Grow In Your Grief

When was the last time you found yourself in a safe space to talk about grief? In this heartfelt conversation, Kathy welcomes back Nick Gaylord, host of "Our Dead Dads" podcast, for a candid exploration of grief community and the transformative power of shared stories.

Nick opens up about creating his unconventionally-named podcast after his father's death left him struggling with unexpected anger and communication challenges. Despite seeking therapy himself, he recognized how many people lack access to professional grief support due to financial barriers or societal stigma. His solution? Build a platform where anyone could find connection through honest grief conversations without judgment or cost.

The discussion takes a powerful turn when Nick shares insights from his most impactful interviews—conversations with Gabby Petito's parents and Sandy Hook father Robbie Parker. These stories highlight how public tragedies create additional layers of grief, yet also showcase the resilience of those who transform devastating loss into meaningful action. Nick's upcoming participation in the Gabby Petito Foundation's charity golf event demonstrates how grief communities extend beyond podcast conversations into real-world connection and purpose.

Perhaps most revealing is Kathy's personal evolution with death conversations. She recounts arranging "escape calls" to avoid her mother's funeral planning discussions, only to later find herself hosting a grief podcast after gradual exposure through hospice work transformed her relationship with mortality. This journey from avoidance to advocacy perfectly captures why these conversations matter—they create safe spaces for others still struggling to face their grief.

Both hosts emphasize that grief isn't something we can outrun or drink away—it must be processed and moved through. As Nick poignantly puts it, "If we're going to jump off the cliff into the abyss, then let's all hold hands on the way down." 

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
Instagram:  @asiliveandgrieve
YouTube:  asiliveandgrieve
TikTok: @asiliveandgrieve

To Reach Nick:
Website:  http://www.ourdeaddads.com
E-mail : ourdeaddadspodcast@gmail.com

 
Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve

The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. 

Transcript

Welcome to As I Live and Grieve

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.

Speaker 2 0:27

Hi everyone, welcome back again to another episode of as I Live and Grieve. You know, every week I say I've got another great guest, and it's true. This week, in fact, he's so great I invited him back again. I don't know. Is this your second or third time, nick, third, third time, okay, well, we'll have to shoot for number four and five. Eventually, down the road With me today is Nick Gaylord. Hey, nick, great to see you again.

Speaker 3 0:50

So good to see you again, Kathy. How have you been?

Speaker 2 0:52

Pretty good, thanks, nick, and I decided it's time to catch up, so we're going to offer just a little different perspective this time. We're going to kind of have not a review, but maybe some reminiscing about some of the guests that we have interviewed on our podcast. Nick has one and he's going to tell you about it in a minute, and we're just going to share some information back and forth. So to get us started, nick, would you kind of tell the listeners because I know there's listeners out there that haven't heard your other episodes would you start out by telling them a little bit about yourself and what your podcast is all about?

Speaker 3 1:27

Absolutely, and let me just say thank you again so much for having me back again, and I would love to have a fourth and fifth time and as many times as we do this, as many times as you want to do this. I love being on this show. It's an incredible podcast and I hope that your listeners see as much value in it as I do. So thank you for having me back. I really appreciate it. As you said, my name is Nick Gaylord. I'm the host of a podcast called Our Dead Dads, which is an unusual name. Everybody would agree to that part. The podcast is about grief, trauma, loss, processing everything, having difficult conversations around processing grief and finding ways to move forward from all of it and finding ways to do it together as a community. One of the biggest things with this podcast is it's not just a podcast. It's about creating community.

Speaker 3 2:16

Everybody has been through grief, whether we'll admit it or not or whether we want to talk about it. We have all been through the ringer in one way or another, or sometimes in Baltimore. Whether or not we choose to discuss it and open up about it is usually a different story. Unfortunately, most of us are, whether it's unwilling or just reluctant to open up about it because society has taught us for far too long that we just don't, we just shouldn't. I know that's the way it was with when I was growing up, society, not only society, but the people in my life, the people who raised me and I don't say that like they were wolves or something like you know my family, the adults in my life. Yeah, I was not raised by wolves, even though it looks like I may because I haven't shaved in a week or so, but it's okay.

Speaker 3 3:03

Yeah, I was born in 1975. So basically, growing up as an 80s kid Back then, the outlook on grief was we don't talk about this, it's just a taboo topic. It always has been and in a lot of ways, in a lot of circles of society it still is. It's gotten better, but it still is hard to discuss and a lot of people in my life said we don't talk about this. Some people even suggested leave this stuff for the women. I don't know why. That's just the way, the mentality is no.

Speaker 2 3:35

women are known to be more touchy-foley types.

Speaker 3 3:37

Yeah, exactly, women are in touch with their emotions and women can handle this and they just deal with this, right. Well, okay, and then what about men? Where does that leave men who don't want to deal with it? Well, it leaves us in places like I found myself four years ago when my dad died. My dad and I did not have the greatest relationship. I am the oldest of his seven children. He was married and divorced five times and it was a very complicated relationship. Anybody who's going to was married and divorced five times, and it was a very complicated relationship. Anybody who's going to be married and divorced five times, they're going to be a complicated individual. He died in 2021.

Speaker 3 4:11

And I found myself about four months after that, at first thinking I was fine and then realizing I wasn't. And I found myself in therapy, because my wife is the one who pointed out to me that I really needed to talk to somebody, because I was losing all kind of control. I was getting angry, I was snapping at people for no reason. Nobody did anything wrong.

Speaker 3 4:32

I couldn't deal with the internal crap that I had going on. I didn't know how to communicate. My family was not the best at communicating so I really didn't know how to handle it, as a lot of people don't. Unless you're working in the field, unless you know all these things or you've read a million grief books, then you don't know how to deal with this. And so she said you need to talk to somebody, and she was right, and so I did, found myself in therapy, and we did that for six months, and on the other side of it, I found I guess I found peace. I found forgiveness toward myself and toward my dad. I was able to forgive him for being the person he was, for not being the person that we all know he could and should have been. I was able to forgive myself for the anger and I was finally able to let go of the anger, and that's something that I would not have found without therapy.

Speaker 2 5:23

Right.

Speaker 3 5:24

Now also, a lot of people think, oh, therapy is not for me, it's a bunch of crap. Therapy is for everybody. Everybody should be in therapy at one point or another for something. But also a lot of people can't afford therapy. A lot of people may not have insurance. A lot of people don't know where to begin with therapy. So I created a podcast and it is a platform that is open to everybody.

Speaker 3 5:46

As I've said many times from the beginning of the show up till recently, I do not ask you for your insurance card. I do not ask you for a copay. I ask you for some of your time and your willingness to just come in with an open mind, because there is a lot that can be learned here. I am learning things every single week, every conversation that I have, everybody that I talk to. I am constantly learning things, and I believe that we should all be open to learning things every day. If you live a day without learning something, you've basically wasted it.

Speaker 3 6:17

There's always something to learn, and so I started this podcast to just build community, to give people a platform and an opportunity, if they so choose, to embrace it, to talk about some of the hardest things that they've been through in their life to talk about grief, to talk about trauma, to talk about the loss they've experienced. I know that the podcast name is called Our Dead Dads. I'm not going to get into a lot of details other than to say find my podcast on all the major streaming platforms and please listen to episode one. I will talk all about how I got here, why I started a podcast and why it's called Our Dead Dads. It involves my three younger brothers and three very close friends. I hope it's a good story. The interviews, I think, are better.

Nick Gaylord and Our Dead Dads

Speaker 2 7:01

I think it's a good story and you know, think it's a good story. It's a good story. It's a good story. So many times we just try to find a title that will pique somebody's curiosity, that will make them want to take a listen, Just like with as I Live in Grief. I struggled for days and days and days over what to name the podcast, and I got so frustrated one day I sat there and said oh my goodness, as I Live in Breathe, why can't I think of this? And then boom, the light bulb went on. Yeah, Instead of as I breathe, it's as I live and breathe.

Speaker 3 7:31

Yeah Well, so my brothers and my friends and I, we're something that I can thank my dad for. So I'm fluent in sarcasm and dark humor and we all are, and the seven of us have always been a tight group of us have always been a tight group and we realize at some point, oh, all of our dads are dead. So that kind of became like a joke between our dead dads. Right again, people just they, we joke and we find dark humor and so it's a coping mechanism and sometimes it's a great way to cope with something. Yeah, I mean, we're stress reliever. It really can. Yeah, it could be a stress reliever, and again, we're just, you know, seven demented idiots, but it worked for us.

Speaker 2 8:04

Because I knew the title Seven Demented Idiots.

Speaker 3 8:07

Never mind. Yeah, Maybe if I ever rebrand the podcast then I'll get a picture of the seven of us looking like eh and just like weird faces, and maybe, yeah, that'll be the rebranding.

Speaker 1 8:18

Not anytime soon.

Speaker 3 8:21

But so I started the podcast and, like I said, there's a lot of jokes, there's a lot of humor, but there's also a lot of serious stories. There's a lot of conversation around really serious, really heavy, really intense topics. Some episodes did not have a lot of laughing at all because of what we're talking about. It is what it is and so, yeah, it all depends on the story and it's okay. But it's all about, it's not a comparison. One of my guests, jessica Prenzy, from episode 16, she famously now famously for the podcast said grief is not a pissing contest, trauma is not a pissing contest. And she nailed it it's not a pissing contest. It's not a comparison. It's not. Yours is worse than mine, it's. We all dealt with it. We're all here. Let's work together. If we're going to be, if we're going to jump off the cliff into the abyss, then let's all hold hands on the way down. Yeah, because we can do this together.

Speaker 2 9:13

Tell me out of all your guests I don't know how many episodes do you have out there now About Well, going to be episode 50, and it's a pretty big one. All right, so compared to me you're a little newer, but that's true. I mean, even if you look at us, you're definitely younger than I am. I could be your mom. I think, yeah, I probably could. Yeah, right, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, okay, anyway, moving on. So, out of all your episodes, tell me something you've learned from one of your guests.

Speaker 3 9:44

From one of my guests yeah, or two. Well, I don't, geez, I don't know if I now you put me on the spot.

Speaker 2 9:52

I don't know if I can narrow it down to one thing, or maybe a different perspective or just something kind of stands out to you.

Speaker 3 9:56

Something that I have learned is we all grieve and we all need to grieve. We can't hide it. We can't hide it, we can't bury it, we can't run from it, we can't escape it, we can't outrun it, we can't forget about it. It's always going to be there, no matter how hard you try to push it down and bury it. You can try to drink it away, you can try to work it away, you can try to literally outrun it.

Speaker 3 10:25

I had a guest who talked about after she lost her dad. She was a runner, she was a marathoner, she became an ultra marathoner, literally tried to outrun her grief and ended up did like a 200 mile four day ultra marathon around Lake Tahoe, ended up getting injured on day four and she didn't get. She was like 12 miles away from completing. She didn't get to finish it and so she's injured and she's got that to deal with and her dad's dead and she hasn't dealt with her grief. It's always going to be there.

Speaker 3 10:56

That's something that has been a very common theme throughout all the interviews and everybody's perspective is different and everybody's perspective is right, and I'm not trying to say that this isn't like a the customer's always right kind of situation with a supermarket, because that's a bunch of crap. We all know that, but when it comes to grief, the way you feel is it's relevant, it's important, and it's important to be noticed and understood and validated. Nobody gets to tell you when you're dealing with your grief, oh, you're dealing with this the wrong way. There might be better ways of processing it, but if you're sad, if you're upset, if you're heartbroken and it's been six months, it's been a year, and your people are telling you you need to get over it, you need to get your life together and you need to pick up the pieces. That's not a person that you want to be giving you advice, and I understand that they might be trying to, in their mind, help you, but a lot of times, what it is is that person who's saying those kinds of things to you. They're uncomfortable with what you're going through and they don't know how to deal with it. Now, obviously, nobody wants to live the rest of their life in grief. Sometimes it happens, though, and rather than throw these labels on it and just put depression or manic or whatever PTSD, let's try to dig a little bit deeper, and it's a two-way street.

Speaker 3 12:20

There need to be more resources readily available for people who want them, and there also needs to be the willingness from the person who's grieving to begin the process. There are so many resources. There's resources galore for all the guests that I've spoken with. I've spoken with therapists, life coaches, teachers, friends so many people from all walks of life, and at this point I think I've interviewed people in seven different countries, including ours, of course, and it's the same everywhere. It's not different in England or in Australia or New Zealand, it's all the same.

Speaker 3 12:55

The human emotion is. We're all human, so for it to be something different, it would have to be a different species, and we are all human. We all experience the same thing. So that's kind of a perspective that I've gained that it's so important that everybody takes the time and has their grief validated. Doesn't let themselves be surrounded by people who aren't interested in helping, by people who are just so uncomfortable with what they're going through that they're going to try to give them a false perspective. Deal with the hard stuff. Say the hard things. Say the-.

Speaker 2 13:33

Yeah, yeah, I like that, and I especially like the first, when you first started out saying that grief is something we have to go through. It's, I mean, just like a caterpillar, at some point has to make a cocoon and metamorphosize into a butterfly the same way.

Speaker 2 13:50

I mean that's a biological necessity and I really believe for us we have to go through it. It's physically, mentally and emotionally necessary for us to go through the process of grief and if we do, if we can set our mind and open our minds and let it happen however long it's going to take for us, because we're all different you get to the other side and things do get better because you've put the hard work in, you've gone through it.

Speaker 3 14:21

You've gone through it. Just don't give yourself, don't beat yourself up Right Because of how upset you are, how sad you are, how depressed you are. No, that's part of the human emotion spectrum, yep, but there are ways to get through it Right. And grief really does suck.

Speaker 2 14:41

We're not going to try to sugarcoat it here. Grief sucks right and I'll you know, and I'll bet if you asked, you know the man on the street type thing. He went out and said what's the most powerful emotion, the deepest, most passionate emotion? They would say love. That's why grief hurts so much. Yeah, because we love the person we've lost. It's that same deep passion of love that's part of grief.

Speaker 3 15:04

And it also could be someone that you couldn't stand, I mean, like me and my dad. Yeah, I loved him. He was my dad, but he was a son of a bitch, right. He was just a miserable person for most of his life, right.

Speaker 2 15:21

Doesn't mean I didn't love him, but at the same time. I mean holy hell yeah and it was not easy living with that. You were grieving. You were grieving all of your life really, but because you were grieving for the father that you wish you had, maybe you know, father, I wish I had.

Speaker 3 15:31

Yeah, I mean again, that's a lot of that is covered in episode one too. There are so many absolutely between us, it's hard but you do grieve a person.

Speaker 2 15:40

I mean. There are people well one particular that I wish dead. If murder had not been illegal, I probably would have helped him. Okay, but did I still love him at the time? Yes, I did. Did I afterward, after we divorced, after we went our separate ways? Did I love him then? No, I loved the life I wanted to have with him. That's right. And I was grieving that probably more than anything.

Speaker 3 16:06

Yeah, yeah, and loss is everywhere, sure, and it doesn't. It's going to in some ways control our life. It doesn't have to completely control our lives. Like I said, we're not just talking about dad stories on this show. We've talked about parents, siblings, children, jobs, homes, relationships, marriages. Because all loss needs to be grieved.

Speaker 2 16:31

Absolutely, absolutely. Have you ever had an episode that started out one way and then kind of took an entirely different direction and you went with it?

Speaker 3 16:41

I'm sure there probably have been one or two.

Speaker 2 16:46

Okay, all right. So tell me about an episode. Maybe that was your favorite. I know we were talking for a few minutes before I hit the record button and you were telling me about a very special one. Tell everybody about that.

Speaker 3 16:58

So of course, if I say it's my favorite, then all my other guests will be like what I mean.

Speaker 2 17:02

It's just like your children, right?

Speaker 3 17:04

you love them all. Yeah, you love the ball of the.

Speaker 2 17:07

Somewhere on the side they're like it's okay but like do we have one episode of mine that I do not like, but right, it's still there exactly still there.

Speaker 3 17:15

So the one episode that you're talking about was I mean, there are two that really stick out in my mind as just so incredibly impactful, and possibly it's because of the story that's involved and also because both of them are kind of they're very public cases. These are stories that a lot of people are familiar with. The first one was the interviewing the parents of Gabby Petito. Many people remember Gabby and her then-fiancé, brian Laundrie set off on a cross-country trip in their van and a few months later Brian returned home without Gabby. It was discovered that he ended her life and then he took his own. Shortly after. By the time they found him, or by the time they were even able to charge him with anything, he was probably already no longer on this earth. And so I got to interview her mom, nikki Schmidt, and her bonus dad, jim Schmidt, and that was such an intense interview and so powerful, and that was actually my aside from my wife Kim. That was actually my first in-person interview. As most of my guests know, I live in Tampa and they kind of live on the other side of Tampa. They're probably maybe 45 minutes away, and she actually suggested it. Absolutely Nice. So we did that and have gotten to know them and become friends with them. They're just incredible, incredible people.

Speaker 3 18:37

And I actually have a charity golf event coming up on June 6th that I'm going back to New York because we were all originally from Long Island and they're doing the second annual Gabby Petito Foundation golf event. At where is it? I think it's Willow Creek Country Club in Mount Sinai, new York. If anybody's interested, go to GabbyPetitoFoundationorg and look under the events and you will see it. I believe there are still a few tickets left. If you want to play golf, is it okay if I give a little bit of information about it real quick? Sure, okay. So if anybody wants to play, as a single person, I think it's $325. As a foursome is $1,200. If you want to go just for dinner, I think it's $135. It's all for the foundation.

Grief Is Not a Pissing Contest

Speaker 3 19:18

It's an incredible cause, all the work that Gabby's parents and, by the way, when I say Gabby's parents, I mean all four of them her mom, her dad, her bonus dad, her bonus mom, all four of them. They were a huge part of her life and so the four of them are on the board. They run this foundation together. So, yeah, that's going to be golf, it's going to be dinner, it's going to be incredible day on the island and I will be broadcasting live that morning, probably from like 9 to 11 am. So if anybody wants to come and hear me find me on Facebook, I will be broadcasting live on Facebook and just look under Nick Gaylord or our Dead Dance podcast, and yeah, so that's going to be an incredible day. I can't wait and I'm so happy that I even got to get to know them and interview them. Yeah, that sounds exciting.

Speaker 3 20:04

Yeah, the second interview, which has probably had one of the biggest impacts on me personally, is a man by the name of Robbie Parker, who is one of the many parents who lost his child at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December of 2012. That interview was gut-wrenching, and not talking to Robbie, talking to Robbie was just brilliant, and Robbie is himself an incredible speaker and he's just such a great human being. The things that he went through because he unfortunately, as of losing his daughter, wasn't bad enough. He then found himself in the crosshairs of one, alex Jones, who decided to throw all the conspiracy theories out there about how the shooting never happened. It was fake, it was staged, robbie was a crisis actor.

Speaker 3 20:54

The whole deal that went on for years before they ended up taking Alex Jones to court and you guys can read the book and find out how that ended. It did not end well for Alex Jones. So that interview and the Petitos or the Schmitz, rather, because Nikki got married to Jim Schmidt, her stepdad, but Gabby's parents those two interviews are probably two of my most intense and I mean, if I had I don't know if I I don't really want to put favorites on it, but I mean I love those interviews so much as I love with all of my guests.

Speaker 3 21:29

Everybody just brings so much to the table and I would. Here's the thing I wouldn't have a podcast if it wasn't for each and every one of my guests and my list, because I will say it until I drop, drop dead I don't know who that wants to listen to me talk just endlessly, but when we're talking about topics like this that impact literally every single one of them, it's not a sexy topic. This isn't a topic like some of the other popular topics or the hot button topics like politics or religion or sports or scandals or scandal, scandal, true crime, things like that, right, not everybody. I mean, if I started a true crime podcast, if I really got to go on, I could probably have 100,000 listeners in like three months because everybody just lets them know true crime and scandal, all those things. This is not the same.

Speaker 3 22:18

Obviously, I don't have 100,000 listeners and followers at this point and I'm trying to get there, but what I can say is I have heard every damn one of my listeners that I have. They are loyal, they're amazing people, they're faithful because they have been through it Right. They spread the word. The show is growing. At this point, I have listeners now in 48 countries Nice and, like I said, I'm getting ready to drop episode 50 next week. If anybody is interested, that will be actually another. It's going to be my second Sandy Hook interview, carla Lewis. We're going to obviously be talking about that day, but we're also going to be talking about a lot of the work that she's been doing with her foundation in the name of her son, jesse, who she lost that day.

Speaker 3 22:59

That's going to be an intense one, but that's going to be probably a better, more upbeat tone than the Robbie Parker's episode was. I definitely recommend if you've ever been through grief, if you are in grief, if you know somebody who is recommend that they give this show. And look, I understand it's not for everybody, so if it's not, that's okay. There's no hard feelings. But if you try, you think it's not for you and you ever decide you want to come back, I'll be here when you're ready, because everybody needs someone to go through the grief journey with and a lot of us don't even start it because we feel like we don't have anybody to talk to. And you don't have to come on. When I say talking to people, you don't know this. You don't have to come on the show and talk to me. You can come here and just listen. If you want to talk to me, then you go to my website. It's OurDeadDadscom. There is a be a guest form. You fill it out and we're going to have a conversation from there and we just might end up having an interview. But if you aren't up for having an interview, if it's not your cup of tea, but you still think that you can benefit from hearing how others have gotten through their grief, then I can't recommend enough that you give this a shot. And again, we're on all the platforms Apple, spotify, iheart, pandora, all of them or you can go right to the website. You could listen through there. If you don't want to deal with the podcast with a listening platform, you could listen to all the full episodes right from my website.

Lessons from Nick's Podcast Guests

Speaker 3 24:27

This is something that I believe is so powerful and so necessary, and I know that a lot of people feel that it is too. But I also understand that a lot of people may have a little bit of a hard time listening to Topics of Grief every single week. Look, it's not a doom and gloom podcast. This isn't all sad and depressing. We have a lot of fun at this show. Believe it or not, we do have a lot of fun. There's a lot of humor. Sometimes there's some dark humor. The end of every episode we play a little bit of a game. We do some rapid fire questions for the last five to 10 minutes just to learn some useless tidbits of information about everybody, things that have nothing to do with the pod, nothing to do with the story that we just talked about. We make it fun, we get the listeners engaged, we get the guests engaged and we're just again. We're trying to create community because community is so powerful and everybody needs someone, whether you know it or not.

Speaker 2 25:23

Yep, and that's why we podcasters stick together too.

Speaker 1 25:26

Did.

Speaker 2 25:26

I ever tell you this story about me and how I used to avoid the topic of grief and death.

Speaker 3 25:33

I don't believe you did.

Speaker 2 25:35

Well, let me just tell you this. The listeners may have heard bits and pieces up here and there, but here's the entire story. My mother, my mother was the inveterate planner. She would plan everything down to the most minute detail. So she planned her funeral pretty much from the moment she was going to be dead. She planned everything, not just who the funeral home was, but who memorial funds could be donated to, how many bouquets of flowers and arrangements she wanted or didn't want, the type of flowers she didn't want even. And she had it down almost on an agenda format of what my brother and I were supposed to do, extremely detailed. All right, you hang on to that question for a minute. Not only did she do all this planning, but she felt the need to convey that information to her children.

Speaker 2 26:29

My brother lived out of state. I was the only one here, so I was kind of her caretaker, her, I watched over her and everything. Yeah, so about once a month she would invite me over for dinner. My mother did not cook. She would invite me over for dinner, which meant I would come over, I would cook, and the topic of conversation was going to be these plans she had made. Maybe she made a revision here and there, or maybe she gave a copy to somebody else. Whatever, I hated those dinners so much that I used to have an escape call planned. You know how when you have a blind date, you just about choked, didn't you, on your water, if that's water in there.

Speaker 2 27:10

I used to have an escape call plan. I used to have a good friend who would call me at a specific time because at my job I had told my mother I was on call 24-7, which was kind of true. I worked at a nursing home and sometimes there were emergencies that I had to go help with, right. So I would have my friend call and I would go oh my gosh, no, really, what room or what patient or what resident? And I would leave and I would do that. That's a good friend.

Speaker 2 27:38

And it was because I didn't want to talk about this or listen to it, because I was terrified of the entire concept of death and grief. That was what was really at the base of it. I don't know. I don't know. I just I could not talk without losing control of my emotions completely and I didn't want to crumble because of that. I didn't want to show that weakness.

Speaker 2 28:01

And then eventually I got a job at a hospice home and the nurses kind of figured out I had this reservation, so to speak, about the topic and they developed a plan where they would start to ask my help with a patient Now, every patient here in this hospice home is dying you never know if it's a day away or three days away and they eventually would have me help them with hands-on care. And then at one point they actually asked my help with a patient who was actively dying and did in fact die while I was in the room Gradually, with the nurses helping me and supporting me. It got me over that, and that very hospice home is the one I was at when this entire concept of a podcast came to be, so I used to be terrified of it.

Speaker 3 28:48

Are you still?

Speaker 2 28:49

No, I talk about death every day now.

Speaker 3 28:51

Oh, I know you do, but that doesn't mean that you're not still terrified.

Speaker 2 28:54

No, I'm not terrified of it. I have my plans in place. I have written paperwork in a binder and it's in the safe or file cabinet of my son-in-law, who's going to take care of things. And no, I'm good to go, but at the time I just could not deal with it.

Speaker 3 29:08

That makes sense. The question that I had for you before was did your mother make these plans because she liked the idea of not having to make her kids crazy and planning, or was she in control for you?

Speaker 2 29:21

She looked at this as a gift she was giving us by making all those plans, answering all those questions, because when my father died, she of course had to go through that at the funeral home. She remembered very well how, at the time, the last thing you want to do is make decisions about the obituary, make all of those decisions. So she was trying to spare us that stress. Now I have to add that, as kids, my brother and I took great pleasure in changing one of her plans, but we did it for fun and we did it and to honor her memory. But anyway, we did make a change and and it was fine, I'm sure. But no, it was a gift and she was right, because when the time came, all of those questions were already answered. We didn't have to worry about any of them. It was so fun.

Speaker 3 30:08

It's so funny that your mom thought that she was giving you guys a gift, and I had suggested that, with my dad, to plan this funeral in advance, and he was completely against the idea, Because Kim and I moved to Texas in 2016.

Speaker 3 30:22

And then we moved here to Florida in 2022. Before we moved to Texas, I suggested multiple times to my dad we need to get your funeral planned. Why that's so morbid, what the hell am I going to do that for? I said, because you have seven children and none of us are going to agree on what to do. So this way, if it's Dylan and you make all the decisions, then all we have to do is push the button and execute them. It's your wishes. You get to make the decision. You are in total control.

Sandy Hook and Gabby Petito Stories

Speaker 3 30:54

And when I said it like that, he's like yeah, you know what? That's a good idea. And so then he was on board and then we went and then I think it was about six months before we moved, got everything planned and when the time came, all I had to do was call up the guy at the funeral home and said it's time. In fact, he, the funeral home director, is going to be an upcoming guest on the podcast, Not necessarily to talk about his and he lost it, he said but to talk about how he has what he had. His experience has been dealing with 10 years of this.

Speaker 2 31:28

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 31:28

With so many other families. Yeah, just came in and let me see so I threw that idea past him a few months ago Like would you be interested? And he's like that would actually be really cool. So we're going to do that. It's going to be a really interesting perspective, I think, to see how that goes. Yeah, I'm excited.

Speaker 2 31:45

It will Well look at that. Time has gotten away from us again, where you and I we could talk all afternoon, we could talk for hours and hours. Who knows where the conversation would go, but for now, for today, we have to wrap things up and say farewell. So one more time, tell our listeners the name of your podcast, tell them how they can reach you and know that the contact information will be in the podcast notes, and then I'll sign off.

Speaker 3 32:11

Absolutely. Thank you again so much for having me here. I really really appreciate it and I definitely look forward to the next time. I hope that you do not get sick of me and I hope that there will be a next time and a next time I'm not going to get sick.

Speaker 2 32:22

You're too much fun to talk to.

Speaker 3 32:24

I love that. So the name of the podcast once again is on any podcast platform. If you see what looks kind of like a retro looking cartoonish logo with two ghosts like an orange circly orange, yellowish, bluish background, just two ghosts. They have hats on and ties. They look like kind of. They just look like old men. I mean I really think the ghosts look like the odd couple with the hats and the ties and everything.

Speaker 3 32:49

If you find that logo, you found the right podcast. The website is OurDeadDadscom. You can find me on Facebook, instagram, tiktok, linkedin, youtube. I haven't done as much on YouTube I'm getting there, but Facebook, instagram, linkedin and TikTok those are the big ones right now. You can go to the website. All of the back episodes are up there. I'm not exactly sure when this is going to be released, but if it's before episode 50, then feel free to join. You can find me on Facebook. You can find my personal profile, nick Gaylord. If you see a Nick Gaylord that is the owner of Our Dead Dads podcast, you found the right one. Find Our Dead Dads podcast Facebook page and also the other social media pages. Join them and follow me.

Speaker 3 33:32

I do occasionally do lives. I try to do Facebook and TikTok lives at least twice a month on each one. So that's a great way to kind of network and to get a little bit of interaction with me. And again, if you'd like to be a guest on OurDeadDadscom, go to contact us. There is a be a guest form. You can fill that out. If you'd like to recommend or nominate a guest, you can do that as well. Just know that you're not alone.

Speaker 3 33:56

Anything that you're feeling, no matter how intense, how unique you may think it is, your situation may be unique, but you're far from the first person who's ever dealt with grief and far from the first person who ever wasn't sure of how to deal with. Again. I went through this crap too. I didn't know what I was doing when my dad died, even though it wasn't the first time I'd been through it. But I also didn't know what I was doing and I thought I was good, realized I wasn't. It's a very common theme that you're going to hear from a lot of people and it's different every time. These podcasts thinking they're good Every time. It is different every single time.

Speaker 3 34:29

But the outcome is that we will get through it together. It doesn't mean it's going to happen in one shot or one little conversation. It's a start. The hardest part of getting through grief and moving through grief is beginning the first conversation. By the way, we're not saying move past it. We're not saying get past it or get around it. We're saying go through it. That's the only way. It's the only effective. It doesn't have to be a scary negative situation. So I invite everybody to come check out our Dead Dads podcast and tell your friends, tell anybody you want, because this is something that really is for everybody. Anybody who's ever had lost experienced it going through it now. By the way, we have also had a few conversations about anticipatory grief people that are they know that they're going to be losing somebody. We've had those conversations, so there's so much to talk about. I really believe it's a show for everybody.

Speaker 2 35:24

I always have a good time talking to you, even though we're talking about death, and some people aren't going to understand that, but I know others will and I bet a week's paycheck that many of your listeners and my listeners will get that as well. When you find somebody that you can talk to comfortably about grief and about death, you're in a good space. You're in a safe space. So, absolutely so, listeners, let's wrap up today.

Speaker 3 35:52

You definitely feel like you're around your people, safe space. So, absolutely so, listeners as we wrap up today.

Speaker 2 35:55

I just want to say that my attempt today was to expand your resources, to give you another option. Whether it's a different option or an additional option, it doesn't matter. That's up to you, because what I truly want to happen is that you find what you need to help you move through your grief, and we talk about self-care a lot. I always close by reminding you to take care of yourselves. One of the ways you can take care of yourself is to find those supportive, comforting resources and people that you feel you can listen to, you can talk with. You could be a guest on his show. You can be a guest on my show. All you have to do is reach out. So think about that. Remember again to take care of yourselves. Check out our Dead Dads podcast. I know you'll enjoy it and certainly please come back again next time as we all continue to live and grieve. Thanks, nick, back again next time as we all continue to live and grieve.

Kathy's Journey with Death and Grief

Speaker 1 36:56

Thanks, Nick. Thank you so much for listening with us today. Do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info at as I live and grievecom, and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and gr us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and grieve together.