Hosted by Melanie Martinez
What if you didn't?
Summary
Fetching Death is a podcast about thirty years of directing people through crisis — and what that work teaches you about living. Hosted by Melanie Martinez, a former mortician and legal document professional, it is told the way the work was done: quietly, without flinching, with the occasional moment of dark comedy the job makes necessary.
Each episode is a card from the Rolodex — a specific person, a specific room, a specific thing that got filed under something you don't put down. The unclaimed man in the orientation video. The snails on the Whittier sidewalk. A woman named Hope, eighty-three years old, still waiting for her marker to get its second date.
This is not a death podcast. It is a podcast about noticing — what happens when you spend decades in the rooms where the real things happen, and what you carry out when you leave.
Episodes
Ten Episodes — Season One
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Melanie
Melanie Martinez spent twenty years in mortuary science — apprentice and licensed practitioner at Rose Hills Memorial Park, owner of two funeral homes, creator of the Tender Heart infant product line. She answered calls at two in the morning. She carried a briefcase with holy water in it. She said damn it in front of twenty people at the worst possible moment. She has not judged anyone since a Monday morning in a second-floor prep room in 1992.
After mortuary science, she opened Lake Legal in Lakeport, California — a legal document practice for disenfranchised communities. Next door to the last mortuary she ever embalmed in. Same block. Full circle.
She is the founder of AfterLife Documents and the host of Fetching Death.
When her kids asked where she was going, she'd say: fetching death.
Not a removal. Not work. Fetching death.
Contact
These episodes were made to be sat with — that's the intention. If something came up for you while listening, I want to hear it. Write to us. Everything comes to the same place and we read it.
For listener notes, speaking, media, or AfterLife Documents inquiries —
[email protected]
Occasionally I set aside time to talk — a specific episode, something it surfaced, something you wanted to say out loud. When those dates are open they appear below.
is open.
Send a few sentences about what you'd like to talk about to [email protected] and we'll be in touch.
I open dates when I have something to give. Check back.