Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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The ones that are like, that are harder to listen to are like, this is like five days before you went into hospice. Hi, I'm Nora. In...
2011, my boyfriend had a seizure when he was at work. And it turned out that the reason for the season, his joke, was a brain tumor. And the brain tumor was cancer and the cancer was bad. And the cancer would kill him three years later. But in between, a lot of other things happened.
Yes, chemo, radiation, two brain surgeries, a billion blood draws, but also life. We got married. We had a baby. His name is Ralph. Hi, I'm Ralphie. We traveled and we went to a Bruce Springsteen concert and we went to a Beyonce concert. We did everything we wanted to. And life was really good and normal, even though there was this big...
scary shadow following us around everywhere. And then the shadow caught up with us. The brain tumor kept growing back. I miscarried our second baby. My dad died. And a few weeks later, so did Aaron. So now I'm a 30-ish widowed mom and everyone wants to know how I'm doing.
It's just our nature for us to touch each other's arms gently and try to make an awkward amount of eye contact and whisper in that soft NPR voice, like, how are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? Which I hear a lot. And I kept telling everybody the same thing, which is, I'm fine. Like, I'm good. But sometimes when somebody asks you how you are, the only answer is,
Terrible. Thanks for asking. Since Erin died, I've stopped having normal conversations with people. I don't think there's really not such a thing as small talk when you wrote a blog about your husband dying. And I don't want small talk anyway anymore. I want the big talk. I want to talk about all of those big things, even if we are just standing in the checkout line at Target. And when I ask how you're doing, I want to hear the real answer.
Not to totally bum you out, but you're going to go through something hard in life. And if you're sitting there like, oh, I already did. Okay, well, you're going to go through another hard thing in life. That's how it works. You don't get a pass. The hard things happen. I'm not even done with the hard things. And if you've been through one, you know that it's hard for people to look at them. It's hard for people to talk about them. And it's hard to go through them. That's why they're called hard things. But they're also worth talking about.
And you find value and strength in your struggle eventually. And we're going to find it together. Each week, we'll explore something uncomfortable. Not just death, but all the icky feelings and icky things that can happen in a life. Things like loss, divorce, jealousy. We're going to laugh about things you're not supposed to. Probably going to cry a little bit. I'm big into crying. Love it. Do it every day. This week, we're talking about death itself.
and memory, and whether or not it really is going to be okay. It started with a letter from my friend Claire, and I got it just a few weeks after my husband and father died. In it, Claire tells me how I may miss the pain I'm in, how that urgent, burning sadness of losing her own father and her own brother within eight months of each other had helped keep them close to her. And now, five years later, they're harder to conjure in her memory.
I felt the most pain when the memory was the strongest, by a lot, because the memory was so fresh of the people that were there a second ago. And that pain, man, it's awful, but that's what makes them feel real. They faded together as the memories fade away.
The pain is more like an ache to call them up, but not a distinct memory of, like, they could be here right now. It's more like, oh, I used to have a brother. I wish I could call him and ask him this question. As a mother raising a son who won't have any memories of his father, but whose own heart is aching with the weight of what we lost...
You could say that pain and memory and loss are on my mind all the time. And I know that I'm not the first person to go through this, but this shit is hard. I'm raising a child who's now three, who has spent one third of his life without his father. I'm the keeper of these memories, and it's my job to, in a sense, help Ralph know his father, his
without having him around, which is really, it's a big task. So I wanted to talk to people who are having their own experiences with this. Parallel experiences, similar experiences. And I wanted to talk to Mo. Where's Nana? Can you go get Nana? And away from the fire? That's Mo. Hey Bronson.
And this is her husband, Andy. Here's your hat, buddy. And their son, Bronson. In this video, Bronson is two years old. Hi. Now, at age four, Bronson watches this video all the time. Like, all the time, the way most kids watch, like, Curious George. In it, his dad is chasing him around a family picnic. Get you. I'm gonna get you. Coming to get you. Hey, I'm gonna get you. I got you. Ha, ha, ha.
What? What was Andy like as a dad? Hilarious. The first year was really experimental. We are lucky that Bronson's alive. He did some funny things like fall asleep while feeding him in the middle of the night and I come out and there's a baby on the floor. Oh, God. He also, I came out one time and I was like, oh my gosh, the baby stopped crying. And he goes, yeah. He's like,
Go look at him. I go in there. He has a blanket tied around Bronson's face with a pacifier because to hold the pacifier in. And the baby is like six weeks old. I was like, dude.
He was like, I don't know. It works, man. I'm like, you know what? I know that makes sense to you. But no. And then something like and he just loved he wanted to be a dad so bad and he just loved being a dad. And he's like just really funny with them and like kiss on him and love on him. If this sounds like two moms just laughing about how clueless you are as new parents, that's because you guessed it. It is.
Mo and I are really close friends, maybe even best friends, if you still say that in your 30s, which would surprise you if you saw us together because she's really cool and I'm not. She's a hairstylist, so she's always wearing layers of cut up T-shirts and black jeans and tons of jewelry. And I am wearing the J.Crew catalog.
You look like Jon Bon Jovi and I look like his brother, Steven. Excuse me, it's Jonathan. Jonathan Bon Jovi. Jonathan. We can laugh about everything, even the reason we know each other, which isn't particularly funny to most people. It was a Monday. At the time, Mo and Andy were complete strangers to us. It was sunny out and danced our last dance in the kitchen that day and he walked away.
When we walked to the car that morning, he kicked the grass and he said, oh, I got to mow this lawn. So when I came home that day, I thought that he would be mowing the lawn. But I opened the door and he wasn't there in the backyard and the lawn was like how it was left. Nobody knew where Andrew was or why he'd gone, but all of Northeast Minneapolis was looking for him. Because Andy was a cool guy. He was a really good musician. He was in a ton of cool bands. And also because internet.
And these cops are at our house because our dad/husband is missing. You know, my child is sitting here and he's almost kind of like, "This is kind of cool because look at their shiny badges." And I'm thinking,
You don't know what is going on. He just doesn't get that they're here because his dad is not here. Just to watch your little, tiny human try to process, because I don't even know what the hell is going on, and I'm talking to these people, and they're asking me questions, and standing in my house thinking, like, dude, this is like what you see on TV. This is not my life.
I work in northeast Minneapolis. I make northeast beautiful. I do their hair. I come home. I love my family. I don't stand in my house with cops in my house because I can't find my loving husband. And our child is sitting on the couch watching this. And how is that going to play into his head as he gets older? Is he going to be somewhere in his adult life and see a shiny badge and be like, shit.
That's when my dad was not here anymore. And I remember being like, "Oh, should I have my child here? Is this not appropriate?" The cops were there again the next day, when Mo's mother got the phone call that Andrew had been found. I could see her put her hand over her mouth and she was like instantly crying and like she just turned her head and yelled at me. He hung himself. She didn't try, you know, it's just like you react.
And eventually, everyone knew. Her family called friends. The friends called friends. The news was on Facebook, where strangers like me could see it. But the one person who didn't know yet was three years old, enjoying the last normal day of his life. He was at daycare. My mom drove me there to go get him, and I just remember being like,
He has no clue. He has no clue. I'd be like, I can do this. I can't do this. I can do this. I can't do this. I'm like, oh my God, what do I say to him? And someone had called the whole daycare and we're like a little family. And so they, all the moms were sitting out there just like crying and crying and like looking at me, but trying to be strong for the kids. And Diane is just holding him as tight as she can. And she like walked him out to like me and gave me a hug. And
I just remember bending down and hugging him. And I said, your dad is dead and he is gone. And we're not going to see him anymore. And when you want to think of him, you can close your eyes and you can dream of him. What did he understand? He just like hugged me and kissed me. And like he was like extra loving. And we put him in the...
and we drove to my parents' house because, of course, after your husband dies, you have a pizza party at your parents' house to tell all the family. It's the weird things that people don't understand. And then I just remember not knowing what to do. I remember that night just laying on the couch. And I remember coming into my mom and dad's room, and I laid in bed with them and could not stop crying and could not breathe. And Bronson was laying on the floor in the living room, and I just, I could not...
I just, it's like that emotionally, like I am, I'm dead. I don't know, there's too many feelings that I'm exploding. This, I don't, like it's, it hurts. Like your whole body hurts. Andy had done the unthinkable. He'd left his family and friends with all questions and no answers. And the pain he felt wasn't gone. It just wasn't his anymore. It was Moe's.
After he died, I felt like I didn't want to live anymore. So I would dream about it and how I was going to go because I felt that if I was so broken and I can't live without Andrew, how am I going to raise my son to be a good person? He'll have a dead parent and a totally fucked up parent.
So what is better? Is it better for me just to leave here and let him grow with someone else? Is it better to have two dead parents than one fucked up one who's broken? And I would dream about it. And I just know now that the reason I need to be here for my son is because I need to teach him how to feel.
I need to help him cope to get through this in the best way that he can. But I am fully aware my kid's going to be a little messed up. It's okay. It's okay, people. He's going to be messed up. Let's not try to sugarcoat it. I mean, Bronson stopped being potty trained when Andy died and people were like, oh my God, and he's three and a half. He's not potty trained. I'm like, no, dude, he's not. And that, you know what?
Guess what? He sleeps in my bed every night and sometimes he'll stub his toe and scream like he is dying because that's his emotional release. That's what happens. They bottle it up and sometimes they'll just take one thing and then it like is a full on 100% meltdown of like weeks of emotion that he didn't know how to deal with. That's what Mo and I are preoccupied with all the time. Are our boys going to be okay? We have no way of knowing how this will play out with them when they're older.
I mean, we hope they're going to be okay. We keep our fingers crossed. We pray that they are. But I don't have a crystal ball to look into. Coming up after the break, my crystal ball. ♪
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It's been seven years since I had my last baby. Seven years, which doesn't feel possible because it feels like I just had him. It goes really fast, except when you're in it, every decision you make feels like a huge one because it is. This is a whole human being and you're responsible for keeping them safe and loved and growing and thriving. By heart gets it.
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So maybe it's not a crystal ball exactly, but I realized I could find out a little bit about my son's future by talking to somebody who shares a similar past. I am Ombra Marcos. Ombra and I went to grade school together, and she stood out because she was beautiful and elegant. She was a ballerina, and she was the only girl in school whose mother was dead. Her mom had been killed by breast cancer when Ombra was only 18 months old.
And folks, she is okay. I don't remember her and I don't remember losing her, but I just always remember her being around. It's just so normal, my connection to her. This was a connection maintained by Ambra's dad, who raised her as a single parent, but had help from his sister Peggy and Peggy's kids and his parents and Ambra's mother's family.
this whole worldwide network of people who made sure Ombro was okay.
Even when it got awkward. It was a little rough when I started hitting puberty, like when my poor father noticed that I needed a training bra. So he was like, oh, Peggy's going with Anna training bra shopping this weekend. And I'm sure he called her and was like, does Anna have boobs yet? Amber does. Take her training bra shopping immediately, please. Because it was the 90s. We were wearing the baggy shirts, you know, with like the biker shorts. And so there was no support happening at all. So stuff like that.
That's when I really needed the mother figure, you know, and if I had been living with a mother figure, she would have been there to catch it before it even happened, probably. But Ambra and her dad got by, even through puberty and high school, and the mother she never got to know never felt like a stranger to her.
Because Ambra was surrounded by objects and artifacts that helped her create and maintain that maternal connection. My dad's a photographer, and he was just constantly documenting them going out. And I have the most amazing photos of them out with their friends, like personal photos of them in the apartment, you know, nudes of her when she was pregnant with me. You know, photos of her ironing and just getting, being playful. You know, just them...
you know, their life around the house. And it's amazing how raw they are, but how glamorous they are, too. And I even have a lot of photos from the day that they took her body away. And...
There's this photo of me on a bed. I don't know if it's the bed, but it's this photo my dad had of me forever. And I'm wearing this blue sweater and these blue striped overalls and these blue Nikes. And I just, it's not that I look sad, but I just look really...
Like you knew something. Yeah, yeah. And this photo has been framed in his room for years, and it wasn't until maybe I was 19. He was like, yeah, that's the day your mom was taken away. I was like, what?
You never told me that. He's like, are you sure? And I was, you know, he just thought I knew or something. And now I'll never look at that photo the same again. And then there's, you know, your memories are probably a more fantasized version of what they actually are. And when you reminisce about stories of your childhood with your parents or your friends or your siblings that were the same age, I think...
I think you kind of turn the story into something a little different than it actually was. This collection of photos and notebooks and artifacts of memory shared by the people who had loved her created a kaleidoscope version of Ambra's mother, a combination of fact and fantasy that kept her mother close. It was kind of a romantic way of growing up, being connected to this figure that was like an icon, like a rock star. It was almost...
It was almost like a Marilyn Monroe or even a Jesus, you know? She was just, she had such an effect on people. Whenever I talk to people that know her, they are just like, oh my God, Jarrett, she'd walk into a room and it was all about her. And she was just so social and so vibrant. And yeah. Aaron was the same. A big, joyful presence. He was loved by everyone who met him. Everyone says that after someone dies, but this guy was the best person.
And now, in death, he's even larger than life. And I do fear a little bit about how that legend is going to affect Ralphie by comparison. The day that Ralph was born, like the minute we found out he was a boy, which was, you know, it took a minute because Aaron missed him and then was like, well, I don't know what it is. But the second that Aaron said, it's a boy, I was crestfallen. I just thought, a boy, a boy.
a boy who's going to be compared to a father that he's going to lose. And it's not that I don't want people to compare the two of them. It's just that I want Ralph to feel that that's an honor and never a burden. And that's a really hard balance to strike.
Well, if I can give any advice is don't be afraid to talk about his flaws, too. I've heard from my aunt and my dad, never anything super negative, but just, you know, oh, sometimes she could be like this or, oh, my gosh, tell the story of her wedding planning, which was basically her planning the wedding, getting everyone together and then.
making this huge lavish wedding in New York City and then not paying anyone or following up on anything after she just got everyone together get me this this this and this and then totally flaked out on everyone you know so stuff like that yeah I think because they spoke about her like a real person I never felt like I had to live up to this you know crazy standard or something that makes me feel so good it makes me feel so happy because I'm doing all these things and
And Ralph has these objects and stories and this village of people who love him, who loved his father. But I still want to know, do you still, do you miss your mom? Yes. But, you know, I couldn't say...
You know, I miss her in the same way, you know, I now miss my grandparents who passed or, you know, I miss a friend I haven't seen in a long time. You know, only a couple of times have I missed her where it hurts, where you feel that pressure on your chest. Like, I just want to like talk to her and I want to.
I want to share things with her, but, you know, I feel like in a way she is watching me because I feel her energy, especially a couple times in my life I've actually physically felt her energy. When? So I had this dream that we were in a bar or a restaurant, and it was pretty dark, and I look down the hallway for where the front door is, and it's apparently daylight out because the door opens, and there's this figure standing in the door, and the light is shining behind it, and I know it's her. Yeah.
And then I wake up.
And I just remember, like, crying and, like, talking to my dad about it and be like... Like, she visited me and I almost got to talk to her. And I'm not sure how old I was, but that sucked. Yeah. And it was my first time really feeling, like, the physical pain of missing and loss and sadness of her. Do you think not having those, like, real memories of your own made it easier for you? Or was it ever painful to not have those? Absolutely. It was...
Probably easier to lose her without remembering her than it would be to lose her at 5 or 10 or 13, you know, because you have the real memories. Because I mean, people told you so many stories. Yeah. And it sounds like the photos just helped you. And like having diaries and photos helped you fill in, color in this sketch that people had given you of who your mother was.
It's fully documented. Yeah. And I also recently got a hold of some videos as well of, you know, weddings and functions and family reunions and trips to the beach and...
Oh, my gosh. It was all so cinematic. How does it feel to see your mother moving? Oh, that blew my mind. And hearing her French accent and her voice, she has a deep voice, and her calling my dad's name. You know, them acting really goofy and then them also just being all over each other, too. Like, my uncle told me ahead of time before they showed the film at the party, like,
He was like, just so you know, there's going to be footage of her and there's going to be footage of her holding you as well. And I was like, okay. And of course, I totally started crying when they showed it. Everyone in the whole room, there's like 200 people that looked at me and everyone around me like put their arm around me or like touched me in some way. And of course, I was just like teared up. But I was smiling as well and it was beautiful. And then it went on to the next scene and I could kind of like...
Get distracted again. Yeah, I love it. I like, I can't watch videos of Aaron. Or even, I never knew my friend Mo's husband, but she sent me a video of him. He was like in all these bands in Minneapolis. And seeing him alive, it just feels like, oh my God, this thing is coming for you. You know, it's like, it's seeing somebody before they get hit by a train or something. And just like, you want to be able to like, move them or something. Wow. And also like, I really love knowing that you're
a grown-up who's okay. Yes. Everything will be fine. Have faith in your man. I do have faith in my man. And I have faith in me. And Mo. And everything we're doing for our sons. We have lots of objects. Thousands of photos. Movies. Our husband's old band t-shirts that the boys can wear when they're teenagers. But these objects aren't Andy or Aaron. And they aren't memories either.
And sometimes people want to tell us how to best care for our memories, even when their husbands or dads are still alive. Here's Mo again. Some people were like, I can't believe you celebrated his dad's birthday. Who said that to you? Some people on the interweb.
They're like, I can't believe that you celebrate that. And I'm like, but it's his dad. And I will celebrate it until he doesn't want to. He sang happy birthday to his dad. He baked him those cupcakes. He was so excited. Of course he was excited. You don't get a lot of chances to be excited the year after one of your parents dies. But you have to hold on to those shinier things as hard as you can. Just everything you can remember about who you loved and who they were. Bronson turned one years old.
And I used to be, like, Bronson's, like, everything, and then he turned one, and it was all Andy. I like my daddy. What up, daddy? And they, like, run around. They sing, like, silly songs together, and they would, like, put this, like, marching music, and they'd march around the house, and, like, the dog and the cat would follow them, and the priest and we're all following them. Then we have, like, instruments, you know. He was seriously...
It hurts even more to not have him because he's so incredible. And it hurts me more that my son doesn't get to really, he's not going to remember a lot. He's going to make shit up. And he'll remember some things because he remembers more than most kids do. But like, he's going to lose those. And I just keep trying to talk about him because like, I want him to know what, you know, an incredible person his dad was. But memory is slippery.
And the harder you try to hang on to things, the easier they wriggle away. Like, have you ever tried to grab a minnow with your bare hands? You're really big and they're really little, so it should be easy, but it isn't. They always get away and you're just left with the feeling of their malleable little body just squeezing between your fingers and swimming away. But you keep working at it.
Every day, grabbing at those minnows in your mind, trying to make sure that this little person can see them, can see who their father was. We talk about him daily, but we draw pictures. Like, he still draws pictures of our whole family sometimes with all of us. We don't ever not, we're never hushing about it. We're just fully open all the time. I think that children, like, so he's going to, like, remember things by, like, scent and touch and hearing things.
But I think that he's just going to add on to those. So like he'll say, hey, do you remember when we found that black cat in our yard when I was one? And I was like, yeah, I do. But I think as time goes, for example, he'll be like, remember that black cat with the blue eyes that lived at our house for a long time and we kept it? I think he'll just like add on to it to make it something that he wants it to be to comfort him.
I see a little of it now. Like, oh, my daddy liked that. I'm like, well, no, okay. It's anything to have him feel him, I think. I don't know. I want him to remember him. I want him to remember him the right way. But sometimes I'm like, is it better to remember every single thing about him and have him gone? Or is it better to only remember some stuff and have him gone? You know, what's better? They both suck. Like with Ralphie.
He's not going to remember anything. No. And even, like, whatever he does remember, like, I think just in memory in general, maybe it's not getting the facts completely right, but getting, like, the spirit of the memory right, you know? Like, I don't remember...
everything about like my grandparents but I remember like the way my grandpa smelled like Old Spice and Irish wool sweaters and Brock's caramels like I remember just always feeling beautiful when he was around because he would say this ridiculous thing which is you get more beautiful every day and I looked like Macaulay Culkin's uglier brother you did not I did I was not cute and he would just tell us that we were and like I see a lot of our boys um
in the husbands that we lost and also know that they're going to have to grow up to be whoever they are. And so if they can kind of have their own version of their dads, it just belongs to them. That is a combination of fabricated memories and mythology and leftover YouTube videos. Okay. Like they earned that. Like they earned that by like losing their,
such a big, big part of their lives so young. And our kids aren't the only ones who are finding comfort in a mythology around their losses. I would say I have two worlds.
I have my Andrew world and then my world that I'm in now. And sometimes when I'm sad, I can go and I can climb up and lay in that bed of my Andrew world and talk to him and be in that past world. Like, what are we having for dinner? And like, you know, and then I have to come back because this is where I am. I'll always have that little bit because he's always going to be with me. But I always have to be looking towards what's going on now and looking for the future.
What happens when you don't remember everything about Andy? Like, are you always going to have that Andrew world? No, that's the scary part. I feel like as time goes by, you're going to forget the little things and that you're not going to remember all the different little, like, looks and, like, inside jokes and things that you do together. Yeah.
Because you're not creating new memories with them. You only have your old stuff. And how much space in our mind do we have to remember all that when we're trying to live our lives, move forward, and raise people? We want them to remember them too. You can talk about it. You can write it down. That's why I want to write for my son. Because I'm not going to remember everything at all. Until I walk outside and maybe someday I smell that
you know, a spark of air that like I can tell Bronson, hey, we walked a dog one time like this. You know, it's like those little things that help you get by because you will forget. And those are the kinds of things that you aren't necessarily like grasping for. You know, it's not like you're actively in your mind trying to like catalog every walk you took with Georgia and Bronson and Andy. It's just, it's your mind does it for you. Or like when you see something.
And like some of the stuff that I see that used to be negative, like at first when he died, I mean, I saw Andrew's shadows hang from every single tree and I hated trees and it was horrible. And now when I see a tree, I think of it as this big, beautiful, like sign of life and that Andrew's okay. Like those are just like the things that they're just there for you forever. You don't have to try for those, but you will forget a lot.
But you always have those little things that are just there that you do not try. They're just going to be there because that's your life with them. ♪
Hi, it's Nora with a little bit of an update. Terrible Things for Asking is on an indefinite hiatus, which means that for the foreseeable future, you won't see new episodes in the main feed. But if you want to support the work that we've done, get access to our entire back catalog with no ads, you can do that by clicking on the link in the description.
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A few years ago, my parents moved out of my childhood home, which was, that was rude of them, but I'll save that topic for another time. My mother left a few cardboard boxes on the back steps of my home labeled Nora's Life, and I opened them immediately because it was a very compelling label. In it was, was my life. It was every old report card, notes to and from my high school friends, and
Valentines I'd created for my parents, which, again, rude. Those were gifts. They were lost memories and moments from my life. And some of them brought me back to specific moments in time, like staring out the window of my seventh grade classroom or the smell of Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis after all the snow melts. And some of them were like reading a foreign language. All the letters were there, but they made no sense to me.
I couldn't, like anywhere in my mind, find the girl who was so upset with her friend about something that had happened at the lunch table in 1999. The memories were gone. They were gone even with all that evidence laid out before me. I will always have things that were Aaron's, and I will always have memories of him. But there's no keeping him alive for this world because he's not of this world. I can't control what brings a memory back and what doesn't. I can treasure the things...
but they can't be my everything. At some point, I have to trust that I absorbed enough of Aaron when he was here because he's a part of me and a part of Ralph. Like Andrew is a part of Bronson and Mo. Like Ambra's mom is a part of her. The people we love are indelible elements within each of us. You will lose the things. You will lose some of the memories. But they will become a part of you. Like the books you memorized as a child...
or the roads you can walk with your eyes closed, or a song you can sing in its entirety, even without the music playing. So thanks for being here with us. We're going to keep exploring all the gross and gorgeous little nooks and crannies of all the hard things that people go through. And we're going to be looking for all kinds of people who are working hard on being the best humans they can be,
in the face of, and probably because of, everything that happens in a life. Like remember Claire from the beginning? We've got a full interview with her available for free. Just text TERRIBLE1 to 677-677 and we'll get you all set up. Data messaging rates apply, whatever those are.
If you're not listening there already, you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, all those places you find podcasts. So subscribe. And when you do, leave us a review. It makes a big difference unless you don't like it, in which case I take that feedback very, very personally. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram and most of the Internet as Nora Borealis. Terrible Thanks for Asking is produced by Hans Butow at American Public Media. He is a delight.
Our theme music is by the fantastic Joffrey Wilson of Just Post Valum. No one gets me to fight. Fight? No, I don't. What are you talking about? See, guys. The first rule about Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. Oh.
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