Sarah Carey

What I discovered was, you know, people's patience runs out.

Like that can be nice to you for a while.

And then after a while, if you're the person who's showing up and you've just been a bore and casting a shadow on everything, the invitations will dry up and people will stop wanting to be around you.

And I became ruthless about getting a blow dry, putting on a new dress, going out, smiling, being positive.

And that works well.

You know, and, um, you have to make yourself do it, but it, and you can go home afterwards and be completely flattened and exhausted, but over time, um, it does work.

And, and also making new bonds, making new relationships, making new friends is really, really important because I found with that, um, if you were making a new friend, they were taking you as a blank slate.

You could start over because this stuff changes you.

You're not the same as you were before.

So if you have older friends who maybe expect you to revert to whom you were, that can be a kind of pressure.

And maybe that's where impatience can drive in.

But but if you make new friends, you know, you're starting over.

And I found that really, really helpful.

Another thing is maybe we should go back to this, too, is that difference you were talking about between the Irish and the English experience.

And and that idea that Kevin Tullis book I mentioned, My Father's Wake.

And so from my understanding of the English way of death is, well, the first thing is funerals tend to be weeks.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

So what did you do in those intervening weeks then?

I think we do it a bit better here.