This week Marshall and Steve welcome special guest Brian Mahon. Brian’s daughter Amy died on April 5, 2018 from bowel cancer at age 32. Receiving a terminal diagnosis and knowing that you are going to die can create an extended grieving process that puts you face to face with the inevitable each and every day. Is it possible to do more than simply live and get by post diagnosis, or can life be lived in service and in hope that inspire others? Amy’s story will leave you both inspired and hopeful. 

To find out more about Amy’s journey and dedication to sharing her journey to help others go to her website: http://www.catslovepeanutbutter.com.

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. You can find us on the internet to continue the conversation!

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Jordan Smelski Foundation: http://www.jordansmelskifoundation.org

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 everyone.

Welcome today's hope through grief.

I'm Steve Smelski cohost with my good friend, Marshall Adler.

Hello, everyone, I want to thank you so much for listening and

I hope you're all doing very well today.

Marshall and I have a special guest that's

going to join us today.

His name is Brian Mahon.

He's from Canada with his wife, Sharon, and we've asked Brian to come in and share

his story about his daughter, Amy and everything that he and Sharon experienced

over the last two and a half years.

And we met him through one of the grief groups that we had.

And we we've gotten to know Brian very well.

And we've heard some of Amy's story.

We wanted you to hear it because it's a very special story today.

So with that, I'd like to say, Brian, welcome to the show.

Thanks for joining us.

Steve Marshall, thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate the opportunity to tell you a little bit about Amy and her story and

what she managed to accomplish in her 32 years of life here on, on the earth.

She's really special to us, of course, as parents, but she did so

much, and especially in the last year of her life to help others.

So, I'm happy to share with you about her life.

Thank you for offering to appear.

Why don't we just start with a question about Amy.

Can you tell us some things about Amy?

I was spending some time this morning, reflecting

on Amy and looking at pictures.

And I don't think I own a picture of Amy that she isn't smiling.

She would light up a room.

She would walk in, she would be the center of attention.

She would be the kind of person you would want to get to know and spend time with.

And she certainly was that to us and in the life that she lived,

especially in dealing with cancer.

I never saw her wallow in self pity.

I never saw her weep excessively for her situation.

Instead, she would smile and say, let's get on with it.

And she had such a fortitude about life and she actually said something.

It really is amazing to me, she said, dad, it's not a battle.

Cancer is never a battle.

Cancer is never a case of winning and losing.

It's a case of doing your best, always doing your best.

And she used to say, nevertheless, I persisted.

And if anything, that defined Amy better than anything else, she persisted right

to the very end of her life and defining herself as Amy and not as a cancer person.

She, she defined herself by who she was.

Now what I could tell you about Amy over and above what I've just mentioned

is that she would help people.

She would go out of her way to become friends with people.

Case in point, she had a nurse that would come into her house and she would help

Amy dealing with many situations that Amy had to contend with , with bowel cancer,

colon cancer and her name was Tamsen.

And Tamsen would come in and she was relatively a new nurse

visiting in the home obviously.

And she would come routinely to see Amy and deal with different situations.

And the first rule of thumb of being a nurse is don't get emotionally

involved with your patient.

And yet Amy would tell you, and I could obviously see that they

became close personal friends.

And I remember that after Amy Tamsen came to us at the Memorial in absolute

tears saying how much she had loved Amy and enjoyed getting to know her and how

she was dealing with it, going forward.

She now runs marathons and she raises money for Amy.

And, for colon research, I should say on behalf of Amy.

And she continues to do that to this day, which is really, uh,

and writes us constantly emails us and tells us what she's doing.

So it's, it's special and Amy had a special effect on so very many people.

One of the things that Amy liked to do was to defy the norms, the

routines, and Amy wore a gold Cape.

And, she put this gold cape on whenever she could go out for a walk for

raising funds for cancer research.

So, she decided that she was going to walk between Bradford on Avon and Bath

along the canal, because as you know, the UK is full of canals and you can

go across UK through these canals.

So you could walk the canal between Bradford on Avon and Bath, and it would

take you about two hours, two and a half hours to get through it, anyways, Amy

would put on this gold Cape and anyone that wanted to walk with her would walk

with her and people would look at her and say, what's with the lady with the

gold cape and everyone that was walking with her could say, well, this is Amy and

she's dealing with terminal cancer, and so she's running, she's walking to raise

money for bowel cancer research in the UK.

And they raised, I couldn't believe it the day that we, we walked with her

on a number of occasions, but on this first day she raised lots of money.

People would say, well, I want to contribute to that.

And that just was Amy.

Amy was always about doing something to make things better.

And, it just defined our daughter in such a beautiful way.

And she told us, you know, before she died, she said, you know, make sure

that you do something with your life.

Make sure it counts in a way and more so than maybe what you've done already.

And that's what we're looking to find for ourselves a way to help others.

Because to let her just die and do nothing about, seems like a waste of a

life to me because if anything, and we're going to, live our lives to make sure

her life counted by carrying on things that she did and helping other people.

Thank you for sharing that.

You had shared before that you and Sharon just kind of packed up

and went over to stay with her.

Could you tell us about that?

Yeah, I can remember the day that, Amy told us about

the diagnosis on FaceTime.

I was in the kitchen upstairs and with Sharon and Amy stopped, and she looked

at me, she said, dad, something's wrong.

The right side of your face has gone down.

It doesn't look right.

And then Sharon looked at me and she said, yeah, she's right.

And so we basically had to stop the call so I could go to the hospital.

They thought I'd had a stroke.

It turned out that what I had was Bell's Palsy.

And, interesting that today we're doing this interview because today I just

had a call from the neck and throat clinic, and they're going to see me.

It's been three, four years now since, um, no, actually four or

five years now, since I've had this.

And I still struggle with Bell's palsy on the right side so that day, I will

never forget because Amy was far concerned about me, than she was telling us about

her diagnosis and hers was terminal.

That was, that's just Amy, you know, she just, she didn't want to make it

about her, but shortly thereafter, uh, Sharon went over initially.

And then, uh, I went over after that because I was designated

for a whole lot of testing.

To see what they could do about the Bells, so they had me stay back,

but then eventually I flew over and we spent the last year of Amy's

life in the UK, living in the UK.

And we could do that because we were retired, but we stayed in their home

and, and spent the year with her.

And this wasn't just any home that Amy and Chris had purchased.

It was a home built in 1690, and they had, Amy had totally renovated it and

designed with Pinterest boards, each room knew exactly what it's going to look like.

And one of the interesting things about that house as I reflect on it, there

wasn't a straight wall in it, but Amy had put a Pinterest board in every room.

So you could see what it was going to look like.

And when Amy died, the house has was 95% done, but there was this one room

that wasn't done and everything arrived for that room to be put together,

uh, shortly after she passed away.

And so we did that in her honor, and then also on our computer, we found

the color she wanted for the pantry door, which we painted to that color.

So we spent the last year, basically we did whatever we could to help.

We would cook.

We would clean, we would paint.

We would, we cleared her garden.

One thing that Amy wanted to do was sit in the garden and enjoy the beautiful

garden that she had, but it was overgrown with many, many years of neglect.

So Sharon and I sat and worked on it, and one of the great joys we had

was to see her come out and smile, hug us and thank us for clearing out.

The yard.

I think we took three truckloads away of yard waste to get that garden back.

And now it's one of the ones that in the city of Bradford and

Avon that people go to visit.

So, um, she never got to see it done, but she enjoyed what we

were able to do to bring it back.

Brian, how difficult was it to see your loving daughter?

Deal with the progression of the disease process that eventually

ended and taking her life.

Yeah, we stayed there for the year.

We went with her to every, every hospital, every appointment, every

meeting, and we, we lived the ups and the downs of a cancer diagnosis.

As you know, many of the people who will be listening will know, uh,

you got a bit of good news and you, you're on the top of the world.

And I remember that we went into a clinic for an appointment and

we were unable to go in with Amy and Chris, but they went in.

And we were sitting in the waiting area and we could watch the door that she went

in on and I remember the moment that she came out, she was smiling and she came

up to us and she said, I'm in remission.

And there's a picture of us, in a car on the car ride home.

And we're all on top of the world because we thought that Amy was in

the right space, that everything was going well, that everything was great.

Remission meant that it was over, that she'd beat cancer and we, we

absolutely lived in that moment.

And then I remember Chris turning to us and saying, Hey

guys, we need to understand that this doesn't mean it's over.

This is just one day in which we've got some good news.

Unfortunately that good news went away quite quickly as we found out that

remission just meant it wasn't growing as fast as it had been in the past.

But shortly thereafter, it started growing rapidly again, the cancer, and the chemo

was no longer considered effective and what doesn't help you is killing you.

And so if it's killing you, they stop it.

And when they stop it, the cancer grows faster.

So, it was very short lived um, but I remember going in one time and Amy

got some bad news and she came out and we sort of hugged her and she

cried and she cried for about a half hour of just dealing with it, asking

why me, why now, why all of this?

And then she looked up and she said, that's enough of this.

I'm not going to live like this.

I'm not going to let this control me.

And she said, let's get on with things.

And she got up and we moved forward, we went back and we dealt with it every

day from there forward, but always with a positive bent, you know, always with,

you know, what are we going to do today?

Living the day to the fullest, she taught us two things.

She said, look, every day counts.

So live every day as it is a special day and live it to the fullest.

And that's how we approach things.

Sharon and I try to live every day to the fullest.

Brian, you had shared a few things, as Amy was going through this,

she was actually trying to help others.

I think you sent me a link to one of her websites and going through

this battle, she was actually reaching out and helping others.

Could you tell us a little bit about that?

I think that gives us a pretty good description of how much

she cared for everybody else.

I laugh because Amy had a sense of humor about her and she

had a way of, she said, you know, if I'm going to have a website,

I want people to remember it.

So, her blogging is on a website called CatsLovePeanButter.com, and

you just got to love it because it's easy to find, uh, people say,

well, how can I write that down?

I go, look, CatsLovePeanButter.com, how can you not remember that?

Then they'll all was asked the same question do cats

really love peanut butter?

I say, hers did.

So she blogged her whole walk with cancer on CatsLovePeanButter.com.

And if you go there, you will read her story in such a way that you will

get to love the daughter that we had.

She's special.

She, she had a way of communicating.

She had a way of talking that just drew you in and our blog is so honest.

So honest about what she was going through.

She didn't hide anything.

She told people what the drugs did, how they reacted to her body,

because so many people with colon cancer didn't know what to expect.

And she wanted to write in such a fashion so that people could

deal with their own colon cancer.

A lot of the problems today with colon cancer is it's

considered a disease of the aged.

Young people aren't supposed to get it.

And I remember the story of her telling us of one, young girl who read her blog

and went to her doctor and said, I want you to test me for, for colon cancer.

And he said, you're too young.

And then he had her read Amy's blog and in doing so he agreed to test

her finally with some resistance.

And when he tested her, he found out that indeed she had cancer, this young

girl, and as far as we know, she got treated for her cancer and we know she

got treated, but we, she got better.

She got over, she, uh, recovered from it.

And so that was just one story of one person she helped, but many other

people were dealing with the idea of getting a stoma or a colostomy bag.

And Amy said it was nothing compared to, to not living.

She said I would do it in a heartbeat.

And she talked people through that.

Every drug that people could take, she would say, this is what it is.

This is what it does.

This is how it reactes in your body.

And so it's difficult to look at the blog today for me because you see a

healthy individual, at least looking healthy at the beginning and you see

you're in her weakest state at the end.

And it's, it's just tough to look out for me to remind myself of those

days, but, to know that she's still helping people, we're still seeing

people on the website on Facebook.

Today, just Amy reaching out through that to us, and we're happy to talk to them

or share or tell them about Amy's story, however we can, but I would encourage

everyone, if you get a chance, and you really want to understand colon cancer

in a young person, then go to this.

You see our daughter, she was misdiagnosed even as she was in junior college.

She was told she had hemorrhoids.

She was misdiagnosed.

Three times she wasn't tested three times.

And by the time they finally tested her, unfortunately they found out that there

was over 300 polyps in her, her bowel.

And, and just, and just.

The first test, they knew right away that she had cancer.

And that was when, of course she gave us that call and we

understood the ramifications of what she was going through.

Up until then, we, we didn't know anything because the doctors had said nothing.

She actually had to pay to go to a private clinic to get diagnosed

because the system refused to see her, saying that she was okay and

she was already headlong into cancer.

And so she actually, um, did something else that to this day amazes me.

She went with four other young, uh, colon cancer patients, and she spoke

to, um, in the UK parliament, not in parliament, but to the Lords in

a meeting about this disease and her member of parliament actually took it

up in parliament and spoke her case, didn't give her name, but spoke her

case and the need to do early diagnosis.

And so Amy, Amy really accomplished so much in her 32 years, but in that last

year, she did some amazing things that I just shake my head on and go, wow,

is that our daughter that did that?

So, she's had a profound impact in the UK, especially.

But also in Canada, the US and Australia.

People who've written us from around the world saying that Amy

has had an impact on their life.

Brian, thank you for sharing that.

Could you tell us, so obviously you and I first met when you came

into the grief class in Florida.

Did you experience anything during that last year were you, were you starting

to grieve or did it all happen after?

Yes, we started to grieve.

We grieved before.

I mean, a terminal diagnosis is in essence the beginning of grief

because you know, there's an end, that's not going to be what you want.

I mean, you hope and pray and want it to be different, but you also deal

with the reality that is before you.

And so we knew that we were dealing with a tough diagnosis, stage four colon

cancer that had metastasized to the liver.

And it just, it rocked us.

It changed us.

It, um, it caused us to struggle in ways that we'd never struggled before.

This is the biggest trial we'd ever gone through.

And what I didn't want to do was show Amy any sense of weakness, typical guy.

And so I, I kept everything from her, but I had a friend who was

willing to spend time with me.

And I remember meeting him in a coffee shop.

As we were going through this in the UK, he was an elder in the

local assembly, a similar to the one that we went to in Canada.

And we, I met with him constantly weekly and I remember just weeping,

constantly weeping and grieving and just saying, I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to help.

I don't know.

I, you know, I've prayed about this and yet, it just it's moving forward.

You know, one of my prayers, I will, never forget the prayer.

I said, Lord, you give me every bit of disease that she has, put

it on my body, and I'm ready to go.

Give her life, let her have life and I'm ready to go.

I've had enough.

Um, but of course you can't do that.

And, uh, it's one of those things that is, um, still on my heart,

but, but God did something amazing.

He took our sin nature.

And took our sin upon him and die for us.

So I live in that grace and that mercy.

And I know that I'll see Amy again one day in heaven.

So that's something that gives us comfort, but I tried to be strong through

this and this person that listened to me, I said to him, one day, I said,

wow, are you ever a great counselor?

He said, Brian, do you know what I've done?

And I said, no.

And he said, all I've done is listen to you.

That's all I've done is let you vent, let you share.

And you shared enough about what you're going through that now you're

ready to talk about it a bit more, but living with cancer as a diagnosis, you

start grieving right then and there.

When Amy passed, we were there like you, Steve, Sharon and I were there.

I was holding Amy's hand and Sharon and Chris had a hard time dealing

with a body, a shell at that point.

And I could deal with all of that.

I don't know why God gave me that grace and I stayed and dealt with things

and cleaned up and, and it didn't, it didn't hit me right then and there.

But the moment I walked out of that room, I realized that.

I had lost the most precious gift God had given me above his salvation over

after his salvation was my daughter and my kids mean everything to me

and I had lost my daughter and a light had gone out of my life and I

had to learn how to deal with that.

And I think that's why we literally stumbled into grief share down in Florida.

We started it in Canada, but we came to Florida.

We're snowbirds.

And we wanted desperately to find meaning in what we were going through

because Amy wanted us to understand that the best thing we could do dealing

with her death was helping others.

And that's what we really want to do is learn to be compassionate people, to

help others who are going through grief.

Brian, how was Amy able to deal with this deadly disease

process and keep such a positive attitude through the course of her life?

Amy was able to have many faces and I mean, that sincerely,

she had a real ability to do makeup.

So, she really struggled with the fact that she was full of cancer inside.

And yet people would say, I've never seen you looking better.

Amy had always dealt with weight and was always struggling to keep her weight down,

but obviously cancer took the weight away.

And for the first time, in a lot of years, she looked very trim and

fit and because of her ability to use makeup and use it effectively.

She looked beautiful.

All the pictures you would see of her, uh, you would say she looks great.

And, and, and yet she would say to me quietly, she said, dad, well,

they, they, they see the outside, but they don't understand the

inside that I'm dying with cancer.

So yes, we not only, saw past the, the looks that she put on the face

she put on, because she told us intimately what she was going through.

There was one day I'll never forget.

They had a snow storm in the UK.

Very rare.

And Amy had had a procedure in which they had gone in

through an artery to do a test.

And at one point she was back at home and she convalescing and she started

bleeding out of that artery and she thought she was going to bleed out

and we couldn't get to the hospital.

No, no ambulance could get to us.

But this nurse Tamson, she found a way to get there.

And what we did while she was coming is put pressure on Amy's

leg, where this artery was so that the blood wouldn't come out.

And we were concerned that she was going to bleed out.

And when Thompson came, of course, she reassured us, she bandaged it she put

pressure on it and everything was okay.

But every moment of every day, you just.

You just didn't know what to expect was coming next.

You know, shortly before Amy went into the hospital and I'll never

forget this, uh, the Thursday the, she went in, I think Saturday night,

but Thursday night she made us a meal.

She wanted to make a meal for Sharon and I and Chris special meal that

she didn't want us to do anything.

She wanted to do it herself.

And she wanted us to have this meal together and she was so sick at some point

in the day that she couldn't finish it.

And my wife Sharon finished the meal, preparing it, and

Amy wasn't able to eat it.

And I remember, the terrible sounds coming from her for the next two

days as she'd languished in pain, but didn't want to go to the hospital.

And finally, we had to call an ambulance and she went to the hospital and it was

that day in the hospital, in the room, that a doctor walked in with all of

his interns, he wasn't alone, he came in with and he asked, he said, can I

bring in the interns, and we said, sure.

We didn't know why he brought them in, but he brought them in anyways.

And he stood around and he started talking, talking about Amy's diagnosis

when it started and how it progressed.

And then he looked at Amy and he said, Amy, uh, the news I

have for you today is not good.

I have looked at everything.

And after all the testing that we've done today, I can tell you that there's

nothing more we can do to you, do for you.

It was that moment, that very moment, that my life changed because I realized

I was about to lose my daughter.

And, Amy turned to the doctor and she looked at us and she said,

we knew this day was coming.

We knew this moment was coming.

I'm done.

I have nothing more to give she'd be comfortable.

And Amy was, um, sent to palliative care shortly thereafter, and we

stayed with her for the rest, the remaining time that she had.

One of the things that she asked to do, which was, neat.

She asked for her bed to be pointed in the palliative care, looking outside over

this beautiful meadow, gorgeous meadow.

She loved the outdoors.

It was, it was just, it was spectacular.

And she said, I want to look at the world outside for the time I have left.

And then she asked us to get a Coke.

She said a feel like Coca-Cola.

I know I can't hold it down, so they, she would literally drink it with a straw and

then it would be pumped back out because she couldn't hold anything in her stomach,

but she said it tasted so good going down that she wanted to do it anyways.

And.

So, yeah, I lived with, we lived with her every single day, going through

and deteriorate bit by bit by bit.

And it was tough because what parent wants to see their child suffer?

What parent thinks that their child should ever die before them?

It's just not right.

It, it's nothing, uh, that you could ever deal with.

You just don't know what to do.

You feel so inadequate, you feel so, so useless because there's

nothing you can do to stop it.

There's nothing you can do to hold it back.

But the only thing that we could do in the thing that she wanted,

most of all is for us to be there.

And there was a point at which we thought she was getting better.

As I talked before that she was in remission, we were going to go home but

obviously that was shortsighted, and we never did go home, we just stayed.

And I'm glad we did.

I'm glad we spent all that time with her because it was fresh.

It was special.

It was precious.

Let me tell you, you just don't talk about meaningless things when

life is on the line and that's what it was for Amy at that time.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

After Amy's passing, you guys went back to Canada.

Yes, what we did, first of all, was Chris had a hard

time dealing with Amy's passing.

He.

He decided we, we went back to Florida just because it was springtime

and we needed to take a break.

And rather than face everyone back in Canada, we thought we would just use

some time to be alone and to figure things out a bit, and so we flew

back to Florida where our vehicle was and we spent some time there, but

Chris wanted to come back with us.

We were looking for some alone time Sharon and I, but Chris asked to come

back, so he came back with us and he stayed with us for a couple of weeks,

we found it difficult, um, because we were all grieving in our own way.

And I think Sharon and I just want to time alone to talk and deal with it.

We did go to the, the local assembly, the church that we attended in

Florida and it was interesting.

We watched people, uh, deal with our grief in different ways.

There were those who would come up and hug us and talk to us.

There were those who didn't know what to say.

So they, you, you could look at their eyes as they wandered around the outside

of the church so they could avoid us.

They just didn't want to deal with us, because they didn't

know how to to talk to us.

And that's one of the things that we've struggled with for so long

is that so many people don't know, don't know how to talk to us or

don't want to talk to us about Amy.

And we want to talk about Amy.

We want to share what Amy stood for, what she believed in, what she taught us

about compassion and caring for others.

So, yeah, we spent some time in Florida then we came home

and we had two memorials.

We had one in the UK and one in Canada and Amy wrote her own eulogy.

She actually planned out her own funeral, everything.

She, she told us exactly what she wanted done, so we did that.

And when we came back to Canada, it was similar.

There were a lot more people that were willing to, um, meet

with us and wanted to talk to us.

But again, most people didn't know what to say, they didn't know what to, you know,

they didn't know how to deal with it.

And we didn't know how to deal with it.

Let's be honest.

We didn't know what we were doing.

And so we went to this close friend of ours, Mona Kane.

And Mona and Bruce, we had met in Florida the year before.

Two years before.

And we knew them from Canada, they come down to Florida,

they had a place in Florida.

On the way back, I said to Bruce, would you preach in our chapel?

And he said, sure.

So they came back.

He preached on, uh, it was on the girl scout boy scout Sunday, so he

spoke on, be prepared to meet thy God.

And then he drove home, they drove home and two weeks later, he, he

collapsed with a heart attack, massive heart attack and died.

So when we came back to Canada, two years later, having lost

Amy, I didn't know what to do.

And we called Mona and we said, Mona, can you give some time for us?

And she said, sure.

We went to her house, her apartment, and we sat down with her and we said,

we don't know what to do, we don't know how to get through this, we

don't know how to deal with our grief.

And she had been to Grief Share, and she said to us, why don't you come with me

and we'll go to Grief Share and we'll see if that is a help at all in your life.

And so what we did is we went to reshare in London, Ontario, and we were there

for about six sessions because we were heading down to Florida for the winter.

And that's how we met you.

Steve.

We decided that once we'd been through these six sessions, they were so powerful

to us and helping us deal with our grief that we said, we got to continue this.

So we looked up where we could go in Florida and the Journey

Church had it available for us.

And so that's when we met you and Shelly, and Marshall and we, we found such benefit

from being able to talk and share and, and be open about what we were going

through and, and others were willing to listen, which was amazing to me.

We were all in the same place, dealing with grief.

And so we could be open and honest.

We didn't have to put on airs.

We didn't have to hold back.

That's one of the, the great blessings of Grief Share, and

that's why we've continued on in it.

We found it so helpful.

Brian.

I want to thank you so much for opening up to the audience today about your journey

of grief with the loss of your daughter.

And one of the advantages of going to a wonderful support group

like Grief Share is that we all speak the same language there.

In the sense that everybody there is there for a reason because they are in

on their journey of grief because they have lost somebody that they've loved.

You don't have to explain what you're going through because

the people there know about it.

Conversely.

Having you talk about your journey of grief today to our listening audience is

also going to be very helpful to people that are on their own journey of grief.

Because as we know, it can be very difficult if you're isolated and not

having an opportunity to interact with others and the way the world is now with

the pandemic, that is something that is difficult for people to go through the

grief process and have the necessary interaction that is required to help

them get through the grief process.

So again, I can't thank you enough for your willingness to open up and

talk about your journey of grief.

Well, what you do, Marshall, and what Steve does is

important to bring meaning to your loss.

Is that it?

Is the person die and that's it?

That's all there is?

It's going to end, you're not going to do anything with it?

That disturbs me to think that, that you just let it end.

There's got to be something more that you can do to help others.

And you are trying in many ways to help other people deal with suicide

and, and how, how to get through that.

And having lost someone that's gone through suicide and Steve

with grief share how to help people who are going through grief.

And that's how we all met, but we all have the same desire to see others

helped and, and to find meaning in the sense of being able to help others.

You know, we've been given a gift.

The gift is we understand something in life that many don't go through

until it's, you know, until late in life is grief and how to deal with

it may be and how we can help others.

Um, I just, I can't think that Amy's life ended on that day.

It continues.

One thing Amy said to me though, that I'll never forget.

She said, dad, having cancer is one thing, but she lost her son Leo at 26 weeks.

And it was probably due to this cancer.

And I remember her telling me the story that she'd sent Chris to go

home and get clothes cause she soiled everything and she just needed clothes.

And so she, here she is and they delivered stillborn Leo at 26 weeks.

And we were in Canada at the time, this was, this was before this.

And Chris was there.

Chris had gone home to get clothes, so, Amy was alone on

that table and they delivered Leo.

And they let Amy see Leo before they took him away.

And I wasn't there.

None of us were there for her.

And that just breaks my heart to think that no one was with

her in that room at that moment.

To be there with her, to hold her hand to say, uh, I wish we could have saved Leo.

We couldn't, but we were there for her when she, when she passed, we

were there, Sharon and I were there.

We, we held her hand.

We, stayed to the very end, because it was so critically important to be there.

And I want to be there for other people when they go through things to help

them, if we can, in some small way to find their way through, because that's

what we need to do for one another.

Thank you for sharing that, Brian.

I've had the privilege to, to be in a few of the breakout groups with you,

and you've shared so many things that helped so many people in those groups.

What are a couple of the things that you've realized?

Let's say just in the last year, that first year is very

difficult, you've got all the first you're just trying to survive.

You've actually had some very profound ideas about your grief and purpose.

Could you share a few of the things?

I wouldn't call them profound.

I would call them, um, lessons of life, perhaps.

Things that I've learned, uh, that we've learned as we've

watched others go through grief.

Um, As I said, being there as is probably the first thing.

Learning that it's not always what you say that's important.

In fact, Amy said you don't have to even say a thing.

You just have to be there.

Just be there, just, just be in the room.

Um.

Make sure that that person, whoever they are is the center of your attention.

The very focus of you being there.

There was a day in which Amy and I sat out in chairs in the UK and Bradford

on Avon and we were looking out at the trees and the birds were flying,

it was a beautiful spring light day.

And Amy looked to me and said, isn't this beautiful?

Isn't this amazin?

And I agreed with her and she said, Hey dad, tell me how many

years did Jesus have I said, 33.

She said that I'm going to come up one short with 32.

And you know, she wanted to help people.

She wanted to do anything she could to help people.

And so that's the way that I've approached things.

I remember sitting in that small group, there was a, a lady there that

had dealt with grief and she was, she had, been in prison as well, and

she felt grief because she hadn't been there when her mother died.

And I'll never forget.

She told us that she liked those little chocolates that you gave out

Steve, and they were on the table.

So when we went to the breakout rooms, I went around the room and collected up

all these chocolates and came back into the room and the moment she sat down, I

put them in front of her and she smiled.

And to get that smile, I'd do anything . To get that smile,

that's what it's all about is to change the person's for a moment.

Just give them the joy of the moment.

Help them have find a even a moment's break from what they're going through.

And I think that is the core to what we do.

Um, but I, I do tend to look inside and look inwardly and try to

understand what I'm going through so that I might be able to help others.

But if you can remember the profound things that I said, Steve,

by all means share them with me.

Cause I I'd love to hear them again to find out why they're so

profound, but I love people, and I, um, I love to help people.

I want to make my life count.

And that's one of the ways that I see that I can do it.

Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing.

I'm not sure that I could remember everything that you

had mentioned to me before.

That's part of the issue of grief is the memory is a problem.

Well, you know, um, there's so many stories and I

could, I could go on and on and on.

I I'll tell you one last one that just spoke to the kind of

person that my daughter was.

There were 14 stairs.

That's all you have to know.

There was 14 stairs.

She went on the week before she went into palliative care.

We went to a pub and there were 14 stairs down, and she forced herself to

go to this function because they were deciding at her company, Bluebolt's,

for the next year, every month, they were going to do something to raise

money for colon cancer research.

And so, um, Amy wanted to go and be there.

And so she went there and it was 14 steps down and we got her in there, sat down

and she looked like a million dollars . She really looked great cause she, she

did the makeup and she was dressed well.

And I was so proud of her and I was sitting beside her, watching her and

everyone was coming up to her and talking to her and they, they identified that in

April of 2018, they were going to start these functions, these different things

they were going to do to raise money.

And Amy never lived to see any one of them, but she was there for that day.

And, when we left, she was holding onto me and she said, okay, dad, how many stairs?

And I said, 14, she'd take a step.

And she'd say, dad, how many stairs?

I say 13.

And she made it up every one of those stairs.

And it was tough.

I could see in her body, I could see in her face, the struggle

she had to make those stairs.

And yet she made it, she did that because it was important to her

to show up and to be seen and to be a part of what was going on.

And that's what we need to do.

If you're dealing with cancer, you're dealing with someone

who has cancer show up.

Be there, help them be an arm for them to lean on.

Be someone that would hug them and say, you love them and care for them.

Go and get them the meal they need to get on the drink that they need to drink.

Do anything to ease their burden and make their life easier.

It's all worth it.

Thank you Brian so much for sharing with us today, and

we'd like to thank you and Sharon for sharing your Amy with all of us today.

Thank you for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

If you want to read about her, again, CatsLovePeanutButter.com

will tell you her blog and, um, it's a, it's an interesting story.

So please go see it.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks Marshall.

Thank you, Steve.

Brian, I want to thank you so much for being our

guest today and telling your story of grief with the passing of Amy.

It really has resonated with me personally, and I'm sure also

with our audience that you were so brave and, um, so open talking

about the loss of your daughter.

But I want to tell you that something that really impacted me listening to your story

is how Amy did not want to dwell on any bad feelings or feel sorry for herself.

And that she was saying life is just too darn short to dwell on that

and didn't want to waste the day.

And I think that to me is a wonderful lesson for all of us, because we are all

here for a finite fixed period of time.

We may not know how long that will be.

Well, we all know it's finite.

And I think Amy knew that and took the wonderful approach

to make the most of every day.

And I think that is something that we could all learn and realize

there's a life lesson for every single person on this earth.

Steve, what thoughts did you have about Amy and her and her journey?

Well, first I would say, I agree with you on that point.

That was actually, that was a very touching thought that on

her most darkest journey she's able to, to look at the light.

One of the things that I thought was very interesting was how much she

wanted to help others on their journey through their own, deal with cancer

by sharing helpful hints and things that she had learned along the way.

It's like, you know, you think of cancer as being very personal and it's

your, your fight to continue living and yet she didn't look at it that way.

She looked at it like, wow, I can help some other people who

are going through the same thing.

I was, I was amazed with that.

I think that was, that was awesome.

I think that one thing that again, so impressed me about Brian

and Sharon is something that Debbie and I have tried to do since Matt's passing.

I think Sharon and Brian have seen how their daughter lived

her life, helping others.

And now they're trying to do the same thing because she's not here.

And that's the same way Debbie and I felt about Matt's passing.

He did so many great things to help so many people, we felt it

was now our job to continue that.

And I know Sharon and Brian are doing the same thing, and I think it's a

wonderful tribute to their daughter to continue the good work that she's

no longer able to do on this earth.

I think it's a wonderful lesson for all of us to see what they're doing.

I agree.

It's unique when you see parents wanting to carry on for their

children and be so moved by what they did in their short lifetime, that

they're willing to continue it on.

I felt, actually, I feel very inspired by, by Amy, just hearing her story

and how she lived her life, and I realized I, I would like to live

mine more with that type of mindset.

Thank you everybody for joining us today.

Wanted to let you know that we are going to be starting a, uh, a blog page

on our website, www.HopeThruGrief.com, which is H O P E T H R U G R I E F.com.

So, be on the lookout because Brian has offered to write us a post for

the blog, telling us some more of the stories about Amy, that he didn't get

a chance to share on today's show.

And, he's actually promised to send us pictures of the garden and some

of the rooms that Amy finished in the house, as well as photos of Amy.

And I did ask if we could possibly get one of her wearing the gold Cape.

So, be sure to check it out.

We'll have it out there as soon as.

Brian gets it down to us.

And thank you for joining today.

Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you for joining us on hope through 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.