October 22, 2020 • 45 mins
Lindsay Roemer assumed she’d metabolized, and mostly moved on from, the secret that had been kept from her most of her life—until an unexpected Facebook message from a man she’d never met changed everything she thought she knew about her father.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning.
This episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
If you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. At I think
(00:26):
I was old enough to think, not like, oh my god,
she lied to me. I can't believe she did that.
But I think I had the thought, well, there must
be a reason she lied about it. There must be
a reason she didn't want me to know. I think
I was worried about like upsetting her, or I wouldn't
say I was scared. I was more nervous to say anything.
So I just that's kind of my m O, like nervous.
(00:46):
Sometimes if I'm scared or nervous to do something, I
just don't do it, or I put it off. I'd
procrastinate it. That's Lindsay Romer. And this is a story
of a layer to see grit, the kind that begins
in childhood and moves through life in various ways, sometimes
so subtle that we don't even know what's happening. We
(01:09):
just have a faint whiff of something not quite adding up,
not quite making sense. And as always when the secret
is finally spoken, fully revealed, Finally, though it may be shocking,
finally we understand. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
(01:41):
the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, was born there,
and I really have nothing but positive memories of my childhood,
(02:06):
even with you know, my parents got divorced when I
was I think, maybe like three, but I still everything.
I think it's when you're a child, you kind of
see everything with rose colored glasses. I guess that makes sense.
It was just kind of normal. There were kids that
I went to school with her that I knew that
seemed to have a whole lot of things, things that
(02:27):
they did in their lives, sometimes like more than I
guess what I felt like I had. But I never
felt like I was missing anything. My mom was always
very loving and caring and a cute little house in
Baltimore County, and it was me and my brother and
your brother is he's three years younger than me. Do
you have memories of that really early childhood time. I
(02:51):
know your father died when you were five. Do you
have memories of him? He was actually a magician. Um.
He used to, you know, do shows all over the
place and would always do my birthday parties. And I
just remember him as like a happy, just kind of glowing,
magical person. I don't ever remember him seeming or being
(03:12):
sad or upset. Do you have any memories of his
performing at your at your birthday parties? I do. There's
one in particular. It's just kind of like a flash
of a memory. Sitting in front of the bay window
at our old house, and maybe it was probably a
small party, maybe I had like seven or eight friends over,
and he did you know, it, was doing some magic tricks.
(03:34):
And it was this combination of so excited and happy
that he was performing for us, and also like very proud,
you know, thinking like, oh my god, my friends must
think this is so cool. My dad's a magician. And
maybe cool wasn't the word I used, but oh my god,
my dad's a magician, Like this is kind of as
good as it gets for a tiny kid. I remember
being at one of his magic shows in the theater,
(03:56):
and I was either in the front row or pretty
close to the front row and I had I remember
these sun kissed fruit snacks that my mom used to buy,
and they were a little little like pellet shaped things,
and I would wash them onto my fingernails and pretend
that I had pretty fancy lady nails. And I remember
watching one of his magic shows while sitting doing that
with my nails in the audience. After my parents separated,
(04:18):
he had um, you know, obviously his own place, and
it was just decorated with so much magic stuff. I
remember there was a slot machine that took dines, and
he would just have this unlimited supply of dimes and
would just let me play on that. Did your mom
work as well? She did. She still has the same
job she had. Um Out of school, she went to
(04:38):
Micah and she's an interior designer. Tell me a little
bit more about your mother. My mom, she's somebody I
hold as you know, Like I said, my brother is
one of my best friends, I hold my mom just
as close. She's someone over the years that I have
grown to develop just so much respect for and how
(05:00):
much love. And I've always loved her. I've never there's
never a point in my life and I was like,
you know, my Mom's the meanest other than probably when
I was going through puberty and she told me I
couldn't go to the movies or something. But she is
someone that I now have two step daughters that are
nine and eleven, and there's so many times that I
will call her a text her and be like, oh
my god, one of them just did something to me
(05:21):
that really upset me or hurt my feelings. And I
know I did the same thing to you, and I'm
so sorry, And you know, this gives me this whole
new level of respect for her. I think is a parent.
And one thing that always stuck out to me is
when we were kids, you know, we weren't wealthy by
any means, but she never, if you know, me and
my brother would ask for a million things as kids do,
(05:42):
whether we were at the grocery store, towards r US
or wherever, and she would never say we can't afford that.
She would just say we don't need that. And that
was something that looking back as an adult, I think
was just um a wise, I guess way of saying
that to us and kind of helped me, I guess
as I grew up as an adult valuate you know,
do I need this? No, I don't need this. Maybe
(06:03):
I just put it back on the shelf. I shouldn't
get it today. Right, that's so interesting. So it wasn't
coming from a place of scarcity, but from like a
value judgment or weighing what's necessary or what we need
and what we don't. M hm. So Lindsay's dad is
(06:26):
a magician. Really, this has got to be like hitting
the parental jackpot. Well, maybe astronaut or owner of a
candy factory. It's been a couple of years since her
parents marriage ended. Her parents now share custody, and Lindsay's
father is supposed to be picking Lindsay and her brother
up for their time with him. But on this particular night,
(06:48):
he never shows. It was a Tuesday night and my
mom was out of town and my grandmother was staying
with us, and he just didn't show up. But I
remember like looking out the window and it just got
later and later and later, and he just never arrived.
My grandmother and then she was like, you know, it's
too late, you guys have to go to bed. Let's
just go to bed. And the next day my mom
(07:11):
came back from her trip early. I wasn't expecting her
that early, and there were all these people in our
house and I couldn't find my mom. They're just I
kept being like, where's my mom, where's my mom? And
I remember people being leave your mother alone. She'll she'll
be down in a minute, and leave your mother alone.
But I just had this very vivid memory of being
in that house and just seeing, you know, as short
as I was at five years old, just seeing all
(07:32):
these legs everywhere. And then I finally went up and
found her in her bedroom and she sat me down
and was like, I have to tell you something. Daddy
died in a car accident. And I don't think at
that age I really quite understood what death was. We
had had a dog that died, but I don't think
that was ever. I knew the dog just wasn't coming back.
(07:54):
She but just wasn't coming back anymore. But I don't
think I quite understood. But I do remember sitting on
her bed and crying because I think I knew death
was like I knew she been net wasn't coming back
so then, and my dad wasn't coming back. And I'm
assuming your brother wasn't there for that conversation because he
was too little. Oh yeah, he was so little. I
(08:15):
mean he was I guess a little over too. I
don't know what kind of conversation my mother had with him,
or how she said it or what she said, but
I'm sure something simple was communicated to him. So Lindsay
grows up having been told that her dad died in
(08:35):
a car accident. She was also told that the accident
was due to carbon monoxide poisoning. As children, we tend
to take what we're told at face value, and yet
at the same time, if it doesn't make sense, we
puzzle over it, or we get nervous about it. We
can't quite let it go. We create our own narratives,
(08:56):
as Lindsay does. Here, remember asking, and my mom said
something along the lines of if he's stay in your
car for too long with the windows rolled up, carbon
monoxide can get in your car and it can kill you.
So the way that was explained to me, I didn't
quite get it. So, like when I was a kid,
at red lights in the car, I would crack my
(09:16):
window a little bit because I was afraid that would
happen if we sat at a red light for too
long with our windows rolled on. Does your mom me Mary?
She did, Yeah, when I was about ten, How did
you experience loss of your father, Like, how did you
internalize it? And how did you think about him as
you were growing up, as you got a little bit older,
(09:39):
as your mom remarried, as you got to middle school,
high school, how did that sit inside of you? First
and foremost, I just I missed him, But I think
I always felt like I didn't know anybody else to
my age whose father had died, So I guess it
made me feel really left out sometimes. Or if I
would go to a friend's house and see them, like,
(10:01):
you know, their father hug them, or their father be
there at dinner, or their father take them somewhere or
take us somewhere, that was always like a reminder I
don't have that. I don't have a my biological dad
here anymore. It wasn't something I think I thought about
twenty four hours a day, but I would notice it
in moments like that, and it just made me feel
kind of left out or mothered, or it made me
(10:23):
feel sad. How old are you when you learn that
there's more to the story than carbon monoxide poisoning. As
I grew up, I would see very sele sporadically, not often,
but once in a while I would see somebody it
portrayed in like a TV show or a movie where
(10:44):
somebody would get in their car and attach to you know,
regular car up so that that would happen, and I
remember thinking, that's weird. And I remember hearing carbon monoxide
said out loud in at least one or two of
these shows or movies, and I was like, Oh, that's weird.
That guy did it on purpose. I was told it
was an accident of what happened to my dad, that
it wasn't on purpose. And when I was in high school,
(11:07):
my stepdad. My stepdad has two brothers. One it's awesome
and we see him all the time at holidays and
whenever our families get together. And the other one, I
think has struggled with mental illness his whole life, and
he would do odd things. And there was one time
when I was in high school and he called our
house and I answered that I happened to be the
one to answer the phone, and you know, maybe we
(11:30):
had call her. I d then, I don't know, it
was like the house phone and I just said hello,
and he said Lindsay why did your dad kill himself?
And I was like, okay, Mom, Jack's on the phone, like,
what what is this? You know? She took the phone
and I guess they had their conversation, and then when
she hung up, I told her what he said, and
she said, oh, he's crazy. Don't listen to him. That's
(11:51):
not true. I was like, Okay, he had done some
had some kind of erratic and odd behavior in the past,
so I didn't think to like question um what she said.
And then when I was I was like twenty two
or twenty three, I had gotten accepted into an AmeriCorps program.
We're just kind of like Peace Corps, but in America,
(12:12):
and I needed my birth certificate or a copy of
my birth certificate for it. And I was always I'm
embarrassed to admit that I was such a snoop when
I was a kid. It's always like going through stuff
in my house that was not mine. But this wasn't
even like intentional snooping. I really I knew we had
this file cabinet in the basement that had documents in it,
and I don't know if my mom wasn't home or
(12:34):
if I just didn't want to bother her and I
went looking for my birth certificate and I found my
dad's death certificate, and I remember it was a plain,
simple piece of paper and there were different options like
natural causes illness, a few other things in suicide, and
I just remember there's a big typewriter looking X next
(12:55):
to suicide, and I was like, whoa it. You know,
was the first time I guess it was really confirmed
for me. And I think in the back of my mind,
I think I knew that's what it was, even though
my mom told me it wasn't. It was based on
those depictions that I had seen in TV shows and movies,
and I think I just didn't want to really accept
(13:16):
that as the truth. And then I didn't really have
a choice but to accept it when I saw it
on the paper. You know, it's so interesting when you
when you bring up snooping, because that's such a theme,
was people who have had secrets kept from them. I
think we so often become these little slews or snoops,
(13:40):
you know, without having any idea why, but it becomes
this like little obsessive behavior. It was kind of it's
funny that you said that it was sound was like
a little private investigator. Yeah, I guess that now here
you say that that makes a lot of sense to me.
I don't think I could have put into words before.
I think I think I was thought I was just
(14:00):
like a rude little kid. It's like, I'm going to
find some things out that I'm probably not sopposed too.
If you can call it back to mind, what did
it feel like that moment that you saw that X
next to suicide. I think physically the feeling I felt
was like my stomach dropped. But then in my mind
(14:20):
I almost said to myself, Duck, you've known this. Jack
said it, You've seen this in movies. You just weren't
letting the puzzle pieces all get pushed together in the
right arrangement. I think I kind of didn't want to
believe it, so I didn't believe it, but then I
had to when I found that paper. We'll be back
(14:44):
in a moment with more family secrets now. Lindsay knows
unequivocally that her mother has actively kept from her the
fact of her other suicide. She had directly asked, and
her mother had said, and I quote, no, no, that
(15:05):
didn't happen. She sits on this information for a little
while wrestling with it privately. She also doesn't want to
cause her mother pain. Sometimes it's easier not to say
anything at all. I think I was old enough to think,
not like, oh my god, she lied to me. I
can't believe she did that, But I think I had
(15:27):
the thought, well, there must be a reason she lied
about it. There must be a reason she didn't want
me to know. I think I was worried about like
upsetting her, or I wouldn't say I was scared. I
was more nervous to say anything. So I just that's
kind of my m O, like nervous. Sometimes if I'm
scared or nervous to do something, I just don't do it,
or I put it off, or I procrastinate it. So
(15:47):
it wasn't until a couple of months later when I
was actually away. I was in Denver, Colorado, at a
training for my Americorp program, and one night, I'm really
not sure what inspired me to do it, I just
called her. I just was like, I'm going to do
this now. And I called her and told her what
I found. And I just remember hearing this, not an
(16:08):
angry sigh, not a sad sigh, just a I don't
know if it was relief or if it was worried
or if I don't know what it was, but she
just kind of sighed and said, yeah, yeah, that's what happened.
And I remember asking her, like, you know, why didn't
you tell me? And her response was just, you know,
when should I have? There never was a right time.
(16:31):
Just I didn't know how to tell a five year
old little girl that, and when do I do it
when you're ten, when you're fifteen, eighteen twenty one. There
never was a right time, and I just never knew
when to drop that bomb. And you know, I was like,
I get that, that's kind of a nice kind of
the way I operate. If I'm scared or I don't
know how, I just don't do it. I think I
remember being a little bit like you lied to me?
(16:52):
Why you lied to me? And I think her response
was just kind of I panicked. You know, I didn't
expect Jack to call and say anything like that to you.
That's not you know, if you ever were to know,
that's not the way I wanted you didn't find out.
I wasn't mad or anything, but I was grateful that
we had that conversation and that she did open up
about it, And did she give you any sense of
(17:16):
the reason for or the motivation behind your father's suicide.
Did she talk about his being in any way unstable
or mentally ill or depressed? Not really. It was kind
of like my whole life. She didn't speak highly of him,
but she also didn't speak poorly of him. She just
didn't really speak about him much at all. And I noticed,
(17:40):
you know, throughout my life if I had a question
about him, where I brought him up, it almost seemed
like she kind of like winced or like her body
tense stuff. And that communicated to me like maybe I
shouldn't bring him up too often because it just seemed
like uncomfortable or maybe painful for her. She just said,
and that conversation when I was in Denver just that
(18:01):
he was very he was very depressed. He was having
on her time. But she really didn't give me any
kind of details about anything, you know. It's it's also
so interesting I think when as children or in families,
when we sense that a subject is painful or off limits,
(18:23):
or you know, you describe your mother as wincing, that
serves to keep us quiet. It serves to you know, like,
not want to cause pain, not want to rock the
boat in any way. I think it too was like
my mother. I've always just seen her as perfect and strong,
and I didn't want to do anything to make her
(18:45):
not feel like that or upset her, don't make her
feel sad. Lindsey grows up to be a successful adult
with a great job. She has the whole story. She
knows all there is to know about how she lost
her father. She's moved on. If you were to come
across her Facebook page, you'd see whatever she had made
(19:07):
public on social media, perhaps a few photos and posts,
the information that you worked for a nonprofit and it
graduated from Villanova. You know, so many family secret stories
would not have come to light if not for social media,
and what you're about to hear next is one of them. Yeah,
(19:28):
I think with my early thirties, I've got the Facebook
message from a man named Brian um Because, a very
handsome older man with gray hair and like a gray goatee,
And this message said I knew your dad and I
knew your grandmother. We were friends. It looks like you
live a really great life right now. I think your
dad would be very happy to see that, and when
(19:50):
I first read it, it caught me off guard because
that my father just wasn't spoken of often really, even
between my brother and I that much. UM and we
didn't see my father there's side of the family very
often either, So it just wasn't a topic that came
up a lot. I thought about it a lot, but
it wasn't something that was like spoken about a lot.
So to have this, you know, essentially a stranger send
(20:11):
me this message, you know, part of it was just
it just really caught me off guard, and I didn't
really know how to respond to it, so I didn't.
And then I asked my mom about the name, and
she said, yeah, you don't really have to respond to
that person, like you didn't show any kind of emotion
in her face, didn't just was like, ah, yeah, that
might have been someone from your day's pass and now
(20:33):
you don't have to respond to him. I was like,
all right, So your mother says, no need to get
back to him, so that door gets closed. And then
what happens, Well, I guess fast forward maybe like five six,
seven years, and generally the education and training programs that
I do are around Baltimore City, UM in Baltimore County.
(20:54):
But one of my co workers who lives on the
eastern shore of Maryland and she you know, does education
around there. She was out on medical weave and she
had this class that she did at facility in Delaware
that supports folks who are in recovery from drives and alcohol.
And my supervisor was like, hey, listen, I know this
is super far away. It's just once a month. Can
(21:16):
you cover these until your coworkers out of medical agnostic? Sure,
no problem. And I had just started to get into
listening to podcasts, and I was like, amazing, I've got
like a two plus hour drive, you know, five probably
five hours round trip. I was in my car that
day and I think that around the times when I
stumbled on your podcast Family Secrets, and I found myself
(21:38):
so immersed into the episodes and they made the drive
feel like it was twenty minutes. And I remember pulling
up to the facility on the first class that I
did there, and I was like, I wish I wish
the driver longer. Um, you know, totally enjoyed my class
with them, and then I was really excited to get
back in the car and listen to more and I
found myself really eating with a lot of the guests
(22:01):
that you had, and I thought to myself, Wow, we
had a family secret, but I already figured mine out,
you know, finding my father's death certificate. And it started
to make me think, as I heard some of your
guests say, sometimes when they found out the secret that
was within their family, the secret keepers had had passed
away and they were not able to ask the questions
(22:22):
to those people that they wanted to ask. And I'm
almost finished your book, Dannos, like six pages left. I
was soping to have it's on before I got on
the call with you today, but I noticed that it
sounded like that was something for you too. I think
that you wish you had been able to ask your
parents about your family secret. So I thought to myself,
you know, my mom doesn't love to talk about my
(22:44):
father that much. So I really need to start reaching
out to people that I know and find out some
more stories, because if I don't find these out, they're
gonna leave this earth with the people that know them.
Lindsay is right. That was such a fear and preoccupation
of mine as well. When I first discovered my family's secret.
My parents were gone, and they had taken it to
(23:04):
the grave with them, but there was a great sense
of urgency to identify and find those who were still
living and might still know something. Those people started to
rise to the surface of my consciousness as if they
had been there all along, just waiting in line for
some reason. And this message from Brian, like, I never
forgot about it, I never deleted it, but it came
(23:26):
back to my mind once in a while, and it
certainly came back to my mind in those spots, and
I thought to myself, I should really respond to them.
I wonder, you know, how he knew my dad or
what kinds of stories he could tell. So I responded
to him, and he wrote me back almost immediately, and
I think accidentally tried to call me on Facebook audio
and remember seeing my phone ring, and I was like,
(23:47):
oh God, no, I should have done this. Look, oh,
I don't know if I wanted. I'm not ready to
speak at what's happening. I think the message I wrote
him was something along those lines and not with much detail,
but you know, I just wanted to reach out and
see if you I'd be willing to speak with me
on the phone. I would love to hear some stories
about my father, and he was very willing to do that,
and so we set up a date to talk. And
(24:08):
it was a date. I think I did this on
purpose because I was meeting some friends for brunch and
the place where we meeting was about four minutes away
from where I lived. So I made this date to
call him on my way out there. And I don't
want to say anxious was what I felt, but it
was like when, oh my god, that's gonna happen. What
it's going to be? And when I called him, he
(24:29):
sounded kind of slightly out of breath a little bit,
and I kind of gave him like the background that
I just gave you, you know what prompted me to
finally respond to the message. He's okay, and you know,
asked me a few questions about, you know, what did
you know about your mom and dad's relationship and what
did you know about your dad? And I kind of
was like, why is he asking you? I just wanted
(24:50):
to hear some stories, and he, you know, said okay, okay,
and he said, well, your dad was gay and he
and I had an affair. And there it is the
secret that had been lurking beneath the secret, the first
secret suicide, the second secret, Lindsay's father's sexuality, and then
(25:12):
there's more. And I said, what did you say? And
he repeated himself and I was like wow, He goes,
did you have any idea? And I said, nope, now
I didn't. He went on to tell me all sorts
of stories about how they met, and there were some
things that were very heartwarming. There were some things that
were also kind of upsetting and scary, and I think
(25:34):
gave me a little bit more of you into my
father's mental health. I would imagine that being five years
old and losing your father, one has lost someone that
one has never really gotten to know in a way
except for these flashes and these childhood memories. And so
(25:55):
now you're getting this avalanche of information, right, Yeah, that's
agree way of saying it. It did feel kind of
like an avalanche, and it wasn't an unwelcomed avalanche. It
was like, I was kind of like, wow, Okay, this
is giving me a much broader picture of who my
dad was, and you know, what he felt like and
what he went through. And after speaking with Brian and
(26:19):
you know, I reached out to a few other people,
and they all said similar things that he I don't
know that he was ever diagnosed, but that he had
bipolar disorder. I never saw the depressive states, I think.
I don't know if I saw nannic states or if
I saw, you know, what he wanted me to see
or what I wanted to see maybe for that matter.
But one of the first things he said was your
(26:40):
father was the most charming and charismatic person I've ever met.
And he said when they met, they had this just
instant connection. You know, they met, sat in his car
and talked for like three hours getting to know each other.
And how did they meet. They met at a gym.
I didn't ask too much too many details on like
you know, how that interaction or who walked up to who,
(27:01):
or how that went down, But I guess what I pictures.
They saw each other and kind of their eyes locked
and went towards each other and just started chatting. But
of course, even as this beautiful love story is playing out,
someone is suffering terribly because of it, Lindsay's mother. That's
(27:21):
what I think was extremely hurtful for my mother is
that she didn't know about his sexuality and he was
cheating on my mom with this person. And I think
after speaking to several family members and Brian and eventually
my mother. You know, it was the eighties, and I
think he was struggling with his sexuality and he was
suppressing who he knew he was because I think he
(27:43):
wanted to have this kind of stereotypical life of a
wife and kids and you know, white picket fence. I
don't think he necessarily felt that in his heart was
a pent who he was, and that, combined with his
mental illness, made his internal struggle really, really, really difficult.
From off. I think it was hard for him to
(28:04):
just come out and be out and be who he was,
and this was what the world was extremely homophobic, I
think back then compared to two thousand twenty, when I
think folks are a lot more accepting than they were,
you know, fourty years ago. Did his affair, your father's
affair with Brian have something to do with your parents divorce?
(28:30):
It did? Yeah, it was only a couple of weeks ago.
I finally talked to my mom about everything, and I
think I was kind of trying to gather my facts
and find my information before I talked to her. It
was another thing. I was just nervous to talk to
her about it. We'll be right back. A long time
(29:04):
elapses between the time Lindsay reaches out to Brian and
learns more of the truth about her father and when
she decides to actually tell her mother what she's discovered.
A phrase comes up. It was never the right time. This,
you might remember, is what Lindsay's own mother had told
Lindsay about why she never revealed her father's suicide. It
(29:25):
was never the right time. This is true of so
many families and so many secrets. We wait, We think
that the stars will align, that there will be a
perfect moment, but there never is. I'm embarrassed to say
it's almost a year and not quite but almost a year,
maybe about ten months. I guess I was nervous. I
(29:47):
was afraid of upsetting her. I'm so close to her.
I hold her as like one of my best friends.
She's somebody I feel very lucky to have that relationship
with her, and I can talk to her about just
about anything. But I was really nervous to talk to
to her about this. I think I was afraid of
retraumatizing her and making her like rehash all this. The
(30:09):
assumption that I made was that this must have been
so difficult for her to deal with when she found
out about his affair that she just kind of tucked
it away in a little box and put it in
a closet and was like, I'm never going back there again.
So I was kind of afraid to reopen that box
for her. And the timing was never right. It's like,
if I tell her right away, I'm going to ruin that.
(30:30):
That could ruin that vacation, and then all the holidays
are coming up. It's going to ruin the holidays. And
then we had a trip that we were my husband
and I. My husband's family lived with parents I should
say live in Florida, and he and I and my
mom and stepdad were going down there for like a
long weekend in February. And I was like, I was
gonna ruin that trip. And I was St Patrick's weekend.
(30:51):
My mom and I were supposed to go up to
New York to stay with her sister for the weekend.
It's kind of like a little tradition we started, I
guess a year ago, and you know, to see a
show and TUF dinner and do New Yorkie things, and
we had to cancel the trip because of Corona, and
my plan was to talk to her on the train
ride home because I was like, oh, we'll have at
(31:12):
least three hours alone together. That's going to be the
time that I do it. And then we had to
cancel the trip and I was like, oh my god,
we're all quarantined. When am I going to have this conversation?
Because it was really important to me to do it
in person. I just felt like it would be unkind
or rude or or mean even to just do it
over the phone. Um. I really wanted to be able
(31:33):
to do it in person. And then I think when
I finally got the email from your producer to set
up a date for this call, well, now, my my taker,
my time is counting down. I have to do this
before I have this call. Nothing like a deadline, right right,
Because I really didn't feel comfortable recording this episode without
(31:56):
like speaking to her first and making sure that she
was okay with it, because I guess I kind of
that it is this is not just my story, this
is her story. This didn't happen to me, This happened
to her, or you know, happened to us. One of
the hot topics that I teach and train about his
consent and I wanted to make sure that I had
her consent before I did this. And how did she respond?
She was very surprised. The only time I've been out
(32:19):
to a restaurant during all of the social distancing and
its outdoor seating, we were the only people there, so
it's very safe. We went to Lebanese to vernon, which
is delicious. And she had I think, like a chicken swarm,
a wrap in one hand and her fork in the
other hand. And I said, I need to talk to
you about something. And I saw her face kind of drop,
as I'm sure any mother would when their daughter says that.
It's like, oh my gosh, what's going to come out
(32:40):
of my child's face right now? And I gave all
these qualifiers, like I was nervous to bring this up,
and I wasn't sure how to do it. I don't
want to upset you. I'm afraid Joe be mad at me.
And I talked to a man named Brian. She dropped
her wrap and she dropped her fork and went, oh really,
I would both had sunglasses on, but she almost looked
(33:02):
like scared, and that made me feel awful because I didn't,
you know, I didn't want upset or I didn't want
to make her mad. Kind of jumped in and said,
I can't imagine what that must have been like for you.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You didn't deserve it.
And I was just wondering if we could talk about it,
and she kind of like I could see her relaxed slightly,
(33:23):
and then she kind of dropped her guard and really
just kind of shared everything. It sounded like with me
with what happened. Do you think maybe after holding that
for so many years that there was some relief? Well,
I asked her that, I mean it turned into a
(33:45):
three hour lunch and I said, towards the end, how
are you feeling? How do you feel? Do you feel relieved?
And she said kind of, I feel like I should
feel relieved, but I don't fully feel that. And I
was like, oh, no, maybe I shouldn't have done this,
and she went on to say, I don't know if
I feel relieved because I don't really think about this
much anymore. She said, I've done a lot of work
(34:06):
on myself, and I think I've moved past it to
the point where I don't really think about it much anymore.
What happened with Brian, You've had a you know, an
ongoing connection with him. I think he in fact, I
was able to share some stories and give some insight
(34:28):
onto who my father was and what he was like
that I don't know that I would have found out otherwise.
After I had that initial conversation with him, I then
was like, you know, immediately reached out to my brother
and he was just kind of what what our father
to my brother was kind of almost like this phantom
person that he doesn't really remember. And after I spoke
(34:50):
with him, I reached out to my dad's sister and
we set up a time to speak. And I really
wish that some of these conversations I had had in person,
because I kind of wanted to see their facial expressions.
But I was so nervous for all these different conversations
with people, and come to find out, they were expecting
me to ask this. So I called my dad's sister,
(35:12):
you know, so such this time to speak, and I
again because I was nervous, you know, gave all this beginning.
So I had a minute, you know, kind of doing
some finding some stories and I told her what I
found out and she said, Lindsay, I've been waiting over
thirty years for you to ask me about this, and she,
you know, shared a whole lot. And then I called
my godfather, who was good friends with my father, and
(35:32):
he said something similar. And I told my brother about
all this, and he said, do you think we're the
only people in the family that I don't know? And
I was like, Wow, that hadn't occurred to me, but yeah,
I think you might be right. And my brother was
working for about six weeks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and
Brian lives in Florida, not far from where MITI was working.
(35:55):
And I'm not sure which one of them got in
touch with each other first, but and I'm not sure
who proposed the idea, but they decided to meet up
in person. And MITCHI called me and told me that,
and I said, do you want me to book a
ticket and come with you? And he was, this is
a really big deal. I said, I know, Do you
want me to book a ticket and come down? And
he goes, this is a really big deal and he said, okay,
(36:16):
I'll book you think getting come down so his wife
and I flew down and we met up with Brian
for lunch the next day. And you know, I shared
all of this with my mom. I told her everything
at the lunch that we had, and I think it
was hurtful for her to hear that. Mitchell and I
(36:36):
went and met this man that our father had an
affair on her with. But he was so open and
so honest and shared so many stories. But you know,
good and bad. Remember, Lindsay's father was a magician, and
as a magician, he had certain tools of his trade,
white doves and a white rabbit he used in his shows.
(36:58):
Ryan tells Lindsay a story that must have been terribly
hard to hear about an argument that two of them
had at one point, one that illustrates just how much
mental anguish Lindsay's dad must have been dealing with. He
was so angry that he picked up his rabbit and
he threw it against the wall and killed it. I
don't say that to speak poorly at my father, to
(37:21):
make him sound like a scary monster person, but that
was his mental illness acting out and making him make
that choice. So Brian shared things like that with us,
but he also shared, you know, like your father was
so charismatic and everyone loved him. And Brian even went
on to tell us that he was actually in a
relationship with somebody with a man when he met our father,
(37:43):
and you know, it was also having kind of an
affair of his own. But Brian said, if this speaks
anything to the charisma that your father had, said, my
partner even got to be friends with your dad, like
your dad even won him over, And I was like, wow,
and it's just kind of surreal. It was a meeting
(38:03):
that was a story I never thought I would hear.
I feel guilty saying this because I know my mom
would not like to hear me say this, but I'm
grateful for the experience and it was just, I guess,
kind of a beautiful thing to meet somebody who knew
our dad on such a deep level. How do you
think that knowing all this now impact too? Are you glad?
(38:28):
You know? I am glad. I know I think all
of the processing and talked to some of my friends
about the story and my husband, my brother. I'm glad
that I know. And several people have said to me like,
are you mad at your mom for not telling you?
And I said, I'm not mad at her at all.
I have nothing but admiration, if not, you know, more
than I had before that she went through this, and
(38:50):
she gave me her version of things. She had no
idea that anything like this was going on. My dad
often would say he was working late and then would
moment like three o'clock in the morning, or you know,
he wouldn't come home at all. She would call a
hospitals and I seem an accident like what happened. She said.
He took her to see a play and the plot
(39:11):
of the play was about a man and a woman
that were married, and the man was gay and cheating
on her with other men. And she said it was
at that play that she was like, oh my god,
oh my god, oh my god, this is what's happening
in my marriage. And she maybe this is where I
got my private investigation skills from. But she she did
some snooping up her own and found some some things
(39:31):
that confirmed us for her, and confronted him and said,
I want to divorce. I know what's going on. This
is this relationship will go no further. And I think
just the way that she raised us, she didn't she
could have just bashed him every day to us. If
she wanted to, she could have put awful visions of
our father in our heads. And she didn't. You know,
(39:53):
she just didn't speak about it much at all. And
she picked herself up and she kept going, which I
think must have been so to be hard to have
two tiny children and then have your husband cheating on you,
and you know, I have no idea what's going on,
and then it's I just I can't imagine what that
must have been like for her, and to have to
make that choice of no, we're done, we will be
(40:14):
no longer. But she just kept going. And I told
her when we had lunch, I said, I have so
much admiration for you. You're so strong. You could have
started drinking, you could have started doing drugs, you could
have done a million things to cope with this. But
you just got up every day. You got us up,
every day, you took care of us, you went to work.
I had no idea that my mom ever went through
(40:34):
anything like this. There were no clues, there were no
mutterings or utterings of anything along these lines. So I
said that to her, and she said, well, what else
was I going to do? I had two kids. I
needed to focus on the good and I needed to
move forward and make sure you guys were taken care
of and and raise well. The homophobia of the era
(40:56):
also played a significant part in Lindsay's mom's decision not
to tell her kids the truth, and Lindsay's understanding of
the choices her mother made and her reasons for them
have brought the two of them even closer together. So ultimately,
this is a story that contains tragedy, sorrow, secrecy, and loss,
but also a deepening love between a mother and a daughter.
(41:21):
I said to her, why didn't you tell us? And
I was kind of expecting the same answer, as you know,
there never was a right time, and that's part of
what she said. But she also said she was worried
about telling us the whole truth because she was afraid
that we would get bullied because people were not accepting
of folks in the LGBTQ community then. And I was like, wow,
(41:43):
that never occurred to me as as a reason for
why she wouldn't have told us. And then I think
as time moved forward, it was kind of again like
when's the right time? How do I share this with them?
And if she had told us when we were kids,
we probably would have just accosted her every day with
like a million and one questions, kind of making her
relive all of this over and over and over again.
So I think it was a combination of trying to
(42:03):
protect us and also trying to protect yourself. That makes
me think of another kind of thematic family secrets thing
that runs through a lot of stories, which is that
what we find out and when we find it out,
I have a lot to do with how we're going
to be able to process or how a family is
able to process a secret having been kept, and that
(42:25):
this is a secret that came out in the fullness
of time, kind of when everybody could handle everything about it. Yeah,
that's definitely how I've looked at it, Like I'm grateful
to to have found out when I did, because I
think I'm enough of an adult to be able to
process that in a healthy and normal way. I don't
know how I would have processed that if I found
it when I was five, when I was ten, when
(42:46):
I was fifteen, you know, I don't know how my
brain would have handled that. The one other thing that
occurs to me is, as you're talking about your mother
is that this is actually I mean your your love
for her mother is so clear, and your respect for her.
This is a way of actually knowing her better and
having even more dimensionality to her for you. Yeah, I
(43:10):
think knowing all this and also finally hearing her version
of everything, it just makes me want to cuddle her
up and hug her forever. You know, when you think
you can't love a person more and then you find
you do. I guess that's kind of my reaction to it.
And I know it's weird for me to say I'm
proud of her, but I am proud of her. I
think for like I said earlier, getting up every day
(43:31):
and keeping a routine and raising her kids with love
and kindness and moving forward in her life. Everybody has
their own different version of the story and different kind
of interactions with each other. But yeah, I think it
gave us kind of a new maybe moved us to
like a new level in our relationship where we can
talk to each other about this. And it really felt
(43:53):
like it almost felt like when she when we were
at lunch and she was telling me everything. We were
friends like. It wasn't a daughter mother dynamic. It was
if we were friends, and feeling that didn't make me
feel nervous or panic to kind of made me feel
even closer to her that we have not only a
mother daughter relationship, but also a really strong foundation of friendship.
(44:28):
Family Secrets is an i Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan
is the supervising producer and Bethan Mcaluso is the executive producer.
We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
(44:49):
one eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then the
number zero. You can also find us on Instagram at
Danny Ryder and face book at facebook dot com slash
Family Secrets Pot, and Twitter at fami secrets Pot. For
(45:21):
more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the i Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning.
This episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
If you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. At I think
(00:26):
I was old enough to think, not like, oh my god,
she lied to me. I can't believe she did that.
But I think I had the thought, well, there must
be a reason she lied about it. There must be
a reason she didn't want me to know. I think
I was worried about like upsetting her, or I wouldn't
say I was scared. I was more nervous to say anything.
So I just that's kind of my m O, like nervous.
(00:46):
Sometimes if I'm scared or nervous to do something, I
just don't do it, or I put it off. I'd
procrastinate it. That's Lindsay Romer. And this is a story
of a layer to see grit, the kind that begins
in childhood and moves through life in various ways, sometimes
so subtle that we don't even know what's happening. We
(01:09):
just have a faint whiff of something not quite adding up,
not quite making sense. And as always when the secret
is finally spoken, fully revealed, Finally, though it may be shocking,
finally we understand. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
(01:41):
the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, was born there,
and I really have nothing but positive memories of my childhood,
(02:06):
even with you know, my parents got divorced when I
was I think, maybe like three, but I still everything.
I think it's when you're a child, you kind of
see everything with rose colored glasses. I guess that makes sense.
It was just kind of normal. There were kids that
I went to school with her that I knew that
seemed to have a whole lot of things, things that
(02:27):
they did in their lives, sometimes like more than I
guess what I felt like I had. But I never
felt like I was missing anything. My mom was always
very loving and caring and a cute little house in
Baltimore County, and it was me and my brother and
your brother is he's three years younger than me. Do
you have memories of that really early childhood time. I
(02:51):
know your father died when you were five. Do you
have memories of him? He was actually a magician. Um.
He used to, you know, do shows all over the
place and would always do my birthday parties. And I
just remember him as like a happy, just kind of glowing,
magical person. I don't ever remember him seeming or being
(03:12):
sad or upset. Do you have any memories of his
performing at your at your birthday parties? I do. There's
one in particular. It's just kind of like a flash
of a memory. Sitting in front of the bay window
at our old house, and maybe it was probably a
small party, maybe I had like seven or eight friends over,
and he did you know, it, was doing some magic tricks.
(03:34):
And it was this combination of so excited and happy
that he was performing for us, and also like very proud,
you know, thinking like, oh my god, my friends must
think this is so cool. My dad's a magician. And
maybe cool wasn't the word I used, but oh my god,
my dad's a magician, Like this is kind of as
good as it gets for a tiny kid. I remember
being at one of his magic shows in the theater,
(03:56):
and I was either in the front row or pretty
close to the front row and I had I remember
these sun kissed fruit snacks that my mom used to buy,
and they were a little little like pellet shaped things,
and I would wash them onto my fingernails and pretend
that I had pretty fancy lady nails. And I remember
watching one of his magic shows while sitting doing that
with my nails in the audience. After my parents separated,
(04:18):
he had um, you know, obviously his own place, and
it was just decorated with so much magic stuff. I
remember there was a slot machine that took dines, and
he would just have this unlimited supply of dimes and
would just let me play on that. Did your mom
work as well? She did. She still has the same
job she had. Um Out of school, she went to
(04:38):
Micah and she's an interior designer. Tell me a little
bit more about your mother. My mom, she's somebody I
hold as you know, Like I said, my brother is
one of my best friends, I hold my mom just
as close. She's someone over the years that I have
grown to develop just so much respect for and how
(05:00):
much love. And I've always loved her. I've never there's
never a point in my life and I was like,
you know, my Mom's the meanest other than probably when
I was going through puberty and she told me I
couldn't go to the movies or something. But she is
someone that I now have two step daughters that are
nine and eleven, and there's so many times that I
will call her a text her and be like, oh
my god, one of them just did something to me
(05:21):
that really upset me or hurt my feelings. And I
know I did the same thing to you, and I'm
so sorry, And you know, this gives me this whole
new level of respect for her. I think is a parent.
And one thing that always stuck out to me is
when we were kids, you know, we weren't wealthy by
any means, but she never, if you know, me and
my brother would ask for a million things as kids do,
(05:42):
whether we were at the grocery store, towards r US
or wherever, and she would never say we can't afford that.
She would just say we don't need that. And that
was something that looking back as an adult, I think
was just um a wise, I guess way of saying
that to us and kind of helped me, I guess
as I grew up as an adult valuate you know,
do I need this? No, I don't need this. Maybe
(06:03):
I just put it back on the shelf. I shouldn't
get it today. Right, that's so interesting. So it wasn't
coming from a place of scarcity, but from like a
value judgment or weighing what's necessary or what we need
and what we don't. M hm. So Lindsay's dad is
(06:26):
a magician. Really, this has got to be like hitting
the parental jackpot. Well, maybe astronaut or owner of a
candy factory. It's been a couple of years since her
parents marriage ended. Her parents now share custody, and Lindsay's
father is supposed to be picking Lindsay and her brother
up for their time with him. But on this particular night,
(06:48):
he never shows. It was a Tuesday night and my
mom was out of town and my grandmother was staying
with us, and he just didn't show up. But I
remember like looking out the window and it just got
later and later and later, and he just never arrived.
My grandmother and then she was like, you know, it's
too late, you guys have to go to bed. Let's
just go to bed. And the next day my mom
(07:11):
came back from her trip early. I wasn't expecting her
that early, and there were all these people in our
house and I couldn't find my mom. They're just I
kept being like, where's my mom, where's my mom? And
I remember people being leave your mother alone. She'll she'll
be down in a minute, and leave your mother alone.
But I just had this very vivid memory of being
in that house and just seeing, you know, as short
as I was at five years old, just seeing all
(07:32):
these legs everywhere. And then I finally went up and
found her in her bedroom and she sat me down
and was like, I have to tell you something. Daddy
died in a car accident. And I don't think at
that age I really quite understood what death was. We
had had a dog that died, but I don't think
that was ever. I knew the dog just wasn't coming back.
(07:54):
She but just wasn't coming back anymore. But I don't
think I quite understood. But I do remember sitting on
her bed and crying because I think I knew death
was like I knew she been net wasn't coming back
so then, and my dad wasn't coming back. And I'm
assuming your brother wasn't there for that conversation because he
was too little. Oh yeah, he was so little. I
(08:15):
mean he was I guess a little over too. I
don't know what kind of conversation my mother had with him,
or how she said it or what she said, but
I'm sure something simple was communicated to him. So Lindsay
grows up having been told that her dad died in
(08:35):
a car accident. She was also told that the accident
was due to carbon monoxide poisoning. As children, we tend
to take what we're told at face value, and yet
at the same time, if it doesn't make sense, we
puzzle over it, or we get nervous about it. We
can't quite let it go. We create our own narratives,
(08:56):
as Lindsay does. Here, remember asking, and my mom said
something along the lines of if he's stay in your
car for too long with the windows rolled up, carbon
monoxide can get in your car and it can kill you.
So the way that was explained to me, I didn't
quite get it. So, like when I was a kid,
at red lights in the car, I would crack my
(09:16):
window a little bit because I was afraid that would
happen if we sat at a red light for too
long with our windows rolled on. Does your mom me Mary?
She did, Yeah, when I was about ten, How did
you experience loss of your father, Like, how did you
internalize it? And how did you think about him as
you were growing up, as you got a little bit older,
(09:39):
as your mom remarried, as you got to middle school,
high school, how did that sit inside of you? First
and foremost, I just I missed him, But I think
I always felt like I didn't know anybody else to
my age whose father had died, So I guess it
made me feel really left out sometimes. Or if I
would go to a friend's house and see them, like,
(10:01):
you know, their father hug them, or their father be
there at dinner, or their father take them somewhere or
take us somewhere, that was always like a reminder I
don't have that. I don't have a my biological dad
here anymore. It wasn't something I think I thought about
twenty four hours a day, but I would notice it
in moments like that, and it just made me feel
kind of left out or mothered, or it made me
(10:23):
feel sad. How old are you when you learn that
there's more to the story than carbon monoxide poisoning. As
I grew up, I would see very sele sporadically, not often,
but once in a while I would see somebody it
portrayed in like a TV show or a movie where
(10:44):
somebody would get in their car and attach to you know,
regular car up so that that would happen, and I
remember thinking, that's weird. And I remember hearing carbon monoxide
said out loud in at least one or two of
these shows or movies, and I was like, Oh, that's weird.
That guy did it on purpose. I was told it
was an accident of what happened to my dad, that
it wasn't on purpose. And when I was in high school,
(11:07):
my stepdad. My stepdad has two brothers. One it's awesome
and we see him all the time at holidays and
whenever our families get together. And the other one, I
think has struggled with mental illness his whole life, and
he would do odd things. And there was one time
when I was in high school and he called our
house and I answered that I happened to be the
one to answer the phone, and you know, maybe we
(11:30):
had call her. I d then, I don't know, it
was like the house phone and I just said hello,
and he said Lindsay why did your dad kill himself?
And I was like, okay, Mom, Jack's on the phone, like,
what what is this? You know? She took the phone
and I guess they had their conversation, and then when
she hung up, I told her what he said, and
she said, oh, he's crazy. Don't listen to him. That's
(11:51):
not true. I was like, Okay, he had done some
had some kind of erratic and odd behavior in the past,
so I didn't think to like question um what she said.
And then when I was I was like twenty two
or twenty three, I had gotten accepted into an AmeriCorps program.
We're just kind of like Peace Corps, but in America,
(12:12):
and I needed my birth certificate or a copy of
my birth certificate for it. And I was always I'm
embarrassed to admit that I was such a snoop when
I was a kid. It's always like going through stuff
in my house that was not mine. But this wasn't
even like intentional snooping. I really I knew we had
this file cabinet in the basement that had documents in it,
and I don't know if my mom wasn't home or
(12:34):
if I just didn't want to bother her and I
went looking for my birth certificate and I found my
dad's death certificate, and I remember it was a plain,
simple piece of paper and there were different options like
natural causes illness, a few other things in suicide, and
I just remember there's a big typewriter looking X next
(12:55):
to suicide, and I was like, whoa it. You know,
was the first time I guess it was really confirmed
for me. And I think in the back of my mind,
I think I knew that's what it was, even though
my mom told me it wasn't. It was based on
those depictions that I had seen in TV shows and movies,
and I think I just didn't want to really accept
(13:16):
that as the truth. And then I didn't really have
a choice but to accept it when I saw it
on the paper. You know, it's so interesting when you
when you bring up snooping, because that's such a theme,
was people who have had secrets kept from them. I
think we so often become these little slews or snoops,
(13:40):
you know, without having any idea why, but it becomes
this like little obsessive behavior. It was kind of it's
funny that you said that it was sound was like
a little private investigator. Yeah, I guess that now here
you say that that makes a lot of sense to me.
I don't think I could have put into words before.
I think I think I was thought I was just
(14:00):
like a rude little kid. It's like, I'm going to
find some things out that I'm probably not sopposed too.
If you can call it back to mind, what did
it feel like that moment that you saw that X
next to suicide. I think physically the feeling I felt
was like my stomach dropped. But then in my mind
(14:20):
I almost said to myself, Duck, you've known this. Jack
said it, You've seen this in movies. You just weren't
letting the puzzle pieces all get pushed together in the
right arrangement. I think I kind of didn't want to
believe it, so I didn't believe it, but then I
had to when I found that paper. We'll be back
(14:44):
in a moment with more family secrets now. Lindsay knows
unequivocally that her mother has actively kept from her the
fact of her other suicide. She had directly asked, and
her mother had said, and I quote, no, no, that
(15:05):
didn't happen. She sits on this information for a little
while wrestling with it privately. She also doesn't want to
cause her mother pain. Sometimes it's easier not to say
anything at all. I think I was old enough to think,
not like, oh my god, she lied to me. I
can't believe she did that, But I think I had
(15:27):
the thought, well, there must be a reason she lied
about it. There must be a reason she didn't want
me to know. I think I was worried about like
upsetting her, or I wouldn't say I was scared. I
was more nervous to say anything. So I just that's
kind of my m O, like nervous. Sometimes if I'm
scared or nervous to do something, I just don't do it,
or I put it off, or I procrastinate it. So
(15:47):
it wasn't until a couple of months later when I
was actually away. I was in Denver, Colorado, at a
training for my Americorp program, and one night, I'm really
not sure what inspired me to do it, I just
called her. I just was like, I'm going to do
this now. And I called her and told her what
I found. And I just remember hearing this, not an
(16:08):
angry sigh, not a sad sigh, just a I don't
know if it was relief or if it was worried
or if I don't know what it was, but she
just kind of sighed and said, yeah, yeah, that's what happened.
And I remember asking her, like, you know, why didn't
you tell me? And her response was just, you know,
when should I have? There never was a right time.
(16:31):
Just I didn't know how to tell a five year
old little girl that, and when do I do it
when you're ten, when you're fifteen, eighteen twenty one. There
never was a right time, and I just never knew
when to drop that bomb. And you know, I was like,
I get that, that's kind of a nice kind of
the way I operate. If I'm scared or I don't
know how, I just don't do it. I think I
remember being a little bit like you lied to me?
(16:52):
Why you lied to me? And I think her response
was just kind of I panicked. You know, I didn't
expect Jack to call and say anything like that to you.
That's not you know, if you ever were to know,
that's not the way I wanted you didn't find out.
I wasn't mad or anything, but I was grateful that
we had that conversation and that she did open up
about it, And did she give you any sense of
(17:16):
the reason for or the motivation behind your father's suicide.
Did she talk about his being in any way unstable
or mentally ill or depressed? Not really. It was kind
of like my whole life. She didn't speak highly of him,
but she also didn't speak poorly of him. She just
didn't really speak about him much at all. And I noticed,
(17:40):
you know, throughout my life if I had a question
about him, where I brought him up, it almost seemed
like she kind of like winced or like her body
tense stuff. And that communicated to me like maybe I
shouldn't bring him up too often because it just seemed
like uncomfortable or maybe painful for her. She just said,
and that conversation when I was in Denver just that
(18:01):
he was very he was very depressed. He was having
on her time. But she really didn't give me any
kind of details about anything, you know. It's it's also
so interesting I think when as children or in families,
when we sense that a subject is painful or off limits,
(18:23):
or you know, you describe your mother as wincing, that
serves to keep us quiet. It serves to you know, like,
not want to cause pain, not want to rock the
boat in any way. I think it too was like
my mother. I've always just seen her as perfect and strong,
and I didn't want to do anything to make her
(18:45):
not feel like that or upset her, don't make her
feel sad. Lindsey grows up to be a successful adult
with a great job. She has the whole story. She
knows all there is to know about how she lost
her father. She's moved on. If you were to come
across her Facebook page, you'd see whatever she had made
(19:07):
public on social media, perhaps a few photos and posts,
the information that you worked for a nonprofit and it
graduated from Villanova. You know, so many family secret stories
would not have come to light if not for social media,
and what you're about to hear next is one of them. Yeah,
(19:28):
I think with my early thirties, I've got the Facebook
message from a man named Brian um Because, a very
handsome older man with gray hair and like a gray goatee,
And this message said I knew your dad and I
knew your grandmother. We were friends. It looks like you
live a really great life right now. I think your
dad would be very happy to see that, and when
(19:50):
I first read it, it caught me off guard because
that my father just wasn't spoken of often really, even
between my brother and I that much. UM and we
didn't see my father there's side of the family very
often either, So it just wasn't a topic that came
up a lot. I thought about it a lot, but
it wasn't something that was like spoken about a lot.
So to have this, you know, essentially a stranger send
(20:11):
me this message, you know, part of it was just
it just really caught me off guard, and I didn't
really know how to respond to it, so I didn't.
And then I asked my mom about the name, and
she said, yeah, you don't really have to respond to
that person, like you didn't show any kind of emotion
in her face, didn't just was like, ah, yeah, that
might have been someone from your day's pass and now
(20:33):
you don't have to respond to him. I was like,
all right, So your mother says, no need to get
back to him, so that door gets closed. And then
what happens, Well, I guess fast forward maybe like five six,
seven years, and generally the education and training programs that
I do are around Baltimore City, UM in Baltimore County.
(20:54):
But one of my co workers who lives on the
eastern shore of Maryland and she you know, does education
around there. She was out on medical weave and she
had this class that she did at facility in Delaware
that supports folks who are in recovery from drives and alcohol.
And my supervisor was like, hey, listen, I know this
is super far away. It's just once a month. Can
(21:16):
you cover these until your coworkers out of medical agnostic? Sure,
no problem. And I had just started to get into
listening to podcasts, and I was like, amazing, I've got
like a two plus hour drive, you know, five probably
five hours round trip. I was in my car that
day and I think that around the times when I
stumbled on your podcast Family Secrets, and I found myself
(21:38):
so immersed into the episodes and they made the drive
feel like it was twenty minutes. And I remember pulling
up to the facility on the first class that I
did there, and I was like, I wish I wish
the driver longer. Um, you know, totally enjoyed my class
with them, and then I was really excited to get
back in the car and listen to more and I
found myself really eating with a lot of the guests
(22:01):
that you had, and I thought to myself, Wow, we
had a family secret, but I already figured mine out,
you know, finding my father's death certificate. And it started
to make me think, as I heard some of your
guests say, sometimes when they found out the secret that
was within their family, the secret keepers had had passed
away and they were not able to ask the questions
(22:22):
to those people that they wanted to ask. And I'm
almost finished your book, Dannos, like six pages left. I
was soping to have it's on before I got on
the call with you today, but I noticed that it
sounded like that was something for you too. I think
that you wish you had been able to ask your
parents about your family secret. So I thought to myself,
you know, my mom doesn't love to talk about my
(22:44):
father that much. So I really need to start reaching
out to people that I know and find out some
more stories, because if I don't find these out, they're
gonna leave this earth with the people that know them.
Lindsay is right. That was such a fear and preoccupation
of mine as well. When I first discovered my family's secret.
My parents were gone, and they had taken it to
(23:04):
the grave with them, but there was a great sense
of urgency to identify and find those who were still
living and might still know something. Those people started to
rise to the surface of my consciousness as if they
had been there all along, just waiting in line for
some reason. And this message from Brian, like, I never
forgot about it, I never deleted it, but it came
(23:26):
back to my mind once in a while, and it
certainly came back to my mind in those spots, and
I thought to myself, I should really respond to them.
I wonder, you know, how he knew my dad or
what kinds of stories he could tell. So I responded
to him, and he wrote me back almost immediately, and
I think accidentally tried to call me on Facebook audio
and remember seeing my phone ring, and I was like,
(23:47):
oh God, no, I should have done this. Look, oh,
I don't know if I wanted. I'm not ready to
speak at what's happening. I think the message I wrote
him was something along those lines and not with much detail,
but you know, I just wanted to reach out and
see if you I'd be willing to speak with me
on the phone. I would love to hear some stories
about my father, and he was very willing to do that,
and so we set up a date to talk. And
(24:08):
it was a date. I think I did this on
purpose because I was meeting some friends for brunch and
the place where we meeting was about four minutes away
from where I lived. So I made this date to
call him on my way out there. And I don't
want to say anxious was what I felt, but it
was like when, oh my god, that's gonna happen. What
it's going to be? And when I called him, he
(24:29):
sounded kind of slightly out of breath a little bit,
and I kind of gave him like the background that
I just gave you, you know what prompted me to
finally respond to the message. He's okay, and you know,
asked me a few questions about, you know, what did
you know about your mom and dad's relationship and what
did you know about your dad? And I kind of
was like, why is he asking you? I just wanted
(24:50):
to hear some stories, and he, you know, said okay, okay,
and he said, well, your dad was gay and he
and I had an affair. And there it is the
secret that had been lurking beneath the secret, the first
secret suicide, the second secret, Lindsay's father's sexuality, and then
(25:12):
there's more. And I said, what did you say? And
he repeated himself and I was like wow, He goes,
did you have any idea? And I said, nope, now
I didn't. He went on to tell me all sorts
of stories about how they met, and there were some
things that were very heartwarming. There were some things that
were also kind of upsetting and scary, and I think
(25:34):
gave me a little bit more of you into my
father's mental health. I would imagine that being five years
old and losing your father, one has lost someone that
one has never really gotten to know in a way
except for these flashes and these childhood memories. And so
(25:55):
now you're getting this avalanche of information, right, Yeah, that's
agree way of saying it. It did feel kind of
like an avalanche, and it wasn't an unwelcomed avalanche. It
was like, I was kind of like, wow, Okay, this
is giving me a much broader picture of who my
dad was, and you know, what he felt like and
what he went through. And after speaking with Brian and
(26:19):
you know, I reached out to a few other people,
and they all said similar things that he I don't
know that he was ever diagnosed, but that he had
bipolar disorder. I never saw the depressive states, I think.
I don't know if I saw nannic states or if
I saw, you know, what he wanted me to see
or what I wanted to see maybe for that matter.
But one of the first things he said was your
(26:40):
father was the most charming and charismatic person I've ever met.
And he said when they met, they had this just
instant connection. You know, they met, sat in his car
and talked for like three hours getting to know each other.
And how did they meet. They met at a gym.
I didn't ask too much too many details on like
you know, how that interaction or who walked up to who,
(27:01):
or how that went down, But I guess what I pictures.
They saw each other and kind of their eyes locked
and went towards each other and just started chatting. But
of course, even as this beautiful love story is playing out,
someone is suffering terribly because of it, Lindsay's mother. That's
(27:21):
what I think was extremely hurtful for my mother is
that she didn't know about his sexuality and he was
cheating on my mom with this person. And I think
after speaking to several family members and Brian and eventually
my mother. You know, it was the eighties, and I
think he was struggling with his sexuality and he was
suppressing who he knew he was because I think he
(27:43):
wanted to have this kind of stereotypical life of a
wife and kids and you know, white picket fence. I
don't think he necessarily felt that in his heart was
a pent who he was, and that, combined with his
mental illness, made his internal struggle really, really, really difficult.
From off. I think it was hard for him to
(28:04):
just come out and be out and be who he was,
and this was what the world was extremely homophobic, I
think back then compared to two thousand twenty, when I
think folks are a lot more accepting than they were,
you know, fourty years ago. Did his affair, your father's
affair with Brian have something to do with your parents divorce?
(28:30):
It did? Yeah, it was only a couple of weeks ago.
I finally talked to my mom about everything, and I
think I was kind of trying to gather my facts
and find my information before I talked to her. It
was another thing. I was just nervous to talk to
her about it. We'll be right back. A long time
(29:04):
elapses between the time Lindsay reaches out to Brian and
learns more of the truth about her father and when
she decides to actually tell her mother what she's discovered.
A phrase comes up. It was never the right time. This,
you might remember, is what Lindsay's own mother had told
Lindsay about why she never revealed her father's suicide. It
(29:25):
was never the right time. This is true of so
many families and so many secrets. We wait, We think
that the stars will align, that there will be a
perfect moment, but there never is. I'm embarrassed to say
it's almost a year and not quite but almost a year,
maybe about ten months. I guess I was nervous. I
(29:47):
was afraid of upsetting her. I'm so close to her.
I hold her as like one of my best friends.
She's somebody I feel very lucky to have that relationship
with her, and I can talk to her about just
about anything. But I was really nervous to talk to
to her about this. I think I was afraid of
retraumatizing her and making her like rehash all this. The
(30:09):
assumption that I made was that this must have been
so difficult for her to deal with when she found
out about his affair that she just kind of tucked
it away in a little box and put it in
a closet and was like, I'm never going back there again.
So I was kind of afraid to reopen that box
for her. And the timing was never right. It's like,
if I tell her right away, I'm going to ruin that.
(30:30):
That could ruin that vacation, and then all the holidays
are coming up. It's going to ruin the holidays. And
then we had a trip that we were my husband
and I. My husband's family lived with parents I should
say live in Florida, and he and I and my
mom and stepdad were going down there for like a
long weekend in February. And I was like, I was
gonna ruin that trip. And I was St Patrick's weekend.
(30:51):
My mom and I were supposed to go up to
New York to stay with her sister for the weekend.
It's kind of like a little tradition we started, I
guess a year ago, and you know, to see a
show and TUF dinner and do New Yorkie things, and
we had to cancel the trip because of Corona, and
my plan was to talk to her on the train
ride home because I was like, oh, we'll have at
(31:12):
least three hours alone together. That's going to be the
time that I do it. And then we had to
cancel the trip and I was like, oh my god,
we're all quarantined. When am I going to have this conversation?
Because it was really important to me to do it
in person. I just felt like it would be unkind
or rude or or mean even to just do it
over the phone. Um. I really wanted to be able
(31:33):
to do it in person. And then I think when
I finally got the email from your producer to set
up a date for this call, well, now, my my taker,
my time is counting down. I have to do this
before I have this call. Nothing like a deadline, right right,
Because I really didn't feel comfortable recording this episode without
(31:56):
like speaking to her first and making sure that she
was okay with it, because I guess I kind of
that it is this is not just my story, this
is her story. This didn't happen to me, This happened
to her, or you know, happened to us. One of
the hot topics that I teach and train about his
consent and I wanted to make sure that I had
her consent before I did this. And how did she respond?
She was very surprised. The only time I've been out
(32:19):
to a restaurant during all of the social distancing and
its outdoor seating, we were the only people there, so
it's very safe. We went to Lebanese to vernon, which
is delicious. And she had I think, like a chicken swarm,
a wrap in one hand and her fork in the
other hand. And I said, I need to talk to
you about something. And I saw her face kind of drop,
as I'm sure any mother would when their daughter says that.
It's like, oh my gosh, what's going to come out
(32:40):
of my child's face right now? And I gave all
these qualifiers, like I was nervous to bring this up,
and I wasn't sure how to do it. I don't
want to upset you. I'm afraid Joe be mad at me.
And I talked to a man named Brian. She dropped
her wrap and she dropped her fork and went, oh really,
I would both had sunglasses on, but she almost looked
(33:02):
like scared, and that made me feel awful because I didn't,
you know, I didn't want upset or I didn't want
to make her mad. Kind of jumped in and said,
I can't imagine what that must have been like for you.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You didn't deserve it.
And I was just wondering if we could talk about it,
and she kind of like I could see her relaxed slightly,
(33:23):
and then she kind of dropped her guard and really
just kind of shared everything. It sounded like with me
with what happened. Do you think maybe after holding that
for so many years that there was some relief? Well,
I asked her that, I mean it turned into a
(33:45):
three hour lunch and I said, towards the end, how
are you feeling? How do you feel? Do you feel relieved?
And she said kind of, I feel like I should
feel relieved, but I don't fully feel that. And I
was like, oh, no, maybe I shouldn't have done this,
and she went on to say, I don't know if
I feel relieved because I don't really think about this
much anymore. She said, I've done a lot of work
(34:06):
on myself, and I think I've moved past it to
the point where I don't really think about it much anymore.
What happened with Brian, You've had a you know, an
ongoing connection with him. I think he in fact, I
was able to share some stories and give some insight
(34:28):
onto who my father was and what he was like
that I don't know that I would have found out otherwise.
After I had that initial conversation with him, I then
was like, you know, immediately reached out to my brother
and he was just kind of what what our father
to my brother was kind of almost like this phantom
person that he doesn't really remember. And after I spoke
(34:50):
with him, I reached out to my dad's sister and
we set up a time to speak. And I really
wish that some of these conversations I had had in person,
because I kind of wanted to see their facial expressions.
But I was so nervous for all these different conversations
with people, and come to find out, they were expecting
me to ask this. So I called my dad's sister,
(35:12):
you know, so such this time to speak, and I
again because I was nervous, you know, gave all this beginning.
So I had a minute, you know, kind of doing
some finding some stories and I told her what I
found out and she said, Lindsay, I've been waiting over
thirty years for you to ask me about this, and she,
you know, shared a whole lot. And then I called
my godfather, who was good friends with my father, and
(35:32):
he said something similar. And I told my brother about
all this, and he said, do you think we're the
only people in the family that I don't know? And
I was like, Wow, that hadn't occurred to me, but yeah,
I think you might be right. And my brother was
working for about six weeks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and
Brian lives in Florida, not far from where MITI was working.
(35:55):
And I'm not sure which one of them got in
touch with each other first, but and I'm not sure
who proposed the idea, but they decided to meet up
in person. And MITCHI called me and told me that,
and I said, do you want me to book a
ticket and come with you? And he was, this is
a really big deal. I said, I know, Do you
want me to book a ticket and come down? And
he goes, this is a really big deal and he said, okay,
(36:16):
I'll book you think getting come down so his wife
and I flew down and we met up with Brian
for lunch the next day. And you know, I shared
all of this with my mom. I told her everything
at the lunch that we had, and I think it
was hurtful for her to hear that. Mitchell and I
(36:36):
went and met this man that our father had an
affair on her with. But he was so open and
so honest and shared so many stories. But you know,
good and bad. Remember, Lindsay's father was a magician, and
as a magician, he had certain tools of his trade,
white doves and a white rabbit he used in his shows.
(36:58):
Ryan tells Lindsay a story that must have been terribly
hard to hear about an argument that two of them
had at one point, one that illustrates just how much
mental anguish Lindsay's dad must have been dealing with. He
was so angry that he picked up his rabbit and
he threw it against the wall and killed it. I
don't say that to speak poorly at my father, to
(37:21):
make him sound like a scary monster person, but that
was his mental illness acting out and making him make
that choice. So Brian shared things like that with us,
but he also shared, you know, like your father was
so charismatic and everyone loved him. And Brian even went
on to tell us that he was actually in a
relationship with somebody with a man when he met our father,
(37:43):
and you know, it was also having kind of an
affair of his own. But Brian said, if this speaks
anything to the charisma that your father had, said, my
partner even got to be friends with your dad, like
your dad even won him over, And I was like, wow,
and it's just kind of surreal. It was a meeting
(38:03):
that was a story I never thought I would hear.
I feel guilty saying this because I know my mom
would not like to hear me say this, but I'm
grateful for the experience and it was just, I guess,
kind of a beautiful thing to meet somebody who knew
our dad on such a deep level. How do you
think that knowing all this now impact too? Are you glad?
(38:28):
You know? I am glad. I know I think all
of the processing and talked to some of my friends
about the story and my husband, my brother. I'm glad
that I know. And several people have said to me like,
are you mad at your mom for not telling you?
And I said, I'm not mad at her at all.
I have nothing but admiration, if not, you know, more
than I had before that she went through this, and
(38:50):
she gave me her version of things. She had no
idea that anything like this was going on. My dad
often would say he was working late and then would
moment like three o'clock in the morning, or you know,
he wouldn't come home at all. She would call a
hospitals and I seem an accident like what happened. She said.
He took her to see a play and the plot
(39:11):
of the play was about a man and a woman
that were married, and the man was gay and cheating
on her with other men. And she said it was
at that play that she was like, oh my god,
oh my god, oh my god, this is what's happening
in my marriage. And she maybe this is where I
got my private investigation skills from. But she she did
some snooping up her own and found some some things
(39:31):
that confirmed us for her, and confronted him and said,
I want to divorce. I know what's going on. This
is this relationship will go no further. And I think
just the way that she raised us, she didn't she
could have just bashed him every day to us. If
she wanted to, she could have put awful visions of
our father in our heads. And she didn't. You know,
(39:53):
she just didn't speak about it much at all. And
she picked herself up and she kept going, which I
think must have been so to be hard to have
two tiny children and then have your husband cheating on you,
and you know, I have no idea what's going on,
and then it's I just I can't imagine what that
must have been like for her, and to have to
make that choice of no, we're done, we will be
(40:14):
no longer. But she just kept going. And I told
her when we had lunch, I said, I have so
much admiration for you. You're so strong. You could have
started drinking, you could have started doing drugs, you could
have done a million things to cope with this. But
you just got up every day. You got us up,
every day, you took care of us, you went to work.
I had no idea that my mom ever went through
(40:34):
anything like this. There were no clues, there were no
mutterings or utterings of anything along these lines. So I
said that to her, and she said, well, what else
was I going to do? I had two kids. I
needed to focus on the good and I needed to
move forward and make sure you guys were taken care
of and and raise well. The homophobia of the era
(40:56):
also played a significant part in Lindsay's mom's decision not
to tell her kids the truth, and Lindsay's understanding of
the choices her mother made and her reasons for them
have brought the two of them even closer together. So ultimately,
this is a story that contains tragedy, sorrow, secrecy, and loss,
but also a deepening love between a mother and a daughter.
(41:21):
I said to her, why didn't you tell us? And
I was kind of expecting the same answer, as you know,
there never was a right time, and that's part of
what she said. But she also said she was worried
about telling us the whole truth because she was afraid
that we would get bullied because people were not accepting
of folks in the LGBTQ community then. And I was like, wow,
(41:43):
that never occurred to me as as a reason for
why she wouldn't have told us. And then I think
as time moved forward, it was kind of again like
when's the right time? How do I share this with them?
And if she had told us when we were kids,
we probably would have just accosted her every day with
like a million and one questions, kind of making her
relive all of this over and over and over again.
So I think it was a combination of trying to
(42:03):
protect us and also trying to protect yourself. That makes
me think of another kind of thematic family secrets thing
that runs through a lot of stories, which is that
what we find out and when we find it out,
I have a lot to do with how we're going
to be able to process or how a family is
able to process a secret having been kept, and that
(42:25):
this is a secret that came out in the fullness
of time, kind of when everybody could handle everything about it. Yeah,
that's definitely how I've looked at it, Like I'm grateful
to to have found out when I did, because I
think I'm enough of an adult to be able to
process that in a healthy and normal way. I don't
know how I would have processed that if I found
it when I was five, when I was ten, when
(42:46):
I was fifteen, you know, I don't know how my
brain would have handled that. The one other thing that
occurs to me is, as you're talking about your mother
is that this is actually I mean your your love
for her mother is so clear, and your respect for her.
This is a way of actually knowing her better and
having even more dimensionality to her for you. Yeah, I
(43:10):
think knowing all this and also finally hearing her version
of everything, it just makes me want to cuddle her
up and hug her forever. You know, when you think
you can't love a person more and then you find
you do. I guess that's kind of my reaction to it.
And I know it's weird for me to say I'm
proud of her, but I am proud of her. I
think for like I said earlier, getting up every day
(43:31):
and keeping a routine and raising her kids with love
and kindness and moving forward in her life. Everybody has
their own different version of the story and different kind
of interactions with each other. But yeah, I think it
gave us kind of a new maybe moved us to
like a new level in our relationship where we can
talk to each other about this. And it really felt
(43:53):
like it almost felt like when she when we were
at lunch and she was telling me everything. We were
friends like. It wasn't a daughter mother dynamic. It was
if we were friends, and feeling that didn't make me
feel nervous or panic to kind of made me feel
even closer to her that we have not only a
mother daughter relationship, but also a really strong foundation of friendship.
(44:28):
Family Secrets is an i Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan
is the supervising producer and Bethan Mcaluso is the executive producer.
We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
(44:49):
one eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then the
number zero. You can also find us on Instagram at
Danny Ryder and face book at facebook dot com slash
Family Secrets Pot, and Twitter at fami secrets Pot. For
(45:21):
more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the i Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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