August 27, 2025 • 69 mins
What happens when love continues beyond goodbye? Tony Stewart's journey with his wife Lynn reveals a profound truth many of us fear facing: grief's deepest waters can hold unexpected beauty.
Tony's memoir "Carrying the Tiger" chronicles their 30-year love story that evolved through creative pursuits, global adventures across India and Southeast Asia, and ultimately, Lynn's battle with cancer. The title—inspired by a Tai Chi movement where one lifts a tiger onto a distant hilltop to make it less threatening—perfectly captures their approach to life's most difficult challenges.
When Lynn received her diagnosis, Tony began documenting their experience on CaringBridge. What started as medical updates for friends transformed into reflections on mortality, connection, and finding light in darkness. These writings eventually became the framework for his memoir, but only after Tony had navigated the unpredictable terrain of grief that followed Lynn's passing.
Throughout our conversation, Tony's vulnerability shines as he shares revelations that challenge conventional wisdom about loss. "The first few months, I kept expecting steady progress upward," he admits. "What surprised me most was how nonlinear grief is—how it sneaks up just when you think you're getting better." This honesty offers comfort to anyone who's felt bewildered by grief's unpredictable nature.
Most powerfully, Tony describes the weeks he spent caring for Lynn during hospice as "the most beautiful of my life"—a perspective that transforms our understanding of caregiving and end-of-life experiences. Where many see only loss, Tony discovered profound connection, demonstrating that love doesn't diminish as physical abilities fade.
Now a certified grief educator, Tony shares wisdom that resonates whether you're grieving or supporting someone who is: "You can't heal what you don't feel." His story proves that embracing grief rather than avoiding it ultimately leads to healing, though not on society's timeline or terms.
For anyone navigating loss or seeking to understand its landscape, Tony's journey illuminates an essential truth: grief isn't where love ends—it's where love finds a new way to speak.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
I am Anne and today we haveTony Stewart, author of Carrying
the Tiger.
Living with Cancer, dying withGrace, finding Joy While
Grieving.
This isn't just a memoir.
It's a love letter and tributeto his late wife Lynn, who
(00:28):
passed away after a courageousbattle with cancer.
Through this deeply personalbook, tony invites the reader
into the sacred space of grief,devotion and the quiet moments
of beauty that remain even inthe shadow of loss.
It's not just a story of sayinggoodbye.
It's a story of continuing tolove even after they are no
(00:51):
longer physically with us.
But Tony's life hasn't only beenshaped by loss.
It's been marked by innovation,creativity and a pursuit of
meaning.
He's made award-winning filmsfor colleges and universities,
written software that earnedglowing reviews and developed a
grants management applicationused by three of the five
(01:11):
largest charities in the world.
And in the complex world ofadvertising, he helped lead the
creation of an internationalmessaging standard used across
the globe.
I mean that's really impressive.
I mean that's really impressive.
(01:46):
With carrying the tiger, heproves that sometimes the most
powerful thing we can build is abridge between love and legacy.
Tony, I have to tell you thisone was very personal to me.
Loss and grief has deeplyshaped my life, having lost my
father when I was 11, and I'vehad many losses since then.
I love that this is a book thatproves that even the hard can
be done with beauty and that wecan continue to love and, even
(02:09):
though it might be a physicallyhard goodbye, it is a transition
into a different relationshipwith them.
So thank you for that, thankyou for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You are really welcome and thank you for that
beautiful summary of the book.
You've just basically laid outin a few paragraphs all the
reasons I wrote the book, ormost of them, and I'm just so
glad that it worked for you thatway.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It has.
I mean, the story was hard forme.
I'm not going to, you know, tryto sugarcoat that only because
it took me to a really hardplace, but I think honestly that
only because it took me to areally hard place, but I think
honestly it's needed.
I think this is something thatwe need to read for those of us
who have really gone throughsome hard losses.
But, you know, you honor everypart of the journey and that's
(02:58):
what's so beautiful about it.
All of it deserved space.
The worst of times, andsometimes even the harder of
times, with joy and love woventhroughout the entire thing.
You show how to love anotherhuman with your entire heart.
So please tell us about yourwife.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Lynn, wow, lynn Cotulla, a painter, an artist.
I met her in 1985, a kind of ameet, cute story in a swimming
pool, ok, and I was on therebound from a first marriage
and I was sort of chasing afterevery woman who crossed my path.
(03:42):
Chasing after every woman whocrossed my path that's
overstating it.
But chatting up, I'm anintrovert and this had brought
out this.
I was 29 at the time and Ireally wanted to prove that I
was still attractive.
And I met this woman in aswimming pool and said a few
words to her, not much differentthan I had said to a million
other people.
I didn't actually have her inmind specially and she, who was
(04:06):
then 39, thought, oh my gosh,this guy is after me, this guy
has fallen.
I mean, he spotted me and he'stalked to me.
No one talks to each other inthe swimming pool.
She's wearing her cap, hergoggles.
So the next day she stopped atthe end of the lane and did some
leg stretches and I thought, oh, this, this nice woman is there
(04:29):
, I'll just chat with her somemore.
And only later did we realizethat it was this wonderful cross
misunderstanding where shethought that I was already
hugely attracted to her and Ithought this was just a
coincidence.
But because she believed I wasattracted to her, she made
herself available to me and westarted talking and we were
(04:52):
together for oh gosh 30 yearsafter that she sounds like a
beautiful human.
She's a wonderful person and Islip into the present tense,
even though she died more thanfour years ago, because for me
she's very much alive in myheart.
She painted paintings that wereout of fashion for 30 or 40,
(05:13):
for all that time mainly stilllives.
She became really well knownfor it still lives where you put
some objects on a tabletop andyou paint them.
It was something that was donelike in the 17th, 18th, 19th
centuries, but through her lifethese paintings were out of
fashion.
She was very good at it.
She got a gallery, she hadshows, she sold paintings, but
she was never going to be richor famous from that.
(05:34):
But that was her passion.
She lived to make thesepaintings, had a partial day job
at a law firm where she workedwith all of these hugely
talented, creative people, Ishould say in the support staff
you know as the paralegals, theproof readers and she had this
circle of friends who were likeher, over talented, over
(05:58):
educated, making a few dollars,working in this law firm and
doing whatever they did in therest of their lives working in
this law firm and doing whateverthey did in the rest of their
lives and she brought all ofthis creativity to me, which I
just loved.
It was funny, vivacious, toldsome wicked jokes.
I put a few of them in the bookgive you a sense of who she is.
And, as you said, in the firstfew years she was around 40
(06:21):
years old.
I was around 30.
We tried to have children.
That didn't work for us and wedecided to redirect that energy
and, honestly, money that wewould have spent.
You know that one does spendraising children on travel and
on doing things that we wouldnever have been able to do if we
had been raising a family assort of the alternative life.
(06:43):
And we spent all those yearsgoing on these wonderful trips
and we just love to go off byourselves I mean it wasn't with
groups to places like India andSoutheast Asia and sort of
figure out this before theInternet, figure out where we
could go, where we could stayand have all these adventures
for a few weeks every year.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Could you talk about those travels and what they were
like?
Sure, yeah.
Could you talk about some ofthose travels?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The one that comes immediately to mind is there are
two or three that comeimmediately to mind, and perhaps
it's because these are onesthat I actually put these
anecdotes in the book and maybesomething else will come to me.
But the very first trip that weever took to India, she wanted
to see this sort of paintedpalace, which was a 15th century
building that the Maharana ofthat area, that's a regional
(07:34):
prince, and his family had.
That was said to be coveredwith I'll call them frescoes
paintings on the inside of thewalls, and the only way you
could see it was to go to thislittle regional town and stay in
a hotel that was run by thatfamily.
That was their converted palace, but after India's independence
(07:54):
they no longer had a palace andin order to try and make some
money, we could go stay there.
And this was right around 9-11that we did this and tourism had
collapsed.
So we stayed in this palacewhere we were the only guests in
this giant thing and we had putup $100.
This, for that, was a hundredfeet long and then the bedroom
(08:15):
off to one side.
It was literally like theMaharana's room, and Lynn looked
at that and said I can't sleephere, this is too big, and they
said but you paid for it.
And she said show me somethingsmaller.
(08:35):
We worked our way down tosomething more intimate and then
set out the next day for thispalace, which was, which had no
electricity, no running water.
It was built, you know, 600years ago, but there was a
caretaker who let us in.
He spoke no English.
We walked up to the top of thisthing, five flights up, and he
opened the shutters and thedaylight came streaming in and
(08:59):
it was covered with the mostamazing paintings.
So we walked downstairs throughthat admiring this artwork,
taking some pictures ofourselves in there, and then we
thought you know, I don't wantto get back in the car.
We had a car and a driver which, I should say, is not like
having one here.
I mean, it's the only way toget around in India.
It's very inexpensive, it's notonly rich people who do it.
(09:21):
So we had a car and a driverand we told him to meet us at
the bottom of this long hill.
This castle building was at thetop of a hill that wound down to
the center of town, and we wentwalking down that hill and
after a while we were standingin front of a hardware store and
the shopkeeper came out and hehardly spoke any English but he
(09:42):
was really excited.
People were staring at us as wewent down this thing because
this was regional India.
There weren't any touriststhere.
Who are these white foreignerswalking down the street?
Where did they come from?
And he said please come with me.
I want you to meet my parents tothis little house where his
(10:06):
parents were, who were more ourage, and they were totally
surprised to see us.
He left us alone with them.
They didn't speak English.
We spent 20 minutes with hisparents while they took like
family photos off the wall Atleast I assume that's what they
were and pointed to us.
They served us tea, we did somelittle chatting where none of
us could understand what we weresaying in pidgin English and
pidgin whatever, and then, wethanked them and we went on our
(10:26):
way, and that was ourintroduction to India.
And perhaps encapsulated in allof the aspects of that story is
how we ended up going back sevenmore times.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Wow, that's amazing.
You know, when we want toexperience life and I love to
travel too I want to take myfavorite people with me you know
, because I want to say look atthis and look at this.
I mean you're taking in theworld around you with your
favorite people.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And so that's just such a beautiful thing that you
got to do that with her.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yes, again and again I had these various cool sort of
jobs A lot of them wereself-employed, consulting sorts
of things so I could take threeor four weeks we did this in the
winter here and we would flyfar, far away.
I also was very lucky because Ihad jobs where I was earning
massive numbers of frequentflyer miles.
(11:21):
Frequent flyer miles.
We said, ah, we got to go tothe other side of the world
because we can go business classand stretch out on all these
flyer miles that we wouldn'totherwise have been able to
afford.
So that's how we started goingplaces like on the other side of
the world.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I want to talk about the title Carrying the.
Tiger, because it's reallyvivid and so is the picture on
the cover.
What does the tiger representto you and what does the title
mean?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So that title was given to us, although I didn't
have any idea it was going tobecome the title in an email
that a friend of Lynn's wroteabout a month after we
discovered that she had cancerand she was very open with her
friends about it.
And so we were communicatingand started writing about it.
(12:08):
And a friend wrote in my TaiChi group we carry a tiger for a
friend who is facingdifficulties.
The three motions of bendinglow, lifting up the tiger and
putting it on a hilltop far awaymake that tiger so much less
(12:29):
threatening.
Lynn wrote back to her friendand said that's beautiful.
I'd love for you to carry atiger for me and also could you
teach me how to carry tigers.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That really is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
And so much so that it became your title of your
memoir that represented both ofyou cancer and then learning how
to die with grace and give Lynna good, beautiful death.
Together we cooperated on that,and then me afterwards trying
to find joy while deeplygrieving those I think of as
(13:15):
these three huge challenges.
Each is a different section ofthe book and in each case it's a
different tiger to learn tocarry.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
For anyone that's ever followed a loved one story
on CaringBridge and I have youknow just how powerful it is to
stay connected through everyhigh, low and in-between moment
of a person's medical journeyand their life and everything
else.
But, tony, for our listenerswho may not be familiar, can you
talk a little bit aboutCaringBridge and why you decided
(13:43):
to start writing Lynn's andyours story on the website?
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yes.
So Lynn had a lot of friends,very vivacious person who stayed
in touch with people, and theday that we learned that she had
tumors, before we even had aformal diagnosis, she started
emailing some of her closefriends to say, oh my God what
horrible news.
And then they emailed back andthen the word spread and then
(14:10):
more emails were coming in andthis was all during this crazy
first week.
I call that chapter into thewhirlwind because that's what it
feels like, and I think that'strue of anyone who receives a
sudden, unexpected, horriblediagnosis.
It's like what the hell are wegoing to do with this?
How are we going to deal withthis?
So we're running around tryingto find the right doctors and
(14:31):
being referred from one toanother and dealing with all
these emails.
And someone said I think Lynnmust have started complaining to
her friends like this iskilling me.
Bad enough to have the cancer,but communicating like this is
killing me.
And someone told her aboutCaringBridge, which is a
(14:52):
nonprofit organization it'sdonation funded, it's free to
use where you can set up a smallsocial media site, sort of a
very, very much like a strippeddown Facebook, where you post
things and people can writecomments and you can lock it
down.
You can.
You can be public, but you canalso make it private.
And we chose to have a privatesite.
(15:13):
But we started telling ourfriends go here, We'll whitelist
you, We'll, we'll, we'll do thesecurity thing so you can get
in and you'll read what Lynnwrote there, and it actually
wasn't Lynn who wrote them.
Lynn was a very good writer and, as I said, was very happy to
talk to her friends, but shequickly said life even as this
sword was hanging over her.
(15:33):
But I was very comfortablesitting down and writing a post
like this is what happened today.
And they started out thoseearly months as one post after
(15:58):
another.
This is what happened today.
Eventually that became the bookCarrying the Tiger, but the
book is rather different fromthose posts and has a lot more
in it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
At what point did you realize that your writing
wasn't just updates, that thiswas becoming a book that people
would be touched by and theywould be changed when they read
it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
It was probably several years later.
Lynn had incurable cancer, butwe were lucky enough in those
first weeks to get hooked up toa miracle drug.
An immunotherapy that doesn'twork for everybody did work for
Lynn, did not make the cancer goaway, but held it down for
years.
So instead of dying in a yearor two, we had this experience
(16:45):
of learning to live with cancerand then dealing with the side
effects.
That went on for five or sixyears before things turned bad
again.
During that time, I started outwriting these factual posts and
then, just almost withoutthinking about it maybe because
(17:20):
I was writing so much of themstarted letting more of the, of
talking more about.
What does it mean to live withcancer?
What does it feel like to us?
So things that weren't purelythe factual, all bad news, but
it wasn't hard news, it was justthis feels like a slog.
We feel like we're in a swampand we don't understand.
We don't know when this isgoing to end and how long this
(17:41):
will go on, and it's just reallyhard every day.
And I almost didn't publish thepost.
I wrote the thing and I hoveredover the little publish button
and I published it, but I wasafraid of.
I was afraid of alienating ourfriends, and instead I got these
responses back.
Tony, thank you so much forsharing what's really going on.
(18:19):
Right, yes, I think this couldbe a book.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You also became a certified grief educator.
So where did you make thattransition from working so hard
on yourself and helping yourselfgo through your own grief to
wanting to help others withtheirs?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
This is a very recent event in my life.
I wrote the whole book and andI took this was just last year.
Lynn died four years ago.
It took several years before Igot to the point of being able
to create Carrying the Tiger,which, as I said, is much more
of a real book than than justthe posts.
And then I started on the OK,I've got this book.
(18:59):
Some of my friends who readearly versions of it said wow of
it, said wow.
And, to my surprise, somestrangers in the beta reading
phase, where people you don'tknow read a manuscript said this
really helped me.
This helped me get through theloss of my brother and his wife.
Oh my God, this woman just losther brother and his wife.
(19:20):
So I started having the feelinglike I've got something here
that could be really much moremeaningful than I imagined, when
I originally thought, oh, I'llpublish this thing and, you know
, sell a few hundred copies andthat'll be that.
And I started to think, no, Ithink I'm going to try and make
this more widely available andhired a publicist and started
(19:40):
going on podcasts and thingslike this one to try and spread
the word, things like this oneto try and spread the word.
So after I'd recorded maybefour or five conversations with
people asking me about the book,I began to realize these
conversations where I feel likethere are people listening who
might be helped, whether theyever read my book or not, who
might be helped by hearing aboutmy story.
(20:00):
It was making me feel great.
It was making me feel like Iwas doing something good in the
world.
And then, by coincidence, I justsaw an Instagram ad by David
Kessler, who is one of the mostwell-known people in the grief
counseling space.
He runs griefcom and is acounselor, and he was starting a
(20:21):
training the next week.
Wow, a training the next weekWow.
And I'm not religious, but Imean I felt like Lynn was making
this happen, or you know, thiswas a sign like here, I was
starting to feel like talkingabout grief and helping other
people was really meaningful andI could take this course and
find out.
So that was just a few monthsago.
(20:43):
I only finished the course afew weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Oh my goodness.
Well, I can tell you that youwere doing this even before you
knew you were doing this.
You know the grief educatingpart of it and I want to share
that.
You know, helping others hasalways helped me and when I was
going through one of the hardesttimes in my life, someone said
to me go help someone else.
And it was the best advice thatI could have been given during
(21:08):
that time and I actually preferhelping other people.
You know, I mean, but I waswondering if becoming a grief
educator has helped you gothrough the process even more.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I think writing the book helped me immensely.
I think the CaringBridge postswhich became the origin of the
book, writing them in real timewhile I was grieving, writing
them in real time during hospice, day after day those posts were
my therapy at the time and thatwas huge.
(21:41):
Then the process oftransforming them into a book
which caused me me.
At this point it had been threeyears since Lynn died.
By the time I was ready andstarted making the book.
I tried earlier and I justwasn't ready.
I was crying too much.
I couldn't possibly make thisbook no-transcript breakdown,
(22:32):
because the caring really got tome and I collapsed.
That wasn't in any post, butit's so important to the story
and I wanted to tell the reality.
So for a year I worked on thebook and I would say the first
half of that year was therapyall over again, I bet, Reliving
all of these things.
(22:52):
Yeah, that was a year and ahalf ago.
It then calmed down for a while.
I started focusing on how do Iyou know which sentence is
better than which other, and allthis sort of craft work you
have to do to make it not just abook but a really good book
that people will actually wantto keep turning the pages.
And then I recorded the audiobook and it all came back again.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
See, that's a different.
You're using a different partof you when you're actually
saying it out loud yes, and alsonot second guessing it, because
(23:40):
by the time I recorded theaudio book, the text was locked.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I was no longer being my own editor and saying, oh,
in my apartment and Lynn diedacross the hall from here, and
many of the whatever events inthe book take place in my
apartment.
I'm sitting there now.
Oh, my gosh, it was.
That was huge.
And that was just earlier thisyear.
All of that had happened and Iwould say that by the time I
took the grief class, I learneda lot.
I learned a lot of things thatI would not never have known
(24:05):
about helping people and aboutdifferent kinds of grief, but
the biggest thing I learned wasthat it reinforced all of what I
had done out of instinct to tryand find my way through, and it
reinforced me the value of thefeedback I had gotten.
I just thought, wow, I I.
By by luck uh, by lots oflayers of luck I did all kinds
(24:30):
of things that I would say arequote right that helped me get
through my grief, and they'rethe techniques that the class
was teaching you to apply andhelp other people.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
You touched on something you know.
I have to ask.
You went from writing softwareto making films, to helping
shape ad buying standards, andthen you wrote this one of a
kind grief book.
You seem to be talented inwriting what you know.
And when you were done withthis.
I have to ask did you have anyidea that all of that was in
(25:05):
there, that you could writesomething so honest and
vulnerable and raw?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I knew I had written something open and real and good
.
The level of response that thisbook has gotten has been a
wonderful surprise.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, it's because of how intimate, how real, like
you said, and it's really brave,I think, especially for a man
to put everything out there onthe page for other people to see
that you really do feel men, dofeel men feel deeply, really do
(25:52):
feel men, do feel men feeldeeply.
And it's hard, I think, foranybody to really put it out
there on the page for otherpeople to read.
I mean, we might be able towrite in our diary, you know,
and read something later andrevisit that, but to allow other
people to see it, I mean thisis a very brave book, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I of course I didn't know I was being that brave at
the time, but luckily, if youthink about it, you know.
Carrying the Tiger began asthese private posts and I was
writing for an intimate group offriends that kept expanding.
By the time Lynn died therewere 200 people reading the
posts and many of them I didn'tknow they were friends of
(26:28):
friends of hers or people shehad worked with and such, who
wanted to know what was going on.
But I was writing in a verysafe place and this whole
process that I talked about,where I started out factual and
just kept getting more open andthen getting the feedback from
people saying keep going, wasimmensely satisfying to me.
But it brought me to a placewhere I was putting things down
(26:49):
on paper that I have never, ever, done anything like that before
and that just kept going to usand not just someone but other
kinds of losses to see if we canmake some fine meaning, make
something meaningful out of itwhich makes us feel good and
(27:11):
helps to transform this horriblesource of grief into a happier
source of grief, a warmer sourceof grief.
So, I didn't know that concept,that phrase, but it's clearly
what I spent several years doing.
So you asked me quite a bitearlier in this conversation
when did I first think of makingthis a book?
(27:32):
And I don't think I answered.
I told the whole preamble butthe actual when did I first
think that I'm going to makethis a book?
About two weeks after Lynn diedI was writing these posts.
I had thought I would stop whenshe died.
I actually wrote a post sayingthis will be the last one.
It's the Lynn CotullaCaringBridge Journal and she
(27:53):
died and I can't very well go onwriting Lynn Cotulla posts.
I'd never pretended it was her,it was always my name on them.
But then, a few days after shedied, I wrote another post
because I could not stop,because I had become addicted to
the process of writing them andI started getting these
responses back about my griefposts in which I was really just
(28:14):
describing day by day what itwas like to go through that
horrible, shattering early grief.
And I was doing it because Iwas addicted to the process of
putting this stuff down on paperand it was helping me
understand what I was feeling.
But I was feeling, but I wascreating this treasure trove of
material, my friends startedsaying, wow, this is great, tony
, you're helping me so much bysaying this that, a week or two
(28:37):
in, I will now say I realized Icould make real meaning out of
Lynn's life if I took all ofthese posts and turned them into
a book that other people willread.
And that was the first time Ihad that idea, and it was
specifically because Lynn hadjust died.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
This is one of the most intimate books out there on
grief and I do think it was thewillingness for you to go there
and I think so many timespeople write about facts, you
know, they just put those thingsout there that are more in your
head instead of your heart andthe how to's.
(29:13):
But this was just written fromhonesty and heart.
What do you think of the stagesof grief?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Oh, do you mean the so-called famous five or six
stages?
There are the five stages thatthis guy, david Kessler, and
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did, andthen later he added a sixth
called finding meaning.
I think that they are all realdescriptions of things that you
may go through, not all of, notnecessarily in that order,
(29:43):
necessarily all of them, becauseand I think David Kessler
himself would tell you that,because I've taken his course
and heard him say that to us itis not like first you will feel
anger, then denial or thenwhatever.
No, it does not work that way.
But these are all phases thatyou might go through that are
(30:03):
very, very common.
It's sort of a handle you canput on how you're feeling at
this moment in your own personalgrief journey, and sometimes
it's really helpful to be ableto look at how you're feeling
and say I'm not alone here.
Millions of other people havebeen angry.
It's very common to beextremely angry about all kinds
(30:23):
of things.
Right to be extremely angryabout all kinds of things you
know, or to deny it.
Well, denial, of course.
There is this.
I wrote about it as magicalthinking and I picked up that
phrase from Joan Didion's memoirabout her grief journey, the
Year of Magical Thinking, whichin her book she defined as the
irrational belief that theperson you've lost is going to
(30:44):
come back.
When she realized she washanging on to his clothes which
I think is very common I.
But that stage in which you hangon to them, it's some part of
(31:10):
your brain.
It certainly was for me and forJoan Didion.
It's because, oh, lynn willneed these when she comes back.
I can't get rid of her clothesbecause then what will she wear
when she comes back?
Of course you're notconsciously thinking that
thought, but emotionally.
That's a large part of why youcan't get rid of them, or why I
(31:31):
shouldn't generalize.
That was a large part of why Icouldn't get rid of them at
first.
Eventually I gave a lot of herthings to friends and to charity
and I still have some here fouryears later.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I think for me and I have had so many people in my
life pass away and I still havesome of their things you know I
have had to, of course, let mostof it go, but I just can't let
go of a memory Like when my auntpassed away, who was the
absolute closest aunt, she wasjust a beautiful soul.
(32:03):
I was allowed to go into herapartment and take the things
that meant the most to me.
And you know some people theywant the most expensive item or
whatever you know, and itbecomes some greed thing.
Kept her halls in because shewould always share them with me
(32:24):
when I would come.
I wanted the bird music boxthat I had given her that we
would listen to together andreally that was all that I
wanted, because those were thethings that I'll never forget.
And when I still look at themtoday, you know they're that
memory and I'll keep themforever.
But you know some of the things, like my mom's clothes, I still
(32:47):
have in a bin in my shed.
You know I don't have them inthe house but I can go look at
them, I can go hold them.
You know that kind of stuff andit's hard to let go of them.
It really is.
I probably have too many things.
I probably should let go ofthem.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Don't should yourself , don't should yourself ever.
Yeah, I think when I'm ready Iwill.
And during that time I hadreached a stage I know because
it's in the book where I'vegotten.
I've given away some of Lynn'sthings to charity her clothes
(33:31):
and all and I've kept some of myfavorite ones and they're
hanging in the closet and, as Isay whenever I want to visit
them, there they are.
(34:01):
Now it is two and a half yearslater now, as we record this,
than the ending of the story inthe book and I recently was
looking in that closet andrealized oh, somewhere in the
last two years I gave most ofthose things away because
they're no longer there, and Ihad just maybe recorded where it
was wrong.
It was like these were beautifulthings she had bought in India.
The ones I had kept were mainlylike Indian blouses and all
that we had bought during ourtravels, so they had double
meaning.
But they're really beautifuland useful and not that easy to
get.
So at some point I had said no,I can't hang on to these, I
(34:23):
need to give them away.
But that moment honestly hasnot stuck in my head.
It's sort of like well, wait aminute, they were there two
years ago and now they're notthere and I just reached a point
where it made more sense to meto move them on and give them
another life somewhere else withLynn and her health and the
(34:45):
struggles that you twoencountered with the health care
system.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yes, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
One of the lessons that we learned is that you
really do have to advocate foryourself.
You have to do a lot of yourown research, and most
well-meaning doctors in theworld are living within the
system that they are in Right.
And the story I tell early onin the book is how is this
twists and turns of how we cameto learn about a clinical trial
(35:17):
that might be right for Lynn.
And it was in the course of ourgetting a second opinion from a
doctor who was a friend of afriend that I happen to know at
Yale New Haven Hospital.
I live in New York City.
Yale New Haven Hospital is twohours travel from here, minimum,
so it wasn't someplace weexpected to get treatment.
But we went up there for thesecond opinion and he says I
(35:37):
have great news for you.
We're running a clinical trialhere of this new immunotherapy
drug that we think would beperfect for Lynn Love to log you
into.
You know, get you into thistrial and you could start now,
tomorrow, the day after.
And then we learned that it wasgoing to be fiendishly
difficult Go there.
The clinical trial requiredthat we more or less camp out in
New Haven for weeks, three daysa week here, three days a week
(36:01):
there, which our lives.
I had a full-time job, we don't.
You know it's stressful, etcetera.
Would it be possible to do thisin New York City, where we are
surrounded by world famoushospitals?
And they basically saidprobably, but you're on your own
to figure that we can't helpyou.
I'm simplifying tremendously,but that was my first taste of
(36:22):
like.
Wait a minute.
I ended up sitting there in NewHaven Googling on my phone or
actually it was on a computerthat they loaned me Googling to
discover that the same exactstudy was being done at Sloan
Kettering Famous Cancer Hospitalhere in Manhattan, where I
could get there by subway, andthen they wouldn't be able to.
(36:45):
I said can you connect me tothe right people there?
And they said we wouldn't knowwho to call.
So Lynn and I spent this wholeafternoon sitting in New Haven
figuring out and calling intoSloan Kettering and her other
doctors to try and get her intothis thing in New York.
This was nuts and these are allwell-meaning and some, in one
case, world-famous doctors who Ireally liked.
(37:05):
But there was something aboutthe nature of the system they're
all working in where they saidyou're on your own because this
sort of spans between theirinstitutions, and that was
horrible.
There are lots of stories inthe book of situations where,
even at Sloan Kettering, which Ilove, we're working with people
I loved.
They wanted to do things becauseof the nature of the systems
(37:28):
that they thought were in Lynn'sbest interest.
That turned out, in my opinion,totally not to be so.
The second or third time wewere back for a similar major
operation and they wereproposing the same sorts of
things again.
I ended up like yelling one dayand saying, basically we're
going to sign Lynn out againstmedical advice, which is a
(37:48):
defined term.
We're going to sign Lynn out,ama, rather than do what you're
saying she's got.
She's got deadly cancer.
She could die tomorrow.
I'm not going to worry aboutthis little thing you want to
protect against Her.
Staying here is killing her andthey didn't see it.
She was getting hospitaldelirium.
Things were going wrong for her.
(38:08):
It was a hell of a journey andso, again and again, we had to
learn the systems, understandthe people and advocate for Lynn
.
And that is a lot of what I did, and it was this wonderful
pairing because that was like mytype A project management
personality.
I could bring that to bear andshe was much more of the artist
(38:29):
and the emotional person andvery smart, but it really played
to my strength to figure thisstuff out and advocate for her.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
She was very fortunate to have you and that
you had that fight and I thinkthat you know I had to do that
for my mom when she was inhospice and different things,
and I often say to the doctorswhat would you do if this was
your mom?
What would you do if this wasyour wife or husband or child?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
And they do this every day.
This is what they do, and Ithink that they lose that
sometimes where and I don't wantthem to I don't want to say
that they just saw my mom as anumber, you know, or just
another patient, but they arejust another patient in some
regards and you want them tolook at them as if it's their
mom in that bed.
What would you do?
So, yeah, her third majorspinal operation.
We're ready for her to go home.
(39:48):
She's starting to get hospitaldelirium again, and that's a
whole thing in the book that Inever used to know anything
about and it's fascinating andhorrifying.
And they wanted to keep heranother day to check her heart
and then they wanted to keep hera second other day and that's
(40:08):
when I just lost it.
I mean, you know, it turned outshe died two months later from
her cancer and what she was mostscared about was losing her
mind to delirium by staying inthe hospital any longer.
And what they're looking at iswhat if we release her one day
too early and she goes home andhas a heart attack?
And I don't know, are theyworried about litigation and me
(40:31):
suing them for malpractice,whatever?
And I'm just trying to get herthe heck out of there.
These were good people.
They're doing their jobs, butwhat they think is their job is
not what I thought we needed,right, yeah, and it's about
(41:07):
through the living with cancer,part of the story our doctors
repeated again and again.
It's not about extending Lynn'slife, it's about having quality
life for as long as you can,and I think that's a sea change
among good oncologists and gooddoctors from 20, 30 years ago,
(41:27):
everything was measured on howcan we get you home and in a
condition where you can enjoythe life you have?
Right, the measure of what itmeans to enjoy the life you have
changes.
It's.
Certainly we couldn't gotraveling to India or anything
like that.
We weren't going to get thatlife back based on what happened
(41:52):
to Lynn during those years, butwe learned to enjoy what we had
.
And the doctors were very muchon our side and very sympathetic
and never saying we just wantto do this one more thing.
You know, maybe it'll get yousix more months.
Well, we didn't want six moremonths if Lynn was going to be
in pain and unable to enjoy herlife for those six months, and
(42:13):
they weren't pushing that on us.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, I want to move on to you, and there's something
deeply human in the way thatyou described the space after
Lynn's passing not just thegrief but the rebuilding.
So can you talk about this timeof your life and what surprised
you the most about you and yourgrief?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Wow, that's a great question, and I don't think
anyone's asked me that questionbefore.
The thing that surprised memost in, certainly in the first
month or two, was I was lookingfor a steady progression upwards
.
I understood that I didn't knowwhen it would happen.
(43:00):
But when I look at the what Iwrote day after day, day every
time, I start to feel a littlebetter.
In those first weeks I write,hey, I'm feeling a little better
, you know, maybe the sun isstarting to come out, and then I
would get plunged back a day ortwo later into deep, horrible,
(43:22):
sobbing grief, sobbing grief.
And so the thing that surprisedme most which I now know is
completely common and happens tovirtually everyone, is that it
was so nonlinear, so sneaky.
I used the word sneaky at onepoint, not in the book, but I
remember in writing about it.
Somewhere I said grief is sneakybecause, it leads you to think
(43:44):
you're getting to a good placeand then it comes roaring back,
something sets you off andlooking back and realizing that
I was only a few months into mygrief journey and most people,
all of us, you know that firstyear, or even two years, is
really intense for a lot of us.
The idea that I thought that Iwas going to start feeling
consistently better in a monthor two is just.
(44:07):
It's the same fallacy that oursociety lives with, and I had
bought into it.
If I can just do everythingright and I was I was writing
these CaringBridge posts andpeople were telling me what had
worked for them, but I thinkthey meant over a period of
years.
I was trying to do things inone, two, three months in like.
(44:31):
Let me train myself to look atthe photos of me and Lynn
together and remember the happymoment instead of just sobbing,
because you know, in those firstmonths, you or at least I, you
look at photos of us in India orsomething on a happy day and
all I could do was sob at howI'd lost that and we were never
going to be there again, etcetera.
And in reality, over time, thisis exactly the transformation
that you hope for and that hashappened to me and happens to
(44:52):
most people is that youeventually reach the point where
you at least can smile andremember the happy part without
always bursting into tears.
But I somehow thought that bydoing these sorts of exercises
looking at the photos, trying tosmile, thinking about grief
that in a period of one, two,three, four months I was going
(45:14):
to lift myself up to a betterlevel, and instead it just kept
surprising me, plunging me backdown.
So that's the first thing thatcomes to mind when you say what
did you learn?
Well, I learned that that stuffis really tricky.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
If it's giving yourself permission to go on the
wave, to go in whicheverdirection the wave takes you
that my instinct was to go onthe wave.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
So, even though I wanted and hoped, and I
continually foolishly believedthat when the wave was lifting
me up, maybe it will keeplifting me up, you know, one
would like to believe thattomorrow will be another good
day, I was willing from thebeginning to experience the
grief as it rocked and rolled me.
There's a phrase I learned inthe Kessler course you can't
(46:09):
heal what you don't feel, and alot of us.
It's a wonderful phrase.
It's a wonderful.
You can't heal what you don'tfeel.
And those of us who try andjust push the grief away.
Of course the phrase is true ofmany other kinds of emotions,
but you try and push the griefaway.
Of course the phrase is true ofmany other kinds of emotions,
but you try and push the griefaway.
It's really still there, it'snot healed and it will come back
(46:33):
to bite you at some unexpectedtime, possibly much later in
your life.
And I, in taking the course,realized, oh gosh, I let myself
feel from day one.
That's how we have that part ofthe book.
That's what I'm writing aboutis is all these feelings I was
having, and I think, possiblybecause I was getting so much
(46:55):
satisfaction from sharing how Iwoke in tears.
They came from nowhere, youknow.
Today, this morning, whatever,sharing just things and getting
the positive reinforcement fromfriends and readers.
Keep going, keep going.
Somehow I walked myself rightinto the midst of the feelings
(47:20):
early on and that was a blessing.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I think that, listening to you and your book
and everything that you've donein the Caring Bridge and I mean
you did this a very healthy way.
You didn't put up that wall.
You allowed it to consume youat times and I think sometimes
that's the part that everybodywants to run away from.
(47:43):
It's like wait a second.
I'm feeling nope, wall go up.
Okay, I'm going to go dosomething to block that pain,
but you allowed it to come in.
I think that that's a reallybeautiful message.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Thank you.
It is what worked for me as aperson trying to get through
that phase and it is also what Imost wanted to share in that
part of the story that I hopethat in reading the book, in
reading Carrying the Tiger, yousee that playing out in all the
(48:15):
parts of the book reality ofwhat was actually happening and
we didn't try and sugarcoat itor push it away.
Very true of the hospicesection and helping Lynn Dott
and that doing that broughtgreat gifts.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
What I'm also taking from this is that this space, I
think, would be harder for men.
You know, women go straight totears lots of times, times and
it's okay, but I think that itis harder for men.
What do you hope men learn fromyour vulnerability?
Speaker 2 (48:55):
I think men I really hope that men hearing about this
story or reading this storylearn exactly what we're talking
about.
That letting yourself be open,revealing these thoughts that
you're having that you don'tdare reveal because they make
you feel bad about yourself,actually helps.
(49:16):
It doesn't just helpemotionally.
Sometimes it helps like lettingthis out gets other people,
whoever you're talking to, tosay something really useful,
really helpful.
There are examples of that allthrough the book.
It kept happening to me when Iwrote the book.
I wasn't actually thinking aboutthe gender issue, although
there is one spot in it wherewhen Lynn was dying in hospice
(49:42):
and she was here with me at home, and it was during COVID, and
she was here with me at home andit was during COVID we we did
have AIDS, um, but it was duringCOVID.
There were hardly any visitors,um, and I was.
You know it was.
It was hard.
I was taking care of her as onetakes care of a baby.
As we got to the end, you know,wiping her, cleaning her, all
(50:02):
of all, all the bodily functions, feeding her, all of that, her
all the bodily functions,feeding her, all of that.
And then I did hire some aidesto help health aides in the last
period because it was justgoing to kill me.
It was more than I could do bymyself.
And one of the aides told methat when she does hospice duty
(50:24):
she's been in a lot of differenthouses and often I think she
may have said almost always thehusband sits in another room and
can't bring himself to go in tobe with his wife because she's
not the woman, the vibrant,healthy woman that he spent his
life with and he doesn't do thethings that I was doing.
And she told me I was reallyunusual in her experience and
(50:48):
when you read that section ofthe book I hope that you'll
realize that that those were thetwo most beautiful weeks of my
life and that taking care oflynn and bathing her and talking
to her about dying and sharingthe feelings she was having,
those were the most miraculousspecial days of my whole life.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Well, I'm tearing up.
You know.
That is just proof that thereis so much beauty in our deepest
pains.
There really is.
I mean, in the midst of all ofthis you did seem to find joy
(51:35):
and stay in the joy when youwere really hurting deeply at
the same time.
So could you talk more aboutthat?
How did you find the joy in themidst of all the pain?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
I think that there's a Buddhist saying that you
shouldn't chase happiness.
Happiness is chasing you.
You just have to stop runningand let it catch you.
And I've heard other Buddhisttype people, and I should say
I'm not a deep Buddhist,Buddhist type people, and I
should say I'm not a deepBuddhist, but I really of all
(52:13):
the religions.
There are things in Buddhismthat I relate to more than any
of the others, and that's one ofthem.
And I think that what Lynn andI had from the very beginning
was a willingness and an abilityto just stop and look around
and say, yeah, this is allhorrible, but, oh my God, these
buds on these trees lookbeautiful.
Oh my gosh, the air is nicetoday.
Oh my gosh, you know, and justto let yourself stop.
(52:38):
There is no magic.
Here's what you do to get joy.
To get joy, it's here's whatyou do to stop for a minute and
realize that if you just openyourself up the things to
appreciate and admire.
I mean, we frequently said westill have each other, we still
(52:59):
have each other, we can't dothis, we can't do that, we can't
do the other, but we still haveeach other.
We said that to each other manytimes and it was still true.
(53:26):
I wrote it isn't.
The person they were before isnever.
You're never going to have backwhat you had.
Then you're into loss, you'repossibly into avoidance.
But if you just say all of thatis true, but let me just stop
for a minute and hold her handand realize what I've got, that
(53:49):
use that as a metaphor, becausethat was certainly true at that
moment and it was true manytimes.
But versions of that are whatkept me going.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
You said so much in all of that.
I think that so many times andyou know, not everybody has the
ability to do what you'retalking about I don't know why
Some people really do just holdon to that negative and that's
what they do and no matter what.
(54:20):
They just can't make that shiftand I'm not sure what it is why
some people can and some peoplecan't.
But what I love is that you hada mix.
You felt this and you felt thatand you allowed both, and
sometimes you allowed them atthe exact same time yes and not
all of it was all bad, and notyou.
(54:42):
even the really good times, youstill knew what was, but yet you
still, just you, cherished thatmoment.
And I think sometimes we oftendo it in hindsight, you know,
instead of in the moment.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
And I love that you got to do that with her, because
you made her last daysabsolutely a beautiful thing.
Instead of it just being aboutthat she's leaving, you made it
about living, too.
(55:23):
That's a wonderful gift.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
I'm getting emotional .
Listening.
That is exactly, of course.
At the time I wasn't thinking,oh, let's make this about living
.
We are looking back inhindsight and realizing what the
impact was.
At the time I was just tryingto do the right thing, whatever
(55:48):
the right thing felt like oneminute after another.
But when I look back, when Isay like those were the most
special years, weeks of my life,and you echo back to me why you
just echoed back to me, whythose were such special weeks,
and I got very emotional,realizing I agree with you.
(56:09):
I agree with you.
It's so much about living.
It is a truism, a cliche, thatwhen you know you are about to
die, that you are more aware ofthe world around you.
I was about to say what you'reabout to lose.
(56:29):
But if you go at it as what I'mabout to lose, that's a downer.
That's where grief is in theearly stages what I've lost, not
what makes me happy.
We and many people entered thatphase and then it lasted for
years, which is not that commonto think you're about to die and
(56:52):
then suddenly have an extrafive years.
But we entered that phase wherethe grass was greener, the
flowers smelled sweeter.
I held Lynn's hand more than Ihad.
We said we loved each othermuch more than we had, because
we weren't really very effusiveabout it.
Our love language was doingthings, not telling each other
(57:14):
how much we loved each other.
But in those years we said itagain and again and again,
because who knew when thingswere going to turn bad again?
Right, you wanted that to be inthe air between us at all times
.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
You've mentioned about your spirituality a couple
of times.
You've, you know, referred to acouple different religions.
Did your relationship with that, or mortality, or the meaning
of it, shift throughout?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
this journey?
Yes and no.
Until Lynn died, I would sayprobably not.
We were open to spirituality.
We were open to and I am opento like I have no idea what
(58:02):
happens when you die.
I don't subscribe to a formalreligion that tells me there
will be heaven or there will bewhatever after I die, or a
rebirth.
I don't subscribe to any of theformal religions that say that
and I call myself an atheist.
But I'm not a science atheist.
I'm not a oh, science has allthe answers.
(58:23):
I'm more like well, no, I justdon't believe any of the major
religions.
But I have no idea.
And Lynn and I talked aboutthat and we agreed we don't know
.
We don't know if her spiritwould live on All right.
Then she dies.
Now I'm the grieving husband andof course I want to believe
(58:44):
that her spirit is living on insome form.
And I talk in the book about acouple of things that happened
where it's.
It's so freaky to think thatthese are coincidences.
You know, lynn must have madethis happen.
How else could this amazingthing have happened?
And so I'm, you know, dying tobelieve the wrong word, wrong
(59:07):
verb.
Yeah, I'm, I would love tobelieve that Lynn is out there.
I don't want to believe thatshe's hovering over me paying
attention to my life all thetime, because that's really
boring as some kind of spirit ofwhatever the heck happens to us
Do.
I really believe that?
Speaker 1 (59:27):
No, I just don't know , but I want to believe that and
I'm open to the possibility.
I love that you're just openabout everything.
That's just you know.
That's such a good quality.
You're not closed, everythingis just a okay, I'm open to
learning.
You're just you know.
(59:48):
You're such a really freespirit when it comes to that.
I absolutely love that.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
If you could sit with someone who just lost the love
of their life and they're justbeginning.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
What would you tell them?
I wouldn't tell them.
I think that if we're talkingabout the first, certainly the
first few months, and possiblyeven the whole first year the
most important thing I wouldwant to do is give them an
opportunity to tell me whateverthey would like to tell me.
If I have the chance to sayanything at all, it would be it
(01:00:30):
will get better.
I don't know when, but Iwouldn't be telling them try
this, try that, don't feel this,do feel that.
If they ask me about timelinesor anything like that, I would
say don't pay any attention tosociety's expectations.
Everyone's timeline isdifferent.
But the most important thing, wewho are grieving want our grief
(01:00:56):
to be witnessed.
We want to be able to saywhatever we're feeling without
being criticized or secondguessed, and often, often, we
want to talk about the person welost.
So I might ask them to tell meabout the person we lost, tell
me about Jane, and just let itgo, let the conversation flow.
(01:01:21):
I've actually been engaged in aseries of conversations with a
friend whose husband died a fewmonths ago.
We talk maybe once a month, wechat and she tells me what she
wants to tell me.
I learned at least DavidKessler's opinion about this.
And there are other people verygood grief counselors who teach
(01:01:44):
their courses and may bedifferent, other people very
good grief counselors who teachtheir courses and may be
different, but he basically sayshe won't attempt a significant
intervention in the first year,that the first year is so much
about simply helping the personfeel it and letting it go where
it's going to go.
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I don't think that there's a right or wrong.
I do think that lots of timespeople try to interject in what
they think or how the personshould go, or you know how long
the grief should last or whatdifferent stage they should be
in.
But I believe that they will gothe direction that they need to
(01:02:25):
.
And everybody's different andthere is no right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
And I think that simply by showing up for your
friend and being willing tolisten, making a space and
saying I'm here for you, butthen without making any demand
or expectation.
This is the grieving person'sspace and maybe they don't want
to talk.
Expectation this is thegrieving person's space and
maybe they don't want to talk.
(01:02:51):
This is the grieving person'sspace.
And the best thing you can dois to show up, preferably in
person, secondarily on the phone, third, with some kind of card,
but the cards aren't thatmeaningful.
I mean, it's meaningful to knowthat someone's thinking of you.
It is way more meaningful forsomeone to call you up or to
show up in your life, say hi, Ibrought you a little food, I
brought you a little this here.
(01:03:11):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Sometimes you just need somebody to sit with you.
Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
That's, that's it.
That's what I'm talking aboutJust to just to be there, to be
the person who sits with themand acknowledges and witnesses
their grief, sits with them andacknowledges and witnesses their
grief.
That's what you want to giveyour friend in those first
horrible months.
Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I just have a couple more questions.
You know they say that in orderto hurt deeply, you had to have
loved deeply.
Having lost so much is so hard,but it shows how deeply you
still love her and she was soblessed to have you.
You two are such a great lovestory and a story of what love
(01:03:53):
should be between two people.
I think so oftentimes,especially nowadays, I think
love has been watered down.
I think there are such skewedversions of love.
Can you tell us what love, truelove, is and what you think a
husband should be to their wife?
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
I always resist trying to prescribe things for
other people.
So to say what true love is?
I don't know what true love is.
I know what we had, lynn and Itold each other.
We were each other's bestfriends.
We were the people who couldshare anything, who could come
back from a party and say Ididn't have a good time, who
(01:04:32):
could talk badly.
It's the person you're with, inour case, living with, who you
know will show up for you andwho actually does whatever that
might mean.
Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
It was really about being the best friend, the true
confidant, the person who mademe laugh most, who showed up for
me many times, and then thehonor of my life be a weakness
to show how much that they loveand to meet their wife where
they need to, even in the worstof times, and I think it's the
strongest that a man could be.
Just like you said, those werethe most beautiful times of your
(01:05:40):
life, but you also showed somuch bravery and so much
strength while you met her rightthere.
Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Right there, right there.
Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Oh my gosh, this is just so emotional.
I honestly think that thiscould be a lesson for men in how
to truly love, and women I meannot just.
I mean, of course, this is abook for everybody that's
grieving, but there's a lot ofwomen that I think it's hard for
them to go there too.
(01:06:14):
And it's a book on how to grieveand walk through the hard parts
with your spouse, but one ofthe biggest takeaways from this
book is how to love, how to lovedeeply and to give to another
person so purely, with ourentire being.
So thank you for being ademonstration of what a man
should be when he loves his wife.
Can I ask how people can getyour book or how they can get
(01:06:38):
your grief services?
Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Sure, the book is Carrying the Tiger.
It's available everywhere.
It's available on Amazon butalso all the competitors to
Amazon.
So if you just search Carryingthe Tiger, it's available
everywhere.
It's available on Amazon butalso all the competitors to
Amazon.
So if you just search Carryingthe Tiger, it's a nice, unique
title dot com.
(01:07:07):
There's certainly the contactme form, which will put you in
touch with me if you would liketo talk to me personally or do
something related to your grief.
I will absolutely.
I read every contact that I getthrough that contact me form
and I do reply.
And also Tony Stewart, authordot com.
There's a by the book therethat leads I have a screen that
comes grieve, because you havetruly loved.
Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
This book Carrying the Tiger, living with Cancer,
dying with Grace, finding JoyWhile Grieving shows that when a
person closes their eyes forthe last time, love doesn't have
to stop.
Their story is not over.
Your wife lives on and you haveallowed us to walk with you
through this hard journey, butyou showed us that there is a
(01:08:11):
joy in the pain.
Grief is the hardest thing thatwe go through on this earth,
but you showed how it is a gift.
Grief is a gift because it is asign that you have loved.
(01:08:48):
Thank you for showing me thatand our listeners.
We are honored by yourvulnerability and grateful for
the legacy that grief isn'twhere love ends, it's where it
echoes the loudest.
For anyone walking throughsorrow, your story offers a soft
place to land, a steady hand tohold and a reminder that even
in the shadows, beauty stillflickers.
Hold your people close, lovefully, and know that even in the
hardest seasons, love doesn'tdie.
(01:09:10):
It just finds a new way to live.
And, as we always say at RealTalk with Tina and Anne, there
is purpose in the pain and thereis hope in the journey, and we
will see you next time.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
I am Anne and today we haveTony Stewart, author of Carrying
the Tiger.
Living with Cancer, dying withGrace, finding Joy While
Grieving.
This isn't just a memoir.
It's a love letter and tributeto his late wife Lynn, who
(00:28):
passed away after a courageousbattle with cancer.
Through this deeply personalbook, tony invites the reader
into the sacred space of grief,devotion and the quiet moments
of beauty that remain even inthe shadow of loss.
It's not just a story of sayinggoodbye.
It's a story of continuing tolove even after they are no
(00:51):
longer physically with us.
But Tony's life hasn't only beenshaped by loss.
It's been marked by innovation,creativity and a pursuit of
meaning.
He's made award-winning filmsfor colleges and universities,
written software that earnedglowing reviews and developed a
grants management applicationused by three of the five
(01:11):
largest charities in the world.
And in the complex world ofadvertising, he helped lead the
creation of an internationalmessaging standard used across
the globe.
I mean that's really impressive.
I mean that's really impressive.
(01:46):
With carrying the tiger, heproves that sometimes the most
powerful thing we can build is abridge between love and legacy.
Tony, I have to tell you thisone was very personal to me.
Loss and grief has deeplyshaped my life, having lost my
father when I was 11, and I'vehad many losses since then.
I love that this is a book thatproves that even the hard can
be done with beauty and that wecan continue to love and, even
(02:09):
though it might be a physicallyhard goodbye, it is a transition
into a different relationshipwith them.
So thank you for that, thankyou for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You are really welcome and thank you for that
beautiful summary of the book.
You've just basically laid outin a few paragraphs all the
reasons I wrote the book, ormost of them, and I'm just so
glad that it worked for you thatway.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It has.
I mean, the story was hard forme.
I'm not going to, you know, tryto sugarcoat that only because
it took me to a really hardplace, but I think honestly that
only because it took me to areally hard place, but I think
honestly it's needed.
I think this is something thatwe need to read for those of us
who have really gone throughsome hard losses.
But, you know, you honor everypart of the journey and that's
(02:58):
what's so beautiful about it.
All of it deserved space.
The worst of times, andsometimes even the harder of
times, with joy and love woventhroughout the entire thing.
You show how to love anotherhuman with your entire heart.
So please tell us about yourwife.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Lynn, wow, lynn Cotulla, a painter, an artist.
I met her in 1985, a kind of ameet, cute story in a swimming
pool, ok, and I was on therebound from a first marriage
and I was sort of chasing afterevery woman who crossed my path.
(03:42):
Chasing after every woman whocrossed my path that's
overstating it.
But chatting up, I'm anintrovert and this had brought
out this.
I was 29 at the time and Ireally wanted to prove that I
was still attractive.
And I met this woman in aswimming pool and said a few
words to her, not much differentthan I had said to a million
other people.
I didn't actually have her inmind specially and she, who was
(04:06):
then 39, thought, oh my gosh,this guy is after me, this guy
has fallen.
I mean, he spotted me and he'stalked to me.
No one talks to each other inthe swimming pool.
She's wearing her cap, hergoggles.
So the next day she stopped atthe end of the lane and did some
leg stretches and I thought, oh, this, this nice woman is there
(04:29):
, I'll just chat with her somemore.
And only later did we realizethat it was this wonderful cross
misunderstanding where shethought that I was already
hugely attracted to her and Ithought this was just a
coincidence.
But because she believed I wasattracted to her, she made
herself available to me and westarted talking and we were
(04:52):
together for oh gosh 30 yearsafter that she sounds like a
beautiful human.
She's a wonderful person and Islip into the present tense,
even though she died more thanfour years ago, because for me
she's very much alive in myheart.
She painted paintings that wereout of fashion for 30 or 40,
(05:13):
for all that time mainly stilllives.
She became really well knownfor it still lives where you put
some objects on a tabletop andyou paint them.
It was something that was donelike in the 17th, 18th, 19th
centuries, but through her lifethese paintings were out of
fashion.
She was very good at it.
She got a gallery, she hadshows, she sold paintings, but
she was never going to be richor famous from that.
(05:34):
But that was her passion.
She lived to make thesepaintings, had a partial day job
at a law firm where she workedwith all of these hugely
talented, creative people, Ishould say in the support staff
you know as the paralegals, theproof readers and she had this
circle of friends who were likeher, over talented, over
(05:58):
educated, making a few dollars,working in this law firm and
doing whatever they did in therest of their lives working in
this law firm and doing whateverthey did in the rest of their
lives and she brought all ofthis creativity to me, which I
just loved.
It was funny, vivacious, toldsome wicked jokes.
I put a few of them in the bookgive you a sense of who she is.
And, as you said, in the firstfew years she was around 40
(06:21):
years old.
I was around 30.
We tried to have children.
That didn't work for us and wedecided to redirect that energy
and, honestly, money that wewould have spent.
You know that one does spendraising children on travel and
on doing things that we wouldnever have been able to do if we
had been raising a family assort of the alternative life.
(06:43):
And we spent all those yearsgoing on these wonderful trips
and we just love to go off byourselves I mean it wasn't with
groups to places like India andSoutheast Asia and sort of
figure out this before theInternet, figure out where we
could go, where we could stayand have all these adventures
for a few weeks every year.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Could you talk about those travels and what they were
like?
Sure, yeah.
Could you talk about some ofthose travels?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The one that comes immediately to mind is there are
two or three that comeimmediately to mind, and perhaps
it's because these are onesthat I actually put these
anecdotes in the book and maybesomething else will come to me.
But the very first trip that weever took to India, she wanted
to see this sort of paintedpalace, which was a 15th century
building that the Maharana ofthat area, that's a regional
(07:34):
prince, and his family had.
That was said to be coveredwith I'll call them frescoes
paintings on the inside of thewalls, and the only way you
could see it was to go to thislittle regional town and stay in
a hotel that was run by thatfamily.
That was their converted palace, but after India's independence
(07:54):
they no longer had a palace andin order to try and make some
money, we could go stay there.
And this was right around 9-11that we did this and tourism had
collapsed.
So we stayed in this palacewhere we were the only guests in
this giant thing and we had putup $100.
This, for that, was a hundredfeet long and then the bedroom
(08:15):
off to one side.
It was literally like theMaharana's room, and Lynn looked
at that and said I can't sleephere, this is too big, and they
said but you paid for it.
And she said show me somethingsmaller.
(08:35):
We worked our way down tosomething more intimate and then
set out the next day for thispalace, which was, which had no
electricity, no running water.
It was built, you know, 600years ago, but there was a
caretaker who let us in.
He spoke no English.
We walked up to the top of thisthing, five flights up, and he
opened the shutters and thedaylight came streaming in and
(08:59):
it was covered with the mostamazing paintings.
So we walked downstairs throughthat admiring this artwork,
taking some pictures ofourselves in there, and then we
thought you know, I don't wantto get back in the car.
We had a car and a driver which, I should say, is not like
having one here.
I mean, it's the only way toget around in India.
It's very inexpensive, it's notonly rich people who do it.
(09:21):
So we had a car and a driverand we told him to meet us at
the bottom of this long hill.
This castle building was at thetop of a hill that wound down to
the center of town, and we wentwalking down that hill and
after a while we were standingin front of a hardware store and
the shopkeeper came out and hehardly spoke any English but he
(09:42):
was really excited.
People were staring at us as wewent down this thing because
this was regional India.
There weren't any touriststhere.
Who are these white foreignerswalking down the street?
Where did they come from?
And he said please come with me.
I want you to meet my parents tothis little house where his
(10:06):
parents were, who were more ourage, and they were totally
surprised to see us.
He left us alone with them.
They didn't speak English.
We spent 20 minutes with hisparents while they took like
family photos off the wall Atleast I assume that's what they
were and pointed to us.
They served us tea, we did somelittle chatting where none of
us could understand what we weresaying in pidgin English and
pidgin whatever, and then, wethanked them and we went on our
(10:26):
way, and that was ourintroduction to India.
And perhaps encapsulated in allof the aspects of that story is
how we ended up going back sevenmore times.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Wow, that's amazing.
You know, when we want toexperience life and I love to
travel too I want to take myfavorite people with me you know
, because I want to say look atthis and look at this.
I mean you're taking in theworld around you with your
favorite people.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And so that's just such a beautiful thing that you
got to do that with her.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yes, again and again I had these various cool sort of
jobs A lot of them wereself-employed, consulting sorts
of things so I could take threeor four weeks we did this in the
winter here and we would flyfar, far away.
I also was very lucky because Ihad jobs where I was earning
massive numbers of frequentflyer miles.
(11:21):
Frequent flyer miles.
We said, ah, we got to go tothe other side of the world
because we can go business classand stretch out on all these
flyer miles that we wouldn'totherwise have been able to
afford.
So that's how we started goingplaces like on the other side of
the world.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I want to talk about the title Carrying the.
Tiger, because it's reallyvivid and so is the picture on
the cover.
What does the tiger representto you and what does the title
mean?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So that title was given to us, although I didn't
have any idea it was going tobecome the title in an email
that a friend of Lynn's wroteabout a month after we
discovered that she had cancerand she was very open with her
friends about it.
And so we were communicatingand started writing about it.
(12:08):
And a friend wrote in my TaiChi group we carry a tiger for a
friend who is facingdifficulties.
The three motions of bendinglow, lifting up the tiger and
putting it on a hilltop far awaymake that tiger so much less
(12:29):
threatening.
Lynn wrote back to her friendand said that's beautiful.
I'd love for you to carry atiger for me and also could you
teach me how to carry tigers.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That really is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
And so much so that it became your title of your
memoir that represented both ofyou cancer and then learning how
to die with grace and give Lynna good, beautiful death.
Together we cooperated on that,and then me afterwards trying
to find joy while deeplygrieving those I think of as
(13:15):
these three huge challenges.
Each is a different section ofthe book and in each case it's a
different tiger to learn tocarry.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
For anyone that's ever followed a loved one story
on CaringBridge and I have youknow just how powerful it is to
stay connected through everyhigh, low and in-between moment
of a person's medical journeyand their life and everything
else.
But, tony, for our listenerswho may not be familiar, can you
talk a little bit aboutCaringBridge and why you decided
(13:43):
to start writing Lynn's andyours story on the website?
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yes.
So Lynn had a lot of friends,very vivacious person who stayed
in touch with people, and theday that we learned that she had
tumors, before we even had aformal diagnosis, she started
emailing some of her closefriends to say, oh my God what
horrible news.
And then they emailed back andthen the word spread and then
(14:10):
more emails were coming in andthis was all during this crazy
first week.
I call that chapter into thewhirlwind because that's what it
feels like, and I think that'strue of anyone who receives a
sudden, unexpected, horriblediagnosis.
It's like what the hell are wegoing to do with this?
How are we going to deal withthis?
So we're running around tryingto find the right doctors and
(14:31):
being referred from one toanother and dealing with all
these emails.
And someone said I think Lynnmust have started complaining to
her friends like this iskilling me.
Bad enough to have the cancer,but communicating like this is
killing me.
And someone told her aboutCaringBridge, which is a
(14:52):
nonprofit organization it'sdonation funded, it's free to
use where you can set up a smallsocial media site, sort of a
very, very much like a strippeddown Facebook, where you post
things and people can writecomments and you can lock it
down.
You can.
You can be public, but you canalso make it private.
And we chose to have a privatesite.
(15:13):
But we started telling ourfriends go here, We'll whitelist
you, We'll, we'll, we'll do thesecurity thing so you can get
in and you'll read what Lynnwrote there, and it actually
wasn't Lynn who wrote them.
Lynn was a very good writer and, as I said, was very happy to
talk to her friends, but shequickly said life even as this
sword was hanging over her.
(15:33):
But I was very comfortablesitting down and writing a post
like this is what happened today.
And they started out thoseearly months as one post after
(15:58):
another.
This is what happened today.
Eventually that became the bookCarrying the Tiger, but the
book is rather different fromthose posts and has a lot more
in it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
At what point did you realize that your writing
wasn't just updates, that thiswas becoming a book that people
would be touched by and theywould be changed when they read
it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
It was probably several years later.
Lynn had incurable cancer, butwe were lucky enough in those
first weeks to get hooked up toa miracle drug.
An immunotherapy that doesn'twork for everybody did work for
Lynn, did not make the cancer goaway, but held it down for
years.
So instead of dying in a yearor two, we had this experience
(16:45):
of learning to live with cancerand then dealing with the side
effects.
That went on for five or sixyears before things turned bad
again.
During that time, I started outwriting these factual posts and
then, just almost withoutthinking about it maybe because
(17:20):
I was writing so much of themstarted letting more of the, of
talking more about.
What does it mean to live withcancer?
What does it feel like to us?
So things that weren't purelythe factual, all bad news, but
it wasn't hard news, it was justthis feels like a slog.
We feel like we're in a swampand we don't understand.
We don't know when this isgoing to end and how long this
(17:41):
will go on, and it's just reallyhard every day.
And I almost didn't publish thepost.
I wrote the thing and I hoveredover the little publish button
and I published it, but I wasafraid of.
I was afraid of alienating ourfriends, and instead I got these
responses back.
Tony, thank you so much forsharing what's really going on.
(18:19):
Right, yes, I think this couldbe a book.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You also became a certified grief educator.
So where did you make thattransition from working so hard
on yourself and helping yourselfgo through your own grief to
wanting to help others withtheirs?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
This is a very recent event in my life.
I wrote the whole book and andI took this was just last year.
Lynn died four years ago.
It took several years before Igot to the point of being able
to create Carrying the Tiger,which, as I said, is much more
of a real book than than justthe posts.
And then I started on the OK,I've got this book.
(18:59):
Some of my friends who readearly versions of it said wow of
it, said wow.
And, to my surprise, somestrangers in the beta reading
phase, where people you don'tknow read a manuscript said this
really helped me.
This helped me get through theloss of my brother and his wife.
Oh my God, this woman just losther brother and his wife.
(19:20):
So I started having the feelinglike I've got something here
that could be really much moremeaningful than I imagined, when
I originally thought, oh, I'llpublish this thing and, you know
, sell a few hundred copies andthat'll be that.
And I started to think, no, Ithink I'm going to try and make
this more widely available andhired a publicist and started
(19:40):
going on podcasts and thingslike this one to try and spread
the word, things like this oneto try and spread the word.
So after I'd recorded maybefour or five conversations with
people asking me about the book,I began to realize these
conversations where I feel likethere are people listening who
might be helped, whether theyever read my book or not, who
might be helped by hearing aboutmy story.
(20:00):
It was making me feel great.
It was making me feel like Iwas doing something good in the
world.
And then, by coincidence, I justsaw an Instagram ad by David
Kessler, who is one of the mostwell-known people in the grief
counseling space.
He runs griefcom and is acounselor, and he was starting a
(20:21):
training the next week.
Wow, a training the next weekWow.
And I'm not religious, but Imean I felt like Lynn was making
this happen, or you know, thiswas a sign like here, I was
starting to feel like talkingabout grief and helping other
people was really meaningful andI could take this course and
find out.
So that was just a few monthsago.
(20:43):
I only finished the course afew weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Oh my goodness.
Well, I can tell you that youwere doing this even before you
knew you were doing this.
You know the grief educatingpart of it and I want to share
that.
You know, helping others hasalways helped me and when I was
going through one of the hardesttimes in my life, someone said
to me go help someone else.
And it was the best advice thatI could have been given during
(21:08):
that time and I actually preferhelping other people.
You know, I mean, but I waswondering if becoming a grief
educator has helped you gothrough the process even more.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I think writing the book helped me immensely.
I think the CaringBridge postswhich became the origin of the
book, writing them in real timewhile I was grieving, writing
them in real time during hospice, day after day those posts were
my therapy at the time and thatwas huge.
(21:41):
Then the process oftransforming them into a book
which caused me me.
At this point it had been threeyears since Lynn died.
By the time I was ready andstarted making the book.
I tried earlier and I justwasn't ready.
I was crying too much.
I couldn't possibly make thisbook no-transcript breakdown,
(22:32):
because the caring really got tome and I collapsed.
That wasn't in any post, butit's so important to the story
and I wanted to tell the reality.
So for a year I worked on thebook and I would say the first
half of that year was therapyall over again, I bet, Reliving
all of these things.
(22:52):
Yeah, that was a year and ahalf ago.
It then calmed down for a while.
I started focusing on how do Iyou know which sentence is
better than which other, and allthis sort of craft work you
have to do to make it not just abook but a really good book
that people will actually wantto keep turning the pages.
And then I recorded the audiobook and it all came back again.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
See, that's a different.
You're using a different partof you when you're actually
saying it out loud yes, and alsonot second guessing it, because
(23:40):
by the time I recorded theaudio book, the text was locked.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I was no longer being my own editor and saying, oh,
in my apartment and Lynn diedacross the hall from here, and
many of the whatever events inthe book take place in my
apartment.
I'm sitting there now.
Oh, my gosh, it was.
That was huge.
And that was just earlier thisyear.
All of that had happened and Iwould say that by the time I
took the grief class, I learneda lot.
I learned a lot of things thatI would not never have known
(24:05):
about helping people and aboutdifferent kinds of grief, but
the biggest thing I learned wasthat it reinforced all of what I
had done out of instinct to tryand find my way through, and it
reinforced me the value of thefeedback I had gotten.
I just thought, wow, I I.
By by luck uh, by lots oflayers of luck I did all kinds
(24:30):
of things that I would say arequote right that helped me get
through my grief, and they'rethe techniques that the class
was teaching you to apply andhelp other people.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
You touched on something you know.
I have to ask.
You went from writing softwareto making films, to helping
shape ad buying standards, andthen you wrote this one of a
kind grief book.
You seem to be talented inwriting what you know.
And when you were done withthis.
I have to ask did you have anyidea that all of that was in
(25:05):
there, that you could writesomething so honest and
vulnerable and raw?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I knew I had written something open and real and good
.
The level of response that thisbook has gotten has been a
wonderful surprise.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, it's because of how intimate, how real, like
you said, and it's really brave,I think, especially for a man
to put everything out there onthe page for other people to see
that you really do feel men, dofeel men feel deeply, really do
(25:52):
feel men, do feel men feeldeeply.
And it's hard, I think, foranybody to really put it out
there on the page for otherpeople to read.
I mean, we might be able towrite in our diary, you know,
and read something later andrevisit that, but to allow other
people to see it, I mean thisis a very brave book, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I of course I didn't know I was being that brave at
the time, but luckily, if youthink about it, you know.
Carrying the Tiger began asthese private posts and I was
writing for an intimate group offriends that kept expanding.
By the time Lynn died therewere 200 people reading the
posts and many of them I didn'tknow they were friends of
(26:28):
friends of hers or people shehad worked with and such, who
wanted to know what was going on.
But I was writing in a verysafe place and this whole
process that I talked about,where I started out factual and
just kept getting more open andthen getting the feedback from
people saying keep going, wasimmensely satisfying to me.
But it brought me to a placewhere I was putting things down
(26:49):
on paper that I have never, ever, done anything like that before
and that just kept going to usand not just someone but other
kinds of losses to see if we canmake some fine meaning, make
something meaningful out of itwhich makes us feel good and
(27:11):
helps to transform this horriblesource of grief into a happier
source of grief, a warmer sourceof grief.
So, I didn't know that concept,that phrase, but it's clearly
what I spent several years doing.
So you asked me quite a bitearlier in this conversation
when did I first think of makingthis a book?
(27:32):
And I don't think I answered.
I told the whole preamble butthe actual when did I first
think that I'm going to makethis a book?
About two weeks after Lynn diedI was writing these posts.
I had thought I would stop whenshe died.
I actually wrote a post sayingthis will be the last one.
It's the Lynn CotullaCaringBridge Journal and she
(27:53):
died and I can't very well go onwriting Lynn Cotulla posts.
I'd never pretended it was her,it was always my name on them.
But then, a few days after shedied, I wrote another post
because I could not stop,because I had become addicted to
the process of writing them andI started getting these
responses back about my griefposts in which I was really just
(28:14):
describing day by day what itwas like to go through that
horrible, shattering early grief.
And I was doing it because Iwas addicted to the process of
putting this stuff down on paperand it was helping me
understand what I was feeling.
But I was feeling, but I wascreating this treasure trove of
material, my friends startedsaying, wow, this is great, tony
, you're helping me so much bysaying this that, a week or two
(28:37):
in, I will now say I realized Icould make real meaning out of
Lynn's life if I took all ofthese posts and turned them into
a book that other people willread.
And that was the first time Ihad that idea, and it was
specifically because Lynn hadjust died.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
This is one of the most intimate books out there on
grief and I do think it was thewillingness for you to go there
and I think so many timespeople write about facts, you
know, they just put those thingsout there that are more in your
head instead of your heart andthe how to's.
(29:13):
But this was just written fromhonesty and heart.
What do you think of the stagesof grief?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Oh, do you mean the so-called famous five or six
stages?
There are the five stages thatthis guy, david Kessler, and
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did, andthen later he added a sixth
called finding meaning.
I think that they are all realdescriptions of things that you
may go through, not all of, notnecessarily in that order,
(29:43):
necessarily all of them, becauseand I think David Kessler
himself would tell you that,because I've taken his course
and heard him say that to us itis not like first you will feel
anger, then denial or thenwhatever.
No, it does not work that way.
But these are all phases thatyou might go through that are
(30:03):
very, very common.
It's sort of a handle you canput on how you're feeling at
this moment in your own personalgrief journey, and sometimes
it's really helpful to be ableto look at how you're feeling
and say I'm not alone here.
Millions of other people havebeen angry.
It's very common to beextremely angry about all kinds
(30:23):
of things.
Right to be extremely angryabout all kinds of things you
know, or to deny it.
Well, denial, of course.
There is this.
I wrote about it as magicalthinking and I picked up that
phrase from Joan Didion's memoirabout her grief journey, the
Year of Magical Thinking, whichin her book she defined as the
irrational belief that theperson you've lost is going to
(30:44):
come back.
When she realized she washanging on to his clothes which
I think is very common I.
But that stage in which you hangon to them, it's some part of
(31:10):
your brain.
It certainly was for me and forJoan Didion.
It's because, oh, lynn willneed these when she comes back.
I can't get rid of her clothesbecause then what will she wear
when she comes back?
Of course you're notconsciously thinking that
thought, but emotionally.
That's a large part of why youcan't get rid of them, or why I
(31:31):
shouldn't generalize.
That was a large part of why Icouldn't get rid of them at
first.
Eventually I gave a lot of herthings to friends and to charity
and I still have some here fouryears later.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I think for me and I have had so many people in my
life pass away and I still havesome of their things you know I
have had to, of course, let mostof it go, but I just can't let
go of a memory Like when my auntpassed away, who was the
absolute closest aunt, she wasjust a beautiful soul.
(32:03):
I was allowed to go into herapartment and take the things
that meant the most to me.
And you know some people theywant the most expensive item or
whatever you know, and itbecomes some greed thing.
Kept her halls in because shewould always share them with me
(32:24):
when I would come.
I wanted the bird music boxthat I had given her that we
would listen to together andreally that was all that I
wanted, because those were thethings that I'll never forget.
And when I still look at themtoday, you know they're that
memory and I'll keep themforever.
But you know some of the things, like my mom's clothes, I still
(32:47):
have in a bin in my shed.
You know I don't have them inthe house but I can go look at
them, I can go hold them.
You know that kind of stuff andit's hard to let go of them.
It really is.
I probably have too many things.
I probably should let go ofthem.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Don't should yourself , don't should yourself ever.
Yeah, I think when I'm ready Iwill.
And during that time I hadreached a stage I know because
it's in the book where I'vegotten.
I've given away some of Lynn'sthings to charity her clothes
(33:31):
and all and I've kept some of myfavorite ones and they're
hanging in the closet and, as Isay whenever I want to visit
them, there they are.
(34:01):
Now it is two and a half yearslater now, as we record this,
than the ending of the story inthe book and I recently was
looking in that closet andrealized oh, somewhere in the
last two years I gave most ofthose things away because
they're no longer there, and Ihad just maybe recorded where it
was wrong.
It was like these were beautifulthings she had bought in India.
The ones I had kept were mainlylike Indian blouses and all
that we had bought during ourtravels, so they had double
meaning.
But they're really beautifuland useful and not that easy to
get.
So at some point I had said no,I can't hang on to these, I
(34:23):
need to give them away.
But that moment honestly hasnot stuck in my head.
It's sort of like well, wait aminute, they were there two
years ago and now they're notthere and I just reached a point
where it made more sense to meto move them on and give them
another life somewhere else withLynn and her health and the
(34:45):
struggles that you twoencountered with the health care
system.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yes, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
One of the lessons that we learned is that you
really do have to advocate foryourself.
You have to do a lot of yourown research, and most
well-meaning doctors in theworld are living within the
system that they are in Right.
And the story I tell early onin the book is how is this
twists and turns of how we cameto learn about a clinical trial
(35:17):
that might be right for Lynn.
And it was in the course of ourgetting a second opinion from a
doctor who was a friend of afriend that I happen to know at
Yale New Haven Hospital.
I live in New York City.
Yale New Haven Hospital is twohours travel from here, minimum,
so it wasn't someplace weexpected to get treatment.
But we went up there for thesecond opinion and he says I
(35:37):
have great news for you.
We're running a clinical trialhere of this new immunotherapy
drug that we think would beperfect for Lynn Love to log you
into.
You know, get you into thistrial and you could start now,
tomorrow, the day after.
And then we learned that it wasgoing to be fiendishly
difficult Go there.
The clinical trial requiredthat we more or less camp out in
New Haven for weeks, three daysa week here, three days a week
(36:01):
there, which our lives.
I had a full-time job, we don't.
You know it's stressful, etcetera.
Would it be possible to do thisin New York City, where we are
surrounded by world famoushospitals?
And they basically saidprobably, but you're on your own
to figure that we can't helpyou.
I'm simplifying tremendously,but that was my first taste of
(36:22):
like.
Wait a minute.
I ended up sitting there in NewHaven Googling on my phone or
actually it was on a computerthat they loaned me Googling to
discover that the same exactstudy was being done at Sloan
Kettering Famous Cancer Hospitalhere in Manhattan, where I
could get there by subway, andthen they wouldn't be able to.
(36:45):
I said can you connect me tothe right people there?
And they said we wouldn't knowwho to call.
So Lynn and I spent this wholeafternoon sitting in New Haven
figuring out and calling intoSloan Kettering and her other
doctors to try and get her intothis thing in New York.
This was nuts and these are allwell-meaning and some, in one
case, world-famous doctors who Ireally liked.
(37:05):
But there was something aboutthe nature of the system they're
all working in where they saidyou're on your own because this
sort of spans between theirinstitutions, and that was
horrible.
There are lots of stories inthe book of situations where,
even at Sloan Kettering, which Ilove, we're working with people
I loved.
They wanted to do things becauseof the nature of the systems
(37:28):
that they thought were in Lynn'sbest interest.
That turned out, in my opinion,totally not to be so.
The second or third time wewere back for a similar major
operation and they wereproposing the same sorts of
things again.
I ended up like yelling one dayand saying, basically we're
going to sign Lynn out againstmedical advice, which is a
(37:48):
defined term.
We're going to sign Lynn out,ama, rather than do what you're
saying she's got.
She's got deadly cancer.
She could die tomorrow.
I'm not going to worry aboutthis little thing you want to
protect against Her.
Staying here is killing her andthey didn't see it.
She was getting hospitaldelirium.
Things were going wrong for her.
(38:08):
It was a hell of a journey andso, again and again, we had to
learn the systems, understandthe people and advocate for Lynn
.
And that is a lot of what I did, and it was this wonderful
pairing because that was like mytype A project management
personality.
I could bring that to bear andshe was much more of the artist
(38:29):
and the emotional person andvery smart, but it really played
to my strength to figure thisstuff out and advocate for her.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
She was very fortunate to have you and that
you had that fight and I thinkthat you know I had to do that
for my mom when she was inhospice and different things,
and I often say to the doctorswhat would you do if this was
your mom?
What would you do if this wasyour wife or husband or child?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
And they do this every day.
This is what they do, and Ithink that they lose that
sometimes where and I don't wantthem to I don't want to say
that they just saw my mom as anumber, you know, or just
another patient, but they arejust another patient in some
regards and you want them tolook at them as if it's their
mom in that bed.
What would you do?
So, yeah, her third majorspinal operation.
We're ready for her to go home.
(39:48):
She's starting to get hospitaldelirium again, and that's a
whole thing in the book that Inever used to know anything
about and it's fascinating andhorrifying.
And they wanted to keep heranother day to check her heart
and then they wanted to keep hera second other day and that's
(40:08):
when I just lost it.
I mean, you know, it turned outshe died two months later from
her cancer and what she was mostscared about was losing her
mind to delirium by staying inthe hospital any longer.
And what they're looking at iswhat if we release her one day
too early and she goes home andhas a heart attack?
And I don't know, are theyworried about litigation and me
(40:31):
suing them for malpractice,whatever?
And I'm just trying to get herthe heck out of there.
These were good people.
They're doing their jobs, butwhat they think is their job is
not what I thought we needed,right, yeah, and it's about
(41:07):
through the living with cancer,part of the story our doctors
repeated again and again.
It's not about extending Lynn'slife, it's about having quality
life for as long as you can,and I think that's a sea change
among good oncologists and gooddoctors from 20, 30 years ago,
(41:27):
everything was measured on howcan we get you home and in a
condition where you can enjoythe life you have?
Right, the measure of what itmeans to enjoy the life you have
changes.
It's.
Certainly we couldn't gotraveling to India or anything
like that.
We weren't going to get thatlife back based on what happened
(41:52):
to Lynn during those years, butwe learned to enjoy what we had
.
And the doctors were very muchon our side and very sympathetic
and never saying we just wantto do this one more thing.
You know, maybe it'll get yousix more months.
Well, we didn't want six moremonths if Lynn was going to be
in pain and unable to enjoy herlife for those six months, and
(42:13):
they weren't pushing that on us.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, I want to move on to you, and there's something
deeply human in the way thatyou described the space after
Lynn's passing not just thegrief but the rebuilding.
So can you talk about this timeof your life and what surprised
you the most about you and yourgrief?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Wow, that's a great question, and I don't think
anyone's asked me that questionbefore.
The thing that surprised memost in, certainly in the first
month or two, was I was lookingfor a steady progression upwards
.
I understood that I didn't knowwhen it would happen.
(43:00):
But when I look at the what Iwrote day after day, day every
time, I start to feel a littlebetter.
In those first weeks I write,hey, I'm feeling a little better
, you know, maybe the sun isstarting to come out, and then I
would get plunged back a day ortwo later into deep, horrible,
(43:22):
sobbing grief, sobbing grief.
And so the thing that surprisedme most which I now know is
completely common and happens tovirtually everyone, is that it
was so nonlinear, so sneaky.
I used the word sneaky at onepoint, not in the book, but I
remember in writing about it.
Somewhere I said grief is sneakybecause, it leads you to think
(43:44):
you're getting to a good placeand then it comes roaring back,
something sets you off andlooking back and realizing that
I was only a few months into mygrief journey and most people,
all of us, you know that firstyear, or even two years, is
really intense for a lot of us.
The idea that I thought that Iwas going to start feeling
consistently better in a monthor two is just.
(44:07):
It's the same fallacy that oursociety lives with, and I had
bought into it.
If I can just do everythingright and I was I was writing
these CaringBridge posts andpeople were telling me what had
worked for them, but I thinkthey meant over a period of
years.
I was trying to do things inone, two, three months in like.
(44:31):
Let me train myself to look atthe photos of me and Lynn
together and remember the happymoment instead of just sobbing,
because you know, in those firstmonths, you or at least I, you
look at photos of us in India orsomething on a happy day and
all I could do was sob at howI'd lost that and we were never
going to be there again, etcetera.
And in reality, over time, thisis exactly the transformation
that you hope for and that hashappened to me and happens to
(44:52):
most people is that youeventually reach the point where
you at least can smile andremember the happy part without
always bursting into tears.
But I somehow thought that bydoing these sorts of exercises
looking at the photos, trying tosmile, thinking about grief
that in a period of one, two,three, four months I was going
(45:14):
to lift myself up to a betterlevel, and instead it just kept
surprising me, plunging me backdown.
So that's the first thing thatcomes to mind when you say what
did you learn?
Well, I learned that that stuffis really tricky.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
If it's giving yourself permission to go on the
wave, to go in whicheverdirection the wave takes you
that my instinct was to go onthe wave.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
So, even though I wanted and hoped, and I
continually foolishly believedthat when the wave was lifting
me up, maybe it will keeplifting me up, you know, one
would like to believe thattomorrow will be another good
day, I was willing from thebeginning to experience the
grief as it rocked and rolled me.
There's a phrase I learned inthe Kessler course you can't
(46:09):
heal what you don't feel, and alot of us.
It's a wonderful phrase.
It's a wonderful.
You can't heal what you don'tfeel.
And those of us who try andjust push the grief away.
Of course the phrase is true ofmany other kinds of emotions,
but you try and push the griefaway.
Of course the phrase is true ofmany other kinds of emotions,
but you try and push the griefaway.
It's really still there, it'snot healed and it will come back
(46:33):
to bite you at some unexpectedtime, possibly much later in
your life.
And I, in taking the course,realized, oh gosh, I let myself
feel from day one.
That's how we have that part ofthe book.
That's what I'm writing aboutis is all these feelings I was
having, and I think, possiblybecause I was getting so much
(46:55):
satisfaction from sharing how Iwoke in tears.
They came from nowhere, youknow.
Today, this morning, whatever,sharing just things and getting
the positive reinforcement fromfriends and readers.
Keep going, keep going.
Somehow I walked myself rightinto the midst of the feelings
(47:20):
early on and that was a blessing.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I think that, listening to you and your book
and everything that you've donein the Caring Bridge and I mean
you did this a very healthy way.
You didn't put up that wall.
You allowed it to consume youat times and I think sometimes
that's the part that everybodywants to run away from.
(47:43):
It's like wait a second.
I'm feeling nope, wall go up.
Okay, I'm going to go dosomething to block that pain,
but you allowed it to come in.
I think that that's a reallybeautiful message.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Thank you.
It is what worked for me as aperson trying to get through
that phase and it is also what Imost wanted to share in that
part of the story that I hopethat in reading the book, in
reading Carrying the Tiger, yousee that playing out in all the
(48:15):
parts of the book reality ofwhat was actually happening and
we didn't try and sugarcoat itor push it away.
Very true of the hospicesection and helping Lynn Dott
and that doing that broughtgreat gifts.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
What I'm also taking from this is that this space, I
think, would be harder for men.
You know, women go straight totears lots of times, times and
it's okay, but I think that itis harder for men.
What do you hope men learn fromyour vulnerability?
Speaker 2 (48:55):
I think men I really hope that men hearing about this
story or reading this storylearn exactly what we're talking
about.
That letting yourself be open,revealing these thoughts that
you're having that you don'tdare reveal because they make
you feel bad about yourself,actually helps.
(49:16):
It doesn't just helpemotionally.
Sometimes it helps like lettingthis out gets other people,
whoever you're talking to, tosay something really useful,
really helpful.
There are examples of that allthrough the book.
It kept happening to me when Iwrote the book.
I wasn't actually thinking aboutthe gender issue, although
there is one spot in it wherewhen Lynn was dying in hospice
(49:42):
and she was here with me at home, and it was during COVID, and
she was here with me at home andit was during COVID we we did
have AIDS, um, but it was duringCOVID.
There were hardly any visitors,um, and I was.
You know it was.
It was hard.
I was taking care of her as onetakes care of a baby.
As we got to the end, you know,wiping her, cleaning her, all
(50:02):
of all, all the bodily functions, feeding her, all of that, her
all the bodily functions,feeding her, all of that.
And then I did hire some aidesto help health aides in the last
period because it was justgoing to kill me.
It was more than I could do bymyself.
And one of the aides told methat when she does hospice duty
(50:24):
she's been in a lot of differenthouses and often I think she
may have said almost always thehusband sits in another room and
can't bring himself to go in tobe with his wife because she's
not the woman, the vibrant,healthy woman that he spent his
life with and he doesn't do thethings that I was doing.
And she told me I was reallyunusual in her experience and
(50:48):
when you read that section ofthe book I hope that you'll
realize that that those were thetwo most beautiful weeks of my
life and that taking care oflynn and bathing her and talking
to her about dying and sharingthe feelings she was having,
those were the most miraculousspecial days of my whole life.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Well, I'm tearing up.
You know.
That is just proof that thereis so much beauty in our deepest
pains.
There really is.
I mean, in the midst of all ofthis you did seem to find joy
(51:35):
and stay in the joy when youwere really hurting deeply at
the same time.
So could you talk more aboutthat?
How did you find the joy in themidst of all the pain?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
I think that there's a Buddhist saying that you
shouldn't chase happiness.
Happiness is chasing you.
You just have to stop runningand let it catch you.
And I've heard other Buddhisttype people, and I should say
I'm not a deep Buddhist,Buddhist type people, and I
should say I'm not a deepBuddhist, but I really of all
(52:13):
the religions.
There are things in Buddhismthat I relate to more than any
of the others, and that's one ofthem.
And I think that what Lynn andI had from the very beginning
was a willingness and an abilityto just stop and look around
and say, yeah, this is allhorrible, but, oh my God, these
buds on these trees lookbeautiful.
Oh my gosh, the air is nicetoday.
Oh my gosh, you know, and justto let yourself stop.
(52:38):
There is no magic.
Here's what you do to get joy.
To get joy, it's here's whatyou do to stop for a minute and
realize that if you just openyourself up the things to
appreciate and admire.
I mean, we frequently said westill have each other, we still
(52:59):
have each other, we can't dothis, we can't do that, we can't
do the other, but we still haveeach other.
We said that to each other manytimes and it was still true.
(53:26):
I wrote it isn't.
The person they were before isnever.
You're never going to have backwhat you had.
Then you're into loss, you'repossibly into avoidance.
But if you just say all of thatis true, but let me just stop
for a minute and hold her handand realize what I've got, that
(53:49):
use that as a metaphor, becausethat was certainly true at that
moment and it was true manytimes.
But versions of that are whatkept me going.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
You said so much in all of that.
I think that so many times andyou know, not everybody has the
ability to do what you'retalking about I don't know why
Some people really do just holdon to that negative and that's
what they do and no matter what.
(54:20):
They just can't make that shiftand I'm not sure what it is why
some people can and some peoplecan't.
But what I love is that you hada mix.
You felt this and you felt thatand you allowed both, and
sometimes you allowed them atthe exact same time yes and not
all of it was all bad, and notyou.
(54:42):
even the really good times, youstill knew what was, but yet you
still, just you, cherished thatmoment.
And I think sometimes we oftendo it in hindsight, you know,
instead of in the moment.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
And I love that you got to do that with her, because
you made her last daysabsolutely a beautiful thing.
Instead of it just being aboutthat she's leaving, you made it
about living, too.
(55:23):
That's a wonderful gift.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
I'm getting emotional .
Listening.
That is exactly, of course.
At the time I wasn't thinking,oh, let's make this about living
.
We are looking back inhindsight and realizing what the
impact was.
At the time I was just tryingto do the right thing, whatever
(55:48):
the right thing felt like oneminute after another.
But when I look back, when Isay like those were the most
special years, weeks of my life,and you echo back to me why you
just echoed back to me, whythose were such special weeks,
and I got very emotional,realizing I agree with you.
(56:09):
I agree with you.
It's so much about living.
It is a truism, a cliche, thatwhen you know you are about to
die, that you are more aware ofthe world around you.
I was about to say what you'reabout to lose.
(56:29):
But if you go at it as what I'mabout to lose, that's a downer.
That's where grief is in theearly stages what I've lost, not
what makes me happy.
We and many people entered thatphase and then it lasted for
years, which is not that commonto think you're about to die and
(56:52):
then suddenly have an extrafive years.
But we entered that phase wherethe grass was greener, the
flowers smelled sweeter.
I held Lynn's hand more than Ihad.
We said we loved each othermuch more than we had, because
we weren't really very effusiveabout it.
Our love language was doingthings, not telling each other
(57:14):
how much we loved each other.
But in those years we said itagain and again and again,
because who knew when thingswere going to turn bad again?
Right, you wanted that to be inthe air between us at all times
.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
You've mentioned about your spirituality a couple
of times.
You've, you know, referred to acouple different religions.
Did your relationship with that, or mortality, or the meaning
of it, shift throughout?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
this journey?
Yes and no.
Until Lynn died, I would sayprobably not.
We were open to spirituality.
We were open to and I am opento like I have no idea what
(58:02):
happens when you die.
I don't subscribe to a formalreligion that tells me there
will be heaven or there will bewhatever after I die, or a
rebirth.
I don't subscribe to any of theformal religions that say that
and I call myself an atheist.
But I'm not a science atheist.
I'm not a oh, science has allthe answers.
(58:23):
I'm more like well, no, I justdon't believe any of the major
religions.
But I have no idea.
And Lynn and I talked aboutthat and we agreed we don't know
.
We don't know if her spiritwould live on All right.
Then she dies.
Now I'm the grieving husband andof course I want to believe
(58:44):
that her spirit is living on insome form.
And I talk in the book about acouple of things that happened
where it's.
It's so freaky to think thatthese are coincidences.
You know, lynn must have madethis happen.
How else could this amazingthing have happened?
And so I'm, you know, dying tobelieve the wrong word, wrong
(59:07):
verb.
Yeah, I'm, I would love tobelieve that Lynn is out there.
I don't want to believe thatshe's hovering over me paying
attention to my life all thetime, because that's really
boring as some kind of spirit ofwhatever the heck happens to us
Do.
I really believe that?
Speaker 1 (59:27):
No, I just don't know , but I want to believe that and
I'm open to the possibility.
I love that you're just openabout everything.
That's just you know.
That's such a good quality.
You're not closed, everythingis just a okay, I'm open to
learning.
You're just you know.
(59:48):
You're such a really freespirit when it comes to that.
I absolutely love that.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
If you could sit with someone who just lost the love
of their life and they're justbeginning.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
What would you tell them?
I wouldn't tell them.
I think that if we're talkingabout the first, certainly the
first few months, and possiblyeven the whole first year the
most important thing I wouldwant to do is give them an
opportunity to tell me whateverthey would like to tell me.
If I have the chance to sayanything at all, it would be it
(01:00:30):
will get better.
I don't know when, but Iwouldn't be telling them try
this, try that, don't feel this,do feel that.
If they ask me about timelinesor anything like that, I would
say don't pay any attention tosociety's expectations.
Everyone's timeline isdifferent.
But the most important thing, wewho are grieving want our grief
(01:00:56):
to be witnessed.
We want to be able to saywhatever we're feeling without
being criticized or secondguessed, and often, often, we
want to talk about the person welost.
So I might ask them to tell meabout the person we lost, tell
me about Jane, and just let itgo, let the conversation flow.
(01:01:21):
I've actually been engaged in aseries of conversations with a
friend whose husband died a fewmonths ago.
We talk maybe once a month, wechat and she tells me what she
wants to tell me.
I learned at least DavidKessler's opinion about this.
And there are other people verygood grief counselors who teach
(01:01:44):
their courses and may bedifferent, other people very
good grief counselors who teachtheir courses and may be
different, but he basically sayshe won't attempt a significant
intervention in the first year,that the first year is so much
about simply helping the personfeel it and letting it go where
it's going to go.
Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I don't think that there's a right or wrong.
I do think that lots of timespeople try to interject in what
they think or how the personshould go, or you know how long
the grief should last or whatdifferent stage they should be
in.
But I believe that they will gothe direction that they need to
(01:02:25):
.
And everybody's different andthere is no right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
And I think that simply by showing up for your
friend and being willing tolisten, making a space and
saying I'm here for you, butthen without making any demand
or expectation.
This is the grieving person'sspace and maybe they don't want
to talk.
Expectation this is thegrieving person's space and
maybe they don't want to talk.
(01:02:51):
This is the grieving person'sspace.
And the best thing you can dois to show up, preferably in
person, secondarily on the phone, third, with some kind of card,
but the cards aren't thatmeaningful.
I mean, it's meaningful to knowthat someone's thinking of you.
It is way more meaningful forsomeone to call you up or to
show up in your life, say hi, Ibrought you a little food, I
brought you a little this here.
(01:03:11):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Sometimes you just need somebody to sit with you.
Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
That's, that's it.
That's what I'm talking aboutJust to just to be there, to be
the person who sits with themand acknowledges and witnesses
their grief, sits with them andacknowledges and witnesses their
grief.
That's what you want to giveyour friend in those first
horrible months.
Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I just have a couple more questions.
You know they say that in orderto hurt deeply, you had to have
loved deeply.
Having lost so much is so hard,but it shows how deeply you
still love her and she was soblessed to have you.
You two are such a great lovestory and a story of what love
(01:03:53):
should be between two people.
I think so oftentimes,especially nowadays, I think
love has been watered down.
I think there are such skewedversions of love.
Can you tell us what love, truelove, is and what you think a
husband should be to their wife?
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
I always resist trying to prescribe things for
other people.
So to say what true love is?
I don't know what true love is.
I know what we had, lynn and Itold each other.
We were each other's bestfriends.
We were the people who couldshare anything, who could come
back from a party and say Ididn't have a good time, who
(01:04:32):
could talk badly.
It's the person you're with, inour case, living with, who you
know will show up for you andwho actually does whatever that
might mean.
Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
It was really about being the best friend, the true
confidant, the person who mademe laugh most, who showed up for
me many times, and then thehonor of my life be a weakness
to show how much that they loveand to meet their wife where
they need to, even in the worstof times, and I think it's the
strongest that a man could be.
Just like you said, those werethe most beautiful times of your
(01:05:40):
life, but you also showed somuch bravery and so much
strength while you met her rightthere.
Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Right there, right there.
Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Oh my gosh, this is just so emotional.
I honestly think that thiscould be a lesson for men in how
to truly love, and women I meannot just.
I mean, of course, this is abook for everybody that's
grieving, but there's a lot ofwomen that I think it's hard for
them to go there too.
(01:06:14):
And it's a book on how to grieveand walk through the hard parts
with your spouse, but one ofthe biggest takeaways from this
book is how to love, how to lovedeeply and to give to another
person so purely, with ourentire being.
So thank you for being ademonstration of what a man
should be when he loves his wife.
Can I ask how people can getyour book or how they can get
(01:06:38):
your grief services?
Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Sure, the book is Carrying the Tiger.
It's available everywhere.
It's available on Amazon butalso all the competitors to
Amazon.
So if you just search Carryingthe Tiger, it's available
everywhere.
It's available on Amazon butalso all the competitors to
Amazon.
So if you just search Carryingthe Tiger, it's a nice, unique
title dot com.
(01:07:07):
There's certainly the contactme form, which will put you in
touch with me if you would liketo talk to me personally or do
something related to your grief.
I will absolutely.
I read every contact that I getthrough that contact me form
and I do reply.
And also Tony Stewart, authordot com.
There's a by the book therethat leads I have a screen that
comes grieve, because you havetruly loved.
Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
This book Carrying the Tiger, living with Cancer,
dying with Grace, finding JoyWhile Grieving shows that when a
person closes their eyes forthe last time, love doesn't have
to stop.
Their story is not over.
Your wife lives on and you haveallowed us to walk with you
through this hard journey, butyou showed us that there is a
(01:08:11):
joy in the pain.
Grief is the hardest thing thatwe go through on this earth,
but you showed how it is a gift.
Grief is a gift because it is asign that you have loved.
(01:08:48):
Thank you for showing me thatand our listeners.
We are honored by yourvulnerability and grateful for
the legacy that grief isn'twhere love ends, it's where it
echoes the loudest.
For anyone walking throughsorrow, your story offers a soft
place to land, a steady hand tohold and a reminder that even
in the shadows, beauty stillflickers.
Hold your people close, lovefully, and know that even in the
hardest seasons, love doesn'tdie.
(01:09:10):
It just finds a new way to live.
And, as we always say at RealTalk with Tina and Anne, there
is purpose in the pain and thereis hope in the journey, and we
will see you next time.
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