The Dr. John Delony Show - Empty Nesters Reconnecting, Rx Addiction, & Being an Awesome Grandma

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 2:19: We're about to be empty nesters, how do I reconnect with my husband after putting the kids first for so long? 13:46: My mother-in-law is addicted to pain pills, how do we handle that relationship? 24:05: How do I support and help my grandparents? 35:31: How do I connect with my teenage grandchildren? 39:41: Lyrics of the day: "These Are the Days" - Natalie Merchant tags: empty nesters, marriage, addiction, grandparents, grandchildren, Esther Perel These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.  

Hey, today's show, we're going to be talking about parent transitions and how do you reconnect with your partner after you drop that last kid off at school. We're going to be talking about how to support your wife or your husband when your in-laws just aren't coming through. We're going to have an awesome segment talking about grandparents, how to support and love your grandparents as they get older, and how grandparents can love and support and even surprise their grandkids. Stay tuned. What is up, good folks? I'm John, and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show, a show for you, about you, and by you, where we take your live calls.

We talk to real people with real challenges about relationships, relational IQ, mental health, ADHD, depression, anxiety, relationships, being a good girlfriend or boyfriend. Sometimes we talk about people who say the words, I'm a cat mom, or yeah, I don't have kids, but I'm a cat mom. What? There's a couple of people at work talking about their kids, and then they're like, oh, exactly. I'm a dog dad, and it's so the same thing. Here's the spoiler alert, everybody. It's super not, super not, cat moms. Not a real thing. That's not a thing everybody It's super not Super not, cat moms Not a real thing That's not a thing It's super not a real thing

Dog parents, nope You have a pet that you can put in a cage In the side of your house That's just a thing So here's the deal We can talk about that That's a whole other thing If you're looking for honesty in a world

Where truth doesn't exist anymore If you want a first opinion A second opinion If you just disagree with your neighbor If you want a first opinion, a second opinion, if you just disagree with your neighbor and you want a mediator, give me a call. I'm here to walk with you. My number is 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291.

Again, keep the emails coming at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. Leave your name, your number, and we will get back in touch with you. And God help you, dude. If you're a cat mom, probably this isn't the show for you. All right. Hey, let's go straight to the phones. Let's go to Cindy in Austin, Texas first. Cindy, good morning.

How are we doing in the 512? Doing awesome. Thank you. So how can I help this morning? Good morning. How are we doing in the 512? Doing awesome. Thank you. So how can I help this morning? So I have been a stay-at-home mom for a long time, and my kids are my entire life for the last 25 years. I've dreamt of being a mom since I was a little girl.

Once I had them, I poured everything I had into them. I'm very proud of who they are today. Our last child will be graduating college this year. And so, as to be expected, my husband and I will be empty nesters soon. And I honestly, looking back and looking forward, I've done a disservice to him because I've always put him second to the kids just because I wanted to do the best I could with them. And now I want to make it up now during our empty nester years. And I was calling to see if you'd give me advice on how to do this best and how we can reconnect. What a beautiful question. So real quick, how old are you? You sound like you're about 19. I'm 49. Thank you.

It's not even how you look anymore. It's like, oh, I sound young. I'll take that. That's cool. Oh, Cindy, that's fantastic. Okay, so 49. How long have you and your husband been married? Oh, for 30 years. 30 years. Okay. So give me the state of the union of your marriage.

How are things? Are they good? Does he love you? Is he seeing somebody else on the side? Are you like, give me a state of the union. We're really good. Like're we've done a really good job of balancing out you know parenting stuff but you know for the first in our 20s and 30s and 40s we were just grinding trying to do the best we could raise our family you know him work and stuff like that so when you say you put him when you say you put him second what does that mean

just like as always the girls always always worried about what they were doing, if they were doing good, making sure I spent time with them, making sure I was invested in what they were involved in, getting up with them at night to talk. They were talkers late at night. That's when we'd do things. We'd let them keep their cell phones in the room so I'd make sure I was up until they went to bed

so I could get their cell phones from them. And he's just doing the dad thing and working really hard. And so I was always putting the girls first, making sure that they were good. So I wanted to make sure that when they left the house, I could say I did my best with them. So that's honorable. And I want to high five you there all the way from Nashville. What are ways that you show your husband that you desire him, that he is loved, that you think he's a person of value?

So I've come to realize that, you know, those personality traits, like how you look for love and affection. I'm very much a service-oriented person. Okay. And I show love to him and other people by doing things for them. And I hope that they interpret that as my love for them. So I've figured out that's what I do for him. I think he always has, you know, warm meals and his clothes washed and a clean house. Awesome. And cars, stuff like that.

And he's very much a warts. He likes warts. And that hasn't been my forte our whole marriage, and I'm trying to change that now. Cool. He's a good, good guy. I mean, he's amazing and awesome. I just honestly I honestly put him second for the last 25 years. Well, number one, I want to applaud you for recognizing that.

I want to applaud you for being a mom who kept the house together for 25 years and you really doubled down and dedicated her life to her daughters, to her husband, to just being the CEO of your house. And that's a noble calling. And I also want to honor the fact that you're recognizing that you're changing stations here in life and that you want to make changes yourself and you want to reconnect with your husband. That's a big, big deal. And that puts you ahead of so many other people. I've worked with, I can't even tell you how many families who are dropping kids off at college over the years. And then they just get home. I mean, they're driving home and they look at each other and it's like, who are you? And that reverberates through their kids. It reverberates

through the parents. So high five to you. So here's a couple of things I want you to think through. And I wish I had a better analogy than the one I'm going to give you. It's just the one pops in my head here. And so for the vegans in the audience or the PETA folks, this isn't going to be a great example, but it's the best one I got. So anytime there is a transition in a marriage, right, from a new kid, the aftermath of an affair, moving to a new town, after a cancer diagnosis, after the loss of a parent, or empty nesting, right?

Any sort of transition, there's a temptation, and for good reason, right? There's a temptation to try to reclaim the past, to try to go back and get what was, right? Remember when we were young and we just made out all the time and I look super good and you look super, right? There's this temptation to go back and get what was and bring it into our new place or our new season. And what was, was beautiful.

There are great memories, beautiful love and joy, peace, wild fun, great sex, all that stuff, right? But when you try to drag the past into the present, it often arrives dead or not quite as awesome as we remember it. And it's covered in leaves and sticks. And again, I apologize. The only analogy I can think of is deer hunting. When you just shoot a deer in the woods and you've got to drag it all the way to where your car is or to where the Polaris is, it just isn't this majestic, beautiful thing that you saw on the mountaintop, right? It's a dead animal. And so Esther Perel, she's a relationship expert. She's somebody that is really elevated in the relationship space.

She's a brilliant, brilliant thinker and writer. She talks about this beautiful notion and tell me how this fits in your soul, Cindy, how this resonates with you. She says, adults will often have three or four deep loves in their lifetime, in their adult life. And the lucky ones are the She says, This lovely, lovely husband, and you met him, and that was love number one. Then you got to be in love and experience life for 25 years with this hardworking provider who also loved you deeply but loved you differently. And now you're at relationship number three with the same guy, right? How does that sound? Does that sound right? That sounds right, yes. Okay.

So here's what I want you to reconsider. I want you to reconsider not recreating the past, not trying to get back what was, but I want you to try to build something new. And building something new means you get the excitement of being an architect, you get the excitement of being an engineer. You don't have to be an archaeologist. You don't have to go back and try to drag something that was. You get to paint an entirely new picture. And so to do this, you got to be honest with

who each other is right now, who you've become, and where you guys want to go, which is so rad. So when's the last time you guys went out on what I would call, and again, this is going to be different for everybody, on a smoking hot date.

When's the last time y'all went out? Like smoking hot? Like just me and him? Just you and him. Like he looked like for real, for real Texas good. You looked good. You were winking at him the whole night. You set it up for a couple of days.

Like when's the last time y'all went and did that? We went on one of those overnight dates um last year for his birthday so you threw in the overnight date well played on that one and the the birthday date right so so what i want you to begin to think of is a world where y'all can have a life a romantic life a rebuilt life a life that is a completely new picture that is beyond the birthday overnight date and the anniversary overnight date, right? The overnight date, the obligatory dates there. But the ones where you can set out to date again, and now y'all been married for 25 years,

y'all can even hook up on the first date. You can recreate what you want to do, where you want to be. Here's the big thing. Paint a new picture together. And you said something earlier that I wrote down, and it's this idea of this hope. I hope that my husband has received my love language, my love language of service, of, man, every time you come home, you've got food to eat. Here's the deal. He has received that. No question about it. But I want you to move past this word of hope.

I want you to move past this word of I hope so, I think so into I know so. And the way you do that is to have a direct, probably several direct conversations. Several direct, we're going to take another out of town date and we're going to revision life. What do we want to do in five years? Because we don't have any Looney Tunes kids in the house. You mom, you're going to have to probably go see a counselor, get a couple of older women in your life that you trust, because you're going to have to unhinge your identity from ever-present, super, on top of everything mom to woman who is madly, wildly in love with this knuckleheaded husband that I married a quarter of a century ago. And you're going to have to recreate a new identity in yourself, right?

I can do that. That's so, I can hear it in your voice and you're making me smile right now because you're so rare. You are rare, rare, rare, Cindy. And God bless you. So here's a couple of things. Build something new together. Dream, dream together. Start to date one another.

And not just perfunctory like, hey, it's Taco Tuesday at Rosa's. Let's just go. I mean, make it a thing once or twice a week. And I sound like I'm over sexualizing this I'm not but what I'm trying to do Is to let you guys know that You're going to have to be intentional about re-sparking this thing You're going to have to be intentional

About recognizing Oh we can just walk around the house naked because there's no kids here And then you can be intentional about We can just both decide to lose a bunch of weight together We can both decide to Start I don't know Turn our living room into a gym We can decide that we're going to paint the house yellow decide to lose a bunch of weight together. We could both decide to start, I don't know, turn our living room into a gym. We can decide that we're going to paint the house yellow. You can do whatever you want, right? And that starts with being honest about what you want, honest

about what and who your husband is, honest about who you are, honest about your financial situation, your kids, all that stuff, right? And as you move forward together and recreate this new adventure, it starts with a conversation that says, honey, I love you. I recognize that I think I've put you second over the years. I've loved you as hard as I can, right? I provided for you. I made sure you were taken care of. But I'm ready to move back into being your girlfriend.

I'm ready to move into creating relationship number three or number four, where we can dream. We're now got some financial security. We got three kids that we sent to college so that they can put us in a nice home someday. We can live recklessly in love with one another. And then you just have to decide and go build it. And it's going to be a beautiful transition. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to call me, Cindy, after you have this conversation or two or three, and I want you to let me know what your plan is. Maybe you're going to get out of Texas. Maybe you're going to build a new house. Maybe you're all just going to start riding bikes together. Maybe you're just going to have two dates a week, whatever the thing is. I want you to call me back and let me know. I spent a little extra time on this. I love

this call, and I love you, Cindy. I think you're incredible. All right, let's go to Connor in Philadelphia. Connor, what's up, brother? How we doing? I'm doing all right. Thank you so much for taking my call, Dr. John. Hey, brother, thanks for calling in. How can I help? So I have a hard subject in my family, but my wife and my mother-in-law, they have a really shaky relationship. They actually haven't talked in about four years. After our first daughter was born, we have two children. And her mother has been addicted to prescription pain medications and abused fentanyl and morphine for over 15 years. And I just see my wife struggling every day with her relationship and not talking to her mother. But we don't know what to do.

Okay. So mom's been an addict for 15 years. Is there any movement there, any desire to not do that anymore? Or is it just is what it is, what it is? So, you know, about four years ago, what prompted her to stop talking to her is, you know, her, I said, you know, we can't just ignore the problem, right? And let's sit down and talk to her. And we sat down, we talked to her mother completely exploded, you know, we can't just ignore the problem, right? And let's sit down and talk to her. And we sat down, we talked to her. Mother completely exploded. Yep.

You know, adamantly denies, I'm not addicted. I'm prescribed this medication, but she takes more than she's prescribed. She uses multiple pain patches at the time. She's definitely abusing it. And she's lost everything. Physically, she's deteriorating. Financially, emotionally, she'll pass out in the middle of conversations that we're having. She'll passating financially, emotionally. She'll, she'll pass out in the middle of the conversations that we're having. She'll pass out while our children are

there. It's just, it's a mess. And, you know, she exploded at us, kicked us out. And, you know, pretty much that was the end of the last time we spoke to her. And that was in 2016. Yeah. So I'm going to give you some hard truth, brother. You probably know what I'm going to say, but I know it helps to hear it from an outside source. You cannot have a functioning relationship with an addict. You can't. She needs connection. She needs love.

She needs people to keep showing up and showing up and showing up that may not be you guys right now with small kids. and that's especially painful for a guy like you who desperately loves his wife and whose wife desperately wants her mama to be involved in the raising of the two small kids having a grandmother that's around right this whole norman rockwell fantasy picture is gone because somebody's an addict and i'm not in the business of blaming addicts. I can't imagine the story that your grandma's experienced and the numbing and the ability to distance herself from that pain that fentanyl and some of that nonsense can provide. But the reality is your job is taking care of your kids and loving your wife the best that you can. And you can't do that in relationship with a functioning addict. Yeah. What hurts the most, you know, and I, we, we, my wife, thank God she, you know, she,

she works in the medical field and she, she knows that stuff. I think that the challenge for us is, you know, I see her hurting and I want to help my wife. I know there's nothing I can do for her, but is there anything I could do for my wife to try to help her cope with it? Yeah, there's a couple of things. One is you can know this intellectually as a helping professional, right? I know a lot of things, but it doesn't mean it doesn't really hurt when my wife says something, right? Or when I call home and my parents are working on something, right? It still hurts. And that idea of knowing intellectually in your frontal lobe versus feeling and your amygdala is not sending off signals that you're disconnected,

you're disconnected, you're disconnected. So a couple of things. One is I'm going to recommend that you, this is just husband to husband, dad to dad, that you yourself set an example, not through advice, not through, hey, you know what you should be doing, but that you go see a counselor. And when your wife asks you what you're doing, why you're doing it, tell her, I love you and I love our kids. And I'm really haunted by this situation that they're going to grow up without a grandma and I want to know how to love you better and I want to know how to love these kids better. And that's going to be a signal to her that you are deeply tethered in and that you're invested. And at the end of the day, all you can control is you, right? That's it. And so you're going to get

some tools and some relationship ideas and some new strategies on how to love better. But you're also going to signal to your wife that we've got to put the fantasy to bed. It's over. The second thing is, is I want you to be somebody who offers strong boundaries, meaning you've got to sit down with your wife and say, all right, let's, this is 15-year addiction. This is a four years we're not talking. At the end of the day, there's not a lot we can do here. Maybe there's brothers and sisters who can help with intervention.

Maybe your father-in-law is willing to help and go all in with the Army. That's one option. But it sounds like you need to sit down with your wife and you all need to paint a new picture of what Thanksgiving is going to look like without grandma forever. You're going to need to paint a picture of kids growing up, not knowing who their grandma was or only seeing them every once in a while because grandma checked out, right? For whatever reason. Knowing that when your wife is frustrated or she breaks down in tears that she doesn't need advice from you. She just needs a hug from you to say, I love you and this sucks. It's not supposed to be that way. Moms are supposed to be connected with their daughters. Moms are supposed to be invested in their grandkids' life and y'all aren't going to get that. And it's less about trying to fix it.

Your wife knows what's up. She's smart. She's brilliant. She married a wise guy like you. Man, it just sucks. It's just a matter of being with her. When I tell you that you got to put the fantasy down, my guess is after four years, y'all have had this conversation. How has it gone? So it's exactly what you said. You know, there are times where, you know, we've, we've, we've said it, you know, we've said, this isn't, this is not a safe place for our children to be, though the way that she behaves and acts now being addicted is not – it's unsafe for our children. And we can't – I can't bring a one-year-old and a four-year-old around here. That's right.

Hey, listen. That's a big deal that you just said that. Good for you. There's too many people who are trying to live out a fantasy, live out a I wish it was, I wish it was. And they are trying to cram a triangle through a square hole, man. They're trying to take a round peg and just mash it through a triangle hole, brother. And you've done some hard things by saying, my kids aren't safe. I'm not doing it. Good for you. Good for you. Yeah. I appreciate that. And you know, it's hard. And what makes it

even more challenging, I think, is my wife has memories pre-addiction and how great her mother was. And my mother passed away from cancer before I even met my wife. So, you know, our children don't have a grandmother. My mother-in-law is divorced from my father-in-law from this. Like, you know, so it's just, it's almost like a death of a family member. It's exactly like a death of a family member, except it's worse, because you're right. They're still alive. You can't properly grieve it and move on. And so what you and your wife have got to do, brother, you have got to grieve it. Maybe even have a small ceremony.

And I don't mean that tongue in cheek. I mean a true ceremony that you and your wife go somewhere. You celebrate a memory she had of mom before addiction when mom was whole and mom was safe and mom was warm. And you mourn the passing of that. You grieve it. And you cry like you haven't cried. I'd recommend that your wife write a couple of letters that she's never going to give her mom, but write her mom a letter of anger. Here's what you're missing. Here's the beautiful babies you're missing. Here's the narratives

you're missing. And I wanted to write a second letter, which is here's who I'm going to be. I'm going to be an incredible mom. I'm never going to be an addict. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to go to counseling. I'm going to double down on my husband. I'm going to be an extraordinary woman and let those things rest. And then y'all grieve the loss of your mother-in-law. It sucks, brother. It sucks. Here's the thing. There is no way to avoid the pain of this because it's a living, breathing hurt. It just is. Again, brother, I want to commend you for being a great husband, for being an invested husband, for trying to love your wife the best you can. Grieve this thing.

Let go of the fantasy and then start building a new world. That may mean finding some older ladies at church who become surrogate grandmothers. I had two grandmothers living, and my son, when he was five and six, made best friends. It was like reverse Dennis the Menace. He made best friends with an elderly woman who lived next door to us. She'd give him Fig Newtons, and he would cut her little weeds with some scissors that she gave him, and they would chit- chat for hours. It was just really beautiful together. And we haven't lived in that town for several years and we still write letters. We still get notes. And it's just a matter of finding somebody else to get invested in your kid's life. There's women out there who would love to do that. There's surrogate granddads who would love to be invested. But it's a matter of finding that. But don't go run find those things

until you've grieved the loss. And I'll also put this out there for folks who have addiction in their family. It's going to sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but don't give up. Don't give up on people. Keep praying for folks. You can send cards. You can send letters that say, I love you.

If you've got brothers and sisters who want to reach out and do an intervention, you can do that. But protect your hearts because the reality is, especially with fentanyl and golly, man, prescription drugs, addictions, those things are demons that just drown family members, drown family members. And to doctors, he'd keep writing that nonsense. Man, stop. Stop. Quit doing that, man. You're destroying families. Help people get well.

Don't just dope them up to the point that they become non-functional, unsafe grandparents. Stop. Man. All right, I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to exhale. And then we're going to go to, I'm going to smile. We're going to get it back here. I'm going to go to and then we're going to go to, I'm going to smile. We're going to get it back here.

I'm going to go to Elizabeth in Reno, Nevada. Elizabeth, good morning. How can I help? Hi, thanks so much for talking to me, Dr. John. How are you? I am doing outstanding this morning. It's a blessing to get to just hang out with everybody. How about you?

I'm doing well, thank you. Good deal. So how can I help this morning? So my grandparents have been going through some really tough times, and they're just such wonderful, generous people, and I'm just having a really hard time knowing how to best love and support them in such hard times. Tell me about hard times. What do hard times mean? So a little over a month ago, my grandfather was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

Yuck. I'm so sorry. And he's in his 70s. So he's, you know, he's really healthy for his age. But, you know, it's just been really difficult for him. And then a couple of weeks ago, um, on their way to another biopsy, uh, they ended up having to go to the ER because. And, you know, they called us last weekend and said they didn't know if he would make it. And so we went up there to go just be with my grandmother. Fast forward to kind of what's going on right now. He actually made it through the surgery really well. And he's at home recovering until he has to do another surgery to completely replace the hip. And praise God, they actually had another biopsy and it's completely negative. Like the cancer went away while he was there. Wow.

Very cool. Which is really amazing. But, um, now that they're back home, I'm just kind of trying to figure out, um, how to help them. They, they don't like to ask or take help. They're really generous themselves, but, um, you know, they don't want to feel like a burden to others. And I know they've got a lot of medical bills and they're not really set up for their future. And so I guess I just was wondering how I can best support them and then also kind of how to start talking with them about hard things like, you know, do they have a will or like what's like the next step? I don't feel like they like to talk about those things, but I just don't know what role I can play. Yeah, so here's the deal. Your heart is gold, and I can hear it through the phone, and I just want to high-five you from Nashville to Nevada. Nope, not even a high-five. This is a pre-COVID era two-handed front hug. I just want to tell you I love you, and I'm grateful for your heart here.

Grandparents are precious, and they are beautiful, and especially ones that sound like yours that are generous and giving and present. And there's nothing more challenging than watching loved ones going through pain and hurting both relationally, your poor grandmother's just watching the man she loves on a table, right? And the actual physical pain that your granddad's going through. And then with that feeling of helplessness, right? We can't do anything about it. So there's a few things here that are swirling around in my head and I'll just lay them out in kind of a rapid fire, sideways, crooked order here, okay? The first thing I want you to do, do you have brothers and sisters?

Yeah. Okay. Do they love your grandparents the same way you do? Yeah. Okay. I want you to connect with them, and whether it is through a Zoom conference or an email chain or a text chain, my preference would be you all get together and hang out, but depending on where everybody lives and all that, and I know everything's, the travel's a text chain. My preference would be y'all get together and hang out, but depending on where everybody lives and all that, and I know everything's, the travel's a

mess now. But I want y'all to have some fun times remembering the fun things about grandma and granddad, the crazy things, the mean things when they were super hardcore disciplinarians back when y'all were little and how now they just laugh or whatever weird little pachydillos your grandparents have. I want you to spend some time remembering. One of the things that stinks about when our loved ones hurt is that that becomes our picture of them and it overshadows, it overweighs like a heavy anxiety blanket. It lays over the just treasure trove of years and years of beautiful memories, time together, laughter, silliness, all that stuff, right? So I want you to spend some

time proactively with your brothers and sisters, your siblings, remembering the awesome, okay? That's for you. That's for your heart. What's going through your heart and mind right now, here's the deal. You've recognized that these pillars in your family that have held y'all up for years, they're getting old. And the one sad, crummy part of this whole existence that we share is that we all pass away at the end, right? And hopefully they've got 20 more years that are of awesome, fun silliness. My dream is that to be a 90-year-old grandparent hosing my grandkids off in the yard, sneaking behind a tree and just blasting them with a water hose. That just sounds like fun to me. My hope is that y'all have that time, but you've got a crack in the armor now.

And now you've got a dose of reality that's just never fun to have to take. The second thing is we often think people are more frail emotionally than they really are. Occasionally, people refuse to talk about death. Occasionally, they won't have hard conversations, but often they crave them. They just don't know how to start them. And so one of the greatest gifts you can give to aging grandparents is presence, is if you can't be in contact with them directly, is handwritten letters. Make it a practice every week that you write them one funny story you remember. One time they really surprised you with their generosity.

One, like, you know, deep track, a deep cut from one of the stories that your mom and dad told about them. About, hey, one time they just showed up with a casserole and some money and helped us out when we were newlyweds. Those kind of old stories. Write them down and send it to them. There's something about it for a grandparent is understanding that they are leaving a legacy. They are leaving changed hearts, that they have a family tree that's going to go on and on. And the more you can reinforce that either through presence or through something tangible that they can reread and reread and reread.

I remember a conversation I had with my granddad before he passed when I called him and just said, hey, listen, I want you to know you gave me your last name. I want you to know I'm going to do the best I can to honor that. You've been a good man. My granddad had a reputation for being really, really, really nice, just the nicest guy. And I told him I'm going to honor that. And even last night, my post on Instagram had something to do with kindness. That's just become part of my DNA.

But I made sure I let him know this is going to be something that's going to carry on when you're gone. And then the thing about the will, there's no way to have that gently or compassionately or where it's not weird. It's one of those conversations that you just put out there. Do you have parents? Are they involved in this? Or is there a kind of skip to generation where you're connected with your grandparents pretty closely? It's one of those conversations that you just put out there. Do you have parents? Are they involved in this? Or is there kind of skip the generation where you're connected with your grandparents pretty closely? Yeah, my mom and her sister are involved.

But there's just some weird family dynamics there too. So I know there's some tensions. We'll save that for another call. I'll just tell you a funny story from my life, and it's funny because I come from a weird family who's lived and worked around death a lot. I had a close friend of mine, a really lovely, one of my best friends in the world, and her dad died suddenly in a tragic car wreck. And he was a police officer, and I was on the phone with her and her husband. He's one of my oldest, best friends in the world, when they were looking for this magic box. And most police officers have a box that has all of their things in it, their will, their passwords, their bank accounts, because they know at any day, at any time I may not come home, and they're trained out of the academy.

You leave your home in a state of neutrality. You let your family be able to grieve you and know where all your stuff is. And so police officers live with this understanding, I might die today. And so I was on the phone with them when they found the box and it was a hard crying, hard, it was a deep, deeply tragic, but at the same time, a beautiful moment. Because I remember thinking on the phone with my friends, what kind of awesome dad? This is incredible, man. He left it all there just in case, just in case, and just in case happened. So I call my dad, who's a homicide, was a homicide detective for years. He was a SWAT guy.

He still was working in a police department. I called him and said, hey, dad, you need to get a box together, dude, of all this stuff. I need to know where your will is just in case something happens. I'll never forget. Elizabeth, he laughed and he was like, dude, it's behind the thing, behind the thing in my closet. And I was like, you got a box? And he's like, yes, John, everybody should have a box. And so it was this moment.

I built it up. I was nervous. Like, oh, let's talk about the wills. And, I'd built it up. I was nervous, like, oh, let's talk about the wheels. And man, it was just like, I was asking him, hey, can I borrow 50 cents for a Coke? And it wasn't a weird thing at all for him. He told me how the stuff's going to work, who's going to do how and what. And it just ended up being a relatively high level, stress-free conversation. And that was all praise to my dad for doing that. So I tell you that to tell you,

I would enter that conversation directionally. It's a math problem. It's not an emotional problem. It's they need to have a will. And you need to know how you can best support their legacy, their honor, what they want to have done, how you and your brothers and sisters and whatever messy dynamics, how you can help navigate that and ask them directly. They may tell you, we're not talking about a will. We're not there yet. Stop bringing that nonsense into our hearts and heads. Hopefully they don't.

They sound like generous, wonderful people, and they just won't. But thank you, thank you, thank you, Elizabeth, for that call. Thanks for reminding me of how wonderful my granddad was. Just spending some time in those memories, just sitting here on the radio talking to you is a beautiful moment. But at the end of the day, you've got to see a crack in the armor the strongest pillars of our families are strong dads are incredible strong moms our grandparents who have always been and it just feels like they're always going to be they pass away at the end

and it's heartbreaking and i hate that it's got to be that way, but it is. There's just some stuff on this side of the curtain we don't get to figure out and understand why, but it happens. And so the best we can do is to honor their legacy, let them know that we are honoring them, live lives that honor them. And then, wow, be direct about the math problem where are the forms where's the this who you want to have the car how do you want us to divide stuff up

those are the math problems of life that people often run around and avoid and it takes somebody like you Elizabeth who cares about her family just to kind of head right into the middle of that conversation and I hope that they respond like my old man did with directness with a smile

with laughter with hey I'm a grownup. I've got this figured out and I'll take care of y'all. Like I always have. That's my prayer and hope for you guys, Elizabeth. Hey, I got an email. Normally we wrap up the show here, but I got an email that let's just, we're here. We're talking about grandparents. This is an email from Sharon. Here's her email. My four grandkids are all teenagers now. This is the other side of this call. My four grandkids are all teenagers now. It used to be so easy to get silly and play with them. Now they are older and I feel like I've lost some of the connection. How can I relate to

teens? Sharon, God bless you. You're awesome. What a great question. What a remarkable, wonderful, great question. All right, so here's the deal. Grandparents, don't overthink this. Like I just said earlier, I want to be a 90-year-old grandparent that when my grandkids are coming to visit, I'm hiding in the bushes with my 90-year-old wife. And we are crooked and wrinkly old messes. And I'm sagging all over the place, barely able. I'm probably going to be wearing grownup Spanx, right? But we're going to be hiding the bushes and we're going to have the super soakers. And when our grandkids get out of the car, we're going to blast them. I want to be those grandparents. So you ask how to be silly

and play with them. Here's how. Be silly and play with them. Be silly and play with them. Get some kid at your church to teach you how to TikTok, if that's even still legal anymore. Get some kid at your church to teach you how to send Instagram message. Write handwritten notes about crushes you used to have before you married that old granddad of theirs, right? Ask them who they're dating. Ask them if they're kissing boys.

Ew. And give them a hard time about it. And say, go over the line just a little bit, Sharon. Like, are you kissing, kissing? Are you using tongue? Yeah. And you will freak out your grandkids, but they will tell that story for a hundred, hundred years. Here's one story from my grandmother that was epic. My grandmother was every Tuesday, the big shell came over her head. She got her hair done every day, no matter what the economy was doing, no matter what kind of work was going, that hair was getting done. And I'm telling you, I don't know what they've made these space age NFL football helmets, but my grandmother could have lined up against any professional NFL center

and dropped him, one, because she was hardcore and she grew up on a farm. She was a gangster ninja. But number two, because her shell hair was just this perfect brick of Aquanet and death. And listen, she was a proper, always done up, always perfect woman. She's just incredible. So the first time my wife got to meet her, we met them at some fancy seafood restaurant in Houston. And my grandmother, perfectly proper, sits down. And as we sat down, they bring a trough of french fries to the table next to us. And there were some people at that table, I mean, probably could have used some Orange Theory fitness in their life at some point, right? That may have wanted to check in with Jenny Craig once or twice, right? I mean, I'm just saying. So I don't think anything of it. They bring this giant trough. It's a

platter of French fries and they set it down. And my grandmother, about this loud, leans over the table and goes to my wife, who's just meeting her for the first time. Well, the last thing that table needs is another plate of fries, right? And we started dying laughing. And to think this proper woman had a good old-fashioned Deloney jab stuck up. And I was like, that's where I get my sarcasm and my goofiness. And that opened the gate to where we laughed more in her last 15 years. We laughed and laughed and caught up and made fun of people and made fun of each other. And it just turned into this beautiful thing. So Sharon, how do you get silly and play

with them? You get silly and play with them. You show up, you be goofy, you be silly. You let them know that you're a person. You let them know that you see them as people and y'all are all getting old together. And it's a beautiful, lovely transition. Man, today's calls make my heart feel good. I hope as you're listening to this, you're smiling, thinking about your grandparents, thinking about the grandparents that you wish you had, thinking about new grandparents you could bring into your life, whether they're surrogate parents, whoever.

I hope you're thinking about a beautiful tomorrow. So as we wrap up the show, here's the deal, man. This is the greatest song ever written of all time by one of the greatest songwriters in the history of the world. And when I say one of the greatest, I mean, she came down from the heavens actually on day eight after he rested, God stood up and stretched and he went, I'm going to make Natalie Merchant. And he dropped her down in the US in the late 80s, early 90s. Natalie Merchant was the lead singer of a wonderful band called 10,000 Maniacs.

And in 1992, the album Our Time in Eden produced this song, the greatest song ever written. It's called These Are the Days, and it goes like this. These are the days you'll remember, never before and never since. I promise. Will the whole world be warm as this? As you feel it, you'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky. It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

These are the days that we'll remember. The days that might fill you with laughter until you break. You might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face. And when you do, you'll know how it was meant to be. Hear the signs and know they're speaking to you. These are the days. And this is the Dr. John Deloney Show. you