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33. Learning To Embrace Happiness Amidst Grief - With Autumn Toelle-Jackson
66 Plays4 years ago
"Autumn Toelle-Jackson has lived a life of love and loss, filled with happiness and marked by tragedy. Labels are too simple, but they do have meaning and they do tell part of her story: wife, widow, mother, survivor. The loss of a husband, a beloved cousin and mentor, and her daughter have left scars on her soul and memorial tattoos on her body, but Autumn learned to grow through it all.
She found love and reasons to get up each day until those days strung into weeks, then months, then years. Autumn wrote "Boldly into the Darkness: Living with Loss, Growing with Grief and Holding onto Happiness" to share her story. She also created www.GrowingwithGrief.com with her family to provide those who are grieving with a place to find community, resources, and help." (Bio from her book)
Get in touch with Autumn Toelle-Jackson:
www.GrowingWithGrief.com
https://www.facebook.com/GrowingWithGrief/
https://twitter.com/GrowwithGrief
The book is available on the Growing with Grief website and can be ordered everywhere books are sold.
Other links mentioned in the podcast:
Soaring Spirits International https://soaringspirits.org/
Donate Life: https://www.donatelife.net/
Get in touch with Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest or schedule a complimentary grief coaching call:
https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
http://www.instagram.com/griefgratitudepodcast
Music:
https://www.oneplanetmusic.com
Production:
Carlos Andres Londono
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Transcript
Embracing Grief and Happiness
00:00:01
Speaker
I learned how I grieve, and that sounds a little bit silly, but I learned when I was feeling certain things that before I'd just be like, why am I having such a bad day? Why does this seem like this little tiny issue is a really big deal? And I was able to learn when that was grief and recognize that I was grieving. And when I was able to start doing that and face the grief, I started also being able to embrace the good stuff.
00:00:30
Speaker
and embrace the happiness a little bit better.
Podcast Introduction: Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between
00:00:36
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.
00:00:59
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. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:22
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode.
Autumn Tully Jackson: Author and Founder
00:01:24
Speaker
Today, I have the honor of interviewing and allowing all of you listeners to get to know Autumn Tully Jackson. Did I pronounce that right? You did. Yay. Who is the author of Boldly Into the Darkness, which I love this title. So it's Boldly Into the Darkness, Living with Loss, Growing with Grief, and Holding on to Happiness.
00:01:48
Speaker
If that title doesn't say everything about her, I don't know what else would. So this will definitely give us a big glimpse into what we're going to talk about today. She's also the founder of Growing with Grief, which is a website that has a whole bunch of grief support links and information, and she'll share a little bit more about that. So again, welcome, Autumn, to the podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you.
00:02:16
Speaker
I am so excited that you reached out too.
Sharing Grief Stories
00:02:19
Speaker
I was telling, Autumn, you're the first person that's reached out from having listened to a podcast to then want to be on the podcast. And so for all of you listeners, just know that if you're listening to this and you yourself have a story of grief and gratitude that you'd like to share and be of inspiration to others, please reach out the emails on the
00:02:45
Speaker
show notes below, please reach out just like Autumn did. And again, I'm so grateful to you, Autumn, for reaching out. Well, thank you. I was just really pleased when I got your response that you'd be
00:02:56
Speaker
willing to talk to me on here. Oh, absolutely. It's always an honor. And there's always so much growth from hearing other people's stories.
Unique Grief Journeys
00:03:06
Speaker
And everybody's journey is so unique. And I know that I myself learned from every single interview I have and from everybody's journey. And I know the listeners can relate to everybody in a different way. Just like you did, listening to a few of the episodes, you related
00:03:20
Speaker
to some of the episodes, even though the ones that called your attention weren't necessarily similar to your own stories, right? To your own story of grief, yet you could still relate to them. Yeah. A lot of them actually were, some of them had grief components, um, similar and a lot of them were very different, but it just, I find you can always find something in somebody else's story, um, that either touches you or that you can pull from for your own life.
Life in Eastern Oregon and Community Support
00:03:47
Speaker
So I really enjoyed listening.
00:03:49
Speaker
You know, and one of the things too, it's not, when we hear somebody's grief's journey, which by the way, for you listeners, this will be one that will string at your heart. That's what I'm saying. I'm not sure. Pull at your heartstrings. How do you say that, Sange?
00:04:05
Speaker
I think pull out your heartstrings, I think is right. Okay. Pull out your heartstrings because there are several layers to Autumn's grief, but at the same time, just like you said, sometimes even if we haven't had a grief experience, everybody's had a grief experience, but even if the grief is not the same, there is a lot to learn in just life lessons like you mentioned.
00:04:30
Speaker
So, let's talk a little about you. So, you live in Oregon. At this moment, we were talking right before we started recording about the air quality and all that regarding the fires. Things are starting to get better. Yeah. I live in Eastern Oregon, so I'm always away from where the fires are. But of course, it's been such a traumatic few weeks for a lot of people in the state. So, they're starting to get those under control. People aren't losing houses quite as fast as they had been.
00:04:59
Speaker
which thank God. Like even just that aspect of grief, right? Of even the people that lose a home and even just the emotional component of seeing whole forests and animals, you know, oh my gosh, being, you know, being destroyed by the fire. It's just so hard. Yeah. It's been, it's been a very hard end of September really for a lot of people around here, but I think people are,
00:05:27
Speaker
learning how to deal with it. And what's really good to see is always the organizations and the private individuals that step up and volunteer or buy food or pay for hotel rooms or really just help each other out. So it's always good to see that bit that gives you that faith in humanity.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yes, the lending hand, people really stretching out a hand. And that happens, of course, in many aspects. And I'm sure you felt it in your own grief journey as well of people around you being there to support you in your process. So let's share a little about your story. So you were married to Jo.
Family Life Begins
00:06:05
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about Jo and your life prior to your first grief experience.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, so Joe and I were married in 2009, and we started dating when we were pretty young. He was 19 and I was 20. And once we finished school, we got married. We moved out to Eastern Oregon, where he's from. He's a ranch kid, a cowboy. He loves dealing with just anything in nature, hunting, fishing, working with cows, working with his hands.
00:06:43
Speaker
a pretty amazing person. Very active, very active, healthy. Yeah, yeah, active, healthy. He was a wildland firefighter. So in the summers, we of course didn't get to see each other quite as often. But he, since he was 18, he was a wildland firefighter in the summers. Once he finished college, he became an engineer. But he also still did some firefighting on the side. So
00:07:13
Speaker
Very active. And that, and you both worked in the same, you both worked in the same company for the same company, correct? Yeah. So we live in a really small town in rural Oregon. Um, actually it's one of the bigger towns, but our entire county has 7,000 people and the town has three to 4,000. So, um, there's a handful of industries that are better for
00:07:42
Speaker
just the benefits and everything you get. We both worked at the same place here. We didn't necessarily work together, but we worked with the same people. We worked in the same office. Same company. You got married in 2009, and then how far into your marriage did you end up having your kids? We wanted to be married for a little while, and we decided, well, we're going to have our
00:08:11
Speaker
kid in 2012 and I'm a planner and I know that sounds crazy. How'd you put it on the calendar the day your child was gonna be born? Not quite that exact but it's like okay well the summers are really busy with ranching stuff and if you're doing fire stuff so we want them to be born in the winter and we planned it all out and everything worked perfectly and in February of 2012 we had our first son Cody and so at that point we really started
00:08:39
Speaker
kind of settling down a little bit more and trying to learn how to be real adults with responsibilities. And then how did that change your job? So you had Cody, then you were able to take maternity leave at that point. Was it very flexible with your job at that time? Yeah. So at that point, I was able to take the full 12 weeks of maternity leave, and I had some leave stayed up. So most of it was paid.
00:09:08
Speaker
which was way less stressful and Joe would help where he could and he was able to take some leave and stay home with us for a while too. And we got to learn how to be parents together and really kind of embraced it. I have never seen somebody so baby crazy as he was.
00:09:25
Speaker
That's so awesome. You get to know this whole other person, right? When you become a parent, you really get to know another side of your partner that you would otherwise not know. Yeah, absolutely. I just remember right after Cody was born, I was just looking in complete confusion on how to swaddle.
00:09:49
Speaker
And he's over there, of course, he's an engineer with that sort of mind. So he's just like studying it, asking the nurses to show him again. Show me again, show me again.
00:09:57
Speaker
It's like, it's like origami. It's like an origami kind of thing. Like, okay, he's rather like, you know, you put this corner here, then you tuck it over there. Oh, my gosh. I would buy like, so many things that like, would be like the perfect swaddling blanket, like things that already kind of had the Velcro in order to leave. But no, my kids were like, Houdini's, they would both come out of that. Yeah, I was never able to do it. But luckily, he really had it nailed down by the time we left the hospital.
00:10:25
Speaker
Oh, that's wonderful. And then how many years later then was Wade born? So we wanted to have our kids two years apart, and again, I'm a planner.
00:10:37
Speaker
And unfortunately- That aspect of you being a planner, Autumn, this is really interesting because then life really took through some curve balls at you. So this whole planning thing of life, this is a big, aha right now that I'm hearing here, this repetition of the planning. So this is interesting. Okay. I want to hear it all. Okay. So then you're a planner, so you wanted them to be two years apart, both be born in the spring. I'm the big joker. Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
Exactly, though. It's like, that's how my mind worked. It's like, this is the best time to have a kid and we want him to be this far apart. And so we started trying for another kid in 2013. That'd be born in the early spring of 2014.
Miscarriages and Pregnancy Struggles
00:11:25
Speaker
And this was the first time where life really kind of threw me that curveball. And we got pregnant easy. And then when we were about eight weeks, I had a miscarriage.
00:11:35
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. And I didn't get to know about that in our, in our first conversation. Yeah. It didn't really come up, but I had a miscarriage and that really kind of shocked me because I'd never dealt with anything really that I didn't feel like I had any control over. Um.
00:11:55
Speaker
And so we talked about, of course, the doctors, it happens a lot. One in four pregnancy or something like that has a miscarriage and it's not that uncommon and there's probably nothing wrong. You already have a healthy kid. And so we kind of rallied and we're like, okay, well, now we're just going to try to get pregnant, have another healthy baby. And we got pregnant again in the fall of 2013. And we went in for a dating ultrasound at
00:12:24
Speaker
Oh, I think I was 12 weeks. And we found out we were pregnant with twins and neither of them had heartbeats. So I had a second miscarriage. Wow.
00:12:34
Speaker
So my first pregnancy was a miscarriage, so I can relate to that aspect of loss, and it is such a heartbreaking experience to go through. Of course, everybody's grief experiences differently. Okay, how about I rephrase that? It was a heartbreaking experience for us, and I know that other friends who had miscarriages, their experiences maybe have been different.
00:12:58
Speaker
You already also have names sometimes. You already have the idea, even if you've never met these beings, it's still, and in this case, you have three babies at that point then, because this was two. How did you guys deal as a couple with grief at that point then? I really struggled because it was such an abstract loss. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but for me, it was in my body.
00:13:25
Speaker
Absolutely. That's what I'm saying. It's a being that I didn't even know the gender of my miscarriage. I didn't even know. I was like eight weeks, like your first pregnancy, like your, I mean, your first miscarriage. I didn't even know the gender. So the, but there was still so much pain.
00:13:43
Speaker
my soul just aching. Since it was my first pregnancy as well, there was no other baby for me to focus the attention to, which you had a little bit with Cody, but it's still like this is then the second time around for you. That abstractness of the grief, how did you handle it?
00:14:09
Speaker
I really struggled with it partly because Joe was excited about us having a baby, but he hadn't felt the changes in his body. Um, and so he had plans and he was grieving that, but it was very different grief and I hadn't had any real experience with grief. So I kept it a lot of it to myself and I tried not to show it to him, but that meant a lot of nights I'd stay up crying while he was sleeping or I wouldn't sleep.
00:14:34
Speaker
Um, and I really just held it in. Nobody talks about it. I didn't know anybody who'd gone through it at that point. Turns out I actually know a lot of people who have gone through it.
00:14:43
Speaker
Then just nobody talks about it. Exactly. Exactly. Nobody does. And so then you think you're like the only one. I totally can relate to that. Wow. So then when you started to share them with friends, did it make you feel a little bit less, like as if something was wrong with you when you started to know that there was more common than not?
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, it did. I mean, it doesn't take away from the grief, but you realize that other people have also experienced it and it's not something to be ashamed of. Yeah, there was a lot of just confusion, like I said, always having been a planner. And this was the first time these miscarriages where my life really didn't go the way I had thought it would go. And so I was dealing with that loss of control and all these plans that we laid out.
00:15:38
Speaker
obviously now weren't going to happen. They weren't going to be two years apart and be the best of friends. And I was grieving this future that existed only in my head. And I didn't know what to do with any of those feelings. And so after a few weeks, I just kind of pushed them down and, well, I guess it happens and it's normal and I don't need to talk about it. And I really just suppressed a lot of it.
00:16:05
Speaker
That is so normal for a lot of people to do that, especially when you don't have somebody else again to kind of talk about those emotions too that can completely relate. And I'm sure that Joe probably also felt that loss again, but he was also probably feeling just as confused and not knowing how to be able to completely verbalize those emotions either. Yeah. So at that point then, when did you guys then try again?
00:16:36
Speaker
to get pregnant. Yeah. So at that point it took, we took a little time off. I, we just weren't feeling, feeling it. And so we, we waited about six months and then we got pregnant again, which I guess we're blessed with the ability to be able to get pregnant easily. Um, and this time of course the whole pregnancy, I was a dress case cause every time I didn't think it was moving enough or we'd go for an ultrasound. I just wait.
00:17:06
Speaker
for something to be wrong, but luckily we had a healthy boy, Wade, in January of 2015.
00:17:16
Speaker
And then, yeah, like even after that, I remember that pregnancy too, my pregnancy after the miscarriage was exactly that way, exactly what you're saying. The not knowing, I'm like, why should I even get excited? Like, should I even, you know, like without not knowing. And the worrying, you know, component. So yeah, I didn't breathe, I think, till the day that my first was like actually born. I was like, okay, now I can breathe. And now I'll just have sleepless nights and worry whether my child
00:17:43
Speaker
You know, those are the worries that come. But in the aspect of the actual caring of the baby, I can relate to that. So when he was born, then you have these two kids. Then again, you're on maternity leave. And then just take us into the journey of what happened next. Yeah. So Wade was born on January 23. And we were just so happy.
00:18:12
Speaker
We had decided we just wanted the two kids. We didn't want to risk dealing with more miscarriages and we had two healthy boys that we were blessed with. And we were just so happy the pregnancy was and the birth were both easy. So my recovery was easy and I was doing what I needed to and Joe was just in love with his kids. And I remember once I was breastfeeding and so it seemed like I was always happy
00:18:40
Speaker
holding Wade because, you know, they have to eat every two hours. And Joe was holding him once in between one of these periods and I went over to pick him up and he glared at me and he goes, no, this is my baby. It's just like, you get to have him all the time and right now he is mine and you cannot take him. And he was what, three years old at that point or two? How old was he? This was Wade at that point. And so Wade was like a week old at this point.
00:19:09
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. But who was holding Wade? Joe is. Oh, Joe. Okay. Okay. I thought, you know, I, for a second, I thought it was like Cody holding Wade. So I was thinking, I'm like, cause that sounds like my baby. That's what my sister used to say about my brother when he was born. Cause she was four years older than he was. And so when he was born, be like, no, it's my baby. Like she wouldn't, like, she would call it her baby. So that's what I thought, but it was Joe saying that. It was Joe saying that.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yep. And he was just so in love with them and he'd give them baths and he'd do all the extra work so I didn't have to do anything. And he was just absolutely amazing. And we were all, everything just felt right. It felt perfect. And our lives were going how they were supposed to go. And we were happy. How you had planned. How you had planned. Exactly. It wasn't the same exact original plan, but of course you adjust and then it happened how it was planned.
00:20:08
Speaker
Um, and Joe had been trying to get in shape. He wanted to go on a big hunting trip in August. And so he was doing some men's league basketball in the evenings.
Sudden Loss of Joe
00:20:18
Speaker
And on February 5th, he went to his basketball. And I knew when he came home from basketball, even though it was going to be late, he was going to go out for a jog and he wasn't going to come in the house because he didn't want to wake up the baby or disturb us. And so at about probably about 9 45, I heard his truck pull in.
00:20:38
Speaker
And I knew he was home and I knew he was going for a jog and it got to be about 10 30 and I didn't feel right. I didn't, I didn't know what was wrong, but I didn't feel right. And I knew that he should be home pretty soon. Um, and I was sitting there feeding Wade and just something in my body was telling me that something was wrong. And so I finished feeding Wade and got him back to sleep and it was about 10 45 and I checked on Cody.
00:21:08
Speaker
And I jumped in the car and I drove down our road where he would jog. And I saw him laying on the side of the road. And I don't know what I'd expect to define, but it definitely wasn't that.
00:21:24
Speaker
I can't even fathom. You see the other things I could fathom this because I had experienced similar, but this I can't even fathom that, you know, finding and the feeling and the fact that you kept on feeling that intuitive notion, something, you know, telling you to that something was not okay.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah. What did you do at that moment? Did you get out of the car and then did you put him in the car? What did you do at that moment? Yeah. So Joe was 6'3", 200 pounds. And so I couldn't have moved him into the car if I had wanted to. But I stopped the car in the middle of the road and I went to check him. And the whole time part of me said, he's just playing this really horrible joke on me. And I got to him.
00:22:16
Speaker
tried to talk to him or get him to sit up and he didn't move at all. And so we were right in front of one of our neighbor's houses. And this is almost 11 o'clock at night and I just ran into their house screaming that Joe was on the side of the road and they needed to call 911. And as soon as I heard them acknowledge something, I ran back out to Joe and started CPR. And after a few minutes, I don't know how long in reality
00:22:45
Speaker
But after a little while of doing CPR by myself, my neighbor came out and he started helping. So we could, we were doing it as a team and his wife had called 911 and was on the phone with them and they're sending an ambulance. And then she went to my house. Cause at this point I had a three year old and a newborn in a house by themselves. And it was only a few hundred feet away, but, um, it's still, so, uh, we worked on him until a sheriff came and then the sheriff relieved me.
00:23:14
Speaker
And then the ambulance came a few minutes later and they worked on him and worked on him. And at that point I started calling family and I'm like, I don't know what's happening. I know he's not breathing. His heart's not beating. I don't know what's happening. And I don't, I probably said that a million times. Um, and eventually Joe's brother got there and his dad got there and
00:23:42
Speaker
I have no idea how long the medics worked on him, but then they just, they'd stopped and the sheriff walked over and he didn't even have to tell me anything. I remember going, they stopped working on him. That's not good, is it? And he goes, no, we weren't able to bring him back.
00:24:11
Speaker
Even though it's been a few years since that, how does it feel for you to still even just be reliving having to share all the details because you've written a book about it and now you're speaking about it I'm sure you've said so many times it's like so many
00:24:29
Speaker
times our grief, we feel like it's already gotten to a point that we're okay talking about something and then all of a sudden emotions strike again. It is just so much I can't imagine as a mom of two young kids having to be now in that position. Yeah, it's
00:24:53
Speaker
I don't know if it's easier to talk about or if it's just that I've decided I'm okay having those emotions that come up when I do talk about it. Oh, that is beautiful to say. Yeah, because you for so long also with your miscarriages, you suppress those emotions. And then here was one you could not suppress. Yeah. Here was something you could not. I pretended away. Trust me, I tried. It didn't work.
00:25:23
Speaker
Um, and it not just, uh, it just takes your breath away and it takes, it felt like it took all the warmth in my world away. Um, we'd had so many plans and we had these kids and we had a newborn and this wasn't how it was supposed to go. And even, even talking about it now, I sometimes still have this like level of disbelief that it's like how
00:25:52
Speaker
Did that even happen? How is this how life is supposed to be for me? And again, yeah, again, it was because it was not in your plans. That was not something you had planned for. Yeah, not even. Yeah, the thought. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say not even. I told you I interrupt a lot. I told you. I told you when we had our pre-interview. That's OK.
00:26:18
Speaker
But no, he was 30 and I was 31 and we had two small kids and this isn't how anybody's life is supposed to go. You're not supposed to find your husband died on the side of the road. And we did end up doing a full autopsy and looking at everything and they have no idea what happened. They literally said something caused his heart to stop and we can rule it unknown natural causes.
00:26:45
Speaker
That, and yeah, it's like he was, he was healthy. I mean, he had just come back from that, you know, what was it, a hunting trip or back? What was it that he had? Well, he was preparing for a hunting trip, but he just came back from playing basketball and then jogging. Yeah. I mean, the only thing could be like overexertion, but it's like you're 30, 30, you know, it's like, what would be an overexerting at 30, right? You don't even think of that.
00:27:13
Speaker
Wow So then what did life look like then you were here on maternity leave? Something you mentioned that was was that at the time that you when this happened that That you ended up feeling that sense of what humanity out there how people around you supported you it was so this all happened and
00:27:39
Speaker
I don't know what time we made it back to the house, but it was probably close to midnight. So it happened in the middle of the night and living in a small rural community. Immediately. People knew about it. I mean, are the people who work in the ambulance are part of it, our sheriffs, they're all part of our community.
Community Support After Loss
00:27:54
Speaker
And so word spread really fast. And by six o'clock the next morning we had trays of breakfast were being dropped off for us. And, um, the garbage company dropped off an extra garbage can and the furniture store came and brought us a refrigerator.
00:28:09
Speaker
to keep extra stuff in. I know. Okay. Because this is only 4,000 people in your town. So people knew everything. So like the furniture store is dropping off and the garbage truck is, you know, garbage. That is amazing. So it was this amazing support and some things you didn't even have to ask for. They're just like, here's this if you need it, if you don't, we'll come back in a while and get it. And I was on maternity leave at the time and
00:28:36
Speaker
Being my second kid, I didn't have enough leave saved up to cover everything, but Joe and I were, we figured we could, I could take some time off without pay. Uh, but now everything had changed. And so my boss I worked with, um, told me that I'd qualify for a program with our work that's called leave share, which basically means that anybody in this company, which is a national company could donate their unused sick leave to me. And.
00:29:05
Speaker
within the first week that it was advertised that I was looking for leave. I had enough time donated to me to be able to take six months off paid.
00:29:16
Speaker
When you told me that, like I still get chills. When you told me that when we were having the conversation before this interview and then, oh my gosh, now I still get chills because we're so often so focused on humanities, inhumanity, let me put it that way. And to hear these beautiful stories of compassion and empathy, it's just like, oh,
00:29:40
Speaker
such a breath of fresh air and it's just so beautiful to hear. Imagine six months that you didn't have to worry about, you know, you had plenty of things to worry, but you didn't have to worry about where, you know, your meals were going to come, you know, your paycheck was going to come from. And this is from strangers, just people that didn't even know you donating their own time, their, you know, their pay, whatever.
00:30:05
Speaker
They're paid sick leave to you. That's beautiful. It was a huge gift because I was in no shape to work. I mean, I could have warmed a chair and that probably would have been the extent of it. That's about the extent I did for those first few months after Joe died. I was lucky enough to have a lot of good family and a lot of good community support. And my mom was able to take 12 weeks of her
00:30:37
Speaker
family family leave and it was all unpaid but she was able to take 12 weeks to stay in the house with me and to help me take care of things because I wasn't functional I was functional to the extent I absolutely had to be to plan his service and his burial and all that stuff but um she really helped keep me on track with everything and then slowly helped me relearn how to live in this new life that
00:31:05
Speaker
I never had wanted.
00:31:09
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking something here in your grief, and this is going to be a very personal question, so please don't answer if you don't feel comfortable. But in the grief component, like when you're grieving and nursing a newborn, did that affect your milk production with the amount of sorrow and the fact that maybe lack of sleep and maybe nourishment for yourself? Did you notice any changes in that?
Grief's Impact on Motherhood
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah. So I am a very good milk producer and, um, I didn't notice a decrease in my ability to produce whatever milk Wade needed, but the, where I saw a difference and I saw pretty quick was I started just dropping weight. And part of that was cause I couldn't eat. I physically, I would eat something and it would physically give me a sharp pain in my stomach, like somebody had stabbed me. And so I was virtually eating nothing.
00:32:07
Speaker
especially those first few days. And then I think my sister realized I could drink, so I started eating some smoothies. But from the time Wade was born, so this goes a little bit before Joe and includes all the baby and all those other things that account into it. But from the time Wade was born, within the next six or seven weeks, I'd lost about 65 or 70 pounds.
00:32:32
Speaker
Wow. Did that happen with Cody too? No, not as much. I was always able to produce a lot of milk for him. But not losing the weight. For example, after Cody was born, did you remember it being that drastic too? After Cody, I did lose a lot of the weight just from breastfeeding.
00:32:59
Speaker
I think I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight after about a year. Um, with weight, I went about 10 pounds below that. Maybe even a little bit more, but I went about 10 pounds below when I realized that I wasn't going to be able to keep feeding him because I wasn't able to feed myself. And at some point I had to take care of myself too.
00:33:23
Speaker
Absolutely. He was probably just, all his nourishment was coming just from your own body. Like because if you weren't even able to eat yourself, like it was probably just draining. If you had not been eating, all his vitamins were coming just from you. Yeah, it was, it was just coming from me and we did have, and this might sound weird to some people, but there were some other people in our community who had been taking milk to a milk bank over in Bend, the next biggest city. And she actually did.
00:33:50
Speaker
donate some of that milk directly to us to start using for him in the transition period. That is not weird, because that's the reason. You see, I asked a very personal question, but I asked the things that come up, and that's why my interviews end up being very long sometimes, because I'm just this curious being, and the things that come up in my head, either I'm like, am I the only one thinking this?
00:34:14
Speaker
Maybe the listeners may also be wondering what happens in all that sorrow and so much going on in your life. I wonder what happens in our anatomy, like in that aspect of- Anatomically.
00:34:29
Speaker
Thank you. I'm like, that's my Spanish. Every single episode I have, there's something in which my, and it happens even when I'm doing the Spanish episodes too. I'm like, there's words that I'm like, is that how I say it in Spanish now? And then the same thing happens. So thank you for that lesson, for my English lesson today.
00:34:52
Speaker
So then at that moment, then you started receiving visitors and then please share when some of the people from your work came to visit and then your friend in common, you and Joe shared in common.
Support from Kyle and New Relationships
00:35:10
Speaker
So people started visiting right away. And for the most part, I literally sat in Joe's recliner and I stared straight ahead. And sometimes I held Wade and sometimes I held Cody and mostly I just sat and I didn't deal with people, which, um, nobody complained about it. So hopefully I didn't hurt anybody's feelings, but I just didn't have the energy to deal with people. And so my family talked to them and thanked them for their gifts. But I remember one person.
00:35:39
Speaker
came into the house and his name was Kyle and he was a coworker of Joe and mine. And Joe and him had, they knew each other better because they talked a lot about hunting and fishing. And he came in and he brought Cody, a little toy tractor, and he brought a bunch of paper towels and paper plates and those things that, now that I had a house full of people, we actually needed. And I remember thinking that was really nice and he came over and just said,
00:36:07
Speaker
You know, grief really sucks and I lost my dad and I can't relate to this at all, but I can relate to grief a little bit. And I'm always around if you need somebody to talk to. And then he goes, these other three people that we also work with came because they wanted to offer their condolences, but they didn't want to get out of the car because they didn't know what to say.
00:36:30
Speaker
And when you shared that with me, I remember saying, I'm like, you had not told me that, that Kyle had had his dad, that his dad had passed away. He just said he's the only one that came in and the rest stayed outside. And I'm like, had he had a grief experience in his life? Because feeling comfortable with the uncomfortable, not again, not that we feel comfortable and nobody feels comfortable, but at least you know,
00:36:53
Speaker
that you kind of have to show up. And even the not knowing what to say is still enough. Even walking in, whether we know he knew what to say or not, he brought something for the boys and his presence alone was, you know, enough for you to know that you were having that support. So you're like, yeah, his dad had died. I'm like, oh, my gosh, OK. Yeah, because it's like that's why he was OK going in the house. But the other people felt, you know, not knowing what to do.
00:37:20
Speaker
So that that is so, so amazing. Then that empathy that he had of and knowing what it is you needed and the kids needed in that moment. And so share a little bit about that friendship and that dynamic of how he was then your support during your grief experience. Yeah, so the first month or five or six weeks, I didn't really know what I was doing.
00:37:48
Speaker
I wasn't doing much. Honestly, I still have blackouts. I, from that time period, I couldn't, there's days and weeks where I don't know what I did other than just the little bit I was told to do. Um, and I didn't really have anybody to talk to. And so eventually I remembered that Kyle had said, yeah, he's up late. He's single. He doesn't sleep a whole lot. And if I needed to, somebody just to kind of vent to about the grief, he was around. And so.
00:38:16
Speaker
I started sending him messages and we just started talking and he didn't push me about my grief. He didn't necessarily ask me how I was doing. He asked questions about Joe and questions about the boys. And he let me ask questions about him, which was really nice because it was nice not to have the focus on me. Um, and we were able to have a comfortable, just normal conversation that I felt like I'd completely lost the ability to have since Joe had died.
00:38:46
Speaker
And because there's a relatability there, there was a trust and a relatability and the fact that he knew your husband gave that space to be able to talk about him. Exactly. And so eventually we stopped making it just messaging and texts and stuff. And we'd started hanging out a little bit and realizing, well, we actually have a lot in common and we can talk about this stuff and I can make those jokes that
00:39:16
Speaker
are about death and loss that other people would probably cover their eyes at. We get a hall pass on that. Exactly. And I could vent my frustrations to him without him trying to fix it. He would just let me have my grief and he let me share what my grief was with him. And it was so healing for me that
00:39:47
Speaker
out of nowhere, I realized that I was having a lot of the same feelings for him that I'd had for Joe. All of a sudden he was the person that I wanted to talk to about grief or non-related grief stuff. And he was the person I wanted to share when the kids did something new or when Wade started to roll over and stuff like that. And so we developed this relationship, which was always
00:40:15
Speaker
just friendly. And he was very careful to make sure that he was never making me feel like he was coming on to me or any of that stuff. And when I decided that maybe it was worthwhile to see if this could be more of a relationship than just a friendship, he actually tried to talk me out of it.
00:40:40
Speaker
It's really soon. It's only been about Joe's only been gone for about five months. Are you sure this is what you want? I think I'm perfectly happy just being your friend for now. Um, and eventually I, I don't want to say I put my foot down because that sounds like I forced him into this relationship with me, but it's like, no, I know what I want. You let me grieve Joe. And I assume if we're dating, you're still going to let me leave Joe, but I don't know that I'm willing to turn a blind eye to something that could potentially be really good.
00:41:12
Speaker
Wow. It's because it's like, it's okay. And that's the beauty of it. You could still be sorrowful. You could still feel sorrow and also feel joy. And it's like the fact that you were finding joy, um, it's even though you were still grieving, you know, it, it was okay if joy and love, you know, even though you're still grieving, it was okay. Those, those, that those emotions could be intertwined. And the fact that you were able to recognize that,
00:41:38
Speaker
So early on, after his passing, that's amazing and very brave too, because a lot of times, again, it's easy to even suppress those emotions. Sometimes we suppress even those happy emotions because there's a guilt component that sometimes comes into play, right? So even those happy emotions.
00:41:56
Speaker
Those are easy to support. So the fact that you were able to acknowledge that you were having these feelings and emotions at five months after becoming a widow, that is very brave. Well, and I think really Joe helped me in some way. And so if we kind of rewind back to where I was saying that right after Wade was born and Joe was helping with everything, I remember once where I woke up from a nap or something.
00:42:25
Speaker
because it was time to feed Wade and he came in and I gave him a hug and he go, and I go, I don't know how I do any of this without you. And normally he would give me some flippant answer about like, gee, I don't know either. And this time he looked at me and he made sure he was looking in my eyes and he goes, if something happened to me, you'd be just fine. And you'd find a man who would love you and the boys like, like I do. And so,
00:42:52
Speaker
I really felt that I had his permission to try to grab onto that happiness. And if that doesn't mean I didn't deal a lot with doubt, I had a huge fear of public opinion, especially in a small town and a fear that if I started dating Kyle, people would think that I never really loved Joe. And that was a whole bunch of stuff.
00:43:16
Speaker
unpack for the next few years. It's so interesting that you say it, even though I thought about asking that, but I thought it'd be inappropriate for me to ask that of how you felt about other people. I'm so glad you brought that up because that's another thing too. Sometimes it's not only fear about our own emotions, but yes, about the rest of the world of what are they going to say. That holds us back from
00:43:43
Speaker
again expressing either love or even the sorrow again with grief like any of those things of like what are people gonna say if I'm still you know mourning or you know grieving or what are people are gonna say if I do find love and and are they gonna think I am just like over like you know my you know that quote unquote over my grief or whatever so that is that is again brave that you were still able to push through those doubts and
00:44:13
Speaker
and continuing anyway. So then the relationship changed and then... Yeah. Well, we started dating and of course we're still working through it. And at one point I hit in September after Joe had died, we hit the stage where it was Joe and my wedding anniversary. And I wanted to go to the coast, but I wanted Kyle to go with me. And there's something really confusing about being
00:44:41
Speaker
about dating somebody and wanting to tell your husband about your boyfriend. Um, but that's how I felt a lot. And so it made sense to me that Kyle could celebrate this anniversary with me, even though it wasn't mine and his. Um, and so we went to the coast and he took me out to dinner and he got me an anniversary card about, I don't, I have it somewhere, but I think he said something about how lucky Joe is to have those years with me. And he spent the entire night just asking me about Joe and Mai's relationship and
00:45:10
Speaker
things we did and different stories. And so that kind of really pushed me. It pushed a lot of doubts behind because any man who can sit there and spend a whole night comforting me and allowing me to grieve and allowing me to talk about the only other man I'd loved is a pretty impressive person. I said this to you that day when you were telling me this, I'm like, man, you really found an amazing human being.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've had two amazing human beings. I know. It's like how amazing and fortunate, you know, you are. Yeah, very much twice. So yeah, eventually we did get married. We got married in June of 2017. And we had a memorial table with a picture of Kyle's dad and people he had lost and a picture of Joe.
00:46:06
Speaker
Which I know people question that one, but it's like, well, he's a part of my story and we miss him. And in the wedding ceremony, we talked about my rings because I wear three rings on my left ring finger. And even to this day, I have the wedding band from Joe and I. And then I'd had a what I call a widow's ring, but just kind of a symbolic ring after Joe had died made. And I wore that next to my wedding ring.
00:46:34
Speaker
And on our wedding, the pastor explained that I wear three rings on my, or I will after that day, wear three rings on my finger to tell my whole story. And, um, yeah, we got.
00:46:49
Speaker
married and now there's on our dining room wall there's two wedding pictures of me marrying two different men which is I've seen people walk into the house when they don't know my story and it's they get very confused yeah they probably think they're like that Siri did you ever spend a long time ago in big love on HBO or something like that like they're like wonder where the other husband is
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But and that a lot of that was Kyle because Cody and Wade needed to know their dad and they needed to see pictures of their dad even though he was in heaven and he is a part of my story. And Kyle was never threatened by that. So Joe's all around in our house.
00:47:33
Speaker
That is just amazing. That's just amazing. And so now take us into then your relationship then changing and it will growing and so forth. And when you guys then decided to, or I don't know if you decided or if it just happened to get pregnant.
00:47:50
Speaker
Well, if you go back to the whole I'm a planner part, I thought that maybe at this point in your life with all these other things, I think it made me embrace the stuff I could control even more. And I think if it was an accident, I would have just completely lost my mind.
00:48:15
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Okay, so when did you start planning? So we talked a lot about it and Joe and I had only been planning on having the two boys and Kyle right off the at the very beginning because we talked we did talk about this a little bit before we were married and he was like, you know, I'm fine. I don't need to have a biological kid. These are going to be my kids. And it doesn't matter what
00:48:41
Speaker
blood or DNA says, and we don't need more. I know you've had trouble with miscarriages and I don't want to put you through any of that stuff. But I felt like it was one thing I could give him that I hadn't. I mean, I'd given Joe kids, but it was one thing I could do as his wife was give him a kid. And if you wanted one, um, I felt like we needed to at least talk about it. So we talked about it and we decided that, you know, let's try for a baby. We'll see what happens if we have a miscarriage. We'll just call it quits and we won't deal with that anymore. And if it works out.
00:49:10
Speaker
will add another kid to the family. And it did work out and everything was wonderful. And in the middle of July 2018, we gave birth to a beautiful little girl named Riley Marie. And we were now a family of six in a really weird way. And they boys had a dad in heaven and a dad on earth.
00:49:40
Speaker
and Cody and Wade and Riley and Kyle and I. So, um, and it was amazing. Those days after she was born and those months after she was born, it was like, I had a life I never knew I had wanted and I never thought I could be that happy again. And of course everything with Kyle from meeting him and talking to him and getting married each time one of those events happened, it was like, I didn't know I could be this happy. I didn't know I could be this happy. And so with Riley, it was just,
00:50:10
Speaker
All of a sudden, everything seemed to fit into place. And Cody and Wade absolutely adored her. And I don't know how many hours they spent bringing her their toys so she could play with them. And I'm like, she's two weeks old. I mean, she's probably not going to play with them yet. But it was perfect. It was perfect that summer. So she was born in July? Yeah, she was born in July. OK. 2018, you said. Yeah, 2018.
00:50:41
Speaker
And then at that moment, then you were able to take maternity leave again. Were you again, like, is that six months, six months, six weeks? 12 weeks. 12 weeks. 12 weeks. Okay. 12 weeks. And then take us into a little bit then of what happened next.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, so I took 12 weeks off and I worked a little bit here and there, but I didn't have the pressure to
Riley's Health Crisis
00:51:10
Speaker
work. And, um, in the end of October, 2018, we all kind of got colds. We had sore throats. We had runny noses. Nobody was really sick, but we all kind of felt not great. And I noticed Riley's nose started getting runny and it made sense that we all just had this cold and it was just a cold.
00:51:31
Speaker
I don't know how many times we said that. It's just a cold, no big deal. And over the weekend she stopped, she wasn't nursing as well. She was still nursing. She was still having a normal number of wet diapers and stuff, but she just wasn't, wasn't doing as good as she used to. And it seemed like she was starting to get a little dehydrated. So we took her in and I know it was a Monday when the clinic opened, we took her in and we said, you know, we think she's,
00:52:00
Speaker
getting a little dehydrated and she seems her head's a little bobbier than it normally is, not too bad, but we wanted to bring her in just to be sure that everything was okay and get her hydrated. And the doctor said the same thing. He goes, yeah, it looks like it's just a cold, but we'll get an IV hooked up and get her rehydrated and hopefully she'll start nursing better again. So they sent us from the clinic, the family clinic over to the hospital so they could hook up an IV and
00:52:25
Speaker
They weren't, they weren't able to. She had just amazing little chunky arms and legs, which are adorable and make it difficult for them to find veins. And then on top of that, she's three and a half months old and she had really little veins and they just couldn't get an IV in. And so they ended up admitting us to the hospital and the whole time we're like, yeah, it's just a little cold. When she gets rehydrated, we'll be out of here. And they put a nasogastric tube in her and every 15 minutes throughout the night,
00:52:54
Speaker
Um, and into the next morning, Kyle and I would give her a little bit of formula through this tube and she'd still smile at us. Not quite as think she didn't have as much energy, but she'd still smile at us and look at us and wave at us and do all those things babies should do. And in the morning she was rehydrated, but her head was still a little bit wobbly. And so the doctors were concerned with that and they wanted to test her for meningitis, which is a spinal tap. And so.
00:53:24
Speaker
We kind of said, hey, Riley, we'll see you in a little bit. We had to leave the room when they did the procedure, but they just did the procedure there in her room. And Kyle and I walked out of her room and from that room to the waiting room, it's probably a hundred feet, maybe 200 feet. And right about the time we sat down, we heard the hospital page a code blue and they paged it for Riley's room.
00:53:52
Speaker
And so within seconds, a nurse was there and was pulling us back to the hallway outside her room. And they go, I don't know what happened, but she coded and they're working on her now. And I think everybody that worked in our little small hospital was inside her room. There had to have been 30, 40 people there and a whole bunch of nurses and everybody outside both trying to do what they could for us, but making sure they were there if the people in the room needed anything.
00:54:22
Speaker
And, uh, they worked on her for 40 minutes and eventually my, my doctor and Riley's doctor and another specialist, um, a pediatric doctor came out and sat down with Kyle and I on the floor where we were going back and forth between just like complete disbelief and uncontrollable shaking and crying. And they go, we will work on her.
00:54:51
Speaker
until you tell us to stop, but it doesn't look good. And when we were waiting, like the few seconds it took for that to sink in, and Kyle and I knew that was probably coming. And before we even had time to answer, we heard somebody in the other room say they'd gotten a heartbeat. And so we didn't have to figure out how we tell them to stop trying to save our daughter's life.
00:55:20
Speaker
her heart started beating and they got her on a ventilator and they got her stabilized. And at that point, I was life lighted with her over to Boise, which it's about a three hour drive, a pretty short plane ride, but it was the scariest and the longest plane ride of my life. And I knew she wasn't stabilizing very well. The nurses who were working on her on the plane did a really good job of trying not to let me know if something was wrong.
00:55:50
Speaker
But between the miscarriages and Jo and other stuff, I've also learned that when they don't talk, it suggests that something's not quite right. So we got to Boise and I think it took them three or four hours to get her stabilized. And I was able to watch her through a window in the pediatric ICU unit. And they did eventually get her stabilized and she was
00:56:20
Speaker
in a coma. She wasn't aware at all. And they took her for a CT scan and they came back and they go, you know, we would have expected a lot more swelling. There's not the swelling there. We don't know. She may or may not have the brain damage at this point. We just have to wait and see what happens. And her heart was doing good and all of her other organs were doing good. She just wasn't, she was still on the ventilator and she just looked like she was
00:56:48
Speaker
She looked like she was sleeping, but because of all of the trauma, her little body had kind of gone through while they were trying to stabilize her. And I know there's medical terms, but she had retained so much fluid that when we were finally allowed to go in and look at her, she didn't look like our little girl. She was so swollen. And her eyes, even though she wasn't awake, her eyelids were so swollen that they wouldn't cover her eyes. And Kyle and I had to step out of the room because we were so caught off guard.
00:57:20
Speaker
and we were told that we couldn't do anything to help. We just had to wait and see. So we were in the hospital and we were just kind of in this place where we couldn't actually do anything to help and we couldn't help her and it was a horrible place to be and the doctors and the nurses and everybody were amazing and again with the kindness of strangers was
00:57:49
Speaker
A bunch of the nurses didn't like seeing her in such a white sterile area and they went and they had blankets that other people had donated and stuffed animals and they took the time out to give her baths and to wash her and to pick out blankets they thought she might like if she woke up and add color into the room. They'd work on her and they'd talk to her just like she could hear them.
00:58:15
Speaker
It was a pretty amazing thing to watch other people love your kid in a way that you do. And this is like you guys would be sitting there in the in the hospital room and the nurses would be doing all this while you guys were there. Probably also knowing that it's just like so draining probably emotionally for you guys that also adding all that extra loving on her, you know. Yeah.
00:58:45
Speaker
was needed because you also had them, the boys back at the house. So how was it? Like, what did you tell the boys? They were little, they were how old at that moment? So the boys were five and two at that point, five and a half and two and a half. And they had known Riley was sick when we went to the hospital originally. And we had Joe's brother and his wife were watching him.
00:59:15
Speaker
And when we had to go to Boise, cause Kyle of course drove to Boise after I flew on the plane and we just told him when we were in the hospital, Riley got sicker and she has to go to a bigger hospital and the doctors and us were doing everything we can. And that was kind of it. And we didn't want them to worry. And, um, we also made the decision that we didn't want them to see her in the hospital.
00:59:43
Speaker
unresponsive, especially when she was really swollen, which luckily her body was able to deal with those fluids eventually. And she began looking just like she was sleeping, but she was still hooked up to IVs and to a ventilator and machines. And we didn't want to give them that picture. And we also didn't want them to know what was going on until we could be there to tell them. And so my brother-in-law and his wife kind of tried to keep them going to school and on their regular schedule.
01:00:12
Speaker
but not really doing anything extra outside the town because Kyle and I had put out on Facebook and everything else that we need prayers. We aren't gonna tell you what's going on right now, but things do not look good and we need a miracle. And so people knew that something was going on and we wanted to protect them from any of that sort of talk. And we talked to them every night and just say, they'd ask how Riley was doing and we'd just say,
01:00:41
Speaker
They're trying their best, but she is really sick. And then something that you mentioned in our conversation, because again, you didn't want to put it out there because Cody was already school-aged at that time. So mention what happened to Wade at school, how he heard somebody say something to him.
01:01:07
Speaker
Yeah. So we didn't find out until months later, but during this period where we were over in Boise and the boys were going to school, Cody, who was in kindergarten at that point, I believe, um, first grade, first grade, he might've been first grade, but he went to school and a kid came up to him and goes, I heard your sister died. And at this point we were still in Boise and she was still, we were still doing what we could for her. And, um,
01:01:36
Speaker
he didn't tell anybody about it. He I don't know if he just trusted enough that if that was true, we'd tell him or imagine a little five year old hearing that at school like from a friend like that is just wow. Yeah, and I don't think it was done in any sort of malice. My guess is we live in a small town and somebody who is in the waiting room. Yeah, somebody who is in the waiting room and put the pieces together or
01:02:03
Speaker
even a doctor or a nurse who was talking and their kids overheard. But yeah, I felt bad that he had to carry that for a few days without telling anybody about it. But while we were in the hospital, despite the CT scan looking pretty good, she still wasn't responsive at all. And so the doctor came in and told us that
01:02:34
Speaker
we were gonna, that they thought she was brain dead and we needed to verify that. And so they hooked her up to an EEG cause they just, they wanted to see if there was any brain thing, any brain activity. And she did, she was on an EEG and they hooked a camera up just to see if there was
Organ Donation Decision
01:02:53
Speaker
any movements. And they did that for 24 hours and we just waited and she had absolutely no activity, nothing that could even,
01:03:03
Speaker
you could even try to convince yourself was activity. And so then they started talking about the process of declaring her brain dead. And at that point, Kyle and I kind of looked at each other and it was just this unspoken thing and we both turned toward the doctor and we go, so what about organ donation? And I knew we both had it, like our licenses both say we're both organ donors, but we never really talked about it. It's always kind of been this.
01:03:33
Speaker
this thing that exists that we aren't involved in, but we both had the thought that it is so impossible to lose your own kid. And if she could be a donor and save some other lives, then we knew we wanted to do that.
01:03:52
Speaker
It's just so beautiful because the fact that amidst your pain, your own pain as a family, that you were still able to have, again, that empathy and compassion towards other parents that were probably going through similar things and that you were already thinking of a way of healing somebody else's pain in some way, in the little way. That is just such a beautiful act of
01:04:21
Speaker
selflessness in such a moment of so much pain.
01:04:27
Speaker
It's just so beautiful that you guys were able to have that conversation. And so at what point do they have to wait? How does it work with that? Then if you ask about organ donation, they keep her connected until there are donors that are willing to receive. Is that what happens? Is that the process that happens next?
01:04:53
Speaker
The whole process is really interesting, but basically at that point she hadn't been declared brain dead, but we were pretty sure like 99.9999% sure that's where it was going. And so once we mentioned that the doctor called the organ procurement organization and they sent a team over and that team basically started doing blood tests and
01:05:19
Speaker
pulling all these different tests because for each organ she was able to donate, which in her case was just her heart, her liver, and her kidneys. They would have to find matches. And they actually told us in our first meeting, they go, well, she's a positive, which isn't a super common blood type. So there's a chance there won't be anybody who needs it. And of course, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, you've told somewhere you guys have told some person who needs a transplant.
01:05:46
Speaker
that because they have already positive. Right. Right. That they wouldn't be able as easy to get one. Right. Yeah. So meanwhile, the doctors started doing the brain dead test, which they do run through two sets of things and we didn't see it. They asked us to step out of the room for that part. And the first test found that she was brain dead. And they said, because we have EEG, we can either declare her now or we can wait 24 hours, which is standard protocol for adults.
01:06:15
Speaker
when you have no other information. And we said, we want to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe a miracle will happen. And so they ran that other test. And after that second test, they declared her brain dead. And at that point, it was really interesting because the Oregon Procurement Organization actually takes over all of her care. So we were still in the ICU, but they brought in their own nurses
01:06:43
Speaker
And everything. And it was a lot of testing and they hadn't dealt with Oregon procurement from such a small baby before. And so, um, there were some instances where they came in with like a hospital. Yeah. This particular team had it. And so there were some things where they're just trying to follow their protocol and they bring in like a giant Ziploc bag full of test tubes that they need for blood. And it's like, well, you're going to drain her at that point. So you guys are going to need to figure out something else. But so they start doing that.
01:07:13
Speaker
And they worked 24 seven. So they had some, but they worked 24 hour shifts. And so not the nurses, but, um, the other members of the team that were trying to find matches. And it's so, it's not as easy as you just pull up this list and oh, there's somebody with the same blood type. They have to test different things. And then we also had to, um, we had the point that we didn't know what had happened. She had her heart just stopped. We didn't know what the cause of it was. And so.
01:07:42
Speaker
they were able to track down donors for all three of those organs. Um, and because her heart had stopped and she did have to be worked on, they were concerned about damage to that. And so they took a lot of echocardiograms and different tests on her heart, which just each time they did one, it showed it being better and better functioning. And the whole process took probably 48 hours, maybe closer to 72 hours before they found matches and then
01:08:12
Speaker
Each match, we don't know where all the matches were, but they're within a certain region, but each Oregon has its own team. And that team flies to the hospital to get the Oregon, and then they fly to their hospital with it and put it in the recipient.
01:08:30
Speaker
I've watched Crazy Anatomy a lot of times and I know that they do that. That part of it was accurate. That part is accurate. I know that somebody that's a doctor watching those, you know, doctor shows probably says like, but like at least that part, I remember a lot of those things having like that. Now, at what point then did they realize, because here at this point you still didn't even know her cause yet.
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah. So then at what point then did they find out the cause of her death? Yeah. So once we got into Idaho, they did test her for meningitis and that was negative and they ran tests for everything else that they could think of and everything just kept coming back negative. And we had a pediatric
01:09:18
Speaker
internalist maybe is what they're called. The one that you had seen at the other hotel before you left Oregon? Yep. He was the one who was getting ready to do the spinal tap on her when she coded and he just couldn't figure out what had gone on. Eventually he had the idea that she needed to be tested for infant botulism. He was able to convince the doctors and Boise to test her for that. It takes two weeks for that to be verified.
01:09:48
Speaker
And so the whole time we were in the hospital, we didn't know. And about, I think it was even longer than that. I think it was more than two weeks after she passed away. We found out that she did, she did in fact. And so, but yeah, at the time we didn't know. So then, so that's the reason they had to test each organ because without knowing the cause, they didn't know which organs would be viable. No, not quite.
01:10:14
Speaker
No, so they had to test each organ because to make sure it'll match the recipient.
01:10:20
Speaker
There are a whole bunch of other factors other than just blend type that have to match and I do not know what those are. But I know like they've got. And in that moment, that's not even like you're just there. Again, that's not even you're just kind of present as everybody hears around you and your little baby here. I'm like imagining all these people with all these ships. Oh my gosh, it's just so overwhelming.
01:10:45
Speaker
Thank God you had each other, you and Kyle to support each other during this and seeing your child go through this.
Commitment to Grieve Together
01:10:54
Speaker
You mentioned about a conversation you guys had while you were in that waiting game of, and I hate to call the word game, but in that waiting period, would you mind sharing a little bit with the listeners of that kind of
01:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, so the hospital there was really good. And they actually had some rooms that they set aside just for families of kids who were in the pediatric intensive care unit. And so they assigned one to Kyle and I. And we, 99% of the time, barring a few times where we just needed to walk around and where we had to go to the bathroom, we were in that room with Riley.
01:11:37
Speaker
But we did have a lot of other family there. We had my family and my parents and my sister and Kyle's brother and Joe's parents, Joe's mom. And we had a lot of family with us. And so when we'd go for those walks or we'd go, and if we did take a few minutes to go try to lay down in that room, somebody was always with Riley and talking to her, reading to her, or sitting in there with her. And one of those times where I think it was when we were already working with the Oregon Procurement,
01:12:07
Speaker
for the donation and we knew that we weren't going home with her. Um, and we were laying in the room, not sleeping, cause I don't think we ever did sleep in that room. We were just, you're so exhausted and yet sleep seems like the hardest thing to do. Yeah. Um, but we were laying in there and we were just kind of crying out to each other a little bit, just how do we do this? How do we leave this hospital without her? How do we survive?
01:12:36
Speaker
survive this loss. And that led into a conversation about how we need to make sure we grieve it together and acknowledgement that we aren't going to grieve the same way. But we need to make sure that we grieve together and we don't pull away from each other because we both seen the statistics that show that when a couple loses a child, oftentimes the marriage follows. And we didn't want
01:13:06
Speaker
that to happen to us. We needed each other. And so we made a point in that hospital room before she was even fully declared brain dead that we were going to go through this together and we weren't going to cry in the shower. We weren't going to hide our tears from each other. We were going to grieve with each other as much as we possibly could.
01:13:31
Speaker
That is just, that is just so beautiful because again, again, I keep on saying beautiful, but every act that you guys did, all these actions, again, thinking, forward thinking, a lot of forward thinking, you know, like, which is just so hard to do in those moments of so much pain, but the fact that you guys kind of thought, okay, this may happen. Now let's protect our marriage. So let's make sure that we acknowledge our grief and make sure to,
01:13:58
Speaker
grieve together and not keep it down partly because you both had already experienced grief right so you already knew that experience of what it was to grieve alone and a certain period of your lives and you fortunately had him to be able to
01:14:15
Speaker
grieve alongside with, you know, eventually, you know, in your life. But again, it's just amazing the time again, brave, brave is the kind of word that brave conversations you guys had throughout all these journeys of grieving. It's interesting, because I can hear you say that. And yet thinking back at the time, and we were just trying to figure out how to survive.
01:14:42
Speaker
Like it didn't seem like we were doing anything brave or crazy. It was just like, how do we survive? And I think we both knew that we just needed each other to survive. That's just amazing. So then take us then the date. So she went in October. November. Well, we first went into the hospital, I think it was either October 29th or 30th.
01:15:09
Speaker
after she was matched to her recipients and they scheduled all the, all the teams to fly in to Boise. Um, we, we actually got a holder. They made set up a chair so we could hold her at about, it was about three o'clock in the morning on November 4th. And we held her and we said our goodbyes and our family that was still with us said their goodbyes and then they put her in her little cart.
01:15:35
Speaker
prim thing and went out to the hallway and at four o'clock in the morning in this hospital, I think everybody who worked there who was able to was lined up against the wall. And they did a, they call it a walk of honor, um, that they do for Oregon donors that are going down to surgery. And so we walked through this and we didn't want people clapping or anything, um, because it's four o'clock in the morning and there's still other patients, but they had bubbles and they blew bubbles for her to go through.
01:16:04
Speaker
and Kyle and I went in the elevator down and got off the elevator and there was a red line and we stopped at that red line and she kept going and so at about five o'clock on November 4th she went and made her donations and Kyle and I started driving home. And so the first thing we did when we got home was call my brother-in-law and
01:16:34
Speaker
We had already told them what was going on and they literally just walked the kids into the house and left. And the first thing out of Cody's mouth was, where's Riley? How's Riley? And at that point, we had them come and sit with us on the couch. And we had to tell them that she had died. And we tried to use very specific words because we didn't want them to be confused. And we said she died. And she's not going to come home ever again.
01:17:05
Speaker
And she's in heaven with your daddy, your daddy Joe in heaven. And I have no idea how long we sat on that couch. Just all of us huddled together. That image is just so much and I'll give you a few minutes here.
Grieving Different Losses
01:17:35
Speaker
I know you had mentioned prior when we had talked about how Wade had, because Cody was just a newborn when Joe died and how Wade never really necessarily mentioned too much of the grief component when his dad had died.
01:17:58
Speaker
And that was different this time around because he was older.
01:18:09
Speaker
So when you when you have a minute if you want to share a little bit about that but I do want to also for you to share and you can share this in any order that you want about Riley's burial and also about what Kyle said regarding regarding Joe and Riley as well. Yeah.
01:18:35
Speaker
I just appreciate you so much for going through all this and I know it's not easy to have to relive the emotions in order to help somebody else that may be going through something like this and hearing it.
01:18:53
Speaker
But at the same time, I know that you know that it's also a part of our healing journey too, to share so of our own grief journey. So I appreciate you so much for doing this. Um, yeah, so going back when we were still in the hospital with Riley at the point that Kyle and I had decided that we wanted to donate her organs. That was basically the time where, uh,
01:19:24
Speaker
we knew she wasn't coming back for sure. And so we went into the family waiting room, which like I said, was filled with a lot of our family and Joe's mom and her husband were there and we were telling them what we had decided and what was happening. And Kyle goes and he looked specifically at Joe's mom and goes, I'm just happy to know that, well, I won't be able to take care of her down here.
01:19:54
Speaker
She'll have a dad in heaven who will watch over. And she'll be up there with Joe and she won't be alone. And so that really, it's such a sad thought and such a beautiful thought all at the same time. Because nobody wants them to be up there. We want them to be here with us. But knowing that they were together
01:20:23
Speaker
brought a little bit of comfort to us. And so when we came back and we were trying to figure out where we were going to bury Riley, the only place that made sense was next to Joe. And Joe's family owns a ranch outside of town. And when he was buried, we were able to designate a cemetery on their property and bury him out at the ranch, which was his favorite place in the world. And so
01:20:52
Speaker
After we came back, we went to them and we asked if we could bury Riley, who's absolutely no blood relation to them, if we could bury her next to Joe. And I think they looked a little offended at me that I'd even have to ask because as far as they were concerned, she was one of their grandkids too. And so we buried her there next to Joe in the little cemetery out at the ranch. So whenever we go out there, they're there together.
01:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. This is the second time I'm hearing all this and I'm still so moved because it is just so heartwarming. It's just like imagery again and the purity of heart of Kyle saying that to Joe's mom, you know, that her son, you know, is like here he is, his daughter,
01:21:51
Speaker
is, you know, about, you know, about to die because at that moment you had not. And then talking to another mother who already.
01:22:01
Speaker
had had her son die sharing that now her son would be the caretaker of. It's just like that. It's just like so beautiful because I'm sure that that also brought Joe's mom so much comfort too, to hear that, you know, that also now her son was not going to be alone, quote unquote, because again, we don't have an
01:22:29
Speaker
a clue really. We only have ideas of what it is and perceptions and faith and so forth, depending on our own beliefs of what happens, but that is just so beautiful. Now, with Wade's grief then this time around after his- With Cody. Cody, sorry. Yeah.
01:22:50
Speaker
Cody, yeah, sorry, Cody's the oldest, I got confused. Cody's grief now after, because then Wade was only two then when his sister died. So how was it for him this time? Yeah, so when Cody was almost three when Joe had died, and it was very strange because he went from this little toddler who was
01:23:14
Speaker
constantly asking where his dad was, whether he was at work or whether he was gone for a few nights doing fire or traveling or hunting. He was always wanting to know where his dad was. And from the morning he woke up after Jo had died, he never once asked for Jo again. Even before we told him that Jo had died, he never asked for him. And we always found that really strange. And afterwards, he never really cried for him. I don't remember him ever crying.
01:23:43
Speaker
But he'd say things very matter-of-factly, like we'd drive past a store that, like an auto parts store that Joe used to take him to and he'd go, that was my dad's store, but my dad's dead, so it's your store now. Just not with any sadness. I think he did it about Joe's lunchbox. That was my dad's lunchbox, but since he's dead, it's your lunchbox now. And it was one of those things that just like,
01:24:07
Speaker
sticks a dagger in your heart. Especially if I'm a three-year-old saying that, yeah, a little voice saying that, but you had to also acknowledge that that was his way of expressing it. Yeah. And so it wasn't how I could understand because I was definitely not grieving in that matter-of-fact way, but that's what was working for him. But when Riley died, he was much more emotional about it and he cried and he still cries.
01:24:37
Speaker
about it pretty regularly, but he had, it really affected his confidence and his sense of belonging with our family. Um, I think he felt that he should have been the one to die and not her. And so that played out in different ways through school and through sports. And he'd say things just like that. He'd say, I should have died instead of Riley or I'm not good at anything. You should just kill me or I don't deserve this.
01:25:08
Speaker
And that would be his response with things as simple as, hey Cody, did you remember to brush your teeth? And he'd say no and then go off on these
Addressing Grief with Children
01:25:16
Speaker
things. And for whatever reason, losing her really affected him and it really, really affected his confidence. And he'd start doing things like bending his fingers back so they'd hurt or hitting his head on, on a wall and doing things that were hard. And of course our first instinct when he says,
01:25:36
Speaker
I wish you'd just killed me, I want to die," is no, you don't say that. You don't say that. Right. Yeah. But then at the same time, then going back to how you reacted when he'd say, well, that matter of factly, then you kind of wonder if this is his way of kind of expressing he's hurting, right? Yeah. And it's kind of like, how do you honor that? But at the same time, make sure he knows that that's not the way to express it, right? Yeah. So what would you guys say? Well, so at first,
01:26:03
Speaker
The first time he ever said anything like that, we were in the car and my first instinct is what came out of my mouth. It's like, you don't talk like that. And of course, I'm being very selfish in that moment because I'm thinking I've lost Joe, I've lost Riley, I've had these other losses. You don't talk like that. I can't even consider losing you. And then by the time I got home, I sat down with him and Kyle and I sat down and we talked about it a little bit. We go, that's not how that works. If he's feeling that he needs to be able to talk to us about it,
01:26:32
Speaker
because you hear a lot that it's that bottling up of those emotions, which lead people to do self-harming activities. And we wanted to be a safe place for him, which meant we couldn't be judgmental of him having those feelings. And so even now, he's gotten a little bit older, he's two years older now, just about.
01:27:00
Speaker
He can speak better, but when I can tell he's really upset, he still starts it off with things like, I know you're not going to want to hear it. It's like, no, I don't want to hear it, but that's not because I don't want to hear it. It's because it hurts me that that's how you feel. And I want to make you understand what you are, how much we value you and what you mean to us and that you weren't responsible for Riley. And so that's.
01:27:28
Speaker
I mean, even still, it's a struggle with him. And I assume as we grow older, it'll continue to be a struggle.
Lack of Grief Resources
01:27:37
Speaker
At that time too, like when Joe passed, there was no grief, because you live in a small town, there was no grief support that you could go to yourself.
01:27:50
Speaker
So, and then there was nothing really for the kids, but there was the newborn you didn't need at that moment, of course, because you would take the newborn. Then how had that changed by the time Riley died? You know, was there more support? Did you have, because we were talking about the Dougie Center out of Portland, Oregon, which is one of the grief organizations, especially for children, you know, families with children.
01:28:19
Speaker
that support grieving children. But that was far for you, too. What did you guys do in terms of that support?
Finding Support in Soaring Spirits International
01:28:32
Speaker
After Joe had died, I struggled to find support. There was a hospice group, but I didn't feel like they could relate to a 31-year-old widow with two small kids. I just couldn't find anything. Eventually, through a bunch of internet searches, I did find an organization called Soaring Spirits International.
01:28:50
Speaker
which is all about promoting hope and learning how to live after you become a widow or a widower. And it wasn't so much like a support group where you sit around in a circle and talk. It was a support group in the sense that let's go to dinner and let's, we can talk about it or we can not talk about it. And here's some helpful tools in dealing with your emotions. And so,
Starting a Local Support Group
01:29:17
Speaker
I really enjoyed that organization. They have something called Camp Widow, which I still think is a horrible name, but basically it's a weekend retreat at a fancy hotel. I went to the one that was in San Diego that has workshops, and you're surrounded by 300 other widowed people, a lot of them who were my age. And I really got a lot of support there, and it's kind of one of the times where I really started to work on, okay, what
01:29:45
Speaker
is my grief and how am I handling it and what should I be doing to handle it better. Um, I liked their, the feel of that organization so much that they also have regional groups where people can just meet for dinner or for activities. And so I started one here in Eastern Oregon. So the story, the story of the soaring spirit. So it's called a soaring spirits regional Eastern Oregon regional group.
01:30:13
Speaker
And basically I just started meeting about once a month, sometimes every other month, depending on how busy the schedule is with four or five other widowed women in burns. And kind of just started our own little support group. You created, you saw a need and you had a need, you created what you needed at that moment. And then how about when Riley then passed away, then is there support then for bereaved parents at that time?
Online Support and Accessibility
01:30:42
Speaker
So there wasn't specifically what I found was I got a lot of support from the widowed community for losing a child. And some of them had lost children also, especially like with accidents and stuff. Sometimes they lost multiple, multiple family members. And so I was able to find people I really could connect with through that organization also. And then the only
01:31:11
Speaker
The thing I really found that was helpful locally was we did have a pediatric therapist that was able to talk to Cody. If nothing else, so he just had a safe place to vent because he obviously understood that his hard emotions were also hard for us to hear. And so we did start having him see a therapist and they did some play therapy. And I found the Dougie Center and while we never had to go over there and make a trip,
01:31:40
Speaker
and utilize those resources in person. They had so many resources online that we were able to look at and to read and try to figure out how to apply to managing Cody and Wade's grief.
01:31:53
Speaker
And that's the thing, a lot of times we don't know that there's all these resources out there until we need them right sometimes. And sometimes we don't find out about it until way later. I really did not know that there was so much support out there until I myself now participate in an organization that's similar to the Dougie Center, but here in the Dallas area.
01:32:17
Speaker
It is just amazing that there's all these resources there to support. And of course, depending on the towns you live in, if it's too small or not, then there might not be that support. But like you said, there was a lot of online support even on that website that you could use for free to help your children navigate their
01:32:39
Speaker
their grief and that is just so important. Now tell us a little bit now, just kind of curve it a little bit as we're ending this conversation into all these, we talk about the grief gratitude, the gray in between.
Finding Happiness Again
01:32:57
Speaker
We've talked a lot of course of that aspect of all these grief moments and this hardship and the struggles.
01:33:05
Speaker
That you saw, you were able to experience Joe, Joey, Joe, I was going to say Joe after Joe, my tongue twister here, after Joe's passing, you're able to experience joy again and find love again. When you met Kyle.
01:33:19
Speaker
And feeling again, you was talked about like you never knew that you could feel so happy again, when even Riley was born and, and all this joy. And then suddenly now again, life throws you a curve ball and you experiencing all this pain. And again, having to.
01:33:38
Speaker
live with a life that you did not plan.
Navigating Grief and Personal Growth
01:33:43
Speaker
How have you kind of been able to navigate your grief now, those groups that you've organized, that you've created or become, you know, head of the chapter of, what would you call that when you become the head of a chapter of those organizations, the one that you've been... I'm a regional... Regional... Yeah. I'm a regional group leader.
01:34:07
Speaker
Okay. A regional group later. And then you wrote a book. So take us into this journey of, in this grief process, all these aspects of the tools that you've used yourself and now the light at the end or within the tunnel, the light within the tunnel, the little bit of the, cause sometimes it's not just at the end. It doesn't really end, right? Yeah. I think.
01:34:38
Speaker
I knew I needed more right after Jo had died. I didn't know how to deal with that at all. And I knew I wasn't dealing with it well, if at all. And so finding resources were really, it was really important to me, but I don't know if I was just really bad at searching the internet or I just wasn't doing it right because I was in such a dense fog of grief that it took me a long time to find some of those resources online. And so I was able to find some books and I always liked reading books.
01:35:08
Speaker
And that's when I really started connecting to how beneficial it can be to hear other people's stories, especially after it's been a few years from their loss, because you can see where they are in their lives now. And you can see that there is a life out there. It may not be the life you had planned, but there's a life out there and it can be amazing even with those sad points in it. And so.
01:35:33
Speaker
between reading the stories and soaring spirits. And I did end up finding a coach that really helped me work through some of my grief. And I learned how I grieve. And that sounds a little bit silly, but I learned when I was feeling certain things that before I'd just be like, why am I having such a bad day? Why does this seem like this little tiny issue is a really big deal? And I was able to learn when that was grief.
01:36:04
Speaker
and recognize that I was grieving. And when I was able to start doing that and face the grief, I started also being able to embrace the good stuff and embrace the happiness a little bit better. And a lot of that I learned after Joe and before we lost Riley. And so while I don't think it made losing Riley any easier, I think understanding grief more and the process that I personally
01:36:34
Speaker
have gone through. I think it really helped me navigate my grief better. And wanting to provide some of the things I'd learned about my grief and wanting to share with others my story and be able to tell them that my story has some really, really horrific parts in it. But those parts are really small parts compared to all the wonderful in between.
01:37:04
Speaker
And so I wanted to be able to kind of show that if you can embrace the good stuff in your life and still honor the people you've lost and recognize your grief and let yourself grieve when you need to, that you can still have a full and happy and amazing life. And so that's kind of what I wanted to do with the book and with the website growing with grief, which
Creating a Grief Resource Website
01:37:30
Speaker
literally just has a list of podcasts and a list of organizations and a list of books and blogs with links. So somebody who's in my position right after Jo had died, where I'm looking for support and can't find it, can go to one website and have a lot of different options so they can try to find something that might work for them and not feel quite so alone in it.
01:37:52
Speaker
Oh, not so lost, right? Like you already feel lost in life already. And then you're also lost on the internet trying to find the resources. So I'll make sure to add that on the show notes of that website. Because again, that will save people a few steps in that process to be able to go there and see all these different resources that you were able
01:38:11
Speaker
to find yourself and use yourself in these different moments in your life in which you've needed the grief support. And then your book, can you tell a little bit people, again, say the title one more time, because I said at the beginning, share the title again and how people can find it. And then again, I'll add all that on the show notes, but you can share a little bit. Yeah, the title is called Boldly into the Darkness, Living with Loss, Growing with Grief, and Holding on to Happiness.
01:38:41
Speaker
And it's a memoir, but as the title kind of recommends or suggests, it's really about going in to your grief. Go into that darkness so you can come out of it and embrace what you have. And it was just officially launched on October 1st. And it's officially available for everybody wherever you buy your books. So if it's not in your local bookstore, they can order it. But of course it's also available on Amazon too.
01:39:10
Speaker
Wonderful. So wonderful.
Sharing Wisdom and Hope
01:39:13
Speaker
Thank you again so much. And I know this was a lot emotionally and even for the listeners having, you know, to hear all this, but at the same time, so many, so many amazing, uh, I always call them nuggets. I haven't found another word I keep on jewels. I should find another word for nuggets of knowledge and of wisdom and of
01:39:35
Speaker
hope to that you share in your journey. So thank you so much, Autumn, once again, for opening up your soul to share these very candid and honest moments in your life and painful moments in your life to be able to shed some light and hope to the listeners and to myself as well. So thank you. Well, thank you for letting me be on here and try to do that, really, the book and the website and everything else is so hopefully I can
01:40:04
Speaker
help some other people. I appreciate everything you do because you're one of those support services, I guess.
01:40:15
Speaker
I think we all share in the way we can. Actually, I'm going to end with this funny little anecdote. And if it's okay with you, when Autumn reached out to me, she wrote me an email and it was a thorough very, you could know she's a writer because it was thorough, it was to the point. And then I respond with, yay, it is so great. I would love to get to talk to you. It's like something like that.
01:40:40
Speaker
And when we talked, I was like, by the way, I wasn't trying, as you noticed in the email exchange, I'm not a writer, I'm a talker. The world needs talkers too. That's why I have a podcast and not a blog. Yeah, exactly. Know your strengths.
01:41:02
Speaker
Yes, I just didn't want to dismiss the fact that I'm like, here you are. I'm like, oh, I'd love to connect. Yeah. But yeah, we have to knowing our strengths and also embracing those and using those strengths in our life also help us, you know, with helping others to when we know that because each of us sometimes when we're trying to serve
Podcast's Purpose of Comfort and Support
01:41:24
Speaker
others in a way that's not our strength and we end up finding a lot of blocks, right? And so when we're serving in our strengths, things just kind of come a little bit easier and just flow, right? We kind of get into that flow. So I'm excited to be able to read your book as well. And I know the audience will too. So thank you once again, Autumn. Great, thank you.
01:41:50
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. 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.
01:42:19
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. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.