The Doctor Who Feared Death: Leah Kaminsky on Life, Loss and Finding Joy

In this episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, I sit down with Leah Kaminsky, a physician and award-winning author, to explore the often-taboo subject of death and dying. Leah shares her personal journey from being a terrified doctor to becoming a passionate writer who confronts mortality head-on. We discuss how her experiences in medicine, particularly with dying patients, have shaped her understanding of life and death, and how writing has become a therapeutic outlet for her fears and emotions.

Leah's unique perspective as both a doctor and a writer allows her to weave together the complexities of human experience, history, and the inevitability of death in her novels and poetry. We delve into her creative process, the importance of honesty in conversations about death, and how her own family history has influenced her work. Leah's insights remind us that while death is a natural part of life, it can also be a catalyst for deeper connections and a more meaningful existence.

Join us as we unpack the layers of grief, the significance of storytelling, and the power of confronting our fears. Leah's journey is a testament to the idea that by embracing death, we can truly learn to live.

Key points from our discussion:

●      Leah's transition from a fearful doctor to a writer exploring death and dying.

●      The importance of honest conversations about death, especially with children.

●      How personal experiences with loss and family history shape our understanding of mortality.

●      The role of writing as a therapeutic process in confronting fears.

●      The connection between history, storytelling, and our relationship with death.

Leah’s Book Mentioned:

1. The Waiting Room
2. The Hollow Bones
3. We’re All Going to Die

Her website is: https://leahkaminsky.com/

Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.

Take care,

Catherine

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Music composer: Ania Reynolds - https://www.aniareynolds.com/

Transcript

0:01

Inside. I was terrified. I was terrified of death. And I woke up one morning very well into my career with that realization that I am a doctor, terrified of death and dying for that matter. And it's like it's a pizza chef scared of his dough. Like that's what I deal with. Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead, a podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Catherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life. Because while you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared. Don't be caught dead. Acknowledges the lands of the cool and nations and recognizes their connection to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around the globe. Today I have with me Leah Kaminski. Leah Kaminski is a physician and an award-winning writer. Her debut novel, the Waiting Room, won the Voss Literary Prize. The Hello Bones won both the literary fiction and historical fiction categories of the 2019 International Book Awards and the 2019 American Best Book Award for literary fiction. Leah holds a master of fine Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in the USA. Leah, I'm so excited to have you with us on the podcast today. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Catherine. Now, we had the. Opportunity to meet while you were doing a talk at Frankston Library just before Christmas. So I think I mentioned just previously that you've been my company all my Christmas holidays. I've had the beautiful pleasure of reading two of your books while I've been r and r. So the two that I have read are the hollow bones and also we're all going to die. Bit of light reading over Christmas. Hey. Yeah, and I have to say that I did give a few of your books away as presents as Christmas gifts, and they were certainly appreciated and well read over the Christmas period. Thank you. The thing that strikes me is how does a qualified physician get started in writing and poetry as well? It's more that, how does a physician get started from when you were a writer? So grade three would go back to grade three. I was captain of the tunnel ball team. I'll have, you know, but for sports lessons, I used to, I. Miss Gras, the librarian used to hide me in the library so I didn't have to go to sport. Okay. Ah, I was a bookworm, absolute crazy reader. And turning point in my life was in grade three, Ms. Elizabeth Weeks. My grade three teacher published my very first poem in the school magazine, and it was called the Royal Beatle Bug. Oh, how lovely. And that was my first published poem, had the word psychedelic in it, which is. Sort of telling my age. Pretty good for grade three. That's amazing. So what I'm basically trying to, what I'm blathering on about is that I've always been obsessed with reading and I've always written to get into medical school, which is what I always wanted to do. Well, actually, I also wanted to do vet. So it was either that or vet. Anyway, I basically got in on my English and French marks. Oh, really? Didn't do that well in biology and chemistry, so I was not like an A science student. Okay. Yep. So I got in and then over six years of study, I really had to kind of develop what I call tunnel vision of the soul, where you just only look in front of you, you're only kind of getting through medical school, and I dropped. All my other creative things that I was doing, dance and drawing and reading. I just six years of just bam. And then by the time I sort of got out, did my internship and then I was starting to do a pediatric training program. I was rostered on for Christmas night. I was on the pediatric oncology ward and there was a little boy there who was dying and I was the only one on, and I was a junior. Like I was a very junior doctor. I. And he spiked a fever and I rang up the consultant. I said, I dunno what to do, what should I do? And he said, this is the senior doctor in charge. He said, you've gotta do a spinal tap, Kaminsky. I. And I'm like, there's a 7-year-old dying boy here on Christmas Eve. I'm gonna do a spinal tap. Well, you didn't have a choice. Like, you know, you were the junior and you just did what they said. And it was one of the most horrific experiences of my life, but also a turning point in my life because you know, you gown up, you put the mask on, and all they can really see is your eyes. And this poor little boy turned around to me. I can still remember his face and his huge eyes. And he said, is this going to hurt? And I'd become such a shell of a human being that I lied. I said, no, it's not gonna hurt. And I just sort of went into robot mode and just, you know, did the spinal tap out, came the fluid, the kid was screaming and I just remember, you know, I walled off to do the procedure and then I just had to leave the room and I was on a, you know, 56 hour shift or something and got back to the doctor's room and fell. Apart, I think everything I'd tried to hold together over all of my studies and the sort of, you know, the suffering of humanity that you see, um, fell apart. And that's when I, I took a break and I was actually living with a guy in Sydney who was dying at the time, at the age of 32. And I, I, I did a writing course, just, you know, an adult education thing for a couple of weeks. And then I applied for A NYU was running a summer program. In writing. So I went across and took up some poetry and short story courses, and I just felt like I'd come home again and it allowed me to sort of, it was kind of a therapeutic process in a way. It allowed me to process everything I'd seen as a young doctor through the lens of the written word. It's a very long-winded way of telling you I'm probably really a humanities chick, but I think that, I remember when you first told that story, when I met you, and I just thought it really does indicate that sort of division between the physician and how you, you're raised or taught in a medical environment and then that. Perhaps lack of skill that's taught in relation to communicating and the human side of medical training. And my heart just, oh, I really felt for you. You know, a girlfriend of mine works in Ed and she went to study as an adult after she had her first child. And I just, I know that. Long hours and the pressure that you must have been under. So I really feel for you, and I'm not surprised, that was a very significant moment in your life. Look, I think things have gotten better. Hopefully things have gotten better in the training system nowadays, although, but I think for me it's, you know, I've, I've always kind of, I really enjoyed the side of medicine as a student and as a junior doctor, you know, as a kind of birth kind of girl, you know, and worked in pediatrics and. Kind of more, I guess, the happy side of medicine. And so when it came to anything to do with death, which, you know, I remember in my undergraduate years we had a whole week, which was called sex week. And we were trained, you know, we talked about sex very openly. I'd still remember, I. Sitting at Queen Victoria Hospital in, in its day in the city, in Melbourne. Yeah. And we were asked to cover the whiteboard. It might've been a blackboard then with names that we know for genitalia. And one side was. Penis and the other side was vagina or you know, I don't think they mentioned clitoris in those days. Yep. It certainly hadn't been mapped by that stage. No, we had not. So there were all these sort of, you know, slang words and we just covered the board. We just, everything about sex, we would talk about, when I look back through the years, did we ever talk about death? Zero. Nobody discussed death. And so it became a sort of a verboten, like you just, I still remember for years and years when I'd send someone off for, I dunno, a CT scan or something, expecting it to come back normal. And then you'd have these words written across in code, you know, metastatic infiltrate meaning. There's secondaries from cancer or you know, there's a suspicious shadow of metaplasia. And I'd sit there with this and this patient sitting up speed. And I still remember, I mean, how disingenuous I had become. I'd sort of sit there kind of going, oh, well, um, doesn't it look too bad And do anything I could to kind of gloss over it? And then. Handball the patient off to the specialist. I'm just gonna send you to someone just to double check because I'm not a hundred percent sure. Blah, blah, blah. I mean, obviously I wasn't that callous, but inside I was terrified and I didn't have the skills. I was terrified of death, and I woke up one morning very well into my career. With that realization that I am a doctor, terrified of death and dying for that matter. And it's like it's a pizza chef scared of his dough. Like that's what I deal with. So there's this big gap in my education and in my maturity, I think. And that really set me on the path of, you know, middle-aged goth girl, exploration of death and dying. And that's when I started writing. We're all gonna die. And it started with this little boy Joshua, back in those days when he turned around and said, you know, don't lie to me. Is this gonna hurt? And I said, no. And he said, don't lie to me. So I'd sort of been glossing over it for years and years and years. And Leah, was there one particular incident that before you woke up that morning, was there something that led to that point that you went, oh, okay, I've actually got. A fear of death, and I probably need to think more about this. There were lots of incidents and it sort of built up like, I guess one turning point that occurs to me. I had a lovely old elderly patient called Merv, and you know, he lived on his own. I think his neighbor sort of looked into, you know, throw some food at him occasionally he had a lamb. Down the back of the garden and lots of stray animals around. And I walked in to do a home visit and he was poking some baked beans around a plate and I. Got bitten by his duck. Wow. That really is a house call, isn't it? The duck never liked me. The duck was onto me because I'd sort of, oh, Dolly hockey sticks. Hi Erv, how are you? La la la. Yeah. And then I said one day, I don't know why I, I can't remember what prompted it, but I said to him. Move. Do you ever think about dying? And he said to, because I was thinking like, what's gonna happen with you? Like no one's looking after you. Yeah. And he said to me, just very laconic. And he goes. Nah, doc. Nah. If I ever thought about dying, I'd die a thousand deaths a day. It was in that whole sort of phase of me thinking, I've just gotta get my act together, not only for me, but for my patients. Because I think if you're not comfortable talking about dying in my profession, let alone in society. Then I think, you know, it's not good. And Leah, had you had children at that stage? Yeah, I had three children. Yeah. I mean, if you stick me on an analyst's couch and you know, ask me why I was scared of death, it's pretty damn obvious. I grew up, my mother was wonderful, gorgeous, loving mother, but you know, she was a sole survivor at 21 of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. So I had absolute no family on that side. And. I know she talked to me about it. She died when I was 21. She took an overdose and so I spent a lot of my youth, as we all do, running away from, I then had to spend the rest of my adult life trying to recapture. And so I think for me, death was scary because it was traumatic death that I, you know, Osmos as a child. And then as a 21-year-old, my mother dying also. So I think that. You know, you don't have to analyze me very deeply to understand. Why I was terrified of all of that, but going on this journey, really, I think it's called a joyful, a joyful book about death. That's back to front. But yeah, I I love that. Yeah. With the butterflies on it. I know I did have a giggle when I read that and I thought, oh, well this is gonna be a good read. Because I thought, you know, my friends and family thought, oh God, really? Leah, you know, lighten up. And I thought, no, I've got to do this. And I, I'd never been to my parents since my parents died. I'd never been back to the cemetery. So that was my first trip. You know, I. Go back and I'm sounding very morbid, but I No, no, no, it's not. I went and spoke to, you know, I live around the corner from a cemetery and I'd never been there. And so I started walking around there and I found Sir John Monash's grave. And you know, I spoke to the grave diggers there and the crematorium guy that runs the Cremator. It was, they were actually such uplifting human beings. It was really quite fun in a strange way. And then I was starting to read a lot about death and I. Thought, oh, this is gonna be really depressing. But then I read about a place that had opened not long before called the Morbid Anatomy Museum in New York, and I thought, yeah, that sounds amazing. I've got my inner goth girl on middle aged goth girl. Yeah. And I applied, I said, would you like a writer in residence? And they were like, yeah. And I went over there for a month. And I got to sit in this museum that was just, I mean, it's not there anymore. I think it, it closed up about a year ago. It was mad. They had taxidermy classes and workshops. You know, I was, my desk was near a, a two-headed duck under glass. They had victoriana of, you know, the hair, the memorials of people's death. Yeah. At the same time, there was a. Exhibition of Victorian mourning on at the Met. So it was just coming at me from all angles, but it was actually really fun and I got to sort of, I guess, desensitize myself in a way to exposing myself to the idea of death in a kind of strange way. And, and yeah, and speaking to a lot of people about their experiences. So the whole project. I guess it was sort of a self-help book for me, but I was surprised at how joyful it actually became, because the one thing that, I mean, this is a bit cliche, but the one thing that happens when you kind of think about death and speak about death is that life becomes all that much more precious. Otherwise, I think we go through life thinking, oh, well, you know, we've got forever. Well, you haven't, I totally agree with you on so many things that you're saying. Obviously I stumbled into this world that I'm now involved with, and for me it was about. Education and making sure that there was a platform for people to learn about the myriad of choices and options. And the one thing with all of the, and very similar to you, the one thing that I've found is that it has taught me more about life than what it has. Actually about death because death is really just another part of the life cycle, and it does all talk about how we live and what we value. And so it really is also, when we think about it, it's about our history and who we're. Come from and our heritage and it is all associated with people who have passed and died. Absolutely. I mean, my mother's sort of, you know, sitting in the corner of the room here, chain smoking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, what are you doing? Talking about all this stuff, you know? You should have been a lawyer. Yeah. I could still, and she's been dead for years and this, but I still. Not in a woo woo way, but she's present. I, she's in me, I hear her voice, I hear her wisdom. You know, I see her smoking. I wanna stop that. Yeah. Yep. The dead, I think, are kind of present for me all the time in whispers, and I don't believe in ghosts and I'm not religious, nothing like that. I don't mean it in a spooky way, but I think, you know, their heritage and what we've learned from them and what they've imbued in us is with us. And so. Not thinking about them, I think is not honoring them. Also, it's the stories that we tell and the stories that we remember. Like I think of my father, how I am where I am today, and I thought that death and having a will and things like that were normal. And it wasn't until I embarked on this process that I realized not everyone has that sort of administration or that paperwork in place, you know? But for me it was normal because. You know, he was a clerk of courts. He worked in the coroner's court, so it was just a standard thing that we all grew up with. That was just a normal, natural thing. But you know, you do, I think, grow up, especially during your formative years of constantly and especially I think it, it was when I had my son, that you also have those little, you know, devils and angels and those family members on your shoulders that actually. I like your mom sitting there, smoking in the corner telling you different pieces of advice. So, yeah. But you know, one of my clients said to me that, you know, we were talking about she'd lost her husband and we were talking about the stages of grief and I was sort of, you know, kind of quite in crude Ross and blah, blah, blah. And she goes, Lee, you've missed the first stage of grief. And I'm, what? What? Hang on, I've written the book. What are you talking about? And she goes. It's admin, it's, it's exactly admin. And nobody, I was so delighted to see what you've been working on. Nobody guides you. I mean, there's guides to sex and there's guides to accounting and there's God, but there's nothing that guides you through the process, that administrative process that hits you straight in the face, the minute someone close to you dies. And it's horrific sometimes and people don't prepare for it. You know, there's, I've got a lot of families where you just can't. Talk about death or dying or what if for, you know, would you think of putting in advanced care? They just will not talk about it. So you have to tread very gently. But I think society's a lot to blame for that too. We're a death denial, death denying society. I. And as you mentioned in your book, it's that medicalization of death that it no longer occurs in the home. You know, it's sort of outsourced because generally we are living longer, so we're moving to residential care, aged care facilities out of sight outta mind kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Whereas, you know, they used to be in the middle of the living room with everyone. Sitting the vigil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the whole reason why the front room was called parlor in an old home was it was where you laid out your debt and people would pay respects. I think that I saw some of the houses, the older Victorian houses were built with the little kind of alcove for the coffin. So just walk through some of the houses, you'll see where they used to put the coffins and yeah. And so. With writing this book, and I'll move on to how it has become a theme in your writing across your novels and into your poetry as well. But with the research that you did with this book, how does death sit with you now and how do you think that has influenced how you are as a physician? Oh gosh. You know, it's 10 years on, I think, since I wrote the book, or thereabouts. Yeah, so I've gotten older. I certainly, after the writing of the book, felt much more at peace. Unable to talk. You know, I did the circuit talking about the book a lot, and I think for me, you know, by ignoring death, I'd been ignoring life in a way because it was hanging over me the whole time as this dreadful fear. I. And I think that lifted. So I think it made me realize how much more precious our days are and you know, yeah, I'll still lie on the couch and watch Netflix for forever and eat chips, but I could do that. Like that's fun. Yeah. I get to choose now. Yeah. So I think it's made me a lot calmer about things. And, you know, it forced me to get my paperwork in place. I don't want my kids to go through what I had to go through and that 21 sorting through all my mother's stuff. And uh, so, you know, I did a bit of Swedish death cleaning and still can't throw out my children's drawings. Don't they hate me for it? I view that as their legacy, that they have to actually organize at some stage in a big plastic box that I just give back to him. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. So I think for me it, it's just made me far more deliberate in my choices of what I want to do and less BS in my life possibly. Yeah. Yeah. And I've just really honed, I. Yeah, what is it that lights me up and how can I contribute to the world and to other people? Sounds all a bit sappy, but I mean it genuinely, I think I've stopped just skating over things and just, oh yeah, whatever. It totally makes sense, Leah, and the theme of death is certainly a very strong one throughout all of your writing. But what I find really interesting is the way in which you also have integrated history, like a lot of history in your novels, but it's not that I'm exhausted with statistics or anything like that. You've actually embedded it into your storytelling. I feel like I'm part of history. As I'm reading it, it's a very beautiful thing that you've done. Can you talk me through your process and how you've perhaps done that over the series of novels that you've written? I think, you know, I don't think it was anything I was really aware of. So Anne Michaels, who's one of my favorite authors, said, you know, one book washes up on the shore of the next, and I think I can see the sort of evolution. I've written 14 books so I can see, you know, the influences of one over the other. And I've always been a poet at heart since grade three. Yeah, it's more. I guess the fascination with history comes from the fact that I, growing up, I didn't have any artifacts, any, anything from my mother's family. So I remember going to a junk shop and buying myself an old marker Z watch and wearing it around and saying, oh, this is my grandmother's watch. Well, it wasn't. I lied, but it was more that, you know, I didn't have any heirlooms or any, anything. Yeah. Not even a thimble. I didn't have photos of what they looked like. And also then, because my mother died when I was young, I know she had spoken to me about her experiences and you know, I listened with half an ear and when she died. I thought, well, she's had such an incredible life. I want to write her story. And so I took off, you know, a week off uni and filled up the AirPod and got exercise books and pens and thought I'm gonna start writing the book about my mother. And got three pages out. And I hadn't been listening, you know, I was an Aussie chick and I wanted to be cool and mm-hmm. Into boys and didn't care about that. You know, my mother's history, so that was really quite depressing for me. And I think I circled the next sort of 10 to almost 20 years of trying to write the waiting Room, which is my first novel because, you know, my mother's story took up three pages on the page. That's all I knew. And there was no one to ask. Mm. You know, I've subsequently pieced some stuff together. I married a genealogist and he's found that's one way to do it. That's like cheating on the test, isn't it? It's a bit, but even so, you know, he's found two third cousins that we didn't know existed. Yeah. So what I had to do is what if this was my mother's story? And so I took snippets of what I did know and woves a story around that. So I know what's real in the book. But I've had to, what if this had happened to my mother, and what if she'd been there? And so in order to do that, I had to then literally turn around and face my demons. So I had to start reading about the Holocaust and the war, and the atrocities committed, and the book was set in Haifa at the time of the Interfa. So I had to then turn around and look at that. Fraught history, which we are seeing, you know, hideous results of now. And that's where that kind of weaving all that together. Yeah. And in order to write something that's based in history, you really need to know a lot. So I had to know what were they eating and what did the streets smell like? And so I just. Yeah, a lot of it was experiential. I'd go to the places or I'd read a lot or I'd interview people. But I think when you're writing fiction, you don't, I mean, place is a character in fiction, but I think you really need to make it incidental so that the reader doesn't really even, I. It's not like an info dump. Mm. You have to have that as part of, you know, secondary to your characters and I really enjoy that. So then, you know, in that book I'd looked at the victims of War in the hollow Bones, the ones you've just read. Mm. Um, which was my second novel. I then turned around and thought, well, hang on a minute. The main people that have been involved in most atrocities in the world, you know, organized atrocities, have been scientists and doctors. So if I had been there at the time, you know, if I'd been a German doctor, what would I have done? And I think I had to confront my own morality. And instead of sort of just simplifying it, saying, oh, they were just all evil. They weren't, they were ordinary people like you and me. And so I came across this character who was a scientist, a young German scientist who is a zoologist, a specialist in Tibetan birds called Ern Schafer. So he's a real character and I researched. As much as I could about him, because he got drawn into the third RA Himmler's view of the world. They changed the whole scientific approach of the world and the science was, which is World Ice theory. Mm. Meaning that everything revolves around the earth and the moon is an icy moon, and it crashed into the earth thousands of years ago and released the origins of the Ian race from. And who bred with the, it was all mad, but it was a scientific platform. And this guy, my main character, embraced it in order to further his career. So he said to him like, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll go to Tibet and I'll look for these, you know, traces of this theory. So it made me think, God, what would I have done in that situation? And it was these tiny, small steps, you know, slippery steps of amoral choices. Mm. That led to this evil. I love the way in which you tell it because you're right. It's a very human story, and it's not like they were evil and you know, cloaked or anything like that. There is a series of choices that lead to the outcome that is now history, you know? It was really insightful and I think that one story that I'd love for you to perhaps tell is how you incorporated the Panda. And this is still a taxidermied panda that you've seen, and this is a relic of that time and that expedition readers are either team Panda or team. What the hell was she doing? So. Yeah, as Schaffer was a zoologist in the thirties, German zoologist and zoology in the time, and to a certain extent still now you need to shoot. What you're studying. So he worked in America too at the Academy of Sciences in Washington, which was actually Philadelphia. And they were doing collaborative things where he was providing them with specimens and he was one of the first people, I think the first person was Roosevelt. The second person was in Schafer to shoot a panda in the wild. And so he had that baby panda cub shipped over to the States. And when I was researching him, I'd come up with, you know, I'd found his field journals and you know, I was having them translated and all sorts of things, his scientific drawings. And I actually on book tour for my previous book at the States, I went to the museum and I asked the librarian, have you got any of his archives and it shape his archives? And she goes, oh yeah. And she brought out like, you know. 10 boxes and in it there was a little drawing of a panda's tail, like a skeleton. And I said, oh, I've heard he shot a panda. You don't know. You know where these bones might be. And she just picked up, she goes, yeah, just a sec. She picked up the phone, spoke to Dave down in the dungeon and said, just go down. He'll help you. And I went down and I met the curator there, and he had a collection of all the pandas bones. Wow. You know, he just, that was just, there was a th scene there. And, and then he pulled out these drawers and there was. Schafer's writing with the panda that he'd shot the bones. And I said, oh my God, you don't know where the hide is, do you, you know, was that preserved? And he goes, yeah, go back up and ask the um, librarian. I'll give her a call and she'll direct you back up there. And you know, she got off the phone from him. And I, I also, where do I find the hide? I dunno why I wanted to find the hide. And she goes, well just see the exit sign. Just cross over the corridor there and turn left and you'll see it. I thought, okay. And I crossed. Corridor from the library and there was a diorama of two adult pandas and a baby panda under glass. Huge. And that was my baby panda. And I, everyone's gonna think I'm mad now. Well, you know it. I just, I sat down. And just wept. I was a blathering ness. Here was this little baby panda that had been shot by er Schaeffer. I'd been reading about this so much and here it was, you know, in front of me and I don't know why, but it just got under my skin. Bad choice of words. That little panda, when I came to write the book, demanded to have a voice. Yeah. And the book is interspersed with the voice of a stuffed. Tibetan baby panda, and that's the voice of the wild and of nature. Yeah, and I think it conveys it really well. And look, I totally understand where that emotion is coming from. Having had my time when I was working at the Royal Botanic Gardens and having the privilege of actually going into the collections area there and seeing, you know, specimens that were collected at the time, a species was named by. That botanist and seeing species that, you know, were, were taken by Sir Joseph Banks. And those sorts of things are really amazing because it is a direct connection to history and that's what you are seeing. And it's a connection that normally, and not a lot of people have that access because it's behind. Like you said, you've gotta ring Dave to go downstairs to, you know. And it's in a draw that no one gets to see. So it's a privilege to be able to see that history. But I think for me, when I've had that opportunity, it also is a direct connection to what that history and that point in time means. And I think I couldn't have written that book unless I had done. We're all gonna die because I would've been so creeped out. I would've listened to me on this podcast thinking, what a weirdo, you know? I don't think I would have the wherewithal to be confronting any of that stuff. It'd be too gruesome and too horrid. I still can't watch horror movies. So for me, touching history is very much tied in with what we were saying with. Touching death. It's what's gone before us. And I think if you lose that connection and you're just living totally in the present, I'm not very good at mindfulness, then I think you've lost a lot of what came before and that collective wisdom and knowledge that we all carry. Yeah, and also it contextualizes and puts perspective on where we sit in that story. It connects us to humanity, doesn't it? Yeah, and we sort of live as if you know, we're sort of on this island that's not connected to anything, the future or the past. We're just living in the moment and you know, living. A good life or whatever we do. Yeah. And I think it's just, it's so narrow and it, as I said, you know, I call it tunnel vision of the soul. I think you need, it's not nuanced. You need to look outside and you need to look to the sides and backwards and in front of you, whether that's, you know, history or you know what's happening with the planet or. In all ways. So for me, in we're all gonna die, I really explored anything that came up for me. Like, you know, I went and spoke to Daredevils, like what is it that makes people flirt with death and be fine with it? I went and spoke to kids who were in oncology wards. Or with rare diseases and what their attitudes were. I spoke to people who'd had near death experiences. I just, you know, funeral directors, death doers, people who suffered from horrific health, anxiety and death. Anxiety, far worse than what I had. And for me, I think. Just exposing myself to all of that helped ground me in life. And I'd like to just raise that comment that when you were talking about, when you went to write down your mother's story and you only got to three pages, and so what age were you at that sort of time? 21. 21? Yeah. So I think if anyone had to write the story, perhaps of their family or their parents at the age of 21. I don't think anyone would get past really three pages because at what point in time do you feel that you wanted to look forward? Like how many years was it before you actually started looking at the waiting room? Gosh, again, it was a sort of an evolution. Mm. I think probably kind of towards my late. Twenties and I'd been living with a fellow who got cancer and you know, he died quite young, I think. And when I came back that kind of line in the sand with that child who I had to give the lump puncture to, I think that's when I started looking back and that's when the poetry came out. I. I think the rawness of those, of that language spilled out onto the page. It was my heart just spilling out and I was grieving. I think I'd put grieving on hold for a long time. And do you think that only comes with more lived experience, that you can actually perhaps appreciate your place in life and how it connects with other people? I think there's an aspect to that and yeah. You know who wants to be thinking about it when you're young? Yeah. But I. Catherine, whether it's also societal. And you know, that we sense some mortality. You can look at, you know, I'm very big into language. You look at language and you know, I still can't abide it. When people say, oh, she passed what? She passed when, what did she, where did she pass? You know, he's pushing up daisies. She's no long, we've lost her. Where did we lose her? Where'd she go? Yes, she died. That is the word. She died and we can't even use it. And so I wonder whether we actually, and I know a lot's been written about this, but whether we sort of steal that permission from our children to actually think and talk about death. You know, you look at a little kid and they, you know, they'll see a bug dying or whatever, they don't get freaked. It's just natural. I mean, they'll be sad if their dog dies of that, but it's just, it hasn't got all those layers on it that we add as adults. Mm. So I wonder whether. Society was more open to discussing death in a healthy way. Whether we would have to put all that on hold or it would just be a sort of a natural process. You know, children aren't brought to funerals a lot of the time, but you look back not that long ago, and they were there. Yep. Well, when you think the nursery rhyme, you know, ringer Ringer, Rosie was for children to understand, you know, the, the black death and a way of, you know, dealing with that. Yeah. So children have always been around death. I had the privilege of speaking with Lionheart Camp for kids and you know, they've done some great work with Lauren Breen and her understanding of grief and how children process it. And it seems to be that it, you know, they're pretty upfront and they know a lot, you know, a lot more and have less filters than what the adults do. Absolutely. And I see it over and over again. I actually wrote. One of the books I wrote soon after was with the Damani family who'd had a little child called Massimo, who was born with a rare genetic disorder. Long story, I won't go into it, but having the privilege, I wrote it with them and having the privilege to be part of that family and see what, how that family dealt with this little child's. Very debilitating, a very progressive illness. He died when he was 10, but they were extraordinary. They, they were the ones behind getting genomes map, DNA, maps for rare diseases for children that's now being used in every neonatal unit in the world. In those days, they didn't know what exactly the illness was, and Steven was an it geek and he just, he said, it's numbers. It's a numbers game. Lee, you gotta get my DNA, my. Wife's DNA and just cross out, you know, what doesn't match. And in those days, you know, it was to the moon and back a a billion times. But he did it. And he worked with a group of fantastic people. But just to see the way, you know, Massimo's brothers dealt with it. It was just humbling is the word. I was really honored. And what did you see while you were working with the family that. You think would perhaps be a good example for other people who have children or are going through something like this? What can we learn from them did you think? Honesty, I think, you know, obviously it has to be couched in the right terms, but I think to undo what I did when I was a young doctor and Joshua turned around to me and said, is this going to hurt? And I said no. And he said, you are lying. Wisdom beyond his years and me behind my mask. You know, just my eyes looking at him. And I think we need to have honest conversations with children at obviously an age appropriate level, but they cope with it better than we do a lot of the time. I. They really do. And tell me, when we are talking about language and the power of words, what is the difference for you between expressing your emotions through writing the fiction and then moving into poetry? How does that feel for you to then be. The difference between the two expressions? It's an interesting question. I think it comes from the same wellspring. I don't set out to say, oh, I'm gonna write a novel, or, oh, here's a poem. I think the form I long hand write, except if I'm writing articles for newspapers or something, I'll type those up for some reason. But I long forms and, and that's my way I guess, of trusting the process of just giving into it, of sort of letting my inner chicken know what it wants to say. And so I'm not censoring myself, I'm riding along. It is trash. I mean, my first drafts, you don't wanna look at them. They're horrible, but they're honest. And half the time I look back and I go, who wrote that? Like, where'd that come from? I think that's the beauty of creativity is that you're giving yourself over to the process and you don't know there's an inner self that can express itself, that you're not just. Shutting up. Well, that's interesting that you say that you type your articles when you are sort of, I suppose, being paid, and then when you are expressing yourself, you physically write it. Mm-hmm. So it's very much a physical process for you. Yeah. I think it, it stems back to when I was a little kid, you know, I've started writing longhand and I still do. And did you do that with. All of your novels and your poetry, you start off longhand. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. I've got my dear friend, Meg Cane and her father Tom, I found out recently dictate their books. What did, did, were you offended? Did you say you're cheating? No, I just thought it was amazing. I can't do it. But I mean, everyone's got their own crazy process, I guess. Yeah, yeah. No. Well, and what I love, you've also got a style with the way in which you present your poetry. Could you perhaps talk us through that with just even the way in which you name and structure the poetry books that you've written? Like I just find that fascinating. Oh, look, I love junk and I'm a, I'm an absolute op shop junkie, and I love books. And I think my most recent poetry book that came out last year was Disorders of the Blood. And I came across ages ago an old hematology textbook, blood specialty, and it was called Disorders of the Blood. It was written in 1939, and I structured the sections of the book according to the headings, like, you know, coagulation or hemorrhage. And somehow the poems organically kind of fitted into that trope or that. Idea behind it. My first poetry book was called Stitching Things Together, which was also an old book about, you know, tailoring for ladies. My father was a tailor and I can't sew. I can't even sew on a button. Catherine, I'm, it's such an embarrassment. I cheated in sewing class. He just did it for me. Overlock my skirts, you know. Um, I am still so atrocious that I, my 85-year-old mother, when she comes and stays with us, I'm like, mom, can you put this button back on for me, please? Oh, does she wanna swing past my place's? Gone collect it? When she, I actually, on that note, I have to show you something that. It's quite interesting. We're talking about trinkets and things that we hold onto in junk. I mean, there's my dad's little sewing box. Oh, that is gorgeous. And then I've got, I've just got next Leah's showing this. Beautiful. Is it wooden? It's Baker Light, yeah. Yeah. A, a gorgeous round baker light container with sewing trinkets in there. Hang on a sec. I've got, uh, can I do show and tell? You can do, show and tell and I'll do the running commentary. How's that? And I've got dad's little thimble, hang on. Oh, how beautiful. His thimble also in a container with his little sewing box from the sewing machine. Oh. Then this is the PS to resistance. This'll send you, I'll have to get you to take photos and, and we'll share them on the show notes. Does anyone know what that is? I would say it's an eye glass. It is. It was my dad's eye glass. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I dunno what you did with it. You washed your eye out. I dunno. I think you'd have a bit of Johnny Walker in it or something. I dunno. It's extreme. It looks like a shot glass, doesn't it? It's very thick glass. Like old style glass. Yes. It's beautiful. So you know that sort of walking style, I feel like when I touch that I recreate my father. Does that sound a bit weird? You know, what do you think is it about those things that we hold so near and dear to us? There's a beautiful saying by Aristotle. I can't remember what the Latin is, it's called, there are tears and things, and I, I, I've always found objects really interesting in that what do they hold and what do they embody? And so for me, when I grew up without my family. Treasures. Mm-hmm. I had to create my own. And so now I have my parents things and when I hold them and I smell them. It just brings back the history, it brings back the memory and it brings back the dead. Does that sound bizarre? No. That's why we have Memento Maori and, and it's been done for centuries, you know? Yeah. Because it is that connection that is that way of keeping them and smells, you know, there are certain smells that will remind me of my mother, or, you know, it's very potent. It's, it's really powerful and I used to kind of get creeped out by it, but now it's actually soothing and it makes me feel at home again. Yeah. And tell me with everyone that you've spoken to and everything that you've experienced, what are the key things that you have taken away? From what you've learned about death through your writing and your poetry, it's really hard to not have it sound cliche, Catherine, but I think that it is part of life if you think about it. Not in a morbid way, but in a natural way. It helps us frame what we wanna do with our small time on this planet and what matters to us. I think it's a big my allowed to swear. Big bullshit cutting factor. Oh yeah, you just have and you're allowed to. Thank you. It's okay. We're all adults here. I think when it's sort of you come face to face with it, it distills the essence of what's important. You know, one thing I haven't mentioned, my son was 17 and we come back on a long haul flight and he'd gotten very sick with a gut illness and a couple of days later. I was in the shower and he went to answer the door and he fell. He couldn't open the door and he was paralyzed in three limbs. He had a very rare condition called transverse myelitis where the, the lining of the nerves and the spinal cord, the myelin, was just sheared off from this horrible infection that he'd had, and it took him a year to recover. He had to learn to walk again, and so there I was. You know, on the other side of the fence, looking at, and I've written about this quite a bit, but looking at my colleagues who are looking at the sort of, you know, moth eaten spine of my son and telling me, you just be a mother, don't be a doctor. Now you're the mother. And I'm like, I'm both. That was a really galvanizing, you know, when someone's so close to you and you don't know what's going to happen. That for me, again, was a big BS cutting factor and made me rethink, you know, I don't wanna waste my life. I want to do things that really matter to me personally. You know, he's fine now and he, he's better. That was a long time ago, but it was a pretty horrific experience to go through. Very leveling and being on the other side of things, not the doctor. But you know the patient's mother. Yeah, I, I can never look at parents of children who are ill again and not feel that very deep empathy. And what would you say to people who perhaps were like you or are. Like you were, I should say, that might have a fear of death and medical appointments and those sorts of things. What would you suggest given your, you know, process that you've been through? Look, it never goes away. You know, I, I'd be disingenuous to say, oh look, I'm so zen now. I just don't, you know, I don't, I think. You know, in particular, I deal with a lot of people with health anxiety and I used to, I think, be far more flippant of it, or dismissive of it, or you know, and now I understand it needs to be listened to. It needs to be taken seriously, and you need to understand what your patient needs in order to feel better about things. So do they need extensive investigations? Just because, you know, doing the Toyota service is gonna prove to them that they're fine and then they'll go off and be happy or you know, is there something underlying it? I think for me, the thing I've learned the most, and this ties in with being a writer and a reader, is looking for the subtext, looking for what's not being said or what hasn't been put down on the page in that you're listening for story. So if you know Mrs. Kafu comes into me for the 10th time in a month with a sore throat or I don't know anything, mm-hmm. I can then say, yeah, here's another lot of antibiotics, or There's nothing wrong with you. Go home. Or I can say, I can turn around and I can say, what is going on in your life? Why are you getting this chronic, whatever that you are coming in with? What's happening in your life? Now, I'm not saying it's all in the head, but I'm saying there's no, in my books, there's no dotted line between body and soul. Call it what you like. Mm-hmm. And so I think for me, I. Listening to the story is important across the board, and I'm not sure how that ties into death, but you know, somewhere there. No, I think that's really good observation. And obviously it sounds like you've become a much better practitioner. Oh, you have to ask my patients that. They probably think I'm dreadful. They're always waiting by half an hour. Oh, Leah. Are you gas bagging? Again, I think that waiting for a doctor is a standard thing, that's for sure. My tr my, I think my next book has to be on time management. Well, the first one was waiting room, so we, we well and truly got that one covered. That came out of my absolute frustration with waiting. I used to be the most impatient human being. I couldn't wait for anything. So your, it sounds like your entire collection of works is a, is a really a way of working through your therapy there, Leah? I think so. Well, the world is richer for it. Geraldine Brooks Got it. Beautifully. If I can sum up, yeah. I listened to one of her Boyer lectures and it said, she was talking about home and the whole idea of home, and she said that the word comes from an old Norse word called Hempter, H-E-I-M-T-A. It means to come home, but it also means haunting. And what it sort of came to me for me is that really the ghosts, the haunting, the history and what came before us actually brings us home. Into ourselves and our heritage and grounds us in where we came from. Wow. It makes perfect sense. And what a beautiful way to, I think, conclude our chat today, Leah. Thank you Catherine. No problems. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners? No, I think you just don't put off anything. Yeah. And if, if, you know, if you wanna do. Like you wanna be a writer, go and write. Fantastic. You wanna be a pole dancer? Off you go. Do some classes. I dunno. Whatever lights you up. Yeah, I think that's great. That's very good advice. Well, I can't thank you enough and I'm so pleased that I met you at Frankston City Library just before Christmas, and thank you for what you do, Catherine. I think it's incredibly important. Oh, thank you so much, Leah. 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