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207. A Caregiver's Journey Through Love and Loss with Tony Stewart
38 Plays3 days ago
Tony Stewart has made award-winning films for colleges and universities,, written software that received rave reviews in The New York Times and the New York Daily News, designed a grants-management application that was used by three of the five largest charities in the world, and led the development of an international standard for the messages involved in buying and selling advertisements, for which he spoke at conferences across Europe and North America. Carrying the Tiger is his first published book.
Tony and his late wife Lynn Kotula, a painter, traveled extensively in India and Southeast Asia, staying in small hotels off the beaten track and eating delicious food with their fingers when cutlery wasn’t available. Inspired by the experience of writing Carrying the Tiger, Tony is now studying to become a Certified Grief Educator.
Show Highlights:
•Tony Stewart, author of Carrying the Tiger, shares his deeply personal memoir, chronicling his wife Lynn's 6.5-year battle with stage four cancer and his profound grief journey.
•Discover how Tony's daily writings to friends on CaringBridge evolved into his book, serving as a "love story told almost entirely by actions" that allowed Lynn to live fully despite her illness.
•Hear Tony describe the final weeks of Lynn's life in home hospice as "the best two weeks of my life," a "miraculous" time of deep physical care and spiritual connection.
•Learn about Lynn's powerful and comforting last words: "Don't bother me. I've got a lot to do," which left Tony with a sense of mystery and spiritual insight.
•Tony bravely discusses finding new love after immense loss, and the complexities of honoring Lynn's memory while opening his heart to a new relationship.
•Explore the meaningful origin of the book's title, "Carrying the Tiger," which stems from a Tai Chi concept of facing and making challenges less threatening.
•Gain insight into why Carrying the Tiger is described by readers as an inspiring and joy-filled experience, rather than a depressing one, despite its difficult subject matter.
Reachout to Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest or have her as a guest https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Reflections on Meaningful Experiences
00:00:01
Speaker
I felt that this was the most meaningful thing I had ever done in my life. I had basically, I had almost stopped working. The pandemic had, had, had largely shut down the work that I had been doing the last few years.
00:00:13
Speaker
Um, so I was able to really focus in and i took a leave of absence from my job during those last months. Um, but I felt in a way that my entire life had led up to this and I've done all these cool projects in my life, but that helping Lynn to die with grace was the most meaningful thing I had ever done.
00:00:34
Speaker
And i it just gave me great joy.
Introduction to 'Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between'
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:04
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys.
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right into today's episode.
Introducing Tony Stewart and 'Carrying the Tiger'
00:01:26
Speaker
I am excited for you guys to listen in today as I chat with Tony Stewart. He is the author of Carrying the Tiger.
00:01:37
Speaker
And i am like, you the author of your own writing, basically. It's a compilation of your writings and I can't wait to find out more about how it came about.
00:01:49
Speaker
But it is your very heartfelt story, real time, really, of your own memoir of going through the death of your then wife,
Finding Meaning in Grief
00:02:01
Speaker
Lynn. And so I am happy to have you here on the podcast, Tony.
00:02:06
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you, Kendra. I'm very happy to be here with you and looking forward to our conversation. Yes, and and it's nice to be able to hold space and say the names of those that we are remembering and honoring, because the book is not only really about you sharing your your story and your process, right, of going through your wife's diagnosis and death, but also really a way of carrying her legacy through in this book, would you say?
00:02:38
Speaker
I think absolutely. I've been taking a ah course to become a certified grief educator, which I never would have imagined that I would do, but I've started it actually since I began promoting Carrying the Tiger and having conversations like this.
00:02:55
Speaker
And i've I've really so, i found it so rewarding to talk about what Lynn and I went through and then my grief and then how I came out of grief, which I know is very much like the title of your podcast, ah I found it so rewarding that I've actually decided that this is something I want to know more about and want to be able to keep doing.
Personal Paths to Meaning
00:03:17
Speaker
So in a way, this whole project is about making meaning out of what I lost and carrying Lynn's memory in my heart, you know carrying Lynn in my heart and going forward and trying to do something useful for other people as a result.
00:03:34
Speaker
You know, i I love that you're saying that because it's a lot of times so when we go through really hard things, it's hard to, but first off, when we're in the midst of it, we don't like to hear about the silver linings. We don't like people to be saying,
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, at least or na na na or, you know, all these kind of things that just make it be like, no, that is not not what I need to hear. And but but really, when we've gone through something that.
00:04:05
Speaker
There are so many beautiful things that can be born of that. And like what you're saying right now of you even wanting to learn more about being a grief educator, this would have not even happened had you not been through the grief you went through, right? So there's these learnings and growth that come from it if we want if we want it to be that way.
00:04:29
Speaker
If we want it. ah I certainly wouldn't say to everyone listening to our conversation, Oh, after suffering a terrible loss, you should run out and become, or a few years after, you should run out and become a grief educator. That's crazy.
00:04:43
Speaker
ah Some subset of us find that that's how we want to make meaning.
Dealing with Grief Differently
00:04:48
Speaker
ah There's a whole book called Finding Meaning by by David Kessler up of grief.com, who's teaching the course that I'm taking.
00:04:55
Speaker
And so i've i've been I've read his book and it's all about how the last stage of... Well, finding of making something good out of your loss that you're going to live with and carry forward is usually most of us try to find some meaning in it.
00:05:13
Speaker
and some so And that can be totally different for everyone. In in in your case, here you are hosting a podcast. You're the podcast, exactly. Exactly. And in your case, that you wrote a book.
00:05:24
Speaker
I wrote a book. I wrote a book. And then I found that to be such a rewarding process and then and then sharing it with the world, even more rewarding than I ever anticipated, that now I'm thinking, wow, there's more here than I than i could have imagined and I want to keep going.
00:05:43
Speaker
Without knowing at this minute between you and me, i don't know who I'll be next year, but um I want to keep trying. And sometimes people that even take these courses are are there to really learn even more about their own grief a lot of times. and And then in the process of understanding their own grief, end up realizing, oh my goodness, there are so many other people that are going through this that I can help as well to...
Lynn's Cancer Diagnosis and Adaptation
00:06:12
Speaker
to navigate, which is why a lot of us end up doing what we do. it's Because it does feel so isolating. So let's talk about your grief itself and the creation of the book.
00:06:25
Speaker
um It's going to be a little jim jump jumping around because, of course, people will have to read the book to really know fully everything about it, but we'll be jumping in and out of the storyline of your life with Lynn as well as developing the book. So...
00:06:43
Speaker
When Lynn passed, she passed in 2021. Is that correct? That's correct. February. 2021. diagnosis was, her process was what? of seven-year process? Six and a half years. We were incredibly lucky, considering that from the minute we knew about it, she had Stage four non-smokers lung cancer, and there's no cure.
00:07:06
Speaker
ah and We were incredibly lucky because most people with this diagnosis, even with chemo, even with some of the best drugs that are out there, die in less than two years.
00:07:17
Speaker
ah But we stumbled into a clinical trial of something that worked really well for Lynn and basically held down her lung tumors for an extra four or five years. And that's how we had as much time as we had to go through ah the the initial fear, terror, navigating the healthcare system, trying to figure out what are we going to do? How are we going to get more time?
00:07:40
Speaker
We moved past that because it turned out we got more time, which is a blessing. and we And we went into several years of of learning to live with her cancer and what that felt like for us.
00:07:53
Speaker
So I should back up. So Carrying the Tiger is the book. And the first part of it is ah subtitled or at least that's on the cover it says living with cancer. It's in three parts, living with cancer, dying with grace, finding joy while grieving.
00:08:06
Speaker
And that first part is about our journey those first four or five years. as you were navigating and the, the process of accompanying somebody going through, through grief, through their own mortality is not only are you and navigating your grief, but as you're walking alongside someone with a diagnosis and seeing their own process,
00:08:31
Speaker
How was that for you? And how was that for Lynn of her own grief journey? Because, well, since you're taking Kessler's course, he probably has talked about a little bit of the five stages of grief of how that particular aspect was mainly for someone who is confronted with with death, how someone that's confronted with death, how they go through their own stages.
00:08:56
Speaker
Did you... Did you see a lot of the of the different processes and emotions show up in lint in her journey?
Managing Life and Communication with Cancer
00:09:07
Speaker
um Not quite like that.
00:09:12
Speaker
I would have, first of all, Kessler himself, even having co-written the book about stage of the Greek, would be very quick to tell you we don't go through those in some natural process. Everyone is different, et cetera. Absolutely. Yeah. That's something I say this all the time in the podcast. I'm like, I actually don't. I'm like, I don't think I've ever reached this one at all. Right. It doesn't work that way.
00:09:34
Speaker
And he is quick to tell you that. Yes, yes, yes. So if we go, if we wind back to the day that the phone rang and the doctor called and said, Lynn, you've got tumors, which you know shattered us.
00:09:46
Speaker
um We reacted according to our personalities kind of very, very differently. I mean, we we'd been together 29 years at that point, very tight. um And Lynn was an artist, a painter.
00:09:59
Speaker
And that's a a big part of her personality, very open, very warm, lot of friends. And I had done all these different things. I'd made movies for a while. I developed computer software.
00:10:10
Speaker
ah I ran big projects, very different life and personality than Lynn. ah And how we responded in the first couple of weeks was kind of reflects our personalities.
00:10:21
Speaker
I started Googling like crazy. Like, okay, what are we going to do here? I'm like project planning. How do we, who's the best doctor we can get to starting with the one our on college that that our GP referred us to, but then, okay, can we get a second opinion? What else is out there? Things like that.
00:10:38
Speaker
And in the course of doing all of this Googling, I was reading many, many cancer related websites where people would post their own stories. And there are a lot of very sad stories. And people would post about their treatment and say, it stopped working and now I don't know where to turn.
00:10:54
Speaker
I could deal with this because I was like focused type A left brain versus right brain, whatever you want to call it. I could deal with this because I was just skimming past those emotionally difficult things and looking for the information I needed.
00:11:08
Speaker
The minute Lynn, who was actually living with incurable cancer, started seeing that, It tore her apart. She got scared. and And basically she and her doctor said, I'm not reading these websites.
00:11:20
Speaker
I'm not going on the computer about this. And what she did was focus on living her life, which I highly recommend. Um, Everything we did for the next few years was about enabling Lynn to live her life as fully as possible despite having this death sentence hanging over her.
00:11:42
Speaker
She went to her studio and painted. We started posting on CaringBridge, which is a private – CaringBridge.org is a private is a website. where you can set up a private like Facebook sort of thing to communicate with your friends when you're going through something like this.
00:11:57
Speaker
We set up a private site where we could post and communicate with Lynn's many friends. I call them Lynn's friends because 90% of them came from her classic male-female kind of partnership. um But I wrote many of the posts. That sounds familiar, by the way. My husband, he's he edits this. He'll he'll he'll he'll ah and admire the honesty on your part too.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah. yeah So I was in, I was writing posts every day or two about what had happened, the doctors we had seen, things like that, purely to keep our friends informed.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I should say, this is actually the origin seed for the book, even though I had no idea at the time that there would ever be a book. These were for our friends. um And this allowed Lynn not to have to write those posts, although she did read all of them.
00:12:44
Speaker
And when we published them, she would sit with me and we would see the comments come back from our friends, which might be just simple things like, you know, we're with you or, oh, that sounds hard or good luck tomorrow.
00:12:57
Speaker
And they gave us huge strength because we were constantly aware that this community of friends knew what we were going through. But the upshot was that when she saw them in person, because she she wasn't bedridden in and out of hospital several times, but she was leading her life in between.
00:13:13
Speaker
When she saw her friends in person, she didn't have to talk with them about her cancer. They didn't have to ask her about her cancer. They had read it. They had read it.
00:13:24
Speaker
This was a huge gift that we didn't
Maintaining Normalcy Through Passion
00:13:27
Speaker
anticipate. that is That is ah genius right now, what you're saying. And it's because so many times somebody that's going through that, not only themselves, but the people around them, don't know how to interact with them. And so this also just gave space for these other moments in her life to just be, quote unquote, normal, normal.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yes. talk about the weather if she wanted to. Yeah, she would show up. On the days she felt really crummy, she wouldn't go out. And when you read Carrying the Tiger, you will find long sections where I say Lynn hasn't left the house in three days. She's been feeling so crummy.
00:14:05
Speaker
That happened. But in between, when she had the energy, when she could which she wanted to, she would go to her painting studio and paint. She would go downtown and to art openings and things and see her friends. And she would walk in with this big smile and friends, even reading the posts, didn't realize what an effort it took because this is how she wanted to project and interact with them.
00:14:26
Speaker
And they would talk about the paintings they were looking at or their friend what their friends were up to, things like that. At home, Lynn had never, prior to this, liked watching TV.
00:14:38
Speaker
And we cuddled on the couch every night and watched shows on Netflix or whatever. It was just, this is like, this is what she wanted. This is escapism at night, painting in her studio, seeing her friends and letting me communicate with everyone about her cancer.
00:14:55
Speaker
that's that's That was basically- The way that she- The way that she navigated it. Navigated And the way that then you- ah like you know, helped her in that process too, by you being the voice in and being the one that would write.
00:15:10
Speaker
yeah So for you, as you are then, i always ask like people's tools as they're navigating grief, you then were writing throughout all this time and being able to process. So that was one of the tools as you're processing it.
00:15:27
Speaker
Then when she passed, did that continue then being, of course you have the book, but I mean, did that continue being then what you were doing as well in order to process your grief after her passing?
00:15:40
Speaker
Yes. And I will say that the whole first five years, I wouldn't think of it although i I wouldn't think of it as processing my grief for those first five years. We were living in hope that we were going to have an unknown number of good years together. Yes, there's anticipatory grief that is hanging over you the whole time.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yes, I was having all kinds of difficult emotions and feelings during those years, but it isn't the same as the grief feelings that came later. It's more of the what it's like to be a caregiver and what it's like to live with cancer, which would be a different podcast.
00:16:14
Speaker
conversation. um During those five or six years, as I wrote and wrote and wrote, I kept getting these responses from friends encouraging me.
00:16:25
Speaker
I would say encouraging me to be more open. But what actually happened was I felt more and more like what I wanted to talk about was our emotional feeling of what it was like, especially when we weren't chasing a new doctor that day, when the drugs were working or kind of working, and but we were getting really depressed.
00:16:42
Speaker
One day I put up a post about how we were getting really depressed. It just felt like slogging through a swamp. And this was a watershed post for me because I almost didn't publish it. I had never written anything like that. It had been more factual.
00:16:56
Speaker
And now I didn't have anything factual to say. Nothing has changed, but it feels really crummy. And I got back these wonderful comments from friends saying basically, thank you for sharing what's really happening.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's not only good news. So that sort of thing happened. Then eventually the drug stopped working, stopped holding down the cancer. The cancer grew. We decided, Lynn decided eventually after a very tough year, 2020, to go for home hospice, to stop treating, to die at home.
Documenting Hospice Experiences
00:17:31
Speaker
And now, of course, we really knew this is it. Our journey is coming to an end. And I found I couldn't stop writing. I was writing during those weeks of home hospice, which was also during COVID.
00:17:44
Speaker
um We did have aides coming in to help, ah but we were very ah isolated in the sense of you know there weren't a lot of visitors coming through the apartment. ah I was waking up in the middle of the night, night after night and writing posts about what that felt like day by day.
00:18:02
Speaker
And it was such a special time. I mean, it if you've ever had the gift, the blessing of accompanying someone you love through his or her final weeks, it is ah it is miraculous. it is Those are the best two years of my two weeks of my life.
00:18:20
Speaker
The best two weeks of my life. I love that you're saying that because it is not so often. I felt that, well, with my mom, we were present when she passed.
Spiritual Reflections on Death
00:18:30
Speaker
And it was something that was just, I have felt it was one of the most spiritual experiences yeah that I have witnessed. Now, it's not necessarily the case for everyone probably, but it was for me. So to hear that for you, it was also, please talk more about that of why why why did it feel that way?
00:18:52
Speaker
um Multiple, multiple levels. First, I became the most true caregiver I had ever been because she was losing her body.
00:19:07
Speaker
her and increasing And so increasingly, i felt like I was bathing her. i was helping her to and from the toilet. And then when she couldn't make it to the toilet, to and from the commode.
00:19:18
Speaker
And then when she couldn't get out of it bed, We had a female urinal that I would hold against her. She'd wake me in the middle of the night and say, I need to pee. And I would hold this against her and stroke her leg and breathe the scent of her leg.
00:19:32
Speaker
And I felt so close to her. Just this physical caring. um
00:19:42
Speaker
Meanwhile, we were having conversations in the first, until it was too until she couldn't anymore. because the tumors were going into her brain at that point. And even though the hospice only lasted a few weeks, um she was steadily regressing in her ability to talk, to find words. her Her energy was disappearing, all of that.
00:20:03
Speaker
But in the first week or two, we had these conversations about, what does it feel like to know you are dying? She was with me and actively dying and knew it.
00:20:17
Speaker
And she didn't say anything especially amazing or profound that you would quote in a book, although I quoted what she said. She said small things like, I can't believe this is really happening.
00:20:30
Speaker
And I'm going to miss you. And I'm going to miss the cats. She gave me permission to have another girlfriend, which was huge later on. um And then as ah as As she drifted away into this place she was going, she said a few things in the last few days of her life when she was hardly talking anymore.
00:20:51
Speaker
One time, the last time ah that I tried to give her water, which at that point we were down to a few drops out of an eyedropper into her mouth, she finally closed her mouth.
00:21:05
Speaker
And wouldn't this was the first time, i would say finally, as in after the two weeks, she we had reached the point where she didn't want water. And we had agreed way at the beginning of this, we talked about Lynn, I said, when you reach the point that you're ready to go, just stop eating.
00:21:23
Speaker
I'll know what you mean. We're not going to force anything on you. know And she had already stopped eating and now she stopped drinking. And what she said was, suddenly, don't bother me.
00:21:35
Speaker
I've got a lot to do.
00:21:38
Speaker
Those are her last words. It was about two days before she died or one day. Don't bother me. I've got a lot to do. She was lying there, mostly looking at the ceiling in some place that she was traveling to.
00:21:53
Speaker
That you you, this is something, I know that this is not what this conversation is about, but that aspect of what happens after we die, that what you're saying about a lot to do.
00:22:08
Speaker
My sister dreamt with my mom and it was something she, might and it was one, and I hope my sister's okay with me sharing, but she asked her like, mom, what, are do you miss us? Like, it was like something is like, I do, but I am so,
00:22:21
Speaker
so busy. I have so much to do. And another, another friend whose friend died when she was really young, like 18, her, that this friend's dad also dreamt something similar like that. And it was that her, his daughter was like, with like a, a pay, like a bucket kind of thing and putting like things on it.
00:22:44
Speaker
And she, and she was like, no, I'm so busy. There's so much work to do. again, it's all this continuing of the, of the souls of just, and it, it brings so much comfort to some extent to know that that energy and that they're there. However we want to say about what our, and what our soul is, but that that energy continues to influence in some shape or form our own, our own reality and that it continues to have an impact in our lives.
00:23:17
Speaker
I think it's so comforting, right? Yes. I found it incredibly comforting as well as like mysterious and the spiritual, but mysterious.
00:23:30
Speaker
You know, what is this lot to do that she's lying absolutely still on the bed. She stopped moving. She's looking up at the ceiling most of the time. Sometimes at me, she was still responding perfectly.
00:23:40
Speaker
physically when I had to roll her over so that the aid could wipe her bottom, things like that. And she actually kind of clung to me still. She was able to do that. And then she passed.
00:23:51
Speaker
Then she went. um You know, makes me want to cry.
00:24:00
Speaker
I would wish that we could all, as the loved ones left behind, have that experience. I was so lucky because of course, You can die in a hospital. You can die in a car crash. You can die in the middle of the night unexpectedly.
00:24:16
Speaker
All these things happen. In this case, I got to experience what I call in the subtitle, the second subtitle of Carrying the Tiger, Dying with Grace.
00:24:27
Speaker
Living with cancer, then dying with grace. Tony, i I know that for your experience of being a caretaker and really for the love of your you know love of your life and literally your life, because she had been someone you'd been for when she passed it had been 29 years you guys had been together.
00:24:46
Speaker
By the time she passed, it was more like 35 years. 35 years. Oh my God. Oh, so 29 by the time. So 35 years, this has been the person that you've been with. And for you to be a caretaker was the ultimate way of showing that love back to her ah yeah in in your case.
00:25:06
Speaker
A lot of times caretakers... It could be the other way around. It could, a lot of times, depending on our personalities, things come up in us that are and maybe not the prettiest, the prettiest, you know, the impatience. i know that i I always say this, even when my kids aren't sick, I'm like, I'm not the best. I'm not the best caretaker when someone's sick. Because I'm like, I want you to get better. Take take this.
00:25:31
Speaker
Take this. You know, it's going to make it. if the person doesn't take it, I'm like, I get frustrated, right? Yeah. so Right. so So all these other emotions that I find out about myself in that process.
00:25:42
Speaker
So it's just so beautiful to see that you really were so selfless and just really focusing on her during that time. And that's what was so cathartic and life-changing for you.
00:25:54
Speaker
I felt that this was the most meaningful thing I had ever done in my life. I had basically, I had almost stopped working. The pandemic had, had, had largely shut down the work that I had been doing the last few years.
00:26:07
Speaker
Um, so I was able to really focus in and i took a leave of absence from my job during those last months. Um, but I felt in a way that my entire life had led up to this and I've done all these cool projects in my life, but that helping Lynn,
00:26:24
Speaker
to die with grace was the most meaningful thing I had ever done. And i it just gave me great joy. Oh, thank you for sharing that, Tony. Tony, as i want to i want to hear more about how you guys met, if you can share your own story, your own love story of how you met.
Serendipity in Meeting Lynn
00:26:45
Speaker
And then now, as you are now in this new stage of your life of now meeting, of being with someone and getting to find love again, kind of weave that in and honoring Lynn's memory as well. Tell us how you guys met.
00:27:02
Speaker
I'm laughing because I feel like, well, I could write a 300-page book just to answer that question. Oh, really? Well, I don't have 300 pages. we don't have 300 pages. So when Lynn and I met, I was 29 years old. I had been married in my 20s and my wife had left me amicably.
00:27:19
Speaker
been married in my twenty s and had my wife had left me amicably I was on the rebound and I was trying to prove to myself that I was still an attractive guy and that that my life wasn't over.
00:27:32
Speaker
ah It happened that Lynn and I both swam at the Columbia University swimming pool at the same time of day every day, swam there for exercises. At that point, I was still, i was sitting under semi-false pretenses because it was my ex-wife who had the alumni relationship.
00:27:49
Speaker
It turned out later, Lynn was also there under false pretenses pretending to be someone else. what What was hers? I need to hear that. What was hers? She and a friend, ah a friend of hers had gone to Barnard, and which is in part of Columbia University up here.
00:28:07
Speaker
And Lynn had gotten a master's downtown at NYU. Now, Lynn was living right next to Columbia. Her friend was living downtown next to NYU. And they swapped gym identities. They swapped identities enough so that each could go to the other person, pretend to be the other person and get like cheap- That's just genius. Well, yeah, but that's genius. You can't do it anymore. The world has changed. No, yes, yes, it has. but but The ID was a piece of cardboard, you know? But they were they it was smart in case if they lived near to the other ones.
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah. So, so I met Lynn, uh, because I, I, I noticed one day that she was, she, she passed, she crossed in front of me in the lane, in the swimming pool. I was at, stopped at the end.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I said to her, why were you swimming in that lane over there? You usually swim in this other one to my right. The lanes were sort of organized by speed. And she said, well, I went to the slower lane to kick. to do use my kickboard.
00:29:03
Speaker
Didn't say anything else to each other. The next day, she was at the end of the lane in the swimming pool doing some leg stretches. And I stopped and talked to her again. And we started to have a real conversation.
00:29:14
Speaker
And the the the twist to this is, I was talking to like every pretty girl I could. It didn't matter. i had been I was noticing them, talking to them. I would have said the same thing to anyone else who was crossing in front of me and was a woman of an eligible age. As Austin Powers would say, it's like you still had your mojo. You just wanted to prove you still had it. and ah Lynn was older than me and at a point when she thought she was never going to be in another serious relationship and like looked up, her eyes widened, as metaphorically, and this guy, this guy has been paying so much attention to me.
00:29:50
Speaker
So she deliberately stopped and did those leg stretches the next day to give me a chance to talk to her She never did leg stretches. And it worked. But she didn't know that I would have talked that way to anybody.
00:30:02
Speaker
Oh, my goodness. That is how we met. That's how you met. and that how How long after did you marry? We married ah three years later, two and a half years later. Wow. That's fantastic.
00:30:17
Speaker
Now together, in those 35 years that you guys were together, had you ever experienced other types of grief or grief as a couple that you had already been able to hold space for each other in that grief?
Profound Grief and Loss
00:30:34
Speaker
I would say yes. Although looking back on it now, I mean, during the years we were together, my father died and I was very, very close to my father. We were with him when he died.
00:30:44
Speaker
My ah elder brother died. We were in the hospital with him when he died. um And Lynn's parents both died. So, but e none of those grief experiences were as shattering as what happened for me after Lynn died.
00:31:03
Speaker
ah some Even when her mother died, and and I think for most most, my mother, by the way, is still alive. um But for most of us, losing your mother is a very powerful experience, typically more than your father, just to generalize.
00:31:19
Speaker
um Lynn was in shock a little bit, but it wasn't the kind of shattering grief that I know some people, many people go through upon losing their mother or their father. So I would say little yes, a little no.
00:31:32
Speaker
We definitely held space for each other. We definitely comfort each other. We definitely supported each other. Lynn had to go take care of her father a lot over the following few years. Her mother was the more together of that couple, and she was the one who died first.
00:31:45
Speaker
And now he was living alone in New Jersey, and it's in the rural house in New Jersey, and needed a lot of help. And Lynn took the lead among her siblings on organizing that help. which was a way of dealing with her grief yeah when you think about it. i actually Yeah, she was you know taking action on it.
00:32:01
Speaker
the The conversations that you guys had, did you ever talk about your own beliefs about what happened? Since you've like had experience grief, did you talk about your own beliefs about what happens when we die? And so can you share if you if you ever heard what what she felt about death?
00:32:21
Speaker
She felt. Neither of us was at all religious in the traditional sense. ah But Lynn hated labels. She wouldn't let you call her an atheist or an agnostic. Her parents were both atheists and proud of it. so But then they joined a yeah a Unitarian congregation.
00:32:39
Speaker
um Lynn basically said, I don't know. this is this was This was her... ah her her Her belief was there's more to the world than we understand.
00:32:55
Speaker
I have no idea what happens when you die. She certainly didn't believe in a formal heaven, you know, the the the the kind of thing that is described in scripture.
00:33:05
Speaker
ah But she was open to the idea that your soul, your spirit could go anywhere and do anything or possibly the that basically you go to sleep and it all blacks out and there's nothing.
00:33:19
Speaker
We didn't know. Didn't know. And the reality is that we only know what we are really told or shared. Like, so the reality is that we don't really know until we know. There's a sense of feeling. For me, it's a sense of feeling and ah the knowing, quote unquote, ah but it's more of that feeling, right, that you have.
00:33:41
Speaker
Now, since her passing, how has your connection continued with her ah along the way as you've also then met other people in your
Finding Love After Loss
00:33:51
Speaker
life. So share how you've continued that connection and at the same time, opening your heart to new love.
00:33:58
Speaker
That's a really good question and is in fact the heart of the last part of my, of carrying the tiger, ah the part subtitled finding joy while grieving.
00:34:09
Speaker
um Lynn died. I was shattered. I couldn't do anything. For months, really, as, as, as as as happens.
00:34:20
Speaker
um And then, and I discovered that I cried huge amounts, ah that I'm a crier, ah much more than I ever imagined.
00:34:32
Speaker
And I went through all the kinds of things that you hear about. And I i write about them in the book, what it felt like for me. But the sobbing at the sink, looking at myself in the mirror saying, i should have died with you. We should have gone together. It's not fair to be left alone here without you.
00:34:48
Speaker
All of that. ah And then about six weeks, two months after Lynn died, while I was preparing her Zoom memorial, which caused me to cry all the time. I'm looking for the photos to show in the slideshow and things like that.
00:35:02
Speaker
Wonderful tears. I wouldn't have have it any other way. um i started ah ah invited an acquaintance to Lynn's Zoom memorial, ah whom I hadn't seen in decades, but her father had lived near here and was one of Lynn's doctors, nothing to do with cancer before that, but practiced right near here. So we had stayed in touch with this woman's father and stepmother, and the stepmother died recently, and we had gone to their memorial, so I invited Cordelia to Lynn's memorial.
00:35:33
Speaker
And Cordelia wrote me an email thanking me and basically saying, oh, dear, dear Tony, this means a lot to me. My husband of 32 years just told me he was leaving me.
00:35:47
Speaker
um And I'm simplifying the story here somewhat. There were a few emails before that, but I wrote back, wow, you're going through the loss of your spouse just as I'm going through the loss of mine.
00:36:04
Speaker
And we connected over that. And we started writing and then calling each other as someone who was deeply grieving. Her stepmother had actually died just a few months before, and she loved her stepmother. And now her husband had left her, and they were trying to figure out how to divide everything up.
00:36:21
Speaker
And they have kids, ah young adult kids. And um Cordelia and I were talking every day. multiple times a day. i was I really lived for it.
00:36:32
Speaker
While I was preparing Lynn's memorial, i doing yeah I wasn't going to let go of Lynn. Lynn was the love of my life. There was just no question about that.
00:36:43
Speaker
But then one day Cordelia stopped in the middle of a sentence on the phone and said, Tony, are you feeling what I'm feeling? Because I've got a big crush on you. And I had to admit that, yes, I felt the same way.
00:36:59
Speaker
So this was immensely confusing. Lynn had given me permission and encouraged me to find to have another life, to have love if it came to me. But in that conversation, which was actually on the first night of hospice, when we knew she was going to die, one of the most meaningful conversations of my life, but we imagined it would be years.
00:37:21
Speaker
And here I was just a few months later, realizing that I'm attracted to this woman whom I'd never met in person, barely knew what she looked like except a couple of photos. um And she came and she lived a thousand miles away.
00:37:35
Speaker
She came to New York a month or two later and the physical attraction was very strong and we went to bed together. Which I should add, now that I've been studying grief and all, I understand that it's actually so surprisingly common, or maybe not surprisingly, for people who've gone through the the long decline and loss to want the physical pleasure again and to want- Connection. to Connection. connection I'm you talking about the intimacy and the connection.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah. And we certainly wanted that. But dammit, Lynn's urn was sitting on my dresser. here cor The day Cordelia and I first went to bed, I looked up and there was Lynn's urn sitting on the dresser. And no matter what Lynn had said, this this freaked me out.
00:38:23
Speaker
I didn't kick Cordy out of bed at that moment. I tried to hide in myself how confused I was. I had a therapist. I went and talked to my therapist. And then Cordy and I talked about it.
00:38:35
Speaker
um I would say it took me two years of continuing to see Cordy in pieces. she As I said, she didn't live in New York, so we would see each other when she came to New York, and and but she did a family on the East Coast.
00:38:50
Speaker
um It took me about two years of multiple, pulling her to me, pushing her away from me, being annoyed by her, being annoyed by all the ways she wasn't Lynn, and she's never going to be Lynn.
00:39:05
Speaker
Some of the things that most attracted me to Lynn, which are her ease of being in the world, her quick sense of humor, the silly little jokes she would just spontaneously make that worked perfectly for me, that's not Cordy.
00:39:17
Speaker
Cordy's very different. We were attracted in multiple ways and she's very deep and she loved asking me about Lynn, which as you I'm sure know, as anyone who is listening to grief podcasts on a regular basis or is grieving knows, one of the most valuable, wonderful things you can do for someone who's grieving is ask them about the person they've lost.
00:39:38
Speaker
And Lynn, to I mean, Cordy totally didn't know Lynn. So what she wanted in those first in that first those first months, what she wanted in those first months was to ask me about Lynn and hear about Lynn and who was this woman that I loved so much?
00:39:52
Speaker
So building on that foundation over a period of about two years, I slowly learned how to navigate the bumps and confusions and hold on to Lynn and And I did that at the at the end of the book. when you When you reach the end of carrying the tiger, you find this point when I wrote a letter to Lynn telling her that I would hold her in my heart forever.
00:40:17
Speaker
I have photos of her around the house. I have her paintings all around the house. I'm not letting go of those. And the day we buried Lynn's urn, I put that letter in the urn with it.
00:40:30
Speaker
I mean, in the ground with the urn. As a way of saying, I love you, i will love you forever, but i I need to now find a way to move on and be open to whatever Cordy may bring me.
00:40:44
Speaker
And that's the last part of my story. And it still continues. What I love is what you said, first off, you guys connected in the grief. And the fact that you honored that what she had been experiencing of her husband leaving was also grief is huge. Because there was this, a lot of times this...
00:41:07
Speaker
ah comparison in life of what type of what, when someone's grieving, I was like, well, it's just, you know, you lost your job. Like that is not something to grieve about. It's not because I have this other thing like this, one upping somebody else's yeah experience.
Honoring Different Types of Grief
00:41:25
Speaker
And the fact that you were able to honor her grief as what you were going through and connecting that, I think that was really, really something very special because to be seen in your grief is so important. And you guys saw each other in that grief. And the fact that she honored that your love would get continue also for Lynn and not and wanting to know more about her is just so, so, so, so great as well, because it just, there's no competition, you know? it like Yeah. and the comp The competition was all in my head.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The competition was in my head and occasionally i would push Cordy away or reveal to her how much I felt for Lynn. And I had never said such strong words to Cordy. I wasn't ready to say, I love you to Cordy.
00:42:14
Speaker
Actually, I'm not. Lynn and I were pretty unromantic. and rarely said I love you to each other until the day ah that we learned she had cancer, at which point we started admitting, having been together 29 years, we started admitting, actually, this is deep love. You're the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. And those kinds of lovely things that most couples say to each other a lot more often and starting a lot earlier, but that day they don't come easily to me saying I love And I certainly wasn't going to start saying I love you to Cordy During those few years, while I was trying to figure out where to put my love for Lynn, how to hang on to it, i'm I'm not going to walk away from it.
00:42:54
Speaker
I mean, look, I've written this whole book, which is in large part a love letter to Lynn. You really understand her and what we had by the end of Carrying the Tiger. No, it's just, you know, I i always feel it's like ah i ah have kids. And so when ah ah when you're going to have a second one, sometimes you feel like, my gosh, how am I going to love this other baby? Like, if I already have this one, like, is it?
00:43:18
Speaker
It's not going to. It's your. heart just grows bigger and then you have room. So you don't have to put Lynn anywhere else other than staying in your heart and it still make room for Cordelia and for, you know, so that's, that's what is so beautiful about love. It's not finite. It, you know, and it, and it also doesn't have to be something you say in words. Like ah you said, you showed your love,
00:43:44
Speaker
to each other, you and Lynn, through your entire lives by the respect and the way that you treat each other. And, you know, so they didn't have to say, i love you to know that you were you loved each other either.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yes. One of my absolute favorite ah comments in the Amazon reviews is from someone who read the book and said some beautiful things and then basically said, this book is a wonderful love story told almost entirely by actions.
00:44:14
Speaker
It's the story of me caring for Lynn, of helping her die, of of how she responded to me, of how she cared for me when the caregiving – I had a breakdown after about a year of trying to hold it all together in the first year of caring for Lynn.
00:44:27
Speaker
And then she ended up caring for me, despite being quite ill at that week. Yeah. That's the love story. It's what do. It's because love is an action.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, love is an action. It's not a word. Yes, it's we we think of it only as when we say it to somebody, but it is. it's It's an action. So I love that that was
'Carrying the Tiger' Availability and Inspiration
00:44:49
Speaker
your review. So talking about the book and the reviews, let's tell people how they can get Carrying the Tiger.
00:44:55
Speaker
So Carrying the Tiger is in wide distribution. You can get it on Amazon. Just search for Carrying the Tiger or any of its competitors, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, all those places.
00:45:07
Speaker
ah It's available in as an audio book. So it's on Spotify and Audible and as an e-book. So it's on various sites like Kobo that carry e-books. The easiest way, other than just going to Amazon and searching for Carrying the Tiger, is to go to my website, TonyStewartAuthor.com.
00:45:27
Speaker
And right on the homepage, if you click the order the book button, it takes you to a page where I've put links to all of these locations. So you can go straight to it on Amazon or Kobo or Bookshop or Barnes & Noble or wherever you want wherever.
00:45:42
Speaker
audible And it'll take you right to Tiger's page and you can download it. And that's what I'll link then below in the show notes will be your web website so that people can go straight there, be able to know.
00:45:53
Speaker
And who knows in the future more now that you already are Tony Stewart author, more books to come now that you've opened this new found love for writing. And it was a way of expressing. we see We'll see what, well, you said that it could be a 300-page book just to share how you met with Lynn. So that might be the prequel we'll be looking for.
00:46:17
Speaker
and So be on the lookout for the prequel ah of the Carrying the Tiger. Birthing the Tiger or something. Birthing the Tiger, yeah. And let's start, Carrying the Tiger, Tiger, was this, the representation of this title has to do with cancer? Can you share the chew choice of the word of the title of the book?
00:46:36
Speaker
Absolutely. It comes from an email that a friend wrote to Lynn about a month into our journey, which basically said, in our Tai Chi group, we carry a tiger for a friend who is going through difficult circumstances, facing challenges.
00:46:51
Speaker
The three motions of bending low, picking up the tiger and putting it on a hilltop far away make that tiger so much less threatening. Lynn and I had never heard about this, but she wrote back to her friend saying, I love that.
00:47:06
Speaker
Would you please carry a tiger for me? And also, could you teach me how to carry tigers? Oh, and love it. And so that is the the reasoning of the of the of the book, yeah of the title of the book.
00:47:21
Speaker
Okay, to Tony, I usually ask this as I'm ending the podcast. It's been so lovely talking to you and hearing your story. And just you just have such a beautiful light and energy. And it's just been lovely to get to know you through through this conversation.
00:47:36
Speaker
Aside from also getting to know you through the book, I love one-on-one conversations. Now, tell us if there's anything I have not asked you that you want to make sure that the listeners...
00:47:48
Speaker
get, whether it's about your own story about grief, whatever you feel? The main thing i would I would like people to know is that although there are hard events in Carrying the Tiger, it is a memoir. You're looking over my shoulder as I go through all of these experiences, make wrong turns and learn from it.
00:48:08
Speaker
Most people reading the book say that they come away inspired. There's a lot of joy in it. that Yes, you you inherently we went through some very difficult experiences and some of the cancer, some of the if hospital events were very hard, but reading the book is not depressing.
00:48:32
Speaker
I've listened to some of my podcast interviews and thought, wow, no one's going to buy the book because it just sounds like I'm talking about all these difficult things. And actually, I hope, and the comments that I'm getting back and the reviews have said that reading it is an inspiring experience, not a depressing one.
00:48:49
Speaker
I think that that is the case for everything. I tell this to people about even the podcast. the podcast I say, it's not like people are like, my gosh, you must feel so heavy every time you interview somebody.
Podcast Reflections on Joy and Lightness
00:49:00
Speaker
I'm like, no, I don't. I actually feel so much joy and lightness after I've had conversations for the podcast.
00:49:07
Speaker
Because it is, it's not something that it has to be heavy. Grief is heavy, but it doesn't, there's so much more. to it around it too and I can see that with the book as well and just even just talking with you I'm sure that people will be able to connect to what you just said that it really is a love story showing it shown by actions of how much you cared for Lynn and and continue caring for her so thank you for carrying the tiger and and to you Tony thank you you're very welcome Kendra
00:49:48
Speaker
thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief.
00:50:01
Speaker
If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:50:17
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me.
00:50:30
Speaker
And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.