Life After Death: The Moth Radio Hour

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Speaker 3 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jay Allison.
This is an hour of stories about life after death.

Speaker 3 And if you don't mind, I'll start with a quote from Keanu Reeves, who, when asked by Stephen Colbert what he thinks happens after we die, said, I know the ones who love us will miss us.

Speaker 3 In this show, a bunch more answers to that question from a doctor, a Renaissance fair gravedigger, and of course, the loved ones we leave behind.

Speaker 3 We start with Panduranga Rao, who told this at an open mic story slam in Ann Arbor, where we partner with Michigan Public. Here's Panduranga live from the moth.

Speaker 5 Hello, I'm Pandu.

Speaker 5 I'm a doctor. You might have guessed that because I'm Indian.

Speaker 5 Anyway.

Speaker 5 But it's particularly relevant to what I'm going to say about belonging.

Speaker 5 I finished medical school in 1986.

Speaker 5 And like a lot of my classmates, although I graduated and here I was an official doctor, I still felt like an imposter.

Speaker 5 I still felt that, you know, am I really a doctor?

Speaker 4 Do I really deserve to be a doctor?

Speaker 5 But, you know, I didn't have the courage to actually face that.

Speaker 5 So I had to go looking for a job and

Speaker 5 I lived in a place called Madras and the job interview was in New Delhi, 1,500 miles away, so I took a train.

Speaker 5 So being a newly minted doctor, obviously I could travel only by third class in the Indian Railways, which is what I took, sitting among all of the ordinary folks.

Speaker 5 And it was time for lunch and everybody ignored you. They all took out the lunch boxes and

Speaker 5 started to eat. And here I was sitting all alone feeling sorry for myself.

Speaker 5 One of the things that the Indian Railway requires when you reserve a ticket

Speaker 5 is it says specifically if you're a doctor, please state you're a doctor.

Speaker 5 you know if I were to fill up that form now I would carefully avoid saying that I'm a doctor but at that time since I've newly graduated I proudly wrote Dr. Pandu

Speaker 5 and in India they always call you by your first name Dr. Pandu

Speaker 5 and here I was sitting in the compartment and

Speaker 5 Suddenly there was this ticket checker who walked down the train

Speaker 5 calling out where's Dr. Pandu where's Dr.
Pandu?

Speaker 5 And suddenly there was silence, and everybody became very alert. You know, who's this Dr.
Pandu among us? And then I very, you know, bravely raised my hand and said, I'm here.

Speaker 5 And they said, do you mind coming with me, sir? I said, sure.

Speaker 5 I felt very important and then walked along with him. And we went right up to the end of the train.

Speaker 5 And even as I approached the end of the train, I knew there was something sinister and bad which was going to happen.

Speaker 5 And at the end of the train, propped up in the last seat in the train compartment, was this very old man who had died.

Speaker 5 And as we came closer, the ticket checker turned to me and said,

Speaker 5 sir, we want your help in this case. So I thought he was going to ask me to find out what's going on.

Speaker 5 Then he deflated me by telling, we actually know this person is dead.

Speaker 5 So then I looked at him and said, what do you want me for? He said, well,

Speaker 5 we want you to certify that he's dead

Speaker 5 because if you don't certify that he's dead, we have to stop the train at the next station.

Speaker 5 take him out to the rear nearest railway hospital in an ambulance, get him certified there and then bring him back to the train and there's going to be a delay of eight hours.

Speaker 5 And so I said, okay, that seems like a reasonable request. Can you get me a stethoscope?

Speaker 5 So he looked at me and asked, what is that? I said, well, I need to check his heart. He said, no, we don't have any of that here.

Speaker 5 So the closest thing I could get to certify that somebody had passed was to look at the pupils. So I said, okay, at least get me a flashlight.
And so he readily ran and got a flashlight.

Speaker 5 And as you know, all the train ticket examiners in India, they carry a flashlight which is five feet long.

Speaker 5 So he got this huge flashlight and I had to go back and shine it.

Speaker 5 And then lo and behold, the pupils were dilated. And indeed, this poor chap had passed.

Speaker 5 And so they gave me the papers and I I certified him as dead. It was a very sad event, but I nonetheless did that and it was with a sense of some accomplishment that I did that.

Speaker 5 And then I started walking back to my third class seat. By the time the word had spread that there is this doctor among our midst

Speaker 5 who actually certified a patient to have passed and because of that he saved us eight hours of waiting

Speaker 5 and then when I sat there

Speaker 5 immediately everybody gathered around me and asked me where I was from do you want some food take this food take this coffee

Speaker 5 take this drink and I became a hero

Speaker 5 And it was at that time I suddenly realized who I was and what it meant to be a doctor.

Speaker 5 That despite doing something so intensely sad,

Speaker 5 despite

Speaker 5 doing something

Speaker 5 which should actually cause so much of grief, I yet managed to bring so much of comfort and stability to everybody else around me. And I felt really proud of being a doctor and felt I have arrived.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Panduranga Rao is a nephrologist at the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor.

Speaker 3 He told us that despite significant advances, patients with kidney disease, especially those on dialysis, have a higher mortality than the general population.

Speaker 3 So he deals with death quite often in his field, but has never gotten used to it. We asked Dr.

Speaker 3 Pandu if he still feels the way he did at the end of his story, that as a doctor, despite doing something intensely sad, he manages to bring comfort to others.

Speaker 6 Absolutely. I'm especially humbled when the family reaches out to me after a patient passes and thanks me.

Speaker 6 Time and again I'm reminded about the unique role the doctor plays in the patient's and the family's life.

Speaker 6 the comfort and the strength they always offer to the family and about how privileged I am to practice medicine, even in these turbulent times, or perhaps especially in these turbulent times.

Speaker 3 Our next story also comes from Ann Arbor, from a moth grand slam, in which 10 slam winners are invited to tell a new story and compete to be crowned the ultimate storytelling champion, at least for the moment.

Speaker 3 From Ann Arbor, here's Jaron Ege.

Speaker 7 I keep a list in my phone of the names of my friends who came to my father's visitation.

Speaker 7 I have never admitted that before because it feels grossly self-indulgent to have it.

Speaker 7 I felt strange about this list for a long time, even though I never revisited it, until one day I found in my father's nightstand after he passed all of the birthday cards that my sister and I had ever written to him.

Speaker 7 And I wondered whether he ever revisited those loving words or if they served the same function that my list did for me, in that their mere existence was enough reassurance that somebody cared for him in this large and often lonely world.

Speaker 7 I am trying to be more honest like my father was.

Speaker 7 In the conversations that I had with people at his visitation who knew him well, there was one quality that they kept repeating, that he was a very honest man.

Speaker 7 Almost as if they were getting paid to say it.

Speaker 7 And even though my father joked his way through life, he was the kind of person who, when he said he would do something, he did it.

Speaker 7 That's why it was a big deal that when he promised me that when he died, if he became a ghost, that he would come back and give me some sort of sign that he was, in fact, Turkish Gasper.

Speaker 7 Let me backtrack to August 2017.

Speaker 7 My dad was recently diagnosed with a rare complication of cancer that gave him about a six-month prognosis.

Speaker 7 By the time I started my sophomore year in college in September, I was driving home every weekend to a new downfall of my dad's health.

Speaker 7 The first weekend, he'd be in a wheelchair, the next weekend, he'd be using a catheter, the next weekend, he was bedridden.

Speaker 7 I decided that I needed to record his voice, and it's Halloween 2017, and I'm sitting across from my father.

Speaker 7 I secretly press record on my phone and put it away, and we start our normal bantering, sarcasm, light-hearted conversation. And I go, okay, Bubba, now this is serious, okay?

Speaker 7 I know you're an atheist, and I know you don't believe in an afterlife, but I have a proposition.

Speaker 7 If you find yourself existing in some form, somewhere after you pass, then I need you to come back and give me a sign in some way. Like, don't be too obvious, but don't make it too subtle.

Speaker 7 If you want, there's these plants by my windowsill on my dorm, in my dorm bedroom, or along the window.

Speaker 7 If your mom and dad inevitably piss you off up there, just come down, knock one of those plants, and I'll know.

Speaker 7 He smiles at me, or smiles at the thought of getting to see his parents again, and he says, I promise, which was the best answer.

Speaker 7 Fast forward to

Speaker 7 about two weeks after November 29th, which was the day that we lost him, I'm in my bed in my dorm room

Speaker 7 and I'm on my phone when the wind knocks down one of the plants in my bedroom and spills all over the ground. And I stand up carefully, I

Speaker 7 inspect the crime scene, looking for patterns in the soil that might be spelling out like my name or his name or hello or some obvious sign that I remembered I told him not to give me, but that I desperately wanted in that moment.

Speaker 7 And before I can list the thousand plus logical reasons of why that was a coincidence, I decide to let myself believe that it wasn't.

Speaker 7 I decide to let myself believe that my dad is somehow, somewhere with me.

Speaker 7 And then I think to myself, oh, he must be pissed that there's an afterlife. Like all those years of denying and denying, and now he's around all these people going, we told you so.

Speaker 7 And the only thing that my dad hated more than dishonesty was being wrong.

Speaker 7 When I first read the theme of this night,

Speaker 7 it felt like a faded nudge to finally take a leap to listen to that voice recording that I've had aging in my phone for four and a half years. But I'm trying to be more honest, like my father was.

Speaker 7 And the truth is, I am not ready to listen to it.

Speaker 7 Maybe.

Speaker 7 Sorry.

Speaker 7 Maybe the true leap in the story is that

Speaker 7 is concluding that that sign was not a coincidence and it was from my father. Maybe there's

Speaker 7 the natural law of physics to explain that the window was open, the wind knocked down the blinds and knocked down the plant.

Speaker 7 But in the same way that my list served me and in the same way that those cards served my father, I'm going to choose to believe that somewhere out there he has and is still caring for me in this large and often lonely world.

Speaker 7 Because sometimes holding on is a big enough hurdle. Thank you.

Speaker 3 That was Jaren Ege.

Speaker 3 Jaren is a Turkish-American creative writer, storyteller, soon-to-be lawyer in New York City. We reached out to Jaren to see if she's listened to that recording of her dad.

Speaker 7 So I did finally listen to the recording pretty randomly while I was on a flight last year. And as I was listening, my headphones died about halfway through the recording.

Speaker 7 And it felt like a painful reminder of when I lost him, losing his voice earlier than I expected to. It's still funny to think about the irony of it.
And it still sits only half listened to.

Speaker 7 I think the right time will find me to listen to the rest.

Speaker 7 Since the plant incident, he has visited me a few more times, thankfully.

Speaker 7 He's also visited during a conversation with my mom when we were poking fun of his grey sweatsuit he loved to wear, and then the framed picture collage of him in the kitchen slammed to the ground.

Speaker 7 Even though he's dead, he still finds a way to stand up for himself.

Speaker 7 And I'll lastly add that if hearing the story made you think of anyone, then reach out to them. Human connection is all we have.

Speaker 3 Jaren told us she believes the beauty of life can't be fully appreciated before the reality of death is.

Speaker 3 In a moment, a mother disperses her worldly possessions, and a Renfair actor commits to his role as a gravedigger when the moth radio hour continues.

Speaker 3 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 3 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison.
In this show, we're exploring what happens after death. Our next story comes from Noreen Grimes.

Speaker 3 Noreen told this at an Open Mic Story Slam in Washington, D.C., where we partner with public radio station WAMU. Here's Noreen, live at the mall.

Speaker 10 There was 50 years of living in that house, and we had to make it empty. It had taken us almost a year to begin the business of settling my mother's affairs and dispersing her personal things.

Speaker 10 That was the title she had written on a 50-cent black and white composition book, The Disbursement of Goods.

Speaker 10 She'd read somewhere that it cut way down on family fighting if the goods were delegated in writing beforehand.

Speaker 10 So every family member had a page with their name across the top and a list underneath of anything they had ever expressed interest in when visiting with mom.

Speaker 10 In the last five years, she got a little sneaky with the book. She'd follow you around the house with it.

Speaker 10 You like that picture?

Speaker 10 You want that picture?

Speaker 4 Scribble, scribble, scribble.

Speaker 10 You like that bowl? You want

Speaker 4 that bowl.

Speaker 4 Scribble, scribble, scribble.

Speaker 10 And we all shook her off the same way. Stop with the book already.
We don't want to talk about this now.

Speaker 10 But when faced with the challenge of emptying our family home, that book was a treasure. Like the four pictures at the top of the stairs.
I told my sister, I always liked them.

Speaker 10 I have a perfect spot for them. She'd say, check the book.

Speaker 10 Sorry, Noreen. The book says they go to grandson number three.

Speaker 10 Darn.

Speaker 10 What about that ugly blue and orange vase?

Speaker 5 Check the book.

Speaker 10 Oh, the book says it goes to Noreen.

Speaker 10 But I don't want it.

Speaker 10 It didn't matter. In this settlement, if it was in that book, you had to take it.

Speaker 10 And in this particular case, when you turn that vase upside down, there was a little yellow sticker on the bottom of it with my name on it. So that made it a double whammy.

Speaker 10 And we knew this process of emptying our family home was going to be very sad for us, but earlier on, we were geniuses.

Speaker 10 The day of her funeral, if you came back to the house after the service, we forced you to take a swan from her swan collection.

Speaker 10 This emptied two curio cabinets.

Speaker 10 And what about all those floral vases she'd saved in the basement? They'd all come through the same local florist just down the street. We boxed them up and gave them back.

Speaker 10 I mean the florist she cried, but she cleaned them, reused them, and we saw another big old box go out the front door.

Speaker 10 We Virginia siblings, we made a pile for the California brother and we made a pile for the Texas brother. And we said, get on back here and get your disbursements

Speaker 10 and take them back to your own homes.

Speaker 10 But the Texas brother, he says, he only wants one thing. When he was a kid, he found a rock shaped like an egg.
And at Easter, he'd painted it blue and given it to mom.

Speaker 10 By the time his big old truck rolled on out of here, he had three twin beds.

Speaker 10 a box full of every card or photo he had ever sent mom because because of course she had saved them all,

Speaker 10 a wooden clock cut in the shape of the state of Texas,

Speaker 10 and a tiny blue egg rock.

Speaker 10 The day that we had to take our six senior high school pictures down off the wall, and we saw the faded paint, the shadows of the frames left behind.

Speaker 10 That was a tough day. But then the rooms began to echo, And we knew if we didn't dig our heels in, we would never get this job done.
So that's when my sister decided to make it fun.

Speaker 10 She got it into her head that mama had hidden money somewhere in the house.

Speaker 10 My mom had a ton of nice, tiny shoes. We were donating them to the senior center.
Was there money tucked inside those shoes?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 We finally finished and we walked outside around the empty house now and that's when we saw the tire swing hanging back there by the creek and we were exhausted. Forget it.
The swing stays.

Speaker 10 About a month after it went on the market, a realtor in the area put down an acceptable bid. She was married with a four-year-old and had just found out that she was pregnant.

Speaker 4 Yay,

Speaker 10 the house was filling up again.

Speaker 10 Thank you.

Speaker 3 That was Noreen Grimes.

Speaker 3 In 2016, Noreen retired from a range of careers, including bank teller, dental office manager, administrative assistant to a corporate trainer, with six years in the middle at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.

Speaker 3 now she uses her free time working on DIY plumbing and electrical projects. Noreen's daughter requested the blue and orange vase after her grandmother's passing.

Speaker 3 It now resides on a prominent shelf in her home. Noreen's name sticker is still in the bottom.
You can see it at themoth.org. We asked Noreen what else she inherited from her mom.

Speaker 8 I inherited way too many other notable items to mention, but I did did get five of her multitudinous display of houseplants.

Speaker 8 Mama has been gone almost 11 years, and her Christmas cactus never fails to bloom for me on time.

Speaker 3 We also asked Noreen what non-physical thing her mother passed down to her and her siblings.

Speaker 8 The joy of laughing. The actual physical act of laughing.
My mom had the prettiest smile, but the greatest laugh.

Speaker 8 My dad could really get her doubled over sitting at the kitchen table during family tea time,

Speaker 8 and we kids just adored hearing her bust up. We Grimes kids always look for the funny side of a situation, and we never hesitate to giggle, chortle, guffaw.

Speaker 8 We never hold anything back when it comes to laughing because, well, because mama made it sound so good.

Speaker 3 Our next story comes from a New York main stage at St. Anne and the Holy Trinity Church with the theme Body and Soul.
Here's Jake Ottison live at the mall.

Speaker 11 In January of 2018, I was living in Portland, Oregon, and it was raining.

Speaker 11 I'm on my way to a job I don't particularly care about, and I'm feeling really like disconnected from my creativity. See, I'd come to Portland a couple of years before that because,

Speaker 11 well, I'm an actor and a theater maker, and I had heard that Portland is a place you can go to find inspiration. All those creative weirdos that have wound up in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 11 Sounded like a great idea, and I was sort of burnt out on New York City, but now I was feeling burnt out in Portland.

Speaker 11 And I was thinking, when was a time when I really felt inspired like when I was connected when I felt like I could bring all of myself to my work and I knew the answer right away

Speaker 11 a Renaissance Festival

Speaker 11 oh yeah that's right for four summers out of college I was an actor at the Sterling Renaissance Festival now for the uninitiated a Renaissance festival is basically like a giant carnival if that carnival took place in 1585 Elizabethan England, and the Queen of England herself is coming to town.

Speaker 11 You walk in through those front gates, and it's like a wooded wonderland, a Renaissance village brimming with excitement and entertainment.

Speaker 11 You look over here, and there's a juggler swallowing swords, and over there, there's a tavern with raucous music, and there's folks dressed all in Renaissance garb while the pirates sing sea shanties.

Speaker 11 And you just get to wander through, grab your giant turkey leg and your mug of mead, bring out your inner child and have the best day ever.

Speaker 11 And it was part of my job as one of the actors to make the place feel even more immersive.

Speaker 11 For example, one year, I played a thief character, and you would find me off to the side of the road with my band of thieves loudly arguing about who stole the best thing that day.

Speaker 11 And then I'd see you and I'd say, oh, God's my life. I do recognize thee.
Thou art the most famed thief in all of England. Do come here.
I am so glad to meet you. Please settle this argument for us.

Speaker 11 And I'm riding that bus.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, man, I gotta go back to the Renaissance Festival.

Speaker 11 So that night, I call up the creative director and I say, hey, it's been a minute, but is there any chance that you have a job for me this summer? And he said, sure.

Speaker 11 Come on down. And just like that, I was strapping on the old cod piece and heading back to the Elizabethan woods to make magic and find myself again.
Huzzah!

Speaker 11 Now, a couple weeks roll by, and I get an email with the cast list. These are all the people who are going to be sharing the summer with me, my fellow actors.

Speaker 11 And I'm looking through the list and I'm thinking, oh, great, I wonder who of my old friends are going to be there.

Speaker 11 I'm looking through, I'm looking through, and I'm not recognizing any of the names, really.

Speaker 11 And I'm thinking, okay, like, where's Matt, who played this amazing architect character that would walk around and say zany things?

Speaker 11 Or my friend Mary Lane, who was an unforgettable pirate, or my friend Donna, who played this incredible body tavern wench character that would tell these Elizabethan jokes that had you like rolling in the dirt.

Speaker 11 But none of those people were going to be there. And I started to feel kind of like nervous, like, hold up.

Speaker 11 All of my memories of that place are with these people and is it going to give me what I want if my people aren't there?

Speaker 11 So I go to the festival, and my fears are more or less confirmed because,

Speaker 11 well, a lot of the new folks, they're right out of college, and I don't know how this math works out, but somehow they're like 10 years younger than me.

Speaker 11 And they're talking about memes I don't understand.

Speaker 11 And there are some folks there who I had worked with before, but they've been doing this for decades, and they got their own thing going on. And so I'm just really having trouble connecting.

Speaker 11 And I should say that we are up there for for a whole month before the festival opens. And it's kind of like this intensive rehearsal boot camp.

Speaker 11 Like you're learning to think and speak in Shakespearean English so that you can improvise in character all day. And this is usually where the cast really bonds.
It wasn't really happening.

Speaker 11 And so I thought, okay, well, if not the cast, then, you know, maybe when I get more into character, I'll feel better. So

Speaker 11 I get my costume. I'm excited for this, but I show up and they say, oh, you're playing a gravedigger.
Okay, here's a giant floppy hat and an oversized vest. Now get out of here.

Speaker 11 We got to costume the queen.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 11 And then to make matters worse, I didn't realize that as a gravedigger, I would have kind of a solo role. Whereas in the past, I'd had sort of these family units to bounce energy off of.

Speaker 11 This time, I had come seeking connection, but I was going to just be the creepy old man by himself in the graveyard.

Speaker 11 So the festival opens, and I'm still holding on to these feelings of not exactly belonging, wondering when it's gonna kick in.

Speaker 11 But I'm doing my thing, I'm in my graveyard, which is a really nice little set.

Speaker 11 It's got a couple of crumbling graves and a you know, a wagon, and I'm there with my prop shovel yelling to people about how their grave is ready.

Speaker 11 And could they remind me when they were thinking of dying so I can mark it down?

Speaker 11 That you you know, gravedigger stuff.

Speaker 11 And I still don't feel, I'm not feeling it. And my friend Kristen, who works as a musician at the festival,

Speaker 11 she comes up to the graveyard and sort of pulls me aside around midday and says, hey, I have a really odd request. Could you help us with something?

Speaker 4 I go over.

Speaker 11 She's standing with a man that I don't recognize, and she says,

Speaker 11 We would like to bury Donna's ashes.

Speaker 11 And I knew right away who she was talking about.

Speaker 11 Donna was an actor that I had worked with many years before at the festival. And sadly, I had heard that in the past year she had been battling a terrible cancer and she passed away.
And now

Speaker 11 the man there was

Speaker 11 had been married to Donna and brought her ashes thinking

Speaker 11 we could like scatter a few around in this place that she loved. But then they saw me in the graveyard and they thought, well, we could do one better and have a real ceremony in the middle of the day.

Speaker 11 And she said, who do we have to ask for permission to do this? And immediately I was like, no one.

Speaker 11 Who cares? I'm the gravedigger. Let's do this.

Speaker 11 So then we had a plan. They went to get people who had known Donna, who might want to be a part of this ceremony.
And I, because I'm the gravedigger, prepared the graveyard.

Speaker 11 Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to like

Speaker 11 dig a hole with a prop shovel,

Speaker 11 but

Speaker 11 it's like smashing the ground with a rock.

Speaker 11 And it was taking a long, long time. And I was getting nervous, like, this has to kind of look good.
And then I'm looking down, thinking, I should make this look nicer.

Speaker 11 And I got a bunch of nice like rocks that I thought were pretty and I put them in a circle around the hole. And I'm sweating.

Speaker 11 I'm wiping my brow with that floppy hat and I suddenly hear music and look over to the tavern that's near the graveyard and a processional has begun.

Speaker 11 There are about 10 people. They're dressed in different costumes.
Some of them are actors. Some of them are longtime fairgoers

Speaker 11 and they're making their way to my graveyard. And in the front there are some minstrels playing music.

Speaker 11 They're sort of kicking up dust as they walk, which adds this haze to this kind of silly-looking, somber scene.

Speaker 11 They come into the graveyard. I welcome them, ask them to, you know, gather around the hole that I dug.
And it's almost golden hour at this point, so the sun is slanting through the trees.

Speaker 11 And Michael has Donna's ashes and thanks everybody for coming and says, you know, Donna would think that this is hilarious.

Speaker 11 And I look around at this motley crew, and we're some of us half in character.

Speaker 11 I mean, my friend Frank is there with a hat that has cartoonishly gigantic feathers, but he's taken it off out of respect.

Speaker 11 And the guy playing Sir Francis Drake is wearing these like pumpkin pants, and we're just a bunch of pretend people in a pretend graveyard in the middle of a Renaissance festival having a serious ceremony.

Speaker 11 And Michael puts the ashes in the hole as my friend Andy starts to sing Parting Glass, which is a traditional Irish funeral song.

Speaker 4 It goes,

Speaker 4 Of

Speaker 4 all the comrades ever I've had,

Speaker 4 they're sorry

Speaker 11 for my

Speaker 4 going

Speaker 4 away.

Speaker 11 And I invite everybody, if they'd like, to take a handful of dirt and place it into the hole to say their individual goodbyes.

Speaker 11 When it comes to my turn,

Speaker 11 I think about Donna

Speaker 11 and the gift she had, how in her bright blue eyes you would see mischief dancing. And when she looked at you or she looked at a whole audience, you felt like you were part of her family.

Speaker 11 And now here we all were.

Speaker 11 And I took my shovel and I covered the rest of the hole. And then one of the women with us, who was a longtime fairgoer, picked up a stone and placed it in the middle of that circle.

Speaker 11 And she said, there,

Speaker 11 now it looks like a boob.

Speaker 11 Which I know is a terribly inappropriate thing at a funeral, but I am telling you that is exactly the kind of joke that Donna would make. And we are laughing because Donna is laughing with us.

Speaker 11 And I'm in the middle of these people. These These are my people, these people that take being silly seriously.

Speaker 11 And I realized, yeah, I had come to the Renaissance Fair like a pilgrim to a shrine, seeking this divine inspiration that was gonna fix me.

Speaker 11 But life doesn't work like that. You know, one day you're feeling like you're never gonna fit in, and the next day you're standing in a circle of love.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 because of Donna, it was like I was remeting the magic of that festival.

Speaker 11 And so, as we say at the end of each festival day, when we raise our glasses in a toast, merry meet, merry part,

Speaker 11 and merry meet again.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Jake Ottison is an actor and theater maker. He says he fled rainy Portland for windy Chicago.
He recently founded Hidden Wonders Immersive.

Speaker 3 It's a theater company dedicated to sparking the same sense of interactive adventure he first felt performing at the Renaissance Fair.

Speaker 3 Jake would also like to give a shout out to the Rescue Foundation, a non-profit that helps Renfair folks pay their medical bills.

Speaker 3 In a moment, a man receives a message from beyond the grave when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

Speaker 3 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 12 Truth or dare, how about both?

Speaker 12 This fall, the Moth is challenging what it means to be daring. We're not just talking about jumping out of airplanes or quitting your job.
We're talking about the quiet courage to be vulnerable.

Speaker 12 The bold decisions to reveal the secret that changed everything.

Speaker 12 This fall, the Moth mainstage season brings our most powerful stories to live audiences in 16 cities across the globe.

Speaker 12 Every one of those evenings will explore the singular theme of daring, but the stories and their tellers never be the same.

Speaker 12 So here's our dare to you. Experience the moth main stage live.
Find a city near you at themoth.org slash daring. Come on, we dare you.

Speaker 3 This is the moth radio hour. I'm Jay Allison.
No episode about life after death would be complete without a ghost story. Craig Chester told this at the City Winery in New York.

Speaker 3 It may be difficult to believe for the skeptics out there, but as a reminder, all moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Here's Craig, live from New York.

Speaker 4 A few years ago, I made, directing my first movie, sort of a big gay, goofy, romantic comedy with like line dancing and all this crazy stuff. Very R-rated humor.

Speaker 4 And Hollywood saw my movie and thought maybe they could bring me out there and I could make big, dumb, goofy, R-rated Hollywood movies. So I'd been an actor to this point.

Speaker 4 I'd never made any money and I thought, well, maybe I'll go out there, but I didn't know what to do. So a friend of mine suggested to go see a psychic on that breeze side named Reverend Catherine.

Speaker 4 So I'd never been to a psychic before, but I thought, you know, what the hell. So I'm sitting across from her and

Speaker 4 I'm going on about my career and my life. And the whole time I'm talking to her, she's looking over my shoulder at something that's not there.

Speaker 4 And finally, she speaks and she says,

Speaker 4 None of what you're talking about is important.

Speaker 4 There's a spirit of a dead gay actor around you,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 your next movie is going to be about this man. Who could this be?

Speaker 4 So, you know, I start throwing out some names. I'm like, Is it Anthony Perkins?

Speaker 4 She's like, No, it's he's saying I'm not Anthony Perkins.

Speaker 4 Well, is it Rock Hudson? And she's like, no, he doesn't like Rock Hudson.

Speaker 4 Is it Montgomery Clift? And she's like, oh, he's jumping down and out and saying, that's me, that's me, I'm Montgomery Clift.

Speaker 4 So for 45 minutes, Catherine uses herself as like a magical human iPhone to receive text from beyond.

Speaker 4 And Monty starts talking to Milamin.

Speaker 4 He's saying, you're having this life you couldn't have because you're an openly gay man and he was a closet case in the 50s and you're going to write this movie about him.

Speaker 4 He's going to get you into this house that he died in on the Upper East Side and this is so exciting. He's been waiting this long time for this reunion.

Speaker 4 And you know, I didn't really get any of the answers, you know, any of my questions answered, but I left there and I kind of blew it off.

Speaker 4 So I go out to LA, one of my big gay romantic comedy premieres.

Speaker 4 And I go to this restaurant and I'm sitting with like, you know, a bunch of people and there's this woman, Joseanne, sitting at the table. And she's very sweet.

Speaker 4 She's like a very suburban type of mom type person.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 while we're talking, somehow or another, you know, people are talking about famous Hollywood closet cases and Montgomery Cliff's name came up.

Speaker 4 And when his name came up, this woman, Joseanne, leans away like she's listening to something.

Speaker 4 She turns back to the table and she goes, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt all you guys. Craig, this Montgomery Cliff guy is attached to your hip.
And he's saying, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Speaker 4 He's talking a mile a minute.

Speaker 4 He's saying that you're having this life he couldn't have because of the time he lived in and he was gay and you're gay and something about a screenplay you're going to write for him and he's going to get you into this house that he died in.

Speaker 4 Now this woman, Joseanne, happens to be a psychic and she tells me everything that the woman in New York told me

Speaker 4 verbatim, word for word.

Speaker 4 Joseanne is sort of like this, she's sort of the opposite of Catherine, the New York psychic. She doesn't charge, she just talks to dead people.
She's been this way since she was five.

Speaker 4 And she's sort of like a psychic Carol Brady, you know,

Speaker 4 so I go home, I'm kind of shaken, and I'm trying to find a logical explanation. They don't know each other at all.
And the next day, Joseanne calls me at home, and she's like, hi, Craig.

Speaker 4 So listen, I was taking a bath, and Montgomery Clift is here.

Speaker 4 And he wants to get started on his screenplay.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm in LA, and I'm taking, I'm like, well, you know, I'm very flattered that Monty would pick me for screenplay.

Speaker 4 You know, but I was very busy. I had a really important pitch the next day at a studio for female med wrestling comedy.
And I was up for Revenge of the Nerds remake.

Speaker 4 And also, I was like, you know, wouldn't it be more sensible for Monty to pick like an A-list writer, you know, like Paul Haggis or someone.

Speaker 4 And while I'm talking to her, my landline dies, my landline. So I go outside to get a reception on my cell phone.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I call her back, and while I'm talking to her, she goes, Craig, are you outside? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, are you looking at a tree? And on one side of the tree, the leaves are gone.

Speaker 4 And at the bottom, there's like a bamboo fence. and to the right there's like a red looking barn house and she described what I was looking at.
Now I was in a temporary housing situation.

Speaker 4 She didn't know where I was. I met her once and she said,

Speaker 4 Monty's giving this to you as confirmation. This is real and you need to pay attention.

Speaker 4 She's like, he's going to talk about his life. Do you have a pen? He's going to start talking.
You need to write this down.

Speaker 4 And I lied and said, yeah, I've got a pen. Go ahead.

Speaker 4 Then she takes a pause and she comes back to the phone and she's like, I'm sorry, Craig. Monty just told me that you're lying.

Speaker 4 So I get a pen, I start writing down what Montgomery Clift is telling me.

Speaker 4 In the day I'm going on these dumb jobs to get these R-rated comedies, and at night Montgomery Clift is calling me, giving me lectures about like integrity in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 And out of the blue, like, you know, these people start appearing

Speaker 4 that Monty knew in my life. Joseanne was like, you know, Monty's saying you've got to find some guy named Jack.
Who's Jack? And I'm like, is it Jack Larson? He was Jimmy Olson in the Superman TV show.

Speaker 4 And she's like, yes, yes, find Jack Larson. You know, I'm not a journalist.
I know how to do this stuff. I go on peoplefinders.com.
There's like 60 Jack Larsons in LA.

Speaker 4 I go to sleep. The next morning I wake up on my cell phone.
There's a voicemail from my friend Michael saying, Hi, Craig, it's Michael. I'm in town.
I'm having lunch with this guy, Jack Larson, today.

Speaker 4 He was Jimmy Olson in the Superman TV show. I don't know if you know who he is.
And within 24 hours of Monty telling me to find Jack, I'm speaking to Jack Larson. This is how it was the whole time.

Speaker 4 Like, things would happen. People would appear.
I go back to New York.

Speaker 4 And right away, I get invited to a cocktail party at 217 East 61st Street, which is Montgomery Cliffs, Old Brownstone, where I was told I would go from the very beginning.

Speaker 4 So with an hour's notice, I go over to the house, and I walk in. I'm sort of in a daze.

Speaker 4 And it's frozen in 1966. It hasn't changed since Monty died.
And I meet this guy, Paul, who's lived there for decades and knows all the secrets of Monty's house. And

Speaker 4 he tells, and I see the rumor he died. He died in his bedroom famously, this famous story of his death.
And he said, well, actually, no, he died in the bathtub. But nobody knows this.

Speaker 4 It's not published anywhere. So I leave there.
I call Joseanne. And I say, she's like, what was the house like? And I'm like, it's exactly like it was when he left it.

Speaker 4 It's Monty's wallpaper and Monty's tile.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 she says, what's the significance of the bathtub? He's saying there's something about a bathtub.

Speaker 4 And then she says, you know, Craig, Monty just told me that he's been trying to get you in here for 20 years.

Speaker 4 And I'm sort of, this doesn't quite sink in, but a week later I get an invitation from Paul, the guy who lives in Monty's house, and he says, listen, I know this may be a little morbid, but do you want to spend the night in Monty's bedroom?

Speaker 4 So the following Wednesday,

Speaker 4 I have a dinner party at Monty's house. My friends come over and at midnight they all leave and I go up to Monty's bedroom and I'm there.
I've been led all this way. I'm in his bedroom and

Speaker 4 I'm looking at the tub and I'm thinking, oh I've got to get into the tub. I mean,

Speaker 4 Monty would. I mean, he was a Method actor and

Speaker 4 he'd want to feel what it felt like to be him.

Speaker 4 So I go in the bathroom, I get in the tub, and I lay back and I'm looking at this air vent. And it's this very sacred moment, you know.

Speaker 4 And I'm looking at this air vent thinking that's the last thing he saw alive

Speaker 4 and while I'm laying there I'm thinking you know I remember what Joseanne said about 20 years ago you know he's been with you for 20 years and then it hit me like my face

Speaker 4 when I was 19 I had genetic I had a massive reconstructive surgery to my face I had a genetic disfigurement to my jaw and I had a year's worth of operations to rebuild my face.

Speaker 4 Montgomery Clift had a terrible car accident at the peak of his fame.

Speaker 4 He was leaving Elizabeth Taylor's house and he hit a telephone pole and his face was demolished. And his jaw was wired shut for months, just like mine was.

Speaker 4 And I thought, this is why he wants me.

Speaker 4 Like, when you have an experience like that,

Speaker 4 you see the world, you know, you really sort of see how shitty people are because you have two different faces, but you see the world through the same set of eyes.

Speaker 4 And I felt like, you know, I understood him in a way that maybe nobody else would.

Speaker 4 And when we want the person to tell our story, be somebody who understands who we are.

Speaker 4 So I got out of the tub and I was very aware that I could stand, that I could leave, and I could be, in a way, Monty's happy ending.

Speaker 4 I could live past 45. I could have a great life.
I could be out.

Speaker 4 After this, after the bathtub, it kind of died down. Monty left me alone and went back to my real life.
And I'm not any more spiritual than I was before this started, by the way.

Speaker 4 I mean I'm still completely living, complete fear of everything.

Speaker 4 And so I go to LA and I work in television and it's great.

Speaker 4 And then a few months ago, Joseanne called me and she's like, Montgomery Cliff's back. He's been waking me up the last two nights.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, you know, that's great. I'm really busy with my TV show.

Speaker 4 And she's like, he's saying you've got to get to to Elizabeth Taylor because

Speaker 4 there's something that Elizabeth Taylor knows that no one else knows that he knows, that she knows. So I blow it off.

Speaker 4 I finish my job. The day after I finish my job, my cousin Chandra calls me from Texas.
Now I talk to Chandra like once every 10 years. We have nothing in common.
She lives in a small town in Texas.

Speaker 4 She's got eight kids.

Speaker 4 And she calls me out of the blue and I'm like thinking, you know, who died? You know, and she says,

Speaker 4 I'm like, is everything okay? And she's like, well, this really scary thing happened here last night. I'm like, what? She's like, well, I woke up and there was a man in my bedroom.

Speaker 4 And I thought it was you. He looked a little bit like you.
And he said, he wanted me to tell you something. And I'm like, what? And she's like, he was kind of mumbling.

Speaker 4 And he said, my name is Clifton Montgomery.

Speaker 4 And you need to tell Craig to hurry.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 Elizabeth Taylor, if you're there,

Speaker 4 it's me, Montgomery Clift.

Speaker 3 Craig Chester is an actor and writer currently living in Woodstock, New York. He was nominated for a Spirit Award, and his memoir, Why the Long Face, was published by St.
Martin's Press.

Speaker 3 He wrote and produced three seasons of the Big Gay Sketch Show, starring Kate McKinnon and episodes of the HBO hit True Blood. He's currently shooting a sequel to his 2005 film, Adam and Steve.

Speaker 3 Elizabeth Taylor died in 2011, so Craig never got to meet her to unravel the mystery. And while Craig never wrote the screenplay, he is writing a memoir about his experience with Monty.

Speaker 3 He tells us that their twinning continues, and he's committed to giving both of their stories a happy ending. To see a picture of Craig in Monty's old house, visit themoth.org.

Speaker 3 If you have a story about life after death, or just about life for that matter, pitch us a two-minute version on our website, themoth.org.

Speaker 3 That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from the Moth.

Speaker 3 This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick.
Associate producer, Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Jennifer Hickson and Michelle Jolowski.

Speaker 3 Additional Grand Slam coaching by Larry Rosen.

Speaker 3 The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin-Janes, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricia Urania.

Speaker 3 Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift.
Other music in this hour from Neil Mukherjee, Mort Garson, Tom McDermott, and John Zorn.

Speaker 3 We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The MOTH Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Speaker 3 Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Rhys-Dennis.

Speaker 3 For more about our podcast, for information on pitching this, your own story, and to learn all about the moth, go to our website, themoth.org.

Speaker 9 The moth is supported by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

Speaker 9 This condition can cause polyneuropathy, like nerve pain or numbness, heart failure or irregular rhythm, and gastrointestinal issues.

Speaker 9 HATTR is often underdiagnosed and can be passed down to loved ones. Many of us have stories about family legacies passed down through generations.

Speaker 9 When I was five, my mother sewed me a classic clown costume, red and yellow with a pointy hat. It's since been worn by my sister, three cousins, and four of our children.

Speaker 9 I'm I'm so happy this piece of my childhood lives on with no end in sight. Genetic conditions like HATTR shouldn't dominate our stories.

Speaker 9 Thanks to the efforts of AstraZeneca, there are treatment options so more patients can choose the legacies they share.

Speaker 9 This year, the Moth will partner with AstraZeneca to shine a light on the stories of those living with HATTR. Learn more at www.myattrroadmap.com.