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Chapter 1: What inspired Jenny to create a not-for-profit funeral service?
At 17, Chantelle McDougall was nannying for a 36-year-old man. At 20, she was pregnant with his child and swept up in his bizarre spiritual beliefs. At 27, they all disappeared. I just wished I'd asked a lot more questions no matter what. I'm Dominique Bayens, host of Expanse, The Nan Up For, a story of control, manipulation and isolation.
Search Expanse on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Just south of Wollongong is the industrial suburb of Port Kembla. Jenny Briscoe-Huff manages the community centre there. Since Jenny took over, it's become a real hive of activity.
There's a very successful men's group, there's a sewing for zero waste group, there are meditation workshops, gardening, permaculture groups, that kind of thing. But there's another thing they do that at first glance seems unlikely for a community centre. Jenny and her colleagues run a not-for-profit funeral service.
And this was the subject of a beautiful documentary from a few years back called Tender. In times gone by, the process for washing and preparing a body for a funeral and for conducting the service was traditionally managed by the family. And this was considered a great honour at the time. and it seemed to help hugely with the grieving process.
But somehow, over the last 100 years or so, we've managed to outsource this business. And now we've come to think of keeping the body out of sight as normal. Jenny Briscoe-Huff now wants to help people in her community and others take back the control of dealing with their dead, to bring the dead back home. That's a nice way of putting it, I hope. Hello, Jenny. Hello, Jenny. Hello, Richard.
How are you? I'm well. This idea starts with your mum in 2007 when your mum died. Tell me what happened when you went about organising your mum's funeral, Jenny. Look, I think what happened really was that we just went along a road that was already set out and we just followed the road and we did what we were supposed to do. We didn't ask questions, that many questions. We didn't ask prices.
um because that seems vulgar yeah there's no prices on things it's like we just didn't we just went along with that we didn't have many choices we didn't think we had many choices but we did do as much as we could you know we my mum was that sort of person who you know wouldn't want us to spend a lot of money so we didn't have again we had just one hearse and my sister-in-law did the flowers and I did the urology and we designed the memorial cards ourselves and we
We did go and wash and dress her. But, you know, I think we didn't ask questions, really, which was a bit shocking. Yeah, because you like to ask questions normally, don't you? I do. I mean, for me, I'm pretty bolshie, actually, and I do ask questions. So, yeah, I do like to ask questions. So how did you feel when you got the bill?
Well, I was horrified when we got the bill, but I think I was more horrified by the fact that the funeral home had put its advertising on my mother's memorial card. And I was like, I sort of suddenly woke up, you know, so we, but I was horrified by the bill because we had done a lot. We already owned the burial plot and we still got a bill for over nearly $10,000. Wow.
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Chapter 2: How did Jenny's personal experience with her mother's funeral shape her views?
Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. There's very little that's not legal. Like, it's not about, you know, there's a lot of things that are legal. You are allowed to keep a body at home for up to five days. Really? That's quite legal? That's legal, yeah. Yeah. In an unexpected death. So in an unexpected death, you have to call the coroner or find out what's happened to that person.
But in an expected death, you can keep the body at home for up to five days. Even, you know, one of the things about even an unexpected death, if you find somebody that has died, if your partner has died during the night and it's unexpected, but obviously nothing wrong has happened, like, you know. They've died. And nothing can be done. Nothing can be done. Nothing can be done.
So there's a whole lot of things around even that, around not immediately calling anybody. You know, Zenith always says, what you should do is pick up the kettle, not the telephone, and just have your time with that person. Because often when someone dies like that, people pick up the phone and then that person's taken away and then... And that's it. That's it. That's it.
You never see them again. You never see them again. No. So there's a whole lot of learning to go on, a whole lot of sort of culture changing around what is possible to do and what is our default position around it? What is our response to these things that happen? It seems like there's a kind of a, is it a natural thing? I don't know.
But there's a kind of a squeamishness barrier that you have to travel through or climb over to get to the other side. And you're pretty happy once you get to the other side. But you've got that squeamishness barrier, I feel it. I mean, I think most people do. Yeah. Look, I think it's true. But I think it's really like it's in your mind. It's what you imagine.
And what we imagine is often so much worse than the reality of something. So, you know, even now what we would... I think it's fear. I think there's been a whole lot of... you know, mystery created around it. But actually, it's very simple.
And, you know, we have got, I always say to people when they're about to come into the mortuary and they feel a bit anxious, you know, you're about five minutes away from not being afraid. Because the thing about fear is that if you just stay in fear, you stay afraid. But if you move through fear, then you're not afraid anymore. If you go and do the thing that you're worried about. And
I see that all the time that people walk into the mortuary and they're like, oh, and there's their person. There's their person. And of course, they know how to care for that person. I've certainly found that the first instinct you have is not to recoil but to rush to the body and give it a hug and a kiss. Yes. I think that's true. It's funny.
It's funny, yeah, because they recognise that person. You know, that person is that person. And so really it's a very – what happens is that love, the love they have comes forward and so it's not complex. It's not a complex thing. And all of a sudden all of those images that they imagined –
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Jenny face in starting Tender Funerals?
Like, you know, I want to do this. This is my person and I'm going to do it. And that person, there's so much to be said for that when you see somebody do that. It's so... You know, it makes complete sense. Of course, it makes complete sense. But they want to do that thing themselves. They don't want to open it up to all the friends and the relatives. They're like, nah, they can't come in.
So people have their own reasons for doing those things. But no one's ever come out going, that was terrible. You know, people are usually coming out feeling pretty happy. And, you know, we also have children in the mortuary, coming into the mortuary. And they also, you know, they seem relieved by that. Now, this all starts with your mum and what happened after your mum had her funeral.
Tell me a bit about your mum. What memories do you have from your childhood around the home? Oh, she was pretty funny. She was a great woman, my mum. She was a hairdresser and she had like a backyard hairdressing room she had. I wouldn't call it a salon. It was a hairdressing room. And so our house was like filled with women getting their hair done from like 5 a.m. in the morning to 10 a.m.
at night. And my mother had this great... incredible strategy that she was just going to put them all to work. You know, so they were like vacuuming the house and putting the clothes on the line and they'd be under the hair dry doing our hems. Their faces would be bright red and they'd say, oh, Rose, I think I've, have I, am I dry yet? And mum was like, look how much hem they got.
No, no, you've just got a bit more. LAUGHTER You know, she was really... But, you know, the thing is... So women would come in to get their hair cut. Yeah. But they'd be in there all day. All day. All day. They had perms and I don't know what they were talking about in that hairdresser room, but there was a lot of hilarity going on in there.
I mean, I can imagine now, but when I was little, I couldn't imagine. But there was lots of laughter and tears and... You know, they adored her. I think, you know, she was someone really. She understood people, my mum. And she, you know, when we were young, she used to go into nursing homes and do people, you know, the old ladies here in nursing homes.
And we were all like, she used to make us go. I was like, mum, you know, do we have to go? I don't want to go. They're smelly and, you know, all that. And she'd be like, you know, not only do you have to go, but you have to hug them. Yeah, pull your head in. Yeah, because we are the only people that might be touching these people. We are the only people.
And so she understood the necessity for physical contact. So she understood that that's what was happening in those exchanges. They were getting their hair washed. Somebody was talking to them. So it was not about the hairdo at all. So in that way, she was a remarkable teacher. You know, I remember at her funeral, my brother told this story about her, which really does tell about her.
He said, you know, he came home from work one day and my mother walked in the back door and she told him this incredible story about this woman and her life and what had happened to her. And my brother was sitting there and he was going, oh my gosh, mum, you know. who is that woman? How long have you known that woman? And my mother said, oh, I just met her on the bus.
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Chapter 4: How did community involvement play a role in establishing the funeral service?
But I mean, I think they really did... They understood what they were doing with us. And so we certainly, I left school and I know other people I went to school with left school with an idea that we needed to do something in the world. But not only that we needed to do something in the world, that we could do something in the world, which are two different things, actually.
To feel like you need to do something and to feel able to do something, I think, are two different things. So they really helped us do that. When you were 18, there was a harrowing incident with you and it changed the way you see the world and gave you another sense of what to do with your life. What can you tell me about that incident, Jenny? I was raped. I was kidnapped and raped.
But I think before that had happened to me, I'd been sitting with a friend and she had told me about when she had been raped. And she had said that she understood that when she was raped, she had sort of had a tampon in and she flung the tampon out and she went, you didn't actually get me. Like... But it was not even that.
It was much more about the fact that if someone rapes you, it's not about you and they're not destroying you. So I went into that, which was like a light turning on in my head because I hadn't thought that before. So I didn't know that was going to happen to me. But when I went into that experience, I had that knowledge.
I had a different perception about what was going to... Did it make you kind of... Did it make you kind of... You're saying it sort of made you psychologically impregnable. It made me... Or defensible, anyway. Well, I think I just thought, I don't know. I really don't know. But I just knew that I had this thing like, I can't be destroyed by this. It's not going to destroy me.
And that was very incredibly helpful. And also... You know, it was really hard. It was a very hard time. But also I think the thing... I thought they were going to kill me and I worked very hard for that not to happen. And in some level I found my own magnificence in that. And I think... That was also surprising to me. That was really surprising.
But the other thing is when you think you're going to die, something inside of you wakes up. And so that combination of all of those things took me a long time to process all of those things. But that experience was life-changing in all of those ways of how you come out of it and who you are and what the power is people have. What was it that you think was woken up?
I think it was this idea that, well, my own mortality, the idea that I could die, actually, that life is limited, which is really the great thing about being around death, actually. But if you wake up that, oh, life is limited, so what am I going to do? I can see that in retrospect, but also at the time I had to work really hard to process what had happened. And doing that was helpful for me.
Why were you, do you think, directed towards community groups rather than, for instance, becoming rich or a CEO of some corporation or something like that? I don't know. That's a good question. It hasn't even occurred to me to be a CEO of a corporate organisation. Probably I think that people are pretty magnificent. I really think human beings have got
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Chapter 5: What unique services does Tender Funerals offer to families?
Yeah. What did you learn from that process of starting a festival and making it into a success? Well, I think what we learned, we started a festival. The area we live in was really a, it's an area where there's a lot of people who have got no money to go anywhere. So they don't even... you know, they don't have much to do in some ways.
And even though there's some great things in our community, sometimes people don't think that those things are for them. And so, you know, so there's a... Like what? What do you mean? Well, like we've got a great swimming pool there. And I remember when I first started working there, I would say to people, there's a great swimming pool down there. Why don't you go swimming?
They'd say, that's not for us. So there's a whole lot of things about belonging that are really important. So you've got to not only think that – you've got to be able to feel like that you're entitled to something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that down around there there's some super expensive beachfront properties. There are. Some very super – but there's also people living on the street.
So that's a very – and there's a big Aboriginal community there. Yeah. So it's a very diverse area. There's a lot of money. There's no money. There's homelessness. There's, you know, very diverse communities. So there's a lot of diversity. And also Port Kembla was really like a place that had a lot of stigma attached to it.
You know, it's like a place where the prostitutes and, you know, really a lot of stigma attached to it. So we needed to try and build pride in the community. And what was... So we did this, you know, community development usually should ask people, what do you want to do? And we should all talk about it. But we decided that we would do the first festival ourselves as a group of workers.
And we did a festival based on a 13th century Persian poem called Conference of the Birds, which was about bringing... Because there's a beautiful lagoon there. And we did a thing where we brought the... We wanted to bring the spirit back to the community. So we built this... See, I was thinking, you know, you put a festival on in Port Kemble and make it somehow about steel, I suppose.
I don't know. And you went, a 13th century person talking about birds. It's like, so then we built this big bird, like it was a big lantern that everyone called the chalk, which, you know, it's like, but, and we did this thing with the kids where they walked, where they was all, had all their, they were like painted like ghosts actually. And they did a lantern walk.
And in the middle of the lantern walk was this huge thunderstorm. Wow. It was like I was sitting there going, oh, my God, you know, please don't let anyone get hurt. Everybody, nobody left. Everybody waited for these children to come. And these children, when they walked out of that bush, it was like they'd just been born.
They were so happy because they'd been through this quite scary experience. Right. And they were OK. And everybody, they're cheering them and they all sat, they all came and sat around. We did the big lantern thing and we had these five cooking fires and from the different communities and we had kangaroo and jabapi and all the different meats from the different ethnic groups.
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