Opening Up the Conversation About Death — An Interview with Suzette Sherman, Founder of SevenPonds

by | Dec 19, 2019 | End of Life

Eight years ago, Suzette Sherman founded SevenPonds, a startup that provides resources for those involved in end-of-life experiences. The name Seven Ponds comes from seven glacier-formed lakes, called the Seven Ponds, in Metamora, Michigan, where Sherman’s grandparents founded a summer vacation community, and where their ashes were scattered after they died. 

Suzette ShermanTheir deaths led Sherman to exploring death and dying and her desire to promote a more open and comfortable approach to the end of life.

She and her colleagues at SevenPonds encourage a healthy attitude towards the process of death and provide an information library about end-of-life as well as links to local resources and vendors, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We spoke on the phone earlier this year, shortly after I listened to a recording of her talk at the Commonwealth Club — Let’s Talk about Death: How Boomers Are Transforming the Last Taboo.

I see you are, or were, an interior designer. How did you get from design into the death and dying business?

For me, it was a creative path. It goes back to my grandmother’s death, twenty years ago. As a designer, I was a problem-solver. Death is a rich, expansive topic that really engaged me, and I approached it in a visual way, with design thinking. (What is design thinking?)

Since I’m also business oriented, that led me to create this online platform to help transform end-of-life to a comfortable place. 

We celebrate when someone is born. We’re comfortable with that. And we celebrate other life milestones. But not so much death. Our culture isn’t comfortable talking about death. Though that’s changing. We’re going through a cultural transformation. 

Tell me more about the vision and goal for SevenPonds.

Ultimately, we’re about educating people. Opening the conversation. What’s fascinating to me is that I participate in a lot of events and networking with these end-of-life experts, who’ve been doing this stuff for years, and there’s this sense that everyone knows how much is going on, but outside this movement, we’re invisible. 

So it’s a subculture, like, say, bicyclists in Marin County, but we see them — the death positive movement is more invisible? 

Right. But I see the change happening. There are the boomers who are mostly focusing on their parents’ aging and dying. They want to know what all the options are. Makes sense that that would come from the boomers. Mostly, people don’t know about all these options until they need to. 

But there’s also this younger generation that’s having its own conversation. I see it on Instagram, more of a death-positive mentality. One of the first people I brought on to work with me was a young designer who had done her thesis at Academy of Art University on natural burial. It’s not as much of a taboo subject for younger adults. 

There’s still a long way to go, however. I recently did my dad’s advance care directive and POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment), and my dad’s doctor, she was flabbergasted. In a good way. My parents live in Florida, in the largest retirement community in the country, but the doctor is not used to people being proactive about how they want to die. Planning like what we did is still pretty uncommon. We’re not having the conversation broadly yet.

So, your business plan. Your educational work is possible because your site is a resource for local vendors — green burial services, cremation shrouds, grief counseling. Sounds like your focus is mostly after death.

Mostly, but we deal with terminal illness treatment, advance care directives, the whole process. You know one important thing about being an online platform. People have become so comfortable surfing the web, and this is especially true for subjects like death that are uncomfortable to talk about. There was a study I read about how one of the search trends and a common questions was, “how do I know if I’m gay?” It was a reminder that before people talk about these difficult issues, they look them up on the web. They can research online with less anxiety than in person.

I heard you say in your Commonwealth Club talk that cremation is now approaching 50 percent in the country. How did that happen? I don’t think a lot of people are aware of that huge shift. 

That’s a combination of reasons. For some people, it’s cheaper, more ecological. It doesn’t use land in the same way a casket does. And some people don’t want to go through the whole funeral home experience. I sum it up as changing attitudes, a different way of looking at life, and death. 

What about natural burial? When my dog died, I dug a hole in the backyard and buried her there. You can’t do that with a human. Or can you?

It’s interesting that so many people ask about the rules about burial. Obviously, in San Francisco, you can’t bury someone in your yard, but there are a large number of counties in the United States where there’s a lot of land. So there are options, but the problem with doing this on your own property is what if you sell. Then will the family members want an easement so they can go to the burial site. It’s complicated. 

Clearly, you have a mission, but you’re also a startup business and you want and need to attract visitors and vendors. Money is almost as uncomfortable a subject to talk about as death and dying, and financial success is only one measure of success, but I’d love to know how your business is doing? 

We are reaching a lot of people and things could not be going better. Thanks for asking! We are one of the top websites and are truly honored to helping people in all aspects of their end-of-life experiences.

What’s next for you and SevenPonds? 

We’re redesigning our website. It needs to grow up with the topic. There’s so much to talk about. We have a team of bloggers and we do more articles on death, dying, end-of-life than just about anyone, and yet we never seem to run out of ideas. 

It’s frustrating that the culture still doesn’t have a space for end-of-life. Within one network, for example, it’s classified under “health.”

That’s an example of the culture shift that still needs to happen.

It’s easy to forget that not long ago, cancer was something no one talked about. They didn’t even use the word. That was the case when my dad lost his mom. She was at home, and wanted to stay at home, but they took her to the hospital. You did what the doctor said back then. That’s not the way it is anymore. 

In the early days of the midwife movement, a lot of people thought it was going to be huge, but it didn’t happen that way. Having the birth at home might be preferable, but there’s a scary element, that something might happen, that you might need medical help. When someone is dying, you’re not worried about that. 

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To learn more, go to sevenponds.com or @SevenPonds.

Why Is a Book About Mercy Killing ‘Touchy’ But a Murder Mystery Isn’t?

by | Dec 9, 2019 | End of Life

Isn’t it curious that we watch movies and read books full of bloody murders without batting an eyelash, while a novel about assisted suicide is considered controversial? 

In November, I read a review on GoodReads about my new novel, When I Killed My Father: An Assisted-Suicide Family Thriller:

This indeed was a page turner. Although I really wouldn’t support or approve of any assisted suicide, this was really interesting to read about. 

When I Killed My FatherI wrote the reviewer a note saying I was glad she enjoyed it, and asked — since she noted she didn’t support assisted suicide — if she assumed I did. 

My intention, I wrote, was to tell a compelling and entertaining story, not advocate for any particular position. I deliberately avoided taking a stand on what should be legal or not. 

But I do believe we should think and talk more about end-of-life questions — as individuals, families, and in our overall society. 

When I wrote earlier murder mysteries, no one assumed I advocated murder. No reviewers felt the need to qualify their thoughts: “Of course I don’t approve of murder…”

I knew that this story, about a man ending his dying father’s life, would be controversial. And sure, the title is provocative. But I didn’t expect the blowback.

I hosted two book launch events this fall as part of Reimagine End of Life, a Bay Area “festival” exploring questions about life and death. I titled my event, “Why I Wrote an Assisted-Suicide Family Thriller,” and billed it as one part book reading and one part conversation about end-of-life concerns, such as family decisions, dementia and dying. 

One event was in my neighborhood, at the Tam Valley Cabin on Tennessee Valley Road, where I’ve volunteered for five summers at the Creekside Fridays concerts. I asked the woman in charge if our local park department might co-sponsor the book event. 

She said they were too busy in October with the Haunted House and other activities, and also, that it was a touchy subject. She wasn’t sure what she felt about it.

Fair enough. But the department produces a murder mystery dinner theater every year, and no one questions that for being too touchy.  

And there’s the difference. The murder mysteries are full of jokes and pratfalls, meant to entertain. They’re a comic variation on those shoot-em-up action films where bodies are dropping everywhere, or the TV cop shows that invariably include a gunfight that takes out all the bad guys. Afterwards, the heroes go out drinking and tell jokes.

All that is make-believe. In our real world, killing someone or just seeing someone die is a ghastly event. If your parent or other loved one is sick and suffering — lingering before death — it is worse yet. So though I called my book a thriller, paced it accordingly, and aimed to be as entertaining as the Tam Valley murder mysteries, I wanted it to be more than that. If it makes people uncomfortable, maybe I got it right.