Hello. I want to thank you so much for listening today. I'm here with my good friend and cohost Steve Smelski. Steve's just say hi to the audience for a second.
Sure, hello Marshall and hello everyone. Welcome to today's. Episode of Hope thru Grief.
Again, want to thank our audience so much for listening in, and today is going to be a very interesting and a little different episode than we usually do, because we're going to be looking at the clinical lists of grief.
You and I have done some research and we've seen that there's basically four different clinical lists of grief, the most famous one being the five stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler Ross started in the late 1960s ,actually was 1969, and many people I've heard of her stages of grief and the five stages
denial, anger, bargaining depression, and acceptance. And Steve ,I've mentioned in prior episodes that you have been incredibly helpful, not just to me and to Debbie, but to literally hundreds of people through your work with grief share, which we were fortunate enough to join a few weeks after Matt died. So. What I want to do today is to ask you some questions, not only based on your personal experience with the loss of your son, Jordan.
But also based on your experience as the leader of the grief share program that you helped me and Debbie through our journey right after we lost Matt. So again, I'm going to ask you. What are your impressions of the different clinical lists, but specifically, I want to ask you about the Elizabeth Kubler Ross Model, the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that I mentioned.
I'm really interested in your personal observations as to the validity and the truthfulness and helpfulness of the Kubler Ross Model, where we'll start there today.
Marshall. I think the items that she has identified and written in her book are all some of th stages that a grieving person would go through. However, I know she came up with her list through observations of other grieving people, and it's not so much a reflection of somebody actually going through the grieving process. It's more as an observer, seeing what they were going through from the outside.
So I know she's had some regrets on how it was interpreted and, and misunderstood over the years after she wrote the book. And I would say, first of all, it's not linear. And that's one of the things that she recognized. So. We all like lists, we all like to check things off our list and say, okay, we've finished it .Grief is not like that. She's got her five steps because you check out number one, which was denial doesn't mean that you don't go back to it.
And you.. you may re revisit it multiple times. You may skip one, you may not have anger issues going through your grief. You may go right tobargaining, but that doesn't mean you couldn't go back to the denier or anger or in the other order. So it is not linear. And doesn't mean that you can't reach it multiple times. So I know for me personally, and some of the people I've spoken with. If you have a list, it's all about checking it off the list, getting it done and moving on.
And that doesn't work very well for grief.
Let me ask you this. I'm looking at the list and the first one I see is denial. And I will tell you personally with Matt's passing, that absolutely is something that I can tell you I did experience. Because obviously ,when you have a child, you just assume that you are going to pass before they do. And when we got the call from the medical examiner in San Diego, some 3000 miles away, that Matt passed away, you just feel like you're having an out of body experience that this is not happening.
I think every parent worries about their children and knows that people lose children every single day. It's just a reality of it's a horrible tragedy, but it happens. But you assume it won't happen to you until it does. And so the denial. I think most people say, Oh, of course you experienced that early on. Well, I'll tell you I still experienced almost two years after Matt's passing because I dream almost every single night that Matt is still alive.
And my relationship with Matt now is different. Obviously he's not physically here but my relationship with him is for whatever reason through my dreams. I can't control my dreams more than anybody else can on this planet. But for whatever reason, my relationship with Matt is actually more intense and intimate now in his death. And it wasn't his life cause he was 3000 miles away when he was in San Diego, we would talk and FaceTime things like that.
But I didn't see him every day because he was in San Diego. Sometimes we're able to text. Sometimes we're able to talk. Sometimes we able to FaceTime. The FaceTime, we couldn't do it every day, but I see him every day now my dreams, and that is obviously an aspect of denial because he's not physically here. And I don't think anybody would assume that this was part of the Kubler Ross five stages of grief model almost two years after Matt's passing.
Have you experienced anything like that with denial?
Yes. First of all, let me say most parents that have lost a child would be very jealous because I've only had two or three dreams of Jordan since he passed. Shelley's only had two or three. Our sister-in-laws had more dreams with Jordan coming to her in the dream than we have. So to have that every day, I would say that it is very, very fortunate. I would, I would love to have some more dreams at Jordan.
I guess it's nothing I can control. That just happens. I have no idea why, but it happens.
I understand. Because we go to bed hoping to dream and we don't, we don't dream of Jordan. As far as the denial piece goes. I think it was five to six months that every time the front doorbell rang, one of us would hurry to the door to look out the door.
And the first thing we thought of is Jordan he's coming home because when he left to go play with his friends and stuff, he would come up to the front door, he would ring the door we go running we would open the door and say, "hey, welcome home, Jordan." How, how was your day? How was your trip? How was the theme parks?" Whatever, so I would classify that as a form of denial. Like when I talked about making these lists, we like to check them off.
Nobody would expect that anything on that list could take two years and still not be done with.
Its interesting because I sorta knew this list. I heard of it, but I obviously didn't look at it until after Matt's passing and I'm looking at it now. And the next one is anger. And for whatever reason, I never really felt anger. I never felt rage, anger. It just was not an, a emotion I experienced again emotion by definition. They're not rational. So I can't tell you why I didn't experience anger. Somebody would, I'm sure they could say you lost your son. How come you weren't angry?
Maybe because I was appreciative of the life that he led while he was here. And I was proud of the life that he led while he was here. And I always knew we're all here a short time, Matt did not have the longevity that I hoped. But he made the most of the time he was here, it was a quantity versus quality argument. that to me, I was not angry because I knew he made the most of his time on this earth. So that's not an emotion I really, or stage I can really relate to.
Did you have issues with anger after Jordan's passing?
Yes, I did. I had a lot of issues until it was explained to me that the emotions come on,you like a set of waves on an ocean and that will knock you over. Sometimes they'll roll the over you end up in the surf or in the sand, and then you get up and you wait for the next one. When you go into anger the first time. Nobody lets you know, when it's going to end or how long it's going to last. Until it subsides and goes away, I wasn't sure it was ever going to go away.
I think the first bout of anger I had lasted three or four weeks. I went through several counseling sessions and several the grief program meetings before it finally end. It felt good to get through it because I was very, I was angry at everything and it's hard to live with somebody that's grieving and not have anger and they wonder if you're angry at them. But I realized, I was angry at what happened to Jordan at that resort. It was a five star resort.
We found out the owner knew about the Ameoba. In fact, he knew it was called Naegleria Fowleri .He knew that half a one part per million or a billion, what actually killed the Ameoba and never did anything. And he had to put up a sign after Jordan died, but we knew that wasn't going to save anybody. It wouldn't keep you out of the water. But the anger came back four times after that didn't last as long, sometimes it'd be two weeks.
Then it was like a week, sometimes it's three or four days, then it was a week and then it ended up a few more days later. So I have had an issue with anger and I would say over 90% of the people that Shelly and I have spoken with all had anger at some point, maybe it didn't come back that many times. I think it's fairly rare that somebody doesn't experience anger after that the death of a loved one.
Who were most of these people angry at were the angry at themselves, at society, at God, at the world? Who were they angry at?
Yes. All of those,
all the above.
They had different reasons, different thoughts on it. I think it was more of a coping mechanism because we don't like to think. Cause I would say the guilt part comes from feeling your response over. It's easier to be angry at somebody else than to even consider that you might've been responsible on the guilt side of it. So I would say I heard all of those as reasons and many, many more.
It's interesting. You mentioned guilt because. My mother always thought and told me that guilt was the most useless emotion because it doesn't change anything at all does is hurt you. And I think that always sort of stuck in my head and I never really had issues of guilt because as you mentioned, the underpinning of guilt is that you could have done something. To control the situation when obviously that's not the case.
If I could have done something to make sure Matt would not have passed away, I absolutely positively would have done it. The reason I didn't do it is because I could never do it. I never had that control and we do not have control over. Who's going to live, orwho's going to, I've mentioned this before in the Jewish religion during the high holiday service called Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah means the beginning of the new year. There's a passage that always did make sense to me.
And it states at the beginning of the new year, it's already written, who's going to live and who's going to die and even as a little kid, I sort of believe that. But I know that people here on earth didn't know who was going to live or who was going to die. We just sort of have to accept that it's already written down somewhere.
We just don't know where it's written and we can't read what it says or when it says, so the guilt part was never an issue with me because I just felt that I learned a long time ago. There is no control over who's going to live. Who's going to die. Have you had similar experience either with yourself, with Jordan's passing or through people at grief share?
Yes, Shelly and I both experienced some guilt and I think that an anger go closely intertwined. So when you're angry at somebody else, you don't have to feel guilty o what's really worrying you or bothering you. It was the second time we went to Costa Rica. We had plans fall out for a different location, and we were like, man, if we had just followed through on that, we never would have gone back and we'd still have a Jordan.
Not true, Shelley felt guilty that she bought the plane tickets to go back and she threw that around for a couple months until we processed it and realized we had no control. For me, I was guilty because Jordan wanted to go tubing on the river instead of going to that pool that he and I played well, that time down the water slide. And I was like, wow, he wanted to do something else. And I talked him out of it.
And after about two months of feeling guilty about it, I realized that the tub ride was maybe an hour, we still would have ended up in that pool, just maybe not six hours worth. And then you realize we've got no control over it. Many of the other people that we've we've had the privilege of walking through the journey of their grief and came alongside of them. Many of them had the guilt issue. Some were much heavier on the guilt than they were on anger at anything else.
So I would say, yes, we both experienced, and we've met others that have.
It's interesting, it's interesting to me how it is just so different and everybody's always on their own journey of grief and it's not right. It's not wrong. It just is what it is. And I'm looking at the next list and the next factor on the list, next stage on the Kubler Ross model is, is bargaining. And I never really experienced that either.
It's not like I know some people feel they would say, Oh, I'll change this change that if it can only get my loved one back, or I promise this to whether it is God or to somebody else in their family or someone they love, or society, or the universe. But again, I, I personally never dealt with that emotion because again, to me, it was on a supposition that if you're bargaining, you had control that if I, if I could do XYZ, I'll get the result that I want.
And I know that life and death doesn't work like that. If you do XYZ, it doesn't mean you're not going to lose a loved one. You could do everything under the sun correctly, based on every medical recommendation, legal recommendation, psychological recommendation. From the world's leading experts and you can still lose a loved one. So again, the bargaining was sort of a control issue that I knew I, I didn't have, so I never dealt with it. Did you experience any issues like that?
I don't think I ever did going through the process after Jordan's passing, I do want to be clear. I think Shelly and I are still going through the grief process. We, we haven't gotten to the end of our journey. You still have difficult days. This week, we ended up going through his closet and we gave some of his clothes away and we were both emotional. We both cried. So while we're down the road, we are not over the journey. I don't remember going through a bargaining phase.
I don't think Shelly did. I've I've met a few and they may have changed some things going forward. But you can't change the past. So I'm not sure how the bargaining works out is as an advantage. I think it a lot of the bargaining gets back to the denial phase. I, those two are kind of tied, I think, but....
Yes, it's interesting that you mentioned about not being dealt with the grief process, and I will tell you that I am convinced that the grief process for me and Debbie, uh, we'll continue for the rest of our lives. I believe we'll never be done with it. I think this is something that is going to be in our house for as long as we're taking breatjs on this planet. I've just accepted that, which is ironically see the last stage.
But before I get to acceptance the fourth stage, I want to, that I do want to tell you that I did experience is depression. Because I have generally not had issues with depression during my lifetime until Matt passed away and losing Matt totally gave me a new understanding and insight into depression.You know, people think that oh, somebody is depressed and if they just suck it up, they can move and do whatever they need to do to get through the depression. It's just not true.
You look at some of the great figures in the history of the world like Winston Churchill. I know Winston Churchill called his depression, the black dog, and he fought it every day of his life. So he was literally fighting depression as he was fighting the Nazis to try to help save the world for freedom. And he didn't ask for it, couldn't control it and did the best he could with it. You know, he, he drank a lot and he did a lot of things. I think we're out of depression.
So to me, I know that Matt was hilarious he just was such a funny guy. He broke me up thoughout his whole life and because he was so darn funny, I always thought that his humor would be the ultimate defense mechanism and would guard him from any adverse affects of any depression that he had cause I knew that he did deal with depression. And now I realize that the illusion or delusion that I had about humor and man's quick wit being a safe harbor for him from his depression.
It just wasn't true because I can see now that the depression will come on irrespective of what is happening in my life. I 've learned that depression is inside out, not outside in. Some people will say, Oh, this thing was so wonderful this person was doing so many great things. How could they be depressed? Those are all outside things that we're seeing, that the person from the inside looking out doesn't quantify as a answer to the to their depression.
You know, I mentioned this before, I think so many people with depression are like icebergs. You know, icebergs only one tenth of the iceberg is above the water line, which means 90% of the icebergs below the waterline. The Titanic didn't get destroyed by the one tenth iceberg that they saw. It was a 90% below the water line that destroyed the Titanic and I think that is the way you have to look at depression.
So for me, I have a total different understanding and appreciation of what people go through that deal with depression. So have you had a similar experience with that stage?
Yes, I have. And I would say that's a very good analogy of it. I had some bouts of depression before Jordan died, so I have struggled with it off and on throughout my life. We've had a lot of depression since Jordan has died. A lot of it comes up, uh, before one of the big holidays that we were close when shared with him or one of the anniversary dates. So. It can hit you out of the blue. It could come from a trigger. I mean, it's even on a good day. You can, you can fall prey to it.
I would say almost every single person that we've met and walked alongside with them through their journey has struggled with depression at one point or another.
Yes, it's just part of the deal.
And that's, that's a lot of people and I know sometimes you're worried youknow, is this normal? Am I my working through my grief correctly? Am am I just different? And the answer's no, it's very normal to feel the depression part and, um, that one you can move on and come back and move on and come back and over and over and over again.
Yes. I'm amazed how it will hit me at the most surprising times, driving in a car, hearing a song, seeing something on TV, seeing a movie clip, and it just comes on like a wave from the ocean, just knocking on your feet, off your, off your feet. It really does. And I never really understood it or appreciated it until after Matt's passing. The last stage that was in the Kubler Ross model was acceptance.
And to me, I did some research that I think sort of applies to this because I saw the Kubler Ross had some regrets of the misunderstanding of the stages, things like that. And there's been writings that she made that thought that meaning could be considered a sixth stage of grief and acceptance/meaning to me is sort of the more accurate way to describe it because. I'll never accept emotionally the fact that my son's not here anymore.
Intellectually, obviously I've had to accept because he isn't here. But the journey of trying to understand the meaning of somebody's life has been helpful to me with accepting Matt's death because I believe that we're all here for a short time and it's not how, or when you die, it's how you lived your life when you were here and Matt although he didn't have the, he did not have the gift of longevity. He did have the gift of humanity, kindness, compassion that made the quality of his life.
Something that I'll be proud of the rest of my life. So the meaning of his life to me is something I'm very proud of trying to figure out the meaning of his death is probably way above my pay grade because it's a metaphysical universal question I can't answer why he died, but he did. And the meaning that I get out of his life gives me comfort and peace. Knowing that while he was here, he made the most of it.
And the one thing I can say about the meaning of his death is that I feel there's been a spill over from the good work Matt did in his life while he was here onto me because he's not here anymore. So I want the meaning of his life to continue through his death, through my work. And that's why I believe the meaning and acceptance for me is sort of related. And that's one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast with you to try to make the meaning of his life, continue through his death.
So my question to you is. What's your experience with acceptance and or meaning ? Steve Smelski: Those are great questions. As far as the acceptance part, we all reached that point on our own cause everybody's got their own journey. I actually think I realized that a while ago, I've still struggled with the depression after that. I think she was right to question whether a sixth stage should be the meaning part.
I've tried to stay away from the meaning of Jordan's death and why he had such a short life here. And I've tried to look more at the meaning of my life and what I'm going to do after his death. So qI would go around in circles and it would really tear me up to consider the meaning of why he had to die at 11 1/2. It was much easier for me ,cause ,I rationalized it that he wasn't coming back. No matter how many times I ran to that front door, it wasn't going to be Jordan ringing the doorbell.
So I think I, I started to realize that he was gone he wasn't coming back. And as far as meaning, it was easier to keep me out of the depression, by focusing on something that I could change with what I was going to focus on going forward. We've spent a lot of time working on his foundation and tackling things that nobody ever had, and we never thought we could change.
And I think the meaning part was easier for me to look at the meaning of the rest of my life than it was to look at how short the meaning of his life was. I will say that the majority of the people that we've come alongside and shared with and spoken with, they all have a hard time with acceptance. Obviously we don't like it. We'd rather they're here with us. As far as meaning, there's a lot of people that are still looking for that, they don't, they don't know what that means.
They don't know where it's going to take them. I think that may be the hardest one to figure out. It's interesting because I'm, I'm looking at this list and it sort of takes me back to my father. You know, my father had mentioned before by I had two brothers die. One was older than me. One was younger than me. I don't remember either one because they died when I was very young. And so my father had grief obviously but my father just was the happiest guy I've ever known in my life.
And he occasionaly, would get depressed, but not really very long. And he always told me that there's two different things in life. There's those things in life that you can control and because you can control those things. He would say, I'm not gonna worry about it. And then there's other things that you cannot control. And he would tell me, because you cannot control those things he would say, I'm not gonna worry about it.
Which sounds sort of funny because he basically saying I'm not gonna worry about anything, which wasn't exactly true. He did worry about things. And my mother was a Jewish mother nurse who took whatever my father wouldn't worry about. She would multiply that by 10,000 times and she would do all the worrying for both of them.
So there was enough worry in our household believe me, but it sort of made sense to me when my father was saying with this Kubler Ross Stages of Grief, because I couldn't control Matt's life or his death, but I can control how I react to it by making the meaning of his life after his death go through me, because I want to do the good things that he can't do here anymore.
And it's sort of made me look at the Kubler Ross Model just differently from the standpoint of what my father said about things you can and can't control. And, you know, death is the ultimate mystery because you've had philosophers and geniuses much brighter than I'll ever be pontificating on it and realistically they know no more or less than we do. They haven't been there when they were writing those things. They may know about it now because they're no longer here, but maybe they were right.
Maybe they were wrong. We'll all find out eventually. So in some crazy way, it does sort of give me peace and contentment based on what my father said, because the life and death cycle, I can't control it ,never could, so you're probably better off listening to my father and not worrying about it.
I think your dad had a wonderful way of looking at it and dealing with it. I know I would be much better off if I had approached it that way.
I do want to add then when we talk about these stages, there are so many different pieces and each one different emotions, different feelings, diff.. different things that we deal with so we're not going to break it down into just these we'll go deeper into all of the different pieces we haven't talked about, but your dad's got a great way of looking at it.
He just was a very funny guy. And it's funny because him and Matt were very close. Matt was very close to my parents and I saw a lot of similarities with my father and Matt and I saw a lot of similarities with my mother and Matt, he just was very close with them. They, they moved here. When my, when my parents retired man was about three or four years old. So he spent an enormous part of his life with his grandparents.
And I always was hopeful that my father's zest for life and happiness would rub off on Matt because I knew that Matt did deal with depression and in a lot of ways it did. But again, it was control or lack thereof that I realize now was nothing that my parents or myself nor Matt ever had. And that's a lesson that I've learned since Matt's passing. And I think the Kubler Ross Model again, can be informative, but as you said, it's not linear and it has different meanings for different people.
So from my experience, after man's passing, there are bits and pieces of the five stages of grief in the Kubler Ross Model that I can relate to. And then there's other parts that I can't.
And I know no, we were going to talk about the other clinical lists, but we got so deep into the Kubler Ross model that I think we're going to have to wait till our next episode to discuss those other clinical Liz, because Steve, you've got such a unique insight that I appreciate you sharing with us because not only can you and I talk about our individual experiences. But you've had the unique opportunity through grief share to talk to so many people who've been on their own journey of grief.
And you've got an insight from them that obviously been very informative and helpful hopefully to the audience today to hear that. So for that, I'd like you to, I'd like to thank you so much for giving us our insight, but unfortunately I think we have to close this episode and address these other clinical lists down the road because they are different and I think they do have different dynamics to it.
But again, I'd be very, very, very interested in your insights because I think you've got a unique ability to analyze these clinical lists. That would be very helpful and informative. For me and our audience. So again, I'm looking forward to addressing those issues with you in future episodes. Well, thank you for allowing me them to come out and share with everybody. I hope everybody finds it helpful. There's nothing easy about grief.
We'll go deeper into a lot of those different steps and we'll cover some of the extra items from some of the other lists, but I think we'll all find it hopeful that almost everyone has a similar journey. It's always different. Your relationship with your loved one is unique. So even a husband and wife will have a different journey or a path to follow. But there is something to be gained about knowing that you're not unique. And you're the only one that's feeling it.
I 'absolutely agree with that and it does show you that there truly is hope through grief, and that is something that. We would like the audience to get from our show. So again, Steve, I'd like to thank you so much for giving us your insights today. And I want to thank the audience so much for listening. I hope it was informative and helpful, and we look forward to talking to you very soon.
Thank you, Marshall and thank you everybody for joining us on hope through grief.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for joining us on Hope thru Grief with your cohosts Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski.
We hope our episode today was helpful and informative since we are not medical or mental health professionals, we cannot and will not provide any medical, psychological, or mental health advice. Therefore, if you or anyone, you know, requires medical or mental health treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.