Be Willing to Be Willing: Lisa Espinoza on Grief, Joy & Losing Chandler

Some losses happen in a moment. Others continue unfolding for years.

In this deeply moving conversation, Lisa Espinoza shares the layered story of grief that has shaped her life—from losing her mother at just 18 years old to the devastating loss of her youngest son, Chandler, in 2019 after he was struck by a car while riding his bike to work. 

For 18 grueling days, Lisa and her family lived between hope and heartbreak as Chandler remained on life support. And in the middle of that unimaginable pain, they were faced with another devastating reality: complications and failures in his final care that ultimately prevented his wish of becoming an organ donor from being fulfilled. 

But this conversation is about more than loss. It’s about what happens after.

Together, we explore:

•  The long-term impact of layered grief and trauma 
•  What it means to continue living after unimaginable loss 
•  How purpose, perspective, and faith evolve through suffering 
•  The physical reality of grief and heartbreak 
•  The complicated relationship between sorrow and joy 
•  Why healing doesn’t mean “moving on” 

Lisa also shares the story behind one of the most powerful ideas in the episode: “What would honor Chandler?” 

And ultimately, what it means to simply: “Be willing to be willing… to be open to the possibility of joy.” 

This conversation is tender, honest, heartbreaking, and deeply hopeful all at once. If you’ve ever loved deeply… grieved deeply… or wondered whether joy is still possible after loss—this episode is for you.

Transcript

When Loss Splits Life In Two

Erin 0:06

Some losses change you instantly. Others keep unfolding for years. And sometimes the hardest part isn't just learning how to survive what happened, it's learning how to keep your heart open afterwards.

Kellie 0:18

Today's conversation is honest, tender, and deeply human. It's about grief that lingers, love that never leaves, and the quiet courage it takes to keep living when life no longer looks the way you thought it would. In this episode, Lisa Espinoza shares the story of losing her son Chandler, the heartbreak of what their family endured in his final days, and the deeply personal journey that followed.

Erin 0:43

But this conversation is also about something unexpected. The possibility of joy existing alongside sorrow. Not instead of it, alongside it. And maybe, most importantly, what it means to simply be willing, to be willing to experience joy again.

Kellie 1:00

Welcome to The P-I-G, where we explore life, love, loss, and legacy through real conversations and meaningful stories with purpose, intention, and gratitude. We're Kellie and Erin, sisters, best friends, sometimes polar opposites, but always deeply connected by the life and love of the woman who taught us that there is always happiness after heartbreak. Our mother, Marsha.

Erin 1:33

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. Moments where nothing looks the same, and somehow you're still expected to keep going. Today's conversation is about what it actually looks like to live inside those moments and how they continue to shape us over time. Lisa Espinoza is an author, speaker, and advocate whose life has been deeply shaped by loss, beginning with the loss of her mother at just age 18, and later the loss of her youngest son, Chandler, in 2019. And in the middle of that unimaginable loss, she also experienced something no family should ever have to face avoidable suffering in his final hours, and the loss of something that mattered deeply to them, the chance for him to be an organ donor. But what makes Lisa's story so powerful isn't just what she's been through. It's the way she speaks about purpose, intention, and even gratitude as something that has carried her through it. Lisa, we are so grateful that you're here with us today. And before we dive in, we want to take a moment to ground this conversation. A lot of what we've been exploring, both here and in our own lives, is this idea of unboxing our stories, taking a look at the things we've carried, the moments that shaped us, and the meaning that we've made along the way and creating space to do that without rushing it, not all at once, not perfectly, just honestly. So let's start here. Where does the unboxing of your story begin?

Lisa Espinoza 3:07

That is such a good question. It really begins back with the loss of my mother. Because there's a common thread. I'll kind of get to the common thread. But as I look back at my life, the very first really, really hard thing that happened to me was when I was 18 and my mom died of lung cancer. And my mom was like my best friend. I just, I literally always said, if my mom ever dies, you know, because when you're a kid, you don't say when. You say, if my mom ever dies, I don't think I can ever live. I couldn't continue. I my mom is everything to me. And then she died.

unknown 3:46

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 3:46

I love what you guys are doing. And I want to thank Marsha for that.

Erin 3:51

That's really special.

Lisa Espinoza 3:52

I love what you say. That legacy is not just the person that we've lost has left. It's how we live because of them. And you're doing what you're doing because of this very special person. That's legacy. And that will continue on and on and on. And so I look at my mom, and you know, just losing her. I did it all the wrong ways. I grieved all the wrong ways, if you can say that. You know, I didn't cry for weeks. I put her makeup on her in her casket. I sang at her funeral and I minimize it. I said, Well, you know what? That's just a body. She's in heaven. It's just a body. Yeah. It's a body that held me and rocked me and kissed me when I'd come home from school after a bad day. It's a body that gave kisses like no other human can ever give.

Erin 4:47

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 4:47

The feel of her face when I would put my hands on her face, just the softness of her skin. Everything was better when I was with my mom. And then to lose her, it just rocked my world. I was 18, you know. And I did the smartest thing any 18-year-old can do just before my mom died. I got married. Who doesn't? You know? Oh my goodness. Yeah. I've been married almost 43 years. I met this really good-looking guy that had a business in the front, party in the back, mullet. Then we got married in May. My mom died on the 4th of July.

Erin 5:22

Oh, wow.

Lisa Espinoza 5:24

So that was like, you know, welcome to adulting on steroids. So now I'm a new bride. We moved to Alaska to be youth pastors. And meanwhile, my mom was getting worse and I didn't know. Nobody told me. I had all this innocent, naive faith that she was just going to be okay and she was going to come visit. And then I get a call that she's in the hospital and she's on morphine. And I need to go from Alaska to Texas, which obviously we made that happen somehow, even though we didn't have money to buy a can of tuna. And then we just, you know, I continued to live my young life, you know, and then four years later, I became a mom for the first time. Losing my mom, let me say, having the mom that I had, and then losing her, then becoming a mom. I knew, wow, wow. What I get to do and be right now is what my mom was for me. And it was stability and it was warmth and it was unconditional love. And the biggest cheerleader you could ever imagine in your life. All of it, all of it. And I'm like, I get to be that now. What a privilege. Yeah.

Erin 6:40

And that you had such a shining example of how to do that.

Lisa Espinoza 6:44

Yeah. Yes. Yes. And so at that point, I ended up writing a bunch of songs and recording an album called Candy Kisses, Muddy Hugs, Songs of Encouragement for Moms.

Erin 6:56

Oh.

Lisa Espinoza 6:56

On a thing called a CD that we used to have. This hard thing that went in a machine and you played it. Just songs that I wrote about moms and poor moms. And one of them was called Pooped On, Pooped Out Blues. And one of them was Ode to the Gecko, where my little guy Chandler was on it. And not to get to the punchline, but he was holding this little lizard by the tail, and the poor little lizard detached from his tail. And just before that happened, Chandler had the little Timmy, the gecko, in his hand and goes, He liked me, Mom. Oh and then Timmy lost his tail. So this whole song was called Ode to the Gecko and the demise of the Gecko, but my little guy Chandler's voice is on there. He liked me, Mom. So I have that, you know, his word. Priceless. I need voice in his whole list.

Song 7:44

I was looking. He kidnapped little Timmy again. Oh, I saw it so clearly. Chandler holding on dearly. As Timmy laid wrapped in his arm. Little Timmy was demon. Little Chandler, he was demon. As he proudly said, You liked me, huh? Timmy jumped in his last.

Lisa Espinoza 8:14

So I wrote this album and recorded it, and then and I led a group, a mom mom's a preschoolers group with a friend of mine, and just my passion became I want to encourage moms. So this season that I was in, and having lost my mom, I knew I want to let moms know that the wiping of the butts and the noses and the snot and all of it, it is of the utmost significance. It is mundane and it's exhausting and it is ultimately important. Yeah, it matters. All of it. It matters.

Kellie 8:48

And one of our greatest gifts.

Lisa Espinoza 8:51

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So then got an opportunity. I was writing a column for a magazine, and uh an editor asked me if I had anything else. And I said, Yeah, I I want to write this book that's like bite-sized chapters that mom my mom could read in the bathroom if she gets a chance to go. Read it really quick. And so I got the opportunity to have this book published called Days of Wine and Noses: Pep Talks for Tuckered Out Moms.

Kellie 9:19

Oh, I love that.

Lisa Espinoza 9:20

And again, this is because of this amazing mom that I had and didn't have any more. And I wanted to encourage moms. And I was in the throes of it. Like I knew the exhaustion. And we can sit here and, you know, we probably don't have preschoolers right now, any of us here. I'm just gonna go on and say that. But you we remember how exhausting. And to us, we can go, oh, honey, it goes so fast. And I remember going, oh, I wish it would go fast. I'm exhausted. But we can look back at it with empathy that those days feel so long. And sometimes you just are a zombie and you're walking around like just you can't even think straight. It's a hard season. It's so hard. It's a different hard season than a season of grief. But it is a hard season, and I don't minimize that for my daughters-in-law who now have my grandbabies. It is hard. So it was a hard season, and I felt inspired and compelled to encourage these young moms in that. And then, you know, I move forward in my life, and you know, lots of life happens, lots of life happens, and on and on. And then I get a call on December 15th, 2018 from a hospital saying, Is this Chandler Espinosa's mother? And I said, Yes. He said, He's been hit by a car. You need to get to the hospital. Well, not to sound callous or like a horrible mother or anything, but since the age of about two, Chandler had been, well, at two, he fell out of his toy box or jumped out and broke his collarbone.

Erin 10:59

Oh my.

Motherhood, Exhaustion, and Perspective

Lisa Espinoza 11:00

Through the years, there was, "Oh, Miss Espinoza, we're at the hospital with Chandler. He was body surfing and thinks he like cracked a cervical, whatever, but he's gonna be fine. Oh, he's at the hospital. He picked up a baby rattlesnake on the golf course. Oh gosh. Supposedly thought it was a stick. I don't know. I'm I don't know. I wasn't there. Thankfully, the snake didn't. I mean, it it bit him, but it was a baby, so it had no poison.

Song 11:27

Right.

Lisa Espinoza 11:27

So he was he was okay, you know, bruised ribs, stitches on the legs. He was a BMX biker. So anything to defy gravity, he did it. Skateboard, bicycle, body surfing, jumping off of tall things, been known to jump off of one of his friends' roof. We actually have the video into their pool. Oh goodness. All the things, just all the things.

Erin 11:48

We can both relate to having sons. Can you really? Yes.

Lisa Espinoza 11:51

So we get it. What are you gonna do? Tell them, oh, honey, you can't do all the things that you love. You know, I mean, you can when they're four or five or six, maybe to an extent, but you still have a coffee table they can get on when you turn your head.

Kellie 12:06

I could definitely relate to the not knowing ever what was gonna be on the other side of that phone call.

Lisa Espinoza 12:13

Yes.

Kellie 12:13

Yeah. And so you answer it every time because you don't know. Yeah, and you just don't know what it's gonna be. Yes. Yeah.

The Call About Chandler

Lisa Espinoza 12:20

So my first thought, I was doing little shopping for my Secret Santa thing for my work. I was at TJ Maxx, had my cart, and I thought, you know what? I'm this is like all the other times. He's gonna be fine. I'll just go ahead and pay and then get to the hospital. But something just clicked in me. I remember saying out loud, oh my God, he's been hit by a car. And I just, you know, left my basket, ran to the car, and started driving to the hospital. And I remember the last thing that I said to him that day, we were trying to coordinate this family watch going to see Christmas lights. We do that every year. So we're trying to coordinate it with everybody. And so one of the Espinoza kids, I didn't know which one. There's Chase, Chance, Chandler, Charlie. I knew it wouldn't be Chase because by then Chase was not living at home. But I knew one of the Espinoza kids was home and running down the stairs. So I just yelled from my bedroom, hey, who, whichever one you are, are you able to go to Christmas lights tonight with us? And it was Chandler's voice that came back as he ran down the stairs and said, "I've got to work tonight, Mom. I gotta get there. I love you." And I said, "I love you too, honey." And then that was the last that I heard his voice...

Song 13:31

Oh. Hmm, the smiles behind me are lit and face. White sky home was like a promise made. Every road I wandered pulled me through Fragments of a life I outgrew. I wore every silence like a cold, held a weight of words I never spoke. Now the wind don't question where I've been, it just lets me breathe again. There's a stillness calling on my name, not a place, not a face, not a flame. I am in a space I couldn't see. And the quiet that was waiting for me. Not a door, not a light in the night. But a feeling I don't have to fight on a mouse ball. I don't know. I don't need a wrong spade in the open stop the step, every shadow stopped in the sun. But I'm fine. No, it's no light, no good over holding place to breathe on the baby toe. I just gotta let it out breathing the truth I don't have to leave on the road Not a past to have a bone Just the life that's finally begun up With a mouse ball out of my bones.

unknown 16:18

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 16:19

Sometimes it hits me and sometimes it doesn't. So we got to the hospital and we were told that if he lived, he would be paralyzed from the chest down if he lived, and that there would be brain damage, but they didn't know the extent. So we just decided we'll retrofit the downstairs, we'll put in a ramp, we'll put in a bedroom downstairs, bathroom, all of that. We started looking at like oh rehab places for spinal injury and brain injury and looked at specific ones. And we were just like, we're gonna make this happen, and we'll probably get a phone call someday saying, Hey, Ms. Espinoza, Chandler did a flip in his wheelchair off of the thing at the mall. Can you come get him? You know, he's still gonna be Chandler, just with different abilities. Sure. And he was how old? 25. He was 25 at the time. Days went by, days went by, and the news that you want to hear never came, and the news that you don't want to hear did come. So on January 1st, 2019, that was Chandler's last breath. And I had the privilege to be with him, obviously, when I gave birth, and then the privilege to be with him for his last breath, which is a privilege no mother ever wants. After Chandler passed, and you see, I I still have a hard time saying died. I still have a hard time with that word.

Erin 17:51

Yeah.

Living Through 18 Days of Hope

Lisa Espinoza 17:51

I'm not in denial, just don't like the word. Not in conjunction with my son. So after he passed, I had been writing on Carrying Bridge every day because a friend of mine said, Lisa, it's been two days, people are just flooding you, wanting to know how how he's doing, progress. Why don't you start writing on Carrying Bridge to keep everybody updated? And it'll be good for you because you're a writer. This is what you do. I said, I don't know. I don't, I don't know that I want to do that. But, you know, I went home, thought about it. So the next day I started to write updates, how Chandler was doing. And every time I would write an update, it felt like a processing mechanism for me. I could process the day's events. And I was hearing from other people that my words were somehow helping them. Yeah. So that was like fuel to keep going, keep going. And so then after January 1st, well, let me go back a bit. He had met an author, Martin Dugard, at the place where he worked, Board and Brew. And Martin just had a new book come out last week called The Long Run. But he had met Martin where he works, and unbeknownst to me, of course, Chandler never met a stranger. Everybody was a new friend. So he met Martin and told Martin that he wanted to become a writer and asked Martin, How do you do that? How do you become a writer? Well, we were at the hospital during those 18 days, and one night we got pizzas delivered to our whole crew that, you know, we just kind of lived in the intensive care unit waiting room. And we got pizzas delivered. And we I did some research to find out, well, how do we get these pizzas? Turns out it was from Martin. I contacted, I didn't know him, I'd never met him, and he had this lovely conversation with me. He took the time to tell me about his little friendship with Chandler and that Chandler wanted to become a writer. And of course, obviously the first thing I said was, thank you for the pizzas, because I just wrote a thing on Substack, never underestimate the power of a pepperoni pizza. So I just decided I'm gonna keep writing every day, every day for this next year. I'm gonna write to process my own grief, to continue to maybe help people through what I'm writing.

Erin 20:05

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 20:06

And to write with and for Chandler. That's beautiful. Every day. And I've often said I don't do anything every day except go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. So to do that every single day, some days I didn't want to. The thing I wanted to do was pretend like I didn't lose my son that day, just that day. But I just kept not be part of the club. Not be part of the club.

Erin 20:29

Did you ever write about that? Like did your writings ever include those sentiments of I don't want to be writing right now.

Lisa Espinoza 20:37

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And so I kept writing at the end of the year. I said, you know what? I'm gonna try to see if this can be published as a because I I it was a blog on my website, it became a blog on my website. And so then now published as a book called First Brush Your Teeth, Grief and Hope in Real Time. Because that's what it was. It was in real time. It was not, you know, I kind of remember on Mother's Day that first day. It was it was this is Mother's Day, my first one without Chandler. Yeah. This common thread that I mentioned is when I go through hard, I'll say stuff to be nice. When I go through hard stuff, my DNA says, How can you process it in the best way that serves you? And how can it be recycled to help other people? And I saw after losing Chandler weight, that started with my mom. That this hard season of mothering that's so exhausting and all the challenges. And even when your little ones have health challenges and it's so stressful for you. There's so much that's hard about it. And yes, it's amazing and everything, but it's a hard season. And I realize this common thread is when I go through hard stuff, I want to somehow help other people go through their hard thing, you know? And I'm not a this is How you do it and all the steps.

Kellie 22:02

There are no rules.

Lisa Espinoza 22:04

No, I just figure it out. But I what I can say is never underestimate the power of the next small step. Whatever the hard thing is. We look ahead at the mountain and go, I can't climb the mountain. When in reality, what is called for in those hard moments, those hard seasons is what's the next small step? And maybe the next small step is just brush your teeth.

Erin 22:35

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 22:36

Get out of bed. Just get out of bed. And that's the bravest thing you will do that day.

Erin 22:42

And sometimes it's the only thing you do that day. Absolutely. And that's okay.

Lisa Espinoza 22:48

Absolutely. And that's okay. I look at the loss of Chandler and the loss of my mom. And I've heard you guys say this about resilience. It's not an outcome in and of itself. It's a process. It's a step. It's a moment. It doesn't happen like, oh, it's here and it's here and it's here. It's this moment that you brushed your teeth. It's this moment that you wrote on your son's birthday the first one where he's not here for you to hug. As a new mom, it's I am half asleep and my baby is crying in their crib, and I'm going to put one foot in front of the other and walk down that hall and get them. It's the next small step, whatever it is in front of you. For me and so many of us out there that do the whatever it is that we do, it's not that we have all the right steps and all the instructions. It's that we have a little flashlight that says, maybe I can just shine this light a little bit for you so that you can see what your next first step is. That next small step. You just need a little bit of a flashlight, a little bit of just enough in front of you to step forward a little bit, not to climb that whole dang mountain. That's not what you need today. Yeah.

Kellie 24:07

You know, it takes so much courage and bravery to even sometimes in the midst of loss and grief and hardship, to even get out of bed, to brush your teeth, to put one foot in front of the other, to make your way into the bedroom where the baby is crying. And take care of those children who are still remaining, or the family members who still need you. That courage and that bravery to continue to show up every single day, I think sometimes can be underestimated. But it is the fuel that becomes resilience.

Lisa Espinoza 24:51

Exactly. Exactly. Resilience is both a process and an outcome. And they've studied it. They've studied resilience. And one of the things that is a characteristic of people who are resilient is that they don't say, Oh, how surprising that a hard thing happened to me. That's so surprising. They just go, you know what? Life is hard. Life happens. And so I I'm not going to fight against the fact that something hard and bad happened to me because it just does. And it happens to everybody. So, you know, that's one of those resilient sort of characteristics that, you know, it's almost like rolling out the red carpet for what's going to be hard.

Kellie 25:34

Bring it on.

Lisa Espinoza 25:35

It's because it's going to happen. You just don't know what shape it's going to come in. Yeah. Or what day. Exactly. I talk a lot about resilience, but not in the I'm just going to white knuckle through this and be resilient. I think resilience includes letting people come in, letting people carry you. If pride keeps someone from saying, yes, please come and bring me a meal, or yes, please come sit with me. That's not resilience. I wouldn't call that resilience. I'm not judging it at all. But resilience is being able to say, what is the thing I do need? What is the thing that will carry me when I feel like I can't carry myself? Can I be open to that? And then moment by moment, the process of becoming resilient and being resilient. It's a process and an outcome all at the same time. And I think most of the time we don't even realize we're doing it until you look back and go, dang, that was a lot. That was a lot. And that was a lot of small forward motion steps.

Kellie 26:45

It's kind of like you're building the bridge across the chasm, one board at a time and stretching out the ropes, but you're building it as you go. Oh yeah. It's it is not there. No, you don't know. Sometimes you have to be courageous and brave enough to ask for the things that you actually need. And I I love that part of what you just talked about, that it's okay to find your voice in that. In fact, if you do find your voice and tell people what you actually need versus them assuming what you need, because we all need something different when we experience loss and go through grief.

Lisa Espinoza 27:26

Yep. Yep. Some people do need a lot of hunker down a long time. They do. And then if it becomes out of balance, it can be isolation and really not allowing the community that can help you heal to be there with you. And some people need to be around people. And if that goes overboard to the other direction, sometimes you never allow yourself those quiet spaces to really just feel the stuff that you need to feel when you need to feel it.

Kellie 27:56

And listen to your own being. You know, sometimes we have to get so quiet so that we can hear the voice inside of our own head and our own heart. And sometimes that external noise can get so loud that we turn this off.

Trauma, Grief, and Survival Mode

Lisa Espinoza 28:10

Yep. Yep. And it's easy to be distracted. And again, I'm not judging it. It's easy to go, I'm just gonna go back to work and be distracted. And again, there's a balance because for me, I found that there were days where I had to say, I can't look at any more pictures of Chandler today. I can't look at videos of him anymore today. I can't just be submerged in it anymore right now. I need to go for a walk. I do need to get my work done. I need something different. Distraction is not an evil, bad thing all the time. Distraction is just, in the best case scenario, it's just continuing to live the life that you have.

Erin 28:50

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 28:51

But it just feels like, oh, continuing to live the life that I have, that's not honoring my loved one. I should just keep thinking about them and crying. And at some point, you realize, wait, does it really honor my loved one? Or is my my loved one really most honored by my choice to say I am deeply grieving? I will never stop missing my loved one. I will never stop talking about my loved one at any opportunity. And be that as it may, I will choose to live a life where I show up for myself and the other people in my community. I will show up in the best way that I can. Not perfectly, not polished, not like everything's okay, but I will show up in my grief and even in my joy that is possible in the middle of profound loss. It is possible. But that's the way you honor your loved one, is to say, I, you know what? As a testament to you, I'm gonna show up for myself and I'm gonna show up in my life for people and in this world. I'm gonna show up as a way to honor you. A friend of mine made me a little ring after Chandler passed, and it says WWHC, because I'd written in my blog something about what would honor Chandler. What would honor Chandler? Would it honor him if I just shrink away from my life and refuse to be open to the idea of joy after losing him? That would not honor him. So she made this little ring for me, WWH. What would honor Chandler? One of the things that I really want to encourage people who are in the middle of maybe you're hurting so bad today that you you don't even know, like you physically hurt. Your heart hurts. You there's a lump in your throat where you can hardly speak. You keep taking those deep breaths that it just happens when you're missing that person. Maybe you're there today. And to hear me say that it's possible to have joy, even in the middle of the worst loss, it feels like sacrilege to you. And I get it. It feels like, how dare you? How could you say the word joy in the same sentence with I've lost my brother, son, mother? How can you? And what I want to say is you feel what you feel right now. You feel it, all of it, you feel all of it, you go right ahead, you go right ahead. It's the right thing today. And I just ask, be willing to be willing to be open to the possibility of joy, just be willing to be willing to be open to the possibility of joy. That's all.

Kellie 31:45

That is so beautifully stated, and that just in and of itself is a baby step.

Lisa Espinoza 31:50

Yes, absolutely.

Kellie 31:51

Just to be willing to be willing to be open.

Lisa Espinoza 31:54

Yeah.

Kellie 31:54

You know, as you were talking, Lisa, there was something that came to my mind. There's so much about your story that I know resonates deeply with both Erin and I. Our mom died of lung cancer, which was her third cancer, just days after Erin turned 17 years old. And I was 24. And so and had just gotten married. And had just gotten married in July, and our brother got married in August, and she died in September. And I lost a baby between my two children who are six years apart. And even though I didn't get to see that child grow up, there's a sense of loss there. But one of the things that has always been part of my grieving process, and just like our children and us don't come into the world with an owner's manual, we don't have a death manual either. We don't know what our journey of grief after a loss is going to look like, just like we don't know what somebody else is. And it took Erin and I 30 some years to figure this out, which was part of how this whole podcast came to be, is we started to realize how differently that we grieved and talked about that. But the one common thread that I have found is that when somebody I love and care about or respected, whether it was a former coworker, it doesn't matter who it is. The only thing that you're left with is the beautiful positive memories of what made this person so special as they walked on the face of the planet right alongside us. I don't remember the fights with my mom. I don't remember the disagreements. I don't remember the times she pissed me off. I don't remember the times that she told us no. I don't remember the times we yelled at each other as we were up and down the stairs or in and out of the house. All I remember is how she made me feel. Absolutely. All I remember is that I never doubted her love for me ever. Yes. And so just holding on to that is a type of joy that allows us to hold these people in that really special sacred place, yet still go on moving forward with our lives. And I think that's where a lot of people can get stuck. Yes. There was so much joy, there was so much happiness. And as parents, we're not supposed to bury our children. We're not supposed to do that. My heart aches that you had to do that with a 25-year-old.

Lisa Espinoza 34:36

Yeah, thank you.

Kellie 34:37

That's tough. That's really, really tough. And yet, Chandler has still to this day and will always have this amazing life. And I I want to get to know Chandler a little bit more and the rest of your family. It was very important what you just said.

Lisa Espinoza 34:53

A lot of people get stuck at that place where you just named, I believe it was the fourth task that William Warden, you know, he's he's a psychologist, and writes about the tasks of grief. Rather than stages or phases, he writes about the tasks of grief and mourning. I think it's task four is figuring out how to move forward in a way that honors your life, but also honors the one that you've lost. And so that's what you're talking about is that when you can bring those positive things, those memories, the meaning with you in a way that helps you move forward, it's almost like you put them in your permanent backpack. And now every day, this is the backpack that I carry, and it has the meaning and the purpose and the memories and all those things attached to my mom that I lost, to my son that I lost, to my brother, my sister, my grandpa that I lost. And I will carry those with me every day in the best possible way. I think when you talk about those positive, wonderful memories, grief can be complicated too.

Kellie 36:02

Yes.

Lisa Espinoza 36:03

We get to sit here and talk about these wonderful mothers that we had. Like when you said how they made you feel, that right there, that unconditional love, you know that your mom is crazy about you, that covers a multitude of sins. Like you just said, I don't remember when she said no. I don't remember what you said. I remember how she made me feel. So that's a permission slip, not to be sloppy human or whatever, but to say we are human. And so, especially as parents, the thing that we most want to do is take guilt upon ourselves. I didn't do this or I didn't do that. I've told my kids, I've given you reasons to go to therapy probably every day of your life. I'm sorry about that.

Kellie 36:45

Sorry, kids.

Lisa Espinoza 36:46

Not one of them has a doubt in their mind that I am so overjoyed to be their mom. Yeah. I am crazy about them.

Erin 36:55

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 36:55

I don't do all the things right, but I'm crazy about them. That covers a multitude of sins. I love what you just said. And because of menopause, I don't remember the thing that I was just gonna say.

Kellie 37:08

Amen to that one.

Erin 37:10

Which is why we don't script the podcast. We just let the conversation go where it's supposed to go because yeah, we're all in that phase. Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 37:21

You get a taste of it when you have brain fog, when you've got the babies and you're just kind of in autopilot, just to do the things you do. It's like a little training ground for them menopause.

Kellie 37:30

For then menopause. Yeah, it's just yeah, training wheels for menopause. Why did I walk into this room? I don't know. Did I walk into this room? Did I what room am I in?

Organ Donation and Medical Failure

Erin 37:39

What room am I in? Yeah, it's so true. That's so funny.

Lisa Espinoza 37:45

So the thing I was gonna say about Chandler is one of the things that his life taught me, something that I didn't know when he was alive. I knew he was a sweet kid. Was he always the well behaved? He may have gotten best citizen at a camp, but he he may not have gotten the least naughty, you know. And so I'm under no delusions that he was perfect. But what I learned, people told me that at his job, he listened to them. There was a little girl that brought a picture that she drew for him to the hospital because the family said every time he would come to our table, he listened to her. He paid attention to her. She's a little kid, and she was so sad she wanted to draw a picture for him and bring it to the hospital. I just posted, you know, those darn memories that pop up on Facebook and sometimes punch you in the gut. One came up this week of Chandler. It was, I can't remember the year it was, 2011 maybe. But he was sitting with monks. He got to go on a month and a half long trip to India with someone who was had been a million times, and Chandler said, Yeah, I'd love to go. So he went. He loved the people, he loved the culture, he loved the food, and he sat with these monks and helped them practice English. And I found out after this week, after posting reposting it and saying, This is my boy, that the person who went with him said, Yeah, they still talk about him to this day. They people remember him. He made an impact. He made an impact. His friends told me he gave a gift card of his, it was his gift card someone had given him to a buddy of his that was having a baby as a gift for the baby. I mean, he just he was an old soul. He listened to the people in his life, like the the friends, and I didn't know all this. I didn't know all this. This was like, what? This is my son that ran into the kitchen and said, Hey, did did you ever notice I look good in jeans? Like that's so I didn't use it. I mean, when he was little, just to get my attention, or just to, you know, he would say, Mom, mom, and there may have been something to come after that, maybe there wasn't, but he would just always go, Mom, yeah, yeah, honey, I'm here. So I mean, there's just so many, so many things about him, so many amazing memories. In fact, I wrote a lot of Chandlerisms in the back of my book. When the kids were little, I had this three-ring binder that I started at this mom's group that I led. And so one day we made these little memory binders. They each had their divider. Chase, chance, chandler, Charlie. Under Chandlers, I went back and looked at all his little things that he said and put a lot of them in the back of the book. And then I put some of the things he wrote in his journal in India in the back of the book. And I thought, at his young age, he had a depth of spirituality that I've only in the last few years come to touch on. Like he just was an old soul and loved people and loved life and loved dancing and hiking and golfing and surfing and just all the things where you can just be in the moment and live your life. And yeah, I think that's a good thing. So that it's like, he was three or four. He was eating strawberry yogurt, and I walked in and he had rubbed it all over his body.

Kellie 41:50

Because why wouldn't you?

Lisa Espinoza 41:52

Why wouldn't you? You had mom, it's little liz, it's like sun screen. It's like sun screen. Sure, honey. Just like sunscreen. And now let's wash it off. So we have to go somewhere.

Erin 42:03

That is hysterical. You will appreciate the fact that I have a photo. I don't remember this. I was way too young. Kellie remembers it. But I have a photo that my mom had put in an album for me um years and years and years ago, because we were farm girls. We had a tub of Crisco, right? Everything got cooked in Crisco. Oh, yes. And I had done that. I got into the tub of Crisco and I rubbed it all over myself, head to toe. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. My mom was like, your skin sure was soft.

Lisa Espinoza 42:38

No, I get the Crisco. We had the big thing of Crisco always on our stove. Yeah. But sometimes the one beside it had bacon grease.

Kellie 42:46

Oh, yeah. They go hand in hand. Hand in hand. Yeah. We still have the bacon grease. Save all of that because it's the best thing to cook everything in. 100%, yes. You know what I heard as you described Chandler is leaving crumbs of care and kindness. What kind of popped into my head was Hansel and Gretel, right? You know, leaving their crumbs. That's such a beautiful way to describe not what just Chandler did, because it was clear that he did that. Left these little crumbs of care and kindness everywhere he went. The little girl that he stopped and listened to. Was he a waiter?

Lisa Espinoza 43:23

Yes, he was a waiter and a barback. Everybody said he was the best worker. Everybody'd be wanting to leave and he'd be scrubbing with. I remember this. He always had his t-shirts that had bleach things on them. Because he'd be scrubbing the tables with bleach. And I do have to tell a funny story though. I'm sorry, Chandler. He was working for a restaurant. I don't know how long he worked there, but for whatever reason, he didn't love it. So then he ended up at this other board and brew, which is near where we live. But he was telling us at the dinner table one time, yeah, I resigned. And we're like, You are you were kind of washing dishes there. You could just say, I quit. You weren't like a CEO. Like CEOs resign, you know. You know, people resign from things like that. He goes, Yeah, I resigned. We never let him live that down. Did you resign as washing dishes at the restaurant? Yeah.

Kellie 44:14

I love that.

Lisa Espinoza 44:15

I'm going to take that off my resume. Yeah.

Kellie 44:16

Almost like he retired.

Lisa Espinoza 44:18

Retired from washing from washing dishes. There's so many channel stories. And we tell them as a family when we get together. We're not shy about, I mean, we talk about him. There's no, oh, should we, if we talk about him, will we be sad? Or would well, we know we lost him. We know we miss him. We know when it's anybody's birthday and we're all together, or a holiday and we're all together, or anything that brings us all together, we are acutely aware that Chandler's not there. We will be forever.

Kellie 44:49

There's a hole.

Lisa Espinoza 44:49

There's a hole.

Kellie 44:50

There's a Chandler size hole in everybody's heart.

Lisa Espinoza 44:54

Yes.

Kellie 44:54

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 44:54

I realize now that even you know, these years later, that I think if someone were to say, Well, when are you going to just stop talking about it? When are you going to get over it? I'm I just wrote this this week in a blog. I I might punch them. I might punch them because there's no world in which a mom ever to the day she dies does not ache that her child is no longer on the planet with her. Of course. So the expectation, yes, move forward in ways that serve you, ways that are appropriate. You know, I'm not talking about any kind of timeline or anything, but yes, move forward in your life. Show up in your life. And one way that you can show up is talk about your kid. Talk about your love. Talk about your mom. Talk about your grandpa. Talk about them. Say their name. Yes. If people, and I know this isn't your audience, because your audience probably has all this, all of us have this thing in common that we've lost someone that we love. So I'm really preaching to the choir right now, but people that are kind of on the outside that maybe for whatever reason haven't experienced loss or haven't really dealt with it. And they just kind of swept the rug and move forward. I would say don't be afraid to say, hey, can we talk about your mom? Can can we talk about your son? Never be afraid to say that. You're not gonna remind us that we've we've lost him. We know. Right? We know. Yeah.

Kellie 46:25

That lives 24-7 to five. It's top of mind.

Erin 46:29

Yeah. It reminds me of one of our very first guests that we had on the podcast was Wendy Cohen. She lost her daughter, Lacey. And if you have not listened to that, I'll go back and listen to that. Please go back and listen to it. Just 30,000-foot view. Lacey was 20 years old and she was randomly targeted, abducted and killed by a man impersonating a police officer.

Kellie 46:57

In front of her home.

Erin 46:58

In front of her home. I lived in that community and, you know, was part of search parties and things like that, trying to find Lacey after she died. All of that to say when I asked Wendy if she would be a guest on the podcast and to share her story. I will never forget how deeply touched she was and that she verbalized that and communicated that of a true heartfelt thank you. Thank you for asking me to talk about Lacey. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to exactly what you just said. Any opportunity to say her name and to share these memories and to keep her spirit alive and to talk about her, you know, because she's been gone for a long time, you know. Two decades, over two decades now. Yeah. I just remember how deeply grateful she was, and that really resonated with me and it has stayed with me. And then you just echoed that of how important it is. And it it was good for me to just be reminded of that by you, and good for all of us to be reminded that you're not gonna remind people their loved one is gone.

Lisa Espinoza 48:08

Oh shoot, I I forgot for a minute, but thanks for reminding me now.

What Would Honor Chandler?

Erin 48:13

But man, any opportunity to speak about them and to share those stories is a beautiful gift for those of us who are left behind. And and I that resonates with me too, especially old family friends, people that I haven't seen in years and years and years, because I don't live in Colorado anymore. Kellie still lives in the town that we grew up in. But when I see people, like after years and years, get a lot, like people tell me that I look like my mom and I remind them of her. It is the most beautiful gift that anybody can ever give me is to bridge that. I love that. If in any way, shape, or form I remind them of this beautiful woman, like what? Yeah, like that. What a gift.

Lisa Espinoza 49:04

I agree. People tell me when I go back, the older I get, and it keeps happening, that's a good thing. You look so much like Ruth. My mom's name was Ruth. You look so much like Ruth. I'll take that. Yeah, yeah. You know, the the thing about telling the stories and talking about them and sharing the same stories again and again. Why? Because our stories with them are finite, right? They're finite. We don't get any more, we don't get to make more memories, we don't get to be at a a new dinner and play a new game and remember that funny thing that they said as a like in the game. And we don't get to do that. We have this body of memories. We have this body of memories, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let go of any of them. Yeah, they are heart and soul, they live in me, they're in my DNA. And if I want to repeat the same freaking story 10 times in a week, I'm gonna do it. So be it. So be it. We get to continue making memories with our other kids or with our husband or with our brothers or siblings. We get to keep making memories with them, and it's awesome. We don't get that, right? Marsha or Chandler. We don't get that, but we do get to keep carrying those stories and those memories and just repeating them and telling them to anybody that will listen. Yes, yeah, yes. What you're doing here is so beautiful because you are helping people carry those stories, carry those memories every time that it's shared. Then somehow those words go on to somebody else, and maybe they tell somebody, oh, I heard this thing on this podcast. It's like a ripple effect. Yeah. It's a powerful way to carry your mother forward in this world. Thank you for that.

Kellie 50:53

So, Lisa, one of the things that happened with Chandler's accident. So he was struck by a car. Was he walking?

Lisa Espinoza 51:02

He was riding his beloved BMX bike that he had built. He built it, like kind of put the parts together himself. We have videos of him doing all crazy things. One of the images we have on the back of our car is a silhouette of him doing a flip on his bike. Had it made into an iron, a wrought iron gate, that silhouette. And it's also my husband has caps and t-shirts and all kinds of things with that silhouette of Chandler on it. So yeah, he was riding his bike on his way to work because he didn't work too far from here. He had a car, but so yeah, he was hit by a car and it was 18 days of a lot of different lives in one in one 18-day stretch.

Kellie 51:44

Well, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about because I know that some things happened in that hospital experience that you don't wish upon any other parent or human being for that matter. Are you open to talking about what happened? Because I know you're trying to bring light and awareness to traumatic brain injury, which is something near and dear to us in our family. Our daughter was in a pretty major car accident when she was 17 years old. And so I'm right there with you. But that hospital experience was really something for your family.

Lisa Espinoza 52:21

Yeah. And I will tell you that this is the first time that I'm talking about it publicly. Oh, wow. So here goes. Where do you even begin? As the news about Chandler continued to remain very bleak, there was no hopeful news at all. There was no meaningful movement. We hoped, we hoped you attach meaning to, oh, he meant to look this way, or he, you know, his eyes were open, but there was no awareness. He was he wasn't there.

Kellie 52:54

Connection. Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 52:55

And so we got a phone call from a neuro the neurosurgeon after they did their last set of imaging. And he said, it's it's as bad as you can get. It's a severe diffuse axonal injury. It's like somebody took a paintbrush, dipped it in paint, and then just kind of bent it back and let it fly, and the paint splatters all over the canvas. The injury is all over his brain and his brainstem.

Erin 53:24

Okay.

Lisa Espinoza 53:25

And he said if he if he survives any length of time, there's like less than a I don't remember if he said 3%, 2% chance of any, any kind of meaningful existence that he would even know he's here. And our family, without question, without doubt, without hesitation, all in agreement, said Chandler would not want to just exist. I mean, to be honest, if he were left on the street, he would have been gone. His Glasgow coma score was very low. He was posturing. I mean, all of the signs of a really, really, really bad prognosis were there from the beginning. So we just said that's not what he would want, but he would want to be an organ donor. And the neurosurgeon said at this point, comfort care, which is another word for palliative care, right, would be certainly an option.

Erin 54:20

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 54:20

Now that's the first time that that had been mentioned to us. When 18 days earlier, our son had been essentially dead on the pavement. And they he coded that night. They had to bring him back. And the first time we ever even heard the word potential of comfort care, palliative care was from the neurosurgeon many, many, many days into it at the last imaging. Not that we would have made any other choice than we made in the beginning. I I don't know. I can't say. And I'm not judging anybody else for any other choice they would make at all. But to know that it was that serious and it took us having to come toward the end of it and this one doctor saying this. So that's the choice we made. It's it's grueling. When you say that someone's going to be an organ donor, you are asked so many questions, in-depth questions, detailed questions. Like it's it took hours for the organ donor organization to do all of the things that they needed to do. And there's a lot of detail involved and blah, blah, blah. So I'll skip all that. But the day was set for January 1st, 2019, because he, I mean, it's not a great day, but what what day, you know, what day is. And you're just like, I don't, we don't want him laying their suffering anymore. He's he's not with us. So we it's a lot. Again, this is the first time I'm telling this. Take your time. So the day before, January 1st, we were on our way to the hospital early morning, and my husband was already there. I'd had to go to a dentist appointment to get a tooth pulled of all things because it was abscessed. So I had to get this tooth pulled, and I'm on my way to the hospital. I get a call. It's from the spiritual care director at the hospital. And she says, I just want you to know that people disagree with your decision and they're talking about it. And do you do you know that he's gonna die on a cold steel operating table if you go through with this? I I didn't even have words. I I didn't even have words. So I got to the hospital and I'm completely shaken up, completely undone. Another doctor that had been with Chandler from kind of since day one came into the conference room and sat us down and said, I'm gonna have to recuse myself because I don't agree with what you're doing. He's young. You should trake him and peg him and put him in long-term care and see if he recovers to any degree. And during that conversation, she said, If he were born like this, would you be doing this? Oh wow. Wow. Yeah. Those words can just speak for themselves. They are what they are. Yeah. So I found out later that the spiritual care director had called my husband first, said the same thing. And when she got nowhere with him, then she called me. Then this doctor says this, and and I'm just beside myself. So I called the organ donor organization, the person that we were talking to, and I said, They said he'll die on a cold steel operating table if we do this. I don't know. I can't do this. I but I know that's what he would want. And they said, first of all, the doctor should have never told you that that she's recusing herself. She could have just stepped off of the case and not said that to you. That was inappropriate. Second, you can be with him in the room, and it's not what she's saying. And a family member who happens to be a doctor was with us. And so she said, I'll be with him. And I said, I may, I may be with him if I can, if I can do it, I may be with him as well when they take him to the OR for the org organ donor part. We go through that whole day knowing that tomorrow we're gonna lose our son. We wake up the next morning. I mean, I say wake up, I don't know that we slept, but we're walking out the door, all of us together, and I see the New Year's Day parade and I see the organ donor float.

Erin 58:34

Wow.

Carrying Loved Ones Forward

Lisa Espinoza 58:34

And I was like, that's that's our sign that Chandler is gonna live on. He's gonna live on, he's gonna help somebody else who needs a heart or a liver or a blood, you know, whatever. He's he's healthy. He's this young guy, he's healthy. And by that point, there are people who've been notified that they're gonna get an organ. So we go to the hospital and a doctor sits us down. We've never seen him, never met him, sits us down in the conference room, and the first thing he says to us is, Well, it's really not that bad. Just like that, just flippant. And I'm like, Have you seen him? Have you read his chart? Yeah, it's not that bad. It was, I don't, I don't even, I'm rarely speechless, but but it's it's beyond words. So he again mentioned that we could trake him and peg him and put him in long-term care. And we reiterated there is not one iota of wavering in our family that this is not what Chandler would want. So I guess, long story short, longest day of our lives, Chandler was not given true comfort care. He was not comfortable. We watched him suffer. At one point, I said, I can't, I can't, he can't do this. Please just just just stop. I mean, because they were supposedly doing the thing that you have to do. There's protocol for organ donor donorship. And at some point I said, I can't just I just want him comfortable. I just want him comfortable. And my oldest son looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, Mom Chandler would want this. And I'm gonna say something that is from what I understand, and this is a grieving mom's story. So if big Goliath people want to come after me, they can come after me. But what I understand to have happened is instead of titrating up so that when they took him off of the things he had been on to get him ready for organ donorship, instead of the dose being commensurate, so that there's a bridge, so that there's no suffering. That didn't happen. And when he started to struggle, he said, go get the family. And when they see how strong he is, maybe they'll have a change of heart. So that's when we came back into the room and watched, and and it was horrific. And we will never unsee it. We will never unsee it. It's it's nightmare on top of nightmare, only the one on top was unnecessary. I watched my mom die of lung cancer. I watched my dad die and they were peaceful. They were not in pain. But you can't keep my 25-year-old son in comfort and let him pass with us nearby. Again, I'm usually not without words, but again, this is the first time I'm saying this into a microphone to people that will hear it at large. He finally passed in the afternoon. I ran and had to get the doctor many times. And like he, I think he was in the room, maybe a total of 10 minutes the whole day, maybe if that. At one point I said, Would you please make my son comfortable? Please make him comfortable. And he said, Well, we'll do what we can, but I'm not going to give him a lethal dose of morphine. And I said, I am not asking for a lethal dose. I'm asking for whatever dose gets him comfortable. That's the point of comfort care.

Erin 1:02:11

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 1:02:12

We know what the end game will be. I want him comfortable. And I don't know, this may be protocol, maybe it's not, but every 10 minutes I had to go and tell the nurse, if she wasn't already in there, okay, it's been 10 minutes. Can you raise his dose? It's been 10 minutes, can you raise his dose until he got somewhat comfortable? Nobody should have to do that. You shouldn't have to beg for your loved one to be able to be an organ donor, to be comfortable, for your family to be able to be around the bedside. We were robbed. You know, I found out later there's this thing called a hero's walk.

Erin 1:02:45

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 1:02:45

I I didn't know what that was.

Erin 1:02:47

I've seen those before.

Lisa Espinoza 1:02:48

They're beautiful. I have friends who are in this club who would give anything to not be in this club, but you know, one of the things that they can kind of hold doesn't make it better, doesn't take away the pain. But you know, there's this hero's walk that was able to happen and treasure that and know that your loved ones living in a way in this world through a vital organ that someone got. Chandler didn't get that. We didn't get that, and we didn't get the sacredness of a peaceful passing. We didn't get that. Right. Most of all, Chandler, most of all Chandler, he's at the center of it. He suffered unnecessarily. And you can say whatever you want. All I know is the words that were said to us. People are talking about your decision. They don't agree with you. Do you know he'll die on a cold steel operating table if you do this? I'm gonna have to recuse myself because I don't agree with what you're doing. Would you do this if he were born this way? It's really not that bad. You could still trake him and peg him and put him in long-term care. And then to see what I saw. I don't know. Coincidence? I don't know. Somehow people disagreed and my son suffered. That's just what happened. So at this point, I want to get in front of med students and hospice workers and social workers. Anybody and everybody who intersects with end-of-life moments, because I can't change the institution where this happened. What I hope that I can touch, maybe a little more than a textbook can, with my story. I hope that I can touch hearts and say, if you are in those moments, those final sacred moments of life, in any capacity, in any capacity, those people will live with whatever happens forever. They can't unsee it. They will carry it with them. And it could be a wound so deep it could never be reached, or it could be a point of light that they can carry with them and say there was compassion, there was kindness, there was peace, there was dignity, there was honoring of our loved one. That's what I want.

Erin 1:05:41

That's what I want. It's a choice. They have a choice to make. Yeah. I'm like a mess over here. You're so brave. That's what you do with your mom.

Lisa Espinoza 1:05:52

I can't keep it from suffering. He's not suffering anymore. I couldn't keep him from suffering. But what I can do is in the name of Chandler Espinosa, I can speak to rooms of people who can influence those final moments. That is my desire. I want to influence those final moments for light and good and peace and sacredness.

The Physical Reality of Grief

Kellie 1:06:14

For me, it's a humanity issue. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Human dignity. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And not just for the person who is passing, but for every single person who's surrounding that person. And whose grief will now be layered because of the choices that were made by others that took away the choices that you were trying to make based on what you knew in your heart.

Erin 1:06:44

Yeah.

Kellie 1:06:44

Chandler would want as he left his crumbs of care and kindness, right? And I can only imagine how those layers of grief compress. And I can hear it in your story. I can hear it in your reliving of those moments to say, please, anybody, listen. Yeah. This was the worst possible scenario that we could have had and experienced, stepping into the best possible outcome we could have hoped for given the circumstances that we were in. When that peaceful part of that passing is then taken away from you, I hear that being the message.

Lisa Espinoza 1:07:27

Yes. Yes.

Kellie 1:07:28

Don't take that peace away. In whatever form.

Lisa Espinoza 1:07:32

Yeah. It could be a thoughtless, careless comment. It could be taking away some sense of agency that should rightfully be there and exist. One of my dear friends in this club, Monica, her little guy Jojo, she started a foundation in his name and something really horrible, like not exactly what happened to Chandler, but something that just marked his last day. Now they bring blankets into these spaces that are so hard and that are not mostly going to end the way we want. It's such a beautiful thing. I want a Chandler blanket in a sense. I want something to bring into rooms. Let's just say you're training to be a doctor and you're learning all the things that you need to learn. I don't know how much you touch on end of life, but maybe this mom who came in and talked about her son and what would have made those last moments bearable and connected to something more positive as a legacy. Like his organs are going to live on, and he's going to live in someone. And our family got to all be around and see him pass peacefully. And we have that to take with us. Maybe that doctor will approach those moments maybe a little differently. And that would mean everything. That would mean everything to me and to my kids, to my husband. It would mean everything.

Erin 1:08:57

Yeah.

Kellie 1:08:58

We all have a lot to learn as we go through this life. And I thank you, we thank you for going down a road and talking about an experience I didn't know that you had never spoken about before. And Lisa, I really commend you because the bottom line is unless we share our experiences with others, there's no way for anybody else to know.

Lisa Espinoza 1:09:26

And you don't know what you don't know.

Kellie 1:09:29

Don't know.

Lisa Espinoza 1:09:30

That's the other piece. I for sure want to family is to know you don't know what you don't know until it may be too late. So understand one thing that could have changed everything. Instead of multiple people telling us we disagree, and here's what we think you should do. And I don't know, coincidentally or not, it doesn't get to happen the way that we had asked for it to happen. What could have happened is for them to say, to be able to honor everything that you're asking, you probably need to transfer him to a different hospital. And we could have done that.

Song 1:10:02

Right.

Lisa Espinoza 1:10:02

But we weren't given that option. We just were bombarded with sabotage.

Kellie 1:10:08

You know, it really shocks me that anybody, anybody would not take a mother by the hand, siblings, dad, the family, and say, your child is going to be comfortable. Your child is going to be calm. And we're all going to walk through this experience together. And we're going to get on the other side so that you can step forward into whatever is next.

Erin 1:10:35

That would be so deeply human, wouldn't it? And we are going to honor your wishes.

Kellie 1:10:41

Right.

Erin 1:10:42

This is your child, your sibling, your family. This is your loved one. Yeah. To really hold the family.

Lisa Espinoza 1:10:52

Yeah. It was kind of a joke because we saw the whiteboard and it said comfort care and it said make sure that the patient is comfortable. There's like three different things. And I thought, well, that whole thing was a joke right there. I mean, just X right through every single one of those. Everything on that board. None of that happened. And to have to chase down a doctor and say he's still not comfortable. I don't know what protocol is, but from where I'm sitting, I'm not asking you to end my son's life. His life was essentially ended when his head hit the pavement. Right. I'm asking you to keep him comfortable. And if that last dose that keeps him comfortable also ends his breath, he's comfortable and he's out of suffering. Yeah. Yeah. It's just kindness. Yes. It's the right thing to do. The other thing that could have happened is they could have called in a true palliative care team. They could have said, because this guy wasn't a palliative care doctor, but you don't know what you don't know. Now we know the questions to ask, and we would be able to do it differently, but we didn't know. So we got what we got and we will live with it forever. My son writes songs about it. He did his released albums that was that were written. He wrote one song called Change of Heart based on the doctor's maybe. Maybe you don't have a change of heart.

Erin 1:12:12

I think for me, what's so profound is going back to the ring that you got from your friend, right? What would honor Chandler? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Whoo, I'm getting emotional. I have so much respect and admiration for your commitment to willingness, desire to make an impact, to speak to these doctors and social workers, like you said, and to educate. Because if we can move the needle at all, if we can help one family avoid the pain that you experienced, for whatever it's worth. While Chandler was not able to be an organ donor and live on in that way, there is no question and no doubt that part of Chandler's legacy is the education and the impact. And he was such an incredible listener. And so it's how do we impact more healthcare providers to listen to what the family wants, what they need.

Kellie 1:13:16

Yeah. And to honor the Hippocratic oath of do no harm.

Erin 1:13:20

I was thinking about that as well.

Lisa Espinoza 1:13:22

Yeah.

Kellie 1:13:22

I mean, that's the bottom line. Yeah. When your choices cause harm or contribute to harm and discomfort instead of avoiding it at all costs, that just in and of itself, let's just bottom line it. I mean, that violates that oath that every single medical practitioner takes.

Lisa Espinoza 1:13:44

Yeah, there was a lot. And again, I am a grieving mother with a story. Yes. And institutions are Goliath. So I have to say, you know, that my story is my story. And I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw. And I'm not the only one.

Kellie 1:14:00

So am I hearing correctly then that the wish for Chandler to be an organ donor ultimately did not happen? No, it could not happen.

Lisa Espinoza 1:14:11

And it's probably partly blocking it out because it's just painful. But all the details of it, I knew them. I knew the details because we have a family member who was a doctor and was there and saw all of it. But in a nutshell, if I'm remembering correctly, something happened in that process where instead of just, like I said, keeping him comfortable in that transition from the meds he had been on to keep him comfortable.

Kellie 1:14:36

To take him off those medications.

Lisa Espinoza 1:14:38

Yes. Okay. To take off all of those, but not start what you need for the organ donor, that protocol. There was this gap. The bridge wasn't there. There was a gap. And so he was suffering. And somehow, in that gap time, at some point, they said he's not going to be able to be an organ donor anymore.

Kellie 1:14:59

Which then takes away the gift of life for so many people who had already been told is what I heard you say. Oh, for sure.

Lisa Espinoza 1:15:08

I mean, once you know, once the organ team is there to do the organ harvest, people know that they're going to maybe be getting a heart or a liver or and my husband wouldn't be alive today if not for a liver transplant. Oh. He had a liver transplant. Really? I think we're going on two, three years. Time flies. Yeah, he wouldn't be alive if somebody hadn't been an organ donor. And Chandler could have been that. It doesn't matter what Goliath wants to say or skirt around it or whatever. How can I imagine that it's just a coincidence that he's not able to be an organ donor and that you want us to change our minds when we see how he struggles because he's strong in conjunction with all the words that were said to us?

Erin 1:15:58

Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 1:15:58

I don't know. That's my story.

Erin 1:16:00

And it's valid. Yeah. It's all valid. Everything, everything that you and your family feel around this is justified. I'm so sorry that you guys had that experience.

Lisa Espinoza 1:16:13

And no accountability. Like, no, no accountability. None.

Erin 1:16:17

It's layered trauma. There's trauma already there. There's already grief. There's already loss. There's already trauma.

Lisa Espinoza 1:16:24

I can't watch the New Year's Day parade because of that float and that memory. When the organ donor they call and say, Hey, we're having a thing. Would you like to come? And I'm like, I don't want to. Yeah. I don't want to come to your thing because I found out his tissues, some things were able to be used, but the other things weren't. The life-saving organs weren't. And it hurts too much. Yeah. And it makes me angry. The best thing I can do with all of that is to try to make a positive difference. I could just let my anger propel me and just try to keep going after Goliath and going after Goliath and going after Goliath. But I don't want that negative energy to consume my life. I would rather say, okay, Chandler, money, Chandler, we're gonna we're gonna go about it in the way, like the organic way. We're gonna try to to impact hearts that will be intersecting with other hearts in those spaces. And I'm so sorry that you had to suffer what you did.

Kellie 1:17:27

Yeah. It didn't go as planned. And yet mom had to get up every day after and brush her teeth.

Lisa Espinoza 1:17:36

Yeah, that's what you get to do. You get to make a choice. A step at a time. A step at a time. That's all.

Joy, Healing, and Being Willing Again

Erin 1:17:43

And you're still doing that one step at a time. Today. What can we do just today? Today. Not only for ourselves, but then to impact others, to impact the community, to impact other families. Yeah.

Lisa Espinoza 1:17:57

Well, you know, I mean, you guys know one of the brightest points of redemption to a dark place of loss is just to somehow use your loss as a flashlight to help other people take another step forward.

Kellie 1:18:11

I love that analogy that you shared earlier, you know, shining the light for somebody else to take a step forward. Because when it's dark, it's really, really dark. And just that little ray of light, just that little ray of flashlight, sunlight, guiding the way.

Lisa Espinoza 1:18:29

Not a floodlight, God forbid, because floodlight, you're gonna say, oh my God, I can't climb those stairs and I can't go up that hill and I can't do that. But if it's just a little flashlight, oh, okay, I could, I could take that.

Erin 1:18:42

I can take one step forward. I just have this really like beautiful visual in my mind of, you know, when you are in the darkness or walking down a really dark path, and you don't see the light, maybe that's because you are the light shining on the path for somebody else. Wow. You don't even realize that you're holding a light. Yeah, you don't see yourself. So to you, there's just darkness all around, but that's because you're the light. Wow. And the path that you are walking is actually lighting the way for somebody else to find their way through the darkness. And that's really beautiful.

Kellie 1:19:23

You become a living light. That's powerful.

Erin 1:19:26

I love that. Wow. It sounds to me like that's what your writing really turned into for you.

Lisa Espinoza 1:19:33

And little did I know when I wrote this Days of Juan and Noses, which was my attempt to cheer on my fellow moms that are wiping butts and noses. And yes, yes, you're so important. What you're doing today is so important. And be in the moment. That's the other thing I learned from Chan. Be be in the moment. Be in the moment. Be with the people that you're with. Little did I know that when I'm writing this book, then it's replete with Chandler stories and my other kids, that these years later I would be inspired to write another book about that little boy. And the desire is the same, that it just be a little bit of a flashlight to help move somebody else one step further on their path.

Kellie 1:20:16

For somebody who has lost a child, Lisa, what would you want them to hear?

Lisa Espinoza 1:20:22

Oh man, that's a club that nobody wants to be in. You say that to yourself, they're like, man, I'd never, I don't know what I'd do if I was if I lost a kid. I don't, I just couldn't. And then you're in that club and you go, I will always be, I will always be this mom or this dad who lost my kid. I will be this forever. It's not all of who I am, it's not the totality of who I am, but it sure as heck infuses every cell of my being, every minute of every day. And I would say there are so many of us out here. Don't be alone in it. Allow yourself to be with some others in the club and be willing, just to be willing, to be open to the possibility of joy again. I created this free guide to help you through the day when you're grieving the loss of your child. It's free. I just created it as a sort of a resource, especially for moms, but a dad could do it too. Some very simple small steps. Small steps. Here's a little flashlight. Here's some small steps. Maybe can help just get you through till noon or tonight and maybe tomorrow. It's on my website, lisaespenza.com, and on Instagram, it's under the LinkedIn thing. I am so not good at all this stuff, but it does my heart good to know that maybe that little simple guide could help somebody who's grieving their child today.

Kellie 1:21:58

I think that the concept of getting to the place where you can be that living light for other families who have suffered loss. Our dad, who adopted Erin and I shortly before we came into his life, lost his daughter, who would have been our older sister, Laurie, at 16. She died in a car accident with her two best friends. And one of the things that I admire about his processing of that grief through the years, you know, number one, there's a whole spiritual thing that happens with loss and death, right? Lori lost her life and he lost her, and Scott lost his sister. And then these two girls came in. And so we got to step into that space and were just embraced with so much love. And he and I just this past weekend had a really beautiful conversation about the four of us all growing up because he drives a school bus now at 85 years old. He's so cute. Oh my gosh, I love that. He drives the school bus, and we were talking about the obnoxious group of kids. And I said, Well, at least, you know, I wasn't a difficult child. And we got some chuckles out of that. And he said, Erin had her challenges, Scott had his challenges, you had your challenges. Lori's the only one that I don't really remember any challenges with. And I said, Well, she got the free pass, right? From the difficult child status. But my point in sharing that story is I have loved the way that he, since Lori died in 1981. So it's been 40-some years. Through all of those years, part of his grieving process has been showing up for other parents who have lost their children. Just being present in that space. And so whether you do that through a phone call, whether you do that through showing up, physically being present, whether you do that through your writing, there are so many ways to keep showing up and being that living light for other people who are walking this journey. And nobody wants to join the club. And this is where life can change at any moment for anybody, anywhere, for any reason. Like that. We received that phone call. Your daughter's been in a head-on collision. You don't know anything. It's the worst phone call anybody can get. I commend you for continuing to show up and being the light every single day and doing the work and creating the free resources and figuring out how to make the link work so somebody can download and share and share it. Because that is the thing that will allow Chandler to continue to bless the people that cared enough about him and that he cared about to say, thank you for making my life and my passing mean something. Yes.

Lisa Espinoza 1:25:14

And I think another thing that Chandler would be really happy to know if he influenced people to be in the moment with the people they love. Because, like you said, you don't know how many moments you have, right? Any of us. We don't know. So when you're with somebody, be with them. Yep. Honor them with your presence. Yes, that's exactly right. I want to ask, you said you guys grieved differently. How did you guys grieve differently when you lost your mom?

Erin 1:25:40

Oh we have unpacked so much of this over the last year and a half. It's been fascinating. There's a behind-the-scenes project going on. There's a documentary actually that's being created. When we dove into that project and started having conversations about our mom and her life and then her passing, and I was 17 and Kellie was 24. That was kind of the beginning of us having these conversations and even recognizing and for the first time that we actually did experience the same loss in wildly different ways. And not only because we're different humans, but because we're seven years apart. And there's a really big difference between a 24-year-old and a very selfish, bratty 16-year-old who's just like living my life. And so, like you, right? Losing your mom at 18. It's such a blur for me to go back to that space. While I did some counseling and therapy, and I did like a teen grief support group at hospice, and I started volunteering in children's grief support groups for hospice because that helped me helped me heal to actually help children. I found great healing in helping other people walk through their own journey. But I think I did what you did. I think I just want to minimize it a little bit.

Kellie 1:27:05

Yeah.

Erin 1:27:06

I left for college and then just threw myself into that world. I just really think I didn't process in a healthy way. Looking back on that. I can relate to that. Yeah.

Kellie 1:27:20

And I had caregiver syndrome. It's a real disease. Yeah. I had been Erin's caretaker since she was a little, little, little girl. And that's long stories of, you know, growing up. And our mom went through three different cancers. The first one was right after she became a single mom. And Erin was just a little toddler. About the age of my granddaughter now. And so, you know, I would just take care of her and I'd move back to the community where I grew up, where our mom was really actively involved, a pillar of this community. And so I think there was an obligation inside of me, having made a lot of promises to her to make sure nothing bad would ever happen to Erin. So So stepping right back into caretaking and then also stepping into these really big shoes that I felt in my grief and in my unknowing and in my immaturity, felt it was my obligation to step into and fill these really big shoes. And you know, that brought a lot of weight. And I had to carry that weight for a very, very long time until I was mature enough to recognize all of it for what it was and is, and take off that emotional backpack and say, that's no longer mine to carry. I don't have to carry all of that anymore. That's good.

Lisa Espinoza 1:28:34

So you got to that point where you could say, okay, that's that's not.

Kellie 1:28:38

And it took some other traumas to actually get there, right? So that's actually what can happen is that we experience these multiple, many layers of trauma through our life experiences. And each one, I believe, shows up to teach us something different that is all part of the learning process. And I think our responsibility is contemplating quietly within our own selves and with our trusted sanctuary of people. What's in this for me? You know, what can I learn here? How can I use this to help me grow and become better? We make a lot of icky, messy mistakes going through the process of it, because again, no manual. We figure it out as we go. And in the end, I think if we are willing to, we can look in the rearview mirror of our life and all of those experiences and be very grateful for ultimately the path that they took us down because that's the human being that we became.

Erin 1:29:40

Yeah. Yeah. So interesting that you say that. And I think to biggie back on my own story, feel like, oh, my menopause brain, I just lost my train. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I literally lost my train of things. Oh, I I hear you. I hear you, sister.

Kellie 1:29:55

Yeah, it's part of daily reality.

Erin 1:29:57

It'll it'll come to me, but yeah.

Kellie 1:30:00

Okay, Lisa, if someone's listening right now, they're at the very beginning of their grief. What is one small step they can take today?

Lisa Espinoza 1:30:09

If you feel paralyzed, it's okay, it's normal. Let yourself feel that paralysis, feel the things you need to feel, and then just maybe dare to do some small thing. Maybe it's get out of bed and brush your teeth. Maybe it's walk outside and stand in the sunshine for 10 minutes. Maybe it's call a friend and say, I'm just having a crappy day. Or maybe just texting a friend and saying, I don't want to talk right now, but I just want you to know how I'm feeling, because I just need another human to know. What is one small forward motion that you can make? Not in a denial, but in just this rebellious act of I am grieving, I feel paralyzed, and that's okay and it's normal. And be that as it may, doggone it, I'm gonna take a forward motion step. I'm gonna do something that brings me some forward motion in this moment. I'm just gonna do it. Whatever that thing is. That's great advice. Maybe that's the best thing you can do today, and that's just okay.

Kellie 1:31:24

Thank you. One small step.

Lisa Espinoza 1:31:26

Yeah.

Kellie 1:31:28

Well, Lisa, as we come to the end of every episode, we talk to our guests about their PIG because our name reflects our mission of purpose, intention, and gratitude. And I love at the beginning that your peas were power of pepperoni pizza.

Lisa Espinoza 1:31:47

Never underestimate the power of pepperoni pizza.

Kellie 1:31:49

I'm gonna use that one because pepperoni pizza is popular in our family. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Ours too. But do you have a PIG? Or when you think about purpose, intention, and gratitude, what does that conjure up for you?

Lisa’s Free Grief Resource for Parents

Lisa Espinoza 1:32:04

Purpose. I am propelled forward by the purpose of allowing my experiences, my pain, my loss to be redeemed into a, for lack of a better metaphor, a flashlight to just shine the next step to other people, whatever the hard season is. That's my purpose. My intention is to keep showing up every day for myself and for my people. And gratitude, that's my operating system. It's just what runs underneath everything else. I'm so, I'm so grateful for family, for my friends that I had Chandler for the time that I had him. I'm grateful for my mom who was just amazing. I'm grateful for the opportunity to write about all of it. I'm grateful for a healthy body. I had breast cancer a few years ago. I don't have breast cancer anymore. I'm grateful for my health. I'm grateful for my stupid dogs. I'm grateful for good food. I'm grateful for matcha. I'm gonna make myself a matcha after this. I'm grateful for my impromptu trip to Cabo. Not grateful that my friend's husband has arthritis in his hip, but I'm grateful for my impromptu trip to Cabo. I'm just, I'm just, there's so much I could just go on and on and on and on. And there's so much I'm grateful for.

Kellie 1:33:30

I love that concept of gratitude as an operating system. Yeah. And as I was watching you talk, because we do record on video, but we release the audio, I saw this visual of your mother Ruth on one side and your son Chandler on the other side of you just embracing you in this really big, beautiful hug. I can really see that. And I want to commend you on the mother that you became because of the mother that you had, the mother you were to Chandler, and the mother that you continue to be to Chase, Chance, and Charlie.

Lisa Espinoza 1:34:17

Congratulations. I don't get all those right sometimes.

Kellie 1:34:20

Thank you for joining us on The P-I-G today. This was a real honor to have you with us.

Lisa Espinoza 1:34:25

Thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me say Chandler's name over and over. Thank you.

Kellie 1:34:31

You're welcome. We'll keep saying it too.

Erin 1:35:14

If something in this episode moved you, please consider sharing it with someone you love. A small share can make a big impact. You can also join us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn and connect further at thePIGpodcast.com.

Kellie 1:35:29

And if you're enjoying this podcast, one of the most meaningful ways you can support us is by leaving a five-star rating, writing a short review, or simply letting us know your thoughts. Your feedback helps us reach others and reminds us why we do this work.

Erin 1:35:44

Because The P-I-G isn't just a podcast. It's a place to remember that even in the midst of grief, life goes on, resilience matters, and love never leaves. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Until next time, hogs and kisses, everyone.