What do you do when you can see your loved one’s fight for life fading before your very eyes? You know the unthinkable is inevitable and you are powerless to stop it. In today’s episode our guest Adam Levy talks about his loss and allowing hope for the future.

Adam Levy is a songwriter and producer performing his music around the world. In 2012, Adam lost his son Daniel to suicide. Today Adam shares his journey to writing and performing music again and coming to terms with life without his son. 

This is our 5th episode highlighting the issues surrounding suicide and we are thankful for the transparent and candid conversation that Adam was willing to engage in. Listen and share our collection of episodes on suicide: https://feeds.captivate.fm/hope-thru-grief/the-complex-issues-of-suicide/    

This episode’s closing music is a cover of Never My Love by Adam’s band, Turn Turn Turn and is used by permission. Watch the performance used for today’s music: https://www.mplsdid.com/news_article/show/1117724

To view Daniel’s artwork as mentioned on today’s show: https://thinkpiecepublishing.com/tpp-authors/adam-levy/daniels-art/

To find out more about Adam Levy and Turn Turn Turn please visit their website: https://www.turnturnturnmpls.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 everybody and welcome to today's episode of Hope Through Grief.

I'm one of your co-hosts Steve Smelski and I'm here with my good

friend and cohost Marshall Adler.

Hello, everybody.

Hope everybody's doing very well today.

We wanted to let you know, we have a very special guest

on today that's going to talk with us, some about the topic of suicide.

We've talked about that three or four times in the past.

Today, we have a songwriter musician, founder of Honey Dogs, Mr.

Adam Levy, and he's here and he's gonna spend the next hour having a

conversation with us, Adam, welcome

Thanks for having me, Steve and Marshall.

Good to be here.

So to get us started, we thought we would just come back to you

and just ask you to share your story and how you've, uh, been pulled into

this world of grief and the valley of grief and, and that'll get us started.

And I know everybody would like to hear your story.

Well, my son took his life in 2012, so we're now about eight years

out from the suicide and from his death.

And my son died at age 21 and I'd been struggling in his young adult life

since about 16 with some mental health issues that got progressively worse.

His mom and I, his mother, Jennifer and I were both very connected

with Daniel and with his mental health, therapies, and medications.

And he was really open with us about what he was going through, which

was a blessing in a lot of ways.

I don't feel like there was any surprise to his death as tragic as it was.

It was something that we lived with almost like a, a terminal illness of sorts.

You know, we watched his disintegration over a few years.

We were hopeful.

We were engaged.

We felt that he was doing as much as he could to kind of

cope and to be hopeful as well.

And so those ebbs and flows just became kind of a normal part of life.

And in his last year, things got really bad.

His diagnosis was Bipolar.

But we suspect because of a number of psychotic episodes that it's

possible he was dealing with something more akin to Schizophrenia, some

sort of Schizophrenic Affective Disorder, but it was frightening.

It was frightening watching a child pull away, become really, uh, changed altered

person almost as though it was a, a spirit possession of sorts, you know, he

became so, so different in so many ways.

It was like we lost him and we were holding onto a balloon that was gradually

slipping away from us without us really being able to do anything about it.

I'm trying to think what else.

He was an amazing artist and he channeled his suffering through his art.

I don't know if we can get people a link to that so they can actually see this as

they're, as they're listening or after.

His art was pretty remarkable.

And at 21, I think it was just kind of coming into his own.

It was a world, his art was a world of ghouls and monsters and,

um, kind of tortured individuals.

And as a parent, you know, watching that art unfold, there's a part of

you that's just like, Oh my God, this is just you know, can you just,

can you paint some things that are a little more contemplative and

peaceful, you know, landscapes maybe.

But this was his internal world.

This is what he was experiencing.

And art became a, a conversation for him, a way of processing outside of medications

and therapy, what he was seeing.

And so whether it was like a literal representation of this inner turmoil

or whether it was a more symbolic discussion he was having, it was

his way of really processing what he was going through and it was dark.

But one thing I will say is as dark as that art, that he was, it also

felt there was a level of empathy.

I felt there was a level of empathy in the art.

I never worried about my son going and killing anyone else.

I did, I always worried about him self-harming.

But because there was such an intense connection to other people's pain

in his art, in our conversations.

I knew I felt bad for him that he was such a hypersensitive kid,

like his dad and like his mom.

But I, I never really worried that he was going to be one of those kids that

would go out and shoot somebody else.

So, you know, I can go on and on here about, you know, bearing witness

to his pain, it was obviously an incredibly horrible life altering

experience, losing a child.

I never would have imagined there's no words.

There's no words in our language that the name, a parent that loses a child.

It's like, it's one of those things.

That's just so horrific and almost taboo that we don't have

a way of really discussing it.

And so there's a lot of shame and guilt around losing a child to

suicide because as a parent, you're of course always wanting to help your

child and your responsibility with your children is making sure they

survive and they're happy, right?

And so losing a child to suicide is in some ways, a condemnation

of you as a parent that you had, you know, you failed your job.

And so I've spent a lot of time processing those feelings just as well

as the massive loss that you have.

Adam, let me ask you something.

It's interesting.

You're mentioning a lot of similarities.

Like Matt was 32 when he passed and throughout his life he was

unbelievably empathetic in grade school.

He was called a comforter because he always took on all of his friend's

problems, which as a parent, you're proud that he's a loving empathetic person, but

then you start worrying about the toll that would take and looking back, they

took a huge toll and as he got older.

I remember at his bar mitzvah, we've got pictures and he was just so happy.

And as he went into becoming a teenager, you just sort of saw the happiness.

Like get dimmer.

It wasn't gone, but it got dimmer, you saw the pictures before smiling happy, funny.

And then you saw the pictures afterwards, not so much.

And he dealt with chronic depression and he also was diagnosed with bipolar,

but with him, he was hilarious and we always thought that humor was

going to be his saving grace because he just was, I mean, really, really

funny, but he was super smart also.

Like Daniel, he was very artistic in the sense that he was a, he

wanted to be a movie director and he actually moved to California.

And the last three years of his life were the happiest years of his life.

And I think because he was so intelligent,

The protocols that medical technology had to treat him didn't work

and you knew they didn't work.

You know, there's been medical studies now showing that MRI brain scans of

people with suicidal ideation are anatomically different than those

who don't have suicidal ideation.

And whenever this anatomical brain disease that both of our sons had

called suicide, I don't think medical technology has an answer for it.

So he went to multiple doctors, supposedly the best in the area and best in the

country was on multiple medication.

And he the last few years of his life, he told us, he goes, I'm done this dulls me.

I don't like feeling like this.

I'm not going to take this anymore.

And we were so scared and we're saying, this is the worst

thing he could possibly do.

We were wrong.

He was right.

The last three years of his life.

He didn't take any medication at all.

He was the happiest of his life and.

I've talked to so many suicide survivors.

Who've told me, gee, I wish my loved one did that because he stayed on medication

and it didn't make any difference.

Anyways, they ended up dying . It's not like, Oh, if he stayed on the

medication this wouldn't happen.

I've had literally hundreds of people tell me, I wish the medication

would have stopped because at least the last part of my loved ones,

life would have been much happier.

And with Matt, I think that we didn't know at the time, but he told

his younger brother, David, that he was not gonna live a long time.

And I think he just felt I'm going to make every single day, the best

day I can for as long as I can.

And I'm going to fight this until the day that I can't.

The last time I saw him, I drove him back to the airport, top on

the plane to go to San Diego, knowing you'd have to come back.

He had to do some work.

He had to come back from where my mother, when my mother passed.

So we was waiting for my mother, passed to come back.

And I just told him how proud I was of him, because he'd absolutely

taken his life and done a 180.

He was living with some friends from Orlando, a married couple of

another friend house, looking over Pacific Ocean, Oceanside, California.

He went to film school.

He was working on projects with people there.

He was doing YouTube original content.

He actually met one of his heroes, Oliver Stone about doing a movie.

And I told him that, as a parent, this is like what you want to see.

And he told me that he goes, life doesn't care what you're going through.

Life's going to do, what's going to do.

It all depends how you handle, how you cope with it.

And I go, Matt, that is so wonderful for parents to hear.

That you're able to cope with whatever life has to throw up, throw out at you.

So we hugged each other.

I said, see you soon when he comes back after my mother

passed, I never saw him again.

He was gone less than two weeks later after was that I

thought was a Hollywood ending.

So my question to you is I think Matt went out on top and

I think he was fine with it.

What's your interpretation about how Daniel's last years were?

That is, uh, moving description of that, uh, exit for sure.

You know, Daniel, as I was saying earlier, continued to get worse as time went on,

um, and try to different medications and did ECT and nothing was really

seeming to work or at least things would work temporarily for a month or so.

And then we'd be kind of where we were at the end.

I buy into that idea that there's a physiological difference in brains of

people who who do suicide and I've, you know, I've kinda been watching

a lot of the science around that.

I think there's a Miami University or somewhere in Florida there's a scientist

who is doing research on the Amygdala, which is the Frank, the fear, one of the

low cut, low side of fear in our brains.

They talk about the Amygdala being this part of the brain, that processes

fear, and that there are differences in the Amygdala of people who suicide.

That there's a lack of fear that most of us have that kind of keep us in check.

And that for some reason, there's this pattern with a lot

of folks that commit suicide.

And the suicide, I should say.

So I, you know, as much as I tried to discourage Daniel and, you know, that's

your worst fear is your child suicide.

And I think Daniel made a real conscious decision whether or not there were a

physiological difference in his brain.

In other words, I feel like he being able to get around his computer for

the last few days before his death, and sort of see the process of what

he was watching, where he was going.

He was kind of negotiating in his brain.

Do I want to do this?

Does this make sense?

He got ahold of a person in Finland for the suicide technique, which

was, um, a nitrogen process.

That's you know, it's, it's hard to find out how to do it, but Daniel did

the research so that he could have a painless death and that he could

preserve organs for other folks.

And so, as angry as I was at him for a little bit about leaving us, I understand

the choice that he made, even though it's not the one that I wanted to make.

The pain was so blinding for him.

There was nothing that was going to alleviate that at least in

his mind, in his experience, everything presented to him, added

up to a life of continuing agony.

And that's one of the worst things to watch a child in that kind of pain

where there's no resolution, no hope.

So for Daniel, that's where he was at and I wish that there would have been other

things that we could have leaned on.

I know there's a ketamine treatment that's been talked about and I've

spoken with some people who use this ketamine as they were sort of Guinea

pigs in some of the tests that at Yale and there have been huge differences.

A woman I talked to said after six months of the treatment, she, she no longer

has any suicidal thoughts and she'd suffered with them for years and years.

And now they were completely gone after six months of that treatment.

And I spoke with her and she was still doing really well.

So, you know, I think there are people that are really working on this now.

But I feel that the information that Daniel had, the experience that he was

under and the sort of the psychophysiology of his brain didn't really leave any

other choices but that final one,

You know, it's interesting.

I've said before that, to me, suicide is like the iceberg that's sunk the Titanic.

Everybody knows the Titanic at the iceberg, but you know, iceberg

is like a ice cube in your drink.

Only 1/10 of the icebergs above the waterline, 90% of

the iceberg below the waterlin.

The 10% of all the waterline didn't sing the Titanic.

It was the 90% below the water line that they couldn't see.

And with Matt the 10% above the waterline that we saw didn't take his life.

So from my standpoint, I viewed this as something that Matt battled

with for as long as he could, like, I, I know my younger son, David at

the eulogy mentioned that the two boys, they were very close they love

each other, but entirely different.

Matt was artistic and completely open with every part of his life like an open book.

David was very athletic and he was a very good tennis player

in the paper all the time.

And people think, Oh, you're a good athlete, your really tough.

And Dave said he goes, my brother, Matt was a thousand times tougher

than I ever was because he was giving the world the 10% that we saw

above the water line of the iceberg.

There was this incredibly loving, funny, entertaining, caring, human being

when he had a fight with those demons.

The 90% below the waterline that ended up taking his life.

So my question to you is, did you, see this coming because I've talked

to so many suicide survivors that lost loved ones to suicide that were

even though their loved ones had taken multiple unsuccessful attempts.

They were still surprised because after the multiple unsuccessful

attempts, they would say, I'm never going to do this again.

Thank God I'm alive.

I love being alive.

I want to enjoy every moment for as long as I'm here and then, they're gone.

So even though I know you said you had concerns, did you, were you

surprised or were you not surprised?

I mean, there's no way to not be surprised when it actually happens.

You're you're afraid.

I know the last six months I was really, I would tell people when

they'd ask me, Oh, how's Daniel doing?

I'd say I'm really worried about him.

I went to a funeral of a relative the week he died and I was in the synagogue

and looking upward and just thinking.

I know I'm going to be back in here.

I have no doubt that this is going to happen.

I don't know when, but it really upsets me that I'm not certain

that my son's not going to be here.

And I kind of talk myself out of those thoughts.

Like you're just really scared.

It's not going to happen.

The last week of my son's life.

I was on the phone with him.

He lived in Saratoga Springs, New York with his mom an I was on the

phone with them literally every day for that week before he took his life.

And almost every day we would talk for two hours and I would try to come up

with, because he was really about to check out or he'd said, I can't do it anymore.

I don't want to be here.

And I would say things like Daniel, imagine that.

You know, like Daniel was really into Hieronymus Bosch, and a lot

of these really ghoulish artists that portrayed these really

surreal kind of hellish worlds.

And I said, well, what's to say that if you took your life and you left here that

you wouldn't end up in a place like that, you know, like you think this is painful.

"laughing"

What if there was something more infinity tortureess you know?

He paused and said, And told his mom that night, like, I think dad's right.

Like it's not my time to go.

And so I would get these glimmers, like he's listening to me.

He's not going to do this.

I can remember one day talking to him for hours about people

with terminal illnesses.

And he and I had both done a lot of reading about the show about the Holocaust

and survival through that in concentration camps and death camps and Daniel there

are people who've had terminal illnesses that have survived because of the will.

You know, people have been through the, the horrific experiences of

concentration camps and the show up, and they managed to live through

that because they were hopeful.

Can you just summon a little bit of that energy and be inspired by that

to hang on for a couple more years?

You know, you're not going to be in this place.

When you're 26, I just, I can't believe it.

And he said to me, dad, the difference between the people you're talking about

and me is that they wanted to live.

And when your kid says that to you, there's really is nothing you can do

to come back to them other than shaming them, like, well, what about us you know,?

You're gonna leave behind all these people that love you.

But if the, if the, if the desire to be there, doesn't really exist any longer

or it's so tenuous, you're finding a major uphill battle, and that's kind

of what we knew we were dealing with.

So when I got the call from his mother and I, you know, I was shocked, but

there was also a sense of, Oh my God, our worst fears are being realized

and we knew this was going to happen

After Matt passed away.

We had the funeral funeral here at the temple and it was huge turnout.

Half the people were Matt's friends ,half the people were our friends

that didn't know Matt very well.

And so I talked about Matt's life and movies a lot, and all of his friends

that I knew here came to me and I had to console them because Matt

was such a huge part of their life.

And in some ways it really meant a lot to me seeing how he affected their lives.

But what happened is his friends in California that we've met a

few times, again, 3000 miles away.

We go out there, we meet his friends and he would tell us what they were doing.

And after Matt passed, they had a service format attribute and they had like, they

had to keep on trying to find a bigger venue because so many people wanted to

give a eulogy and we were thinking of going, we didn't go, we got a video of it.

And people had never heard of people.

I'd never met talk about, were saying how Matt affected their lives positively.

But two of his very good friends, one was a male , one was a female told me that

Matt had a real interesting take sort of what you said, where they said that Matt

knew that we'd really miss him and he knew that his friends would really miss him.

And he, we felt that if we all know, Iwhat he was going through, we would

not only understand what happened.

We would, again, not accept it, but almost view it as selfishness on our part to say,

we want you to continue to make us happy.

We want you to make us laugh because you're so damn funny.

We want you to make us feel comfortable at night that we know you're safe and sound.

And what they said is they gave me a different view of it.

That from his standpoint, it almost would have been selfish for us.

Like if, if he had terminal cancer that you just know is horrifically painful

and they're doing chemo and surgery and radiation, and there's no chance

of this not being a fatal disease.

And you'll say, keep on doing that.

Let them chop you off.

Keep on doing whatever you need to do, no matter how painful it is,

because we want you to go through this for our own selfish reasons.

Nobody would say that if it was cancer that you could see in this, there was a

cancer, that's no different, but it was a cancer in his brain that we couldn't see.

So hearing it from that standpoint again, I would never accept it, but it

gave me a different understanding of it.

Do you have any feelings like that also?

Yeah, certainly.

You know, I go back and forth between the notion of, you know, what is

selfishness is wanting somebody to stick around a selfish impulse?

Or is it one, you know, was I, was I wanting my son to hang on

for his own goodness, you know, it's so they're so interrelated.

I know that I, I can remember being in the hospital and he was on life support

after his suicide attempt, I call it a suicide attempt because there was at

least a couple of days where we thought perhaps he was going to pull through it.

And so he was, um, seizuring for the first day that he was on

life support, really violently.

And I remember looking at his body and thinking that it was almost as

though he was on a, a balloon that we were, we were holding and we were

just holding that balloon so tight.

He was really trying to get away from us.

He wanted freedom from this pain.

And I can remember a conversation with my mom.

Like the second day he was in the hospital, she said, just let him go.

You got to just let him go.

You can't hold on to him.

He was in such immense pain.

And you can't, you can't let that the guilt and shame around that keep

you hanging on to him because he doesn't, he didn't want to be here.

He doesn't want to be here anymore.

So.

I I, at some point felt like I was allowing him.

I was giving him permission to leave us.

How has this affected his mother?

And you have, am i correct, step siblings?

He had, uh, two half sisters.

Ok

So they, I mean, they're, they're adult women now 19 and 21.

Uh, you know, one of them is the age that Daniel was when he left Daniel

would be, I think 31 now, if he were still alive and of course it's been,

it's the most impactful thing that's ever happened to my children in their lives.

And I think there've been some really tragic consequences of it, but there's

also been severely powerfu awakenings for them about the nature of mental

illness and how to be proactive about it in their own life and not just to

be kind of paralyzed by it, but to really deal with it and, and, and, and

a sense of hope in both of their lives, that they're going to be advocates

for their friends and be helpful.

And talk to us about their own suffering when that happens.

But I think they realize like this is a part of who we are as a, as a

race of human beings as a family.

This is, this is a, a real integral part of being human.

The fact that we've got these big brains and that we think a lot, and we worry

a lot and we connect with others pain, and this is just par for the course.

His mother has been, I'd say much more tough.

And I think that's one reason why Daniel.

He was going to college here at MCAD, The Minneapolis College of Art and

Design working on an art degree and decided a couple of years into the

program he just wanted to go home.

He didn't want to be in the art program.

He wanted to be closer to his mom.

His mom was really nurturing, but she was always really tough with him.

And I think he really wanted somebody that was really kind of

bossing him around a little bit.

And his mom for awhile was just every day, get up, take a walk, get into work.

You know, she was unapologetic about her.

Um, Keeping him moving and not depressed and in alum, but there wasn't

anything she could do at the very end, as much as she brow beat him and

berated him and encouraged him and, you know, Tried to prod them along.

There was just nothing that could really be done in the end.

And so I think she is at peace with Daniel's choice to leave as painful

as it was, and as close as she was, you know, a mother and a child

relationship is incomparable, you know, there's just nothing like it.

I felt really close to Daniel and loving, but there's something about

a mother and a child that's that is beyond profound and interconnected.

So we talk, I would say every month we at least have a conversation about stuff

and what she's going through, but she's really, she's a tough, tough woman,

You know, it's, it's interesting because that'd

be my wife, Matt's mother.

We talk about her journey as a mother who lost a son versus my journey as a

father, lost a son and it is different and there's things that I can do that

she doesn't want to do and there's things that she'll do that I don't want to do.

And it's, it's strange like I , I dream about Matt every night.

I mean, literally every single night and before he passed, I used to have, where

were the nightmares that he had passed and then I'd wake up and say, thank God.

There was a nightmare.

That's not reality.

Now I have dreams with him.

And it's our relationship now where he's sometimes he's

alive and this never happened.

Other times he tells me this did happen and he's wherever he

is, he's contacted me like that.

And then I'll wake up and it's the flip side of that coin out saying, well, that

was a dream and reality is he's not here.

And I've sort of come to a realization that I get before Matt's passing,

I never believed in afterlife at all, but now I absolutely do.

We've had all these different sightings and light things.

And like we also, we had a forensic expert go through Matt's computer

and a cell phone, and we knew everything that he was doing.

Before the end of his life.

And it's funny, your, with your background in music, that would love you.

You know, we were huge Beatle fans and Matt loved all these different

types of music, some stuff, I didn't know what the heck it was like Nine

Inch Nails and all these other things.

And of all the songs that he listened to the last song they listened to.

On this planet was 1967.

The Association Never My Love,

Oh my God.

Are you serious?

This is the last song.

Did you know that my band plays that song?

Are you kidding?

No

See, see this, this is,

this is bizarre.

It's bizzare , I have no idea.

Matt would occasionally like a poppy song and he would say, I don't like it.

And then like he said, okay, I like it.

Like he would like, um, Brandy.

You're fine, Girl, by Looking Glass 1972.

And you know, it's a poppy song it'd be sort of, you would

sort of like almost be shamed.

Yeah, I really do like it because you hear on the radio, we sort of kid about it.

And I think for me, There was a woman that I think he was in love

with that a year before attempted to take her life didn't succeed.

She thanked everybody for all the wishes of help and support, and she

was so positive that this was going to be the start of her life forward.

And I think two weeks later, she passed by suicide and all of Matt's

friends and California said that he never got over that and that was

about 10 months before he passed.

And so Never My love by Association.

Why did he listen to that?

I'm trying to make this, you know, thousand piece

puzzle fit to figure it out.

But we've had so many times where that has popped up on random and explicable times.

Like when we went to Grief Share with Steve, was this support group.

The last thing we did is we went to a bonfire where everybody wrote a

note to your lost, loved one, and you threw in the bonfire and smoke

one up and hopefully they got it.

And Debbie wrote a note to Matt saying, Matt, we haven't

had any sign from you lately.

So we just threw it into the bonfire fire smoke goes up and then we're leaving.

And you know, we've got Sirius satellite radio, 12 million channels, and I just

happened to turn it on, right when we're leaving in a course here's 1967

Association, uh, of Never My Love.

And we look at each other and we go, are you kidding me of all the

songs that could possibly be played?

Was it one out of 10,000 or whatever it is, they're playing that.

And we've had all these other times that that has shown us that I think Matt is

still part of our lives in a different form, but still connecting with us.

So now that you're eight years out, my question, how are

you doing with everything?

Cause I've sort of reached a sense that my relationship with Matt is ongoing.

If somebody would told me that three years ago, same story I'm

saying poor soul he's hallucinating.

He just making, you know, wishes that hopefully this, that I'm a lawyer.

I've got a base.

You know, my, I do a lot of litigation.

My practice is based on evidence.

I got to present every case based on factual evidence to win the case.

So I'm a very cynical, factual, empirical guy.

And.

I won't get too much into it, but we've had nothing but signs that

I'm a hundred percent convinced Matt is still communicating with us.

And my relationship with him is ongoing.

So in some sense like that, I do have some contentment and pride

of what he did when he was here.

And what I want to do now is make him proud of me that he's not here.

So I'm interested in how you are eight years out, because I'm

about a little over two years out.

Well, that's a really big question and I will answer it,

but I really do talk about this.

Never My Love coincidence for a moment.

So I play in many bands and I played cover music for 20 years

and played different covers.

My newest band that I'm in is called Turn, Turn, Turn, and it started as

a cover band with two women where we would do three part harmonies and do a

lot of kind of Laurel Canyon Beatles.

60's 70's, country, folk stuff.

And a lot of, you know, we've just done a lot of covers and we made

an originals record this year.

I just decided, like, I really want to use this group to record some of my original

music and kind of force the two of those women to write some of their own stuff.

We put this record out and people have responded really well to it.

We still will throw in one or two covers in a set.

Tonight, we have a show, we are playing, we only had a half hour to play.

So we had to figure out, well, what are we going to play?

And so I said, well, let's just do one cover.

Let's just do Never My Love in the set.

Wow

So tonight I will announce the show,

you're not kidding you.

This is a true right?

It's absolutely true.

And I, I think we do a really good version of the song and I'll try

to connect you to a link to it so you can actually hear and see it.

But I will.

Now, when I play this song, I will introduce it every time and talk

about you Marshall and your son.

So, uh, You know, at least that personal connection that we're having.

I believe in all of those.

The...

that kind of serendipity.

My, my son has been seen a number of times.

My, my brother, who also is not a particularly spiritual or religious

person was walking in San Francisco and with his wife and they were

in the mission in San Francisco.

And this boy was walking towards them, a young man, and they both looked at each

other and his Vista, you know, half a block away was very similar as the whole

sort of, you know, walk and everything was so similar when they got, when they

walked up to him, the boy looked at them and just nodded his head and smiled.

And knowing Judy just started crying because the resemblance was stunning.

And he's visited me in dreams.

You know, I feel like I have a living relationship with my son still.

I'll talk to him.

And I mean, you know, he's not always here.

He's not always in my meds, but I feel as present sometimes.

It's amazing, I mentioned that because we've heard

a lot of people have so........

You know, it's interesting.

I mentioned, I think before we started that you were good enough to send artwork

that Daniel did and there's one picture of Daniel that I looked at and it looked

like Matt and I saw the other pictures of Daniel and Matt, Daniel didn't look

anything alike and pay those pictures.

But the one picture you sent yeah, me with his glasses on I'm looking at this and

I'm going to, somebody sent me that, what was that picture may have taken because

we get friends taking pictures of Matt.

We didn't know happen.

And I'm looking at that and there's just too many interconnecting

pieces that to me are inexpensive.

And the thing with the Never My Love now is it's just, again, how many thousands

of songs have you done in your career?

And that's the one you're opening you're going to play tonight, but we have to,

you know, you're doing this with us today.

I, and so again, I miss Matt every single day.

And some of it is selfish because I like laughing and Matt was just

funny as hell his entire life.

I mean, the land, again, my last conversation with him was just hilarious

and I really miss that laughter.

But I sort of still get it now because I'll think about things

that he, he said, you know, like, um, just you you'll appreciate this

as somebody in the music business.

I remember when Jerry Garcia died, The Grateful Dead, you know,

and, and I was never that much in The Grateful Dead that Matt was.

And, you know, that was just so funny.

He said, Jerry Garcia, his diet was cigarettes and heroin.

Who thought that health nut would die, you know, at a young age, and then

it just sort of like made this funny comment about Jerry Garcia's death.

And he just saw things differently.

I knew Jerry Garcia was a rock and roll guy.

I don't know if he smoke cigarettes or heroin.

It was a joke obviously, but it was just a joke that only Matt would make, he saw

things differently and the way he saw the world was not how I saw the world.

And I loved the fact that he was my son because he opened my eyes

and taught me things that I never would've been exposed to otherwise.

And so many of his friends told me that they feel so fortunate that they were

led into his world because it was just a different way of looking at things.

And what was Daniel like that also?

I mean, did he have a different view again, it's all how your

brain works and Matt's brain was just so much of a migraine.

I was really enjoying the difference.

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Daniel, uh, was also really funny and had a wonderful sense of humor and I've

had videos sent to me of him laughing and his laugh was just so infectious

and, um, a lot of his art was disturbing, but a lot of it was also really

playful, funny, beautiful, um, comical.

I've had a lot of his job to me or people that I didn't know were his friends

or people who knew Daniel tangentially or knew about him, but say how much

of an impact that brief encounter with him or his story has had on them.

And so that has been really soul nourishing for me to hear the ripple

effects, the butterfly effects of my son's life on so many people in the

very end, he really isolated, and it was hard to get him to interact with

any friends and they would try to get, pull him out of his shell and he

just didn't want to socialize anymore.

But there was a time when he was a really magnetic personality.

And people loved being around him and loved hanging out with them.

And he had friends that he would do art with and he had friends

that he skateboarded with.

These are amazing skate skateboardist as well.

There's a really great video called Dan Levy, dirty maneuver that is seven

minutes of a, for a friend of his, after he died a compilation of some amazing

moves that Daniel did as a skateboarder.

And he was just amazing.

And the first half of the video, we showed it at his funeral.

The video, the first half of the video is all just horrible spills where

he's just one wreck after another.

And I can remember how worried.

I was about him as a parent.

You know, dude, you're not wearing, wearing your helmet.

You're not wearing pants, like all your worst fears, but he would just

fall and spill and get back up.

And he was, had horrible abrasion sometimes and probably hairline fractures.

And then the second half of the video.

He's in flight and he is so elegant in his movement.

And so, so different from me.

I'm such a clumsy oaf, you know, to watch your child move was just, it's

amazing to me just to watch that,

Adam, I want to ask you early on in your grief.

What helped you through?

What did you, what did you lean on?

Who did you go to?

Did you attend any Grief Share sessions?

I, Shelly and I took six months off from work.

We couldn't work right after.

How did you manage to cause those for six months to a year are horrible.

Right, i, you know, I, I had the sense of responsibility.

I don't know if it's being a first child or being a somewhat public figure.

I felt the need to explain and the parent and being a parent, like I

needed to explain this to my children.

I need to do explain this to my family.

I needed to have a narrative in my own head of why this

happened to make sense of it.

So talking for me and talking publicly, doing interviews,

doing a lot of, uh, social media conversations with people about it.

I was really public and people were sort of awestruck by how engaged I was

about it, but it really was for me, it was therap and I talked about it.

I wasn't able to make music as comfortably as I had.

I sort of needed to take a break from writing music.

But I did put a record out within a couple of months of his death and that

was because it was sort of like in the pipeline and I had to put this record out.

But I didn't write any music about him deliberately sort of like, I didn't

want to do anything that would cheapen or trivialize any of what he had been

through, but as time went on and my grief was kind of moving into different stages,

I started writing more about it and I drew on, I think the public conversations

really helped me develop a story, a narrative about his life about our grief.

It helped me make sense of it and it affected the way I started to write music.

And, you know, for me, writing music is one of the predominant ways that

I process the world relationships and the kind of existential experience I

have and spirituality and politics.

And it all sort of like music is, is the primary way that I interact with the

world around me and my internal world.

So I started writing songs that felt like at first they were just about

my own grief because that felt safe.

Like I could write about what I was seeing rather than trying to imagine

his world, but as time went on and I kind of dive in there a little bit.

I'm having a little bit of an audio interruption.

I don't know if those are on my end,

I think they are my end.

I apologize.

Can you hear me okay?

Yep.

I can hear you fine.

Yeah.

So you know that I, I think as time has gone on, um, no.

So when I finished that record, I wanted to play all those songs for people.

And people would just cry when I play the songs because they knew the story

and they were like, how can you not burst out and fall apart when you're doing it?

And for me, it just felt so cathartic and so great to connect with people.

Eight years or five years since that record came out, I can't

play those songs right now.

You know, I don't know part of my grieving process that I needed to

kind of communicate and express.

And now I've sort of retreated a little bit when people ask me to play those

songs, I'm hesitant, I'm reticent.

And I, I, uh, I kinda need to get me to give it a break for a bit so that, you

know, that's been interesting to me too.

Of grief and the processes that we go through are all so individual and

there's no one gone through different stages differently than other folks

that I know that have gone through this.

I've had counts, which is a trauma therapy for it.

I went to some grief groups briefly, but i, I think, uh, just being able

to talk to people in my immediate world is really big and helpful.

One thing I've noticed, I've said this before, I'm amazed how

grief comes so unexpected and you know, I've said this a million times, they said.

The farther out you get the ways of grief do become less frequent,

but the wave height never changes.

Yeah.

It's something that I I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life.

It's, uh, an uninvited friend that, uh, is kind of a necessary part

of my house and my mind forever.

Yes., You know, and I, I, I think it's just, you know, shows

that, you know, people said that the amount of grief you have is directly

related to the amount of love you had.

So I just think it's, we've got three fathers here, they're all

lost sons, we're all grieving.

And I think it's tribute to our lost sons that we had so much love with them.

They will be grieving the rest of our lives.

And I don't feel that it's a negative.

I sort of view as a positive now, because you know, you look what's

happening in the world with the pandemic.

And so many people that never thought that grief would be knocking on their door.

It has, and they're going to be dealing with this, the rest of their lives also.

Right

So it's the price of, of love.

That's the way I look at it.

You know, I think one thing that's really become powerful.

For me is the notion of memory.

And, you know, with all of your children, you have these memories

of different phases of their lives and that it's like this living

thing that you have inside you.

And so Daniel's all my memories of Daniel are like the same memories that I have

of his siblings who are surviving now.

And so, it's like, we're lucky that we have that.

That is a to me a form of survival.

Right?

Right.

Well, I can't thank you enough for being our guest today.

I.

I'm amazed when you mentioned what song would be playing tonight.

I know you got to prepare for your, uh, your show.

And that to me is just another piece of the puzzle.

You know, I've said this before that I view Matt's passing now as a thousand

piece jigsaw puzzle that was thrown on my dining room table and the rest of my life.

I'm going to be seeing how the pieces fit.

I've got about a hundred of the thousand pieces fitting, which means

900, not fitting I'm down to 899 now because you gave me another piece

to fit in there with Never My Love.

I mean, when you, when you, when you, when you told me that I thought you were

kidding, so I know the song, but the fact you're playing it tonight of all the

times for us to do this podcast interview and for all the you know, musical

numbers, you could be playing tonight.

You're doing that.

You know, what are the odds of adding this?

These odds are so infinitesimal that again, statistically,

it's not a coincidence.

I really believe that maybe all of our sons, Daniel, Jordan, and Matt are

all laughing and all of us now saying.

Don't you guys get it.

You're all supposed to be meeting here, talking about us.

Like you guys are slowly the uptake here.

This is all sort of what you're supposed to be doing.

And maybe they're all laughing at us, which I hope they are, you know?

Cause Matt would always, I'd make him laugh, he make me laugh.

And it's just something that I know Matt would love to talk to you about music.

Matt would spend hours and hours and hours and hours.

So if you get a dream tonight about some kid with glasses,

maybe it's Daniel and Matt talking about music together with you.

Who knows if you do tell me, because maybe I'll dream about them tonight.

If I do, I'll tell you, because I do believe that this is part of the story.

I'll, I'll, I'll close with this, you know, I'm I'm Jewish and Matt was bar

mitzvahed, but man was very interested in eastern religion and he told me he

got into Taoism, which I didn't even know what that was the Eastern religion.

And I read a article, I think it was the New York times recently.

It was very interesting.

They had a theological scholar talking about how Taoist view life and

what they view is that the physical life we have here is the middle that

you are, whatever you are before you're born., You go back to that.

After your physical being here is over, this is just the middle.

It's not the end, it's a continuum.

And I've asked my rabbi about that and he's given me some interesting answers.

I've done some research on the Jewish philosophy and it can sort

of fit, but I'm sort of coming up with my own thought process.

And I so many times, man would tell me something, Oh, that

doesn't make any sense to say.

It sorta does.

And I think it again, and I'm sort of, of the mindset now that whatever

this thing is that we're here.

I just believe it's part of the continuum.

Are the Taoist right?

Who knows.

But I believe there is a continuum here and I think we were fortunate

to have our sons during that middle part, whatever you want to call it.

And we're fortunate to have our relationships with them continue on

however you want to just describe that after life continuation of

where you were before, put a name onto it, but I believe it exists.

I really do.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for having me and thank you for sharing your

stories with me and Marshall.

I hope you write a book.

You've got some really nice observations about this and a

great way of telling a story and recounting your pain and your process.

I will say this before I go mentioning, uh, puzzle pieces, uh, at Daniel's

funeral, I had a puzzle made of a picture of him when he was a little bit younger.

It was probably 13 or 14 in this picture.

And I asked people to take a piece of the puzzle as they were going into

the, uh, into the sanctuary to take a piece from this puzzle of Daniels.

And it was basically the, the box was just puzzle pieces so nobody could see

the images of what they were, but they had to grab a piece of the puzzle.

So during the ceremony, I said, I want you to decide whether you want to hold on

to this piece of this puzzle or whether you want to help try to put Daniel back

together either way is a win for us.

We're never going to know exactly who Daniel was or why he left

us, but we can at least try.

If you hold on to this piece of the puzzle, it's going to remind

you forever of my son's life.

And if you put that puzzle piece back and that image of my son will have a slightly

more complete picture of who he was.

So I really like looking at a lifelong process of trying to make

sense of all of this stuff and just sort of being okay with not being

able to answer all the questions.

Right, that's amazing.

You mentioned the puzzle because I just view life, you know, the one

thing I've learned, I just think is the one certainty in life is uncertainty.

Life's going to be uncertain.

You don't know what's around the corner.

You know, we're in a pandemic now who ever thought we'd be in a worldwide

pandemic a year ago, but we are.

And I think when you lose a child, all of your pre-ordained notions of, well,

this is the linear life that I'm going to have are just thrown out the window.

And in some ways, It's sort of freeing in the sense that you

know, all we've got is today.

Like you mentioned, like writing a book.

It's funny because before Matt died, I was thinking about writing a book about my

father called the, The Jewish Bombardier.

Cause he just was a funny guy, a funny book about World War II.

He told me all these incredible things.

And so I might get to a Jewish Bombardier and his grandson.

I might do a book about Matt and my father because they were kindred

souls a lot of ways that they both taught me a lot about life.

And for that I'm thankful,

That's awesome.

You should do that.

I am, I have a group called the Shabby Road Orchestra, which is a Beatles.

We, we do kind of historical reenactment of all the Beatles records.

Wow.

If you look up YouTube sShabby Road Orchestra, like we did the entire

Abbey Road, Sergeant Pepper, White Album.

We've been working on, Let It Be.

There's a lot of videos on YouTube that you'll be able to see, but that

music has been really powerful to me.

The other thing is I was a huge World War II buff as a kid, and I had a B25 model.

It was one of my favorite bombers.

My current piano teacher, his father was a, a navigator on a, B26, which

was the, uh, slightly small, but I love the B24's and the B25's, and B17's.

And yeah, I just, I'm still, I'm still a big history history

guy, I love war history.

It's funny because my dad, he died from Alzheimer's

in the last year of his life.

There's a place in Florida that had all these World War II vintage aircraft.

And we took him there and he couldn't remember what he had for breakfast, but

we actually went through the B24 with him.

And he knew they had from the nose to the gate, to the tail, he

knew where the turret gunner sat.

He knew where the navigating or the 10 guys on the B24, four officers, the

pilot co-pilot ,navigator and bombardier.

And he said, nobody cared.

Who was an officer or enlisted.

He goes, if we were going to die, we're all going to die.

And my dad was just such a positive guy that he would tell me years

later, he goes, you know, I really had fun during World War II.

I go, dad, you're the only person, the Hughes in the history in

humanity that World War II was fun.

He goes, I I've met a lot of people.

I went around the world.

I went to Australia, New Zealand.

He knew Asia, like the back was hanged because he had to do it for bombing runs.

He goes, I didn't have a scratch on me.

And it was really fun.

Like, go that's the way you looked at life.

He always looked at the positive and even with Matt's issues, dealing with the

chronic depression, that eight to fight every day, I think he was the same way.

He fought it to look at the good things in life.

And I think that is something that I think all of our sons did and we've got

to give them great kudos and acknowledge what they did for the time that they

were here and be thankful for that.

I really believe that, but I, and I can't thank you enough for being our

guest today and be willing to open up.

Because again, it's something that is very personal.

And I learned a lot from every conversation I have with somebody that

loses somebody, but also somebody lose somebody from death by suicide.

And the fact we're both fathers that both lost sons.

There's obviously a synergy, we both had and I want to, again,

thank you so much for opening up because I've learned a lot today.

Well, thank you both for having me and I look forward

to talking again sometime.

Absolutely.

And just try to stay warm up there with the snow.

I will.

Well,

Thanks everybody so much for listening and we hope

everybody enjoyed today's episode.

And again, I want to thank Adam for being a wonderful guest and enlightening

us with some really enlightening stories about about his wonderful

son and again, thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.

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 apply any medical, psychological, and mental health advice.

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

health treatment, please contact a medical or mental health immediately