The needs of our families are changing, and so are we

Director of Community Relations Kim Shute shares with us her thoughts on the most recent book that she has read.

I still have Netflix and my reason for keeping Netflix is that they do such a good job with regular releases of stand-up comedians. I have watched a lot of different comedy styles over the last 25 years or more. I remember stealing glimpses of George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robin Williams as a child. As an adult, I pay to see live shows and watch them on various streaming services.  Recently, there was one stand-up special released entitled PostMortem by comedian Sarah Silverman. I have seen Silverman’s work before, normally she is quite dark and raunchy, but this special felt like a bit of a departure from her normal material and is basically a tribute to the lives of her parents. She mostly focused on her biological father and her stepmom (who both died in 2023 within 9 days of each other), with several mentions of her biological mother who died 8 years ago. Silverman is at heart a storyteller, so she does a good job of balancing the realities of loss and the humor that exists in life and death within her narrative. She does sneak in some of the regular Sarah Silverman material by touching a bit on sex, an odd Hitler joke, and a description of a skit she wrote for Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s which never made the air. This special is a beautiful way to memorialize their lives and she paints their personalities so vividly I feel like I knew them. I especially appreciate how this special is a way she continues to stay connected to them and how they influenced her life and those of her siblings and grandchildren. She also put a spotlight on the need for people to plan for the inevitability of death, oddly her parents made no plans for what happens “after” (they were 80 and 85 years old). I laughed quite a bit at the antics of her blunt family and her own idiosyncrasies. I cried at her bravery for bringing this universal human experience to the stage and sharing it. Every time an artist like Silverman breaks the mold and brings loss and grief to the forefront, I want to stand and cheer as it doesn’t shy away from this very real part of life. Many places in life like to pretend that death doesn’t happen and yet it does. Shows like this one pave the way for regular people to have these conversations in their own families. I feel grateful to Silverman for circulating her unique journey and perspective. Maybe you will, too.

If you happen to walk through Memorial Funeral Home’s doors, there is a high probability that Sam Silvia will be one of the faces that you see. Born and raised on Aquidneck Island, Sam has been a force within the community for decades. Before working at Memorial, Sam worked for the registration department for Newport Hospital. “I was 24 years old, and I was working at Grant's department store, and somebody came in and said, ‘there's a job opening in registration at Newport Hospital part time. So, I applied and got the job.” She said. “I worked part-time and through the years I stayed in that department and then became supervisor of the department and managed a group of 24 employees.” And she ended up working there for 48 years.  During that time, she formed a close relationship with the local funeral directors. The registration department was in charge of calling them when a patient passed away. “My staff would take them down to the morgue to ensure that they took the right body and open the door.” Not only was Sam no stranger to death and end-of-life procedures in her work, she also faced a lot of death in her personal life as well. The first death of a loved one was her brother-in-law, who helped her out a lot with her sick husband who had juvenile diabetes and became bedridden in the last years of his life. He was driving home one day on his motorcycle and got hit by a car and died when Sam was 24 years old. And then her husband died. “I was 32 when my first husband died, and he was 40. And then I got married again after that, a couple of years later and that husband died when I was 57 and he was 62.” She said. “And then I had a brother that died at 44 of a glioblastoma brain tumor and lost parents in between that.” Then she lost her younger brother and sister two and three years ago, respectively. “In the meantime--right after my first husband died--I got breast cancer.” She explained. Her cancer journey brought her through a mastectomy, and when the cancer returned, she underwent another mastectomy and chemotherapy. All while raising young children who had just lost their father. Memorial Funeral Home helped with the arrangements of all of Sam’s family members. Kurt Edenbach’s father and uncle, Charlie and Bob, both told her, “Hey, when you're done working here [Newport Hospital], come work with us.” Eventually, she did. “Well, I couldn't stand it when I retired. I really couldn't stand it.” She said. Sam retired from Newport Hospital in 2020 when she was 72 years old. She quickly realized that retirement wasn’t for her. “I ran into Kurt at King's Park, and he asked, ‘well what are you doing?’ I said, ‘well, I guess I'm ready.’ So, like 2 or 3 months after I retired, I went to work at the funeral home,” and she loves every minute of it. After going through so much death and trauma in her life, how does Sam stay so positive? If you know her, she really is like a ray of light in the room. “I think because I always see worse.” She said. “I see children that are sick or dying, and I think, ‘well, at least my kids are healthy. And at least my husbands lived to be 40 and 62. And I think that the storms that I've walked through have made me a very strong person.” Sam admitted that she does see things differently to other people, including her friends. “I just seem to know that stuff happens. What are you going to do? You can't wallow in this.” She said. Although, she does admit, her fortitude sometimes goes a little too far. “I do have a problem because I never want my kids to feel sorry for me or feel bad for me. So, I always keep a positive image around them.” She said. “I don't know if that's been the right thing to do.” She said one of the main reasons that she got through all these hard times was thanks to having very supportive girlfriends. “My mother would always tell me, "keep your girlfriends.They'll always be around you.” And, boy, she was right.” She said. Now, at 77 years old, Sam helps others to get through hard times. And I'm going to live to be 104.” She joked. “I love to comfort and greet people at the door [at Memorial].” She said. “I think that I love to be a part of something, like I call it ‘my Newport Hospital’, and now I call it ‘my funeral home.’” Sam said that she takes great pride in representing Memorial Funeral Home. “Well, I think it's just my nature to be that way anyway. I just feel a sense of great responsibility to do it right.” Sam not only greets people at the door, but she also helps with admin work, “and that helps me to keep my computer skills up.” She said. She also helps the funeral directors make sure the room for the service looks just right. But her favorite part is greeting people at the door. “Sometimes Kurt has to tell me that I'm holding up the line because I talk too much.” She joked. “The thing is, being born and raised here, I know so many people.” Sam also loves to dress up for the services. “It gives me a purpose to not sit here in sweatpants.” She said. “And I love shoes.” Sam is currently mad at former Funeral Director Ed Gurka, who recently retired from Memorial. “He was the one that was going to be able to make sure that all my shoes went in my coffin with me.” She joked. And what makes for a good shoe according to Sam, you might ask? “Well, most of the time they have to pop.” She said. “So, in other words, say, if I'm wearing all black, I might wear red shoes,” which go perfectly with her red-framed glasses. “I have the problem now, at this stage of my life, I can't wear the most beautiful shoes in the world because I'm standing too long.” She said. “So now they have to be more comfortable than beautiful.” Most importantly, though, Sam loves to interact with the families that come to Memorial. Sam says that once the family has had time with their loved one at the funeral home she will go in and let them know when people start arriving, “and they appreciate that.” She said. Considering her experience with death over the years, she also knows what not to say to people who have suffered the loss of a loved one. “We certainly know that we should not be saying, ‘I know how you feel.’ Although I could say that, but I wouldn't.” She said. A simple, “I'm so sorry for your loss,” is perfectly acceptable, according to Sam. She also appreciates when people tell stories about the person that is gone, “and that's the reason for these ceremonies-- some kind of closure is so important.” She said. “That's why I think it's a very important process to go through.”

Dawn Emsellem-Wichowski heard about the wind phone in Japan and decided that her property on Sandy Point Ave in Portsmouth would be a perfect spot for one here on Aquidneck Island. “We live right on the Aquidneck Land Trust and people are walking by all the time.” She said, “It's sort of like on the spine of the island. It's on the crest along East Main Road and so it's windy all the time. I thought a wind phone is perfect here.” The original wind phone was created in Japan by Itaru Sasaki after losing his cousin to cancer. He purchased an old-fashioned phone booth and set it up in his garden. According to the My Wind Phone website , Sasaki found comfort, connection and healing amid his grief when using the phone to speak with his cousin. Sasaki gave his phone booth a name, Kaze No Denwa, which can be translated into English as The Telephone of the Wind. A year later on March 11th, 2011, the most powerful earthquake in recorded history hit Japan, which caused a series of tsunamis. Nearly 20,000 people lost their lives. The city of Ōtsuchi was one of the worst hit places by the tsunami, which is close to Sasaki’s residence and his wind phone became a way for many to reflect on their grief and connect with lost loved ones. “And it was profound, its impact. It extended beyond him being able to talk to his cousin after the tsunami, people started coming to talk to their loved ones that they had lost.” Emsellen-Wichowski said. “I kind of wanted to make an American version of this.” According Emsellen-Wichowski, the idea “fermented” in her head for a couple of years and then she found her phone booth. “I kept an eye out for a phone booth on Facebook Marketplace for like a year or two and found one in Providence.” She said, “This guy had it in his garage, and it was his cousin’s, and his cousin had gotten it from a bank that was downtown, and it was on his porch for like ten years.” The phone booth is what people older than 30 might remember from yesteryear that was used to make calls in the pre-cellphone era. Unlike traditional phone booths, the phone inside this booth is bright red and the area surrounding the booth is filled with flowers and other plants to make it a more private experience. “I had a very particular vision of the rotary dial. I wanted like a candy apple, red rotary dial phone.” Emsellen-Wichowski said. The idea kept percolating in her head and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “And I just was hearing all these stories of people who had lost loved ones and weren't able to do the usual mourning that one does where everybody gets together in person and is present and telling stories about the person.” She said. “So that kind of motivated me to get out there. And my husband and I put down a concrete pad and then checked with the town to make sure it was OK and then put the phone there.” Then NBC 10 News came and interviewed Emsellen-Wichowski in 2021 after a family friend reposted something that she had put up about the phone booth. “Since then, people have just sort of stopped by.” She said, “Some people come back on an anniversary. “I have a notebook that I keep there, and I notice sometimes people will say, ‘I came back again this year to talk to dad’ or whatever.” Emsellen-Wichowski said that people will oftentimes leave stones or knickknacks around the phone in honor of their person. “A project I really want to do is get a weatherproof curio cabinet so that people can put things in there,” she said, since the weather does degrade the things that people leave over time.  In the past year, the North Dartmouth High School pottery class came by and left some decorated pieces of pottery and a new cup for the pens that are there for the people to write in the log. “People come by, and you can go for a walk afterwards because it's really beautiful at all times of year.” Emsellen-Wichowski said. She said that the phone booth needs some updates, like the seat inside needs to be redone and the solar fairy lights inside the lamp need to be replaced. She is also going to add a magnetic poetry board and a kinetic sculpture to make the site more kid-friendly. “I have a blackberry patch and I'm going to put a little sign there that says you can pick them,” she said. She also added a porch swing on one side. “So, I've been sort of adding to it to make it so that there are lots of options if people come by and they want to sit in the swing after they visit the phone and stare at the cows.” Emsellen-Wichowski also added that the booth is very private. She never shares anything personal that is written in the log and whenever she notices people heading to the booth, she makes sure to give them their privacy. She understands the importance of giving people the time to grieve in their own way. “There's just so many different ways that people experience grief. As many different ways as people love or have a family.” She said, “There's a lot of diversity and there's also a lot of shared experiences. It's quite moving.” You can find the location of the wind phone on the booth’s Instagram account which is @goosefieldswindphone, or by clicking here .

Mother's Day without a mother can be difficult, even if it wasn't a big holiday before.

On April 15th political scientist and author, Dr. Robert D. Putnam gave a lecture at Salve Regina University called What is the State of American Democracy Today?, which was cosponsored by RENewport , a community collaborative based in Newport. Dr. Putnam is known for his work on how civic engagement in society is a bellwether for the state of democracy. One of his best-known works is Bowling Alone in America: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , which addresses the cultural consequences of dramatically declining rates of participation in America’s civic associations, from religious communities to recreational clubs. The talk was kicked off by an introduction from former U.S. Representative for Rhode Island, David Cicilline who is now the president and chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Foundation. The day prior to the talk, a screening of a documentary about Dr. Putnam’s work called Join or Die was screened at the Jane Pickens Theater. The political scientist began the talk by discussing the current state of our political system and democracy. “I’ve tried very hard in my work to be bipartisan,” he said, mentioning that he has worked with “all three Bush’s” during his career as a political scientist. However, what he did assert is that America today has reached historic levels of political polarization, economic inequality, social isolation and cultural self-centeredness, which is reflected in our current political situation. He explained that the wealth gap that exists now is bigger than it was even in the Gilded Age. The only time similar to what we are going through now was at the turn of the 20th century. What happened after this period was the establishment of social security, the Boys Scouts of America and other civic safety nets. Dr. Putnam explained that the ‘60s were considered a time when Americans were most equal in economic terms, although he was quick to point out the lack of equality for women and people of color. Now, “we are a class-divided society,” he said, not just in economic terms, but in recognition. “We don’t think the person pumping gas is the same as us.” He said. Dr. Putnam suggested that the next time the audience members go to a supermarket checkout or have their gas pumped for them, that they ask themselves, “do I think of that person as an equal?” According to Dr. Putnam, we as a society were able to fix similar problems before, so we should be able to fix the problems we face now. What we need is to engage our youth more to lead these movements, much like what Greta Thunberg has done with climate change, as well as ensure that it is grassroots led. It needs to be bottom-up, not top down. “We should be getting to work locally,” he said. The political scientist also talked about social media’s role in this lack of “social capital” as he calls civic engagement. Studies have shown that social media platforms like X and Facebook are designed to favor outrage and anger over other types of messaging, as well as foster in people feeling of increased isolation and loneliness. Face-to-fact engagement just cannot be replaced by a virtual reality. According to Dr. Putnam, what we need is a renewed sense of moral obligation to fix our society. “It won’t get fixed this time unless you and your children and students take up this moral calling,” he said as he addressed the full auditorium. “I think for sure there is the desire to fix the problem,” he continued. Dr. Putnam concluded the talk saying that he was hopeful for the future and paraphrased the late English Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks that optimism is a passive virtue, but hope is an active one. Hopefully we can all be more hopeful!

Shrinking is a series that came out this year on Apple TV+ and those of us that have watched it at Memorial Funeral home loved it! The series is irreverent in many ways and if you are not a fan of shall we say, mature (or perhaps immature) humor, then it might not be the … Shrinking: a show about grief and laughter Read More » The post Shrinking: a show about grief and laughter appeared first on Newport RI | Memorial Funeral Home.

When a loved one passes away — no matter how expected their passing might be –the list of things that need to be done can be overwhelming. That is why it is important to share the load with friends and family. The only way to get through it all is to divide and conquer. Hopefully, … First Steps After Someone Dies Read More » The post First Steps After Someone Dies appeared first on Newport RI | Memorial Funeral Home.

I am a fan of stand-up comedy and one comedian I enjoy is Rob Delaney. He is not for the faint of heart as he pushes many envelopes and is quite gritty. A few years back he disappeared from stand-up which caused me to search for him. He was working on a show in London, and I learned that he and his wife, Leah, had lived through the unbearable loss of their two-year-old son Henry to brain cancer in 2018. They experienced the insufferable death of their precious sweet bundle of joy, and the cruel reality that we are not in charge of what happens to us and those we love. After the death of my husband (almost 10 years ago) I found reading about loss experiences of others to be a comfort. It may seem odd or like I was seeking out more pain and suffering, but really what I was searching for was company, I was tired of feeling alone in my grief. Books like Delaney’s make me feel less isolated. Delaney wrote about the experience in A Heart That Works in 2022. Should you choose this book, buckle up as it is not easy on the eyes or ears and yet I can imagine for some it might bring inexplicable comfort for those who have experienced a loss like his. He gives voice to a painful and true-life event that happens to families across the globe that are often relegated to pediatric hospitals, hospices facilities, and private homes. I appreciate and applaud his bravery for letting us into his tender, vulnerable, and intimate life. Delaney has definite opinions about the world in which we live, especially around healthcare in the US and he makes no bones about it in his real-life comparison to the free public healthcare accessible to all residents in the UK, where his family lives. He swears a lot and if that bothers you, I recommend you pass on this short work of art and testament to his love for family and especially for his late son Henry. Some of the descriptions are hard to witness about the medical aspects of Henry’s illness, treatment, and death. Delaney’s candor is both arresting and refreshing, he does not mince words or worry about you as a reader. He paints a realistic picture of the devastating and overwhelming experiences of hospital life with a toddler struggling through brain cancer and tempers it with effortless gratitude and grace. Delaney, originally from New England, is now in his late ‘40s and has struggled with depression and alcoholism in his life. In this book, he is able to shine a light for us on lessons that surface about life and death. His humanity is raw and unedited, and he shares it with those of us who decide to witness it. If you take a risk listening to or reading his memoir let us know what you think.