How Losing a Mother as a Teen Can Shape a Man | Marty Klein

00:01
I'm Matt Gilhooly and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that change lives forever.

00:21
My friend, I am here with my friend Marty. As you know, on the Life Shift, we are talking about those pivotal moments that have completely changed your life. And Marty's on today because we have some similarities in the story that he's gonna share. Not quite the same, and I think, which will be interesting, because we've talked about this before, we have different approaches and different feelings about it. So I think that'll be an interesting conversation.

00:50
But before we do that, let's talk about how we met, which is, I'm not sure. We met through a friend. I know that. When was that? Probably four or five years ago or so. It was, you meet your friend out on the boat. Oh, on the boat, okay. So our friends have a boat and when it's a lovely day, well, actually pre-COVID times.

01:16
we would get a bunch of food and a bunch of people and spend the day roasting ourselves on the boat. Oh, as in the sun, not telling insulting jokes about each other. Well, maybe that too as well. A little of both. Well, your story, I mean, I think we can get right into it, but you have a moment in your life that really changed a lot for you and is something that we have bonded over since we met.

01:46
And probably that first day, it probably came up in conversation in that first day, at least from my side. So will you tell us a little bit about who you were or what was happening or the place in life you were before this moment without unveiling that moment? Sure. Well, I am an only child. I have, I was fortunate my parents are still married. It was the three of us.

02:14
Born and raised in Northern California, East San Francisco Bay. Both my parents were into classical music. My dad, a conductor, my mom, a violinist. It's a little different from probably traditional jobs that most of our parents have or had. Right. And as an only child, I was, I would say dragged, but I think I enjoyed it. I was taken along to a lot of their concerts and receptions afterwards.

02:43
So everyone was dressed up in their concert best, like you would go into a classical music concert. And I was the only child, I don't mean in my family. I mean, I was the only child around. And so I was often had to just had to blend in with that environment and be a little more mature than maybe I wanted to be as a kid. And just got used to that. You're so cultured.

03:11
As a child. Yeah, I didn't really know any different, I guess. But on weekend mornings, there was always classical music wafting through the house. So my dad had and still has records galore, vinyl records. He has a huge classical music record collection. Can name that tune in three notes. Can you name that tune in three notes? No, no, that's his job. I was I mean, my my.

03:38
Both of my parents gave me the piano lessons, although it didn't really stick. I got that question everywhere I went. So what instruments do you play? As if that was the, you know, that was expected. You do feel that you had pressure to be? You know, I gotta give my parents credit for that because they always said, both to me and to others, we don't want to pressure him to play an instrument. We want him to do whatever he wants to do. And if it...

04:07
includes an instrument. Great. He has at home teachers, but piano lessons only went a couple of years maybe. It just didn't really stick. And to their credit, they did not pressure that, like I said, towards me at all. Do you think your subconscious was like, I don't want to do this. This is all I've done. I've had to go to all these concerts over the years. So I'm just not going to do it. I never thought about it like that. It just...

04:33
I didn't feel like it was a gene inside of me or that I was abnormally good at it. And I didn't take to it quickly and had other interests. I was into collecting baseball cards. And when I finally got into middle school, let's say, instead of taking band as the one elective I could take, I went into leadership. I ran for student council and I won one of those positions. And so I had to...

05:02
give up going to band. I played trumpet at the time. Not very well, but I did. It's only three buttons, right? It was only three. Only three buttons. But yeah, since fourth grade, never looked back from playing an instrument. But that just paints a little bit of a picture as to my childhood. I had lots of friends on the street, but no siblings. Yeah, I would say I felt very lucky. Both my parents were

05:30
interested in my success and I was very much wanted and loved. My dad played catch with me, my mom helped me with my homework, read to me, played with my ping pong. You had this like idyllic only child life in which your parents were artists and took you to these fancy events that maybe you didn't care about at the time, but I bet that added to your successes in leadership, even in middle school.

05:59
having had to be around a bunch of adults to be able to articulate your thoughts and what you wanna do. So I'm sure that fed into that. Yeah, yeah, that's all correct. I definitely felt very fortunate then and now that, I mean, a lot of my friends' parents had gotten divorced or they saw their dads every other weekend or lived in a different state. And I felt very supported and loved and helped with quite a bit.

06:29
The one thing I would say that it was not quite my experience was being an only child, I think a lot of the assumption is quote unquote, the only child syndrome of being spoiled. And I didn't quite feel that way. I mean, it's all relative to growing up in this country and when I did, but my dad especially was very cost conscious of everything. And so he...

06:56
Certainly I didn't feel spoiled. I certainly had everything that I needed. And I had a birthday party and celebrated holidays, but I think it's an honest assessment that I was not a spoiled only child. Yeah, and you know what? I wonder if there's a difference between an only child with parents that are together compared to an only child with separated parents and the level of spoil that comes along with that. Because

07:26
listening to your point around that time, in the 80s, I'm assuming, early 90s period, right? We're talking here. There were a lot of people that I was around that had divorced parents and it was fairly common. That was happening around that time. And I grew up with a split home and all the things you were describing as far as

07:53
spending time with my father on the weekends and every Wednesday or I don't remember what it was exactly but it was very split time and I feel that possibly parents that have disrupted their child's life might feel the need to supplement that with whatever that may be. So I wonder if there is a connection to that. I have no clue, but it just felt.

08:18
you telling your stories about growing up, and I'm like, I wonder what that would be like to remember both parents in the home at the same time supporting what you wanna do versus shuttling back and forth. Yeah, we all only know our own story. I mean, we didn't know it any other way at the time. Yeah, but I also think as a kid, you see what other people are going through, right? And you go...

08:44
As a child of a divorced family, I would go to friends' houses that had the full family structure, also other siblings. So also seeing a friend of mine engage with their siblings or engage with the full family functioning unit that happens. So it's interesting to hear your story. I didn't quite remember some of those pieces. Yeah, I know you.

09:09
I'm just going to answer a question that wasn't asked, but you mentioned about being an only child and having siblings, not having siblings. I never really felt at the time that I wanted one. I didn't feel like I was missing out when other friends had siblings. I think now as an adult, I maybe wish I had an adult brother or sister when I don't have to deal with them every day growing up, but I've never felt.

09:36
that I was cheated or missed out. I've gotten to ask more recently about my parents' decision to not have another child. And it was not especially planned or unplanned that way. It just happened that way, I guess. But I don't know, I don't feel like that was something I'm missing. Yeah, I mean, life unfolds, life has its plan, right? And we play along.

10:04
So with that said, life has its plan, and I guess that would lead us to around middle school time for you, in which possibly you're something that really shook your world and changed the rest of your life. You wanna share a little bit of what was going on? Sure, well yeah, it didn't quite, it didn't start out as a major life change, but I remember being 13 on Halloween. This would have been in the mid-90s, just to give you a look.

10:34
timeframe and I was in Northern California, Suburbia. So a pretty traditional Halloween style neighborhood. When I got home from trick or treating, I probably, like I said, I was 13, so old enough to maybe go with some friends and and not have an immediate chaperone. Or maybe I did that night from somebody else. When I got home from that trick or treating session, my mom wasn't home and I asked my, or maybe my dad just immediately told me that she went into

11:04
She went to the ER, nothing serious had happened, just first of all, but she went to get something checked out, her breathing. She had walked, we had lived in a two story house and she had noticed over the last couple of days that she went up the stairs, just a single flight of stairs and got a little winded and it was concerning enough that, or maybe something, maybe it felt especially winded that night, that she said, I can't wait any longer, I need to get this checked out.

11:34
And so I just remember that it was Halloween because it was Halloween. That's like a kid's, one of the kid's favorite days. And so, um, she came back home later that night and maybe it was the next morning that I got more of the story, but ultimately they found some fluid that was in her lungs that was constricting her, um, breathing, uh, capacity. Right. And over the next couple of days, they went in.

12:00
with some sort of a scary needle probably, and withdrew a bunch of that fluid. And when the test came back on that fluid, they found cancer cells within that fluid. It wasn't specifically lung cancer. It was just cancer cells. They still had to do more tests to figure out where it was coming from. And so now we're in the middle of November or so, a couple of weeks later after Halloween, and they get more tests done and more results that come back.

12:29
and they found cancer in several different areas within her body, which at least she understood to be inoperable. I guess, and I didn't know a whole lot, I didn't know anything about cancer at the time, but the way that she described it, she said, the doctor said that if it were a tumor that was where the cancer was, and they can cut out the tumor, then you can go on with your life.

12:55
Or I guess with radiation, if they can shrink the tumors and get rid of all the cancer cells, then you can go on with your life. But if it has spread too much and there's no way to cut it out, even if they leave a few cancer cells, it replicates and spreads again. And so her first sign of anything wrong was, like I said, the breathing. But when all the tests were said and done, the cancer was kind of everywhere. Right. Had metastasized. Right.

13:24
So over the course of the next little while, of course she had the fluid drain, she had a couple blood transfusions, she starts all the things that you do. You do chemotherapy, radiation, hair starts falling out, and now Christmas is coming up. Both my parents were born and raised in the Kansas City, Kansas, Missouri area, so we always went back there for holidays. And she had to decide if she was well enough to do that.

13:52
And based on what doctors were saying, she decided, even though they recommended against it, she decided she needed to go. We're gonna go, like as normal. Even though she wasn't feeling quite herself and her hair was falling out and she needed hospital attention every now and then. We made the trip and celebrated Christmas relatively the same as always. I think deep down she was hedging her bets just in case this was her last Christmas.

14:21
Her mom and dad were still alive. They were in their eighties, I think. My mom at this time was 47. So she still had two parents and her brother, she had one sibling. So we celebrated in late December. The month of January was in and out of the hospital. There was blood transfusions and she was on a really good diet, taking nice supplemental pills of...

14:50
more holistic alternative medicine, we'll say, in addition to everything that the doctors were telling her to do. And meanwhile, I was going to school. I was in eighth grade, 13 years old. There's not a whole lot I can do in this situation, just hope for the best and know that she and my dad and her friends and the doctors are doing what they can. And it was a little like hopeless, not really knowing what to do. Right.

15:19
Do you remember as a 13 year old or looking back now, looking back at that 13 year old, do you think that you were reacting a particular way on purpose, like pushing things down, or do you feel like you weren't worried intentionally, or was that something that you feel like you just suppressed to continue being a child?

15:45
I don't know if this is something that I got from my mom or just skills that I had learned over time up to that point, because my mom was known for being very stoic and even keeled and logical, which I absolutely also am. And I think I took the position that this is something not in my control, so I'm going to only focus on things I can control. And at that time it was school.

16:13
and maybe extracurricular school activities. And just, I didn't actively suppress it, I just compartmentalized, I can't do anything about what's going on with her health. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really mature of a 13-year-old and that's why I ask. And I wonder if that is from your upbringing, not only seeing your mother be that way, but also.

16:40
Again, being around so many adults in professional settings and having to blend in, I wonder if that's a product of that. Because I feel the same, you know, having been an only child, I spent a lot of time with mostly adults. And so having, you know, similar experiences as a child made me a certain way until a certain point. So I'm assuming we're going down a road that is a little bit more intense.

17:09
Yes. So, and on that, the point of made me a certain way, it absolutely followed me through this next part and the aftermath of it in terms of how I was raised and how I was brought up to that point and how I handled information and handled experience. Everything you said still applies on this next part, which is, I'll just cut to the chase here, she ended up passing away the third week of January. So just to...

17:39
connect that timeline, the first thing that anything was wrong was Halloween. Right. And approximately three months later she was gone. And, um, she was spending a day or two at a time in the hospital, as I mentioned, in and out. So when that finally happened, she was overnight in the hospital already. And, um, as essentially overnight, uh, she had a stroke or some sort of a, a blood impediment to her brain.

18:09
And there was a significant, I mean, she went into the hospital the night before. I wouldn't say normal, but certainly normal for the period in time. Yeah. I mean, it happened in the middle of the night. Hospital called my dad. He went down to the hospital to assess the situation. They advised him to go home and get me because it was probably going to end today. And, and so he did. He woke me up before school. It was Monday morning. It was before school. I didn't. It was.

18:39
know, five in the morning, didn't know what was going on. He took took me to the hospital. The way my dad would tell this part of the story is having already been to the hospital that morning is that although she at that point was nonverbal and kind of unresponsive essentially, but she was still breathing, he remembers her perking up a little bit when I got there, almost as if it was her permission to now pass away. She did so

19:08
an hour or two within the first couple of hours that I was there. And I remember doctors and nurses coming in to confirm that that had happened. I remember my dad calling my school to tell them I wasn't coming in. Right. And then after a little while, there's not a whole lot more you can do in the hospital standing there. You have to go home at some point. It's almost too quick, it feels sometimes like, is this it? Right. Are we supposed to do? Yeah.

19:38
Yeah. Do you remember those moments or is it like fully or just pieces of that day? No, I do very, I remember a lot about it. I can go into as much or little detail as you'd like, but the next order of business was my dad notifying people, including my mom's mom, who was in a, not a nursing home, like a retirement community. And he arranged to have somebody else with her when he made the phone call to talk to her about it.

20:08
My dad called his brother and he and my aunt both flew out from Kansas City that day. They basically got on the next plane out. We didn't have any other family in the Bay Area, I should specify. We went home and he made a whole string of phone calls. Interestingly, and you in particular will probably want to ask more about this, but the first thing I did when I got home...

20:36
was I put in a baseball bloopers VHS tape. Which specifically, and this wasn't, certainly not premeditated, but I must have, all I must have wanted to do was to completely be distracted by something else that would make me laugh or make me feel comfortable or just something else to do. Yeah, something normal. Something that was something you, it's like a comfort blanket, I think. Specifically it was something funny.

21:06
Now, think back, it was something that would, I don't know, counterbalance the mood of the morning. I certainly did not grasp how permanent, how final, or, it's a lot to wash over you at that age. Because you were 13? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you don't understand. Had you experienced death before that in someone in your family close to you? No.

21:36
None of my grandparents had died before that point, and no one else either. So this was my first turn at the grieving process, I suppose. Your first turn, lucky you. How long do you think it took for you to realize that permanence?

21:57
Not long. I remember when my aunt and uncle arrived later that day, late afternoon, my aunt, and I'm close to them. They didn't live in the same state, but I had enough time with them over the years. I remember my aunt as the mom, as a woman herself coming to me as her nephew, and giving me a hug. I remember completely breaking down in her arms. It was the comfort

22:27
moment and she knew it and I knew it and we were both crying and I think that was that was finally the at least for that day the the moment that I could uh feel vulnerable um in in terms of your question about when it really sank in I that's a struggle and it's not that I don't remember it's it's um

22:53
Well, maybe it is that I don't remember. It was probably a slow process. I do remember her service or funeral, if you will, was a week later and I did not speak at it, but I also was not a puddle of tears either. I was just, and here's my mom's stoicism maybe, but I was just going through it. I was hearing everything and hearing all this outpouring of support. Everybody was asking about me and how is he doing and.

23:23
It's overwhelming. I almost didn't want it. Yeah, exactly. I didn't like the attention on me. I didn't want to feel like I needed the sympathy. I don't know. I a little bit rejected a lot of that outpouring of support and emotional support. And I remember my dad saying after a week or two, or maybe just acknowledging that that outpouring of support fades away.

23:51
It comes really hot and heavy at first, and people offering rides, places I can take Marty to school, or I'll bring over a home-cooked meal, all these things that people wanna do. And then for the most part, that kind of goes away after the first couple of weeks. Yeah. Which of course, what else is it supposed to do? But like, okay, it's just us now. Yeah, and life changes. And the reason I ask that question is, as you know, but other people I haven't really told much, but...

24:21
When I was eight, I also lost my mother in a, I mean, now hearing this, your loss was fairly sudden. You didn't have the typical cancer end of life experience? On that note, I don't remember the last thing I said to her. I don't remember our last conversation. Similar to an accident, it was a very sudden end to that story. It wasn't like,

24:50
we can have some bedside chats and tell me everything you want to tell me. No, it was, I don't know, very quick. So losing my mom suddenly when I was eight, which your eight is pretty young. And, you know, I was not the stoic put together child that you seemingly were by 13. But I asked that question because I feel like for possibly

25:21
maybe the first eight to 10 years, I don't know that I fully accepted the permanence of it. And I say that because there, I vividly remember moments in which I would tell myself stories that my mother was in something like WITSEC, or she like went off and she was living some other life because for some reason my brain was not ready.

25:50
Like she's still alive somewhere, but she had to go do something. The government took her here or she's living some other life here. And I don't know why I did that. And I'm assuming it was protecting myself and I just wasn't quite ready to do that. And so that's why I was asking. I didn't know if that, I mean, we definitely were different children. We were raised differently and we had different. I don't wanna gloss over. There is a difference between age eight and age 13, I think.

26:20
in how we process a major event like that. I can't say that I did, or you know, you asked a question about permanence and it must have been within a day or two. It wasn't, you know, years and years. But I do remember that before bed, I would sometimes talk to her as if she could hear me. I wasn't and am not a religious person. It wasn't really praying. I didn't think that she could hear me necessarily, but...

26:49
That a little bit, I suppose, gave me comfort that it was like a one-way conversation as if she was still around. I think my brain and my heart allowed me to pretend these things for so long because I wasn't there for the last moment. So my mom died in an accident in another state. And so the next time I saw her was at the service. And that's not a way an eight-year-old wants to see their parent.

27:18
after that. But for me, even I remember being 1415 thinking that wasn't really her in the casket or these like crazy things. And you're, you know, it's not rational. And I probably knew it wasn't rational at the time. But for some reason, that was a comfort. So that was really where that that question stemmed from is kind of understanding that permanence. But it sounds like you were very mature for your age, and you took that from your parents and kind of just

27:47
proceeded with that. It was logical for you, right? It was like, she has died, so she is no longer here, and now life exists without her. Yeah, I just did the, by all means, I did not have it all figured out. I didn't know what I was doing, how I was supposed to react. What I did know how to do was continue on with, I mean, I had very, not strict, but very good habits that my parents, including my mom, instilled in me to...

28:17
Brush my teeth before I go to bed, do your homework before you do anything else. You know, you always go to school. The idea of staying home sick was almost foreign in my house. I was a good student and always did my work. I think that's what I fell back into. I mentioned that she passed on a Monday. I took their obviously Monday off of school. I took Tuesday off of school, but I went back on Wednesday. And I think.

28:43
I just wanted to, I wanted, maybe it was a part of distraction or compartmentalizing, but I felt a responsibility to get back into that routine so that it doesn't falter, I think. Do you think any of that was, or did you feel pressure to perform well and to be put together? Did you feel that pressure that other people were expecting you to not because you lost your parent?

29:10
Yeah, I didn't feel pressure, but I certainly felt that other people were expecting me to be a mess. Yeah, understandably Right. They were always checking in on me always worried about me and I would almost rejected that like don't cry for me Argentina Right. I didn't quite I wasn't comfortable with that attention. I just wanted to get I Guess back to business or it was maybe just a coping mechanism without knowing it

29:37
because if I could just go back to my routine, and by the way, from that point, I continued as a good student and always did my homework and always brushed my teeth and all of that. And I credit that in part to my mom, by the way. But talking about it now, was that the right decision? I don't know. Like I said, I just did what felt natural to me and I didn't feel like it was expected of me.

30:05
Or there was, I didn't feel pressured to. People would have understood if I took two weeks off of school, probably. But I didn't want to get behind. Yeah. Is that weird to have prioritized school? No, I just think we are totally different beings because I, my entire, I mean, I, my mom died on, on labor day, 1989. And I lived in Massachusetts at the time and my dad lived in Georgia at the time.

30:35
So when she died, suddenly my life, I had to move to Georgia and I had to start a new school and I had to meet all new friends. And so I didn't have the luxury of, and I don't wanna call yours a luxury, I'm sorry. I didn't have a life that I could go back to. And so I can't relate to any of that because it's so different. And I think because I guess maybe my changes were so drastic.

31:05
for that eight year old, I always felt that I had to do the best in everything. So that one, my dad wouldn't leave, not that he was going to, but I felt like abandoned, if you will, that my mom died. And so if I did everything right, no one else would leave my life, no one would be disappointed. And then this is probably just an eight year old brain doing that. So it's so interesting to hear, you know, you went through the same drastic loss. We saw it so differently.

31:36
Again, I couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, no, I'm jealous in a way. Not of your experience, but of how you were able to do that. Do you feel that now as an adult, that loss, like had you not lost your mom, do you think you would be a different adult now?

32:01
My guess is no. No, I've often thought about certain moments or sliding doors in my adult life might've gone a little different way in terms of when I moved to college, where I went to college, what major points that we all have in our life. If anything, I've considered what would my relationship with my mom be today?

32:28
Right. I think I would pretty much have gone on the same trajectory and wouldn't have made completely different decisions. I've often wondered whether or not my mom and dad would still be together. I've wondered if my mom would kind of follow me because I was her only son and she adored me. And if she would want to be where I was basically, if I moved to Southern California, which I did, would she then want to move to Southern California? If I moved now to Florida,

32:58
close to me. So I've considered those things, although I don't think I would have turned out very differently, maybe partially because although it was a major life shift for me, as I just described, it didn't shift a whole lot in terms of how I then reacted to it afterwards. I just kept on and like you said, I had the luxury of staying in my home, going to the same school.

33:25
nothing else changed in my life. And maybe that's why I clung on to everything that I knew, so that it wouldn't feel like my life got turned upside down. Yeah, and it did. But you at least had some, you know, your life preserver of school, or of your baseball blooper tape, you know, things that were of comfort to you. Because I feel like the way you described yourself before your mom passed is who you are now.

33:55
and the way that you approach things, you're very methodical and you're logical and, and things happen in life because that's the way they're supposed to. It's the logical pieces, the next step. It makes sense, right? And I feel like that's what I know of you. So I do wonder, but, but your point to like the relationships that you would have, what I find the older I get, and I don't know if this is true for you, but I don't really remember much about my mother.

34:25
And I mean, naturally I was eight. So when do you start forming memories that are lasting memories as a kid, right? Maybe four or five and they're fleeting at best. So when I think of my mom, it's mostly what you just mentioned that the things that I've missed or the relationship that I might have had with her. So it's not necessarily, I remember doing XYZ with my mom.

34:55
but rather what would we have done when I was in college or where would I have gone to college or in all those pieces. So I can connect a lot with that feeling of the what if moments. But do you still remember your mother vividly? I think more so than you just described because I had the benefit of another five years.

35:21
But less and less as time goes on, I can no longer hear her voice clearly in my head. I do remember many things that we did, but it's more like a combination or an amalgam of on weekends, she would sometimes, we would make blueberry muffins together, or on Tuesday nights when my dad was off at a concert or rehearsal, these are the things that we would get takeout, and these are the things that we would do. So.

35:49
It's less individual memories and more just general memories of things that we did on a regular basis or things that she liked or sayings that she would say. And it always does bring a smile to my face. When something reminds me of her, it brings a smile to my face. I'll mention it out loud. Oh, that's something my mom used to say. It's not a sore subject for me. I don't get to talk about it often, I guess.

36:19
probably don't talk about it enough because each of us only have one mother, father. We have various combinations of families from that point. But in my case, I had a mom and a dad who lived together and raised me for 13 years. And I only get one of each. So I do look back fondly on my time with her. I sometimes think to myself, maybe this is me trying to.

36:46
spin what happened into a positive or something that I am thankful for. And that is that at age 13, I was right on the borderline of starting to not want her in my face all the time. I didn't want her to pick out my clothes or remind me to do things. I was, I wouldn't say rebellious, but I was getting to that stage of wanting to be a little bit, do my own thing. And I think had she lived into my high school years,

37:16
You know, who knows? Those of us who've had a high school age relationship with our moms might know what I'm talking about. I never did. But all that to say that all of my memories of my mom are when I wanted her to be my mother and I don't have any memories of me pushing her away, which I think was, we're about to start happening slowly but surely. Right, like every teenager. So that would have been natural. But yeah, I understand that.

37:47
I think I would be 100% a different person based on my circumstances. And so when you said, I don't wanna make it like a positive thing or you wanna, if you had to find a positive spin to it, I feel the same way. So if people now ask me, if you could go back in time, would you do X, Y, and Z? And for me, I would not because I would not change things.

38:17
because I am proud of who I am now and the things that I have done. And I know with most of my heart that where I am now is not where I would be had my mother not died. Cause I was a completely different child before she died than to after she died. So there are two versions of me. And it's like that movie, Sliding Doors, where like one thing happened. I would be two different people, you know, in that instance, where I think

38:46
It seems that you were able to maintain the essence of you with a major loss, but you were able to kind of go down that path, which part of me is envious of that. Yeah, I mean, all I can say is that I don't know any different. And it goes right back around to things I can control versus things I can't control. And it's just now always been a part of my life, part of my story.

39:14
I guess I had a choice to fold my cards or to stay in and keep going. And rather than wallow in it, I just continued on. And I'm not saying that is admirable or that's the right way to do it, because I think certainly I did not grieve in the more socially acceptable or socially expected ways.

39:41
and probably still haven't. I don't know how much of that there is inside of me that hasn't yet come out. I think it's important to note that grief is not the same for everyone, right? I don't think that your grief is any different than your grieving process is okay to be however it was. And if you feel that you have moved beyond that and not wallowed in whatever, and it was...

40:09
this long or forever long, whatever that is, I think it's okay. Do you think that losing your mom as a child has that affected how you, have you lost anyone else in your life, I guess I should ask? Any close family member since? Yes, okay, so I've lost all of my grandparents at this point. That is, I think, a right of...

40:34
that happens to everyone as we get older and that's part of the cycle of life. So I won't say that any of those really was an exercise in grief for me. But I think what's closer to the spirit of why you're asking is that just this last year, I lost someone who was my age or a few years older than me, but a contemporary, a peer, also to cancer coincidentally. He had been

41:04
two and a half years, so it was a long kind of process, but he passed just this last summer. And although I have had a couple of others who have passed that were more acquaintance level, this was a close friend. I had known him for over 20 years. Actually met him just a couple years after my mom passed. Anyway, so his death last year was the closest

41:34
of my own grief processes that I've dealt with. And I gotta say, it was very different from, maybe not entirely different from my mom's story, but I definitely allowed myself to more traditionally grieve this time around than I did the first time around.

42:03
Do you think that was either age or having the experience of loss? I think it was a few factors. One was other people in my life that have heard about my mom's story or just over time seeing other people grieve or advice that people have given over the years. Or I just turned 40 last summer also. And that...

42:31
happened to be six days before my friend passed. So I was already going through a little bit of a mortality phase of, oh gosh, I'm 40, what next? Like life is going, flying on by. And then, oh man, one of my best friends just died. And I think the two things together hit in such a way that it really made me feel more than I was prepared for or used to.

43:00
But at the same time, I am still very logical. I didn't completely, the earth didn't fall off of its axis. I did just keep going, but it was a little more of a profound grieving process this time around, for sure. Yeah, I feel like for me, again, we're, this is such an interesting conversation because we have experienced similar things, yet approach them.

43:30
quite differently. And now that I know, I feel like your parents really set you up for success as a child, in success and grief as a child by kind of indoctrinating you into this world of adults and of professionals and cultured individuals. Because I, having gone through similar things and approached it way differently and neither is good nor bad.

43:59
It's very interesting to hear and I didn't know that component or I didn't remember that component of your life. So I feel like there's a lot maybe to look into there. But losing my mom definitely affected my approach to grief when I lost my grandmother because my grandmother became my mom essentially or became that mother figure. And I was closer to her than I was to anyone. And she passed from cancer when I was in my mid thirties

44:29
I knew the moment she took her last breath, what I was going to do. And I knew the process of grief that I was going to do this time. Whereas when I was a kid, I would say it took me roughly 20 years to quote unquote finish grieving the loss of my mom. And that was through the proof, like showing everyone that I could make it, that I could get all A's. I would...

44:59
I would find myself using that as a crutch in if I did not do something successfully, it was because my mom died. It was, there was always, it was always, there was still something there that I hadn't processed and it took me late 20s before I did that. And so when I completed that path of long grieving for my mom, I knew exactly what I was gonna do. So in my case that,

45:27
that first bout of grief, informed how I was going to change and move forward the second time. So it's interesting to hear that, but I am sorry that you lost your best friend. Yeah, despite that, I did not have a plan. Like you said, in your case, you knew what to do or you were following a little bit of a blueprint. I still didn't, I just took it as it came.

45:59
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're very methodical. I think you're more of a logical thinker. And there is, you know, step one, you do this step two, you do this. And so that's just Monday, you get up, you go to work, you do what you need to do. But it does sound like something cracked the surface a little bit this time. Well, it's interesting, because it's all will also flipped. I'm very logical, but yet I don't have a step one and a step two to it. I don't know what I'm doing.

46:28
somebody who's not very, maybe is more emotional or in the moment, very planned or type B, I wouldn't expect to have a plan to then stick to.

46:42
so weird grief is just it's interesting because I've had a lot of these conversations now and not all of them are about loss or about major loss as far as losing a family member or something like that but there's all these commonalities between all of us that that are quite interesting and it all just comes down to the fact that we are human and we need to be accepting of however we approach whatever we're facing.

47:12
Because I think I know as a kid I was ashamed of certain things that I should have been feeling those ways. Or in your case, people might have questioned why is he not breaking down? Why is he back at school? And that's just how you processed what you were going through. And I think we need to honor that. I think we need to support that in people. Because you even said it. You said...

47:37
the socially acceptable way of grief or something along those lines or expected maybe. And I don't think we should have that. I don't think that we should expect anyone to act a certain way in which, when their world has changed. We all do the best that we can at the time and we live and we learn and we go on. That's with any circumstance, but there's no, people are so different

48:07
process the same input in different ways. And that's okay. You know, in reflecting on all of this story today, there's parts of it that even I cringe at. If I were a third party observer, I would have certain thoughts about how I reacted or what happened next. But I wasn't...

48:36
I am not ashamed or would change anything even because we just do the best we can at the time. And there's always a way it could have gone worse. That is the truth. That is unfortunately very true. And I think we are a product of what has happened to us and what we choose to do or

49:05
get rid of or whatever that may be. And I think that's what makes it great. I think that's probably why we are friends, even though we haven't seen each other, because this whole worldwide pandemic. But I do appreciate that you shared this story and I learned a lot about you, which I also appreciate because I think it adds a couple more layers to Marty. My pleasure. Like I said,

49:31
It isn't a subject that most people want to talk about. They assume that it's a delicate subject or, oh, don't ask him about that. Or I will have to mention it in conversation because someone asks about my parents and I say, well, my mom passed when I was 13, but my dad lives in the Northern California. He's since remarried and we just move on. And they never come back to that and say, oh, tell me what happened to your mom. I think it's seen as a careful subject.

50:00
However, I don't ever mind talking about it. In fact, I wish we talked about these things more. It's what keeps, in my case, keeps her spirit alive and keeps her more front of mind. And I should think about and talk about her more. So thank you for giving this opportunity to do that. Well, I appreciate you sharing with me more of the story because I know that-

50:28
I'm an oversharer and I feel like you are the opposite unless we sit down and actually talk about it. And I appreciate it because I think just us talking about having a similar experience as children, if other people are listening to this and they can see that we both are thriving adults and we are doing just fine, yet both approached a bad situation differently.

50:58
I think that allows people to realize that however they get through, whatever they're going through with the information that they have at that moment is a-okay, totally fine. Good times and bad come through our lives, but they pass. And if that's you out there, it will pass and you will find a way forward. And yeah.

51:25
Well, I appreciate you talking to me. I appreciate you being on the life shift. I think it's so interesting that everyone's sharing these stories and we're just finding how human we really are. And I appreciate you, my friend, and we need to see each other soon. You got it. Thanks for having me.

51:54
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