Welcome back to Final Approach! I’m Jonathan Knaul, your host, and in this very special episode, I’m joined by two incredible guests: Lisa Brown and legendary test pilot Jim JB Brown. Together, we dive deep into the unique intersection of high-performance careers, family life, and the profound challenges—and rewards—of caregiving for aging loved ones.

This episode shines a light on the personal and professional journeys of Lisa and JB, from Lisa’s work in educational publishing and the Flight Test Historical Foundation, to JB’s storied career as the highest-time F-117 pilot and past president of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. We explore their transitions, including JB’s retirement and their move to North Carolina, and most importantly, their candid experiences as caregivers for their parents.

We discuss the realities of living with and caring for family members with dementia, the emotional impact of difficult decisions like moving a loved one to a care facility, and how the aerospace community rallies around each other through adversity. You’ll hear both practical advice and heartfelt reflections on guilt, grief, and resilience.

What We Discussed

1. Lisa’s educational and museum leadership, and JB’s diverse flying and test pilot experiences.
2. The significance of the Antelope Valley in aerospace history; firsts like breaking the speed of sound and commercial spaceflight.
3. How Lisa supported her mom during years of progressive dementia.
4. JB’s story of losing his father and caring for his mother through decades of grief.
5. The emotional toll of caregiving, including guilt, anger, and finding ways to cope.
6. Financial and logistical challenges of elder care in the U.S. and Canada.
7. The critical importance of seeking professional help, support groups, and honoring your own life alongside caring for family.

Key Takeaways

1. Caregiving Isn’t a Solo Flight: Admitting you can’t do it alone—and seeking help—is vital for everyone’s wellbeing.
2. Emotions Are Signposts: Guilt, grief, and anger are normal; learning to manage them is part of the caregiving journey.
3. Never Give Up: Perseverance is a recurring theme, whether in the cockpit or at home caring for loved ones.
4. Prioritize Self-Care: You can’t be an effective caregiver if you neglect your own health and happiness.
5. Professional Care Has Its Place: Sometimes the best care comes from trained experts; making this choice honors your loved one’s dignity and your own limits.
6. The Aerospace Community is Supportive: Careers spent in high-stress environments can foster resilience and support networks that help in personal life.
7. Financial Reality of Elder Care: Costs are steep, and planning ahead is critical—especially in systems with limited government support.

If you’re moved by our conversation, please visit finalapproachbook.com for more resources, to read my story, or to sign up for our newsletter. Share this episode with anyone navigating caregiving—your story matters, and you are not alone. Reach out through the website. And remember, if you’re struggling, seek out community, conversation, and support—it can make all the difference.

Thanks for joining me on Final Approach. Until next time, take care of yourselves—and each other.

Best in care,

JK

And welcome to the podcast Final Approach: Test Pilot Story of Caring for Loved Ones. I'm Jonathan Knoll, and I have two absolute tremendous guests on podcast number 6, Lisa and Jim JB Brown. Very excited to have them, and in a moment, I'll let them introduce themselves. I'm going to do a little mini intro to them too. The podcast is about people who are doing normal things and doing great things in their lives and still caregiving. And so it's a privilege to have JB and Lisa, and they follow on from somebody they know very well because I had Hooter on last week, who was just great talking about his career and what he's gone through with caregiving. And I had Andy Edgell on before that. So, you know, you guys are in great company.

And please folks, go to my website, finalapproachbook.com, one word. You can learn about the book, you can get the newsletter. And it's really all about talking about caregiving and reminding us that we're not alone because that's really what we fall into. So with that, I really want to introduce JB and Lisa. JB, I've known JB for about 6 years now when I first started working at National Test Pilot School. And I hold both of you in such high regard. JB's a legendary test pilot, past president of Society of Experimental Test Pilots, like Hooter. And of course, they're very good friends.

And JB's got a tremendous background. I think he has the highest time flying the F-117, has done tremendous things in flight test and is just a really wonderful guy. Like, I— it's just who you are, JB, that I hold you in such high regard. And Lisa, too. Lisa, you wouldn't be with JB if you weren't the same or similar person, somebody who's deep in— and I hold in such high regard. Lisa, who recently finished her PhD. Lisa, who ran the museum here, the flight test museum here at Edwards Air Force Base. Haven't been there yet and I got to go myself.

And I just love being around you two. And so it means so much to me that you agreed to be on here. And with that, I'll put it over to you. Please just maybe introduce yourselves a bit, talk a bit about yourselves, and then we'll move into there and talk about what you faced with caregiving, etc. And so welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you, Lisa.

Um, so just a little clarification. I, I volunteered with the Flight Test Historical Foundation for a number of years running their education program, and a number of years ago we found ourselves without a general manager, and so I ended up working full-time, part-time for the foundation running their education programs but doing all the fundraising for the museum. There's an executive director that works for the Air Force that actually runs the museum. So thank God, because I'm very good with talking to 8-year-olds about how airplanes work, but not so much with the adults in the room. It is a remarkable collection of aircraft, and my background actually is in education, and I started in educational publishing right out of college. Moved to LA, worked for McGraw Hill, then Pearson, Sage, Macmillan. And in 2015, I decided to leave the publishing world. I was offered a job at a university and running their curriculum development department.

And I thought, okay, my husband flies all the time and we had a child, so someone needs to be home should the child get sick. And when you have a husband that flies, they— you cannot always get a hold of them. So, um, I want it to be a little bit closer to home. So I made that switch to working directly for a particular university. And at that point, um, I had a master's degree and a 20-year background in education and educational publishing, and all of a sudden I needed to get a PhD because it just doesn't work very well in and working for a university without one of them. So I started pursuing my PhD in 2016, the very same year, actually my mom, I got my mom from St. Petersburg, Florida in July of 2016 and started my PhD program in August of 2016. So that's a little lead into our caregiving story.

Yeah, and it's been what, about, A little bit more than a year since you got your PhD.

Yes. Yeah, I finished my work, as you, as you know, with the process. I had finished the work many months before I defended. So, um, yeah, so, so yes, I do have my PhD. And, uh, my mom lived with us for about 5 years during our process.

Yeah.

Um, but we're in North Carolina now. Jim retired and, uh, we moved, we moved to be close to the grandkids.

Yeah, I didn't quite say, of course, Jim just retired last December as our most recent president at NTPS for the listeners. And then you guys moved over to the East Coast. And so, and we're talking virtually. I mean, I had Hooter here last week, was able to interview him in person. But so I haven't said to anybody else that you were the director of the museum. So my little mess up there stays between you and I.

Yeah, no, no, no. I was actually like, I was the executive director for the foundation that runs the museum, so it's, it's very, very close.

And she also developed the educational component of the museum. If, if you don't have an educational component to your museum, the donors aren't going to come. So, uh, it was— I don't know if it was chicken or the egg, but, uh, anyway, she developed a nice little summer program for, uh, kids in the Palmdale-Lancaster area called the Junior Test Pilot Program, and amongst different guest speakers from the aerospace industry, the kids, they learn some of the fundamentals of what make airplanes fly, and it's held out at the museum, so they're able to go see these airplanes for real, touch them, feel them, smell them, etc.

And JB has even appeared in one of our infomercials. And he's going to be in the documentary that finally will be coming out on KLCS pretty soon.

Which documentary?

I did a documentary, unfortunately it turned out only to be a half hour, about flight tests in the Antelope Valley because so many people don't know what happens. Like really, when I met Jim, I met him in LA and I was like, what do you do? 'Where do you live?' And, 'Really? You're just like an hour north of Los Angeles?' Because I was living in the Hollywood Hills at the time. And I had no interest at all in flight test. And I was proud to be an American and very proud to have a military that would risk their lives for me. But I, besides people that had served in World War II, a couple uncles here or there, we were not a military family. So I didn't have any interest in the lifestyle at all. And then when I learned just about all of the firsts and all of the history, like nothing would have happened in aviation if it hadn't been tested in the Aerospace Valley. I mean, everything with the rockets and propulsion and every, every, everything that happened there.

Now, a lot of great minds from around the world have come to that area to test. So it's not like it wouldn't have happened. Um, well, it would have been hard to make it happen without 360 days of sun and no humidity, right?

Exactly.

Barren areas, you know, Blue Origin still tests their engines at, um, Lumen Ridge, and SpaceX did all of their initial testing there too. So it's a pretty significant place. So I kind of fell in love with telling the story. So the documentary is actually about What is flight test? Because your regular person doesn't know. Yeah, I consider myself to be pretty educated. I had zero idea and I was in educational publishing. Like, I understood research happened, right?

So, you know, I'm thinking, Lisa, that a listener right now would be like, and I don't get what is flight test. So in just a second, my computer is making some noises. I'm going to make sure that I just turn it off. I'm thinking that Some of our listeners are like, I don't know anything about Flight Test, so why don't you tell me a bit about it? And so, Lisa, could you expand on that? Just, I'm, you know, what's happened in the Athabasca Valley? Of course, I know, we know, but for listeners, what's the big firsts that have happened here? What's the big deal? What's Flight Test? What's—

I want to talk about where it is first.

Well, yeah, so So Rogers Dry Lakebed and Rosemont Dry Lakebed are ancient lakebeds that have, you know, a couple million years old where the sediment built up to the point where they kind of act as natural runways. So in the '20s, when the Army Air Corps was doing some of their first testing of aircraft, they literally set up tent cities out in the area to test well, they tested the first jets. They started with biplanes, but the area was so remote and it was so difficult to get to, they could develop actually the first jets without prying eyes. So in fact, and again, I need Jim for the technical stuff. I just know some of the stories, like the first jet hangar in the United States is still at Edwards, and it's still right there in North Base. And they brought in the jets, um, the first jets, which were the— thank you—

XP-59.

Okay, they had put wooden propellers on their noses, Jonathan, so they could fake out everybody because they didn't want anybody to know that they had the technology, jet technology. Wow. Um, so pretty much every rocket was tested— well, the testing started in Wright-Patt in Ohio, and pretty quickly the scientists and the researchers realized that they needed an area where they could not blow up people. So they had to go out to this remote spot in the desert that had already been used as a testing site for the Army Air Corps. And from there, pretty much every major advancement in aerospace happened there. One of the things that I found the most interesting and the most fascinating, and again, for scientists and researchers, it's not too much out of the scope, but for every idea that you have, you have to test to see what works, what doesn't. And often your theories don't work, but you learn as much from your failure as you do from your success. So there needed to be an experimentation ground, and there's You know, uh, the area right around Edwards is the size of Washington, DC.

Um, and then if when you add in the Mojave Air and Space Port and Palmdale, yeah, I mean, you've got a pretty big huge piece of geography. And then your only two supersonic corridors in North America, correct, where you can test things supersonically?

Oh, yeah, well, here's, here's some couple— sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Elisa. Go ahead.

No, no.

I mean, here's, here's a couple of questions to answer then. Here, I tell you what. So what was a first that happened today in flight test?

The X-59 flew.

The X-59 flew here in Antelope Valley.

A friend of ours, chief pilot at NASA, and congratulations to him.

That's really cool.

I actually flew one of the very first simulators for that airplane in Uh, it was 2015, so it's been 10 years that people have been working on this thing to get it airborne.

Yeah, well, the other thing is Vista. Vista, the work that's been done on Vista, the, you know, AI fighter jet, it's been going on for 40 years.

Yeah, yeah.

So none of this is new, right? It's just now getting to the point where it's learned enough. But that kind of research and effort That's, that's what flight test is all about, right? And that's what's so unique about the area and what you guys do.

Well, well, here to bring it out, I got a couple more questions, Lisa. So which you know the answers to for sure. Where, where was the speed of sound broken?

October 14th, 1947, right there at Edwards Air Force Base.

There you go. With, with, with who?

Chuck Yeager.

Yeah. Where was, where was the space shuttle built?

Palmdale. And Enterprise was not supposed to be called Enterprise. I cannot remember the original name, but there was— so the Enterprise was built as a test vehicle. So landings and reentry was all tested at Edwards. All of the testing was done at Edwards and all of the space shuttles were built at Edwards as well. Well, Palmdale, right? And that tested the airspace. I've seen it land on the runway. Um, not, not in person.

I have seen one of them or two of them land on the runway, but during the testing, the videos that we have.

That's cool because I haven't, so I think that's super cool.

Oh, you'll love the documentary. And I've, I have so much footage for you if you ever need like a bunch of B-roll, let me know. Um, But there was a whole campaign by the Star Trek fans.

That's right.

That, that the Enterprise be called Enterprise. It was Jimmy Carter got about 300,000 letters.

That's right.

To have it renamed Enterprise. I think it might have been Columbia. And it was the original first name.

And for folks, that's, that was the first space shuttle. It didn't go to space, but it was designed to do all the in-atmosphere testing and all the in-atmosphere testing, as you just said. Happened out here, which is just so cool. Yeah. And what— and the first commercial spaceflight, where did that happen?

Right there in the Mojave Air and Space Port. What was that, 2001?

That's right. Yeah.

Proof of concept.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We go another one.

So, uh, so that's, that's where Jim got me. So it's like, I was like, oh, pilot, yeah, whatever.

I thought it was the dashing good looks. I guess not.

And in combination with your personality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it was the ego that was so charming. Yes. But, but it's true. I mean, it really is. You know, all of NASA research just about happens out there. I mean, it is the, the center of the flight test universe.

Yeah, well, on that note, can you tell us a little bit about JB's impressive career? Or does JB want to tell it himself? Why don't you tell us? JB, you have such a phenomenal career. And of course, there was your retirement party in December last year, which was phenomenal. The accolades and the stories were just— they were amazing.

Those are the stories that could have been told in public too. So, you know, I, uh, my dad was a private pilot. I've got very early memories of him dragging me away from the cartoons on Saturday morning and putting me in the airplane and taking me flying. And no matter how grumpy I was about missing my cartoons, I'd be looking out the window and the second the wheels left the ground, there's always this big smile.

And you grew up in Alabama.

Yeah, Birmingham, Alabama is where I grew up. And, you know, as a young guy, I'm watching Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, those guys walking out to their steaming spaceship wearing their silver suits and carrying a little air conditioner pack with them. You know, I'd always wanted to be an astronaut. So start asking, okay, how do you be an astronaut? Well, you know, do good in school, keep your nose clean. Okay, I did my best at that. And then, you know, Air Force, be a fighter pilot, go to test pilot school, and then, you know, apply to be an astronaut. I ticked all the boxes, but I've got some really nice rejection letters from NASA, but that's okay. I've had astronauts tell me they were very jealous of my flying, so I'll stick with that.

So after college, entered the Air Force flight school, was assigned to fly F-4s in Europe, in Germany. So I was an operational fighter pilot in Germany and then went over to England and flew as an aggressor. We flew the F-5E airplane that was camouflaged like the Soviet airplanes, and we did the Soviet formations and tactics against all the different air forces in NATO, which was, that was a lot of fun. It was cowboys and Indians and we were the Indians all the time. Applied for test pilot school and was lucky enough to get selected. Did test pilot school, flew F-15s and A-7s at Edwards after the school. Then I kind of disappeared into a world that we don't talk about for a few years. And while I was there, I had, you know, the Berlin Wall came down and we had the first Gulf War.

So there was some exciting times to be doing flight tests. Meaning that you got out of the Air Force.

I'm sorry, meaning you were doing super secret work.

Yeah, yeah, secret stuff.

Can I interject something? Is this for a listener that doesn't know anything about the world? So where I was talking about how the first jets were brought into North Base with fake propellers on the top of them or at their nose so they didn't know and nobody could know what they were. And they were brought to North Base. And North Base at the time, there was nobody around.

North Base is the north part of Edwards Air Force Base, right?

Yes.

Yeah, north end of the lake.

Now, after the population started building up, in the '40s and into the '50s, um, the, the government needed someplace that was really where nobody could see. If you, you didn't need a fake propeller on the front of it on the jet to make sure people didn't know what it was. You went so far out into the desert that people didn't know where you were, so you could do that kind of testing. So prying eyes could not see, nor the enemy.

Perfect. All right.

So then I decided to get out of the Air Force, not because I didn't like the Air Force, not because I wasn't doing exciting stuff, but I had 5 daughters at the time and started looking at what it was going to take to put them through university and what the Air Force is paying. And that just wasn't a good answer. So I decided to try my, my luck in the civil world. I flew for United Airlines for 2 years and then got a phone call from the Lockheed Skunk Works and a guy named David Ferguson, who's the chief test pilot, hired me to be an F-117 test pilot. Did that for 8 years and then moved over to fly the F-22 out at Edwards. Did that for 11 years. Went back to the Skunk Works to run their flight operations for a couple of years and then started at National Test Pilot School in 2016 and retired from there in December of 2024. I've been a very lucky guy.

I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to have had the career I did. At any number of junctures, I couldn't have been so lucky. So, you know, Luck is the name of the game. Of course, you do your best to build your own luck, which I tried. I kept my nose mostly clean, I think.

Most of the guys that I've met, you know, Jonathan, one of the stories, as you know, because I run the education programs, or I still do actually, I've done a lot of interviews of test pilots for little kids. And I always ask in my interviews, you know, what, what were your challenges? What was your adversity? I cannot tell you how many test pilots I've interviewed that just said, never give up.

Yeah.

And one young man that I interviewed too, oh gosh, it was probably a year and a half ago now. It was his 5th time applying to test pilot school. He was a major. Um, I can't remember which plane he flew, maybe F-16s. Um, he was a major and it was his fifth time, and he sent me a video when he got his acceptance letter.

Wow. Well, you know, that never give up thing is a little bit the way I— it's very much actually the way I see you two. Um, I mean this sincerely, I'm lucky to have you as friends, but Somebody said something at your retirement, JB, career-wise and in the cockpit-wise. When things would go poorly, they would ask themselves, what would JB do? And really, I see both of you that way. What would JB and Lisa do? Because I get a lot of that literally from you in our interactions over the over the years and also just, you know, energy-wise, like I look up to you guys that way. And in various environments, I think sometimes when I've been faced with a challenge, what would JB and Lisa do? I mean that sincerely. So it's luck too. And you're right, you make your own luck.

But there's something to be said about— I think you hit the nail on the head there, Lisa, about never give up.

I do think it's one of the things that I hear, and you know, I didn't read your book, I listened to your book, so thank you for the audio version. Amazing. But you've had a lot of not giving up in your life too. It does seem to be a theme of everybody that I've met in the TESS community.

Well, thanks. You know, I can't stand my voice, so the fact that you listened to it and got through it, I'm very impressed.

Well, I like your voice, but I feel the same way about mine.

I had to hide all the sharp implements though.

No, I, well, why don't we talk a little bit about caregiving then, if that'd be all right? Yeah. And we can bounce back into talking about aviation too, because none of that stuff ever gets boring. But both of you have had I mean, you are parents. You have very busy careers. I mean, just when I text Jim from time to time and he tells me how busy you are, Lisa, and I know how hard sometimes it is to, to get your time these days. Recently, you've got— you both have had busy careers. Jim, you're in retirement, but you're still busy. You were just flying the MiG-21 last week out in Florida for a private owner.

And at the same time, you've had, you know, you've had parents to look after and it hasn't been easy. Like you, Lisa, you lost your dad at 10. I lost my dad when I was 15. And then it was me and my mom for all those years. And my story, folks know because I put it in a book. But if you guys be willing to talk a little bit about it, because I think the first question is, How do you survive? How do you survive and how do you still get on with your lives? You guys, I, I know it's not easy, but you're put together.

Well, um, well, well, you know, thanks for the good words. You know, you know, I think I lost my father at 15. He had a heart attack out in the front yard and, uh, I had given him CPR to the best of my ability, but I think he was already gone when I got to him.

I didn't know that.

So that was a, you know, that's a sudden, you know, flip of the switch. Dad's gone and, and mom is left with a 15-year-old and a 10-year-old, two sons to take care of. And, you know, I think, you know, you get into the survival mode at first and it's just one step in front of the other. We need to stay afloat. We need to take care of the, the immediacy, and then we, you move forward. My mother never ceased grieving for my father. She held it together pretty much until she had my brother out of university. He went to the University of Alabama.

So, uh, I guess you still call that a higher educational institution. But anyway, um, and then, then she, uh, she fell into an alcoholic, uh, cycle. It was a severe alcoholic for the next, what, 40 years? Um, yeah, uh, 35 to 40 years. And, uh It was something I didn't recognize until I'd come home from Germany and I was visiting over Christmas and, you know, it had been dawned on me and I did the best I could to take cover. And in her later years, we had her living in the same town. We moved— she was in Virginia. We moved her back to California to live in proximity with me. Um, did the best I could.

Uh, I don't know how successful I was. Uh, she, she went on to live to 85. And, you know, the, the abuse that I saw her give her body and still live that long— I, I'm going to be around forever, I think. Yeah, but, uh You know, it's a tough thing. She internalized her grief, never really got any professional help, and but she held it together, one foot instead of in front of the other, to get myself and my brother launched into society. So, you know, it's good for her. I think a more pressing story and more continuous story is Lisa talking about her mom. Who started living with us in 2016.

Yeah, that was a big year.

Yeah, she had— I don't know how you want to describe her husband. She, she had fallen in with a guy that was a shyster, and he ignored her signs of early dementia and squandered her money.

Well, he was a very elderly man to begin with. They were very much later in life. He was 10 years older than she was, and she was in her mid-60s, so he was 75 when they got married. He had always had a bit of a questionable past, but he, he owned, um, an antique store in Treasure Island, Florida for 20 years. He was known in the community, um, but when— and, and I do hear this from Our dear friend Doug is going through this right now with his own parents where his mother is much older. She's approaching 90 and is showing signs of severe dementia at this point, right? Like she's been okay until the end, but the dad is in— well, the dad, his dad is in complete denial. So while my mom's ex-husband He was getting scammed. I know, this is another thing.

I mean, talking to my friend Michael, had to shore up all of his mother's money so she wouldn't be scammed. She called him one day, she— and she's only 70. Sandra's not that much older than you, I think she's 74. Um, 74 years old, calls her son going, the IRS needs $400 from me, I have to get it. And he's like, He's a lawyer, and thank God he had—

they sent me a text and I have to pay.

It was— yes, it was the lawyer. So I think that that's, you know, as we go forward in world, I think we're going to see that more and more. My mom's ex, um, we're 100% sure that he was scammed by some kind of gold deal because we had to get the police involved. He went through $400,000. Um, and it was just like, it was, it, it was, you know, it, it is just called complex grief, right? So your mom is at the point where you realize that her husband can't be trusted to take care of her, so she has to move in with you. But at the same time, you're learning that she's destitute, that there's no, no money left at all, and he's squandered it all, and then he won't leave the condo that is hers that she's been living in for years. I mean, it just turned into—

that stuff's just—

oh yeah, I know, it was—

it's terrifying.

Yeah, yeah, we were paying the utilities, and finally we said, hey, we're going to quit doing that. Next thing we know, we get a letter from a lawyer for elderly abuse because we turned off the electricity. So wait a minute, there's no reason we should be paying this electric bill, you know. But you know, her mom's dementia, Lisa had seen signs of it earlier.

Yes.

When she moved in with us in 2016, it wasn't that obvious to me. I'd never really dealt with someone who was losing their memory. And it was—

it's certainly—

I had to get over the feeling that, wait, she's lying to me. Yeah, rather than she just doesn't remember, uh, you know, did you turn off the stove? Oh yeah, and the stove's still on. You go, well, you just lied to me. No, no, you know, she just didn't have the realization. And then, uh, it became more and more obvious.

Uh, yeah, she had started— so by the time— so Jim and I— I'm Jim's second wife, as you know, Jonathan, but probably Hopefully nobody else does at this point. I did not have—

they do now.

Our daughter was 2 when I started realizing that it's— we're not going right. And Lily's 16 now. So 14 years ago, I really started, and I started pushing. And, um, Jonathan, since you were the only one— well, your sister was on your side, um, for sure. My mom's husband was in absolute denial, which I think is a really common problem.

Oh my God, my sister had some challenges there too. I'm very close to my sister and I adore her, um, but there were challenges there too. Sorry, keep going, but I, I totally relate to what you're talking about.

No, I think that that's—

well, I think if you, if it— you're in it, yeah, and it's in your face day to day, it's hard to see. Rather than stepping in from the outside and going, whoa, hey, there's something going on here.

Well, Jonathan was there all the time, so his sister was visiting, and his sister, I think, lived in Texas at the time, correct? Or was she in Florida?

She was in Florida, in Miami, and this was during COVID so she couldn't get into the country even as a Canadian citizen because of the restrictions on, on travel. So there were months that went by, and when I had to move my mom into— finally into the care facility Of course, I had to get my sister to agree to it because we shared POA or power of attorney. And it was hard for my sister to understand what I was going through. You know, we came to agreements, but at times we really had a hard time getting to agreements. It's hard for both of us. And again, I adore my sister and I think she's amazing. It's just human nature.

That's for her, right?

She—

oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Sorry, what was that?

I said she's quite successful in her own right.

She is, yeah. She was actually— she was a— my first episode was her interviewing me. So, um, but, uh, but yeah, and she had a family to take care of, and, uh, and, and she adored our mother, uh, as much as I did too. So it was very, very hard on her. And so it, it was very hard for her to accept certain changes in our mother, and that because of those changes, we had to make certain decisions. And she wasn't physically there. So it was hard.

So Jonathan, I'm going to flip the interview a little bit and ask you a question. When you decided to put your mom in a facility and she was actually there, did you feel, did you have feelings of remorse? Or regret, or did you feel guilty about that decision?

So I still do. I still have some issues with that, I'll be honest. I think writing my book and doing podcasts like this are my own therapy. And Lisa and I were texting about this a couple of days ago. I still have challenges with that, and it's hard. And even my friends have told me to remind me that the guilt really serves no purpose. And I think it's what I told, I'll give you a couple more details, guys, but just globally on the idea of guilt, which is very hard to deal with. And this is what I was mentioning to Lisa the other day.

And I do believe in this, easy to say I believe in it. And I also have my challenges with accepting it myself. But I think guilt is a symptom or an emanation of our own compassion. We feel empathy and we feel compassion and we're restricted on what we can do. I was restricted on what I could do with my mom and I had to take certain decisions. And I couldn't be at that level of empathy and compassion I need to be. I couldn't care for her at home anymore. I couldn't keep her and do that anymore.

And so I feel guilty about it. Along with that was, you know, my mother, I'll say our mother because, you know, my sister might be listening to this podcast at some point. Our mother told us, she said to both of us, like, whatever happens, don't move me out. I will not go to a care facility. Never let that happen to me. But it got to the point where I couldn't care for her at home anymore, and the situation developed into, here we are in COVID. I had left NTPS and given up my career, as you remember, JB. And gone home.

And I moved in with my mom. I sold everything I owned, moved in with my mom, and I was taking care of her. Not too long after I got there, we had 5 caregivers taking care of her 24/7, and 3 of them walked out the door with no notice. And then I was left alone taking care of my mother for about 4 days of the 7 during the week by myself, 24/7. She was combative. She wasn't making sense. There was all— and I had to take care of her most private needs. It was one of my roommates from military college one day who said, and I was really having trouble with the guilt of saying, I've got to, I think I have to move my mom into a facility.

One, I was experiencing caregiver burnout and a doctor said like, you're experiencing symptoms and these things are going to get worse. And if you get sick, then there's nobody to really look after your mom. Then she's into any government facility and then she's really in a world of hurt. You need to get her into proper care and then you can be, you can be yourself again. You can be her son again and you can really look, continue to look after her from along with professionals. And my roommate from RMC, sorry, last one, I'll just say roommate from RMC said to me, John, if you could talk to your mom when you're 10 years old, your younger mother, and say, Mom, no matter what happens when you're 98 years old, 97 years old, and you're losing your mind and I have to change your diapers, I'm still going to keep doing that. What do you think she'd say to you? And it was pretty clear what she'd say to me. Under no terms are you going to do that.

So you moved me into a facility and it was sort of the sobering moment for me.

Yeah, you know, Lisa has guilt feelings about her mom and, you know, some of the justifications that I try to use to ease her mind is You know, with a dementia case, her medications, she would take a medication and forget she'd taken it and then take more and more. So she was, you know, overdosing, not, not on anything bad or whatever, but, you know, still getting not the prescribed dosage of what the doctors meant for her. And her appetite would come and go and she would eat, forget that she ate, and eat more or whatever. And I said, look, she's, she's being cared for, her medications are metered, she's getting 3 square meals a day, and, you know, they, they ensure her hygiene, etc., and, and that, that is a full-time job, and for, for Lisa's, you know, she's a mother of a young girl, working on her PhD at the time, and doing the museum stuff. I mean, she was really busy and didn't have the capacity to be a full-time caregiver.

Well, I want, and you know, Jonathan, I know firsthand, I appreciate when you and I have discussed this on multiple occasions because everybody deals with this in different ways. You do reach the point where It's not fair to anybody. And you're right, I mean, I would never want my daughter to go through what she— what I went through. I, I— my mother would never have wanted this. My grandmother died in a home, and her dementia was later onset. It was when she was in her mid-80s that it started, and The last 7 years of her life were miserable. And she was nonverbal. It was just absolutely miserable.

And it was my mom's absolute greatest fear. And my mom was very clear about it, that she would never want me to have to— she, A, would never want to be in a situation like that, and B, she would never want me to have to take care of her like that. But you know, as you saw, when, when older people start losing their minds, the instinct to live kicks in. And that instinct, because the mind isn't logical anymore. So it's just that I'm going to do it my way, you know, the, the id kind of takes over. And logic goes out the window when you're not able to think logically. I mean, you can't make You can't go through the process of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, let alone think about the long-term effects on your family members and how you really want to live. And they— all they know is that they don't want to live the way that they're living.

Yeah.

And they're not happy.

No, they're not. And I think there's some of the clincher. And, you know, I'm telling— I'm reminded because, as I said, I, I'm a bit too much of a deep-feeling person, perhaps. That's who I am. So why I would still be feeling some guilt, uh, you know, 3 years after my mom's already passed. Um, but to, to say that I, I share your— I understand your feelings, uh, Lisa, because I, I still feel some of these myself. But I think it gets summed up into— sorry, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, you don't ever— you know, you know also a little bit about the work I've done with families after death. No one gets over death. You don't get over somebody dying. You learn how to live with it the best you can, and you don't stop grieving, and you don't stop feeling guilty for the things you didn't do or that you didn't say. You don't stop. You just learn, hopefully, how to live with it better. And I think that's, um, You and I, when we were texting the other day, and I've been lucky to have you around that we've been able to talk about this through a number of years, hearing the struggles of other people and just understanding that it's universal. It's interesting.

So we have a friend who is passed now, and his name was Hal Bauer, and Hal was a quote-unquote test pilot when he was a 17-year-old child in Germany.

Wow.

So he was German, and so the test pilot— German and American.

He was an American citizen, got wrapped up in what was going on in Germany.

He was actually the grandson to the ambassador of— a U.S.

ambassador to Germany in what would have been The Bismarck era, 30-something, 1930s.

His story is an epic that, right, requires its own—

oh yeah, that's a different podcast. There's been— he's had a documentary done about him too. But it was interesting because he lost his dad. Um, his dad was sent to the front lines because his dad was not a part of the Nazi Party, but he was a physician. He was sent to the front lines. He died inside of 20 days. In the war. We— and then he got sent to a military school for other boys that had lost their fathers.

And we were sitting there one night and I was like, how, how, you know, knowing that we had lost our parents when we were young and we were children. And he was like, everybody's father was dead. There is nothing to mourn. No one had a father. And it was like, well, there you go, right? Like, when it's normed like that, when it's like, well, what are you gonna do? You gotta get yourself up and get dressed in the morning and go about your business, and everybody else's dad is dead too, you know? And unless— when, when it's that normed, right? And I don't think this is a very normed experience, even though there's so many that of us that have gone through this. And pretty much if you get to it, certainly nobody—

no two are the same, right? So many people are going through like experiences, but they're not all the same. And, uh, I want to back up just a little bit to the guilt thing and, uh, and say, you know, there are people out there, there are, uh, children of parents that would take advantage of their parents. They would take advantage of the money, the assets, or whatever. Um, And then there are those that wouldn't, not in a million years. And when you got a hard decision to make, whether to put somebody in a care facility, whether to sell their home, what to do with the assets, you've got to look in your heart and say, 'Okay, am I doing this for the greater good of the individual?' If the answer is yes, then there is no guilt. You can look yourself in the mirror and say, look, I'm doing the best I can. And yeah, it's not optimum. The whole situation kind of sucks, but I'm trying to take care of my mom.

And as long as that is the governing principle, I don't think there's any guilt that needs to be had.

For you.

Well, no, I think Jim's right. And I use that with my sister throughout because we really had a hard time making some tough decisions. And I had to say, look, we have to remind ourselves that any decision we make is about mom. It's about mom's wellbeing. It's about what's best for her. It's not about how we feel and what's best for us or what we think is going to make us feel better. And that helped bring some clarity and allowed us to make some good decisions. And at the time I was able to put aside the guilt.

I tend to feel a bit now, probably because I just think too much. But, but you're absolutely right, Jim. You know, the, the guilt really has no place and guilt serves no purpose. It just pulls us down. And there really isn't anything to feel guilty about. You do the best you can with what you have for that person. And, and one thing I did learn for sure when I had to make that tough decision to move my mom out and I had to trick her to move her out of her apartment, that was really hard. Was that I just couldn't run a one-bedroom care home in our home.

It just was not, just was not possible.

I think that you, I mean, again, I very vividly, and I did, and Jim read your book a couple years ago, and I listened to it not that long ago. So, and because I had been through something similar, I think it's sticking with me. A little more too. You really got to the point where you really, really, really didn't have a choice. My mom— Jim had a stroke in 2019, and he was getting very testy with my mom, his patience, because the job was hard, right? I mean, you know what the school was like. So he would be stressed out all day working 12-hour days. He'd come home and there was my mom. And my daughter at the time was about 11, actually, no, she was 10 that year.

So she was 10 and it was getting hard for her to live with grandma too because her memory loss was so profound that, and I was working from home, so that was fun too. So I was with my mom all day long. And after Jim's stroke and looking around, it was like, I could have kept going with it for a goodly amount of time with my mom. To me, it wasn't as egregious. We could have put in a few more— we could have put in a few more stopgaps. She had stopped trying to cook, which was good. Um, she no longer wandered around the neighborhood because she was afraid. It would have started back up again, by the way.

Like, there would have been to come a time where it really— it wasn't good that we had her upstairs. We could have moved her downstairs. There's a lot of stuff, but because I am that sandwich generation completely, where I had a 10-year-old daughter and a— at the time she was 65? No, what am I saying? She was 75. Um, 75-year-old mom with, with early onset dementia, and it was pretty darn severe. And that's when I was like, I— we have to find another alternative.

I think the stroke scared her.

What if the stroke—

what if I needed care? That, and also, you know, that would have just been a tipping point big time.

And also, I'd have two of them to take care of.

Well, I mean, you guys, you guys nailed, nailed it on the head. And it really brings me back to some of the thought process I was having. I, I was keeping a ship afloat with corks and tape and chewing gum, um, and, and, and, and more and more holes were, were popping with my, you know, and, and I just I just couldn't do it anymore. Like, I literally physically couldn't do it anymore. And, and I had two bouts where I got super agitated with my mom and acted and behaved in a way that I— is just not me. Like, it, it really took me by surprise, and it scared me. Um, in addition to starting to feel like literally having physical symptoms of caregiver burnout. And but the, you know, the other thing to help type you out, sir.

I'll just say this, uh, you know, Lisa, is that the programs that my mother got for dementia in the, in the care home were way better than anything I could have given her. I could not stimulate her properly. It didn't matter how much— TV was a bad idea. Um, I could sing to her, and at some point it wasn't enough. I could play music, and at some point that wasn't enough. Um, I, you know, and I was running out of steam. I, I'm— I do not know how to deal with dementia. As much as I loved my mom and I knew her the best of anybody, along with my sister, really needed a group of professionals that knew how to deal with dementia, give her the proper stimulation just to get through an afternoon.

And that is so true. And I will say, so she moved to an assisted living memory care place in Florida. That was, um, because it's the US, it was extraordinarily expensive. You know, luckily, even though her ex-husband had gone through the entirety of their savings, she still had a condominium, um, that was worth about $150,000. And we found a very nice place for her that she knew. Um, so she kind of didn't know where she was anymore, but it was a really nice place and they did so well for her, and I felt very good about her being there. When Jim was planning on— so her money had run out, oh man, quite some time ago. And with Jim's retirement coming up, we couldn't afford the thousands of dollars extra a month.

I mean, because she does get Social Security, but it was thousands of dollars. There was no Medicare option. Um, so we moved her to a nursing home, um, last year in June. And, um, I think that that's something that— and I'm not sure about the Canadian system, but the cost of, of elderly care, decent elderly care in the States, is extraordinary.

Um, it's— go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, I, I, we are, we're not wealthy people by any means, but we've worked really hard and we're comfortable people. But we had to make a decision, um, when she, when she really didn't know where she was anymore and she really didn't recognize me anymore and she could have cared less if she was on the water. She stopped participating in all the activities and she kind of was just sleeping all day long. They were doing their best to stimulate her and do things with her. But, um, she— that's when it was like, okay, this place, it doesn't matter where she is anymore as long as she's getting good care and she's being taken care of. And, and actually, she's in a wheelchair now and she needs nursing home care that they couldn't do in the assisted living. So she is in the place where she needs to be. And luckily, because she had zero funding left, she is on Medicare.

So that is now taking care of her. So it's just a really— all of it is just a nightmare. There is no good scenario.

It's gut-wrenching. It's painful. It hurts. You know, Lisa on occasion will look at me and just say, I want my mommy back, you know. And, you know, unfortunately it's, it's a, it's a one-way street. And, uh, um, all you can do is look in your heart and you say, I've done my best, all my decisions were made for her best care, and you press forward, do the best you can.

I think that, I think that's what your mom would say to you too, Lisa. She would say, "You're doing the best for me," and she would tell you to live your life. My mom did that, and I can hear her saying it. So again, I still have feelings. I miss my mom terribly. And my sister and I have the discussion on occasion, and we have to say the same things to each other, remind ourselves that we did our best, and that's what our mom would have wanted. She would not have wanted us to be, um, you know, in— to lose our lives over her care, um, after her having the chance to live her life. I think that's her, if that helps.

And she would tell me to keep her— keep our pecker up.

If you know, if, if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be capable of taking care of others.

Well, that's it. That's it.

You know, we're not talking an exorbitant lifestyle, but you know, you've gotta take adequate care of yourself so that you have the capacity to help others. You know, how many dead bodies are up on the heights of Mount Everest that people can't bring 'em down because they're at the very ragged edge of their capability just be in there.

So that's the truth. And, and caregiving's on the spectrum of, uh, or caregiver burnout's on the spectrum of PTSD and operational stress. And, uh, and, and when you can't care for the, the person you love anymore, you've got to find those professionals. I, I think you've done the right thing. I don't think you have— I know you don't have anything to feel guilty about, not at all. And, and I'll also say too, Canadian system, we face the same and I faced the same hard decision with my mom, and money was— we were bleeding money, and on and on.

Um, okay. I thought it was a little bit better. I'm not that familiar with, with the socialized medicine system. I know I'm a little because of our friends.

It doesn't, it doesn't cover caregiving for elderly, period. That's on your own.

Well, that's— it's so hard. And the only, the only other thing that I would mention is something that I did say in my text message. I've tried over the years to find some online support groups and things, and there were so many that I found where it was filled with, it is an honor to take care of my mother who took care of me. And I'm thinking to myself, what stage are you in this? Let me tell you, after 14 years, it's kind of like, wow, I'm angry. I'm angry. I'm angry because she was a good person. You know, my mom was a good person. She lived a good life.

She did things for others. She volunteered. She was very active in her community. She was a member of her city council. She was a vice mayor of her little town. I mean, she was a— you know, everybody makes mistakes and everybody's human, right? So we can always find faults somewhere with our parents, um, some more than others for sure, um, and some deserve you know, a lot more shade than others. Yeah, but I'm, I'm in the angry stage where I just— I, I have no— to me, um, and to her, she, she's— there's a part of her that is left that has so much dignity where she will not get— she rarely gets angry. And she rarely gets upset, but she will have moments where she's a little bit more cognizant and understands where she is, and she is gutted, absolutely gutted.

She is— it is, it is so desperate a thing to see, um, because she will cry and the anguish in her eyes, like she won't even let herself get hysterical where I would be, like if it were me I don't have as much dignity as my mother. I'd be the one yelling and screaming and throwing things. I'd be tied to the bed and they'd be giving me a sedative.

And all right, Antarctica, right?

It's, uh, it's a horrible disease. It's just a horrible, horrible disease. And, and And there's no easy answer to it. So again, you, you've done your best and you continue to do your best. And anything else, anything else that you would, would be not, would be not right. You've done your best. And I faced that with my mother too. There were mornings when I had her in the home too, at her home, she'd wake up with a complete memory wipe, had no idea who I was, where she was.

And it was terrible. And she was asking for her mother and she was already well into her 90s. It was heart-wrenching. And there's no two ways about it. But about your point about support groups, I really faced a challenge with this too. So in Toronto at the time, I was looking for a support group. And the only ones I could find, and one after the other were the same. I had to sign up as a mental health patient with a hospital that would get me into a support group.

And I'm like, I'm not mentally unhealthy. I'm stressed and I need a support group, but I'm not going to sign up as a mental health patient. So I, I didn't do that. And I had trouble finding, finding something. What I, what I finally found was, and it was once I got my mother into the care home, was I found a couple of other children who had parents in the care home. They were recommended to me. And I said, can I talk to them? And I managed to strike up a couple of good friendships and with people I could relate to, and it really helped out a lot. They were, they were good people to talk to who helped me understand better what I was going through and put it all together.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. And because I'm not— I haven't been local and that's probably, you know, you and I started talking about this as soon as you had come back to NTPS and you were starting to work on the book. Yeah, um, you know, you and I ended up talking more, uh, you know, Hooters dealt with a little bit, but not his parents. Not until they were very, very, very old and close to the end did they really stop being able to, um—

I mean, his dad He was forgetful, but he wasn't demented.

Yeah, at the very end. So he, he had— anyway, our— in our close friend group, I think you're the only other person that I talked to that dealt with this, this, you know, the real dementia where your parents don't know who you are and, um, you know, taking care of every single part of their lives and Man, I just, you know, I, I hope people find your podcast and that it helps them, uh, because I would have— again, like, um, I started listening to Anderson Cooper's All There Is because, you know, and I needed— it helped me to cry, um, because sometimes you just have to cry. Sometimes it's, it's good to have a good cry and let yourself too.

Well, there's the thing, and I guess that's, you know, it's part of this podcast is that, and for me, the book is that not typical. Hooter and I had this discussion last week, very unusual in our business to show your emotions and be vulnerable. Test pilots don't do that, but I'm fully willing to do that. It's helped me out a lot. I mean, of course I'm composed in the cockpit and I'm not having emotional outbursts. I compartmentalize, and I'm a professional. But, you know, outside of that, you know, outside of work, I'm fully ready to embrace my emotions. And that's a hard thing to do.

And that's sort of what I had to do too. It was one of my friends who said, hey, you know, emotional emotions are signposts. And if you can, it's very hard to do, we're human. But if you can at times look at your emotions and try and look at them objectively and say, I'm feeling things because I'm human, and that's normal. It's okay to feel what I'm feeling, and there's a reason for it. And also, I have to— hopefully it'll help me be practical in my own life. And so I go back to telling you, Lisa, that you've got everything to feel proud about, about what you've done for your mom. I'm not, not saying it's an honor to care for my mom, that, that sort of thing.

I understand your, your why that would be. The way that sounds to me too is a little bit off. I don't like it. But, but, but, but, but that you, you have everything to be proud about as a daughter. You're a good daughter because you care and love your mom and, and you have and continue to do the very best for her while also— and maybe this is the right thing to say— is honoring your own life because that's what your mom would have wanted. That's what your dad would have wanted too. Honor your own life. And, you know, my father wasn't an easy guy to live with.

He had terrible PTSD coming out of the Holocaust, and it was an awful childhood. Jim and I have talked about that a couple of times. But I know that as much as he was, you know, a monster at times for me in my childhood, he wanted the best for me. And if I could talk to my, my, the heart of my dad, he would have wanted me to live, to live my best life.

Yes, I'm sure. I know he would have been so proud of you. And those kind of, those kind of scars are really what a number to do on somebody, right? You know, so much about your own emotional regulation has to do with your ability to find some peace with yourself.

Yeah.

And that's, that's, that's a tough road when you've been so abused as a young person and have to see so much atrocity and so much pain and never really deal with it either, right? Because, you know, you soldier on, that generation.

Yeah.

You don't talk cut it and you just move on. And but you don't, you don't, you got to exercise the demon somehow.

Yeah. And I, and, and, and it's quite obvious, you know, just, I mean, this is audio, the podcast, but I'm seeing you guys virtually here. And, uh, you know, if there's one guy who really loves you, it's, it's James Brown. And, uh, um, and that guy doesn't want to see you, uh, feeling guilty and, and and, and in pain. So, uh, and that's always been very evident to me from the outside. Um, that guy wants to see you happy.

You know what, our house, Jonathan, every day is Valentine's Day.

Every day.

That's perfect.

And we'll tell you the story behind that later on. That's not to be reported.

Okay.

Every day is Valentine's Day. No, things start getting testy and we're starting to sniff at each other. We'll go, hey, Valentine, and it just defuses the whole thing.

All right, I'll take that as too much information for the podcast. Yeah, we'll get it. We'll get it later. Well, look, do you guys want to wrap it up there? I guess we've been talking for a good hour and 15, and it's pretty late where you are, I think.

So, well, and we also spent like the first 15 minutes catching up, so it was good. It's very, very good.

I hope you have some usable material and good luck there, Jonathan.

Yeah, well, yeah, we miss you too here. We really do, uh, Jim. And so I hope you guys find a reason to come out here soon. And, uh, um, look, I'll just wrap up here and say, uh, thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast. It's huge, really is. And, and for, for being vulnerable and, and for talking about these things. I think you guys are amazing, um, and, and amazing in everything you've done, uh, I mean, as, as people as professionals and let's go as parents, as a daughter, as a son, as siblings. I think you guys have done amazing things and I hold you in the highest regard.

So I'll finish off.

Feeling likewise, Jonathan. And it's an honor. Thank you so much for asking us.

Yeah.

And I really think, I mean, I'm just so impressed that you've done all of this. For getting this out there and, you know, to help yourself, but also to help so many other people.

Well, well, thank you. So I'll close it off there. We'll stay on for a moment after, but I'll just say, hey folks, thanks for tuning in to the podcast. Go to finalapproachbook.com, one word, and you can always reach out to me through that site too. Again, Lisa, JB, from— I'm putting my hands on my heart, you know, from my heart to you, thank you so much for joining me on, on the podcast.

Our pleasure.

Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks.