A Good Death

0:00Michael Brooke:How to Live to 100, or Die Trying, is brought to you by Genical. Our collective fear of dying is one of the reasons why so many of us are afraid of growing old. In a way, this new longevity, these extra years that many will come to expect, offer another reason to avoid thinking about our grand departure. Throughout this series, we have discussed strategies to stay strong, connect to the world around us, and hopefully stay sufficiently healthy, financially speaking, to pay for those extra years. It's work to grow old. It can be stressful too. But it can also be looked at as a real luxury. And yet, many of us remain locked in our fear of the unknown, afraid of a body winding toward its conclusion, and most definitely reluctant to contemplate or even prepare for the inevitability that at a certain point, we will simply no longer exist.

1:06Michael Brooke:As the saying goes, just as we are born, so too shall we die. If there's no escaping it, then by talking about death now, we might just improve the odds of having a good one. In this episode, we're going to take a sober look at what our series title looks at, the end, whenever it may come.

1:35Michael Brooke:From the Toronto Star, this is How to Live to 100 or Die Trying. And I'm your host, Moira Welsh.

1:55Michael Brooke:Michael Brook grew up with one great passion, skateboarding. And somehow, this kid from Thornhill, Ontario, created a presence for himself in the California skateboarding world. In the 1990s, he wrote a book called Concrete Wave, The History of Skateboarding. And that book led to a TV series that inspired a Spin Magazine piece called The Lords of Dogtown, which in turn spawned a documentary called Made in Venice on L.A.'s hardcore skateboard scene. Then, in 2002, Michael founded a magazine devoted to skateboarding and for the next 16 years published The Concrete Wave until, as he says, he developed a severe case of writer's block, a sense that he had said all he needed to say on the subject, and sold the magazine.

2:49Michael Brooke:All of which brings us to death. Maybe, as Michael tells it, it was because a lot of skateboarders die early that death was on his mind. Or maybe it was happenstance. But he got a job in a funeral home at a time when a big chunk of our population was making its dramatic climb toward the decades when death is nigh. For four years, he was the guy in the dark suit who quietly picked up bodies from morgues, homes, and hospitals. At the end of it, Michael had something new to say. He co-wrote another book called The Endless Wave, a skateboarder's perspective on death, dying, and spirituality. And he founded Legacy Expo, a networking group meant to help people prepare for death.

3:39Michael Brooke:So, let's dig into how a skateboarding impresario wants to get us talking about the ultimate off-ramp. For a lot of people who are not skateboarders, looking at the idea of, you know, whipping down a hill at 40 or 50 kilometers an hour or more seems incredulous. Like, it seems death-defying, you know, doing flips and what have you in swimming pools and parks, like skate parks actually built for skateboarding. Looking as an outsider in, you think, why would anybody want to risk, you know, either really hurting themselves or death? And I think for skaters, it's just something that we look at and we go, we know it's par for the course.

4:15Michael Brooke:We know that there is a sense of risk. They experiment with a lot of drugs. There's been a lot of alcohol abuse. It's an extreme sport. That's how it was labeled, you know, in the 90s. I think people sometimes do what I would call extreme living. And it catches up with you. It's like, yeah, I guess I do kind of know a lot of people who've died young. So it's sad to say, but the industry of skateboarding seems to perpetuate a lot of skate and destroy. And for some people, that's what happens. They skate and they destroy their bodies and eventually the bodies disintegrate. The segue from Skateboard Magazine publisher to Funeral Homeworker is, fair to say, a bit of a leap.

4:56Michael Brooke:In addition to giving him a very colorful resume, it also exposed Michael to a hidden world. and, since writers are known to observe, he developed a new perspective on death and its impact on families. Every death is unique, as it is for those who exercise the choice to use MAID, medical assistance in dying. And what struck Michael was the difference in the aftermath when an individual passed suddenly or chose MAID. What I realized that in a situation like MAID, there's a tranquility in that room. There's a peacefulness. There's a sense that the person did not suffer, that this was clinically and methodically from a left brain or right brain side of things.

5:41Michael Brooke:As humans, we are very, I feel, we're afraid of this. Like, wow, this person actually planned their own death. It seems so mysterious. And yet, the vibe that I got was, wow, the family is finally at peace. This person's at peace. Everything is in order. And that serenity, that calmness has stayed with me. And the other thing I want to maybe impress upon people is I was also at the reverse of that. So I was in a room where the police cruisers are outside, the police are inside, they're making their notes, we've been called in, and that person has had a sudden death. They've had a heart attack. And it is a shock.

6:19Michael Brooke:The family is sitting in silence. You know, they're trying to piece together what's just happened. And again, it's the worst of all things. The person was alive a few hours ago, and now they are dealing with something that they did not expect. And so between those two extremes, which is we're planning someone's final moments, to we had no idea that this would be your last day on earth. In one instance, Michael had to pick up the body of a larger-than-life Torontonian, someone who once had immeasurable charisma and immense power and knew how to wield both. And here they now were, in a body bag on a stretcher that Michael was rolling down the ramp from the hospital morgue toward the hearse.

7:05Michael Brooke:He had a bit of an epiphany in that moment about power and inevitability. This person was picked up from the morgue, and a morgue in a hospital is, as you would think, it's very clinical. It's one of those places that not many people get to go into, and there are a lot of bodies piled up in certain cases, or sometimes there's only one or two. Invariably, people are naked in a white bag, you know, a body bag. It's one of these things that, you know, you enter this world naked and you leave this world naked. And all the possessions, everything that you've accumulated, all that's really left is the legacy that you've left.

7:41Michael Brooke:The memories that you've instilled in people, your actions, how you made people feel. Ultimately, what this struck me as is we are really, you know, these bags of flesh and we have all these amazing emotions. and we create all these incredible things. But ultimately, no matter if you're worth millions or you're worth nothing, and I saw both, no matter if you've had no influence on anybody or you've had millions of people you've influenced, ultimately we leave as we came in. It is fair to say that Michael can spot a trend which has led him to his next venture. The Legacy Expo invites the public to meet organizations and companies all related to death.

8:23Michael Brooke:Hospice care, bereavement associations, estate planning, or even death doulas. Michael sees it as a public service to help people prepare for the inevitable. He knows that Legacy Expo may not draw the same crowds as, say, Comic-Con, but he's convinced that boomers are ready to disrupt the way they make their final exit. Nobody wants to attend. Why on earth would anybody want to go to an expo where all we're doing is dealing with wills, death, end of life, made, medical assistance and dying, like grief counseling. It's the worst of the worst conversations. And yet, we have a tsunami of change happening.

9:01Michael Brooke:The first baby boomer turns 80, January 1st, 2026. People are taking on death the way the baby boomers took on education, music, every single thing that the baby boom has gone and done through a life-changing experience of just everything they've touched. They have completely changed. And they will change death. They'll change how we deal with end-of-life planning. And I contend they'll change how we deal with grief. And that's where I feel I'm surfing that new wave. You can ask doctors or nurses about the best way to die. Or what I mean here is the most peaceful and painless way to go. Sometimes that means death in a hospital, or much nicer, a hospice.

9:48Michael Brooke:often on morphine to ease pain and eventually slow the breathing. A lot of families have witnessed this ending. But it made me wonder, with all Michael has seen in his funeral home job, if it gave him any particular insight on what he thinks amounts to a good death. A good death is one where the person who is dying is supported by their friends and their family. A good death is where the person who is dying is not in any pain, and that pain is managed. There's a bittersweetness. I think about all of the, I mean, I must have gone to over 700 funerals and heard so many eulogies and tributes. And I could immediately tell which families had put the time and energy into their children and grandchildren.

10:36Michael Brooke:So that person that had died, ultimately the testimony from the children and the grandchildren about how that person had impacted their lives and the amount of joy that this gave that person, that's what you're left with. And I suppose a good death is bittersweet. We're sad that that person's died, but ultimately we know that that person has left us with such a legacy because that's what you're left with. How did you make people feel? We'll be right back.

11:19Michael Brooke:Andi Timoner is a filmmaker. She lives in California and makes documentaries that elicit powerful reactions from the audience, exploring ideas that might be part of the zeitgeist, but no one has comfortably settled on the answers. Not yet. One of those films is called Last Flight Home. In 2023, it played at Toronto's Ageless Film Festival, and Andi had an on-stage debate with religious leaders about the film's main character, her father, and his choice to end his life through medical assistance in dying. Last Flight Home documents the wildly successful ascent of Eli Timoner, a charming 1970s airline entrepreneur, the founder of Air Florida, who believed that flying should be affordable to all.

12:12Michael Brooke:At the top of his game, he socialized with America's political royalty and a future British king. The film also details the discrimination Eli faced as a CEO after he had a stroke, brought on by a freak accident, a cracked neck from a massage. It hindered his ability to walk, and his board of directors decided this physical change was not a good image for the business, so they got rid of him. That was in the 1980s. Mostly, Last Flight Home focuses on the other side of Eli's life arc, the physical decline of his later years, his many falls at home, and the caregiving that exhausted his wife. In 2021, when Eli was admitted to hospital with congestive heart failure and a chronic lung condition, doctors told him it was time for a nursing home.

13:08Michael Brooke:This was not the ending that Eli wanted for himself. So he went home and chose medically assisted death through California's End of Life Option Act.

13:20Ondi Timoner:He was so staunchly independent, didn't want to be a burden to my mother. He was trying to walk even when he couldn't get a message from his head, his left leg. And he would stand there sometimes for 30 minutes trying to just get the left leg to move until he'd fall over. I mean, I remember him even asking for why isn't his cane by the bed when he was on hospice in those last weeks, saying, what if he needs to go to the bathroom? And one of those sort of delirious moments, we were like, but you don't do that anymore. You know, I think that happens with people. It's just like, we get older, we feel capable, and our bodies don't function.

14:00Ondi Timoner:And it's so painful to see this happen as our parents get older.

14:06Michael Brooke:When her father made his decision to come home, Andi started recording audio and later filmed him. But not for a documentary. That idea would come later, after his death. Andi did it to savor her father's voice. she knew she'd miss it when he was gone.

14:24Ondi Timoner:Dad probably would have lived for another year, maybe more, but really it was a choice for him to avoid being a houseplant. Like, he didn't want to be shelved away in some place, and for Mom to go visit him once a week and for us to go visit him, that wasn't the life he wanted when my brother discovered that there was this law in California. He sounded like a shell of himself. He didn't have any humor. And as soon as David found that there was this law and that he would qualify for it and that there was a feeling of, there was this feeling of hope. There was this beacon of hope of that he would find peace and a feeling that he finally had power over his body.

15:11Ondi Timoner:He started cracking jokes again. He just said to me, I've served my sentence. I've done my time. You know, please, like, let me go.

15:23Michael Brooke:In 2021, California's laws required a 15-day wait period that has since been shortened. But at the time, it gave Eli's wife, children, and grandchildren time to be with him. He seemed to be on Zoom nonstop, saying goodbye to old friends from his Air Florida days, sharing his wisdom, all captured by Andi's cameras. When a friend asked why, he told her, I don't want to fight anymore. I just want peace. The friend told him, I wish you a happy journey and I'll see you in heaven. I'll wait for you, he said. Eli held court in a bed set up in his living room. He would die on March 3rd, 2021. That was the 15th day.

16:12Michael Brooke:And no matter what Andi did to emotionally steady herself for his final day, she wasn't ready. No matter what you do to prepare for the passing of your loved one,

16:27Ondi Timoner:there's nothing that you really can do. The day of, the moment of, is so, you know, I was scared that the world, like the earth, was going to open and swallow me whole. You know, it just, I just remember the feeling of just such dread.

16:46Michael Brooke:Eli had to take the medication on his own, as was required by California law. His two daughters, one a filmmaker, that's Andi, and the other, a New York City rabbi, and his son, a film editor, were in the living room along with Eli's wife and grandchildren. Andi was nervous, trying to follow the rules precisely. They had practiced in advance, she said, because if the timing was off, her father could slip into a coma and he so badly wanted to be free. After the first two rounds of medication, Eli was growing weak. The third and final round of pills, opioids, mixed in a glass was hard for him to hold, but the rules said he had to drink the mixture on his own.

17:33Michael Brooke:Andi sat on one side of the bed, her sister on the other, watching as their father's hands shook. At that point in history, it was 2021,

17:44Ondi Timoner:and California law was three different stages, and they were about 30 minutes to an hour apart. The first was taking pills, the second was a drink, and the third was a very, very, very bitter drink, which was opioids, basically, an overdose of opioids in glass. there was this rule that he had to hold it himself. He's already taken two rounds. So we're on the final round. And the second round is to slow down his heart and his breathing. So he's in a very weakened state and he's already 92 and he's already terminally ill. So he couldn't hold it even though we practiced. And if he didn't drink it in two minutes, he could go into a coma.

18:30Ondi Timoner:So we had a timer set. So at a certain point, I'm just like, I'm going to help. Like he kept saying, you hold this, you hold this. I'm sorry, dad, I can't. It just sounded so absurd to me. I said, I'll put my hand on your hand instead of me holding the cup. And then Rachel immediately from across the bed said, you're not going to do this alone. And then she grabbed a hold with me. And then we helped him and we finished the cup in time. Thank God. We needed to help him get to the goal. And what if he slipped into a coma? It was so scary. So when he finally succeeded, we were so happy for him. But then about an hour later, I was just like, my dad's gone.

19:21Ondi Timoner:I realized that everything, all of the closure, all of the peace, all of the agency that he has that gives him his humor back, everything is because he made that choice. Even the grandkids being able to come home and gather around. And so everyone has peace around his passing that many, many, many, many, many, many, too many families don't have. So if people are terminally ill, they and their families should have this right. And it should be universal.

19:50Michael Brooke:We'll be right back.

20:01Michael Brooke:Critics of Canada's approach to MAID say the health care system has been too quick to embrace medically assisted death. An investigation published in the Toronto Star said that MAID has grown faster in Canada than in any other country that allows it. The number of MAID deaths has quadrupled since 2017. I asked Andi about her work advocating for the right to choose death and how countries can balance the value of MAID while also protecting people from an influence that might push them toward a premature death.

20:38Ondi Timoner:I mean, I think there just has to be psychological guardrails on it where a person, you know, really is able to state that they want to do this. And I think if they're able to do that and prove that they are wanting that for themselves, even if it is because they feel like a burden to everybody around them and they just have no joy left in their lives, why are we here? You know, we've extended life far beyond what it used to be in a lifespan. And our bodies fall apart. And our standard of living falls apart. Like, just life becomes a misery, it seems like, for a lot of people. And then disease can take joy away.

21:25Michael Brooke:If medically assisted death gave Eli the peace he wanted, I wondered what it did for his family. How do families in general ever really prepare for a day, scheduled in advance, when someone they love will die? Like so many other things surrounding death, we don't really have a model for that either. It was another reason why Andi wanted to document her father's final days. But she soon found out the film would become much more than one family's experience.

21:56Ondi Timoner:I think that the reason I shared this film when I had no intention of sharing this publicly was exactly because there is so little in our society that prepares us for this moment. The whole reason Last Flight Home exists is as a guide for others if they want to use it for whatever. You know, that's the whole reason we released it as a family. it was not something that anybody in the family was really on board to do. And I cannot tell you how many people have come to me, like, still, and to my family, by the hundreds and even thousands since the film has come out, to thank us for sharing this, for that, how it's helped them to go through the death of their...

22:44Ondi Timoner:Because this strange thing, this strange magic of film that I only discovered on this particular film is that as people are watching the film, they see their own families there. They meet our family, but they also actually can transpose their own families. So even if they've had a death that was painful or a parent that wasn't quite as kind as my father, it somehow heals them. And I asked a therapist who interviewed me about it, and she said it's called imagination therapy, where you go through a traumatic event again, but you imagine it going differently. And that's what this film somehow has been able to do for people.

23:20Michael Brooke:It seems cliche to say, but we do not as a society enjoy speaking about death. And yet the tagline for Last Flight Home said, if you want to learn how to live, watch this film about how to die. I asked Andi if that sentiment has inspired a discussion about death.

23:42Ondi Timoner:You know, this film and films that actually sort of open a dialogue around end of life, I think, you know, it's just helpful for us to look at it in the face. It's in advance. You know, I think that one thing that I realized is that the amount of people that are part of this group that are either terminally ill or families of terminally ill people is so massive. It's really ultimately almost everyone and so the problem is because we don't talk about it we end up in this group and we become activists you know so if we can look at it and accept the fact that we are all going to die which is not an easy thing to wrap your head around and certainly none of us want it to happen tomorrow but if we want to think about our loved ones and really just try to put ourselves in the position of like, okay, I'm going through this with my loved one.