. Have you ever seen one or heard one?

Melissa Meadow: So here's, here's the story. Um, I'll tell you one that happened here, and I'll tell you one that happened in Texas. So the one that happened in Texas, there was this foyer set up.

Melissa Meadow: So like the building is shaped like a letter C. So on one side of the letter C, you've got the chapel, and on the other side of the letter C, you've got the entryway. And then inside the letter C, you have this garden area with a walkway. So I go from the reception area, I go down this little walkway, and I go to check the chapel to make sure the door is locked.

Melissa Meadow: And a shadow moves in front of the, between the light and the window, um, on the door. And it was kind of like, so you could see it under the door. Um, so the door had like that frosted glass. It was a chapel door. Oh, okay. So I could see the light on the inside and I could see a shadow move in. And then the doorknob turning my hand and I'd sprinted the other direction.

Melissa Meadow: I didn't wait to see if somebody was fucking with me or not. But when I got back to the other room, the two coworkers that it could have been were there. So a hundred percent feel like that was a spook. Situation.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. I didn't used to believe in them. Uh, even though it was, I, I kind of did because I've always, I was raised to believe that demons are real mm-hmm.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That's counterintuitive if you believe in demons. But, um, but yeah, religious, I was, we grew up really religious. Yeah. so I, I never really gave much thought to it and I was always kind of just like, well even if ghosts are real, I don't need to be afraid cuz I'll just. Scare 'em away with Jesus.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Which I still do. and, uh, use the old demonn getaway here outta here. Trick , uh, works on ghost as well. And, um, but I, I, as I've kind of gotten older and been more open to listening to other people's anecdotes, especially their more spooky and, uh, confusing ones that don't make a whole lot of sense, I have come around to where I kind of think that there is a possibility that it's legit and that there is some kind of energetic transfer that happens when you die.

Jeff Nesbitt: because you're entering that, that right frequency mm-hmm. where you're susceptible and open to it. Like you're, kind of like, uh, X-rays, you can't see my bones unless you look with x-rays because Right. That's just not the right frequency. So I think it has to do with that. And when you get on that right wavelength, I, I think it's completely reasonable to think that there's entities that might exist that we could communicate with.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. , especially once you've done psychedelics and you sense entities and energies, and energies with personalities that you are pretty damn sure are real and you're, you're realizing that everything is a lot more confusing than everyone thinks.

Melissa Meadow: And, , I thought it was actually Jeff's dad. I thought I heard Jeff's dad call my name from the other side of the funeral home and I go to look and he's not there, and I go to look and his car's not there, and I go back to what I'm doing and 10 minutes later I hear him again. Spooky. I never

Jeff Nesbitt: told him that.

Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, that's creepy.

Melissa Meadow: I know his disembodied voices haunting the funeral home he once owned. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: wouldn't surprise me. Right. Yeah. All right. Gosh, it's the, it's the version of him that died long ago. His innocence. Yes. After seeing that much death, does that affect. Your mental health and your ability to just be happy,

Melissa Meadow: Uhhuh?

Melissa Meadow: checks.

Melissa Meadow: So,

Jeff Nesbitt: yeah. You seem like a person who feels deeply, deeply and that that seems like it might be, on one hand a benefit and a major asset because of the communication it provides with people who are grieving. But on the other side of that coin, it seems like a vulnerability that you don't have a lot of control over.

Jeff Nesbitt: Totally. Has that it caused you problems

Melissa Meadow: a lot. Yeah. Oh, man. Um, when I first moved to Washington and suddenly had health insurance, which I hadn't had when I started a company, and the last company I left in Texas was a company that I had started and wasn't smart enough to get my name on the paperwork.

Melissa Meadow: So the person with the money had all their name on the paperwork and I had to walk away from it because I wasn't being paid fairly. And I knew I wanted to be in this part of the country. Anyway, so where

Jeff Nesbitt: was I going with that? ? Um, I don't remember. I asked the question too. Oh, yeah. Uh, basically what I was getting at, Does it make you depressed?

Jeff Nesbitt: Do you get depressed from having to be around death?

Melissa Meadow: I'm gonna do the way it is. Right. And everything has just fallen

Jeff Nesbitt: into place since then. Yeah. It feels good. You're trusting the universe to just lay the path for you. Yeah. That I really think that's the only way to be happy is to, you have to kind of just let go. Let go. Mm-hmm. let go of the, of the illusion of control that we have any control over what happens to us in our life.

Jeff Nesbitt: and at the same time, take some agency in. understanding where you want to go, set the attention and then just let it ride. And do do the best you can without putting too much emphasis on the end. Yeah. Because that's trying to second guess yourself all the time and that kind of stuff is never gonna end well.

Melissa Meadow: I wanted to tell you about all the new options available in death care and then to kind of use this as an announcement. I didn't intend on it initially, but might as well use it as an announcement that I'm doing a not for profit funeral home and conservation burial park in Pacific County.

Jeff Nesbitt: I think that's so cool. Thank you. And it, it's much needed. Anything that that's gonna build community, I think especially out here, is important. I feel a genuine lack of community, uh, everywhere I go, like people. in the way that we've gotten so much more connected digitally. Mm-hmm. people have had less of a necessity for actual human connection and a lot of it has disappeared.

Jeff Nesbitt: Like you can survive without ever having to see people anymore. And a lot of people do. Yeah. And I think that they're, they're suffering without even realizing that, that's why. Oh,

Melissa Meadow: 110%. Yeah.

Jeff Nesbitt: Well I think that we are getting close to around two hours. Sweet. Yeah. Do you have anything else you wanna cover before we wrap this thing

Melissa Meadow: up?

Jeff Nesbitt: harmful demote acid from the algae blooms.

Jeff Nesbitt: How does it

Melissa Meadow: reverse the algae blooms? So you can set the pH neutrality with glycolic acid and it can be dispersed into the ocean to fight algae blooms. Oh, it's pH neutral. Yeah, the neutrality. You can adjust it to make it fight. I'm going to get a scientist involved. Um, her name is Sam and she's from Bio Response Solution.

Melissa Meadow: I'm going to do a little interview with her and make it a interview that I can share with the community so they can understand the difference and what it can do in fighting fires and also in reversing the algae blooms.

Jeff Nesbitt: That's really cool. Yeah, it, I'm not sure if it's because of acidification. because it's too alkaline that the algae blooms it.

Jeff Nesbitt: Mm-hmm. and into our, all of our lakes and rivers. Yep. And that's gonna grow plants

Melissa Meadow: like algae. Well, I want you to think about another thing too, about how many people are cremated a day in a big city. I don't know how much emissions are going up. So our cremation machines, when we were. You know, in regular going, we'd do about five cremations per machine per 24 hours.

Melissa Meadow: Wow. And how many machines was that? Two machines at the last one I worked at, the one before that they had three machines. , there's one place in this area. Most of the places in this area have one machine each. , but when you think about how much carbon is going out into the air with every flame cremation, why would you want your last act on earth to be detrimental?

Melissa Meadow: It seems like a waste. The solar powers on, solar panels on it. Have the crematory heat, it

Jeff Nesbitt: There's a lot of fun innovation that you could do when you're like starting something now. Like in this time with all the technology that we have available, there's just, you could take it so many different places.

Melissa Meadow: I'm looking forward to see what happens with this.

Jeff Nesbitt: It's gonna be cool. Come back when you're a little bit farther along in the process and let us know how

Melissa Meadow: it's going.

Melissa Meadow: Absolutely. I'll bring the documentary person too.

Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. So what's this documentary?

Melissa Meadow: The documentary is about, uh, the death care. they reached out to me a little over a year ago into my Instagram dms and wanted to know the ins and outs, and I was like, look, I'm playing it straight. I'm working for a corporate funeral home right now.

Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. Cool. I can't wait to see it. It's gonna be good. All right. One more time. Tell people where to find you.

Melissa Meadow: Melissa. I am Melissa. I am online, Instagram and TikTok at the Modern Mortician. I'm also the modern mortician@gmail.com or the website is the modern mortician.com. But the nonprofit takeoff project is The end green.

Jeff Nesbitt: The end green, yep. Thank you everybody so much for listening. We'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Melissa Meadow: Bye, .