Podcast Episode Transcript: Funerals 101 - Why Funerals Still Matter in Today's World

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Welcome to the Remembering a Life podcast. I'm your host, Gail Marquardt. Every month we gather to talk about life, death, and how we want to be remembered. Today I am talking with Nicholas Welzenbach, managing partner of Darling Fisher Funeral Home and Los Gatos Memorial Park all in California. We're going to have a conversation about funerals, the basics of funerals, why they're important, all sorts of good content. Welcome, Nicholas. I'm so glad you could join me today.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Oh, Gail, thank you so much for having me on. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to share with you.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Excellent. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into funeral service.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Well, the abridged version is I'm second generation. My father and family was in the manufacturing of cemetery and funeral goods throughout the United States and was for 37 some years, Wilbert Vault, the Pierce Colleges, Pierce Chemical, things of that nature. And as a young individual, I ran the other direction, so I would have nothing to do with funerals and moved to San Diego where I wanted to take up things like surfing, expand my ability to skateboard and had lofty goals there. Started working at a funeral home when I was 19 years old and however many times I tried to go in the other direction after I started working at that large cemetery and funeral home, it always just brought me back as I love the ability to guide, support and help families when they need it most. So it's something I'm very passionate about and I think that's how many people find our space, not the skateboarding of course, but that they find themselves at a cemetery or a funeral home and then they're drawn to that level of care.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
I've heard that from other funeral directors that they say, no, I want nothing to do with this profession. They go off, they do their thing and they just get drawn back. It really does seem to be a calling. Do you still surf and skateboard?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I have made those two things very uncool for my children. So I think they're the coolest sports on earth, and as I try to teach my children them, they're not interested and have moved towards more traditional sports. So I don't know, maybe a blessing, maybe a curse, but at some point in time they'll pick it up, I hope.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah, maybe they'll come around. So tell me a little bit about your funeral home. I know you recently did a big remodeling. Tell me how you make families feel welcome. What is that experience like for them?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Well, thank you for asking. Darling Fisher is and has been as most funeral homes are right, we all serve our micro markets and the communities that we're privileged to be a part of, and more often than not, they were established by the individuals who created the funeral homes, decades of life, longer than we've been around. So as I've been privileged to be a part of Darling Fisher for the past decade and they've been serving the San Jose, which at that point in time was the Valley of Hearts delight and it is now referred to as the Silicon Valley, but they've been doing that since 1936 in San Jose, in Campbell since the early fifties and by the mid fifties and Los Gatos. And they always believed in the excellence of service and service above self. Where things transformed was in 2018 when we remodeled these fixtures of our community to places that were much brighter. We removed burgundy curtains and old carpet. We removed your great-grandmother's furniture and all the things that made it feel, look and smell like a funeral home. We made them new modern spaces, we increased the ceiling heights, we improved the lighting, and the lighting is huge for us. We just truly believe that you can’t be sad in a well lit space and that actually might allow you to stay longer and congregate with family and friends. So it's been a wonderful transition for the families we're privileged to serve.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
From the photos I've seen it really, it looks like someone's home. It just looks very comforting and inviting.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Yeah, that was really the goal. We call them funeral homes and they looked like your great-grandmother's old funeral homes. How does it transition into what we expect today? We did that in our arrangement offices where we get to sit with families and guide them through all of the steps. And in those particular rooms, we made them living rooms. We removed the kitchen table or the boardroom table or the desk that we sat in front of the decision makers. We eliminated the ability to put elbows on tables and negotiate, and we removed casket selection rooms and replaced it with 75 inch touch panels with 4K renderings in real time. And it has been received by every family, and that's a big statement. I truly believe that every family since 2018 that has encountered this new experience, has been grateful for it and has been very vocal about how they expected it to be. And what they described is what they expected, which is how I mentioned that funeral homes look like most of us are familiar with and how it was a relief. So that's a reassuring thing that we're chipping away at something that needed to change.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Definitely. So speaking of change, our world is evolving and while people have been burying their dead for millennia, why are funerals still important? Are they still important?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I think as we change the want for space, as we change our expectation of service excellence and what that looks like, none of us are on an island and we all need family and community and the majority of us live that way. So a funeral is just as important from millennia ago to today. It is necessary, whether it's 10 people or 200 people, I think that it is absolutely vital to our success in the beginning of, or whatever stage you're on grief, on your grief journey, that inviting your community in for a healing experience. And sometimes you're like, well, we don't have that many people. And at Darling Fisher, we believe in service unapologetically, meaning that we just think that you should gather, whether it's a few people or whether we have to rent a space that's bigger than our own, which we do both whenever needed. So the funeral is as important. The name has changed. We call it a life celebration, we call it an event, and that is much like the brighter, newer spaces that we've adopted. So if the vernacular changes, the need hasn't changed for people to gather so that they can have a shared experience.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
There are a lot of people who have not been to a funeral. Walk me through what a funeral looks like in your funeral home. What happens? What can people expect when they arrive?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Arriving at a funeral home, whether it is a newly remodeled space like Darling Fisher or an older funeral home, the newer part doesn't really change anything. It might once you've arrived and once you've stepped foot in that door, but ultimately when you're having to show up to a funeral home, it's a daunting task. No one wants to darken our door, and if they've never been to one, that is even more difficult for them. So how do we make that a better experience? It is that the old adage from the book, Broken Windows, Broken Business, you've got to go around and you got to make sure that you've curated your space externally and internally, whether it's new, whether it's old. People need to know that that place is cared for and when they enter that space, the most important task of a funeral home at that point in time is to greet that individual.

Maybe not necessarily to hand 'em a prayer card or a folder or point 'em to a book, but just to greet with a warm smile and then just make sure that there's an acknowledgement of why they're there and that's not a sorry for your loss. We might get into that more because I think that that is the worst thing to say as a funeral professional or just as a human from one to the other, but just a warm greeting, right? It's not “Good morning,” it's “Morning.” It's an acknowledgement of their presence and a reassurance that they're in the right space. I think that that is vital to a person, again, newer old space to being able to take the tension out of their shoulders and realize what they're walking into. And if they're not going to see any of it under the veil of tears as they're the immediate family or their stages removed as a friend or a coworker, they all just want to be greeted and they want to know that that space is cared for and that the person that's acknowledging them cares as much about that space as that person needs them to at that moment.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
So sometimes people will have an open casket at a service, and that may be unfamiliar to people as well. What can people expect when there is an open casket and are they required to view the body? Why might they want to view the body?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I think the simple answer to that is no, you shouldn't be required to do anything in a space that is uncomfortable and familiar. Should you be informed of why it might be beneficial? Absolutely. But no one should ever pull you to the front and say, you really need this, because it may be at that moment that you didn't. So I really think that if you've arrived at a funeral and you're the immediate family or you are someone that is connected through friendship or old relationships, you're there. Your physical presence is there as a symbol of love and appreciation for your friend, brother, sister, mom, dad. But you shouldn't be required to do anything that you don't want to do. And the benefits of being able to see someone in my own personal experience and why we inform people why that service and that is a need to see a loved one.

If you've been in a hospital and there have been tubes and wires coming out of your loved one or they've been at home on hospice and palliative care and they pass, sometimes eyes are open, our mouth is open. It's not peaceful. I truly believe seeing someone at peace provides that sentiment to the family. They know that that individual is now resting because someone in a care center, which those are not the most abundant portion of a funeral service, but it is the most important individual inside of a funeral home. The individual that works in the care center, the embalmer, mortician, whichever word you want to use to reference them, those individuals provide peaceful moments. And I think it is more often than not a benefit to a family. And we always inform so much like the front end of the question, should you have to? Absolutely not. Should we inform you of the benefits? Yes, we should. And if we are able to place that individual based on the care that they've received, whether there's trauma or they've been in a hospital and there's distinction or there's retention of fluid, we can more often than not remedy those so that someone can have a peaceful experience and see their individual, but they've loved and cared for resting.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
And I know a lot of people will go to a funeral and say, well, they didn't look like they did. I want to remember them the way that they looked when they were alive. The person is dead. They're not going to like they did when they were alive. And embalmers can do amazing things. It's more the acknowledgement of the loss and accepting the death, correct?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Oh, absolutely. It's akin to the lowering of a casket at a graveside. It is an acknowledgement that visual acknowledgement seeing someone, and there are professionals that are incredible at their craft and they're better than others. So depending on who's caring for the individual, as I mentioned, the most important individuals in a funeral home are the ones that work directly in our care center. And those individuals, they have a skillset like any other profession. So some are more gifted at making them look as remembered or more peaceful than they were last seen. But there is that that didn't look like I remembered, and I wish that hadn't happened in my career. And it has. But the value of seeing someone and understanding if it's your choice that yes, I know that that's them now, and I know that they're resting and they're not in pain, they're not suffering. There's value.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Definitely, especially in a situation I imagine where perhaps there has been some trauma to the individual or the death has been sudden to be able to see that loved one afterwards, I would think would be incredibly valuable.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Yeah, I mean it dates back to why we created embalming, why there was mummification to the creation of embalming fluids for preservation. People had to go great distances because they wanted to see, they wanted that confirmation, they wanted to hold that hand again. And we didn't have modern refrigeration until not too long ago. So the ability to see someone that hasn't been embalmed whose features have been set, which is a service we provide to families that want to have that peaceful setting and see their loved one with their eyes closed and their feature set, that's something that we can do based on refrigeration, embalming. You might have to get on a chuck wagon or be in a train if you were going to come see that individual. So as funeral services and time has evolved, our ability to maintain an individual's condition has changed through different methods.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Does every body need to be involved?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
There is no requirement and the state of California that an individual will be embalmed. There are sometimes requirements. So the answer to that question is no, not everybody needs to be embalmed. Most funeral homes have strong recommendations as it relates to inviting people into a funeral home and making sure that we have the most control on how that individual would be perceived involving provides us better control. And if you're going to invite 200 people into a visitation with an open casket, we believe and recommend strongly at Darling Fisher as many other funeral homes would that the best situation for the family at that point in time is to embalm. But there is no law that says it's required sometimes ship outs to different countries, and the reciprocity that's associated with that is required, but it is a preservation technique.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
So I know you're more on the arrangement side and then you have embalmers that specialize in that side of the business. How do you on a daily basis cope with helping families who are saying goodbye to someone? It must be a very difficult job emotionally, because I imagine you don't want to lose that emotion, but you also need to control that emotion. Can you tell us a little bit about how you do that?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Absolutely. Yeah. I was having that conversation just the other day as it relates to the day that I don't have feelings or I can't connect with the family, is the day that I need to step out of the funeral and not return, because our ability as humans to connect with one another on an emotional level, now managing through that is mission critical. And the one thing that people say all the time, oh my gosh, this must be creepy and I can't believe you're around all of these, their words, we would use loved one. Many times families will say, dead bodies, right? Can't believe you're surrounded by dead bodies. And we're surrounded by families, loved ones, and more often than not, the majority of our staff is surrounded by the living. So we're actually caring for the living, not unlike the nurse and the doctor or the hospice worker that was just there.

So we're part of that chain of care, and that really fills the cup as it relates to the value of the work that we do. Because more often than not, I mean, there's 60 employees at the three Darling Fisher. There are three individuals that are dedicated to the care of the loved ones we serve. So the vast majority is the living. And that's really a beautiful thing to be able to take somebody on a journey, hopefully it's not someone that's young. That's the most difficult part about what we do, all the way up to Blue Ribbon living where someone's in their late eighties and nineties. Just recently, we were privileged to bury a man that was 105 years old, the last living survivor of Pearl Harbor attack, and what a great honor that's we're telling stories, funeral directors, I wish we could change how we're perceived in the community, that we're not the creepy lurch that people identify within their heads. And in movies and Adam's family, we're in your community and we're your local storytellers. We're the people that share the story of people's lives and allow that to happen. And that's therapeutic for us because more often than not, when we're sitting with a family, they're telling us about how someone lived, and that's amazing. We say the most wonderful things when people have passed on to the next, wherever that might be as it relates to beliefs.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah. Tell me more about that storytelling aspect. Can you talk about some of the perhaps more unique funerals that really beautifully honored the life of someone?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
You have to the arranger in order for that to take place or funeral director in that scenario has to connect with a family. There has to be some thoughtfulness associated with that conversation and the want to find and mind through and our universe, if maybe you just didn't ask the next question that was required to create that amazing experience for a family. So it starts in the conversation and some people are not ready to share and some people are ready to share. So wherever you have that intersection, you need to make sure that you're listening. And then it doesn't necessarily need to be a surprise, but thoughtfulness. What are we doing as it relates to acknowledging that life that either never happened, or in the case of the gentleman from Pearl Harbor, who I won't mention but by name, but just what a remarkable human.

I've never been in a service where there was that much military. It was so wonderfully orchestrated, and it was absolutely beautiful, and the family felt like we had heard making sure that the Patriot Guard were there to acknowledge this life, which are typically veterans, just all of the individuals that would want to be involved, which meant that we had to call and reach out and say, this individual has passed. Would you want to be involved also while curating the permissions from a family to say, Hey, is it okay if we make this an event that we're going to remember? And I truly believe in that specific service. If we hadn't called and reached out to those individuals, we would've done what we've always done, which is honor someone without pulling out all the stops. And we've done things for infants and rainbow babies and stories that I wish I didn't know and didn't have.

So it's truly about listening in an arrangement so that you can create something. And it could be as simple as making sure that the other day I was talking to an arranger and they kept talking about how the deceased loves snicker Snickers bars and Pepsi and the family kept talking about that. And I said, well, when everybody either leaves or shows up, they need to receive a small can of Pepsi and a Snickers bar, and we'll go out and we'll get all those things and we'll curate little takeaways so that when they're enjoying that, they know that it was something that the person they came to memorialize would've enjoyed.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
That's wonderful. So meaningful and something that people will definitely remember. I get asked a lot of interesting questions working in this profession. I get questions about burial a lot. One of the questions I get quite often is, if a person is buried in a casket, are they wearing shoes?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
That's a great question. I think that now cremation and burial are going to be different in that response because we might try to persuade a family the other way about placing something that's rubber, or if they wanted them to leave with a bottle of whiskey and place that into a cremation casket, we probably don't want that, right? All of that stuff melts into the refractory of the crematory and it destroys the machine's longevity. So that might be something we would dissuade, whereas someone's being buried, I think that they should be in every single thing that we knew, not every single thing or I think they should be dressed in the way we'd remember them if they're seen or not, because anything that we do for the deceased, we're actually doing for the living. So I know that one of my mentors in cemetery and funeral, he went to San Diego State, which is where I went to college, and he was very proud of his Scottish culture, and he said, when I'm buried, I'll be in my San Diego state sweatshirt and I'm going to be in my kilt.
And maybe that involves shoes, maybe it didn't, but if it did, he should have those shoes

on. If he was a runner or she was a runner, they should have those shoes on. And we should mention that because it'd be in a conversation to enrich the experience of getting to know who someone was so that we could connect with a family, everything that a family thinks that they should bring in as far as notes and cards and necklaces and mementos. I love it when people write letters and they want to place those within the casket. There's therapy that's associated with that. I think there's just as much therapy in writing that letter as making sure that, Hey, mom, dad was a runner and I wanted to make sure he had his shoes on. Is that okay? 100%.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
How do you talk to children who might come into the funeral home, who might come in when arrangements are being made, or when they might be coming in for the service? Do you encourage parents to involve their children in that process?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I do. Maybe there's an age and understanding and cultures are going to be different. The ability to find a sitter, all of those things are going to play into it. If it's my loved one, I don't want children running around a funeral home because someone couldn't find a sitter. I just don't want that experience because I think it's going to distract me and my ability to grieve. But as it relates to having a baby at a service that cries, there typically is no greater sound on earth than a baby crying, right? It's usually the mom and dad that are worried about it, not everyone that's around it. So there's that balance, and I think if you're going to talk to a child, I think you need to talk to them with respect and allow them to have grownup feelings and emotions because they're having those, they just maybe don't know how to give 'em words.

So I think engaging and having conversations about the reality, I mean, it's the thing that we fear second most in this world is death, public speaking, being number one. But if it's either one or two, you should have a conversation about it before you enter a space like that. Kids know the rules of libraries and schools and if given respect I think a lot of times they'll respect the environment that they're in and they understand the gravity of the situation. So it's going to be a case by case and child by child and family and childcare, and those things are always difficult, but I think if you can have a great conversation with the child and bring them in and provide them some understanding, it could help in the long term for just respecting life.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
So you mentioned earlier about what to say when someone is grieving that I'm sorry for your loss maybe necessarily isn't what you'd want to say. Talk a little bit more about that. What should we say when someone is grieving?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I mentioned that one specifically because that's our go-to. I don't know how to say it in a different language, but I imagine in every language there is that statement, which is, I'm sorry for your loss. And the thing is, it might not even be said disingenuous. It might be something honest that they're saying, I'm really sorry for your loss. It's just that that's what everyone says. So it starts to be numbing and it starts to create frustration. So what can we say? Sometimes nothing. Sometimes just, Hey, if you ever want to talk, I would be honored to listen and just saying, I wish there was something I could say. I think that's from one community member to another. That's actually the honest statement because there's nothing that you can say that's going to alleviate what has just transpired, whether it was trauma, whether it was age, or whether it was illness that has taken some away from it.

There's not a magic statement that's going to remove and lift that individual from that grief. It's just the way that you intersect. And they don't know where they're at in their journey. They probably haven't been able to define it yet. So just acknowledging that with the same level of, I've wished there was something I could say. I mean, I think the thing I said most commonly to families from a funeral professional to a family is, I wish I didn't know you. It's great when I get to help celebrate a life from somebody that's 85 plus years old and has lived a blue ribbon life, and the children are sharing with me openly about a great life lived and how wonderful their parents were. That's awesome. It's not a bad moment to be in when someone's younger and you've lost someone who didn't get to experience life at all, or life was cut short. I genuinely mean it when I say, I wish I didn't know you.

At Darling Fisher, the statement that I ask our team to lead with and to believe in is instead of saying, I'm sorry for your loss, is Thank you for your trust, because maybe it's a Google search. Maybe they've been in the San Jose Campbell Gatos in our space for a long time, and they're like, oh, that's who we use. Nevertheless, we need to earn that trust every single step of the way as we guide. And that's from beginning to end of their loved one being in our care and after. And we need to continue to earn that trust and provide that as a promise and statement of commitment to them. So that's where we've changed that vernacular and is to offer gratitude for their trust during a difficult time.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah, that's beautiful. I know often, depending on the circumstances, if I know someone who's experienced the death of a loved one, I'll say something like, tell me about your loved one, or would you like to share a story about the person? Because I think that can be really valuable too, that their death doesn't necessarily define them. Again, how did they live? And being able to share some of that. I'm a big believer in sharing stories about your loved one forever and never letting that…

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Oh, yeah,

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Never letting that go away. So inviting people to share about their loved one I think is also nice.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
See, and that arrangement, because someone might not be ready, we might not have asked the right question, but that's that. Getting to know a family and how do you have someone open up? Because at the end of the day, I imagine most people want to most want to share about who their mom was, who their dad was, who their brother was. I've lost a brother, and every opportunity I get to talk about him is a moment. I just make sure that he's alive and well. So I think it's important for us to be able to share those stories and on our life. On our life,

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Definitely. So you live within funeral service and you literally live in funeral service because you live above the funeral home. What is that like?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
It is wonderful. I get to live in an amazing town and a great community. It is one and the same, so it's a very old home. It was built in 1910 by the namesake of our town's. So it was a Campbell's daughter's home in Campbell, California, and it's in the middle of town. It's an anchor on one of the streets, and it's really great. I absolutely love it. I love that it's disconnected from that space. There's an upstairs, there's a downstairs there, not connected. You have to go outside, which was a change. And when I first got there, you could walk down the steps in the middle, you remove those stairs, which actually improved my ability to walk, get away from work, which is important when you live that close to it. But I love it. And for me, one of the things that I find that people are always curious about is, oh my gosh, isn't it creepy?

Isn't it scary as it goes? Maybe you'd have to believe in all those things for them to be true. And I don't, I've never experienced, I've lived above a funeral home for 15 years. I've very privileged to do so. So it's been an honor to be able to have that position of the three communities, funeral directors, Campbell, San Los Gatos, and be able to be readily available to our community. But usually it is someone's morbid curiosity that is far greater than mine. I was like, oh my gosh, isn't it going back to the creepiness and this, that, and the other? So I don't subscribe to it. So it's pretty wonderful. And there is a caveat. There is no care center in this particular funeral home. And when I say care center, that is our modern way of saying embalming and preparation or prep room, which I think is kind of cold. So we don't use that word. Our care center is in our other funeral home where refrigeration, embalming and preparation do take place. So I wouldn't have been able to convince my wife otherwise had there been refrigeration preparation, embalming. It's a chapel with an office and arrangement offices to see families.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Well, that was going to be my next question about if you ever feel the presence of people who you have buried. So sounds like the answer is no to that.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
I do love signs though, and I think we search for them. So I don't know that I ever feel physically that presence. And some people say they do, and I think that's great. I think whatever we're doing to heal is important. I do look for signs, and they don't just typically appear. In my case, my brother Nate, I'm always looking for ways to connect who he was in my universe, whether it's pennies from heaven, which is a tradition our family does, where you see a penny and it's not, when you see a penny, pick it up all day long. You'll have good luck. It's pennies from heaven. That's just Nate thinking about me. So wherever I might be at, if I look down, it just reminds me of him. And when I go back to Kansas, I put those pennies on his headstone. And so it's a tradition. So I do love to look for connection, and I would always, whatever anybody believes, always look for those moments. And if it makes you think about your loved one, if it makes you, it brings you to tears or it brings you to laughter, then it was exactly what was supposed to happen.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. It sounds like you were really close to your brother.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Yes, yes. He was close to many, but I'm one of five, and I was privileged to be his brother. So we usually say that's another thing we hear. Oh, he was the best. He was the best. Nate was genuinely the best. So I'm one of five, and the four of us would all agree.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Well, thank you for sharing that. That's lovely. So along those lines, have you ever found yourself in the position of arranging a funeral for one of your own family members or friends? And I would imagine that's pretty difficult to do.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Yes, and yes, it is. I've been able to support friends and help and guide them through difficult situations or make sure that I'm putting 'em in touch with the right person. I might not be that person, but absolutely. I don't want to liken us to a doctor and all their years of schooling and all this. But the reason that a doctor doesn't operate on their child is because they cannot disconnect. It is not because they're a doctor. It's because they're a human. And just because I'm a funeral professional doesn't mean that I'm great at grief. It means I love people and I want to help them and provide them a better experience on one of their darkest days. I think a doctor wants to do that. I think that's why they probably wanted to be a doctor. More importantly, a nurse, they wanted to do that to help people.

And when it becomes your own, there's no book. There's lots of books on grief. I don't know. I just maybe haven't read the right one yet to make sure that I'm understanding my own, but it's because we need to disconnect. So when I helped with my own brother, that was incredibly difficult, and I was so grateful for the funeral professional, and I wasn't dissecting what she did. I was just living in a space of gratitude because I knew that like myself, that she was there to support and provide that level of care, whether I was a funeral professional or whether I wasn't. And I was glad to know that person existed, and she was really important in our family's time of need because I couldn't have done it. I mean, I did help transfer him into the care of the funeral home, and I wanted to take his fingerprints to make sure that I could memorialize him for my family with his fingerprint, but there were so many things that I would've just been numb and not been able to make a decision.

So I don't wish on any funeral director, but I know all of us will endure that at some point in time. And then as funeral directors, it's a lot like being the mayor in a community, except if you don't put signs in your front yard and you help everyone. So you're going to serve someone in your community that, and the longer you're in a community, the closer you're going to get to people. So in my universe, I'm just grateful for the team at Darling Fisher because we're through six degrees. We can maybe find the person that's best suited to care for that person at maybe the furthest degree of separation.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah. Oh, that's a really good point. Yeah. So perhaps I know the answer to this question, but perhaps I don't, and I ask all of my guests this question, who are you remembering today?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Always. I, Nate, I was 15 years into funeral service when I lost my brother. And at that point in time, I thought I knew what I was doing. And it was then that I realized I didn't. And as it relates to having that level of loss in my world, one of the things I remind families, especially to siblings, is that siblings grief is one of the most overlooked. It's not the worst of the griefs. They're all grief, but it's the most overlooked. We worry about moms, we worry about dads worry about children and parents and those relationships, but all too often we forget the sibling that someone that they were born into life with, and they got to have a friend. So for me, it's Nate. It's just being able to remind that to so many siblings and seeing someone's eyes acknowledge the fact that they were there taking care of their sibling in support of their mom or their support of their dad, and they were worried about their mom, or they were worried about their siblings kids. So it's just allowed me to be more in tune with what I do since the day we lost 'em. And I can share with you this though, Gail, I wish that I was blissfully ignorant
And I didn't know what I didn't know. But if I get to lean into it and it allows me to be better, then I honor him.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
That's what I was just thinking, that the work that you've done with other families really is honoring him and his life.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
That's what I get to take from his was cancer. And unfortunately, that is one that we're all one degree of separation from, unfortunately. And it allows me to connect. It doesn't mean I should always share about that, and I don't with families, but I think sometimes you can just look into someone's eyes and you can feel that they're hurting too. And they just, sometimes just that exchange of a glance or a look or the length of a hug is an acknowledgement that I don't know right where you're at, but I've been in a place that's not far away, and I get it because there's not, some people are like, oh gosh, is it worse if he battled cancer for years? Or is it worse if he was pulled away tragically? Is it worse if they were older or they were younger, or if it was an accident, I don't know that grief in an individual's ability to connect with it or without their loved one, that doesn't matter. We're all different as it relates to how that journey is going to take place.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah, that's one of those unanswerable questions, I think.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Yes.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Yeah. Did he surf or skateboard?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
No, no. We were nemesis growing up. He was a star athlete, and I was into the things that were a lot more unconventional through our teenage years. But as life progressed, he was just a giant teddy bear of a human being and the one that the glue for us all. So he remains the glue because we gather in honor of, we've run races, we do things. That's the thing. I always remind families that it's okay to talk about your loved one. It's okay to share about them because if you don't, probably no one will.

Right. My brother, David and I, my eldest brother, great man, we're having a chat one day and he says, it's just a crazy thing to know that any given time, you're maybe one or two generations away from never being spoken about again. And so how are you living that life and what are you doing to impact your community and the folks that are around you? So we have been in cemetery and funeral since I was seven, so maybe it's ingrained in our thinking, or maybe it's just the way that most humans should at least have that in the back of their brain. What am I doing to possibly impact the world?

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Right. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about Nate with me. I'm grateful for that. And speaking of living your life and how do you want to live your life, how do you want to be remembered?

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
As Audrey and Lachlan's dad and as Kendall's husband, and as a person who loved his community and was present for his family. So that's a tough thing for funeral professional. We're pulled away a lot. Our phones are always on, whether you're in my role where I have privileged to have many people that I work with that can facilitate many things, but I'm available to all of them and I'm available to my community. So finding that balance to make sure that I'm who I should be first, which is a husband and a dad, and then a great member of my community and doing my best to give back because I'm a fortunate soul, that's for sure. I've got great folks and a great family, so I want to continue on the tradition that my folks set for me.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Well, it definitely sounds like you're in the right place. Thank you so much, Nicholas, for joining me today and for sharing your stories about the work you do, your brother Nate, and how you help families and friends who are grieving the death of someone they love.

NICHOLAS WELZENBACH:
Well, thank you, Gail. I love the work that you're doing and getting this out there for all to hear and for the NFDA if we're not talking about it, who is? So it's awesome. Great work. And thank you for inviting me to be a part of the podcast.

GAIL MARQUARDT:
Oh, thank you so much. For more information about funerals and funeral options, visit RememberingALife.com.