The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Postgame Show: Dan and Ricky Discuss Lebo

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Dan and Ricky share an emotional Postgame Show as they speak for the first time since Lebo's passing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Hello Ricky. Hey, what's up? Uh-huh. I am hurting. I'm happy to be talking to you. I've been wanting to talk to you about death for a while.

I'm sorry, I didn't get back to you. I don't know if you know exactly what I'm feeling. But I know you've been living your life for a long time because you love big and you have a relationship with the universe that I have always admired in your choices. And so you've known my, I haven't talked to you about my brother dying. You were friends with him too. We painted a mural in your house a long time ago, But I'm happy to see you because I know that you care how I'm doing and I'm hurting, but and this part was such a blessing,

buddy. Like it really was. I learned in being able to spend that last year with him that way able to spend that last year with him that way that to really, really, truly, truly love is to accept that you're going to be just broken with the loss of that. I've never loved anybody the way that I love him. And I know you, I know you know that that's going to stay with me. Like that's the only part that's going to stay with me. Like that's the only part that's going to stay with me here. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's for me, the thing that jumps out is, is, and it's, we don't always get this out of our community, but you can really blow us to someone eating this world, preparing to enter the next. And it's at least, you know, my experience, including me personally,

it's something that's not, it's not a comfortable place to be because we can't help but start thinking about that that day is going to come for all of us pretty soon. And there's the real grief of losing the physical contact because I think when people pass to the next world, they don't disappear. Physically, they're not here anymore.

But even the fact that we can think about them, remember them, even feel like they might be communicating with us or telling us something, that's very real. So there is the grief of losing the physical presence of a person. But I think the biggest challenge is it forces us to wrestle with our lives and the impending end of our physical existence. I was doing breath work this morning, and I know that you do meditation and stuff, but this is outside of my level of comfort, to try to still my mind, which has always given me the illusion of control

so that I could be peacefully at one with just being now. And because of the emotion of what I was feeling today, and I don't know if it's real or not, but it's what I felt today, it felt like I felt him, like it felt like I felt that he was there with me. Now, it could have been just in my thoughts as I'm trying to eliminate my thoughts, but it was comforting to me, even though I would have sounded like a fool three days ago if I thought that anyone said that to me. I would have said what's the matter with you? Like, but I am so broken right now and so broken, open Ricky that my brother wasn't very good at accepting love.

Nobody in my family is any good at accepting love. I'm not sure. I'm not any good at accepting love or even understanding it in some ways. But I broke down looking into my wife's eyes last night just because I feel so loved by her at this time that it scares me and makes me feel like I'm going to die to turn myself over to that and risk losing her one day, that the feeling of that would be like death to me, to love so much that you risk losing somebody and then choose a life that feels like the one I'm presently living, which has me just shattered.

Yeah, well, we know we we speaking cliches until we're in the intensity of the moment, but in any time you go like a real meditation class, okay, they will talk about the need to seal your mind so that you can be more open and receptive to things that you can't sense when your mind is going. And one of those things that we have the ability to be more receptive to are the presences of people who are not physically here. This is how prayer works.

This is why I would say, I'm going to pray for you. And someone's really sensitive, they might feel like a warm protective influence around them that comes from someone consciously, powerfully thinking protective thoughts about someone. And so the cliche that I'm referring to is that true love survives death. True love survives, survives death. And if we only keep the sense of what we can love to the things that we can hold and touch, right, that's a limited source of love because once the thing is gone, right, then we're broken, right? But I think once we realize that love survives this physical world, then we're broken open

to a deeper sense of love. And I think, you know, I just spent some time speaking with your life and even in our conversation, we could feel a day's presence there. Brad, and so I think this, it's an opportunity to expand our sense of what we even mean by love. Explain that one to me. Tell me more about this one. Bread Williams came in yesterday and just said to me that that his father always used to say to him,

grief is just love with no place to go. And what you're telling me is to get past grief, I have to know that my love lives forever toward him. And I have to believe in the idea that our spirits will meet one day because to not believe that is to be totally hopeless, to... One hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. And so, you know, death is an opportunity to cure materialism. You know, I mean, I had a small version of this when I left football because football was the love of my life and I killed it. No, I destroyed. I destroyed my football career. No. And there was a sense of grief, but after that superficial sense of loss died out, I found a deeper love inside of myself.

Kind of for football, but really for the gifts that I've been given, and so when I had the opportunity to go back, I didn't have that destructive toxic kind of attachment to it. No, I could connect to something to something more profound. And this is the gift of death is it gives us the opportunity to experience something beyond. And if you continue my my sense, if you continue trying to steal your mind and find a sense of peace that you will be flooded

with some feeling or sense of your brother's presence. When someone is in the physical form, they are limited by their memories, by their experiences in life. When someone is liberated from the physical form, they actually have a greater capacity to love. And that's something we can talk about in theory, but when it actually happens to someone close to us, and we have enough presence to at least open ourselves to the

possibility of that, then it becomes our own lived experience. And that's something that no one can ever take away. So in that sense, it's precious. And I think we all assume we understand what life is about. But until we face someone really close to us leaving this life, you know, we don't really get a chance to to rethink our concept of life and what it actually means. I feel changed, right? But I feel changed in a way that doesn't feel like healing because I'm in such pain, right? Like this is, you and I talk a lot about the idea of how much growth there is on the other side of pain. Like I don't want the hurt that comes right now and visits me. If it means that I have to grow beyond it, right? Like I don't I did prefer for him to be here with me and maybe not learn the, maybe not learn any of the lessons as you ask

me it right now because I just want him to be here again. Yeah, well my sense is the pain is not something that's coming to visit you. It's something that's always been there but it's been buried and this opportunity exposes it for us to release it. You know that's how people when healing, it's not what you think. My favorite phrase is you got to feel it, to heal it. You have to. And that pain is really the experience of the ignorance, leaving, leaving. It's like when someone has the experience, the actual experience of realizing someone who has passed from the physical plane is still very much and sometimes even more present in their lives, oh, that heals a whole lot of things.

But to get to that, we have to go through the pain of the physical loss. But with hope that there's something on the other side, you said it perfectly. But it's so convenient though, Ricky, right? To the average Senate. Hey, look, really? Levitard, your brother dies and you find God. Seriously, like that's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be that mundane, that cliche,

but I'm altered in a way that believing that contains a hope, but I also felt in this morning. Like, I imagined or not imagined, I felt it. And it doesn't much matter to me whether it's imagined or felt, because it felt slightly better than the awful that's consumed me the last couple of days. So there's there's always truth and and cliches and there there's a reason why death brings people closer closer to God because most of the time we're not thinking about God. We don't have to. So why would we? But when someone leaves the question, especially someone we care about, the question always comes, where are they going? about the question always comes where are they going what happens next right and I think that it's easy and we're supported in avoiding those questions but when it's right in front of our face

there's no and it's a missed opportunity if we go through something like this and we don't move closer to God that's the teaching that's the point of these experiences. Love you buddy I'll call you in the way home. Yeah thanks for sharing. of these experiences. Love you buddy. I'll call you in the way home. Yeah, thanks for sharing it.