Seize Every Moment With Them (While You Can) | David Kessler

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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Dad Podcast, where on the weekends we do a deeper dive and how to get better at our most important job Being a parent Sometimes in these episodes, I talk to bestselling authors and elite performers and other guests, but lately I've also been having conversations with my wife, Samantha, the co parent of my two boys. We do it over in the Daily Stoics studio here in Bastrop, Texas. She and I talk about things that we're working on as parents, things that we're working on as people, and how we are supporting each other, challenging each other, and like I said, trying to get better at what we do, guest or not. I hope you hear some ideas here that will help make you a better parent. I was better for having the conversation. I hope you enjoy.

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Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Dad Podcast. There's there's some things that I read before I had kids Cormac McCarthy's the Road, John Gunther's death. Be not proud. Even Marcus Aurelius, right? This is a guy you know unobjectively, historically, you know, buried multiple children. But that's not something you can really comprehend until you have children yourself. I've talked about Joan Didion's writing a lot. A year of magical thinking and blue notes. There are these sort of touching, moving works you can understand through the power of someone's experience. But it's not until you have a child that you can even begin to understand what.

Those feelings would be. The fear that you have, the dread that you have, the reasons for the anxiety. I just interviewed this fascinating person for the Daily Stoic podcast. His name is David Kessler. He's a grief and a loss expert and he's helped thousands of people on the edge of life, their journey at the end. And he's, you know, he's worked with physicians and nurses and counselors and police officers and first responders. And yet, even after all this firsthand experience studying grief and counseling those who experience it, his own life was turned upside down by the sudden death of his 21 year old son. And I'll link to the episode in the show notes, but I wanted to bring you a chunk of that conversation, not because it's morbid, but because we want to learn from the people that have gone through these horrible things, what experiences they take out of it, what hard won, incredibly painful wisdom came from it, and how it can help us be more present, be better parents, be better people. Not take for granted what's in front of us while it is still in front of us. He signed a few copies of his book Finding Meaning and the Finding Meaning workbook at the Painted Porch. I'll link to that in today's show notes. Also, you can follow David on Instagram and Twitter at amdavidkessler. I thought this was a wonderful, moving, very deep conversation and I wanted to bring a chunk of that to you.

My younger son David, died 21 years old.

And that must have been horrific.

Brutal. Brutal. And I had been doing this work for decades. I knew that children died. I started in children's hospital. I get the concept. But I was the guy who was helping other people with grief and loss. And when that happened, you know, on the ground. On the ground, brutal. And I eventually had to think about, like, everything I've taught. I think I have to do what I've been telling people. Yeah, I think I need to go to a grief counselor. You have to take the medicine prescribe medicine. And, oh, my gosh, I was someone who was like, okay, go to a grief group. It took me three times to get to a grief group. I mean, something that I thought was, like, not the big issue, but was impossible to do. And then I had a cap on, took my contacts out, was wearing glasses, and I had to sit at a table with my books five feet away. And I couldn't go, that's me. I'm the grief expert. I had to be the dad. And so I would watch myself, and I would go, you're in denial. You can't believe it. Oh, yep, there's your anger. I mean, I sort of monitored my process. The grief expert watched the father go through it. And then Kubler Ross and I had always talked about this idea of people think there's a finality to acceptance. Like, I'm going to be done. And, you know, when people say, how long will my sister grieve? How long will my, you know, husband grieve? I'm always like, well, how long is the person dead? Because if they're dead for a long time, you're going to grieve for a long time, but. But not always with pain, with more love, eventually. And by the way, I always want to say to people, grief is not just death. I mean, it's breakups, divorce, job loss, everything else. But when I began to go, is this it? Am I just going to accept this? That's it. Okay. I'm going to accept it. It's like, it wasn't enough. And. And I picked up some papers that I had wrote about meaning, and I was like, that's not gonna help. I threw those down, you know, and then about a week later, I read them again, and they gave me a little cushion to my pain. And I went back, and I read Viktor Frankl's work, Man's Search for Meaning. I reread it, and I thought, what's the disconnection? There's some disconnection that I've heard over the years from people in grief. And as I started to talk about it, it became so apparent. Everyone was like, well, David, there's no meaning in a child's death. There's no meaning in a murder. There's no meaning in a betrayal, in a car wreck, in a divorce, in a pandemic. And I realized, oh, the meaning isn't in the horrible thing. The meaning is in us. It's what we do afterwards. And that was a light bulb for me and so many other people. And I was so honored that The Kubler Ross family gave me permission to add a six stage, and I got to add this six stage. But it also enabled me to write an update and go, everyone. Still not linear. Still not adding a mandatory step.

Yeah.

But it does feel like we are a generation that didn't just want to go, yeah, accept it.

Yeah.

Like, is there something more here? And I think meaning goes along with all those stories we tell.

Do you feel like part of your tragic story, the way you've derived meaning from it and not why you went through it, but the. The what happened by going through it was your deeper understanding of. Of these things and then your ability to come up with an additional layer of how one thinks about it, which has the potential to benefit thousands, millions of people far after your time here.

And I think there's a moment we go through consciously or unconsciously, and I really thought about it. I live on this cute little street, little suburb, and I could picture a future where the teenagers on their bike would be riding by and the new kid would be there, and he'd go, hey, what's the house with the cobwebs? Is it haunted? And they would go, no, it's a grief expert. And then his own son died. Like, I could see I could never come out of the house now. Yeah, I could choose that. I could be done. And I think after all our tragedies and setbacks and horrible things in our life, there's a conscious, unconscious decision of, do I live again? And beyond the do I live again? My meaning that I really thought about is my son David loved my work. I think it would be really heartbreaking for him to think that his life or death somehow constricted it. So then I had to look at, well, if it didn't constrict, could keep it the same, or it could expand it. And I think that's the growth. That's the not just going through it, but growing through it. And growth is part of life.

And growth is painful, by the way. We sort of glamorize it. Even just a kid growing an inch is straining their body the amount of calories they have to consume. Growth is constructive, but also a destructive process.

And it's part of life and a painful part of life. But an even more painful part is if we resist the growth. It takes a lot of energy to become the person who. Who never leaves the house again. And that is a real fight against reality. I mean, so many times when I'm working with someone, they'll go, it's over. It's just not continuing. And I'll go, could I touch your wrist? And they'll go, sure. And I'll go, your heart's actually continuing still. Would you consider tonight going home in the midst of your life is over. It's done. There's that checking your toenails. I think they're still growing through this. And so when we begin to realize, oh, I can naturally grow. And it's very easy to sort of go, but bereaved parent. I mean, how unusual, unnatural is that? Well, you know, we only have to go back before penicillin to go, well, every parent was a bereaved parent.

One out of five children.

Yeah. Every parent was a bereaved parent. And so I can go. I was the grief. Like, why?

Why?

And then I can get to, well, why not?

Yeah. I mean, why should you?

Exempt. Yeah, why would I be exempt?

Right.

And it has made me go deeper with people.

Yeah.

And I would have loved to have taken a class instead of had to say goodbye to my son. But there wasn't an available class.

Right.

You know, it's like, this is the lessons that you learn through life. And it's not to say that these are. You know, we can't reduce this to, oh, what's the lesson? Oh, your tire was flat. What's the lesson? It's, you know, it's more than that.

There is something, though, about being a parent that I think makes you uniquely vulnerable. Joan Didion, you know, this is her table.

Is it?

And these are her chairs. Wow. Like, she sat at this table with the family. There's a New York Times picture of that family, the one that was in the course of 18 months, taken from her sitting at this table in these chairs. And she said something about how being a parent is like being a hostage to fortune. You just, like, life has something on you now. And I think that's what keeps you up at night as a parent is like, that something could happen and you don't have control of it.

I remember when I became a parent, someone, like, I had this nightmare. I forgot what it was. And someone said to me, oh, you only have two nightmares as a parent. You die or they die. And I'm like, really? And it's like, well, that does become it. And listen, I love Joan Didion. I love when I often have people watch the documentary on her. And it begins with, like, you know, she's a robust, elderly, giggling lady that you're like, oh, what a fabulous life she's had. And this person, that person. And then you Hear about it and you go, wait a minute, she's been through that.

Wait, how is she standing? How does it not break? This frail, tiny person. Yeah, it's unreal. How do you think losing a child, what do you think that brings you to say to a parent? Like, how would that inform one's time with their children?

It's hard because I don't want to take away anyone's human experience. And I'm so glad I got to have and still have with my older son all those human experiences. And I think about it like, on one hand, I've done a lot of work with a cancer organization near me. And I remember, you know, one woman saying after she got into remission, when she was about to die, she said, you know, I get up every morning and I just take in the sunrise. I went, that's amazing. I mean, I'm just ignoring it every single day. And then I remember seeing her like a year later, and I go, how you doing? And she's like, I'm doing great. My health's great. And I said, how are the sunrises? She goes, oh, you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I mean, I think we try to operate from the profoundness of all this, but we're just having this human experience.

There's still a day to dayness also.

There's a day to day ness. And, you know, there's times someone will go, you know, my child didn't get into the college, da, da, da. And I'm like, hearing them, I'm like, that's not a problem. Yeah, that's not a. I mean, but. And sometimes I say it, and sometimes I realize, well, that is their biggest problem.

Yeah.

You know, and maybe they're open to a different perspective and maybe they're not.

Well, it's like we all know what we're supposed to eat, and then we get hungry or tired, and then we eat something different. So, yeah, you're right. You have these profound insights, and then you're still a human being who, you know, is prey to all the things that human beings do.

And I remember in that same cancer organization someone shared with me, we were talking about, what if you found out, like, you know, it was your last week, your last day, and one person said, ah, I put another load of laundry in. And I love the humanness of that. That like, okay, I guess I'm just going to do the next thing that's in front of me. And even if this turns out to be my last day, do you know Who?

Montaigne is the French essayist. He says, I hope death finds me planting cabbages.

Wow.

Just. He understood what Cicero said, that to philosophize is to learn how to die. But the idea was that you get this awareness, you get this understanding, you have these insights, and then you just go about your regular life. He's like, I don't, you know, not dreading it, but also not like sort of overwrought and over prepared for it. You learn all this stuff and, and then in a sense, if you understand you could lose your kids at any moment. There's some unhealthy version where you just cling them so tight to you because you're afraid of always losing them, that you end up losing them. It's this idea of understanding it and then taking them to soccer practice and sending them off to school and just living a regular life with them.

Well, and I think a huge lesson is, for me, fear doesn't stop death, fear stops life. So you get in too much fear and it's everything. I mean, you could lose your kids, you could lose your spouse. I mean, that's like true to your job. I mean, everything. And so do we tighten up? Do we go into fear? Do we shut down or do we go, oh my goodness, that's right, I was going to lose everything anyway. I guess I'm just going to like relax into this while it's here and enjoy it.

Yeah, there's a balance to that, I think.

And to go between, you know, that humanness and the reality of loss that it's always around us. I always say death is like no further than six inches. I mean, some things around us that just could electrocute. I mean, something could happen in any given moment. And okay, I'm just going to, well, live and just like, I don't want this long, long wind down of my life. I mean, I'd like to be caught in the act. I'm just like in life planting a cabbage and boom. Who knew? Like, would he have planted a cabbage? Yeah, probably would have. I wouldn't have done the. Another load of laundry.

That's beautiful.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily dad podcast. You can get this via email every day as well@dailydad.com Please leave us a review in itunes. Most importantly, if you know any dads or parents who would benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.

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