The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss
Claire Sandys is on a mission to see if it's possible to find hope in 101 different types of loss and grief (occasionally joined by husband Chris). New ad-free episodes every other Tuesday. With childless (not by choice) hosts, this podcast is packed with deep, honest experiences of grief and hope from inspiring guests. You also get: tips on how to navigate and prepare for loss, blogs, experts, exploring how loss is handled on TV, and plenty of Hermans. For more visit: www.thesilentwhy.com.
The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss
Loss 61/101: Loss of possessions: Naomi Westerman
#125. What impact can possessions have on grief? The lack of them, the loss of them, too many of them etc.
This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, exploring asking if hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss.
Loss #61 of 101: Loss of possessions
In this episode we welcome Naomi Westerman, a playwright, screenwriter, and author from South East London. Naomi's experienced profound loss from a young age, and with that, the difficult task of sorting through her loved ones’ possessions.
Naomi shares about the emotional weight of dealing with a parent's belongings after they die, the unexpected and sometimes painful discoveries made during this process, and how our personal experiences, relationships, and circumstances shape the way we interact with these items.
She also talks openly about her two-year journey to sort through her mum’s house and the surprising childhood object she still treasures, and the special jumper she chose for her dad’s burial.
Naomi has also wrestled with the difficult "why" questions that can arise in grief – Why me? Why did this happen? So, she shares with us what has helped her find healing, connection, and hope.
To find out more about Naomi and her book, Happy Death Club, visit:
http://www.naomiwesterman.com
http://www.happydeathclub.org
http://www.instagram.com/naomi_writes_death
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Thank you for listening.
Hi, my name is Naomi and I am on the podcast today talking about the loss of possessions resulting from the loss of parents.
Claire Sandys:Welcome to The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to uncover 101 different types of loss through the voices of those that have lived them.
Chris Sandys:I'm Claire and I'm Chris and we're into a new batch of 10 losses. This is loss 61 of 101. And today we're exploring a deeply personal and often overlooked aspect of grief the loss of possessions.
Claire Sandys:And our guest is Naomi Westerman, a playwright, screenwriter and author from South East London. And Naomi has faced immense loss from a young age.
Naomi Westerman:I come from a very, very small family. Originally, my family that I was brought up with was pretty much just my mum, my dad, my grandmother and my aunt. So my grandmother died when I was probably around 21 or 22. My aunt died around the same time, kind of early 20s, and then, when I was kind of in my early 30s, I lost both my parents within a few years of each other Very, very suddenly, and that was quite traumatic.
Claire Sandys:While grieving the loss of her loved ones, naomi faced another unexpected challenge the emotional way of sorting through their possessions, stumbling across things she wished she hadn't and being unable to find the cherished items that she wanted.
Chris Sandys:She explores how our experiences with a loved one's belongings after their death can differ, greatly influenced by who they were, our own circumstances, the items themselves and even factors like time and access.
Naomi Westerman:My first loss was my grandmother, and because my grandmother was living in council accommodation, all of my grandmother's possessions were lost just because we weren't given enough time to actually sort through her things. So that was quite sad. Then when my dad died, he had very minimal possessions so like emotionally, the process of clearing the house was very, very easy. And then when my mother died, there were two things that were really difficult. The first is that her ex-boyfriend squatted in her house and then when he did leave he stole a lot of possessions. And then my mom was kind of a hoarder, so my mum had never thrown anything away, kind of in 50 years.
Claire Sandys:Naomi shares what it was like during the two years of sorting the horrible mess left in her mum's house. Also, the surprising childhood item that she found that she still clings to today and cherished memories, such as the special jumper she chose to bury her dad in.
Chris Sandys:She also reflects on the emotions tied to the objects left behind, the difficult why? Questions, questions like why me and why did this happen. But through it all, naomi has found a sense of peace and through her writing she's discovered connection, hope and healing.
Naomi Westerman:Through my process of writing my book, writing my plays, people who have wanted to hear what I have to say, wanted to connect, and I think that more than anything, gives me hope the knowledge that, like other people, are also going through the same thing and they're also searching for hope or searching for connection. And people who've been through you know way worse things than me and they still have hope. So I think that's a really beautiful thing to keep hold of.
Chris Sandys:So let's jump in. We began this conversation, as usual, by asking Naomi to introduce herself.
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, hi, my name is Naomi Westerman. I am a playwright and screenwriter and I am the author of Happy Death Club, an essay collection exploring death and grief in different cultures. I live in London. I live in Greenwichwich in southeast London. I am in my office, surrounded by all my books and my theatre posters, and at the moment I am in pre-production for a play that is going to be opening in April. So we are right in the middle of doing lots and lots of prep and publicity and various different things before we start rehearsals in a few weeks. So this is not really a very typical week. Uh, a typical week is just sitting and drinking lots and lots of coffee and trying to write and occasionally, maybe doing a little bit of writing, maybe sometimes that sounds very exciting.
Claire Sandys:We haven't had many guests with an intro like that, and I'm loving the uh.
Naomi Westerman:The fact it looks like you have a cocktail lounge to the right or left according to your poster behind you, held in Waterloo for many, many years, was wonderful, launched the careers of many playwrights and theatre makers. Sadly, they lost funding and had to close, so they sold all their old props. So I bought this sign in their sale. So this used to be above, like a bar in a fringe theatre venue underneath Waterloo station.
Claire Sandys:Wow, that's really cool and that was on my wall.
Chris Sandys:I know yeah great, I must say. With regards to as soon as you mentioned your book, it makes me think. I must ask, because when you tell people you've written a book, they're probably really intrigued. In the same way, when we talk about oh Chris, you've got a podcast, tell me about your book, what's it called?
Naomi Westerman:So when you tell someone about your book, like we tell someone about our podcast, how would you summarise the mixture of reactions you get when you say, oh, it's called happy death club?
Naomi Westerman:There's pretty much just one, and it is with very, very few exceptions my dog, dad, grandmother, friend from school, mom, hamster died. Every pretty much 99% of the time, people's immediate response is just to tell you their death story, tell you their story about either the first time they experienced death or the most recent time they experienced a death or the most significant grief they experienced. And I'm aware that it's a way that we show empathy by. You know we try to find things in our own lives to connect to, but it really makes you realize how many people have experienced loss and don't feel that they can talk about it. And it takes very, very little urging for people to start talking about the losses that they've experienced, because maybe they don't have opportunities to do that or maybe they've never had the opportunity to do it before. And it is really. It's amazing. It's a lot of weight on my shoulders sometimes, but it is quite humbling to to be the recipient of all of that from people.
Claire Sandys:Yeah, some people we talk to, they naturally gravitate towards loss and grief and those sorts of subjects anyway, do you find that comes into other aspects of your writing when you're doing plays and things as well to a degree?
Naomi Westerman:yes, ironically, the play that I'm about to start rehearsals for is about dogging. So, no, so, no, no. Yeah, it's a comedy, it's a romantic comedy, it's very carry-on style.
Chris Sandys:If you don't know what dogging is, sort of say, google it.
Claire Sandys:I don't know about that. Anyway, got a bit off topic there. So yeah, loss and grief, obviously that's why we're here. So got a bit off topic there. So yeah, loss and grief, obviously that's why we're here. So just share a little bit about your experience of loss and grief in your life and sort of where you're coming from with what you've been through.
Naomi Westerman:So I come from a very, very small family. Originally, my family that I was brought up with was pretty much just my mum, my dad, my grandmother and my aunt. So my grandmother died when I was probably around 21 or 22. My aunt died around the same time, kind of early 20s. You know, I had sort of like you know, like I don't know great aunts and people like that who died, I think when I was a very young child. That I don't really remember, but I think my grandmother, my aunt, dying sort of within a few years of each other when I was in my early 20s, was my first experience of significant loss.
Naomi Westerman:And then when I was kind of in my early 30s, I lost both my parents within a few years of each other, which is very weird to be.
Naomi Westerman:You know, does the word orphan even apply if you're an adult?
Naomi Westerman:I think it does, but I'm not sure.
Naomi Westerman:So that was really my major experience of grief and loss was losing my parents, and both my parents died very, very suddenly without sort of being unwell or anything like that, and that was quite traumatic and definitely sent me down a whole pathway of trying to figure out how to cope with my grief, how to cope with being the only person in my peer circle that had lost both my parents, none of my friends who my age had even lost one parent at that point.
Naomi Westerman:I'm now, quite a few years on, seeing this through in my friends, helping my friends through the process of having parents who are very unwell, having parents who probably don't have very many years left, and I was kind of the canary in the coal mine for that really horrible thing that most people will go through in their lives. And then my background is that I was an anthropologist, so I was studying death rituals and that was something that I was doing before I suffered major bereavement in my own life and that was something that proved extremely useful for me in terms of figuring out I don't know if I would say how to process my grief, but figuring out the fact that there is no right or wrong way to process grief, I guess.
Claire Sandys:Yeah, so how did you get through that? Because unless you have people around you that can sort of help and guide you, especially at that age, that can be incredibly frightening and lonely. It was extremely lonely.
Naomi Westerman:I was extremely lucky. Something extraordinary happened to me. A very short amount of time after my mum was killed, which was literally only a few weeks after this happened, I had a voicemail asking me to co-write a play for a project that was an experiment in collaborative playwriting. Collaborative theater that was be uh, had been put together by a playwright and screenwriter named james graham who is, I think, quite well known, or he's, you know, very well known if you follow theater. He wrote uh, sherwood, the bb and 10,000 other TV shows. He decided to put together this project where he would bring eight emerging kind of early career playwrights together to co-write a play together. So I was asked to join this project. I was chosen to join this project only a few weeks after my mum had died.
Naomi Westerman:Never occurred to me to not say yes, and some people were surprised at that. Some people were like, why didn't you take more time off work and it just it would never occur to me to do that. And also, I mean, I do consider my work to be work, but it's not the same as, like I don't know, going to work in like a factory or, you know, an office job that you hate, you know. I think creative engagement is, or can be, incredibly healing. So very, very, very shortly after this happened, I kind of found myself in a writer's room and then obviously going into rehearsals with all of these other wonderful, wonderful playwrights wonderful, you know. Actors spending, you know, every day in the theatre spending, you know, every day in the theater, spending every day kind of being able to kind of play in a creation of our joint imaginations.
Naomi Westerman:And the process of making theater is not always easy. Sometimes there's a lot of conflict, sometimes there's a lot of big egos, but this was a beautiful experience. You know it's such a cliche to say we were like a family, but we really were. It was just the most amazing, beautiful thing. And I think without that I have no idea how I would have survived, because those first few months of grief was so sharp and, I think, just being able to kind of shut the door on that and go somewhere where I just felt really supported but also just didn't have to be defined by this person who just had this terrible thing happen and find ways to maybe process it in a way that was very non-confrontational. You know, I could write about what I wanted and I could touch on certain things without feeling pressure to really talk about death and grief very, very directly, because I wasn't ready to do that then.
Chris Sandys:Did your dad die first? You said they're a few years apart.
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, my dad died first, um, so my dad basically dropped dead of like an aneurysm, having been basically healthy. So that was very shocking, and something that I talk about in my book is the idea of like a good death versus like a very difficult death. I think my dad had a good death because he wasn't sick, he wasn't in pain, he just went to work, came home, sat in his armchair and just dropped it, literally after having done like a full day work, which I think is, you know, that's, that's bad. You don't want to die after having done a full day work. But he loved work, um, and he loved his job. So I think that was okay.
Naomi Westerman:He was very happy with the things that he accomplished in life. He was a very well-organized type, a person whose life was very well organized and his death was very well organized. You know, I didn't have a lot of difficult things to kind of take care of because everything had been organized. So kind of going through that process of my dad's death was very sad, but it wasn't traumatic, um, and it sort of gave me the training, I guess, to be able to do my mum's death, which was a lot more chaotic and a lot more messy, both practically and emotionally. So I in a weird way I'm glad it happened that way around- you said because it's a familiar story to you.
Chris Sandys:But you said your mum was killed.
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, it's a very, very difficult story. My mum was in an abusive relationship. I don't know what happened the night she was killed, but she was in an abusive relationship and she just ended an abusive relationship and was in the process of trying to evict her ex-boyfriend from her house. I have heard many conflicting accounts of what happened that night. I've heard accounts of what happened that night. I've heard accounts of what happened that night that I know not to be true. I mean, it's not anything that would be prosecutable. I don't really know. I don't really know, but I feel emotionally. I feel that she would be alive if it wasn't for this person. But I'm also aware of not you know my emotional response in terms of, you know, blame, I guess, is. You know we're not in a court of law. You know I want to be really careful not to libel anybody. I guess slander anybody who hasn't been convicted of a crime, crime, because some things aren't necessarily prosecutable. But it's really difficult.
Claire Sandys:So you wanted to come on so we could talk about the loss of possessions, which is a really interesting.
Claire Sandys:Take on what happens, because not everyone would be aware that possessions can have such an impact. You don't really think about possessions when you think about death. You think about the person you've lost and if you haven't been through it yourself, there are many ways that possessions can be helpful. Hindering can go either way. Um, so tell us a little bit about how that links to the people you've lost and and why it was such like a big thing for you to go through with the possessions yeah, so I think it's almost like a three-part story.
Naomi Westerman:My my first loss that I remember experiencing was my grandmother, and because my grandmother was living in council accommodation, like sort of like you know, sheltered accommodation for for OAPs, we had a very, very tiny amount of time to clear out her house before the council or the you know water support accommodation, whatever it is needed to take it back, and my grandmother lived in Eastbourne. So there was just no time to kind of sort through her things and make the decision what to keep and what to not keep. My mother and I just had to kind of go to my grandmother's flat and just hire a skip and just chuck everything in a skip, because we just had no time. So, apart from like a few things that my mum was able to put in the car, all of my grandmother's possessions were lost just because we weren't given enough time to actually sort through her things. So that was quite sad.
Naomi Westerman:Then, when my dad died, my dad, like I say, was very, very type A, one of those incredibly kind of well-organized type of people. He had very minimal possessions. I mean, he had possessions, but just not. He wasn't really someone who kept a lot of kind of emotional stuff. You mean he had possessions, but just not. He wasn't really someone who kept a lot of kind of emotional stuff. You know he was kind of the opposite of a hoarder. The process of cleaning his house was very, very, very easy. You know, I had someone come along and kind of collect all of his books. I took all of his clothes which were just sort of like very basic set of like you know Mott's, andencer's kind of suits and jumpers to a charity shop and he didn't really have anything beyond that, like he didn't really have a lot of personal belongings. Uh, I took a couple of very small things but he didn't really, he didn't really have like the detritus you would expect from a life that was that long. And I wasn't really kind of emotionally weighted to like, oh, you know, a suit that he bought in Marks and Spencer's last year. You know, like it wasn't really like anything. So like emotionally, the process of clearing the house was very, very easy. But I do also look back and go oh, maybe I do wish that I kept some stuff, because I don't really have very much to remember him by.
Naomi Westerman:And then, when my mother died, there were two things that were really difficult. The first is that her ex-boyfriend squatted in her house for about eight months after she died and had to kind of go through a whole process to get him out of the house. So that was really difficult. And then when he did leave, he stole a lot of things. He stole a lot of possessions. He stole, you know, things that had been birthday presents from my dad to my mom, things that have been presents from me to my mom. Lots and lots of things, lots of things from my childhood that I knew that my mom had in storage when I got to the house just weren't there. I don't know necessarily what happened to them if my mom would chuck them away at some point, if he'd chuck them them away. But there were definitely specific things that I know that he took a van. He turned up, sort of had a mate turn up with like a van and filled a van with things. So that was obviously very, very upsetting. And then my mum was kind of a hoarder, so my mum had never thrown anything away, kind of in 50 years.
Naomi Westerman:Um, so the sheer scale of things, plus the fact that the house was just not in a good physical condition, you know it had real problems with kind of mold and it had not been maintained in like a good condition at all. Like the floors were rotting away, you know, the wallpaper was rotting away, the bathroom was not functional, the kitchen you couldn't even go into. It was in a really really bad state. And then, on top of you know, my mum unfortunately, you know had mental health problems, so it wasn't she wasn't able to maintain her house in a good condition. And then on top of that, to have this squatter in the house for like eight months, where he basically, you know, didn't clean for eight months he had a dog that was kind of running around kind of everywhere. It was really really really in a terrible state. So it wasn't just the hoarder, it was the fact that it was hoarding plus just dirt and just like really entrenched kind of grime and kind of mold.
Naomi Westerman:So I had to throw away a lot of things because they just were not things that I could have touched or had in my house. There were lots and lots of things that I did manage to save, but it was still very, very difficult because it was a question of just having to just get rid of just huge amounts of stuff. And then COVID happened and obviously I wasn't able to get to the house for a long time and again, my mum lived quite a long distance from me. I don't drive, so it was just a question of like literally having to kind of get on a train every single Sunday, go to my mum's house, make a tiny dent in it, and it took several years for me to be able to clear her whole entire house and it was just incredibly, incredibly traumatic, like I would physically have to go and sit in the park behind my mum's house even in the middle of of winter because I physically could not be in that house anymore.
Naomi Westerman:It felt like a loss every single day, either because I would not find things that I'd expected to find, or I would find something and it would be really really damaged, or I would find something and it would be upsetting and it just kind of felt like, yeah, the loss of, like my childhood in a way, you know, because I was sort of expecting to have lots of things from my childhood and there were lots of things I was expecting to find that I didn't find, lots of things that were just really really badly damaged. Yeah, so it just it just kind of felt like a secondary loss of the possessions and my own sense of like.
Chris Sandys:You know, by allowing this squatter to be in the house for eight months and kind of trash everything and steal everything, you know that I'd almost failed my mother in not being able to preserve her legacy, I guess, so that was quite upsetting we've talked on the podcast before about, uh, us dropping and breaking accidentally a hard drive full of photos that we they were the backup at one stage and then we deleted the originals from computer or laptop and then accidentally broke this hard drive and lost a good number of years worth of photos and videos from some fairly big, momentous life things and um, on the one hand it feels like, oh, it's a small thing, but the amount of times that we are sort of heading our hearts go to, oh, if only you know there was that.
Chris Sandys:Oh, do you remember that time when we're like, oh, yeah, we can't go and find the images from that because that was, you know, that trip, that experience, that was all in the photos that we lost. Are there any examples of of items or things that you know your head, your heart would go to? The most I wish I had that. Uh, it just would illustrate what you're talking about.
Naomi Westerman:I'm not a hoarder, but I'm a digital hoarder. I kind of upload like every photo to like five different places. Yeah, no, I think that I absolutely understand. That must be absolutely devastating. I would be really upset. Do you know what sylvanian families are? Yeah, I had a friend that collected them all.
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, so I was obsessed with sylvanian families when I was a kid and I feel like the reason I'm a writer is because of Sylvanian families, because I just used to sit surrounded by my like huge Sylvanian family village when I was a kid and just like make up stories and have this like epic, like ongoing soap opera around these little figures. And I left home very young because a lot of very traumatic things happened to me when I was in my sort of early teens and I had to leave kind of all almost all of my possessions behind, and these Sylvanian families were the one thing where I said to my mum like please don't throw them away, please just put them in a box, just put them away somewhere, you know. And she was like, yeah, yeah, you know, they're in a box, they're in the garage, they're in a crate, it's fine. And I kind of did several times in the course of her lifetime, kind of say you know, can I come to your house and like help you clean out the garage and like get you know some of my things that you've been, you know, storing for me from childhood? And I kind of, you know, it was my sylvanian families that I kind of wanted and she would always say, oh, no, no, no, no, because it's going to be like a huge job and it's a nightmare and like it was just it was very, very difficult for me to go to her house as well because she had this abusive boyfriend and stuff. So that was kind of the one thing that I was really really wanting to have.
Naomi Westerman:And the irony is I did find kind of random, odd things from my childhood, you know, that I didn't really care about, but this one crate wasn't there. So that was the one thing of going like where is it? Has it been thrown away? Yeah, I don't know, that was the one thing that really, you know that was quite upsetting to me.
Claire Sandys:Yeah, it's heartbreaking to think you went through all that time, all those years, clearing that house and you didn't find the things that really should have been the reward for you doing all that work. You should have come away from that job. Normally people would come away from a job like that and think, ah well, at least I've got these things that I found that I was looking for. So to do all that and not not come up with something, and I'm just I'm really. I mean, there's so many things going through my mind now about possessions, because you talk about your dad and there's almost no possessions, and then your mom there's almost too many possessions, but they're not the ones you want.
Claire Sandys:So I'm thinking of all the different scenarios people must be in and the amount of times like when someone dies, you might get given a, the wedding ring or something seems significant. You're like, oh, I'll have this from that person, but actually over the years it might be some plastic owl that they had that you referred to the most, and sometimes you think you're taking the thing that will mean the most to you, but sometimes the connection is actually something that's seemingly smaller. So I'm guessing there must be lots of things like that that people have to struggle through as well. So there's so many dimensions to it. It's really got me thinking about possessions, no massively.
Naomi Westerman:And one thing I was I was in my mum's loft and just kind of throwing kind of boxes down at random and I opened one box and I have no idea, like just hoarderville, I have no idea, but there was a kettle, a broken electric kettle, probably circa like late 80s, you know, when they used to have like the big round kettles with like the thing we, yeah, and like for some reason, like nobody has round electric kettles anymore, we have like the tall ones now with I don't know when that happened. Um, and it's like I wish I could describe it to you because I wish I could show you a photo of it, because it was so 80s looking. It was like beige and it had like a pattern on it that was like brown and orange kind of flowers like very, like, very 70s in the way that like 70s decor continued into the 80s. Anyway, it was broken.
Naomi Westerman:I have no idea why it was up there, because it clearly been up there since the 80s and it had a bright orange towel wrapped around it and I unwrapped it and it was my old swimming towel that I used to take to swimming lessons when I was in like primary school and I was really super obsessed with swimming, like I was.
Naomi Westerman:I've always been obsessed with swimming my whole life. So I had this orange towel that had been shoved in a box for kind of you know decades, took it home with me, put it in the washing machine and it was like completely mildewed, it was just awful. Put it in the washing machine, came out good as new and then I looked at it and it actually had a name. It had my name embroidered on it, when my mum had obviously embroidered my name on it so I could take it to school swimming lessons. And that is my swimming towel right now I actively use when I go swimming, like twice a week, and it's got my little name on it and people like, oh, you embroidered your name on your swimming towel even though you're on top.
Chris Sandys:That's cute oh, when you're swimming, what you do with the kettle? Does that just stay in the changing?
Naomi Westerman:well, you know it's come out before. Like you know, you always want like a cuppa of you want some hot chocolate, yeah can I plug this in somewhere?
Claire Sandys:brilliant, you're with all the people charging their phones. You've just got your kettle plugged in my 80s castle.
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, yeah amazing.
Claire Sandys:Yeah, oh, it's really. It's so interesting and I just I could already feel, you know, that people who are listening will be identifying with it in very different ways that one item must be more significant because it is on its own.
Chris Sandys:It's not one of many, it's just. You know, I'm clinging to this. One thing I managed to rescue yeah, no, it is.
Naomi Westerman:It is, and I do look at it because you know every day that I use it it gets a little bit more tattered, the holes get a little bit bigger and I do wonder is there going to come a point where I stop using it? And I really don't want to. I feel like I'm going to be like 90 with this like little shriveled, tiny bit of like bright orange cloth.
Claire Sandys:Just be like oh, it's as precious to me how do you feel like the, the loss of possessions and the loss of a person? How do they compare? If they do grief wise, are they connected? Is it all mixed in and the possessions make it easier or harder for the grief as a whole, or do you think it's like almost a separate grieving process for the person and the possessions?
Naomi Westerman:I kind of feel like they're connected in that I feel like possessions are almost like a way that you can kind of project your grief for the person onto something that's maybe a little bit easier to deal with.
Naomi Westerman:You know, like it is easier to grieve the loss of possessions than it is to grieve the loss of a person, but then, on the other hand, the loss of possession specifically related to my childhood, I think, in a way are harder because that's linked with a lot of things around the loss of my childhood generally and things. You know, I had to grow up and be an adult very, very quickly and I did lose a lot of my childhood as a result. And then that links in with a lot of I don't know like anger that I had of my mum making bad choices, but then also a lot of guilt for maybe not doing enough to recognise that she was going through a hard time. So I guess it's just objects kind of being a representation of a lot of very, very complex emotions that you have about a lot of different things.
Claire Sandys:It's made me think this week because, just by pure coincidence, we're doing this interview this week and everything's happening in LA with the fires, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, so we've been discussing like. Well, this is interesting because this is a loss of possessions without the loss of a person. Do you have any idea of what that would sort of feel like and how different that might be if you lose the possessions but not the person themselves?
Naomi Westerman:I actually know two people One of them is not someone that I kind of know very well, someone that I do know, and then an actor who was nearly going to be in my play but then it didn't work out who actually had experienced the loss of all of their possessions through a house fire, and I cannot imagine the trauma of that. I think that must be absolutely devastating, you know, because it's like a loss of identity. You know, you lose your whole entire history. I know there are people who are very zen about having, like you know, very few possessions. I can't imagine being that kind of person. I'm someone who has always taken huge comfort in my possessions and really rooted myself, you know, in my possessions and like and I have lots and lots of possessions that I've had since I was a teenager, that I've kind of carted around with me my whole life. Yeah, I mean it's just absolutely devastating, isn't it? You're losing your whole past. You know your childhood. You know your children's childhoods.
Chris Sandys:if you have children, it's just there's a lot of weight in possessions yeah, and now I'm thinking there is a difference in that it feels easy to accept something that's an accident or that's natural. You know it's out of control, you couldn't have any part of it. But again to come back to your experience, there are different emotions you've already talked about. You know the anger towards your mum and making bad choices, the loss of the possessions. For you is linked with maybe unwelcome or unwanted emotions and feelings, because when somebody's died, generally, generally we look back and remember all the best bits, but you keep having reminders of the things, maybe of your family, that are like I'm just reminded about the bad bits and not able to just forget that because of this, how do you detach the anger Maybe you don't the resentment not having these possessions from the aspects when your mum was alive, certainly with the ex-partner abusive relationship. How do you separate them?
Naomi Westerman:I'm not sure that I can. I I really struggle with that. I think one thing that has struck me really clearly in all of the experiences of loss that I've had is that I think when someone is alive, you only have a relationship with the person they are right now, and then when they die, it's almost like that changes and you suddenly have a retroactive relationship with the person that they were throughout the whole entirety of the time. You knew them and, like my dad and I, were on really, really great terms. When he died, we didn't have any kind of unresolved stuff and so it was very easy for me to grieve him. But when my mum died, we weren't necessarily on amazing terms.
Naomi Westerman:But then, after she died, I found myself really able to live in my memories of her a lot more and kind of remember times when we were on better terms, or remember times from my very young childhood when she was, you know, a very, very loving mom, very invested, able to, I guess, cope with problems in life much, much more easily.
Naomi Westerman:And I guess it sort of feels like for a really, really long time I just had one version of my mum in my head, which is the mum that I was engaging with or not engaging with at that moment. And now it feels like there's 50 different versions of my mum in my head. Some of them aren't great but some of them are, you know, are really great. So it just feels like I don't know. It's almost like in her dying. I've been given back the whole entirety of her and I can try to see what kind of person she was before I was born, you know, and have access to that, and to kind of look at her that way, without being confronted by the reality of the person standing in front of me.
Claire Sandys:One of the things I was thinking that you would sort of process some of this stuff through are the death rituals you know you know are really important and stuff, and I know that some of those were interrupted for you because you didn't have things like your mum's clothes. How did that affect you?
Naomi Westerman:Um, uh, repression, I guess I I know that, like when my dad died, um, his will said please bury my body, and he was very clear that that was his wish. And it meant a lot to me to be able to go to his house, go through his wardrobe and pick a really really nice outfit for him. And my dad wasn't really someone who was into fashion. You know, he wore quite ordinary, you know sort of business type clothes, but you know like he quite liked to wear colour. So I buried him in like a really really nice, like pink cashmere sweater that I found in his cupboard, because he was just, you know, the kind of man who had no problem wearing like a pink sweater, and it meant a lot to me to be able to do that.
Naomi Westerman:And then my mum was was cremated, which was something that she said she would be fine with, and she had to be cremated just wearing like I don't know, I guess, hospital gown. They put her in when she got admitted, I guess I don't know, I don't actually know what she was cremated in. I mean, I saw her body but it was literally in a body bag. I don't know Whatever they put bodies in in the morgue, I don't know. So she was just kind of cremated, just without anything really, because I just didn't have any way to get access to any of her clothes.
Naomi Westerman:I felt bad for that. I felt bad that I wasn't able to perform that act of care for her. I felt better about the fact she was being cremated because I kind of feel like, well, it matters less in my head, like I know it's, I know it doesn't matter, but in my head it matters less what you wear, if you're going to be cremated, because the clothes are just going to be burned in like two minutes anyway, than what you were to be buried in, because those clothes are gonna, you know, stick around for a really long time. So, yeah, it was upsetting to not be able to perform that particular ritual. Yeah, that was. That was not great it can be difficult.
Claire Sandys:We've spoken to people in the past about not really being able to do certain things. One of the episodes we did was a woman whose husband was never found he died on a mountain and not being able to have those rituals. We hadn't really fully, I don't think, before that episode, thought about how important they are in saying goodbye and just feeling like you've done right by the dead person and you know following their wishes, if there are any, or following through what you want to do, whatever.
Claire Sandys:So, yeah, it's quite. It's quite a big area to not be able to follow through on, especially for someone who studied them and knows so much about them exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean it.
Naomi Westerman:It's very comforting in a way to think that my dad is still, you know, in there kind of all snug and all cuddly in his like little pink sweater. You know, that's quite nice, like I don't know if it's like rotted away, but you know like it's yeah, I don't know, it's nice, I don't know, but it's a nice image, I don't.
Claire Sandys:You mean, I like, I like the idea of that. Well, and one of the things we talk to a lot of people about is um, why the question? Why do people ask it when people die? Because you see it portrayed, you'll have seen it on lots of you know, tv and films or cartoons, and there's this kind of expression that when people die or something bad happens, there's this big like why? Or why me, which isn't always the case. Not everyone is asking that question, or sometimes they do for a little while. Sometimes it plagues them for the whole of their life. So how have you had that question come up and how have you dealt with that? Because obviously you've lost a lot of family members at a short amount of time, so that could be a big why question. It might not be. Yeah, what's that been like for you?
Naomi Westerman:oh god, I yeah, I definitely had a lot of that. Why and why? Why me? Why am I always having these terrible things happen? I think the why me a lot of that has to do with.
Naomi Westerman:It felt like these deaths, and particularly my mother's death, played into something that was much, much bigger in terms of things that I had gone through when I was a teenager in terms of, you know, losing my home, losing my relationship with my mother when I was very young, you know, coming back to a relationship with her later in life that was very difficult, and obviously a lot of things around her. Being in this relationship with this abusive man. It just felt like a lot of really, really, really terrible things happened that were all connected. But there was also something in my mother's death that felt like something coming full circle. I mean, this is something that I've written about quite a lot. I wrote a Guardian article about it, but basically, my mum's boyfriend resulted in me being homeless when I was a teenager and then, as an adult, my mum's death was essentially the means by which I was able to cause him to become homeless and reclaim my house, I guess. So there was a very, very weird poetic justice or a very weird sense of something coming full circle or being able to reverse I don't know things that had happened decades ago and it kind of felt very fatalistic to be able to do that.
Naomi Westerman:It felt very, very fatalistic to be able to have this like very uncanny, precise symmetry of being able to do to this person what he'd done to me, and it's horrendous that my mum had to die to do that and I wish that my mum could have been a completely different person. I wish that she could have been a person who could have lived a happy, long life, and I feel so sad for her that she wasn't able to do that. But I I don't think that she ever would have been able to escape from this relationship or able to escape from her own personal demons, and I don't feel that I ever could have lived the life that I'm living now, particularly as a writer, particularly as someone who is expressing myself, while she was still alive, and I do have some guilt over that, but like I feel like I've only really been able to be emotionally free since she died because I felt like I had to keep so many secrets to keep her safe and I definitely don't think that I could have written with a degree of emotional honesty while she was still alive. So it's kind of a really horrible thing because it's like I absolutely feel like my success, my career, my financial freedom has come about because of her death.
Naomi Westerman:And that doesn't mean that I want her dead or that I'm glad that she's dead. It's just a really weird thing. I'm not glad she's dead. It's just a really weird thing. I'm not glad she's dead. But it feels like it's part of something much bigger and it just feels weirdly fatalistic and it just feels like somehow I've managed to close a circle and hopefully I can move on in my life. And I don't know what happens after death, but I believe that there is something after death and I just hope that. I hope that my mum is not in pain anymore. That's all, that's all. The only way that I can really choose to frame it is that she's not suffering anymore.
Chris Sandys:I guess yeah, that taps into, I guess, a big part of why we're here with the sound that, why podcast that we? We want to explore all these different types of permanent loss like yes, yes, people, of course, loved ones, bereavements in that regard, but also things, body parts, careers, identities, things that we lose and still have to acknowledge and grieve and move past, but explore them with hope in mind that can hope be found, can good things come out of all of these bad things. So, listening to you talk there, it sounds like you know you're still on that path of discovery, in a sense, that you're still actually realizing there are emotions, there are experiences that you're thankful for that have happened as they're happening now. I mean one of those. I guess one of the things we're thinking about. I'm thinking about is is peace with losing the things that you've lost? Where are you in a sense of actually having peace or finding peace with the Sylvanian families are gone. I can't get them back. Where are you with peace?
Naomi Westerman:Yeah, I feel like I have reached a state of peace or a state of acceptance. I think mostly that is just something that comes through time. I can't tell you how I did it. I think it's just incremental day by day. You just you just learn to live with things. I feel like I am in a state of peace now very much, which is just, I think, learning to live in the moment and learning to open up emotionally to people and get support, and I think I think being able to open up emotionally and gain support from people has made me less emotionally dependent on things, and I think being able to open up emotionally and gain support from people has made me less emotionally dependent on things, and I think that was a really big part of the process of letting go as well.
Claire Sandys:What sort of part has hope played for you, because hope means lots of different things to different people. Has that been something that you've had lost?
Naomi Westerman:have no, massively, massively. I mean I've been through absolutely horrendous times in my life. No, massively, massively. I mean I've been through absolutely horrendous times in my life, but somehow I always had hope or I had some kind of belief that things would get better or that I would persevere or that I would endure. I feel like I have a big capacity to endure and sometimes that's the only thing you can put hope in ultimately is just your own ability to just keep breathing through the day.
Naomi Westerman:But I also had a lot of people who are very supportive of me through these griefs and through my process of writing my book, through my process of writing my plays, people who have wanted to hear what I have to say, wanted to connect, and I think that more than anything gives me hope the knowledge that, like other people are also going through the same thing and they're also searching for hope or searching for connection. And people who've been through you know way worse things than me and they still have hope and they still have that mindset of wanting to connect with people in a very emotionally kind of honest way. So I think that's a really beautiful thing to keep hold of.
Claire Sandys:Do you find things like we've got a lot of different people who find things like Christmas and New Year and those sort of seasons quite difficult because of many different reasons, but largely because if you haven't got family around you it can be quite hard. Do you find those kind of seasons quite difficult or have you found a way to navigate those where you feel okay with them? Find those kind of seasons quite?
Naomi Westerman:difficult, or have you found a way to navigate those where you feel okay with them? Uh, I have a lot of things that I, a lot of structures that I put in place to try to cope. Uh, it's really really hard. My birthday is between uh, my birthday is on the 27th of December, so that's also really terrible. Yeah, it's really awful.
Naomi Westerman:Um, I'm also Jewish, so Christmas is not necessarily as meaningful for me or part of my culture I mean, my dad wasn't Jewish, so it was part of my culture growing up. I can't take refuge in Christmas as a religious holiday in the way that some of my friends can. Uh, I also don't drive. I don't know how to drive so that you wouldn't think that that would be a thing, but it's a really big thing because there's no public transport in England on Christmas Day, so you can't go anywhere.
Naomi Westerman:So I, you know, I just I have to be really, really, really vigilant in just stacking my schedule, making sure that there's lots and lots of things reaching out to friends, booking social activities, but not necessarily like super Christmassy social activities and I pretty much was busy like every single day of like the festive period except Christmas day itself, and then I was just like so tired that I was happy just to kind of eat chocolate and kind of watch TV and go for a walk and not do anything else. I would love to be able to celebrate Christmas more and I I hope that maybe one day I will be able to, but at the moment it's just kind of I don't have the detachment enough to be able to go. Well, it's just a normal day. I I, some people do I can't, I just can't do that. It is just a question of having enough distractions and people around to be able to kind of get through it.
Chris Sandys:You've referenced having some really good supporters around you, which is brilliant for someone who's had a very small family, because quite often it's the family that you turn to siblings and whatever else, to share the experiences. So you've cleared in something right to have a good support network around you. We've heard about the towel and how much you're clinging to the towel, stepping into the future, hoping it clings to the cotton strands and stays in one piece. Um, how do you view the future? Do you view the future? Do you think about the future? Do you plan? What does the future look like for you?
Naomi Westerman:I mean, I think at the moment I'm pretty much looking at the future in career terms. Um, I'm a bit of a workaholic, I think I probably tend to subsume a lot of stuff into work and ambition and career. But I mean, I don't know that that seems to be working so far. Maybe that's a horrible coping technique, I don't know, I wouldn't recommend it. But you know, my career is very, very, very exciting at the moment and I happen to work in a career that facilitates lots of really wonderful things and lots of really wonderful connections with lots and lots of people. You know, I'm not just kind of in an office, kind of chained to a computer. My career has enabled me to go all over the world and meet amazing people and really connect with people. So I think that the way that I'm looking to the future is mostly in the work that I'm going to do and what that's going to facilitate.
Chris Sandys:I guess Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat. Thank you for sharing what you have. We really appreciated that. It's a really interesting and something that we'll continue to think about because, as you say, with the LA wildfires in, when you read stuff in the news about people that have lost possessions, then what you've shared with us is really helpful. So thank you for that.
Claire Sandys:Well, same in war zones as well, isn't it? We often think about oh, at least the people are safe, or this person lost their life, or this person survived. Secondary is the possessions really in your mind, because you think, well, at least the life is the important bit. But actually to think you know, even if you survive, think you know, even if you survive, you've lost all those things it's yeah, it's not something we think about very often, we should do really, and so many possessions are attached to memories aren't they?
Chris Sandys:or handed down, um whatever, they have some sort of sentimental value. So to wrap things up for us, um we end with our wonderful question um that can put you, naomi. So what's your herman?
Naomi Westerman:my herman I've chosen is my pets, and this is very special to me because I come from a massive family of animal lovers. My parents were both huge animal lovers who absolutely took comfort in their pets throughout, whatever terrible things they were going through. My dad was a cat person and my mum was a dog person uh, I'm both, I guess, guess but dogs were incredibly important to my mom. She had a beautiful dog named Charlie and then she had a dog named Laura, and they saved her life when she was in this abusive relationship, really saved her life with her, one way of kind of escaping. So the theme of like animals, being your hermit and being like your very precious thing you can latch onto, is something that I very much grew up with, uh, and I've always had pets. I've always, you know, believe really strongly in them.
Naomi Westerman:So, yeah, I currently have little pet rats and I rescue pet rats, and something that I specifically do is when people are wanting to stop having rats and they've just got one rat left. Uh, you can't keep them singly. It's very cruel. So if someone has one rat left because the other rats have died and they don't want to get more, because they want to stop having them, but they can't have. This one lonely rat, uh, I essentially have a service where I will adopt lonely rats who have been bereaved, you know, through having their siblings die, and I take them in and I, you know, bring them into my weird little, you know, rat family.
Chris Sandys:So I do have this is going to be the first ever demonstration of a hermit.
Claire Sandys:Yes, we're going to get to see the rats. Oh look, Are you running? Oh?
Naomi Westerman:wow, what run. She's just a little bit scared.
Claire Sandys:Yes, that's the prettiest rat I've ever seen. So what would you say? What do they give you that you recommend other people consider pets for? What aspects do you think are most important? I?
Naomi Westerman:mean definitely support. I think two things. I think physical touch I think is so crucial. And if you've got a whole bunch of stuff going on emotionally, sometimes you just don't really want people around, you don't want to have to talk. So I think something that you can physically touch without the pressure to like have a conversation or be aware of, like another person's emotional needs, can be just really beneficial. And then the second thing I think just having another living creature that you have to prioritize their well-being is the most important thing, because sometimes grief can make you very not self-centered but self-focused.
Naomi Westerman:You know you get so wrapped up in your own grief. It's really easy to kind of forget about the rest of the world and kind of come from this perspective of like why me, oh, I'm a victim, terrible things have happened to me, and just get quite navel gazey and I think that's really dangerous. And I think it not only is kind of dangerous for yourself emotionally but it is sometimes not great for people around you. So I just think the I think having pets forces you to de-center yourself and it kind of forces you to be at least a little bit selfless, because if you've got a dog you have to get up and walk your dog. You know you can't like go. Oh, I'm just gonna lie in bed and mope like you have to walk your dog. If you've got, you know, rats, you've got to get up and clean the cage. So I think anything that just kind of forces you to put somebody else first, I think is probably a very healthy thing.
Claire Sandys:We do miss our pets, don't we?
Chris Sandys:We really do.
Claire Sandys:Animals have an incredible way of offering comfort, especially in grief, as Naomi shared. They can shift our focus when we need it most, and if you can't have or afford a pet, there are other ways to connect with animals.
Chris Sandys:We love visiting our local wildlife park, though there's only really one goat I get to stroke you do really appreciate that weird goat.
Claire Sandys:I do. This episode is a powerful reminder of how deeply our emotions, love and memories can be tied to possessions, sometimes bringing comfort, sometimes pain, Whether they bring warmth or heartache. Navigating these connections can be incredibly challenging. It's a side of grief worth bearing in mind the next time you support someone facing a loss.
Chris Sandys:If you'd like to find out more about Naomi and her book Happy Death Club, you can visit her website, which is w ww. naomiwesterman. com. You'll find more links in the show notes for this episode too.
Claire Sandys:And if you want to know more about us, why we started the podcast, our journey with grief and childlessness, or even hear the story of all the photos we lost head over to www. thesilentmycom, or find us on social media.
Chris Sandys:Speaking of possessions, there's one possession we think everyone should have.
Claire Sandys:Indeed, Herman. If you don't know what a Herman is, where have you been? It's not just the final question. We ask our guests about what they'd like to pass on to help others through grief. It's also the name of our grief companion, a little crocheted friend that I make to help support the podcast. If you know someone going through a tough time, grieving in hospital, facing a big life change, don't send flowers, send herman. He never fails to raise a smile and offers just the right kind of support when it's needed most people all over the world have found comfort in their very own Herman.
Chris Sandys:Want to meet him? Visit www. thehermancompany. com to see his little face and grab yours today.
Claire Sandys:We all know someone going through loss, so why not send them a link to the podcast to remind them they're not alone and thank you for listening? If you support the podcast in any way, a huge thank you for that. You have no idea what an encouragement it is to us.
Chris Sandys:And there's one thing you can do, you must do to support the podcast and that's rate it, review it on your app your provider your podcast platform. Now it makes such a difference. Now, we're just about done. We'll leave you with a thoughtful reminder from Indian author Dara Viswani. A reflection on the role possessions play in our lives, they may hold meaning, but without the right state of mind they can never bring us true happiness.
Claire Sandys:"Happiness, true happiness is an inner quality, it is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give pleasure, possessions, power but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy."
