Hope Thru Grief features co-hosts Marshall Adler & Steve Smelski discussing their journeys of grief, after losing their sons and other family members. They have changed their focus in life since their son’s deaths and have been helping others to find the support and answers they have been searching for.

Marshall is a successful lawyer practicing in Winter Park, FL but his world was flipped upside down when his son Matt died from suicide at age 32. Two days after that terrible day, Marshall’s mother also passed away. And within a few weeks of those two incidents, Marshall’s best friend of 50-years passed away, as well. To say that Marshall’s grief has been extensive is a bit of an understatement.  His journey of loss and eventual hope is one that will resonate with anyone who has experienced the grief of losing a loved one. 

We welcome your comments and questions! Send an email to hopethrugrief@gmail.com and please share our show with anyone you know that is struggling with loss and grief. 

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Tune in for new episodes every Thursday morning wherever you listen to podcasts! 

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski, co-hosts of Hope Thru Grief are not medical, or mental health professionals, therefore we cannot and will not give any medical, or mental health advice. If you, or anyone you know needs medical or mental health treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.

Thank you

Marshall Adler

Steve Smelski

Hello, my name is Marshall Adler.

I want to thank you so much for listening to our show.

I want to invite you to join me and my good friend and cohost Steve Smelski

and our journey of Hope thru Grief.

After my 32 year old son, Matt passed away.

I knew I was on a journey.

I never thought I would ever take.

Although this is a journey, no one ever wants to experience.

It has taught me some amazing life lessons of loss, survival and redemption.

You will hear incredible stories of amazing people that could

change your life forever.

One of these amazing people I want to tell you about is my son, Matthew Adler.

So Steve, again, if you could say hi to everybody,

hello everybody.

So I thought I would just ask you a, a question about Matt.

Can you tell us all about Matt?

Absolutely.

Steve, I know you and I have been on this journey together because we've

both lost our sons, but obviously losing a son is an individual journey that

every father has to take on his own.

And my son, Matt obviously was a huge part of my life in life and it's now

a huge part of my life in his death.

He was an incredible human being who may not have had the gift of longevity,

but he put enormous amount of love and humanity in the 32 years that he was.

On this planet, his whole life was really based on helping others.

When he was in grade school at a very young age, he was called the comforter.

Why?

Because all the teachers saw that whenever another student was having difficulty sad.

Depressed being bullied.

Matt would always go over and help that person.

He was awarded in high school, the American Legion Citizenship award,

because he just continued throughout his school years, helping people.

His nickname that we called him was Mahatma like Mahatma

Gandhi, which means great soul.

And I always believed that he had a great soul and Matt was an incredibly

artistic person, interested in literature, in movies and books and music.

And I know that one quote he always liked was I think from Walt Whitman

and Walt Whitman made a comment that

society needs people made out of steel and velvet by that he meant we need people

that are tough enough to deal with the difficult issues of life, but also kind

and gentle to help those less fortunate.

And I think Matt absolutely did that.

The thing about Matt, though, for all of his good work that he did.

I was amazed how he never liked, when people would mention what incredible

job he did on some aspect of his life.

He just never liked to have the spotlight of praise on him.

And it sorta reminds me of a great quote from Will Rogers

that I also told Matt years ago.

Will Rogers the great American humorist had a great quote that I think when

something like this, that if he gets somebody else to blow your horn,

the sound will travel twice as far.

Matt never blew his own horn and didn't like other people doing it.

But when they did, the sound did travel twice as far because they know

it really meant something that really affected people in a positive manner.

And the one quick story that I like to tell about his school days concerned a

day where his school indicated that a very famous person was going to come to his

school and the school needed an ambassador to take this famous person around.

And what happened is that Matt was chosen by the school to be that person.

And after he spent the day with his famous person, he came home

and I asked him, how was it?

He goes, Oh, it was real interesting.

And I go, that's it.

You don't have anything else to tell him?

He goes, no, it was extremely interesting.

I really enjoyed it.

And they sort of went on his way later that night, we got a call from

the school saying that this famous person was so impressed by Matt,

that they wanted authorization to give our home address to this person.

So he could write a letter after Matt passed away I found the

letter in his personal effects.

And I actually was so incredibly moved by this and the person that wrote the

letter, the famous person that Matt became very close with was Fred Rogers of Mr.

Rogers Neighborhood, obviously anybody's ever watched PBS.

Any child knows that Fred Rogers was one of the nicest human beings on the planet.

And I think it is a great testament to Matt's life being well led based

on the fact that Fred Roger felt he needed to write this letter to

Matt, which I want to read to you.

It goes on and quoting.

Dear Matt, thank you so very much for your kindness to the Rogers family.

You, by your sensitive guidance through the school, allowed us to have

a most wonderful, memorable visit.

I wish you every blessing in your life as you continue to work on a

goal of helping others and all kinds of children throughout your life,

you have such a beautiful spirit sharing that with others will be an

enormous contribution to our society.

Again, our thanks for giving such a thoughtful and wonderful tour

of your wonderful school or your wonderful school, your real neighbor,

Fred Rogers.

When I read this, after Matt passed away, I actually was so struck because

I forgot that it was even in there.

And I forgot about the whole day that Matt spent with Mr.

Rogers and he actually stayed in touch with Mr.

Rogers through his life.

And looking back now really just gave me a sense of peace and contentment,

because obviously it was not just my biased view that my son had

this incredible effect on people.

It was the view of one of the greatest humanitarians of our lifetime, Fred

Rogers, that he felt the same way.

So after reading this letter, after Matt passed away, it

truly, truly meant a lot to me.

And the effect on me really sort of is one of the reasons why we are doing this

show today, because I just felt that it was now my obligation to continue

the work of helping people that Matt did in his lifetime, that he could

no longer do, because he's not here.

I've tried to live up to that goal and I hope Matt is proud

of me for what I am doing.

What I'd like to talk about now is how Matt's life unfolded.

After he left high school, he always wanted to be a movie director.

Matt had a encyclopedic knowledge of movie trivia, instead of googling any

type of question I had about a director or producer or who won the best movie in

1957, I would just call Matt and he always knew the answer and he always was right.

He was just incredible.

So he had the desire to always go to California.

To try to start his movie career and he was fortunate enough in the

last three years of his life to actually live in Southern California.

He went to film school here in Florida.

Then he continued his education in California, and it was the

happiest, most productive, most gratifying time of his life.

And the reason I'm telling you this is that he came back

to Orlando in July of 2018.

The reason he did that was that my mother, Matt's grandmother, was dying.

She was in hospice and Matt flew in from San Diego to say goodbye

to my mother, his grandmother.

Never in a million years.

Did we ever have any inkling that we were not only saying goodbye to my grandmother,

but we were saying goodbye to Matt, because that was the last time we saw him.

We had a wonderful time with Matt.

He saw a lot of his old friends.

He spent a lot of time with his family, it was just one of the best four or

five days that we had spent together.

And what happened is he had to go back to San Diego for some work

obligations, and he knew that he'd have to be flying back to Orlando because

my mother was going to pass away and he'd come back for the funeral.

Again, never did we ever think that he would pass away before my mother did.

On the morning that he left, I drove him to the airport and I told him how

proud I was of him, because he had formed this incredible life that allowed

him to do things that he wanted to do professionally but also from a personal

standpoint, he had a lot of good friends.

He had a lot of good relationships that were with wonderful

people and he was really happy.

And I told him as a parent, it just meant so much for me to see my son so happy.

And he told me something he said that he learned that it's not

what happens to you in life.

It's how you handle it.

And he felt that this was the happiest time of his life.

He was looking forward to his movie career.

He really enjoyed his living in California and he couldn't wait for the future.

If this was a Hollywood movie, that's where the director would have said cut.

And they would have said, well, that's a Hollywood ending.

This young man is going to go and win an Academy Award because he's

got all these great attributes that are going to flourish, and he's going

to have this long, wonderful life.

Matt being the movie connoisseur, that he was always told me that he was not

a huge fan of Hollywood endings because they didn't show the reality of what

would happen if you kept the film rolling.

Unfortunately, many Hollywood endings.

If you keep the film rolling show, tragedy, illness, suffering, and death.

And Matt knew that the great directors would show that because

it is part of the human experience.

So if you took the fact that this was a Hollywood ending, when we hugged each

other at the airport and said, see you soon, if the director said, cut, say,

well, wow, what a great movie that was, but Matt, wouldn't be satisfied with that.

He said, it's not true to life and true words and ever spoken because

13 days later, Matt passed away and there was the last time I ever saw him.

And I think that that is something that has been a lesson to me because you

realize life has twists and turns has many things that you can control and

losing Matt was obviously something we could not control, but it's given us the

opportunity to go forward, live the best life we can help as many people as we can

as a tribute to man, that what happened next is sort of almost unbelievable in

the sense that we were at the funeral home, picking out Matt's headstone.

When I got the call that my mother had passed away.

And if it wasn't so serious, I would look at this almost like a black comedy movie

that was happening to somebody else.

And I was stunned, but I knew my mother's death was coming, but I

didn't think it would be literally while we were at the funeral home,

picking out Matt's headstone.

So what happened after that?

We had to continue on and go to Matt's grave site to see where he was going

to be laid to rest, which actually was close to my parents and right there.

And then I knew we had to make a decision from the standpoint of where

do we go forward after losing our son, Matt, and what we decided to do.

Is that we decided to make sure to live our life as productive and as meaningful

as possible as a tribute to Matt, I know that grief can be overwhelming and some

people literally become the walking dead.

But by that, I mean, they're living, but they're not living.

The grief is so overpowering that they can't function to lead

a productive meanifull life.

And I knew that Matt would not want his passing to result in that.

He'd want us to live the best life we could even though he wasn't here.

And that is something that we decided to do together.

And one of the huge factors that has helped us through our grief process

is my co-host Steve, because after Matt passed away, We knew we could not

go through this process on our own.

And we were able to join Grief Share, which was run by Steve and his

wonderful wife, Shelly, we started Grief Share literally just two or

three weeks after Matt passed away.

And it really was a godsend because it gave us support and a templates

to have our journey of grief result in a productive, meaningful life.

So, so Steve, I can't thank you enough for helping us with that process.

You're welcome.

It was actually a privilege for us to get to hear about yours and

Debbie's journey and the story of Matt and what Matt is like.

So it was a great pleasure for us to get to know both of you and to hear the

stories about mat, which make us smile.

So tell us how, how have you dealt with your grief?

Well, It's it's interesting because I've told many

people the comment that you made at the first meeting when we first met you.

And I thought this was so relevant.

You started out by asking the people of Grief Share.

Well, obviously they're because they lost a loved one.

How many courses they had taken in the study of grief?

And obviously everybody looked around and the answer was nobody

ever took a course in grief.

Why in the world would anybody want to do that?

You wouldn't, accept when you do lose a loved one and you are in grief.

You're totally unprepared for what it's going to happen to you.

So I look at that and realize I will be learning about

grief for the rest of my life.

And I knew that we had to meet it head on.

And Debbie Matt's mother, my wife had a great comment that she didn't

make till about a year after Matt's passing that she knew that grief

was always going to be in our house.

It was never going to go away.

It's not here 24/7, but she decided that she had to make friends with it.

It was not leaving our house.

It was going to be there.

And we could either fight it in a battle, they would not be productive

for a happy life or acknowledges existence try to make the most of it.

So what we did is we decided to take grief head-on and we had

so many people who had lost.

loved ones in general and children in particular to reach out to us.

Before we lost Matt, I always thought that losing a child was the worst

thing that happened to anybody.

I had firsthand experience in the sense that my parents lost two sons.

One was younger than me.

One was older than me.

I was too young to have any memory.

But my mother grieved from losing two sons till the day she died.

So having people that had lost loved ones in general and children in particular

was very instructive as to how we were going to deal with grief head-on and

of all the people that we dealt with, the one that really resonated with me

more than any other was my Aunt Eve.

Her youngest son, Jeffrey was a brilliant medical doctor.

He was one of the top ophthalmologists researching

macular degeneration in the world.

At age 37, he came down with stomach cancer, it took his life.

The nature of stomach cancer is it's generally fatal and extremely painful.

And my Aunt Eve called me after Matt's passing and told

me a story that I never heard.

She said that she was at her sons bedside holding his hand, Jeff

was a fighter and he was trying to fight this stomach cancer.

And she knew it was a battle he couldn't win.

So when he passed, she said that it gave her comfort that he was no longer in

pain and she realized that he was a gift from God for 37 years, that it was his

time and this was something that she nor anybody else on this planet could change.

And what you told me is that one day I would understand

that Matt is no longer in pain.

And that he was a gift from God for 32 years.

And there was nobody on this planet could change the lack

of longevity that Matt had.

And that was very comforting to me because I realized that my cousin, Jeff helped

so many people in his 37 years of life.

And Matt helps so many people in his 32 years of life.

So neither one of these two incredible people had the gift of longevity, but

they had the gift of helping humanity.

And in the big picture that has helped me get through the grief process.

And I'll, I'll just say this, our, our rabbi had a interesting comment that I

never knew until after Matt passed away.

What he told me is that generally when a baby's born, everybody

is really happy, smiling.

And when somebody passes away, people, tears of sorrow, he said the

Jewish religion actually flips that.

I never knew this.

He said that in the Jewish religion, the tenants actually are to have tears of

sorrow when a baby is born, because you know, they're going to be difficulties.

You know, there's going to be tragedy.

You know, there's going to be sadness.

You know, there's going to be difficult is that you can't protect the child

from, and when somebody passes on.

You should actually have a smile, a happiness, that there are no longer

in pain, no longer subject to tragedy and all the good things that they

did are now in the book of life.

And there's old saying that may their memory be a blessing,

and I will tell you that.

Matt's memory is a blessing.

So to answer your question, Steve, that is how we dealt with grief.

Marshall, thanks for sharing that.

I know how difficult it is to, to walk through the discussion about it.

So I've heard a little bit of this story.

Tell us the story about your trip to Israel?

Israel was a place that I always wanted to see at some

time in my life, I never thought it would be under this circumstance.

But what we decided to do is in the Jewish religion, on the

anniversary of a loved one's death, it's called a Yahrzeit candle.

You light a candle that burns for 24 hours and attribute to that person.

And Debbie and I decided that we were going to go to Israel to honor our son by

lighting his Yahrzeit candle in Israel.

And what we did is we made a trip that was amazing in many different

ways and the biggest effect on me.

We went to the wailing wall, which is the Western Wall of

the second temple in Jerusalem.

It's the part of the old city that many people have seen on TV.

It's the most Holy place of the Jewish religion and people from around the world.

Jews, Gentiles, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists.

Any religion or no religion at all, go there and put notes into the wall.

And these prayer notes are kept in the wall.

And I believe that they're actually rounded up periodically and taken and

buried in the Mount of Olives, which is obviously biblical significance.

So what we did is we went to Israel and we put a prayer note for my son,

Matt, for my father who passed away 2012 for my mother who passed away two

days after Matt and to my good friend from childhood over 50 years, Ted who

passed away a few weeks after Matt.

And there was a synergy and a contentment that I had writing these

prayer notes for Matt, my mother, my father, and my best friend of 50 years.

Cause they all knew each other and they all loved each other.

And I felt that it was very significant that I was putting these four people

together in prayer notes in the Western Wall where people for thousands of

years have been coming to make a tribute to the lost, loved ones.

And as I was standing at the wall, I realized that thousands of years

people have been doing what I'm doing.

And I sort of realized that the key aspect of someone's life.

Again, it's not the quantity, it's the quality because of all these people

that had come before me for these thousands of years, putting prayer

notes into the Western Wall had lives that were too short, whether it was

somebody who lived in their nineties.

Like my parents or somebody that, that passed away at 32, like Matt life

for someone you love is too short.

But the reality is that applies to all of us.

And all we can do with the time we have is make the most of it.

And by seeing the history of people who tried to make the world a

better place and had their loved ones come to the Western Wall.

Like I was doing, I felt like I was in a continuum of humanity that I was proud

that Matt and my parents and my friend Ted were a part of, so it really helped

me through the grieving process, realizing after I've come and gone from this planet.

Somebody might be standing right here a thousand years in the future who lost a

child and felt the same way that he was thankful of the good work that his child

had done while they were on this earth.

So I felt like I was just a part of a bigger story and that Matt and my

parents and my friend Ted made the most of the time they had on this

planet and the end of the day, that's all any of us can do because we're

all going to be there at some time.

So I really had a sense of contentment and peace that surprised me and what we did

after going to Jerusalem, we went to Tel Aviv, which is on the Mediterranean Sea.

And we actually lit Matt's Yahrzeit candle on the beach, looking out onto the

Mediterranean ocean and it was moving.

And it again, just made me realize that we're just a small part of

the history of the human race, because people have been coming here

for thousands of years, lighting Yahrzeit candle for their loved ones.

And I felt proud of what Matt did during his time on this planet.

So the trip to Israel gave me an enormous sense of peace and contentment that my

family was part of a bigger legacy of service to humanity and Matt wrote a

beautiful story to help achieve that goal.

Marshall, thank you for sharing Matt's story

and yours and Debbie's story.

You've added a few things that I hadn't heard before, and that

was beautiful tribute to Matt.

So thank you.

Well, Steve, again, you have been such a help to us because you

and Shelly have been such a exemplary couple as to how you've lived your lives.

We love you guys, respect you guys and are amazed how you've handled your

life with grace, kindness, empathy.

And as I mentioned at the end of the day, what else is there?

Everything else is just fluff after that, because we're all here short time, we

got to make it a good time for ourselves, our loved ones and for humanity.

And you've absolutely done that.

And I believe that Matt did that.

My parents, my friend, Ted, and I want to take their good work and

continue it in my life for as long as I can, because they're not here.

So I hope today's discussion was helpful.

And as we go through this journey together of Hope thru Grief, we

are going to be telling stories that are helpful to anybody who's

going through the grief process.

So again, I like to thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And have a good day.

Thank you for joining us on Hope Thru Grief with your cohost

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski

We hope our episode today was helpful and informative.

Since we are not medical or mental health professionals.

We cannot and will not provide any medical, psychological,

or mental health advice.

Therefore, if you or anyone, you know, requires medical or mental health

treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.