Grief, Part 1

In this episode, the first segment discusses the surprising things that came up for Tyler during editing as well as a revisit to the use of the term violence. The hosts discuss violence in a more nuanced way and clarify the use of the term.

Both Parts of the Grief session delves into the paradoxical nature of grief as both deeply personal and requiring community witness. The conversation explores how grief fragments and splinters, with different pieces moving in various directions. The speakers introduce the concept of “ambiguous loss” and discuss the challenge of supporting others without imposing one’s own narrative.

Grief Part 1 Transcript

Intro & Outro
And all of that, looking back, demands to remember what it was like to be in that moment. What was the relationship with grief then? I’m Jeremy. And I’m Tyler. Welcome to GoodPain, where we talk about life’s true intensities without pretending they’re easy to solve. What if the things we’re told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives? Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often, about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn’t to eliminate the hard stuff, it’s to find the good in it. Welcome to the conversation.

Tyler
Thank you for joining us for episode three of GoodPain. Season one. And as we’ve discussed in previous episodes, we do have a content warning here. The story that’s being shared involves a child, catastrophe, trauma, a family in grief, and it is sensitive content. If you have sensitive ears nearby, whether those be younger ears and you don’t want them to hear this, if you yourself are in a vulnerable position and this kind of a conversation is not helpful to your mental health and well-being, take care of yourself. With that, we want to introduce the next two episodes. Episodes three and four. We’re going to talk about grief. And while it is not independent of trauma, we tried to create a separation between the first two episodes where we talk about the initial trauma, the initiating event, and then also grief and what that means. Before we jumped into the conversation on grief, Jeremy did two things when we recorded this. He first did a check-in with me. We were rolling and recording when he asked me the question. We recorded all of our pre-session conversations. And in this case, what was revealed deserves to be in this episode because it’s a pulling back of the curtain for what I was going through while we were recording these episodes and the surprises that came up around that. And the second thing that Jeremy does is he brings up a topic that was mentioned at the end of episode two. It involves the word violence and what that means. We clarify that we’re not just talking about physical violence. We’re talking about the many different ways that we are violent towards ourselves and towards others. And so we spend some time discussing that word violence. And it’s an important discussion that will continue to come up through the rest of the season, not necessarily with just that word. But when we start talking about how we are violent towards one another, we also start to discuss how we invade each other. Sometimes rationalizations that are for ourselves and for our behavior can be in conflict with intentions that we have. And so when we have intentions that are good, that are compassionate, that are graceful, that want to help and yet we choose tactics, whether it is through immaturity, whether it is a lack of knowing, a lack of forethought, that causes impact that is out of line with our intentions. That is a form of violence. Now that word has a lot of connotation for good reason. But we want to have this conversation that’s a little bit more nuanced for the purposes here. Because using that word as stark as it is solicits reactions that sometimes are very helpful in evaluating what it is that is driving those reactions. Why do they come up? We do not use the word flippantly. We use it very specifically and we invite you to evaluate it and hold it in the same way. After the mid-roll break, we jump into our conversation with grief part one. Grief part two will continue next week where we devote almost a full hour to the conclusion of this conversation. Thank you again for joining us and here’s the show.

Jeremy
How did you feel leaving last week? We did a check in here. Everything was good. It was not the first time you were talking about these things. So you were able to do these things and hold it together. Do you need more of an intro dynamic about do we jump right in or what is it you need?

Tyler
Leaving last week was fine. Leaving this week may be not the same. The editing has been where I’ve gotten to even certain parts where just pulling out and doing the dialogue cleanup. I’m having to listen to specific lines multiple times over. I’m just like, this is heavier than I thought it was going to be hitting certain points. Last week, in particular, the part where I was relaying word in the emergency room and them delivering the news to us. I was like, I do not want to hear this again.

Jeremy
Because you have to relive it in a different way.

Tyler
So it’s interesting. I’m listening to myself tell the story.

Jeremy
But you hear the emotion behind it?

Tyler
Yeah, and talking about it, I’m fine. Us having a conversation, just fine.

Jeremy
I think I guessed a little bit that that might be the case.

Tyler
I did not guess the gravity that would be associated with it. It’s been a learning exercise.

Jeremy
Yeah, I didn’t even see that coming. But of course, that makes a lot of sense.

Tyler
These first two or three episodes, however, it’s going to shake out. Those ones might be the most challenging ones.

Jeremy
With respect to editing or retelling the story?

Tyler
Yeah, it’s the editing and hearing the story. The retelling of the story is fine. It’s almost how proximal to the initial event it is. That was the most acute phase of things, the most piquant feelings are associated with that. Because of the emotional memory of those things. As the time distance from that event increases, the size of the feelings don’t change. But the spikiness of them do.

Jeremy
Intensity, yeah.

Tyler
That’ll be interesting also today when we start talking about grief. That’s what I anticipate is going to be the nature of what a lot of the conversation is going to carry us towards is, what do you do when the feelings aren’t even as clearly defined? Because with spikiness that is bound by this very specific time and event, you can almost compartmentalize that one easier than you can taking that and spreading it out, making it more dull, but more weighty across time. That’s where I am. I am in a space of extreme curiosity. Nothing about this continues to give me pause. It’s more being surprised, sometimes being exhausted by some of those surprises, but not deterred, more curious.

Jeremy
Do you want to talk about any of that in any conversation? I think that would be curious because you’re really being forced to relive these things that are very much not in the past, but you’re having to deal with that head on here, aren’t you?

Tyler
I think this is going to be the struggle here between you and I about this topic that we’re talking about today. What I wrote is there’s something about the language of grief and trauma that does not seem to be spoken by everyone. Not yet. It will be. Eventually, we’re all going to become fluent in it, but some of us are sooner than others. That’s something that has always been challenging is speaking about grief, speaking about trauma, and choosing the words that will land. I may understand things in my body about trauma and grief that I’m translating to someone else, but they’re not going to understand the way I’m going to explain it.

Jeremy
I’m guessing they don’t have the language or at least the lens to really dissect what is being heard.

Tyler
It begs the question is that sometimes I’m in the process of grasping after the words to try and make it make sense in a way that convinces myself that the way I’m explaining it makes sense to me and makes sense to you, and in so doing, it’s losing meaning. Part of what I’ve challenged myself for even today is to grasp after what I know is the actual antidote to that, which is stop being up here and move down here and just share what’s raw instead of trying to explain. Stop trying to manufacture a language that frankly words are never going to meet. It’s a language that is felt in the body.

Jeremy
What was your biggest takeaways from last week? Well, I’ll start with a funny one. It occurred to me after I was leaving because I think in the moment it seemed crystal clear what was meant, the language you were using, context all nailed it, but you said in how you’re treating your wife with her emotional needs and her processing of all that was going on and you used the word violent, and I should have stepped in and just clarified we’re talking about verbally with respect to the healing, not the physical, not, but I think it was understood.

Tyler
I think that’s a great call out. My question to you is maybe as sanitized as possible, what is violence?

Jeremy
I think you did a really great job of painting that picture because I think that violence is anything physical or mental and anywhere between that elicits a reaction that hits you in a way that is sharp, it’s intense, and it’s confusing. Yeah, there’s probably a couple other ways to do it, but I think that’s something that you were not expecting or didn’t see coming and it just changed a little bit of forward momentum or whatever you were had planned in that moment because now you have to process that thing that has happened.

Tyler
No, I think this might be something that’s good because that is a very charged word. I think the reason that we connotatively load the word violence is because what we’re actually doing socially when we say violence, we are putting more of an emphasis on physical violence and not the other aspects where we can also be violent. It is a word that I think needs to stay in the podcast in the discussion, but we need to contextualize it.

Jeremy
And you spend some time really teasing out what it means. I think the context was there, but I think people, once they hear that word, automatically starts to jump to conclusions and stop processing.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
And then they really, oh, this is what was meant.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
And anyway, so that’s what I picked up on.

Tyler
For me, when I start thinking about violence first, oftentimes we think of it in terms of one person against another. And I almost wanted to get more fundamental in describing violence is not even just a violation of the other.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
It’s a violation first and foremost of self. And if I was to say whether it is physical, emotional or psychological violence, how do I want to be treated? How would I in my highest achieved evolution of self? How do I expect to treat somebody who themselves is at a stage, including myself? If I if I’m saying that I myself in if I’m at a point in my life where I struggle with being patient driving on the road, I want to extend that person grace and compassion.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
I don’t want to shame or guilt or judge or physically try to compel that person to be something.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
They are not even capable of being at that point. That is a form of violence is me saying you should be different and more in line with what my expectations are of you.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
I’m going to do something either physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually to compel you.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
To fit the mold of what I think you should be right now. And anytime we do that, whether it’s even we do this in in ways when even we want to help people when we come alongside people who are grieving, who are suffering. We sit with them and we try to get them to feel what we think they should be feeling, even if that is relief. And we grasp after mechanisms that we believe are going to is going to give them relief.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
Things like you are capable. You are stronger than you think you are. You’re going to get through this.

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
Our intentions may be good. We want to help alleviate. We want to help be alongside them in the suffering. But in so doing, we grasp after things that could actually perpetuate more pain, could make them feel lesser, could put some further down a path that we had no intention of.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
That still is violence. That is violence. That is a violation of ourselves because when if we were to extract ourselves from that and look at it, we would say we never wanted to put that.

Jeremy
No, that’s wrong.

Tyler
And yet.

Jeremy
What kind of a monster would say or do those things?

Tyler
That’s right.

Jeremy
That’s right.

Tyler
And that’s what and that’s for me is where using this language of even calling it violence is a is a mirror up to ourselves to say our intentions are good.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
And sometimes the impact of our selected actions is not in line with our intentions.

Jeremy
This is a totally appropriate label for this act.

Tyler
That’s right.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
That’s right.

Jeremy
And I think you mentioned earlier about using language that works for you, the teller to the person that is well meaning and wants to be in the support position. You fundamentally are trying to force something that there’s either no place for or the red, I’m sorry, round peg square hole dynamic, right? And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do these things and by shoving those things in, it not really helping because the receptors just don’t exist in the way that they need. And that becomes really dangerous for both parties.

Tyler
What continually comes back to me is we are frequently looking for some sort of formula outside of ourselves.

Jeremy
Hmm.

Tyler
It is there the entire time. The question is, do we know how to read? I mean, even go back to where we started with it’s, are we speaking the language?

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
That is that we ourselves are communicating to ourselves.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
When I, you know, when I sit down to plane a board and I get frustrated with it when I’m driving and I get frustrated with that. Do I even have the language?

Jeremy
Do I even have the ability to sit with what is coming up?

Unknown Speaker
Right.

Tyler
To, to learn from it. And, and I, the majority of my life until, until I was beaten into submission for that.

Jeremy
That’s how it has to happen.

Tyler
Yeah, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t because the truth is, is that every single time something came up, the justified, the justification for what my ego was, was, was experiencing was sufficient.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
You just gave that story. You shared the story. Everything about that story, not a single person would disagree with what came up and what, what the ego experiences, what the parent experiences, what the citizen experiences. That all is fully justifiable.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
And yet it’s, it’s not.

Jeremy
Hmm.

Tyler
It’s, it’s both sides of those things. And I think that’s the, the piece that, that trauma has helped with just living life and getting more years under the belt and some of those very painful years and is, there’s a lot that I don’t know, not about the world.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
That’s, that’s always been the case.

Jeremy
Sure. It arguably always will.

Tyler
Always will. And, and I can distract myself by reading more books. I can distract myself by taking more classes in order to, there’s so much about myself.

Jeremy
Totally.

Tyler
That I still do not understand and is in such conflict with the ways over time that I thought I was.

Jeremy
This is 100% the challenge and the struggle for everybody.

Tyler
Yeah.

Jeremy
You know, this is coming at a very timely moment for me because I experienced all those feelings about 24 hours ago. And so I don’t care if you want to hear it because I’m going to tell you.

Tyler
Good.

Jeremy
This has now become therapy. So, so I just dropped off my daughter on a date with this lovely young man and that’s, that’s in my head as well. I’m happy for her and this is time of her life to explore and kind of process developing new relationships. But it’s like, still, this is my baby girl, right? So like, you watch your back and right. So there’s that. Then as I was driving, driving away, there’s a stoplight and in the stoplight, I’m in front of the line. And so the light changes as we’ve all done. And the initial reaction is, oh, I’m going to press down with the accelerator and just move my vehicle in the direction that I wish to do. If it weren’t for the fact that I started doing this thing about a decade ago where I look and I’ve told you this before, I look about 300 yards to the left and then 300 yards to the right before that car goes into motion. Because if I didn’t, I, we would be having a very different conversation today or not at all. But there is this, this person and I’m going to use language that’s in line with violence. But this idiot, there’s, I was looking in my scanning the two lanes on the outside, not the center lane, but the two lanes, they at all come to the line slowly stopping at the red light as they should. The middle lane was wide open. So I start pulling slowly forward and then she did not even hit the brakes. She was not doing anything and just going in my mind is about 300 miles an hour through this intersection. And so I instantly lay on my horn and I went through instant in an instant, everything you just described, right? You son of a, you know, all the things. What was funny about this story is in my surveying to my left, there was a police officer there pulled over, did their job, they were stopping at the light as you should. And so she barrels through, I could see her reaction. She saw me. I mean, I know she has blue eyes because they were that close. And I’m laying on the horn. I heard her mouth and expletive that starts with the letter s. And so she was frustrated at the moment. I don’t get the impression that she regretted doing this or had the wherewithal to think I should probably do a better job. She’s like, oh, somebody’s calling me out.

Tyler
Right.

Jeremy
So in a way, so I’m pissed off in every kind of way. And then this police officer slowly starts to roll over, but he had to wait for us to get out of the way so he can start giving chase. And but in that moment, I’m just thinking, if I wasn’t doing your job, you would have cut right through my vehicle. I mean, if I was with my kids in the back and I’ve got young kids. And I started having all these feelings. So I did this very petty thing. And I’m not proud of this, but I would do the same thing again next time. So I pulled over and I’m starting to just breathe and all that. And I’m like, you know what? No, I’m going to go follow that police officer. It just ask if there’s any reason whatsoever you might need my presence to make this go. I want her to be in the clink by nightfall. I want her to never see Clyde de Dever again. And so anyway, I did this and I’m like, what am I doing? I’m insane. And what am I doing? Anyway, I didn’t find them. I turned around and but but with that thousands of thoughts about what if and oh my gosh, you know, what would happen if this happened? And then the other thing that hit me when I was driving home, I guess at this point, the second time is the number of times that I have avoided this same scenario because I was doing somebody else’s job on the road. It’s just maddening. And when is that going to end? Because now I’m thinking about my kids and I’ve got one who’s close to getting a license for the first time and it’s just oh my gosh. And I don’t know how to how to process how we’re going to change this. And yeah. And so it’s a problem for me, but I want it to be violent. I want it to be physically verbally. Mentally, I would like to make this person suffer in some small way. But you know, it’s just like, what am I doing? I really appreciate you saying this because we’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done silly things. I cannot say with honesty that I’ve ever run a red light, but if I had, I would hope for grace and understanding. But it’s a big problem. It’s a major concern for all of us and parents are not. Nobody wants to see somebody cause damage and physical harm to somebody else because they were negligent or they were distracted or there’s no reason for it. Is there anything that would have diffused it immediately that was brought into round out that story about her when if you did track her down, you did find her.

Tyler
Sure.

Jeremy
And you find out another bit of information that just releases that violence. I see what you’re doing and you were very much leading the witness, your honor.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
But yeah. I think there’s two ways I would have to answer that. One, if there was justice that I saw served. So if I had the wherewithal to stop and keep the rest of the traffic behind me so that the police officer can go and do his job and lights and sirens right away, I think, okay, great. Justice is one today and that’s fine. And I could release this. If I had been able to find them, follow them and start giving her an earful of my least PG language. And then I’m sure to say, hey, I’m really sorry. This is what’s going on. And I didn’t even see it because my head is somewhere else. Yeah, that changes every dynamic in the world except for the fact that you still have a social obligation in this circumstance. Yeah, I feel like I would want to be sympathetic to whatever’s going on, but it would not in this situation excuse the fact that potentially you could have done some real harm. I’m just thinking if there was a pedestrian, oh my God, right?

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
If there was more to the story, except for I was just distracted, I would be more sympathetic to that. Yeah, I think all of us know that the chances that there is more to the story that would eliminate those feelings that we carry is more.

Tyler
Is much smaller than the exercise of just trying to extend grace or the possibility of.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
It’s the one sided storytelling that makes me nervous about myself.

Jeremy
And you mentioned being a parent is singular storytelling that my child that I’m supposed to be protecting that is the one in the right that needs that. A lot of justification there, right?

Tyler
Lots.

Jeremy
And underneath that is a beauty to it that could also be exploited.

Tyler
Okay. And that exploitation, I think comes when we are put in situations that are out of our control. And what I find is that when I’m reminded of how little it is that I control is where I see the pieces of myself that resort to violence as a means for reasserting control.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
That on the one hand, when I indulge it, temporarily delightful.

Jeremy
100%. Yes. That’s why we like revenge movies, I think.

Tyler
Absolutely. And then on the other hand, I know these are not the things that actually drive change. If I want to make the most impact that is in line with who I am, regardless of my inadequacies at this stage of my life for myself, for my family, I choose the immediate control at a far higher rate.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
And I wish I did.

Jeremy
And I think it’s so hard to just quiet that feeling, though, isn’t it?

Tyler
Yeah. I don’t know if I can quiet the feeling. I haven’t figured out how to be a ego whisperer. I’m still in the process of figuring that out. It’s only been through trauma, which makes it, which is interesting is that the very thing that we are forecasting could have happened. The trauma that would inflict on us is likely the best teacher at humbling, at actually eliminating that behavior.

Jeremy
And similar to what we were talking about last week of not wanting to speak that into the universe, of saying, you know, it’s one of those things of, yes, be careful what you wish for.

Tyler
Yes, I want to be more patient. Well, here comes the things that are going to actually teach me to be patient. Oftentimes, what I’m really asking for is I want to become patient in the least painless way possible.

Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s the human way, right? I mean, we want to get to the end goal without having the benefit of the full understanding or grasp of the issue you’re trying to grapple with in the most efficient way possible. The least painful, the least obtrusive to other thoughts and relationships stuff. It’s, of course, why wouldn’t anybody want it that way? But to your point, it’s also inauthentic to the things that you might need in the authentic learning of that lesson.

Tyler
It’s interesting that this is where we ended up because as we’ve talked about this, I would add an addendum to the nature of violence is taking matters into our own hands to affect the world. We’re taking our own hands to affect the change on our ego’s timeline with whatever things are available to us emotionally, psychologically or physically. When those things are already in flight, they are already working. It’s just we don’t like the way that they’re working. We’re not paying attention to the feedback that we’re receiving. And so we’re going to resort to violence to accelerate to the timeline.

Jeremy
Well, you know, again, I’m going to bring up my example of hockey playing. It was pretty clear when you get frustrated, you could address that frustration in a very physical way, sometimes to the benefit of the team. Unfortunately, life does not work that way. That’s right.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
And it’s really hard because it was so easy in sports and football is the same. And I’m sure rugby players feel the same way. There are those channels that we have learned to go through in life that don’t have an equal when you become an adult citizen of, you know, of the whatever culture you’re in. And it also, I think the thing that’s delusional about it is that it doesn’t really address how to process those feelings at the moment. It feels good temporarily, but it is not the thing that’s going to make you be able to recognize what you’re going through and say, I want to release this. And this is how I’m going to do it.

Tyler
Yeah.

Jeremy
So you’re back to the same issue.

Midroll
Sit tight and we’ll be right back after this short break. Captain Redworth, does it not strike you that polite society abhors genuine feeling? Lady Margaret, you’ve voiced what I have long suspected. We prize performance over truth. If only that existed place with vulnerability was not a weakness, but wisdom. Well, extraordinary. I have recently encountered just such a philosophy. Philosophy? Through something called good pain. Most unconventional name yet profoundly moving content. Good heavens. You know of good pain. You are acquainted with their work. I frequent goodpainco.com and subscribe to their newsletter. And you partake of their podcast on Apple and Spotify. I can best. I like and share their episodes with unseemly enthusiasm. Oh, as do I review them most favorably. And I send them my most pressing questions and topic requests. My dear lady, we are united in our appreciation for authentic discourse. What are the odds that good pain would lead us to each other? The very best odds, my darling. The very best indeed. Welcome back to the rest of the episode.

Tyler
When Claire was injured, that initial pull for saving her, for saving ourselves from the pain, for looking externally for answers through our reconciliation with grief. It became more and more clear that our relationship to grief belongs to us and belongs to us alone.

Jeremy
It’s so easy, though, in everything you just said about, I don’t have the tools to understand this, let alone process this. I need to look externally and being disappointed. If I’m hearing correctly about all the resources that are available, none of them speak to you directly in that moment, in that way, in the way that you need to hear it. So it has to be personal, but you never know that in the moment, do you?

Tyler
And sometimes it takes years to get there. I don’t want to speak of grief as a linear. Like grief starts here. This is, you know, the path that it gets to. Grief fragments, it splinters and potentially the bulk of it moves in one way while there’s other remnants of it that move in odd ways. We can, with one aspect of our grief, realize this belongs to me. I have to carry this. This is a part of my journey. At the same time that there’s another aspect of that grief where I am either trying to co-opt somebody else’s experience or trying to dictate to them what it should be so that my experience can be lighter. This is something that the most stark examples of this show up in my and Tiffany’s relationship. And how a shared experience as parents who are both equally advocating for the full recovery of their daughter ended up having stark differences in their path towards managing their own grief, learning what it looked like to each other, to ourselves, to our kids. There’s a point where after Claire was back at home and we were starting to get into a routine, we were starting to know how we manage her ongoing care.

Jeremy
Can you give me a timeline of what you’re talking about?

Tyler
Yeah, so this is about three months after the initial event.

Jeremy
So you’ve had a chance to kind of recognize these are the, this is the pattern, this is the schedule in some ways.

Tyler
We’re recognizing the pattern. We’re recognizing also and starting to learn what are the things that we have to build up the muscles to carry long term because we do not have definitive answers. That would help us understand what the plan is going to be long term.

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
Learning how to, in the adapting to this new normal is there’s components of it like this outstanding question of how close to 100% pre-accident is Claire going to be able to get to. And understanding that there is no, there is not a definitive answer for that because brain injuries are highly variable. And you could have two people that have virtually the same circumstances and two wildly different outcomes, even if they’re the same age, even if it’s the same temperature of water, all these, there’s still a lot. We don’t know about the brain and what its recovery path is going to be.

Jeremy
And so we are very big variables.

Tyler
Wow. I have no idea. With those big variables, one of them for us is, oh, we really just want an answer.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
So that we can get accustomed to how do we moderate our own hope? What does hope supposed to look like?

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
And this goes back to the nature of the trauma itself is that the trauma decimated the original hopes that we had. Our original hopes as parents for every parent is imagining her growing up, her being her own person, developing her own autonomy, her own agency, making mistakes, having to be lectured, learning how to drive, running into things, nearly t-boning Jeremy on the street and having to deal with that.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
All of those things that come along with that have the hopes and the expectations of this is what life is going to look like. And now after that trauma, part of what is comforting is being able to reconstruct a new future.

Jeremy
A narrative that you can wrap your head around.

Tyler
Yes. But we want to have certain questions answered in order to reconstruct that with a degree of confidence. Having our confidence shattered three months prior.

Jeremy
Do you feel like you were owed some type of answers in that moment or is that something that was premature at the moment?

Tyler
My answer for that today is going to be vastly different than the answer at three months.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
It’s going to be vastly different than the answer Tiffany would give today versus three months. We had friends who came to visit while we were at the subacute care facility on the step down after the PICU that came and said things to both of us where both of us are present that we learned years later each of us took very differently.

Jeremy
Oh, wow.

Tyler
One of them was someone came in and offered an encouragement that this was someone who had also been a parent of a near drowning.

Jeremy
Well, this is a new friend or a former friend.

Tyler
New friend.

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
New friend that popped up after the fact.

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
Best of intentions was to provide comfort encouragement to parents who better than virtually anybody else who was there.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
Knew what we were going through.

Jeremy
Instantly.

Tyler
Very much so.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
And offered a piece of encouragement along the lines of, well, my son was never doing this. These are good signs. I don’t see any reason why she wouldn’t be at least at where he is.

Jeremy
This is a promising thing to my story.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
Who would kill for these types of markers.

Tyler
Yes.

Jeremy
Okay. Okay.

Tyler
And in terms of the relationship of the process of grieving not ever being having a terminal endpoint. It’s something that we’re going to carry at certain points during that arc. We are clinging to hope in order to do that planning to talk about what the future may look like so that we can, one, make decisions.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
And Tiffany and I took that very differently.

Jeremy
Yeah, let’s hear it.

Tyler
Tiffany, it was what she needed in that moment because she was starving for hope. Optimism in any way.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
And that gave her something sufficient to get her through that day.

Jeremy
I could see that.

Tyler
I was livid.

Jeremy
Because?

Tyler
Because I saw it as false hope. How do you know what her trajectory is going to be?

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
And I saw directly the compassion and the intention. I also saw the folly of giving that when you cannot prove that. And we had similar things with, after her first MRI, the doctor that we met with came back to us and said, “I see no reason.” The part of her brain that’s injured, we see is mildly ischemic, meaning that there’s not fully, full necrosis of the tissue, not full death. And the lobes within her brain that they were slightly enlarged, but he said, “I don’t see any reason why she won’t be able to walk, talk, laugh again.”

Jeremy
Wow.

Tyler
And?

Jeremy
You shared that with me before. I didn’t put it in the context of that moment when you were hearing this. That’s a dangerous thing to say with such confidence.

Tyler
Now, this was almost the inverse.

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
And Tiffany wasn’t livid with this. But that gave me hope. Partially, this also gives me pause for am I giving credence to a professional over a friend? Those kinds of things. That’s another topic we have around our own confirmation bias. I think the takeaway for this is that that moment of reaction to whatever was teed up at that stage had itself an arc to it.

Jeremy
What was the difference of time between both of those stages?

Tyler
Two or three weeks.

Jeremy
Wow.

Tyler
So one was in the PICU after the very first MRI to really assess this is when she came off of the cooling blankets. She was out technically of the medical coma.

Jeremy
Okay.

Tyler
And then how we’re wanting to see what’s the degree of injury that has occurred. How injurious is it? And can we use that data to forecast a little bit of what the future is going to look like? The other aspect of this is that within probably 48 hours of hearing that from that neurologist who had read her MRI, she also had an interaction with a doctor that was attached to the practice at the PICU who lacked tact and essentially said, “Do you guys really want to go through with this? Do you know what you’re signing yourselves up for?”

Jeremy
Those are huge different messages within two days, if I’m understanding. Oh my gosh.

Tyler
And the arc for both of these is in that moment when he said that, which has nothing to do with hope, we’re parents at this point that we’re clinging on whatever hope we can get.

Jeremy
Anything you provide.

Tyler
I’m livid with him. I’m absolutely angry to the point that we actually spoke with the practice and said, “We never want to see this doctor in the room again.” And I am very hopeful by what the neurologist who read the MRI had said to us. Fast forward five years and we now see the level that Clare was able to get back to. The person that was closer, that was actually probably kinder with the directness, even though I still would say he had bad side manners.

Jeremy
Bad side manners is what I’m hearing.

Tyler
But his prediction was more accurate to what actually happened than the neurologist and his prediction of what happened. And it inverted. And what this comes back to is all of this has been highly fluid. There has nothing about it. It has been determined to reach this point and this is put to bed. You reach this point and this is put to bed. Every single thing, even looking back at it and saying, “This is how we responded to it then.” We have a new relationship with that. We have a new type of grievance that’s associated with it. We have a new interaction with grief based on the evolving nature of the data, the experience that we had over that time. And all of that, looking back, demands to remember what it was like to be in that moment. What was the relationship with grief then?

Jeremy
I’m sure you remember it in the way that this is an experience and a time you will never forget. And even the details that are nuanced, I think, probably flood back to you in some capacity. Maybe it takes a trigger. Maybe it takes talking with your wife. I don’t know. But I’m sure that these are things that you are not escaping from, for better or worse. Let me ask you this. In the moment, you’re dealing with a million things. Is grief a part of that conversation then? Or is it amplified further out? Or is it a combination of those? Because to your point, the fluidity of this, it seems like maybe it’s all happening in various ways.

Tyler
For me, the grief takes more center stage as uncertainties start to become certainties.

Jeremy
So to dumb this down, just so I can understand, there’s a conversation here and I’m holding a scale, an imaginary scale in one hand, we have hope.

Tyler
Then we have a grief here and then the balance of the shifting of one of those up and down. I think what you just said, and I think is insightful, is the relationship between grief and hope.

Jeremy
Are those the two feelings that we’re having? Is there a third?

Tyler
There’s probably more, but the predominant pieces I think are… Those are the first players. Yeah, and as parents or as individuals, all of us who are going through trauma and getting farther away from that initial trauma moment, I think that it’s the relationship between hope and how much of that that you have, giving way to the clarity of what we have lost and what deserves to be grieved.

Jeremy
Oh wow.

Tyler
And oftentimes, until you have that level of certainty, you cannot grieve appropriately. And there’s a book that both Tiffany and I read that’s called Ambiguous Loss that put language to this for us. It’s one of those books that we read, I think probably around 10 years after. And we’re just reading through every page, and none of that is new to us. It’s just giving voice to things that we felt inside. And the difference between ambiguous loss and unambiguous loss is, with unambiguous loss, you almost have a time for conducting the grieving because there’s a certainty of what’s going to happen. And right now, my family is, I have an extended family member that is of older age that got a cancer diagnosis. That was unexpected, has deteriorated quickly, and we are now at the stage of palliative care with a pretty strong emphasis on hospice care.

Jeremy
Yeah, okay, wow.

Tyler
We know what that end game is going to be. And so we’re able to start doing the things that is grieving with that loved one beforehand. Wow. And that shared experience of my solitudinous grief coming alongside and bordering your solitudinous grief has a tremendous amount of catharsis to it. And I think we all inherently know this when we say, you better take the opportunity now to put things to bed. And not everybody has that opportunity. And that’s a big part of the switch to then ambiguous loss, which is, now you’ve got a whole bunch of these unresolved pieces that would have been a privilege to have been able to deal with those. To deal with those beforehand. We distinguish between ambiguous and unambiguous loss. And the truth is that those are ends of a spectrum that usually there’s some sort of a balance between the two of those. In this situation with my extended family member, because of the speed with it, it’s going to have some ambiguous loss associated with it. This framework of ambiguous versus the unambiguous loss is not to mitigate the size of the loss at all. Ambiguous loss is not more deserving of grief than unambiguous loss. They have different mechanics associated with them. And when you have a tragedy like this, where we are celebrating, as we said in the last episode, we are celebrating at a party celebrating life. And within a matter of seconds, we are now, the world is different.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
The ambiguities associated with that, the what ifs, what if we had done something different, what if we never had the party, what if, what if, what if, you know, weather had changed, what if, you know, every single decision that’s made, you now are in a position for grieving things in a way that will never be resolved. That’s where this ambiguity that comes in.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
That relationship between hope and grief is, it’s, it’s ongoing versus unambiguous loss where you know, what the outcome is going to be. It’s, you know what’s going to have, you know what you’re marching towards.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
And hope has an answer. And so you’re able to shift that hope to other things, whether that’s reconciliation, whether that’s deeper relationship. And the more it starts shifting to ambiguous loss, but our relationship with it has shown that there are certain aspects of our hope that we continue to hold out that we will not be able to grieve those things.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
Until we have a similar outcome. We were in, in Texas when this happened. I ended up taking a job was the happiest I’ve ever been in my professional life.

Jeremy
Professional, yeah.

Tyler
And we decided to leave Texas.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
After we got an offer to return back here home to the Rocky Mountains to be close to family who could provide support to our family.

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
At the same time that a whole bunch of things were happening policy wise in Texas that was making it more and more challenging to even get the care necessary for Claire. But as a reflection of, of this ambiguous loss, when I went to go and resign from this job, I went and talked with a friend who was also the person I was going to resign from. So the person I was going to resign with. And spontaneously, one of the main reasons for why we were leaving besides getting close to family, all those pragmatic reasons came up out of me and is attached to that ambiguous loss. My voice broke as soon as I told him this was my chances right now for outliving my youngest child are very high. It is most likely that I am going to outlive my daughter.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
And I have to be close to family. We have to do this regardless of.

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
The first thing that I was going to do was to talk about the secondary trauma of my professional life and how happy I was. And those the types of things that are these. We talked about the secondary traumas that come with head injuries as the brain swells. There are secondary traumas to us and the grief and the hopes that we have.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
That are going to continue revealing themselves, even if they’re as we know as inconsequential as my professional life. I still… those things are coterminous. That I’m giving this up because I know at some point chances are that I’m going to outlive my daughter. And I to a degree I am holding that potential trauma at bay at arms length.

Jeremy
Yeah.

Tyler
And I don’t know how to do that. I don’t I’m not equipped for doing that. I have the hope that that’s not going to be the case. But I don’t have answers for this.

Jeremy
Right.

Tyler
And so much of going through especially those early years of of seeking answers, asking questions, seeking answers is about right sizing the hope so that I can grieve.

Jeremy
Sure.

Tyler
And that comes it came naturally.

Jeremy
In that moment or the entire journey of grief coming in?

Tyler
I think the desire the desire to grieve the understanding within the body that I need to complete something. I need I need some resolution on pieces of this. It starts calling out from inside of you.

Intro & Outro
Next week we’ll continue this discussion with grief part two. Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation for bringing your own story, your own questions and your own hard won wisdom to what we’re building together. If you want to keep this going, subscribe to GoodPain on Apple podcasts or Spotify, where you can also leave us a review that helps others find their way to these conversations. And for weekly doses of conversations that go beyond quick fixes or surface level advice, subscribe to our kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com. Goodpain is recorded in Colorado on a Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands. And let’s remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame. Whatever we are carrying today, we don’t have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.