Our Dead Dads
The concept of Our Dead Dads was born through the daily discussions of seven men who share bonds of blood, friendship and all having lost their fathers. Nick Gaylord, the show’s host, shares his life experiences with his deceased father while exploring the complications and realities of that relationship. Life is intense, grief and loss come in many forms, and no parent-child relationship is black and white, which is why this show touches on all shades of grey.
Join Nick for candid conversations with his three brothers and three of his lifelong friends, along with other special guests who discuss their experiences with loss, grief, laughter, and moving forward. Nothing is off-limits here. Nick learned after his father's passing that he couldn't process what he was going through alone and sought the help of a therapist, who helped him to let go of his anger toward his father. Looking back, he realized just how many people are being crushed under the weight of grief, loss, and in some cases, anger.
Nick's mission through Our Dead Dads is to offer a platform for anyone who needs or wants to tell their story, to have that opportunity. He also hopes to reach many more who need to talk but don't know how to start the conversation, hopeful that by listening to these stories, they will be able to start talking with someone.
Nick has always sought to help others and to make everyone around him laugh. Along with his brothers and friends, he has frequently used humor to get through the hardest times in their lives, and hopefully, you will permit yourself to do the same. Get ready for an emotional deep dive. Nick has a lot to say and so do his guests. He's here for you and ready to help. Everyone has been through trauma, grief, and loss. Now, along with Nick and his guests, everyone will get through it together.
Nick is changing the world one damaged soul at a time. Welcome to Our Dead Dads.
Our Dead Dads
021 - Family Bonds and Emotional Journeys with Annie LaBeth
Grief, trauma, and resilience take center stage as we bring you another heartfelt episode of Our Dead Dads. This time, I sit down with my friend Annie LaBeth, whose journey through losing her father at 23 offers a poignant look at the complexities of family dynamics and loss. Annie's story, laced with moments of dark humor shared over morning mimosas, highlights the vital role supportive communities play in navigating the turbulent waters of grief. Her insights remind us of the power in sharing our stories—a collective healing that can transcend the pain of loss.
Join us as we reminisce about our shared Texas roots, uncover surprising family histories, and explore the intricate dance of familial relationships. From the revelation of herfather's late-in-life fatherhood and the unique circumstances of her birth to Annie's experiences with an aging, ailing parent in Brenham, Texas, the episode paints a vivid picture of how parental health and habits shape our lives. We traverse the emotional landscape of significant life events and the unexpected paths they carve, underscoring the necessity of therapy and honest engagement to process grief and find closure.
This episode doesn't shy away from the raw and real—whether it's recounting the bittersweet timing of a father's passing shortly after witnessing a child's wedding or navigating the emotional maze of a mother's intense yet incomprehensible grief over an abusive partner's death. We confront the challenges of processing grief during a global pandemic, the complex journey to forgiveness, and the awkwardness of social interactions post-loss. Through it all, we emphasize the importance of vulnerability and genuine connection in fostering understanding and healing from one damaged soul to another.
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Hello and welcome to Our Dead Dads, the podcast where we are normalizing, talking about grief, trauma loss and moving forward. I'm your host, my name is Nick Gaylord, and if this is your first time joining me, welcome to the show, and if you're a regular listener, then welcome back. For everyone listening, thank you so much for your support and thank you for making this show part of your day. The best way that you can continue to support the show is to continue listening. Send in your feedback on the show's Facebook and Instagram pages and, most importantly, please spread the word about the show. Everybody deals with grief and we are all in this together, and the best thing that any of us can do is to support each other through that grief. Follow us on your favorite platform, give us a five-star review and, by the way, if you don't know how to leave a five-star review, go to the homepage of OurDeadDadscom, scroll down and it'll show you the step-by-step, the ratings, the downloads spreading the word. I can't thank you enough. We're getting noticed in countries all around the world, so please keep it up. As you all know, I'm striving to be a recognized voice in the grief community, and the more that the word spreads about the show, the more folks I can help. I really hope that you enjoyed last week's conversation with Sean Christopher.
Speaker 1:This week is episode number 21, our Blackjack episode and it's time to talk with my friend, annie LaBeth. I met Annie at some point in mid-2021 when Kim and I were still living in Texas. We were working together at my last job in Texas and immediately hit it off when she heard about Our Dead Dads and started listening. She reached out to say what a great idea she thought the podcast was, which led to a conversation about her dad and losing him, which led to what you're about to hear today. Annie's dad was close to 50 when she was born, which unfortunately led her to losing him when she was only 23. So, between that factor and everything else that played a role in their relationship, we have a lot to talk about. You're going to get some laughs, because Annie also shares my love of dark humor and the fact that Annie started off this interview with a mimosa, which led me to make a drink. Even though it was an 8am on a Saturday morning interview, we had a hell of a lot of fun, given how emotional the conversation was.
Speaker 1:Before we get started, I would like to thank you again for listening, for your feedback and for engaging with the show. Don't forget to follow the show's social media pages on Facebook, instagram and TikTok. As you know, my goal is to normalize talking about grief, loss and trauma, which are topics that are not easy for most of us to talk about, but there are also topics that everybody should be discussing more, and not only discussing them, but not feeling like they're taboo topics. Time may not heal all wounds, but keeping everything bottled up inside does not heal any of them. Together, we are building a community for others to have a safe space to talk about their stories and their feelings and for anyone who may not yet be ready to talk, just to listen to others and know that no one is alone on this path. That is why I say we are a community and I'm so happy to have you here. If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest on Our Dead Dads, go to OurDeadDadscom, go to the contact us link and then select be a guest, fill out the form, send it in and you just might be able to tell your story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and helping so many others. That said, it is time to start the show and turn the spotlight over to Annie. Please enjoy this episode and stick around for the end when I will tell you about next week's episode.
Speaker 1:Our Dead Dads podcast is sponsored by Kim Gaylord Travel. If you can dream up the vacation whether a getaway for you and your other half, a family trip or a trip for a large group she will help you plan it. If you've never used or even thought about using a travel agent for your trips, you really should. About using a travel agent for your trips, you really should. Kim will help you plan everything the flights, hotels, transportation, excursions, all the places to visit and all the sites to see. You'll get a detailed itinerary of everything and if anything goes wrong during your trip, you have someone to contact. Whether you're looking for a customized European vacation, a relaxing stay at an all-inclusive resort, an Alaskan adventure, a Caribbean cruise, kim will work with you to make sure you have a seamless travel experience. Contact her today and plan your next trip with a peace of mind that only working with a travel agent can offer. And, as a special bonus for our listeners, mention Our Dead Dads podcast for a 10% discount on planning fees. You can find Kim Gaylord Travel on Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn, or email Kim directly. Her email address is kim at kimgaylordtravelcom.
Speaker 1:Our Dead Dads podcast is sponsored by Dotted Avenue Creative Studio. If you're looking to build your first website or give your current site a facelift, you need not look any further than Dotted Avenue Creative Studio. They will work with you to customize exactly what you want in a website. Whether you want something personal and simple or a website for your business, you're in the right place A professional-looking page that you and everyone who visits your site will be obsessed with. Search engine optimization, e-commerce all the bells and whistles.
Speaker 1:If you haven't already checked out OurDeadDadscom, you should take a look fora couple of reasons. First, because there are a lot of really cool features to check out, including some interactive sections for the listeners, but also because Dotted Avenue built this website. They work exclusively within Squarespace, who is the hosting company of our website. They work exclusively within Squarespace, who is the hosting company of our website, and customize your website exactly the way you want it and then, when it's done, you'll have a one-on-one Zoom call to learn everything you need to learn about maintaining the website yourself. Go to dottedavenuecom and get started today. Mention our dead Daz and get a 10% discount on any web design package. Dotted Avenue Creative Studio is the first, last and only company you'll ever need for website design. I cannot express in enough words how overjoyed you look to be doing this. You look thrilled.
Speaker 2:I was up before she was and that makes me mad when my brain does that.
Speaker 1:You and Kim should talk. She's frequently up in the middle of the night because she'll just wake up and then she'll start thinking about something, and then she's awake for two hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was last night at about 2 am, I was. What was I even thinking about? And we don't have a four month old to deal with. Yeah, I don't know what it was. It was something like that it was. It was something completely stupid and yeah, did not need to be thinking about it.
Speaker 1:2 am, that's for sure. Well, duh, you don't need to be thinking about anything. Oh, oh shit, is that a mimosa um?
Speaker 2:it's a body armor, so kind of oh damn, I didn't get mine.
Speaker 1:Hang on a second I we have to do this right.
Speaker 2:I had orange juice but I was like I'm going to drink my body armor anyway, we might as well knock it out of the way.
Speaker 1:Why not? Like we said yesterday, you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning.
Speaker 2:That's very factual. Usually it's like 10 am, but hey, what's a four? Well, what time is it? Three hour head start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was almost 7.30 your time, 8.30 my time and I had a very early morning. I mean, I was up at probably 4.30, which is, for anybody who hasn't listened, that long is very typical for me. I'm usually up early during the week, go to the gym, feed Maxie because, again, cats don't understand weekends, so I try to sleep in.
Speaker 2:I can't believe she ate for breakfast. That's insane. We have an automatic feeder for our cats. Because we left for a week in nashville last year, I was like I don't want people in and out of our house, so we just got an automatic feeder.
Speaker 1:And well, we have we. We do have an automatic feeder, um, but it really doesn't work so well for canned food, otherwise it'll just be sitting out and it'll get all stinky and gross. I mean, if it was dry food that's one thing.
Speaker 1:But we actually stopped giving her dry food several years ago because when she started having issues with her thyroid and her weight was a little weird, the doctor, the doctor, the vet said basically stop giving her dry food. It's pretty much nothing but carbs, so she needs protein and she needs grain free. So whatever you know, she's worth it.
Speaker 2:We'll get there once they need it. We do give them wet food occasionally, but yeah like you said it's not easy to put that in automatic feeder. It doesn't. No, it's not at all She'll occasionally get.
Speaker 1:we'll give her a couple of treats, you know the little dry crunchies, but that's really it.
Speaker 2:We don. Yeah, I know they eat it. It was a pain in the butt portioning it because it did it like by tablespoons or something.
Speaker 1:I was like I don't know how many tablespoons y'all eat, so it was trial and error for a fat minute, yeah, and at this point she's 18. So we're going to try to keep her around for another 15 years or so.
Speaker 2:It's about time for her to move out and get a job.
Speaker 1:No kidding, we've been telling her that for a long time. It's about time she gets a job and starts supporting the household. Well, she is a typical 18-year-old in one way. She used to frequently sleep up on the bed with us at night, at least she would start, she would just sleep at the foot of the bed and at some point she would get down and go do her own thing. Pretty much ever since she turned 18, which was about a month and a half ago she doesn't want to do it anymore. I'll pick her up and I'll bring her up and she gets right down.
Speaker 2:What a teenager. Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 1:What a teenager, now that she's 18 and she's asserting her dominance and her independence. I'm an adult. Fuck off, guys. I don't want to be bothered with this, giving me scratches and love. No, fuck off. As much as I hate to say it when we're talking about a topic like this, I have a feeling we're in for a little bit of a fun morning today.
Speaker 2:I would agree, more of a fun morning than normal.
Speaker 1:More fun morning than normal. You sure you're ready for this.
Speaker 2:Yes, ready.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that we finally are getting around to doing this.
Speaker 2:I am too, I know.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize until we had started talking about this a few weeks ago probably several weeks ago by now just how much you had in your past with your dad, and I'm so happy that you know, whether it was a combination of you hearing the podcast and us talking and you just decided you wanted to bring this up. Yeah, I think it was you just posting about it. I was like dang, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I didn't know you were working on that, so I wanted to reach out and just say how cool it was. But here we are. Went a little further than that.
Speaker 1:Went a little bit further than that. Obviously, I appreciate you reaching out about that, but I'm also glad that we have a chance to have a conversation To give everybody a little bit of context as to our background. So you and I have known each other for about three years. So you and I have known each other for about three years. We actually used to work together. We met sometime in 2021. I left that company in early 2022.
Speaker 2:You left shortly after I fought midway, yeah, midway, I fought midway it was about July of 2022.
Speaker 1:That's right, and we just never lost touch after that and I'm so glad that we didn't for many reasons, but we pretty much hit it off right away yeah, I don't know what the heck you said, but it was like my first day you're the first person talking in the break room.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think they brought bagels. They had bagels that day and you were oh, you know what I think?
Speaker 1:I brought those bagels yeah, maybe you did that, that, yes, yes, that was one of the trips um rainbow, rainbow bagels yeah, I had just come back from new york and brought a few dozen long island bagels, yeah, which I had tried doing that at my previous job, and they just got destroyed every time I brought them in, and so I I'm pretty sure that wasn't the first time that I had brought bagels where we worked, but that was your first day and I'm pretty sure it was just.
Speaker 1:You know, here's a new person, so introduce myself and oh, by the way, have a bagel and, you know, have one or seven, as I'm sure a few people probably had.
Speaker 2:I probably had more than one. I don't, I don't, I don't have portion control, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:No reason to have portion control.
Speaker 2:And yeah, our desks were about six feet away from each other, so once we moved, I was over by that door at one point and they were like no, no cubicle for you. So then they banished me to the stairwell door and you were like three feet from me. That was the cool kid corner right there.
Speaker 1:That was the cool kid corner. We had so much fucking fun over there. We gave everybody grief, when they were coming up and coming up, the stairs and going down the stairs throwing paper balls at everybody. Bagisha, we frequently did that. We always gave doug a hard time whenever he was going up and down the stairs. That was fun. But yeah, between you, me, pavan james, the four of us, yeah, we really made it the cool kids corner the the occasional Gary spew.
Speaker 1:Occasional, gary and people would frequently hang out and talk to us, and it's a good thing that Jack was not a jerk of a boss, because there were plenty of times when people were coming over and just talking to us and any other boss would have been like really again and nope, shut up and get to work. Shut up and get to work.
Speaker 2:Shut up and get to work, but frequently he would join in the conversations. Yes, 100, and I didn't know that at all.
Speaker 1:Shout out. Shout out to jack and shout out to pavon and james. Again. I don't know how much fun we're gonna have talking about these topics, but with our personalities and the fact that we are going to be well lubricated yes, we are. For the record, we are are drinking at 730 in the morning on a Saturday and no fucks to be given.
Speaker 2:It is mom juice. Mamos. It's success, mamos.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to make you feel left out, so that's basically why I'm having a drink and I'm doing a little Jack Daniels and some screwball and chambord, a little peanut butter and jelly whiskey Love it.
Speaker 2:Hey, that's kind of like a breakfast.
Speaker 1:It is kind of like a breakfast. This way I don't have to go through the hassle of cooking anything, yeah, exactly. I'll have actual breakfast later. Yeah, I'll have second breakfast eventually, that's right, I'll have some solid food, so let's get into this. Something that I didn't realize until you told me last night was your dad was 49 when you were born.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And you have a twin brother which I also didn't know.
Speaker 2:Yes, most people don't know that Kind of a fun after fact. But yeah, my parents, who are on the older end of the spectrum for kids, I think probably like graduating high school, most people's parents were like mid 40s, early 50s, somewhere in that range.
Speaker 1:My people's parents were like mid forties, early fifties, somewhere in that range. My dad was 28 when I was born. My mom was 25. So yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2:That's pretty much how we're at. We had our first at 27. So probably right on pace with average. But yeah, my parents were probably on the older end of that. My mom was 41 and my dad was 49. They tried to have kids together for solid 10 years and 1997 that around that range was when ibf became popular or it was just starting to come about. So, um, they tried that route and um used donor eggs.
Speaker 2:So I'm not another fun fact I'm not biologically related to my mom wow yeah, another bomb, um, but they used my dad's sperm and a donor egg and implanted it into my mom ivf so whenever your mom would piss you off, you could say you're not my real mom. And yeah, fun fact they really wanted to name us master and visa, because we we fuck up their credit cards. You know, I'm not even kidding like that. They really thought about that. For a fat man it's named me and my brother, master and visa yeah, would have which?
Speaker 1:which one of you would have been which?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'll just say I was gonna be master for sure. I think that kind of fits my personality a little better but, yeah, that that happened in 97. They implanted like six eggs or something. So there was a fat, there was a chance she could have had like I don't even know what that's called sex I'm stupid.
Speaker 2:Sex topless is early, um, but yeah, just me and my brother made it. And here we are, 27 years later. They were 41 and 49. Take care of twins. And yeah, now, being a mom myself, I can't. I literally can't fathom. You can barely handle one, let alone being in your 40s, handling two like and, and she's what? Four months old, yeah, so the the best is still ahead for you yes, definitely, we're still in the, there's light at the end of the tunnel and it's getting brighter face right.
Speaker 1:well, that light will dim if you end up having more, because then you'll go back to day zero Restart the clock yeah. Restart the clock again. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:What kind of sleep you function on before baby and then what you learn to function on after baby. Like I thought four hours of sleep was going to kill me. Now I'm like, yeah four me now I'm like, yeah, four hours of sleep, let's go. Four hours of sleep is a dream come true at this point for you.
Speaker 1:That is magical, I mean, especially if it's four hours of consecutive sleep.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying like four hours of consecutive sleep, that's like unicorn sleep like yeah, love it.
Speaker 1:So your mom is 41, your dad is 49. Um, tell us about growing up. What were your parents like?
Speaker 2:so, as far as I can remember, my dad dad was born in Ohio and he ended up going to college at Marshall in West Virginia.
Speaker 1:We are yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a good movie. He went to college in West Virginia. He got married three times over there with two women.
Speaker 1:Married one of them twice.
Speaker 2:Married one of them twice. He didn't learn the first time. I guess he had two children with one of them and they're much older than me. I think they could actually be our parents. I think they're close to 50 right now. I have not met them in my conscious life. I was a flower girl in his daughter's wedding when I was like three or something and that's probably like my earliest memory. But yeah, he had two from a previous marriage and then booked it to Texas and started working at the state school in Brenham. It's now the state sport living center, but anyway, that's where he met my mom. She was a nurse out there and they got married in 1984 and built a house and that's where I grew up my entire life and the house they built. Way back when and now I'm I built my own house on the same land and we're chilling. But yeah, they tried to have kids for 10 years, eventually had IVF done and that was successful, so that's why they were older.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I grew up in Brenham, texas, my whole life, so shout out to Bluebell.
Speaker 1:I'm sure some of your listeners are familiar with that ice cream depending on parts of the country yeah, I love bluebell ice cream. Okay, so you guys come along and now it's just you, aside from your much older siblings, it's just you and your brother, right?
Speaker 2:yes, correct, it was just me, my brother, my mom, and my dad, all his family was pretty much in ohio. I I think the earliest time I met one of his family members was probably like 12 is a big range, like 12 to 18 range. I met his sister once, my aunt Claudia, and then, yeah, I didn't meet his other children and I still haven't met them. Like I said, it was three years old and I was in a flower girl for his daughter's wedding and that was kind of it. And then my mom had some sisters. She had one in California she passed that same year, my dad did and she had another sister that passed when she was really young. And then she had two other living sisters. That one lived in Houston, one still is in Houston and one lives next door to us actually. So that was kind of the only family we really had growing up was mom, dad, brother and occasionally aunts and a couple cousins and that was. That was kind of it.
Speaker 1:Okay. What was it like growing up with your dad?
Speaker 2:tell me about him he was a difficult dude and I can't even say that it's probably because I'm so much like him now, like in hindsight, like our personality is very the same, like we're very stubborn, very headstrong you stubborn really, oh, I know, like we just don't take no shit, you know, like that's like like borderline, like blessing and a curse, like he taught me to be really independent, so that's great, but yeah, yeah, it was difficult.
Speaker 2:As long as I can remember, he just had health issues. Um, vividly remember in sixth grade I was late, it was dark and I walk out on the porch and my mom's on the phone. He's sitting on the picnic table and he's just like hell's a ghost, what the hell's going on? And it turns out he was having a heart attack and my mom was on the phone with an ambulance and I was like I think this was sixth grade and fast forward. Yeah, we go to school the next couple of days and he's ended up having double bypass and Brian open heart surgery.
Speaker 2:We stayed with my aunt for a couple of days and yeah, it was kind of like that on repeat my whole childhood, just with them being older and then being smokers and drinkers. Like just the health issues were a revolving door. It was always something between him and my mom. I mean, she wasn't. She wasn't a heavy alcoholic, but I'll do that to you. So that was just kind of the moral of the story it was just growing up. It was just cost of hospital visits, cost of constant doctor visits, like it was just oh, dad's in the hospital today it's like okay, what? For this time it just kind of became like a routine part of life and especially when I got older't phase anymore I was like, oh, okay, another another dollar.
Speaker 1:You know it was pretty commonplace at that point yeah, definitely. So you said so. Both your parents were smokers and you said your mom wasn't an alcoholic. So that does that mean your dad was?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my dad's another one of the earliest memories I have is he just drank all the time, like vividly in my childhood. Anytime he'd come tell us good night. His scruffy mustache he'd come kiss on the forehead. It smelled with what like he ate, like spaghetti he ate spaghetti all the time and then like his scotch whiskey, like that was. That was what it smelled like every night going to bed. Then yeah, it was. I don't know how much of it, I never. I mean the liquor bottles were on like above the double oven, so that was way too tall for my little 12 year old ass. But I don't know how much you drank every night, but it was. It was definitely a significant amount, I mean enough to be inebriated every night for sure.
Speaker 1:Was it just during the night?
Speaker 2:No, it was all day, it just didn't get.
Speaker 1:I don't know like repeated unfortunately, that's what an alcoholic does.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's crazy and like just you'd think the hangovers would get up to you. But no, they just they just stopped phasing you at some point, I guess yeah, what was your relationship with your dad?
Speaker 1:like, were you guys close?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think, like talking to you the other day or reflecting on our relationships with our dads, I'd say it was like somewhere in the 60 to 75% range of good and then the other parts were bad. And it's not like they were like mild bad. When they were bad, they were bad. There was almost no middle ground. Honestly, I would say early life my mom was kind of the main one involved, like extracurriculars and stuff like that. He would come to the occasional basketball game or just kind of be an embarrassing mess. And now, looking back at it, I'm not really sure if he was drunk or if that was just his personality. It probably could have been a little bit of both.
Speaker 2:Um, like I remember playing little dribblers basketball and I was I was not great at shooting. Like I could defense I could. I could go post somebody up and just like reject your ass with the ball, but I could not shoot for the shit. Like my my form was terrible. Like I'd pretty much just like shoot the ball at like a 45 degree angle straight at the rim and like obviously that's not how basketball works. Like it goes like a parabola, like up and down into the into the net and he'd he'd scream over the top of everybody's arc ball arc. And I can just like hear that even now like watching basketball arc.
Speaker 2:Um you're basically passing it to the rim yeah, I was literally passing it to the rim, that's exactly how it was and like, thankfully I was tall for like a five, like an eight year old, you know, like five, eight at eight years old. Like, yeah, I'm gonna be taller than everybody, so that was my saving grace, but wait a minute.
Speaker 1:You were five, eight, you weren't five, eight years old, same size shoe since like sixth grade.
Speaker 2:Like size 11 women's shoes since the sixth grade I mean, you are tall yeah, I'm like average. I guess average now like five, eight, five, nine on a good day. But yeah, at 10, 11 years old, eight years old, that was.
Speaker 1:That was pretty freaking tall yeah and then, all of a sudden, you just stopped yeah, and literally I stopped like after sixth grade, that was it.
Speaker 2:Like nope, you're done, we don't want you to. We want you to find somebody one day.
Speaker 1:That's not gonna do much drinking coffee as a kid.
Speaker 2:It stunted your growth you know I I can't drink coffee anymore. It jacks me up, it gets me going too much I don't drink coffee all.
Speaker 1:It's one of my favorite smells in the world. I love it. Yeah, I'm the same way.
Speaker 2:I'm the same. The taste is okay. It's got to be like watered down a good bit, but yeah, the smell is awesome.
Speaker 1:Awesome. The smell is amazing and in the last few years I've gotten into enjoying coffee ice cream, Because coffee ice cream is kim's favorite.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, oh, she's got great taste. That was my favorite for the longest.
Speaker 1:It's still she has great taste, you married me.
Speaker 2:That's true. You know what a woman what a woman, exactly.
Speaker 1:No, but I can't drink coffee. Um, even when I drank it for about a semester in college, and that was with tons of milk and sugar, and you know, it was basically a 300 calorie cup of coffee and I was like, well, this bullshit, it's not even enjoyable. At that point, it was just not worth it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, he was, he was there for some of it and then when it I guess I just remember in high school I was I was really involved in band and he loved classical music. He played trumpet and stuff like that. So that was one of the things we kind of bonded over. Do you play trumpet? No, I played flute. Okay, I was lame, I played the flute, but no, um, it's okay, I was pretty good at it, not gonna lie, but um, yeah, he was super supportive of that when he was there. Um, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times he came to concerts and stuff like that. And it was towards the end of high school, I think he realized, like dang, she's gonna be out of the house like in a year, you know. Like, yeah, time to get my shit together.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, senior year he was really involved with stuff but, prior to that, it was definitely hit or miss, and it was it was a combination of the drinking and then the combination of, like the drinking spurring fights between my mom and them not wanting to be around each other. So that was probably the probably the majority of it's not just them to want not want to be around each other. So that was probably the probably the majority of it is not just them to walk not wanting to be around each other.
Speaker 1:When they were fighting. Was it screaming? Was it physical?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was both. It was probably 90% screaming, but there were definitely times where there was um, there were some physical altercations. He was in jail a couple of times, um, just overnight, you know. They'd take him to the drunk tank. I'm sure let him sit there sober up so he couldn't hurt my mom or potentially hurt me or my brother. Thankfully he never did physically abuse me or my brother. But yeah, the times with my mom, they were bad, like there was. There was a time we were me and my mom, were in my room watching like Grey's Anatomy or something back in the day and came in there trying to start a fight and she ended up throwing the trash can at him and he was yeah, he was done after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the cop didn't take any shit yeah, she did not take any shit that night. Um, cops were called that night there. It was probably a good two or three times. I remember that he ended up going to jail for the night just to go sit and sober up for the next day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't really remember him coming home or how he got home if If my mom went and got him, I have no idea. I was probably too young for all that. But um 90% verbal, there was good 10% physical Um so when did you move out at college?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I graduated high school in 2015,. Um went to Texas A&M that next year. I decided to live on campus. In hindsight, just with how the world's going now, definitely should have went to junior college first, but I just wanted to get the hell out of the house. That was the main thing. I could have gone to junior college first, stayed home, saved some money, but, yeah, it was time for me to skedaddle out of there. So, yeah, I moved out in 2015.
Speaker 2:I went back, I think that next summer, like summer 2016,. Just worked at my pool during that summer and that's where me and my husband, actually um, reconnected. He got a job at the pool that same summer. We had known each other since junior high but he had moved. We kind of went our separate ways and but he came back that summer to work at the same pool and um so that kind of worked out went home that one summer in 2016 and never went back. Um graduated college in 2018. Um got married in 2020 and then, yeah, we lived in college station until 2019, then moved back to Brenham that next year so we could both work full-time for our city.
Speaker 1:But and for context for the listeners, how far are Brenham and college station apart?
Speaker 2:they're like 45 minutes. Like my pediatrician's office was in college station so I was up and down there like every couple months for sure, just going to doctor's appointments, doing whatever, because there wasn't anything in Burnham at the time. We thought Burnham was hot shit because we just got a Chick-fil-A and a Hobby Lobby in the last year College Station always had that, so yeah, we would always go to College Station and get school supplies, go out to eat at the good places, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So they were close by Ram's, a small town it had. Now it's closer to 20,000, but back then it was like 12, 15,000 people, so it was a small town.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how did your relationship with your dad evolve, change, improve, decline over those over this point, from the time when you moved out to when you got married?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was definitely up and down, so I'd say it improved dramatically. Like while I was in college he actually like sobered up for a couple of years randomly, like he didn't, he didn't really make a spiel out of it, it just kind of happened. And it was great Like we were connecting. We were going out to eat when I was home he was coming up to College Station. We'd go out, we'd like hang out.
Speaker 2:It was great and then one day yeah, it was great, it was good, and then it just kind of changed. One day I remember that was the first day I got my ticket I was in Brim visiting him and he had picked up drinking again. I had no idea and it was bad. So I was hot and driving back to College Station. So I was hot and driving back to college station, I was flying. I don't know how fast I was going, but this guy got me going, got at least 20 over the speed limit and I was like bawling when he pulled me over and he was super nice. It was some Brian Constable or something. I was just like, yeah, like my dad picked up smoking and drinking again. I'm just super upset and that's kind of.
Speaker 2:When I went downhill again, that was probably 2018 ish, towards the end of college, all right, um, and then it was just up and down from there. I mean, his health was still not in great shape at that point um, in and out of the doctor's office and then out of hospital with various things. He had copd and congestive heart failure. That by that point it was just manageable. It wasn't like end of life stuff, but it was definitely taking a toll on him and that frustrated him a lot.
Speaker 2:He was a busy body. I mean he retired in 2008 when we were I mean, we were like 10 at that point, yeah but he was always doing something. He had his own contracting business for a while, just kind of like doing handyman stuff for people odd jobs and then he got really involved in, like, taking care of our property. We have 10 acres in brenham and he was just super involved, got tractor, we do like land clearing and like landscaping and all that kind of stuff. So he was really involved with that wildlife management plans for our acreage, to get tax exemptions and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of when we bonded again was over the wildlife stuff Cause that's what I was going to college for, maybe that's what it got him interested in. It was just kind of like a mutual feedback kind of thing. Just kind of like a mutual feedback kind of thing. But, yeah, we bonded over that again and it was good it was. It was just up and down after 2018 when he started drinking and smoking again and then they just kind of flipped the switch when COVID came and he got super sick and we couldn't see him for a couple months and that was just kind of. The end was 2020. So there was a good, there was a good couple of years like 2015 to 2018. And then it was a major roller coaster until he went in 2020, for sure.
Speaker 1:When he got sick in 2020, was it COVID or was it just all of his health issues coming to a head?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was all of his health issues coming to a head. So I remember this too. We were moving into our first real big house and it was actually my grandma's house, that's next door. Our cousin aunt was leasing it out to us, thankfully, um, and we were moving in on my birthday I had the flu. And we get this call from mom like hey, um, your dad's in the hospital. It's really not looking good. And I was like well, shit, so we go there. And yeah, they said like his congestive heart failure and copd was just like ramping up big time and like I was like well, damn, this is not, this is not good. And so he was just like ramping up big time and like I was like well, damn, this is not, this is not good. And so he was in the hospital for a couple of days. He also got the flu at that point, so that really took him out. He came home and this was in January of 2020.
Speaker 2:It was kind of the same thing up and down, up and down until March, right when COVID hit, like that that week before stuff really starts shutting down, I guess probably like beginning of March around his birthday. Yeah, he, he went into the hospital. He didn't. He never came back out and that week afterwards COVID came in full swing with the United States and no visitors at hospitals, you weren't allowed to go anywhere.
Speaker 2:So we couldn't see him for two months, like, and then at that point his health was like rapidly declining. My job got taken away at that point just because I'm budgeting stuff. So I remember I was like subbing in at our finance, just like scanning in stuff, like receipts and everything, talking to my mom about updates from the hospital and stuff like that, and they were doing like all kinds of heart procedures, all kinds of dialysis, and like he was septic, it was just bad Like I can't even remember half of it now but yeah, that's kind of when we knew like he's not coming back from this, my mom really looked into retiring at that point too. And yeah, unfortunately, march and COVID was just kind of like the beginning of the end for us, like anytime I hear COVID, that's kind of what I'm associated with now.
Speaker 1:So when? When? In 2020, did he die? He died in June 2020,.
Speaker 2:June 22nd Okay.
Speaker 1:So we're well into COVID by this point.
Speaker 2:Yes, they finally I don't want to say they figured it out, but they've at least gotten somewhat of a grasp on what it's doing. Things aren't shut down as much. There's definitely restrictions at this point, but it's not like it was back in the first months where literally everything was shut down Restaurants, public places, everything, hospitals yeah, everything.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about a few different things. First of all, aside from the time when it happened and what was going on in the world, let's just talk about his death for a minute. How did you process that grief and that loss initially?
Speaker 2:Initially. Yeah, so like I, when I was listening to your first your episode about your dad, um, I just remember you said that you were relieved and that was 100% how we felt at that time. So he got I mean, he was really sick in January. It kind of like ebbed and flowed at that point. It was up and down, good and bad, but like March is when it really really declined. So come June we were just like God, this was a hellish three months. Like you put up a good fight, old man, but like we're glad you're gone.
Speaker 1:You know, like you just just you took it out on yourself and it took it out on us too now, when you say and I understand what you're saying, because obviously that's what I said in my episode as far as the relief but when you say you're glad he's gone, are you glad because he's not suffering anymore or glad because of your relationship with him?
Speaker 2:so initially it was because of the suffering, for sure, like we were. Like I remember one of the first times we could actually facetime him, because I guess they were allowing that or he was like he, I guess they had probably just woken him up, he was on an intubator, like he was intubated for a long time and like unconscious, pretty much right, and so once they unintubated him or took it out, we got to facetime him and he still couldn talk because he'd had a tube down his throat for like a month and a half by that point. So just FaceTiming him then, like hadn't shaved in three months, he had lost so much weight, and even then he was in some rehab facility somewhere in the Houston area and that was the first time I got to see him. It was like mid-May of that year. Two and a half full months of not seeing him on phone in person. Over the phone, like just nothing, radio silence from him, because like he's on an intubator.
Speaker 1:He's touching go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's touching go, can't talk, can't move, can't get out of bed, nothing. And I see him at this rehab facility in May and, yeah, it literally broke my heart. My husband and me and my best, his best friend, went down there Cause I don't know. He just asked if his friend could come. I was like, yeah, sure, I don't care. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be on me that day, I don't know why. But yeah, he, they came and picked me up and I just sobbed the whole way home Like he could barely stand up.
Speaker 2:I, he, we, we got engaged in December. He got sick in January this is May of that following year and we were going to get married in January of the next year, so like January 2021. And he like begged for us to move up the wedding so he could be there. We were like, okay, like we'll do it. Like as soon as you get out of here, we'll, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and yeah, I just remember like he he got to try to hug me and he did, but like I, I was supporting his whole weight and it was probably like 90 pounds. Like it was not shit, it was, it was. It was so sad, like, and that's why I just bawled the whole way home, like I was just not mentally prepared to see him like that, like at all. Um, so yeah, that initial grief was definitely just glad that he's done suffering because he he hated to be held down I mean one of the last things he did when he was home and like trying to get better in that short little month. Like he was home from like late May to late June and he was tooting around on his tractor with his frigging oxygen tank hooked up. Lord knows, that's probably not fucking safe.
Speaker 1:Not likely.
Speaker 2:No, not likely. And he's like still not 100 percent. So his mind's not great either. And he backs into my car with this tractor. So one of the last things he actually bought for me was like a new bumper for my car. So, yeah, thanks insurance.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was just initially just glad that he was out of that suffering because he just hated to be held down. You could tell, and yeah, that Juneune that that week he passed um, it was a friday, I get a call that um, we were supposed to get married on a sunday. So like it's friday, I'm at work, we get a call, he's getting life flight at college station like he. He tanked and I was like, oh my god, we're literally supposed to get married in two days and this is father's day. We're like, well, what better to get married than father's day? You know he's still here and we're like shit, he's, he's literally not gonna make it to father's day.
Speaker 2:The dude sometimes somehow does. He comes home on hospice. That next day, on saturday, sunday morning, we get up, get married in this hot, humid texas crap and that's it. He. He couldn't walk down the aisle. He had um, a lifelong friend like like FaceTime while we got married, so he got to see it, okay, and then, literally less than 24 hours later, he was gone. Like we got married and he was gone. He said I saw what I needed to see on the other side.
Speaker 2:He hung in for what he needed to, for what he really wanted Exactly, and I remember he was at home that Saturday, that one day. He just wanted to be brought home. He didn't want to be in the hospital when he went. I don't blame him, that's that's not the place to go. I remember calling him that Saturday before and I was like are you, are you going to be at the wedding? He was like, yeah, good, I'll be there. And you know he was. That was one of the last things he said, actually said so he kept his promise.
Speaker 1:So now he's passed and we're still dealing with COVID, talk to me about navigating death and grief during COVID. Obviously, it's something that millions of people have had to deal with.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But based on everything that you've already talked about, even with all the things we're going to get to tell me what your experience was like, yeah, so not that that's not unfamiliar with what was going on.
Speaker 2:Just with so many people dying and dying alone in hospitals, it's just awful for everybody and he didn't even die from covid no, he didn't, and that's what I think. That's what a lot of people thought too, like it was just bad timing and he never even got covid, as far as we know, like it was literally like his desk give it gesture to be. It says um complications from congestive heart failure, which is 100 true right um but yeah, he passes.
Speaker 2:Um, me and my husband uh, got the room at the a&m hotel. They just built it at that time. It was super nice. You're like, yeah, this is the nicest hotel in a decent area. We'll stay there for the night, wake up, come back and just start our work week.
Speaker 2:That fall on Monday, tuesday, whatever. Yeah, 9am we get the call that he passed, so we pack up our stuff, go back to Brenham and his son and daughter the ones that I was talking about earlier that I'd actually never met. They had actually come down for it and spent the night with my mom and my brother and again, I'd never met them. My mom had a relationship with them, my brother that was his first time meeting them too and I was. I was trying to get back to like meet them. You know, like I wanted to kind of connect with them over this. They were already in town, but I mean call station's like 45 minutes away. They didn't, they didn't wait, they just made their happy way back home. So that kind of stunk.
Speaker 2:But um, yeah, that following week just started all the logistical stuff. I was his executor, so that was kind of weird taking that on at 23, 24, however long I was at the time yeah, 23. Had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully he was very organized. He was an anal man. He had passwords saved everywhere, he had all of his stuff squared away, had his funeral costs paid for, set up already. So shout out to him for that. That made things easier than it could have been. But yeah, just doing that I mean it's all COVID while working and being young, like I didn't know what the heck I was doing, it was stressful and so I was just in like survival mode just trying to get it all done. Um, and then everything, like I wasn't really grieving, like my mom called me that day. I remember getting back in bed with my husband and like I didn't cry. We just we just kind of laid there and like silence for a little bit, just kind of took it all in.
Speaker 1:And yeah, you weren't processing anything at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was not processing anything Like it was super delayed. I don't think it was until five June, June to October. What is that? A couple months, four months?
Speaker 1:Yeah, about four months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, four months. It was probably about four months. Once I got everything settled, the dust had cleared, like all of his will was probated, all of that junk was his belongings and stuff were separated, money was cashed out and divvied up wherever it needed to go. It wasn't until then that, I think, I really started processing stuff. And then, to make matters worse, um, my best friend, her dad, was diagnosed with brain cancer in that little span too, um, and he ended up passing away that september. So I think that's that's almost kind of what kick-started the grief. I think was just like watching her go through it and I was like holy cow, like I never. I never processed this like. This is still super fresh. It's delayed, but it's still super fresh right and yeah that october, it's not.
Speaker 2:That's when it all hit for sure so now we're about four months out from your dad's death and you've got your best friend who just lost her dad, and all of a sudden it's crashing on you yeah, it's crashing and there was a lot, of, a lot of pressure to kind of help her and I there's no hard feelings at all towards any of that Like I get it If somebody is going through something and they're freshly going through it too, like you want to lean on these people that have gone through it first. Like I totally get that, but like at the same time I didn't and there was just a lot of pressure from that built up to help her and help navigate that when I didn't even have a chance to navigate myself first.
Speaker 1:Where was the pressure coming from?
Speaker 2:So I'm really close with them, my best friend and her mom. She's like another mom to me. Her mom was just pretty much like, yeah, just watch out for her, you know, like y'all got to have each other's backs. I was like, yeah, I totally agree, you know, and I don't know, I guess I just kind of felt a sense of responsibility too to kind of like watch out for her, like, hey, this is how the next couple months are going to go and feel like um, just heads up, you know, and that was probably weird unnecessary pressure to take that on myself.
Speaker 2:It was probably more coming from me, but um, okay, not from outside, not from them not not 100. From the outside there's definitely some like hey, you've gone through this, um, y'all need to stick together, type thing. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:but I find it weird that you're kind of guiding your friend on what she's about to go through and you've barely begun to process it yourself yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 2:They probably didn't realize that. I didn't really realize it until later, but I was just winging it. You know, I was like I don't know, I just just work. I couldn't even say let it out at that time, you know, like because I wasn't, I was not letting anything. I was like suppressing it as much as I could, just to keep the days going like whether that was working. I was in school at the time too. I was working full-time and getting my master's part-time.
Speaker 2:So right yeah, I was just doing anything and everything to just not think about it what did it look like when it finally hit you?
Speaker 1:what happened? Was there one particular thing that basically set off the avalanche? Was it a few things? Yeah, so what did it all look like for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so her, my best friend's dad, died in september of that year and I remember we went to the viewing and one I was just not dressed appropriately, which, like now, looking at hindsight, like I was probably just not in my right mind, like I was like, no, I'm just not gonna like let this, this is not real. You know, like we're just gonna push this off. Like we go to this viewing I'm dressed not appropriately for a viewing. I was like in flip-flops and like there's summer clothes, you know right and bald the entire time. Like to the point I was almost sick and like I was close with their family. Um, I wasn't so close with her dad, but like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I guess it was just like the empathetic feeling of like kind of understanding what she's going through and how hard that is. It just all came. It was like losing like my dad and her dad at the same time and I just felt it all right then and from that point on, like it just spiraled, like like your story. Similarly, I was just like lashing out at my husband, jordan for no real good reason. It was just stupid stuff and poor guy, like he's just he's too nice, he just takes it. But there was one day he did not take it and I just remember crying on the bathroom floor like just sobbing, and I was like yeah, this is not, this is not how it should be, like something's not right, like I know this is hard, but there's got to be a better way out of this than just this perpetually for end on end. We talked about getting counseling just me, not like couples counseling or anything like that.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:October of that year is when I started counseling and my counselor was great, like clicked right away. Thankfully, I don't know if I would have had the mental energy to hop from counselor to counselor and try that, try that battle. But yeah, I started in October of 2020 and went on for about six months. I think I stopped in February and, yeah, it was. It was a really good. It was really good. It needed to happen. There were definitely the first four or five sessions Like I just cried all the time like in between work, but like it was just sobbing, getting out all those emotions of just like pent up sadness and frustration and stress over the last four months of just taking care of all his crap.
Speaker 2:And then after that, it's kind of when we unpacked all the family stuff too, like growing up and the alcoholism and him being there and not being there, his health struggles from as early as I can remember they're straight on relationship with him and my mom, they're straight on relationship with him and my brother and I. That's kind of what we unpacked afterwards Once the initial grief and all of that was kind of gone, like sadness that he was gone, relief that he was gone, but we've got some crap to unpack from early years.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the crap that was unpacked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one of the main things we addressed, as obviously my mom, she was married to him. They got married in 1984. He passed in 2020. So do the math like 20, 36 years they were married for 36 years.
Speaker 2:I still don't know like he was a grade a asshole and I don't know how she did it. I know there were. There were points growing up like I would just beg her, like just leave him. Like none of us need to live like this, like this is. This is freaking miserable. You know, that was hard to unpack, was trying to understand because she took it hard. I mean, they kind of had their finances separated, like not like they didn't trust each other separated, but like he handled one side of the bill, she handled the other and like it just kind of worked out that way. So once he passed and all the all of the bills were on her, like it was just it was too much for her and she was deep in her grief, very, very depressed. She probably still is. Has she ever gone to therapy? As far as I know, she still has not. I've encouraged it and um, but I don't want to say push it.
Speaker 1:I've encouraged it as much as I can, um, but that's gonna be open to the idea of going to therapy with you I think she would.
Speaker 2:I do I think if I'm involved there's definitely a higher chance of her getting stuff done. So I've recently started getting more involved with her her doctor's visits and stuff like that and even told one of her doctors like I think this is what's going on, like I think grief and depression has a big part in a lot of her health problems as of recently because it kind of spiraled anyway. Problems as of recently because it kind of spiraled um anyway. But yeah, I the one of the main points in my therapy sessions was my mom was taking it super hard and I just couldn't understand why. Because their relationship growing up was so like in my eyes it was awful.
Speaker 2:Like why are you sad that this guy that like I don't, he beat her a handful of times? Like he beats you and he berated you and harassed you for, I would assume, 36 years at least 23 by this point. Like why are you sad that he's gone? Like he was controlling, he didn't like you going out with your friends. He had to know what you were doing all seconds of the day.
Speaker 2:Like why are you sad that he was gone? Like that was probably the focal point of my therapy session, which was just trying to figure out why are you sad that he was gone? Like that was probably the focal point of my therapy session, which was just trying to figure out why you know? Like why are you sad? Why? Why do I feel like I'm losing you too, because you're in your, you're in this grief process of your own, but he was so awful to you and I guess it's the same way for us too Like there were definitely times he was awful to us, but like in my mind he was awful to us but like in my mind he was awful to her 20. So it was like I don't understand why you're upset at all, like you should be even more relieved.
Speaker 1:So these are questions that you're trying to figure out while you're in therapy for yourself. Why your mom wanted to stay with him for so long. Are these questions that you ever got answers from her when you had these conversations with her? What response did you get from her?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I ever directly asked her like why'd you stay with him? Because so awful. But I mean, like it came up just growing up too, like that he'd be yelling at her and be like mom, like just leave him, like go get a divorce, like what are you doing?
Speaker 1:so this is more about you wondering what possessed her to stay with her, with him for so long and why she was so upset yeah, and I think just between the counselor, kind of saying, like you know, love just manifests itself in some weird ways, like she pretty much just said, like the emotions are stronger, like the love is love when it's there and it's also like the hate is hate when it's there, maxed on both sides.
Speaker 2:um, and I think just between realizing that I still don't know if I 100% believe that, but at the time it helped, I guess, just kind of rationalizing it, and then I knew she just stayed with him for us. I think you said that about either your step-mom or your mom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my step-mom, his fifth wife. They've been divorced since 2003 and she's still my stepmom, his fifth wife. Um, they, I mean, they've been divorced since 2003 and she's still my stepmom and she always will be. Yeah, but yeah, I, I know that for the last several years she was there to try to make things good for the kids and at a certain point she said I'm done and she wasn't going to do it anymore. So yeah, I can totally relate with that. My mom really didn't take any shit. She was basically out of there as soon as my brother was born, and that was less than a year and a half after I was born.
Speaker 2:They weren't married for maybe three years so, yeah, I think she really stayed with it for us. I don't think she was that was ever a thought in her. It probably was a thought in her head. I don't think it was ever going to become acted upon. It was always just yeah, I really don't want to be with him. She'd probably go to sleep and wake up and the day would restart like, okay, we're good now.
Speaker 1:She stayed with him for us, I'm pretty sure but every day waking up and doing that master reset and saying we're good now.
Speaker 2:That alone has to wear on a person yeah, I I truly can't fathom like I think about that. I don't know if every single day was that bad. It probably wasn't. There were probably days where it was just like normal, but I'd say the majority of them were like that just strictly because he was drinking. I mean, he became a different person when he drank yeah, so yeah, oh, he was not a happy drunk.
Speaker 2:No, it might start out a little like silly loose happy, but then there was a switch that flipped and it was not happy real quick.
Speaker 1:I am not a therapist, obviously. I have said that many times. You can laugh, it's okay. I definitely think that there is possibly some benefit to be had, and this is again, this isn't my you know professional recommendation. This is whether, because of the podcast, you and me talking as friends, I think that there is some potential for benefit for you and your mom to see someone together. You've been through the process.
Speaker 1:I've already documented my process of therapy and I've always said I've never considered myself cured. I got to a point after six months of it where I was good in the sense of I was able to accept what my relationship was with my dad. I was able to accept that he was never going to change, no matter how long he lived. I was able to get to a point of forgiving him for who he was. Forgiving him for not being able to be the person that he really had the potential to be, forgiving myself for being so angry at him for so long after he died and even before. But coming to a point where I realized he just didn't have the tools. But your mom, my mom and I were never going to have a conversation with that because by the time my dad died, they had already been divorced for 40 plus years yeah so there was, there was no conversation to have with my mom and even like, with my stepmom she had long since moved on, I mean yeah, that ship has sailed.
Speaker 1:There's no point reopening that right, but your parents were together. You know even if not in a loving relationship.
Speaker 1:As you know, typical relationships frequently are. They were still married for all of this, and it doesn't sound like she has processed a lot of what she had and I know that it's her story to tell, not obviously yours or mine, but it just seems like there might be some benefit, based on how close the two of you are, if you maybe suggested the idea of doing therapy with her and just getting her, even if it started with the two of you and if it ended up becoming something that she continued to pursue on her own or you do it together. But it sounds like there's a lot of unprocessed shit with her too.
Speaker 2:I mean it took you four or five months to get there but three, three plus years later, she still hasn't got there yeah, I completely agree, completely agree, and that's definitely a conversation that needs to be had, especially um with her health also not being the greatest anymore. She's just getting older, um, just to kind of let that settle and process before it's too late for everybody, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least if this way she can have. I don't even know if peace or closure are the right words I don't know really what the right words are, but if she's still dealing with this anxiety and this grief over it. Grief is processed in so many different ways, as I've talked about on this show, as you and I have talked about separately, and as everybody knows, grief is processed in many different forms.
Speaker 1:So, it's at least worth a shot. I definitely agree. Tell me about some of the unique struggles that you faced with losing your dad as a young adult. You were what 23, 24, when he died.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would have been 20, it was 2020. Yeah, 23 at that point.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, mainly it was just like the navigating, the unknown was the main part. Like nobody our age that I was close to had lost somebody in that capacity they may have lost like grandparents and not to discredit that, that loss, but just somebody that had played such a like a vital role in your upbringing and obviously, like you're here because of them, there was just that unknown you know. Like nobody had dealt with that before. So it was like, well, I'm the first one to go through this.
Speaker 2:There's not really any other advice I can go through and even just asking, like our aunts and uncles, or like parents or family, friends or whatever that are like in their 40s or something older, like they lost their parents at an older age, and it's like, well, you've already had an established life at this point. You might have already had kids. You've already, like, started careers and jobs and done your massive life changes at this point. Meanwhile, this is all happening like mid 20s and like all the major life changes are happening getting married, moving and starting full-time jobs, losing jobs um, it was just a lot and it's it's different probably with every stage you go through versus losing somebody when, like, you're in your childhood, versus your mid-20s, when there's all these life changes happening, versus like an adult, when you get to the age I was.
Speaker 2:I was 45 when my dad died yeah, and like you just think about, like, like, I thought about this the other day. It's like there's gonna reach a point where I spent more years without my dad than I did with him. Does that make sense? That was kind of a weird thought. You know, like once I hit, I don't know, I'll be that math.
Speaker 2:But yeah, once I hit that 47 I'll say 47, like I'll have spent most of my life without my dad. At that point that's really weird that a lot of people won't necessarily go through that. So yeah, just navigating it, like just navigating the unknown, was just the hardest part, not having anybody to lean on and say, hey, how'd you get through this? Like, how do you probate a will? Like right, what do you do with that? At 23 years old, like I don't even know what I'm doing with my own life, let alone somebody else's life. That's gone now.
Speaker 1:Like you've barely graduated college, you're just married, not even 24 hours when?
Speaker 2:yeah, literally 24 hours later, like I'm signing the death certificate. It's like well shit, do I sign my maiden name? Do I sign my like new last name, like right by that point, you haven't even had chance.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't even change your name, like it was a sunday, like I didn't even have a chance to go get my shit changed. Yeah, that was the weirdest part going into the funeral home and they're like who's who's the representative? And I was like, well, I am. And they're like, well, you need to sign. I was like do I? I was like do I sign my my?
Speaker 1:I think technically at that point, the answer is you sign your maiden name, because, yeah, I don't even remember what I did now.
Speaker 2:but yeah, it was just a mess, like, yeah, it was a mess, just navigating the unknown. That was pretty much the nutshell of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, speaking of navigating the unknown, can you give me some examples, at least in your experience, of how grief is not linear, since you lost your dad?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so obviously when, when it happened, there was just like numbness, like it was. It was probably. It was definitely shock. I think, like we expected him to go soon and, like I said earlier, like my mom actually retired and she retired to take care of him. Like they brought him home, she expected him to stay on hospice or just like recover for, but there was not really a timeline, but we expected him to recover and probably pass soon, but not 24 hours after he came home from the hospital and hospice. You know what I mean. So she retired, anticipation of staying home taking care of him, and that never happened. Like she got like maybe a day of taking care of him and now she doesn't have a job or she could have, she probably could have gone back if they wanted her, but she like she was tired, she was, she was getting older, like it was time she had been at her job for over 30 years. At that point she was ready what did she do?
Speaker 2:she was a nurse at the state school, okay, and that's where they met. He was a case manager, um, and she was a nurse. So she was a nurse her whole life. She became an RN and worked in various hospitals around the Houston area and then eventually settled in Burnham, because that's where her parents ended up settling and got some land to get out. And yeah, that's how she settled down here and met him Early on October, started therapy. It all just kind of like came down like a tsunami, pretty much like all at once, and then I actually went back to therapy. So I finished up around February. I was like I'm at a good point where I feel like if I do encounter some difficulties, like I have the coping mechanisms to get through them, like in a healthy manner. Probably about that one year mark, I guess, just that being a significant date Went back one year from when you, one year after he died, yeah.
Speaker 2:One year after he died yeah, one year after he died. Like I went back and looked at, um, our, my therapist message was just kind of get a timeline of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was about that one year mark, I messaged her and I was like, yeah, I'm having some struggles, um just feel super alone, like I don't know how to navigate this now again, for whatever reason. And, um, we worked through it again for another couple months and we were good again, but since then I don't know. It's just like once major life events happen, even just like non-major events. I remember, towards the end of my master's degree, I graduated in May of 2022.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I graduated right around starting iBio or leaving iBio maybe, but yeah, that was a major one, like just graduating college. He was really involved in my education. That was one of the other things we bonded over. Besides, like the wildlife stuff, he got me really into baseball and like he was really involved in my education, he got his master's and he was a principal for a while. He got his master's in education, so he was really involved in me going to school and what like what my classes were like at A&M and my grades and stuff like that, which is great, because I don't know how I would have ended up otherwise. Like I might have just been like your average run of the mill student, but I think I really excelled in school because he just he poured into that.
Speaker 2:So towards the end of my master's program I was really struggling like working full time, commuting there's just a lot going on and we went to our local Chili's and he was like a bar fly there. He would go, get his cheap little drinks and toot around with the bartenders and do whatever. And one night me and my husband went to dinner we just didn't want to cook and they sat us in the bar and some random table. And I look up and there's his picture on the wall and I had no idea that it was there. I was like what?
Speaker 2:And I, I guess, like the bartenders there, like really must have liked him. You know, like they put that up because it was a picture they had from his obituaries, like they had to have gotten it from that, wow, and so I guess they just liked him, he was good company and I they put that picture up in remembrance of him, like one of their locals made an impression, and so that that was just one of those days where like I looked up and I was like it, like it just hit me again, like I was just grieving all over again like yeah, he's, I'm struggling right now, but you know he's obviously there and that was kind of a sign to just keep going.
Speaker 2:You know, don't, don't give up. And there's been little things like that along the way, like little random things that will come up, like, like I said earlier, he he ate spaghetti all the time like I don't know what that man did with spaghetti.
Speaker 2:He loves spaghetti. It was just easy and quick. I guess it was one of the few things he cooked for us. But there was one time I made spaghetti and I was like at home on my lunch break or something, and like I just started sobbing like eating this stupid spaghetti. You know, you know, it's like it, just it just reminded me of them.
Speaker 2:So I think that's just how it's not linear, like there's going to be good days, and I'm. There's definitely not a day that I haven't thought about it. Some days are gonna be good memories. It's like, oh yeah, that was, that was something you would have thought was funny. But like there's bad days, hard, you know, and even recently I was.
Speaker 2:It was when I was on maternity leave. I was walking around with my daughter and that's weird saying that the park and was looking at my phone and like a memory on my phone popped up and it was like the first time I FaceTimed him in the hospital, like just me and him, and like he just had this scruffy beard and it just hit me. I was like, damn, like I have a daughter now and this is the first time I saw you, like when I hadn't seen you for two months, hadn't talked to you, and it just hit. And that was really recently, that was like a couple months ago, right, so and it's been almost, it's been over four years. So it just shows that there's going to be good days, there's going to be bad days. You just kind of got to roll with it grief comes in waves it does.
Speaker 2:It does. Sometimes they're little, they're little ebbs and flows and sometimes it's just last tsunamis, you know, and you just gotta, you just gotta ride it, you gotta surf it it really is.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like being at a beach and you know, sometimes just little waves, they'll just basically wash over your feet and then other ones, six, eight ten foot high waves, they completely engulf you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you gotta. You gotta learn to swim or you gotta get on a surfboard or something like you just gotta, you just gotta roll with it you have to, otherwise yeah and I think that's why therapy is important like to just learn those coping skills. If you don't learn those coping skills, or just like how to get through that in a healthy way, it's just so easy to get like sucked under and not come back up Like really.
Speaker 1:And I'm glad that you mentioned how you specifically talked about how you went through therapy twice. You did it initially, a few months after your dad had passed, when you realized that you're kind of in a bad way. And well, it came to similar to you and I, you, you know.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how many similarities your journey and my journey have had yeah, yeah one of the one of the biggest differences is that my dad I never saw him with a drink in his hand- yeah, and that's what I thought was so interesting, and complete opposite the rest of it, you know, dealing with a lot of shit that we dealt with growing up. The spaghetti, I mean spaghetti was probably his favorite. Spaghetti and steak were probably his favorite dinners ever. Well, that, and Oreos and Coca-Cola and White Castle, oh solid.
Speaker 2:What a man, I relate.
Speaker 1:But then the illnesses that he dealt with afterwards. I mean he also dealt with congestive heart failure. For the last three years of his life he had COPD. He died at 73. He stopped smoking on his 50th birthday. After that he never had another cigarette, but the damage was already done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my dad died at 72. And, like I said, he took a small break in there like three years. But yeah, the damage is done. If you've been smoking since you were like 14, 16 or however, like it's just, there's no chance.
Speaker 1:But again, I love how you've talked about two rounds of therapy, of dealing with a professional therapist. Sometimes I feel like this podcast is my second round.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that you know I haven't talked about it extensively probably since that and whenever you're that with 2021, since, like the year after, I probably haven't talked about it extensively since then. So, yeah, it's kind of it's kind of nice and I don't want to say refreshing, but you know you're moving forward when you can talk about it and not get upset, or you can get upset. You know it's okay either way.
Speaker 1:but it is okay either way, whether you get upset, whether you're just at a point where you can talk about it and not get upset, I don't really know if one is better than the other. I think the best part of the whole process is just talking about it, and that's what I've been trying to put out there to everybody that I've spoken with and to all the listeners is the most important part of any grieving process is you need to embrace it, you need to talk about it. Obviously, everybody does it at their own pace. Some people aren't ready to do it right away, and that's fine. Sometimes you need a minute. You need a week, a month, several months, a year, whatever it is. Sometimes you need that time to process, but you also, at a certain point, are going to need to confront it head on. You tried to ignore it, I tried to ignore it. We both got to the point where we were getting kind of taken over by it.
Speaker 1:We were fighting with our spouses for no reason and realized that we both needed some outside professional help and we got it, and I just worry that there are way too many people out there that are being crushed by their own grief, with whatever their story is whether it's a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a friend, anything and they're not addressing it Again. That's the biggest thing that I've been trying to drive home.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree and, like I said, I've been encouraging some type of counseling therapy for my mom pretty much since it started. I mean because in the beginning like we were.
Speaker 2:We were grieving together, like those first four to six to eight months, like we were in the same boat. But then, obviously, like I got help and like I was getting past it, I guess quicker than she was Right, and she was just kind of left in the dust and I, yeah, it was just hard to see her struggle like that, knowing that there were outside resources that could probably help. Like I know, therapy is not for everybody but, on the same token, I think pretty much everybody can benefit from therapy in some form or fashion. It doesn't even have to be grief, like it can just be life changes, navigating new relationships, navigating loss, navigating job changes, moving. Like it's therapy Isn't just what, like it's a blanket, like it can cover all kinds of things you need advice for, like your resume. Like you just need some job search help.
Speaker 2:I know that was one of the topics I talked about. Like I was, I was in a job that wasn't aligned with my career goals and my degrees and I was, I just felt stuck in like a failure. Like I'm working an admin job and I have my master's in environmental management, like what, what am I doing with my life, you know, and that was that was part of the therapy sessions for a little bit at that year mark, when, like navigating the year anniversary of my dad and still being in a job that like I just I just wasn't going anywhere with and yeah, she helped me get through that. And it wasn't even just like do this for your job search, like logistical X, y, z steps, it was just like here's how you should process it, like, is this going to matter in a week? Is this going to matter in a month?
Speaker 2:And most of the answer was no. You know, like this seems like such a big deal today, but if you put it in context, like, is this going to impact you how it's impacting you right now? Is this going to impact you that way in a month, in a year? And like no, and that was that was kind of what, what my brain needed. I was in the worst case scenario all day, every day. I just needed to look at it. Is it going to be the worst case scenario next week? And usually the answer was no.
Speaker 1:So round two of therapy really wasn't necessarily just about your dad. It was really about taking stock in your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really was, and I think just the anniversary of my dad, just kind of like put a lot of things into perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, put things to perspective, just brought it back up and then just kind of made me realize what where I was at, where I wanted to be, and like what I could do to do that, and, um, what things matter now. Like, are these emotions of feeling like a failure now going to fuel me, are they going to sink me and are they going to matter next month, or is it just going to be like do you need to see the pity day, you know what I mean? Like you just need to cry it out today and you'll be good tomorrow. And usually that's what it was Like. I just had to let it out then and next day I was usually good and I had a clear head and had a plan of action and what I needed to do next. But yeah, it was just a matter of getting there, you know, and the therapist providing those tools to cope in a good way and just kind of get my mindset geared in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, after you've already dealt with your grief, at least begun to process it. Or, in your case, you went through a full round of therapy to deal with what you had experienced. And then, when it comes back, sometimes it's like a pressure cooker you just need to, it's going to subside for a while. You have to, yeah, you have to just release the pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just gotta let the pressure go. You just gotta release it. Yeah, that's pretty much what it was like. There's just a lot of built-up pressure at that one year, which is probably pretty normal. Yeah, you just gotta get it out, otherwise you're just gonna keep perpetuating it and letting that pressure cooker reactivate every year, every couple months, whatever it is there are going to be triggers.
Speaker 1:There are going to be times they're going to be. Things will happen, things that will either remind you of a bad time you could be watching a movie with a husband and a wife that are fighting, or it's getting physical, or one of them is an alcoholic, and that might be a trigger. You could see something again on TV or just in real life where people are doing things, participating in things that were good things, good memories that you had. You mentioned how your dad also fostered your love of baseball, which again is something that I have in common with my dad. If you see a dad and a little girl playing baseball, or even a son and they're playing baseball, and you get to the point where you're thinking about when you were a kid and your dad was teaching you, that could be something that could be triggering. And again, it's all okay, these aren't bad things.
Speaker 1:But there are going to be things that happen, and they come up at the most unexpected times, and that's why I think you have to keep an open mind and you have to understand, as you do, as you've demonstrated, that grief not only is not linear, but also it doesn't have a finish line. The only thing in our lives that have a finish line is when we cross that finish line, when we die. Until then, it's just a marathon, it's just a marathon.
Speaker 1:We are a constant work in progress. There's always going to be shit that we're going to deal with, and you don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next. Let's go back to your dad for a minute. I'd like to know some of the best and worst memories that you have of your dad. Let's get the bad out of the way. Let's start with the worst oh the bad.
Speaker 2:I can remember I had this longtime boyfriend in high school. He went kind of into college, but anyway, it was one of those. It was one of those nights he was just harassing, berating my mom, saying all kinds of hurtful shit, and I was just not having it like I was probably 17, 18 at this time. I was, I was just done with it. Like I was on my way out the door, I was getting ready to move out. I was like Yolo, I don't have nothing to lose, we're just going to send this shit.
Speaker 2:And he was in bed for the night. He had just finished his tantrum. My mom was in shambles and I just went in there and tore into him. I was like what in the fuck do you think you're doing? Talking to my mom this way, like who do you think you are? She does not deserve this. You will never talk to her like this, ever again. Or else, like it was pretty much a threat and he pretty much like he literally just looked me down the eye. He said fuck you. And I was 17, 18 at the time. I was. I've probably never been that mad in my life, like to the point of like almost physically sick, sick. I was so enraged.
Speaker 2:And um yeah, I left that night. Uh, my boyfriend came and got me and I did not stay at the house that night. Um went back the next day after school like it was just going around the house like ignoring him. We ignored each other. It was probably a good five days or so before we talked to each other and we were living in the same house. That was pretty awkward. That was probably one of the worst memories. And then towards, I guess, towards the end of his life, the last two, three years I was in college, for sure, I don't even know the details on this, but I think self-assisted suicide was a a hot topic, like in arkansas or washington state, one of those two. I don't know if you remember that, heard of that, any of that?
Speaker 1:but I do remember it a little bit it was.
Speaker 2:It was kind of like a hot button thing and he, he was seriously looking into it and, like he was, he was kind of healthy at that point, like he was sobering up, like he was in like as well a health as he had been most of my life and we were like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:like you, well, clearly there's something to be said about a difference between physical health and mental health. He may have been physically healthy, but it doesn't sound like he was in a good place. He was.
Speaker 2:He was never in a good place mentally and it wasn't until later in his life that he kind of opened up about that too. Um, he actually encouraged therapy a handful of times, I guess, when he thought I was struggling and like it was like definitely some rough patches in college, just like school stuff, you know, um, but nothing that necessarily warranted like full-blown therapy at that point. But I guess he even recognized the importance of it at some points just because his mental health must have been absolute garbage at that point. I mean he was looking into buying some land in the mountains in arkansas and just letting his, letting himself go. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like right that seemed like the easiest solution for him which is better than better than becoming the next unabomber? That is, you know, that is one way.
Speaker 2:You don't want to go and you just, you know, be selfish, check yourself, don't take other people too right but yeah, like between that instance where, like I just remember standing up for myself and my mom and our family and him saying that, and then, yeah, I remember crying. I mean, my husband we were dating at the time when he brought up this selflessness and suicide stuff I was like like I sure think, are we not good enough that you're, that you're looking into this Like you're healthier than you've been in a while, like you're still not healthy by any means, but you're doing better than you have been and you're looking into this like is your outlook on life like so poor? And like your happiness with your family? Is it just? Is it just not there? Like, are we not worth it to stay alive? Is that it?
Speaker 2:And then like but probably the third like top three worst memories was, like I said, seeing him in that rehab facility after we hadn't seen him for a couple of months, and him just straight up looking like a Holocaust victim, like that. That'll probably be etched in my mind forever. Those are definitely top three Like those just are burned into my mind. I'll probably never forget those.
Speaker 1:The conversation that you had about the assisted suicide with him, the one that he brought up. I know that you just mentioned all of those questions that you were just asking, but were they hypothetical questions? Did you ever actually ask him those questions to basically say what the fuck, dude, what is so bad with your life that you think that ending it is the better option?
Speaker 2:No, I really don't think I ever brought up to him and maybe it was partially shocked, like I was just like why are you casually bringing this up to me, like we're talking about like my microbiology class?
Speaker 2:Like why are you just bringing up offing yourself in Arkansas, like what are you, what are you doing? No, I don't think I ever like really brought it up to him and he was kind of like he had ADHD. So I think it was probably just one of those things he got kind of hyper fixated on and it quickly passed because after a couple months he didn't really ever look into it. And maybe it's because I don't know what that, what that path ever looked like politically I don't know if that's even a thing anymore but maybe he just like looked into it a little more. He's like, oh, this is too much work. But yeah, I never actually legitimately asked him those questions. It was definitely more or less like my brain spiraling like are we not good enough? Like do you really not like your life this much that you're looking at these options to just move hundreds of miles away just to like die, leave your family for toughen for ourselves?
Speaker 1:but yeah yeah, I was definitely more hypothetical at that point okay, let's turn things around and tell me about some of the best memories that you have of your dad or with your dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this occurred numerous times. But we lived close to the airport in Burnham. It's just like the municipal one, where puny little flights from Houston come and eat lunch at the local diner and then skedaddle on their way Right. He had this torpedo of a car, like a buick riviera 1997 that he drove literally like a torpedo. That thing was so long, it was like a limousine but it had a sun roof growing up and we would go to to the airport in this car and I'd be hanging my head out the sunroof, driving on the back roads with like a scarf hanging in the wind, like flapping behind me and I don't know. That was just like a peak childhood moment, like I don't know why. That just has burned into my brain too. It's just simple stuff, like playing catch on the front lawn and he was old, so like my little 12 year old arm, he thought I was about to blow out his hand with how fast I was throwing. I probably was not throwing it very fast, but I'm trying to think if there's any like big memories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so getting your Aggie ring is obviously like probably one of the peak things of being an Aggie in the cold, but usually it's like in a former student that presents the ring to you. It's just kind of like a nod, like you're one of us now, type thing. But I asked him to do it just because, like nobody in my family was an Aggie I didn't really have anybody. I was one of the first people in our circle to get like a ring. So I was like, well, I'm gonna ask my dad to do it and like just the look on his face when he did it. I have a video. I'll have to send it to you, but like you can just see like he's just so happy and proud, like it still brings tears to my eyes watching this video.
Speaker 2:And it'll pop up every year around November because that's when I got my ring. And, yeah, that that's probably the top memories him giving me my ring and just seeing how proud he was of me in that moment and thankfully he did get to see me graduate from A&M I think that was probably more proud than he would have been for me graduating from my master's program. But yeah, I'll never forget how he looked. It was like he was handing me off to get married. You know, like he never got to do that, but I can imagine that's how he would have looked that day too, just how proud he was. Give me my Aggie ring. I wear that thing every day and I'm like, yeah, this is special, I get to wear this despite everything.
Speaker 1:The good is always going to accompany the bad, but pretty high on the good list. I'm not an Aggie. I didn't graduate from A&M.
Speaker 2:But you lived around there, you understand.
Speaker 1:Yes, Living in Central Texas. It was about an hour and a half from the Bryan College Station area. That's where I worked for the last two years that we lived there and got to know a lot of Aggies from both jobs and I understand the pride. I completely get it. So while it's not something that I ever personally experienced, I am pretty sure that I have a good idea of just how much that meant to share with your dad and to have your dad be the one to present you with your ring.
Speaker 2:That's a great moment, yeah, and I'll always look back on that. And I think you've kind of said just your, your journey with processing your grief and therapy has kind of made you like, look, look at the good more so than the bad. It's not that we forget the bad, it's just you kind of remember what's more important and you'll never forget either of them, but you just kind of choose to remember the good no, you, you're never going to forget either one.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, the bad stuff sometimes is easier to recall or to think about than the good. That being said, you try to always keep the good things in mind too. I mean, I dealt with a lot of shit from my dad. There was, as I've talked about. There was plenty of good, there was plenty of bad. The bad shit is what it is.
Speaker 1:It's never, going to go away, and I also try not to focus on it nearly as much personally. Obviously, for the purpose of this podcast, at least in episode number one, I had to focus on it.
Speaker 2:You got to lay it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to lay it out. You need context, that's, you need the context. I did it because I felt that if I was going to ask everybody else to make themselves vulnerable to unload some of the worst shit that they've ever experienced, it wasn't fair for me to try to get other people to do this.
Speaker 2:And not do it myself.
Speaker 1:So some people will just kind of reveal things as they go along, and it's not like I was able to put my entire life into one podcast episode, but I did try to put some of the worst stuff out there, the really important stuff. I did try to put that out there for very specific reasons.
Speaker 2:Going back to one of those questions, what one of the hardest things dealing with this, like with a young adult and, like I was saying, there's just navigating the unknown. Me and my best friend both agreed like losing our dads at this age, kind of being the first, not the first, but it's uncommon to lose your, your dad's younger, like we did. It's just how people kind of talk to you afterwards or don't talk to you. You know like it feels like you're walking on eggshells with people, like I've known this person their whole life but now that their dad died I don't know how to talk to him. And that was the hardest thing. Was like losing relationships and just like having those struggles of like fostering relationships and conversations with people we've been comfortable with our whole lives and now all of a sudden there's like, it's like taboo just to be friends with them just because you're worried you're going to upset them.
Speaker 2:It's like they're going to explode, or you're going to say something to upset them, or we've both agreed that that was probably the hardest part of that fresh grief and just not people not knowing how to act and like not necessarily us even knowing how to act, like we just want to kind of continue on like our day is normal and like some days it is, but some days it isn't. But other people just kind of need to like just carry on too. You know, like don't open up the conversation if you're worried you're going to say something to upset us. Like just say, hey, I don't want to upset you, but xyz, you know like right, we're normal people. We just have some shit going on and we just want to carry on and get past it how we can and we just want as much normalcy as possible.
Speaker 1:I think this is a good time to bring up a book that is available on my website Not my book. This is actually a book from a previous guest, Mark Lucero. He wrote a book called what to say when you don't know what to Say Loving a Friend Through Grief and I've read it. We did an interview and we talked about it, and it's an incredible book. It is a very valuable book.
Speaker 1:It's something that I think everybody should read, especially if they've gone through grief, especially if they know somebody who is going through grief, and even if somebody hasn't had a person in their life recently where they've had to be there to kind of help them through a situation. It's great information to have, Because when the time hits I mean, you just said it there are people who don't know what to say. Whether you dealing with somebody else or somebody else being there for you, we frequently don't know what to say. The first thing that comes to mind is I'm sorry for your loss, but there's so much more than that like that. Just that doesn't really validate it for anybody it's like asking how's your day going.
Speaker 2:It's like do you, do you care about how my day is going, or is it just like the thing to say you know?
Speaker 1:yeah, are you? Are you just going through the motions, or do?
Speaker 2:you really give a fuck yeah, or do you actually give a shit? Like are you actually asking how my day is going? I spent like even to relate that to like maternity and it's like, oh, how are you doing? I don't know. I gave birth 24 hours ago. I haven't slept in four days. Like, do you, do you want that answer or do you want I'm good, the baby's sleeping?
Speaker 2:like yeah, she's so cute it's great, everything's wonderful, but yeah, it's like all those new changes, it's like the shit's gonna be hard, like you. Just, do you want the real answer or do you want the cushy answer that society wants you to say?
Speaker 1:that's the problem. I think it's an answer that society wants to deal with, because society generally is uncomfortable with dealing with this shit. Yes, that's why we have this problem, that's why we are, as a society, where we are, and whether that's because of how we were brought up and the tools that we were given. Well, honestly, the tools that we were not given growing up to be able to deal with grief and loss and trauma, and that's because, largely, our parents didn't have the tools, because their parents didn't give them to it.
Speaker 2:And it was just. You go back further and further and it gets worse and worse, and I hope at this stage where that is starting to shift. I mean therapy. I think we are coming more mainstream. I can't like, even a decade ago, like it was not like this no, it definitely is getting better. I think we're whether we're in that shift, a tipping point.
Speaker 1:The younger generation of this country will you yourself? You're 27, right? So I definitely think with I say pretty much anybody, probably 30 and under, it's getting a lot better, especially even with kids. You know, 30, 35 years ago, when I was in junior high school and in high school there were no counselors for that.
Speaker 2:There were. Yeah, there were there were a couple of school counselors, but I didn't even think about that as counseling, though you know, like the school counselors are just the ones that like helped you with your schedules and stuff like those were guidance counselors maybe some con, maybe maybe some conflicts, if there was like bullies or like some teachers or something. But yeah, not like getting through major life changes or grief or anything like. That's not what they were for.
Speaker 1:You and I being separated by 20 plus years. We grew up in very different times. I mean, I think probably the most traumatic thing that was experienced during just societal when I was growing up was in 1986 when space shuttle challenger exploded. That was something that was like holy shit, like nobody knew how to deal with that. Then, yeah, I remember watching that in school and basically like right away, as soon as the teachers realized what happened, they turned the tvs off and that was pretty much it. We just like went back to class and finished the day like okay, well, what the shit? Like how do we deal with this? Like we don't, we didn't deal with that because they didn't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, unfortunately, you know, we live in an age now where, um, something like that happening would probably be maybe the sixth worst thing that happened on any given day, because there's constantly not that there wasn't shit happening all the time, but it's just in our face. Now we live, we live in a 24 hour news cycle and we have you know, at our fingertips, we have instant access to every horrible thing that's going on.
Speaker 1:And you know, whether it's in our personal lives or just in society. I mean school shootings, they, they. You know, when columbine happened and was it 99? It was all that anybody talked about for days, and now a school shooting happens and we're basically numb to it yeah it's taking a couple of big ones to kind of wake up.
Speaker 1:But even then it gets on the back, yeah but much like school shootings and other really horrible things that happen. Society has become numb to so much of it and therefore we've also become numb to dealing with grief and processing grief. Even when it comes to things that affect us individually, like major world events happen and they affect people on a grand scale, it's a little bit different, but when it comes to things that affect you or me or just an individual person, a lot of people don't know how to deal with it. We have become I think we've become so numb because of everything that's happened in the world that maybe some people just don't want to talk about it, but that doesn't mean that we should.
Speaker 2:Agreed, they just need to keep getting talked about.
Speaker 1:Yes, the conversation.
Speaker 2:We can't let it get on the back burner, no it can't, it cannot be put to the back burner.
Speaker 1:We have to talk about these things and, whatever each person's coping mechanism is whether it's just conversation, whether it's things that you and I are very familiar with humor, dark humor, I mean I love that we share a pretty fucked up sense of humor and, with the story that I've talked about with me and my brothers and my friends, we've frequently used that to get through a lot of the things that we've dealt with over the years, including all of the losses of our dads, and it's not a bad thing. There has to be a way for everybody to deal with things.
Speaker 2:And definitely.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you just need to do what works for you.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's different for everybody, but there's, there's something for everybody to absolutely the last question that I'm going to ask you with regards to this interview is what is the one thing you miss the most about your dad?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So again, I just highlight this period in life, like those later years in college where it was just like the things were good. He, he always sent the most random emails, like he was old, he emailed. He didn't text very often until like way later, but he would send emails. He be like, hey, check out this article. Or like, for our wildlife exemption, for our property you'd have to do like bird surveys. He'd be like, hey, check out this, this bird survey I did today. It'd have like 12 egrets, three cardinals, like whatever on there.
Speaker 2:Um, and there's this one email he sent that I remember like I almost had to memorize. But, um, I had visited home one day and he was. He said I was telling your mom that you're not just a gym, but you're a polished gym. And I was like man, like he just had a way with words, like he was very intelligent, he's stubborn as hell, but man, he was probably one of the smartest people I've ever met and that that probably is why he he just couldn't get it all out on his, all out of his brain. He just said it was just frustrated coming out. But yeah, he was just one of the smartest people, most articulate people I've ever met and yeah, I just miss his emails like I don't know what year, but whatever year bernie sanders was running for president I think it was 2008, 2012, so it was that long ago I think so well.
Speaker 1:16 was trump and clinton 12. 12 was obama. Obama was elected in 08.
Speaker 2:Became president 09 bernie was definitely running while I was in college maybe you know, maybe it was I think he was the other democratic candidate okay, yeah, anyway, whatever your bernie sanders was running, he, he was a big bernie sand fan.
Speaker 2:He'd always just text me, or text me or email me Go, bernie go. And that was it. Like just those words Go, bernie go. I just wish his emails there, or anything from Super Sweet, just like hey, check out this article. Hey, you should take a personal finance class. Hey, just love you, miss you. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:That's probably what I miss the most, just his random communications. Um, thank you, my little devil's in here. Now too, we're gonna get a visit. Hi, yes, so cute. Well, that's a great answer and thank you for sharing those memories. Yeah, I think that about wraps it up for the interview I agree we do have.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good place to stop. Stop. Nice view of butthole right there. That's okay. We do have one last thing to cover. I don't remember if I've told you in advance about this. If not, then hopefully you've listened to enough episodes at this point to know what I'm about to do.
Speaker 2:The hot seat no, the hot seat is or is the rapid fire?
Speaker 1:questions yeah, the rapid fire questions. The hot seat is what I get put on when my listeners Thank you, everybody who continues to send in questions send questions in when they want to interview me, and then, once a month, I get to sit down with whoever the co host is To this point, when we're recording this episode. I've only one done one episode, and it was my wife, kim, who everybody has now gotten to know almost as well as they've gotten to know me. She was the one asking me all the questions. I don't know that that will always be the case, but the hot seat is a great segment, but for this we are going to deal with some random questions and get to know some totally useless and useful at the same time facts about you wait all right, you ready for this?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Okay, what was your favorite workouting?
Speaker 2:Well, you might know this one Last year I went to New Orleans with my boss and our HR guy and her boss for a trash conference, because I work at a landfill.
Speaker 1:I do remember you telling me a little bit about this, but share a little bit more for the listeners.
Speaker 2:So it's new Orleans and I'm a new employee and, needless to say, I got very initiated on bourbon street, a little too initiated my ankle is paying for it today.
Speaker 1:Did you earn yourself some beads?
Speaker 2:I did, yes, I did.
Speaker 1:Nice, very nice, how's your ankle doing.
Speaker 2:By the way, this is totally off topic but I didn't, I didn't get to no, it's, it's actually okay. It has its days Um, but it's, it's okay, it didn't break.
Speaker 1:I severely sprained my ankle in my sophomore year in college.
Speaker 2:It's never the same.
Speaker 1:I was basically told you would have been better off if you broke it.
Speaker 2:That's pretty much what they said to. They're like, yeah, probably wish you broke it. I was like I actually do like that's, that's like the splint and you're done.
Speaker 1:No sprain is, it's never the same what is one missed opportunity that you wish you could have a second chance at?
Speaker 2:oh boy, honestly, I'd say, my undergrad years I was really focused on school, which is like a blessing and a curse. I'd probably go out and socialize a little more. Okay, get a little wild, as crazy as that sounds. I was pretty mild in college.
Speaker 1:Just live life a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I would live life a little more. I'd go out and meet more people, stay out a little later.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean at this point you're so old. I mean 27 is like the new 80.
Speaker 2:27 is the new 80, when you have a four-month-old, I'm going to, I'm going to put it out there.
Speaker 1:You're going to have plenty of chances to continue living your life.
Speaker 2:Yes, funny.
Speaker 1:Speaking of which, what do you think is the key to living a good life?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say perspective. You know there's going to be silver lining to everything.
Speaker 1:You've got to find the good and the bad, and the bad and the good, to learn and live, you know.
Speaker 2:It's a great answer. Do you ever post inspirational quotes on social media? Not anymore. That was kind of a thing to do back in like 2012. I'd say, well, I don't know, I did a couple of years last year or whatever year that I saw my dad at Chili's. I put something on there. You just got to feel. You know, like occasionally I'd say, probably more so when I was in my angsty years versus now.
Speaker 1:Okay, At what age do you want to retire?
Speaker 2:Before 60. I'm going to say 55 at the latest. I'm ambitious, I've got some ambitions.
Speaker 1:You're going to work your ass off and you're going to enjoy the environment.
Speaker 2:We're grinding, we're trying to travel Nice.
Speaker 1:What surprised you the most about your current job?
Speaker 2:Just how much there is to learn. Like I've been there two years as of two days ago, and there's things I'm learning every single day that I just had no idea about, and there's there's a lot to learn about trash. I'll just leave it at that. There's a lot of stuff that goes into the landfill.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, if you're having a burrito, black beans or refried beans.
Speaker 2:Oh refried, no, no question. Or refried beans oh refried, no, no question. Have you ever traveled abroad? Yes, I actually studied abroad in college. I went on a river boat on the Amazon river in Brazil. That was super cool. That was actually on my bucket list that I made in high school. And the opportunity arose in college, I was like you know, I don't care what this is going to cost, we're going to do it. It's never going to come back again, so we did it.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite type of tea?
Speaker 2:Lately I've been in a hot tea mood. I had a raspberry leaf tea when I was pregnant. It doesn't taste great, but when I was sick a couple of weeks ago I was putting honey in it. It was pretty good. So it's like a hot herbal tea.
Speaker 1:Polka dots or stripes, stripes a night out or a night in you know, last year I would have said a night out.
Speaker 2:Now I'm going to say a night in now that you've got the little one now they've got a little one, but it changes.
Speaker 1:It changes right now, night in okay, what type of milk do you put in your cereal?
Speaker 2:so heb. This is, I don't want to keep bringing up pregnancy stuff, but H-E-B has as much as you want.
Speaker 1:This is your interview.
Speaker 2:This is my interview. They have this brand called Mutopia and my husband's lactose intolerant. I started buying this milk thinking he would drink it. He doesn't, but I just kept buying it. It's Mutopia, it's got omega-3 in it and it's lactose free. It's got extra protein, so that's what I buy. It's a little bougie but it works All right.
Speaker 1:Do you want a bicycle?
Speaker 2:No, not currently.
Speaker 1:Okay, on a scale of one to 10,. How much do you enjoy garlic?
Speaker 2:Oh, like 10. If the recipe says like two cloves, you put like six.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you're more about a 19 instead of a 10.
Speaker 2:Probably yeah, Like garlic, you measure with your heart. It's like, yeah, you measure with your heart for garlic 100%.
Speaker 1:Definitely. If you see a bug inside your house, will you kill it or will you take it outside and let it go free?
Speaker 2:I'm taking it outside. I don't do squished bugs, unless it's a scorpion. That thing's getting it's going outside. I'm not touching a scorpion. I'm sorry that thing's got to die. If there's one, there's more, and I'm not playing that game.
Speaker 1:I've talked about scorpions a couple times on different episodes and scorpions are the one things that I do not fucking miss.
Speaker 2:I also do not mess with them. I told my husband every time there's a scorpion, I am trapping it or you are killing it. I am not touching it or getting in a thing.
Speaker 1:Oh no, there was never a situation where we would trap a scorpion and take it outside. Was never a situation where we would trap a scorpion and take it outside? No, absolutely not name one of the seven dwarves dopey. There you go. Would you rather lose all of your hair or gain 50 more hair?
Speaker 2:I'd gain 50 more because I'm currently losing my hair right now. We love pregnancy.
Speaker 1:It's the best I was gonna say you going to blame your daughter on that.
Speaker 2:I am, I actually am.
Speaker 1:Okay, someday when she hears this episode and she'll be able to defend herself. For now, you carried her around for nine months. You get to blame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do Correct.
Speaker 1:What word do you hate hearing?
Speaker 2:Is there a word I hate hearing? I can't think of any word for whatever reason I feel like swanky comes to mind.
Speaker 1:I used to say that word a long time like it was a long time ago though, but yeah, that word that's. That just sounded like a good word to not want to hear right now swanky, swanky. Okay, do you know the definition of?
Speaker 2:triskaidekaphobia?
Speaker 1:I do not know no what is the fear of the number 13?
Speaker 2:well, that's dumb. I mean that is a bad number, I guess, but that's oh yeah, it's dumb, oh wait, it's a bad number.
Speaker 1:It is a bad number, I guess. Oh yeah, it's dumb, oh wait, it's a bad number, it is a bad number.
Speaker 2:supposedly they skip it in hospitals and hotels and crap.
Speaker 1:Elevators. Yeah, that's a little extreme, that's a little extreme, there's a word for a fear of everything.
Speaker 2:What was your last?
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:Dead. You might as well be dead if you're scared of everything. That's right.
Speaker 1:What, what Dead? He might as well be dead. If you're scared of everything, that's right. What was the last thing you searched for on Google?
Speaker 2:Let's see, it's not even showing this dentist in Brenham because people were bashing him on Facebook.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you needed to go to a dentist and you were making sure that you were getting a good one.
Speaker 2:No, I wasn't even going to a dentist. I just saw the post about it and I was like who is this guy?
Speaker 1:so you're just curious, you just want to look up and see what all the dirt is about otherwise we've been looking up the center point outage maps for on repeat.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you heard about that.
Speaker 1:Houston's out of power and their outage maps are a complete joke yeah, I did hear the um for anybody who was listening to this episode when it first came out. We're talking in july and houston just dealt with hurricane barrel. Yeah, um, there were what, about two million people out.
Speaker 2:It was like 2.2 million people without power and, as of like last night, there were still about 800 000 without power. Wow, um and yeah. For a little bit, a couple days, they didn't have an outage map. That was accurate. And so texans were using water burgers location map on their app to see which water burgers had power, and that was accurate. And so texans were using water burgers location map on their app to see which water burgers had power, and that was actually more reliable for a while wow it might still be.
Speaker 2:You know, texans always find a way god bless texas god bless texas holy hell isn't that ridiculous?
Speaker 1:it's absurd.
Speaker 2:That's a whataburger map location like pretty much every news anchor in the area was like whataburger to the rescue texans using whataburger, an outage map oh man, I will also say that I I was not the biggest fan of whataburger when we lived there, but that was also well.
Speaker 1:It was largely because the bass drop location was slow as fuck there could be three cars in front of me and it was at least a half an hour before I got my food from the drive-thru. It was so bad yeah I believe it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was actually the bass drop location that kind of made some headlines when a rat jumped into the oil fryer. It was on YouTube, it was on Facebook. It was so fucking bad. Not a rat, I'm sorry I wasn't, I apologize. It was not a rat, it was a mouse. It was just running around and somebody, for whatever reason, had their phone and they saw it and it went to bolt and it just missed whatever was jumping for and landed right in the fryer.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Little Caesars and Brenham got a bad rep for a while because there was a viral picture going around of them spreading the pizza dough on a trash can lid. What is wrong with you, dhs? Where are you at?
Speaker 1:Seriously, oh so bad. All right, let's try to get this back on track. What is your guilty pleasure?
Speaker 2:Oh Oreos.
Speaker 1:I love Oreos.
Speaker 2:I'll take down the whole pack. It's not even a guess.
Speaker 1:Without a doubt. I saw a meme on Facebook the other day about how you can be sitting on your couch and your cat will give you dirty looks when you're eating a sleeve of Oreos, but you're also the person who will break their treats in half.
Speaker 2:It's so true.
Speaker 1:My guy gives me dirty looks anyway. Yes, no they don't need a reason for Maxie she gets she she shouldn't get a bad rap. She's such a good cat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Who do you text the most?
Speaker 2:Other than your husband. Honestly, he's so bad at replying. I have a group text with two of my girlfriends called bitches without zero fucks and or with zero fucks, and yeah, we text like back and forth every day bitches with zero fucks coming to you in 2025 on netflix yeah, bitches with zero fucks. My husband thought the group was called bitches with only fans at first, because it's bitches with zero, and then f's start out and he was like y'all only fans. I was like no, we don't you should have said yes.
Speaker 1:How do you think we're paying for all of?
Speaker 2:this, or would you be mad if I said it made money?
Speaker 1:probably not do what you gotta do, no judgment, none. What's your favorite carnival food? Funnel cake Are lifeguards attractive.
Speaker 2:I was a lifeguard, so I'm going to have to say yes and so is my husband, so I feel like I can't say no.
Speaker 1:There you go. Do you enjoy running?
Speaker 2:No, not even a little bit. I have asthma, so it's not enjoyable, gotcha.
Speaker 1:Are you politically correct?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:Why do you ask?
Speaker 2:that question If you're interviewing people that are saying, yes, you need to get new people to interview. I'm sorry, that's right.
Speaker 1:When you fly in a plane, do you wear a neck pillow?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Ask permission or beg forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Beg forgiveness.
Speaker 1:What was your last impulse buy over $100?
Speaker 2:Probably the little. This is such an adult purchase. The little Bissell green machine, it's like a little carpet cleaner. It was like viral on TikTok for a while but yeah, that was an impulse buy. I would say it's worth it. It's worth it.
Speaker 1:It cleans cars and cars, was it a good purchase.
Speaker 2:It's a good purchase. It was an impulse buy, but it was solid.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you like the smell of gasoline?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Are you more cautious or bold? I'm more cautious, for sure. Who's your favorite Harry Potter character?
Speaker 2:I love Ron Ron Weasley.
Speaker 1:What is your deepest fear?
Speaker 2:I really hate thunderstorms. Like a lot Wow, like, probably like surface level fear, it's probably thunderstorms. Like a lot wow, like, probably like surface level fear, it's probably thunderstorms like I hide in the closet and I just I hate them if they're like, mild like, but like this hurricane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was hiding in the closet the whole time see, we can't hang out during thunderstorms because, no, that's my husband.
Speaker 2:He's like a little storm watcher. He'll go outside nice funnel cloud like okay as storms are approaching.
Speaker 1:I'm always outside. I want to see the lightning coming. I want to see the clouds. I've even got, I've even got kim to turn a little bit of a corner on that.
Speaker 2:She's definitely better if it rains too hard, my blood pressure goes up like seriously oh no, I love a good downpour.
Speaker 1:It rains too hard, I'm not sleeping well.
Speaker 2:I'm the complete opposite of most people. I can't do it.
Speaker 1:It makes me nervous we had a storm a couple of weeks ago. Um, I mean it was. That downpour was absurd. We must have gotten two and a half inches of rain in an hour. Oh, it was a lot, and I judged that based on the uh, the level of water in the pool. I mean it was. It was actually at the point where we needed to add water and then we got that and it was almost overflowing. After that it was like up, just up above the top of, because there's, you know, that filter.
Speaker 2:It's an above ground pool and there's that filter like rectangle on the side of the pool and it got.
Speaker 1:It actually got a little bit above the top of that, so it was just the filter cover outside and water was slowly draining out of that. But yeah, that was some crazy rain. What celebrity annoys you the most?
Speaker 2:Man, this is a hot topic unpopular opinion. I really don't like Adam Sandler.
Speaker 1:Really. I really don't, what don't?
Speaker 2:you like? I don't know. He's just cringy man. I just can't, I don't. I've never liked him.
Speaker 1:Are we talking Adam Sandler like 2024, or like happy Gilmore, Billy Madison?
Speaker 2:Like, like, probably pre grownups, like grownups is probably the only movie I'll watch and I can like stand him, and it's probably just because of the other actors, but yeah man, he's just cringy. Sorry, everybody that's an Adam Sandler fan. I know there's a lot of y'all out there, that's okay. Last question what do you think people misunderstand about you? Oh man, I think people think I'm really mature and I'm 100. Not you hope you. You know that I am not like I. I put on a good face. I've got a good poker face. But don't get you wrong, I'm not as serious as I look.
Speaker 1:No, I can definitely attest to that.
Speaker 2:No, no, take me too serious. If I look like I'm mad, I'm probably not.
Speaker 1:No, I don't know if I've ever seen you really pissed off.
Speaker 2:It takes. It takes a while, it takes a little bit. We got to wrap up a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's me you need to. If you've really pissed me off, then you've accomplished something You've done, something you better.
Speaker 2:You better get out, you better look out, you better get out of the way, annie, thank you so much for this.
Speaker 1:Obviously it's always great to see you, even if it has to be through zoom because we live in different time zones. But thank you just for doing this. I know that this is never easy to talk about for anyone, but it means a great deal that you're willing to share everything.
Speaker 2:Of course, this is a good time. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. Of course this is a great topic and for anybody who really wants to talk about it, it's good to just get it out there.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 1:People that have good stories again. Not that grief and death and loss is ever good, but there is a good side of it afterwards. If you've been able to find a way to process your grief and to get through it, then I think it's a good story because you can help others to process theirs.
Speaker 2:There's lessons to be learned from it.
Speaker 1:There are lessons to be learned. There are lessons for all of us to learn from our own grief, from others grief, you know. Look what you experienced with your friend a few months after your dad. There's always something to learn, there's something to be taught. We can all get a lot out of this, and I'm really grateful to you for being part of this, and hopefully the listeners will get a lot out of this episode as well. I hope so. I'm glad we made the time for this. You're amazing.
Speaker 2:You're a great friend, love you too, and your message is awesome and I will promote this as soon as it's live. Just let me know.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely, I appreciate it and we'll definitely talk soon.
Speaker 2:All right, Love you Nick.
Speaker 1:Love you too. The conversations we have here on Our Dead Dads do not lack emotion or intensity, and Annie's story was no different. Her dad put her through a lot in their 23 short years together, and fortunately, they were able to gain some closeness near the end, though she also learned some valuable life lessons through their often turbulent relationship. Annie, thank you for being willing to come on the show and open up about all of the highs and lows with your dad, and I hope that everyone can take away from this episode that grief comes in waves. It can hit at the most unexpected of times and, as we've said so often here, don't let the realization that the grief will suck when it happens stop you from processing it, because not processing it will be much worse. If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest on Our Dead Dads, go to OurDeadDadscom, go to the Contact Us link and then select Be a Guest, fill out the form, send it in, and you just might be able to tell your story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and helping so many others. Again, there are no rules to navigating grief and there's no timeline for doing it either. Everyone needs to go at their own pace, but the most important part is taking the first step. Whether you want to tell your own story or you just want to listen to others tell their stories, the most important thing to understand is that no one is alone in grief or should ever feel like they don't have someone who will talk to them or listen to them. Here at Our Dead Dads, within the safe space of this community, you always have both.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening, and join me next week when I am joined by another family member. This time it's my baby sister, helene Nicole, the seventh and, as far as we know, the final offspring from our dad. This is going to be a bit of a long one, but whatever, it's my baby sister and she deserves all the time that I can give her. You've heard from my three brothers and now I've saved the best for last, so get ready for my sit down with Queen Helene. Don't forget to mark your calendars for Wednesday, november 6th, at 5 pm for the very first live full interview on Our Dead Dads with my very special guest, justin Shepard, the man who many of you know simply as Justin on TikTok. Make sure you're following Our Dead Dads on your favorite podcast streaming platform because you will not want to miss this episode or any other upcoming episode. This is Our Dead Dads, where we are changing the world one damaged soul at a time. See you next time.