The Dr. John Delony Show - My Dad Almost Died & I Didn't Feel Sad; Now I Feel Guilty
Episode Date: October 6, 2021The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advic...e on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode My husband just passed away & I want to know how to raise my son to be a good man My dad almost died & I didn't feel sad about it Lyrics of the Day: "The Rose" - Bette Midler As heard on this episode: BetterHelp dreamcloudsleep.com/delony Conversation Starters Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+ tags: parenting, kids, substance abuse, grief, family 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
On today's show, we talk to three remarkable women.
One is struggling with her marriage and with parenting.
One is struggling with the passing of her husband just a few weeks ago.
And one is struggling with not feeling like she grieved enough
during her dad's recent health scare.
Stay tuned.
Hey, what's up? What's up? Welcome to Dr. John Deloney's show.
I'm laughing because Kelly's looking at me as though I'm a child that she's very disappointed in. What did I do? It's so not you. I don't feel good. It's not you.
I would not have known that you didn't feel good.
You were on time, professional, kicking butt, brilliant as always.
I won't make any comments about your appearance.
It's like you're just here ready to rock and roll.
I would say you're beautiful, but the internet gets mad.
Like, you shouldn't tell her that.
So whatever.
Parched in a pear tree.
I'm sorry you feel bad.
That's okay.
Thank you.
On the last show, you had a full beard
and you had a way deeper voice
that was actually a different person
named Austin
he had a hat on so I couldn't tell
he was wonderful enough to step in so that I could stay home
we did try to get him to answer the phones
like hello this is Kelly
but he's too respectful and he wouldn't do it
I thought that would be super funny
people would not
expect that. But I'm glad to see you back.
Sorry you don't feel good.
Oh, that's okay. Thank you. I'm glad to be back.
Are you taking all your vitamins? Yes.
I don't even know if you take vitamins. I'm just saying that.
I'm on a lot of drugs right now.
So, I'm in a steak well type stuff.
Yes. You should call into the show.
We talk about those kind of things.
James, feeling it?
Feeling great.
Good folks, when James says, and I quote, I'm feeling great, that's him being sarcastic.
I'm not being sarcastic.
No?
No.
You look full of joy today.
I really am doing great.
Is it the denim?
Yeah, it's the denim.
I think so.
Whenever you wear denim, there's like a radiance about you.
It's the bright colors.
The blue just, yeah, it's good.
All right, hey, let's go straight to the phones.
I don't have anything else to talk about today.
Actually, let's read one poem, and then we'll go.
Let's see here.
Here's another poem.
Oh, man.
All these poems mention y'all.
This show's about me.
And all these poems mention you guys.
Here's the greatest poem of all time.
Oh, I think I've already done this one.
From Heidi, I've already done this one.
I put it back in the stack.
I'll do it anyway.
You need a screener for your mail.
I disagree.
Yeah, we have had some.
Man.
This is from heidi in minnesota james is super red kelly carries herself with poise strongly disagree the dr john deloney show
is my favorite forever a fan of the horse noise you did read that one. I did? Yeah, you did. Oh, well, there we go. But, you know, it's worth reading again.
It's so accurate.
Was it?
It was, Heidi.
Thank you.
We're doubling up here.
All right, here we go.
I have a poem for you.
Here we go.
Thank you for your words and wit and wisdom and whimsy.
Thank you for your words and wit and wisdom and whimsy.
Thank you for your alliteration.
Okay, here we go.
It's my joy to surprise you with delight.
That's not a poem.
What is happening?
Before we do this next time, Kelly and I are going to go through them so that there's some semblance of order.
Hi.
If this is your first time to the show, this is how it always is.
I don't really know what's happening here.
And I read mail, and then I stop in the middle of it because there's some people who are struggling with assignments.
Read the syllabus.
It's always those students.
Here's the deal. It's not as if all the mail you receive are poems.
These are just feedback letters. There's things that may be from the Ramsey show, so it's not like they all the mail you receive are poems like these are just feedback letters
there's things that may be from the ramsey show so it's not like they're all going to be poems
that's why we need to screen them i agree you're right great if you had someone that you know
screened things and did that oh i see what you did there it'd be cool if she came to work
that was a sick joke sorry too soon too soon. Too soon. I have something to say, but I'm not.
Because your kids listen. All right, let's go to Paula in Columbia. Hey, Paula, what's going on?
Hey, Dr. John, how are you? I'm good. And you? I'm all right. Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good what's going on um my husband died three weeks ago after an eight month battle
with cancer paula paula i'm so sorry three weeks ago um tell me about him yeah um he was awesome the happiest person you've met um kind wonderful had great life and has done
a bunch of wonderful things in his life um and was just at a point in his life where he was
sharing those other people teaching them things he knew. Throughout his cancer treatments, he went into every one of them with a smile on his
face.
He was everyone's favorite patient.
His goals were to eat, sleep, drink, and, you know, take cancer.
And mine were to find all the best treatments and read all the medical journals and
he never once gave up he was amazing and three weeks ago it caught him huh it did um
can i just tell you i'm so sorry. Thank you. I hate that for you.
I can tell in your voice that you love, love that guy.
And you won the husband lottery with that one.
What was his name?
You know, I got a card that said that.
I'd sent it to a friend, you know, when we were early on kind of getting that thing people do about talking about their husbands, things they do.
And I said, you know what?
I got a good one.
There really wasn't anything to complain about. And that was the coolest card to get. Hey, I got a good one. Like it's like a whispering secret.
Guess what guys? I found a hundred dollars under my house. Yeah. I got a really good
one. Even after 13 years. What was his name? His name was David. David. I want to make
sure we say his name out loud and honor him.
That's awesome.
We actually, so we have a son.
Okay.
How old?
Five.
Five, okay.
Five.
And we say his name every day, and we sing to him, and we talk about him, and we have pictures.
Charles Conner put pictures on our house, you know, in little areas in our house. And we've, he brought
his dad to show and tell last week, cause he had to pick a word that began with D and D is for dad.
So he's doing awesome now. Um, and at the beginning of the journey, the first three months,
we didn't tell him anything, but we found great resources and we are able to bring him on the
journey with us. He met nurses and ate at the hospital cafeteria and he just, he knew his dad was sick, but
it helped him with compassion and empathy.
And he is the coolest kid.
And part of that was because he had the coolest dad.
So.
And I know where you're going with this.
So before you even say it, I'm going to tell you.
And he had the coolest mom too.
Yes.
He did.
He does.
He's got a mom who loves him and a mom who shows up.
And a mom who loved his dad too.
And that's magic.
I was more the operational parent, though.
No, you're putting...
Listen, I'm the fun dad.
And you know what wouldn't happen?
Is we'd have no electricity in my house or food.
We'd have a really cool fire outside.
And we'd write our names in the yard with a lawnmower.
But we'd have no food, right?
So, it takes both.
And they, your son, one with you, too.
Herein lies the problem. How do I navigate the upcoming years so that this awesome kid can grow into an awesome man without his dad around?
Yeah. We have a huge community and great men in it, and there are men in his labs, but there's not that fun in the house and around him constantly.
What a great, hard, heartbreaking question.
And thank you for trusting me with that.
I know it's even hard to say out loud, but every time you have to say those words without dad,
the whole thing just pulls that scab off again.
So here's the thing.
I'll answer your question,
but I'm going to answer it with a caveat, okay?
Okay.
This is a next year question.
Okay.
You're three weeks out.
And as a planner and as a controller
and as somebody
who loves people
who are lots of fun, but you
were put on this earth to make sure they don't
all drive off the cliff together,
you are doing
your best to tie up
every loose end.
Right?
And to control what you can control because
a grenade just went off in your heart.
And in your home.
And try not to control
as much. I know, I know, I know.
I know. And bills
gotta get paid, right?
Life insurance has to, I mean, all that stuff has to happen.
And there's still gonna be a roof leak and things
like that.
But, you're worrying on a 20-year challenge right now, and there is still smoke coming out of that house.
And so for the next three months, the next six months, the greatest gift you can give your son is that you be honest about your grief and you cry with him.
And when you're sad and you're lonely, you hug him.
But also you don't make him responsible for your wellness and your healing.
And that mom takes care of mom.
And that doesn't mean faking it or flexing or that means you got someone to talk to.
You got people to cry you've got people you can call when you need to be away from your son and you just need to go for a walk in the
woods with a buddy like you know what i mean it sounds like you have a great community that's the
gift you can give him okay um downstream you're right little boys need models of men.
They do.
And teaching
integrity,
honesty,
grit,
kindness,
and strength,
those are not gender specific things.
He'll be fun because he's fun.
He'll be bonkers because he's bonkers.
You can still teach him what strength looks like,
even if it's a different kind of strength
than the one maybe dad would have shown him.
And by the way, when you tell stories of dad,
they will become almost more powerful than him.
So stories of dad's strength and dad's character and dad's integrity
will take root in his heart.
As will watching
you be a person of integrity and
strength and character.
And you calling those things
out explicitly.
And so I don't want you to think
your son is gonna
struggle because dad passed away.
That's a trauma.
You know that, right?
That's a great tragedy.
He's going to struggle.
He's going to have challenges.
And when I say struggle or challenges,
I don't mean like,
ah, it's all good.
Not like that.
But his life's going to be harder than mine was
because my dad's still here.
Okay?
And he had an incredible father.
I don't want to mince that.
And he is going to be incredibly blessed by you and so i don't want you to think that suddenly there's these things that
you can't teach him that's not true he will need male models he'll need men in his life that will
take him out i said that kind of weird i just just want to say, I should have said, he needs male models.
I made that whole thing weird.
He'll need models of men in his life, right?
That will take him fishing and take him hunting or take him to do computer.
I don't know what he's into, but whatever he's into.
That will be important.
And those guys will come.
That's for later.
That's for later.
The important thing right now is to sit and just be still and grieve.
And I'm so sorry.
So sorry.
The sitting part is hard.
It is.
It is.
But what I'm going to tell you is you can't run from this.
And as a controller, you're used to running from it.
Because that's what control gives us.
Are you set up financially?
Are you all okay there?
We became 100% debt-free a month before he passed away.
Wow.
It was a challenge.
And, you know, there's always a person who's going home and there's somebody who's not.
And so David begrudgingly followed me the entire time,
but we did it together.
And being able to look back and say that we did it together
is way cooler than after the fact. Absolutely.
We're okay.
I have an amazing
boss, an amazing
CEO, an amazing company.
Awesome. Good for you.
Good for them. Awesome.
We're good. It's just
there's just a lot.
And you're not
good.
You lost your best friend.
Yeah.
And it's okay to not be good.
It's okay to not be good.
It's okay to not be strong. It's okay to not be in control.
Thank you. thank you the world doesn't need any more strong sprinters
right
Dave always says
he reads the tortoise and the hare every year
and the tortoise wins every time
your little boy Paula The tortoise and the hare every year and the tortoise wins every time.
Your little boy, Paula, is really lucky to have you.
Real lucky to have you.
He's really lucky to have the community he's in and he's really lucky to have spent five magical years with a magical, incredible dad.
You are correct.
And so sit in the memory and the love of your husband.
Sit in the pain and the hurt of you lost your best friend and co-pilot, your forever guy.
Sit in the grief that your son lost his dad.
Sit in the joy that your son lost his dad,
sit in the joy that, man, he got to spend five years with somebody who was just magic,
and then be about the slow, slow process of healing.
Don't hide your grieving from your son.
Don't bury him with it either.
Put people in your life that will call you out
on making sure you're eating,
making sure you're walking,
making sure you're going to work,
making sure your son's got somewhere
to go on the weekends
and go play
and be around people his own age.
Make sure he's got a counselor
that will walk with him.
That'll be different than you,
more than likely.
And recognize this,
this isn't a sprint.
This isn't something
you can wrap your arms around.
You can't control grief.
You can't wrap it up
and hold it really tight.
It'll pull you underwater.
You have to breathe through it.
It's so hard.
And I'm so, so sorry.
And by the way, there's no rules to grief grief it'll hit you at weird times and weird moments
there's no expectations you have to grieve like this
and this way and this amount of time
people are going to try to shape
your grief to make them comfortable
they don't get that
your story is your story
and your sons is your sons
and y'all are in this together
and what an extraordinary testament to the world your husband who fought valiantly who smiled all
the way to the end and who handed that baton of being free financially to you he just made it
what an incredible testament so david we salute you brother and we all hope to see you sometime
and high five you man thanks for being a husband who loved his wife and loved his kid
thanks for the call paula thank you so much we'll be right back on the dr john deloney show
this show is sponsored by better help all right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks.
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All right, we're back.
Let's take one more call.
Let's go to Alex in Portland, Oregon.
What's up, Alex?
Hi, John.
How are you?
I'm outstanding.
How about you?
Not too bad.
Not too bad.
The undersell of the year.
What's up?
Yeah, I got an interesting question.
Nobody calls my show because
when things aren't too bad,
nobody does. Right, yeah.
We just want to say hi.
Just want to say what's up. What's up, Alex?
How's it going?
My dad recently,
just a couple weeks back, had a heart attack
and he almost died.
And I feel guilty for not feeling bad about it.
I'll get to the meat of everything you want to know.
My main question is, is this normal?
And if it's not, what do I do about it?
If it is, how do I deal with the guilt of not feeling bad?
So when you say you didn't feel bad, what does that mean?
Tell me about that.
I just, I don't feel the sadness that I would expect to.
My parents have been married for 48
years. The thought of
losing my mom makes me sick to my stomach.
My dad, almost
indifferent. And I didn't have
a great
relationship with him, but he was
never a bad dad.
I didn't have that great relationship with him, but he was never a bad cat. I didn't have that connection.
Okay.
So paint me a picture in like a sentence or two.
What did you expect yourself to do or to feel or to experience
in the hypothetical event your dad almost dies?
I guess I thought I would have this overwhelming sense of grief,
like I lost something that meant so incredibly much to me,
just like I would with my mom, and that would just break my heart. But yet with him, I just, I don't know, I felt sadness,
but the sadness was for my mom, for yet with him, I just, I don't know, like I felt sadness, but the sadness was for my mom for almost losing him, you know? So it just, I don't know, it just, it hit me weird. And like,
I realized when she called me and told me that she, you know, I could hear it in her voice.
She was just distraught. That's what hurt me. So I don't know, once I like started thinking about it, I realized that's
what my sadness was. It was for her. And I don't know, I've seen him since and you know, he's doing
fine. He's, he had really high cholesterol and one of his arteries was almost completely blocked
and he's being incredibly stubborn and he's saying, well, it took 67 years for that artery
to block. So now I have another 67 years. He's just being like so cavalier about it. And when he was in the
hospital, um, he wanted no attention. Like he didn't want anyone to know. And it was, you know,
oh, don't, don't tell anybody. And now that he's out, he loves all the attention he's getting.
And he wants to talk about every little detail. And it's just, it's a lot for me like i just i can't you know here's my guess here's my guess alex this isn't just
about the heart attack he's been this way for your whole life is that fair yeah yeah and it's
exhausting and annoying and it is okay for whatever it's worth
and I'll tell you it's not very much
it is okay to not like
your dad
you can love somebody and not like them
you can love somebody
and respect them and not want to hang out
with them
here's a couple
of things I've learned working in grief
for forever now
and trauma and tragedy
we have these Hollywood pictures of what happens
there's even a lot of research
on juries
and when people respond they find their
husband has passed away
or their kid has passed away
and they don't respond in a Hollywoodized way
they're often looked at as a suspect
or why did you call this person what I will tell you and they don't respond in a Hollywoodized way, they're often looked at as a suspect.
Or why did you call this person?
What I will tell you is that whatever picture you have of how you think you're going to respond,
you have no idea.
None.
Most people, most of the time,
don't scream and yell and weep and fall down on the floor.
They go stone numb.
They freeze.
And they will report things like, I can't feel anything.
I can't.
I am just.
And that's just their body shutting down.
And that's totally normal and okay. Here's what I want to give you
to carry you on
in the next however many years.
You're going to have your dad with you, your mom with you,
and just as you learn to learn about Alex more.
Be curious
with your responses,
not judgmental of them.
Okay.
So when you have an anticipated response
and you don't respond that way instead of going
oh my gosh i'm broken or i suck or it's because my dad's just be curious about it like why in the
world it helps me to write that stuff down when i have those different responses um some people
can talk it out with their friends or with someone they trust but just be curious about it. So let's be curious. Why do you think,
why do you think that you were indifferent? And it's okay to say, I don't like him.
I have never liked him. Yeah. He hurt me growing up. Um, I think,
I think it's because I've seen a lot for for an example, probably about two months ago, my mom had COVID and shingles at the same time.
And she was almost literally on her deathbed.
There was one day, though, that she thought, yeah, I'm done.
This is it.
And she, I don't, I'm married.
I don't live at home.
And I knew they were going through this and I knew
she was also a little stubborn and didn't want to go to the hospital. So I had texted my dad
and I said, Hey, you know, if she's refusing to go to the hospital and you won't fuck up and take
her, I'm going to call the police and I'm going to have a forced welfare check on her because I
don't want her to die because she's being stubborn. Right? And he just said, okay, thanks for your concern,
you know, well, she's doing okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I then find out when she
asked him to call for an ambulance for her on that day that she thought this was it, he said,
oh, are you sure? I mean, you know, they're going to show up and you're going to be really embarrassed. And, you know, like he just, he kind of, he cares so much about appearances, not the severity of the situation.
And then on top of that, I find out that when I said that to him, that I'm going to call the police and have a forced check on her, he laughed.
He thought that was funny.
And I'm just like, who does that?
You know?
I just, it makes me sick.
Because it's like, you don't take things seriously, and then you want all the attention and love in the world when it's about you.
Yeah.
So it just, I just, I'm disgusted.
Really.
And so here's what I want to tell you, Alex.
It's okay to be disgusted.
Yeah.
Anger points us to things that we care about.
Yeah.
And that's what it is.
It was anger and, you know, all that for how he treated my mom in that situation, how I've seen him treat her, you know, my whole life growing up.
And, and, and how he treated you.
Yeah.
How he treated you.
You were the recipient of this as well.
It's okay to be angry.
It's okay to be frustrated.
In a perfect world, you let him know these things while he's still alive.
I've also seen it time and time again that people pass away
and that initial wave of anger and disgust and frustration and all that passes.
And then there's this longing, almost for a myth, for a fantasy of I miss my dad.
Right.
I miss my dad.
And letting him know, hey, I almost, we almost lost you.
And you're cavalier about it.
Here's somebody who's not cavalier about you, me.
And I love you. And I don who's not cavalier about you, me. And I love you.
And I don't
like your cavalier attitude. It breaks my heart
that you're cavalier about mom's health,
about your health.
But your dad, you're 60,
70 years old, you can do whatever you want.
I'll tell you, it breaks my heart.
And it's hard to love you.
I do. It's hard to love you, though.
And then, when it comes back to the response,
your response doesn't,
I mean, you don't need to be curious about it.
You know why.
You don't like the man.
He almost killed your mom in your heart and mind.
He almost killed your mom.
He's been like this his whole life.
You're just done with him.
It's cool.
You're allowed to be done with him.
And I'm gonna tell you down the road,
this is gonna come back and it's gonna hurt. And I'm going to tell you down the road, this is going to come back.
It's going to hurt.
And so whatever you can process and deal with now and let go of,
here's something I think that you're carrying around that would probably be great for your soul.
And you should forgive your dad and put that brick down.
Stop carrying it.
I think you've been carrying your old man for a
long, long, long time. And he's obviously doesn't have the tools and some equipment and he's got
some challenges that he's worked through and he's not going to change. And so at the end of the day,
you're carrying around the stuff that's not going to make any difference to him.
So I'd set it down and you can set it down by writing him that letter,
by calling him and looking him in the eye,
by saying what you need to say or saying nothing
and just saying, I'm putting that down.
I love my dad and he's drawn his boundaries
and so I'm going to draw mine.
But that's hard, man.
That's hard, hard, hard, hard, hard.
In the last year, last two years,
I've heard more stories of people
coming to terms with their parents and who they are and their mortality or their idiocracy or whatever it happens to be.
I'm sorry.
But to answer your original question, you're not broken, Alex.
You're not evil.
You're not mean.
It's okay to not like your dad, especially if he's abusive, especially if he was ugly to your mom, especially fill in the blank.
I always want people to be respectful and treat their parents with dignity.
And it's always okay to just sit down and say,
I miss my dad.
Where were you?
That's okay too.
Thank you so much for that call, Alex.
Whew, it was a heavy one today, man.
So as we wrap up, James has been hassling me
and hassling me.
And I don't say that lightly lightly james because you're not
a hassler you have been beating me up about do my favorite song do my favorite song do my favorite
song do my favorite song here it is america here it is jeez james this is like not even
go with the show but james is like i'm the producer i get whatever song i want like fine
this is called gaslighting, guys.
This is what gaslighting is.
I don't even know what that means. I do know what that means, but
it's from
the Rose soundtrack.
From James' best singer
of all time, Bette Midler, The Rose.
And it goes like this.
This is for you, James Childs.
Some say love
it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Ooh, James.
This actually sounds like a My Chemical Romance song.
Some say love, it's a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love is a flower.
In you, it's only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance. It's the one who
won't be taken, who cannot seem to give, and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.
Far beneath the bitter snow, James, lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring
becomes the rose.
It's for you, Jimmy Childs.
I've never heard that,
but she's the original
emo artist, apparently.
James Childs
and his love for the rose
right here on
The Dr. John Deloney Show.