Tom Rose | Sep 19, 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Tom Rose. Excited to have you here. Tom, I'd like to start with you've got the balloon in a box coping with grief poster behind you, and I'd love to hear more about that. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's where my life changed. All right. My wife had breast cancer in 2004, 2005, and had mastectomies both times. And then until 2017, life was good. And then in 2017, the cancer came back in the chest wall. She was told she had six or eight months to live, and she lived two years. I lost her on August 5 of 2019. So just about a month ago or five years ago, a month ago. And after that, I guess the encouragement of a friend and my son ended up writing a book called Balloon in a Box coping with grief. And it's my grief journey. It's what I learned. It's how I learned to handle grief. What happened to me along this journey and my speaking engagements, that's what I tell everybody. I tell people, you know, what happened to me day by day, week by week, month by month, how it changed, how I got to where I am today. So, yeah, that's what the book's about. It's my grief journey. [00:01:18] Speaker A: Okay, so your journey with dealing with losing your wife to breast cancer right after she died. [00:01:25] Speaker B: You know, you go through the visitation at the funeral home, and then the funeral and the visitation. I remember pretty vividly, because I remember the comments and the conversations of people. I had about 450 people go through that day. That was on a Thursday and Friday. Then was the. Was the funeral. I don't remember the funeral real well. It kind of fuzzy. I do remember that evening. I mean, it was nice here. It was August. Everybody was out here on my deck. I'm sure there were a few bottles of wine drank, and all of a sudden, it was 09:00, and everybody was gone. And I'm sitting there, and I remember I didn't want to come back in this house. She wasn't here. Finally sunk into me. You know, what it was I did. And I tell everybody that next morning's when my dark period began. I got up the next morning, and everything was just black and white. I didn't care about anything. I didn't want anything. I didn't. You know, I was totally lost. And I was that way for about four months. I hid it from my friends. I don't think I hid it from my son. I think he could feel it. But he was very good. Let me live through it. Let me get through it. He didn't push me. He didn't try to fix it, because you can't fix grief. You got to live. Let it happen. And then finally, one night, well, it was again, it was in November, and I remember it real well. It was. If you could see my house. My house was an open concept. So there's a kitchen and a counter, a bar and stools, and then a living room and a dining area off to one side. And when I was in college, I was in theater arts, and, in fact, one of the classes was setting up movie scenes. So if you were going to set up a movie scene, you could have set one up. This night. You picture this little old guy sitting on this stool at his countertop, eating his meal with his glass of wine. Like I say, the snow and the rain and sleet are hitting the windows. The fireplace is on, and Frank Sinatra is on the stereo. So if you were walking around with the camera there for a movie, you could get a lot of great shots. And I remember sitting there and had a glass of wine with my meal, and I had a little more, and there was a little left in the bottle. So, hey, waste not. What? Nothing finished that off. And I'm sitting there, and I think I got up to walk across to change the stereo, but I caught my foot on the bar stool, other bar stool, and fell under the carpet in the living room. And I think that's when it finally hit me. I don't think I had cried up to that point, you know, maybe a little tear or so. But I got up and I sat in a chair, and it. It was buckets. It came out. I mean, I was ringing wet. And my wife's favorite saying, washington, it is what it is. Put on your big boy pants and deal with it. So I could hear her telling me that. And I remember going to bed that night and thinking, oh, my God, tomorrow's gonna be terrible. I got the next morning, for some reason, there was sunlight, there was color. I guess I. All of a sudden, I knew that I had to take grief on, and I was ready. You know, I have to be honest with you. The first couple of months, I kicked God out of my life. And I think that morning I said, okay, I got to take grief on. Bring it on. I'm ready. And, hey, God, please step over here, please. I think I'm going to need you to go with me on this journey. Someone had told me, now we're going to get to the part with your question, okay? Somebody had told me once that grief is like a ball in a box. The ball bounces around when it touches the side or when it touches the corner, it's really bad, because three things happen at once. A memory and emotion. You know, it's hard to handle. And I'm thinking, no, it's more like a balloon in a box. Because if you've got a balloon on a string and you want to move it right, you move your hand right, but the balloon may go left. So it's a lot more difficult to control a balloon. So that's. That's my whole thing. The balloon in a box. The balloon is my memories. My whole life is in that balloon. And so what I learned to do was, I think some people fear that if they move forward, they won't take their loved one, will be lost. And that's when I decided, no, no, I can move forward and take her with me. All those memories, you know, 58 years of marriage, you know, there's a lot of memories. So I can take that balloon and I can take her with me and I can move forward. And so, like I say that friends talked me into writing a book. And so I wrote it. I had some journal notes, and my doctor friend in Florida, the one that talked me into it, he read my journal notes and he said, you got to share these. I told him, I said, hey, doc, you know, I was sat in english class with you and you didn't pay attention. That's why you were a doctor. And I didn't either. I don't know how I can write a book, but one night, again, I think everything happens here when it's cold and rainy and snowy and bad. I was sitting here, my computer, and I did my glass of wine sitting here, and I decided, okay, I'm going to write a book. It was Covid years, so didn't have anything else to do, right? So I started in and I wrote a page and I corrected the punctuation and the spelling and everything. And then I thought, if you're an author, you're supposed to use big words. So I went to the thesaurus and changed all the words, got up the next morning and read it and thought, who wrote this? And what does that word mean? And what does that word mean? I did that a couple of times. And finally one night, I said, no, dummy, write it like he would talk to Jordan. And so I started in, said, don't worry about punctuation, don't worry about sentences, don't worry about paragraphs, don't worry about spelling, just type it. And it was like 08:00 and all of a sudden it was 03:00 in the morning, and I had page after page after page. I. So I took those pages and my notes and then, thinking about things, planning things, I wrote a book. I self published the book. I printed a couple hundred copies and thought, yeah, I'll give some away, sell some, maybe pay for it, and it'll go away. Well, service club in town asked me to speak, and I went and spoke about the book. And 132 later, here I am. And I decided then, gee, I wrote that book. I must be an author. So I wrote a novel. I got cocky and thought I. And I thought, I'm not going to self publish this. If I can't get a publisher, I'm not publishing it. Well, I got a publisher. And then he found out I'd written balloon in a box. And what he wanted me to do was he said, I want a second edition, but I want the original the way it is. I just want you to go through and at the end of each chapter, write what you've learned going out and speaking. My son and I were in advertising marketing business all the years, and we struggled for two weeks to come up with a title for the second book. And we came up with balloon in a box. Two really smart guys, you know. It took us two weeks to figure out just to call it balloon in a box, too. That's what it is now. That's what it is. Balloon in a box, too. So I'm still going on speaking things, and I'm helping facilitate some grief groups at some retirement communities. I have my own little grief thing here. I guess I've got people that give me a call. We just sit and talk. Because one of the things that, when I was looking after my wife died, I was looking for help. If you go online and you'll find a lot of stuff, some good stuff, but a lot of stuff is so clinical. Everybody wanted to make it 1234, and it's not. I know now. I'm sure I know absolutely now that what the griever needs is just, they need to find the words, say the words, and know those words have been heard. That's all I want. And my heart was breaking. I said, just listen to me. I just want to talk. Just listen to me. You can't fix it, you know, just listen to me. So that's what I try to do when I facilitate a grief group. I just try to get people to talk. We don't have a structure. We don't say, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. I kind of use my book, and each week we kind of like, there's a chapter on feelings in there. So we'll talk about feelings. One of the things I do, which is really fun when I had a grief group, and especially if it's, if it's because they've lost a spouse, I always say, tell me about your first date. And I always get a big smile from everybody and they'll share their stories. And once they've shared that story with everybody at the table, they're friends. They now know, you know that. So, and as that goes along, that just keeps building. Each week, these people know a little more about each other. We do. One that I do. I say, okay, let's talk about regrets today because everybody has them and you've got to get rid of them to move forward. You can't take those with you. So I say, okay, folks, today we're going to talk about the regrets one time. That's it. They're going to share and then we're going to get rid of them. Actually, what I do is I give them a rock and I tell them, well, they're telling me that hold that rock and put their initials on it and give it to me. And on the way home, I throw it in the river. Those regrets are gone, folks. You can't talk about them anymore. You can't think about them anymore. You can't do anything about them. So they're gone. Think the happy thoughts. I try to tell people. I don't like the word grief. I think it's an ugly word. I'm not on a journey of grief. I'm on a journey of love. Because without love, there is no grief. So mine's not a journey of grief. Mine's a journey of love. And if people can get on that journey of love, they got to go on the journey, and it's going to be forever. It's going to change. I always tell them that if my little talk, my book helps, you're going to go on the journey with my little book. My speaking takes a few of the bumps and potholes out of the road. That may help you. Maybe it'll make the road a little smoother for you, but you're going to go on it. Don't think it's not going to happen. I've had people that tell me it goes like five or six months before the grief really hits in, especially when people have responsibility. One, the other day, the lady said, she said I was the oldest in the family. She said, so I had the will and the testimony. She said I had to take care of all the property and all the things. And she said, I didn't have time to grieve. I had to do this. I had to get the insurance policy. I had to do all this. She said, it finally hit me about four or five months after, and she said, I just woke up one morning and the rest of my family been going through it for four months, but I just started the kind of things I hear. Yeah. [00:11:50] Speaker A: So it sounds like, you know, when you're talking about what someone needs when they're grieving and they just need someone to listen and acknowledge and, you know, I've heard you. I hear you, and I can't do anything to fix it. It's your journey that's really. [00:12:06] Speaker B: And I love you. I love you. You know, say I love you to them and then they know, you know, somebody's there were with them on that journey. [00:12:17] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Go ahead. I was just going to say, Bishop Sheen once said, I don't exactly remember I said it, but he said sometimes in order to get into people's hearts, he has to break it, and he broke mine in a thousand pieces. And I always tell everybody, and the only person that could put it back together is goddesse. And he did. But there's still a big piece of it missing, and that piece is always going to be missing. But my heart's back together. He's done that. My heart's back together. I am a. I'm a ha. I'd be happier if she was here beside me holding my hand. And if she was, we wouldn't be talking because I had never written a book. And, you know, so that's the kind of life changing things that suddenly you start to look around and go, man. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So you're able to, I mean, you're kind of a living testament to how you can walk through grief. You can get through it. It changes you, and, you know, it should change you. And things aren't ever going to be the same, but you can come out of, come out the other side and still survive. [00:13:20] Speaker B: You know what? I'm going to get a t shirt made. Nip. I'm going to play by. I'm a living testament. I like that phrase you just said. [00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. It's. I still have my moments. I spend five years and little things happen. Most of the time, when it happens, it's a memory that comes back and it may be a little tear, but it's also a smile. At the same time, you remember that happy moment and have a little temperature smile because it was fun. I'll tell you, my wife was a, she and I were zingers. Okay. We sing each other all the time, and we, I kind of back up a little bit. We used to. We were on the fox morning show here in the region for 13 years, doing a cooking episode every Wednesday morning on the morning show. And so we love to cook, both of us. So we take turns cooking. One person sitting at the counter and the other person cooking them. Our glass of wine. Five to 07:00 was our, and was our time to share our day. And. But one evening, we were done. We were, I guess, cleaning up the kitchen. And we got into one of these philosophical talks, like, talking about mistakes. And she was talking about this mistake she made. I can't remember what it was. It was something really simple. And she kept talking about it. And I said to her, I said, joyce, you have to sooner or later embrace your mistakes. She walked over, gave me a hug, kissed me on the cheek, and walked out of the room. Now, you gotta be thinking about that. She embraced her mistake. She zigged me. She got me good. You see, I started to sink in. You know, it took me a minute to, oh, that was nice. What was, oh, my goodness. She's out of the room. She just embraced her mistake and left, you know, so that was, that was kind of the way we, it was kind of the way our life was. She actually, she was in hospice for three weeks in the hospital before she died with nothing but pain pills and water. I don't know if she survived for three weeks, but anyhow, I was there 24/7 basically, my family would come relieve me so I could come home and shower and change clothes. But I was there 24/7 she died on a Monday, the Thursday before she died. So it's been almost three weeks I left. And my granddaughter is a theater arts major where she graduated theater arts and called great singer. My wife had said, oh, I'll never get, I won't get to hear Amanda sing. And I had said something to the family while Amanda sang for her grandma that night, I guess she put on a concert for the wing of the hospital, I guess. But anyway, I get back and she sits up in bed, very lucid again. Remember, it's been three weeks. Nothing but pain pills. And she looks at me and she says, we have to talk. Now. I knew right away when my wife said, we have to talk, we were going to talk. She explained to me that, you know, she wanted a closed casket because she. Remember the way she went. I knew that she didn't want all the videos and all the pictures at the funeral home. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. She said, there's a green bag in the closet. That's what I want at the funeral home. I didn't know it was there. Later I found out what was in it was a couple cookbooks we'd written and some articles about us being on tv. That was it. That's what she wanted there and then. She's holding my hand. This is the last thing my wife said to me. She squeezed my hand and said, I love you. I'll see you in church. That kind of like a woman. I mean, can you. Can you say a sentence to your husband without a command at the end? You know, it's got to be something. She gave me a command. You know, she could have just said, I loved you and left it there, but she had to give me a command. I got to go to church because she told me I have to go to church. So, you know, and I laugh about it because I know what she was doing. And I had a little lady. I got one of my speaking gates to come up and just chew me out for laughing at the last thing my wife said. And I had to explain to her, I said, I understand. That was our life. We zinged each other. She zinged me. She got the last one in. At least she thinks she does. I'm saving one. If we ever see each other again, up wherever she gets a zinger, I've got it. You know? That was her life. Yeah, I got it. Ready? I'm saving it up. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to hear. I mean, you're telling these beautiful stories, these beautiful memories. When someone is in the middle of the grieving process, how do you balance the hard side of that, the negative emotions, the hard emotions with the positive memories, and retaining and respecting the memory of that person while still allowing yourself to feel the feelings. [00:18:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, again, it's all control. Our lives are controlled. We have to control things in our lives to be successful. You have to have some control. You have to control your emotions. You have to control your actions. So that's where it starts. And that's what it is with the balloon. The balloon is this little thing to control. Now, if you think about it, and I don't know whether most people get it, but the balloon is really your brain, okay? Because that's where everything's stored. And so you have to learn to control that like you do with anything else you do. And it's not easy. No, it's not. And again, if you begin to think about. Think about the things again that you did in your life with the love, okay? If you can take that, use that love to carry yourself through, you know, it's going to make it a little easier. The hard things, I think what you have to do with the hard things, and you have to take it, and then you have to handle it. You have to control it. So I learned when those things come, I take it, I take the punch. Give me the punch. I got it. You know, I'll shake it off and I'll move on. Once I've taken that punch, I don't have to take it again. I don't have to take it again for that. Whatever it was, I don't have to take it for that. For example, we were talking about regrets, and I live well here in northern Indiana. So it was fall of 2018. She died in August of 2019. So this has been October, like 2018. Behind my house is a golf course one side and a cemetery on the other side. And the cemetery is a beautiful place to walk. Gorgeous trees and everything. And so we walked in it a lot. And one Sunday afternoon, she came. I was watching a football game, the Chicago Bears, as a matter of fact, you're in Chicago. And she came and she said, let's go for a walk. I said, nah, that's all right. Go. I didn't go with her. A year later, in October, I'm sitting there in that room, and it's the same. It's beautiful out the leaves on the trees, and she's not there to take that walk. I did take that walk without her that day. And when I came back, I said, okay, this is part of this battle that was a bad thing, okay, but I can't do anything about it. So I took the punch. I took the punch when I got up and walked out in the cemetery and felt badlandhouse, a whole walk, that I didn't do it the year before, I couldn't change it, so it's gone. I mean, I can talk about it now. I talk about my speaking engagements. If I wasn't doing speaking engagements, I wouldn't even think about it anymore, because it's over. I can't do anything about it in our lives. I'm to the point now where I can't think of it. I can't think of bad things that happen to us. I really can't. I mean, if I really wanted strets and I'd say, oh, yeah, I think back, you know, I think, well, we had this big fight about this. And you know, I did that. I lost a big bunch of money in business. I lost in business, oh, probably 25 years ago. And that was a tough moment. Again, she. I was probably depressed. I want depressed, but I would. I wasn't feeling great about it. I'm not the kind of person that gets depressed, but. And I'm sure she grabbed hold of my ear and pulled it and said, hey, it is what it is. Deal with it. I know that's what she said to me because she said it 5000 times in my lifetime, whenever. So I'm sure she pulled me out of it by saying, hey, just deal with it. You know, it's. You know, it's happened, so let's move on, you know, deal with it. Go, you know, so that's what I try to do with the grief thing, the same thing, okay. Something pops up like that, I go, just get away from it, Tom. You don't need that. Remember this? Remember the story, the embrace. The embrace your mistakes and laugh? Remember? Well, thanksgiving, it was that fact. It was the first thanksgiving after she died. My kids came to me and said, hey, dad, you go ahead and do the turkey like you always do. We're going to bring everything else. They come to my house, a little bigger place, table. So I'm there that thanksgiving even. I've got that turkey on my butcher block. My glass of wine sitting up on the counter. And I'm stuffing that bird with all those fruits and spices and everything I put in it and get ready to tie the legs. And you tie it and you need a finger to hold that knot so you can tie it. And she always put her finger there and she'd always say, who helped you tie your boy scout knots? You know, we'd laugh. My wife was a brunette with big brown eyes. I think I told her one time that I thought it was a cute little bond with blue eyes. And I think I got a wish clots aside in my head. But, you know. So, you know, I think about those things. I think, yeah, that's a guy. You know, all the fun we had just taking a walk in the cemetery. Fun we had on our vacations and the joy that we had. We just had one son, but the joy of having that son, you know, I kind of remember back, I remember getting married and I was thinking, oh, this is the greatest day of my life. And then three months later, I roll over and look and I go, oh, my God. What did I do? Then a couple years later, we have a child. And I'm thinking, oh, this is the greatest, you know, this is unbelievable. And then we go through all those years and he gets married and has a daughter, a granddaughter of mine. Now I'm on top. I mean, this is the best thing in the whole world. And then my granddaughter's got all this talent, and so I'm able to go to plays and concerts and went to college to see her in plays and all these kind of things. And, you know, my heart just burst, you know, with pride. My wife said she did the lead and Joseph, the gal that does all, if you've seen Joseph, she does. She's in everything. She sings every song. She's got, you know, monumental apart. And she was doing the lead in a theater. And I went, my wife said, I don't think you breathe the first 15 minutes of the play. You just sucked your air in. You just, you know, I was so excited for herself. But so those are the things that I can remember, and that's the way to deal with the hard stuff. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So remembering the positive things, appreciating that, enjoying those, and not letting the things, you know, the hard things that you can't control take over. [00:24:45] Speaker B: That's right. Well, you know, I always said, you know, people, people tell me, well, sometimes you can't control stuff. I understand that. But you can control how you react to it. You may be not, you know, you can't control something that happened, but you can control how you act and how you respond to it. That's what you have to think about. It's like. I guess it's like anger. When somebody makes you angry, you have the ability to control your reaction. You don't have to get angry. You don't have to throw a punch. You don't have to swear at them. There are ways to handle it, you know, only, you know inside yourself. But, but you have to think, wait a minute. I can handle this. I could just put a new presentation together. And I just did it. And it's called happiness is a green banana. Now, you got to really think about that for a long time to get the stretch. But the reason I say that is so, so a lot older people, you know, we say we don't buy green bananas because we don't know we're going to be here today. But if you take a green banana and you bring it home now, you can't control how it ripens. But what you can control is what you do with that. So when it gets starting, it gets almost ripe. It's good to slice and put on your soyuz or slice and put in a skillet with a little butter and then put honey over it. It's good. There may be the next step it gets to is, okay, it's ready for a banana split. And then maybe it gets a little softer and everything. And then you say, hey, I could smash that up and put it in pancakes so I can make banana pancakes. And then when it gets really, really brown, you can actually freeze it and keep it because then you can get it out and make banana bread with it. So the whole thing here is you couldn't control what was happening to the banana, but you can control what you did with the banana. So that's the way life is with happiness. You can control it. I can say somebody makes you mad, angry. You can't control what they did, but you can control how you react to it. Walk away from it. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Anyway, that's my, you know, that's my soapbox here. I'm standing on, I guess, preaching. [00:27:05] Speaker A: No, I like it. I think that, you know, it makes me think of. I'm preparing to, you know, have a child in a few months. And some of the books that we've been reading are, you know, about kids and their emotions and how do you deal with those? And it's a lot of what you're talking about, right? Which is you're going to have feelings, you're going to have big emotions, or your kids are going to have feelings and big emotions. And it's not about convincing them not to feel them. It's about teaching them that you can have these emotions. And that's perfectly okay. It means you're alive and human. But what you can control is how you behave based on those emotions. [00:27:44] Speaker B: You are about to enter an exciting part of your life, little lady, your children. It's scary. It is really scary. Again, I think, you know, we're talking about, you know, when my son was born. And again, it was beautiful, fantastic. And all of a sudden, a month later, I look at him and go, what did I do? You know, all the responsibility. All of a sudden, two years ago when I was freelancing, happy, you know, could do anything I wanted. Now I got a wife and I've got a son, and I got to worry about making a house payment and, you know, buying stuff, food for the kid, you know. And now my wife can't work anymore because we got a baby. She did finally go back to work a year or so later, but she spent the first year. Wait a minute, we only got one income. You had all those things to worry about. But, you know, somehow here I am, it's 83, 58 years of marriage and got a son that's 60, a granddaughter that's 33. And so life happened. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:41] Speaker B: And somehow I made it through and I lost a big bunch of money, you know, but somehow I made it through it. I'm here. I'm sitting here, you know. [00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. No, everything. Everything feels like it's changing and like it's going to change, which I'm learning, you know, as I am an adult. That's the constant thing, not the exception. [00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the other thing that happened to me was before I wasn't a bad guy before. I tell people, if you can imagine, and you need. I tell people to try it. When my wife was in hospice, I was there at the hospital. Twenty four seven. I couldn't watch tv, I couldn't read a book. I couldn't do anything but sit there and hold her hand. I felt her pain and think. Now, if you sit and think 15 hours a day for three weeks, you learn a lot about yourself. You question all your beliefs. I question every belief I had. I didn't change them. I questioned them. Why do I do this? Why do I believe that? Why this? So one of the things I learned about everybody's selfish, okay? And I don't think we realize how selfish we are until we have to sit and think, you know, you think back, well, I did this. Why did. Oh, I did that. Because of me. Oh, I did that. Why did I do that? Oh, that was the easy thing for me. Those are the kind of things that happened to you. I think I walked through life before that and I didn't have the feeling for other people, maybe my family, but I could see a stranger now, it's interesting, I stand up and I speak to a group. I've spoken to groups of eight or eight, up to 300, but I can, small groups, 40, 35, 50, where you can see their eyes and I can see in their eyes they're in pain. I can feel it now. I know it. Before, I wouldn't have gone right by that. Now I feel for people. I guess it's empathy I feel that I never felt, to a degree that I never felt before. And so those are the kind of changes that, you know, happen to me. It's also with age, too. You know, when you get. When you get my age, you begin to. You begin to think about all the things you did and, you know, I'm sitting there, I'll be 84 in two months and I'm in good health, or knock on something here. And I. I really enjoy what I'm doing. I think I know what he wants me to do. I think he wants me to do this. So I'm just. I don't know how long I've got. I'm going to keep going. I tell everybody the Grim reaper's behind me someplace there. And I just keep moving so he can't catch me. If I stop, he might catch me. [00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There you go. So I love to hear you mentioned that you can see the pain in people's eyes, and you have, you know, some people that you're interacting with very much one on one, sometimes big groups. I'd love to hear a story of someone that you've gotten to work with that's been one of your most fulfilling experiences. [00:31:47] Speaker B: Okay. Two stories. Number one, about two years ago, and I've done several of them, but two years ago, and this one in particular, a lady from my church called, and she said, I know a gentleman that just lost his wife. And she said, he really needs help. He knows nothing about the house. He knows nothing about cooking. He knows. Doesn't know how to do the laundry. She said, would you help him? I said, I would be happy to help him, but I am not going to call him. He asked to call me. I said, tell him if he would like to call me, we'll talk. So he called. His name was Charlie. And so Charlie was a real nice guy. I could tell when we were talking on the phone. And I said, charlie, I said, can you make coffee? He said, that I can do. I said, okay, I will come to your house. We'll have a cup of coffee. I'll look around your house and we'll talk. So I did, and the first thing we did was we went to the washer and dryer. I said, do you know how to turn these on? He said, no. I said, well, let's figure it out. So we figured it out. I told him how to do the laundry, you know, what he should do. Then we cut the vacuum cleaner and all those kind of things and said, you know, went to the pantry. And I said, now, charlie. He said, let's go to the grocery store. I said, no, no, no, no. We're going to check the pantry first, and then we're going to talk about what you like to eat, what you would like, you know, how. So we did. Now, interesting. We went to that supermarket, and he said, he'd never been in the supermarket. He traveled on the road for years, for 40 some years. So only time he went to the store was he'd stop at the ready mart or whatever it was, you know, on the way home when she said, get some milk or get some bread, he walked in the supermarket and he's just going, oh, my God. You know, he's looking all around and all this stuff, you know. And he started getting. Picking up stuff. I said, stop, charlie. I said, why do you. Why do you want that? Well, I said, no, no, no. I said, we made a list here of what you have in your pantry and what you like to eat, so let's look for those things. So we did. But then I taught him some things in the kitchen, you know, he said, be careful with the stove. Turn the. Turn the handle the way so you don't walk by it. Knock it off. You know, those kind of things. Number two, when you take a pot off, turn the burner off before you take the pot off. That way you won't leave the burner on, you know. I said, it happens to everybody. It happens to me. I still do it every once in a while, but try to get the habit of turning the burner off before you take the pot off. Okay? So we went through all those things, and he was getting pretty, pretty good. In fact, he had me over for dinner one night. Cooked a steak and baked potato and a salad. But, you know, it was dinner. And then it was actually, it was a year ago. It was right before Labor Day. And he called me and he said, tom, he said, my family's having a family picnic on Labor Day. And my daughter called me and told me bring potato chips. And he said, I told her I didn't want to bring potato chips. I'm bringing a casserole. I said, what's a casserole? I said, well, charlie, you got yourself into this, and I'm not going to do it for you if that's what you think. I said, I'm emailing you a recipe right now. I said, when you get it, you call me and we'll walk through it. We did a simple little casserole. We did. I said, can you make it? So he called me back about two or three days after labor, and he said, my casserole is a hit, but my family's accusing me of buying it someplace and I can't convince them. My daughter finally realized it was one of mom's and casserole dishes, so I must have made it. So. So, yeah, that one. And then kind of a little more sad than that because this guy, I will, I'll tell you today, this guy is, he's, uh, let's see, my wife died five years ago, his wife died three years ago. So he's kind of a friend now. And he is on a happy journey too. He's on a love journey. He tells me that all the time. He come over and I just gave me a hug and say thank you for putting me on this love journey. So that's the kind of thing it happens. Well, two other stories this lady was speaking, it was Fort Wayne, Indiana, where not important. Came up to me afterwards and she said, can I give you a hug? I said, hey, I take hugs from ladies all the time. And she gave me a big hug and she said, thank you, thank you, thank you for getting me out of my dark period. I said, oh. I said, how long has it been? She said, twelve years. I said, ma'am, if I'd have been in my dark period for twelve years, I wouldn't be here. And her friend standing beside her is nodding her head and she said, she said, I'm telling you, she's right. I've been her friend for 50 years and this woman hasn't smiled in the last three. She said, I've tried everything. She said, but you said a couple things. I can't remember, what they were now to me were incidental, but hit her. She said, she laughed, she smiled, she leaned over to me and said, I think I understand what I have to do. So that kind of thing. Then I got a call from prison, actually jail sophomores here, young lady on the phone. And she said, mister Rose, I would like you to come speak to my drug rehabilitation group. And I said, wait a minute, you know who you're talking to? And she said, well, yes, she wrote a book on Greek. I said, yeah, so prison, what? She said, remember? She said, majority of these people in this program are here because of some kind of greed. Something pushed them over the edge and they went that drugs was their way out or was there what they thought there was their way out. And she said, so they're in this program. It's an educational program. She said, what I'd like you to do is come and speak and then I'll give them all your book and their assignment will be to read your book and I want you to come back in two weeks and they are to ask you questions. And I said, okay. So I can remember it was hot. August day I go down, it's about 40 miles south of here. Go park in a parking lot. Go in. And I'm thinking, this is going to be a bus because these guys have to be at the table, right? They have to, because it's a class thing. It's part of their, they get a lighter sentence by taking this program. The judge says, if you go in this program, you're in educational programs anyway. So I'm thinking they're going to sit there and look up in the sky and look at the. So I'm doing my presentation. I look around and they're all glued on me. I say a thing in my presentation about saying I love you. We don't say it enough. And I tell everybody, you know, be sure to say I love you to your spouse, your neighbor, your kids, you know, your people at work say, say it. We don't say it enough. So anyway, I get ready to leave and they're all walking up. There's twelve of them. They all walked up to me and I thought, they're going to stick their hand out to shake my hand. Every one of them gave me a hug and said, I love you. Now. I walked out to my car. It was real hot. And I opened up the door, turned the air conditioner. I'm sitting there and I'm crying. Tears run dumb. I mean, emotionally, it got me. And there's some lady beside me looking up. She said, are you okay, sir? I said, yeah, yeah, ma'am, I'm all right. I'll make it. But those kind of things that happened to me at these things tell me that at least, at least I'm, I'm making a difference, you know? And I didn't know that I could. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to pump myself up and say I'm this great preacher over this stuff. I'm just sharing what happened to me is all. It's like I told somebody, I said, I'm not making any of this up. This is not a story. I'm just telling you what happened to me. If it helps you, that's great, but it's helping me doing it, you know, helping me sharing. So that's where I am, I guess, and I could go on story after story, but I'll tell you one that kind of struck me. I tell people that grief is different, but the same for everyone. It's different for everyone, only it's the same. I had a group that I went there, south of here. Again, it's a group called light. It's living in transition every day, I think, and it's all kinds of people. Anyway, I went and gave my presentation, and the guy that runs the program said, called me and said, could I use your book to conduct my grief class? I said, well, certainly, feel free. And so I saw him and a couple weeks later I said, well, how's the class going with the book? I'm interested to know how you're using it. He said, well, why don't we do it on Tuesday night? Why don't you come down? I said, I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want to interrupt what you're doing. He said, no, no, that's all right. So I went down. I said, way in the background now, he had twelve people around the table. He used a book. And he, like I told you earlier, there's a chapter called feelings. So he asked every. They journaled. That was part of their thing. Everybody had their little book. He said, everybody write down how you feel today. Three minutes, everybody did. He read his and he said, would anybody like to read theirs? You don't have to. Now I'm going to go around the table and say, there were a couple people sitting on the right that lost children, somebody else lost parents. Two ladies at the corner, down here at the corner that were divorced, a couple people that had just gotten out of prison, a couple people from drug rehab, and there were two gentlemen sitting up close that lost their wives. The one gentleman got up and read his. They were around the table, he read his. But one of the divorced ladies got up and read hers. They said the same thing. She, he lost a life partner. She lost a life, 40 years of marriage and divorce. She lost 40 years of life of living. That he has. That's what I told him afterwards. You know, we were talking afterwards, I said, you know how lucky you are? He said, what do you mean? I said, that lady that's divorced, she lost those 40 years, those things that were fun, things she can't think of as fun anymore. But you, you think about those things and they're still fun. He says, you know, you're right. I said, so, you know, I said, you, he'd been married like 50 some years. I said, you and I are blessed to get 50 years. Blessed with our loved ones. So that's what we should feel. We should feel good about that rather than, hey, you know, so those are my stories. I got it. I got books full of them. [00:42:12] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, no, I love that. It's not that, you know, I mean, you did lose something. But think about what, what you had that you can now look back on. [00:42:25] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. [00:42:26] Speaker A: 50 years. [00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I told another guy, you know, I said, there's a time and place for everything, and. And there's a time that marriage is going to end one way or the other, unless you happen to both go at the same time. In most cases, it's the man that goes first. And I think you women, I think you're hardwired. I think that day you got married, a little thing in the back of your brain said, he ain't going to be here the rest of my life. So I better prepare myself. So I think women, in a way, are much better prepared when it happens, at least in my experience, that talking to people, guys are totally lost. They're just floundering around. The women may be more emotional and everything, but they know what they're doing and they know what they have to do and they do it. So that's the kind of things that I think I've learned, you know, over the period of time. Just hang in there, so to speak, you know, but be happy. It's a lot easier to be happy. Just be sad, I think. I think, you know. [00:43:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:25] Speaker B: So it's easier to smile. He's easier to smile and not smile. [00:43:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:31] Speaker B: It's easier to be nice to people. It is to be nasty to people. So all those things, you know, people say things, I hear them say things, and I brush them off anymore. That would used to bother me, so somebody'd say it. And most of them are unintentional. One of the things that really struck me, and it's a big part. Well, it's a part of my book. When I was at the funeral home, at that visitation and all the people coming through, the things that they said and I got afterwards, and I thought, man, I've been that person. I'm always the one stand there in line and say, what are you going to say when you get up there? Okay. Oh, he was a nice guy when maybe he really wasn't, you know, what do you say when you're going through that line? And so I developed a list of things not to say. That's the worst thing. Please don't say, how are you doing to. I must answer that. I must have said okay a hundred times. But what I really wanted to say was, you know, how do you think I'm doing? You know, my wife died, you know, I'm miserable. I got some. I got some. They're funny to me. Now, one lady came up and gave. I was 78 when my wife, she gave me a hug, and she said, tom, you'll find somebody to share your life with. I said, oh, my God, lady, my wife's right there, right behind me in that box, you know? You know, and she meant well. She would just try, you know, try to make me feel good, you know, come up and say, well, God needed her up there more than you needed her down here. And I want to yell at him and say, hey, God's got a whole bunch of people. I just wanted one. Can you share? So don't, you know, go through that, you know, and I think the best thing to do is, I mean, there's all kinds of things you could say, I'm praying for you and your family. Bye. But the best thing to do is walk up and give them a hug and say, I love you. Because when you say, I love you, that means I'm here for you. I'll do whatever, you know. That's it. That's all you need to say. In fact, maybe you don't need to say I love you. Maybe you just give Baha. Yeah, you know, I remember the hugs I got, you know. Yeah, I can tell you who the people. I can tell you who those people were today. I remember them. [00:45:37] Speaker A: That really goes back to the, you know, Brene Brown and she's talking about depression, and, you know, how do you help someone who's in depression, dealing with depression? And she says exactly the same thing. Don't. Don't try and fix it. Don't try and tell them, you know, everything's gonna be better. Don't try and tell them everything happens for a reason. That's not what they need. [00:45:59] Speaker B: That's one of the things I said, the funeral home go through. Well, you know, everything happens for a reason. Now give me that. Give me the reason for this. You're right. The one thing I would be cautious here, that I have to be cautious about depression is a whole other level that I can't. I can't help with because I'm not a professional, and a lot of people don't. I mean, most people don't go through depression with the loss. I've discovered that there are people. There are people, but they're the people who go through depression for all kinds of things. They need. They need special help. You know, I would. If. If somebody calls me and says, oh, my friend is so depressed, or depression, I've been trying to get him to go to professional help. I said, get him professional help. I can't help. I can't help it. If you gave me my book, fine. And he read it, fine. If he wants to talk to me, that's fine. I can't help you. If he wanted to talk to me, that would be the first step of him realizing he's got, he's a depression and needs to talk to somebody. But I'm not a doctor of psychology or a professional, so I would stay away from that. In fact, I've told people at the retirement communities, if you've got somebody that's really in serious depression, please, I can't handle them in a group. I can't help them because I'm not a professional. You have professional people here that should be able to. Now, once they start out that depression and become that, then fine, have them come join us and meet all the other people who are on the same road they're on. If they're depressed. If they're depressed, it's not going to make any difference when anybody else does. And they're not even going to see if it's something funny. They're not even going to see the humor in it that the other people see. When one person tells about their date and what was a disaster, it was okay. Everybody else smiles and laugh. The depressed person is going to sit there and not even hear it, not even know it, not even understand that it was funny. In fact, in my book, I go through my wife and I, first date, it takes three pages to explain what happened and how we ever had a date again. I don't know. [00:48:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'd love to ask one last question while we're on here, which is if you could go back and give younger you any piece of advice, what would it be? [00:48:27] Speaker B: Oh, my God. The younger me, that's a long time ago. The younger me's a long time ago. Probably. Enjoy. Take in what's happening. Listen to what's going on. Observe what's going on. Don't let things fly by you. I guess the old thing, smell the roses. No pun. My name's Rose, no pun. But smell the roses. Make sure that you make sure that when those memories, when you have those memories later, you have them complete and full. You really remember what happened. You don't have to make it up, so to speak. I was always a person that did that. Certain things I think there are certain, like I said, I could walk by people who are having problems, you know. Of course, I was having my own emotional thing, so I didn't need their emotional pride in that. My own. But, yeah, just. Just make sure that you take advantage of everything. This opportunity is given to you, you know, you get to my point. And anybody, I tell them this all the time, I say, hey, you're going to be. Someday, you're going to be where I am. And every morning when you get up and look at that sky outside, you're going to be so happy. Every time you see a kid on a bicycle, little bicycle, going around the neighborhood, you're going to smile. You're not going to think of them as a problem as much as you are as a joy. You may think, that kid driving across my grass, and I'm worried about, I'm going to run over him with the cardinal. No, I enjoy seeing the kid. You know, it's the old thing, you know, when there's a song, I think, like Sinatra, when. When you shoot that, when you shoot the bad guys shoot at me in his. What's his song about? He's older days, you know, he said when. When you're playing cowboys, shoot. Shoot at me. Yeah, the little kid. I want you to. I want you to. Yeah, just I see. I see couples walking and holding hands, and I go, oh, Oscar, that's nice. That's nice. And so I tell people, hey, young couple, when you guys walk it, they take all your wife's hand and walk us there. You know, people don't, people don't, I don't think, hold hands like we used to. I don't know, I don't see it much, but maybe I'm. Maybe I'm the wrong place, the wrong time. Yeah, but do those, make sure you make sure you enjoy those things, you know? Remember that the, uh, I was, uh, I got a, I got the. I had the opportunity to do a speaking gay fit and art theater here, which they just redid. And I'm standing backstage looking around and I'm going, oh, my God, this is where I had my first date. You know, the one where your mom drives you and you go to the movie and then you go to the drugstore, call mom and say, come pick us up. It's time to go home. And, you know, and I was thinking about that. I'm thinking, man, what a memory, you know? What a memory, what a fun thing, you know, the life thing you went through. And back then you thought you knew everything. And you get to be my age, you realize you know nothing and I still know nothing, you know? That's it. That's my life, kid. Yeah. And you, and you are entering a super dying take it all in and make sure that husband of yours takes it all in. [00:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah. No, we're super excited. I appreciate that. I love everything you said, and it's. You're right. It's very timely for, you know, getting ready to have a child. [00:51:46] Speaker B: Do you know what you're having? [00:51:48] Speaker A: Yes, we are having a girl. [00:51:50] Speaker B: Okay. And name? [00:51:51] Speaker A: Still deciding on that one. [00:51:53] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:51:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Okay. How long do you have? [00:51:58] Speaker A: About three months. A little under three months now. [00:52:01] Speaker B: Oh. So almost a Christmas baby, maybe. [00:52:04] Speaker A: Yeah, almost a Christmas baby, which is my husband. [00:52:06] Speaker B: Or a new year baby. If you haven't read on New Year's, you always win all kinds of prizes, so hang in there. [00:52:14] Speaker A: I love that. Well, thank you so much, Tom. It's been an absolute pleasure. You know, really appreciate you coming on here and being willing to share some of your story. And I think that it sounds like you've helped so many people, and I would love for your story to be able to help even more. Even more people as they deal with grief, which, like you said, I mean, it happens. It happens to everyone. [00:52:35] Speaker B: Yes, it does. And thank you, Jordan, for having me. I really enjoyed it. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you.