Welcome to Death in the Afternoon. I'm Sarah Chavez for the Order of a Good Death.

On today's episode, we're sharing the first audio version of one of our favorite

articles from the Order Archive written by a familiar voice for longtime Death in the

Afternoon listeners, podcast co-host Louise Hanne. Louise is the producer and writer

of the Ask a Mortician web series. Her debut novel, The Hungry Bones, a Chinese American

Ghost Story from Mill Great Readers, is coming from Scholastic next year in 2023. Here's

Louise, with a reminder that while Death may be scary, you're not alone.

I was six years old the night Death took up residence in my brain. I was sitting in bed

with my mom and she had just read to me from a book of Greek myths. I don't remember

the story she read me. I don't remember who was punished or pardoned, but I do remember

that in the story a character died, a character who felt important to me. Death was not

described as especially violent, cruel or gory, but something about my mom's voice and

the demise of a character I had conjured into being, shined light onto something I didn't

know was there. I began to cry. It was the first time I remember crying over sadness

that I'd seemingly picked out of the ether. Nobody had pinched me. Nobody had stolen my

special frosted birthday cookie, a travesty that had happened earlier that year. I was

just suddenly overcome with the type of sadness, a panic that made my heart race, my breath

catch and my stomach lurch. Was this fear or was this sorrow? Should I scream or should

I faint? The only thing that made sense was to cry. My mom, who was never one to coup

or caught, I asked, what's wrong? Usually her cool assuredness made the monsters go away,

but this time, maybe not. I hesitated. In the moments I spent turning over the death

of a character I had briefly willed into existence, I realized something about life. It

...