Rev. Cordelia Wallace on Loss of a Spouse with David Kessler

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See myself there in Facebook, so that means we're there also. Very good. Feel free to say hello on Facebook once you're in there too. Welcome, everyone. I'm so glad to see everyone coming in this afternoon. I have a special session. A wonderful guest is here with us. So if you want to say hello, let me know where you're viewing from. I'd appreciate it. Nice to see everyone here in the chat. From New York to San Francisco and Philadelphia. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Great you're all here.

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Very good. All.

All right. All. I'm just going to give everyone a chance to find their way in. I if you're this is your first time, I am in a few different places. I love bringing amazing people to you and we are in a few different groups and that I have the privilege of working with. We're also in Facebook. Coming to you live on Facebook. So, so glad you're here. I really appreciate you joining us today. And I often say hello to people as if when I was growing up, there was a show called Romper Room where the teacher would pretend she saw everyone. After Covid hit and we closed everything down, this group started. I would say hi to everyone as if I see them. So I see Krista and I see Robin's here and I see Lisa's here from Michigan. And I'm so glad that everyone's here with us joining us. And it's so important. I see people from Hawaii and Wisconsin. Welcome. Glad you're here. So I mentioned we decided in this group that we weren't going to give the virus any more power than it had. It could do horrible things in the world, but it couldn't stop us from connecting. And we've been connecting here virtually ever since then in this wonderful group. I also am broadcasting right now into two other groups that I have and it's because today's guest, when I talked to her, I thought I want her to be in my grieving, fully living, fully group. But then I thought, oh, I want her in tender hearts and I want her in the Facebook group. And it is because when I just meet certain people, I have to share them with the world. So that is what I am doing today. I am sharing someone really extraordinary with you and I am so glad to hear have her here. So I'm going to be Bringing her on right now to join us. And one of the things we always do before I do that is we're all here because someone we loved is no longer physically with us. And that doesn't mean we can't send them love and connect with them. So join me in just a moment of silence to send those who are no longer physically with us our love, to let them know how much they mean to us. So join me in that moment.

Thank you for that. As I talk about the.

The idea about how we come together, I also talk about that concept that we are also here together.

Many different religions, many comes from many different places, and many different losses, but we all come together as humans. And so I brought some really wonderful people with a religious and spiritual background to this group. There is no one religion to this group, but we honor all the places that people come from. And I'm so thrilled to have the Reverend Cordelia Wallace with us here today. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to have you on. Let me just unmute you so we can all hear you.

There you go. Hi there.

Hi there. How are ya?

It's so great to be with you and see you here today. I just. We had a wonderful talk the other day. We had a mutual friend who brought us together, and I thought, I really want to, as I said, share you with the world and talk a little bit about. Obviously we're all here in these different groups because we're dealing with loss. And I'm sure, obviously, as a minister, as a reverend, professionally, you have dealt with this a lot. And my guess is, like everyone else on the planet, you've had to deal with it personally, too. So I wonder if you might just share a little of your story with us.

So I just want to say, hey, David, how are you? And to everyone that's viewing us from all of David's worlds, what a delight it is to be here this afternoon, almost evening in New York. You know, I am third generation Pentecostal. And so, you know, I started out with faith. I didn't always live it, but I definitely started out with it. And at some point, you know, I've been doing what I do now for almost 25 years.

And then, you know, you can be doing something for so long, and then you have this traumatic experience, surely having assisted my husband with funeral services, we call them homegoing services.

And then being there to comfort families that have lost their children and families that have lost their spouses or families that have lost cousins or grandmothers or all of that.

You live through it, you walk through it, and surely you are feeling or you have empathy to those people. But then something happens in your world that changes the dynamics of what you've always said, what you've always done, how you've handled it. And so let me just talk about that for a moment. January 2019.

I've been married, or I was married for 32 years.

To a great guy that I always called my dark chocolate Cadiva bar. And he called me his marshmallow in his hot chocolate. We were capable and had two wonderful children and lived a life pretty simple. He had been the pastor and bishop of our local church for 30 years. September of 2018. And I traveled evangelistically throughout the country and the world doing what I do. But on the weekend of 2019, January 12th 13th, we go to church. I'm co hosted with another pastor colleague of mine. So I was there in Brooklyn that morning, come back, we have dinner and he said he's not feeling that well, but it seems like a cold. He had traveled the weekend as well. Monday morning we wake up and he says he's not feeling well, he wants to go to urgent care. And I thought he's not feeling well, it's probably the flu. And surely.

We go to urgent care and the doctor that I trust emphatically is there and he gives him a flu test and it comes back positive. So he has the flu, but his breathing is quite shallow. He takes X ray and he says he has a touch of pneumonia. He sends him home with an antibiotic already taken, taken at the office and says quarantine him and if anything changes, call 911. I quarantined him. I brought him to my daughter's bedroom because she's married now. And I said I'm going to step out to get some juice and more water and some soup. You guys know what that is? And I come back 35 minutes later because I needed to go get the prescription as well. And David is downstairs, his name was David too. David was downstairs. And for a moment I was somewhat annoyed because he had the flu and now he's going to give all of us the flu. And I walk in the family room and I'm like, what's up, babe? And he's like, I'm not breathing well. We're talking about 2 o', clock, maybe in the afternoon. And so I call 911 and they came immediately, within seconds, and they gave him oxygen. He's alert, he's not lethargic, he's listening to all of Us. He's talking to me or nodding at me because now he has an oxygen on his mouth.

And they put him in the ambulance and they dash off. One of our ministers was here and I asked her to ride with him because her car was quite small.

Thinking, I said, Bishop is 6:4, so of course he's not going to be able to fit into a little buggy. I'm going to take my truck. I'm right behind the ambulance. As I'm parking. She calls me hysterical and said, get inside. And I'm inside and I walk in and they are working on him. They are pumping at his heart. And at 4:36, they pronounce him dead. How can this be? This doesn't make sense. We were together at 8:00 in the morning. 8:30 at the emergency room at the urgent care. And 2:00, you're home, we're good. And 4:36, you're gone. That is a moment in life I will never forget. I'll never forget him leaving. And I'll never forget that moment, that moment in time. It almost like it stops. And I know for some of you can say the same thing. Like there's this gut punch, David, that you get and you can't explain it. You don't know whether to scream. I didn't know what to do.

I went into alert because my children were on their way to the hospital. I called both of them. They both worked in. My daughter worked in Wall street, my son worked in Brooklyn. I said, you need to get here. Daddy's not feeling well in that second. I'm trying to navigate because both of us are public, pretty public in our community, our Christian community. And I was trying to cause my kids to get there first before it spread.

I don't know how I navigated it all. And I'm not really sure if you're supposed to. I think for a second you're supposed to go numb, but you can't stay there.

And surely you've got to go through sorrow and you've got to go through the stages and you've got to. You've got to be able to cry. Crying is healthy. You've got to be able to be around people that just want to listen to your story again and again and again, just so that you're emptying out. But it's after the services. Bishop had lived a very ecumenical life. And so the services were two days.

But after that is what happens next. And I am such an advocate of what happens next, because if you don't move to next. You will always live in a place of mourning.

And never come to a place that you see a new dawn. Surely you want to never forget them.

And surely memories, anything. The other day I got an email from the cemetery where Bishop is resting, and they were asking, did you want to order Father's Day flowers for the gravesite? Surely a tear. But I can't stay there. And I think that truly for our community, our Christian community that I'm a part of, we had so many losses. Congregants were transitioning, and so many pastors and bishops have left now their pulpits unattended. I got a call just two days ago that one of our colleagues in Pittsburgh, he went to the hospital, and two days later, he was gone. So death is very real. I never want to make it, and I don't think you either. Death is real. You know, there's a. There's a process to it, but. But for all of us, you can't stay there. You can't live in that place forever. The intent of God, whatever religion we are, the intent of God is that if he left us here, there's a cause, there's a reason. If he, whoever, is no longer in our life, there's a cause for that, too. We don't have definition to that, but we do have an opportunity to go on and to move on and to find a way to navigate that.

Some days will be better than others. Some weeks will be great. Some months will be just full of laughter and joy. And then you'll hit a bump, but you can't stay on the bump. It's like driving a car and you hit a bump, you want to go over the bump. I think it becomes important that we learn how to get through the mourning process so that we can go over the bumps. You know what I'm saying?

Absolutely. And it's interesting. Sometimes I. You know, how many of us say the same things in different ways? And I talk about it from the psychological aspect about we don't want to get stuck in the traumatic moment. That is a horrible place in our life that we pass through, but it's not a place we want to stay in or live from. And that's part of this work that I do, that you do, that so many of us are doing, because I think I talk about it many times as sort of the active grieving versus the passive morning where we can stay stuck.

I want to go back to something. I think it's so interesting. And we've talked privately and folks on here Know that.

I've shared how my work was, my mother dying in a shooting, and it was racially motivated and I couldn't be there. Sounds a lot like today things haven't changed as much as I wish they had, but we've all got to work towards that. And my younger son died a few years ago. David, also another David.

He's beloved David.

The beloved David's. Exactly. And I'll tell you, it is just like you. You were doing the work, you were committed to the work. You were serving people in crisis and death and grief. And what a different moment it is when it comes to us again.

I actually said I wanted to write so many parents that I had counseled and other people I counseled saying I had forgotten how bad the pain was. That something so visceral. And like you said, I think you said, like, it's a moment of definition in ourselves.

That's right. It becomes that moment that it's almost like for a second, you lose breath. For a second, just for a second, you lose breath. And then you have to find ways to walk through the process. For me.

I started this thing called Thinking out Loud because in my community of Christian community, we're so private. We're there for the public, but the public never really does get to see who we really are, what we're really feeling. We come back strong. We come back with another preaching message or another teaching lesson. I started to write on my social media, particularly on Instagram, this whole. Almost weekly for a while, thinking out loud this. I missed him coming up the steps. I looked for his voice. It didn't seem right that the garage door wasn't opening. And I talked about those losses, how I needed to move the clothes, but I wasn't ready to do that. And I talked about how going back to the church, you know, he had just preached there the following Sunday. What was I supposed to do in this moment? So I think for me, I had to come to the place that I became very transparent about how I was feeling. Not so much looking for sympathy or empathy, but almost downloading what I needed to get out of me.

And isn't that also sharing the human and the spiritual experience that we see, just like you say publicly, we see your faith. And to let people know it isn't easy.

Yeah, I mean, it's not. I mean, you have to, you know, you have to say, you know, this hurt me. This is devastating to me. This is trauma to me. You know, and even now, you know, just simple things that I've done so That I can get to my morning every day. Not tomorrow, but every day, get to my morning. I repainted my whole house. I changed all the furniture. And it wasn't like David had transitioned in the house, but to live. I was no longer living as a married woman. I was now living as a single woman, as a widowed woman. And so the concept of how I lived had to change as well. I think sometimes we hope. Hold on so much to the. And please hear my heart to the death of the moment, that we omit the necessity to take a deep breath, assess that no matter where you were in that moment, there was little we could have done. You know, I even said that even at Bishop's funeral service, that I would have given life for him. I just thought he had so much more to offer the world. I would have been, you know, take me instead. He just was that man that I just felt the world needed. But when you come through this, you realize that God intends for you to go on. Days will come and you'll cry. Days will go and you'll find laughter. Days will come and. And you'll just want to cover your head with the pillow. But at the end of the day, it's. It's. It's imperative that. That your moment of mourning, really. There's a scripture in the Bible that says weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Joy is that thing that does not change based on a circumstance. You walk into it. It becomes almost a strength of internal strength to where you're going and how you're going to get there. Sometimes you even have to recalibrate your thinking to be able to adjust, because now there becomes adjustments, and whatever those adjustments are, it's necessary to make them.

And I don't feel like we are teaching anything new.

Right.

I always say it's almost an unlearning process of this modern world I often think about. I'm teaching people what our great grandparents knew. I say to people, you come from a long line of dead people, like every ancestor has died. This isn't a new thing that's happening to us, but I do feel like we encounter and we work with. There's all different speeds to this.

Our grief is different. Your grief looks very different than my grief, looks very different than everyone who's watching here. There is no one right grief, one right speed. And we do, as you say, sometimes get stuck, have trouble taking that next moment. I say it as getting stuck in the trauma. What do we say to people who have lost their way.

I think what happens is when you lose your way, you have to find people that are stronger than you.

I'm grateful for men and women that are in my life. And I think there has to be a time that you have to say, help me through this. They may not be able or they may not have had the loss that you have had. But like you said, everyone has lost someone. You know, my grandmother, I don't know, she's been deceased now so long I can't remember the years. But. But every now and then I'll think about her or something she did or something she said. So that was a loss. But I didn't stop there. I kept moving. And so all of us need someone or we need our faith. Let's not deny our faith, whatever that faith is, let's hold to that. That should be a strength for you, that should be an encouragement for you. There were things that our parents taught us that they had lived through. It almost becomes an echo in our ear to be able to do that. And I think that oftentime, and I don't want to sound self righteous, but there are times we like where we are sometime and you've got to be able to say, I don't want to be here anymore. You know, there's a story, David, in the Bible and it talks about this man at the pool of Bethesda for 38 years and he kept making excuses about why he was there. And. And at some point you've got to be able to say, I've got to get up, you know, I have two legs, I'm going to make them walk and I'm going to move my steps. Like you said, David, my steps might be NC Bitsy steps. Remember that Simon says game we used to play? I'm dating myself. Remember that? And sometimes Simon would say, take it easy. Step. And your feet were so large you couldn't even navigate bringing both feet along. And then sometimes Simon would say, take a giant step. And so grief is like that. You take a little step. Some days you'll take a giant step. Some days you'll have the courage to not only go forward, but to take a leap. And some days you'll just wait until you get strength to move. But you're right, it's a journey.

And I'll tell you, that's why I love doing this kind of group work with all these different groups. Because I have a group here called Tender Hearts. I have another group for people who have had a spouse die. I'm going to have another one soon. For a child die and another one for when we've had a parent die. And the Facebook group and why I love those. And here's what happens in this is I believe we find ourselves in each other's stories and people especially in Facebook these days, I think our group is a little different. But so many people talk about how bad it is and we go into the darkness together. And it's interesting in my groups, we do a lot of talking about. As much as I want people to share their pain and it's okay to share your darkness when you're in that dark night. I also tell people it's okay when you're feeling okay or in grief, you're having a good hour or a good afternoon to share it because it gives hope to others. And I say to people, when you see, sometimes people will tune in and everyone's so hopeful, I'll go, it's not every day it's like this. But just know if you're not hopeful, we're holding hope for you. We know that this darkness will not last forever and that no darkness ever has.

Absolutely, we know that. And.

You know, not only do we know that we have to be confident of that, we have to be knowledgeable that this confidence is hard.

I'm going to tell you, confidence is hard. It's hard. I gotta say, confidence, confidence and grief is hard.

Confidence in grief is hard. And, and, but that's why we have groups, that's why we have close friends, that's why we have David's, that's why we have Reverend Wallace's, that's why we have these kinds of networks that causes us to build some kind of confidence. Those of them, those, those persons that exercise every day, they didn't start out with 20 pound weights. They were, they're now lifting or 30. You know, they started out with a two pounder. You know, I was thinking the other day, I probably need to start going back to the gym, but I probably need a £1.00er to get started. But, but, but you build confidence. You built, you do it one pound and then you do it two pound and then you do a five until it comes along. It's, it's having those right people around you. Those, those. And I don't want to call them right energies. I want to say right people because the right people will say the right thing.

That's why really important, you find whether you're choosing your church, you're choosing your synagogue, you're choosing your grief group, you want to find one that really resonates with you because they do have different energies and people have different energies.

That's right. I totally agree with that. I think sometimes, you know, you have to find. You've got to find the group that when you walk away, even though it may have been painful walking away, you know, or you left the group and you weren't feeling the best because you felt like they weren't being. They weren't caring about how you were feeling. But when you get home and you think about the conversation and you drink a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and you rehearse what they were saying, it starts to make sense about how to better equip yourself to get through this. You're not going to not remember the person. You're not going to not remember the. The love that you shared for them. You're not gonna, you're gonna remember those things. You're gonna be thoughtful of those.

Anything.

A birthday can bring it back. A cartoon that they enjoy, you know, or, or anniversary or, or date, a Mother's Day or Father's Day or whatever it is. But, but, but those things will happen. And even those days will become days. Some days you'll laugh, and then some days you'll cry. You know, this, this, this year, January, I said to my son, you know, I don't know if I could make it back to the cemetery this year. It just creates this pain for me that I. I just feel like I don't know why daddy left us. I can't. I don't have exponent as, as, you know, as close as I am to God. He didn't tell me why, you know, and so I said, let's do something different. Let's, let's. Let's figure out another way that we can think about daddy on this day and think about. And I said, let's go to his favorite restaurant. One of the things that my husband loved was dessert. I said, and for the cause of forgetting about weight, we're going to order all the desserts and we're going to just enjoy everyone that daddy would enjoy. Sometimes you've got to just change the way, change the thought, change the process.

Right? Now, let me ask you, you obviously Christian family. I come from my family as a mixture of Judaism and evangelical Christians. So you can imagine some of the get togethers. But I want to ask about those who, they don't have a particular faith, or maybe they're atheists or agnostic. When it comes to grief, one of the things I've been really challenged by sometimes is to Learn how much comfort, how much comfort ting we give with faith. That when I've had to talk to an atheist, I've had to really make sure I don't speak a language that they don't understand or isn't their language. And I've also realized that many times it's not that they're devoid of anything. They have a different meaning, that they have meaningful lives. They don't attribute it to God. How do you. Do you talk to people who, you know, minister them or talk to people who don't have a particular faith when it comes to grief and loss?

Absolutely. I mean, there's. It's a world and we don't all agree.

But at the conclusion we're all human and we feel. You cut me, I'm going to bleed red blood. If I cut you, you're going to bleed red blood. We might have different blood types, but it's all red.

But absolutely, in those moments, we talk about being human. We talk about what tears feel like rolling down your face. In those moments, you talk about that gut punch that no one hit you, but you got this gut punch. In that moment, we can talk about that. Crying becomes healthy. We can talk about words that are comforting, and we can talk about love. Because no matter what religion we are or we are not, everybody needs love. One of the things that I think Covid taught us is that we need each other more than we need less of each other. When we have situations where our religious differences may be on the table, then we go back to the very beginning when we were human and we only knew each other and we knew what made us go forward. Holding my hand, you know, giving me a hug, you know, or saying something that would be lasting. One thing that I know that lasts forever is when we don't know what to say. The best thing is to say nothing.

Right. And just sit with the person. Right?

That's right.

And you know, grief in a lot of ways is truly about being. Not so much about doing that's right. Because we can't fix you because you're not broken. You know, one of the things. And I will just speak for myself.

When my son died, I was so angry with God. I was so angry with God. And I really allowed myself to be angry with God. And for me, God didn't take it personally. My God is big enough to handle my anger. In fact, my anger is part of all of this experience here.

That's right.

How were you? Were you ever angry?

I don't know if I was angry. I Was disappointed. And I don't know if that's anger too, David, but I was disappointed. I was disappointed because I felt like I should have gotten a heads up.

I felt like.

I'm doing all this for your service and you didn't tell me that this is what the plan was. So I don't know if I ever got really angry, but I muddled in disappointment that I thought that.

It just didn't make sense. You know, there. There was a calendar that he had just delivered. You know, it didn't make sense. I have felt, and I'll be very transparent, you know, I still have moments of disappointment, like, how could you have left me? You know what? I needed questions. I have questions there. You know, I'm the girl who needs a David.

Right? Right.

So, you know, you were my security blanket, so to speak. You know, and so I don't think I got angry, but I felt tremendous disappointment that.

He was no longer here. And maybe that is a form of anger, you know, maybe that is what I was feeling. But I. I still have moments that I'm just like. Like, for real, for real. You know, like the kids would say, like, for real, for real. Are you for real about this?

And some people in my family really went to there with Jesus. It's fine.

And I'm very much like, I get that. And I'm having a human experience and it doesn't feel fine. And I'm so glad they're okay. But I wasn't. And I think that was part of my work to go through.

Absolutely. I think for me, you know, to.

This was my final statement to this, that I knew that God never made mistakes. I got that. I just didn't know that it was going to feel like this.

Right.

You know, and I, you know, as a. As a parent who wants to. Who wants to see their child, you know, it's. It's always, you think the reverse of this, you know, And. And for me, you know, I was older than my husband, so surely if anybody left, it would be me, you know, so. So.

Those are times that you cannot wrap your head around it, but you come to a place of resolution, or you come to a place of peace about it, or you come to a.

I always say, let me acknowledge what I'm feeling.

Right. I always say, you got to heal it to feel it. You got to feel it to heal it.

That's right.

You know, that's the reality. There's no going around it.

This. Yeah, let me acknowledge how I'm feeling. So at least I'M not playing games with myself. So this is how I'm feeling. So I can do that. And once I do that, I set the tone, like you said, for that place of healing.

Right. Well, if it's all right with you, if you're up for it, we're going to say goodbye to the folks on Facebook who are watching there and we're going to stay here and some people from my groups are going to come on and. Okay, talk to us live.

Let's do this.

What they say. All right. All right. Thank you. Those of you in the Facebook group, thank you for joining us. Please continue to post when you're having a bad day. Post when you're having a good day. Support one another. We need each other. Let's hold one another's hands virtually. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Please follow me if you like.

Yes. Tell us where to find you.

I am Reverend C. Wallace on social media, Instagram, Facebook and also on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel called Reverend Steve Wallace. And so join me. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Bye, Facebook. We're going to tender hearts and in grieving fully and living fully. Give me a moment here. Bye, everyone.