August 14, 2008 Death of a Sister in Law
August 31, 2008 by The Grief Blog
Filed under Past Show Transcripts
HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Death of a Sister-in-law and After 9/11: Death of a Husband
Hosts: Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley
With guests: Nancy Manahan, Becky Bohan, and Susan Retik
August 14, 2008
Gloria: Hello, I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley with my co-host
Heidi: Dr. Heidi Horsley.
Gloria: Each week Heidi and I welcome you to Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and conversation with those who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one and for healthcare professionals who work in this most difficult field. And always the message is others have been there before you and made it. You can too. You need not walk alone. If you’re listening to our Thursday live Internet show, please join Heidi and me and our guests on the show by calling our toll-free number, 1-866-472-5792, with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. These shows are archived on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com, as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites and they are brought to you by the Open to Hope Foundation. All shows can now be downloaded on iTunes and the transcripts can be accessed on www.thegriefblog.com. Well, good morning, Heidi.
Heidi: Good morning, mom.
Gloria: It’s back to school time for a lot of people or just getting ready to go back. It can be a really difficult time for families, can’t it?
Heidi: Well, I think so because it brings up a lot of memories and also you see children going off to school and it brings up a lot of things that you did when your children were alive. I think it can be really hard for people.
Gloria: Yeah. And a lot of pressure of organizing and getting things ready and maybe having to do things or maybe not having a child that’s going back to school. It can be very tough.
Heidi: Well, and also I think when you’re getting your children ready that are living, it makes you think of the children that you have that have died and that can be bittersweet.
Gloria: Or if somebody has a mom or dad who has died, it can be really a tough time of year, and a sibling if you’re going back to a school where your sibling went.
Heidi: That’s a really good point, I think. I know that when Scott died, Heather was about to go to the same high school and that was hard. That was bittersweet, like I said, because all his friends were there.
Gloria: Right. Exactly. Well, I just wanted to mention an email we had from Skye on www.thegriefblog.com. Hope you are all going on it and remember our shows are archived on there. We got an email from Skye which I thought was very heart rendering talking about her ten-year-old daughter. She died of cancer on July 2007, and she is feeling. So it’s just been a year for her. We know that’s really tough. A lot of times people feel like that first year they’ve gotten through it and now things should be better and when they’re not, it’s discouraging. So we want Skye to hang in there. She says that the loneliness is unbearable and she feels like she has very little support. You know Skye, you really need to reach out, doesn’t she, Heidi? Like she is now with sending us a note on the grief blog.
Heidi: Absolutely. And sometimes for some people, not for all people, but going into the second year can feel even harder because the numbness and shock have worn off. Reality is setting in and it can be a really difficult time for people.
Gloria: Her little daughter died of leukemia so she was taking care of her so it can be rough and it could be, you ought to prepare yourself that the going back to school thing can be tough. If you don’t have other kids, you may want to do something around that time. Be with people that you particularly enjoy or do some kind of an activity that is soothing for you. Well, I just want to remind people to go to the Open to Hope Foundation. We have got some wonderful new writers on there. Fran Dorf, Bob Baugher, Neil Chethik, and we’re looking for other authors. We’re hoping to have over 300 authors by the first of the year to give wonderful information to you about grief and loss and things that you can do. So the foundation is going very well. Well, Heidi, I wanted to talk about our guests today before they come on. Our first segment is going to be Nancy Manahan and Becky Bohan, who have written an inspiring account of their sister-in-law Diane’s five-year struggle with cancer. It’s a really amazing story about in-laws and how in-laws deal with the loss of a loved one. And then our second guest is going to Susan Retik. Her husband died in 9/11. He was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and she went on to raise money for widows of Afghanistan. Very interesting story. But I think the counterpoint of these stories is interesting, isn’t it, Heidi? One family losing someone to cancer, a five-year struggle, and then one immediate death. So for our audience out there, there are some differences in those kind of situations, aren’t there, Heid?
Heidi: Absolutely, but I think both of them are difficult for their own reasons, but it is different, like you said. There are differences.
Gloria: And then it’s interesting. This is the first time we’ve had in-laws on, which I’m very happy about.
Heidi: I know. This is going to be an interesting show because like you said, we have not done any shows on in-laws up until this point.
Gloria: Right, exactly. Well, would you like to introduce them, Heidi?
Heidi: Sure, I’d be honored to. So as you said, mom, in this first segment our guests are Nancy Manahan and Becky Bohan, and our topic is the death of a sister-in-law. Nancy Manahan and Becky Bohan, authors of Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, give us the inspiring account of the last five years in the life of their sister-in-law, Diane Manahan. Nancy and Becky will discuss how dealing with Diane’s loss has impacted their lives. Welcome to the show, Nancy and Becky.
Gloria: It’s great to have you on. Nancy, Diane was your sister-in-law, right? and Becky.
Nancy: That’s right, my brother, Bill’s wife.
Gloria: And would one of you like to tell us about Diane?
Nancy: Diane was a nurse and a professor of nursing at Minnesota State University in Mankato. She was also a therapist and one of the most fully alive people that I’ve ever met. My brother and she started dating when they were in the sixth grade and so I met them when I was in the first grade. I met Diane and I think fell in love with her at the same time my brother did.
Gloria: Oh, that’s great. And how about you, Becky? What was your experience? How long did you know Diane?
Becky: Well, I’m Nancy’s partner so when I got into the relationship with Nancy back in ‘94, that’s when I first met Diane. So I had known her only a year before she was diagnosed with cancer.
Gloria: So you’ve got a different perspective on it, which is interesting. Well, I wanted to just mention a little about the book before we get going along too much because it’s a very interesting book and I think one of the things that our audience out there would be interested in getting this book, and I highly recommend that you do this, is not only to look at your future if you have someone who has cancer or has a terminal illness or is fighting some kind of an illness. It’s very inspiring to hear how Diane lived with cancer. And I love that. Didn’t she say that she lived with cancer? She wasn’t dying with cancer, right?
Nancy: That’s right. She was very clear about that.
Heidi: I love that. She wasn’t dying of cancer. She was living with cancer. I love that reframe.
Gloria: So for people who need it from that point of view. For our audience who have already had a loss, I will have to say that it fascinated me because you ladies did such a full life about her. Tell us about her journey through it and wonderful journals but also you do a genogram, a family history. You have comments in there about what friends said about her. You have suggestions for people about holding memorial services. You have all sorts of things going on in here in the book that could be helpful for people if they want to look at some rituals and things, but also if they would like to write a book about their loved one that has already passed away, I think it’s a wonderful outline for that, don’t you, Heidi?
Heidi: Absolutely, or have a celebration, a life celebration for someone that’s already died.
Gloria: Yeah, we’ll talk about the life celebration and everything. Diane was pretty remarkable because she was in the Peace Corps. Her husband’s a doctor, right?
Nancy: Right.
Gloria: And they traveled all over in the Peace Corps and whatever. Well, one of the things that I wanted to talk about in connection with this book, in there you talk about how Diane died at home, and taking care of the body and doing all those kinds of things which I thought was interesting because I know some of our audience out there would have had a request from their loved one to die at home but they weren’t able to pull it off as it were. And I think it’s amazing that you were able to do this. Do you think it would be hard to do this if you hadn’t had a brother who is a doctor and Diane was a nurse and had planned for it? What’s your thought on that?
Nancy: Well, that certainly was a factor that my brother is a physician and Diane was a nurse and so they were pretty familiar with end stages of life and some of the issues and Diane said that if she needed to go to the hospital, that was fine, but families without medical professionals in them usually have the option of hospice and hospice performs the same function. They can be on top of pain medication and give support to family members, emotional support as well as physical and medical support, so I think that today now that hospice is so widely available, most families have the option of trying to have a death at home if that is possible medically.
Gloria: Becky, do you think there was any time when, or did you or other people get a little nervous, because I know some families think they’re going to have them die at home and then it’s hard.
Becky: I don’t think anyone ever felt nervous. I think one of the things was that they were so well prepared and so grounded in the reality of what was happening that they just in a way created their own reality. They were prepared for the death and they had talked extensively about it and they just took the steps that were needed and they always left open the option that if something got out of control, that she would go into the hospital or hospice or they would always have a back up plan.
Gloria: Well, I think it’s great that there were these support people available and hopefully for our audience out there, they were able to get the support they wanted to but unfortunately, as Diane would know if she were here, being a nurse, some people don’t have that, and they’re hurt and angry and we understand that if they weren’t able to do what they wanted to do. The other issue can come up with where you don’t have family solidarity. Where one person thinks that they should go and one person thinks that they should stay home, and a lot of issues there. Well, it’s time for us to come up on break, and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host Dr. Heidi Horsley, and we’re talking to Nancy Manahan and Becky Bohan, authors of Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, and they are in-laws of Diane Manahan. Well, please stay tuned for more and remember that you can reach us through www.thegriefblog.com and all these shows can be downloaded on iTunes.
When we went from break, we were talking about the fact that Diane was able to die at home with the family, and I wanted to get into the last part of the book after Diane died. You guys had some pretty amazing experiences. Do you want to talk to our audience about that?
Becky: Sure. I’ll share one experience that I had. It was just at the moment of passing. The Celtics call these places thin places where that veil between this world and the next is very thin, and as Diane died in bed with the family surrounding her, I stepped back from the bed after awhile and I’d read about people’s spirits rising and looking down on the sea and so forth so I looked up to the ceiling and I was giving Diane the thumbs up like you did it. You died. You really wanted to die these last few weeks and you thought you were lingering and you just couldn’t do it but you did it and I looked up and right above her, I saw what was I call a portal – this round hole – and I saw these three ancient beings – some people would call them angels – I’m not sure what name to give them, but they just kept looking down on the scene and it was the most incredible moment of my life to experience something like that that I never knew had happened or could happen. I’ve since found out that sometimes people do see this kind of veil being pulled back.
Gloria: Well, it’s amazing when you talk about it in the book because it’s like wow and you wanted to tell everybody around you, look, look, can’t you see it, but they were busy with her body.
Becky: They were and part of me just thought wow if I say anything and no one else sees this, am I nuts? It’s very interesting. The times that we’ve been in bookstores or giving talks and so forth, oftentimes people will come up afterwards and share a story about a communication with their loved one or seeing something like this when that veil is pulled back and they said I just never shared this with anyone because it just sounds too crazy.
Gloria: That’s amazing. How about you, Nancy, you had an experience, too, didn’t you?
Nancy: I did but I want to say something else first which is I think one of the most important parts of the grieving experience is for people to know that these events, these thin places are possible so that they can be open to the tremendous comfort and reassurance and love that can be coming from the other side.
Gloria: And tell us about your experience.
Nancy: Um.
Becky: Well, actually, Nancy didn’t have an experience.
Gloria: Weren’t you the one that had the smell?
Becky: That also was me.
Gloria: That was you, too?
Becky: Yeah.
Gloria: Oh. I thought it was Nancy. Well, there was a smell and that really triggered something for me because I know when we talk to our audience there’s a lot with smell and with experiences for many many people.
Heidi: What was the smell, Becky?
Becky: The situation was that Nancy and a few other close intimate friends of Diane’s washed her body and they washed it with lavender oil in the water and I didn’t participate in that thinking that I really was not an intimate of Diane’s and I kind of felt bad about that and when I drove home that evening back to Minneapolis from Mankato, when I walked in the back door, the hallway was filled with the smell of lavender. It was so incredibly intense and I thought right away Diane, and I just felt her presence and I felt the sense of glee that she had that she was just able to zip all over the universe and she was free and it was just a fabulous moment and then about half an hour later, my left brain kicked in and I thought no, this can’t be real. You must have a broken bottle of lavender oil someplace in the house. I ran downstairs and all over and there wasn’t. We didn’t even own any. And when I came back to the back door, the smell was gone.
Gloria: It’s amazing how we deny our experience, isn’t it? Very quickly for a lot of people.
Heidi: I’ve had that experience. My father-in-law is dead, and he died about five years ago, and I’ve smelled Old Spice very strongly before in places he’s been and that’s what he always wore. So it’s powerful to have these experiences.
Nancy: I think some of the most common ways that there is that communication are smells, songs, like a favorite song or a bird, a sense of touch even. Sometimes people feel as if they are being touched. A hand on the shoulder. A hand on the back. A voice. A message whether they hear it in their head. Some of the stories in our book, for instance, one of Diane’s best friends is a therapist and she says sometimes during therapy she hears Diane’s voice. It’s not anybody else’s voice. It’s Diane’s voice giving her some guidance on what to do. We love those stories, and the fact that we were inspired to write this book by Janis Amatuzio’s book, Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living from a Forensic Pathologist. Janis Amatuzio is a physician here in the Minneapolis area who has interviewed many many families after their loved ones have died and have these incredible experiences of post-death communication.
Heidi: And my mom and I also interviewed a man named Bill Guggenheim who wrote a book called Hello from Heaven where similarly people have told amazing stories about communications like this.
Nancy: That’s a wonderful book, too, Heidi. Yeah, I like that.
Gloria: Maybe you want to shoot the name of that book to us and we can put it on our website, maybe even see if we can have her on the show. One thing I like about this book is that you have chronicled those and when you do that then it stops that left brain from denying those experiences and you’ve got them down there. It’s really quite wonderful. I wanted to talk about your memorial service, your life celebration, because I feel like that was really wonderful that you did with Diane and she actually planned it, but I believe that even now, if you’ve had a loved one die a year ago, you could do one of these wonderful life celebrations. One of you want to talk about that?
Nancy: That’s true, Gloria. Diane planned her own service in detail but anybody can take her plan and modify it and use it for their own loved ones no matter how long it’s been since they died. And one of the things that Diane did was to involve as many people as possible in the funeral. For instance, she asked me a month before she died if I would be willing to read a Mary Oliver poem that I had sent her on a card and that was such a powerful experience for me to be sitting there on the sofa beside Diane holding her hand and having her say, Nancy, I love that poem, would you read that at my life celebration? How many people ever have the opportunity to talk to their loved one who is dying about what they want? And to have that personal request?
Heidi: And I like the idea – you can serve the food that the person liked at the life celebration.
Nancy: Oh, that’s right, Heidi, and also a year later we had an anniversary party at which we dedicated the memorial that our family chose and it isn’t in a cemetery. Diane was cremated. In fact, it was a very green funeral, but they chose a natural unpolished rock, a local rock from southern Minnesota, and it’s in the public park in her hometown so that people can sit on it. There’s a bench portion and kids can climb all over it. In fact, there’s a picture in the book of Bill and Diane’s four grandchildren climbing on this rock. As you say, Heidi, sometimes the second year is harder and so people had a chance to share how they were with the grieving process including Diane and Bill’s four children and Bill himself and just have a wonderful. I don’t think people think of doing that, a one-year or a two-year ceremony. And then we all went back to their house and served all of Diane’s favorite foods and had a wonderful time remembering and talking and laughing and crying.
Gloria: I was laughing in the book because you made some comment about all the food may not have been that healthy.
Heidi: Yeah, coffee ice cream. Exactly.
Nancy: We didn’t have any spinach.
Gloria: I love the fact that she felt that having a good sense of humor was important, too.
Nancy: Well, it was fun food. Diane had a wicked and wonderful sense of humor, and the very last quote that we have from her journal in the book which is full of wonderful quotes from her private journals which she typed out and put with her medical papers as if she knew someone was going to write a book, but we didn’t even get the idea to write a book until three years after she died, and it was because of reading Dr. Amatuzio’s that we thought, hey, we’ve had these experiences with Diane. But the last thing in her journal that we quote in the book is her philosophy. Her whole life philosophy. And it says to treat people with dignity whether I agree with them or not. To give reverence to nature and creation. To err with some grace and humor. Which reminds me that one of the goals for her life before she was diagnosed, for her birthday when she was 55, that same year, was to every day to slip up a little and to do something outrageous a little knowing that I and others are so human. So she really embraced her humanity. And then the last thing, Gloria, as you pointed out, is to maintain and share my sense of fun.
Gloria: Oh, that’s great. Well, could you tell folks how they can get the book, and you do have a website, right?
Nancy: Our website is www.nanbec.com. The book is available on www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and any bookstore, especially independent bookstores which we like to support in your hometown.
Gloria: Great, and you can also get it off of www.thegriefblog.com. Well, Nancy Manahan and Becky Bohan, thank you so much for being on the show, and you are fabulous sisters-in-law, and it’s just wonderful.
Nancy: Thank you, Gloria. Thank you, Heidi.
Heidi: Thanks, Nancy and Becky.
Nancy: You’re doing a wonderful work. Thank you so much for what you do to help people cope with grief and loss.
Gloria: Thank you.
Heidi: Thank you for your book.
Gloria: Well, welcome back. We weren’t sure we were going to have you for our second segment but it looks like our second guest isn’t going to show up so we are very happy to have you on because it’s a great show and I know our audience is getting a lot out of it. We’re talking to sisters-in-law about the death of their sister, Diane Manahan, and we were just talking about the things that are in the book about her sense of humor and about her life. I want to talk about her life. She did some interesting things, didn’t she? The Peace Corps.
Nancy: Yes, Diane and my brother Bill were in the Peace Corps in Malaysia for two years and then they re-upped at the end of that and went to West Africa and when they were there, I happened to be just graduating from college. I’m six years younger than they are and they invited me to come and live with them in between my undergraduate and graduate schools and so I actually lived in Ghana in Accra, the capital, with Diane and Bill, and I think maybe that cemented our relationship and it was when Diane became a sister-in-law, certainly, but also a very very close friend.
Gloria: Could you talk about her bout with cancer and about how did she find out and what was your take on that as a family member?
Nancy: Boy, that’s kind of hard to talk about, but she did everything right. She was an athlete, a marathon runner, very healthy lifestyle, healthy diet, did annual mammograms, and it was just six months after her annual mammogram, but during a shower which is so often what happens, she felt a lump and went in and had it biopsied and it was cancer and when they went in to do the lumpectomy to remove it, they discovered that it had spread to the lymph nodes. So immediately she had metastatic breast cancer that had spread.
Heidi: And she was in her mid-fifties, right?
Nancy: Yes, she was 55 when that happened.
Heidi: She lived with cancer five-and-a-half years, didn’t she?
Nancy: She did, even though it was a very aggressive form, and that’s one of the other helpful things about the book. If anyone knows someone with cancer which, I think at this point, we all do, her whole protocol for complementary and alternative therapies for cancer are detailed in the book which she did along with conventional chemotherapy and radiation, and as a result, she believed of those alternative and complementary therapies, she had a very high quality of life during that whole five-and-a-half year period. She never got sick. She never got chemo brain. She never was exhausted. She never even lost her hair which her oncologist said was unheard of.
Heidi: I was going to say, I’ve never heard of that before.
Nancy: She was able to continue teaching at the University.
Gloria: She taught right up to the end which was quite an amazing thing.
Nancy: And she had energy. She and my brother went to Norway for their 35th wedding anniversary. This was two years before she died and hiked fjords. So she had an incredible good life quality during those five-and-a-half years.
Heidi: She chose to embrace life to its fullest even though she knew that she had serious cancer.
Nancy: That’s true. And another reason she was able to do that, you may remember that every year she and my brother had this habit, or actually I think they did it every six months, of asking themselves if we knew we were going to die in a year, what would we change?
Heidi: Oh, it’s like The Bucket List, the movie.
Nancy: That’s it. The Bucket List. And they really took that question seriously and made course corrections, either very small like my brother saying one time, oh, Diane, I’m really happy with our marriage and my work and the family and our community involvement but there is one thing I would change if I knew I was going to die in a year. So what is that, Bill? He said I wouldn’t go to the symphony with you anymore. And she said well, fine. You don’t have to. I thought you enjoyed it, too. I’ll just go with my friends.
Gloria: Now tell me, as a sister-in-law, how did it impact you when you found out she had breast cancer?
Nancy: Well, first of all let me say that Becky and I were the lucky recipients of that course correction because then she would invite us to go to the symphony with her. But how it impacted me, Gloria? When I heard that she was diagnosed with cancer, I had an intuitive dreadful certainty that she would not survive it and so during that whole five-and-a-half years, I was grieving, I think, because even though I would try to say with my logical brain, no, no, no. Cancer is no longer a death sentence. This doesn’t have to be. And she was in remission for three years. A deeper intuitive level of me, I think if that’s possible, knew that she would die of this breast cancer.
Gloria: I was thinking of in-laws, do you feel that there is any kind of disenfranchisement? Heidi and I see that with grandparents or siblings. There can be some level where you have to support your brother and you can’t deal with your own grief, or are not allowed to.
Heidi: And also where your loss is not acknowledged by the world.
Becky: Well, I think that Diane made such an effort to include everyone that, speaking for myself, I felt as much a part of the event as was comfortable for me and as I wanted it to be and certainly Nancy played such a pivotal role in Diane’s dying, being there, holding her while she died. I don’t feel that we were excluded in any way. In fact, I really felt that we were embraced.
Nancy: And Diane herself set the standard for that by inviting friends and family members including me to go with her to every single chemotherapy or radiation appointment so that we were involved in the process.
Gloria: How many people went along? That’s kind of amazing.
Nancy: Someone different every time.
Heidi: Well, it’s amazing that people chose to go along because sometimes people don’t want to be part of that.
Nancy: They always had the option of saying no, but I don’t know if Diane invited anyone who didn’t welcome the opportunity to spend a couple of hours of really quality one-on-one time while she was just sitting there having the drip. We could really talk then.
Becky: And one of the things that that helped do is normalize what she was going through. This is a disease. She was dealing with it, and it was part of her life. It certainly wasn’t her whole life. She didn’t allow it to consume her so it just in a way reflected – when she died, it was just a very natural family event. So she helped set the stage for treating for her terminal illness and her dying in a way that this seemed so natural for all of us.
Gloria: It sounds like you all got along pretty well. There could be a situation where family members don’t get along that well and come together.
Nancy: That’s true. We were a very very lucky family in that there weren’t, as you mentioned earlier, disagreements about how things should happen.
Heidi: And what about the grieving process after her death? How has that been and what do you think has helped you to heal?
Gloria: Writing the book.
Nancy: Bingo. Absolutely. We laughed and cried our way through writing this book and just reading over her medical records. Reading through her journals. Oh, what a privilege. And thinking about her and interviewing her sister, her only sister, and their four children and their spouses.
Gloria: Now did you interview them on tape?
Nancy: Yeah. We made tapes and we tried to do it in person whenever possible so one of her best friends lived in California and when he came to Minnesota to run a marathon then we interviewed him when he was here in Minnesota.
Gloria: Now tell our audience, did you have an outline or what would they do?
Becky: Well it started out just being a collection of stories of after-death communication with her and then we realized that the story was much greater than what we had first envisioned because once Bill gave us her journals, medical records, and so forth, it was incredible material, and her voice in her journals was extraordinary. So we thought, this all has got to be in there so at that point, we made an outline and started using that just to cover the various parts of her journey.
Nancy: We recommend any family member, as you can see, it wasn’t her husband or one of her children or his sister who did the book, it was people in the next level of closeness in the family, but we interviewed her sister, who is the first person we interviewed, and she said that it was the most helpful thing for dealing with her own grief, and this wasn’t until three years after Diane had died. But people move on and they don’t talk about it or think they’re not supposed to talk about their grief because you’re supposed to get over your grief in a year or a year and a half supposedly, and that’s just not how it works, of course, as you well know, and so giving these people who were the closest to Diane a chance to talk about her and their experience of her death brought out so many stories that no one had heard yet and was a really important part for us. We cried during every single interview and the person who was interviewed cried. In fact, I’m tearing up right now just remembering it. It was so powerful, Gloria and Heidi, that if any of your listeners have any inclination not to write a book to publish it, but maybe just to put a few stories together in a nice little format that they can have bound at Kinko’s and just share among the family. It’s so healing.
Gloria: Now on page 200 of your book, you’ve got the appendix, list of people mentioned and their relationship to Diane, but when you look through them, it’s like John Glick, husband of Diane’s friend Susie, a professional potter living in Michigan. So you can interview anybody. What fun.
Nancy: That’s right. And right now I’m looking at a piece of pottery, a beautiful bowl that John Glick made which held the water that we put some oil of lavender in when we washed Diane’s body. Everyone has some little or big connection.
Gloria: Yeah, and it would give you an opportunity, if it was a child, to go back and interview teachers, tutors, whatever, if it’s something that you want to do. Not every family member would want to do this or would be comfortable but I think a lot of our audience would be.
Nancy: But even if one family member were doing it, it would involve everybody else and what a gift to everyone in the family and to connect the family friends.
Becky: And one of the things it does, too, is that it keeps these stories alive and we felt after three, four years we were starting to get fuzzy on the details of what happened and so it was going back and talking to people that we started developing a better sense of what happened and just getting it down. We’re so glad that we didn’t wait any longer than we did.
Heidi: How many years after Diane died did you write the book?
Becky: We started writing it in 2005, and the year before we had started collecting the stories.
Nancy: So we were interviewing people three years after she died and then started doing the writing a year after that.
Gloria: So it took you four years to get the book out, or five?
Nancy: Three. From 2004 to 2007.
Heidi: So like you said, it can be years later that you decide to do a book. You can go back and interview people about their memory.
Nancy: Absolutely. And people were thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss those memories and share them. Some of them they hadn’t ever shared before.
Gloria: I think it would be wonderful to get that perspective. I was thinking if you had a child die, you could even have some of their artwork or whatever. I think our next guest is on now so when we come back from break, we’ll discuss with Susan Retik about the work they did with widows in Afghanistan. And we want to again thank you two ladies for being on the show for an extra fifteen minutes and it’s wonderful to hear more about Diane and her story, and I would highly recommend that people get this book.
Nancy: And a lot of this information is available free for download on our website, www.nanbec.com.
Gloria: So you can get some of this information, and I will tell you if you do have someone in your family or if you have a terminal illness or you’re living with some illness that could potentially be terminal, this is a wonderful book for you to get also from that point of view because it’s got things in here about alternative treatments. What Diane did. What she ate. Her philosophy of life. Her journal. All sorts of things that can help you if you are struggling with that kind of issue.
Nancy: And an annotated bibliography of resources.
Gloria: Right, so it’s a treasure trove. And also, if you’re thinking about doing it, I’d like to hold the fact that it took you guys three – you didn’t start it for three years and it took you three years to write it, to finish it?
Nancy: That’s right.
Gloria: So don’t get discouraged about your book. They’re long-term processes. Well, thank you so much again for being on the show, Nancy and Becky. It was great. You’re delightful ladies and what a wonderful thing you’ve done.
Nancy: Oh, it’s been a pleasure, Gloria. Thank you, Heidi.
Heidi: Thank you.
Heidi: Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m Dr. Heidi with my mom, Dr. Gloria, and our topic in this segment is “After 9/11, the Death of a Husband,” and our guest is Susan Retik. Susan’s husband was killed in one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. As part of her healing, Susan went on to raise money for widows in Afghanistan. Her truly remarkable story was made into a movie Beyond Belief, which was featured on “ABC News” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Welcome to the show, Susan.
Gloria: Hi Susan.
Susan: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Gloria: Well, you know how Internet radio goes. We’ve got a short segment, but anyway, we just wanted to. I’m going to give a little synopsis of your story because we watched your CD. You’re on www.thegriefblog.com. There’s a little excerpt from the CD and you can also purchase the CD about Susan, but it’s a truly remarkable story. Do you want to give us the quick version, Susan?
Susan: Sure. My husband, David, was on American Airlines flight 11 on September 11th. I had two children. My son, Ben, was just a month shy of turning four. My daughter, Molly, was two, and I was seven months pregnant with our third child at the time that he was killed. And not long after – well, actually, as soon as he was killed and people found out, I was overcome by so much help from people, from friends and family in my community to people all over the country and even around the world. People could not do enough to help us. And as soon as I began to lift my head up out of this fog of grief and overwhelming craziness, I decided that I wanted to try and help other women who were going through
Gloria: And Susan, that was a couple of years, wasn’t it? How long was it?
Susan: My husband was killed in 2001 and we formally organized an organization called Beyond the 11th in the fall of 2003, but it took about a year to get it up and running so it was about a year after he was killed that we formed Beyond the 11th.
Gloria: That you came out of the fog enough to do that because I think that’s important for our audience to know that they can’t expect themselves to jump right into things.
Susan: Right. In my own story, I became very manic and could not do enough so my husband was killed in September, I had a baby in November, I got a puppy in January. People thought I was crazy. I organized a fun run on Father’s Day in June. I wrote a children’s book actually even before that. I went crazy. I could not do enough and years of therapy later, I realized I just didn’t want to have to stop and think—about really have my thoughts sink in and so I was just trying to stay busy.
Gloria: Heidi and I had Candy Lightner on that started Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She started it three days later and she says the same thing. She says she felt like she delayed her grief years later looking back at it. But people do great things quickly.
Susan: Right. I don’t know that I delayed the grief. I just didn’t let it all sink in right away.
Gloria: So you started your foundation which people can go online to find, right.
Susan: Right. It’s called www.Beyondthe11th.org and our mission is to help widows affected by war and terrorism in Afghanistan because we feel like we are the same victims that these women halfway around the world are. The Taliban ruled them for so many years and really they had so few rights. They still have very few rights and we just felt a connection and wanted to be able to reach out and help them and we’ve raised probably in excess of $500,000 and make grants to fabulous organizations doing really good work, helping these women learn income generating skills so that they can help themselves and eventually send their children to school because I am a firm believer that it’s through education that other parts of the country – well, education in general which changes people’s mindset and will eventually change the world.
Heidi: And your movie is so powerful, Beyond Belief. I would very much recommend that all of our listeners see it and it shows how much similarity there is between widows no matter where they live.
Susan: Right, and I don’t in any way want to make it seem as though my plight is the same as theirs because I live in this beautiful house and a wonderful community. My kids go to the same schools, and on same level we couldn’t possibly be any different because these people are some of the poorest in the world, but being a mother is being a mother and it doesn’t matter what country you’re born in and losing a loved one is the same. It doesn’t matter where we live. Our feelings are the same. It’s a universal human thing, and I hope that does come across in the film.
Gloria: It certainly does. Now tell our audience about you. You went on your bike from Ground Zero to Boston to raise money and eventually you go to Afghanistan. Talk about that.
Susan: We did. We raised money and had given out grants and then the next part of our journey was to actually go to Afghanistan and see how the money that we raised was being spent, and it was an amazing, life-changing experience to get to meet some of these women and to learn about their lives in more detail and to be able to truly envision where it is they lived and how they work and meet some of their children and it left me wanting to do more, feeling like we’re not doing enough, but it was truly amazing.
Gloria: Now, were you angry after 9/11? What made you decide to get involved with the widows and that kind of thing because it was murder, right?
Susan: I don’t know that anger—it was—he was murdered, and of course I’m angry at the people who murdered him and Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban and the true evil people in the world, but I strongly believe that there are so few evil bad people in the world that they can wreak havoc on large portions of people, but the people of Afghanistan are not bad people. They have been at war for so many years, I can’t imagine growing up in a country that’s so poor. They have so little. I don’t know how you don’t grow up being a hard person. And the choices that they have to make are so unlike the choices that we get to make. For example, a woman said to us, we’ve heard the story. The Taliban comes and knocks at a family’s door and says we want your son to come and train with us. Well, the parents, the family isn’t like oh, yes, we want to send our child off to train for the Taliban, but in return they will give them a sack of rice that day and every month thereafter which will help feed the rest of their children. They also know that the son that they send off will be clothed and will have a warm place to live so the choices that they make are based on pure necessity and it’s easy for us to say oh, I wouldn’t send my son to fight for the Taliban. That’s a horrible organization, blah, blah, blah. But we can say that from the comfort of our warm homes and our full bellies. And I think that that’s what we have to keep in mind is that it’s difficult to judge until you walk a day in that person’s shoes.
Gloria: So let me ask you, Susan, do you feel like doing this has helped you make meaning out of David’s death?
Susan: Um, I hate that question. I don’t know.
Gloria: What would you tell our audience out there who are widows? What would help?
Susan: I personally feel for me finding something that you feel passionate about and then find something new and different in your life that brings new meaning. This does bring new meaning and it has filled me in a way that has helped enable me to move through my grief. That said, I don’t think Dave died for a reason. I don’t believe that this had to have happened. Can good have come from it? Yes. I think that there are certain things that would not have happened but I certainly wish it never had. Oh, my goodness. I don’t have a good answer.
Heidi: And the grief process is lifelong because you’ve got children that are constant reminders and they don’t have a dad, and they are constant reminders of the wonderful things that David brought into your life and also house the sadness that he’s no longer here.
Gloria: And you have remarried, let me say, and have a new baby, and I want to congratulate you for that. It’s time for us to close this show now, but thank you so much for being on, Sue.
Susan: Can I just say one thing. If anybody wants to see the film, Beyond Belief, you can – it’s available through Netflix or you can go to my website, which is www.Beyondthe11th.org.
Gloria: Great, and you can also get it off the www.thegriefblog.com. Thank you so much for being on, Susan.
Susan: Thank you. Take care.
Gloria: It’s time to close our show and we want to thank our guests for being on the show today, and next week you can listen to Audrey Stringer who is the author of Get Over It!: Surviving Grief to Live Again and Ariane de Bonvoisin, author of The First 30 Days. This show is archived on www.thegriefblog.com as well as the www.thecompassionatefriends.org website. Remember, you need not walk alone, and thanks for listening. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host,
Heidi: Dr. Heidi Horsley. Nancy, Becky, and Susan, thank you for helping people all over the world heal after loss.
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