ep 03: transcript
03. How to Support a Partner in Their Grief
Brooke: Hi everyone. Welcome to The Grief Coach. If it's your first time listening, we're glad you're here, and if you've listened to previous episodes, welcome back. You can find us on Instagram, on Twitter, at the underscore grief coach, and shoot us a note, feedback, thoughts, or future episodes at hello@thegriefcoach.co today we're going to talk about how to be supportive of a partner while they're losing a parent. I have our inaugural guest, Hannah, and I'm going to ask her to tell me a little bit about herself and her experience.
Hannah: Hi. Thanks for having me. My name is Hannah and I'm 29. And I lost my father in law about three years ago and so at the time, my now husband we were engaged and at the time we had been together for 10 years.
Brooke: Oh my goodness.
Hannah: Yeah. So you think you know everything about someone and you know how you interact and how they deal with things and how you deal with things. This experience really taught me that there's always more to learn and at the time we were planning a wedding, which I'm sure will come up a lot. It really was like one of those pre marriage tests that I hope no one ever has to go through.
Brooke: Right.
Hannah: But we learned a lot about each other through the experience and how I could support him and also manage my own grief in this situation.
Brooke: I'm sure.
Hannah: Yeah. So obviously lots to cover here.
Brooke: Do you want to talk a little bit more about the circumstances of the death? Was it sudden, was it expected? Talk about what that was like a little bit.
Hannah: Sure. Yeah. It was unexpected. So let's see. I was 26 my husband is two years older than me, so he was 28 at the time.So relatively young to lose a parent, absolutely. But still old enough where you're an adult. I remember that morning very clearly. It's probably one of the most clear memories that I'll ever have, unfortunately. So we lived about three hours from where his parents lived, and actually my parents live in the same town. And it was a Sunday morning and we were sleeping and we were woken up by a call from his mom and his mom isn't the type of person to call at random times or to be extra needy or communicative. So I woke up and I saw her call and my husband didn't want to and he just wanted to keep sleeping.
And I was like, no, I think that we need to answer this. And I thought this was about his grandfather because he's much older and he's had health problems on and off for years. And so we missed the original call and PJ called his mom back right away. And all she said was -and she's a very, strong, composed... kind of the rock of the family. All she said was that your father had a heart attack. We're on our way to the hospital. Please come home as soon as you can. And we were about three hours away, so we hopped out of bed and. I can't remember. We had to like divide and conquer, and I can't remember if we had like left our car somewhere the night before but it was like I hopped in the shower and he got our car ready or something. And I'm not a particularly religious person, but I just had such a bad, like feeling, knowing his mom and knowing like the tone of the call. And I just remember like. Standing in the shower, praying, which is not a typical behavior of me. I'm like sobbing in the shower and then kind of snapping myself out of it and saying like, okay, you have to get it together. You have to be strong and you have to get it together. And I didn't want to make my husband upset because all we knew was that his dad had a heart attack and his dad was 63 and seemingly healthy. He was in shape. He was active. He owned an auto body shop. And so he was constantly moving around, like he didn't sit all day and then he was always golfing or walking and, you know, like moving around very freely. Yeah. I think that he had high cholesterol in the sense that like every guy that I know over 40 cholesterol you know, when you're taking care of medicine and that's it. So the logical person in me was like, he's healthy. Lots of people have heart attacks. I have a lot of friends who's had parents who have had heart attacks and they've all been okay. So I tried to keep that in the back of my mind and stay optimistic and basically it was a blur. We hopped in the car and we drove. I think we were silent for three hours. We had music playing, and it just felt like, what do we even say? The other thing is that neither of us, we realized after the fact, packed funeral clothing, like we just couldn't go there. So we drove straight to the hospital in our small town straight to the ER. We walked in, we checked in, and it took them like a minute or two and they brought us back. And at that point he had already passed and we had found out that his dad had a heart attack at home and his mom was there and she did everything she could and she called the EMTS and they arrived and they didn't pronounce him dead at the scene but by the time he got to the hospital, he was, and they said it was such a massive heart attack that he was probably dead right away and there was just nothing that anyone could have done. So we were at the hospital, his brother was there, his mom and me and we had our chances to say goodbye. And that was like the first time where it felt really confusing for me because I grew up with this man. My husband and I started dating when I was 16, and at the time my parents were getting a divorce and his family was like this nuclear happy, like very warm family that had become mine on his dad was, I mean, I love my dad, but he was kind of like the quiet, we weren't very close We didn't do a lot together. And his dad was the type that like we'd come home to visit and he'd stay up all night talking with us and hanging out. And he was a real presence in my life. He meant a lot to me. And because we were engaged, I remember thinking like, I'm just so happy to make it official, like he's felt like a dad for so long, but I'm just so happy. But we weren't married at the time and he wasn't my dad. And he and my husband were incredibly close, like best friends, but also like the role model and like the parent figure, like all of the things that you want a parent to be. That's what his dad was. So that moment was one of the first times where I was like, I need to take a step back, let them have their time, and kind of figure out how to manage my own grief and how to support him. And that was a real challenge and learning experience. And it still is.
Brooke: It's kind of amazing that you had the presence of mind to be like, okay, how do I step in as a support while managing that, like it was a devastating loss for you also.
Hannah: Yeah. I don't, I'm not exactly sure how I came to that feeling in that moment. Yeah. but it definitely is something that I'm grateful that I recognized because as I'm sure you've experienced, there are some people who it comes from such a place of love and sorrow, but when like their grief kind of consumes the room and it's challenging.
And I think I've experienced that and I've seen that before so. I tried really hard to like to find a balance. And I still am.
Brooke: I mean, right. Cause you're still sad. So yeah, that never goes away. Never goes away. You know? So what was it like in those how soon after he passed? Did you have the funeral? Was it right away or did you guys wait?
Hannah: It was it was pretty fast. So we arrived on a Sunday and the funeral, I believe was that Friday. Okay. So either that Friday or that Saturday and that week was like, as oddly as it sounds, was the clearest time for me. I don't want to say it was the easiest time because nothing about it was easy, but it was very logistical and it was very practical.
Brooke: I've been there. That's easy. It's easy. And then you don't have to think about how sad you are because you've got to do list.
Hannah: Exactly. That to do list was like my lifeline. And especially because, again, this weird place of being so close, but not having it be my father or my parent. Understanding the big things that my husband and his brother and his mom had to go do, and then really understanding the, all the other things that I could do while they were doing things that like as their intimate family they needed to do together. You know, I did things like planning the post-service luncheon while they were meeting with the funeral home and coordinating people coming into town and sending the information and then little things around the house, putting organizing files and papers and finding like doctor's slips, like reminding you of appointments. And canceling those appointments so that she wouldn't get the call and three months.
Brooke: That's amazing. That's a great to do list item.
Hannah: Yeah. And that my brain really clicked on for those things. I think it helps me just as much as it helped them, like I really felt like I was capable of just coming in and doing stuff and getting it out of the way. And then also at the times where there was less to do and more people around, I felt like my husband needed to take a step back and I would just be like, let's go for a drive. Let's just get away from everyone or go upstairs. And then there were the moments where like, I, for hours had been so strong and so like to do and get stuff done and then it would all come crashing down for me and I would like sneak upstairs and like just sob. And then my husband would find me and then I would feel incredibly guilty because he was comforting me and telling me that everything was going to be okay. And I'm like, this is not how it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to be doing this for you. But that was learning how a partnership and how it has its ebbs and flows and you kind of have to rely on each other. And he was incredibly supportive of recognizing my own grief and not making me feel like: He wasn't your dad. You don't have a right to feel this sad, you know? Which my inner voice said that a lot to me. Like, you know, this isn't your thing.
Brooke: No. But like you are still allowed to be sad.
Hannah: Yeah.
Brooke: It was weird, cause I had people say that to me a lot and they say, I know he's not my dad, but like so many of my friends were so close with him, It almost was comforting to me that they loved him so much and that they were sad.
Hannah: And I think that is how it was received for him. Because his dad was just, everybody loved him, right? Like, and I felt so lucky that I got to be as close to him as I was. But I also remember feeling like, does he know how much, how important he was to me? Like I don't think I ever stopped and said, you are this person for me and that was like a big thing that I dwelled on for a long time was does he know the impact he had? And like, because we lived a few hours away. We didn't see them that often. But the last time we saw him before he passed was right when my husband and I had gotten engaged, my fiance at the time, and he was the first person my son wanted to wait to tell people in person. So we had to drive home and we stopped at his dad's work and he was the first person that we told and he was so happy. As much as I wish we had 15 more times of those memories. That's like a very special one. That's one of the last times that, you know, we saw him. That's lucky because not everyone gets that.
Brooke: So you talked a little bit about how you tried to be there for your then-fiance and that first week, which as I'm sure you know, and some of the listeners know, like your grief morphs as time goes on. So what was it like those first few months. And what did you do? What in hindsight are you like, Oh, that could have been a nice thing to do. Or like, Oh, that would've been maybe better if I didn't do that. Cause I mean I still have moments like that.
Hannah: It was a really challenging time for us. And we were planning a wedding. So that's an interesting variable.
Brooke: If you could talk about that, that would be great.
Hannah: So I think I mentioned this. My husband is pretty reserved and I'm an open book. I'll tell you anything. And so we really learned or I really learned that he's not going to express and mourn and grieve the way that I do. So we were home for an entire week and then we got home and I remember thinking, okay, we have to go back to work now and just live life like it's normal. Even though it's not, and that's absurd, and I think I was still in that, like to do mode. Like I need things to do. I need to make this okay by doing things. So I planned like, I think it was the Thursday after we had gotten home. So this is a week and a half after his dad died. I planned a night for all of his friends to come over and I made all this food and I wanted it to be this time for him to just have with his friends and have fun. I think he appreciated it and I think his friends. Felt happy to have a time to come and by no means was this like, let's sit and talk about sadness. It was just like we had music playing, we had food drinks. People are just hanging out. But in my planning of doing that, I naturally went a little overboard in my own way and I printed probably 20 pictures of his dad.
And got all these frames and put them all over the house because I wanted to see his dad like I wanted. I just needed it. We didn't have any pictures of him. We didn't have any pictures of anyone in our family. Sorry, family. I love you. I remember at one point my husband saying like, this feels like another Memorial service. And I was so embarrassed because I was so caught up with just wanting to see him and I took everything down and I like threw it in a closet and that night I, I feel like I kind of like made my presence a little hidden because I was just so worried that I was going to do something that would be perceived that way. Yeah, and that was very much just me also working through my own brain. And so then after that, I think I felt a little trigger shy of grieving myself and wanting to talk and wanting him to talk. Like I really worried that he was holding everything in. And like you always see in movies and TV shows when someone experiences a great loss, they go through this like crazy period where they drink all the time or they stop showing up for work or they do something crazy. And I'd been like, something's going to happen. Like he's going to have this like breakdown because he's not talking about things. And he never did because he's just a different person than me or the fictional characters that I watch on TV. but it almost turned into these, like we'd have to get into a fight about something unrelated and one of us would have to leave the fight or leave the house, which is not something like, that's not our behavior. I always had the like, don't walk out of the room. Don't go to bed angry, but at this point, I think because the grief and the stages of grief, and this was probably the anger stage for both of us we'd have to do that and then we'd come back together and then it would turn into just talking about it and crying and holding each other and letting our feelings be free. And that pattern kind of lasted for a while and it was really challenging because I kept thinking like, why can't we just talk? Like I could just bring it up at any time and we could talk and I could let these feelings out. And for him, it just wasn't the same thing. So learning how to let him grieve privately and not force it on him and allowing myself to grieve and not feel guilty for that. And like, when we could come together, music was a big part too.
Brooke: How so?
Hannah: There were times that I just remember, and especially when we'd go back home, like in the weeks and months after we went home, a lot more than we ever did.And that was harder than the weeks or the week, right after. And so we spent a lot of time in the car, and I think that there was a lot of time where we just didn't have the words or we'd be driving in our very small town, and his dad's shop was two blocks away from his house. And we drive by it, and we both look at the sign that said, max auto care, and just feel like the weight of that and we'd put on music and we'd sit there. And not talk, but we'd both be crying and like, let that song do a lot for us. And it was really important for me to learn how to let that be enough. And it's still like still to this day, songs will come on that you listened to at that point?
Brooke: I have that even with, and like Spotify just did the year in review and I'm a song repeater sane and so like this song came on and it was the first song and I just like was walking in Soho and like burst into tears. It happens all the time, all the time. Thankfully in New York, anything can happen and no one really pays attention. It’s the best place to cry in public.
Hannah: It really is.
Brooke: Unparalleled. I think that music is really, can like take you back to a place.
Hannah: It totally can. And the week that we were home planning the funeral music is really important to both my husband and I, and we made a playlist and I mean, I could show you it on my spotify It's literally called dad funeral. And we listen to it and we played it at the luncheon and we played it all the time and we share a Spotify account, and in the like months and weeks after, like I would listen to it all the time and then I'd start to feel like, Oh, he can see that I'm listening to this. And it felt a little weird, but it was really for both of us, I think it was really healing for us as individuals and also to come together with that and have that shared like, It's an overused term, but shared safe space to just feel what we're feeling and let that be it. But wedding planning.
Brooke: Yeah. What did you do something at the wedding to honor him?
Hannah: So that was another that was another example of how different we are. Okay. So I like would have done a lot,. I would have had something probably said at the ceremony, there are all these things that I remember looking up and like talking to him about, and he was like, I don't think he wanted, I don't think he wanted people to like, feel bad for him and like bring that into the wedding day and make it about that. And so what we agreed on after a lot of conversations about things was that we, instead of doing favors, we made a donation to an organization that his dad supported. So he was a mechanic and he had a shop. And for years he partnered with like an apprentice school and would bring kids in and they'd work under him to get some experience. And he loved doing it and he actually ended up with a long term employee who today has taken over the shop. So we made a donation in his honor to that program and had a sign at the entrance, and that's how we did it. But that was hard because I wanted to do a lot more.
I just felt like it's obvious his presence isn't there, or his physical presence and all the people who were close enough to be invited to the wedding, they all probably, a lot of them were also at the funeral. And that was a weird thing because, so we had gotten engaged in December. We had our wedding planned for the following September, so less than a year. And his dad died in March. Okay. So his funeral was the first time that many people were seeing us for the first time. So we're standing in the receiving line at calling hours and people would say, congratulations, and I'm so sorry for your loss. And I just remember being like. Thank you. Like I, I don't know. And I get why people say that cause they haven't seen us, but it was very surreal. And all it reminded me of was like, it felt like this impending doom of our wedding day, which is horrible. But real and like the fact that he wasn't going to be there. And I hated wedding planning.
Brooke: I don't see you as a bridezilla.
Hannah: Yeah. I wasn't a bridezilla. I didn't love wedding planning before this. I very much was like, this is a lot of time and money spent on one day I could elope and be happy. Afterward, it just felt like every single detail related to our wedding day or we had drama with vendors, which I think everyone does when they have when they plan a wedding and have it ugly, something happens. And every time something like that would happen, I would just think like, don't she know that this is irrelevant? Like one of the most important people isn't going to be at our wedding. And so none of this matters. I don't care. And that six months time period, I mean, maybe the wedding made that a real marker in time for us, but in that six month time period, I had my bridal shower, I had my bachelorette party, I had other friends weddings. I had all these very happy moments in my life and I remember feeling I'm never going to feel uninterrupted happiness again. Like I recognize that these are happy moments and happy times. But the sorrow was way too strong for me to truly feel happy in a genuine, just uninterrupted way.
Brooke: Have you found that to be true?
Hannah: Yes and no. So it's changed. And the wedding day was the first time that I realized that, genuine, uninterrupted happiness can happen. And you can still feel this like loss and sorrow, but it doesn't consume you. And I just, I didn't think I could feel happy in the same way that I felt happy pre March 19th, 2017 like just happiness and then I realized that same happiness and its true form, it did exist on my wedding day. It was the first time that I was like, I'm happy. I feel really happy to be here. And I'm also sad and like, but my sadness isn't taking away from my happiness. And I didn't think that was possible. And it magically was that day. And since then, since then, I've been able to feel that. And that was a huge turning point for me But I think for him as well was that we both felt truly happy and we missed him. But I will say like, as cliche as it is, I felt him there.
And up to that time, I mean, I was that person. I said I wasn't religious, which I'm really not, but I am pretty spiritual. And I was that person who was constantly looking for signs and I found them cause I was looking for them. And I will choose to believe that they were him reaching out. That day I never saw a sign, but I felt him. And then my dad told me right after the ceremony that right as we were saying our vows, a bird kept flying over us. And to me, like I didn't see that sign, but to me it's like that was him. That was his presence. But it actually, as much as I hated the planning and said I would have eloped, I think it was a really critical day for us and our healing, not just, you know, our marriage. But it was a turning point for us, thankfully.
Brooke: And since then, like do you find that your grief and his grief, cause it’s just very common that people need different things as they move through this process. Like do guys do something together to celebrate him on his birthday or the anniversary of his death or holidays? How do you find a way to honor your grief into your life?
Hannah: That's part of our learning process. So his, the first year was really hard. His dad died in March. June was his dad's birthday, and two weeks after was Father's day. And I felt very confused about what do we do. Like again, my instinct is: let's go like fishing and talk about your dad all day because he loved to fish or go golfing or whatever. And both of those weekends we went home and I think being in our hometown with his mom and his brother kind of forced me to take a step back and just kind of follow their lead. But I do remember on father's day, we left our hometown early and we were driving back and we made a stop in Ithaca and we decided to stop and hike. And I think we talked a little bit, but it wasn't overdone. And I think that it's exactly the way it is that my husband needs it to be. And since then, it's turned into just, I'm thinking about him today. I miss him today, but we don't do too much. And that's how I think my husband needs it. And that's okay. And on holidays, again, it's more of this unspoken thing. That's how their family is. But like it was a tradition every Christmas Eve that his mom would get craft beer, and the four of us, me and my husband has on his dad would sit at their Island in their kitchen and she hated beer. But she would pour us samples of each one. And then I think early on in my relationship with my husband, it was like probably my first Christmas with them or something. And you know, when you're dating someone and you're young and it's earlier and you just like say you like everything, I must have like there must've been Baileys out and I must have said that I liked, I'm so his dad like over the years, so it's like, it's our annual, like Bailey's tasting and he would get different flavors of Bailey's for us to taste. And I never tell them like. I don't actually like this. So we do a Bailey's thing every Christmas, and now I love Bailey's, and I don't think my taste buds have changed. But little things like that, and like, now I'm pregnant. And one of the first thoughts, when his dad died, was this extreme sorrow and loss that our future children wouldn’t have the best grandpa ever. I just remember feeling that this is such a rip off for them. Like I got to experience him and I feel like my time was cut short, but he would just be the best grandpa ever. And. I'm sorry dad, I love you, but just different people. And actually my dad even said that to me.
Brooke: Really?
Hannah: Yeah. In the couple of days after my father in laws passing, my dad and I got lunch and he was, I think he could sense that weight in me. And he even acknowledged it and was like, you know, I'm different. And I'll be a different kind of grandpa. And I think about the fact that your kids won't know him and I'll do everything that I can to like try to make up for it. And it's just a, it's an interesting way of realizing the way that grief kind of trickles to everyone who does. And so now I'm pregnant and you know, it's one of those times when your question can you feel uninterrupted happiness? And it's the same thing with my wedding where I truly feel so genuine, really happy. But constantly I'm just like, my daughter's never going to actually know him.
Brooke: Right. And people say things like, well, they live on in you. And you're like, yeah, I know. But like, it's not the same.
Hannah: It's not the same. And my husband and I will talk and I'll be like, how much do you know about like your mom's grandparents or you know, people who have passed and we don't know that much about them. I am constantly thinking about how can we introduce him to our kids? And I think there's only so much we can do, you know, like they're never going to know him, and that just, it breaks my heart probably more than anything else. It's just that they're missing out on him.
Brooke: Yeah. I think about that too. Like, I mean, I'm very single. I'm not having kids anytime soon, but like that, my sister's kids knew him. We talk about him of like, Oh, grandpa would have loved this. And like, we spent a lot of time together when you were cleaning the house out this summer and we would just talk about him. Not in a heavy way, but just like, Oh, he would say this. He was a very proper man. So it'd be like, we have to use a saucer for grandpa. We can't just use a cup. And like little things like that, which I think is a nice way with kids especially. But even I find myself doing that with my friends of like, Oh, he would really like this restaurant we're in. Or like my friends will cheers him when we're out, which I talked about on the last episode. But it's like, how do you make sure that.... you almost like don't want people to forget about him.
Hannah: Yeah. And, and it took us, or at least me, a long time.
Brooke: Do you feel comfortable bringing him up?
Hannah: I think it was a counter correction to how much I wanted to talk and how reserved my husband was. Then I really took a step back and if I could go back, I definitely wouldn't do that. I would talk about him all the time, but we're finally at this place where, like you were saying, just random things, and we talked like your dad would have loved that, or like, remember when he did this or he would say, we should do this. And thinking about introducing that, and like I said, we were together for 10 years before his dad died. And I remember thinking. You idiot, you should have gotten married earlier and you should have had kids earlier because you could have, and I mean, we couldn't have, you know, everything happens on the timeline, but you have these thoughts where you're like, Oh, all of a sudden he's gone and now it's too late. And we could have started this earlier and our kids could have known him, but you can't live that way. You have to kind of just let that go. But it did change, like our perception on having kids, both of us, we both, we both knew we wanted to, but we're never, like now in five years. And I think after that we had a conversation and we were like, if we know we want kids, we should just do it because we're, you know, we're married now. Fast forward and I never want this feeling of my kids not knowing someone who is so important to me. And obviously a lot of people are not in that situation, and not saying everyone should run out and have kids right away, but for us it had a big impact on how we perceive that. How we made decisions about it.
Brooke: I even was like I need to have kids. But this was before he was sick and since he was older - He was 75 when he died. I’m from his second set of kids. In my mid twenties, I was like, I need to marry someone and have kids so my kids know my dad. He was like: don't do that. Cause we would talk about it. He was like, you're 26 like what are you doing? You’re single [laughs] but I think that that's like a very real feeling that you, I mean it, and it was before like any of this was even happening, but just like if there's someone you care about, you want them to know also the people you care about.
Hannah: And like, especially with a child, I would assume you want someone who had such a big impact on you to be able to have that on your children.
Brooke: Yes.
Hannah: And there's no controlling it. It would be great. I've been pretty good. You can't know.. So maybe we'll do a followup when I figure out how we're going to do for our daughter.
Brooke: Is there anything else that you think is good, would be useful to touch on? it sounds like you really have moved through this in two years.
Hannah: Yes. Yeah. Two and a half. It'll be three in March. I think. I'm far enough on the other side where it's a lot easier for me to talk about. I used to sit at my office and Google the stages of grief and try to calculate which stage I was in and how long it would take me to get to acceptance, which not going to say that acceptance doesn't exist because I've accepted it, but there's still a part of me that it's like, this isn't real. I still walk into my mother-in-law's house and see him standing in the spot. I mean, for a long time it was a lot more prevalent and I couldn't even look in that direction. I just couldn't look, I couldn't look up the chair that he used to sit. And so that's past. And we've all, you know, found our way. At times when, I mean, I lost myself for a while and I tried to keep it in because I wanted to be the support for him. And I pulled back from a lot of people in my life. Not from everyone. Like my mom was huge during this time, so it was my dad, actually, it was the first time that they came together after their divorce was like joint parents, which is, you know, learning to see the beauty in horrible times. But I really, I thought for awhile that I had lost myself and that my personality was just changed and I wasn't going to be like, I'm a pretty bubbly person. I just thought it wasn't going to be that way anymore, and I can look back on that time and understand the place that I'm in or that I wasn't, and not resent myself for being there, but also recognize that that wasn't forever and I tried as best as I could to calculate how long it would be until I felt the way I'm now. The wedding was a significant time where I felt happiness, but I don't think that there's been a time where I'm like, okay, I'm back to myself. It's just kind of slowly, this has become the norm. And I can allow myself to live a little bit more freely without it weighing on me so much and that like, I hate why I hated when people said: Time heals.
Brooke: I hate them.
Hannah: I would just be like, okay, great. I'll talk to you in 10 years. That does not change how I feel right now but I understand why they say that. Because it was the only thing that slowly brought me back to myself. There was nothing that anyone could have done. I think everyone did everything that they could. I think I did everything that I could and everyone was just doing the best that they could in the situation. It has definitely has shown me that life will go on and you can also choose to like sit on the sidelines for awhile and it's okay. You don't have to pretend like everything is normal. And you can take a step back and you won't lose yourself, and you can allow yourself to like, feel all of the feelings which was really hard for me to let myself off the hook and do. And then like you were saying, like, there are days and I'm listening to music, I'm walking through Washington square park and I just start crying and I'm not happy that I'm doing that, but it's also kind of nice to like remember that this is always going to be that big of a deal for me. I don't want those feelings to fade. I want this to always be a tremendous loss because he was that big of a person in our life. But you don't have to carry the sorrow so heavily.
Brooke: That's great advice. All right. I think we'll end there cause we could go on. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope that was helpful to you. Please reach out to us hello@thegriefcoach.co. If you have any feedback ideas for future episodes, I would love to hear from you, or you can find us on Instagram and Twitter @the_griefcoach, and our website is live the grief coach.co and I'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks.