The Adventures of Memento Mori

3.6 Saltier by the Room

Moss makes the rookie mistake of thinking a chaplain's job is to absorb the suffering of strangers. Soak it up like a sponge, room after room, story after story. Sounds noble until four months in, when the weight of it starts showing up in places you didn't invite it: your shoulders, your sleepless nights, your ability to be present with the people you love. So how do you sit with someone in their worst moment without letting it move in and take up permanent residence? How do you let energy flow through you instead of collecting inside you? In this episode, Zen Master Trudi teaches Moss the secret technique of flushing and reveals the true healing power of a prayer. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

3.5 I Hope This Finds You Well

Does refusing to face a difficult reality become the thing that saves you from it? Or is denial what ultimately takes you down? Moss is three months into his chaplaincy and handed a new framework for caring: hope, meaning, and connection. But when he walks into the rooms at Bellevue, hope is the one box that won't check. The harder he reaches for it, the more fraudulent it feels. How do you project hope onto someone's life when everything about their situation tells you not to? In this episode, a roadside sign, a nun's prayer, and an ostrich named Amadeus force Moss to ask whether denial is actually a tool and hope is nothing more than a weak wish. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley

3.4 Thou Art That

What does a Nazi, an ancient prophecy, and a pack of gum have in common? When beautiful philosophy meets overwhelming suffering, what holds you together when you're falling apart? How do you practice compassion when you're faking it—when you're standing in a room you're supposed to care about, but you feel nothing? Moss learns the difference between an open heart and a bleeding heart, discovers he's connected to the people he despises, and finds out why trying to save the world will destroy you. In this episode, an ancient warrior prophecy offers two weapons for facing darkness—but only if you can wield them both.

3.3 Hidden Elephants

Moss thought the hardest part of being a chaplain would be sitting with the dying. He was wrong. It was contextualizing people's suffering. At Bellevue, he meets a man so broken by life he swallowed razor blades just to get medical treatment for hemorrhoids—a man convinced God is actively torturing him, questioning how he could possibly love a God that doesn't love him back. Having experienced hundreds of stories like this herself, Zen Master Trudi reveals an ancient text that offers no resolution, no silver lining, only brutal validation. In this episode, Moss learns the chaplain's job isn't to fix suffering—it's to help people find the constellation that makes sense of their chaos, even when that constellation reflects back their darkest truths.

3.2 Do Your Thing

Faced with the daunting task of responding to his first pager call, D.S. Moss confronts fear and uncertainty, struggling to define his role as a humanist chaplain without religious frameworks. Zen Master Trudi offers insights on authenticity and human connection, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability and presence. Through encounters with patients, Moss grapples with questions of authority, identity, and confidence, ultimately finding power in his beginner's mind and the simple act of being human. Host: D.S. Moss Produced by: The Mayda Creative Company Mix & Sound Design: Aman Sahota Story Editor: Laura Standley