Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Paralyzed and Perspectives: Money Solved Everything, Until it Couldn't...
Have you ever considered what makes a problem "real"? This week delivered a powerful lesson about perspective when two life-altering events struck within days of each other.
First, my son watched helplessly as his friend crashed on a motocross track, resulting in paralysis from the knees down. A 20-year-old engineering student's entire future changed in a fraction of a second. Then on my 47th birthday, I received my own devastating news—a diagnosis of retinal venous occlusion, requiring monthly injections directly into my eyeball to prevent blindness. The eye damage? A direct result of stress-induced high blood pressure from my law enforcement career.
These experiences crystallized a truth I've been learning: if you can throw money at something to fix it, it's not actually a problem—it's an inconvenience. The lawnmower breaking down, bills piling up, everyday frustrations we obsess over? They pale in comparison to life's genuine challenges that no amount of resources can simply undo.
What's struck me most is how difficult it remains for me to slow down and accept help. Even after therapy and healing from PTSD, I struggle tremendously with feeling "weak" when needing assistance. My nervous system is finally allowing me to feel emotions again—I cry freely now after years of emotional suppression—yet accepting vulnerability remains my greatest challenge.
These parallel crises have reinforced the importance of family and work-life balance above all else. My wife's unwavering support through decades of challenges has been my foundation. Without her faith in me and our relationship, my world would look completely different today.
Whether you're facing your own struggles or supporting someone through theirs, remember that showing emotion isn't weakness—it's your nervous system functioning properly. What challenges are you facing that money can't fix? I'd love to hear your thoughts on vulnerability and healing.
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
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do you feel that slowing down is hard for you? Do you feel that taking time to relax and not do anything and just sit and be is that difficult for you? Is it difficult for you to accept an injury? Is it difficult for you to accept or ask for help? How many of you people listening right now find it super easy to pick up the phone and say, hey, I'm dealing with something I can't handle on my own and I really need somebody to come alongside of me and help me through this process. Or how many of you does that make you feel weak? And how many of you love feeling weak? How many of you love feeling like man, I can't do this on my own. I'm a real pansy ass and I feel super, super weak as a result of this and I'm just probably a shining star to everybody around me because I am I'm incapable of doing this myself. How many of you love that feeling? And you know, our body shows us signs of needing rest and needing certain things. As we're traveling down this highway of life. There's these exits that say, hey, get off here to avoid devastation. Hey, you're making some bad choices in your marriage. Exit the left here and we can show you how to get back on track, but we just pass those things up at 55 miles an hour or maybe 100 miles an hour. On tonight's show we're going to talk about all of those things.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murderous to Music podcast. How are you guys doing this week? And thank you so much for coming back for another week. My name is Aaron, I'm your host, and tonight we are going to talk about real life problems. We're going to identify what those are, and this week has been full of them. There's been a couple of things that have crept up this week that I just didn't expect, and we're going to talk about those, but before I do, I want to get to some fan mail that came in, and when I say fan mail, that sounds so big headed. It's just a one way portal of communication for people to be able to reach out and send me a one way message. I have no way of responding to these, and you can do this through any of your different podcast platforms or several of Portland Oregon, and this listener is going to refer to the snapshot that I released on June 10th where I talk about Steve Redmond, and if you haven't had a chance to listen to that snapshot. It's about a 10 minute recording broadcast you should go listen to.
Speaker 1:Essentially, in 2012, I was in a really bad mental health place. I attended some training in the Seattle area. This is where I met Steve Redmond. Steve Redmond at the time was a Seattle police officer who literally helped save my life by sharing his message and his struggles with PTSD, alcoholism, abuse within the family and, uh, you know, I learned some stuff about him this last week that really shook me up and I put that out on a snapshot on June 10th. So if you haven't had a chance, go listen to that. But this listener's message says this. It says hey, I just started listening to your podcast after hearing you on. Small town dicks loved hearing from a local cop. My always perks my ears.
Speaker 1:The ending of this snapshot dropped my jaw and broke my heart. This man helped so many people through so many bad times, yet he himself was not immune to the relapses. It just shows that we are never completely free of our depression and our PTSD and how fragile life is in this world. Hearing you get choked up at the end was enough. I started crying. My heart hurts for people who think there is no hope. Also, I deeply respect a man who is secure enough to cry, and even more to do so on a public platform such as a podcast. Not only is it emotionally healthy, but physically as well. Tears of sadness carry the right chemicals that contribute to that emotion. So when we cry in sadness, we actually release those negative chemicals from our bodies. Thank you for showing us that it's okay for men to cry, to feel and to not be okay.
Speaker 1:So with that, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for reaching out and taking the time out of your day to send me a message. You have no idea what that feedback does for me. It gives me the encouragement and the energy I need to move on and to put another podcast out. You know, um, you guys can all get involved in the conversation. Feel free to send me if there's something you want to hear about. Feel free to send me either a fan mail. You can email me at murders to music at gmailcom and that is the number two murders, the number two music at gmailcom. Or you can find me on Instagram murders to music. Follow my page, get involved in this conversation and be a part of the show, be a part of people growing and let me take your pain and help it for my purpose and the purpose of this podcast and the platform that we've got in front of us. So thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1:One of my more recent podcasts talks about inspiration for this show, and you know different topics of conversation and one of the topics that's been written down in my notes for months is crying and the showing of emotion. You know, I think so often in law enforcement and maybe even in life, but specifically law enforcement or male dominated careers, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the tough guy syndrome that you can't show emotions. And a couple of things are happening In my case at least. One of it was a cognitive decision to not show emotion, to not cry, to not have feelings. Other side of the fence was the nervous system shutting down and not allowing those feelings or things to be processed, because it was a protective mechanism my body was putting in place to protect my psyche from all the stuff I was dealing with For years and years and years. You know, I didn't cry, I didn't show emotion, I didn't open up about things and I held them all in and over the last couple of years I have found that through therapy.
Speaker 1:And over the last couple of years I have found that through therapy, through healing, through conversation, through you know just my journey that I cry more and more often, all the time, and I don't see it as a weakness anymore. I don't see it as something to be ashamed of or afraid of. You know, you know in the law enforcement world that a lot of partners and really they don't show emotion, they don't experience what they're really feeling or they don't cry, especially in public. I think that it has been so healthy for me to be able to get those things out. Now, if the wind changes direction or if there's a sad commercial on, I start crying and I get that emotion and sometimes I feel like I don't even know where it's coming from, but I think it's just an indicator that my nervous system is kind of functioning again. I have those feelings, I have those emotions and I let them out.
Speaker 1:So one of the things I want to talk about on the podcast was men showing emotion and feeling feelings, and is it positive or negative? Is it seen as a weakness? Is it seen as a positive? I don't know. I mean, I know my opinion about it. I know this listener's opinion, but in the grand scheme of things, you know, if men are crying, is that acceptable in this world? I'm so used to living in this law enforcement world where it wasn't seen as acceptable. It wasn't an everyday occurrence. It was very rare. I've been to police funerals where people didn't cry, and that was, or is, something that is new to me. So I just want to throw that out there. What are your guys' thoughts? Anyway, this episode is not about crying, but I really appreciate that listener reaching out to me, sending me that message and just helping me understand that I'm okay where I am and I'm okay with doing what I'm doing, and that somebody is getting something out of it. That's super, super cool In my world.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes I will get caught up in my problems of the day-to-day and I'll get caught up in the what I need or what the bills are due, or you know what needs to be bought for the kids, or what camp needs to be paid for, or the lawnmower is not working or whatever those problems are. So those are the things that I get caught up in all the time. I get caught up in all the time and this last week a couple of things have happened that really opened my eyes and reminded me that if we can throw money at it, it's not a real problem, and I want to talk about those things. This last week has been pretty cool. There's been some really high highs and there's been some really low lows, but all of them have a message, a meaning, a purpose and a lesson out of them, and that's what I want to talk about this evening, and we'll take these in chronological order because I think that's important.
Speaker 1:So last weekend my son so we, our family has this family, friends and, as another family, their kids are just like our kids, two boys and a girl. The ages are the same and we've grown up around this family for the last 10 years. And last weekend my son and their son both 20, took their motorcycles, uh, up to a place in Albany, oregon, to ride on this motocross track. They took a another gentleman with them and this gentleman's a little bit older, he's kind of late fifties, early sixties, something like that and they've all ridden together for years and it was going to be a great day. And they're out riding that day and they make their way out to Albany. They unload the bikes, they do their ride, and it's the end of the day and our, our friend's son doesn't have a motorcycle. So he was sharing my son's bike and they would take a couple of laps and then trade and go back and forth. That's the way they did it all day.
Speaker 1:Well, towards the end of the day, uh, my son was tired and it was going to be the last lap and his friend took the bike around for an extra lap because my son didn't want to. Well, when he did this, he hit a jump and it was a double. So he hit the first jump, came down, hit the second jump and when he did because his arms were fatigued he goosed the throttle. Well, when he goosed the throttle on the bike, it launched the bike up in the air about 30 feet. The bike went flying, hit the ground, slid about 75 feet into the parking lot and the boy came down from about a 20 to 30 foot fall. When he did, he came right down on his heels, impacted the ground and completely shattered a vertebrae. As a result of this, my son ran over to him.
Speaker 1:My son is an EMT, works on an ambulance, and my son went over to him and was able to assess the situation, administer first aid, get his clothes off of him, assess for injuries, but at the end of the day they got transported to the hospital and at the hospital it was determined that this young man is paralyzed from the knees down. He has no feeling in his feet or anything below the knees and he can't move anything. So we have a 20 year old young man who's going to college to be an engineer. He is completely has the world in front of him and a one 10th of a second issue is going to change the trajectory of the rest of his life. And it's those types of things. Those are real problems. That is a problem that you can't throw money at. So at 9 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock at night, his family is getting this panic-stricken phone call that says your son's been in a serious accident. They have to drive an hour south, hour and a half south to get to him. They get to the hospital to sit with the unknowns to see the x-rays, the CT scans, and at the end of the day find out that there's paralysis. And how is that going to change that family's life?
Speaker 1:It's so important to realize and understand that you're traveling along in this world and these little hiccups that come up from the day to day that I get so wrapped around, my mind wrapped around and I get so wrapped around the axle about that when something like this occurs, it really just shakes the living shit out of you and says you know what? These things aren't real problems. There is no crisis in the lawnmower not working. I think working the way that I did for so long it was so used to getting those calls where people's lives were changed forever and you're never guaranteed another tomorrow, which is why I don't like my kids fighting and arguing over stupid stuff, because we could be fighting right now, we could leave the house or even in the house, choke to death and we don't have another tomorrow and all of a sudden, the last thing our loved one knew from us was anger and argumentative and frustration over something silly that probably doesn't even matter. This was just another example this week of how none of us are immune to that. So that happens on the weekend.
Speaker 1:Now, over the last two years, I've been noticing my vision has been slowly getting worse, and I'm 45, I just turned 47 this week, you know but at about 45 years old I started noticing my vision is getting worse. It's kind of getting blurry. It's harder to read things in low light and a lot of you listening have been there and you got the readers to prove it and I just figured that it was age. So I never went and got an eye exam because we're men and we don't do those kinds of things. We ignore the problems and hope they go away, but really they only get worse. Well, I've noticed the last month and a half that my vision has really, really started to deteriorate and I'm noticing that it's like blurry all the time and I'm struggling to see things even in broad daylight.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting at church on Sunday and I'm looking at the stage from about 100 feet away 75 feet away, and the stage is hard to see. I can't read the name of the keyboard. I'm printed on the back of the keyboard, white letters on a black keyboard. I can't read it. So I cover up my left eye and everything is crystal clear. I can read everything. I can see the stage, no problem. I cover up my right eye and then all of a sudden I can't see anything. It is literally a big blur. It's like I'm looking through a thick piece of saran wrap or maybe a glass filled with water. Everything is distorted and blurry and I'm like, holy crap, there is some kind of real problem and I don't know what it is. But I'm essentially blind in my left eye and I can't see anything.
Speaker 1:So, as all men do, I pretend that I'm dying and I tell my family about it and I make these jokes because as men we are emotionally immature. Children we handle stress with humor and, uh, I make jokes about, you know, taking a look at my new deck and being able to take it all in while I can still see, and at least I get to see mine. Stevie Wonder never got to see his and man. I got eye problems, but I didn't see that coming. So I'm making all these jokes throughout the day and just really processing that stress that is inside, that I really don't know what's going on with my eye, but I don't have to be a doctor to figure out that it's not good. So as I go throughout my day, I'm worried about it. In the back of my mind, stress is kind of building a little bit, because I realize that I really only have one good working eye.
Speaker 1:The next day happens to be my birthday. It's my 47th birthday on Monday, so thank you to all those who said happy birthday. I appreciate you guys. So on my birthday I decided to take the day off work and hang out with my my son. So my son and I went shooting and we go to this indoor shooting range and I know what you're thinking as I'm even saying this right now like why is a blind guy taking a gun to a shooting range? I don't know, but I did and it was fun. So it was memories. So I go to the shooting range and I got a target out there about 75 feet and I realized that when I have both eyes open, looking through my optic, I cannot put the red reticle dot on the black target.
Speaker 1:I literally can't focus and see that. So I close my left eye and, sure enough, everything is picture clear and focus. So my son and I shoot for the next hour and a half two hours, something like that. It's a lot of fun. But as soon as we get done with the shooting range, I realized, hey, I got to go get my eyes checked.
Speaker 1:So I go across the street to the doctor, the ophthalmologist. She does a quick eye check and she'd say I need to refer you out to a specialist because you got some serious eye problems going on and I think you may have a retinal separation and if so you can go blind. So you need to go see the doctor. So the next day I I do what everybody does and I Google it and it says I'm going to have this surgery and that surgery. And so I go to the doctor the next day the real doctor specialist and the specialist says that I have, after a bunch of tests, the specialist says that I have retinal venal occlusion, which means the veins inside of my eyes have been occluded and the blood flow to and from them has diminished and, as a result, tissue has died.
Speaker 1:You see, all the veins in your eyes looks like a lightning storm. If you've ever seen them, it literally looks like a lightning storm across the sky and in that lightning storm you have arteries and veins that cross and those arteries and veins live inside of the same insulative sheath and on normal conditions the veins and arteries expand and contract because they're both soft and pliable, and as one is expanding, the other one's contracting, so on and so forth, which allow the flow, the ebb and flow of blood. However, under high blood pressure conditions the arteries harden and when they harden they can press down and occlude that vein within that sheath and therefore the blood can't go to and fro. As a result of that lack of blood flow to the extremities that that vein feeds or returns, blood from the tissue in the eye dies and that is permanent damage. So the blurriness that I see is the permanent damage that's been caused by the dead eye tissue. The dead eye tissue is caused by high blood pressure. High blood pressure wasn't a problem until my final years of law enforcement and that is part of my stress related injury which got me out of law enforcement. It's not coincidental that all of this eye vision stuff started about the time that my high blood pressure was identified and that I'm making my exit out. So over the last couple of years with high blood pressure and trying to manage it, it's caused these problems in my eyes, which have got progressively worse.
Speaker 1:So I, the doctor, says, hey, for a birthday present, we're not going to do surgery, but the solution for this is injections right into the eyeball. And I'm like not interested. She's like well, listen, it's you know she. And she likened it to this. She said when you have a stroke and the blood doesn't get to a certain part of the brain and that part of the brain dies, then you know, your right arm maybe go limp and weak. Your left arm is working like a champ. With physical therapy you can get that right arm back and a little bit better and have some improvement, but it will never be as strong as the unaffected left arm.
Speaker 1:And she said without doing these injections, your eye vision is going to continue to deteriorate and potentially go blind and will have to remove your eyeball. And I'm like well, that you're not really leaving me any choice. And she's like well, you have a choice Either get shots and injections every month for the rest of your life into your eyeball or go blind and we take your eyeball out. So really, the choice is yours. After some hemming and hawing and deep sighing and really having to take this in, I realized I really don't have a choice, right? This is another one of those problems you don't see coming. No pun intended, you don't see it coming. And you know I'm, I'm, I'm tootling along in life, everything is good. I think I'm just getting old and getting some blurry vision. And the next thing, you know, I'm getting told that if I don't get injections directly into my eyeball every month for the rest of my life, I can go blind and I have to take my eyeball out.
Speaker 1:Now isn't this a typical Tuesday? I mean this is and all of this is stress related, blood typical Tuesday? I mean this is and all of this is stress related, blood pressure related from law enforcement, from a career of giving it all up for everybody else. You know, and I'm not even bitter about like the way law enforcement ended anymore, I don't blame anything on that. Law enforcement ended rough. The department ended rough. I forgive them. We're going to move on. Life is good. This is just a side effect of what we do and what I did.
Speaker 1:So I said, all right, let's do these shots. So she lays me back, she puts some numbing drops into my eyes and then there's lidocaine shots about five or six lidocaine shots right around my eyeball and then it's the shot that goes directly into the center of my eyeball. And then it's the shot that goes directly into the center of my eyeball and she squirts this miracle drug in there and, uh, after about 15 minutes you know this whole process, but probably 30 seconds of injections, you know she's like all right, you're done, see you in a month, and that is how my life changed this week. So it is what it is. But you take that birthday present that I got with a bad eye and I couple that on top of spending time with my family, spending time with my kids, going shooting, surrounding myself with people that love me, surrounding myself with people who are willing to pray for me during these times, it was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Sunday was Father's Day. I got to spend Father's Day with my kids. I got to spend it with my family. We got to eat some good food together. We just got to hang out, watch movies. It was amazing. Even with these couple of hiccups, this was by far the best birthday Father's Day combination I have ever had in my life, and I chalk that up to good family, good people. And while I was celebrating this weekend family, good people, you know.
Speaker 1:And while I was celebrating this weekend, I got asked, aaron, what is the biggest takeaway from this last year and what is a life lesson? And this was asked by one of the kids and I'm like well, without a doubt, the biggest takeaway from this last year is comparing and contrasting. Where I was a year ago. Year is comparing and contrasting. Where I was a year ago mentally, physically, uh and where I am today, there's been such a huge change in me and such a weight off my shoulders and such a heart of forgiveness for those people that I feel wronged me in the past and that has truly set me free and it has truly allowed me to experience life with a whole new outlook and a whole new view and a new filter and it's allowed me to take time to look internally at myself and see where I've been a part of the problem in some of these different situations. So I mean, by far that is the biggest takeaway of the last year.
Speaker 1:And then the question was well, what is some you know your life lesson, or what is a good life lesson for us? And she's asking me because I'm 47 years old and I basically was in, you know, the world war one. Apparently that's what they think. So I took all my years of collective knowledge and said the biggest piece of advice I can give you for a life lesson is recognize the importance of your family, never be willing to sacrifice the importance of your family and have a good work-life balance, because it's so often we allow ourselves to chase the dream and we leave the people that mean the most to us behind. If it wasn't for my family over this last year, two years, three years, realistically, last 25 years, then my world would be so much different. Then my world would be so much different. My wife is an absolute saint and an angel and if it wasn't for her and her love and complete despise of divorce and her faith in me and her faith in God, my world would look completely different today and I thank her for that now. But for so many years I forgot the importance of family and I forgot the importance of a work-life balance. So that was my piece of advice to my kids.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm wrapping up at the birthdays, wrapping up father's day, wrapping up the diagnosis, wrapping up the shots in the eye last night, I'm laying on the couch and, uh, I'm thinking and I'm, like you know, while I'm thankful for everything, I know I need to slow down and relax, but for me that was super, super hard. It was hard for me to lay on the couch last night after getting those shots in my eyes and not want to get up and go do something or take time for myself, and this is something I need to work on. This is part of that therapy that I need to work on and realize it's okay to slow down and even after all the work that I've done and all the work that I've put into it and the understanding that everything I have done, your body needs time to heal from everything, it's still hard for me to lay down and accept that I have an injury, accept that I need help. It was very reminiscent of when I got diagnosed with PTSD and when I recognized that I needed help and that I needed to stop what I was doing or I wasn't going to survive it or life wasn't going to be the same as I had anticipated or hoped that it was going to be. It makes me feel like I'm weak. It made me feel a sense of weakness and a sense of vulnerability that I was uncomfortable with. As I laid there, a friend of mine texted me last night and told me that my body was showing me in so many ways that it needs rest and I just need to give in and succumb to it. But it was hard, because succumbing to that makes me feel weak and I know I'm not. I know that, but that's how it made me feel, um, you know. So that's something I'm working on. I'm working on taking that rest today. I took today off. I might have been able to work a half a day, but at the end of the day, I need that mental break and to accept where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:I've got a kid that's in the hospital who is paralyzed from the knees down. I've got a son who witnessed that crash where his friend, his world, was changed forever, and that is hard for my son to process. So I need to be there for him. I have got told that I've got eye issues that may lead to blindness, even with the medication, but the medication is going to be a monthly injection into the eyeball and that's not cheap, by the way. So there's some money issues or concerns there, um, and all that will work out. That's not a real problem, right, we can throw money at it, but I've got all these things going on and I just needed the back half of the day to accept these things, to relax and process them.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm wrapping this episode up, problems are things that you can't throw money at If you can throw money at it not a real problem the things that we get caught up in the day to day. The things I get caught up in the day to day, the things I get caught up in the day to day, the frustrations, all of that, not real issues. I just I appreciate the opportunity that I've had this last week to experience this and to see the silver lining on some of these things Again, no pun intended, but to see the silver lining on some of these situations that I've been in and where I can grow and help other people grow as a result of it. God is good he's got me in this with one eye or two eyes, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1:Um, my boy there that's laying there with, you know, hurt legs. I am praying for a full recovery, absolute full recovery, and we know that it can happen. We know God that can do it. We know that our God hates this pain and this paralyzed legs more than the family does, more than the friends do, and there can be an absolute divine healing there. We get it. It's just having the faith and praying for it.
Speaker 1:This week has been some pretty highs and some pretty low lows, but at the end of the day, at least from my perspective, it has given me something to consider and think about and it's given me another opportunity to learn in just what an amazing place I am in my life right now, and from a guy who was suicidal not too long ago and feel like he lived the last three years in a living hell. Um, it's good, god is good. Thank you guys so much for listening tonight and, uh, remember again problems, you can throw money at it, it's not a problem. We love you guys so much. Can't wait to catch you on the next show. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a murders to music podcast.
