It’s Complicated! Navigating Caregiving and Difficult Family Relationships

"He needed us more than we needed him." - Nick Gaylord

This is a powerful one! Hosts Natalie and JJ sit down with Nick Gaylord to explore the raw realities of caregiving, grief, and complex family dynamics. Nick opens up about the emotional toll of caring for his father, the struggles of managing a difficult relationship, and the conflicting emotions of loss, relief, and anger after his passing.

This heartfelt conversation sheds light on:
✅ The challenges of caregiving for a parent with whom you have a complicated past
✅ Processing grief, denial, and emotional burnout
✅ The importance of seeking support and sharing your story
✅ How forgiveness can lead to healing and personal growth

If you're navigating the ups and downs of caregiving, loss, or strained family relationships, this episode offers honest insights and real-life experiences that can help you feel seen and supported.

Learn more about Nick Gaylord:

Nick has always been driven to help others. With a talent for numbers, he built a 28-year career in pharmaceutical Quality Assurance, ensuring life-changing medicines reach those in need. Yet, he longed for a deeper connection.

In January 2024, Nick launched Our Dead Dads, a podcast that creates a safe space for grief, laughter, and open conversations about losing a parent. Inspired by his own complex relationship with his late father, he hopes to normalize discussions around grief, trauma, and healing—helping others feel seen, heard, and less alone.

Social Media:

• Website: https://www.ourdeaddads.com/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ourdeaddadspod
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourdeaddadspod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ourdeaddadspod/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ourdeaddadspod/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ourdeaddadspod
• Podcast URL: https://ourdeaddads.buzzsprout.com

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#Caregiving #GriefSupport #FamilyDynamics #MentalHealth #Forgiveness #Healing #Podcast #ConfessionsOfAReluctantCaregiver

Transcript

0:00

Hey guys, it's your favorite sisters with the confessions of a reluctant caregiver podcast. On the show, you'll hear caregivers confessing the good, the bad, and the completely unexpected. You're guaranteed to relate, be inspired, leave with helpful tips and resources, and of course, laugh. Now, let's jump right in to today's guest confession. Was that a boy? Yes, did you? Did you hear that boy voice? was like, come on, come Isn't that what we normally do? my gosh. Everybody's like, I thought I was on a different show. Welcome to Confessions Over Elected It is technically Confessions Over Elected Caregiver, but we have an amazing guest today and he's a podcaster. And we've been on with him for just, you know, little chitty chat prior to the show starting. And he's already cracked me up. So I'm ready to be filled with laughter today. But it's on topic, you know, when I first met him, when I first started reading everything, I was like, holy crap, this is a topic that I need to talk about frequently because he hits it like. no, he hits it head on. And that's why I love him. Like when I met him a couple of months ago, I was like, well, I mean, think about it. We have a show that's called Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver. Don't give it away. And so, yeah, no, right. If you don't know, you're listening to us. Here we are. Spoiler alert. And so. But it's a taboo kind of statement. And his show, we're just gonna give it right out at the beginning, is Our Dead Dads. That's right, Our Dead Dads. And so people are like, I'm sorry, what? And so I think we should go ahead and get started. I know, because I'm super excited. I want you to talk about Nick. And Nick is from New York. Yes. Unless you're from New Jersey. No, I'm definitely from Long Island, born and raised there. spent the first 40 years of my life there. Then we lived in Texas for six years. give no, sorry, my bad. I'm from New York. Okay, back to JJ. Stop it, Nick. Don't tell it all at once. Nick is their honorary, he's the honorary co-host. They're like, you ladies are idiots. Let me tell you about Nick. So we have Nick Gaylord with us today and Nick has got a passion for helping others, which I love about him already. When it came to caregiving, he says he and his siblings became, I like this, caregivers by default. Sometimes I feel like I was defaulted into it. It's like they were drafted. That's true. Caregivers drafted or by default for their father who passed away in 2021. He spent the last 28 years in the pharmaceutical industry. But he says somehow it just wasn't, never felt like enough. So in January of 2024, guess what he did? I bet he started a podcast. Oh my gosh, he's just like us. We were just a year ahead. We were just a year ahead of this friend. So he started a podcast called Our Dead Dads. And it's a podcast designed as a safe space for grief and laughter around the death of a parent. The podcast lets him tell the very personal story of his complicated relationship with his father and the many feelings that he's had to deal with since. And we know how that feels, having to deal with 100%. And he says through conversation, his goal is to normalize the difficult conversation that... that we all know is taboo. And it is, nobody wants to talk about death, Nick. Well, nobody wants to talk about parents that you might not like either. Right? That's very true. Let's just make it, let's just rip the bandaid off that one. Hey Nick, thanks for coming. Hi. I'm so excited. Thank you for having me. Yeah. That introduction was phenomenal. That's the best introduction I've ever had. And honestly, I don't even know why you guys need me here. You just did everything by yourself. to do better than I ever could. thank you for visiting. shortest show ever. No, no, because there's so much to unpack here. this is a different perspective. Most people, were literally just talking about this, most people see caregiving as a female dominated role. And you also have stereotypes about what we are given permission to talk about, men versus women. And this is, know, for guys, I think it's more of a bootstrap thing. They expect guys to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, just suck it up, just do it, let's just get it done. women are more like, are they gonna fall apart? Are they gonna be okay? It doesn't even change your tone of voice when they start talking about stuff. and then you're not allowed to grieve, so yeah, don't grieve, don't be sad, there's no emotions. So that's why I'm, you know, and the fact that as a parent, I'm really excited to hear what Nick's got to share with me today, because. I can use help with that. So Nick, apparently you're going to be doing therapy for Jay. Yeah, always. And you're welcome. So we always start off really with, give us the background. Give us some background about growing up and how you got into care. So if you want to start from the beginning, you were born and then just, you can skip some parts too. Okay, I was born at a very young age, like most of us were. And getting into care. It's interesting that you put it that way because it's not something that probably most of us, excuse me, ever think about something that we're going to get into unless we're going into healthcare. Other than that, we really don't see ourselves as getting into care. Yet it's something that a lot of us do end up doing. So growing up, I am the oldest of seven children. that I know of. There's a reason why I say that I know of. My parents, who were only married for a couple years before they got divorced, my dad, my mom never remarried. My dad was married and divorced five times. My mom was actually his second wife. There are no children from the first marriage, again, that I know of. And that's why we always say that I know of because, well, that and the fact that there were... Say it again? You're just qualifying it. Right, just qualifying it. There were multiple marriages of his that ended due to, we'll say, extracurricular affairs. mean, look, he's not Gene Simmons. He doesn't have a kid in every city. you know, there's... And not that there's anything wrong with that, know, Will Chamberlain or whoever. This is a judgment-free sound. Judgment-free. Right, judgment-free. Absolutely. The man's dead. We can't judge him too harshly. Yes, but as far as I know, I am the oldest of his seven children. So, you know, growing up, I always saw my dad on weekends. That's all I ever remember. My next brother, Jack, he and I are 16 months apart. He's my only full sibling. After that, it's all half siblings. So, you know, growing up, I lived with my mom, saw my dad on weekends. He was an interesting individual. was very complicated even early on. He always seemed to be focused on... what he wanted to do, his current wife, his current kids, whatever. there was just, there was a lot of issues between him and my mom and, you know, tried to win over the affection of this man for a long time and just couldn't. He just wasn't into it. Not that he hated us or, didn't want us there or anything, but he was never the overly lovingly affectionate dad that a lot of kids wish their dads would be. Let's see, growing up, one of the things that I, some of the things that I talked about on my show in the very beginning, episode one of my show, which I know we'll get into later, it basically outlines a lot of the stuff that I dealt with with my dad, which is part of what led me to doing the podcast. Um, he didn't want to really be involved in a lot of stuff. Uh, my brother and I were both in Boy Scouts growing up. Um, never wanted to be part of that. In fact, he always saw it as a hindrance to him because a lot of times when We were in Boy Scouts, we would go on camping trips and they fell on weekends. Sometimes they would fall on his weekend because, they alternated weekends, my mom and my dad. Anytime that they were on his weekends, my mom always said, kids can go over the weekend before, the weekend after. She was always trying to be accommodating. And he just, again, felt that it was an inconvenience to his schedule. So he never was happy about that. Never participated in anything in Boy Scouts. in the nine years that we were in it. When I had my Eagle Scout ceremony in 1993, he showed up for that and that was the first time he ever did for anything of mine. At the end of it, I had to give a whole big speech and everybody I thanked. I did not include him in the speech because he never participated. He never did anything. When I was raising money for the service community service project that I had to do, he didn't want to be part of that. The way that I was raising money was collecting soda cans and bottles and a couple of other things. But that was the one big thing with him because the man drank Coca-Cola like it was going out of style. Literally he drank it like he was swimming in it. I just asked him, save the bottles and cans. Let me redeem them. He couldn't even do that. So, all right, fine, whatever. Do your thing. So when I did the speech, I didn't thank him because he didn't deserve the thanks. He was immediately pissed about that. When the ceremony was over, he was the first one out of the auditorium the following week when I went over there. He was furious at me. said, know, excuse me. He said he was mad because nobody at that ceremony knew that I had a father. And I said, well, a nine years boy scouts, nobody knew I had a father either. So there's that. So it was tenuous then. It was a tenuous relationship. it was. It was very tense many times because the man always had to be right. You couldn't tell him he was wrong. You couldn't prove that he was wrong. He was always going to be right or It would just cut you off. That was his mentality. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. mean, so that actually, that whole situation ended up leading to us not talking for several months. We ended up reconciling before I went to college. My stepmother had a hand in that. There were money, there were many times during my life where we didn't talk for a long time. He didn't come to my wedding in 2007, which was 10 minutes from his house. Now granted at this point he did have some health issues, but My brothers and I had everything set for him. We rented him a tux. We had a way for him to get there. All I wanted in there was for the ceremony. didn't, he didn't need to be at the reception. I didn't want a gift. I just wanted him there. Nope. He had an excuse. He claimed he was sick, which was a lie. And I think it was probably about a year or so that I didn't talk him after that. I just, you know, very young realized that I'm not gonna, if I want anything out of this man, I'm going to basically have to force it out of him because I'm not going to get anything willingly. And it sucks and people are like that and I guess to each their own, but you have to keep on living your life. By the time he ended up getting divorced for the fifth and final time in 2003, he for about a year ended up living in a department. And then year after that ended up helping one of my sisters who I do not mention on the podcast because I do not have contact with her. by choice mostly, but for a lot of reasons which I'm not going to get into. He needed a place to live. They wanted her and her husband at the time wanted to buy a house. He had great credit. They didn't. So basically they kind of, you know, a mutually beneficial arrangement. The three of them went in, they bought the house. The arrangement was to within three years, get him off the title. You know, they had to secure their own mortgage. They never did. He ended up walking away from it like 15 years later. And he was, you know, living on his own. By this point, my brothers and I were doing so many things for him. He was done working. He had retired. He just, he was, he had a lot of health problems. The one thing that kind of led to a lot of his health problems early in life, which was not his fault, when he was 17, he was in a car accident. got T-boned and the car flipped over. rolled on top of him. went through the windshield. He crushed his hip and his pelvis. He spent a year in the hospital. And when he got out, the doctor basically said, look, you're good now, but at some point you better hope that there's more advanced medical care in the future because this is going to come up, this is going to catch up to you at some point. And it did probably by about his mid fifties. He needed a hip replacement. He needed any replacement. He wouldn't get anything. He, again, he thought he was the one with all the answers. And he worked in the medical field. He was an x-ray tech for 30 plus years. He knew that he needed this care. again, he just, again, nobody had the right answers. He had all the right answers. So he didn't do anything. Anytime we took him to the doctors, doctors would say, you need to do A, B, and C. Oh, I'm not going to do that. Doctors tell him, we need to do x-rays. We need to do an MRI. You need to get up on the table. Oh, I can't get up there. My hip hurts too much. So. Well, what do you want them to do? You need, I mean, it's not their fault. So, I've got a question. going to move. you know how to move. So, here's the question because I know you guys get into the default situation. Is this relationship, sounds like, know, as Natalie said, tenuous, is this relationship the same with all of your siblings? Excuse me. It has varying degrees of similarity. Yeah, he wasn't overly close with most of his children. One that he, I have also one sister who does not want to be mentioned on the podcast that he actually never met. And I did meet later on after she turned 18, but he never met her. But the children that he did have relationships with, most of them were not great. And again, this was all his doing. just, everything had to revolve around him. Everything had to be done his way. And when it wasn't, he was a jerk about it. And I'm saying that nicely because we're trying to keep this clean. Well, and I want to, we're at a place where I want to take a break for just a second. And then let's go back into some more questions. Yeah. All right. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. We are back here with Nick Gaylord and the host of Our Dead Dads podcast. So he's given us a good picture of his dad. And this is something a lot of people don't share, Natalie. And Nick, I'm glad you do. that? Sometimes the relationship with the person you have to care for is not a great relationship. Welcome to 80 % of the American population in the sense of there can be a tenuous relationship. Everyone wants to have the I love Beaver kind of like, and I'm like, that's not happening. And it doesn't. There's all kinds of, life is messy. people are, we're good Southerners, Nick, and it would be, you wouldn't talk about. tell anybody that. You have to start whispering around it, even though no one's here when you're a famous. And the reality is that this can be hard. And we've met numerous caregivers before that have had difficult relationships, and then they're put in this place of care. And so I think one of my questions is, you graduate. I want to kind of go back to your life. So you graduate, we know the part with your dad is tenuous, but you and your brothers, and it sounds like you have relationships with your other half-brothers, you've got relationships with folks, and you get married, and you're moving along, and you know what I mean? Like you have your life, but does it run, like it feels like this is a slow burn for caregiving. Was this a slow burn, or was there something like a crisis event happened and you were called in? No, so there was no. one thing that was called into this. This was a very slow burn. As I mentioned before, with him needing the hip replacement, when he wouldn't get it, began to deteriorate, meaning his hip, probably in his mid to late 50s. So I would say probably 2005, six-ish after his fifth divorce. He began to have difficulty walking, difficulty doing physical activity for like lengthy periods of time. After he was no longer working as an x-ray tech. He began working as a bus driver for a charter bus company on Long Island He was a driver and he had to load the luggage it got to the point where he couldn't even load the luggage He had to have somebody on the bus with him like an extra employee to do all the lugging loading of the luggage and It got to the point where he could barely even drive He also his physical activity was next to nothing. He would finish work, he would come home, and he'd sit on the couch, he'd eat, he'd play video games, he'd watch TV, he would do not a damn thing. mean, when he went from working as an x-ray tech to working as a bus driver, in that first year, being from on your feet all the time to sitting all the time, he probably put on about 100 pounds. So obviously that had a lot to do. That's gonna definitely impact. That's absolutely gonna impact it. mean, plus the family health issues, I mean, he was type two diabetic. high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anemic, again knee replacement, hip replacement that he needed and wouldn't get. He also broke his ankle when he was 46, never rehabbed that properly. So that created issues with walking. There were a lot of things. He just had everything wrong. But he also lived on a very steady diet of Coca-Cola, spaghetti, bread, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, White Castle. All of the sponsors, but you can't. Right, yes, none of those who are sponsoring, sorry. But all things that you can eat. You're totally right. Well, but here's the thing, though. I mean, that has to be frustrating because JJ and I were talking about this in a training that we did. What happens when the person that you're trying to care for does not do things that support a healthy lifestyle? Because I'm assuming you and your siblings, like, Like I want to push away from your dad for a second, because we know he's over here living his best life of noncompliance with all things, because he's mad about something. We'll just go with that. We're just going to say, you just sit over there and you be in your unhappy place. But how are you guys as siblings talking and coordinating with each other saying, how are we going to take care of him? Somebody is going to have to take care of him at some point. Power of attorney. We talk about this just a second ago. Like all the paper, like, And because you're the oldest, do again default? Does it default to you to take the lead with everybody? So in that great question, in that case, eventually the power of attorney, the medical proxy, that did fall onto me. It was a while before that happened. I'm going to pass forward very briefly in the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021. He had to go into a long-term care facility. That was the time when I definitely had to get all that paperwork lined up and deal with everything for him and arrange everything. But before that, yeah, mean, my brothers and I and my youngest sister, the five of us, we've always been very tight. But yeah, we would constantly have conversations like, what the hell's wrong with this guy? Like, what seriously is wrong with his brain that he just doesn't, it's just not clicking. I mean, the man's not stupid. The man was one of the smartest people that we've ever known. We've talked, my siblings and I have talked about this. Yet, as we all know, people can be so smart and so damn dumb. They just do stupid things. make very bad decisions, but you can't understand how they do. It was a slow burn, he just, over time, got more and more unhealthy. And we all didn't have a choice but to chip in and take him to doctor appointments or go over and help him do things. Until my wife and I moved to Texas in 2016, I was doing a lot of it. Also, my youngest brother, Michael, was actually living with him for six years after he and my stepmother got divorced. then he turned 20 and he's like, you know what? I need to have a life. I'm going back to my mom's house and he did. And my dad was furious at him for a long time for that, but get over it. You got the, the boys got to live his own life. but he didn't understand that he thought that, you know, Michael should have stayed there and should have taken care of him. Michael was kind of like a live in caretaker from like 14 to 20. And that was just. really wrong that he got put in that situation. And God bless Michael, he's a great kid and he was so good with my dad. But again, at a certain point he's like, I can't do this anymore. And nobody blamed him. But we all chipped in, we took him to doctors, we got him groceries, we did whatever, would go over and clean his apartment, whatever needed to be done. Because for a while he just... wouldn't be bothered doing certain things that he still could have done. And then there got to be a point where he couldn't do it and we didn't have a choice. mean, at a certain point we got somebody to come in and clean the apartment. But as far as health wise, we all had to do it. And it took a toll on all of us, especially because of his reluctance to just take care of himself. So many things that he could have done and he could have done to make his own quality of life better. He just wouldn't do that. I don't know why. I if I live to be a thousand, I'll never figure it out, but wouldn't. He had his own decisions and his own intentions and his own ideas of what was going to happen. And maybe he just didn't realize that he was as bad of health as he was. mean, I kind of want to give him a little bit of grace on that. is powerful. Denial is a powerful thing. It is. It's very powerful. And he lived on denial. He lived on denial and No self-accountability. Everything was always somebody else's fault. He would sit in his apartment and watch, I'm not going to try to make this political, but he would watch his political shows and he would just complain about everything in the country from the president to anybody who was living here and he would complain about this, that, and the third and talking about things that had zero impact on him and people of certain living preference groups or ethnicities that had nothing to do with him. And he would just complain endlessly about all of them. I mean, he and I got into a huge fight one year on his birthday. He was talking about the LGBTQ community and just railing against them. And I said, Dad, you need to chill. And he's like, no, no, no, you're just going on and on. Then finally I just started going off on him. He's like, well, what does it matter to you? I said, because I have a lot of friends that are gay. That's why. And all of your children have friends that are gay. So you really need to cut the crap. And he wouldn't. And so at that point I took my key to his apartment off the key chain, threw it at him. I said, happy birthday. I left and we didn't talk for a while. We finally made up because it's the problem with all of myself and my siblings. None of us could walk away from him because we're good people. And We wanted to try to do the right thing. couldn't break up with them basically. We just could not do it. We couldn't break up and stay broken up as much as we all wanted to do it. It sounds like, and I guess what I hear what you're talking about, you keep going back, it's that you're always looking for, you always hope that there's approval or maybe that's what you're seeking is some sort of approval in this relationship that you just keep going back. I don't know. Honestly, don't even think at that point. I think we were long past approval I think it just he needed he needed us more than we needed him We knew that for a very long time and at the same time We just were not the kind none of us were the kind of people that were going to walk away from him Because it's just it's not how our mothers raised us today Forget about how he raised us to be so here here it is because this would be where I am I'd be mad Okay, I would be Oh, we were living. So are you like, because you've got a life, like, I don't know if you have kids or not, but you're married, like, you guys are all having a life. so, and I don't want say I've got stuck in caregiving, but I did not, like, I did not prepare for this. This was not what I planned for. And I don't know whether, know, you know, he's, you know, that he's not taking care of himself. You know, that at some point he is setting himself up to die earlier. And I know that you talk a lot about grief. You talk about, you know, The grief after a parent passes. I know there's probably grief going on before, but I want to talk about being mad. Like I want to talk about what you're feeling during that time. we were, we wanted to take them off the couch and throw them against the wall. We were furious for years. We hated how ungrateful he was. We hated how he just didn't care enough to want to take care of himself, to want to do healthy things, to eat. salads, eat vegetables, eat anything that was healthy. Stop eating the garbage that you do not need to be eating. Stop drinking Coca-Cola. And nothing gets coke because coke is amazing once in a while. You don't need to drink it all the time. Again, I'm not sponsored by them, but saying everybody loves it or some people do. But I mean, again, he drank it like it was going out of style, just cookies and snacks and the little Entenmann's crumb cakes, everything. He just ate all the stuff that he shouldn't have eaten. He didn't have any physical activity. So yeah, mean, there were so many things he could have done and he just wouldn't do it. And so, after a while, as we're trying to take care of him for years and he's not doing it and his blood results are always bad and we're like, what the hell is wrong with you? Why can't you just take care of yourself? Like you can't put a gun to the man's head and say, you need to start eating salads or you need to stop eating this. You can do it, but it's not going to end. The results not going to end. So you're either going to walk away or you're going to pull the trigger. And obviously nobody's going to pull the trigger in that situation. Well, not nobody, but we weren't. We tried everything we could do to be the best caregivers we could, to take care of him, to do what he needed us to do. But yeah, again, that was it. He needed us way more than we ever needed him. But again, because of the people we were, because of the morals that we were raised with, because of the way that our moms raised us to be, the humans that they raised us to be, we couldn't leave him to die. That's interesting. We did everything we could. No, and also... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, no, no. You're right. You're saying we couldn't leave him. And, you know, there's so many people, there's so many people who don't care for their parent, their or or people who get divorced after a serious illness. And you're right. I think it comes back to character values that you have. personal values, because, you and how much is it related to, I wouldn't want that to be done to me? Like, I mean, that's the other piece of it. Like you have to look, and you know, I think we've never had someone, you know, as kind of outspoken about this and comfortably outspoken about it as you on the show. And I know a lot of people are like, wow, that's just really bad. And that would feel overwhelming. And cause you know, It would feel overwhelming and I would have anger and I would be mad and you have grief, grief for the parent that you wanted that never showed up and even in you trying to care for them, you're right about the lack of gratitude and you're just not gonna get it. And I'm assuming at some point you just have to say, I knew I wasn't gonna get it and I had the satisfaction or the comfort that I did the right thing. For me, I did the right thing. That's absolutely right. And we all knew that years ago. And I had told my wife, Kim, many years before he died, because at some point, I'm sure she probably said something to the effect of, why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep putting up with him? And I kind of made a deal with myself early on that I was going to do the best I could because I didn't want to have any regrets when the time came that he was no longer here. And even with all the times that I walked away and I was done and I had every reason to walk away, nobody would have held it against me if I had stayed away from him. I kept going back to kind of see it through because it's just what I do. I don't walk away from things that are unfinished. if I really believe in them and not that I had much to believe in, but I just knew that if we didn't take care of them, then he would be dead anyway, because he couldn't do it. He couldn't afford to have somebody else do it. He, as I said before, he needed us way more than we needed him. This was not a relationship of love. This was a relationship of necessity for probably the last 10 years of his life. And it is what it is, and it sucks. And again, should we have walked away? Probably, but we're better people than that. Yeah. And I think that's what it comes down to is you have to be able to live with yourself. I'm going to take a break here because we've got our second break coming up. And we'll come back because I want to continue talking about because you have to ultimately live with yourself. Yeah. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. We're back here with Aunt Gaylord, the host of Our Dead Dads. And we left off with you have to live with yourself. And it's rare that we have somebody that comes in, I think, and says, I, your dad passed away in 21 and I would like to jump in and say you started your podcast but your podcast comes from a place of grieving but you said something about in a bio you said you had unresolved issues and it's something that people don't talk about is that after caregiving you still are dealing with caregiving issues. And I want to talk about if we can go into some of that. What's, you know, tell me about how caregiving ended and what it has, what it did, like what this impact is, like what you were feeling as you got closer to the end. So the way that the caregiving ended, well, ultimately he died. He went into a long-term care facility early 2021. I think it was right before Christmas 2020. He went into the hospital and in 2020 he was in the hospital probably 10 different times because his anemia was out of control. He was just dealing with a lot of issues. And finally it got to the point his doctor said, John, you can't. take care of yourself and you either need somebody to live with you and take care of you 24 seven or you need to go into a facility. Both of which he said no. But the doctor said, all right, well then what's your choice? What is your decision? What do you want to do? He's like, I want to go back to my apartment. He's like, well, then you need somebody there with you. You can't take care of yourself. By that point, he couldn't. I mean, he literally couldn't make it to the bathroom. I'm not trying to be disgusting or gross anybody out. But I mean, that's something that both of my young, my two youngest brothers had to deal with. multiple times. He couldn't make it to the bathroom. He would have accidents. And so that right there, because he couldn't walk, he couldn't move fast enough. So he did end up going to the long-term care facility, dealt with a lot of issues there, mostly because he, originally started as a rehab assignment and he wouldn't do the work. And he said, I couldn't, you he said, I'm doing the best I can. Honestly, we all knew better, but ultimately it was so bad that his and his secondary insurance ended up canceling his coverage because they felt that he wasn't doing enough for a rehab assignment. They said, well, if he's not going to do anything to try to help himself, we're not going to cover him. So they didn't cover him. And then I spent probably a month with the director of the nursing home to get him approved for Medicaid. Finally did. And there was other issues involved with that, which I won't go into. But we finally got him approved in early April. He was on Medicaid. And he's like, so what does this mean? I says, it means you're good for life. Like you're, you're, medical care. You have a place to live. You don't have to worry about anything you're taking care of you. As long as you're here, you have nothing to worry about. And he's like, all right, that's good. Three weeks later, he died. And our initial reaction was really like all of this crap and the man just dies. Like what in the world? I got the phone call. on a Saturday morning, May 8th, 2021. It was about 5.15 AM. Again, I'm living in Texas at this point. I actually missed the call, but then I woke up two minutes later, saw the call, called them back, and they said that he was experiencing some breathing issues, some blood pressure issues. They were going to take him to the hospital. They got him cleaned up. And as they were getting ready to transfer him to the stretcher to wheel him into the ambulance, to take him to the hospital, he coded. They worked on him for 35 minutes to try to revive him. They couldn't, they had to pronounce them. And the whole time when the nurse is telling me this, like I'm still expecting her to say, you know, he's in the hospital and he's, you know, we revived him. He's being monitored and blah, blah. And then when she said he passed away, I just kind of sat there and I was like, Oh my God. So he's gone. And she said, yes, I'm so sorry. And I said, okay. And she said, do you need anything? Can I do anything for you? And we talked about the funeral home. and transferring over there, which we had already arranged that years in advance. Thankfully, I got him to do that. But there was really nothing they could do. And then just sitting there in my living room with my cat next to me, because she obviously knew that I needed some consoling or affection or whatever. mean, I never had the emotional breakdown over his loss. I just kind of sat there and thinking, holy crap, my dad's dead. And of course, the only thing I'm thinking is got to call my siblings, got to let everybody know, got to tell Kim, but of course it was 5.30 in the morning. So I'm not going to wake her up on 5.30 on a Saturday. When she wakes up, I'll tell her cause he's not going anywhere. he's where I got all my dark humor from. but we got to hold my siblings, arranged, you know, told them the funeral, they already knew the funeral home was already arranged. They just had to. The ME had the process and was going to get him over there. The two immediate feelings that I had when he was gone was I was glad that he wasn't physically suffering anymore because as I've said, the man was in a lot of pain for a lot of years, largely his own doing. Nonetheless, he suffered a lot. So I was glad that that was over. The other feeling was Thank God it's over. Thank God it is done. And I didn't really know what my other siblings were initially feeling. We talked a little bit about it, but not a lot. Earlier this year when I interviewed my three brothers on the podcast, they were episode number two. And then recently, actually earlier this week, the interview with my youngest sister, Helene, dropped. And we all said this, they all said the same thing, that they all had the feeling of relief as well. And so was comforting to know that we all felt the same way. We all were, honestly, we sick and tired of doing everything for him, not because we didn't want to do it, but because he didn't want to help himself. And we were just tired of helping somebody that it was a worthless cause. It was a fight. was a pointless fight. Let me ask you this though, because this is the thing. That's what we talked about in the training is like, Why am I fighting so hard? Why does everything have to be a fight from the insurance to like caring for my, I will tell you, there are times that my husband does things that I'm like, it's so counterintuitive. It's not good for him. And he's like, I'm not gonna stop living my life. And a little bit sounds like your dad in the sense of, cause he's mad. He's mad because he has back and neck issues. He's mad because he had cancer and he can't, and he's had no, everything last week tasted terrible. And he was. Terrible to live with and I'm just like you are really Like making me want to just walk out and not turn back around That's it was bitter at the world. It is the truth and he was bitter at the world He was he was largely bitter at my stepmother who even though they've been divorced since 2003 She's still my stepmother were so close with her and she always will be she he was mad at her because She got his house in the divorce And that was the house that his parents built when they moved out from New York City out to Suffolk County, Long Island in the late 50s. He put my stepmother's name on the house initially during his fourth divorce. And then they were married. They were married for like 16 years and they redid the house. They did a lot of upgrades and everything. so, I mean, they were both fully invested in it. When it came time to get the divorce, He was no longer working as an extra tech. He was working as a bus driver, not making as much money. He couldn't afford to buy her out. He asked me to go in with him and take out a mortgage to buy her out. And I said, hell no, not a chance. And so, but that was another point when he didn't, he and I didn't talk for a long time because he was pissed at me because he said, you know, he, for a while he said, I caused him to lose his house. Well, you know what you did, your stupid behavior, your treating your wife and your children the way you did forever. That's what caused you to lose your marriage, all of your marriages and your house. So I don't want to hear it. And he blamed everybody. He blamed her. He blamed me. He blamed my brother Joseph's, for five years. He would just say, this is your fault. You were doing crappy in school and causing so many problems. And you cause problems between me and your mother. Like everything was his fault. This is the way the man lived his life. Zero accountability for anything. that's what just led to so many of his problems. It led to almost all of his problems. So I'm looking at our time because I'm like, God, I can't believe our time's almost up. I'm like, crap. You know, I'll say this. You know, I know that after you have this relief, and we've had other people say it's like this relief. it is. It's different than our dad passing immediately and you didn't have the opportunity to say goodbye of whatnot. We've been with I mean our moms had Parkinson's for 20 years and the last five years of caring for her has been very difficult Difficult because of navigating the system difficult because nothing is ever easy difficult because she's not easy and and JJ is the primary and then Emily and I are like best supporting actresses but Emily for a window of time was the primary lived with mom and dealt with it and right and so you know when you're when you're supporting somebody who is what feels like sometimes just generally mad at the world because of the situation that they're in. And then you're just like, oh. And so a lot of people want to run away from them, and other people don't. And that is a total individual decision, and it has to be judgment-free. What question do you have? Go ahead, go ahead. I was gonna say, I totally agree with you, but unfortunately, It's just, it's a decision that everybody has to make individually. Look, in a situation like that, I certainly would not judge anybody from walking away. And I know that nobody would have judged me or any of my siblings for walking away. It's just, we did what we needed to do because we know that if we didn't do it, there was nobody else who was going to do it. There's nobody who would even be bothered to deal with the paperwork to get him into a facility. just, again, it was how we were raised. did what we thought was the best for him at the time. But again, we also knew many years ago that we weren't benefiting from this in any way. We were never going to benefit from this in any way. mean, his, you know, his, inheritance, whatever you want to call it from him was splitting up his last social security checks seven ways. So think we all ended up with like $280 or whatever it was. It's not like we were in this for money or anything. We were, we were trying to do right by him, even if he couldn't have cared less, even if he just didn't want to be bothered. And certainly even when he was younger and he could have done something he could have done right by us. Again, it was all about him. So, I mean, to just deal with a narcissistic scumbag like that, anybody who has ever been in that situation, I would never fault you from walking away from that situation. But look, we've all got crap that we dealt with. You guys have just talked about everything that you're dealing with with your mom. And honestly, that's why I started the podcast because everybody has a story and everybody has things that they want to talk about, that they have to talk about. And as you guys said before, especially with men, feeling like, when I was a kid, we were always told, we don't talk about that. Boys don't have to worry about this stuff. Leave that stuff for the women. That's what we were told in the 1980s. I mean, I'm not trying to sexualize or anything, but that is what we were told. So, okay, fine, we won't deal with it. And as a result, we don't learn how to process anything. We don't know how to deal with real emotional situations. And we grow up more screwed up than ever because we weren't given the tools as kids. And look, I'm not a therapist. I don't ask you for your insurance card when you come on my podcast, but I do know that you can have real conversations. And I also know just from real human interaction that talking does so much to help so many people. And, know, I know that my story isn't unique and it's also not the best or the worst story out there, but that's really why I decided to start this podcast because. anybody who wants to talk has a form to do it. And honestly, also I'm looking for the people that aren't ready to talk yet. As long as they're ready to listen and just hear the interviews that I conduct and understand that they're not alone in what they're feeling. And they are not single cases. They are one of many, many cases out there. But as long as they're willing to just listen, maybe eventually they'll be willing to talk to me or to somebody else, to a therapist, whoever. But just trying to get the conversation going. So you said something because I have my sister question. have my sister question. Mine is kind of a serious one but not really. So you answer part of it because you said your unresolved things after you died passed. But you just said that conversation is one of the best tools that have helped and will help people get through unresolved things. What's another thing that you would recommend for people that are dealing with those unresolved things after? after this caregiving, this grief period. Feel all the feels. Whatever is going to happen, don't fight it. Don't try to say, it's not natural. I shouldn't be feeling this. And this goes out to men and women. It doesn't matter whether you're a man, whether you're a woman. Don't listen to all of the ridiculous stereotypes the society has crammed down our throats for our entire lives. If you are feeling something, it is okay. You should feel it. You should let it... be processed. You should find a way to process it. If you don't know how to process it yourself, talk to somebody else because there is somebody else who has dealt with your situation or whether it's a therapist, but a lot of people say, oh, well, therapy is not for me or I don't want to deal with a therapist. All right, fine, then don't deal with a therapist. Talk to a sibling. Talk to a friend. Talk to a coworker. Talk to me. Talk to you guys. A lot of people feel that they are going to be a hindrance to somebody else. They feel like they're going to basically be extra weight that that person does not need, that they're unloading their crap onto this other person who has nothing to do with it. Like, they don't need to deal with my story. They don't need to deal with my problems. Just try because I have had so many people come to me and just need to unload for five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, whatever. And the common denominator was everybody at the end of those conversations said, I feel so much better. Thank you. They always feel better. They always feel better because they let themselves feel all of it. They let themselves be vulnerable. But we are all making ourselves vulnerable. When I'm doing my podcast or when you're doing your podcast, we're putting our own lives out there. Anybody who comes onto my show is making themselves vulnerable. And that's a lot of responsibility that I take on. That's something that I am truly honored to have because it's not easy. And it's also like, One of questions that I've asked over the time is who the hell am I? Like, why me? Why are going to use me as the person you're going to tell all these things to? Because I'm willing to listen, because I'm a reasonable person, because I'm willing to have that conversation and just hear what they have to say. But when somebody does this and when somebody has these conversations, they occasionally will, you know, it's just a conversation. And other times the emotion comes out. that emotion happen because it is real. And if anybody tells you, you need to pack it away, as you guys said at the beginning of this, especially with men told, oh, you know, just rub some dirt on it, pack, don't, you know, ignore it, just ignore it it goes away. That's a bunch of crap. You can't ignore it. If you ignore it, the only thing that's going to happen is you'll put it away for a little while and you might forget about it for a little while, but it will come back and it will come back bigger and badder, lot worse than it ever was before. It's going to haunt you until you find a way to process it. And that's what that's why I ended up in therapy six months after he died because I thought I was fine. And I realized I wasn't I and it wasn't because I was sad and I was missing him and I was all upset. No, I was pissed at him. I was livid at him. And I had a lot of stuff on my mind that I couldn't say to him because at that point it was a one sided conversation. And as I've said on my podcast, I know that if he had lived another 25 years, it wouldn't have accomplished anything because conversation frequently accomplished nothing with him. Because again, if you weren't saying something that was aligned with what he believed, you weren't going to get anywhere. Well, and so, you know, I'll say this too. There's a book by Bruce Perry in Oprah Winfrey about what happened to you. And she talks about the resolution that she had to have with her mother. and really around forgiveness. And she had to forgive her mother for herself, not for her mother, but for herself. And I think that's what a lot of people who have strained relationships have to do is realizing that when you forgive someone, you're really giving yourself the grace that you need to move on. it's the truth. And that's exactly what I did. I got to the point after therapy where I forgave myself for being so angry. I forgave him for being the person he was. I forgave him for not being the person that we all know he could and should have been. I forgave him. And with all of the anger that I had toward him, can honestly say that since then I have never spent a day in the last whatever, two and a half, three years, since the end of therapy, I've never spent a day angry at him and I never will again. Doesn't mean I'm not going to have moments where I'm going to think of something I don't get used to. very miserable person. Yeah. But it's going to have moments, but I'm not going to spend my time and my energy on that anymore because there are better things to spend it on. And again, it wouldn't change anything. It's it's and that's the thing. It only hurts you. And I think that's really what it comes down to is, is am I going to allow someone else's behavior to control how I think I feel my actions and ultimately long term physical effects? because we know that's gonna have a problem. I have one more question because we really are sadly very out of time, but we're going to come over and play with you on your podcast without question. Yeah, you are. yeah. So here's my favorite question. It's always the question that I do. What is your favorite guilty pleasure? The one thing that you do just for yourself. Favorite guilty pleasure. don't really know that I have one. You can say a couple. won't. don't have problems. Yeah. I mean, one of them is I still play video games that I played when I was a kid. our first video game, well, we had Atari when we were growing up. And then Nintendo came out. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Atari, Plico, all of those. Years ago, you know, we got Nintendo and Super Nintendo as a kid. And then, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago. Nintendo released a super Nintendo classic, like the mini version with like a bunch of games on there. Well, I found somebody who on, I don't remember Facebook or Craigslist who like modified the system. And I've got a little, flash drive with thousands of games from like all of the systems like Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, super Nintendo, Gameboy, PlayStation, all of those like on one system. every now and then when I need a break, I'll just sit there and play some games. Um, fantastically mindless. We're going over. I need to Donkey Kong. I mean, if you got that, uh, Nintendo, I'm your girl. Yeah. I'm going to tell you, Donkey Kong was awesome. I've I've got the Nintendo version of Donkey Kong. I've got the Atari version. The Atari version was really kind of lame, but it was still fun. Of course I've got the ball. Next time you guys are in Tampa, you need to come over here. We're to have a game party. Consider it done. Hell yeah. Oh my gosh. You know what, this has been so much fun, Nick. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate you really sharing and offering your most authentic, vulnerable self because I still think you're just as amazing the first time I met you as right now. And so, and I think actually you're even more amazing because you're not afraid to talk about the hard things and to say, give myself permission and I give myself permission to be mad and then I give myself permission to get over it. because you want control. Well, definitely. And thank you both so much for having me on the show. is truly an honor and a pleasure to be here. And yes, you guys are going to come onto my podcast. We're going to figure that out so that I can interview you guys where there will be no language restrictions or time restrictions. So we're going to have some fun. I appreciate everything that you guys said. And yeah, it's... It's just something that, everybody is going to deal with at some point. They're going to, you guys are going to have not just you and I, but, you know, we're going to have hard situations in our lives. You have to give yourself the grace when you're dealing with them. You have to figure out how you're to deal with them. You have to figure out what you're going to get out of it and look. Sometimes you're, might not get anything out of it. Like we, nothing. mean, we got nothing but grief and aggravation from our dad. Yet we did it because it was the right thing to do. You just have to just live your best life, everybody. And if you're in a situation that you need to walk away from, then walk away from it. And if you decide you have to go back, go back. If you decide you don't, then don't. Live true to yourself. Because at the end of the day, it's only one person that you're ultimately going to have to worry about pleasing and it's yourself. And if you're married, then you're going to have to deal with, Well, mean, you'd be very... at the end of the day, you're the only person living in your body. live... I say that to everybody, just live your best lives, whatever it takes. If you have something that you need to talk about, find somebody and talk about it. Whether it's grief and it... By the way, on my podcast, I do deal with a lot of grief with parents, but there's also grief around many other situations besides parents. So if anybody's curious, just... Check, find my podcast, Our Dead Dads, it's available on all platforms. You can go to ourdeddads.com and reach out to me if you have a story and if you want to potentially be on the show, there's a contact form that you can fill out there. We'll have all the information on the, on Yeah, definitely. You'll know, everybody will how to get in touch with you. Absolutely. But seriously people, if you need to talk to somebody, just talk, just talk to benefit yourself because if you hold it in, it ain't going to help. It's going to make it worse. totally agree with that. Well guys, thanks so much for listening in again and until we confess again, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Well friends, that's a wrap on this week's confession. Thanks so much for listening in to the podcast. But before you go, please take a moment to leave us a review and tell your friends about the confession show. Don't forget, visit our website to sign up for our newsletter as well as connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. You'll also find the video recording of all our episodes on the Confessions website and our YouTube channel. We'll see you next Tuesday when we come together to confess again. Till then, take care of you. Okay, let's talk disclaimers. We are not medical professionals and are not providing any medical advice. If you have medical questions, We recommend that you talk with a medical professional of your choice. As always, my sisters and I at Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver have taken care in selecting the speakers, but the opinions of our speakers are theirs alone. The views and opinions stated in this show are solely those of the contributors and not necessarily those of our distributors or hosting company. This podcast is copyrighted and no part... can be reproduced without the express, written consent of the Sisterhood of Care, LLC. Thank you for listening to the Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver podcast.