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We got that call in the morning the next day that no parent ever wants to get.
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Our eldest Miranda uh died suddenly. The pain is incurable.
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One day you're there, you're having coffee, you're reading the newspaper, you're taking the kids to school, and the next day everything is a smoking ruin.
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That's what it feels like.
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You you are just hurled into a completely different existence and you become a completely different person.
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My guest today is Danielle Kittton, journalist, author, and someone who grew up in newsrooms.
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Infinite Books is publishing her new book, Dispatches from Grief, a very, very difficult and yet incredibly rewarding book to read.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Danielle.
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Danielle, welcome to Infinite Loops.
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>> I'm so honored to be here. Thank you.
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>> Your book, Dispatches from Grief, which we are publishing through our Infinite Books uh division. Wow.
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I mean, is really all I can say.
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Your training in journalism is pretty obvious here.
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But the thing that I want to ask you about first is the raw honesty that you write in this book really kind of took me back.
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You know, I I I I love the year of magical thinking.
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I love When Breath Becomes Air and like I put your book in that in that category with those books. >> Wow. Thank you.
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>> First off, obviously, let's tell our listeners the tale. Mhm.
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>> It's a sad one, but it is also an unflinching look at what grief really is, as opposed to the feel-good pop psychology.
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Oh, it's actually a gift. >> Yeah. >> So, welcome.
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>> The worst the worst thing that has ever happened to you is something you can benefit from.
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Actually, >> so American in it boosterism, right? >> I know. I know.
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Well, the story is that our 32-year-old daughter, we have three children, she was our eldest, Miranda, uh died suddenly um one night in her apartment in Brooklyn where she lived.
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My husband David and I live in Washington DC.
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And without getting too medically complicated, but she'd had a brain tumor 5 years before removed. It was non-malignant.
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It removed her pituitary gland, but that can be replaced by drugs, we were assured, and you know, hormones.
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And from everyone's opinion, she was going to live a perfectly normal life so long as she took her medications.
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And what they didn't tell you was if you don't get your medications exactly right, you could drop dead.
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And that is what happened.
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And so we got that call in the morning the next day that no parent ever wants to get.
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And so I was just what I describe as being thrown suddenly into this alternative universe that people don't expect things to happen to them like this until they do.
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And why would they, you know, right?
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>> Um, but I was just, >> uh, this is a story and I I I wrote it partly, as you say, my journalistic upbringing.
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I grew up in a family of journalists and actually they would think journalists was a pretentious term.
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They were reporters, they were editors, you know, journalists went to Colombia, you know, my parents were like firefighters or something, you know, it would still >> make tights. >> Yeah. Yeah.
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Really tough, hardboiled.
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And uh but my stepfather who I write a little bit about in the book he he was just such an adventurer and he every experience that happened to him he would write about like it was didn't matter what it was good material and so I grew up learning that maybe whether it was the way to understand things or in my case this grief was so horrific and none of the books I turned to really could help help me understand how bad it was.
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And and and so writing this down was a way of saying, "My god, everybody, there's this terrible thing that can happen to you, and the pain is incurable, and no one is is telling you this.
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It's sort of like a a scoop, of course, you know, but everybody who goes through this knows that."
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I think it's it was important for me to convey to others who don't know it what it's like and for those who do know it and are going through it to have some recognition or articulation of their pain because I just didn't find that expressed anywhere.
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And I think a lot of the time and especially mothers you you you ask yourself are you going crazy?
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You know time passes and you're not better. uh am I failing at this?
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Um uh you know uh it's it's you you are just hurled into a completely different existence and you become a completely different person.
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And so that's what I was trying to capture.
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>> Well, you captured it amazingly well.
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My eldest sister died when I was 10 and I watched what happened to my parents. Um and that was 1971.
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So, and you know they were Irish, right?
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So, bottle up the emotions, don't talk about it.
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And even from that tender age of 10, I saw what it did to them. And >> what did it do?
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>> I wanted you to tell me.
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I knew about your sister, but I wanted to hear.
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>> They they unlike you and your husband, they siloed their grief.
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And you know, I was the only I was the martini baby.
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So, um, as we as we were back then, >> all of my sisters were already away at either a high school or a college.
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And so, literally, it was just me in the house.
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Right after my sister died, the family came together very much like when I was reading your book, it actually made me very emotional because it brought me back to that time.
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Uh, but they they were you referenced Kubler Ross and like as a I I didn't read it when I was 10, but I did read it when I was a bit older and I saw like every step that I just immediately mapped my parents to it. >> Huh.
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>> Um, >> but they never reached acceptance.
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>> They never reached acceptance as it were.
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No, I mean for example uh La was my sister who died uh was very much like your Miranda.
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Yeah, >> she was very regal in her disregard for authority like Miranda.
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She was would ask anyone anything.
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I remember picking her up at the airport in 1970 and there was a sailor there and he had a beard and we were in an elevator and it's quiet and all of a sudden Leil turns to him and go, "Are you actually in the Navy?
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If you're actually in the Navy, why are they letting you wear a beard like that?
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I think it's really cool."
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But the have they really relaxed that and they and immediate and you what was cool is he the guy immediately relaxed. >> Yeah.
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>> Like somebody just interested in him.
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But again back to my parents it it was very very hard >> and they kind of suffered in silence. >> Yeah.
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>> And my mom was a smoker.
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Uh smoked a lot more, drank more. Yeah.
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and that one, you know, that that connection that I saw, you're very open about.
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One of the other things that I really have to congratulate you on is you're incredibly honest about >> I don't know that that's a >> Well, I mean, again, >> gets me into trouble a lot like your sister. >> Yeah.
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But you're incredibly honest and like you talk about the body's reaction.
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>> It's it's not all grief is not all mental.
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the I don't know if you've read the book the body keeps the score but it goes into the body and then you know that carried through and I got to the part of the book where the mother actually retains the cells biologically >> of I just thought that was really incredibly beautiful but I I it made me understand my own mom >> much better.
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>> much better. Did she um well let me address the physicality of grief which is again something I've learned that we hear you know you read like stress can affect you obviously the worst thing you know the most stressful things you can
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go through is divorce selling house death of a child and and until you kind of experience the physicality of that kind of stress and what I now call grief but with a capital G when you lose a child, it's different from losing a parent because it just upends the natural order. And I think
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And I think and this is true in any case when you lose somebody close to you tragically and quickly like a spouse.
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I think it's it's similar that your body goes into shock.
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What you start to hear and read a lot about the nervous system, which normally if you just say, "Oh yeah, my nervous system is really upset."
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you you sound kind of weird or you know it's it's but but it is >> I'm having a bad nervous system.
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I'm having a bad nervous system, but it really >> is true >> is true.
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And your brain, >> and this is what they talk about in PTSD when it when it a trauma like this hits, the brain can't process it.
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And you know, when we talk about non-acceptance, it's the brain can't file this trauma.
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And we can if you want get into EMDR therapy a little later, which is what helped me a lot.
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But so and you get uh I came across this very grim um statistic set of studies where especially mothers who have lost their child their mortality rate suddenly goes down uh because sometimes suicide sometimes alcohol or addiction and then or they just give up.
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Um, I remember like in your parents' case in that day and when my grandmother lost her son in the Second World War and she she just drank herself to death.
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She was dead within four or five years of her son's death.
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Um, and she people would say, "Well, she was never quite right after Bobby died, you know, and and that's you're not quite right.
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Not just because you're having a mental breakdown, but you're having a physical breakdown as well." >> Yeah.
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And you you are, as I said, incredibly honest about what that feels like.
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And why do you think you also have wonderful terms like the bureaucracy of death?
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I remember that because I went with my parents to pick my uh sister's casket out. Yeah.
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>> And as a kid, it was just all so weird. Yeah.
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And because >> you know, I guess what happened with me was I I had someone tell me much later, somebody who had studied death and families and how it affects the family structure.
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She said, "Well, what you're not accounting for, Jim, is the day your sister died, you became an adult.
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Your childhood ended because like my instinct was to, you know, help my parents and and help them."
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Now, let's spoiler alert, things eventually got much much better, but as you point out, never the same, >> right?
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And I think that one of the reasons why I'm I'm so uh impressed by your book is you just honestly say that and and but I think that people who are in that undiscovered country, right?
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Like the the people who have experienced it versus the ones who haven't, right?
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You you call it griefplaining. >> Yeah.
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Well, There is a certain type of person who hasn't experienced it who might grief. >> Right.
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>> But it's more like those who know and those who don't know. >> Yes. >> Yes.
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>> And can you pick them out of a like how long does it take you to know whether they know or whether they don't?
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>> Well, I couldn't pick them out of a police lineup and just point to that person.
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>> You'd have to interact with them obviously. >> No.
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It's quite it's quite fascinating.
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So, uh, what I likened sort of the the earliest part like as you describe when you have to start coffin shopping and things like that, uh, you're you're just in a completely shell shock state and and the description I have is imagine if a meteor hits your house and one day you're there, you're having coffee, you're reading the newspaper, you're taking the kids to school, and the next day everything is a smoking ruin.
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That's what it feels like.
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So, you're just shell shocked.
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Um, and then people, it's so horrible what has happened to you that people don't, most people don't know how to react. And, and hey, I get it.
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Like, some people get very upset that people say the wrong things, you know, like she's in a better place. >> Oh, yeah.
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that one or or and but I think what it comes out of and this is very human and and very kind is they want to make you feel better like they're trying to be helpful and and and the people you could say who don't know don't understand the house is a smoking ruin all I want to hear is this is horrible I you know I'm so sorry it's fine but but the the the people who know just hug you. They listen to you.
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Uh they um when they say they say they can say how are you and they say it in a way that how are you?
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What are you feeling right now?
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Is it different from I think a lot of people would be afraid to say how are you? Yeah.
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Um and so so it's just a kind it's more a bearing and a manner of people who have been through something.
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doesn't even have to be the same thing, but maybe have been through, you know, terrible illness or whatever.
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But understand that your life and you are not the same and and especially in the earlier phases, not capable of anything um except trying to take the next step and the next breath.
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And you also talk about the repetitive thinking, the if I'd only done this, why didn't I know?
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Why when I was on the phone with her, >> why didn't I ask her about are you staying on your meds?
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And that is ubiquitous among humanity, I think. >> Right.
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>> And it's your brain, too.
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This is part of the brain's training is the brain is it's like you know the little spinning um orb on the on the internet you know and the bandwidth isn't connecting.
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Uh it's it's the brain is trying to find a reason for this >> and so that's part of it and then part of it of course especially as a parent you're you're you're replaying it because I knew Miranda in her case looked very pale.
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She looked very sickly for about six months.
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And I you say to a young woman of beautiful woman of 32, you're looking a little thin. They're gonna go thanks.
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You know, so you think so?
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>> So I I couldn't say that.
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And and you know, as a mother, you don't want to get into body issues and everything, but I'd say to Mandy, you're looking awfully pale. >> Yeah.
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>> And and she'd go, "Yeah, no."
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You know, she it it didn't worry her.
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Then she I made her see another get a second opinion from an endocrinologist because she was complaining about her endocrinologist.
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So we got a second opinion and he checked her out.
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So this would have been in the fall. She died in February.
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And then all the numbers checked out, but she still looked to me very very pale.
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And then she sent me a photo.
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She was in Los Angeles about a week before that she died.
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She sent me a photo and she looked like a skull.
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Like she just was so gaunt.
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And I said to Miranda, "You look so pale. Are you okay?"
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And she had been struggling with like a cold, or so she thought.
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And so after she died, I just I was just going over and over and and I didn't speak to her yesterday.
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And it turned out she was feeling much worse than she let on.
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And so, of course, you start beating yourself up on this.
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And then very early on we spoke to another uh father who had lost his daughter exactly the same age a year before ours.
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She had died believe it or not in childbirth which you don't didn't think still happens but it does. >> Yeah.
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suddenly and um he said and he was an agent in Hollywood and he said uh he said he was I remember he was on speaker phone in our kitchen and David and I were just sort of hunched over the phone listening.
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He said if you could go back in time and say you know God I'll give my own life it if it if you'll bring back Miranda.
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He said would you do that?
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I said like not even hesitant.
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Of course we would rather we were dead than she was dead.
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And he goes, "Well, that's not on the table."
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>> What a great way to do it.
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>> It's not on the table.
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And so you can I think part of the delusion that you have is you keep thinking if I go back and figure out what I could have done or she could have done that would have been different then she's going to come back.
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No, that's not on the table.
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So, you have to That's one of the first things you have to let go.
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I I don't know what it's like to be a parent who somehow feels like directly responsible for the death.
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Uh I I think I don't think I could survive that, you know, and I understand.
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I mean, even if it was your fault, per se, but if you had any inkling like you got in a car accident and you survived and the child didn't, you know, um or you turned your back and the toddler went in the pool, you you know, it just those sorts of incidents or if your spouse was somehow seemingly at fault.
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I don't know how a marriage could survive that even if even if there was nothing that could have been you know so it's it's a terrible immediate as you say obsessive series of thoughts that just go round and round and round as you try as your brain tries to grasp it and as you try to wonder how it might have gone differently.
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And then it also feeds into just our very normal humanity, right?
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Like when something catastrophically happens to us, especially a death of a loved one, like you get enraged and like I as I was reading your book, I I did have to set it down a lot of times.
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I the the line, "Nothing prepares you to see the body of your dead daughter." Oh my god.
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Like I literally had a I had to stop because that is I I don't have many fears but one is that any of my children or grandchildren predesceased me. >> Yeah.
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That's that's the nightmare. Yep.
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>> It it really really is.
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And especially you've experienced it.
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I watched my mom and dad experience it and I just really there's a very like when I read that line I had to put the book down because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to continue before I kind of calm down a little bit.
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Did that happen in in a way like I'd be really mad at the doctors?
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I'd be really angry that they didn't say, "Hey, this is lifethreatening."
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I yeah I you know as you know I'm Canadian by origin so I'm not naturally latigious.
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Um I did I did call her endo once we were getting a report cuz I just needed to know.
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They never actually came to a conclusion, but it was clear from everything the coroner told me that her um her renal glands had failed from a lack of enough cortisol.
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Doctors listening to that say that's not possible.
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I I may have fudged it a bit, but that's what I remember.
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And um and I remember talking to the officer on the corner on the line when he was on the scene.
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scene. And I one of the first questions I ask him in this horrible call you never want to receive and as it's coming clear you're saying like she's okay right like we're taking her to the medical examiner's building and you're going like but you're thinking that's
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not the emergency w he's making it pretty clear to me that she is dead and so once I absorbed this I said you know I I gave him a little bit of that medical history and there was suddenly oh and And he didn't want me to take this as a fact. He was cautious in the
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He was cautious in the way he conveyed this.
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But he said, "Yes, you can have a perfectly seemingly normal person come in to the emergency ward, claim of a they're having a flu, get tested, they'll leave, and the next second they're dead."
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And it was actually extremely helpful to me.
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And and then the other thing I asked him as any parent would was would she have suffered >> yeah first question >> any pain and it would have happened around 3:00 a. m.
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which by the way coincidentally my son who was on the other coast in Los Angeles when she was in Brooklyn woke up violently at 3:00 a. m.
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with just he said the most terrible feeling of dread.
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Uh but anyway, they said around 3:00 a. m. and he said no.
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Um by the time it would have happened, she would have fallen unconscious and it would have been quick.
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And those, you know, you never think those are going to be the upside of things you want to hear, you know.
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Um >> you start you get into these weird categories or hierarchies of grief.
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Well, at least she wasn't murdered, you know, or at least she wasn't Simultaneous to this, one of my husband's relatives was in October 7th hostage. >> Oh dear.
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>> Who's 22 years old and he did not come back.
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Um but watching his parents not know his fate at that point.
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Like not knowing is its own kind cell of hell, you know.
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So it's like every parent who in this circumstance has a version of hell that they are living different from other experiences.
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you're all in the same burning room.
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And um but then um yeah, and then but then it's we're we're Jewish and there are very um mercifully I don't want to say strict, but there's rules that you follow after a person dies that I found very helpful.
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It was both terrible and helpful because you you are really implored to bury a person quickly.
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>> You can't just send them off, have them come back in a little urn and then wait a year for a celebration of life or whatever.
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Like you have to face the reality of it right away.
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So by we learned she was dead say Friday morning.
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By Sunday afternoon noon, I was choosing coffins online.
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And later that afternoon, I was in the funeral home, the Jewish funeral home, walking into her and seeing her.
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And then the next day we were on a plane to Canada to have her a funeral and be buried um near where our summer cottage is in Canada outside of Toronto, which is where David and I plan to be.
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And unexpectedly, she now is.
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So, so that speed of where you still have to make so many crazy decisions when you're not in a state of mind to do it is yet somehow helpful to accept you're never going to accept being resigned to the fact that this has happened and that phase of it is over quickly and then then yeah then you're just left in I think of Bgal's depiction of hell you know, of all these people, what do you want?
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Whipping today or, you know, swallowing swords of fire.
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Uh, each day is a new day like that.
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The the How did your other kids help? How did they process?
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Because again, you're you're the mother and the normal relationship between a parent and a child, especially in times of incredible crisis and stress and everything is, you know, the mother is the mother and she takes care of those kids and >> she's got to hold it together >> and she's got to hold it together. >> Yeah.
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>> How did that play out?
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>> Well, I've I've always been first I've always loved being a mother. Like I love motherhood.
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motherhood. that that and by the way that comes through very clearly in the book I think which is a bit of a surprise because it's a book about grief right >> yeah yeah well it's you know I want to say young people today you know they're not they're not getting married they're
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not having children and they're missing out and I say this in the context of someone who has now lost a child they are missing out on the most profound and as you said human experience of existence there is nothing there is nothing like having children. It's like
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It's like what we're put on earth to do.
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You know, it's not to go to dive bars and it's like that's all fun, but it's, you know, eventually it is to have children.
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Um, and when you have a child, it speaking of alternative universes, you can never know what that's going to be like till you have one.
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>> Um, you can sit out and list all the negatives.
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You know, they're easy to see, but you don't see the positives till you cross over.
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And in a way it's like the o grief is the opposite. >> Yeah.
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>> You know, you you don't know how horrible it is too when you've crossed over.
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And as a mother, so I always felt it was people will sometimes denigrate or criticize the fact that women tend to put themselves last, put every else needs uh before theirs.
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And that's just what a mother does.
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And I think it's a kind of I wrote I think it's a kind of superpower.
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The idea which I couldn't have done before as a mother that whatever was going on with me or my emotions if some child was mine was having a problem I was on it you know um you're the strength you're the person who's going to solve this for them or help them solve it I should say.
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So when Miranda died and the siblings were all very close, very close family.
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My son Nat is two years younger and our youngest daughter be who is 10 years younger than Miranda like you and your family.
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They all kind of they of course looked to me and their father and and and David was was I mean he was shattered but he was able to more visibly hold it together.
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And I just went off the rails, you know?
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I mean, I I I did everything.
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I I kept my brave face on till she was buried.
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And then after she was buried, I lost it.
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And I to feel as a mother that you I couldn't prioritize their feelings.
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I mean, obviously I tried and we all hugged together, but I for the first time as a mother, I felt I couldn't help them.
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And I knew they were in their own chambers of hell.
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And I tried but they and I think it's terrifying to see a parent and to see your mother crying like just just even if you can imagine your mother crying at a sad movie or something.
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It's very distressing to a child.
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I think I wrote about my my wonderful stepfather, the journalist, who when our one of our dogs died and he'd been in the Korean War and everything and he kind of whimpered and I looked at him.
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I thought he was laughing and then I realized he wasn't and I was I was so shocked but it was so upset like disturbed that something could wobble him.
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And so there was a period early on where you know I was I'd gone from being this very funloving person like really I like enjoyed my life and was excited David and I like we excited to be empty nesters and we were had these plans and and suddenly I went from that to um just curled up on a bathroom floor wanting to die just wanting to die.
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And I because the pain was so unbearable.
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It was and it's physical pain. It's in your chest. It's in your throat.
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And you can't close your eyes to the smoking ruin that is around you.
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People again I read people asked if I could sleep.
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And weirdly I could sleep. Sleep was a gift.
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It was when you woke up and you realized that even though your bedroom looked the same as it did 5 days ago, your entire world is completely different.
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And so being suffering that pain, looking as I did through like books, manuals, websites, how can I stop this pain?
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And spoiler alert, you can't.
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Uh, you can drug yourself, which by the way, Valium, everybody, I highly recommend.
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Don't become addicted, but Valium is helpful.
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Uh, very tempted to drink a lot. That works for a bit.
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um never was a big drug person, but um you you you you're trying to numb your pain and and and it's also a supremely you're aware of it being a supremely selfish thought as a mother knowing here I am lying on the floor wanting to die and the brain telling me they'll be okay, you know, it's okay.
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It's they're going to be fine, but you know, you just can't go on.
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can't go on. and and then and then having to just sort of not wanting to express that to them like yeah you guys are great but I'm ready to die like it's kind of insulting to them like you aren't worth living for and of course that's not what you're thinking but that's how you >> feel and so they were be and I included
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she's a beautiful writer and I included in the book some of she took some journal notes at the time and what it was like to go into David spent that first night back home in Miranda's bedroom and she heard him just howling through the walls cuz her room was next to his and she went in and tried to comfort him. And again, that's
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And again, that's the reversal of things, right?
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The child comforting you.
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uh and so it was very hard and I that's if I felt like a failure at anything that's what I felt a failure at that during that time and I've you know gradually I was able to pull it together but I think what you said about your childhood ended I mean be our youngest was 22 she was in she'd been studying her semester abroad uh so she would have been a junior college and suddenly she she became she
33:46
was always like solid but she became unbelievably strong >> and the things that she did with me she wouldn't let me do alone like going to Miranda's apartment and >> yeah I was taken by that >> and packing it up like she I was like no no no I'll do it I can do this I can do this for everybody and she's mom you're not doing it alone I'm coming with you I want to be there. That was, you know,
34:10
That was, you know, such a gift.
34:15
But I think, you know, you do get that strength back.
34:18
And I hope I've been able to be there for my kids more in the way I used to be than I than I was at that moment. >> Yeah.
34:29
It's just as a It's obviously different being a father than a mother.
34:34
I I'm fully willing to acknowledge that >> we we do things differently.
34:38
like my own mother and I had this wonderful relationship and I was so lucky to have her unconditional love and you know not so much with my dad but um the as I was listening to you it's it's just seems so unfair because not only are you dealing with this hammer blow of losing your eldest then you have this compounding guilt about my kids, they need me and I can't be there for and it just it just continues to compound negatively. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
35:20
>> And you you know one of my instincts when faced with a crisis is to like go to the go to the literature. >> Yeah, that was mine.
35:30
They they must have figured this out.
35:32
I got to be able to find something.
35:35
And that's why I was so taken by your book because I had read you know the year of magical thinking and when uh breath becomes air different kind of book but same category and I'd read a lot about that and and I I'm holding those out as they're the real deal >> and I'm holding your book out as the real deal.
35:58
Why do you think that given all of the uh resources we have to study this process, is it just because we've so tried to remove death from our daily experience that that you get these as you as you said, Yeah.
36:18
this most horrible thing in your life that just happened to you and will irrevocably change you. It's going to be good. >> Yeah.
36:28
>> Yeah. or it's it's you know you can you it's going to be hard for a bit or also this idea of the stages uh like like I think it was my son who said you know yeah there are stages they don't tell you you feel them all at once sometimes
36:43
you know um yeah it it's no I don't you know people say that like we we just don't face death in our society and you know maybe we should be more like tribes in Africa and you know really embrace race death in our ancestors. And I think
36:58
And I think well maybe because we are a very lucky society that you know we have a lot of cures for a lot of things that would have killed our own relatives 20 years ago.
37:13
>> And so when so it's it's not that we've tried to remove ourselves from death.
37:20
Maybe death has been removed from us and and we don't all live on top of each other as we once did.
37:25
and and so and and people live an extraordinarily long time generally speaking.
37:33
So I don't blame people who don't want to think like when somebody says oh I just can't even imagine.
37:42
It's like nope you can't >> and it and you are lucky you know I'm glad you can't imagine it because you can't >> and I think part of the other things that people can't imagine is this whole concept that you become a different person.
38:03
Well, what does that even mean? You're still you. You're still Danielle. You're okay.
38:07
You're really sad Danielle.
38:09
You're not fun Danielle, but you're really sad Danielle.
38:11
But the and and this speaks to fathers, too, because I think I think fathers and mothers can react differently.
38:20
I mean, as you said at the beginning, one of the science is that your baby's cells stay within you.
38:28
So, you have this, which I find comforting.
38:29
There's always going to be a little bit of Miranda alive in me.
38:32
>> Which by the way, I just found that so cool.
38:34
I I >> And they will help you a mother like fight infection. >> Yeah. It's amazing. >> Yeah.
38:39
It's they and it's as you say, it's so underststudied.
38:41
Um but a father, you know, his in the dynamics of the family, everybody's a new person because you are because not only has a a whole been blown apart in your dynamics and your relationships, but you are never going to be the way you were with that person.
39:01
and that person is never going to be there to bring out you know the qualities to so for be our youngest Miranda was like a like the coolest mother you know their 10-year age gap was enough that Miranda was very protective towards her but it was also way more fun than I was and Miranda was fun um and and and and be could go to Miranda and tell her though that she would obviously not bring to me.
39:36
But but they had a certain bond and my son had a certain bond and of course David who Miranda most resembled.
39:40
They shared a sense of humor that none of us really got.
39:46
Um, I mean it was a very funny sense of humor, but they would just laugh at they look at each other, they just start laughing and we're trying to what's so funny, we don't get this.
39:55
And and so those are the things that you lose.
39:57
And I just um and now and and from a mother's and father's perspective, you've gone from being a parent of three to a parent of two.
40:08
And that alone brings up just everyday awkwardnesses, you know, because suddenly the most normal interactions like mothers, oh, how many how many kids do you have?
40:20
And that you, oh, I have three. Now you go, >> yeah.
40:24
>> And you've got to learn to answer the most benal questions relating to the tragedy.
40:30
I actually found after I was um wasn't finding what I wanted in the books uh I started to read a lot of Holocaust survivor memor memoirs uh because I mean there are people who lost entire families who uh had to do their days were physically way more awful than mine were.
40:57
But I think that's you want to find some connection of um recognition of some somebody who has endured something that you are enduring and you want to know how they did it and what their thoughts were.
41:16
And I think that was in the end my goal with this is uh and there is you know some hope expressed of how I came through those earliest days but it's not the kind of hope that the grief explainers the grief fluencers the would want to say oh yeah well you get through it and you're a better person and and you will get through it it's fine you know it might take longer but you'll get through it.
41:47
No, you won't get through it.
41:47
You're not getting through it.
41:48
You're going to learn to live with it somehow. And that's not easy.
41:54
>> But there is this phrase out there that it's the important thing is not to avoid grief like your parents or another to go through it.
42:01
And there's some truth I'm sure to facing it, but it implies an ending >> a destination.
42:08
And I don't think that destination is there. >> Yeah.
42:12
And that is again very clear and honest in your book, which is one of the reasons I fell in love with it because the happy happy joy joy. No, honestly, no.
42:26
It's not going to work out like that.
42:27
You're going to carry that with you.
42:29
I still think about my sister and she's died when I was 10 and I'm 65. >> Yeah.
42:35
>> But let's talk about Miranda for a minute because I fell in love with her.
42:39
Um, and there there's often in books about somebody who's died, um, we tend to turn them into saints andor symbols, right?
42:51
>> And only speak good of them. >> And only speak good. And you didn't do that.
42:56
You were super honest, which >> I didn't trash her.
43:00
>> No, of course you didn't. But you made her real. >> Yeah.
43:03
in in my especially in my second reading of the book, I just like I felt so sad that I could never meet her. >> Yeah.
43:12
>> Because I love this girl. >> Yeah.
43:16
>> She's vibrant on the page as she was in life.
43:20
Uh she was also difficult.
43:20
Uh she was I was a difficult kid.
43:23
And you you know that you that you write her fullblooded is to me a real gift.
43:31
Is is that h like >> Yeah.
43:36
Well, >> is that how you think about her right now? >> Oh my gosh. Yeah.
43:39
Um well, there were two things when I write the opening chapter about sort of gen familiar grief.
43:48
The death of a parent, the death of our parents.
43:50
David's father, sorry, David's mother died at 54, unusually young. >> Yeah.
43:56
>> My stepfather died at in his 80s.
43:56
So when I was writing about the death of our parents whom we were all very close to, uh one of the ways we found that the way you keep a person alive is to remember them in all their dimensions, not make them into plaster saints.
44:18
Uh telling stories of David's mother, telling stories of my stepfather who could be so mischievous with the children.
44:28
and he was like a child himself and he and Miranda were thick as thieves.
44:32
Uh, in fact, when he was dying and she walked into his hospital room to say goodbye, which miraculously we all did and able to do, he pointed to the floor and he said, "I'll see you down there."
44:50
And she was she reeled back and then of course started to laugh hysterically and like that like you know that was and and so she was very like him in many ways.
44:59
So you you want to remember them in their fullness.
45:01
But when I was first writing this book, I or you know what was becoming a book, I didn't know what it was. I was just writing it.
45:07
I I kept Miranda very much out of it because I didn't think I could do her justice.
45:12
I wanted to focus on the grief process or whatever it is experience itself of a mother.
45:20
I didn't and I thought if I brought her into it too much, I well, I'd never be able to capture her.
45:26
And and and I don't know, it it it just felt wrong to me.
45:29
And then actually my very first book editor I let I showed her an early draft and she said I I want to know more about Miranda. Okay.
45:39
So I started to go into her um and I'm really glad you say she becomes alive on the page because she was a difficult person to capture and she she did she gave us you know I think I first started Zoloft when she was about 15. Zoloft also recommended.
46:00
Um, and but she was just I I I once described her as a Google as she grew up, a Google pin that you could just drop into any city in the world and within 24 hours she would have made friends, know where to eat, what to see, and not just the museum.
46:18
Like she would have had the exhibit that no one else knew about what to see.
46:22
She was exceptionally cool.
46:25
and she had gone, we had gone on a family trip to Israel when she was about 21 or 22 and she hadn't wanted to go.
46:34
We had all gone sort of separately on various different journeys and but we'd never gone as a family and and she just ah why are we going to Israel?
46:48
I was like, "Yeah, we'd be a normal family. Just go to a beach.
46:50
Why don't we ever go to somewhere like a beach?
46:53
Always like and she loved like history and archaeology and things, but but you know, we we always we never took beach vacations and and so I said, "Well, there's a beach.
47:03
There's a beach in Israel in Tel Aviv."
47:05
And anyway, sort of pulled her along kicking and screaming, which is how you brought her along on something if she didn't want to go.
47:12
and she got to Tel Aviv and one look at it, it was the coolest place she had ever seen.
47:20
And if I know the news now would not indicate this, but anybody who has been to Tel Aviv knows it's it's she thought it was like Paris mixed with an Arabic bazaar and it was so youthful and coffee culture and people stayed up all night and they really embraced life.
47:38
And so she came back from this trip and within three months, quit her job, found some bogus program that would get her like a student visa of some kind and taken herself over and there she was became a fashion model for a bit.
47:57
And she get me she identified very strongly as Jewish, but she was not religious.
48:05
And so she loved everything that was not religious about it.
48:08
anything that was not Jerusalem.
48:10
Like when I wanted to visit and go to Jerusalem, she's like, "Ah, so lame."
48:13
Um, but she so she and she taught me to see the culture that was there, like 200 different ethnicities, all living, and the artisanship and the food and music and everything that was happening.
48:29
So she could she would make me see things.
48:30
And she did this wherever and whatever she was doing.
48:35
Like if I came and visited her in Brooklyn, she would just have this program of things that I would just never have done on my own.
48:43
In fact, after she died, Nathaniel, her son said, "Now I'm never going to know where to eat."
48:54
And she was but her company, she was so effortlessly, piercingly witty.
48:58
I mean, she's like Oscar, a modern Oscar Wild.
49:01
like she would just toss off oneliners that were so insightful u but just you you would just be gasping with laughter um when she would say things. She's very well read.
49:15
She didn't go to she went last about three months in university and that was it.
49:20
And she worked in news and she loved news.
49:22
She wanted to be in the real world.
49:24
She wanted to live in the world and she wanted to live live in the world and and she was just the best company but she brought out things. She was a booster.
49:35
She was a loy she saw she had this gift for seeing people into people and what their gifts were and encouraging that.
49:44
Uh so she had a lot of friends, a lot of strays, we called them like sort of lost girls who wanted help, sympathy.
49:54
And so when she died, there were a also a lot of people who came to her funeral, young people were just like, I I don't know what I'm going to do without Miranda to talk to.
50:03
Like >> she was she had a deep kindness and compassion to her.
50:11
And I think that comes out of someone who had illness.
50:16
You know, somebody had seen trauma.
50:16
Uh she lived when she was modeling, there were a few inifadas that happened and she'd be running with curlers in her hair to bomb shelters.
50:24
And so she really lived a big life in her 32 years.
50:27
And uh and you lose someone like that.
50:33
And it's Yeah, it's a crater. Just a crater.
50:36
And I I'm very grateful that your original editor made you write about her. >> Yeah.
50:45
>> Because it again, so much of this stuff can seem kind of intellectual, abstract.
50:53
You know, this is how you get through grief. Here's the program.
50:55
You know, everything is well, we'll take this step, then this step.
50:59
And there are some effective therapies that we're going to talk about in a minute. >> Yeah.
51:03
Um, but having her there really helps understand why you went through what you went through, right?
51:14
And and I'm not saying that in a pjorative way.
51:17
Like I'm I'm sure that a parent who loses a child who isn't that, right?
51:23
Maybe they're very studious or very quiet, they have their own special attachments that the parent has >> with with that child.
51:32
But the the the thing that I really think your book does so well, you do so well is just the raw honesty of it, right?
51:46
Because she was all of that, but she was also a challenge for you.
51:49
I mean, you you you literally had to send her up to your stepdad and and have him take a crack. >> Well, yeah.
51:57
>> Well, yeah. their their two her last two years of high school she went we shipped her up to Canada to live with my mom and my stepfather and and and my mother I you know I has been extraordinary and she's still alive and she was the one who conveyed how much being a mother meant to her and was one of the best things she of her life aspects of her life but my mom was my mom was probably stricter with her but my stepfather had
52:25
been a lieutenant and sort of knew how to deal with an unruly troop and she um so he could and as I think as a grandparent you know you can deal with sometimes a grandchild better than the parent can deal because you're the parents you're just too close and you
52:42
feel too responsible where sometimes they need a little space and >> there's that great joke uh why do grandparents and their grandchildren get along and bond so well they have a mutual enemy >> exactly exactly Yeah. No, it was it look it was a
52:58
No, it was it look it was a godsend to us and and and they they really pulled her through and uh yeah, but I think any child, you know, and that's the thing.
53:07
I mean, you enter this alternative universe and you meet other people.
53:12
some people's children have died from suicide, >> you know, uh or they've and then you could say, well, those were really problematic, you know, but it's it's it's no less because in the end, it's I I said when I learned that she had died, I said, what is the opposite feeling to giving birth?
53:32
I mean, it's it's crazy to think that you can create this life and now this thing that you bore has been taken from you, has died and and that bond is is not describable.
53:46
But any child who is your child is going, you know, people have I I had a miscarriage once and then I just learned every oh join the line, everybody has a a miscarriage but and it was very early but I I remember just spending the entire day kind of in a morning and then babies and it doesn't really matter the age.
54:16
Um, it's it's you are just have that bond and and I think that's part of what it's trying to get to is the unnaturalenness of when it of when it's when it happens.
54:32
>> And what would you now that you have your passport to this country >> what exile? Yeah. Deported.
54:38
Um, a passport you did not choose, you did not want.
54:46
Um, >> I wish I'd been sent to Venezuela, let me tell you. Oh, Venezuela. How lucky. >> Uh, yeah.
54:56
I'd rather go to North Korea. >> Yeah. Rather, Exactly.
55:02
>> What would you advise uh if a friend or a loved one experiences this?
55:06
What are you going to tell them that is is different because you've been through the experience? >> It's a good question.
55:16
Sadly, it it happened um last fall.
55:18
Um a friend of ours uh daughter died suddenly by an embolism. >> Oh dear.
55:27
>> 18 years old just getting off a plane.
55:31
And you know I very unexpected to be joined by someone so close to me.
55:41
And uh I think what you learn is not to tell them anything to say because they know you know and you actually I mean obviously you're there for them. I I never say it.
55:59
This is just a rule of life.
56:01
Never say, "Hey, call if you need me."
56:03
Never never do that for anything.
56:05
Anything you want to see me, call me or I will call you.
56:09
But hey, don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything is is a meaningless phrase.
56:14
And so you don't actually say that, but I, you know, I' I've been solicitous.
56:20
I've said, "I'm here if you want to talk."
56:22
Um uh but I don't give her advice.
56:26
and um and she and you know they're dealing with their own families in situations and and I think this community of mothers that I've now joined many whom I didn't know at the beginning uh who have reached out to me through various social media and David wrote a beautiful article in the Atlantic a few months after she died called Miranda's last gift.
56:52
Yeah, I read it >> uh about talking about Miranda through her relationship with her dog Ringo. >> Yeah.
57:02
>> And um so I've met people that way and one of the the universal experiences that people feel is loneliness.
57:11
I feel in in this sense I feel lucky that I have had I have a close family.
57:18
The marriage has survived through it.
57:18
The marriage has survived through it. um and our family remains close and I've I've had the support of many very good friends but that is not the common experience and I think you know I've I've heard from single mothers uh
57:35
sometimes families who lost their only child and there there is the drum beat of the world goes on and again totally understandably like you're sad indefinitely but after 3 or 4 months you know, there's not going to be people just naturally stop asking or or they forget or they remember to ask. Oh, Oh, right. How are you doing?
58:00
>> But again, I don't fault them for that.
58:03
Um, it's the world goes on, time goes on.
58:05
It just doesn't feel like it's going on for you.
58:07
And so to another mother in this situation or a father as it's not on the table, friend was for us.
58:18
Yeah, >> they're there to talk to you whenever you need them and that's completely understood and then I will reach out and just check in say how are you doing let me know thinking about you want to talk I'm here you know that that's what one does and that's and and and in that case in that world you know they are there for it >> I think one of the things that your book does is It gives the reader who's experienced this permission.
58:55
And by that I mean, you know, if you're reading the happy happy joy joy, this is going to make you stronger. >> Yeah.
59:03
>> Um, and you're not feeling that. And I bet you're not. >> No. No, I'm not.
59:11
that your book allows them to see you and what you went through, but then it gives them, oh, all right.
59:20
So, I'm not this crazed creature. >> Yeah.
59:25
>> I'm not, you know, doing it wrong. >> Yeah.
59:29
>> Because we we have so much of that, you know, the this these are the 10 steps you have to do. >> Yeah.
59:36
Or you're not you're not through it yet. Yeah.
59:38
>> You were supposed to get through it. It's two years. Come on. It's It's been a while. What's wrong with you? >> Yeah. >> Right.
59:44
>> And and so and that only heaps more pain. >> Yeah.
59:49
And >> and if you're lonely and you don't have a lot of people around you who understand or close family who understand, um it's it's it's I'm sure it's terrible feeling. Yeah.
1:00:03
And and and people do say amazing things.
1:00:06
We I tell a story uh of the checking in at the hotel in Brooklyn. >> Yeah, I love that.
1:00:14
>> Oh my god, that was There are times people say so much the wrong thing. It's funny.
1:00:20
And this was I don't know a month after Miranda died.
1:00:23
We because she we weren't there before they removed her.
1:00:29
They police sealed up her apartment.
1:00:29
We had to go through this horrible legal bureaucracy of death of death >> to to just get access to her apartment.
1:00:36
And then I was very much among many things haunted by the aspect that no one had been in there to clean up.
1:00:41
And I thought, you know, there's food drawing on the counter.
1:00:45
Like I, you know, this is we have to be able to get I I could wait for her things. I just wanted to.
1:00:53
So be again, our daughter accompanied me and we checked in in this hotel that was very near her apartment in Brooklyn. And we got there late.
1:01:02
We were exhausted and we were braced for having to go in the next day and face this.
1:01:06
It's the first time we had to face anything like this.
1:01:11
And um we go to the check-in and it's this really jolly New York check-in person and he's like, "Well, hello ladies.
1:01:23
What brings you to New York?"
1:01:27
and B and I just we look at each other and I was like um uh business pleasure and I was like and be just says neither we're not not here for anything like that. Oh, we got plans.
1:01:48
And uh I'm like, "Yeah, we have plans. We have plans." Show. Uh, no, not a show.
1:01:57
>> And he goes, "Well," and he keeps going on.
1:01:59
And finally, and this is one of these early things you have to learn is when to drop the nuclear bomb and when not to.
1:02:04
In the early days, you're tempted to drop it all the time.
1:02:07
Like, you're checking out at the drugstore and you want turn to the clerk and say, "You know, my daughter just died."
1:02:12
like you know that like it's weird.
1:02:14
You just become compulsive about it.
1:02:15
But but this one, you know, this one I I was trying not to cuz he was so jolly.
1:02:19
And finally I just said, you know what? My daughter died.
1:02:25
We're here to clean up her apartment after her death. I'm thinking, okay, wow.
1:02:31
You just I just exploded you.
1:02:37
And he went, "Oh, oh, well then, well, at least she's in a good place now, right?"
1:02:43
And I said, "Well, she actually had a good place.
1:02:49
She was lived right near the esplanade in a one-bedroom apartment."
1:02:52
And he was like, "Yeah, that's a that that is good real New Yorker.
1:02:57
That is good real estate." >> New York. >> I know.
1:03:00
And and I said, "So, I think she was in a pretty good place."
1:03:03
And uh he said, "Well, yeah, I guess.
1:03:06
Well, can I send you ladies some champagne?"
1:03:12
And I said, "Well, we're said,"We're not really celebrating."
1:03:15
And he goes, "Well, what do you want?" And I said, "Oh, it. White wine. Do you have white wine?"
1:03:21
He said, "Yes, bottles coming your way, ladies."
1:03:26
And it was just I mean we did like it was actually like you know the the comic bits in the Shakespeare tragedy where the guards are all drunk and yeah you know that was that moment >> so when I was reading that part I thought it was a MontiPython sketch >> so much of life turns into a MontiPython
1:03:43
sketch but but yes no it was and then yeah >> and and it's not their fault right >> they they haven't ever they probably have no knowledge of what a person feels like, what they're experiencing sematically, you know, and and but he that was a like a routine, honestly. >> Yeah. Couldn't break the couldn't break >> Yeah.
1:04:05
Couldn't break the couldn't break the bit.
1:04:07
Um, no, I mean that what I did get I think my favorite targets if I was going to have annoyance or anger were the happiness gurus. >> Yeah.
1:04:19
there there, you know, there are people who study the science of happiness and and it's great at a TED talk or, you know, at a corporate retreat with billionaires about learning to experience and and take strength and lessons from your misfortune, you know, and then you realize like nothing has ever happened to you.
1:04:39
ever happened to you. Like you never want to presume like one of the other things you realize is like so many people are out there that you didn't even realize are walking about in my state y >> or some version of my state >> is as I said this alternative universe is very well populated and more populated than you think >> but then there are a lot of people
1:05:01
I don't want to presume that nothing bad has happened to this person but like nothing bad has happened to this person like more than they got they lost a job you know or >> they had a bad time in college >> and I learned from it, you know, or I started my first company and it failed but that made me better businessman, you know, I was like, "Yeah, okay, good. Good for you." Good for you." >> Yeah.
1:05:25
I I really uh empathized when I was reading your views on that.
1:05:30
I I used to get cluster headaches, >> which they used to call suicide headaches. >> Oh.
1:05:38
>> For the obvious reason. >> Yeah.
1:05:39
And I had a male neurologist tell me, you know, it's the worst pain a man can feel.
1:05:44
And then mercifully, they went away uh when I was in my mid-40s.
1:05:48
And I had an occasion to see another neurologist, female, and she was looking through my chart and she goes, "Ooh, cluster headaches."
1:05:57
And I went, "Yeah, my previous guy told me they were the worst pain a man could feel."
1:06:02
and she goes, "Oh no, they're the worst pain a human being can feel."
1:06:09
>> And that's coming from a from a woman and a mother. >> And a mother. Yeah.
1:06:15
>> Because I was present when all three of my kids were born. That ain't for sissies.
1:06:20
>> Well, it is when you get you have the wit to get the anesthesia, >> right?
1:06:23
Well, my wife chose not to do that.
1:06:26
>> I compare that to like natural heart surgery.
1:06:30
you know, you know, >> I'm going to go to the natural line because I'm like, "Honey, uh, you know, >> the a spinal block, it won't it won't play with your mind." No. Nope.
1:06:43
>> Oh, your your wife is impressive.
1:06:47
I was watching a movie by the time it was ready for Miranda to be born. >> Yeah.
1:06:51
>> Well, you're you're very wise.
1:06:53
>> That was a that she was born at the time.
1:06:55
It was fashionable to go to midwives, >> right?
1:06:58
>> In fact, I wrote an essay at the time.
1:06:59
See, I I use my experience.
1:06:59
I don't let material go to waste.
1:07:02
I wrote an essay at the time for the Wall Street Journal called Knock Me Out with a Truck.
1:07:08
>> My mom was the same way.
1:07:08
She was like, when she heard that Missy wanted to do it without any anesthesia or any pain meds, my mom was just like, "Can can you She would say it directly to Missy.
1:07:20
Uh, I think you're really misguided here.
1:07:26
This is an experience that you know it's it's not a returning it is a returning to nature but it's it's like one of those ones you don't want yeah >> to return to.
1:07:35
But but again with the what what why it why it resonated so strongly with me was like when you're in a cluster headache like you literally can't think >> it's like a migraine they were worse worse >> basically when I when people would try to ask me to describe it the closest thing I could come up with was imagine somebody heats up a drill >> drills the side of your head and then pours white hot molasses with chunks of glass. >> I know that feeling. Yes.
1:08:08
>> And and I think >> and that's why I'm bringing it up. >> Yeah.
1:08:12
>> Because reading your book, I was like, "Oh, I know how she felt because it >> Yeah.
1:08:18
It's relocated to your chest." >> Yes.
1:08:21
>> And that then when we're talking about the physicality. >> Yeah.
1:08:24
>> No, I I I've I've not experienced that level of headache, but I have had a couple things that I I I thought I was brain hemorrhaging and it turns out it was a son.
1:08:33
So just that is bad enough.
1:08:33
So, I know what you think, but you can't you can't think, you can't function, you all you want to do is lie on your back.
1:08:39
And um and with the pain and especially the early pain, uh I I originally compared it in the book to Prometheus and David thought it was too literary, so he said, "No, you have to cut that."
1:08:51
But it felt like Prome the story of Prometheus is he's lashed to a rock and every day comes in eat his come in eat his liver and then and then they come back the next day and that's what it felt >> like waking up every morning was Prometheus >> your heart being ripped out of you physically and uh that was the pain that sends you to the floor like that's >> and and that's what I found so helpful in your book the the the pain.
1:09:21
A lot of people think it's just all mental or it's all, you know, that No, it's it's not.
1:09:31
It can it can collapse you as you write onto your bathroom floor.
1:09:34
It can, you know, uh broken heart syndrome. >> Yeah.
1:09:41
>> My mother-in-law suffered from it after my father-in-law died. >> Did she? >> And it's real. >> Yeah, it is real.
1:09:47
>> It is very, very real. >> Yeah.
1:09:48
and uh we moved her out here from Minnesota and she ended up living with us in the last years of her life.
1:09:54
She died just last year at nearly 99.
1:09:56
But that period right after my father-in-law died, we were incredibly worried because she had broken heart syndrome.
1:10:07
And so like I always do, I did a huge research project on it and I'm like because my wife was like this can't kill you, can it?
1:10:17
And I'm like, >> unfortunately, it can.
1:10:21
>> And and so that's another thing I wanted to just hear directly from you.
1:10:24
How do you You You do a great job putting it into words, but a love that is so strong that you would rather be dead than go through the grief and pain, real pain, not just mental, physical pain. Mhm.
1:10:46
>> I I saw you on that floor and I'm just like how do you get up?
1:10:51
>> Well, I think I I do I'm glad you brought this aspect up because so far despite my advocating for motherhood been a quite bit of a downer on the cost or the potential cost of it.
1:11:04
Um uh but I do include a conversation uh that I had with a friend of mine and he uh he he never had children.
1:11:11
He he he he he's he's gay.
1:11:14
He got married when they finally could and and just children were never sort of in their cards.
1:11:23
Um and anyway, he was sitting one night with me and I was describing this this pain that I was having and he knew me as this former my nickname used to be the minister of fund.
1:11:36
I was always I was always the one planning stuff and I stopped planning stuff and he so he knows me as his former minister of fund and he's looking at this absolutely shattered person and I I said I said uh I said to him I told him that I times felt I'd rather be dead and he he's he started his eyes started to water and he said I said I have never experienced ed a love so intense that I would rather be dead than not have had it.
1:12:14
And that is the core of it because in in the end when you when I look back and a father this same that's not on the table father who is a year ahead of us as it were. >> Yeah.
1:12:30
>> He wrote me and I included this note in the book.
1:12:32
He wrote me that for the first time a few months ago, the first time he could walk and think of his daughter Leia without also being consumed by sadness.
1:12:46
That in fact that sadness was turning into uh a type of gratitude that he had had the fortune to know her the 32 years that she had been in his life for 32 years.
1:12:58
So, if you were to ask me uh no Miranda but none of this pain or Miranda and all of this pain, I would still choose Miranda and all of this pain. >> Yes.
1:13:13
And and that is like that to me was one of the central messages of the book that and and especially your friend who'd never had a child.
1:13:25
I I was not fully prepared for the birth of my first child. I was 24. >> No one is.
1:13:37
>> And but the part I wasn't prepared for was the just instant unconditional love.
1:13:47
I had never fel I had felt it from like my mother. Yes.
1:13:50
I felt to what it felt like to receive it, >> but I I'd never felt it for another creature. Right. >> Right. >> I loved my wife. I loved my siblings. I loved my parents.
1:14:02
All of that, but there is nothing like at least I've never experienced anything like this love.
1:14:08
And when I got when I saw that uh in your book, I'm like, "Yeah, >> yeah."
1:14:16
And and we were chatting before we sat down and you also have a new grandchild. Congratulations. >> Yeah. That's a gift of life. >> Yeah. And joy.
1:14:27
>> And but it happens there, too. >> Yeah. Here we go. Getting attached again.
1:14:33
>> And I wasn't prepared for that. >> Yeah.
1:14:35
Well, apparently grandparenthood, as I'm discovering, is is like all of the love with none of the hassle. >> It's great. >> Yeah. Back to you. I highly recommend it. >> Over to you, son. >> Yeah. Here you go. >> Here you go. That was great. We had a great time. Uh yeah.
1:14:51
No, I'm I'm I'm very I'm very excited about that.
1:14:54
But but that's when I was talking about how they change you and you know the list of negatives that you can easily rack up when thinking about having a child.
1:15:03
But they I wrote that just as um I had David and I had to teach Miranda how to be an adult, she taught us how to be parents.
1:15:16
And when you have that first child and you people think your life shrinks and in early on of course you know you're much more constrained and yes you know you got to get them to sleep through the night and blah blah blah but they >> enlarge you they bring out dimensions that you didn't think you had including that selflessness which a father has too.
1:15:41
the the sense of of not just responsibility for another being, but just growing into a role like now you're the father, you're not the son anymore.
1:15:53
That sounded more religious than I intended it filled with the spirit.
1:15:58
But uh but no, you go from being the child to the parent at that moment. Yeah.
1:16:03
And then I spent a lot of the first year of Miranda's life when my mom, who was so helpful and and it was so great having her around.
1:16:13
She said, uh, I just would turn to her multiple times and go, "Mom, thanks." She'd say, "What? What for?"
1:16:19
And I say, "Just thank you. Thank you.
1:16:21
Now I know what you felt like, what you did, and I know what it feels like now."
1:16:29
And it's it's it's an extraordinary thing.
1:16:31
And I think if you if you don't have that opportunity, it's it it's it's it's hard to convey how how if you can do it, how amazing it is and for you selfishly there.
1:16:47
We could be a happiness guy, >> you know, have a child and it'll bring out the best in you. Yeah. >> It's good for you. >> It's good for you. >> Yeah.
1:16:57
the um but but I also saw that in the book as the bridge, >> right?
1:17:04
>> And and by that I mean you're very clear that you're never going to be the uh minister of fun like you used to be.
1:17:13
You might have a different version of it, >> but it's never going to be like it was. But nothing is.
1:17:23
But there is that when you get asked that question, no Miranda, none of this pain, Miranda, all of this pain, I would make the same choice you made.
1:17:33
Like that that's a no-brainer to me, right?
1:17:36
and and and that is the the part where you kind of realize, you know, better to have loved and and lost than never to have loved at all.
1:17:53
>> And and and that was kind of a bright beacon for me actually in your book.
1:17:58
>> It's like, yeah, most of the you read from from the happiness purveyors and the TED talkers and that's it.
1:18:04
It's But the there is a way to survive this, right?
1:18:14
>> Well, then the child even you know when we talk about difficulties even the testing the child does of you makes you stronger.
1:18:22
>> You know that that that a that's why it was so strange for me to tumble back into a form of helplessness and not have the energy.
1:18:30
I I still don't have the energy.
1:18:32
I still don't have the the capacity of, you know, I'm like an older model of myself now. Uh I've gone back.
1:18:40
But the strength, the wisdom, what you learn about yourself and your capacities is something that being a parent is you can only learn through being a parent.
1:18:52
Um and so yeah, when you lose that some of those skills, it's it's very upsetting.
1:18:57
Um but you know join the history of mankind that experience has experienced this and worse and and uh uh you know as I said you're not unique.
1:19:16
You've just joined the whole world of of people who have experienced loss. >> Yeah.
1:19:22
And and then you also write um about moving her Because the cemetery that you chose in haste, >> yes, >> was really rule ruly.
1:19:36
>> Yeah, it was that was the one downside of this Jewish journey of death.
1:19:38
It was a rituals of morning.
1:19:42
It was we chose a Jewish cemetery that we hadn't realized was a little more orthodox than we expected and certainly that Miranda would have not enjoyed.
1:19:55
They were the Jerusalem side of the >> You know that's so funny when I was reading it. That's what I thought.
1:20:01
>> Like mom, this is not Tel Aviv.
1:20:02
>> She got buried in Jerusalem instead of >> Tel. What are you thinking? Yeah. Yeah. No, I heard her. I heard her. Yeah.
1:20:07
you know, we had wanted to plant um so we you know, again, the haste it's February and we had found this Jewish cemetery near there were very few Jewish communities or let alone cemeteries in this area where we go have spent their all of their childhood summers and uh and so there was miraculously this small one and um I'd wanted to plant uh a wildflower garden for her and and do a monument that was, you know, a little more her.
1:20:43
Uh, nothing garish, but like a very beautiful designed, tranquil wildflower garden with little benches where you could sit, stools.
1:20:52
It was all very, very cool design.
1:20:54
She would have approved of it.
1:20:56
And uh, we they just the committee would not allow it.
1:21:00
It had to be a black stone, you know, in a row, a flat lawn, and it was off this highway and it wasn't near where our cottage is.
1:21:14
It wasn't sort of in the area that would have been familiar to her as a child.
1:21:18
And so I then found uh this beautiful non-denominational cemetery.
1:21:25
I mean, everybody is buried there.
1:21:27
and um and it was historic cemetery in the town.
1:21:31
I had never even seen it.
1:21:33
It was just sort of tucked away. It's like a nature park.
1:21:34
And so we had to make this very difficult decision, which again is wrenching, not something you want to go through twice, of moving her from that cemetery and rearing her in what turns out to it's like natural cathedral.
1:21:49
It's got trees and they let us do whatever we wanted with the garden and and it's always got people going by.
1:21:58
It's used like a local park.
1:22:01
park. people hike through it and dog walk through it and and that's what I wanted for her is because and and and so we did go through the process of it's all done sight on we were waiting on the side of the highway while they unearthed
1:22:17
her and we would not have wanted to be there but we were not allowed to be there thank God and then they put her in another hearse and we followed that hearse to the new place And uh again it was one of the things I was dreading horribly. But
1:22:32
But this time seeing her first of all laughing at what she was saying cursing us is mom off a highway.
1:22:43
Why am I these Orthodox people? What are you thinking?
1:22:47
>> You can't do anything without me. Mom. Mom.
1:22:49
In fact, the first time I visited there in the summer before we moved her, I I walked into this very sterile lawn place and I couldn't find her grave and suddenly I found it.
1:23:01
There was this unbelievable burst of what turned out to be wild mustard, but yellow golden flowers, tall, six feet tall.
1:23:09
And I I was stunned and they were nowhere else.
1:23:15
They were in the neat rectangle of her plot. >> That's so cool.
1:23:18
And as I walked up, a little rabbit hopped out.
1:23:20
And and I just like it was like her protest, you know, this gushing thing of gold in this in this otherwise quite grim place.
1:23:30
And I I I I did start to laugh and and and and then okay got the message and uh so now she is in a very beautiful place where she where it's sounds weird a joy to visit her but it's it feels correct and it's a place where you not you see yourself being there too and that's weirdly comforting.
1:23:55
It's not something again anyone wants to think about, but once you kind of know where you're going to end up, >> there's a lot of comfort in that. >> Yeah. >> No hasty decisions. No.
1:24:07
>> I I found I'm not a religious person, but I'm not an atheist because I think that's a religion all of in itself. Right.
1:24:14
I know there is no God >> versus I know exactly.
1:24:19
>> I love funerals where the they tell you exactly where your loved one is, >> right?
1:24:25
you know, and what they're doing at that moment with Jesus. It's great.
1:24:26
I wish I had that certainty. >> Yeah.
1:24:32
I I am I am comfortable with the uncertainty, though. Right.
1:24:34
So, like, >> well, Jews are Jews don't have these strong visions, >> right?
1:24:39
So, I love and so maybe I'm Jewish. Yeah.
1:24:42
I maybe I didn't adjacent. >> Yeah.
1:24:44
Well, they I had a good friend who I have a lot of good friends who are Jewish and one we might have had a little too much to drink and uh he said to me, you know, I never liked you goyam until I met the Irish.
1:25:01
>> He goes, I think you might be one of our lost tribes. >> Yeah.
1:25:04
Or as Fran Lebo had said about Italians or Jews with architecture. Yeah. Yeah.
1:25:09
No, there are a lot of there are a lot of spiritual Jews.
1:25:11
are a lot of spiritual Jews. I'm a convert and I one of the reasons I converted and I was not under pressure to convert because David was Jewish was for that very uncertainty like everything about the religion matters what you do in life >> totally
1:25:28
>> you know like you you fine for you to be a mass murderer and then accept Jesus on the deathbed you know >> I always thought that was one of I mean the >> get out of jail free card >> so I was brought up uh Roman Catholic right and but Roman Roman Catholic light because my parents were not terribly religious either. >> Uh but you know this is 60s and 70s and
1:25:46
>> Uh but you know this is 60s and 70s and like I was the wise act wise ass with the priests and like hey father like all you know Greek mythology makes much more sense to me than this.
1:26:02
>> I think you guys have stolen a bit of that too.
1:26:04
>> Oh of course they did.
1:26:04
They stole it all these saints.
1:26:06
But but they're from a marketing perspective. >> Oh, so much better. >> So brilliant. Yeah. >> So brilliant.
1:26:13
Not only like when and St.
1:26:17
Paul the original of the marketing geniuses, right?
1:26:21
He would go in, he would commandeer the most populated synagogue and his pitch was simplicity itself.
1:26:30
Hey, all the special diet stuff, you don't need to do that guy.
1:26:35
Well, you have how many commandments do you guys have? We just have 10 and 10. >> Yeah. >> Just accept. I know.
1:26:40
We just lost all your Roman Catholic view. I know. No, but dad. No, it's okay.
1:26:44
David and I whenever literally whenever we've gone into one of those beautiful cathedrals and we just look at each other, >> Jews could never we're never going to win this one.
1:26:56
>> I tell you, it's true.
1:26:56
But the real secret that I actually admire about the religion I was raised in, >> what you mentioned, confession. >> Yeah. >> Wait a minute.
1:27:07
Wait, let me get this straight. >> Yeah. No, it's way better.
1:27:09
And and actually the more evangelical you get, you can pray for stuff, >> right?
1:27:15
>> Like I once met someone who was praying for a sofa.
1:27:17
Like the whole church was doing a prayer >> by me a Mercedes Benz.
1:27:24
>> Apparently that can happen too.
1:27:24
So we actually I now you're making me feel like the loser of all of this.
1:27:29
>> No, that's Jonath Japan.
1:27:31
>> No, no, I mean like that.
1:27:31
But that that our religion is, you know, pretty grim.
1:27:35
>> Well, yours is probably closer to the way things really are. >> Yeah. I don't know.
1:27:40
I just don't I'm like in that sense I don't presume to know, but I also know that things have happened since she's died.
1:27:46
>> That's what I was getting at the flowers and the bunny and the flower coming up in your own garden. >> Yeah.
1:27:53
Like I love that kind of stuff because who knows who knows how strange the universe that we live in actually is. >> Yeah.
1:28:03
>> I like I >> I don't know that they're not just like we we we talk to each other online and you could be in Japan like I don't know that there's not another dimension that >> Exactly.
1:28:12
And you know the light spectrum I I'll believe it when I see it and then you know the big joke laughing out loud.
1:28:20
You know here's the part of the light spectrum the human eye can see.
1:28:21
Here's the light spectrum. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, no.
1:28:24
I I I don't question and and and there have been things that haven't I I haven't gone looking for them, but I have I've a few of those odd things and then I've I've very um suddenly at moments had her voice land in my head.
1:28:43
Uh, and one time was that that morning we woke up in the hotel to go to her hotel to sorry her apartment and I I just as you know dreading it.
1:28:56
Uh, and uh, just as I was waking up I suddenly felt this strong wash of peace over my being and I heard her voice say, "You got this, Mom." And then I did.
1:29:12
like it just was like spiritual valium or something and and then and then be and I we we went there and we did it and >> and uh and actually the other time it came into my head was I was thinking about this book and it's weird to promote such a book.
1:29:32
It's weird to talk about this book in you know by the book way like it's it's I never wanted to write this book as a writer.
1:29:40
This was not my ambition obviously to write such a book and I I've been very sort of morally torn up about it and I was lying just I don't know few weeks ago I was thinking about this I said well talking to her as I sometimes do I said well at least this keeps you alive in the world right and again I heard her voice very strongly say and it's not something I would have thought spontaneously I heard her say, "No, Mom.
1:30:11
You keep me alive in the world, and you only keep me alive if you live."
1:30:18
And meaning not just live, but live.
1:30:23
If if I'm just going to walk around as a sad sack, I am not keeping her alive.
1:30:28
And I was I was very startled by that thought. >> Yeah.
1:30:32
And you know what's interesting about that is that's ultimately what got my mom through too.
1:30:39
>> What hearing the voice >> was well not that sounds really crazy but >> not like that >> but her saying cuz again as a young son you're very attuned to how your mom is doing. >> Yeah.
1:30:54
>> And >> I wouldn't say that of most young sons.
1:30:57
Oh well I maybe but under the circumstances I was very attuned to both my parents >> and I like there was a day I don't know nine months maybe a year after la my sister died where she just seemed different and I went you seem better mom and she said something virtually the same as you just said.
1:31:23
She was like, "Lil would be so mad at me, >> right, >> for moping around."
1:31:29
Because La was this like your Miranda was this incredibly vivacious, fun, witty, you know, a liver of life. >> Yeah.
1:31:41
>> And and that was kind of the way my mom came back as well.
1:31:44
It was like, you know what, I am doing a disservice to La. >> Mhm.
1:31:50
And I think that but that requires time, right?
1:31:55
Because you're >> it's also it's it's you you tell yourself this over and over like, "Yeah, well, Miranda would hate to think that she'd cause you to be this sad."
1:32:02
Or as my son said very early on, nothing would be worse to Miranda's memory than for this to shatter our family, which is a line I keep a lot in my head.
1:32:10
But but there was something about the the bolt of lightning of her voice saying that to me as and it's not me like it didn't feel like me telling myself. >> Yeah. No, I know.
1:32:22
And and that was very similar to my what my mom transmitted to me. >> Yeah.
1:32:28
>> After and and so again like I I have no >> I have no insight as to how strange the universe might be and what might or might not happen.
1:32:38
But those types of things are really interesting to me because maybe it's just us concluding that naturally after the grief, right? I don't know.
1:32:53
But hey, if you hear the child's voice, listen is kind of the way I think about it.
1:32:59
So, how are you girded for you're you're going to be going on >> with your publishing company, Mr. Sean? I'm sorry.
1:33:09
>> No, no, you guys have been I I I I just want your listeners or viewers to know that Infinite Books has been the most extraordinary publishing experience I've had.
1:33:19
I've published four previous books, none on this topic.
1:33:22
and just what you guys are doing, the modernization of publishing, but also the compassion and warmth everybody has and professionalism has been.
1:33:37
I've just it's been amazing to me.
1:33:39
And editor Jimmy Sony has I mean he's he's like the old Max Perkins if anybody who knows who >> I know who Yeah, I know Max Perkins very well.
1:33:49
but also a friend and and he he's someone who Miranda helped research one of his books. >> Yeah.
1:33:56
>> For so he knew her and but he's just been such a booster and such a support and I can't I can't imagine going through this with any type of traditional publisher. I really can't. So I'm grateful.
1:34:08
>> Well, thank you very much.
1:34:08
We uh essentially uh we decided Jimmy and I were comparing notes and we just thought it was so funny that most of my books were written in the '9s.
1:34:20
My last imprint was 2011.
1:34:23
I'm writing a fictional book now which is kind of fun.
1:34:28
>> Uh but mine were all non-fiction.
1:34:28
Um, and we were together and Jimmy especially was just so struck that exactly the same things that had happened 20 years earlier to me >> were still happening. >> Yeah. And still are. Yeah.
1:34:44
>> And we just looked at each other and I'm like, "All right, infinite books it is then." >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:34:49
No, it's I I I have friends publishing other books with other publishers and I'll just say something passing like, you know, they AB tested my cover and they're like, what?
1:35:00
Wait, publishers do that? >> No, they don't. We do.
1:35:09
>> You know, the cover actually is really interesting because the AB test here for anyone who's watching, this is the cover that won. I think it's a fabulous.
1:35:18
>> Well, it was one that took me by surprise and thanks to AB testing because the cover is showing a selfie I took of Miranda and me on a girls trip to Malibu. I think it was 2017. >> Yeah. >> 2018.
1:35:30
And the I had given that photo as one of several photos that you guys were looking at for author photos, >> right?
1:35:39
And I we were trying very artsy beautiful covers like and I really love the artsy beautiful cover. So did I.
1:35:45
And unbeknownst to me, your team mocked up and they went through about five or six covers which also never happens.
1:35:53
And they mocked up that one and it won like like forget it. >> One with a bullet. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:36:02
It was >> and and Jean Mark and I were like >> this is interesting. Let's retest it. Yeah.
1:36:08
>> Because we were like you.
1:36:08
We We won't bore our audience, but there were a lot of really beautiful and very artistic covers. >> Yeah.
1:36:18
>> This just blew them out of the water. >> I know.
1:36:20
I startle >> and and so like it's just like one of those things.
1:36:25
If you can do that and you can get access to that, why aren't you doing that? >> Yeah.
1:36:31
It wasn't like it's it wasn't difficult.
1:36:33
Like you didn't have to have like whole teams of people do this.
1:36:34
It was just like do anything.
1:36:36
You probably do it on AI now, you know.
1:36:40
>> Well, actually we do uh but we also do it with humans.
1:36:44
>> Everything that we do we run first through an uh insilica audience uh and in silica you can create characters and I guess we could call them agents, right?
1:36:56
But you can create thousands of them. >> Wow.
1:36:59
>> And then give them the AB test.
1:36:59
But we always make sure that we do it with humans as well.
1:37:03
Uh because you know AIs know nothing of grief. >> Yeah.
1:37:08
Well, also they don't they're not walking into bookstores or >> Exactly. Exactly.
1:37:12
But what's really interesting is Jean Mark can attest to this.
1:37:16
The AI picked this with a bullet, too. Oh, >> okay. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:37:21
And he and I were just kind of like, okay, live by it. We got to die by it.
1:37:26
>> Well, every everybody like my mother is overjoyed by the cover and Yeah.
1:37:28
Every person that I've shown this cover to has reacted so warmly to the cover. >> Yeah.
1:37:37
>> Like, oh, that's >> Well, because it's such a miserable topic.
1:37:42
But if you had this big black gloomy, you know, dispatches and font and like you'd kind of like, whoa, I'm not opening that.
1:37:51
Like it's like a scary box. >> Exactly.
1:37:53
you know, and and this looks >> this looks >> I wanted to ask you one other question about the title, right?
1:37:59
Dispatches from grief immediately to me says it's like a war correspondent, dispatches from the war zone.
1:38:07
Was that the reason for the title?
1:38:10
>> Yeah, I I never It's funny, it was always the title in my head after I started writing because I was also writing it in a fairly not di It's not a diary-like form, but an episodic >> Yeah. >> form in that.
1:38:21
So one section is just it's a dispatch like about how um modern social media is a source of terror becomes a source of terror for you because um you know you can put their old clothes in a drawer but you know every time I'd pick up my phone there'd be memories >> or you know my car would say want to connect to Miranda's iPhone and and every time that happened I just burst into tears. >> Sure.
1:38:51
and like no curse you Facebook memory and uh and so so so they're like there's a section on that there's a section on like the grief explainers and the but structured in a um you know in in along the the journey it's in a what do you call it in a natural way but but but thematically as well.
1:39:15
So in that sense it had and it wasn't like me sitting down to write a book that said this is grief.
1:39:23
This is what it's like you know >> it's much more the old journalistic school. >> Yeah.
1:39:28
Well I I think it was like when I saw the title uh first we usually test titles too.
1:39:35
>> Um we were just like nope that nails it.
1:39:38
And but then I just started wondering on my way in today.
1:39:40
I'm like the image that I get is like okay you haven't been here. I'm here.
1:39:48
>> It's like my my dad, right?
1:39:48
That's what we used to do.
1:39:52
>> And uh >> you would do that from Beirut, you know. >> Exactly.
1:39:55
>> Well, this has been really I I got to be honest.
1:40:00
I was a little worried because the the topic is tough >> and I it doesn't get any tougher, >> right?
1:40:08
But the last thing I want you to talk just briefly about is the therapy that did in fact helped you because I've read a lot about it but I want to hear about it in your words.
1:40:21
>> So the therapy I eventually found and I've I'll keeping it brief.
1:40:25
I did go try and get grief therapy and I write about how incredibly difficult it is to get therapy quickly because everybody has a waiting list.
1:40:37
doesn't matter what your insurance is.
1:40:39
Uh and and basically unless you are willing to say you are suicidal and check into an emergency ward, it's very hard to find >> um help when you really really need it.
1:40:53
>> Parenthetically, the the getting the answering machine >> when you called I just I got mad. >> Yeah. Oh, it was awful.
1:41:00
And I'm I'm calling up these places, the grief institute, you know, we help families, but and I'd go, "Hello, um I'm a mother.
1:41:10
I've lost my child and I need help really badly."
1:41:12
Uh please, we will get back to you as soon as we can.
1:41:17
Please understand there was an 18month waiting list for help.
1:41:20
And you're like, "How is this going to >> crazy? Just crazy.
1:41:26
>> 18 months from now, I'm hoping not to need you, you know." >> Exactly.
1:41:28
Anyway, um, so e EMDR is a therapy and it stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which is a long way of saying that it originated by a psychotherapist, a woman in the late 80s got this was dealing with PTSD victims.
1:41:48
And we think of a PTSD victim typically like a soldier. >> Yeah.
1:41:54
who, you know, a car backfires and suddenly he's back in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam and and starts screaming and uh so treating this level of trauma, she was the one who speculated that the brain doesn't process traumatic memories the way it processes others.
1:42:14
And she developed what began as, and this is the eye movement part where you'd look at a dot, an electronic dot, and by watching it go back left and right while you recalled the traumatic incident in detail.
1:42:35
And that somehow had the effect of helping the brain process it.
1:42:40
And until recently, and it worked.
1:42:44
It had a lot of effect, but they didn't really know why.
1:42:49
Today, they use um I use hand buzzers connected to my computer, which buzz left and right, but they can you can still use a dot.
1:42:54
still use a dot. But the reason they found out it worked is when they could now study brains, put them under MRIs and people who have had trauma that they would watch um uh they would have people process first ordinary memories, the picnic, you know
1:43:15
what I did yesterday, and then they would say now the traumatic memory and the person would start thinking of it and they could see the brain put on the brakes, other parts of the brain started to light up that aren't normally associated with memory and essentially the memory became trapped. It couldn't the brain couldn't file it
1:43:35
It couldn't the brain couldn't file it in its usual hippocampus correct drawer and it um with the result it stayed present. It stays present.
1:43:43
So when the car backfires, you are back being bombed.
1:43:50
When the Facebook memory comes up, I am getting it flung in my face that my daughter is no longer here and I am no longer communicating with her on social media.
1:44:02
What you know, it seems a but with with it with grief of this kind, it's in everything.
1:44:06
It's in I couldn't go to the supermarket without having a panic attack because I just start passing things that I used to buy her Miranda in advance of her visits and pass the energy drinks and just I the first time I went I had to leave the store.
1:44:25
I just left my cart, ran out of there.
1:44:28
And so my therapy, which I still do two years later and I've been doing it weekly and eventually the goal is for you to get off it.
1:44:37
Like it's not like some Freudianism therapy where they want to keep you on the couch like forever. It's like CBT.
1:44:44
It's like these modern types of therapies that teach you how to manage whatever it is like your addiction, your trauma.
1:44:53
And um and so but because I think with a child it's so layered and it keeps coming back at you so many things in different ways that you go I've been going through this and through this.
1:45:07
So when we talked about that early I obsessions of yeah >> obsessiveness of what I could have done.
1:45:14
Um, we would talk through that and I would talk all the way through and all the things I could have done and what didn't happen and what I and then by the end of the session I came out and my son who was doing it as well said I don't know what they did but I feel better.
1:45:33
>> And you come out it's like I I compare it to kind of like an exorcism that you come out and that thought suddenly doesn't bother you anymore.
1:45:40
I mean, you're not happy about it, but you you it's it's filed it.
1:45:44
It's somehow been able to file it.
1:45:46
So, to be able to even write about some of the things I write about, like going and seeing her dead body for the first time, um going to her apartment, all of these things I've I've been able to write.
1:46:00
And I guess writing them down is also a form of EMDR.
1:46:02
As my therapist said, think of if you ever get a song caught in your head, the way to get it out.
1:46:09
I didn't know this, but apparently it's true.
1:46:11
You listen to it all the way through and then it goes out of your head.
1:46:15
And this is the premise of that therapy.
1:46:18
And so when I asked my therapist early on, I said like, "What's the goal here?
1:46:23
I'm not going to stop grieving.
1:46:24
I'm not going to stop missing Miranda."
1:46:26
And she said, "The goal is that one day you will manage your grief, and grief won't manage you.
1:46:31
you will manage your day and grief won't manage your day.
1:46:36
And that to me said, okay, that's a realistic goal.
1:46:38
And if I can get there off the floor walking, that's what I need to do.
1:46:45
And and that has been to me the so if anybody asks me um or friends who are going through similar types of trauma, I I I always raise EMDR and unfailingly a lot of them are already doing it.
1:46:58
M so >> well I think that obviously we're incredibly proud to be publishing your book.
1:47:05
Uh we think it's very important.
1:47:08
Um one of the things that as we've already covered that I love about it is its raw honesty.
1:47:13
People don't need people bullshitting them when they're going through that kind of experience.
1:47:20
And in a way like reading this as opposed to happy happy joy joy or you know uh you you going to emerge in a better place that just seems so false and so inauthentic to me whereas this is very authentic and then it kind of allows the person to feel what they're feeling in other words right it it gives them oh like so I'm not the crazy one here. >> And it does.
1:47:51
I I refuse to call them gifts because they're unreturnable, you know, but but but people say, well, you know, to be fair, in becoming the different person that you are, I think of these now, I call them to myself Miranda's gifts that that if she had to leave me, she left me with these gifts.
1:48:09
And it is, are you more sensitive to other people's pain? Yes.
1:48:12
Are you more aware of other people's pain? Yes.
1:48:15
Are you that makes you more patient?
1:48:17
Like I never boy I could have been a real Karen, you know, at one point.
1:48:22
Like, God, can you pack these groceries any slower?
1:48:27
You know, it's like I have all the patience in the world and I'm saying, how is your day going?
1:48:32
You know, like it sounds stupid to say it makes you appreciate life, but you have because there's a lot I don't appreciate now, like cuz I'm sad a lot of the time, but it does make you it gives you like um a second sight.
1:48:47
You have a second sight into how the people around you are and what they're experiencing.
1:48:54
And it makes you like she was having gone through her own traumas, much more compassionate.
1:49:01
friend said she could look past your te tattoos, you know, your your your your your angry t-shirt and she could see she could see you.
1:49:10
And that's that's I think the gift that she has given me.
1:49:17
>> It's a lovely gift for her to have given you.
1:49:19
Um realizing the fragility of your fellow humans puts you in a very different lens uh on humanity.
1:49:28
>> Yeah, it does shift the It does. It shifts the the view.
1:49:30
Yeah, Danielle, this has been fantastic.
1:49:34
Um, we do have a closing question here that we ask everyone.
1:49:39
>> Is this a surprise question? >> No. >> Is it a math? I can't do math. >> It's not math. It's not math.
1:49:45
>> It is uh speculative though because for our purposes, we're going to wave a wand and we are going to make you empress of the world. >> Oo.
1:49:55
>> You can't kill anyone.
1:49:55
You can't put anyone in a re-education camp. That's no fun. What kind of wand?
1:50:01
>> Yeah, we made it the unfun version.
1:50:03
>> But what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone. >> Yeah.
1:50:07
>> And you can say two things into it that will incept >> the entire population of the earth whenever their next morning is.
1:50:14
They're going to wake up and they're going to say, you know, I just had two of the greatest ideas and unlike all the other times I'm actually work on doing these two things.
1:50:25
What are you going to accept?
1:50:30
>> You mean I'm going to figure out what people's goals should be when they wake up in the morning? >> No, it can be.
1:50:35
Some of the answers that we've had are completely non-goal oriented.
1:50:41
>> You just it's you get to be you get to be the magic genie in their ear >> to to Okay. So, so like Okay.
1:50:47
So, you're telling them what to do when they get up or suggesting you're giving them a helpful suggestion that could be life-changing.
1:50:54
I would say I mean the obvious thing that is always said is like you know embrace life it's nobody is a guarantee it could be over today you know live life as this your last day um which one does after these things anyway uh but I would say so so allowing for all of that I would say be more patient with yourself and with others I have to have two of these right um and appreciate those who you love and love you back. Just show appreciation.
1:51:32
I think it's important in any relationship.
1:51:34
And I do this with David.
1:51:37
I do this with my kids, especially now, just thanking them for small gestures, showing that kind of appreciation um is is good.
1:51:50
>> I love both of those and and both are good advice.
1:51:53
Danielle, thank you so much.
1:51:56
Um, >> you sure I can't kill anyone? No. >> Yeah, I'm sure.
1:51:59
Sorry, that was that's kind of our number one question.
1:52:01
Can you just make an exception to this one? >> Just one person. >> Well, thank you.
1:52:08
It's been a real pleasure and and joy to be with you. So, thank you.