There’s a reason they call Ray Martin the King of the Airwaves. Is there a media personality alive today who has moved so freely between reportage and entertainment?
Throughout his decorated career as an investigative journalist, current affairs anchor and variety show host, Ray has interviewed public figures from all walks of life. Everyone from Sir Elton John to Audrey Hepburn, Muhammad Ali to Jennifer Lopez. You could therefore be forgiven for thinking there is no subject which he has not covered.
Yet despite his vast experience as a reporter in the deadliest zones of human experience including wars and natural disasters, Ray’s recent foray into funerals may be his most mysterious assignment.
I mean what intrigued me in the four months or so we spent on doing it… it's life's great mystery. It's the most important question - what happens when you die? And why do all the great religions believe in spirits?Ray Martin
Ray joined Grave Matters hosts Nadine and Anthony for this special bonus episode to talk about what it was like making the SBS TV series Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye.
The series explores Australia’s changing attitudes and approaches to death, and how we as a nation choose to farewell and remember our dead.
But what do you ask the man accustomed to asking the questions? What happens when you die, of course.
Nadine J. Cohen, Ray Martin, Anthony Levin
You won’t want to miss this fireside with Ray Martin AM as we compare notes on our humble meanderings in Deathland.
I think that's probably the lesson of my journey into death... even at 100, it's too short. And so have a go.Ray Martin
LISTEN TO
Ray of light: Ray Martin ponders death & the afterlife
SBS Audio
07/08/202442:37
Links
Grave Matters is an SBS Audio podcast about death, dying and the people helping us understand both better. Find it in your podcast app such as the SBS Audio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or LiSTNR.
Hosts: Anthony Levin and Nadine J. Cohen
Producers: Max Gosford, Jeremy Wilmot, Caroline Gates, Joel Supple
Guest: Ray Martin AM
If you'd like to speak to someone, you can reach a counsellor at Beyond Blue at any time, day or night, by calling 1300 22 4636 or visiting . Also, Lifeline offers 24/7 crisis support on 13 11 14, and supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In an emergency call 000.
Transcript
Anthony: Nadine Jacqueline Cohen. Hello,
Nadine: Anthony Simon Levin. Howdy.
Anthony: So, another bonus episode, hey?
Nadine: Can't stop, won't stop.
Anthony: And with an extra special guest
Nadine: I'm very excited.
Anthony: Yeah, I got that from the, what, 500 texts you sent me this morning?
Nadine: It was only 12.
Anthony: Do you want to tell the listeners who it is?
Nadine: It's Ray Freaking Martin
Anthony: It sure freaking is. Esteemed journalist Rabbitohs, die hard, small r republican, consummate gentleman and the original hair influencer, Ray George Martin OAM - the beloved television host who spent decades beaming into Aussie living rooms and our hearts.
Nadine: Lev, why are we interviewing Ray Martin?
Anthony: Because we're fangirls. But mainly because he's just gone on a similar journey to you and I. Eerily similar.
In fact, Ray spent four months deep diving into death and lived to tell the tale. He has a new docuseries starting August 14th on SBS and SBS on demand called Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye.
Over three episodes, Ray goes on a mission to understand the ways Australians of different cultures, religions and ethnicities approach death and how we can better dispose of the dead to protect the planet. So, in today's episode, we turn the microphones on Ray and ask what he learned, who he met and what it was like planning his own funeral.
***
Anthony: Ray Martin, welcome.
Ray: Thank you. Nice to be here alive.
Nadine: So, your new series, The Last Goodbye is about planning your funeral. Can you tell us how it came about and how they approached you for it? Was it like, hey, you're old?
Ray: I knew the subtitle was “Ray Martin Plans His Own Funeral” and I knew that's very saleable.
I'm at a stage where I can professionally, apart from personally, say no if I don't want to do something, you know you couldn't offer me enough money. And that's a nice as a journalist. Most of the time you do what you're told for the network or for the paper or whatever.
In this, I thought briefly thought, you know, I know what they're going to do, I've got to spend months of planning my death. But on the other side, I was also curious about the cultural differences between death in our society and death in other societies. And, of course, SBS, you know, was going to look at that. And so, I was curious, as I remain.
My and family said, oh, Dad, do you really want to do this? You know, three hours of death is pretty serious. But I really wanted to it. Death in the classics is often funny, and it's a comedy thing, and I wanted to have some humour apart from it needed to be delightful rather than sad.
Nadine: Yeah, you've got to show the light in the dark as well. And often some of the funniest moments come in those times.
Ray: You know, I don't think death is sad or scary. I don't think it's sad. It ought to be a celebration. It ought to be. Unless it's a young person. Of course, that's different.
Nadine: I think you're only going to get people talking about it more widely as well and planning more widely if you introduce humour and lightness. People aren't going to talk about it if it's just sombre and they're not going to watch your show or listen to our podcast because it's depressing,
Ray: I think that's why you know, the opening for people to see every episode is me being in a coffin and then because you don't get to walk out of coffin. Most times they pull the lid down and that's it.
Anthony: I have to say seeing you in a coffin, I was a bit traumatised because you're so iconic for Australians. I think people are going to get a shock, which is probably part of the point.
Ray: Very much so. The idea of having it every episode just started because that's a reminder of hey, folks, we're not going to give you an hour of gloom and doom. We're going to try and enlighten and maybe entertain.
Nadine: What was it like to lie in the coffin?
Ray: I'm the world's worst actor, but it was just another role playing. And also, I mean, the fun part is you get out and walk through the congregation of the church out to the sunlight. Now, people never get to do that, apart from an Irish wake where they say, I'm alive.
Anthony: I'm glad you mentioned your family. Why do you think they reacted that way? Because you've done shows like First Contact, which are very much in your wheelhouse. And this one maybe wasn't so much. Is that why they had trepidation or was there something else?
Ray: My son and daughter have a great sense of humour, and my wife hopefully too, after living with me for so many years. But maybe it's just too close to the bone. Maybe it is that.
But, you know, my wife and I, part of the reason I did it was that we haven't talked or planned our death as much as we should have. And I think that, oddly enough, when I talk to my son and daughter's friends who are in their thirties, they always ask me what I'm doing. And I thought in this one, you know, they won't want to know. And so, I fairly obliquely and abruptly said, I'm doing a series on death, and they ask 100 questions. Maybe because they're in their thirties and they're not facing death, they are curious. Whereas when you get older and you think it's just around the corner, then I don't want to talk about it. Well, we should.
I mean, what intrigued me in the four months or so we spent on doing it and the three episodes is life's great mystery. It's the most important question- what happens when you die? And you know, why do all the great religions believe in spirits? Without exception, including Aboriginals, they all believe in spirits and yet are they all wrong? Are they totally wrong? Is it dust to dust? Is that what it is?
So, I thought, you know, at the end of it, all this time that I spent fixated on and discussing it and thinking about it, the beautiful thing is that you're left with a mystery. No one comes back from heaven or hell.
***
Nadine: We asked Ray if he went into the show with any preconceived ideas about death.
Ray: I've been a journalist for almost 60 years, and I could never have done talkback radio because I'm not convinced that I'm right. And I think the beauty of being a journalist has been well, this is what I think but convince me otherwise.
I think on this one, that I began by thinking I'm a lapsed Catholic. That it probably is dust to dust. That's my belief. But I have met and I know people, including people in this show who are far more intelligent than me. And they believe So what is it that I don't get that they get?
And these are, you know, people like Father Frank Brennan, who's the Catholic intellectual, a lawyer, et cetera. And he believes. Now he's the smartest of anyone I've ever met. What does he see that I don't see? And so, people like Philip Adams or Dick Smith, who are devout atheists, how can you be that intellectually arrogant to say, they're wrong and I'm right? Because these aren't delusional people?
I interviewed Malcolm Muggeridge, the great English philosopher years and years and years ago for 60 Minutes, and he was in his late eighties, was studying the scriptures, and he was as smart as I'd ever met. I've never met anyone smarter than Malcolm Muggeridge, and yet he still believed. And so, I think, hang on, what am I missing?
***
Nadine: Do you remember your first experience of death?
Ray: I think my first experience was probably my grandmother dying in country New South Wales. And again, we were raised as Catholics, and so there was a Catholic background there. And I remember my mother, who was one of 11 children, and the women prepared the body and grandma was in an open coffin in the lounge room.
I was five or six and we were expected to go, and Grandma was there, not embalmed. But she'd been bathed, and she was buried, and we stood off to one side as children. And there were many kids in the family, and we were expected at the end to go and sort of touch grandma on the forehead as the last goodbye to use the phrase. And we did it and that was life. I mean, death was part of life far more than it is today. And that's part of the reason for doing it. Is that, you know, almost this taboo subject of death, it's obviously part of life.
And so that lovely thing when we did the Islamic funeral, which is probably the most beautiful funeral we did, and wonderful treatment of death I thought. And I said to the undertaker there, a fantastic warm fellow but looks like a bodybuilder, and, uh and I said to him, do you have children? He said, oh, yes, we encourage children to come in for the bathing of the body and I said, well, how do they react? And he said, they react the same as adults. If adults cry, they cry. If adults are stoic, they're stoic. And I thought how true that was because I remember. I don't remember crying at Grandma's funeral because no one else was crying, even though they were sad, et cetera.
So, I think that in some ways I think we've gone from that period when I was a young Catholic boy in which we treated death as part of life, to the point where we don't talk about it.
***
Anthony: You made an interesting comment about the Islamic funeral, something to the effect that the hands-on approach, you think helps people to accept the loss, that it helps the bereaved to process.
Ray: It does. The lady, who was the widow of a young man at 52 unexpectedly had a heart attack - and the family invited us to film it as a tribute to the dad - and the wife came in wearing a scarf, a headscarf, and she was weeping under the scarf. She wasn't screaming, but she was weeping under there. And the undertaker, this very gentle man said, don't worry, sister, we'll look after him and we'll look after you. And so she was allowed as the wife, along with the two boys, the two sons, the daughters came in for the second bathing of the body, and again, culturally, that was the correct thing to do. But the wife was allowed, and she bathed the head and the shoulders of her husband.
And I noticed there in the say, the hour it took, when the girls came in as well, the daughters were bathing their dad's head and shoulders. The mother calmed down, and so, at the time, they wrapped the body in the same cloth that the rich man gets - I love that. Before Allah, everyone was equal in that. And by that stage the woman had calmed down and I thought, how good is this? I mean, she'd gone from, you know, seriously weeping for some hours to now being resoled to the fact that her husband had passed on.
***
Nadine: So, you're 79 now…
Ray: That's what they tell me. They've got it wrong. That great line from the the country, I think, um, Clint Eastwood uses the line of, uh, you know, don't let the old man in. But in that same country song, there's a line that says, how old would you think you are if you didn't have a birth certificate? And so, I figure I'm about 25.
Nadine: You're younger than me.
We're guessing you've been to a few funerals in your time. Were there any - from the show, but also just from your life - any funerals or death rituals that struck a chord with you?
Ray: I tend to avoid funerals. I prefer to go to births than to funerals. Uh, some you have to go to, such as my mother's, and family, that sort of stuff. Only because I find funerals uncomfortable, and not that I fear death, but just they're usually maudlin. I like the Irish wake. I like the idea of, you know, lots of booze and lots of tall stories and celebration as against everyone crying.
But those that I've been to, I think my wife's father's funeral. My daughter, who was 10 at the time and very close to him, she'd never been to a funeral, and she asked if she could speak. And I said, darling, you know, there's going to be the coffin, there'll be a flag on the coffin and that sort of stuff, and flowers, it'll be very sad. And she said she wanted to speak and she did. And that was really beautiful. I thought the things she talked about as a 10-year-old was just her grandfather watching movies and cartoons with her as he did endlessly. And, uh, he was into movies as she is and was. And so, it was really, uh, you know, from the heart, um, sort of funeral.
I went to one, just a couple of weeks ago, an aboriginal funeral out in Walgett with a young fellow who died. And I've been deeply involved in reconciliation for about 40 years of my life, and I was still sort of shocked by the beauty of the cultural side of this young man. Everyone who spoke up there gave eulogies who are not normally used to speaking in public. I don't think you sort of gauged that, and they felt the need to give some sort of eulogy.
Everyone talked about dream time. Everyone talked about country. Everyone talked about the fact that - they did a smoking ceremony at the start - and everyone talked about culturally about where he'd gone and what he had done. And I think if you knew nothing about Aboriginal life, as most Australians don't, then I think you would have been impressed with the cultural side of it, but you had to see it as a funeral. You know, the trouble was you don't see it and they don't see it in everyday life.
But it was one of the most extraordinary funerals, the most extraordinary that I've ever seen. And it was, you know, culturally, something that was really important and something that I learned from. So, you know, I think that's the sort of funeral I I'd like to go to and see.
***
Anthony: About 30 years ago, Ray learned that alongside his Irish ancestry, his great great grandmother was a Kamilaroi woman who lived near Tamworth. We asked whether discovering indigenous heritage has influenced his funeral wishes or the rituals he'd like his family to honour when he dies.
Ray: I mean, I don't pretend that I grew up as an Aboriginal person, that is a very different life from mine, even though mine was poor and working class. What's interesting is that the very fact my great great grandmother was Aboriginal was, you know, in a horrible word that used to be used, the term of full blood, and she lived to 104. And that's extraordinary, you know, born in 1800 lived and died in 1904. And when she turned 100, The Tamworth newspaper had a photograph of her which we saw when I did the SBS series on Who Do You Think You Are? and she was a 5 ft high woman with a large white Afro smoking a pipe at 100.
I think, like my Irish background, I really had nothing to do with it. But I'm really proud of the connection, and it makes me think of little things. My father was a travelling salesman at one stage in my early part of my life, and I would go bush with him a lot and, you know, in the car, and I never once west of the mountains thought when are we going to get there, Dad? You know I'm bored with this. I always I breathe more freely when I go west of the mountains. I love the coast, but without being romantic or silly about it, when I discovered the Aboriginal connection from that open plane country of Gunnedah and Kamilaroi people, I thought that's interesting. I'm not saying that's my Aboriginal side at all, but it's just interesting. And so similarly in the documentary series. I think if I had my ashes scattered somewhere, I'd sooner be scattered somewhere out there, with those glorious sunsets.
***
Nadine: I observed when watching the show that there were possibly a couple of points where you looked a bit overwhelmed, or you looked a bit like, you know, you were taking it in. What were the hard parts of filming a series about death for you?
Ray: I guess when you're forced to discuss the certainty of death and the fact that you're not going to be here, you know, with your grandchildren or with your children especially, plus my wife. I think that's the sort of thing. I don't care so much about missing a footy game or you know, about, uh, not being around for the technological advances that I think are really exciting. I think it's not being there to look after your kids. But I think things like that are probably the moments where you think that's gonna happen. As much as I joke about eternal life, that's probably not on the cards.
***
Anthony: If you did grow up with Ray in your living room every night then, like us, you might find it hard to accept that he will ever die. Thankfully, an experimental science called cryonics might make eternal Ray a reality. It uses sub freezing temperatures to pause the decomposition process in the hope of one day, bringing a person back to life, and it's now available at a facility in Holbrook, New South Wales. Some have called it an ambulance to the future. We asked Ray about chasing that ambulance,
Ray: Alan Pease, who was the man who took me through that journey - since we did the film, there is one person who's been basically put into the tube down in country New South Wales - Alan's a very bright man, and he's also very persuasive, and he's not delusional. But he's paid $150,000 and his wife matched it to be put in a metal tube with nitrogen and hung upside down for 100 years till he finally comes out. That's probably not for me. Um, it's probably not for me. I think I could probably, you know, invest $150,000 on holidays and a few things while I'm alive. But as I say, he's got a story of his twin girls who were basically embryos. So he believes in the idea of just being frozen and the end result. But no, I said at the end that I don't want to make fun of people. The whole journey was about listening to other people, listening to other people's beliefs. But it's probably not for me.
***
Nadine: Ray's forays on the fringes of death land don't end with cryonics. He also travels to Las Vegas, land of the free drinks home of the depraved, to wander the world's largest funeral convention, where he hears about a glass coffin with a twist.
Ray: You can get grandpa mummified effectively, and embalmed, and he's in there with his best suit on, stretched out. You can have the cat embalmed or the dog embalmed a bottle of scotch, and disco lights. So, he's in the corner and you say, let's go and see what Grandpa thinks? You see, he could be there for 50 years.
Nadine: This was all the encouragement Anthony needed to Google mummification and disco coffins. The search results were alarming, but that's a whole other episode.
***
Anthony: One wonderful aspect of the series is you have this privilege of being invited into different cultures to see how they perform death rights for their loved ones, what stayed with you the most?
Ray: There were two that I mean. One was the Samoan funeral that lasts for three days, in which, like the Welsh, everybody sings beautifully, unlike me. Um, so they all sing and there's this beautiful music from day one to day three, when the person's buried. What was striking for someone who's grown up in Australia and thinks, I think I understand who we are, it was to see the hearse come down a suburban Australian working-class street with the Samoan man in front who was basically the undertaker, who was in a grass skirt and bare chested with a skirt. And slowly it came. It was a coffin and the hearse, and they'd come to the house where there were three of this young man's friends who were also bare chested and in skirts, massive Samoan men and I sat alongside them. And then to see this, you know, in my country that I've grown up in, that I think I understand pretty well, to see something that was completely foreign but quite beautiful.
And up comes the Samoan undertaker, and in Samoan, he says - I'm told – in a stentorian voice he says, we are delivering Michael, and he is in your care now, look after him in his spirit. And then the three, the leader, his best friend, answers back in a very strong Samoan voice, we understand, he's our friend, we will love him and care for him until he moves on. And then they all carry the coffin into the house within the house.
The coffin’s open and the young man had three young children who were running around as though Dad was still alive. And they're bouncing off the coffin almost, which is beautiful in the sense that they were made to feel comfortable with death around them. And the women in the house were, as so often women are in these wonderful cultures, where they were more concerned that we were fed and given a soft drink. And so we felt like we were almost out of place. We shouldn't be there with cameras and that they made us welcome. And then the next day was at the church, and the day after was a Samoan Haka at the gravesite.
Anthony: Ray was discovering, as we had, that the rich tapestry of life can be just as colourful in death.
Ray: The other one was the Mexican Day of the Dead, And that was a case where, you know, the Mexican man married to an Australian woman still has the Day of the Dead on the first or second of November. And so, we go there, and I had seen it and read about it on film, et cetera, but I realised it was mariachi and celebration and eating and the spirits come back. But it was much more beautiful than that. It was much more intense and much warmer than that.
Ray: And this Mexican man who had lived in Australia for 30 odd years and his sons were there with their wives and his grandchildren. I think the sons were all in IT, and they were intelligent, with it, cool young men. And yet they subscribed to this cultural belief that on this particular day that the spirits of Grandma and Grandpa and even the man's sister who died unexpectedly, would come back. And they set the altar up, and they had the mariachi band outside, and they played, it was good fun. And they prepared wonderful meals for themselves and also for the dead. And they set an altar up and they had some food there for Grandma and Grandpa, etcetera. And even that point of laying rose petals from the front door to the altar.
Anthony: That's really beautiful. It must have been amazing to be a fly on the wall for those experiences. I get the sense that when you're observing different cultures perform those rights, there might be a temptation to say, oh that, I like that. And maybe to think, could I incorporate something of that in my own funeral or my family's funeral? But of course, that's fraught with risk, too, because we don't want to do cultural appropriation.
Ray: No, it's all part of this. How do we treat our dead? How do we treat death generally? Do we believe in an afterlife?
This man has no doubt, that the spirits of his ancestors and even his sister, who was only her fifties, that she would come back now again. I mean, can I really say, you're deluded or you're wrong? Can I really say that? He's not a stupid man.
That was the journey that I took in seeing them. Things that, if I just read about perhaps, I'd think no. But to see it in person, to see intelligent people, especially young people, you know, subscribe to this? I think that's really moving.
And so, while I'm not Mexican and while I'm not Samoan or I'm not Islamic, all those things sort of added to this picture that I've got in terms of what pleases me and what I think is legitimate and obviously legitimate, if they believe it. You know, somewhere there is this multicultural funeral that I probably, you know, believe in now that I didn't believe in last year.
***
I did that interview with Kerry Packer after he'd been dead for eight minutes, as he said when he had his heart attack. And he said, you know, there's no blinding lights. There's nothing out there, let me tell you.
Nadine: On October 7th, 1990, the late media mogul suffered a heart attack during a polo match that left him clinically dead for seven minutes. He was revived by paramedics and later spoke to Ray about it on A Current Affair.
Ray: I've also interviewed a farmer, a man who won the civilian VC for a heroic act in country South Australia, and he was dead for some minutes. He was electrocuted basically, saving a little boy on a truck. A most extraordinary man but also a farmer who, you know, isn't really into fantasy. He's practical, you know, let's keep animals alive and crops come and go, that sort of that sort of man. He's not a dreamer. And yet I said, so when you were dead, did you? He sat there, embarrassed and finally agreed to talk to me about it. He said he saw the blinding light and the three figures, which are like a judging panel by nature. He was a practical man, not a dreamer, but that's what he saw. Now can I really say you were deluded, or you must have been et cetera. No, I can simply listen to what he told me.
And if the end result is that there's a mystery, it's this wonderful mystery of life which is called death. It'd be horrible, I think, to be certain that it is dust to dust, which is what I believe. But I don't know for sure. The idea that nothing happens when you die, that would be terrible. I mean, it would make life far less interesting if, you know, maybe you get up and do things which we should. But nevertheless, I love that the sweet mystery of life, we don't quite know. You know, we don't quite know but this is what I believe. But maybe I'm wrong. That's why death is the best question that we have as people alive.
Anthony: It's like that Keatsian idea of negative capability, which is that you should embrace the mystery of life because that's what makes it full and beautiful. But you put it very beautifully yourself when you say that's the ultimate question.
Ray: I must say that I was forced to ask the question over four months, and I can't think of anything else that is bigger as a question in life, to death. And I love that Hunter S. Thompson line that I used at the end there, which is that great line of, you know, don't go to the graveyard looking pretty and looking calm and get on a big Harley and scream in there with dust everywhere and be battered and say, wow, what a journey. That sort of thing. I think that's much better.
***
Anthony: You have been in war zones, and you've walked the graveyards of the American Civil War. You've been no stranger to death in your reporting. Did that inflect the way that you approached the subject at all?
Ray: It maybe did, and it's interesting. I covered the tsunami and as I mentioned in Aceh and there were 200,000 people killed there and lots of dead bodies. And so, I remember saying to our film crew, and I was as I am these days, the eldest of the team, and, uh and I remember saying to them, you know, we probably won't see anything, you won't see anything more traumatic, more disturbing than what we're about to see as we flew up. So, let's look after each other. And for the moment, let's, you know, bugger everybody else look after each other. And and we did that. And we had a lot of black jokes and black humour that you do to keep yourself sort of sane in really difficult circumstances like that.
We came out of it - touch wood - fairly well, and some of our colleagues needed counselling, which I understand and completely agree with. But I think what I thought after that is, you know, why hasn't this affected me as much as it probably should or others? And I think probably a lifetime of having seen dead bodies in war zones and that you must be an observer and rather than get involved, and obviously if there are children dead that you do feel and you become empathetic. But don't make it part of who you are, because otherwise, that's too sad. And you see too much sadness.
To answer your question, Anthony, initially, is that I think that you can only be a journalist for 60 years if you can actually not be traumatised by every time you see you know, either domestic violence or children killed in war zones, and I think you really have to almost put that in the back pocket rather when confronted.
So, in looking at this series that we did for SBS, I also thought that had I not had my experience, I probably would have reacted more dramatically than I did. And I kept thinking, wow, you know, maybe someone doing this should be rather observing, which is what I've done all my life. And I observed, I was curious about the Samoan thing or the Jewish thing or the Islamic thing, but I was curious rather than being affected by it. As much as I perhaps would have been had I not been a journalist.
Nadine: But what's interesting is that it hasn't hardened you, though, like I can imagine. being in those war zones and seeing what you've seen and the tsunami in Aceh, you could have been more hardened to it. And you being so open in the series and open as a person as you obviously are, like I think that's a great gift.
Ray: Thank you. But I also think that if you're looking at something and like the Samoans at the three-day funeral and these beautiful voices, but also the reaction to it. And even the Samoan at the church service actually had a man came from Samoa who'd been a relative, and he was fairly critical of the dead man. Now, you know, we grow up thinking you don't be critical of the dead, don't be etcetera. And a few people came to us and said, we're very sorry that you know, you've seen this other side of of our funeral. And I was surprised because we don't get it in our funerals. You know, people always only speak well of the dead. So, there was a moment there, which became more sombre and more sort of serious than they wanted to be, with lots of singing - by his netball team and his soccer team and all those sorts of things. And then suddenly, along comes a relative who who says something critical about the deceased. We couldn't hear what he was saying, but nevertheless it was you know, this tapestry that we've got. So, I kind of like it.
Anthony: Why do you think we have this convention that we don't speak ill of the dead?
Ray: I don't know.
Nadine: Only the worst people, like they have to be the worst people. Even bad figures who've committed atrocities, once they're dead, if I tweeted like, ding dong, like yay that guy's dead, you'll still get people going, you can't speak badly. He murdered100 people!
Ray: When I first went to America, I picked up one of the New York Papers within the first week of being there and there was a congressman named Nunn and I remember it well. I'm talking about 1969, and a columnist named Pete Hamill, who became my sort of, almost my mentor. Left wing Irish Catholic columnist and wonderful. He did the cover for Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album; it was beautifully written. He was just a gorgeous writer.
But he wrote this obituary for Congressman Nunn, and he said, they buried Alexander Nunn in Tuscaloosa today, full stop. And we're better off without him. And then he catalogued all the things that Nunn had done basically, you know, in his wicked career. But I thought, yes, I'm in the land of the free. You’d never say that in Australia - they buried him today, and we're better off without him, as we certainly are - we don't do that.
***
Nadine: What will you do differently in life, now that you've become better acquainted with death?
Ray: It's a good question, and I'm not sure. The learning experience was, as I said earlier, that life isn’t a dress rehearsal.
So, I interviewed a guy named Alex Campbell, who was the last of the Gallipoli veterans on any side, the last of a million men who fought in Gallipoli to die. And he was 106 when he died. And when we were packing up after the interview, he was talking to my son and we gave him a bottle of scotch, a very vintage scotch, and I asked my son to give it to him. My son was 11, went across to him, and he was chatting away to my son more than he talked to me on camera at the time.
So, when we were flying back to Sydney from Hobart, I said to my son, oh, by the way, what did Mr Campbell have to say to you? And he said, oh, just he'd been a water boy in Gallipoli and survived. And I said, what did he say? And he said, oh, can I give you some advice, son?
And so, my son said, yes, Mr. Campbell, what is it? And he said, have a go. And the line from this 106 year old man was have a go. And I think probably that was my experience in these four months of doing this, the lesson is, have a go. And I think that's probably right. Unfortunately, we lose teenagers to death, and we lose young people to death. And so you don't have to be 80 or 90 or 100 to have a go.
And I mentioned to someone, too, that Geoff Harvey, my old musician friend, used to have this line where he would say that, um, when in doubt, go out. That was the mantra. And so he was like, a concert or a football game or a party, if you want to go, go. If you don't want to go, don't go. But if you're in doubt, go out. And I think that's probably the the lesson of my journey to death that we've been doing there. That it's, even at 100, 106 for Alex Campbell, life's too short, and so have a go. And when in doubt, go out.
Anthony: Does your wife endorse this?
Nadine: That’s the opposite of what I do. When in doubt, get under a blanket.
***
Anthony: While Nadine sought refuge under a doona. Ray mused on returning to his mother's memorial site with cultural anthropologist Dr Hannah Gould, who you might remember we interviewed in episode seven.
Ray: Well, I said, you know, again, everyone gets what they want. But when I went out with our death expert, with Hannah, to my mother's place that she's interred, just the ashes, I hadn't been back there in 25 years since she died. She lives in my heart, my head. I don't have to go out there, but you walk among at Rookwood, you walk amongst the headstones out there and you get two generations on, and the headstones start to fall over, and families don't go out there. They don't remember are buried.
Anthony: My 98-year-old grandmother said to me on the weekend, have you been out to see your mother at Rookwood? And I said, No, no, I haven't for quite some time because I feel the same way as you. I don't need to go to the site to feel a connection with her, but I understand why it's important.
Ray: I do too, and it's certainly the reason my sisters wanted mum out there. And I didn't, but I didn't really care that she was because she's got grandchildren and a couple of relatives who were there, and she wanted to be, and I understand that, I understand the philosophy there.
***
Anthony: Ray, do you think about your own legacy or how you want to be remembered? Except for the hair…
Ray: I don't, honestly. I've got a different wig these days. But no, I don't. I mean, I don't need to be, I don't mean to be silly about it. My legacy would obviously be most important with my wife and my kids and my grandkids. One would hope, uh, because they know me as against people who just see me as a public figure, don't know me.
So no, I don't think it's important. And obviously, as the rabbi said to us in the program, that you know, it's what you do on this place on this earth rather than what you are when you're dead. So I think in some ways your legacy is based on the things you've done. You know the people who matter to you. And so, I think that's probably the only legacy.
But again, if they decide that I was a bastard, I can't do much about it.
Anthony: I think that's highly unlikely from the half an hour we’ve spent together.
Nadine: And lastly, we ask all our guests, we're exploring the concept of a good death. Do you have an idea of what you think a good death is?
Ray: I think, and most people we spoke to, um, said the same thing, I'd sooner die in my bed overnight and simply, rather than linger again, everyone's got, especially if you reach my age, they've got this fear of dementia and a fear of, you know, of dribbling, et cetera.
So, the idea where, guess what, Dad's gone, Dad's dead, I think that would be ideal. The trouble is that most of us don't do that. Most of us die in hospital or in a nursing home, and it is a lingering thing because, you know, medicine keeps us alive. So, I'm not. I'm not in favour of that, as most people tend to say. And yet I found with my mother, for example, that, um, old people linger longer than we think they really want to and and medicine again is so wonderful that it just keeps people alive beyond when they probably should be alive. But again, who is going to say? Well, time to pull the plug on Dad, I would want to do it.
But I think the ideal one would be to, you know, have a heart attack in your sleep and, uh, and just go.
***
Nadine: And just as we began to wrap up this very special interview, we got Ray Martin-d.
Well, thank you so much, Ray...
Ray: Can I ask you, all the stuff you've done, do you have an answer to that question that I asked earlier? You know the devout atheist who says that it’s ashes to ashes, nothing happens?
Anthony: We're very different. We have quite different perspectives on this.
Nadine: I am very much in your world. I don't think there's anything. I think when you're gone, you're gone. But I am open to the possibility that that's not true. And there are things in my life and in deaths that I've seen, you know, my mother died at the exact same time as my father, exactly two years to the day after my father. And I don't spend any time thinking about what that means. Like, are they spirits, you know, are they flying around? Or are they what? But there are things that comfort me, that could be out there. So, I'm very open but predominantly, I think once you’re dead, you’re dead.
Ray: And what do you think?
Anthony: So, I am effectively a pantheist or animist. I think there's divinity in all things, that there's consciousness in all things in the universe. So that's how I kind of view the world. And I've had lots of those little synchronous experiences that have kind of reinforced that perspective.
One recently when my other grandmother passed away in January and I was writing a speech for her memorial service, and I was trying to think of a Yiddish word to describe the way that she used to criticise me and my sister. And the word is kibitzing. It's roughly what I was going for. I went to my Yiddish dictionary on the shelf, and I opened it fairly, um, absentmindedly as I walked back to my office at home and I just opened it to a random page and I opened it to the word kibitz, and that was for me, like a little sign from her. And those little things when they happen, and there have been many of them in my life, for me they just reinforce this idea that we're all connected, our energy continues on in some way and that there is something beyond.
Ray: We didn't talk about ghosts, but, I mean, I've spoken to people who are absolutely unbelievable, and they have seen, and they tell not just an apparition, but they'll see Grandpa sitting in the chair and where he always used to sit. And so, are they lying? Are they deluded? Well, no, they're not. I mean, people are strangers and personal friends who talk about it. So if there are ghosts, there are spirits around. So, you know, please explain.
Nadine: Again, Ray, thank you so much.
Ray: My pleasure.
Anthony: Yeah, thank you.
***
Anthony: So, a huge thanks again to national treasure Ray Martin. The absolute GOAT. So, Nadine, thoughts? Feelings?
Nadine: I think that I'm quite in awe of his humility and his willingness to enter this process completely open minded and explore things that, you know, are so challenging in some ways, and to just really give himself over to the process. A lot of people at that age or at any age are so set in their ways and set in their ideas, and he obviously has what he believes. But he's very open to that not being the truth. And I like seeing that in people.
Anthony: Yeah, it was very evident, wasn't it? That he's open to the possibility of being wrong. Yeah, I was fascinated by his adventures in cryonics, and it reminded me that there's actually still a lot for us to learn in this area and on this subject. And that's kind of, um, motivating. But also, I kind of want to road test the cryonics technology, if possible. Like, you know, just dip me in there for 30 minutes. Kind of like an ice bath challenge kind of thing. Can we do that?
Nadine: No, I don't think we can.
Anthony: It's not going to work, is it?
Nadine: So thanks again to Ray, who we hope and pray will live forever.
Anthony: Ray The Last Goodbye Premieres on Wednesday, August 14th at 8:30 p.m. on SBS and SBS on demand.
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Grave Matters is an SBS podcast, written and hosted by Anthony Levin and Nadine J. Cohen and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Caroline Gates, Joel Supple and Max Gosford. If you'd like to get in touch, email [email protected].
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