The Life You Thought You’d Have

In this episode, Chris reflects on the losses that shaped his 40s — losing his mother, father, brother in many ways, and eventually his wife to Covid — and how grief has a way of changing not only who we love, but who we become.

What begins as a conversation about loss slowly becomes something deeper:
a reflection on identity, survival, rebuilding, and learning how to live honestly after the future you imagined disappears.

This episode is about grieving timelines, carrying responsibility through heartbreak, and realizing that rebuilding your life doesn’t always look dramatic or glamorous.

Sometimes…
it just looks intentional.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

There's a strange thing that happens as you get older. You start realizing you're not just grieving people anymore. You're grieving versions of yourself. Timelines. Futures you were certain were gonna happen. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately, especially since I get closer to turning fifty later this summer. Because when I look back at my forties, I don't really think of them as in terms of accomplishments. I think of them in terms of loss. Loss that changed me. Loss that forced me to grow. And honestly, loss that forced me to become someone I never expected to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I'm Chris, and this is the seventh paradigm.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

At thirty-eight, I had a career in retail management. I was moving up. The company I was with was talking about relocating my wife and me to another part of the country. And I turned it down. I turned it down because my parents were getting older and I wanted to stay close to them. At thirty-nine, I lost my mother to cancer.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

And that loss devastated me. I was a mama's boy.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

I didn't know how I was supposed to function without her. And that was the first real loss I had ever experienced in my life. And then just a year later, my career ended too. And suddenly my wife and I were sitting there trying to figure out what came next. A few months later I started my woodworking business, but like most businesses, it was slow in the beginning. So we needed income, and eventually I landed in the career I'm in now. Then at forty one, I lost my father. But the strange thing about grief is sometimes you don't even realize you haven't processed it yet. When my mom died, I focused on taking care of my dad. When my dad died, I focused on handling his estate. So I kept moving, kept functioning, kept surviving. And between losing my mom and losing my dad, my brother right above me had an aneurysm. And after that, he just wasn't the same. So it felt like life just kept hitting from every direction. And when you stay in survival mode long enough, you don't even realize you're carrying grief anymore. You just think exhaustion is your personality. But I'd never really learned how to grieve. And honestly, nobody really teaches you how. Then at forty-five, I lost my wife to COVID. And I think losing her forced me to grieve all three losses at the same time. My mom hit me hard because she was my mom. My dad hit me hard because he was my dad.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And my wife. She was my everything. Losing my wife was different than losing my parents.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

My mom had cancer. We knew what was coming, even if we didn't want to admit it. My dad fell, and there was a long rehab ahead of him. But he never really recovered. The decline happened over months. Again, we knew what was coming. We just never said it out loud. COVID was different. It wasn't immediate like an accident, but it also wasn't long enough for your mind to fully catch up to what was happening. It was a strange space between hope and fear. And the hardest part was I had COVID too. We both went to the hospital. We both ended up in the ICU.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I came home. She didn't.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

So the first half of my forties became about surviving loss. And the second half of my forties became about learning how to live with it. And when the future you plan disappears, when life becomes unrecognizable, it can feel unbearable at times. But eventually, you have to find something inside of you that keeps you moving forward, even if you don't fully know where you're going yet. And somewhere in all of that, I realized I had two choices. I could spend the rest of my life mourning the future I lost, or I could start building a different one.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Not a replacement life. Not a better life. Just an honest one.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And I think that's what my late forties have really been about. Learning what actually matters to me now. Learning I don't need as much as I thought I did. Learning peace and success aren't always the same thing. Learning that sometimes rebuilding your life doesn't look glamorous. It just looks intentional. And lately, I've even caught myself thinking about selling the house. And that thought would have terrified me years ago. Because for a long time the house represented stability. But grief changes you. And sometimes rebuilding your life means being honest enough to admit that the version of life you built before might not fit the person you're becoming. I realized life was still moving forward around me. I still had to function as an adult. I still had to get back to work. And most importantly, I still had responsibilities as a father and a grandfather. And the love of family matters. It motivates you. It grounds you. And honestly, it became one of the biggest reasons I kept going. I'm not going to sit here and pretend it wasn't ugly. The grief was devastating.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

The depression was crippling. And the sadness felt unrelenting.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

But as cliche as it sounds, eventually the darkness does get lighter. I guess some things become cliches because they're true. I had to learn how to get up again. I had to learn how to live again. And eventually I had to learn how to love life again.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And I still miss them. I still miss my mom. I still miss my dad. And I still miss my wife.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

I don't think those things ever fully leave you. But I've learned that grief and gratitude can exist at the same time. You can mourn the life you lost while still being thankful for the life that's still in front of you. And I think that's what my late forties have really been about. Not moving on, not quote unquote getting over it. Just learning how to carry it differently. Learning how to keep living. Learning how to keep loving. Learning how to keep showing up for the people who still need me. And maybe that's what rebuilding really is. Not becoming the person you used to be, but learning how to become someone new without losing the people who help shape you. Be blessed, be safe, and go build.