Jackie Ogden: I still am walking that line between grieving and being afraid of the disease, and also living life. I think it's a daily struggle. How do I feel the real feelings that go with grief and not suppress them — 'cause I know that is not healthy, especially for me — and how do I then also still live? ​

Sarah Cavanaugh: Welcome to Peaceful Exit, the podcast where we talk to creatives about death, dying, grief, and also life. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and my guest today is behavioral psychologist Dr. Jackie Ogden. She spent her career working with animals in leadership positions at world-renowned institutions, like the San Diego Zoo and Disney's Animal Kingdom, where she led global conservation efforts. In this episode, Jackie and I talk first about what animal behavior can teach us about grief and mortality, and then we shift to more personal topics: the humor and daily practice required to care for a spouse with Alzheimer's disease, and what it was like for her to recently receive her own early-stage Alzheimer's diagnosis. We discuss Jackie's desire to be intentional during her final chapter, and what it truly means to make peace with the end of life.

Welcome to Peaceful Exit. I am so happy to see you again, and I'm just so grateful to Peggy for introducing us you are a wonderful human. I know this.

[00:01:44] Jackie Ogden: It is really great to be here. I have so enjoyed meeting you and talking with you and it became very clear to me that we have a great deal in common.

[00:01:54] Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, your background and career are so fascinating to me. How did you first get interested in animals and the psychology of animal behavior?

Jackie Ogden: I grew up in San Diego. As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time at the zoo growing up, which of course San Diego Zoo is world famous. I actually remember a day, a moment where I was in summer camp. A woman was talking to us about, she was holding a bird of prey and a boa constrictor of some sort. I remember it as being huge, but it probably wasn't, and I remember watching her going, "I could do that.”

Sarah Cavanaugh: So what appealed to you about working with animals in this particular context, as opposed to more traditional psychology or research?

[00:02:41] Jackie Ogden: I've always had a connection to animals. I also never really wanted to go into academia. I love scientists. I am a scientist. I admire them greatly. Butwhat I really love is working with people, and so what I really wanted to do was get into a leadership role within a zoo, aquarium, some conservation organization. Sowhen I was applying to grad schools I got really lucky, and there was a gentleman, Terry Maple, who was a professor at Georgia Tech and also was at that point running the zoo and really working to turn it into a world-class zoo. And he amazingly was interested in having a student that wanted to go into a leadership role that wasn't so focused on doing research in an academic setting. And so it was a perfect opportunity and that's how I ended up making the transition.

[00:3:41] Sarah Cavanaugh: So you've worked at some of the best-known zoos and animal theme parks in the world, including San Diego Zoo, Disney's Animal Kingdom. What would listeners be most surprised to learn about this kind of work?

[00:03:55] Jackie Ogden: People really have no understanding about the depth of conservation work that zoos and aquariums are involved with. They've given millions and millions and millions of dollars, actually every year, to support conservation, and their teams are actively involved in saving species and saving habitat on the ground. So that's one major thing. And then I think the other piece that people are always fascinated by is the level of animal care that animals receive in zoos and aquariums. You know, the very fact that we did surgery on tarantulas. We had fish that were trained to participate in their animal care. I think one of my favorite examples always is, is that, so, gorillas, which were — that was the species that I studied in grad school, so I have a, a strong affinity for them — they have, just like we do, a tendency towards heart problems. And so what we have done now within the zoo community is we perform cardiac ultrasounds on gorillas when they are awake. And so they are trained from a pretty young age to come over to a safe spot, where there is mesh so everybody's protected, and to position their chest so that then the veterinarian can actually hold the ultrasound wand up to the chest and do a real ultrasound just like you or I might have one done in an imaging center. There are so many examples like that, and I think people are always just amazed to know that we do all that.

[00:05:19] Sarah Cavanaugh: I think I'm in that camp. I was very surprised to hear the attention that's paid to animal welfare at Disney, and the whole idea that a theme park could participate in conservation just, it gave me a lot of hope. And I'm stuck on the surgery of the tarantula.

[00:05:40] Jackie Ogden: We even trained tarantulas to go from one part of their space to another so that we didn't have to pick them up all the time to move them, because that's not good for their welfare either. So you can actually train a tarantula.

[00:05:53] Sarah Cavanaugh: That is amazing. [laughter] And that's a great segue to talking a little bit about animal behavior, and grief and mourning. What are some of the animal and human behaviors that are more similar than we like to think?

[00:06:07] Jackie Ogden: You know, it does appear that non-human animals, many of them at least, do some level of grieving. Scientists can argue about everything, and so there are scientists that don't think it's real grieving, um, that human grieving is different. Could be, might not be, there may be a continuum, just different behaviors that some species do and some don't. Even some birds like crows appear to show some level of grieving. Certainly primates, especially the great apes, but also monkeys and cetaceans, dolphins and whales and elephants. All of them show some ability to some level of grieving.

[00:06:46] Sarah Cavanaugh: There's a story going around now about the orca mama who was lifting up her baby even though her baby had died. She was sort of carrying her along, and the last baby that died, for the same mama, she carried for 17 days and — before she let the baby sink — and you have to thinkthey’re aware.

[00:07:10] Jackie Ogden: Yeah, it certainly seems so. And again, there's controversy but boy, it sure looks like grieving to me.

[00:07:17] Sarah Cavanaugh: Do animals have any death rituals in a way we think of them?

[00:07:21] Jackie Ogden: Um, yeah, I think that they do. In addition to the carrying, there's visiting. Animals will often either stay with the infant for a long time, or they'll come back to visit animals in the days following the death. And I had the unfortunate opportunity to witness what appeared to be elephant grief at Disney's Animal Kingdom. We lost a female elephant at one point, and it was quite amazing to see the reaction of the other females in the herd and they were very focused on visiting, very focused on spending time with. Um, we allowed them time to do that 'cause it was so clear it was the right thing to do. And there'd been plenty of cases where people had seen this before.

[00:08:08] Sarah Cavanaugh: So how has your work with animals informed the way you personally grieve or think about grief? Has it changed at all?

[00:08:17] Jackie Ogden: That's a great question. You know, I think it has. As much as anything because of the ways that animal people work with animals and deal with grief. There really are very few sacred cows when you are taking care of animals. You don't ignore disease. Um, you spend a lot of time talking about end of life and how that should work. Things that really, you know, sadly, as you know, humans don't do so well or at least not humans in our culture, I should say. Just being part of that means that I was naturally comfortable talking about all of this stuff. I mean, I can talk about elephant artificial insemination. I can certainly talk about dying. And also animal people demonstrate grief and are supported for demonstrating grief, at least every place I've been privileged to work. As an example, and this is not about exotic animals, but, uh, whenever we would have somebody who had a pet die at Animal Kingdom, you always knew that it was a safe place to go to because everybody understood. Everybody got it. Everybody knew that you were struggling. Whereas when you talk to non-animal people, sometimes they go, "Okay, it was just a dog," you know? But it's not true. You know, for us, they're part of our family. You've lived with them for a long time, and so of course you grieve. So just seeing that, sort of the natural grief process and how people support it, I think is another major factor. And certainly that was true when animals that were part of the community, if you will, at Disney's Animal Kingdom or at a zoo, uh, when they pass away the level of support that the team would get was really lovely. When we lost that elephant, we received so many notes and drawings and things and photographs from people across the Disney company who'd heard about this and felt badly. It just became part of how I think about death and dying. It's just part of life.

[00:10:25] Sarah Cavanaugh: Do you have any particular animal that moved you more than any other?

[00:10:28] Jackie Ogden: I would say two. One would be elephants. I didn't know a lot about working with elephants until I went to Disney, um, and then when I began overseeing all of the animals there. I really dove into the elephant care and understanding how we worked with them, in part because they are inarguably the most dangerous animal that we had at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It was critical that I know the team well, and that I understood how they took care of them, and that I understood how they dealt with safety, all of that stuff. But as a result, that meant I got closer to the animals. And so when we lost a calf once and then that cow, that was just really tough. The other would be the first gorilla that I ever studied in a zoo was this wonderful, wonderful animal named Willie B. He was named for an old mayor of Atlanta and he was quite a celebrity within Atlanta. He had a sad, what is now a sad story, and would not happen in a responsible zoo, which is somebody likely killed his family and brought the infant in. And so Willie B was brought to Zoo Atlanta when he was about four, and lived there alone until he was 27, in what was fondly referred to in zoo design as the "bathroom style" of exhibit.

[00:11:53] Sarah Cavanaugh: Mmm. Concrete boxes.

[00:11:55] Jackie Ogden: Tile boxes specifically because — and, and there was a reason for that. When we started first taking care of gorillas in zoos, we didn't know how to take care of them, and so everything had to be disinfected all of the time. And tile is good for that. And so that's where he lived for 27 years or almost 27 years. He was the first animal that I studied at Zoo Atlanta. I was not there when he passed. I'd moved away years before. That was sad. It was sad for everybody in Atlanta. So probably that's the hardest.

[00:12:25] Sarah Cavanaugh: Ifyou don't mind, before we get to your personal story, I want to talk a little bit about conservation. And I read in one of the articles about the word "environmentality," which is a Disney term. Is that correct?

[00:12:39] Jackie Ogden: Walt Disney was himself a big animal guy, very focused on conservation, uh, which I think many people have no idea of. When he opened Walt Disney World, he set aside about a third of the land as conservation area in perpetuity, which is why there's so much green space and so much wildlife that's there. We worked really, really, really hard to really try to build the environmental work that we did, environmentality, into the culture of the company. And I watched it go from, "Yeah, they didn't really want to talk about the environment," to "Okay, we'll talk about the environment as long as you talk about the business aspect and there are metrics, and you can, we can measure it and see how we're doing and, and build on the natural competitiveness that the company has," which we used, absolutely. And then we got to the caring part, which I think is actually one of the challenges that the environmental movement has is that sometimes it just looks fluffy. And if you start with just the fluffy part, the people that are more cynical, or for whom it's just not a priority, don't necessarily get the business case for why they should care. Watching all of that happen was just incredible.

[00:13:55] Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, what does the word conservation actually mean in practice? So what's the day-to-day work involved?

[00:14:02] Jackie Ogden: I think people that don't work closely with the conservation movement assume that conservation is all about animals. It's the people that are the challenge. And so we, over time, have really shifted how we think about conservation, particularly in our culture and some parts of the Western world. We have had a real colonial approach to conservation. We would just, you know, fly in for a visit, tell them what to do, leave, and then be really surprised when nothing happened. And then we'd fly back, and we'd do it again. Now we really get that conservation in an area is not going to happen because the white guys come in to fix it. It's giong to happen because the community cares about the animals, and the community sets the goals, and they own the project. One of my favorite examples is at Disney we were part of a program called The Gorilla Conservation Education and Rehabilitation Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is not an easy place to work. The DRC ended up with a bunch of baby gorillas that had been brought in, as there was a lot of poaching. And so first the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund got involved to help take care of the kids, and I was on the board of Dian Fossey at the time. So they basically handed that over to a consortium of primarily zoos, but also conservation organizations to really, to take care of these gorillas and then eventually release them. And we did — it took a really long time but as of, I think it was just this past year, the last year or two — successfully release some of those individual gorillas back into the wild, into an area that really needed gorillas. The reason it was successful was because the community owned it. They really feel like those gorillas are theirs. The people of the community have worked to ensure that the area where the gorillas live, their home — they've worked to protect all of that because they're their gorillas. They're not the white guys' gorillas.

[00:16:44] Sarah Cavanaugh: You know, conservation is often defined as like, decline and loss and working toward outcomes that you may never see fully realized in your lifetime. It reminds me of my friend William Merwin, who, one of his famous quotations is, "On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree." It's not to see the tree fully realized, it's to plant that seed. How have you personally stayed motivated, and how do you help others keep going?

[00:16:54] Jackie Ogden: It's really about finding moments of hope whenever you can and focusing on those moments. It's sort of similar to the whole idea of mindfulness. Paying attention to where you are right now and what you can do right now. Jane Goodall, before she passed, wrote a wonderful book on hope. She got through it by working with people that were on the ground doing the work, and spending time with the animals. And it's really hard to be depressed when you're out in nature with these animals. You know, I've had the privilege of going twice to go spend time with gorillas in Rwanda, and I challenge anybody to be depressed when they're hanging out with a family group of gorillas for an hour. It's just impossible. You're completely there. So that's one piece. The other part that really helps is that conservation is a people problem. And so you see all of these incredible examples of the work that people are doing in the face of knowing that it may not work, but doing it and doing it and doing it, and loving what they're doing and feeling hope whenever they can. It was my job to keep people focused on the vision and to keep them hopeful. And, you know, that involved working with the animals, it involved the conservation work. It also worked on inspiring people to care. That's what responsible zoos. and certainly Disney's Animal Kingdom and The Seas at Epcot, are all about. They're about inspiring people to care about wildlife and wild places — and not just care about, but care for. You can't do that if you don't have stories to tell. You can't do that if you don't have some level of hope. Um, doom and gloom does not work to inspire people. What does is telling the positive stories and focusing on hope.

[00:18:41] Sarah Cavanaugh: Amid your ongoing work with animals, you also cared for your husband who had Alzheimer's disease, and you developed a mantra during that time: "I may not be happy, but I can have moments of joy." Can you tell us about that in your own words?

[00:18:57] Jackie Ogden: I was incredibly lucky and incredibly privileged that I was able to retire early and take care of my husband full-time. And most people can't do that. I'm very aware of how privileged I am and was. That doesn't mean it didn't suck. It sucked every day. But it was a privilege to be able to be there with him and to make his life as okay as it possibly could be during that time. And the way I did that is by being in the moment as much as I could be. I focused on the fact that I was still in love with him after 28 years. I focused on making his life as easy as possible. I focused on humor, he and I made silly jokes to each other up until the last few weeks of his life. Life is really hard. You know, certainly the Dalai Lama will tell you that life is really, really hard. There's a lot of suffering out there. But what you can do is pay attention to the moments of joy. I realized a long time ago that, although I often like denial as a strategy, it's really not very effective. You really just need to accept what's going on and figure out how to deal with it and not fight it, and so that's what I did with his disease was I didn't fight it. I just figured out how to help us live through it as well as we could. I would say the other thing that I did — well, I mean, I, I use so many different tools — but one of them was meditation, and I went to a meditation retreat very early on taking care of Hall. And during that retreat, what I realized was that I was very afraid I was going to lose myself to caregiving. And boy, we've all seen people do that, right? And I was afraid I wouldn't grow during that period. And personal growth is, you know, it's kind of why I get up in the morning. And so I then undertook the effort to continue to work on myself during that period and that really helped me, and still helps me.

[00:21:02] Sarah Cavanaugh: So you've recently learned that you're now living with Alzheimer's yourself.

[00:21:07] Jackie Ogden: Irony's a great thing, isn't it?

[00:21:10] Sarah Cavanaugh: What has this experience been like for you?

[00:21:12] Jackie Ogden: Oh gosh, that's a great question. Um, crappy and rich.You know, you hear people talk about the fact that as humans we're actually capable of holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time, and I feel like I'm doing that on a daily basis. I do get the irony of caring for him, and my father also had Alzheimer's back in the day, and then having the disease myself. I try to view that as humorous. And I certainly know more about the disease, uh, than I would otherwise. I'm in an unusual position to understand both caregiving of the disease and living with the disease. That's really great and it really sucks all at the same time. Again, two conflicting ideas, but absolutely both true. I was diagnosed two and a half-ish years ago and it's a, it's a firm diagnosis. It was done through a spinal tap. There's really no question that I have it. I was 63 at the time. I caught the disease really early, which is why I'm still doing well, but then I had to start dealing with all of this, and I tackle things head on. Like, it's planning and doing and being busy and, you know, all of that. You know, I also am really focused on living my life fully. We all know that we're terminal, right? But we don't have timelines, and I don't have a timeline either, but it's almost certainly shorter than most people's. It holds itself up to me every day that I have limited time, and I better live as well as I can. So I really work at that. It's not easy all the time. I think you'd be crazy not to be depressed 'cause there's a lot of grief that goes on with knowing you have this disease and a lot of fear. All of that is true. But I am traveling like a fiend. I'm traveling as much as I possibly can. I'm also working hard to do things that have the potential of delaying progression. We don't know how to cure this disease yet but we can slow it, at least to some degree. And so I'm, you know, trying to do all of those things. And I'm trying to do everything that I know that helped me when I was taking care of Hall. And luckily, some of those are good for me. Doing crossword puzzles, um, being in nature has always been my thing. The other piece is I have pulled resources in — again, I'm privileged to be able to do that. I have a therapist. I'm a big believer in therapy with good therapists. I'm also, I also have a spiritual coach. I'm not a religious person, but I guess I would say if anything, I'm a secular Buddhist. And so I'm very focused on that, and that brings with it a lot of meditation. I have this incredible gift that not everybody has, and that is that I have had an amazing life. I've had an amazing career. I've had a great love. I'm also now in a wonderful relationship with a man I also love. I've been able to see a lot of the world, never enough, but a lot of it. And I have incredible people in my life. Because I've worked in all these different areas and with all these different groups, I have friends everywhere. And I really, I'm so grateful for that. It's also really helpful 'cause I'm, I guess, an orphan. My parents are no longer alive. I don't have siblings and I don't have kids. And so that's a disconcerting place to be when you get a diagnosis like this. I was complaining about that to somebody in the business and she said, "You know, family is great and family can be magnificent, but family can also be hard. You have the advantage of being able to choose your own family." And I went, "Okay, that's really fair." My biggest problem right now is not fighting it, not fighting needing help, not fighting the progression of the disease, accepting help. I really am — it's not my strength to do all of that.

[00:25:14] Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, you're not alone 'cause a lot of people have trouble asking for and accepting help. Given that you were only 63, how did you know? Did you have symptoms?

Jackie Ogden: I had symptoms. In part because I analyze everything to death and I'm really quite introspective, and I went through all of this with Hall. I know the disease really well, and I know my brain really well. And I realized that things had gotten a lot harder than they were. You know, certainly I did hard things at work and I had bad days like everybody, but work wasn't hard. Work was fun. And I was still doing consulting and executive coaching, and I realized that the work was becoming un-fun. And that wasn't just 'cause I wanted to be retired. It was hard. And it was like, well, that's weird. And so I started paying attention to that, and then I went, "Well, cognitive aging is a real thing," but I was really young for it to be happening. I think when I really got concerned was when they were changing fairly rapidly, at least to me, probably not to others. In fact, most of my friends still say, "Yeah, if you didn't tell us, we would have no idea."

[00:26:28] Sarah Cavanaugh: So where are you now in the journey with this disease? It sounds like you've gathered your chosen family and your care team.

[00:26:38] Jackie Ogden: I am still am walking that line between grieving and being afraid of the disease, and also living life. I think it's a daily struggle. How do I feel the real feelings that go with grief and not suppress them — 'cause I know that is not healthy, especially for me — and how do I then also still live? And simultaneously, I think the answer to that is really accepting the disease, knowing that it's going to progress, not being terrified of that, and asking for help. I'm not very focused, but I, I, and I don't wanna be very focused, but I do think about the later stages of this disease. I have decided I don't want to live through the last stages. It was horrible watching Hall go through the late stages and watching my dad. The challenge with this disease, as you probably know, is that in order to do “death with dignity,” or whatever it's called in different states, you have to have a terminal illness and you have to be of sound mind. And when you have Alzheimer's, those things don't happen at the same time. You lose your sound mind way before you are terminal. The one option that I do have is what's called VSED, or voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, and that is the path I'm on. I've hired a death doula, and so she's really helping me with all the stuff I've gotta do, but then also she's very familiar with the VSED process and has helped a lot of people. Having her on my team is phenomenal. Now my care team is all involved with that and, and I'm very aware some people are gonna be more comfortable with it than others. But I know that there are people that will be there and help me through it

[00:28:30] Sarah Cavanaugh: So if you choose VSED, which is a personal choice, an individual choice to stop eating and drinking, are you able to ask hospice to come in and help with pain management?

[00:28:42] Jackie Ogden: Yes and no. So it depends. Some hospices won't come in and help with pain management until you are terminal. Um, that means partway through the VSED process, and unfortunately through — or into the part that is the most, arguably the most difficult— when you're incoherent. And I really would like to avoid that part. So there are hospices that do help, that do take somebody into hospice from the beginning of the VSED process, and we happen to have one in town here, which is a miracle. And I plan to avail myself of them.

[00:29:21] Sarah Cavanaugh: What does a peaceful exit mean to you?

[00:29:24] Jackie Ogden: A peaceful exit means that I've come to terms with my life, that I have done the work I need to do to feel good about moving on to whatever the next stage is, if there is one. And I'm frankly okay either way. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm just afraid of the process. And it's also knowing that I have accepted it, that I've accepted this journey that I'm currently on, that I've accepted the VSED process in this case, that I've accepted asking for help and getting help, and really availing myself of that and knowing that people want to help. Just have to repeat these things to myself all the time. A peaceful exit also means to me that I have given back during this time. I am in this weird position where I'm very early in the disease. I understand caregiving, and I understand the disease, and I am trying to figure out how to help people that are going through this. And I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but that's one of my goals. So it's all of that.