Diane Calderon- Shining Light Mother Of Matthew EP 360

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Guess I've known Diane for about 6 years now, and she always has impressed me. And the more I get to know Diane, the more she impresses me. And sitting down in this interview with her and learning about how she dealt with the passing of her son at the same time she was dealing with her husband passing away from dementia, and what she has done with that is just so inspirational. So make sure you stay tuned for the whole interview because this is incredible. Hey there, everybody. This is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth, where we explore the intertwining paths of grief, love, and the everlasting bond that transcends the physical realm. And today I'm really excited to have with me a friend of mine, a fellow shining light parent, someone who has a child in spirit. Her name is Diane Calderón. Diane's story is a testament to the human spirit's capacity for transformation and for healing. After decades of dedicated service in various levels of government, from local to federal, her life took a series of profound turns. Her roles have been as diverse as a community organizer, a training coordinator, a research and statistician, a postal worker, and even a union officer. That showcases her commitment to service and community— and community, I should say. She also served as a deputy director for the governor's office of affirmative action under Arizona's first female governor, Rose Mofford, making— marking a significant milestone in Diane's career. But after retirement, Diane's life took an unpredictable turn, like all of ours do, down paths she never anticipated. After she retired, she found herself as the full-time caregiver for her husband with his, um, during his struggle with Lewy body dementia. That's a challenge that tested her strength and her resilience in ways, of course, she couldn't foresee. But even during that, Diane experienced a tragic death of her son Matthew that marked another pivotal moment in her life and led her to where she is today. She is a customer service manager for a famous medium that Diane both knows, Suzanne Wilson. She is a new author. She's got a great book out. We're going to talk about her book today. We're going to talk about all the things that, that Diane has been through and the resilience that she's shown through that.. And I hope that it's going to bring hope to everyone listening, for regardless of whatever it is you've had to go through or going through now. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief 2 Growth Diane Calderón.

Thank you very much, Brian. I very deeply appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and talk a bit about my book and to share some of the things that both of us have gone through. And many of your listeners have experienced the loss of a child. And I I know from the bottom of my heart how challenging that can be, that experience. And it's great that people like you and I have found an opportunity to meet with others who are going through a similar process to support each other and bring us to a better place. So thank you very, very much, Brian. And I know your podcast touches a lot of hearts. Thank you.

Well, I'm, as I said, I'm excited to have you here. I do want to let everybody know right now, Diane, her internet connection, there's a little bit of delay. So we're going to try to work through that. So there may be some pauses between our questions and responses. But what I'd like to start with, Diane, is whenever I talk to a parent who has a child in spirit, and you and I are very careful with language, I don't say lost children, because I don't think they're lost. But when I talk with a parent that has a child in spirit, I want to ask about Matthew. Tell me about Matthew, who he was as a little boy, who he was as a man, he was here and who he is now.

Okay. To talk about Matthew, this kid was not an anticipated birth. I ended up having this guy, named him Matthew because I saw him as so unexpected that he was a gift. And when I researched names, Matthew meant gift from God. And I thought that was a perfect name to give him. He was the sweetest little kid. My mom would call him her little angel, which, you know, over time, we thought that was really kind of funny because he wasn't that much of an angel. But he was a pretty good kid. He always had friends. He loved sports. He loved doing things with his friends. He was not the greatest sports person. Often he sat on a bench on the teams, but he, um, got really involved in supporting a team. He played basketball, baseball, Little League, everything that you could possibly think of as he was growing up. In school, he was a good student, not the greatest, but a good student. Hated reading, which surprised us because my husband and I were big readers. We just loved reading. Matthew, though, would just absorb knowledge by doing. He was that kind of an interactional person. As he got older, we had bought property up in northern Arizona. As a young kid, we were in the Phoenix area, but we bought property in northern Arizona with the idea of eventually moving up there. And we began to build a home from the ground up, come up on weekends to build. So Matthew was 13 when we started. By the time we moved here, he was in high school and he began to learn how to build by just watching Sal from plumbing, electricity, framing, everything. Matthew absorbed it. In school, high school, he took construction classes. When he went into community college, he was in construction management. He had big ideas about Being a general contractor, building homes for poor people, basically, he had plans he had drawn up to buy property and we would invest and build homes for low-income people. None of that came to fruition because he would get distracted with life. Matthew did design and build a home for us on a piece of property we had, and we sold it to make a few bucks. Beautiful home. It's still sitting there. It's gorgeous. But in the next 10, 15 years of his life, he had scattered energies. He worked at a gold mine in Nevada. He was a river rafter in Colorado. He was a project supervisor for a huge construction project in Indiana. He worked on a lot of different programs in Phoenix and in the Prescott area, renovating homes and doing maintenance and things like that. It was always his dream. He just couldn't settle into anything. When he was about 35 years old, he began to get serious with life, decided it was time to pull himself together and work towards his contractor's license. Uh, at that time I was dealing with my husband Sal, who was showing the earliest signs of Lewy body dementia. Those progressed pretty quickly into the medium stage where he needed quite a bit of care. Matthew had offered to bring me into his little business enterprise. He would take the contractor's license if I would do the business aspect, since I had some time on my hands and I had a little bit of background on, you know, computers and business and accounting and things like that. So the plan was Matthew would get moving on his business and I would have something to help keep me busy in between taking care of Sal. At the height of this, Matthew called me one day and said, hey, I'm going to be up tomorrow. I'm going to help you out, but I'm going to a program tonight. And it's about contracting. So I'll see you tomorrow. So the next day, Matthew kind of left this place and left me hanging for a bit. But to sum it up, Matthew was a good person. He had a lot of friends. He was most social animal I ever knew. And I just missed him terribly. So what can I say?

Yeah, I know that his passing was, was sudden and unexpected. So but there was— I'm trying to figure out what order we want to tell this in. Because even before he passed, I know that Sal had the Lewy body dementia, and you had an experience before Matthew passed that I don't think you thought at the time foreshadowed it, but seems like it might have. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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Right. Uh, about a month before Matthew had passed, Sal had a neurology appointment down in the Phoenix area. Matthew was living down in Phoenix, renovating a home we had bought and working, uh, uh, what is it, a construction project. He had a day off, same day I had to take Sal down for the neurology appointment. So when we exited the doctor's office, Matt was out in the parking lot and said, hey, Hey, I surprised you. Haha. Let's go for lunch. So we went to lunch, had a very nice time. Matthew asked if we would stop by the house where he was staying to pick up a few things. So it was on our way home. On the way over to the house, we'd go down Camelback Road, if you're familiar with Phoenix. We turn north on 23rd Avenue. It's a small residential feeder street in the Phoenix area, not that busy. We're driving up 23rd. Matthew's house is just off 23rd Avenue. Before we got to, you know, a few blocks away from the house, Sal starts freaking out. Now, this was not unusual for him because of Lewy body dementia. He would sometimes go into periods of paranoia and hallucinating. I'd had experiences before where I'm driving and he's afraid I'm kidnapping him and he'd try to escape from the car. But on this day, he seemed fine until we drove up that street and got closer to that house. He started freaking out on me and was moving his foot as if to hit the brake and saying, stop, stop, stop, stop. I stopped. I then pulled over, said, what's wrong? He's going to get hit. He's going to get hit. Somebody's going to get killed. I don't know where that came from because there's nobody in the street. There's hardly any traffic whatsoever. It is a residential area. Sal was insistent not to continue on that road. So I flipped the car around. Did not go to Matthew's house, hit the freeway, and brought Sal home. Weeks later, when I'm reviewing what had happened that day, it just surprised me because that street that we were driving on, that location where Sal started freaking out and I pulled over, was like 2 blocks away from where Matthew actually crossed and he got hit by a car. So was that a premonition? Somehow. Sal's mind was out there in a future point. I'm, I'm sure of it. He foresaw something. He just wasn't real clear in his head as to what that something was. There were no details. He just knew something bad was going to happen in that location.

Yeah, that— I— when I read that in your book, um, and I've known you for, for years, but I didn't know that story, I was just like, that just blew me away. Um, so Matthew, you mentioned he'd come to see you, you know, right before he passed. And so tell me about how you discovered that, that he had been struck by the car?

Well, kind of a long story short, Matthew had been up for a few days the week before he passed over. And he was very engaged in helping me with Sal. I was at a point where I couldn't take Sal anywhere with me. If I took him to a grocery store or anywhere, he could get into a point of fear, didn't know where he was. And that was kind of challenging to get him through the store and back into the car and get him home. So Matthew would come up when he had time. So I could run and do errands and get groceries. Matthew was also working on this contractor's license and needed to collect paperwork in the county and in the Prescott area to submit for the license. We had a long discussion one day, the last day Matthew was here, about a lot of things, and one of it was about life and death and spiritual matters, things that Matthew and I had never really discussed before, but on that day we did. Matthew then left. He went down to Phoenix. He was in a hiking club. He had some work to do. He called me up on, um, what day was that? Tuesday morning. Told me he'd be up later, that he had a conference he wanted to go to that night. Um, so what happened next is the next morning I get a call from a detective in Phoenix telling me you know, asking, are you aware of a Matthew Helmick? And I said, yes. And the detective said, how are you related? I said, I'm his mother. And he said, Matthew died last night. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident. When he said that, I, I almost lost it. But I had to keep it together because, you know, It's that news one might get, and you, you've got to know some details. You've got to know what's going on. How is this possible? This can't be real. Am I imagining it? Kept my composure, heard more from the detective, asked some questions. I needed to know, you know, where did this happen? At what time? Was his dog with him? Because Matthew would take the dog to the dog park. Matthew's house was a block away from a park. He was crossing 23rd Avenue, the street that Sal had freaked out on, with the dog. Fortunately, the dog was ahead of him and not on a leash because she was a really good dog and he didn't follow rules and put her on a leash like you're supposed to at the park. So she did not get impacted. But as he was crossing, a car had hit him and kept going, a hit and run. The detective said Matthew had died pretty much instantaneously from what they can tell. And the detective told me the time of death. So there I was, uh, on the phone trying to figure out, you know, why that happened, what to do. I couldn't believe my ears. I get off the phone. I go to Sal, who then was not all there that morning. And I said to him, Matthew died. Matthew died. The police called and said he got hit by a car. And the best Sal could do was tap me on the head and say, I'm sorry. And that was kind of it with Sal that morning. So that's kind of bringing you up to that point of finding out about Matthew.

Yeah, Diane, I, I'm, I'm so sorry. I, I don't even know what to say, you know, dealing with, with your, your husband with Lewy body dementia, I'm sure. And I've, I've gone through dementia with my in-laws, so I have some idea of what that's like. And, you know, being his caregiver and then having Matthew pass I can only imagine that must have been devastating. Um, what were, what were your thoughts at the time, you know, when you got that call?

Well, to tell you the truth, when I first saw the caller ID that it was Phoenix, my first feeling was, oh, that must be Matthew calling. Cause sometimes he would lose his cell phone and he would borrow one from somebody to call me.. And I knew he was due up that, um, that I think he was coming up that day. Uh, so I thought, well, I guess Matthew lost his phone. And when I said hello and I hear a male voice and the male voice says, hello, this is Detective so-and-so, my heart sunk. Matthew had had some brushes with the law in his life, but never had a call come to me from a police officer. If Matthew had been picked up for something, it would be him calling, say, hey, can you pick me up at the jail? I got pulled over for something. Never had a call come in from a police officer. So once I heard, you know, I have a detective calling me, I just knew something bad had happened. Something was wrong. This was off. The detective, you know, worked through the details. And I did ask for details. I spent maybe 15 minutes on that phone call. Grab paper, I'm writing things down. Got the detective's information, and I asked, you know, when this happened, did Matthew die quickly, or was there a period of time? And the detective was pretty sure it was quick. He said that the young man who had hit Matthew, it was a hit and run. He kept going, but he called and turned himself in an hour later. Apparently he had his mother's car., and the mother had convinced him, you need to turn yourself in. Young kid, about 20 years old. He doesn't remember anything. He doesn't know how that happened. So that was pretty devastating to hear that news. I get off the phone. I did sit for just a few minutes to kind of get myself together. I'm crying a little bit, but I knew that I couldn't break down. I had Sal in the wheelchair at the dining table and he, He had been known to sometimes push himself back and have that wheelchair fall over. I couldn't just ignore Sal. I had to go in and talk to him. And then after I told him what had happened, I was able to move him into his recliner where he would be safe. Then I broke down, and it took a while to compose myself. Had to make phone calls. So, you know, you call— I had to call his— Matthew's girlfriend, because the detective said that Matthew's dog Abby was at his house and was on the front porch and was scared. So somebody needed to go over and get Abby and take care of her. And of course, you know, who else would you call but the girlfriend? Let her know what had happened. And, you know, she just fell apart, but had enough composure to run and get the dog. And later in the day, she was able to meet me halfway from Phoenix to give me the dog. I had to call relatives. I called my sisters first, and both of them dropped everything they were doing and found ways to get to me that day. I asked them to call my dad because my dad was beginning to get into his senior moments and I wasn't in an emotional state to be able to talk to my dad.

Sure.

So one of my sisters called and told him and they called some of the other relatives. I called a couple of very close friends of mine, one who lived nearby and she dropped everything and came over and spent the rest of the day helping me. I called my stepson who lived about 40 minutes away. He came over to help. And I called my dearest friend who, um, lived down in Casa Grande, Arizona. Sal and I had married at her house. We had been close families forever. And I talked to her because she had lost her daughter a few years before to another tragedy. And I knew that she would give me the advice I might need and the shoulder to cry on and that she would understand. She and Matthew were always very close and I called her and She helped me through those first few days. She knew who to talk to and what to do to get things arranged. So it was a hard afternoon, Brian, a very hard afternoon.

Oh, absolutely. I, you know, it's just, it amazes me the resilience, the power of the human spirit to keep moving forward. Um, because I, I know people listen to this are saying, I could not do this, I, I couldn't make it through this. How did she, how did she keep her composure? How did you How do you do the things that you know you need to do?

Yeah, yeah, I know it's, it's not easy making your way through that instantaneous deconstruction of your life. And I am very fortunate that at that moment I did have some support from my friends and from the family. I think I also had a little bit of a spiritual support inside of me, an inner strength that was able to come forward and help me carry through those next few hours. I just believed that Matthew would probably be okay. I didn't have any evidence at that time yet that he was, but I wanted to believe he was okay. But I also knew that I had to carry forward. I, I had a husband to take care of. I had a home. I had You know, later that day, I had Matthew's dog to take care of. She was just terrified. And I had responsibilities. I couldn't just set all of that aside and feel sorry for myself. It was something life had thrown at me, and I needed to deal with it. And I needed to deal with it immediately.

Yeah. But you did have— you said you felt like you had spiritual help. And I can tell from your book that you did. There were a couple things, like almost miracles that went around, around this around Matthew's passing?

Yeah, this is where it got really interesting. Matthew and I, in that discussion I mentioned earlier, where we got into some spiritual topics, we mentioned, you know, how I told him how much I loved him. I loved him more than anything in the world. Him and Sal, they were the dearest things to me. And I told him that I had had this belief for a long time that we as little souls before we're born have a little bit of a say in the lives that we are going to enter. We have some kind of a planning that we get involved with and that we have a say in who our parents are. And I told him, I'm pretty sure you chose me as your mom and Sal as your Dad, and I know sometimes that hasn't worked out well between us. But hey, you chose me, you can only blame yourself, mister. And we laughed about it. And I said, I don't know where I got that idea from. It's been in my head for a very long time. But I do think we have some say in who our parents are. And we got into some other philosophical, spiritual ideas. And at the end, I don't know why I said this, but it popped into my head. You know, Matt, someday one of us is going to die before the other, probably me, because I'm older. And you know, usually the older one's going to die before the kid. But let's make a promise right now, whoever dies first has to come back and give a sign to the person that's still here. And he kind of looked at me and like, well, yeah, okay, sure, let's do that. So here I am sitting on this Wednesday is when I had gotten the word that he had died the night before. And I'm sitting there waiting for my sisters to show up. I'd had a long day. I was able to get Sal to go to bed early that night. And he was rather, you know, sedate for a change. Sitting at the table, and I'm thinking about, you know, what had happened that day, and how heartbreaking it was, and how am I going to make it through the next few days? I just don't know, how am I going to make it through my life? We had plans, and those all went out the window. I didn't know what I was going to do. As I'm sitting there, I began to review that last discussion I'd had with Matt. It had only been like 4 or 5 days before, and I was thinking, you know, Matt, we had this talk about how you and I made, you know, an agreement that if one passes, the other one has to let the person remaining know. And I didn't get a sign. Damn it, Matt. Where's my sign? And as I'm thinking that, it hit me. Bang! Wow, wait, I did get a sign. Holy cow, did I ever get a sign. And here's the sign I got. This, this changed everything for me. I'm telling you, the night before, it was a Tuesday night, Sal and I were sitting on the sofa a program was going to start. In fact, it was the State of the Union by the president. We would watch the State of the Unions almost every year. We were just sort of political junkies and we loved Obama. So we're sitting there waiting for the State of the Union and Sal had been pretty quiet that afternoon and he's focused on the television and, you know, they're getting ready for the proceedings and I'm kind of fidgeting because I don't know, I have to multitask, I guess. If they're not talking on the TV, you know, about something I'm interested in, I'm doing something else. So I'm kind of feeling around, and all of a sudden I saw in front of me little lights sparkling. I mean, they were like sparklers that you light up on the 4th of July. They're, they're sparkling right in front of my face. And I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh my God, what is that? They were there 2, 3 seconds. I'm not sure, I didn't count. I just saw them and they disappeared. I'm thinking, okay, that was really weird. What the heck was that? Looked over towards Sal and they're sparkling in front of him about the same distance away, about an arm's length away, but he's looking straight at the TV. He doesn't seem to see the lights. He's not responding to anything. He's just watching the TV screen. I'm looking at them. They disappear. I look ahead again and I think, okay, I must be losing it. That's not going to be good if Sal's hallucinating and I start hallucinating. Who's going to take care of things? Oh my God. And then they showed up again. Same thing, sparkling in front of my face, all different colors, just sparkle, sparkle. They hung out there for a little bit longer, but this time they moved to my left. I followed them. They went about a 90-degree angle and then they disappeared. And I'm looking over that way and I'm like, oh my God, I am, I'm going crazy. I'm losing it. I'm looking over there. As I look over there, I notice on the table next to me is a book. Now, like a dog sees a squirrel, I do the same, like, book! I pick up the book. It was important because it was a book about Edgar Cayce called There Is a River. And I knew that when I saw that book, that's where I got my idea about children choosing their parents. Now, mind you, I don't know how long that book had been sitting on the table. Sal tended to wander around the house, pick things up and drop them. It had probably been there earlier in the day, could have been there 3 days. I don't know, but here it is. He had pulled it off the shelf in our library and had dropped it there. So here's this book. I knew that this is where I had my idea from. I opened that book right to the page. Where they're talking about children choosing their parents. I couldn't believe it. It's like, oh my, this is the page. Well, Matthew's coming up tomorrow. I'm going to show him this book. I'm going to show him this is where I got my idea from. So now my head's, you know, focused on the book. I'm ignoring the State of the Union. I mean, the union could be great or not. I don't care. I'm reading this book. So I'm reading that whole chapter, you know, like refreshing my memory, like, yes, yes, yes, this is where I got my idea. And I closed it and I set it down. Then I'm watching the the program on TV. Didn't think much more about it. So 24 hours later, I am sitting at that dining table and I'm saying, damn it, Matthew, where's my sign? And that all floods right back into me. Whoa, wait, those lights last night, the lights I forgot about because I got distracted by the book. I didn't think anything more about those lights until I remember I had those lights in front of me. I knew at that moment that was Matthew. That was his energy showing up in our house and saying hello to me and saying hello to Sal and then drawing my attention to that book. I had no doubts. There was nothing that could distract me from that. That was Matthew. And I'm telling you, Brian, that changed everything for me. He brought me that sign. He said, yeah, mom, You're right. We continue living. There's a great afterlife. And hey, look at that book. That's where you got the idea. You're right, man. You're right.

That— I've just covered in goosebumps right now. That's just— that's so amazing. And I think it is such a great example of how the universe supports us, even when we're unaware, you know, and sometimes we don't figure it out till later on, we look back on it and realize, you know, what would have happened in the moment, but the conversation you had with Matthew, which sounds like you didn't have these conversations often, right? It just came out of the blue and you're saying things you don't know why you're saying them.

Yeah, yeah, I have no idea why that conversation came up that day. It just did. I mean, you know, over his adult life, once in a while you talk a little bit of philosophy, but he was not a deep thinker. He wasn't much you know, for reading. I discovered later as we were cleaning out his house and going through his things that he had actually in recent months before he passed, taken an interest in a few spiritual things. He had some books by Eckhart Tolle that he had been reading. He had been listening to audiobooks by what's his name, Don Miguel Ruiz, I think is his name, the guy who does the The Four Agreements. Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, yeah. In fact, one of those audio discs was in his truck when I picked up the truck at the house and it was playing and it kind of shocked me. It's like I recognized it right away. I noted the track that he was listening to. And later when I was able to get my hands on the book, I read the section and it was really remarkable that the last things Matthew would have been listening to in that truck You know, moments before he died, because he had driven home that night and then took the dog for the walk, was These Four Agreements. But in the book, it's talking about being a warrior soul and then going and having a resurrection. Yeah, it was just, it just blew my mind. So Matthew had been having some interest in spiritual matters towards the end. And I found out through his friends that he often talked about Well, I'm not going to be here long. And you know, I'm just going to be here for a short time. Not things he would ever say to me. I don't think he wanted to get me going and get me upset or something. But there was something in his being that knew he wouldn't be here forever. Well, he was seeking answers.

Just a really small aside, you mentioned Don Miguel Ruiz. I was listening to a podcast this morning. And it was an interview with his son. So yeah, that was pretty wild. So, so you, you have this experience, and you kind of have this knowing that Matthew is still with you. And I don't want to take— I want people to get your book, because there's a lot of great stuff in the book, a lot of great signs in the book. But you, you start to get these signs that Matthew was showing to you and other people around you, etc. But you're dealing still with, you know, with Sal, with his dementia. So how did your life progress after Matthew's passing?

Well, after his passing, I had 2 years of dealing with Sal's growing decline into dementia, and they were very challenging years, and they took a lot of my energy. I was homebound for a good part of that. I ended up having to pay somebody to come one afternoon a week to watch Sal so that I could go and get groceries. Because I didn't really have a family nearby that could take care of him for me. And I didn't want to put the burden on friends, like, come over every week and watch Sal. I paid for somebody to come. I got him on hospice at some point, and there was a lot of care through them. And I could no longer, you know, get him bathed or do some of the things that needed to be done. So I had some support. I also had a little bit of time on my hands shortly after Matthew had died, and I was putting together the you know, announcements for the paper. I had someone at one of the local newspapers tell me, you know, this is a great announcement. I don't usually get things like this. I think you might be interested in reading books by a couple of people. One's a medium. They're both from the Phoenix area. One book is by Allison Dubois and another one by Mark Ireland. Look it up. I'd never heard of Mark Ireland or Allison Dubois. Didn't know anything about mediumship really. I mean, I knew there was a, you know, programs about mediums or that movie Ghost where Whoopi Goldberg plays a medium, but I really hadn't pursued anything on mediumship. So I got ahold of those books. I had some time on my hands to sit and read when Sal was snapping or, you know, asleep or something. Um, found out that mediums can connect with people on the other side. Wow, that's really fascinating. Mark Ireland's book really touched my soul because he had lost his son to an unexpected death, uh, lived in the Phoenix area, Scottsdale, I believe. And he, his book went through a lot of tales in which he describes trying to find out about his son to connect through mediums. Mark's dad was the famous psychic Richard Ireland, who I recall my mom was interested in when I was young. She would watch programs. And I remember seeing Richard Ireland being interviewed. I don't know why that name stood out. So here's Mark Ireland with his tale, and I followed it faithfully. I learned about helping parents heal through Mark's books, got my hands on other books by other mediums about mediums. I watched the Long Island Medium to see how she operates. I learned a lot. Later in 2015, so about— Matt died in 2014, so a year and a half after he died, I had an opportunity one afternoon to have someone take care of Sal for the day, and I went down to Phoenix to a Helping Parents Heal meeting, and the medium there was, um, I believe it was Jamie Clark. I listened to Jamie in that session, and I'm sitting there like all the other parents, like, oh please, connect with my son, connect with my son, and Jamie had a couple of little things that I almost said, that might be me, but someone else took it. I thought that was amazing to watch Jamie, and I could see how he was helping so many others. So I became a pretty strong believer in mediumship. Prior to that though, just to say, in 2014, in the months after Matthew had died, I was so intrigued by the mediumship, I thought, I'm going to have to have a reading. I just have to have a reading. I have to know one thing. Why did Matthew put himself in danger that night? Why was he even in the street? If there was a car coming up that road, why was he in the street? Like I said, it's not a busy road. It was nighttime when he got hit. He should have seen the car's headlights. I had asked the detective, did the guy have his headlights on? And he said, yeah, yeah, they were on, they were on. So I couldn't figure out why Matt would have been in that robe. So I had a medium reading. I chose to have the reading, I believe it was at the end of May. Matthew had died at the end of January. I felt by then I was comfortable enough with mediumship that it was worth a try, though I was still a little skeptical. Uh, when I tried to find a medium, I went to Best Psychic Directory because I had stumbled into some works by Bob Olson, and I felt that he had done some research. And trusted that his list of mediums would probably be a good one to pull from. The very first medium I pulled up was one in Arizona. I thought, oh, I'll go to one in Arizona. I didn't realize mediums can meet you on, on, over the phone or on Zoom or some other means. Thinking I'd have to have an in-person, the first one who I pulled up was Suzanne Wilson, the Carefree Medium. And I'm looking at her page, it's like, wow, she looks really nice, nuts and carefree. I guess I could probably arrange to go down there. But then I got hesitant and skeptical. I don't know enough about mediums. Uh, the news about Matthew's death was in the papers. It was on television. I could go back and see the videos of the crime scene, so to speak, because it was available on the internet later on. So I was skeptical. Well, I don't know. She's too local. She could look it up, right? I'll find somebody on the other side of the country. So I did, uh, picked a person named Cheryl. Cheryl was a retired nurse. She had done geriatrics. I thought, well, this is good. Maybe she could connect with Matt. And if nothing else, maybe she could give some insight on, on Sal and his condition. So I arranged for a medium reading with Cheryl. All she had was my name, Diane. That's it. Didn't ask any questions. We opened up that meeting. It was towards the end of May. And it was remarkable what Cheryl brought in. It was just remarkable. It was healing. It answered questions. And I didn't really have a lot of questions that I was allowed to ask. I had a list, but Cheryl had said, okay, let's just see what we get. And I only want you to say yes or no. And if I need clarification, then I will ask, but don't give me too much information. So I was pretty comfortable that, you know, I wasn't giving her leading information on, you know, giving her the names and the, and the circumstances. In this reading, Cheryl had my mom come in first, which was really incredible. She didn't expect mom to show up. Mom had died 30 years before, and some of the information Cheryl gave me was right on target with what my mom had gone through in her life and how she had passed. Then mom brings Matthew as a little boy into Cheryl's presence, and then of course Matthew grows up pretty quick. And Cheryl had so much information about Matt. She had his dog over there with him, his cat. I had forgotten that he had had a cat that had died shortly before he had passed. Described Matthew to a T. She just had so much information. It was incredible. But she had that feeling that he had died quickly, tragically, but couldn't quite get her fingers on it. And I didn't tell her anything. Finally, she says, okay, Matthew's trying to give me more information about his passing. So what he's telling me now, Brian, if you, if you have time, I wanna tell you what, what she said. Absolutely. Okay. Cheryl said, he's showing me that he was trying to go to the other side. But instead of going to the other side, he went to the other side. His angels were there. They told him it's time to go and they took him to the other side. I'm really not sure what that means. It seems like it was something pretty quick and tragic. It was clear as a bell to me, Brian. Clear as a bell. So I said, do you want me to tell you how he died? And she said, yes. Matthew was on one side of that street. He was getting ready to cross over to the other side of the street. He got hit just before stepping on that sidewalk on the other side. So the angels came, Brian D Smith, and told him it's time to go to the other side. They had him. They had him with them. He didn't see that car. He wasn't meant to see that car. It was time for him to leave, to go to the other side of the veil. And they had him in their arms. I got so much healing and relief from that, that, hey, my kid wasn't drunk. He wasn't on a death wish. He wasn't ignoring the dangers. He was a kid who would— a kid, a grown man who would take the dogs for walks and always make them stop on that corner and look both ways and make sure it was safe before they crossed because he had a fear that someday one of them might get out of the yard and they would head over to the dog park on their own and get hit by a car. So, you know, it's like, it didn't make sense that he would have crossed in a danger zone. Well, he didn't. The angels were there. He wasn't meant to be here. He wasn't, he was meant to go. And I felt it was just the perfect way to go. He didn't feel anything. You know, you always worry when your child dies of something that's tragic, that they were in pain, that they suffered. He didn't feel anything, Brian. He didn't feel anything. The angels took him. And he was a little confused according to the, the medium at first, but they, you know, explained to him what was going on and he was given a choice. You can go back to that body. He was looking at his body and seeing how broken up it was. You can go back and they showed him what would happen if he were to return and how his life would be and how my life would be impacted. And he told them, no, I don't wanna put my mom through that. I'm ready. Let's go. And he left.

I think that is such an important— Diana, I want to interrupt you for just a second because there's so much— what you said there was so, so important for people to understand. Parents who have lost children, our minds tend to go to the worst. Were they in pain? Were they, were they scared? Were they alone? You know, did they die alone? And what I've been told is like, nobody dies alone. We always have someone there to meet us, angels loved ones, guides, whatever, that there's typically no pain associated with death, that a lot of times the spirit will leave the body before. And there's always this thing with, again, especially with parents, but the other people also, what if, what if they had— why, why did my— why did they have to die? Why couldn't they come back? And I think sometimes the body's just not viable. And we never know from this side, what if we think, oh, if only they had lived, we don't know what kind of damage they might have gone through. They don't And you— I mean, I can imagine thinking, okay, well, I'm losing my husband to this thing. And then I lose my son. This is terrible. I want him back. I was just talking with someone yesterday. I want them back. And we like, we don't know what it'd be like if we had them back.

Yeah. You're right. You're right, Brian. You don't know what it would be like. It probably depends on the circumstances of everyone's passing. And if it was something tragic like that, You don't know what it would be like to have them back. It might have been much more challenging and difficult. I believe in Matt's case, it would have been a long road to any kind of recovery because he was pretty, you know, battered up, broken up. And he was able to, to see that. And, you know, there's other people who, you know, may have come back and things might have been worse for their, their family and their parents. And I think they're given a glimpse as to what it would be like if they stay on the other side. And that they can be more helpful to us on the other side. I believe Matthew saw what was coming with his story getting out there and with helping his friends know that life is short and you need to live it now and, and enjoy it while you got it. This is the theme that Matthew has pushed from that other side, and he certainly pushed the story to get out in a book format and to get me out there talking about it because he wants people to know that, yeah, it's sad that you lose someone you love dearly. But they're going to be okay. They are okay. And they're right there with you, pushing you and trying to send you the signs to keep you going and motivated and know that everything's going to be fine. And you'll be with them at some point in your own future.

Yeah, well, I think that is, you know, there's lots of lessons in your book and in your story. But one of the, one of the lessons is that, okay, we look at it from the point of that person's life being quote, cut short, that, that, that, that's the end of their life. And you and I both know now that's the furthest thing from the truth. That's not the end of their life. It's not the end of their existence. It's not even the end of their influence in this world, because our, our children are reaching more people through us than they probably would have reached if they had stayed in the physical.

Absolutely. Absolutely. They have touched so many hearts with their stories and with them pushing people like you and myself and so many others out there who are going public with, with their stories, with their emotions, with sharing what they have experienced. And especially with you, Brian D Smith, and your work in helping people through the grieving process. I mean, it's just remarkable. I know you and I didn't see this coming years ago, right? Back in 2012, we didn't see this, 2013. And then things started happening. And here we are connecting with each other and with so many parents who are going through these losses. And not only the parents, you, you lose a spouse, you lose a parent, you lose a best friend. It's all grief, different levels, different layers. Different connections you may have with those who have passed over. But in our world, we learn that they're always there. They're helping us. They're watching over us. Sometimes they can come in and talk to us in a dream, or, you know, if we get some mediumship readings or interact with people in this world, they'll drop in on them and give us a message or a sign. It's just remarkable how life is in that afterlife.

And the physical life, again, I was listening to Dom Miguel Ruiz just this morning listening to his son in this interview, and he was talking about the fact that every relationship ends at some point— the physical, excuse me, physical relationship— either by choice, by a life circumstance, or by, by one of the people passing. You know, when we get married, you know, it's, it's interesting we say in the vows, 'Til death do us part,' because we're, we're acknowledging the fact that we are not going to be together physically forever. So every relationship ends. We A lot of times, again, especially with parents, we judge that passing of a child as it wasn't supposed to end then. And it doesn't matter whether our child's 15, 38. I've talked to parents who have lost children in their 50s and 60s. And they still feel like they're— it's not supposed to end before my, my life ends. But this is something that you— we know it's going to happen eventually to all of us.

Right. Death and taxes, that those are the two eternal qualities in our lives is you're going to run into both of them. Death is a hard one for us because you've lost that physical presence. You can't hug them. I mean, I still have periods where I just miss those guys terribly. Watching football, Brian D Smith, I mean, I am not a big sports nut. But Sal and Matt love football. They love baseball. Every year I find myself drawn to watch the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl if I can. Doesn't matter who the teams are. It's great when it's a team that Sal or Matt loved and supported, but I still will watch them and I feel like the guys are with me and that they're cheering or they're booing or they're, you know, commenting on, you know, the the plays and what have you. I'm still drawn to that. But then I kind of miss that they're not here and that they're not sharing in, you know, the snacks and the chicken wings or whatever it is one would be eating. I have to eat that all by myself. So I don't eat that much. But, um, yeah, I still miss them a lot. Yeah, but I know they're around me. It would just be nice to have them come up and hug or, you know, hear their laugh. Although I do feel some things sometimes. I feel in the morning, almost every morning. Something's touching my hair right here, and I'm positive it's Sal, just a light touch.

Yeah.

And with Math, I'll hear him laugh sometimes. I just kind of hear it. It's not clear, but I can just feel him around me laughing because that would be Math. He'd be standing there laughing at everything I do. But they're there. I just wish I could have them in the physical once in a while. My dream is like, I will join you guys one day and we are going to hug, man. We are going to hug when I get over there. Good God, we have got to hug.

Oh yeah, we will, we will. I want to talk to you a little bit more about Sal and, and dementia. As I said, I've, I've gone through that. I just lost my mother-in-law at this point just a little over a month ago with dementia. Um, I, I was going to say I have a theory, but actually I've seen it people with dementia, sometimes it seems like they allow spirit to break through. They, they can see and, and sense things that we can't. And when I was reading your book, the first thing that struck me was Sal on that street, you know, the premonition of Matthew's passing. But even after Matthew passed, Sal had some contact with Matthew, it sounds like.

He absolutely did. It was phenomenal when Sal would share stories about Matthew coming in. One in particular touched my heart. One day Sal says, clear as a bell, oh, Matthew came and told me that he will be there when I die. And I'm like, Matthew Capeman said he'd be there when you die? Yes. He said that he's learning how to help people when they die. And that when it's my time, he'll be there for me. He'll help me pass over. I'll tell you, Brian, that, that's remarkable that Sal would have said that. And it makes sense that, yeah, Matthew would certainly be there when Sal passes over. I felt Matthew's presence in those hours before Sal passed. We kept Sal here at the house through hospice, and he passed here at the home. And there was a lot of energies going on before his passing. Another time Sal says to me, oh, my mom and Matthew were here. Now, I'd never met Sal's mom. She died in the '50s when he was, you know, a teenager. And I had never met her. I have her portrait hanging up in the house. I know what she looks like, but I had never met the woman. But here she is with Matthew, according to Sal, coming to visit. So I thought that was really cool that Sal's mom and Matthew, who had never met in the physical, were hanging out together on the other side. Sal would sometimes have visits from his, uh, deceased relatives, his brother, his brother-in-law. His sister had died months before Sal passed over. She also had had dementia and he felt her presence shortly after she died and was talking about her being here. So that was rather interesting. I didn't write that in the book, but it's, she, he, she was visiting him. They had been very close when they were growing up. So he had a lot of visitors here. There were times he would talk about people. He would react sometimes. I would see him talking to someone and I'd say, who are you talking to? And Sal spoke Spanish. He grew up in Mexico and I often had trouble understanding what he was telling me. With dementia, they have a harder time vocalizing. So it would come out a little slurred. I'd have to call up one of his relatives and say, Would you happen to know who El Zorro was? And they tell me, oh yeah, that was, uh, you know, my tío's best friend back in the, you know, '50s and '60s. That was his nickname. So, okay. Could you tell me who El Feo was? Oh, well, yeah, that was a guy he worked with. He was pretty ugly. And it's like, wow, Sal's having all these conversations. I don't know most of these folks. But when he would have, you know, Matthew show up or his mom. Or someone that I, I did know, that was pretty remarkable. It happened quite a bit.

And I want to say to people, uh, because my father-in-law went through something similar, and this was many years before I had any kind of this kind of understanding, and we dismissed them as hallucinations. And we talked, and I don't know if there may be real hallucinations too, but I, I know a lot of the stuff is real. And in his particular case, he would only talk about people who had passed away. I mean, it wasn't like he was saying the guy down the road came to visit, and the neighbor that was— it was always somebody who he had known that was no longer in the physical. And it was years later before I realized, I think he was actually being visited by people.

You know, the— when Sal went on hospice, and, you know, I met with the doctor who ran the program, and I had mentioned to him that Sal was claiming to be visiting some of these dead people, the doctor's first response is, oh well, that's just part of dementia. It's just hallucination. Sometimes if it gets bad, there's some medications we could do, but that's all it is. Just ignore it. And I know that in reading about Lewy body dementia and all of the stages that the people may go through that are suffering from it, that that's often dismissed, these stories of visitors from the other realms as hallucinations. Now I'll tell you, Sal did hallucinate at times. Sometimes it would get pretty scary, but his hallucinations were more about what was happening now. Like when he thought I was some bad guy that was kidnapping him and was taking him somewhere to kill him. That's a hallucination. When Sal would escape from the house and head off down the road and I'd have to go and get him, and fortunately I'd have somebody around to help me, that was a hallucination. He wasn't running home to mama. He was running away because he thought he was in a facility and I was the chief medical officer and I was going to murder him or some crazy thing. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah, I— so I'd say I want people that are listening, if you're dealing with someone with dementia or even in the end stages of life, you know, listen and try to observe because you can separate like what's clearly hallucination versus maybe they are getting visits and there's something about the brain-soul connection. It seems like when that starts to break down, it's like it allows spirit to, to come through. It's like they can start to see the other side because they're not as connected here. But let's talk about where you, where you are today, because, you know, you— it's kind of, it's wild, the connections, because, you know, I think about, you know, you and Helping Parents Heal. And with me, I started listening to podcasts, and I ran into somebody who was a friend of Suzanne's, and they gifted me a reading. So the first medium reading I ever had was with Suzanne. So we've got that connection in common as well. So you— the first medium that you were going to reach out to, um, was Suzanne, and you decided to do someone else. Then later on you came back around and you have a relationship with her now, right?

Right. It's interesting, you know, how all of that came to fruition. It wasn't something I had anticipated. You know, like I said, after Mad had died, I had time to learn about mediums, and I, I read voraciously, lots of books. Um, in 2016, January 2016, Sal crossed over, and after his passing, I had lots of free time. I really didn't have a whole lot to do. When you're a caregiver and all that goes away, you're kind of sitting here twiddling your thumbs. I decided that it was now time for me to really delve into learning more about that afterlife and spirit communications and, you know, things that I had read about but hadn't had time to really delve into. So I looked further. I stumbled into Suzanne Giesemann and her book Wolf's Message during my reading before Sal died. Notice that shortly after Sal passed in early 2016, Giesemann was coming to the Phoenix area and doing several classes and workshops. And one class was like beginning mediumship. So I signed up for everything I could because I liked, you know, her book, and I wanted to learn more. Took kind of a basic mediumship class. And through those, I met a handful of people that were kind of her followers or groupies. They really enjoy interacting with her. About a year later, I was invited to be part of a group called Soul's Awakening, which was composed of a lot of people who had met through Giesemann's classes. And it was a lot of fun to be invited to that group. Prior to that invitation, though, I had to go through that one-year anniversary of Sal's death. Death, and it was a challenging one. I didn't realize it would be so difficult. I thought I had my stuff together, so to speak, and I could handle it. So I had gotten into a practice of doing a meditation every morning. I would use a guided meditation. So that morning, been a year, I thought, well, I'm going to do a meditation. Maybe I'll hear from Sal today. And I opened up my computer and I had a touchscreen and I pull up the folder that had all of the audio files. And I hit something on the upper— was it the upper left corner, which was supposed to be a meditation? And prepared to listen. And instead, it started playing a song, which was the Il Divo version of My Way. I fell apart because when Sal was in his last stages, I had put together a little video of photos and songs to show people at the celebration we did for him. And the very first song was the Il Divo song, My Way. Sal had always told me, that's my song. When I die, you play My Way. So when I put it together, I didn't choose the Elvis Presley or the Frank Sinatra version. I liked the Il Divo, because Sal being Mexican and a Spanish speaker, Il Divo does a mix of Spanish and English. I thought it was a beautiful rendition. So that thing starts playing and it just like melted me. I couldn't take it. Like, oh my God, I can't believe this. And why is that playing? I did not touch that. I did not touch that icon. Sal, you did this. And I'm, I just had a hard time. I mean, it was like, great, that's a sign from Sal. But it put me in a funk and that funk lasted for days, for days. So after, oh, about a week, I was hoping for a sign. I needed a sign, and I, and I asked for it. I was feeling like I was stagnating, and I needed something. Went to bed one night, had a dream. In the dream, I'm seeing Sal, I'm seeing a feather, I'm seeing a piece of paper, uh, I'm meeting with Suzanne Giesemann in the dream. Really an odd one. I wake up, I get around to opening the computer that morning, and Giesemann would post something every day from her team called Sanaya, a daily message, and there'd be a photo. And the first message was stagnation. And I'm like, whoa, you know, that's just what I was feeling last night. I need a sign and I'm thinking I'm stagnating. I read the message. I resonated with everything in that message. It's, it was calling to me. It was my message. The photo she had was a feather. It was sitting in a wedding ring. There's a piece of paper under it. It's like, oh my God, that's like the dream. This is just crazy. I reached out to Giesemann and I said, hey, I've been in a funk. This is what's been going on. And then this is what happened. And this message is meant for me. I just know it. Giesemann writes back and says, well, you know, that's really incredible. I think it is for you. In fact, I'm sure of it. So we had a little back and forth and she gave me some ideas on, you know, how to get out of that funk and move forward with life, which was great. So here we'd had this little interaction. About 2, 3 weeks later, shortly after I'd been invited to this group of hers, this Soul's Awakening group, that I get a call from Giesemann and she says, hey, Diane, um, do you know Suzanne Wilson? And I said, well, yes, I know who she is. I'd gone to a Helping Parents Heal meeting the month before. She was the presenter. I had said hello to her. I'm sure she doesn't know me. Why? Well, she's looking for an assistant, a part-time assistant, and she reached out and I thought of you. And so I'm like, oh wow, part-time. Well, can I work from home? Because I don't want to be driving down to Carefree to do any kind of work. That's a long drive. She said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. From home, just part-time. If you're interested, I'll let her know. So sure, I'm interested. So Wilson calls me a little bit later and she introduces herself and I said, yeah, we met, but I'm sure you don't remember me. And I don't think she remembered me. Me, but because lots of people go up and talk to her. So she said, yeah, yeah, I need an assistant, and I was looking for someone who had some idea about mediumship and how that works. And I'd reached out to Suzanne Giesemann, my friend, because I thought maybe she would know someone. And she said she did. She called me back and gave me your name. Are you interested? And I said, yeah, I am. We mentioned a little bit of the details, but then she said to me, You know, it's kind of funny. After I hung up with Giesemann, I put the phone down and the ceiling fan kicked on in the, in the room there. And I looked at it and Carl, my husband, looked at it and we noticed the remote is sitting, you know, on the table. No one had touched it, but that fan was going. And I told her, oh, that's my son. Your son? I said, yeah, I lost my son. His name's Matt. He had installed the ceiling fans at my house, and often when I would have visitors here, family, or I could be in the room on the phone talking to his old girlfriend or whoever, those fans would kick on. No reason, they just kick on. So we figured that was a sign for Matt. So I think he turned your fan on. And Suzanne says, oh my gosh, okay, hold on, hold on. He says, all right, I see him. He's standing right next to you. His hand is on your shoulder. And he says, yeah, that was me. So hey, Brian, there's my reading with Suzanne Wilson. She's got my kids standing here. He's playing with us. He had known Suzanne Giesemann. He knew I had read Wolf's Message. He had popped in and given a reading through her to me, you know, a long time before. So there was a connection there. I guess he heard Giesemann and Wilson talking about needing an assistant and thought, aha, mom's just sitting there doing nothing, feeling sorry for herself. Let's make a connection. So that's how I started working with Suzanne Wilson. And that was in 2017. So that's— gosh, it's almost 7 years since I started working with her, Brian.

Yeah. Well, I— there, there's so much more. And I appreciate you sharing that. But I don't want to let people know, it's in, it's in the book. So see if I can ever get it right there. Living and Loving Life All Day, Every Day, which was something that Matthew said that came from him, the title. I love that. Um, and thanks, Diane, for sharing, like, you know, helping us realize the universe is really a magical place. And then again, we've just, we just skimmed the surface here today of your story and how all these things tie together, connect together. And, you know, for parents that, that, you know, when we get to a certain point in life, you know, you know, starting over is, it's kind of a daunting thing. I can't, I can imagine you being retired, probably thought what am I going to do? And you're living this— like, you're now— you're a medium. So you're a medium yourself. We didn't really talk about that. But because of you meeting Suzanne and developing mediumship, you're doing that and writing books. So I know you have another book planned. So tell me about the other book that you got planned.

I do have another book planned. It's— right now I'm titling it Finding the Medium Within. Part of the reason for writing the second book is that in doing the first one, I had a lot of stories stories about hearing from Matthew, hearing from Sal, being in development circles, practicing mediumship, doing an awful lot of communicating with, with others in the spirit world. And I wanted it in the first book. I had a person who was helping me with the editing, and she suggested, that's a bit too much. Let's pull that out and think about a second book where you can go into those stories. The first book, we're just talking mostly about Matthew and the incredible signs that he was giving and how it led you to where you are today. So book 2 will be a little bit more about that background, that, that inner communication through mediums, as a medium, getting more signs from spirit, Matthew, Sal, mom, dad. I mean, I have a whole plethora of people in spirit who have been coming in. So I'm working on putting together a story that I hope will inspire people to consider medium readings and consider maybe being mediums if they're so drawn, because that spirit world is incredible. And in a lot of the books I had read, the most exciting parts to me were when someone would say, oh, so we had this medium reading and this is what happened. And I mean, I would like devour that, like, oh, what happened? What'd spirit say? So I'm hoping my book will give a little more insight as to what spirit does, how they come in, and what they like to talk about.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of great stuff in this book, and I'm looking forward to the second one. So let people know how they can reach you.

Oh, well, I have a website. We're still kind of working out the kinks, but you can go to DianeCalderon.com. Take a look at the website. I have started a little blog post. I have one blog. I have links to some of the other interviews I may have participated in, and anything coming up will go in there. I have links to purchasing the book. The book again is Living and Loving Life All Day, Every Day. It is available on Amazon. I believe you can go to a little bookstore and ask them to order it. It should be available through that venue too. Yeah, so that's how you reach me. You can just go to the website, there's a place to put in your contact information, and I respond to whatever comes in. So thank you.

Sounds great. Well, Diane, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for being here today. Thanks for sharing Matthew and Sal with us. And enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you so much, Brian. I, again, I appreciate it. Love you, man. Love you from the day I first met you and Ty, which, you know, it's been a while. It was like 7 years ago, I think we met at St. Petersburg. Yeah, with Mark Pitstick and Suzanne Giesemann. So you guys are wonderful people. And God bless you.

Yeah, enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you.

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