Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on Hope thru Grief. I'm one of your hosts, Steve Smellski and I'm here with my good friend and cohost Marshall Adler.
Hello, everybody, hope everybody's doing very well today.
So for today's episode, we thought we would take a little different take on grief and maybe share some of the experiences that we've had along the way. We had a Mr. Herb Nolan a couple of weeks ago and one of the things that came up on that show was triggers and how triggers can come up out of nowhere, catch you off guard and next thing you know, you're you find yourself reeling and grief. So. Marshall. I thought today we would go back and share a few things that we've experienced along the way.
And how it affected us and you know, how long it took us to try and catch our breath and get back up. So when we talk about grief, I think one of the best way to explain it is if you're standing in the surf and there's waves coming in at the ocean, you've got your feet in the water and the waves come up and they, they try and take your footing out from underneath you and suck you down into the sand. Every time the waves wash back out.
Grief is like when these big waves come in, they're over your head, they'll knock you over, they'll knock you down. You get wet. Sometimes they roll you in the sand. It's pretty overwhelming. And I think grief is a lot like that. I'm not sure that the wave height changes over time. I think it's more, a matter of the set gets further and further and further apart.
So it gives you more of a chance to get back on your feet, become stable, again, try and get back to some type of uh, caught a platform to stand on something that feels normal, where you've got your footing and that's longer before the next wave comes in. When you're early in grief, it's like those waves are so close together. You can never actually really get up on your feet.
A lot of people will say, you know, when, when will life return to normal and I'm not sure that we'll ever get that answer here, that chances are may never turn to the way it was before, but it will resemble some type of normal as we move forward. So with that, we thought we would share a few of our own personal, short stories on triggers and when they came up and when they caught us off guard,
Steve, I think that's a good starting point and I think the. Issue of when will life turned to normal is actually very appropriate with what is happening with the world concerning the coronavirus epidemic, because I've said this before that when Matt passed away in July 22nd, 2018, obviously my life was ever changed. It was forever changed and I was forever changed that whoever I was before is different. That person is different than the person I am now. I'm not saying better.
I'm not saying worse. I'm just saying different because that person had not lost a child and the loss of a chil is something that will affect you until you're no longer here. So I know everybody with the coronavirus is wondering when things will turn back to normal and all the medical experts are saying, well, it depends on what your definition of normal is.
If you think that it's going to go back to the way the world was in 2019, That may be months, years until it happens, or it may never happen. Things could forever change. Just the way airfare was changed after September 11th, attacks our lives on a day-to-day basis might be forever altered through this pandemic because this pandemic, all the medical doctor saying. Will not be the last human history has shown pandemics come and pandemics go, but they'll come back again.
So everybody talks about normal and the new normal. So to answer your question, when will life return to normal? By short Reader's Digest answer would be never in the sense that the normalcy that you're talking about, if that is equating to what your life was before you lost your loved one. That's that in my estimation in my life is never going to happen because their person has been forever changed.
If you want to say, well, there's a new normal, that's fine, but it's almost an oxymoron in the sense that if normal was your life and now there's a new normal, well, it's a different life. And is that normal or not normal? Depends on what your definition is.
So I don't wanna get too much in the weeds here, but I think the way you started the question is really a strong foundation to understand the grief process, because some people think, Oh, just do what you gotta do and get over it and move forward with your life. You're never going to get over it. Grief does not have an expiration date on, it's not like a carton of milk and it will affect you the rest of your life.
So I think your initial question is really an excellent place to understand the foundational changes that happen in the grief process.
You hit on a word there that I think is actually that real meaning of that question will life returns in oral and that's different. I think different is a good explanation. It could mean many different things for just about everybody. But when I think of difference, it doesn't mean that it's worse because I actually think I'm in a better person now, in some ways, since Jordan's death, Than I was before. There's things that are more important to me now than they were in the past.
We're focused on Jordan. Our focus has changed. It's still on Jordan with the things that we're doing with the foundation. But actually I think I'm in some ways, a better person now than it was back then.
That's interesting, Steve, obviously, I didn't know you prior to Matt's passing. And, you know, I've said it before, you've been such a positive influence on the grief journey that, uh, I've taken with with, with Debbie that your work, I think has been an extra, an excellent tribute to Jordan. And I think in the big picture of life, the lesson of grief is life is for the living and the ones that are here have to make this world a better place.
As long as we're here as a tribute to our loved ones that are no longer here. And I think you and shell are absolutely doing that. And so I will confirm your assessment of how this has been a positive influence in your life.
Oh, thank you. Let's touch on a few of our trigger stories, because if you've lost a loved going you've had triggers, they've come out of nowhere. They've caught you off guard. You're having a good day and all of a sudden something hits you and brought you to your knees. Why don't we talk about a few of those,
Steve I think that's great. It's interesting you mentioned that because the one difference that I'll say is that a lot of these stories I'll be telling you today. If somebody told me some of these stories before Matt's passing, I'd be very cynical in the sense that I go. Is this just something that is part of grief? Is it something that these people are wishing? Is this something that they're making up and I would have sympathy for them, but not a lot of understanding.
And I will tell you now that, you know, as I've said before, I'm a lawyer, I've been a lawyer for 40 years.
And I'm very empirical, factual and evidence-based, and I will tell you that my first trigger is that we've had multiple, multiple, multiple incidents in our house, dealing with electricity, that lights with brand new bulbs, no electrical issues, no shortage problems with the wiring will flicker and we would actually have a responsive conversation with Matt through just flickering I'm specifically talking.
There was a lamp and Debbie's credenza in our bedroom that she came out on us Saturday morning and said, I think it's magic. He goes, what do you mean? She goes, this light is just going on and off. And I went back there and we just said, okay, let's test this. And this was not like one of those clap lights you see on TV. We clap. It goes on and off. It's not a clap light. It's a regular lamp and we were talking to the lamp asking Matt, is that you.
And it was getting responsive where it would go on and then we'd go off and then we'd ask if my parents were there with them, we get a response. I'd ask them if my friend Ted they've talked about the past that Matt was very close to. You knows my friend Pat knew him growing up. My parents knew him also, if Ted was there. And we'd get a response and it was Debbie and I were both there and we're looking at each other and we were so shocked.
What we should have done was take our video camera to document it. It was nothing that any other explanation is plausible because again, it's not a clap light that our, our voice was activating. This, that lamp is working fine. We never changed the light bulb. We never had a short on it and it was a experience like none other we've ever had cause just wasn't one or two responses. It was double digit responses.
So again, if somebody told me this story before a Matt's passing, I would say those poor souls, they're not being rational and there might be some people in the listening audience that are saying that about me, which is fine. I've been called worse in my life. I got nothing, no problem with that. But I will tell you that is happened. It is true. And if I didn't believe in the empirical factual evidence that I saw, I wouldn't tell you about it, but I have.
So there are times since then we have multiple times where we'll have responsive conversations with flickering lights. And that to me is a trigger, but it's sort of a good trigger cause I think it's Matt communicating with us. So triggers are not necessarily bad. It sounds crazy, but I actually like seeing flickering lights now, I'm in favor of them big fan,
That, that is kind of funny. I would say the first four or five months after Jordan died. Our dogs sleep. We got a little four pound Chihuahua named Jazz, and she sleeps in the bed with us. And whenever Jordan woke up from a nightmare, he'd come to our door, opened the door and she'd stand up bark growl, and then say, nah, it's Jordan laid back down. Well, after he died, we kept hearing all these noises in the bathroom, which is down the hallway from where the bedroom is.
And. I mean, it was scary enough the first four or five times and so loud, you'd swear something broke on the floor and I would get up, you know, I, I didn't have a bat or anything to take with me, but we're thinking, well, who's in the house. And I go in, I look around, there's nothing on the floor. Couldn't find a thing. It sounded like something crashed. Couldn't find any evidence. This went on for a couple months and finally, I said, Shelley, just lay down and go to sleep.
It's just Jordan letting us know he's here. He's messing around, but Jasmine would she'd stand up and grow and bark and she'd look down that hallway, the bathroom she'd sit there and grow. We couldn't see anything. It was the weirdest thing, but, um, It was good and scary at the same time, because, you know, after a while it stopped, but we just kept saying, Oh, it's Jordan lay down, go sleep. I would say one of the first times I had a bad trigger.
We didn't go out of the house much for first month. We took some time off from work. We neither one of us work for three months. And, um, we go to the grocery store. We didn't like to go out in public after it was hard to be in public. It was, we always felt like they said, Oh, that's the couple that lost their son. And we're in a fairly small development and people, we heard people were asking about it. They didn't know all the details.
And I would I go in and some people would just look at you weird and you knew they knew who you were. And half the time I couldn't do it without crying, at least one time when I was in there and I ran into one of the other soccer dads, and one of the guy, one of the boys that played on Jordan's soccer team. And they've been on the team for three or four years. We knew them both very well. And he came up and tapped me on the shoulder. He's like, hey Steve, how you doing?
And I was like, I gave him a hug. And then I saw his son and his son had grown a little bit over what, when you played soccer with Jordan and I gave him a hug and it just came rushing right back that I didn't have that anymore. He was there with his son at the grocery store and I was there alone. That, that one kinda came and caught me off guard.
You know, it's, it's interesting that you talked about positive negative triggers because I know, you know, the story about our last meeting of Grief Share, I thought was a wonderful way to end the course because as you remember, we all wrote love notes to our loved ones who have passed and put it into a bonfire. It was right around Thanksgiving. I remember it was cold, even though we live in Orlando, Florida, it was cold. The bonfire felt good.
And Debbie wrote a note that we wanted another sign from Matt and what we did is after Matt pass.
That was, that was in the note that you guys wrote to burn?
Yes.
Okay.
When Matt passed, he was 3000 miles away. So we got his computer, got his cell phone and I hired a forensic expert to go through both because I wanted to know what happened. As best as I could. And we were able to absolutely positively without any question at all, able to learn that the last song man ever listened to this earth was by The Association 1967 Never My Love. And of all the songs in the world by that was the last song you ever lift listen to.
I've got my own theories, but I just he had a lot of interesting tastes and different types of music, but I would never, in a million years think that was a song he wanted to listen to as the last song ever on this planet. So after we went in the car, Going home. I was going to turn on the TV, the radio in the car.
We have satellite radio with hundreds of stations and obviously each station leads different songs and it just so happened that I turned the car on, turn the radio on and the announcer says. And here's The Association, 1967 Never My Love. And this is right after Debbie and I put the note into the bonfire saying, Matt, give us a sign. And we looked at each other. And again, we're saying, are you kidding me? Like, I'm a big sports fan.
Believe in statistics of all the songs of all the times and all the stations that could have been played as we are leaving. The last Grief Share here asking for Matt to give us a sign. The song that he last heard on this planet is playing on our radio. So Debbie and I obviously to this day, believe that was Matt's sign to us. And whenever I'm in the car now, and I hear that song.
It's sort of a double-edged sword because it'll sort of give me a smile on my face, but then the flip side of the same coin is why is it song significant to me now? When it wasn't before is because of Matt's passing. So it's a trigger. With both a plus and a negative attached to it. Did you guys sing along on the way home or did you cry all the way home that night? We just said yeah, in the car and listened to it. And we were like our jaws dropped saying, are you kidding?
Because again, this was after we've had multiple on controvertible signs from Matt. And what happened, it was interesting. That was, that was Thanksgiving. And what happened actually during Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Matt's cousin, my nephew, who was like Matt's brother, came to spend the first Thanksgiving with us and we told them the story of the song and the lights and everything. And he was funny.
He goes, well, Matt always used to mess with me and I wonder, who's gonna mess with me tonight. And we're sort of laughing. And we said, maybe he will. Maybe he won't. So we all watched football games, everything, Thanksgiving tired from the Turkey. And I was the last one up and all the lights in the house go out. And Debbie me, David that's, brother and Russell Matt's cousin, come out to the kitchen and the kitchen lights are on the same circuit as a lights in the family room.
If I've seen it before, one goes out a circuit breaker, they all go out. The four of us are there in the kitchen and we see only the kitchen lights. And not the family room ights on the same circui go on and off four different times. Four of us there. And Russell was so freaked out. Like he goes Matt. I was only kidding. I really didn't think you would freak me out like this.
And this happened I think three days after if I remember that our last meeting Grief Share with the song was on that Monday so this was Thanksgiving night, Thursday, three days later. And again, these are uncontradicted events that happen where I clearly, I didn't have too much to drink for Thanksgiving. It was something that was inexplicable because if those lines are going to go on and off, they should have got on and off with the lights in the family room with the same circuit.
And they didn't, I'm talking about six different lights and they went on and off four different times. So all of these triggers, again, by definition, it sounds like a trigger is going to be bad, but it doesn't necessarily need to be bad. Those things that I see with that type of trigger with electricity, puts a smile on my face,
Jordan died early on a Wednesday morning. And by the time we did the first funeral. I say service funeral. We did a funeral in Orlando and I have a lot of my family members over 75 in Central Florida. And most of them didn't get a chance to come down for the funeral. We didn't live stream it. Nobody could see it or watch it. And they all felt horrible that they weren't here.
So Shelly and I made it through the first funeral, which was, I think it was eight days later on a Thursday and we were still in shock. And it's like, you get that one little thing to help you through the worst moments, which is shock because the gravity of it all doesn't really hit you yet. And then, we offered to fly up and do a second service in, uh, we flew into Syracuse.
My parents live outside of Syracuse, and so I had my sister go ahead she rented the church had a big meeting hall behind it that my mom went to. So she rented that for the Saturday afternoon and I had a rent, a projector and a big screen, and we popped it up. So we shared like a couple thousand pictures of Jordan. During the service and pre-service, and after the service and people to let people see his personality.
And so what he was like, so we were sharing those we had the hall for three or four hours. We had 75 people came to meet with us. We had tables set up, we had some food and, um, we went to get onto the plane to fly up on Friday night. Which is like two days after the service. And we were like, what were we thinking? Because we weren't in shock anymore. It wore off once we got through the service and we couldn't believe we put ourselves in that position to actually fly up, to do a second service.
So, we had people record the funeral of Jordan and we took it up on video and I took my laptop up and we played the video and put it on the projector. They all, they all want it to see the, the funeral, which took an hour. We had played songs and talking, and they're all giving us hugs and asking how we're doing. And then we played the service and then they ask us, you know, what could they do for awareness? And you know, they wanted to understand how Jordan died.
We were in shock then, and it was very, very hard to go up and do that second service. And I can't tell you how many times we wished we hadn't booked a flight and said, will you do it? We had no idea how hard that was going to be. When we got up there, we left on Monday morning to. Uh, Monday morning to fly back and we had to flew through JFK and catch a flight from JFK back to Syracuse. Well, by the time we got into JFK, it was night.
They were doing construction at one of the planes had gone off the taxi way. So everything was bottled up. We got on her flight to come back to Syracuse and we're like third in line for takeoff. And they came on. It's uh, the address system on the planet and say, Oh, we're so sorry to let you know, we've hit our maximum time. We can't fly this flight. We've got to go back. Cause we would max out in the air. We don't have enough time to land in Orlando.
So your flight's been canceled until they get another flight crew to come in . And we're like, wow, you just can't make this stuff up. And so we went back and everybody rushed off the plane and Shelly and I were like, You know, it's kind of par for the course. It's not surprising. It's like, go ahead, throw something else at us. It's like, it's not worse than what we've already been through.
So we were next to last and the people, we let a couple people, butt ahead of us, they all got, the hotel rooms are gone in minutes that we're close to the airport. So we got up there and she goes, wow, you guys weren't really. That's people are cutting in front of you. I said, that's okay. And we told her, we came up to do a second service for our son who had just died. It was 11 and she was, Oh, I'm so sorry. And she's like, what can I do for you? I said, well, when's the next flight out?
So she got us on like a nine 30 flight to Orlando. I don't know how she got a sound because most of the restaurants were full because we had actually thought about going back to Syracuse to sleep another night at my parents' house. And there was nothing back to Syracuse. And so we ended up sleeping on a couple of the couches at the end of the terminal. In one area, it was quiet. The stores are getting ready to close.
So we bought a couple bottles of water, something to eat, and we, they had two blankets there. So we bought the two blankets at it, got cold by morning, and this lady was with us and she had a little girl with her. And so she goes. I've never been in this situation before, and I didn't get a room either. Can we tag along with you? And we said, sure. So we found the area that had like six or seven of these half couches. You couldn't have your legs stretched out.
You had to have your knees bent up to stay on the sofa. So we were covered up and I looked over and that little girl was freezing. About two in the morning, I ended up giving her my blanket to cover up with. And so we talked to the lady that we thought it was her mom and she goes, no, I'm the aunt. I'm taking her back home with me to her mom. And she goes, I don't have any children. And she goes, thank you for letting me tag along.
So Shelly shared with her what had happened and we gave her one of the wristbands. And it made me realize that, you know, no matter how bad it is, how tough it is, we've experienced something worse and, you know, whatever you got to throw at us can't be any worse than what we've already gone through.
Right, right yeah. I can totally relate to that because I think so many times in life, you think you can control factors that could be dangerous, scary, harmful, dangerous. And then after you lose a loved one in general, or I'll be very circular for me, child in particular, it's like you just realize that's a fallacy, it's a delusion and an illusion.
You never had the control that you thought you had, and in some ways it sounds crazy, but in some ways it makes you less fearful of things, because they're saying what could be worse than this? And the answer is nothing,
Right. And we've been able to survive and try to thrive the best we can realizing that we forever changed with the loss of Matt, but also it gives us strength to realize we can endure. Like, I'll just tell you one quick story. We're recording this the week of Yum Keppra, which is the holiest day of the Jewish religion and this week, uh, Obviously did it remotely. The Rabbi said something really interesting. He was talking how so many people in the congregation have had loss.
And he said that if he would have told these people five years ago, that this was going to happen to you, and would you be able to survive that loss? He thinks the vast majority would say no, I would never be able to survive that loss. Like if somebody told me five years ago, you're going to lose a child on July 22nd, 2018. Would you be able to survive that?
I would say no. I don't think, I don't think I could, but what the rabbi said is you've talking generally to these people, not me in particular. You did survive. You did try to thrive and make your life attributed to your lost loved one. And you realized that you had a ability that you never knew that you had, and you certainly didn't want to know that you had, but you had it.
And I think that is something that is a trigger again, that could be a positive for us that are here going forward to try and make the world a better place and not be fearful. Yeah, I, I think I understand that now. I'm not sure I would have six years ago, but you bring up an interesting point. It's um, I think the longest we'd ever gone without being with Jordan was a week when we got a vacation, we used to fly my parents down to Orlando and they'd sit with Jordan.
And that way he got to know his grandparents and they'd stay a couple of weeks and then they go back home. They're both retired. And, um, the longest we ever went without him with a week. And I remember thinking that we have a hard time going on a weekend without him let alone a week. And then he died. And I remember thinking, I'm not sure we can do it, but the next day you're still breathing. Your heart's still beating. You're still here and he's not.
And we had, we had several people come up to us and say, I could never do that. I don't know. I don't know how you're ever going to, um, to do that because I could never do it. I just, I wouldn't be able to, and we'd look at them. It's like, well, Do you even have a choice? It's like, I guess I don't understand that way of thinking unless you were going to do something to yourself that just doesn't happen that way.
We've always had a hard time with the school year starting and that first year Jordan died on July 2nd, 2014 school started, I think it was the 11th or 12th of it was the 11th or 12th of August. And we were in such a fog. We didn't even know it was the first day of the school year. We didn't know school was starting that day. And we had planned on doing an interview with Fox. We had reached Ryan Elijah is a local, uh, anchor for Fox and he was on our street. That's how we knew him.
And I remember he pulled up and we supposed to do the interview, like at nine in the morning. And Shelly's like, I can't do it. We found out the night before that day was that first day of school. And we were like, how, how do we even think that we could do our first TV interview talking about Jordan's death? What happened to him and do it on the first day of school?
And we're looking at Facebook and all the pictures start coming in because all of our friends are posting pictures of Jordan's friends on their first day of school and Shelly like I can't do it. You're going to have to go out and tell. I came out the front. I go Ryan. I'm so sorry. We didn't realize until like midnight last night, that today is the first day of school and there's no way we can do an interview today. So I think we've put it off till like Wednesday that week.
And that first day of school, when we realized that was over for us, the excitement of the first day of school meeting the new teacher, wondering that was all gone. And that was a crushing two- day cry for both of us. I mean, that was really hard.
I think that is a really good point because again, we both have a connection. We both lost sons and whenever a parent has a child, you always are excited and interested in seeing how things turn out. What's this person's life going to be like the good, the bad and the ugly. It's just sort of a fascinating journey that you take with this person. And when you lose them, you lose all that. So you're not only losing the person you're losing the future that you never had with them.
And I think that is a big trigger because in life it's all just a journey anyways. We're all just here for short time and you got to make the most of the journey while you're here. But on the other hand, I've taken a different view of it in the sense that yeah, after Matt's passing, it really resonated with me that each journey of every person on this planet is finite and whatever, that number of breaths that you were allowed to take on this planet, it's finite.
And when that last breath is taken, you don't get any more. And so it's not how many breaths you take, it's what you do with them. And so I've been able to sort of moderate the grief of their trigger about what the loss of the future experiences you'd be having with your child with being thankful for the experience that I had during the number of breaths that he was here.
Right.
So I think so many triggers are, again, a double-edged sword, you know, flip side of the same coin. It depends how you're going to look at it as well. There's going to be negative or positive.
That's most likely true. I remember the, um, That first year that we lost Jordan, we went through like half of the season of grease shares. So I think we came in week nine, stuck in grief. So we finished out and they talked a little bit about surviving the holidays. Cause at that point in November, we hadn't really thought of it. Now, Thanksgiving was coming up pretty quick. Um, we used to have a lot of family over to the house for Thanksgiving.
We're trying to figure out how to get through the holidays. And a lot of the people in our Grief Share season, we're sharing, having a plan, going into the holidays with a plan, knowing what you can do, the things that you're unsure of plan. So you can easily get out or step out. It's like don't have a hundred people at your house cause you can't leave your house. If it gets bad, if you go to somebody else's house, you can always leave excuse yourself and go home.
But if they're there, it's like you can't kick them out before you eat. So we, um, we are trying to figure out what to do for Christmas because it's Christmas with Jordan. It was awesome. We used to film it all the time. He gets so excited. We, we loved the, the Christmas holiday season when Jordan, our sister-in-law Sally came up with an idea.
Cause she said, Jordan came to her in a dream and we were actually jealous because Jordan had been four months and Jordan hadn't come to us in a dream yet. And we're like, well, how come you get the dream? Why, why Jordan come to you? And she said, well, he, um, he said, you need to do a store for kids for Christmas to give stuff away for free for the kids who aren't going to get much. And she goes, so I guess we're doing a toy store. I go, what do you mean a toy store?
She called both of us the next day. And she goes, Jordan came into me and Shelly was so jealous and she's like, how come I didn't get the dream and Sally goes, I don't know. But he was adamant. We got to do a store for kids. So I guess we got to figure out how to get stuff and give it away for free. She called us the next night and she goes, was he always that way? I said, what do you mean? She goes, well, I had a dream again last night. Two nights in a row.
You got, and she goes, yeah, he came and the second night he's like, and Aunt Sally not a toy store, a sporting goods store. And she goes, he was adamant I was wrong and he was gonna fix it. I said, yeah, that does sound like Jordan. And so that actually made more sense because kids wouldn't want gently used toys. Everybody wants a new toy, but for sporting goods you could use gently used. So Sally had a hair salon for kids up in Hartford, Connecticut.
And so from October through November, she started collecting all this gently used and new sporting, goods stuff where she had her shop. They had a few vacant stores. She got the landlord to give her one for $0. I think I sent her a hundred dollars for insurance on it for the weekend. Uh, she printed out a couple of signs. I went ahead and sent her money for that. And we've started a Jordan sporting goods store. So Shelly and I flew up to Hartford Friday morning early.
We got in at like 10 o'clock. My brother met us. And we got, uh, we rented a van from there. We've never rented a van when we go up, but we rented a van. We can move all this sporting good stuff. So we moved it from Sally's dad's garage, her garage, we moved it all over right across from our shop. We had a bunch of stuff in her shop. We carried across and it's cold. So it's first week, first weekend in December. I think there were eight of us.
We got the whole store set up in a day and we opened Saturday morning at 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock or nine o'clock. And basically we had in this little shop, we had the ski shop. It's up North people are donating skis and poles and ski boots. Then we had rollerblades, we had ice skates. We had hockey sticks. I think we had 10 or 12 bikes. We had a pitch back from baseball and all these footballs. We had all these basketballs. We had all the baseball stuff with gloves. I think we had skateboards.
We had some scooters and that was mostly it. So in the back we put all the new stuff and we'd draw tickets for that. Any use stuff, the kids got a ticket that could get whatever they wanted. Yeah. It was awesome. I think we had 220 kids come through the store that year. We had a Christmas tree. They, they wrote a little, thank you on hung it on the tree. It was in the shape of a, like an ornament in paper and, um, all the kids scan through.
I think Shelly and I got pictures with just about all of them and it was our Christmas and it came three weeks before Christmas. And we got to see the looks on all these kids' faces and some of them that was their Christmas too. And, um, we flew back and it was awesome. It was sad. We really miss Jordan, but we also realized we had a plan. We were going to try and get through that first Christmas.
And we did, we went to my brother's house with their kids, which Jordan considered his sisters and brother. And we spent the afternoon together. We Shelly and I didn't really buy any presents for each other. We just weren't in the mood. And, um, we looked at some of the thank yous from the kids. We shared pictures of all the kids that came through and got something from the store up in Connecticut. And we did pretty good getting through that first Christmas.
But I got to tell you, we were not prepared for New Years. We just went into New Year's and I, it was on. I think it was on a Friday, so ended up having Saturday, Sunday, Monday off. So it was a long holiday season and we were so depressed that weekend around New Year's. And we couldn't understand why there was another friend of ours that lost his son who worked with us. And, um, he sent me a text.
She goes, man, I don't know what is up, but my wife and I have been so depressed for two or three days. So we were all worried about Christmas and nobody is prepared for New Year's and it hit us. I think it was like mid on the second or third day when we were so depressed for that weekend. We didn't even go out of the house. We didn't want to go anywhere. We realized it hit us, that we were starting a new year without Jordan.
The first time in 12 years, we'd started a year without Jordan and it just hit us like a ton of bricks after we realized it was, it was easier to deal with it. But I tell you that will bring you right to your knees. So you don't care if you go on or not.
Right. I think it's, again, the pause and grief of the continuation of the journey together. I mean, every New Year's Eve it is a new start, you know, reboot the computer and start the calendar again. Except obviously after you are in grief for losing a loved one, it isn't restarting the computer. It's a totally different dynamic and you're going to view it entirely different. Like I quick story. I want to tell you about how you viewed things like Matt and I really bonded over music.
We didn't always have the same taste, but we both loved the Beatles. I always loved the Beatles ever since. Man. It was a little kid. I always had him expose the Beatles and he got old and really got into the Beatles. And we spent hours talking about what this song, meant, what that song meant, and learning different things, learning the history. And what I do is I go to the office and go on Saturdays and put the satellite radio on while I'm working.
And after Matt passed, I was in the office and I heard Elton John's song about John Lennon's passing. It's called Empty Garden, John Lennon and Elton John were friends. And there's a line in the song where he says he keeps on knocking. Most of the day saying, Hey, Hey Johnny, can you come out to play? But no one ever answers. And I was just sitting there and it was a, it wasn't a wave. It was a tsunami of grief.
And just because of, I used to always call Matt on Saturday is when I was in the office and I was sitting there hearing this song about John Lennon's passing. I was a huge John Lennon fan. When he passed, I was a two Claus school and I, that was very, uh, big grief for me. Cause I love, love Lennon and having the combination of hearing that song sitting there when I would always be calling Matt was just one of those triggers that was just overwhelming.
And so I just started crying at my office desk and the tears are just hitting the desk and you just realize. You could say anything you want about grief, tough it out, suck it up. Do whatever, lots of luck with that one. It's going to do what it's going to do. And you can either just say, grief is in our house. We're going to make friends with it and go and live the best life we can with this as a border, or you can try to fight it, which I think is going to be a losing battle.
And I think, you know, I'll say one other quick story about Saul. I was like, Matt was very eclectic with his musical taste. He likes some things that I wouldn't even ever listened to, but one of his guilty pleasures was he liked the song Brandy By Looking Glass. It's a 1970s pop sort of bubblegum song. And whenever....
I love that song,
well, whenever they'd be on the radio, I go Matt, want me to turn the stage? And he goes, okay, no, no, no, don't turn it. And I go, you like this song? He goes, uh, yeah, I really do want to be sort of embarrassed about it. So now when I hear that song, it sort of makes me laugh and smile because Matt was turning himself into a pretzel. To tell me he really didn't love this song when he finally said, yeah, I really do, but don't tell anybody. So it's funny how music can cut both ways with it.
The empty garden was the tsunami of grief, but Looking Glass by Brandy is the flip side of that coin. Give me a smile on my face.
I could see him that makes me smile thinking. No, no, don't turn there. I do like it. That's awesome. One of the things that we've struggled with, so we were like a soccer mom and dad because Jordan played for seven years. And in Florida, you played two seasons. You play a spring, you play a fall. All of the kids in his pre-K class, they started on a team the year before he did. And then I think we got him involved in, he was four at the time. Jordan had no idea.
He was like a bull in a China store. He was all over knocking everybody over. It was co-ed. So he's knocking and we're like, Jordan, you can't hit the girls like that. You can't knock them over. It's not tackle football. So we got to know all the kids, they play pretty good. Their team was actually very good. And Jordan ended up being a goalie. He likes scoring goals and, um, But we put them goalie because he wasn't scared of the ball.
He was like the only one that would jump in front and take one off the body to stop it. So his team was very good. We ended up merging with another team and we got to see those kids play. We went through, we got a ton of soccer shirts because every time he go up or the next year he'd have outgrown them. So we got them all lined up in his closet. I think Shelly wants to make a memory quilt out of them and take the different soccer shirts and put them together in a quilt.
We loved watching him play with the kids. They were good. They were good together. They gel, they became very good. They had one, I think it was two and a half seasons. They never got scored on their team was that good. And they'd win every game. They won the league several times and, um, Jordan didn't give up a goal for like three years. And after he, he died. We had signed him up for Orlando City soccer and I had paid the deposit and they got a travel bag that got a away.
So Orlando city's white and purple. So they had a purple set at a white set with purple numbers. We had that all ordered and it was the day we went to the funeral home to pick up the, um, the death certificate. It was a few weeks after the funeral and they just happened to give us his urn because we had Jordan cremated and we stopped at the Orlando City soccer field. To cancel the order for his uniform. It was like four, 500 bucks for everything.
And, um, I walked in and I said to the lady, I said, um, we'd like to, uh, cancel the order for our son. So she found it, she pulled it up and she's like, Oh, does, as he decided he doesn't want to play soccer. He doesn't like soccer. I said, no, he loves soccer. I said, um, He can't play this year. And she goes, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And, uh, she asked me why. And I said, because he died three weeks ago and she got all shook up and I was in tears telling her, and, um, Canceled the order.
We went home and then we got some texts from some of Jordan's friends who were playing on that Orlando City soccer team that we had just canceled the uniforms for. And they asked us if we would come and watch him play. We would try and get there. And he's like, Steve, I don't want to go to a soccer field again. If I'm not watching Jordan, I'm not going. I said, all right.
So I went, I think I got there right after halftime and I stood next to Jordan's best friend, Jaden, his dad, Johnny, and Johnny, and I used to stand together and watch the kids play. Jayden was pretty good. And, um, I saw Jayden tech, the ball, he went down the field, he ended up scoring. It was his only score to the day I had just gotten there and I saw it and the tears just started running down my cheeks and and Johnny is clapping and Jayden was not overjoyed.
Like he used to be when Jordan played with them. Cause they'd high five low five, the whole works. And Jayden was just, he just came back and it was like no big deal. And, um, the tears didn't stop. And I said, uh, I'm sorry, Johnny, but I gotta go. I, I can't stay here and watch the rest of the game. Tell Jayden it was awesome. I got to see him score and thanks for inviting me. That was the last soccer game either one of us had been through. I just, I can't go back.
It's interesting how you mentioned that with triggers because you look at your life and obviously losing a child is life altering. But if you look at the timeline of your life, you realize that you get exposed to grief at different times, even if you don't know about it. And when you're talking about a soccer field, like I'll just tell you that I, it sounds sort of crazy, but she reminds me of a story of, um, Assassination of President Kennedy when JFK was, was, was killed in Dallas.
I was seven years old in second grade and growing up in Buffalo, New York, very Catholic area. All my friends had pictures of the first Catholic president at their house and I was Jewish and we were big supporters of the Kennedy administration and sorry, that's my dog barking. And we had a picture of JFK in our house. And so when he died, it was assassinated.
I remember my second grade teacher told me that and I look back now, there was a first experience of grief that I had and she said, well, the president now is President Johnson. And I go, who's Johnson and I walked home that day and the crossing guard was a nice old man. He seemed really old. It's probably younger than I am now, but I was friends with them because I was a crossing guard also helped him a student crossing out, obviously.
And he just sort of explained to me that this happens, people we really care for will pass on and to this day, whenever you see something of JFK, there's a little twinge of that reminds me. And a year after that, I remember we were in New York City with my mother's brother, with my aunt and uncle and my cousins going to the New York City, 1964 World's Fair. And my grandfather, my father's father. Passed away while we were there. And it was an eight hour drive from New York City back to Buffalo.
And I remember sitting in the backseat of the car for the first time of my life, seeing my father cry, he was driving home an eight hour drive crying, obviously because he lost his father. So. We're big tennis fans. And just a few weeks ago, they had the us open tennis tournament, which is on the site of the 1964 World's Fair. And they will show the big globe and that some, all the buildings still exist.
So even though that happened 56 years ago, I still remember that twin of grief, which sort of shows you even something that's in the recesses of your mind and your history is still there, which I think just really proves when does grief end and the answer is never.
Yeah, great point. And, and that, that came up for you just because you saw it on TV.
Yes. Yes. Which shows you a trigger that you don't even know exists
yeah until it hits ya . Marshall Adler: Yes. We had vacation in Costa Rica in, um, 2011 and 2014. We went back in 2014. That was a year. Jordan got sick, you know, We're in that pool that last day at that one resort for all afternoon, his headaches had started the next day. And so we swam on a Tuesday, went up flying back on Friday. And I remember him complaining on the plane that he had a headache But I remember the flight down because we were so looking forward to it.
Cause we'd been three years prior and we knew it was a great time that first time down it's like, yeah, we're not sure. How this is going to be, if it's going to be safe. And the second time we had no doubts because we'd been, and we're actually looking forward, we knew some of the things that we're going to do. And, um, after we got back, Jordan died about five days after we got back, uh, seven and a half days after swimming.
And, um, Shelly and I have talked for quite a while that we would never never returned to Costa Rica. Uh, we had a nephew and his wife. They ended up going down and they said, would you be upset? We were like, absolutely not such a beautiful country. We had a great time. We Jordan loved Costa Rica. He loved holding the toucans.
We said no. So they went, they showed us some pictures and, um, Last June, we had a doctor from Spain, reach out to us through the foundation page and ask if there was going to be an international conference for free living amoebas. And it was in Costa Rica. So it was started by the doctor. I didn't know this 38 years ago that we supported with research. Dr. Kabral at Virginia Commonwealth University. I didn't know she started it then, but. It travels around country to country every other year.
So they meet every other year. Two years ago, it was in Tunisia last year was Costa Rica. And they asked since Jordan was the only confirmed case in Costa Rica. If we would let them dedicate Wednesday, November 20th of 2019 to Jordan for Naegleria Fowleri day. When we read that message, we were in tears and it just streaming down. And so we slept on it and we woke up and I said to Shelly, I said, what do you want to do?
And she said, You know, if they're willing to honor Jordan and dedicate the day to him. I think we say yes, and we should ask them if we could come down and share Jordan's story with the doctors. And I smiled because it was exactly what I was thinking. And so I went back to the doctor and said, we'd love to, can we come down and share? And there they were estatic. They're like, yes, we'd love to have you come to the conference.
So our board members went down with us and the conference started late Monday. They had a get together a couple of meetings, and then there were sessions all day long on Tuesday. Well, they were supposed to start at noon on Wednesday for Jordan's day and did dedicate the day to Jordan an I was worried that if we flew in Wednesday morning, we couldn't get to the resort in time to be there for kicking off Jordan's day. And they wanted us to introduce the different speakers.
So I said, what if I fly down Tuesday and you come down with all the board members on Wednesday Shelley is like, okay, that sounds good. I remember that flight. I thought I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life saying that I would go down by myself because on that flight down, I got the window seat, which is where Jordan sat on both trips down.
And I remember coming in, I took some video that window and tears are just running down my face because I realized the last time I flew into San Jose Costa Rica, Jordan was with us. So we landed, I made it to the resort and, um, Shelley came in and she had a hard time, but we had a lot of people with her. She was sitting with her brother. And so, so as it turned out, um, it was a blessing in disguise, but I can't tell you how tough it was. I did the night before. I didn't want to go.
I thought I made a mistake saying I would go down by myself. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go by myself. I knew I was going to have a hard time with it. As it turned out, we did an interview in Costa Rica on that Wednesday, just before Shelley got there just after she got there. So the doctor from Spain and I did an interview with the national TV station there in Costa Rica. So everything is out of San Jose. Any TV is all in San Jose and they go out to the neighboring states and cities.
And anything that plays on TV is national in Costa Rica. And it was weird because we did this interview and it played seven or eight times a day because the conference was in Costa Rica. This is a big deal for Costa Rica
Wow
We did the interview and we went to dinner on Friday night, we took a cab off premise and the cab driver recognize me from TV. And I was like, wow, that's weird. Well, Jordan was the only case ever in Costa Rica. We did that, that TV interview and it late in December, again in early February and early March, they had three more cases. So if we hadn't gone down. That never would have happened.
And I remember going back to the airport was Shelly and all of our board members, we were at the same gate, the same terminal that Jordan left with us in 2014 at cause that was the gate for the US and it had a big plane flying out. And so we sat in the boarding area waiting the same place we were with him on that last trip back. So it was horrible. It was awesome. It was okay. It was horrible. There were so many on that trip. I knew it was going to be tough.
And in hindsight, we're so glad that we did, because that third case, the little girl lived, she became the third survivor of PAM since we had started the foundation. So....
Yeah, Steve, that's an amazing story.I think it just shows how, as you go through the grief journey, You just realize that triggers are part of the deal and sometimes you'll see them and sometimes you won't, sometimes you recognize them and then something completely off the radar screen will hit you. And you're going, why in the world did that happen? Like, I'll just tell you a quick story, a last story of the day.
I, I knew we were going to be talking about this episode today to try to help people and. My good friend, Ted, that I've talked about many times who passed away a few weeks after Matt did his wife called me today that she was in a parking lot or pharmacy in Western New York waiting to get her flu shot.
And she couldn't go in because she just was having this incredible sense of grief that she started was experienced, he started texting me this and she was saying, why would getting a flu shot at a pharmacy, be a trigger for grief. And I surely didn't have an answer for that. I don't have an answer for that. So I think as you go through the grief process, you've got to realize you could have your antenna up as best you can to try to see incoming triggers.
But you're not going to see all of them and don't expect to, and not being able to see all of them. That's okay. Because again, you can try to fight it. You can try to suppress it. You're not going to win. It's like a sports. Yeah, there's an old saying, and this is sort of apropos to Drew Brees and Tom Brady play in the NFL over 40 now. They're phenomenal. They're great. But there's an old saying that in sports father time undefeated.
Sorry.
And there's a day may not be this year, but there's a day where they're both gonna have to walk away because father time won, and I think analogy to that is. Triggers are sort of like the father time of grief. It's going to come, whether you're ready, not ready and it's going to be undefeated. So I think wasting energy, trying to defeat it is self-defeating and you just got to realize this is the part of grief that you're going to have to deal with probably the rest of your life.
And with that understanding, I think will help people deal with triggers. So I hope today's episode gave some insight and some helpful hints from our stories, how we deal with it, because it's just going to be part of the journey of grief.
Marshall you're. So, right. The only thing I would add to that is if we go back to our analogy of standing in the surf and the waves, knock us down after you've been knocked down a few times, you realize it's, it's not going to cover it forever. It's going to go on, you're going to be able to get back up to your feet. I think after you've been through a few of them, it's helpful to know that you can get up and you'll be okay. Okay. You can move on. So we hope our stories today helped everyone.
We want to thank everybody for joining Hope Thru Grief. Remember, we're always interested to hear your feedback and questions. If you'd like to send some our way through the website, more than happy to bring it up on a future episode.
Thank you. Everybody so much for listening and I hope everybody has a very good week.
Thanks everyone Thank you for joining us on Hope Thru Grief with your cohost 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 find 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.