August 23, 2023 • 39 mins
If you’ve been following our story up until now, this is the episode that lays bare our motivation for doing this podcast. From our own upbringings to the challenges we face as parents, it’s a journey through pain, love, and the relentless pursuit of doing right by our children.
We never anticipated this level of estrangement from our son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters, and it's been a challenging journey. We've faced anger, resentment, and hurt, but we've also discovered strength, resilience, and growth within ourselves. Our love for our family remains unwavering, and we'll continue to hope for reconciliation and understanding.
We’ll grapple with the question of whether we did enough, while navigating the treacherous waters of parenthood. From overprotection to the struggle for independence, we examine every facet of our parenting style and choices.
This episode is a powerful exploration of how even the most well-intentioned actions can have unforeseen consequences. Tune in as we recount the moments leading up to a pivotal event that would change our lives forever, forever challenging our understanding of family dynamics and personal responsibility.
If you're going through a similar experience, please know that you're not alone. Reach out, share your story, and let's navigate this difficult path together.
Timeline Summary:
[2:47] Being taught there’s no “manual” for parenting
[7:45] Making family time a priority
[10:39] The pain of separation during COVID
[12:11] Helping our son start his business
[17:29] Respecting our son’s parenting choices
[19:10] Constant communication in the family
[23:36] Feeling our son wanted his own identity
[27:24] The grieving process when estranged
[30:39] The ongoing challenge of feeling human
[33:12] Appreciating small moments with grandkids
[38:34] A message of unconditional love
If you're digging our stories and loving the ride, do us a solid - rate us, follow the podcast, and share it with your crew. Your reviews mean the world to us and keep us bringing you more f*ck'n authentic stories. Until next time, folks, stay f*ck'n authentic!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nick (00:07):
It's time to get fucking authentic. So I think this is
probably going to be one of themost difficult podcasts for us.
I agree. We talked about youwhen we talked about me and me
growing up is in itself a story.
And then you're part of thestory and then our son. And then
(00:29):
I went through what I wentthrough. And I felt that I had
gotten over that, which I didn'teven realize that I had a
problem. And then obviously, itwas a problem. And then you
having the moment you did, thepodcast was pretty enlightening,
just with us, coming to termswith a lot of how we were,
(00:53):
throughout our marriage nowcould lend itself as some of the
reasons why maybe our sondecided to do what he decided to
do a year and a half ago, notthat I feel that I'm at
necessarily at fault. Like we'reto blame for that. I don't feel
guilty for what we know, to thispoint. But this is definitely
(01:16):
the reason why we started thepodcast in the first place. Gave
us a big push to do it gave usthe big push to do it. Yeah. I
think we just sort of go intothis and see where it goes. I
think in past episodes, wetalked about our son and how we,
to this day believe that he wasa miracle. He was given to us as
(01:38):
a gift. And that gift, we weredefinitely not going to fucking
squander by any means. And so wedid what we had to do, or we
thought we did what we had todo, right? We did. Yeah, we had,
right. Yeah. And I and I go backto that this is so funny. And
(02:00):
this is part of me having tostill understand the way that I
think, because when when I saythat I did the best I could with
what I had. To me, that soundslike a cop out. Really? Yeah, I
know, I maybe somebody listeningcan maybe give me a reason why,
but I did with the best I couldlike it almost sounds like an
(02:21):
excuse that it wasn't goodenough. So when I say I did the
best I could, if I fail, Ialways feel that I could have
done better. You know, becausebecause my mom used to say you
kids were born with a manual.
And to me i i felt that that wasalways an excuse for doing what
she did. But I know that that'snot what it is. But I just feel
(02:44):
that way. There's there'snothing I can do about that.
Nancy (02:47):
Yes, we don't we don't get a manual. When we go to the
hospital on they say here. Imean, there's a bunch of books
and stuff. But I think,
Nick (02:55):
by the way, I'm sorry. We are outside again. It's a
beautiful night doing a seriouspodcast episode here. And we
have to be interrupted by planesflying overhead. But anyway, go
ahead, sir.
Nancy (03:09):
So I agree. Yes, we we weren't given a manual, or
manual was that we didn't wantour son to go through what we
went through when we were kids.
We said we wanted the opposite.
And I think we did give him thatwe totally, totally. You know, I
get what you're saying. I don'tget what you're saying as far as
how you feel. But
Nick (03:31):
yeah, the depth of it is my feelings. I get that. I'm
just I'm just saying that. Wedid the best we could with with
what we had with what we knewwith the way we were raised, and
with our dedication and theabsolute gift that he was was
our responsibility. Mepersonally, I wasn't going to
(03:51):
let anything stand in the way ofthat. You said that you didn't
feel that you were there. Butyou were doing what you were
doing. So nothing would stand inthe way that way as well. You
know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah.
With that being said, we musthave gone overboard just to
paint a little scenario. I mean,since the day that that kid was
born, I made it a point to havehim with me at all times. Yes,
(04:13):
you did. Absolutely. Well, hewent anywhere I went. He was
with me. I took him with me, inmy truck, my cars, whatever the
case was, he was always with mewherever I went, whether it was
to the store, whether
Nancy (04:30):
anywhere. It didn't matter to not.
Nick (04:34):
We made it a point with him that we were always going to
be home. And we were alwaysgoing to sit down and we were
always going to eat dinnertogether. We were always going
to talk about our day and wewere always going to ask each
other how our days were. And wewere going to talk about those
days and what happened in schooland what happened during summer
(04:57):
break and we made it a point forthat too. happen wherever he
was, we knew where he was. Andevery day Nance you made it a
point every day that we told himthat we loved him. And we showed
him not only told him, but weshowed him as, as best as we
knew how totally, he was veryreceptive to that. And he gave
(05:21):
it back to us. Totally. He toldus, he loved us all the time.
And whenever he was out with hisfriends, whether we were
dropping them off at school, orwhether we were dropping them
off at a game or any function,whatever he would constantly, he
would kiss us.
Nancy (05:37):
Yeah, he was there was no embarrassment. Yeah, there was
no, none of that he
Nick (05:41):
seemed very much that he was very proud of us being as
parents, we were very, veryclose. There was nothing that I
felt at the time could separateus. Did we have issues? Fuck
yeah, we had issues. There'salways issues. But some of the
things that I don't regret, buta lot of the things that I would
(06:02):
say was coming from me was thatfailure wasn't an option. And
you have to always give it yourbest. And always try as hard. Do
whatever you can do so that atthe end of it, you can say,
well, at least I triedeverything, and it didn't work.
I remember this, even talkingabout this in his relationships,
just keep fighting and keepgoing. And that was just that
(06:25):
was us how we would just keepgoing. And all of those morals
are all of those belief systemsthat we had we pounded into him.
And maybe that's part of thetrauma. I mean, he did say, he
told us specifically, when thisall happened that we gave him
(06:47):
too much, number one, numbertwo, is that we didn't let him
fail. Number three, he had ittoo easy for was that we, we
didn't give him a voice. And Ican almost understand that, to
the point of I know that where Iwas with him, I was overly
(07:07):
protective. If anybody was tomess with him, or he said
something happened, the risingthat came out of me and the the
absolute beteween of violence,and you would take care of it.
You you weren't gonna mess withmy son. I made that known. And
(07:29):
we were the parents that we'drather have all his friends over
at our house. And, you know, weknew all of his friends, and we
knew all of their parents, andwe knew all the teachers and we
were involved in all of thatphone calls, you know, to
teachers and
Nancy (07:45):
everything. Yeah, everything we were we were
parties or a dark place or
Nick (07:49):
Yeah, everything. And there was, I will be quite
honest. I mean, we controlledeverything. That's the bottom
line. And that that is a fact,we did control every aspect of
Nancy (08:04):
Troy, I never thought of it that way. I mean, I get what
you're saying now, but I didn'tthink of it that way. That was
our only son. And for me, I waslike, Hey, I knew where he was
at at all times. Because youknow how I would get if you
would go someplace, I'd be sofreaking nervous. And I'd be
like, Oh my God, if somethingdoes, well, you'd
Nick (08:24):
be waking up in the middle of the night, crying and
thinking something's going on.
You'd you'd literally jump up inthe middle of the night. And
just be bawling. I'm like,What's up? What's up? What's up?
And it's like, you know, he's onmy mind is on my mind. And I'm
like, Okay, let's just calmdown. And it. I don't know how
it feels. Yeah, I don't know howother families are all I can say
(08:45):
is that what we thought was wewere very close. What I mean by
controlling now is when I saycontrolling, you said that we
didn't give him a voice. Ifsomebody feels that they didn't
have a voice at all, that meanstheir voice was their tongue was
cut out or mouth. Right? It sortof means that, that they felt
that they couldn't say anything,or maybe do anything. And in
(09:09):
that case, that meant that wewere controlling now, again, I'm
going off of what I believe thatmeans. Basically, year and a
half ago COVID had hit thatwhole fucking fiasco and then we
were separated, there's no doubtthey stayed in their home and we
(09:29):
stayed in ours. And that wasn'tour choice, but we respect that
choice. We talked to them allthe time, as much as possible on
Zoom like everybody else and gotto see her granddaughters
through zoom. I know they wereyounger, so they weren't really
obviously they were younger.
(09:50):
weren't really understanding alot of what was going on. If the
drive bys Yeah, we paper Yeah,we would do the drive bys and
just run, run through what Totruck and throw toilet paper and
paper towels outside the truck,and then just take off. And we
went through what we wentthrough again, like everything
else. And we just thought thiswas another thing that was going
(10:10):
to pass and we were going tomake it work and whatever. And I
remember the dayremember the day that when it
was like, it wasn't over, butthey felt that they could come
back to the house, and oureldest granddaughter came up,
(10:31):
and she's like, mama said, thatwe can hug you guys.
Nancy (10:39):
It was pretty fucked up.
I'm a little
Nick (10:43):
choked up. Yeah, cuz it was, it was huge. We were so
close. That, that was hard toeven to go through that COVID
thing. And then she was soexcited. Something so small,
just a hug. When Dominic wasgrowing up, like we were always
together, always going out everyweekend, camping, doing
(11:07):
whatever, bringing his friendsalong. Obviously, he was a
single child. And then. And theneven after he got married, he'd
go on vacations, and we'd go outall together and do our thing.
And yeah, after COVID Thathappened, we were we were just
sort of relieved. And it was agood, it was good to sort of be
(11:28):
back and just hanging out doingour thing. Every Sunday was
yeah, it was really our day thatwe would just get together with
them and hang out. No matterwhat. We always, you know, had
lunch, dinner Dinner. Yeah, wewould make places, women with
their house or whatever the casewas just hanging out, right? I
(11:49):
mean, just family shit. I mean,that's was the norm for us. It
was normal. And we thought thateverything was normal. And if
your intentions aren't met withif they're not reciprocated, or
understood, we come to the pointwhere where we are now. It was
to us like, like any other day,I got on the phone for my son.
Nancy (12:11):
But we had two girls for when they started their business
a little bit.
Nick (12:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, that's that's what I mean, when after
COVID. And they they startedreally started the business. And
we were with the girls. We werejust even more who were with the
girls. I mean, with all the timeit can take off. You would take
off some work days. You had tobe there in the morning. It
would be Saturdays, Sundays. Anyday. They needed us of course,
(12:35):
like always right. And that wasthere. I was home for a good
year. Oh, yeah. Easy. Yeah.
Longer. Their schedules becameour schedule. Yeah, we helped
out. And believe me, this wasn'tlike, even an issue. This wasn't
charity. This was this. Weabsolutely adore our
granddaughters and we adorethem.
Nancy (12:56):
And it seemed like our son was actually enjoying what
he was doing. We thought thatwas like his the boost that he
needed, right? Because, youknow, we were up and
Nick (13:07):
again, we were part of their lives no matter what. And
so when one was down the otherhelps, right? When one's down,
the other one's here to pick youup. One. When one is crawling,
the other one's there to liftyou up. That had been
reciprocated all these years. Imean, if our son was a fucking
deadbeat, we wouldn't have didhalf the shit we did. Yeah, we
(13:28):
did. Yes. Our son, even thoughhe always wanted to do his own
thing, or he wanted to, in myopinion, feels or felt like he
had to prove something. And I Iunderstand as a single child,
going up against too strongparents. And I say going up
against because I'm justthinking what, what he thinks or
(13:49):
what he might have thought,because I'm we still haven't
gotten explanations or answers,which we don't expect at this
point anymore. But I wouldimagine it was almost like a two
against one, right? And beingtold that success and no
failure, blah, blah, blah, youknow what I'm saying boom, boom,
boom, I would imagine would,would be a hard pill to swallow
(14:12):
every day. I understand that. Ofcourse. Now, I understand it
more, because I'm in the mostpain that I've ever been in my
fucking life. I understand iteven more. But the bottom line
is, he was not a lazy kid. Likenot lazy in the sense of what he
wanted to do. school he sucked.
He was lazy as fuck. He didn'twant to do it, though. That's
(14:34):
the reason it wasn't because hedidn't. He just didn't want to
do it. He didn't want to be inschool. He didn't want to do
math. If he was in gym who hewas one of those kids. If he
didn't want to do enjoyedsomething, he will fucking do it
right. And that was one of thethings he was not lazy by any
means. Never. Even when heworked when I had my landscape
(14:55):
business. Yeah. And my brotherswill work he'd be telling me But
what do you do when you can't dothat? Like, like he took his
role as our son, I believe,proudly? I do, I do believe
that, I just think that hewanted to step out of our
shadows. And the whole reasonwhy I say this is that it was
(15:16):
just sort of like any other day,we were talking about our son
and our daughter in law, wereworking a lot on the weekends.
And we were also starting to getinto the summer. And we have
ourselves a property that werent out, it's a few hours from
our home. And we wanted to beable to do some of the
(15:41):
maintenance on the propertyourselves without having to pay
someone so that we wouldn't haveto spend that money. And the
conversation was that we weregoing to have to bring the girls
with us if if that happened,because we couldn't just go
there by ourselves, and thenleave them here because they,
you know, the kids needed tohelp as well with them. So it
(16:02):
was like, We don't want them todo that. And my argument was,
well, why not? Sometimes we kindof do shit that we don't want to
do. And you have to tell themthis and they weren't backing
down, and I wasn't backing down.
And one thing turned intoanother thing, and it turned
(16:23):
into a massive argument. And Iabsolutely lost. I absolutely
lost it. I was not involved inany of that. So I did not have
conversations with our son anddaughter in law. Yeah, I
absolutely lost it. I felt thatI wasn't being understood. I
(16:43):
believe he felt that he wasn'tbeing understood. I believe that
they thought that we were tryingto tell them what to do with our
granddaughters. Which, by theway, I mean, unless somebody
wants to say something differentabout it. That was part of us,
that we felt that we were alwayswalking on hot coals or
(17:04):
eggshells, because we we neverinterfered with raising the
girls. I don't feel that we did.
Would we say certain things?
Yeah, absolutely. Like anyparent might squeeze something
in there. But we never steppedin to affect those girls in any
way or say anything, that youshould raise your girls this
(17:28):
way.
Nancy (17:29):
And the contrary, I think we if you didn't want them to
watch too much TV, we wouldabide if you didn't want them to
be on the phone. If you didn'twant them to eat or drink a
certain thing we would be okaywith it. Yeah, we tried to
follow whatever. I don't want tocall them guidelines, whatever
it was they
Nick (17:48):
wanted to raise with their kids the way they wanted to
raise them and we respectedYeah, we I mean, the girls were
with us all the time. So yes, wetried to do whatever we would
constantly, if they wantedsomething you should ask your
mom and dad first places to gothings to do. So we tried that.
And so when this when thisargument happened, and believe
(18:11):
me, there were other things Iwas just wasn't like, this
argument probably got out ofhand, I could have handled
myself a different way. And I'mgoing to say that right now. I
will, I will admit that I couldhave been the cooler head in
this conversation. There's nodoubt about it. But it was
another disagreement like anyother district, that your head
(18:33):
was, for most parts when therewas discussions of stuff was
never cool. You know what Imean? It wasn't like it wasn't
abnormal. I went overboard. Thisconversation again, I wasn't
there's ever acted this way. AndI told you afterwards that I
hadn't felt like that inprobably 30 years. I was very
frustrated with the situationthat had gone down. I believe
(18:58):
they were very frustrated withthe situation that had gone
down. But I thought that thingswould cool off in a day or so.
And we we talked about it and wewould we would move on. Because
we
Nancy (19:10):
would always talk about stuff were to happen or they
didn't like something orunification
Nick (19:16):
was huge. In our family.
Well, so we thought, Well, yeah.
Right. Well, I will say that forus communication was huge. We
always say what's on our mind.
And I think maybe that's part ofthe problem. I don't know, but I
do know that that happened. Andafter that happened, well, they
didn't give you any explanation.
(19:38):
So you have not basically talkedto our daughter in law in over a
year and a half now. For thefirst few months. We barely got
to see the girls whatsoever.
There was a lot of hurt going onback and forth. Basically, the
first time we we met with ourson was a couple of weeks later
I think right before my Firstday at that point, he just told
(20:00):
us straight out like, it wouldbe easier if you guys were dead.
And I didn't know how to takethat. At that point, you're in
the middle of saying that youhad it too easy. But yet, it
would be easier if we were dead,which means that it would still
then be easy. So I, I was alittle confused, to say the
(20:21):
least. I think you at that pointtook it a little harder.
Nancy (20:28):
I did. Yeah, I think I took everything a little harder
because I didn't get to talk tothem.
Unknown (20:37):
I text them.
Nancy (20:38):
I call them. There was no communication. You know, after a
couple of weeks, we finallyreached out and said he wanted
to meet with us and said that,it seemed like he had a hard
time saying what he was sayingto us, which kind of took me by
surprise. You think you youthink you know someone right? Or
(20:59):
you think that that everythingis going fine? CAD I think every
parent thinks if there'ssomething that drastic
happening, you know, whethersomebody is caught stealing
somebody's you know, stabbingsomebody killing somebody, you
know, whatever the case is, youthink everything is going fine,
unless somebody brings it up toyou. Right? So a golden right.
(21:23):
The silence really spoke out,because it was like, But I'm
your mom.
Nick (21:30):
Yeah. Like, how
Nancy (21:32):
can you not talk to me?
So yeah, when he said that tous, it was Holy shit, you know,
like,
Nick (21:39):
you basically just cut us out of their lives. You know,
obviously, y'all are listeningto this, and you probably are
trying to come up with answersyourselves. There were texts
that went back and forth. Wewere sort of blamed for if we
cried, you know about this infront of him. We were told we
were children just trying to getour way. Oh, yeah, I remember
(22:02):
him telling you. So many thingsthat have been said, we don't
believe that. A lot of those.
Those things that were said,were coming from a place of
resentment, probably more thananything, I don't think that he
necessarily meant them. You knowwhat I'm saying? Yeah, totally.
(22:22):
I'm not trying to make excuses.
I mean, that seriously, I don'tthink our son is some cold
hearted person. I know that hevery much, I would assume, I
should say that he very muchappreciates part of what we did
as parents. Again, we don'treally know because, right. I've
(22:44):
begged them both to man,whatever, whatever it is, let's,
let's go get some therapy. Let'sget some counseling. Let's,
let's work on it singularly.
Let's work on it together. Let'swork on it as a family that's
comfortable with and let'sdiscuss. So if you pick it. We
we always got together andworked these things out. And I
(23:08):
think there's more to thatdynamic than what our son says.
I think there's some otherthings going on in the
background. That's a bunch ofbackground noise, and other
people had from the outside hadgotten involved. You can't
control any of that. No, and butultimately, my son now has a
(23:31):
voice right? He's done this. So
Nancy (23:36):
now he has a voice so he can, he's controlling and he's
he's on the driver's seat. Yeah,we realized when you become
awakened, or awoken, we'rehowever you want to say it to
this
Nick (23:51):
new way of living without having answers without knowing,
Hey, am I going to see mygranddaughter's once a month
once every six weeks? We used totalk to them almost every other
day. Zoom calls,
Nancy (24:07):
we wouldn't miss any any new thing that would happen to
them.
Nick (24:11):
Now we were always at every any game any sporting any
school event, any birthday, anywe thought grandparents do. Our
son said that our son anddaughter in law want us to be
normal grandparents. And I don'tknow what the fuck normal
grandparents mean, number one,number two. How do you how do
(24:33):
they know what normalgrandparents are? You know what
I mean? You're You're telling meyou want me to be a normal
grandparent, or normal for uswas exactly what we did. That's
what we were. And
Nancy (24:45):
so when we seen stuff, I mean, there were other
grandparents there. We weren'tthe only grandparents there.
Nick (24:50):
Yeah, I think like I said, I think a lot of it is unknown.
We stand by, we wait and we tryTo make sense of it, but I will
say that in light of all ofthis, it has changed our lives.
Nancy (25:07):
Well, you know, we were in their lives, whether it's
birthdays, holidays, weliterally for this past year and
a half for the first year. Imean, it's like, we went through
a grieving process, you know, itwas it started with your
birthday. And that wasdifferent. Well,
Nick (25:26):
so in my birthday, we're sitting around the table, and it
was the first time we had seenthe girls. And you have to
understand this girls are young,they don't understand why
they're not seeing theirgrandparents. We're not going to
put our granddaughters in themiddle of this and say something
(25:47):
that is going to alienate theirthought with their parents,
because it's their parents,right? Like, we're not. We're
not, we're not about that.
That's not who the fuck we are.
We've been accused of beingfake. We've been accused of
being witches. The most ironicfucking thing because everybody
(26:08):
that knows us, even the peoplewho accuse us of being fake, our
actions alone, speak to that,that is just the lie. We're,
we're the least fake fuckingpeople that there are, as a
matter of fact, we're probablyover fucking authentic. I don't
know what to say, like, Oh, I'vebeen blamed for being assholes
(26:30):
and in bitches in whatever,because we're as real as it
comes. And then don't want tosay something against their
parents, though, because thereis nothing against them. They've
made a decision, their decisionstands, they've made it very
clear how they, their actionsmade very clear that they want
(26:54):
to be in control of thesituation. I was gonna say there
actually are when I was raised,my parents pinned us kids
against each other. We as kidswere used as fucking pawns,
period. Now, I'm not sayingthat, that my granddaughters are
being used as pawns by no means.
But I'm saying that that is whathurt us the most. And that is
(27:19):
what's been stuck to the most.
So
Nancy (27:24):
it was That's why I said, for me, I felt like this was a
grieving process. Like,everything. Our whole lives
changed, like I said, startedsaying the birthdays, you know,
everything like you had Mother'sDay, you had Father's Day, you
had the Thanksgiving, and theyhad their own stuff. And this is
where I always say it's such aconfusing thing for me, because
(27:46):
Thanksgiving was their ownlittle stuff.
Nick (27:49):
Thanksgiving used to be so remember growing up, I mean,
even when they were firstmarried, Thanksgiving was always
at our house, it was always ourday was always bla bla bla bla
bla. And then as time went on,things evolved. Right? So then
it was like, no, they wanted tohave Thanksgiving, and they
wanted to have that with herside of the family. And they
hosted that and then the dayafter we would do it and then so
(28:09):
and
Nancy (28:10):
that was, that was Yeah, and even Christmas, it was, you
know, we, we would even for us,we'd celebrate Christmas Day on
a separate day, you know what Imean? Like when the whole entire
family but Christmas day, theywould come over and, and that
changed. And with all of this, Imean, my daughter in law wasn't
even involved in any way shewould never come. Our son was
(28:31):
coming with our twogranddaughters. But remember, I
got close to our daughter inlaw, it was like she was our
daughter, you know, it was thishappened, you guys were out
getting your nails done. And wehad a great time and everything
was was fine. And for me it wasthere was no again, there was no
conversation had with with meabout all this. So I went into a
(28:57):
whole turmoil of fuck like Whatthe hell's going on here. Like,
our whole world just likeexploded. But in the meantime,
Nancy still has to be the strongone. And Nancy still has to go
through, you know, it's notlike, Man, I'm human, too. You
know what I mean? Like, and Ithink that's the part of all of
(29:20):
this, that I've said, from thevery beginning to you. I'm a
mom, you're a dad. We'regrandparents were everything.
The shut off was done the way itwas done. And we've talked about
it. And we've said that our sonprobably had to do that. Because
of the type of people that weare, we would keep going and
(29:42):
say, No, let's work this out.
Let's do this. Let's do that. Somaybe he had to do this just
because of the type ofindividuals that we are and
again, we're not coming up withexcuses or whatever the case is,
but and we've said this from thevery beginning. I wouldn't want
it to go back the way it was,because that was all fake.
(30:02):
Apparently, you know what Imean? That wasn't the way they
truly felt. If that makes sense.
I've always said, we're humanbeings, man treat us. We're
still humans. And I think that'sthe part of this whole
separation. Call it strangearrangement. There's still
(30:24):
another human pin on the otherfucking side. That's the part
where, and any kind ofrelationship with anything that
fucking happens. They're stillhuman beings, man. Like, that's
the part that just fucking killsme. You don't I mean, like,
Nick (30:39):
it just, I just Yeah, and I won't, I don't want to get
into the if I start getting intothe psychological aspects of it,
or what I feel, then what you'regonna be, we're gonna be blamed
because now this is about us.
You know what I'm saying? Andnot about that. But it is about
us. Because, first of all, thisis our fucking podcast. This is
the way that we feel this is thepain that we're going through.
(31:00):
That pain would not havehappened unless they decided to
become estranged from us. Iunderstand. And I'm learning
that it's not ever just aboutone person. Because there's more
people involved in this than oneperson. Here. I'm sitting down
(31:21):
and my youngest granddaughtersaying, Grandpa, why? Why? Why
do you have to work so much?
That's bullshit. How she say,Why am I why do I have to work
so much? I don't. We've never,there was never a time when
anybody ever called on us orever said, Hey, can you be here
(31:45):
now? That that didn't happen? Imean, for God's sake, they'd be
screaming that there's a spideron the wall. I drive 20 minutes
just to fucking kill it like,
Nancy (31:54):
yes, that was the problem, my therapy. But I'm
Nick (31:56):
just saying, but I'm just saying like, this is not. That's
where I feel like, it's so hardfor me not to say that grandpa's
not working. You know, it's hardbecause it's just, it's not
true. It's not true. It is whatit is. And I'm not going to step
into that ring right now. But Iwill tell you that I personally,
(32:19):
and I know you together. We'velearned a ton about ourselves.
Oh, definitely. Yeah, I'velearned a ton about people.
We've learned a ton about beinghuman. We've now been
vulnerable. I will tell youthat. These kids have literally
brought me to my fucking knees.
Congratulations. I guess it'smade me a better person. I will
(32:43):
tell you. This is not pointingblame. I'm telling you. Yeah,
it's this has made me a betterfucking person. And I will tell
you that it has made me man,when I see our granddaughters
man, I live in that fuckingmoment. There's no doubt about
it. When I see my son. I live inthat moment. I love having the
(33:05):
conversation. And maybe that'swhat he means by normal. I don't
I don't know.
Nancy (33:12):
I would have to agree with you. I mean, like I said,
Before, I wasn't there, I wasjust moving and going along with
the stuff. Now there's justevery little thing we notice
every little thing, you know,our granddaughter is growing, or
our granddaughter is doingsomething different. And it's
just like, how did you noticethis? Did you notice, like we
(33:33):
noticed things we
Nick (33:34):
have afterwards. Now because it's like, we're so
excited that we see somethingnew with them, or the little
attitudes and the little stickworks and the look and the
glowing ways they look and sortof there's still little shorty.
So they're not really gettingmuch taller. But their bodies
are changing. And it's just,it's really a blessing to
(33:56):
through all of this pain. Andthrough all of this anger and
fear and resentment. I still doget angry. I still do have a bit
of resentment. But everythingI've learned, is helping me to
cope with that. Everything Ilearned is and I know we're
(34:16):
still we've gone through thesame thing, but we both have our
days will be literally sittingthere will be you'll come in my
office and literally my officedoor is closed and I have just
lost it and you're like what'sup and, and you know what's up?
Yeah, and vice versa. It justhappens you'll be you'll wake up
especially on Sundays with you,where we're not going to see
(34:39):
them at all. And that was ourthing. For what forever,
Sunday's were our thing. And youjust you just lose it. And I
just all we do is just sort ofhold each other and say hey, I
mean this is this is what it isand and let's try and call them
and we'll try and call them andWe may get a call back, we may
(35:02):
not, I will tell you that I havea string of text messages with,
with them probably, I don'tknow, 1000 deep of just our
adventures. And because that wasanother thing, every adventure,
we went on everything we did, wewould be like, Hey, look at
where we're at, and they wouldanswer the phone, and we would
(35:23):
zoom. And we, we don't get thatanymore. We don't get any of
that. But we I have to say,though, we are blessed that we
get to see them when we get tosee them. Because some strange
moments are completely cut off,completely cut off and say, I
don't think our son is doingthis out of spite or malice, or
(35:45):
that he hates us by no means Ithink he is going through
something that he needs to proveto himself, and that he needs to
do for his family. Look, I'vesaid this before, the example
that our son got through us wasI stuck up for you all the time,
(36:07):
I backed you all the time webacked each other. We we were on
each other side, no matter whatwe didn't let anybody stand in
the way of what we were doing.
We were always loving on eachother. We were always there for
each other, we were always doingthat. And that was his example.
And he's doing the exact samething with his wife. It's not
that we don't mean anything tohim, but his family, and his
(36:28):
wife and his daughters comefirst. And I respect the fuck
out of that. There's no doubtthat I respect that. I still
have the knot in my stomach. Andthe question that I've always
had, and that I've alwayscontended, and you're right
along with me is? And I think weknow the answer. But why keep
our granddaughters away from us?
(36:54):
I mean, we can't do anythingwith them without some sort of
visitation. It's like wecommitted a crime or did
something. That's what I don'tunderstand. On the flip side of
that, he could just completelycut us off. That's nothing,
right. That's why I said, in thevery beginning of this, we're
(37:14):
not necessarily looking foranswers. Because it doesn't
matter. What's done is done. Wejust want to continue to say to
our son, if he ever hears this,you know what I mean? Tell him
that we love you 100% I'm notgoing to change who I am, as far
(37:35):
as I still am going to be theuntil the day that I fucking
die. To protect you, and to keepyou safe. Whatever that is. And
I know you're a man. And I knowyou're a good man. And I know
you do the best you can withwhat you have. But we are who we
(37:58):
are. And until the day we die,you're our responsibility. And
we take that seriously. Yeah,that extends to our daughter in
law. And that extends to ourgranddaughters because they are
a product together. And we arestill a family. And whatever it
takes, and however long ittakes, until the day that I'm
(38:22):
fucking Six Feet Under. I'm justgonna keep doing what I got to
do. So like we've always had?
Well, I don't think that we needto drag the sun any long. No, I
Nancy (38:34):
don't think so either.
Nick (38:35):
I think we've, we've got it out. We hope that man if
there's anybody listening tothis that's got some
estrangement issues or even ifyou just want to talk, we're not
counselors, we're not. We're nottherapists by any means. But we
do have some experience and wefeel for you and just be able to
(38:56):
talk to somebody who goesthrough the same thing would be
awesome. Reach out. Let us knowwhat your story is or just what
you're going through and we'lltry to get through it together.
Yeah. Talk to you guys soon.
Till the next time. Bye. Adios.
It's time to get fucking authentic. So I think this is
probably going to be one of themost difficult podcasts for us.
I agree. We talked about youwhen we talked about me and me
growing up is in itself a story.
And then you're part of thestory and then our son. And then
(00:29):
I went through what I wentthrough. And I felt that I had
gotten over that, which I didn'teven realize that I had a
problem. And then obviously, itwas a problem. And then you
having the moment you did, thepodcast was pretty enlightening,
just with us, coming to termswith a lot of how we were,
(00:53):
throughout our marriage nowcould lend itself as some of the
reasons why maybe our sondecided to do what he decided to
do a year and a half ago, notthat I feel that I'm at
necessarily at fault. Like we'reto blame for that. I don't feel
guilty for what we know, to thispoint. But this is definitely
(01:16):
the reason why we started thepodcast in the first place. Gave
us a big push to do it gave usthe big push to do it. Yeah. I
think we just sort of go intothis and see where it goes. I
think in past episodes, wetalked about our son and how we,
to this day believe that he wasa miracle. He was given to us as
(01:38):
a gift. And that gift, we weredefinitely not going to fucking
squander by any means. And so wedid what we had to do, or we
thought we did what we had todo, right? We did. Yeah, we had,
right. Yeah. And I and I go backto that this is so funny. And
(02:00):
this is part of me having tostill understand the way that I
think, because when when I saythat I did the best I could with
what I had. To me, that soundslike a cop out. Really? Yeah, I
know, I maybe somebody listeningcan maybe give me a reason why,
but I did with the best I couldlike it almost sounds like an
(02:21):
excuse that it wasn't goodenough. So when I say I did the
best I could, if I fail, Ialways feel that I could have
done better. You know, becausebecause my mom used to say you
kids were born with a manual.
And to me i i felt that that wasalways an excuse for doing what
she did. But I know that that'snot what it is. But I just feel
(02:44):
that way. There's there'snothing I can do about that.
Nancy (02:47):
Yes, we don't we don't get a manual. When we go to the
hospital on they say here. Imean, there's a bunch of books
and stuff. But I think,
Nick (02:55):
by the way, I'm sorry. We are outside again. It's a
beautiful night doing a seriouspodcast episode here. And we
have to be interrupted by planesflying overhead. But anyway, go
ahead, sir.
Nancy (03:09):
So I agree. Yes, we we weren't given a manual, or
manual was that we didn't wantour son to go through what we
went through when we were kids.
We said we wanted the opposite.
And I think we did give him thatwe totally, totally. You know, I
get what you're saying. I don'tget what you're saying as far as
how you feel. But
Nick (03:31):
yeah, the depth of it is my feelings. I get that. I'm
just I'm just saying that. Wedid the best we could with with
what we had with what we knewwith the way we were raised, and
with our dedication and theabsolute gift that he was was
our responsibility. Mepersonally, I wasn't going to
(03:51):
let anything stand in the way ofthat. You said that you didn't
feel that you were there. Butyou were doing what you were
doing. So nothing would stand inthe way that way as well. You
know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah.
With that being said, we musthave gone overboard just to
paint a little scenario. I mean,since the day that that kid was
born, I made it a point to havehim with me at all times. Yes,
(04:13):
you did. Absolutely. Well, hewent anywhere I went. He was
with me. I took him with me, inmy truck, my cars, whatever the
case was, he was always with mewherever I went, whether it was
to the store, whether
Nancy (04:30):
anywhere. It didn't matter to not.
Nick (04:34):
We made it a point with him that we were always going to
be home. And we were alwaysgoing to sit down and we were
always going to eat dinnertogether. We were always going
to talk about our day and wewere always going to ask each
other how our days were. And wewere going to talk about those
days and what happened in schooland what happened during summer
(04:57):
break and we made it a point forthat too. happen wherever he
was, we knew where he was. Andevery day Nance you made it a
point every day that we told himthat we loved him. And we showed
him not only told him, but weshowed him as, as best as we
knew how totally, he was veryreceptive to that. And he gave
(05:21):
it back to us. Totally. He toldus, he loved us all the time.
And whenever he was out with hisfriends, whether we were
dropping them off at school, orwhether we were dropping them
off at a game or any function,whatever he would constantly, he
would kiss us.
Nancy (05:37):
Yeah, he was there was no embarrassment. Yeah, there was
no, none of that he
Nick (05:41):
seemed very much that he was very proud of us being as
parents, we were very, veryclose. There was nothing that I
felt at the time could separateus. Did we have issues? Fuck
yeah, we had issues. There'salways issues. But some of the
things that I don't regret, buta lot of the things that I would
(06:02):
say was coming from me was thatfailure wasn't an option. And
you have to always give it yourbest. And always try as hard. Do
whatever you can do so that atthe end of it, you can say,
well, at least I triedeverything, and it didn't work.
I remember this, even talkingabout this in his relationships,
just keep fighting and keepgoing. And that was just that
(06:25):
was us how we would just keepgoing. And all of those morals
are all of those belief systemsthat we had we pounded into him.
And maybe that's part of thetrauma. I mean, he did say, he
told us specifically, when thisall happened that we gave him
(06:47):
too much, number one, numbertwo, is that we didn't let him
fail. Number three, he had ittoo easy for was that we, we
didn't give him a voice. And Ican almost understand that, to
the point of I know that where Iwas with him, I was overly
(07:07):
protective. If anybody was tomess with him, or he said
something happened, the risingthat came out of me and the the
absolute beteween of violence,and you would take care of it.
You you weren't gonna mess withmy son. I made that known. And
(07:29):
we were the parents that we'drather have all his friends over
at our house. And, you know, weknew all of his friends, and we
knew all of their parents, andwe knew all the teachers and we
were involved in all of thatphone calls, you know, to
teachers and
Nancy (07:45):
everything. Yeah, everything we were we were
parties or a dark place or
Nick (07:49):
Yeah, everything. And there was, I will be quite
honest. I mean, we controlledeverything. That's the bottom
line. And that that is a fact,we did control every aspect of
Nancy (08:04):
Troy, I never thought of it that way. I mean, I get what
you're saying now, but I didn'tthink of it that way. That was
our only son. And for me, I waslike, Hey, I knew where he was
at at all times. Because youknow how I would get if you
would go someplace, I'd be sofreaking nervous. And I'd be
like, Oh my God, if somethingdoes, well, you'd
Nick (08:24):
be waking up in the middle of the night, crying and
thinking something's going on.
You'd you'd literally jump up inthe middle of the night. And
just be bawling. I'm like,What's up? What's up? What's up?
And it's like, you know, he's onmy mind is on my mind. And I'm
like, Okay, let's just calmdown. And it. I don't know how
it feels. Yeah, I don't know howother families are all I can say
(08:45):
is that what we thought was wewere very close. What I mean by
controlling now is when I saycontrolling, you said that we
didn't give him a voice. Ifsomebody feels that they didn't
have a voice at all, that meanstheir voice was their tongue was
cut out or mouth. Right? It sortof means that, that they felt
that they couldn't say anything,or maybe do anything. And in
(09:09):
that case, that meant that wewere controlling now, again, I'm
going off of what I believe thatmeans. Basically, year and a
half ago COVID had hit thatwhole fucking fiasco and then we
were separated, there's no doubtthey stayed in their home and we
(09:29):
stayed in ours. And that wasn'tour choice, but we respect that
choice. We talked to them allthe time, as much as possible on
Zoom like everybody else and gotto see her granddaughters
through zoom. I know they wereyounger, so they weren't really
obviously they were younger.
(09:50):
weren't really understanding alot of what was going on. If the
drive bys Yeah, we paper Yeah,we would do the drive bys and
just run, run through what Totruck and throw toilet paper and
paper towels outside the truck,and then just take off. And we
went through what we wentthrough again, like everything
else. And we just thought thiswas another thing that was going
(10:10):
to pass and we were going tomake it work and whatever. And I
remember the dayremember the day that when it
was like, it wasn't over, butthey felt that they could come
back to the house, and oureldest granddaughter came up,
(10:31):
and she's like, mama said, thatwe can hug you guys.
Nancy (10:39):
It was pretty fucked up.
I'm a little
Nick (10:43):
choked up. Yeah, cuz it was, it was huge. We were so
close. That, that was hard toeven to go through that COVID
thing. And then she was soexcited. Something so small,
just a hug. When Dominic wasgrowing up, like we were always
together, always going out everyweekend, camping, doing
(11:07):
whatever, bringing his friendsalong. Obviously, he was a
single child. And then. And theneven after he got married, he'd
go on vacations, and we'd go outall together and do our thing.
And yeah, after COVID Thathappened, we were we were just
sort of relieved. And it was agood, it was good to sort of be
(11:28):
back and just hanging out doingour thing. Every Sunday was
yeah, it was really our day thatwe would just get together with
them and hang out. No matterwhat. We always, you know, had
lunch, dinner Dinner. Yeah, wewould make places, women with
their house or whatever the casewas just hanging out, right? I
(11:49):
mean, just family shit. I mean,that's was the norm for us. It
was normal. And we thought thateverything was normal. And if
your intentions aren't met withif they're not reciprocated, or
understood, we come to the pointwhere where we are now. It was
to us like, like any other day,I got on the phone for my son.
Nancy (12:11):
But we had two girls for when they started their business
a little bit.
Nick (12:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, that's that's what I mean, when after
COVID. And they they startedreally started the business. And
we were with the girls. We werejust even more who were with the
girls. I mean, with all the timeit can take off. You would take
off some work days. You had tobe there in the morning. It
would be Saturdays, Sundays. Anyday. They needed us of course,
(12:35):
like always right. And that wasthere. I was home for a good
year. Oh, yeah. Easy. Yeah.
Longer. Their schedules becameour schedule. Yeah, we helped
out. And believe me, this wasn'tlike, even an issue. This wasn't
charity. This was this. Weabsolutely adore our
granddaughters and we adorethem.
Nancy (12:56):
And it seemed like our son was actually enjoying what
he was doing. We thought thatwas like his the boost that he
needed, right? Because, youknow, we were up and
Nick (13:07):
again, we were part of their lives no matter what. And
so when one was down the otherhelps, right? When one's down,
the other one's here to pick youup. One. When one is crawling,
the other one's there to liftyou up. That had been
reciprocated all these years. Imean, if our son was a fucking
deadbeat, we wouldn't have didhalf the shit we did. Yeah, we
(13:28):
did. Yes. Our son, even thoughhe always wanted to do his own
thing, or he wanted to, in myopinion, feels or felt like he
had to prove something. And I Iunderstand as a single child,
going up against too strongparents. And I say going up
against because I'm justthinking what, what he thinks or
(13:49):
what he might have thought,because I'm we still haven't
gotten explanations or answers,which we don't expect at this
point anymore. But I wouldimagine it was almost like a two
against one, right? And beingtold that success and no
failure, blah, blah, blah, youknow what I'm saying boom, boom,
boom, I would imagine would,would be a hard pill to swallow
(14:12):
every day. I understand that. Ofcourse. Now, I understand it
more, because I'm in the mostpain that I've ever been in my
fucking life. I understand iteven more. But the bottom line
is, he was not a lazy kid. Likenot lazy in the sense of what he
wanted to do. school he sucked.
He was lazy as fuck. He didn'twant to do it, though. That's
(14:34):
the reason it wasn't because hedidn't. He just didn't want to
do it. He didn't want to be inschool. He didn't want to do
math. If he was in gym who hewas one of those kids. If he
didn't want to do enjoyedsomething, he will fucking do it
right. And that was one of thethings he was not lazy by any
means. Never. Even when heworked when I had my landscape
(14:55):
business. Yeah. And my brotherswill work he'd be telling me But
what do you do when you can't dothat? Like, like he took his
role as our son, I believe,proudly? I do, I do believe
that, I just think that hewanted to step out of our
shadows. And the whole reasonwhy I say this is that it was
(15:16):
just sort of like any other day,we were talking about our son
and our daughter in law, wereworking a lot on the weekends.
And we were also starting to getinto the summer. And we have
ourselves a property that werent out, it's a few hours from
our home. And we wanted to beable to do some of the
(15:41):
maintenance on the propertyourselves without having to pay
someone so that we wouldn't haveto spend that money. And the
conversation was that we weregoing to have to bring the girls
with us if if that happened,because we couldn't just go
there by ourselves, and thenleave them here because they,
you know, the kids needed tohelp as well with them. So it
(16:02):
was like, We don't want them todo that. And my argument was,
well, why not? Sometimes we kindof do shit that we don't want to
do. And you have to tell themthis and they weren't backing
down, and I wasn't backing down.
And one thing turned intoanother thing, and it turned
(16:23):
into a massive argument. And Iabsolutely lost. I absolutely
lost it. I was not involved inany of that. So I did not have
conversations with our son anddaughter in law. Yeah, I
absolutely lost it. I felt thatI wasn't being understood. I
(16:43):
believe he felt that he wasn'tbeing understood. I believe that
they thought that we were tryingto tell them what to do with our
granddaughters. Which, by theway, I mean, unless somebody
wants to say something differentabout it. That was part of us,
that we felt that we were alwayswalking on hot coals or
(17:04):
eggshells, because we we neverinterfered with raising the
girls. I don't feel that we did.
Would we say certain things?
Yeah, absolutely. Like anyparent might squeeze something
in there. But we never steppedin to affect those girls in any
way or say anything, that youshould raise your girls this
(17:28):
way.
Nancy (17:29):
And the contrary, I think we if you didn't want them to
watch too much TV, we wouldabide if you didn't want them to
be on the phone. If you didn'twant them to eat or drink a
certain thing we would be okaywith it. Yeah, we tried to
follow whatever. I don't want tocall them guidelines, whatever
it was they
Nick (17:48):
wanted to raise with their kids the way they wanted to
raise them and we respectedYeah, we I mean, the girls were
with us all the time. So yes, wetried to do whatever we would
constantly, if they wantedsomething you should ask your
mom and dad first places to gothings to do. So we tried that.
And so when this when thisargument happened, and believe
(18:11):
me, there were other things Iwas just wasn't like, this
argument probably got out ofhand, I could have handled
myself a different way. And I'mgoing to say that right now. I
will, I will admit that I couldhave been the cooler head in
this conversation. There's nodoubt about it. But it was
another disagreement like anyother district, that your head
(18:33):
was, for most parts when therewas discussions of stuff was
never cool. You know what Imean? It wasn't like it wasn't
abnormal. I went overboard. Thisconversation again, I wasn't
there's ever acted this way. AndI told you afterwards that I
hadn't felt like that inprobably 30 years. I was very
frustrated with the situationthat had gone down. I believe
(18:58):
they were very frustrated withthe situation that had gone
down. But I thought that thingswould cool off in a day or so.
And we we talked about it and wewould we would move on. Because
we
Nancy (19:10):
would always talk about stuff were to happen or they
didn't like something orunification
Nick (19:16):
was huge. In our family.
Well, so we thought, Well, yeah.
Right. Well, I will say that forus communication was huge. We
always say what's on our mind.
And I think maybe that's part ofthe problem. I don't know, but I
do know that that happened. Andafter that happened, well, they
didn't give you any explanation.
(19:38):
So you have not basically talkedto our daughter in law in over a
year and a half now. For thefirst few months. We barely got
to see the girls whatsoever.
There was a lot of hurt going onback and forth. Basically, the
first time we we met with ourson was a couple of weeks later
I think right before my Firstday at that point, he just told
(20:00):
us straight out like, it wouldbe easier if you guys were dead.
And I didn't know how to takethat. At that point, you're in
the middle of saying that youhad it too easy. But yet, it
would be easier if we were dead,which means that it would still
then be easy. So I, I was alittle confused, to say the
(20:21):
least. I think you at that pointtook it a little harder.
Nancy (20:28):
I did. Yeah, I think I took everything a little harder
because I didn't get to talk tothem.
Unknown (20:37):
I text them.
Nancy (20:38):
I call them. There was no communication. You know, after a
couple of weeks, we finallyreached out and said he wanted
to meet with us and said that,it seemed like he had a hard
time saying what he was sayingto us, which kind of took me by
surprise. You think you youthink you know someone right? Or
(20:59):
you think that that everythingis going fine? CAD I think every
parent thinks if there'ssomething that drastic
happening, you know, whethersomebody is caught stealing
somebody's you know, stabbingsomebody killing somebody, you
know, whatever the case is, youthink everything is going fine,
unless somebody brings it up toyou. Right? So a golden right.
(21:23):
The silence really spoke out,because it was like, But I'm
your mom.
Nick (21:30):
Yeah. Like, how
Nancy (21:32):
can you not talk to me?
So yeah, when he said that tous, it was Holy shit, you know,
like,
Nick (21:39):
you basically just cut us out of their lives. You know,
obviously, y'all are listeningto this, and you probably are
trying to come up with answersyourselves. There were texts
that went back and forth. Wewere sort of blamed for if we
cried, you know about this infront of him. We were told we
were children just trying to getour way. Oh, yeah, I remember
(22:02):
him telling you. So many thingsthat have been said, we don't
believe that. A lot of those.
Those things that were said,were coming from a place of
resentment, probably more thananything, I don't think that he
necessarily meant them. You knowwhat I'm saying? Yeah, totally.
(22:22):
I'm not trying to make excuses.
I mean, that seriously, I don'tthink our son is some cold
hearted person. I know that hevery much, I would assume, I
should say that he very muchappreciates part of what we did
as parents. Again, we don'treally know because, right. I've
(22:44):
begged them both to man,whatever, whatever it is, let's,
let's go get some therapy. Let'sget some counseling. Let's,
let's work on it singularly.
Let's work on it together. Let'swork on it as a family that's
comfortable with and let'sdiscuss. So if you pick it. We
we always got together andworked these things out. And I
(23:08):
think there's more to thatdynamic than what our son says.
I think there's some otherthings going on in the
background. That's a bunch ofbackground noise, and other
people had from the outside hadgotten involved. You can't
control any of that. No, and butultimately, my son now has a
(23:31):
voice right? He's done this. So
Nancy (23:36):
now he has a voice so he can, he's controlling and he's
he's on the driver's seat. Yeah,we realized when you become
awakened, or awoken, we'rehowever you want to say it to
this
Nick (23:51):
new way of living without having answers without knowing,
Hey, am I going to see mygranddaughter's once a month
once every six weeks? We used totalk to them almost every other
day. Zoom calls,
Nancy (24:07):
we wouldn't miss any any new thing that would happen to
them.
Nick (24:11):
Now we were always at every any game any sporting any
school event, any birthday, anywe thought grandparents do. Our
son said that our son anddaughter in law want us to be
normal grandparents. And I don'tknow what the fuck normal
grandparents mean, number one,number two. How do you how do
(24:33):
they know what normalgrandparents are? You know what
I mean? You're You're telling meyou want me to be a normal
grandparent, or normal for uswas exactly what we did. That's
what we were. And
Nancy (24:45):
so when we seen stuff, I mean, there were other
grandparents there. We weren'tthe only grandparents there.
Nick (24:50):
Yeah, I think like I said, I think a lot of it is unknown.
We stand by, we wait and we tryTo make sense of it, but I will
say that in light of all ofthis, it has changed our lives.
Nancy (25:07):
Well, you know, we were in their lives, whether it's
birthdays, holidays, weliterally for this past year and
a half for the first year. Imean, it's like, we went through
a grieving process, you know, itwas it started with your
birthday. And that wasdifferent. Well,
Nick (25:26):
so in my birthday, we're sitting around the table, and it
was the first time we had seenthe girls. And you have to
understand this girls are young,they don't understand why
they're not seeing theirgrandparents. We're not going to
put our granddaughters in themiddle of this and say something
(25:47):
that is going to alienate theirthought with their parents,
because it's their parents,right? Like, we're not. We're
not, we're not about that.
That's not who the fuck we are.
We've been accused of beingfake. We've been accused of
being witches. The most ironicfucking thing because everybody
(26:08):
that knows us, even the peoplewho accuse us of being fake, our
actions alone, speak to that,that is just the lie. We're,
we're the least fake fuckingpeople that there are, as a
matter of fact, we're probablyover fucking authentic. I don't
know what to say, like, Oh, I'vebeen blamed for being assholes
(26:30):
and in bitches in whatever,because we're as real as it
comes. And then don't want tosay something against their
parents, though, because thereis nothing against them. They've
made a decision, their decisionstands, they've made it very
clear how they, their actionsmade very clear that they want
(26:54):
to be in control of thesituation. I was gonna say there
actually are when I was raised,my parents pinned us kids
against each other. We as kidswere used as fucking pawns,
period. Now, I'm not sayingthat, that my granddaughters are
being used as pawns by no means.
But I'm saying that that is whathurt us the most. And that is
(27:19):
what's been stuck to the most.
So
Nancy (27:24):
it was That's why I said, for me, I felt like this was a
grieving process. Like,everything. Our whole lives
changed, like I said, startedsaying the birthdays, you know,
everything like you had Mother'sDay, you had Father's Day, you
had the Thanksgiving, and theyhad their own stuff. And this is
where I always say it's such aconfusing thing for me, because
(27:46):
Thanksgiving was their ownlittle stuff.
Nick (27:49):
Thanksgiving used to be so remember growing up, I mean,
even when they were firstmarried, Thanksgiving was always
at our house, it was always ourday was always bla bla bla bla
bla. And then as time went on,things evolved. Right? So then
it was like, no, they wanted tohave Thanksgiving, and they
wanted to have that with herside of the family. And they
hosted that and then the dayafter we would do it and then so
(28:09):
and
Nancy (28:10):
that was, that was Yeah, and even Christmas, it was, you
know, we, we would even for us,we'd celebrate Christmas Day on
a separate day, you know what Imean? Like when the whole entire
family but Christmas day, theywould come over and, and that
changed. And with all of this, Imean, my daughter in law wasn't
even involved in any way shewould never come. Our son was
(28:31):
coming with our twogranddaughters. But remember, I
got close to our daughter inlaw, it was like she was our
daughter, you know, it was thishappened, you guys were out
getting your nails done. And wehad a great time and everything
was was fine. And for me it wasthere was no again, there was no
conversation had with with meabout all this. So I went into a
(28:57):
whole turmoil of fuck like Whatthe hell's going on here. Like,
our whole world just likeexploded. But in the meantime,
Nancy still has to be the strongone. And Nancy still has to go
through, you know, it's notlike, Man, I'm human, too. You
know what I mean? Like, and Ithink that's the part of all of
(29:20):
this, that I've said, from thevery beginning to you. I'm a
mom, you're a dad. We'regrandparents were everything.
The shut off was done the way itwas done. And we've talked about
it. And we've said that our sonprobably had to do that. Because
of the type of people that weare, we would keep going and
(29:42):
say, No, let's work this out.
Let's do this. Let's do that. Somaybe he had to do this just
because of the type ofindividuals that we are and
again, we're not coming up withexcuses or whatever the case is,
but and we've said this from thevery beginning. I wouldn't want
it to go back the way it was,because that was all fake.
(30:02):
Apparently, you know what Imean? That wasn't the way they
truly felt. If that makes sense.
I've always said, we're humanbeings, man treat us. We're
still humans. And I think that'sthe part of this whole
separation. Call it strangearrangement. There's still
(30:24):
another human pin on the otherfucking side. That's the part
where, and any kind ofrelationship with anything that
fucking happens. They're stillhuman beings, man. Like, that's
the part that just fucking killsme. You don't I mean, like,
Nick (30:39):
it just, I just Yeah, and I won't, I don't want to get
into the if I start getting intothe psychological aspects of it,
or what I feel, then what you'regonna be, we're gonna be blamed
because now this is about us.
You know what I'm saying? Andnot about that. But it is about
us. Because, first of all, thisis our fucking podcast. This is
the way that we feel this is thepain that we're going through.
(31:00):
That pain would not havehappened unless they decided to
become estranged from us. Iunderstand. And I'm learning
that it's not ever just aboutone person. Because there's more
people involved in this than oneperson. Here. I'm sitting down
(31:21):
and my youngest granddaughtersaying, Grandpa, why? Why? Why
do you have to work so much?
That's bullshit. How she say,Why am I why do I have to work
so much? I don't. We've never,there was never a time when
anybody ever called on us orever said, Hey, can you be here
(31:45):
now? That that didn't happen? Imean, for God's sake, they'd be
screaming that there's a spideron the wall. I drive 20 minutes
just to fucking kill it like,
Nancy (31:54):
yes, that was the problem, my therapy. But I'm
Nick (31:56):
just saying, but I'm just saying like, this is not. That's
where I feel like, it's so hardfor me not to say that grandpa's
not working. You know, it's hardbecause it's just, it's not
true. It's not true. It is whatit is. And I'm not going to step
into that ring right now. But Iwill tell you that I personally,
(32:19):
and I know you together. We'velearned a ton about ourselves.
Oh, definitely. Yeah, I'velearned a ton about people.
We've learned a ton about beinghuman. We've now been
vulnerable. I will tell youthat. These kids have literally
brought me to my fucking knees.
Congratulations. I guess it'smade me a better person. I will
(32:43):
tell you. This is not pointingblame. I'm telling you. Yeah,
it's this has made me a betterfucking person. And I will tell
you that it has made me man,when I see our granddaughters
man, I live in that fuckingmoment. There's no doubt about
it. When I see my son. I live inthat moment. I love having the
(33:05):
conversation. And maybe that'swhat he means by normal. I don't
I don't know.
Nancy (33:12):
I would have to agree with you. I mean, like I said,
Before, I wasn't there, I wasjust moving and going along with
the stuff. Now there's justevery little thing we notice
every little thing, you know,our granddaughter is growing, or
our granddaughter is doingsomething different. And it's
just like, how did you noticethis? Did you notice, like we
(33:33):
noticed things we
Nick (33:34):
have afterwards. Now because it's like, we're so
excited that we see somethingnew with them, or the little
attitudes and the little stickworks and the look and the
glowing ways they look and sortof there's still little shorty.
So they're not really gettingmuch taller. But their bodies
are changing. And it's just,it's really a blessing to
(33:56):
through all of this pain. Andthrough all of this anger and
fear and resentment. I still doget angry. I still do have a bit
of resentment. But everythingI've learned, is helping me to
cope with that. Everything Ilearned is and I know we're
(34:16):
still we've gone through thesame thing, but we both have our
days will be literally sittingthere will be you'll come in my
office and literally my officedoor is closed and I have just
lost it and you're like what'sup and, and you know what's up?
Yeah, and vice versa. It justhappens you'll be you'll wake up
especially on Sundays with you,where we're not going to see
(34:39):
them at all. And that was ourthing. For what forever,
Sunday's were our thing. And youjust you just lose it. And I
just all we do is just sort ofhold each other and say hey, I
mean this is this is what it isand and let's try and call them
and we'll try and call them andWe may get a call back, we may
(35:02):
not, I will tell you that I havea string of text messages with,
with them probably, I don'tknow, 1000 deep of just our
adventures. And because that wasanother thing, every adventure,
we went on everything we did, wewould be like, Hey, look at
where we're at, and they wouldanswer the phone, and we would
(35:23):
zoom. And we, we don't get thatanymore. We don't get any of
that. But we I have to say,though, we are blessed that we
get to see them when we get tosee them. Because some strange
moments are completely cut off,completely cut off and say, I
don't think our son is doingthis out of spite or malice, or
(35:45):
that he hates us by no means Ithink he is going through
something that he needs to proveto himself, and that he needs to
do for his family. Look, I'vesaid this before, the example
that our son got through us wasI stuck up for you all the time,
(36:07):
I backed you all the time webacked each other. We we were on
each other side, no matter whatwe didn't let anybody stand in
the way of what we were doing.
We were always loving on eachother. We were always there for
each other, we were always doingthat. And that was his example.
And he's doing the exact samething with his wife. It's not
that we don't mean anything tohim, but his family, and his
(36:28):
wife and his daughters comefirst. And I respect the fuck
out of that. There's no doubtthat I respect that. I still
have the knot in my stomach. Andthe question that I've always
had, and that I've alwayscontended, and you're right
along with me is? And I think weknow the answer. But why keep
our granddaughters away from us?
(36:54):
I mean, we can't do anythingwith them without some sort of
visitation. It's like wecommitted a crime or did
something. That's what I don'tunderstand. On the flip side of
that, he could just completelycut us off. That's nothing,
right. That's why I said, in thevery beginning of this, we're
(37:14):
not necessarily looking foranswers. Because it doesn't
matter. What's done is done. Wejust want to continue to say to
our son, if he ever hears this,you know what I mean? Tell him
that we love you 100% I'm notgoing to change who I am, as far
(37:35):
as I still am going to be theuntil the day that I fucking
die. To protect you, and to keepyou safe. Whatever that is. And
I know you're a man. And I knowyou're a good man. And I know
you do the best you can withwhat you have. But we are who we
(37:58):
are. And until the day we die,you're our responsibility. And
we take that seriously. Yeah,that extends to our daughter in
law. And that extends to ourgranddaughters because they are
a product together. And we arestill a family. And whatever it
takes, and however long ittakes, until the day that I'm
(38:22):
fucking Six Feet Under. I'm justgonna keep doing what I got to
do. So like we've always had?
Well, I don't think that we needto drag the sun any long. No, I
Nancy (38:34):
don't think so either.
Nick (38:35):
I think we've, we've got it out. We hope that man if
there's anybody listening tothis that's got some
estrangement issues or even ifyou just want to talk, we're not
counselors, we're not. We're nottherapists by any means. But we
do have some experience and wefeel for you and just be able to
(38:56):
talk to somebody who goesthrough the same thing would be
awesome. Reach out. Let us knowwhat your story is or just what
you're going through and we'lltry to get through it together.
Yeah. Talk to you guys soon.
Till the next time. Bye. Adios.
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