Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 146 | Good Grief

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

In this episode we talk about grief. Not just in our own personal experience recently but about grief in general in hoping that it will help one of you through your journey as well. We also wanted to thank each and every one of you who have reached out in condolences to Andrew’s dad, Guy, who recently passed away unexpectedly on December 27th, 2022. We hope you take something away from this episode and appreciate your support during this time. If you are interested in learning more about Guy or donating, you can learn more here: https://www.indystar.com/obituaries/ins145382 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex, Plathom, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best hapice in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca.com. what's up everyone welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through today we're going to talk about dad that's right my dad yes and uh if you don't know my father passed away just a couple weeks ago suddenly out of nowhere unexpectedly and since couples one of the things I go through is death and grief I figured

it would maybe be helpful for us to talk through this and I as I was going through this whole process the last couple weeks journaled through it just because I don't know this is like a once in a lifetime thing quite literally and I wanted to have this process captured just so I could refer back to it in honor and in memory of my dad but now we have scripted five pages of kind of organized thoughts and if it is jumbled up forgive us but we're going to try our best to share how the grief process has been for me how it's been for you and let me just make something clear here i don't want this episode to necessarily be about me or my dad i i am wanting to create this episode that's about grief specifically because we all grieve about different things in life

whether it's a lost loved one a lost relationship a lost career lost plans hopes and dreams whatever it may be. And so I have been documenting this process, just journaling because that's what I naturally do in all phases of life. And hopefully by me sharing my experience with grief, my personal story with grief, you may be able to navigate your journey through grief, maybe a little bit better. Maybe you'll have vocabulary or timelines or thoughts vocalized that you otherwise wouldn't. And so that's my hope. And really our hope, with all the content we make is to start conversations, meaningful conversations that are about the most meaningful thing in life and that's about family. So I really found, like, hearing from

other people was so helpful and encouraging in a lot of ways. So I hope that's the result of this episode for you as well. To start, we'll tell you what happened to dad. So on the night of December 26th, going in 27th, um, dad had what was called a fatal arrhythmia or ventricular fibrillation where his heart got out of sync or out of rhythm and was not able to get back because of that he he basically passed away in his sleep um we all found out in the middle night and i'm actually curious because the way it had happened that ander and i both found out was we were sleeping in separate rooms that night because the kids were having a hard time and I was really sick, so Andrew was letting me kind of rest and try to heal and he was staying

care of the kids. You found out around midnight when I am and then didn't wake me up to tell me until around six. And I'm curious what your first few hours of realization were like. So, okay, can I just read why I wrote? Because literally I said 1.45, I got a text for my mom. saying that dad had a heart attack. And I got a call for my brother about 45 minutes later saying dad had died. I just laid there and cried thinking of what I last said to my dad, how I last treated him, I was thinking of my mom and thinking of how much of a blessing it is

that we all had the last week of Christmas together. And then I said, I know that God is good. And I can't tell if this is a bad nightmare or not. to think of my dad just lying there lifeless so out of the or is so out of the ordinary for him and it's like scary it's so unnatural right um about a half hour later i said the full emotions are setting in and i'm crying just looking at the photos and videos of him i'm mostly sad just thinking of our kids and them not getting to know him better uh the wonderful life that we get to live is in large part due to his legacy and what he built for us

and I wish that they could get to know the man who laid this foundation. I'm so glad that I wrote a letter to him a few months ago, which I'll talk about. A half hour later, I was still crying, thinking about my mom. They had been together since high school. They're high school sweethearts. And I said, I'm not sure how she will navigate life without him. Starting to think about all the things that need to be done, the unfinished houses that he was building. he was a contractor that built houses what to do with all the different things that he was involved

with but then i started thinking about how one of our last conversations that we had my dad and i was about legacy it was about family mission and the values that we had and i feel like the spiritual wealth that he gave us as siblings is greater than any blessing that I could have ever asked for, right? I feel like subconsciously, I was expecting to keep him around for another 20 or 30 years because that's how long my grandparents lived. And my dad died at 63. I guess I had benched smart like my grandpa that died the youngest was 78 so i was like you know oh he'll be around for another 15 years i got this but then we told drew a couple hours after that we said the papa's with jesus and she says why can't i go up there and uh you told her that papa's in her heart with

jesus and we could talk about we we had a big day with the kids there's eight grandkids and we had a big kind of day with him talking about emotions and trying to figure out how to navigate that but um first let me say that i've missed my dad i would not i wouldn't miss the opportunity to spend another day with him or be annoyed by him or sit and listen to one of his wild lectures or get another hug from them. But I, the one word that I feel in my soul is grateful. And the reason that I feel that way is because the last couple months with him were, like, really beautiful.

It was, he was hosting events. He hosted a concert with all his dearest friends. He hosted, like, an event with some of his high school and fraternity brothers. He hosted an event with some of his college football team. the night that he died, he did the newlywed game with my mom at my best friend's wedding shower. And he like, dude, we had the week of Christmas. We had these conversations. I wrote him a letter that was stemmed from a book called The Intentional Father. And it was about all the things that I feel like he got right as a dad that I was thankful for and how that's affected

me as a father, positively affected me as a dad. And so, like, those are all things that, you had we known he was going to die we would have done but they just kind of coincidentally happened to be the last few months that we didn't know we're going to happen um so i don't feel like i i i do think we're grieving i think we're in the grieving process but i'm not like boohoo sad right like it's it's more of i think i'm a little melancholy just being humbled by the fragility of life and like struck by a new perspective my dad and i had a great perspective or great relationship and i'm so thankful for that not everyone can say that i feel like i was his student i feel like i benefited so much from the things that he sacrificed for us and so

all those things lead me to just be grateful um and really from a high level the two takeaways from the last couple weeks for me are one that I was extremely blessed to have a dad who loved and cared for me as my dad did and two that God is good and I've felt that I've seen that it's been really amazing over the past couple weeks to experience that and I think the first of having been blessed by such a great father reinforces the second that God is good so that's the main takeaway and that's what I've been trying to communicate is like you know what it's been difficult it's been sad but it's been beautiful and god is good what's wild is that in the past couple weeks there's been the full spectrum of life phases i feel like i had a dear friend get

married and i stood up next to him uh as he was saying his vows we have a uh another niece and nephew coming uh here in the next couple months and uh we we all were together celebrating and so we kind of we got a lot of life experience here including the death of my dad and it's just a reminder that like the circle of life the phase of life like they do come and go but whatever it may look like I've just been really struck by how joy and pain go hand in hand and it's beautiful and it seems like a paradox and I think that it is like a beautiful mystery but like the the deepest sorrow, I feel like, can result in the most long-lasting joy. And they're just right there with each other.

It's just, can you find the joy? Are you willing to look for the joy and put in the effort or change your perspective in order to do that? And so that's been my challenge for myself is through this process to continue to look for the joy, even though it is pain. and sorrowful. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine,

the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally, the ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. I have been researching grief, though, because I don't know what I'm in for here. I've never lost a close, loved one like this. Lost grandparents, but that was from old age, Lexi and I were talking in Fiji they have a hundred days of grief is what they go through

do you know this in here where Fiji is that right and so they'll have services memorial services on the third seventh 49th and a hundredth day they have four memorial services which is pretty cool right and they gather around and pray and bestow presents in the U.S. we don't really do that I guess I'm saying this because to set your expectations that were 17 days into this and I don't know what is around the corner I feel like the initial shock of the grief hit me and we cried that first 24 hours like I'd never cried like out of headache my eyes stung we were all dehydrated it was like beautiful wouldn't change it but I'd never cried that much But now it's almost like this, the long form of grief is here where random things, objects or food or statements or like a home building site will like trigger a memory of my dad.

And that's what I'm like a little more nervous about because I don't know what that's going to be for me. And it could just hit you out of nowhere. You know what I'm saying? Like you know that the initial period after death is difficult. I don't know how difficult post-funeral days will be. But I'll tell you, they say there's seven phases of grief. I'm kind of just spitballing here. This is kind of for me to get off my chest, if you don't mind.

They say there's seven phases of grief. Shock and denial is the first. Second is pain and guilt. Third is anger and bargaining. Fourth is depression. Fifth is the upward turn. Sixth is Reconstruction and working through, and the seventh is acceptance and hope. Shock and denial, I feel like we felt.

Yeah. This was out of note. I mean, he had a doctor's appointment the week before, and they said he was healthy as a horse. Well, even the coroner said he was healthy. Yeah. So that was shocking for sure. Pain and guilt? I honestly don't

I don't feel like there's a lot of guilt on my end we were the only siblings not in Indianapolis we came back to Nashville to celebrate Christmas as just our family with our two kids so we weren't necessarily there but I can't say I feel guilty about that I mean I can understand how that pain and guilt

would set in but there wasn't anything that could be done and nobody would be done nobody was able to see dad you know at the hospital with his final breath you know it was it was quick and yeah i also don't personally feel like there's any bargaining for me like reckoning with god like oh if you bring them back i'll do that like i don't really i'm at peace with it i really if there's any anger I feel it's like the week before the funeral and after my dad died it was everyone hyping up my dad is like oh your dad's great he affected my life and this and it's like

all the focus and attention is on that loved one and then the funeral happens and the next day it's back to normal back in the routine and I'm sitting there thinking like hey for me simultaneously like everything has changed but nothing has changed but nothing has changed like my dad was an integral part of my life on a foundational level but like he doesn't he's not around here every day he's not so my person everything has changed for me personally but nothing on the outside it's not like i lost an arm or something like that it's like it's it's a hidden wound and i was a little angry that like people weren't continuing to hype up my dad and like compliment him Well, and I think that was something we all talked about as a family.

We stayed in Indianapolis as like a full extended family for 10 days before anybody decided to start flying back home. And I remember texting my sister-in-law and she said, I feel angry. And it feels weird. And I remember talking to mom and her saying it feels weird because it's like when we were, at home for those 10 days we lived in a bubble where we could grieve and mourn and go through the ups and downs and the happiness and the sadness

and people still were showing up to the door with food. So that still felt like people were acknowledging what had happened but when we started flying home and we like broke out of that bubble it was weird to see like the world had never stopped and it made all of us feel angry

because coming home and having people people not understand or people be like, oh, did you have so much fun over New Year's? It was like, well, no. Right. You know? Like, people definitely understood, like, the day of the funeral, people were like, oh, yeah, don't respond to text, message, or calls. But then now it's, people have less of an understanding of that where still it's,

this is my 20th day on planet Earth without a father. It's a little disorienting, like, legit. legitimately. I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's just like, I can't call my dad up and ask him whatever random question, right? So that's a new experience. But I don't know where I am on those seven phases. I imagine, like, I'm humbly accepting that, I don't know, maybe on my face five. I don't think that's a progressive list. I think you can be anywhere on that list for the rest of your life and I don't think you

accomplish getting over one you know I think you can bounce back and forth yeah I'm not so I legitimately don't know I like this no I don't think it's like a oh you get over the shock and denial

I think 10 years from now you could wake up one day and be completely in shock and denial and I don't think you have to try to master that list and say, oh, I've succeeded at all of them. Yeah. I will say, I don't know,

there's just been some weird things. Like, I am not a dreamer. I don't ever remember my dreams. Maybe once a year. And on Sunday morning, I woke up at 3 a.m. bawling crying. Because I had to dream about my dad that he was in our guest bedroom,

like right across the way from where I was sleeping. And he came out and waved at me. and like welcome me in and I was like dang it feels like I'm just now waking up from the past two weeks being a bad dream you know so I don't know I don't know what's going to look like it's like a psychological curveball where I've never been through it you know I honestly feel I feel I feel really content with the whole thing and like I wrote I helped write the obituary did like a eulogy and all that was so cathartic for me to sit back and kind of cement how I will remember my dad go back through all his like LinkedIn posts his Facebook post and it was like so great

it's like man this guy was a good man but I don't know what the like what do I do with this you know i am i we're talking about grief at a high level like how do you navigate it the seven phase and stuff i don't know if there's like a right way to do it but i i do think the one common thread of however you go through the process is to be present in it which i'm really happy with that week before the funeral i mean we were all together that was that was the focus right I feel like we did a great job of being together. We did. And dad was wild as always and videoed everything, even though he was right there.

The week before the funeral, I'm sorry. Oh. I'm like having that being present in that brief, right? Yeah. That week was very, very, very beautiful and very difficult and awesome. We all, we spent every waking second together, our whole family, which was amazing. And there was no shortage of friends, family, just people in the community, stopping by, dropping off diapers and food and cleaning the house and organizing things.

And just we felt so taken care of by the community, which was incredible. And we were able to truly just be present. with each other yeah it's really great by the way if i'm crying it's like it's tears of joy and gratitude i feel that in my soul i'm sad but i'm also grateful anyway if you don't mind what i just want to say too like i said this to that week we were in indy but he dad was the most amazing person ever ever and i feel like society puts this weird spin on like oh my father-in-law or my mother no he was everything you could ever dream of in a human being not just a father-in-law and so yes with the shock and denial and everything of his passing it's hard for there to be that

anger because he was such a light that he wouldn't want you to be angry yeah well you talk on the on the the note of the week after he died before the funeral all the sibling there's like a million things to do we we drove up from nashville got there at 1230 hugged my mom and cried for like a half hour but then it was straight into logistics and it was like where's the funeral going to be when's it going to be who's going to talk what are the Bible verse you're going to talk what's what's he going to wear like it's all this weird stuff and I was like hold on can we just be here together and not you're getting calls from freaking a lot of people and it's like this does not matter I want to be with my mom want to be with my siblings

and I want to be with our family but you Also, we brought the kids. We had eight kids running around. And the in-laws necessarily, they couldn't be as present as us. First of all, thank you for taking that burden and kind of taking one for the team. But how was it for you? Because we've talked about how I've been able to be rather present with the grief. And you less so.

Yeah. That week was same, as you said, really, really difficult. really beautiful everything but all of the spouses the role we kind of took on was just trying to take all of the load off of you guys so all of the load off of the siblings and mom and in doing that that was taking care of the kids helping like direct and manage the phone calls from the funeral home and the directors and all the friends coming in people would knock on the door every 20 minutes which was such a beautiful thing but that's a heavy load on you guys as well so we're trying to direct them and set up systems for meal trains and just like truly be the brunt of

it all or like take the brunt of it um i will never forget this is like a core memory though mom's sister there was one day where i took um six of the kids to the park and met up with my sister-in-law who had the other two and we just wanted to get them out of the house. It was very heavy in the house with just sadness and we needed to get the kids out to like give them some fresh air and a new perspective and everything and so took them to the park and mom's sister showed up to help and I remember after being there for a couple hours I was like loading the kids back up and she came over and she like stopped me and she's like I need you to look at me like look in my eyes in my soul and like look at me she's like I need you to take a

breath and tell me what you need and I was like I don't need anything I just need the kids to be happy I need to like take care of my husband she's like no you have to grieve too and my sister-in-law walked up and we all just started bawling and she was like this is just as much like a loss for you as it is for everyone and it was it just like hits you as a spouse because you're a supporting partner so you try to like you like push it away for a second and you're like okay, what do I need to do for my husband? But it was. It was really, I think that's one of the hard things

about being the spouse on the side of this grief was trying to grieve as well. Because there isn't a lot of time for it at the beginning. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work. at participating restaurants in Canada.

I feel like you did a great job of being honest. We had really good conversation through that, which isn't always, we don't always communicate well. But we did that way. Honestly, the past couple weeks, I feel like this has changed the way we communicate. Yeah.

I remember one thing I felt was important that I did as a spouse was there was one night where it was just us, the kids had gone to sleep when I said I kept asking him for like windows of like tell me when you're in a good mindset that we can sit down and have a conversation not like serious but just like when you and I can talk and I kind of vetted those windows and I found an opportunity where I was like he seems like you seem you seemed like you were in a good place and I was like okay I'm going to prod and I'm going to ask questions are you okay with that you know still trying to make sure you were in a good spot but I said let's run through it

your wife, I need to know where you are. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel pain? Do you feel anger? And we just went one by one. And I said, do you feel happy? Do you feel sad? Do you feel? And I just went through all of these things. Do you feel you wish you were here? Do you feel? And it was a really good conversation that we had of just understanding where you were at that time and how I could best support you. And we did that many times throughout the time in Indy. And we still do that now. I said that yesterday. I was like, I need you to constantly tell me where you are so I can be the best support for you.

You've been very gentle. I appreciate it. Can I read some quotes on grief? Andrew Garfield had like a viral clip that said the grief for his mom that he lost is unexpressed love, which you should watch that video of him talking about his mom with Stephen Colbert. I think it's, that's great. Personally, I'm not sure I feel that way.

Like, the grief that I feel, I don't think is, like, love that I hadn't given my dad. It really is more of, like, this appreciation for him and, like, I feel humbled by it, where we make all these plans and it's like, freaking, whatever it is. Like, we think we have a five, 10 year plan. we're about to talk about it on Thursday what our tenure plan is and the grief is that that's gone now I guess yeah I guess go ahead I feel like one of the greatest gifts dad ever gave all of us was in an event like this we understood so completely that he loved us We loved him and he loved God and it was like, okay, as tragic and as sad as this is, the best gift he ever gave us was, I mean, one of the first things you and I laughed about in the first moments of finding out about Dad was I, he was the biggest fan of Jesus. And if only we all could have seen that meeting that he didn't want to meet anyone in the world.

world more than him. I mean, it would just... Yeah, that's pretty cool. Here's another quote. Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It's an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity. It's the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grief.

Which, again, watching some of the people in our close life, like, try to distract themselves away from the sadness on social media or whatever, I just feel like you are missing... This process has been beautiful. I've been saying that to everyone. It's been like a wild few weeks and I feel like I'm in over my head but also it's been so beautiful

and I was thinking about how it's almost like a level or phase in life that you can only unlock with the passing of a loved one. It's like all these stories that we've heard about my dad, the people who have come into our lives, the new memories that we've made

off the memories that he already made. It's so cool to think about And I wouldn't want to miss that for, it's, there's like, you know, a tinge of sadness to it, but I wouldn't want to miss it for the world. And I've been thinking about how, well, I looked this up. There's new research that suggests that anticipating the end of a good experience is an effective way to enjoy it more. Or like experiencing the end of a good experience is a way to enjoy it more. Endings help us stay in the present, can bring us closer together with people in your life,

can help us let go of the past and refocus on important things in your life. and can also provoke mixed emotions that create more meaning. And I feel like making the analogy of watching a sunrise or sunset or watching your children grow up, it's like the end of the diaper phase or the end of the baby. Like there's so many ends of phases. And there's beauty to be had in that. Like if there were, if the sky was always a sunset, you wouldn't appreciate as much. Or if my dad was always around, I wouldn't appreciate him as much.

And but now I am. overflowing with gratitude that like you just you don't experience it elsewise and I want to sit here and tell you listening to like hey drastically change your life and make sure you don't take a single moment for granted and call your dad every day and go live whatever like some things aren't realistic though in the normal cadence of life like you you're not going to go back and see your parents every day if you're grown and have moved for a spouse or career like that's it's kind of unrealistic to think you can have this intensity of gratitude without something like this happening you know i thought one of the most beautiful things to come

of those 10 days together was i've never felt closer to our extended family aunts uncles cousins nieces nephews i will never again another core memory was one morning a random text was sent out by a cousin they're like going for a hike taking the kids who wants to join and nobody responded but i think 36 people showed up yeah it was wild for the hike and just seeing like how close everybody became and how much we text now and check in on one another it's been really special yeah this is the most cliche thing i didn't have this written about like the end really can be the beginning of an of a lot of new things i felt like our family has drastically changed and we were already one of the strongest families out there but i've

never seen our family look like this and it's so it's so special yeah um i wanted to read some more of the journal if you don't mind me saying going through it chronologically so i that afternoon I said it's feeling like an out-of-body experience where my emotions won't my emotions and realizations that he won't be here again haven't caught up with like my normal social interactions like you have all these people the cousins and you're like interacting with them live like nothing's changed but it is kind of clouded with grief but I said right now it just feels like my dad um is gone he's in a different room or check out on a guy uh job site and he'll be back soon like oh we're just having this social hour and my dad is gone he'll be

back soon what does it mean to not have him around as a resource in everyday life not hearing his random lectures or snoring or heavy scraping footsteps it's a quiet void without him in his normal ambiance being in this house that he poured his heart into to build is like being in an empty stadium or theater. And then I talked about how I was crying so much again. That first 24 hours, I drove us down to Indy. You sat in the back with the kids. And I don't condone this, but I think I cried for the full six-hour drive.

Yeah, dude, you stuffed that door with tissues, dude. I didn't see that. It was flooded. it with tissues um and then it wasn't until that night that i talked to my mom about what had happened and like her experience with it because she went to bed with him and i said thinking of her doing CPR on him alone in bed makes me cry like a little child she shared my sentiment that she thought the paramedics would come and he would go to the hospital and all would be okay he would be healthy and they would revive him and it would just be back to normal which is kind of how he

always lived like that dude should have died eight times before and but it always turned out to be okay he got struck by lightning twice twice like direct hit I don't know how it's possible yeah I was a legend well maybe I don't know we have the footage from the funeral maybe we'll share it but there's a lot good stories in there which is also i feel like you have done really well in allowing me to laugh too because it's not all sad right like there's plenty of jokes to make about my dad boy was not perfect anyway um i said i'm glad that my mom was with my dad all the way to the end though uh my dad got to go to sleep with his bride and wake up with christ and then that night it was It was the first time I took their dog out to go to the bathroom and do, like, the normal thing my dad would usually do.

But it kind of hit me that it was the first of what I'm sure is many things that dad used to do that will now need to be picked up by one of us, which is the daunting thing, too. It's like that guy did a lot, and now we have to kind of pick up some of the shards, right? It's daunting, but I think if you take a step back and try to, like, objectively look at what all happened in those first 10 days, I think dad touched each of us so much that people took on roles so naturally that it was really cool to see. Yeah. the other thing we did was we took two days to kind of just be with each other but then pretty soon we started working back into doing some of the things that we were used to doing like my brother and I would get some exercise we would we had like the big family dinner that we always do on Friday night and I feel like assembling some sort of routine helped us push

through like the emotional mud so that was helpful. I don't know if we over did it with that or not. I don't think so. We had a lot of visitors, so I think it gave us room to breathe. I think if you choose only the sadness side of it, you're failing to celebrate the goodness of your human, of your person. Yeah, which I think is important to do, celebrate. Absolutely. And so on that note, other things that have helped me are, One, I alluded to this, but like writing, being a part of writing the obituary and being a part of the eulogy was really, really, really cathartic for me. And it was like a four or five hour time period where I had no distraction and I was solely focused on my dad and who he was to me. And writing that out was like, oh man, I cried the whole time, but it was so,

uh just special to think about my dad and the role that he played in my life um so that was one thing second my dad was a big piano player he loved it he played it every night when we were at home would put us to bed by playing piano and so i have been re-energized by the power of music and i've put together like a 40 song playlist of songs that have reminded me of my dad because or piano songs or just the lyrics have struck me in a certain way. And so that's been really good as well. Also, typically, I'm kind of a loner and I like to isolate myself. And so, you know, we had a lot of people coming by on a daily basis before the funeral.

And in that situation, I usually would kind of just escape to a room on a normal day. but I really was challenging myself to be there with the people, hear their stories. And in doing so, I learned a lot of new things about my dad. It's a cliche analogy, but I think of, you know, the Phoenix and Harry Potter or elsewhere, but out of the ashes comes this new beauty. And that's really how I felt where it's like there was life from this death. Like, there, I would not have gotten to know my dad otherwise had he not died. Um, I got to know him in really new and special ways.

And I think that analogy of like, you know, life from ashes is, is really powerful. Uh, so writing the obituary eulogy, the music playlist, being present. And then the other thing was that helped me through was kind of like, yeah, assembling some sort of routine. Also, having just those tender and intimate conversations with Sean was another special fruit of this where I think we got to know each other in really new and special ways, too. She's never really seen this crumbled part of me, just sad. And I was not incapacitated, but it was definitely like a burden those first couple days. So talking it out with a loved one, your partner, whatever it is. I think moving did help me.

My brother and I kind of made it a focus to exercise for a little bit, a couple times a week. And I think that just provided an outlet, if you will, and made me feel physically better, even though my emotions were still kind of bummed out. And then I got outside for sure. I also read through his text messages. I looked at pictures and videos for hours. I listened to his voicemails. We pulled out old pictures and went through him with my mom.

And just kind of reflecting on those moments, I think sparked a lot of memories and a lot of joy with it. And also, we ate a ton of food. I'm a bit of an emotional eater. So we definitely crushed some food. And we had so many people that were kind and generous enough to provide that for us, which was really special. those were all things that helped me but I'd be curious how you if you've gone through something like this what are the things that you've tangibly and practically done that have helped you

through the the grief process I've been noodling on this concept about how noodling noodling like you can you could feel deep emotions and not be volatile with your emotions like there's a difference between just being an absolute wreck with your emotions and not being able to function at all. That being one side of the spectrum and the other just trying to like block out any emotions that you have. I feel like there's a middle ground where you can truly feel the depth of the thing, but not let it. But you can argue that grief comes and looks differently in everyone.

So a lot of people don't have that ability to have such self-awareness to level out their deepest emotions in such a hard time yeah so I think that expectation could come later on but at the beginning you don't know how it's going to present itself yeah I'm proud of how my siblings handled it though it's all very much like love oriented some people get stressed some people get angry with grief some people just shut down but I feel like it was just it was a unifying thing for us to go through together. But I don't know. I mean, I'm fully open to the idea that grief will be coming in waves. And some of those waves may hit harder than others. I also heard from a friend that the grief process, like it's not, you make it through step one, you're on step two,

and you never go back to step one. It's like you kind of revisit the anger or the sorrow or the bargaining or whatever it is like it's kind it's not a linear process as sean was talking about so to me it's wild to think that i feel this sad having lost my parent i was talking to a dear friend yesterday who lost a mom about 18 months ago and she's like yeah it's uh it doesn't get any better but you distract yourself away from it to a certain extent and the thought struck me like my gosh everyone loses parents at some point is everyone just kind of perpetually sad in this sense like i don't i am super curious to know how people make it through this and just like continue um you know chugging along like it the thought it never struck me the grief that people carry with them

um and also got me excited about humans in general because despite that grief they keep on keeping on and I think that takes courage and hope and then right now this is my latest journal entry I feel like I said emotionally I feel okay but there's a degree of anxiety from getting caught up like responding to the hundreds of people that sent texts that I mean so many of the wonderful people that do this with us day to day sent us DMs and messages and it's like first of all that insight was so helpful and it's so special like hear their stories and thank you for that but trying to respond to that call the people back um and then also trying to maintain the new perspective of what i feel like i learned which was

like my dad did work he was a hard worker but he also put the always put the family first and it's like i can't say i always did that and i'm trying to work towards that anyway um I feel like there's a mountain of work and projects. And I don't actually know if there was more to do or there is more to do than I'm the normal, but I feel like there is. So there is this unsettling feeling about that. Anyway, can I read some, well, I also wanted to read some insight from others if that's okay. You have for me reading through these?

so this is from a buddy Justin Zeller he said my dad's name was guy he said guy did a beautiful job of balancing earth and eternity he lived life to the fullest but always had his mind on things above he accomplished a lot in 63 years but perhaps his greatest accomplishment is the legacy he's living his legacy reminds us to live hard and to live fully don't get cheated out of what life can offer and it also reminds us that the easiest path to living in that way is to It's understanding one simple truth. The life is temporary, but Christ's work on the cross is permanent. My buddy Joseph Shield says that Guy was a great man that had an even greater savior.

I like that. And then our buddy Hunter Smith wrote this. He said, Guy had a child's faith, a warrior's spirit, and an engineer's brain. He was zany, peculiar, lovable, strong. And whenever I was with him, I felt I was with someone who's very presence was shrouded with wonder and possibility. Above all these, Guy was a man of faith and love. He said, but no one gets out of here alive. And in our ever-accelerating pursuit of safety and longevity, which he really believes is a subconscious desire for eternal life, may we remember

that earth is not a safe place. It's not a good place to be human. But being humans means being physically temporary. People have been dying here for a very long time. And you and I, regardless of our advances in science or medicine, will not be able to shed this reality. We have no choice in the matter. Our only choice is how we live in light of it. Will our response be anxiety and worry or passion and faith?

Our friend Linda Zanako, I feel like had some really good insight into the grief that was to come. She says she lost her mom a while ago, but that her voice. the voice that she hears from her mom will only keep getting louder, like the subconscious messages that they always used to say and you heard them saying growing up will only get louder. She said you'll walk into a room and think about what they said about it, and it only becomes clear and clear.

And then she said that each of your siblings has a special aspect of your parent that lives through them. but my favorite thing if you don't mind me reading this was my dad wrote this email to a friend of his who lost their dad like a week before my dad passed so this is my dad and his own words regarding death he said oh my only god could script a story like that in less than 24 hours everything changed for you but not for god i learned after our house fire the guide doesn't really want us to question him at all times or at times like this which seems odd but rather he rejoices in how we respond to what he's giving us and you my friend

despite the aching heart of the loss of your favorite person on earth are making god smile in the next few days just acknowledge with each breath you take the goodness of god the gifts he gives the timing of his provisions and the eternal value of his son, Jesus. Your father lives on in the generational legacy he's left you. There's been so many messages like this. I could read you the prologue to this daily devotional

that he wrote. I could read you this. He thought he was going down in a plane crash and he wrote this message on a bag. And he wrote it to Mom, which was wild. And there's, like, I think there'll be a time and place we share those. But in the moment he would write things like that, and I always felt like it was way too over the top,

way too grandios. But now it's, like, timeless. And, like, anyway, it's kind of fun to read stuff like that. But when I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. Are those from winners? Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings?

Did she pay full price? Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress, that jacket, those shoes. Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning.

Winners, find fabulous for less. I do feel like I have a newfound appreciation for the role that faith can play in a life and the other day the stock market opened up in the first five minutes it dropped like two percent but then it in the next five minutes went back to even so there's like a net zero percent loss and i was like man if you're riding the second by second if your perspective is second by second that's a stressful place to be you're riding the lows and you're riding the highs but if your time If you extend your timeline to the length of the day or the week, the month, the year, or eternity,

it makes things less volatile. It's like you can zoom out, get the higher level picture, and see that the trend is up and it's good. And so for me, having that timeline of eternity, yeah, it's given me hope. it's given me like coping the verses are like comforting for sure but it's also like made it uh it's made it a net positive which i think is it's powerful um and just to clarify i don't think that the primary use or purpose of of my faith at least is to help me through hard times

in life or phases of grief like we're in now to me that comes off is a little bit selfish. I think the primary purpose, as I see it, of faith, is to have God be most glorified in me because I am the most satisfied in him. And with that, if that's the bullseye target, I think there's ripple effects, one of them being you have this long timeline,

you have this everlasting hope, and you have a purpose. We could talk and do a whole episode on that, but faith has really meant something deeper and more powerful in my life in light of this situation. And to me, the beautiful thing about faith is that it really is just a choice. It's just a perspective that you choose to adopt these whimsical, magical aspects of life. And my two favorite hobbies are playing ping pong and reading. And in our men's group, we just finished reading a book by C.S. Lewis called The Great Devils.

and one of the characters in there is super academic and just says that and he just wishes there was proof of God that there's proof of heaven there's evidence he would believe and I don't want to sound naive but I really have come to believe that the the proof and the evidence is all around us and you could look at the the leaves falling in autumn and say oh well you know the reason the leaves fall is these the trees just need to conserve their energy that's you know true for sure but you could also look at the leaves and just be struck by the awe and wonder of the colors like the natural beauty of them all and don't they can go hand in hand for sure i i i believe that but don't let the the starkness the black and whiteness of like oh that's just the leaves are falling

because the trees are conserving energy, strip away the beauty of it. And that to me is like a parallel argument to faith where it's like, I am adopting this perspective that there's more to life, that there is beauty to life, an added layer of colors and excitement. And that's why I'm looking at this death

and choosing to believe that there is beauty and wonder and life despite that death. There's another book called The Short History of Nearly Everything where it's this not Christian guy, but he goes through and talks to all these experts and scientists and he talks about microbiology

and like molecules, atoms, etc. And how at some point in science, you can't separate fact from fiction. And that to me is like, there's room for faith. The author even said that. The author got interviewed it was like, I'm not Christian, but I was astounded by how much room for faith there is in this world of science.

So that's the exciting thing about me, not to go on a tangent, but I have gotten really excited about faith and how it can bring so much color and meaning, again, as a derivative effect. The other thing that I've learned tying this back to couples is I feel like in marriage, I've said this before, so forgive me. Sean is both simultaneously the most loving, thoughtful, fun, and adventurous person that I know, right? But she's also forgetful and she's sloppy and she's emotional and whatever. But it's like, which batch of those qualities am I going to believe? And I think as we remember the people that we love,

then lost like my dad wasn't perfect you said he was the most awesome person ever which i'm i think he was an amazing man but he was not perfect like there's plenty of stories of us growing up his boys reocan habit there's five kids in the house so with that comes chaos and so he had there was some hiccups right but i'm not gonna that's not the batch of qualities i'm gonna choose to remember it's like i'm gonna remember the guy who a allowed me to believe in whatever he allowed me to dream the guy was so selfless in his voicemails he opened everyone with hey andra i want to let you know i love you and i'm proud of you and it's like this is the the man who played incredibly with our kids was so creative had such an amazing imagination

and uh that's who i'm going to believe right that's the quality i'm going to believe and i think that matters because that's going to affect how I parent my kids and I think that it's the subtle shift in perspective that will leave a legacy generation through generation. You know that I've been into Ancestry.com since this happened. I zoomed out 12 generations all the way back to like 1600s. And it is. It's kind of humbling to think like, oh man, someday I'm just going to be someone. one's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandpa. And they're not going to really,

I don't know who that guy was for me in the six, like Thomas East and 1600. I don't know what he was, but I do know they laid the foundation for us to be here doing what we're doing now, how we're doing it. And that's the legacy. So, anyway, one of the things my dad did well, my buddy Justin said this, that having the, the intentional, deep conversation, conversations can sometimes be hard difficult and awkward but my dad did that and he was good at it and he was definitely awkward sometimes but he had intentional conversations that's one of things that i'm going to take moving forward it's just doubling down on the meaning of things so anyway dad i love you i miss you i'm thankful for you i'm so thankful

Even through this process, that's how I feel is thankful, because I didn't know you as well as I do now, hearing all the stories from your high school friends, college friends. I've written them a lot. I've written a lot of them down, which has been super fun. I can't wait to share those with our kids. But that's how I got. That's how I've been grieving. That's kind of the process, the background to my dad.

I don't know how you guys go through this. I'm curious to see if this is par for the course. Maybe I'm being a cry baby. baby i'm not sure we are less than three weeks out of this but so the other the other reason i feel guilty sorry the other reason i feel grateful is i'm honestly not sure which i would prefer like both for myself for my dad for my mom my dad died out of nowhere he was healthy and then boom had a heart attack gone which is hard because it's definitely more shock but also you have people who suffer for years and they kind of deteriorate right it's like that is kind of

easier for the loved ones around them because they see the end in sight and can do x y and z to like say what they want to say or do what they the bucket list things i know but the heartache of seeing a loved one hurt is takes a long toll on your heart that's what i'm saying yeah like that's grievous too so you have the of the two ways to go like suddenly out of nowhere or years of of suffering that's why like you couldn't have written it up better i feel like if i was going to come up with the way my dad would go out this is how it would go i'm not the one who writes that story thankfully i think he would have written it up this way too and i love in the funeral um it was said that God had done all he needed to do with my dad.

My dad had done all he needed to do here on earth. So it was his time. And I was like, dang, that's freaking true. Like, it's not easy. But it's, that's true. My dad sold the farm. They're like, he did everything. He put it out there, put it on the line.

He did. And so I've been thinking, like, even through the shock, I feel grateful. because for my mom and for my dad, like I would not have wanted to see him suffer for a long time. So anyway, there's that. This is the journey. This is the adventure. We're on it together.

And thank you for being such a helpful partner in this. Do I have tears and stint on my face right now? Everywhere. I love you. I love you, too. that all you got any closing thoughts i literally have snout on my face yeah i'm saying dachology and cite some uh i am thinking i don't know what we're i don't know i want to do i've been sorry i do have regrets no i do have regrets i just wipe this off

i wanted to interview my mom and my dad in this freaking studio my mom my mom my mom mom is shy so she never wanted to do it i think we'll be able to get her down though and i also wanted to do a birth vlog my dad if you didn't know like us filming us filming stuff is not like an andrew original my dad filmed everything of everything we did growing up every friday night game he filmed my birth so i wanted to have them do a birth vlog for us i think we'll still cut that video up and have my mom be a part of it but I don't know what we'll do I don't want to like

over memorialize my dad if that makes sense or like I don't know I don't know how to do it right so I'm just freaking I'm doing the job I would encourage you to journal

or reflect and not like it's been meaningful to me and helpful to process emotions put words to things so all right we'll stop babbling thank you for listening we'll see you next week i'm andrew i'm shot we're the east fam out