The Jack & Chill Podcast | Grief
Description
In this episode of The Jack & Chill Podcast, Jack and Xochitl talk about their experiences with loss and the grief that goes along with those experiences.
Transcript:
Xochitl
You are listening to the Jack and Chill podcast Jack. Today we have a little bit of a heavy topic brief Jack.
Xochitl
Your experiences with grief and how would you define it for our listeners?
발표자
OK.
Jack
Yeah. So grief is A is a a tough topic and for our listeners out there, grief is the emotion that you feel when.
Jack
Someone that you you loved, a loved one passes away or or dies.
Jack
And for me, I I never really experienced it.
Jack
I I I didn’t experience it for a long time because when I was born my 2 two of my grandparents were had already passed away or passed away when I was a baby. So you I just grew up never knowing my my grandfather on my father’s side.
Jack
And I grew up not knowing my grandmother on my mother’s side and my grandfather on my mother’s side was alive. But we we weren’t really in contact with him. He was an abusive alcohol.
Jack
Alec and so growing up, there was a lot of.
Jack
Stress in my my mother’s family because of my grandfather’s drinking and and when he was when I was in middle or sorry, elementary school, maybe fifth grade during summer camp, my grandfather passed away in a nursing home and my parents.
Jack
Ask me, you know, do you want to go to the funeral?
Jack
We’ll come pick you.
Jack
Up or you can just stay at camp and.
Jack
I just stayed at camp and I I really felt nothing. I, I I remember meeting him one time in the nursing home and it was just scary, you know, because it was all all these.
Jack
Elderly, sick people, very thin and.
Jack
I he I just. I didn’t have any relationship with him at all. So I I really only had my my father’s mother, my grandmother, and my father my father’s side.
Jack
And she we called her Bubba. Uh and Bubba was the best. You know? She really.
Jack
Filled in for all the for the other three grandparents that didn’t have I I wouldn’t trade, you know, four grandparents for for one, Bubba and yeah, ever. Because she was amazing. And and she lived to be 92 years old.
Jack
And so she passed. Maybe in, like, 2009. I think if I’m not mistaken, somewhere around there. Uh, my daughter was just a baby at the time and.
Jack
And I I felt.
Jack
Very, very sad, obviously because it’s it’s hard when you lose someone that you.
Jack
Of but I also, on the other hand, she lived to be 92 years old, like she lived a very full life, a very long life. Yeah, I grew up in the Great Depression in America, in on a farm in South Dakota. So she was tough, you know.
Xochitl
Right.
Jack
Tough as nails like there is no, she didn’t. She wasn’t a, you know, delicate person. You know, she grew up in the hard times in America and she.
Jack
Married my my grandfather, who was a a mechanic in the military. He served in Panama building of the Panama Canal during World War 2. So, you know, it was there just just that famous, you know, kind of story.
Jack
1950s, they had their children. They grew up in the 50s and 60s. My my father was in elementary school in the 50s and then high school and university in the 60s and early 70s.
Jack
And so that was my first experience with with grief. But in the last three about three years ago, my one of my very, very close friends, I probably I have a best friend from high school and a best friend from college.
Jack
And my best friend from college passed away, and that was.
Jack
You know it’s.
Jack
He he was young, you know. I mean, not not. Maybe not not, you know, not not like in his 20s. He was in his his 40s but.
Xochitl
That’s young to pass. That’s very young to pass.
Jack
Yeah, that’s that’s very young to pass. And and that was that one.
Jack
You know, stop me in my tracks. You know, it was. That was a very, very difficult one to process and I think I’m, you know, still processing it and and probably will always be processing it in some way because.
Jack
It just leaves a a massive hole in your in your heart, in your life, where?
Jack
Something will happen and you, you you want that person’s advice or you want to tell that person and you and you remember that they’re not here and and you can’t. You can’t tell them and you’ll never laugh together. You’ll, you know you you won’t. You’re not going to share a moment again.
Jack
And everything you had with that person is everything you will ever have with that person. And that’s a very here’s an English expression for our listeners, a hard pill to swallow. You know, it’s hard to accept that reality that.
Jack
This. That’s it. You know, the time that you had is the time is the is the only time that you.
Jack
You get with that person and.
Jack
It just seems cruel, you know that an illness would.
Jack
UM.
Jack
Affect someone that young and and take them away from from from their family and from their friend?
Jack
And and and yeah, it just it just kind of.
Jack
I don’t know what the word is like. I’ve it it it it it’s it has like a dulling effect. Like it a a numbing effect. Yeah. It it leaves you kind of like.
Jack
It it could be dangerous because it can make you cynical, right? Like it can make you kind of angry at the world or angry at God or or or just kind of like, what’s the point of of all this? Because.
Jack
Anyone that we love can just be torn away from us at any moment.
Jack
Or but but that’s the the that’s the anger stage of grief. I think you know where you’re just you get angry and you you don’t. You shouldn’t stay. You don’t want to stay in that mindset. You know, of of anger.
Xochitl
Right.
Jack
You want to move on to acceptance.
Jack
And appreciate and be happy and and blessed that you at least the time that you did have with that person be be lucky that you’re able to have that time with that person, but it’s hard to get to to that stage of grief. I think it it does take a lot of kind of its internal struggle within yourself.
Jack
It takes.
Jack
A more mature kind of.
Jack
Approach to life and understanding that wow, you know, like life is very delicate and it’s not as nothing is guaranteed. And so it’ll make you hug that your loved ones that are still here a.
Jack
Little bit harder.
Jack
And you know what I mean? Like, in, in that moment.
Jack
Now for example, I was in America recently and I got to see my daughter and even though she was embarrassed, I I I made sure to hug her and tell her I love her. When I said goodbye to her.
Jack
I I didn’t care if if it embarrassed her friends or anything and she didn’t care either because, you know, it’s like that you you never, ever know. There are no guarantees in in life. And so those are that was my my take away from my experience with grief and.
Jack
How? How? How about you? Like how? How have you been dealing with with your experiences with grief?
Xochitl
Well, for our listeners, I think there is an important concept about the stages of grief in the United States. We call them like the five stages of grief and their denial, which is like kind of denying that it happened, glossing over it. You really don’t feel any of those feelings you’re kind of.
Xochitl
It’s hard to process or even perceive that it really happened. Then there’s anger, which is, of course, being angry about what happened or feeling like, you know, it was unfair. There’s the bargaining stage, which is the stage where you’re like, oh, it’s only this had happened, maybe they wouldn’t have passed. If only this had happened. If I had done this differently.
Xochitl
They had done this differently. If the doctors had done this differently.
Xochitl
And this all wouldn’t have happened. And then there’s a depression stage, which is kind of where your feelings get the best of you. And you’re starting, you’re in the midst of processing them. I feel like and.
Xochitl
You feel a.
Xochitl
Great sadness. It’s hard to get out of bed. It’s hard to do your daily tasks and the last stage is acceptance, which is what Jack was talking about, where you accept.
Xochitl
What has happened and you can maybe take some valuable lessons or, you know, move forward with.
Xochitl
A better understanding of what occurred.
Xochitl
I think it’s hard for me because.
United States
