Welcome back to Final Approach, the podcast where we explore the story of caring for loved ones from the cockpit and beyond. I’m Jonathan Knaul, your host and author of the book Final Approach: Test Pilot’s Story of Caring for Loved Ones. Today’s episode is one you don’t want to miss: I’m joined by my friend, fellow test pilot, astronaut, and family man, Andy Edgell, who brings a unique perspective from high-risk aviation and personal caregiving.

In our conversation, Andy and I talk candidly about his extraordinary career as a British Royal Air Force pilot, F-35 flight tester, instructor at top test pilot schools, and now an experimental test pilot and astronaut for Virgin Galactic. We go deep into what it’s like to care for loved ones across continents. Andy opens up about supporting his parents from afar—his father, a retired British Airways pilot, is living with Alzheimer’s in the UK, while Andy raises his own family in California.

We tackle the emotional realities of being a caregiver while holding down a high-pressure career, the struggles of communicating with loved ones affected by dementia, and the tension between our “fix-it” mentality as pilots and the true needs of those we care for. We touch on the power of music therapy, the importance of vulnerability, and the need for honest, open communication when family is spread across the globe.

Key Takeaways

1. Balancing High-Pressure Careers and Family Caregiving: Andy shares the realities of being both a test pilot/astronaut and a caregiver to family members living abroad.
2. Long-Distance Caregiving: Learn strategies for supporting loved ones from afar, including the importance of regular communication and emotional connection.
3. Military Mindset and Caregiving: How the "problem-solving" approach instilled in test pilots can help—and sometimes hinder—when applied to real-life family relationships.
4. Communicating with Family Members with Dementia: Andy’s touching accounts of connecting with his father through shared passion—especially aviation and music.
5. Vulnerability in High-Stakes Professions: Why it’s crucial for test pilots, astronauts, and anyone in demanding careers to embrace vulnerability and open up about personal struggles.
6. Role of Music Therapy: We discuss the potential benefits and limitations of using music to support cognitive health in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.
7. Importance of Honest Communication: Having trusted family members who provide candid feedback is essential for maintaining healthy relationships.

If you enjoyed today’s discussion, visit FinalApproachBook.com to download your free caregiver plan, sign up for my newsletter, and learn more about my book, Final Approach. Join our community and remind yourself: you are never alone in your caregiving journey.

Share this episode with fellow caregivers, aviators, and anyone who needs support balancing career and family. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for more candid conversations about resilience, aviation, and the power of caring for those you love.

Best in care,

Jonathan

Welcome, folks. I'm here today with the podcast Final Approach Test Pilot Story of Caring for Loved Ones, which is associated with my book of the same title. I'm Jonathan Knaul. I'm here with a very special guest. Really excited to have him, Andy Edgell. Andrew Edgell. He goes by Andy, call sign Gary, who's a fellow test pilot extraordinaire and an astronaut and a family man and just a really wonderful guy. So we'll kick off with Andy in just a moment.

He's sitting here right with me. A little bit unusual for us. We're good friends. So we're sitting here in my house and going to have this conversation, which I'm really privileged and lucky to have him. The only other thing I wanted to say before we start off is please go to finalapproachbook.com that's my website. You can get the free caregiver plan and my newsletter. And if you're so interested, please do purchase the book. I'm there to help caregivers build a network and remind you all that you are not alone.

So with that, welcome, Andy. And Andy came in this morning about an hour ago. We've been sitting around catching up and chatting, and I'm really lucky to have Andy here, and Andy's a good friend of mine and. And that's a. A privilege in of itself. So welcome, Andy, and just want to talk a bit about. Let's start with your background. You have this sensational background.

You're somebody that I look up to so much in so many ways as a pilot, as a test pilot, as a family man, as somebody who has accomplished so much. Also doctoral candidate, so soon to be Dr. Edgell. And on top of all that, you have the best voice, as everybody always wants to have Andy's voice.

Well, we're about to find out whether that's true, aren't we?

There you are. There he is. So whenever we have a conference, people are like, gosh, we want Andy to be the emcee. So I'm hamming it up a little bit here for the audience, but truly, this is Andy Edgell. So please, Andy, can you tell us a little bit for the listeners about your background, your career, which is sensational, and get a little bit into that first.

Yeah, of course. First of all, thanks for having me. It's a real honor. The honor is mine to be here. I don't think I can call you Dr. Jonathan. Nod all the way through. You're going to be jk.

You've always been JK to Me and you will continue to be jk. So for everyone that's listening, JK is a dear friend of mine and I'm in a fortunate position to have him in my life. We'll go into this as we continue this, this discussion. And over the last few years, I've. I've made it a priority of mine to make sure that I'm surrounded by good, honest and genuine people. And JK is one of those. So that's enough of telling each other that we're fantastic. Let's.

Let's move on. So, as JK said, my background is British Royal Air Force. So I went to university in England. I was born and bred in England. I went to university in England and then I joined the Royal Air Force at the age of about 21. I flew Harriers, or should I say I survived the Harrier for about five years, which is a challenging aircraft so far.

It's so cool.

Yeah, it made me feel like a terrible pilot for about five years because I always seem to be behind the aircraft and fighting it, but. But now as I'm a little bit wiser and older and more experienced, I realized it was just a cool, challenging aircraft to fly. But anyway, I spent that time on the Harrier, and then I started my time in the U.S. i came to United States Naval Test pilot school in 2011. I graduated a year later and then pretty much spent another six years or so flight testing the F35B and C at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River. VX23, the Salty Dogs, they were a fantastic squadron. And that was a truly true, a true pleasure to be part of during that time of flight testing.

That in itself, I think, is the coolest thing, is that you're a former X35 test pilot. And for listeners who don't know, I mean, that really is the newest generation of fighter aircraft out in the world, at least in the Western world. And it's a really remarkable aircraft that, like the Harrier, hovers. It's a fighter jet that hovers.

It is a fighter jet that hovers. Yep. They are chalk and cheese, those two aircraft. You've got the Harrier, which is raw and there's not too much augmentation. It's your stick shift Corvette, for example. Whereas the F35, there's a lot of automation, a lot of protection there as technology advances. And that's your Tesla that you just double click down and it sorts you out and keeps you safe. So two very different aircraft.

But it was fascinating to flight test the F35. I don't have the honor of being an X35 test pilot. That was the very first one that was built. But the subsequent ones that went through all of their flight test campaign, that's what I did for about six years or so. And then I left the military and I joined National Test Pilot School. After I left the military, I spent about 18 months there as a fixed.

Wing instructor, which is where we started together. Met each other.

Yeah, that's where we overlapped for the first time. And then I moved across to United States Air Force Test Pilot School to instruct there for a couple of years with Calspan Corporation. And then about two years of that. I then joined Virgin Galactic as an experimental test pilot. And that's where I am right now. Looking forward to trying to get up to space multiple times a year in.

The not too distant future, which is also just super cool. I mean, again, for listeners who we're going to talk soon about Andy's family. And Andy's a caregiver in many senses as well, too. But Andy works for Virgin Galactic. So Virgin Galactic is a company that is really built to take people to space, take paying tourists to space. And it has a very unique vehicle that will take folks to a suborbital level. And then it really. It leaves from a mothership at about 50,000ft, blasts itself into space on a very impressive rocket motor, and then comes back gliding under no power to Earth safely.

And it's really a special company founded by Sir Richard Branson. That Andy is an astronaut with a spaceline captain, essentially with a company I think is really. Dude, I think it's the coolest thing, man. I really do. And again, privileged to be sitting here just with you talking about this.

Well, it's a very interesting. It's a very interesting job. It's a fascinating company. And you know what? Bringing it back to the more personal level of talking about people and emotions and experiences, that's something that really jumps out at me. With Virgin Galactic, you bring the future astronauts and their families and their friends in for about a week to Spaceport America, and they have you witness the highs and the lows of all of the emotions that you can think about. The excitement, the adrenaline, the trepidation, the nervousness, and every emotion that you can think about. You kind of watch them as individuals, but also their loved ones that are with them at Spaceport America. You watch them oscillate between all of these different emotions.

And it's a fascinating sort of human experiment in a way. And then watching the future astronauts come back down to earth and instantly and in a very raw fashion share their experience of looking down on mother Earth and the impact it's immediately had on them. A really powerful thing, I've got to say. It's a really interesting thing and I'm very fortunate to be able to witness that firsthand in the rawest of fashion.

Yeah. Which again, I think is really very cool. I mean, we were talking about him earlier this morning. One of the people that I have the privilege to fly with at National Test Pilot School, he works for us part time, is call sign Stick and Stick, who's just an amazing test pilot astronaut himself too. And I get to fly with him and he's told me about, about that experience that his family's had and what it's like from that side as well as his own experience. And I'm just really amazed every time I hear it. I can listen to it all day.

Yeah, Stick's got some good stories here. I think he's been to space four times now and in all transparency, I'm still waiting for that first space flight. So in fact I dropped Stick. I was flying the mothership on his last space flight in June 2024 and I was the pilot in command of the mothership, the carrier Aircra. And it's a real, again, a real pleasure and honor to be able to call release, release, release and drop your mate off and then watch and go on Mach 3 up to nearly 300,000ft and come back as a repeat visitor to suborbital space is fantastic.

Well, Andy, you're going to go to space. As I've said before, it's going to happen one way or another sometime sooner than later. And the fact that you are doing the job that you are doing right now for Virgin Galactic is a testament to the trust and credibility that folks have in you. You know, with paying passengers on board is no small thing. So yeah, buddy, let's talk a bit about your family. I mean, you're from the uk, your parents are back in the uk and how do you cope with. And you do it very well. I mean, look, you have a beautiful wife, three wonderful children, you have a full time job and on top of that you have your parents back in England who are having their own struggles with health.

And you fulfill a role, albeit you're not there, as the prime caregiver. You fulfill a role as a caregiver. How do you balance all this and how do you, can you talk a little bit about how you deal with that? Because, again, you know, you're somebody I look up to as not only a tremendous test pilot, an astronaut, somebody who's so accomplished in our industry, but you're a great family man. I mean, I've spent numerous hours at your house. I know your family quite well. You're a solid husband and a father and you've got parents that you have to worry about too. And yet you're very successful in your career. And I think I want to get that across to listeners is that how do you maintain a career and be a caregiver at the same time? And from my point of view, you do that so well.

I appreciate that. From my point of view, I do it in a very low, average fashion. So I would not profess to be an expert in a cockpit, and I certainly do not profess to be an expert at home or an expert caregiver in any way, shape or form. I really don't. We were talking earlier, before we pressed record and something. I'm 44 years old now. I think I'm becoming a better human being. Going back to what I said right at the start of this, by surrounding myself by the right people has allowed me to mature.

You know, men are essentially boys until at some point when they figure out that they've got to actually grow up a little bit. So I've kind of hit that point right now. So the main, the main approach I have to everything, we'll go into the details of my, you know, wife and kids and then my mum and dad and my sister. But my main approach is just to just try to be present and try to be fair and try not to allow your frustrations from all other walks of life, whether it's, you know, work, for example, don't let it impact the family too much. But as I said, I'm doing it, I'm trying it. Generally successful, but I don't think I'm an expert in any way, shape or form. But yeah, so you mentioned my beautiful wife and three children. Yeah, I've got a great family.

I'm very fortunate. They're extremely important to me. They support me in what I do, they allow me to do what I enjoy doing at work, flying, test flying, et cetera. So my beautiful wife, Zir, we've been married for, crikey, 13, 14 years. And I've got three kiddos. The little one's Adeline, she's 8 years old. Sterling is 10 and Samson is 16, going on 17.

All very talented and gifted.

Yeah, they don't really get much of that from me. They have. They're very musically talented and I. And I. All of those genes definitely came from my wife. So they play the violin, the piano, the singers. My wife says a cellist as well. So, yeah, they're all extremely talented.

I look at their music shoots, I have no idea. It's a foreign language. You may as well put, you know, Chinese in front of me. I'm staggered that they have this. This ability. It's awesome. And. And I embrace that and I appreciate the eff wife's put in into that.

So, yeah, they live. Well, we all live down in Temecula, California, and they appear to be pretty happy, so that's cool. My main purpose in life is just to plot on work, earn the money and allow them to be happy and to flourish as children and support my wife in what she does, for which I'm extremely grateful for sure.

By the way, thanks again for doing the big drive from Temecula this morning up here to Palmdale where we're sitting at my house. I really appreciate that, especially with the traffic around here. That's not a fun thing to do.

It was fine. It's two and a half hours, it's not too bad. But yeah, so that's my immediate family down in Temecula, just south of where we're sat right now. And then 6,000 miles away, I have mum, dad and my sister. And that's hard. It's hard in many ways because not only am I separated by 6,000 miles, but my dad has pretty significant Alzheimer's. It kicked in. My dad's called Clive.

In fact, before I talk about how he's doing right now, let me give you a bit of background about my mum and dad. So dad born in 1943, straight into British Airways. So he came out of high school, as we'd call it in America, or sixth form, as we'd call back in England. And he came straight out and went straight to British Airways and he spent 35 years as a. As a British Airways pilot. He flew all sorts of aircraft, ultimately did the main stint on the BAC 111 and then the 757 and the 767 operating out of Birmingham and then out of Heathrow. And mum was a airline stewardess, a trolley dolly, whatever the right or the wrong word is right now, I know we used to call them the latter word there, but. So she was in the cabin and I grew up kind of either in the cockpit or in the cabin.

So it's my Happy place, actually, when I travel commercially, I'll stand in the galley and talk to the air stewardesses.

And, dude, we probably talked about it before, but I did not realize that both your parents were from the airline industry.

Yeah, they were both British Airways, and I think that's obviously where my passion for aviation started at a very, very young age. And then at some point, some guy called Maverick crept into my life through some film, as he did all of us. Yeah. Apparently you can also go upside down and go supersonic and. And have the. The ladies swooning after you. So I was completely swayed by. Completely swayed by Maverick.

We were all taken.

Yep. So, yeah, that's Mum and Dad. Dad's called Clive. Mum's called Margaret. Dad in. Born in 43. Mum born in. In 53.

And they currently live in Cornwall, which is the corner of. Of England, Southwest corner, which is a bit of a challenge to get to. It's the other side of the country from. From Heathrow, So there's there a good 6,000 miles away, which. Which sucks. But it's my decision to be here chasing my dream of being an astronaut and so forth. And my life has certainly gravitated towards a life in America. And it is what it is, really.

My sister Beth, she is an absolute rock star. I've read your book, jk, and you evidently have a fantastic relationship with your sister Felicia. And I really recognize how you supported each other through your mum's decline in her later years. And I also recognize how much you thank her in your book for everything that she did. And then I guess this is my opportunity to say that my sister's doing ultimately what you did right now. She used to live in the Czech Republic. She's a traveler. She's a fantastic individual.

She's a linguist. You put her into a country and she'll speak the language. And three. Three months is just staggering. She's a linguist and artist, a musician, a fantastic singer.

Why am I not surprised that your fellow DNA is gifted as well?

She's the complete opposite to me. I think I'll take all the maths and the engineering, and then she can do all of the arts and the languages for sure. And she's extraordinary at what she does. So the reason I mentioned that is she's also a bit of a traveler. She loves to get overseas, so she's lived in France and Ireland and America, and she's lived in the Czech Republic for about six years. And when dad started to decline with Alzheimer's, she moved back from the Czech Republic I think she'd been there for about five years and she came back and she moved into the village where Mum and Dad were, which I cannot thank her enough for. And that's part of why it's a little bit tough for me, because I'm 6,000 miles away and have not moved back. And Beth did move back.

I'm extremely grateful for her being on site, boots on the ground, day in, day out.

That's a very hard thing to do. So my hat's off to Beth as well. Never met her, but that is just. That is very hard to do.

Yep, you did it. So you understand. You probably understand more than I understand, but I do appreciate it as much as I'm sure Felicia appreciated it with, with you. So that's, you know, that's the background. That's my family, that's where they are. They're 6,000 miles away and. And I'm over here. And it, it puts me in a really interesting position as a quote, unquote caregiver, because I'm not.

I'm not you. I didn't do what you did or I'm not doing what. What you did. And there's lots of layers between me and the person who is declining pretty severely with Alzheimer's. So it's a related situation, but it's not identical at all.

No, and I understand that, Andy, I appreciate what you're saying. Notwithstanding, I think you still play a very big role. You have to. You're the son to your parents, you're the brother to your sister, and I know you enough. And like, if you could comment a little bit on that, because your support and your communication with your family makes a big difference. You are not a person who is just over here in America and ignoring what is happening in the UK with your family. You're in touch with them regularly.

And.

That makes a big difference, I'm sure. Plus you have your own family that you have to, in a different sense, care for and care to, which, again, at least from my perspective, you do. And I have no doubt, extremely well. But maybe if you could comment a little bit about that, because you have to communicate with your father, who has dementia, in a very different way, and communicating with somebody who has dementia is not easy. And you have to communicate with your mother, who's the prime caregiver, along with your sister, who also plays a role as a. Or the prime caregiver, and lend them support. So can you talk a little bit about how you communicate with them and how you're able to manage that and what you've learned from it.

I have learned an extraordinary amount, actually. It's very different. There's three different people and three different approaches and I've certainly got a lot wrong. And I always appreciate constructive criticism to allow me to become more supportive. So let's talk about dad first. Right, let's go to the most important person. Mum noticed that he had symptoms of Alzheimer's just before COVID kicked in. So I think that was just horrendous timing, going straight into isolation when I think the thing that you need is to be active, your brain to be active.

Lots of communication, lots of conversations, lots of things, lots of doing. I'm no doctor, obviously, but I can imagine that at the start of the onset of Alzheimer's, being trapped in a room in isolation for a couple of years in England is the worst thing that you could prescribe. So I think that had a really detrimental impact on the rate of his.

Decline, for sure, which I understand. Right around the same time that we were instructing together at National Test Pilot School, and I made my way back to Canada at the time to take care of my mother, who I guess maybe would say precipitated the dementia symptoms around the same time as Covid struck. So I understand. Sorry, Please keep going.

Yeah, so he. He declined quickly and it's been, you know, now, I guess, six years or so, my communication with. With dad, what I tried to do was set up a regular time because I'd find that you'd call, you'd call your dad or you call your mum, you call your sister, and they're busy. Everyone's got their own life. We've all got things going on. You can't expect everyone to drop what they're doing and pick up the phone. So why establish the regular drum with dad through Mum? So I knew that I'd be, you know, Dad's memory was fading so strongly in order for him to have a chance to even remember who I was. And that's not because I care, it's because I wanted.

I didn't want him to feel bad about not knowing who his son was. So I tried to set up this sort of regular cadence. Sunday, 8 o' clock in the morning, my time, 16 o', clock, 4pm their time. And I would call. And we've been doing that for many years now. And I think that was a really. That was a key move that was important to try and keep some regular contact. But when I chat to dad now, it's.

I don't find it that Hard. And that seems almost unfair to people who say it's difficult to talk to him. And I don't. There's no medical background here, you know that. I don't know why this is a thing, but I find that our, again, conversations in inverted commas, that it's not a conversation. There is some, I think, I truly believe, some deep down mutual understanding of roughly what each other are talking about based on flying and aviation. So there's plenty of times I called him on Father's Day and for Father's Day I constructed a card on moonpig.com and I'd just gone and flown a DC3 for the first time and had a photo on the front of me flying the DC3. And then on the inside page I used good old chatgpt and then tweaked it a little bit and just had a summary of what the DC3 was.

And then on the right, obviously a personal message. And so he opened the card whilst I was on FaceTime to him and it wasn't really a back and forth conversation because that time has gone, but everything I would talk him through the DC3 and my experience and hey, dad, you would have loved flying. This was really interesting, you know, the lateral axis, the directional axis, whatever it is, you know, the challenges to land it. You could tell that he understood it and was kind of communicating back with me. And afterwards Mum said, I haven't seen him that conversational conversant for such a long time and we didn't really have a conversation. But I think there's sort of deep down, you bond and you have this mutual understanding and appreciation of aircraft, of aviation, of challenging situations, of stress because of flying, excitement because of flying. And I think there's something, there's something deep, deep down in Dad's brain and that's a thread, a line that isn't going to get severed. He may not be able to communicate it brilliantly, but I don't think it'll ever be severed.

For his birthday I sent a similar type of photo. I managed to find. I got his logbooks, they're fantastic. I was old school logbooks and I found the very first aircraft that he ever flew. His for the first line item in all of his logbooks and it was a Chipmunk, a de Havilland Chipmunk. And I found the tail number and I managed to find a photograph of it online and I put that as the main picture on the birthday card and we chatted about that. I said, hey dad, this is the first aircraft you ever Flew and it was on this date and you flew for 30 minutes and it was with this instructor and it's at this location. And they're really easy conversations.

They're very one way, but they're very easy conversations for. For me to have with dad. And so I think just finding something in common where the vicious disease that is Alzheimer's, it doesn't get access to that, it doesn't get to eat away at that memory, doesn't get to destroy that part of you. He's still dad, the pilot.

I'm sure. I have no doubt that that's huge to him and his way of dealing with that. I can see your. Dude, are you still okay to.

Yeah, I'm good.

I'm sorry, buddy. And I appreciate you opening up like this. Dude, I'm getting cracked up. We're both are. When your father, I imagine, which is common with dementia, asks you repeatedly the same thing that perhaps you've explained to him, have you had that experience?

I haven't actually. I think mum takes the brunt of that. And that's unfair to say takes the brunt of it. But, you know, we're all. We're all adults here. We know what we're talking about. The frustration, right? No, mum. Mum takes 99.99999% of.

Of that aspect the day in, day out. All the stuff that you wrote about in your book, the frustration of just not being able to do the simple things of, you know, not be fully functionally functioning physically and mentally. So I don't really get that. Of course he says stuff on the phone to me when we're having these kind of conversations, but I don't necessarily, necessarily care for the words or care for the answers or care for the correct memory. That's pointless. I just appreciate talking about a plane or whatever it is.

That's amazing. It's no small thing. I'm going to sidetrack for a second here. I want to highlight something for listeners in our industry as test pilots. Being vulnerable is not a usual thing. It's very uncommon, in fact. We tend to pride ourselves on being unemotional. And for good reason.

We largely have to be.

And.

Not showing who we are inside is something we, you know, you can think about. The Top Gun movie, I think, is maybe a good representation to the larger population. We are more clinical in what we do. So I'm sitting here with you, Andy, and we've got two test pilots. We tend to be two sensitive people. A little bit of emotion coming out. I mean, we're not doing video so people don't see that. Both of our eyes are getting a little bit glossed over.

I pride myself on, as we said earlier, you mentioned compartmentalizing. We need to do that in our job and keeping the emotion out, otherwise you can't deal with the risk that we deal with. But I pride myself also, when the time is right and saying, hey, this is who I am, and I do not mind at all bearing my soul at the right time in the right place. And I think it's important. And I just wanted you to comment on that because we're sitting here and we're doing just that. And it's unusual in our breed to do that.

It really is. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier about kind of maturing and growing up and realizing the important things in life. If you ask any doctor, any of my flight surgeons over the years, if there's anything wrong with me, the answer's no. Because, you know, you, you just, you don't tell anyone. You're perfect. You're mentally and physically 100%, you're the finest specimen to walk on the planet, and you are indestructible because you can't show the. The chinks in your armor mentally and physically. On the medical side of it, you genuinely don't want to be downgraded and taken out of flying status.

So we know that and we acknowledge that. We joke between pilots about that. Don't tell the doc. You don't joke about the mental side of it, though. You don't ever acknowledge that aspect. And I think as you grow up, you just realize that that's just as important as the physical side. But you're absolutely spot on. You've got to, you've got to put one cassette in, play that, take that cassette out, put another cassette in, and have it all very, very sterile and compartmentalized.

Otherwise you can't get through our line of work. It's as simple as that. The risk that we take at times, you've just got to. You've got to lock it away and go and do the job and do that aspect, whatever the task is, in that one minute, one hour, one day period, you, you, you give that 100%, and then you need to be able to take it out. And I'm not very good at it, I'll be honest. And I'm getting better, you know, trying to not take the troubles. This is really interesting. I've never thought about this, Jake, actually.

We is hammered into us through flight training and all the way through our flying careers. Don't take your troubles airborne. How many times have you heard that? Don't you? Do not take your troubles airborne. Once you get in the cockpit, then you think about the mission, the task, you go and do that job safely. How many times have you heard someone say don't take your airborne troubles home or don't take your work stuff home? No one's ever said that to me and it's just talking about it right now with you that it's dawned on me because that's an aspect in me that I've tried to become better at of late, which is don't take all of those stresses home. It's not your kids fault that you had a really tiring day and you spent six hours in the car and five hours in a plane and you screwed up and you feel bad about yourself and yeah, that's a really interesting thing that's just dawned on me.

I never really thought about that myself either. And I try and be very careful about that and who I speak to about the struggles that I meet during the daytime. And on the same note, you're absolutely right about the cockpit. It's interesting. I think we've all had a co pilot at some point who was having their own bad day and I've seen it where. And the communication in the cockpit is just. There's no discussion or maybe they're upset with you and there's no discussion and I think that's just terrible. And I certainly tried to mature beyond that myself and how I deal with things when I'm in the cockpit.

So. True. I want to pick up very quickly, if I may. You segued into how we, we deal with things as testers, as pilots and it can be very sterile. We can come across as a very unemotional person. Breed, should I say? We're a special type of breed, test pilots, that's for sure. And that's trained into us, it's driven into us for sure. And that is something that I learned that I was doing wrong in caregiving.

So we've spoken about how I'm a few steps removed from immediate care from my dad. We've got poor old dad and then we've got my sis who's living around the corner and then we've got my mum as the primary caregiver who's got the really tough job, right. Because she's not even in a position where she gets to grieve the loss of the person that she's married. I think they've been married for nearly 50 years. It's crazy. And my military approach, my test piloting approach, is extremely sterile. You got a problem, you need to design a plan and then you go and execute the plan which will remove the problem. It's as simple as that.

And that is something that is ingrained in us as fighter pilots and as test pilots. Stop faffing around, wasting energy and time and resources and all of those things if you're not solving the problem. So as mum has to now cope with dad as he starts to decline, this is quite simple for me because there's a superficial problem and I can solve this superficial problem. So I come in like a bull in a china shop just saying, okay, here's the problem, here's my plan that will get it solved. Go and execute. I will help you execute questions. And I do that all over the place. And it probably sadly took about two or three years and a good stern conversation from my sister to make me realize that even though strictly speaking, you can solve the problem, that's not helping.

That's really not helping. And so something that I have made a conscious effort to do is just don't necessarily solve the problem. You know what? Sometimes people don't want the problem solved. They just want to talk about it and listen. And I spent half an hour on the. Well, I spent an hour on the phone to Mum yesterday and about half an hour of it was me just saying, yeah, yeah, that sounds tough. And I'm, you know, I'm trying to swallow all of my words, which are pretty sure I've got a primary, secondary and tertiary solution to that problem. But I'm desperate.

You know, I figured out that I didn't figure out. I got told that that's not the way to solve this. And so having your own particularly particular approaches which seem so obvious to you and I, it's a very military it, you know, it's what we do, we solve problems. But sometimes not everyone appreciates or will respond to our approach to life.

I can so relate to that. When I was at the height of caring for my mom, I had a number. At one point I had five personal support workers working for me, working for my mom, working for me to care for her and to cover the 24 and 7 hour, sorry, 24 hour, 7 day a week period. And I tried to deal with them in a military fashion. And that took a nosedive very quickly. And I really had to learn very quickly how to properly manage and work with these folks who are civilians and who for the most part were living in their own intergenerational household, caring for somebody else at home, at least one, if not more people. After they left, my mom and I really had to change my approach and quickly, very, very hard for me to do as well. And dealing with my sister, similar to you, I dealt with her in a military fashion and I still fall into that some ways today with my sister who I adore and respect and love very much.

And I really had to adjust. She similar told me, you need to change your approach. This is not the military. And understand that you are trying to pursue a solution, but this is not the way to do it. And that was a big watershed moment for me as well.

I find it, I still find, I do appreciate it and I acknowledge that and I believe it. I still find it very hard to come to terms with because we're just so problem. We're driven by a military approach to solving a problem. It's as simple as that. And so even now I find it hard and I don't accept that it's the right way, but I do accept that it is the right way for the person on the other end. And I've got it. I've fought into that, fought into that now. But I think we come across as quite unemotional sometimes and heartless and it's the complete opposite.

I know for a fact that I have come across as being a heartless, non caring family member and it couldn't be further from the truth. It's just the approach that you take and that you believe you should be taking can sometimes mask the intent behind it. Yeah, it's fascinating. And it's the same with your close family, right? With your wife and your, and your kiddos. I'm sure my kiddos think I'm horrible half the time. And it's all with the right intent. But you know what you need in your life? You need someone to keep you nicely grounded. And you asked the question way back when on this podcast, you said you brought up communication and that's key.

That is the number one thing, the communication. If my sister didn't have the you know what, to pull me aside and give me the God's honest truth, I'd probably still be making the same mistakes. Equally, my wife, who is an absolute superstar, she's not shy about telling me at exactly what I'm doing wrong and keeping me completely grounded. And I appreciate that because otherwise you'll lose the people that are the most important things in your life. And you don't even realize you're doing it.

Yeah. And I think that's a spot on assessment. And I would mention that or emphasize, I hear for military folks, for veterans, it is. They are probably some of the most caring people because of the business that we do or have done and because of the risks that we're involved in, because of. I mean, in our business, we have lost so many friends. You have. I have. Over the years.

I think, just to cap that one off, I relate back to a story of when I was a cadet at Royal Military College in Canada. One of my fellow cadets took his life one night, and it was very upsetting for the entire cadet wing. We had this wonderful commandant, and he gave a wonderful speech, which we needed to hear as we were getting ready for the funeral for this very young gentleman, young cadet, young officer. And he said, you know, we have the hardest business, and we probably care the most, and we do the things we do and we act the way we do because we care so deeply about lies, because that's what we do in the military, at least in our militaries, in the Western militaries. So, yeah, I think you hit that spot on. And thankfully, we have people around us who remind us, hey, tone it down a little bit. We know that there's a caring person in there. Please use your other side.

I think we're getting close to being done, Andy, But I want to try one more item just to talk about. Reference your father. Music therapy. How did music therapy. Because I know that you tried some music therapy with him. How did that impact him in a positive way? How did that help him?

So music therapy. I remember I'm not the musician. That's. Yeah.

But I'll also have that we talked about. Your whole family is very talented, very gifted musically. I mean, you live in a household full of music. Please go ahead.

Yeah. So my wife very much has driven the importance of music with. We're certain, with our children or with children in general, the association of music with stimulation of the brain. And if you learn a language as a young kid, if you learn an instrument as a young kid, that has positive benefits, and she knows a lot more about it than I do. So I won't carry on down that thread, but suffice to say, I'm no expert in the music world and the cognitive benefits of it. I do know that dad has always loved music and singing. Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, that's. I still.

I was listening to Dire Straits yesterday. It's my kind of tie back into dad because we listened to it together as a. When I was a kid for a very long time. So I know that he responds to music. My sister bought him a fantastic music box. It was for people with some sort of cognitive decline. So very simple to operate and he really enjoys. You can tell he likes to listen to music.

We tried formal music therapy thanks to your recommendation. I know your mum had music therapy and to get to answering your question, very hard for me to say because I wasn't there in the virtual room with dad. So I was setting it up. But I was setting it up for then Mum to go and execute with dad and I think she found that he wasn't necessarily understanding what was going on exactly. But I don't know whether that was deep down a real problem or is it fine to just not understand what's going on and get lost in the music. That would be my expectation. But it's very hard for me to say whether or not it was a benefit or was not a benefit. I can't see that it would not have been a benefit or I can't imagine that it was detrimental to him.

I think there would have been some sort of benefit in there. But Mum decided not to continue with that and it's hard for me to. To truly share with everyone the real reason for that. But I don't think she really saw it, saw the value. But you know, that's each of their own. I can truly understand how it would be awesome for someone just to go and get lost in. Lost in the music or share in musical experiences with someone whether that's virtual or in person. I think if he was surrounded by a string quartet then he'd be a.

A pretty happy man. He should come out to California and then watch my kiddos and my wife play. I'll be on the triangle in the corner every now and then.

Well, fair enough. But let's just finish off with. I mean you wake up every morning hearing your kids playing or practicing music and so, I mean, I think you could comment on the fact that. I mean you have a very healthy family in every way. You're all very healthy. But that living with music brings goodness to you.

I do agree with that. My kiddos are fantastic. In fact, I said that I did wake up to the Sound of Music. I don't. I'm not fortunate enough to wake up at 6 o' clock in the morning, but I wake up in the early hours. But the kiddos will be around about 6:30 in the morning. Without being prompted, the we've got a Baby grand piano. And that'll be going with Sterling doing his practice.

And then Adeline will be up on her violin. She started at the age of three, so she's half decent now for sure. And so that that musical sound will be going through the house. And actually we bought the baby grand. No one needs a baby grand in their life. Right. Let's be honest about that. But we bought it for a reason, because we wanted to fill the house with the sound of music.

And coming from someone who isn't musically talented, I do appreciate the value of music in people's lives. And so our household is now a thriving mini orchestra, which is awesome. And I contribute in no part to it. I learned the electric guitar when I was a kid because I was all into Nirvana and Guns N Roses and so forth, and I wanted to play the electric guitar and I had some lessons. And after about a year, I said to Mum, I think I'm done with this. I'm terrible at it. And mum's approach, this is good parenting, right? Mum's approach is you say you're gonna do something, you do it, you don't quit. So you're sticking with it.

After about two years, I think she politely asked me to quit, that we all acknowledged that I was just terrible at it and just making noise and was never going to improve. So that didn't last very long.

Yeah, like you, my contribution in music is the fact that I'm very good at listening to it. And that's about as far as it goes. But let's wrap it up there, Andy. I think we could talk for hours. And I want to say how much I appreciate truly, you agreeing to doing this podcast and opening up and talking again. I mean, we both got a little bit teary eyed here. I saw you getting teary eyed and of course it affected me. And these are not easy things to talk about.

And I appreciate, as I'm sure anybody who's listening to this, that you have, in a sense, bared your soul, been honest, been open, been transparent, and been able to communicate in this way about what you've experienced in your life. Means a lot to me personally. Also, thank you for reading the book and for your support in that regard. You helped me edit it in a couple of ways too. So I'll wrap it up there. Say thank you, everybody, for listening and please Visit the website FinalApproachBook.com and thank you again, Andy, for being on the show.

Thank you, jk. Thanks for being my absolute pleasure. Pleasure.