34. Colleen’s Story
“You’re never going to move on, but you can move forward. And you do that by…accepting help from others. And the people who want to be there for you….just lean on them. Lean on them as much as you have to.”
One of the most difficult aspects of middle age is the continual reminder and realization of how fragile life is. This is not to say that terrible things do not happen to young people – they definitely do. However, for many of us – by the time we reach our 40’s and 50’s - we have either experienced or repeatedly witnessed how lives can drastically change in an instant. It is almost as if a blindfold is removed and what we once thought of as “unthinkable” is more common than we believed. Tragic events, accidents, and diagnoses occur suddenly and then life as we know it (or as people we care about know it), is abruptly and completely shattered. The inevitable truth that life is both tremendously fragile and fleeting becomes something we understand and feel more deeply as we age.
As we continue our series this season on grief and loss, our guest today is Colleen Albright, who graciously and courageously shares her story of unthinkable losses. She shares her story in hopes that it will help others.
Colleen's life was a tapestry of joy and challenges, raising her children and thriving in a career she loves. On December 1st 2022, a seemingly ordinary day in Coleen’s life, everything changed for her. And then it changed again. And again. In less than a year, Colleen experienced the deaths of her teenage son, her mother, her father and underwent a divorce.
She experienced a “before and after” that “obliterated” the person she was. Her story is not an easy one to hear but she tells it with a poise and grace that astounded us. Colleen offers many insights into navigating midlife's unpredictable challenges with courage and hope, including:
There is no blueprint for grief. It is not linear. It is messy. And everyone grieves in different ways.
Grief is exhausting; grief is work.
For those who lose loved ones, you never get over it and it is important to embrace and accept that. There is no going back to who you were. There is no “normal” anymore.
Grief support groups are similar to finding a therapist – you don’t always click and it might take some effort to find one that you connect with and will help you.
The people that helped Colleen the most were not the ones she would have expected before this happened. Many people - no matter how much they care - just do not know what to do to support someone deeply grieving.
The feeling of time changes in grief. It progresses but feels different.
Let your grieving person talk. It is a gift for them to tell stories, memories and talk about their loved one.
There is no need to say anything to a grieving person. Do not say that it will be ok; do not say they need to stop crying or take a deep breath. Allow each person to grieve in the way they need to; allow them to be and do whatever they need.
The “fog” of grief is real and can last a long time.
The picture for this episode is of Colleen's dad, son, and her mom. They had all run / walked a trail race together. This picture means a lot to Colleen and gives her comfort because it shows all three of them together and she knows that wherever they are, that they are together.The
-
Tara: Hi, this is Tara Conti Bansal and I want to welcome you to season two of our podcast, Messy Middlescence. My sister Christina Conti Donovan and I are in the thick of midlife and trying to help ourselves and others to learn about and hopefully thrive in this unique phase of life.
Like adolescence, mid is a time of tremendous change touching almost every aspects of our lives. There are the physical and hormonal changes, but also many of the rhythms, relationships and frameworks that have dominated our lives for decades all start to shift in various ways.
Tina and I are figuring this out as we go, and we hope you will join us as we dive into and discuss topics and ideas that will help all of us grow and understand this special midlife phase and how to live it better, more meaningfully and joyfully, one day at a time.
Tina: Hello, this is Christina Conti Donovan and I am here with my sister, Tara Conti Bansal. And our guest today is Colleen Albright, who actually comes to us via Kellie Walenciak. She was on.
Kellie was on Messy Middlescence with us last season.
And Colleen has very generously and very courageously offered to share her middlescence journey with us,
one that has been dominated by grief and loss. Colleen, welcome. We are so happy to have you here and to talk with you.
Colleen: Thank you.
Tina: And we tend to start all of our interviews and discussions with the question in Brene Brown fashion,
what is your story? What would you like people to know about you?
Colleen: Yeah, so I,
I mean, my story is, is very typical up to a certain point, I think. I grew up in Sayreville, New Jersey.
I'm the oldest of three kids and I have a younger sister and a younger brother. Wonderful parents. We grew up, you know, very blue collar town, blue collar family. My dad worked for the phone company.
My mom was a nurse and she, she went back to work probably when I was about, you know, young teenager. Just had a great family, grew up in a really great way.
Lots of love, lots of fun. I got married super young.
I don't know why I, I decided that I have to get married. So I was married at 23 and I had my daughter eight years later. So my daughter is now 24.
And five years later, I had my son Jack,
and we raised our children. We lived in South Brunswick.
I was always so thrilled to have these kids. You know, it was just a great, it was just great. You know, it's hard work. I worked full time the whole time my kids were growing up, and that was difficult because, you know, dropping off at daycare, dropping off at school,
picking them up, taking them the stuff after dinner. And this one played soccer for a little bit. And then there was dance, was Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts. So we did all of that.
You know, we had this. This really kind of high energy life.
Tara: What was your job?
Colleen: Oh, sorry. I'm in human resources. So I'm now vice president of HR for a company. But back when my kids were young, I worked actually for Johnson and Johnson in talent acquisition, which was great.
They're a really good company to work for when you have small kids. So we were just kind of coasting along,
ups and downs. You know, I. Marriage wasn't great, but I had these wonderful children. My son struggled in school from the time he was really little. So we went through a lot in terms of trying to get him the right supports, getting an iep,
finding out, like, what exactly is going on. As it turns out, he had adhd,
which just. It's like a grenade going off. It impacts everything in that child's life. And he was also. He had high functioning autism. And sometimes it was like, what's worse today?
Is it the adhd? Is it the autism? But with the right supports, he really started flourishing in middle school. So he was doing really great. We get to middle school, eighth grade, boom.
Covid shuts everything down. And then he had to do school remotely. And I remember thinking at the time, this is it. This is where this all falls apart. He's been like doing so well, and this is when it all happens.
And he actually did better and flourished in that environment of not having the distractions. He was so committed and like he was on every day, he was on camera doing his work.
He really did so exceptionally well that when they went back in person, back into he's starting high school, then it was like, boom, we're firing on all cylinders. And he just, he had such a good experience at that point.
He was the student he always wanted to be. He had the success that he wanted. He had friends, he had a social life. I mean, he was just, you know, so magnificent.
And my daughter didn't have any of those issues.
You know, she kind of went through school and I know school is tough for every kid. And she, of course, had, you know, this friend and that friend and struggles, but she didn't have the learning disability issues.
So, you know, she was just successful. She's always been successful. She does everything really well. So to see him go from being fully unsuccessful to being so good was just.
It was the most rewarding thing. It really was.
So that brings us to December.
Tara: What's the age difference? I'm sorry, I know you said.
Colleen: But they're five years apart.
Tara: Okay.
Colleen: They're vibes. Thanks. Yep. Um, so we get to December 1, 2022. My daughter had graduated from college at that point the previous spring. She was working full time. That day was just a regular day in our lives.
I got up, got my son off to school. Um, he had gotten his driver's license a few weeks before, but he couldn't drive a car to school. You had to be a senior to do that.
So he still had to take the bus. So I got him on the bus. She and my daughter left for work.
My ex husband, now, he worked from home. So he got set up and worked. I went upstairs to my office. My son had a half day at school that day.
So he was home for lunch and came up into my office. When he got home and asked me if I wanted something, he was going to go out and get something for him and his dad.
I said, no, thanks. But he had lunch with my. My ex husband. They had a really nice discussion at the kitchen table. And then the day just kind of went on from there.
Normally, you know, at about 20 after 5,
my son came up into my office and said, so what are you thinking about for dinner? Because, teenage boy, we have to know what we're eating at all times.
And I said, you know, it's just you and me tonight. Dad's got plans, Megan has plans, so it's just us. So maybe we'll just. We'll just do some takeout maybe.
And he said, yeah, that's a good idea, but I'm not hungry yet. I said, yeah, me either. And I have to finish some stuff for work. And he said, all right, I'm gonna go into my room.
Which he did. You know, he hung out in his room all the time. I said, okay, I'll see you in a little bit. And he got to the door and he said, love you.
And I was like, oh, love you too.
And that was the last thing we ever said to each other.
So I guess it was probably about two hours later.
I had taken my laptop and I was sitting in my kitchen working.
Nobody else was home, just me and Jack. And I happened to turn and look at the clock. I said, oh, my God, it's 20 to 8. Did he fall asleep?
Like, did he fall asleep for the night?
And I just thought it was really unusual because that kid ate, like on time. Like, by then he should have been downstairs saying, why aren't we ordering? So I went upstairs, knocked on his door.
He didn't answer.
I opened his door, called his name. It was dark in his room. The lights were off.
He didn't answer. And I flipped on the light, and as soon as I saw him, I knew he was laying in his bed. And he had, I think, and the medical examiner thought, too, that he had probably passed away within minutes of going into his room at 20 after 5.
You know, obviously called 911, the whole shebang, everybody, you know, this police. And it was just. It like, the whole night is such.
Just, like, mayhem. There's just people in and out of the house the whole night. And by the time they got there, you know, there was nothing they could do. He was.
He was gone. But we didn't know, like, what happened. This wasn't. This wasn't a child who was suicidal. He did not take drugs. And I kept saying to the police,
I know he didn't do this to them, to himself. He didn't. He didn't take any kind of drugs. And they were like, it's okay. We're gonna find out. They were so really wonderful.
And they asked, can we. Can we just look around his room a little bit, thinking, like, maybe we'll find something?
And they did. There was nothing in his room, of course.
So,
you know, it's interesting, I think, now that there's, like, December 1, 2022,
that's, like, a line drawn in my life. Like, there was everything before, and then, boom,
this is what happens now. And I remember one of my closest friends lives around the corner, and she came over that night, and I said to her,
this is it. Like, nothing's the same now. Nothing will ever be the same. And she said, it's okay. It's okay. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna figure it out.
And nothing truly has been the same. Uh, so, you know, you kind of sleepwalk through the next few days of making plans. There's a million people in and out of the house.
We go through. He died on a Thursday. His wake was Tuesday.
There were hundreds of people. I mean, every kid in school, every teacher he ever had, people I hadn't seen in years, you know, who knew him when he was a baby.
Like, it was incredible.
So we get through the week and the following Tuesday.
So not even a week after his funeral,
my phone rings at 7 in the morning, and I look, and it's my father calling from his cell phone. And I said, hello? And he said, I'm sorry to wake you up.
I said, what's going on? And he said, well, we're at the hospital. Mom.
Mom's not doing good. And, you know, they keep talking about ventilators, and I'm like, I'm coming. Okay, Let me. I'm. I'm getting. Just. Dad, I'm. I'll be there.
So my mom had long Covid. She had gotten Covid in November of 2020.
And I don't. We. We still don't know how she got it. You know, they didn't go anywhere.
Tara: How old was she?
Colleen: She was 75.
Tara: Okay.
Colleen: So she was 73 when she got Covid.
It. It got her, and it just ravaged her.
There's. It's incredible. We thought she was going to die when she first got it. It was that bad. And the doctor.
My father said he would talk to the doctor, and the doctor said, don't even. Don't take her to a hospital. They'll ventilate her and she will die.
So she wound up with lung fibrosis as a result of COVID and she wound up with afib. So.
And she was on oxygen from that moment on for the rest of her life. You know, for those two years, she never could not be on oxygen.
Tara: Wow.
Colleen: But the. The really neat thing about my mom,
she never complained. She never complained. She. And she used to say, could be worse. And I would look at her and go, you know, your quality of life is nothing like it was before you got sick.
You know, this is terrible. Now. I could have died.
And she really felt grateful that she had these two years. Right.
Tara: But how close did they live to you?
Colleen: They lived in Sayreville. I was in South Brunswick, so maybe like, 35, 40 minutes.
Tara: Okay.
Colleen: And it wasn't bad. My brother lives in Spotswood, so he was the closest to them. My sister's in Hamilton, but we saw them all the time. She went into the hospital in December on a Tuesday, and she died the following Monday.
And they never did. They could never quite like,
you know, the. The one doctor she had was extremely optimistic. He was a cardiologist. And he said, yeah, you're going to be okay. I think you're going to be okay.
And I'm just sitting there looking at him like, I don't know about that. She doesn't really look okay.
And then her. Her pulmonologist came in. And my mom used to call her Dr. Doom and Gloom because she was. She was just really realistic, you know? You know,
and she came in, and she came in that Thursday. So two days after my mom was admitted, and I was sitting there with my dad, my brother and sister and I all were rotating it in and out.
So I was sitting there with my dad that day, and she said,
I.
I don't think this is going in a direction that we're going to be happy with.
And my dad was like, well, you know, if you put her on a ventilator, is that going to help? Like, will that help her? Like, maybe get her lungs better so she can.
And the doctor said, no, that's. That's not what we do with ventilators. And my mom was a nurse and she knew all of this, so she. My mom said,
no, that, like, if they put me on a ventilator, that's it. I'm in a medically induced coma until I die.
And I saw, like, my dad's face, you know, And I think about it now. These two people are grieving for their grandson who just died weeks ago. I am like, like a numb mess sitting there.
My mother was worried about everybody.
Um, and now my. I'm watching my father's face, like, realizing,
oh, my God, like, this is it. This could be it.
And I remember I said to him, I'm going to go out and call Kristen and Danny. You talk to mom. Because I think my mom had to tell him very clearly, I don't want this.
Yeah, not do this. Do not put me on something like this. So they had that discussion, and my father was just devastated after that.
And I still thought. I remember sitting in the hospital and I still thought,
you know what? She's. She's probably going to pull through. Like, this can't happen because Jack just died. Like, I can't do this a second time. Like, we. We don't have this in us as a family to do this a second time within weeks.
I mean, two weeks, two and a half weeks.
So, yeah, Jack died on the 1st and she died on the 19th. So 19 days.
So then now we're really, like, total disasters. You know, she passed away, we were all there, and it was Christmas week, and we couldn't have her funeral until after Christmas.
So we all had to, like,
white knuckle it through Christmas with all this going on.
So we get out of the year, we get into 20, 23, and we're like, okay, let's just settle, figure things out.
Seven months later, my marriage broke up, and I was like, okay,
now let's just keep moving forward. You know, my whole thing that year was we're just going to keep moving forward, forward, forward, forward. So my Marriage breaks up. My father was extremely supportive.
My whole family, really, every friends, everybody was very supportive. Um, but my dad and I had gotten very close, even closer than we already were because we were both, like, in this deep grief.
And having somebody who understood, like, he didn't understand exactly what I was going through, and I didn't understand exactly what he was going through. But just to have somebody to, you know, sometimes we cried, sometimes we laughed.
We told funny stories about my son and my mom having that was just such a comfort.
And the day before he had his heart attack, we were talking. He's like, all right, what do you still need for this place you're moving into? Because we had decided I was moving out.
I'm like, no, I have everything. I think it's going to be next week. You know, they're just. They need the fire inspector to do the final pass and do this and do that.
And he's like, okay, this is great. I'm so excited.
The next day was October 9th. It was indigenous Peoples Day, Columbus Day. So I head off. So I was running around, did a bunch of errands, and I was getting ready to take the dogs out.
And my home, my house phone rings and I look and it's my dad calling from his house. And you know that. Did you ever have a thing where a hundred thoughts go through your head in like two seconds and you're.
They're. None of them are good. And I'm like, why is he calling the house phone? He's been calling my cell phone. Why is he calling from his house? He should be out for his walk.
Why is he calling me in the middle of the day? He doesn't know I was off today. Like, what is going on? I picked up the phone and I said, dad.
And he was breathing very hard, and he said, colleen, something's wrong. I think I'm having a heart attack.
And he was having a heart attack. So we get to the hospital,
you know, obviously called 91 1. My brother and my sister in law got to his house before they took him. So they were able to talk to him, and he wasn't doing well.
He coded in the ambulance. They get him to the hospital, you know, immediately people descend on him. It's just, it's crazy. And they, they said, look, we're gonna, we're gonna try to put a stent in here.
But he, he's dying. Like his heart is vibrating. It's not even pumping its own blood. And you, do you want to come in and see him? And I Thought, gee, that's unusual.
Why would they let us see him? And I think they let us see him because they were like, he's going to die on the table. There's no way, you know.
So they put the stent in and miraculously he makes it through and his heart actually repaired itself. Like he was in such good shape for a man who was, he was 76 at that point.
He was in incredible shape. He had been an athlete his whole life. He didn't smoke, he didn't drink, he ate pretty well. We have no idea how he wound up with this heart condition that he did not know about.
He had no symptoms. It's. It's literally came out of the blue. But unfortunately, when your heart stops like that, everything goes wrong. And they finally, after a few days of him not waking up, they said, we think we want to do a CAT scan and an MRI to see what's going on.
And he had had 13 strokes.
So that was it. You know, the decision was. And he had made it very clear when my mom died, I never want to be on life support. Don't ever let me linger like this.
So we made the decision to take him off life support and he died on October 21st of 2023. So in 10 months that that whole cycle happened.
Yeah, it's like, wow, the worst story ever.
Tara: You tell it beautifully.
Colleen: Thank you, thank you. It's a lot to process sometimes.
Tara: Oh yeah, it's beyond my comprehension.
Colleen: Yeah, it's a lot.
Tara: Do you ever think your dad like in a way, kind of died of a broken heart?
Colleen: A hundred percent,
100%.
And I'll never forget,
I got to the hospital first. My brother and my sister in law were like behind the ambulance basically. So they got there right after he did. My sister and her husband came up from Hamilton.
So they got there, you know, within, we were all there within minutes. And I remember looking and my sister walked in and she was hysterical and she said, I knew this would happen.
I knew he was going to die of a broken heart.
And I'm like, okay, hold on, it's going to be okay. And I'm the one of the three of us who. I think it's going to be okay. I think he's going to wake up.
Like I was trying to be super optimistic because I could not even fathom.
Yeah. That another person was going to die. But she, she said that and I thought that's exactly it. There's no reason for him to have a heart problem. This man was the picture of health there Is zero there.
There wasn't even heart disease in his family. Like,
there was no chance that this didn't kind of take root. I think in those 10 months, I. I really believe that.
Tara: And how. How have you gotten through?
Colleen: Um,
you know, in the beginning.
The beginning of 2023, that January, February, March, it's. It's kind of a blur. I don't.
I think I was just so numb and so in shock that,
like, I. I kind of threw myself into doing, like, these little routine things, right? Like,
I wasn't gonna decorate for Christmas the year my son and my mom.
Tara: Oh, goodness. Yeah.
Colleen: Not. I'm not decorating. And I remember my daughter said to me, do you. Do you want me and Sean, her. Now he's her fiance. Do you want us to get the tree out?
And I said, oh, I'm not putting. I'm not putting the tree up. And in my head, clear as anything, I heard my son's voice say, oh, we're going to be that dramatic?
We're not even going to put the tree up. Okay, okay. And I thought that's exactly what he would say. He was.
I put the tree up. So it was the little things, like taking stuff down, you know, rearranging my family room back to the way. It was like, I threw myself into these little daily tasks to just feel like, okay, I accomplished something.
At the end of the day, I went back to work at probably, like, the third week of January.
And that was both great and awful at the same time. You know, people don't know what to say to you. I had just really started the job I was in at the time.
So here's all these people who don't really know me, like, hey, how's it going? You know, they don't know what to say.
So I went back to work. There were days when I. It was just too much. I remember calling my boss, who luckily is a very good friend. And the one day I said to him, I can't.
I can't work today. And he said, okay, don't work today.
You don't have to work tomorrow. Like, do what you need to do. And I said. He goes, well, what are you going to do then? Like, hold on. Like, if you're not going to work, what are you going to do?
And I said, I'm gonna lay in bed and watch movies all day. I just can't. I can't do this.
He said, okay, I'm gonna call you later. I said, okay. And then he called another one of our friends, and she Called me. So it was that support system that forms in these horrible circumstances really pulled me through to a place where,
you know, by the springtime, I was like,
okay, maybe let's go out somewhere. Let's go out to dinner. Let's. Let me start going out with my friends more, do some normal things.
Because that felt good.
I can. I can honestly say there were a lot of days I. The only reason I got up was to take my dog out. That. That, like, all right, well, he's gotta go out.
Like, can't just do this to him. So. And. And my daughter, you know, I think about her losing her brother,
having me have to call her and say, I need you to come home. And this is what's going on. Then a couple weeks later,
standing there watching her grandmother die, who she was very close to, I think about just the trauma that she went through, and I didn't want to just leave her to it, you know, I.
I didn't feel like.
I didn't feel like I was doing her much good. But I knew me being a basket case and falling apart every five minutes was gonna do her much, much more harm.
So, you know, you pull yourself up in these times just so that other people can feel like, okay, let's. Let's go. Let's. Let's. She's doing okay today.
Tara: Can I ask, is that helpful, or do you think that's hurtful, too? Like, I like putting other people.
Like, you're holding yourself together for other people.
Is that, you know, getting in the way of you processing your own grief?
I can see it both ways. Or it, like, forced you to, Like, I don't know. Yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Colleen: It's weird because there's no blueprint. You know, when somebody dies, I wish there was, like, okay, this is what you're supposed to do.
And everybody, I think, mourns and grieves in very different ways. You know, what's good for me is not going to be good for somebody else. My sister and I grieved in incredibly different ways.
Like, we're. We're close. We're obviously, you know, went through a lot together. We just. We grieved in completely different ways.
Tara: Can you share how it was different? I just.
Colleen: What would I. Yeah, I felt like if I kept myself busy, I felt like the person I was before all this happened. Right. My sister probably did the right thing. She kind of, like, took to her couch, and she was like, I wanna be left alone.
I am sitting here for the next week, you know, I'm not moving. Because what I also found is grief is exhausting.
You're exhausted, you're tired all the time. And where she was able to sit with her thoughts and sit, you know, sit, she would watch a movie, she would watch a TV show.
If I sat, I started thinking of, well, why didn't I check on him sooner? Why didn't I try to wake him up sooner? What if this happened? What if that happened?
What if I did this? Like, I did that for a really long time. Keeping myself busy helped me not. It. It helped my mind to just not do that.
And I felt like that was important for me. My sister, I think, was able to process her emotions and her thoughts, probably in a much better way, because she wasn't running from them.
I think I ran from this, you know, to the extent that I could. And then about a year ago, so everybody's gone. We had just started the process of cleaning out my father's house.
I remember I was sitting on my couch one day, you know, scrolling through my phone,
and this TikTok comes up,
and it's Billy Bob Thornton,
the actor. And I don't know what this was. I don't know if it was an Oprah special or something, but he's talking about his brother. His brother was a little bit older than him, and he died very suddenly, and they were very close.
And his brother also died of a heart problem that nobody knew he had.
So he's talking and he said,
my brother died, and I've never been able to trust happiness since. And I remember I stopped it, and I thought it was like a revelation. I'm like, that's the feeling I had.
That is exactly what I'm going through. Like, if something good happens, I wonder what's going to happen, you know, like, oh, what about that? And I thought that this is it.
This is exactly how I feel. And he. Then he went on to say, I'm 50% happy and 50% sad at any given moment.
And I was like, yeah, that's exactly me. This is exactly how I feel. And then he said something, and it really.
This was the piece that just. It struck me because it really helped me move into a different place. I think he said, you'll never get over this.
And the sooner you embrace that and you accept that,
the better off you are.
And that hit me like a ton of bricks. And I thought, I have spent.
I've spent over a year now trying to get back to the person I was on the morning of December 1, 2022. But she's gone. Like, that person is completely obliterated.
This is who I am now. And I can, I can fight this the rest of my life,
but I'm never getting back to that. I need to actually accept. Not only I accept that all this happened, obviously, but I need to accept that this is the reality I'm living in now.
And if I can just accept this,
I can embrace the person I am now. Like, my moral fiber hasn't changed. Like, I'm in my core, I'm the same person I was, but I react to things differently.
I am probably much more demonstrative with my feelings than I was before. I just,
you know, I'm not that. I'm not quite as disciplined as I used to be. You know, I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'm not gonna do that. You know, I really feel like I have to live in the moment because you don't know.
You don't know when your time is up. You don't know when something's going to end suddenly. And that really, that changed a lot of how I handled my life after, you know, those, that year and a half of gutting through and just trying to find that sense of normal again.
I don't have to do that.
For me, accepting that this is where I am is, is okay. That's good for me.
Tara: After hearing that and the, you know.
Colleen: What.
Tara: What changed for you? Like, just even hearing that. Did you do any grief groups? Did you have a therapist? What?
Colleen: Um, so I had, I had gone to therapy, you know, earlier in my adulthood. I'm a fairly self aware person, so I.
Tara: You seem that way. To be able to sit here and talk like this. You can tell.
Colleen: I, I didn't know that seeing a therapist was going to be the right thing for me, but I did join a couple of different grief groups and it's. That's, that's almost like finding a therapist.
Like, you don't always click.
You don't always feel like you're having the same experience as other people. You can't. Like, no grief is the same. Even if you join a group for people who lost their child, it's not the same.
The first group I was in was for parents who had lost a child,
and it was a child. So, you know, children, you know, young adolescents, teenagers.
The majority of the folks had lost their teenage child to drugs. There were two people there who lost their kids to fentanyl poisoning. There was somebody else whose child committed suicide.
It was,
you know, just devastating.
My son died. His heart stopped. Like,
literally. He died of. His heart just stopped. They call it sudden heart failure.
When we got the autopsy report,
you know, toxicology clear. This is clear. That's. There was nothing. And it's like they called it acute arrhythmia.
So I had sent the report to his doctor, who had just seen him a couple weeks before, and he said, colleen, his heart just stopped. Like, that's what that means.
It's just his heart sped up and then boom, stopped. And it happened so fast, he didn't even know what was happening.
So I have this experience, right? Like, this crazy thing happens out of nowhere with no warning. And I'm sitting in a group, though, with these people who watched their children suffer,
either with mental health issues, with drug issues. And I didn't feel. I felt almost like embarrassed. Like, no, my son just died. Like, he just died. And I don't know why, because we didn't have the report back yet,
but I didn't feel that connection. And I felt like there are degrees of grief, I think.
I think if you lose your child like that, there's a whole different degree of grief. I feel horrible, I feel sad. I miss him, but I can't imagine what these other parents went through.
It's like parents who had a child with a chronic illness for years, and they just watch them struggle and suffer, and then they have hope, and then it goes bad again.
And I don't know how people do that. I don't know how they get through that and move out to the other side. So I didn't feel like I had much of a connection there.
I ultimately landed in a group. It's actually really specific. It's a great group. These are all professional women like myself, most of whom had to go back to work after they lost their child very quickly.
So it's a lot about not only the grief you feel for your child, but, like, I had to actually sit in meetings two weeks later and make a decision. Like, why were people even letting me make a decision?
I couldn't decide what to wear. Like,
you know, we talk a lot about the hardship of having to go back and do something normal because you kind of have to. But there are women in the group who completely changed careers.
They went down to part time because they just. They struggle so much with. With getting back into the workforce.
There's people who don't have a support system around them. So this group is really the thing that supports them. And I've gotten so many incredible perspectives out of that. Group just so many great observances about, like, huh.
I was thinking about this the other day, and it's always nice to talk to some of these ladies because,
you know, you see, like, all the strength and resiliency, and it kind of gives you, like, okay, look, if she's. If she can do it, I can do it. So it's nice to be in a group like that.
How big is the group at any given time? We all meet over zoom. About once a month, so the meetings are usually about 25 people.
Tara: Oh, pretty big.
Colleen: Yeah. Yep. Sometimes it balloons up to, like, 40 people, you know, and I don't do it every month. You know, you miss when you go.
Tina: Yeah.
Tara: When does somebody lead it? Is there a structure to it?
Colleen: Yeah, there's a certified grief counselor is. She is a woman who also lost. She actually lost two children.
And she said after her. Her first child died, she decided she was. This was her path in life. She was going to be a grief counselor to help other people.
And then, boom, Her. Her son is killed in a car accident.
And she was like, good thing I know some stuff now. Like, she has a very disarming way of talking that I think has helped me talk about it. Because at first, you can't even talk about it without bursting into tears.
Tara: Oh, yeah.
Colleen: Like, it's. It's just. Even now, like, I could cry at the drop of a hat, you know? But she.
She kind of gives. Gave us, like, techniques on, you want to talk about your child, but you're afraid you're going to cry, and she's like, just cry. Like, who cares?
Somebody's mad that you're crying. That's on them. But just having that in your head helps you talk. Right. And she. She really.
She's really excellent at what she does. I think she does a very guided kind of conversation. But then she just, like, talk. Talk to. To each other every now and then.
It's like, we're going to talk about this. We have a lot of new members. So let's talk about what this first few months are like, and then it kind of takes you back.
Like, oof,
horrible. But it's been really helpful.
Tara: Yeah. I work with. Or I have worked with widows, and they talk about the widow fog,
how real that is. Did you experience that? And how long do you.
Colleen: Yeah, I would say from December that year through March, April.
Like, I don't. I literally have chunks of time I don't remember,
and I don't think I'll ever remember. You know, maybe that's like your mind is protecting you.
Tara: Yeah.
Colleen: Even into this summer, though, you know,
there, there are things, you know, people are like, oh, remember when we did that? And I'm going, was I there? Yeah, you were. Yeah, of course you guys came. It was this party we went to.
Oh, I don't even remember this. I don't remember certain things. And sometimes it comes back to you, but it doesn't. It's very real.
Very real.
Hmm.
Tara: And any advice for dealing with that is just accepting that that's part of the process.
Colleen: Yeah. It's frustrating because you're like, oh, I forgot to do this thing I was supposed to do. You know, like, I dropped the ball on a couple of things that if you're going through that for anybody who's going through that, it's good to have people around you who kind of have a handle on stuff.
At work, there were people who were like, I'm gonna take that meeting for you. Like, it's okay. I'm like, I forgot. I forgot to put these slides together. I'm so sorry.
No, we got it. We did it. It's okay. In my home life, things were. Things were absolutely falling apart in my marriage. It. And our marriage was falling apart before our son died.
It just, it just obviously didn't make it better.
But, you know, we each had our roles in the home and, and my ex husband, the bills were paid. It's not like, you know, we. We didn't forget to pay bills and stuff like that.
You know, the dog was always fed. Like there were little things I like hung onto. Don't forget to do this. I had post it notes all over my office though, to remind myself to do things.
So it helps to have somebody who's got kind of a handle on something that you're gonna forget about and it helps to write notes to yourself. It's really.
That was the thing that kind of. I still write a lot of notes now, but it was a good, it was actually a good strategy that somebody told me, if you don't wanna forget to do something, write it down and see where you can see it.
Tina: I mean, it's your divorce on top of everything else just. Just seems,
I don't know, another loss. Most people that in itself would have been, you know, devastating and mind world changing and I mean, you had that happen after technically four losses.
Yeah, I mean,
I guess. How, how has your life been since your divorce?
Colleen: It, it. The. The divorce was a long time coming. When I think about that time period, that 10 months that, that the divorce Isn't.
This is the worst thing also, you know, it was. This is. This is the start of probably some healing.
My husband, my ex husband and I grieved,
polar opposites. And I, you know, not to get into any kind of detail. We. We were not compatible in our grief in any way. I was also dealing with the grief of losing my mother and very worried about my father.
Our lives were just completely different.
And I felt like when I finally moved out and I was in my own place,
I finally had the quiet and kind of the peace to be like, all right, here comes the hard work now. You know, like, you can grieve, you can cry all day if you want.
No one's going to be,
you know, asking you why you're crying. And, you know, I. I finally was able to just really feel everything I had felt. It was good. You have to. Grief is work.
It's work getting through and it's work every day. You know, you have to work on feeling what you're feeling and acknowledging it. And somebody had shown me something right after my son died.
You think grief is this linear thing, right? You're gonna hit all these stages,
denial and acceptance, and then you're mad and sadness.
But it's not like that at all. It's like a mess. It's a big mess. And some days you're sad, some days you're angry. Some days just. You want to just sit and cry all day.
It's. There's no rhyme or reason a lot to it. It's. It's very often like,
it's just. It's. It is what it is, but you have to work on it. You can't ignore it. And when I finally was on my own,
I had that time to really work on it.
Tara: What advice do you have for those going through tremendous grief?
Colleen: Surround yourself with people who are going to let you be whoever you need to be.
If you need to sit there and just cry your eyes out, be with people who are not going to feel like they have to comfort you. You know, there's so many things that people say to you after someone dies, and you're like, what made you say that?
Why would you say that? The. The people that I think about who were with me,
and they didn't say anything. They never said, it's going to be okay. They never said,
stop crying or, why don't you try to take a deep breath or calm down? There was none of that. It was, if I was crying, they were crying. We all cried together.
If I wanted to listen to a song because it reminded me of my son. And I wanted to listen to it 50 times. I listened to it 50 times. They were like, oh, we're going to hear this again.
Okay.
They never stopped me from being who I needed to be in that moment, and that was a gift.
So if you can surround yourself with people who will do that for you, be with those people. Don't be with people who don't want you to talk about the person you lost.
Don't be with people who avoid this, who I. There are people in my life who I always thought, these are the people who are going to. They're going to have my back.
And if, God forbid, anything really bad happens, they are my ride or dies. And that is not the case because they did not know what to do when the bottom fell out.
And that's okay. People don't know what to do. There's no rulebook. There's no playbook. For this is how you help somebody. The people who are with you who come back every day, they also don't know what to do, but they're doing something,
and they're not stopping you from doing what you need to do. And they're like, tell me about, you know, what about this. Look at this picture. Like, I love when somebody says, I found this picture of Jack when, you know,
I was cleaning something out. I love it. And I'm like, oh, I love. Thank you for bringing. You know, I want to talk about him and the person he was because he was so good,
and my parents were wonderful people. Like, I don't. I don't want people to forget them.
Tara: Yeah.
Colleen: So let your grieving person talk. You know, it's such a gift to tell stories about them.
There's a whole litany of things you shouldn't say to a grieving person.
I heard so many times, like, well,
you know, God wanted another angel.
And I'm like,
first of all,
you'll. You'll notice we're not in a church. We are not church people. We are not. You know, I'm pretty sure my son was, if not an atheist, he was. Did not believe, you know, what he was taught as a child.
Like, why would you say that to somebody? That's not anything that you want to say. And then there's things that people say, and you go, you know, that. That could have been taken the wrong way, but it's actually a really nice thing.
A friend of mine, when my mom died, we were standing in her wake, and friend of mine came through the line and Said, I know she went to be with Jack to take care of him.
And I was like, oh,
but that could have rubbed somebody like that could have rubbed my dad the wrong way, right? Because in his grief, he was probably like,
no, we needed her here. She needed to take care of this. I'm left with this mess with these kids. But people,
so much,
so many times I want to say, just don't say anything. Just, hey, I don't know what to say. That's okay. I don't know either, you know, that's okay.
But having that support around,
that was the game changer for me. And I still have that. I still have people who get a text randomly, hey, I was just thinking about you.
That means the world when I get those texts.
Tara: So for those of us trying to support and help those grieving, it's just showing up.
Colleen: It's showing up. That's it. You don't have to do anything special for me. I don't need to go. I don't need to go out somewhere.
I don't need to come and sit in your house. And I just need, you know, just a little phone call, a text, you know, and everybody's busy. That's the other.
I completely get that. I'm busy. Right? We're all busy. But I have personally, since all this happened, I know so many people who have lost a parent. A friend of mine lost his brother just a few months after my mom and Jack died.
And I try to, like, oh, I'm going to send them a message and just see how they're doing, you know. Somebody I know just recently lost her husband.
And she was. She was somebody I knew when my kids were younger. My daughter and her daughter were in school together.
We're very different people. We're not, you know, I wouldn't say we're friends, but she is. She is in the throes of really hard grief. And I, you know, I'm trying to remember every couple of weeks, let me just send her a message.
I don't even. I don't think I have a phone number. I usually send her, like, a Facebook message. Just, hey, just thinking about you, seeing how you're doing. And it's not like, is there anything I can do for you?
Because that's also a question that you can't answer, like, no, you can't do anything for me. But it's more about, like, I was just thinking about you and wanted to check in.
And I try to do that more now. And it's, you know, your perspective Changes. When this happens to you, when you lose people,
it's like, ooh, I wish there were times I wish I was better at.
At being a little more communicative with people. And because it's not just showing up for the wake, that's great,
but you're going to go home after the wake and go back to a pretty normal life. The people who had to have that wake are not going to go back to any kind of normal life ever again.
And I really try to bear that in mind with people now.
Tina: What do you find you're struggling with right now?
Colleen: Right now, I'm. I'm kind of in a place where I still struggle. Like, I'm sad, you know, I. I struggle with sadness. I don't think I'm depressed,
but I'm sad.
So managing the sadness,
that can be challenging sometimes,
you know, in other parts of my life, I'm like, am I going to buy a house this year? Am I going to do this? Like, what's going to happen with my job?
Like, should I. Should I, you know, do it? Should I go into a different type of career at this point in my life? I'm at a point in my life where I'm like, you know, kind of winding down in the workforce, which is nice, but I like being busy and I like the job that I have and I love the people I work with.
So there's just, you know, I'm kind of at a crossroads a little bit in my life. I'm very happy with where I am right now, but there's, you know, I like things to be set like, this is where I'm gonna live for the rest of my life.
It's kind of like that. So thinking about moving, thinking about buying a house, thinking about, you know,
where do I wanna move? And. And what does this mean? Like, will my best friend get to come down? Will I have a room for her when she comes to visit?
Like, it's. It's things like this that I'm like, it's not. That's not a struggle. It's more like normal life stuff. But when you layer on top of normal life stuff, like, oh, I'm also really sad today about some.
This, you know, thing that happened. It's hard to make those decisions. So I struggle with that a little bit.
Tara: To me, it still hasn't been that long.
Tina: Yeah, that's.
Tara: That's my reaction is, yeah, yeah, it hasn't been.
Colleen: And there are days I just said this to somebody. I said, I feel like it's been so long since I heard my son's voice.
But then it's like, no, it's only been two years. Like it's not that long in the grand scheme of things. But time progresses. But it changes. Like the feeling of time changes when you're in this kind of thing.
I was thinking about this this morning. I was, I took my dog out and I was thinking,
well, it's been a while. And I thought, no, it hasn't. Like, Jack and mom are only a little over two years. My dad is just a little over a year gone.
Like, it hasn't been that long. When you think of it in those terms. It's also like, okay, well, we're carrying it, we're taking it with us wherever we go. And we.
You have to take that grief forward with you though. You don't let it go. You don't. You can't let it go. It's a part of you now. It's. It's weird.
It's comforting and it's not at the same time. It's like, I wish I didn't have this, but if I didn't have this, I wouldn't have had them in my life.
And I was lucky,
very, very fortunate to have those people in my life.
Tara: What would you love to do?
Colleen: I would love to travel more. Last year we took my daughter and I went on a vacation to London and Paris with my sister, my brother in law and their two kids.
And it was just, you know, it was such a great experience. Experience.
And it was needed, you know, my sister and I needed,
like, we gotta get out of there,
let's go have fun and do something fun. And it was just. It was such a wonderful vacation.
And I realized this is something I really want to do. Like I want to travel more in my life, go different places. So I'm kind of. I just started thinking last week, like, where would I want to go this year if I could go on a vacation?
So I think I'm going to plan a. A trip with my best friend. Nice. Probably for a little later this year.
Tara: Have you decided where yet?
Colleen: No, no. You know, I've always wanted to. I'd love to go to Italy. She's been to Italy. But I'd love to go. Neither one of us has ever been to Greece and I don't know, I'm fascinated with Greece.
So maybe, maybe that. I would love to do like the Ireland, Scotland thing too. So maybe that. But we, I was just with her this weekend. We were kind of kicking around some thoughts, but yeah, that's, that's something I'm really, I'm really eager to do now is travel more.
I really enjoy it.
Tina: That's great.
Colleen: Yeah.
Tara: What about closer to home? What are things you love to do?
Colleen: I love spending time with my family and my friends. I was just at my sister's last night. It was my niece's birthday, so it was just a lot of fun just to hang out and laugh.
I, I spend a lot of time with friends, you know, those, those people who have been there, I, I owe them a debt of gratitude. But they're fun and I, I like hanging out.
I, you know, we're, we're not too far from like Bucks County. I love going out to New Hope and Lambertville, just walking around.
And in the summer I'm like a beach person. I love the beach, so I'm very much looking forward to the weather being warmer. Warmer.
Tara: Yeah, it's very cold here today. What, what beach or beaches do you like?
Colleen: So every year we used to go to Cape May for vacation. So I love Cape May, although that's really far for a day trip. Usually during the, if it's a day trip, I'll go down to like Long Branch.
I used to take my kids to seven presidents their whole lives. So every now and then I like going back there. My daughter now, though, you know, you go to the beach with a 24 year old, she's like, let's go to this section of Long Branch that has the cool places to eat and this neat bar and little shops.
Let's go over there. So we kind of hit some different areas.
Tara: How would you say your daughter is.
Colleen: Doing with, you know, I think she's, she's probably the most resilient person out of all of us.
I think it, of course it bothers her still. You know, she's missing her brother.
Tara: But were they close?
Colleen: You know, growing up? They weren't. They were five years apart. Boy.
Tara: And I feel like they were just getting to the age where possibly starting to get. And maybe not even yet.
Colleen: He was like the annoying little brother. He was a very typical annoying little brother. And she. I want privacy. He's. He's walking into my room. Um, but they did. They had gotten to this point where it was just all love between them.
Um, and he loved her. She loved him. My daughter, she's engaged now. She got engaged in December, which is fantastic. My son loved Shawn too, and Sean loved my son.
So they were, they had a really nice relationship. I think she's,
she's at A point in her life. She knows what she wants. She is happy with her life. She also has wonderful friends who have just been showing up. Yeah. Her fiance is a wonderful person.
I'm so happy. She's moving into a part of her life now. She's working.
She has a good job. She's, you know, gonna start looking at wedding things. You know, they're. They're moving in March. She's actually moving here to Princeton. So she's got a lot going on in her life, and it's good.
It's all good things.
So I think she'll get. She'll get introspective, though, and weepy every now and then, but she will talk about it. She talks about how she's feeling and how she misses Nana and how she misses Pop up.
And we talk about them so much so that we don't. We don't lose that. You know, that feeling that, you know they're here somewhere still. So she. She's doing really well, though.
I think.
Tara: Time has flown. I. We always. I feel like we could talk to you forever. Any last words or words of advice? I mean, I'm just so impressed with you and all that you've been through.
Colleen: Thank you. Just. Thank you for letting me. Letting me come on and talk. It's. It's so helpful to talk about it, and it's been really helpful to talk to the both of you.
I just hope.
I hope if somebody out there is hearing this and they are in that, like the fog, the dark place,
it's not going to go away. It. This doesn't go away. You're. You're gonna have this forever, but you can take these steps to a place where you're. You're moving forward.
You're never gonna move on,
but you can move forward. And you do that by.
I. I'm. I'm not a person who ever says I need help, but you do that by accepting help from others. And the people who wanna be there for you, just.
Just lean on them, Lean on them as much as you have to. That's. They're there to help you. And you can get to a place where you can, you know, have fun and travel and do things while keeping them with you all the time.
Yeah.
Tara: Tina, anything else? You.
Tina: No. Thank you for sharing your story.
Colleen: It's.
Tina: It's moving. It's incredible.
Colleen: And.
Tina: Yeah, we're so happy to be able to talk to you.
Colleen: Thank you. Thank you again. It's been wonderful. I really appreciate it.
Tina: This is Christina Ortina Conti Donovan and my recommendation is the article I Swear this Poem Didn't make me Cry by A.O. scott from the New York Times.
A.O. scott, for those of you who are not obsessive Times readers, is the former New York Times movie critic,
and he left that role in 2023 and joined the New York Times Book Review.
Since then, he's created a series where each month he selects a poem and delves right into it, detail by detail. He deconstructs the poem on a word by word, line by line, and stanza basis, and he uses an interactive format which allows you to clearly see in the printed text of the poem that which he is explaining and analyzing.
The poem that I have loved best so far is from actually January and it is called, as I mentioned, I Swear this Poem Didn't Make Me Cry and the article presents the poem the Photograph by George Apos.
The poem at first read is deceptively simple. It's a description of a photograph in which a little girl embraces her father.
But after stepping through it with Mr. Scott, it becomes much, much more and he shows us it's actually a moving meditation on parenthood and the passage of time.
His interactive article is like a mini English class. Besides the poem analysis, we get to see the actual photograph that inspired the poem, along with some biographical information about the poet.
Regardless of your feelings about poetry, I highly urge you to check this out in just a few minutes of your time. A.O. scott manages to show us the power of words and the beauty in the craft of poetry.
I suspect unless you're an English or literature major from college, it will completely change the way you think about poetry.
We have placed a link to this article and poem in the recommendations section of this episode on our website messymiddlesence.com if you are a New York Times subscriber, please use the article link, but we have also included a gift link which is a separate link if you are not a New York Times subscriber.
If you have trouble accessing the article or the article link, please feel free to email me directly for assistance. My email will be listed along with the article links, so again we hope you check this out.
Thanks.
For show notes and other information about our podcast, please Visit our website messymiddlesence.com if you enjoyed listening, please help spread the word about our podcast by sending a link to a family member or friend.
And don't forget to leave a positive rating or review for us. As always, we hope you will return for more.
-
“I Swear This Poem Didn’t Make Me Cry” by A.O. Scott in the NY TImes
If you have trouble accessing either link, please contact us through our contact page
-
Colleen is an HR Executive with over 30 years of experience in Talent Acquisition and Talent Management, HR Project Management, COE Leadership (DEI, Employee Engagement) and HR Business Partnering. She is currently the VP of HR for Akumin, a Diagnostic Imaging and Radiation Oncology company. She holds a BS in Management Science with a concentration in Marketing from Kean University.
Colleen is the mother of two amazing kids. Her daughter Meghan, 24, is a superstar recruiter who followed her Mom into HR. Meghan graduated from Pace University in 2022. She is recently engaged and she and her fiancé and their rescue pup Toast recently moved just around the corner from Colleen.
Colleen’s son Jack was an amazing, funny, smart, empathetic human who loved everyone and brought a smile to people’s faces. He was a friend to all, especially those who were outside the margins and needed someone. Jack loved history and current events and wanted to be a High School history teacher. Jack passed away suddenly at 17 but left a legacy of kindness and light.
In her spare time, Colleen enjoys spending time with her family and friends, reading, binge watching shows like Severance (a favorite!) and crocheting, a hobby she recently picked up and is desperately trying to get good at. She also loves taking Apollo, the true love of her life, for walks near her home in Central NJ. At 11 pounds, her rescue dog is the big man around town. Colleen also spends time raising money for The Trevor Project, a charity she and her children are passionate about supporting.