Navigating Grief: A Journey with Dr. Gregg Korbon

Title: Navigating Grief: A Journey with Dr. Gregg Korbon

Episode Description: Join host James Moffitt on the Father's Refuge Podcast as he welcomes Dr. Gregg Korbon, a retired anesthesiologist and father who shares his profound journey through grief after the loss of his son, Brian. Dr. Korbon discusses the spiritual and mystical experiences that have shaped his understanding of life and death, offering hope and insight to other grieving parents.

Key Topics:

Dr. Korbon's personal story of loss and the unique circumstances surrounding his son's passing. The role of dreams in the grieving process and how they can guide healing. Insights into the spiritual realm and the intelligence of nature. The importance of community and support groups like Compassionate Friends.

Memorable Quotes:

"Pain reveals, and love heals." "Grief can be a spiritual pathway."

Resources:

Visit Dr. Korbon's website: beyondreason.info for more on his story and book. Learn about the Compassionate Friends support group.

Call to Action: If you're a grieving parent, know that you're not alone. Reach out to support groups and find comfort in shared experiences. Hold on to hope and healing.

Hashtags: #GriefJourney #HealingAfterLoss #FathersRefugePodcast

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Losing a child to cancer is a grief no parent should walk through alone. The Father's Refuge Podcast is a safe place for fathers and parents to share, heal, and find hope in the midst of heartbreak. If you are a father and you would like to share your grief journey with others reach out to me at FathersRefuge@proton.me 

Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.822)
Hello and welcome to father's refuge podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host today on father's refuge. I'm honored to welcome doc, Dr. Greg Corbin. Dr. Corbin is not only a physician, but also a father who knows the deep pain of losing a child through his own journey of grief. He has found purpose in helping others navigate the unimaginable. He speaks with authenticity, compassion, and hope, reminding us that while loss forever changes us.

does not have to define us. On this episode we'll talk about his story, the lessons he's learned, and how fathers can find strength, healing, and even meaning after loss. Dr. Corbin, thank you for being here.

Gregg Korbon (00:42.156)
Thank you for having me.

James Moffitt (00:43.986)
Yeah. Do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Gregg Korbon (00:48.302)
All right, well, I'm an old guy. I'm a retired anesthesiologist. I retired three years ago at 74. And I still work as a medical examiner just to try and keep my physician skills of some use. And I've got a long-term interest in outdoor education.

and team building, stuff like that. And for the last three years since my son died, I guess you would say I'm a become a mystic in that my son died in such a way that he left this huge mystery. And in exploring it, I discovered that there was a lot more going on to reality than I had thought. And so for the last three years, I've been trying to understand

and following up different leads, having some amazing experiences and wonderful teachers. The first teacher was Brian. And then after he left, in his emptiness, all these other incredible teachers showed up. So it's been an interesting story, which I'm happy to share.

James Moffitt (02:09.039)
I'm so sorry for your loss. this is not a club that anyone, anybody wants to be a member of. just kind of find yourself here and you look around and go, wow, this sucks.

Gregg Korbon (02:23.084)
Yeah, it's kind like after Brian died, he died at age nine. And then we started going to the compassionate friends support group. And that's, as a physician, what I discovered was that I had been very afraid of death. And most physicians of the general people that you run into physicians are some of most afraid of death and have trouble talking about it and stuff like that. So

When we got to Compassionate Friends and we started sharing stories, it was all new, new experience for me. And I learned a lot from the other parents. I also learned that my experience, which I thought was like incredibly unique, was not as unusual as I had thought.

James Moffitt (03:11.987)
Yeah. Well, can you share a little bit about your loss, your journey with your son, and what transpired?

Gregg Korbon (03:23.33)
Yeah, now, it's not your typical loss because I mean, when Brian died, he'd been kind of telling us for about six months he was going to die, even though he was going to health. And it didn't make any sense at all. But it was like so well orchestrated. It was like, how do you agree something that was supposed to happen? That was a thing that was different with with my my grief journey.

is that he was moving towards his death and becoming more joyful. And then he died scoring the first one of his little league career. And he was the happiest little boy. And it was a magical day. It was the most beautiful spring day I'd ever seen. He'd given himself a going away party that morning, left behind a sign, Brian's on a trip, don't worry about me, left behind gifts, stuff like that.

So, and then all this paranormal stuff was happening before, during, and after. So it was clearly, you know, an event that was supposed to happen. So, which is different than most people when they lose a child. So that became kind of my unusual part of the story to share. So let me go back to when I first started.

We were getting ready for Brian's ninth birthday in January. And he said he didn't want to celebrate his birthday. would bring his death closer. And he wouldn't live till double digits, which was aged 10. And then there was no reason for that. He had heart surgery when he was a baby, but he'd gotten a complete, you know, clear bill of health. We were told he would have a normal life.

He had no symptoms. And actually, the odds of him dying suddenly were pretty much the same as a normal kid. So there was nothing rational to what he was telling us. Then he got very depressed and was afraid to sleep. And my wife who is a pastoral counselor and minister, and my specialty was

Gregg Korbon (05:50.734)
Pain therapy, anesthesia and pain therapy, and which is mostly psychology. So I was used to being around psychological stuff all the time. And we couldn't find any, you know, any reason, anything to do. So we took him to a therapist, which he enjoyed. And the therapist really enjoyed Brian. Now, Brian was a very unusual child. He was extremely gifted. And

I was proud of myself and being bright, but he was way brighter than I was. And he would write beautiful poetry, which I couldn't do. And he loved entertaining people and he was just full of joy. And he would like go up for a, we were at a summer camp and they had a talent night. So he went up on the stage and started giving a talk about karate, which he'd been taking for a few months. And.

started improvising a karate form. And it was like, he was creating this incredibly beautiful dance that none of us had ever seen before. My wife and I looked at each other and just went, wow. And all the kids gave a standing ovation and started shouting, Brian, Brian, Brian. So that was like when he was eight. So he was like an unusual, a real gifted kid. So then after a few months,

as the days got longer, he started coming out of his depression and then about six weeks before he died, he said it was time for his party, but he did not want it to be a birthday party. was going to be a happy spring party, which three friends and no gifts. So we scheduled a party and, and meanwhile, lots of other things were happening. So, about the time he told us he was going to die.

The most recent picture we had of him, which was a soccer picture, began to fade. And then he had a younger sister, Lynn, who was in the first wave of autistic kids. But she was like, you know, she's very sweet and loving. So we were very fortunate. You know, on the autistic spectrum, she's a really sweet kid. They started drawing pictures of butterflies everywhere.

Gregg Korbon (08:18.636)
all that kind of stuff that was our current theme. And then as we got closer to when he died, he started tying up all his loose ends. He would make sure that he died the day before Mother's Day. So he made sure that we got a Mother's Day present for Catherine. And he made sure that even though Father's Day was a month away,

made sure my wife got my father's day present, which is right here. So world's greatest dad.

James Moffitt (08:56.317)
check it out. Nice.

Gregg Korbon (08:57.934)
Yeah, And he wrote to his grandparents, so all the stuff that he was supposed to do, he tied up all of his loose ends. so then all this other stuff, strange things happened too. So the world, the universe was orchestrating this in a way I had never seen. And of course, I couldn't understand it at all, but I could feel something was going on. And then for the

few weeks before he died, he started talking about taking a trip and he jumped into a cardboard box and said, okay, I'm mailing myself up to Australia or Wisconsin. And then two days before he died, my wife was coming down the driveway and Brian was pulling his little wagon with his teddy bears and his snapping gear. And he said it was time for him to go on his trip. And Catherine said, you can't go on your trip, you got your party coming up. So,

They sat down for a while and he'd always been afraid to camp out by himself. So my wife said, okay, we'll pitch the tent and that'll be your trip for tonight. And then the next day would be his, you know, his party. So we pitched the tent and he camped out with our dog, Sasha, who she was an amazing dog. And I could tell you a lot of stories about her.

But she was probably the bravest creature I'd ever seen. And I think that she was helping give Brian her courage that night. So the next day he came in the house so proud of himself for spending the night out. We got ready for his friends. It was the most beautiful spring day I'd ever seen. His friends came, they had the party, and then he went to his room for a couple hours.

get ready to go to his baseball game. And in that time, he wrote his goodbye note, sign that he put on the door, Brian's on a trip, don't worry about me. And if you go to the book website, beyondreason.info, I've got a picture of that. And at Compassionate Friends, we found out a similar story from a little girl named Stephanie, and she drew a picture right before she died too. And that's up there too.

James Moffitt (11:20.734)
Huh.

Gregg Korbon (11:23.022)
So I'll be glad to talk about that in a minute. So he wrote his sign. He wrote some letters to some people. I was taking him to his baseball game. And he said, OK, you need to stop by the post box so I can put these letters in there. And I said, Brian, they don't have stamps on them. They won't get there. He says, you don't understand. They will get there. So we put the stamps in the

mailbox, went to his little league baseball game and he had always been afraid of the ball. This is his second game, littlest kid on the team. This wasn't his thing and I thought it'd be good for him. So, um, and, um, as we went to the baseball game, he was so enthusiastic and he said he wanted to score a run more than anything. Got to the field and he was a different kid. He lost all of his fear. was chasing after the ground balls, having the best time.

Then it was time for the game to start. His first step bat, he came up, he got walked and the next little boy hit a triple. Brian ran around the bases, scored his first run. We were all standing and cheering. He was getting high fives from all his teammates. He went into the dugout and collapsed. So now I'm an anesthesiologist. That's what we do. We invented resuscitation.

just like we invented ICUs. So I thought he should have an arrhythmia. We should be able to get him back. And then the rescue squad was right across the street. They showed up in about a minute. And so I said to myself, we should be able to get him back. But something, when I looked down on him, I knew he wasn't coming back. And took him to the emergency room and said goodbye.

And the first of two paranormal experiences that happened when I came back to the baseball field picnic area to pick up my car. And so I was outside and even in my grief and pain and shock, I could tell it was the most beautiful day I'd ever seen. there was baseball games going on, picnics, people playing music, the smell of barbecue.

Gregg Korbon (13:47.956)
And honeysuckle was in the air, which is very unusual for that time of year. And I reached up to wipe a tear from my eye and the sour smell of the vomit from Brian. When you shock people, they usually vomit. They don't show that in the movies. OK, so the smell of that combined with the sweet honeysuckle. And then all of sudden, everything got the colors got brighter than I'd ever seen. The colors got clearer. And I was at peace. And I knew that Brian had finished his work here.

James Moffitt (14:02.813)
Right.

Gregg Korbon (14:18.094)
And that the only, if I could bring him back, it would be for me, not for him. And that the only unfinished work here was mine. So then went home, all these people showed up and tried to condol and give us their concern. And then it was time for me to tuck Lynn, my daughter, into bed. And so I went down and I tried to explain that Brian had died.

And I wasn't very religious and I was really not used to talking about this stuff. So it was a stretch for me. And I said, Lenny, Brian, he died and and he won't be coming back to us. He's up in heaven now. And she said, he take airplane. And I said, no, when you die, you leave your body like a butterfly leaves its cocoon.

And then you can fly without an airplane. And she go, I said, and she looked up and she got this wonderful smile on her face. And she started, you know, just smiling and looking at the ceiling. And she was focused on something. She could see something. And I wondered what what is it she could see? And then I felt the the bed vibrating and I could see a river of energy waves carrying us along that I had never

never seen before. And somehow I knew it had always been there, but I could never see it. And that Brian was now part of this river and carrying us along. And what the river was was a mystery that I talk about and then kind of get closure at the end of the book that I wrote. know, Brian, you know, I am the river. I was.

I was the body, was the stone, I am the river.

James Moffitt (16:21.448)
And what's the name of the website? I want to bring it up.

Gregg Korbon (16:24.374)
Yeah, sure. It's www beyond reason dot info info. And so there's a link to the Amazon book. There's some information on there to give you an overall feeling for all the paranormal stuff that I discovered. mean, I had just, you know, the fellow right here in Charlottesville where I live. I had no idea.

Let's see. That's, we're revising it. It's an old fashioned website, but it's got the content on there is good. It's got a few people wrote songs about Brian. They were inspired and there's a music video on there as well as my we were on story core on NPR. And that was the first public.

The story was so paranormal that the media wouldn't touch it. And that was like one of the big mysteries that I had. And I'm just beginning to get an idea why that might be. But all these people, you know, he died on the ball field he made under our national news. Reporters would call and I would say, yeah, there's Stephanie. OK, so there's Brian's.

sign Brian's on a trip, not worry about me. Now, after the first year of, after going to Compassion Friends, I shared Brian's story and took about 10 minutes. And then amazingly, all these other parents started talking about their unusual stories. So about, of about eight parents who were living with their kids,

four had stories and their kids had died unexpectedly. And that upper left picture is of Brian at the age of two months, like two months. And then I talk about all the things I've learned about how children are much more spiritual than adults and tied into great intelligence and some of the stories that came out of that.

James Moffitt (18:31.933)
Okay.

Gregg Korbon (18:52.692)
so, so one mother who was a radiology tech, they worked in my hospital and started talking about her daughter, Stephanie. Stephanie was four years old and, she said she was this really gifted little girl. She was, she was artistic and joyful. And every day she said, you know what? love you with a mad passion. Imagine that in a four year old. And she said,

She always said she never wanted to go up and go to school like the other children. And so she died at a daycare and she went on the slide and a ribbon caught around her neck and strangled her. So 20 minutes before she died, she drew that picture of her in dark colors being strangled. But over on the side is her in bright colors, putting on a halo with an angel up in the sky, dropping halos down to her. So welcome to my world.

That's the kind of stuff that kept happening.

James Moffitt (19:57.053)
Wow. Those are certainly unique stories and I'm sorry for your loss, but I appreciate you sharing that story with us. I'm sure it will resonate with some people.

Gregg Korbon (20:12.482)
Well, yeah, it brings up the grief as a spiritual pathway, which for me it was. I mean, I was an agnostic. I'd had paranormal experiences, but I denied them. But the fact Brian showed us that there was much more going on, and then all of these teachers showed up. So the fellow who wrote the book, Magical Child, Joseph Chilton Pierce,

Turns out, he lives and he was very spiritual and spent his summers on an ashram in India. And he wrote the book, Crack in the Cosmic AA, a bunch of books and Magical Child. And he traveled around the world and met these most gifted children in the world. The ones that had great magical powers, remembered past lives, could read your mind. And so...

He would share his stories with me, most of which were not written down anywhere. He said, Joe, this is amazing. You should write this stuff down so other people can learn. So he happened to be right on my own backyard. Charlottesville, as it turns out, is like a spiritual center for the Western world.

At the time I had no idea, but the first books on out-of-body experiences were Bob Monroe, never heard of the Monroe Institute.

James Moffitt (21:47.047)
yeah.

Gregg Korbon (21:48.142)
Okay, so Bob was a friend of mine. And because he moved, Joe Pierce lived off grid down south of Charlottesville about half an hour. And he was a friend of Bob Monroe. So Bob Monroe bought the land next to him, created the Monroe Institute. He wrote the first books in the Western world on out-of-body experience. Then there's the first books, Western world, Europe, the Americas.

Australia, New Zealand, in this entire area. The first books were reincarnation, Ian Stevenson, Charlottesville, know, the evidence for that. Life after death, near death experiences, Raymond Moody, Charlottesville. Remote viewing, familiar with the term?

OK, so you've heard of clairvoyance. Well, the military, yeah, the military was aware that the Russians in the 70s were using psychics to find information and spy, you know, like on the Pentagon. So they created a unit called Stargate. Can't change names. To try and see if we could do that, too.

And RemoteViewer001, Joe McMonigle, still one of the best in the world. He's a friend of mine. And so he did a lot of stuff like found crashed airplanes and stuff that nobody else could do. So he lives here. Let's see. So anyhow, to say that it's kind of like a coincidence that all these people showed up right in my backyard.

right when I was looking. You you've heard when a student is ready, the teacher will appear. So that's kind of the way it worked out.

James Moffitt (23:48.093)
I got you.

So, we're talking to a listening audience of parents, especially fathers who have lost children to cancer or are already or still on the treatment journey, right? And so there's hope for healing here on the side of heaven.

So what would you, what would you say to those fathers?

Gregg Korbon (24:20.876)
Well, I learned a lot about the grieving journey. There's the dreams that help guide our, that I, when I was talking to the other parents and also my own experiences, there were like three dreams that helped guide our grief. And the first were the pain dreams. And that happened like right after he died. When he first died and

I tried to resuscitate him, I shut all my emotions down. But when I had the pain dreams, I would go back and I would feel everything completely intensely and my helplessness and all the pain. so what I've come to learn is pain is really essential for healing. You you focus on that and that points to that point to in the right direction. And of course, love is

The thing pain reveals and then love heals. Second kind of dream was the I'm okay dream. And that usually came. Most people got that and that was usually after a few months.

And my wife had the first Christmas. So it about six months after he died.

And we were sad because it was first Christmas with Autumn. So we went up to the Hershey Hotel halfway between my in-laws and where we live in Charlottesville. They were up in New Jersey. And we stayed in three different rooms, my daughter, me and my wife, and then my in-laws. And at 2 o'clock in the morning, all three of them had the same dream. So Brian came to them, and they all described him dressed the same way. He was a little bit older. The MLK dream.

Gregg Korbon (26:15.256)
You know, they're older, they're happy, and they tell you that you don't need to worry about them. You know, the problems are yours, but they're okay. So everybody woke up at two o'clock in the morning and Catherine told me, and I was kind of jealous because I, you know, I kind of wanted that too. My I am okay dream came later, but it was similar to that. And then the third one, not everybody gets.

is the goodbye dream. And that's where sometimes years later, you in their dream, you see them, they become older, and you have a reunion, you you reunite, both say how much you love each other. And they tell you it's time for them to go for you to let go and continue on your way so they can continue on their way to.

So those are the three dreams that I saw come up time and again when I was talking to grieving parents, as well as having them myself. So you'll get guidance and dreams. That's one thing. And the other is that the emptiness that you feel that if you allow it, it will be like a fountain.

If you allow yourself to experience the emptiness, things will come from it. The emptiness with the love that you felt for your loved one. Now, for the parents that are dealing with a dying child, that's different. So, you know, all I can say is, you know, my thoughts and prayers are with you. That's hardest thing a parent can go through. But it seems to have a purpose.

And years later, just like Brian's death, when I read through the reviews of the people that have read the book or heard this story, I usually can get through a few before I start crying because the story has been helpful to other grieving parents and other people.

James Moffitt (28:36.668)
Okay. That's I have to tell you this is different. It's unique. And I'm glad that you're sharing this story in the way that you're sharing it. And I know it's, I know it's certainly very real to you. And not trying to be funny. I'm just, yes, yes. And, and I mean,

Gregg Korbon (28:58.242)
Yeah, I think that's another statement.

James Moffitt (29:05.362)
I don't think any of us have all the answers, right? We all go, we all, we all go through the grief process and you know, we all have our, stories that we tell, you know, and things that we experience. And, I, I certainly believe that there is a spiritual realm all around us right now, as well as, there's spiritual realm when we leave this earth, right? When we, we pass on, you know, don't, I don't think.

Gregg Korbon (29:08.823)
no. no.

James Moffitt (29:35.101)
I don't think death is final. I think our spirits live on forever. There's probably a lot of debate about heaven and hell and all this other kind of stuff. I have my faith and my belief system that I embrace, but I certainly don't think that I've come to a place of all knowledge or wisdom about all of that.

Gregg Korbon (30:01.378)
Well, that's okay. That kind of brings up the question. So I get these reporters and I tell them, you know, sorry about your loss, they would say. And I would say, but, but Brian told us he was going to die and left behind all this stuff and all these weird things happened and nobody would follow up. Nobody, you know, and some national news would actually change the story. Brian.

dying of heart disease, wanted to score a run more than anything. Lyft got off his deathbed and went to the baseball diamond, you know, and staggered around the bases and collapsed. Scoring the first round of his little league career. They changed the story. Nobody would tell the true story. So James, why?

James Moffitt (30:52.404)
I, I don't, I don't know. think that I think perhaps we all have our own pre preconceived notion of what happens on the afterlife. Right. Does that make sense? And, um, uh, I personally haven't experienced that, but that doesn't mean that it's not real. And it doesn't mean that it didn't happen to you because obviously it did. And, and I think that.

that is special, this special thing, those are events that are special in your life, in the life of your family that are there for a reason, right?

Gregg Korbon (31:36.686)
Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, you know, we in order to be here, you know, people are all these scientists are saying, we live in a simulation. When you get into things like string theory and you get into the formulas, it really does look like it's a simulation with air tracking. Like, you know, when you create a video game or you could say, go back to Shakespeare, all the world's a stage.

Okay, but in order to do that, you have to have limited awareness to be to create a story. You have to have a person who's limited at the beginning, limited awareness, you have to have something that needs healing. You know, you got the three acts, you have to have time, arrow of time. And to go to create a stage, you have to have a bubble of limited awareness.

And stories like Brian really threaten that. When you hear that story, most people can't integrate it into their understanding, their belief system.

James Moffitt (32:56.308)
Let's talk a little bit about, you said you're an anesthesiologist, right? So you, being in the medical field, being a medical professional, being a doctor, I'm sure that you have experienced life and death, right? You've seen both sides of the spectrum. mean, I guess people come to you alive, right? And hopefully when they come out of anesthesia, you know,

they're still alive right that's the goal of having operations all the way you put them to sleep the surgeons do their work their magic or whatever

Gregg Korbon (33:26.926)
That's the goal.

Gregg Korbon (33:32.524)
Okay, let me tell you a little unknown fact. Okay, so a routine anesthetic, when I give you the drugs to put you asleep, it stops your breathing. That's the same drugs they use for, you know, when they do a lethal injection. The only difference is that we resuscitate you. So everybody, every anesthetic, you take somebody to the brink of death. But we're so good at resuscitating people.

Like in my 30 years of private practice, I never lost anybody. I'm the only anesthesiologist I know that can say that. It's not the anesthesiologist's fault, but usually the average anesthesiologist has a death, perioperative death, about every two to three years. So I've been really been very lucky. So yeah, so that's it. That's why we're so good at resuscitation. And it's because that's what we do day in and day out.

James Moffitt (34:28.722)
Right. I did not realize that you stopped breathing.

Gregg Korbon (34:33.356)
Yes, right. That's why we're so good at breathing for you.

James Moffitt (34:35.188)
Well, is that why... Now I'm going to show my ignorance here. I've watched too much TV. is that why... Is there a breathing tube that's inserted? And is there a machine that actually keeps breathing? Okay.

Gregg Korbon (34:47.66)
Yeah. Yeah. So to put you to sleep, you will stop breathing for a little while and I can ventilate you and then once I get you to the proper state, you can breathe on your own, but I'll have an airway in.

James Moffitt (35:03.54)
Got you. OK. All right. You know, you can watch all these movies and all these TV shows. And like I used to be in law enforcement, and I was actually an EMT at much younger years of my life. you watch TV, like, you know, when they show, like, when somebody has a heart attack and they die, and they have the scene with the machine that shows the flat line, there's no s-

Gregg Korbon (35:07.27)
no!

Gregg Korbon (35:29.272)
Yeah, EKG, EKG, yeah.

James Moffitt (35:32.404)
There's no such thing as a flat line. That line's going all over the place. Right? Yeah. And I, I'll you know, law enforcement stuff on TV and I'll be like, well that's bullshit. That's that is not even close to reality. And I'm sure you've seen shows or movies or scenes where you're like, right.

Gregg Korbon (35:35.712)
Usually, yeah.

Gregg Korbon (35:47.598)
Oh, well, they glorify emergency rooms, you know, ER, okay, but anything that's too much for the ER, go right up, you know, it's too much to handle, they come right to the operating room. So when they show these shows ER, they're doing stuff that they never do down there. That's always stuff that we would do in the OR. So, yeah.

James Moffitt (36:08.254)
You know, like Chicago MD and all those Chicago shows, Chicago police, Chicago, Chicago fire, Chicago, MD, or whatever the medical one was. forget, but yeah, you, you see them doing all sorts of stuff in the, in the ER. And, I had a, my wife, Katie, she, she had a brain tumor. wasn't malignant, but she lost hearing in one of her ears. Anyway, she had to have a neurosurgeon go in there and.

Gregg Korbon (36:12.418)
Right. Yeah.

James Moffitt (36:38.726)
remove as much of it as he could and they had to they had to actually close off the auditory canal or something like that to one of her ears because she couldn't hear anyway. anyway, she she went to they they found cancer found a tumor on one of her ovaries. Long story. They were during one of their surgeries, they were they going to put in a line. What's that thing they put in your head? I forget what it's called.

Gregg Korbon (37:07.004)
a shunt?

James Moffitt (37:07.932)
shunt, they put a shunt in her head and they were going to run it down into her chest cavity. And for some reason that wasn't working. And they said, okay, we'll run it down to the stomach area or the whatever. And so they, they had her in surgery for like 12 hours and then doctors, surgeons came out and pulled me into a conference room and said, man, we, we found your, we found a, cancerous, tumor or whatever on your wife's ovary and we want to remove it while we're in there, blah, blah, blah.

Gregg Korbon (37:18.222)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (37:37.951)
Well, they couldn't do that because they wanted her to make that decision and not me. And, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, the nurses and the other doctors in the O R I signed the permission. said, cause I knew my wife would have wanted them to take it out, you know? they were going to do a hysterectomy. That's what it was. They were going to take all of that out while they were in there. So anyway, the doctors and other medical staff in the operating room overrode that and said, no, you can't do that. She has to be the.

Gregg Korbon (37:42.03)
Really? I've never heard of it.

James Moffitt (38:07.028)
conscious and be able to make that decision on her own, whatever that happened.

Gregg Korbon (38:11.712)
That is not the way it's supposed to work.

James Moffitt (38:14.836)
So, so anyway, during one of those, so that was 2016, almost lost her. She was pretty sick. She had like three brain surgeries, like four rehabs. And, um, I had to take her to, um, I had to take her to the emergency room. went down to MUSC and she was in emergency room and I forget, I forget what the issue was. She was having problems breathing or something. I don't know. So she was an ER. What was it? No. Yeah. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. Yeah.

Gregg Korbon (38:39.224)
Is that South Carolina?

Yeah.

James Moffitt (38:44.434)
It wasn't a breathing issue. she was having, she was dizzy and having pain in her head. Anyway, we, we told them about the brain tumor and all that. And then the near neurologist was there at MUSC. And so they rushed her into the emergency rooms and started working on her. And, I noticed there, there was a clock on the wall, a timer. And I asked one of the nurses that was in the room and the, in the ER room where she was at, I said, what, I said, what's, what's, what's the deal with the timer?

And she was like, you really don't know what, you don't really want to know what that timer is all about. You know? And I guess, I guess at some point the treatment team turns that timer on and at the end of the time, whatever that might be 10, 20, 30 minutes, I don't know. I guess they quit working on you, you know, when all, all is lost. And I was like, Whoa. Yeah. Let's not turn that. Let's not turn that timer on. Let's, let's get her fixed and get her back on the road. You know? And they, they didn't have to, they, got her up to a regular room and she was fine. And, but anyway, yeah.

All of that, all that medical stuff and the reality of life and death is just breathtaking, you know, when you're in the middle of it.

Gregg Korbon (39:51.798)
It is. Yeah, it is. It's more than we can understand and control. So I'm glad things worked out so well.

James Moffitt (40:02.932)
Yes, me too. She's cancer free and she's a special education teacher and she still has a little belles palsy, you know, on one side of her face and, and, uh, she can't feel the outside of her face. Uh, it's sometimes, but anyhow, so, uh, what else do you want to talk about? What else do you want to, what else would you like to share with the listening audience? I apologize for taking us down that rabbit hole.

Gregg Korbon (40:16.866)
Mm-hmm.

Gregg Korbon (40:30.284)
No, no, that was good. I appreciated your sharing that. So the idea that we are so limited in our awareness, but there's an infinite intelligence that's running the universe. And on my website, that page four, magical child talks about that. Things like now after

being around magical children and having had a wonderful teacher like Joe Pierce, I talk about how children who've shown this great intelligence, it's there. But I'm a beekeeper, you can see from my beekeeping outfits in the back of my...

James Moffitt (41:17.808)
yeah, I was wondering about that.

Gregg Korbon (41:20.046)
Yeah, it either looks like I'm a fencer or I'm a beekeeper, so...

James Moffitt (41:22.674)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking some kind of athletic something or another because you said you were really into athletics or the outdoors or whatever

Gregg Korbon (41:26.574)
Yeah. So, yeah, so since since I've been aware of this stuff, I'm much my eyes are much more open to to that sort of stuff and in a regular reality. So, you know, this is an example of the intelligence that's out in the universe that we are, you know, just like Brian's story that would, you know,

The media would not tell it. Story code would, and it was like a real stretch for them. And thank goodness they did. They were also the only people to vet the story. Now, you know, in law enforcement about security clearances. Okay, so I make an unusual claim. And you would expect that there would be 100 things that you would check out about my story.

James Moffitt (42:13.387)
yeah.

Gregg Korbon (42:26.668)
It was so unusual, right? Nobody would check it out. Finally, StoryCorps did. But nowhere near what I would have done, you know, or if you're going for top secret clearance, you got there talking to your neighbors, has he ever lied, you know, has he ever cheated on his wife? All that stuff like that. So the stuff I would have done to the degree to vet my story, his picture started fading.

I ordered a new picture five months before he died. Okay, that would be good to know to go to the store, you know, have stopped photo, another closed, you know, stuff like that. So it was my frustration. So many things, his therapist, he could talk to the dozens of people that knew that we were dealing with that stuff like that. A lot of them are dead now, you know, that kind of stuff. So the evidence

I couldn't present as well as I wanted to. But when you look around, like, okay, so your average honeybee goes out and, well, it had 150 flowers on each trip and bring the pollen and looking for the nectar and bring pollen back to the hive. All right. Now, in information theory and computer science, the hardest problem is the traveling salesman problem.

the hardest one to solve. And you need a team full of math geniuses and supercomputers to figure out the most efficient way to go to all those flowers. And usually they'll give a graduate student 30 flowers or 30 places. But, all right, so a honeybee with a brain the size of a grain of sand will outperform a team of math geniuses using supercomputers.

All right, so they had to adopt bee behavior in their algorithms to be able to match the bee. Okay, that's the intelligence that this bee is operating with way beyond what you and I can do. All right. The flowers in the field want to have the most number of trips with the least amount of nectar. It's hard to make nectar. So what they do is they

James Moffitt (44:30.428)
right

Gregg Korbon (44:50.926)
randomly move the nectar around the flowers, not just among the flowers in a plant, but the whole field. The whole field is connected by an internet of fungal hyphae. And they all work together mathematically to maximize the number of bee trips with the least amount of nectar. The mathematics of that is more than your average math major, you know, could do without special help. Okay.

James Moffitt (45:19.337)
Wow.

Gregg Korbon (45:20.662)
I mean, the plants don't have a brain. They're operating at a very high level of intelligence. And then you've got spiders that are trying to eat the honeybees. So they put out their web. Spider does not have a brain. And not everyone, but some spiders, which not only is a web a very complex, well engineered phenomenon that they somehow know how to do perfectly. But the each

flower has an ultraviolet landing pattern that the insects use to lure them into the nectar. And so the spiders will recreate that on their web to trick the honeybees into landing on the web. But the spider has never been in the flower. the flowers change every couple of weeks.

and the spider will change the landing pattern to correspond to whatever flowers in bloom. So just to say, just something simple like watching a bee go out and gather nectar, the intelligence is way beyond anything that science can explain.

James Moffitt (46:39.826)
Right. It is pretty wild.

Gregg Korbon (46:41.538)
So, yeah, so I mean, if they talked out, everybody would believe in God, we wouldn't know what it was, but we would all know that there's something going on.

James Moffitt (46:55.09)
hear you did did you watch the movie beekeeper with Jason Statham

Gregg Korbon (47:01.1)
I know, but I want to. Was it good?

James Moffitt (47:03.488)
it is out of this world. Good. If you like action flicks, it's a, it is a, it's a, I don't want to ruin it for you, but it's a story about, good overcoming evil.

Gregg Korbon (47:17.784)
Well, yeah, that's the other thing. All the world's a stage. What do you need? You need illuminated awareness, you need space and time, and you need good and evil.

James Moffitt (47:18.004)
You've gotta watch it. If you're a beekeeper, you gotta watch it.

James Moffitt (47:33.534)
Gotcha.

Alright, Dr. Corbin, thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your story with us today. To all the fathers listening, remember this is a safe place where your grief matters and you're never alone. Until next time, take care and hold on to hope. And thank you for the privilege of your time. And thank you, Dr.

Gregg Korbon (47:55.79)
Most welcome.