Life After Kevin: A Mother's Grief, Her Search for Peace, and the Golden Retrievers That Led the Way

SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I'm excited to welcome you inside.

What's going on, my friend?

How are we today?

Welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe.

Thrilled to be back with you again this week for what is episode number 175.

Now, today's episode is a really beautiful conversation with a woman named Susan Lynch.

Now, to be honest with you, it's probably one of my most favorite episodes I've done because I really got to dive in deep with Susan about her story that she wanted to share.

And her story, ironically, revolves around her son named Kevin.

Yeah, Kevin, like me.

I already knew that this must be a good guy, a good mom.

What I didn't realize though was the depth of Susan's story.

And it's truly remarkable.

You know, everybody says it how you know you never know how much time you have, so you gotta live every day like it's the last.

And yeah, don't we all wish that we did that?

But rarely do we live like that each and every day.

But maybe some people do, and maybe it's just made like that because some people don't have as long of a time here on this earth as others.

And so while here on earth, they've got to make their impact felt and they've gotta make it strong, and they've gotta be sure that people remember them, and they've gotta be sure that their spirit that them stays on this earth even after they're gone.

For Susan Lynn, she would lose her side of heaven at a very young age.

Much too young, fresh out of high school, in his college years, when life should have been going great, but it wasn't.

I'll let Susan share the story of what happened to her son because she does a much better job than I ever could summing it up for you.

But what I want you to realize is that this story today has a deeper meaning to it all.

And I believe it's a reminder that whether or not we want to live with a mindset of live it all out like today is your last day.

I don't really know if that matters so much.

It's just remembering that smiling, that laughing, that being carefree, they all kind of have their place in life.

Maybe we are taking things a little bit too serious sometimes.

And I believe Susan's son Kevin kind of taught us all that.

Her story, it has its ups and its downs.

And like I said, we talk about some serious subject matters, like her son getting involved in drugs.

And as tough as all of that is, it's highlighted by this mother telling the story.

Because this mother lost her her son, and she's been on this journey to find him, to find reasons, to find purpose, to find little pieces of him left here on earth.

And that's the really magical part about her story.

You're gonna get to hear all about it.

You're gonna get to hear all about Susan's story of trying to find little pieces of her son Kevin left here on earth just for her.

Like I said, it's a beautiful story with an amazing woman, and I'm just thrilled to get to bring it to you today.

With that said, I'm gonna turn it over to Susan as we catch up with her story here on Rick Grace and Inspiration.

I almost forgot.

I do want to remind you that if you listen to today's episode and you think to yourself, wow, I know the person who really needs to hear this.

I know somebody who's lost somebody.

Or I just know somebody who could relate to this interview.

Please share it with them.

That's how people find out about this podcast.

Is this personal recommendation?

So please share it with a friend.

And not only would that be good for them who you're sharing it with, but it would mean the world to me as we just keep helping to expand the reach of the podcast.

Okay, enough of me.

I promise, I'm believing, enjoy the interview.

Susan, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02: Hi, Kevin.

I am so happy to be here.

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Well, I'm thrilled to have you here today.

And I'm thinking the best place for us to begin is that I would love for you to talk to me about your son, Kevin.

Because as much as this interview is about you, it's equally as much about your son.

And so would you mind kind of starting off by kind of doing an introduction to who Kevin was, what he was like growing up.

Just kind of give me an overview into the person that he was.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So he was born hilarious.

He just came out funny.

He was a funny toddler.

He used to say the funniest things when he was little.

He was the type of kid that just was drawn to people that were a little different.

His uncle had Down syndrome, or his great uncle, I should say.

And one of the things that I just loved about him was that on holidays, his uncle's name was Jeff.

And we wouldn't see him, you know, other than the holidays.

And Kevin used to go up to him, you know, he was only like, you know, he'd be like six, and it'd say, okay, Jeff, you know, here's your and he loved mu Jeff loved music.

And so he used to get like a little drum set or, you know, like bongos or maracas or something.

And Kevin would give him, you know, he'd say, okay, here, which one do you want to play?

And Jeff would take the bongos, and Kevin would take the maracas, and they'd sit on the couch and they'd like do music together.

And he just, he just never had any boundaries with special needs, kids that were different.

He was loved by everybody.

He had tons and tons of friends.

He was athletic.

He was very naturally athletic.

He was able to, you know, slalom ski by the time he was eight.

My parents had a house on Winnipesaki.

So he grew up on the water.

He was a Leo, so we always say he was ruled by the son.

He just loved saltwater, freshwater, boating, any sports and skateboarding.

And he was kind of naturally good at it.

The flip side of that, because I think that kids that are naturally athletic don't tend to try too hard.

If he wasn't good at it, or he couldn't get something, he'd be like, I have to get it.

I'm not doing that.

It's dumb, it's dumb.

He didn't, he didn't do great in school.

He was an average student, but he was very, very social.

So that used to, you know, kind of get him in trouble sometimes.

It'd be too chatty, or yeah.

So, and then as a teenager, you know, he really didn't get that moody teenager thing going until he was like 16, 17.

But 13, 14, 15 were pretty easy.

I thought, okay, well, maybe I'm gonna get through the teenage years and have him, you know, be this easy, but that didn't happen.

But uh, you know, so he got in a little bit of trouble as a teenager.

But overall, it was, I won't say it was like hard to be his mother because he was so funny and fun, but it was hard to discipline him because he would, you know, anytime that we were, we would get on his case for something, you know, Kev, you gotta stop talking at school or whatever.

And he'd be like, I'm so sorry.

And he'd write us an apology letter.

And then I would be like, oh, okay.

So he definitely had me wrapped around his finger.

Um, but he just had that impish quality about him.

And he never, even as an adult, so he he died when he was 25.

And even as an adult, I would say he never lost that childhood wonder about how he saw the world and how he saw people.

SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, I love that.

I love that.

I I'm curious.

I mean, obviously, it's probably a hard question to ask of anyone, but what's the first thing that pops in your head of like your favorite memory with Kevin?

SPEAKER_02: Whenever I picture Kevin, I picture him with his head back.

So his like Adam's apple is sticking out, and he's just hysterical laughing.

Like that's how I that's the first image I get of him coming up.

He was either laughing or making somebody else laugh.

Like that was his superpower.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that.

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_02: I would say actually, now that we think about it, I would say that the best memory, the one that comes to mind is his last Christmas home.

It was uh 2014, and my birthday is December 19th.

So he was scheduled to fly home from he was living in California, and he was scheduled to fly home on I think the 20th.

But he flew home to surprise me a day early.

So I had come home from grocery shopping, and um he was like on the other end of the house.

So I'm bringing in groceries because I didn't know he was gonna be here.

I'm bringing in groceries, and he walked out of the out of his bedroom, and he had this huge smile on his face, and I was like, And he said, This worked out so good because I had no idea how long it was gonna be until you got home.

He had just he had like just gotten there, so it's like it was just so funny.

Yeah, my whole head is uh smiling, which is a funny thing he used to say when he was little.

Or actually, no, my husband Tom said when he was little, he was fishing and he said, Susan, you gotta come up and see Kevin.

He's smiling with his whole head.

And I'm like, that's a great way to describe him.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.

I love this.

I love this.

Now, talking about kind of his childhood years, he was a kid, I just like so many kids, high school experimented with drugs with pot marijuana.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, yep.

SPEAKER_02: He had a hard time sleeping, and um, he started smoking pot probably his sophomore year in high school and relied on it more and more to help him sleep and relax.

And, you know, like a lot of kids his age was anxious, and I think he was anxious due to the pressure of not the stress of getting into college and you know, what am I gonna do with my life?

And so he uh self-medicated with with marijuana.

SPEAKER_00: Now that obviously wasn't just like a short time.

It would that lead to like a full like addiction, would you say, to marijuana?

SPEAKER_02: Oh yes, yes.

We got into, you know, talking about, we we talked about all kinds of drugs because by that time in late high school, he was going to music festivals.

And Molly was the big drug that was out at the time.

And um, you know, we talked about that.

And he's like, Mom, I'm just smoking pot.

You know, Molly is for like raves.

I don't go to those.

And, you know, it's a it was a different music scene.

He was in the jam band scene, so it was more like Grateful Dead and that kind of that kind of music.

So yeah, he was smoking, but he did tell me he was honest.

He did tell me he was smoking daily, which, you know, was very upsetting to me.

And um, but uh, you know, he wasn't gonna stop because I told him to, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Now I gotta touch on something.

You talked about the music festivals, and and and I'm curious because when you talk about music festivals and Grateful Dead, I mean, Kevin is not that old.

He should not be in at the great Grateful Dead concert, but he was into that type of music, the older school music like that.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, definitely.

So that was a common music, it was a something that we both had in common.

So when they were my kids were little, we used to listen to Paul Simon and you know, classic rock.

So he grew up with my music influence, my music tastes.

And then somewhere in high school, he started getting into the Grateful Dead.

You know, they were not my thing.

unknown: I didn't like it.

SPEAKER_02: But he was that type of kid, you know, he he had a hippie vibe to him, he just had that openness, and I think he liked the culture of that, the message, you know, about love the one you're with kind of mentality.

So yeah.

So he got into The Grateful Dead, the string cheese incident, which are, I think they're they're like my age.

Twiddle.

Yeah, so just some kind of obscure bands.

But yeah, he loved them.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you're talking about stuff I don't even understand what you're talking about.

The string, string cheese, and what I'm like, I'm like, I've heard of Grateful Dead, but the others that went right over my head.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, Dave, like Dave Matthews band, you've heard of that, right?

Okay, so of course I love that.

Yeah.

So it's it's that same kind of genre, but okay.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, okay.

Well, well, I love that.

I love that.

Now, high school, he did high school.

You mentioned, though, that school wasn't real big for him.

Did he did he play like organized sports in in school?

SPEAKER_02: He did.

He wrestled, he played golf, he played soccer, baseball.

But, you know, he was kind of like the old school all-around athlete.

He didn't, he wasn't like um, you know, gonna play basketball 365 days a year.

You know, he just wasn't, he didn't have that kind of attention span.

So it wasn't like he was gonna go to school on a scholarship or anything like that.

So, but he did, he did get into college, which we stressed for him because my family comes from more of a trade.

So, you know, we're like, you can do trade, you know, you don't have to go to college, you can do trade, but none of that interested him.

It was like he just didn't really have something, like a lot of kids his age, didn't have something that he really wanted to study.

So, but he did get in and he did go.

He went to Concordia University, which is in Montreal, Canada.

He was there for a year and then he bounced back.

And that's when the depression came and the he started taking opiates, unbeknownst to me.

He started taking pills.

So he was living with me in, let's see, so he graduated high school in 2009.

He went to Concordia for 2010.

So, like from 2011 to 2014, those were some tough years for him.

He got, you know, a job.

He didn't really like like auto sales.

Yeah.

He so he was working there and he hated it.

You know, so we're like, well, you have to work your way up somewhere if you're not gonna go to school.

You know, those those are your alternatives.

So he started, you know, all his friends were away at school, and he was very much a social kid, so he needed to be around other people, and he, you know, met new kids, and um things started going downhill for him.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, now what made him come home from college so soon?

SPEAKER_02: He academically, yeah, he they told him that he could he was on academic probation, so he had to leave.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Was he was he really upset about that?

SPEAKER_02: He was.

He felt like a failure.

You know, he said, I don't really, my life doesn't have any direction, you know.

And so that's when we started talking about the trade again.

And, you know, he's like, I I don't I don't have any interest in that.

You know, so that's when we were said, well, you gotta like find a company where you can start at the bottom and work your way up.

And he just felt like a failure.

That's when he started taking the pills and things just started getting worse.

He ended up getting arrested for marijuana possession, had to do probation and go to some drug rehab.

And so it was uh it was a tough time for him.

And it was a tough time for us as a family, my husband and I.

Neither of us knew how to help him, you know, and that's the the sticky part is, you know, when your kid is struggling and you can tell them, okay, this is how I think that, you know, things will get better for you, but until they pick up the ball, it's not gonna happen and it's on them, you know.

SPEAKER_00: But yeah, yeah, definitely.

And and I wanted to kind of go back a little bit and touch on one thing, you know, when you when you're talking about him and in talking about this struggle that he had after coming home and trying to find a job and and you know, basically still a child.

I mean, being, you know, graduating high school, went away to college for one year, that didn't work out.

You're come back home, you feel like a failure.

Now you're kind of in this quote unquote adulthood where you've got to settle down, you gotta find a career.

Yet he's just lived a life in school where he got to do all kinds of things.

Right.

Where he didn't have to focus on one thing.

You know, it was playing this sport and then that sport.

And and you can't help but kind of think like how amazing that is in school to give somebody that opportunity.

But at the same point, like it kind of can almost set you up for this kind of like uh, I don't know, giving you kind of like a uh a backward slide on getting in like to real life, you know what I mean?

To reality outside of school, where it's just one job, it's just one career.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

And and I and I look at him and I think, no wonder that was a struggle.

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And it didn't help that he was in Montreal where the drinking age is 18.

So he was legal, you know, to drink up there.

So, you know, five hours.

I live in New Hampshire, so he was five, six hours from home, you know, so it was kind of like, woo-hoo.

Yeah, you know, it was hard to see him.

And he, you know, and as a parent, in hindsight, looking back now, I can say, you know, he definitely was not college material.

He wasn't mature enough to handle the freedom, first of all, of being, you know, legal drinking age of 18.

But I think that if I could do things differently, I might have had him really pushed more toward the trades or something more creative.

But I also wanted to give him the benefit of having a college experience and maybe.

You know, maybe it might work, but I don't know.

It's it's I d you don't have a crystal ball.

It's hard.

SPEAKER_00: No, and and unfortunately, as you said, we don't have a crystal ball.

And the only way we know is to try it.

SPEAKER_02: Right.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: And you know what?

When we look at it from the perspective now, he got to try it.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: You know, and and and and I look at that and I even think of that when you when you talk about the type of kid he was.

And that he wasn't a kid who just did one sport.

He did all the sports.

He got to do it all.

SPEAKER_02: When he was in Montreal, he told me there's a um a story I love that he tells.

He was walking past the church in the center of the city, and they allow homeless people to sleep there.

And so there's all kinds of homeless people on the front of this church on the lawn.

And Kevin had walked by and um made eye contact with this guy, this homeless guy, and started just talking to him.

And they became friendly.

And so the, you know, the guy would be there every day, and Kevin would walk by and he'd wave and give him a few bucks sometimes.

And one time he was telling me that he was going, Kevin was going to a party and he had some beer.

And he walked up to the lawn and he gave the guy a beer.

And I said to Kev, you know, Kev, you know, money's okay, but you probably shouldn't give him beer.

And he looked at me and he was like, Why would you think that every person that's homeless is an alcoholic?

And I was like, I felt like the kid, and he was the parent.

And he went on to tell me this man's story of how he ended up homeless.

And I I was just, I was very humbled by his openness and his ability to see past the judgment and the opinions of the people that are in difficult situations.

So but that was that was him.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

And and I mean, and when you talk about him, and uh despite the goofiness, the big smiles, and and and the just living life to the fullest, he really sounds like he he really was an old soul.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, very much so.

Yeah, yeah, very much so.

Like I said, he never there was no like social boundaries for him.

He just like he embraced everything, like the unique music scene.

Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna drive across the country.

Okay, let's do that.

Let's, you know, like it was like his answer was always yes.

When he was little, you know, if I if he would ask me something, you know, and again, like I said, he had me, he did have me wrapped, he was just so funny.

And he would take the tips of his fingers, he'd like open up the palms of his hands and he'd tap the tips of his fingers and he'd say, you know, and then he'd ask me for something, right?

And if I paused for a second, he'd be, he'd look at me and tap the tips of his fingers and say, How about yes?

So that's like kind of my motto and my the way I sign all my books, I say, I sign them.

How about yes?

That's that was uh that's what Kevin taught me, you know.

Just just check in with yourself and see how it feels to say yes.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh my goodness.

I love this.

I love this.

So many lessons learned from him.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

He's honestly my greatest, my greatest teacher, alive and in spirit.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Now, talk to me a little bit more, just because this is kind of, I believe, probably a pivotal moment.

Is that time period back at home after he came back home from that first year in college and he got more into drugs and he got real depressed?

Give me a little bit more of a snapshot of that time period and what was going on, both in his life and and your life as a family, because I mean, I I can only you know assume that it wasn't just his life that was affecting all of them.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.

It it's you know, anytime a parent has a kid that is struggling and is andor in trouble, you know, with drugs or the law or whatever, it puts a huge strain on everybody in the family, you know, as far as even me with my parents, you know, because they'd always be asking about him and then I'm trying to, you know, defend, you know, I'd tell the story and then I'd also be defending him at the same time.

It was, it was like a they couldn't win, you know.

It was a struggle.

It was a constant, you know, Kev, have you sent in your application for this?

You know, I I started to like micromanage because I felt like that was a way, it was like a default mechanism to try and control the situation.

And I was like hyper-vigilant all the time.

Kevin, we were arguing a lot more than we ever were.

You know, we were just constantly arguing.

He he was working, but I would drive up to my house and I would hold my breath because if I saw his car there, then I knew something bad happened at work.

You know, if I didn't see his car there, then I was like, okay, good, he's still at work, you know, things are still okay.

And so it was just that on a daily basis, which absolutely takes its toll.

So right around this, it was the summer of, so he got arrested for marijuana possession, and that was really the low point for him.

You know, he had to go to rehab.

He just was like, I gotta get out of here.

I gotta get away and start fresh.

So the summer of 2014, he was like, okay, I want to go to California.

He had been out to California a couple of years prior.

He went out to visit his brother who was living there, and he loved it.

He loved the vibe, he loved everything about it.

He was like, this is where I want to go.

So he had a friend out there that was working, and it sounded kind of sketchy, but I was like, okay.

You know, he said, Mom, I I want to go, I want to start fresh.

And I said, Okay, you know, you you have my blessing.

I think you can do it.

I I want you to try.

So he left for California in late August of 2014, and he had my blessing.

And people have asked me, you know, do you regret letting him go?

And because he ended up, you know, a year later, he ended up dying out there.

And I said, absolutely not.

I I gave him my blessing.

I wanted him.

He left knowing that I believed in him.

And that was really important to me.

So, and so he moved out to California in 2014.

SPEAKER_00: And then when he made that move out there, how did it go for him?

SPEAKER_02: I think it had its ups and downs.

You know, I could tell when he wasn't doing so great, and because he wouldn't call for, you know, like two weeks.

But he ended up doing really well.

He was just, I say just smoking pot.

He was, and and again, I would learn this after he died.

He, but he wasn't doing opiates out there, he was just smoking pot.

And that was the December he came home for Christmas.

We had a good Christmas.

Then he went back to California.

We went to Costa Rica on a family vacation in February of 2015.

And that was the biggest blessing.

He flew in from California.

There were 17 of us that went.

It was my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary, and they rented a villa, a huge villa, and 17 of us went, Tom's brothers, their wives, kids.

Matthew, my older son, was living in Montreal, and he flew from Montreal.

So we all went there for 10 days, and it was heaven.

It was just, we had a great time.

We had took tons of pictures, all kinds of adventures, white water rafting and parasailing, and it was just amazing.

And then he left.

We we, you know, we all went back to our places where we lived.

He went back to California.

We were flew back into Boston.

He started living with a girl out there.

She was amazing.

Yeah, she he lived there for I think four months, and then October came.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

I want to just say this though.

Like, again, we don't understand how the events of today are gonna impact tomorrow.

And we don't understand the significance of what's happening today.

But when we look back on it, what a blessing that trip was.

SPEAKER_02: And the thing is, Kevin, I didn't want to go.

I mean, I really didn't want to go.

I mean, we were at my husband and I, we were empty nesters.

We're like, oh my God.

All my nieces and nephews were like 12, 10, 9, you know, there were like five kids that were under 12, 12 and under.

And I was like, oh, but they were wonderful.

They were so great.

Everybody got along.

It was the vacation of a lifetime.

And I'm so grateful we had that.

And I'm so grateful that the family got to see Kevin, you know, just having a good time and, you know, just having fun, you know.

And he was so good with his little cousins.

It was just a wonderful trip.

And yeah, I look back on that all the time and I say, thank God we had that trip, that one last trip together.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

When you look back on that trip, if you look at it and you think about it as a series of photographs, snapping a sh a little piece in time of that trip.

What's the favorite photograph of that trip?

SPEAKER_02: Oh, if that's whitewater rafting.

Definitely.

Oh, definitely.

So I I thought it was gonna be this, you know, the concierge person said, Oh, yeah, my eight-year-old daughter did it, she loved it.

And it was, you know, and so I had pictured it like a lazy river kind of thing.

And oh my God, it was like helmets, it was like the the front of the boat going under, and like we were laughing hysterically, like the whole time we were laughing our butts off.

And we had this guy, our guide was in the back of the boat, and you could see like they had the they had the picture, the guy taking pictures like at like this spot on the in the river where it gets like super rough, right?

And the guy on the back of the boat is like got his oar in, he's got the like the face, like he's trying to control the boat so we don't tip over.

And all of our paddles are like up in the air.

We're doing nothing.

And um, because it was because Kevin didn't want to go, he wanted to go surfing, he wanted to skip it and go surfing.

And I'm like, I begged him to go.

And he was like, okay, fine, I'll go.

And he had a blast.

So that and we have so many fun pictures from the photographer of the four of us in that boat.

It was just, yeah, that was that was the best.

But there was there was a a bunch, but that's the one that stands out.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Oh my gosh, I love it.

So, what month was that?

SPEAKER_02: So, Costa Rica was February 2015.

SPEAKER_00: So, fast forwarding October.

Yeah.

Give me a rundown of the of the day.

What was that, October 23rd?

SPEAKER_02: No, it was October 3rd.

So I had, so I live in New Hampshire.

I drove to Ohio, Western Ohio, for a dog show.

I trained and competed with Golden Retrievers.

I had been doing it for 20 years and I traveled all over the country training and competing.

So I had been out there for a week and left on Saturday, October 3rd.

I left the show at 9 a.m.

and started my drive home.

And I was going to stop in New York and spend the night, and then I was gonna finish the drive on Sunday.

So altogether it's a 15-hour drive.

So I was gonna, you know, just divvy it in two days.

So I got to I got probably 45 minutes out from my hotel, and I was in Western New York, and I got a call on my phone, and it was an unknown caller.

And I'm like, I'm not gonna answer that.

So I kept driving, and then it beeped that I had a message.

So I listened to it, and it was a police officer from California saying he was a deputy, and he wanted me to call him back.

And he was very casual.

He was like, Hi, you know, this is Jeopardy so-and-so, and you know, like it was nothing, you know.

And I thought, oh, he got arrested.

Because I'm like, why would a police officer call me from California?

Like Kevin's living out there, you know.

So I called my husband and I said, I don't want to call this guy back.

You call him, you know, and he was like, no, you call him back.

He said he probably just got arrested.

So I said, All right.

So I said, there's a rest area, a state rest area coming up.

I'll just pull in there and call him.

So I pulled into the rest area and I got really nervous.

I was like, really, really nervous.

So I pulled in the back of the lot and I was gonna let the dogs out because I have my two dogs with me.

I called him back and he said, uh, do you know uh Kevin Lynch?

And I thought, of course I know Kevin Lynch.

I said, you know, he's my he's my son.

All right, no, I said, I I said, yes, I know Kevin Lynch.

And he said, How do you know him?

And that's what made me really like the hair and then my neck stand up.

And I said, I'm his mother.

And he just said, Kevin is dead.

It just like kind of blurted it out.

And I immediately felt like if you've ever been on a roller coaster and you go down the really steep, the big hill, like the really, really steep one, and it's like you feel like you're gonna fall out of the seat and you just like hold on for dear life.

I felt like I was free-falling like that, like at lightning speed.

And I remember clenching the air in front of me, like I was trying to hold on to Kevin, like I was trying to grab him, and it felt like I was just grabbing a cloud, like I couldn't, I couldn't get him, and I was just kept falling.

That's the that's the physical, the physical response my body had to that news.

And I just said, What do you mean?

And he said, you know, well, we don't really know the too much about what happened, and then it just kind of came out and like, you know, I remember it as like bullet points, you know.

He was with two kids, there was a Jameson bottle, they were at a party, he was drinking, neither kid knows what happened, and the toxicology report will take four months to come back.

That's what I remembered.

And I I remember feeling like I didn't want to hang up the phone.

Like I didn't know what to say, you know, uh, but I felt like this was the only person who knew where Kevin was, and I was afraid to hang up because if I hung up, I would never find him again.

And so I got I ended up getting his phone number, and um and I I said, I'm I'm driving.

I I have to call my husband, and I will call you back, you know, like I I don't know what to do next.

So I called my husband, and um I remember he said to me, you know, after I I told him that Kevin Kevin was dead, and he said, Tell me again what's happening.

Like he couldn't, he was at a friend's house, and um so I I ended up reverting into a very systematic way of compartmentalizing what I needed to do.

I needed to get home.

I had seven hours to drive.

I was not gonna stay and wait for anybody to come and get me.

And I needed to just get home.

I needed to cancel my hotel room.

I needed to call a couple people.

I was like the president of my dog club at the time, so I needed to cancel, you know, let them know that I wasn't gonna show up for a meeting.

You know, they were all just a very like um like a to-do list, you know, and then I had to call my mother and tell her.

So everybody was like crying when I, you know, when I called them, and I was not crying, and I just said, I can't.

They're like, oh, I'll come and get you, I'll come and get you.

And I said, no, I'm not waiting.

I have to get home.

I'm driving, I know how to drive.

That's the only thing I know how to do right now, is I know how to drive.

I remember being at a gas station because I had to get gas.

And I remember not wanting to make eye contact with anybody, and I I looked down at like at the bottom of the pump, and I I saw somebody across from me filling their tank, and I was looking at their shoes, and I remember thinking, you have no idea what I just heard.

SPEAKER_01: And then I just I just continued and and drove home.

I got home at um midnight.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow.

In the back of a parking lot of a restaurant, all by yourself with your two dogs, and you have to get that phone call.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

SPEAKER_02: Yep, it was it was awful.

It was like it just I people say to me all the time, I can't believe you did that.

I can't believe you drove home.

And I thought, that's the easiest thing I did.

You know?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: It was like I I just kept thinking, I remember I was listening to a book on tape about the Holocaust, and I thought, okay, good, this is nice and dark, you know, and it was something to focus on.

And I just could not it it like sat on the passenger seat.

Kevin's death, that news sat on the passenger seat.

It was, it was next to me, but I could not let it in.

I couldn't, I couldn't, I did not have the luxury of falling apart.

That was a luxury at that point.

And I I was just like, I have to get home.

I have to get myself home safely.

That was, and then Tom would call me, you know, probably, he probably called me every 15 minutes or so, and um, you know, just check in and okay, where are you now?

You know, and and then once I got home, I walked in the door, and um, you know, because I had a week's worth, you know, I've been living on the road for a week, so I had all this stuff I had to bring in.

And Tom was on the phone with the organ donor people.

You know, that was a 45-minute call because you have to answer all these questions because Kevin was an organ donor.

He had on his license.

Because he they found him dead, he wasn't able to donate his organs, but they were able to do tissue harvesting.

So he donated his corneas, heart valves, leg bones, and I felt like there was one more thing.

I hate to leave anything out.

So Tom, I had to, you know, I brought in all the stuff while Tom was on the phone.

He was, we still had to, you know, it was like the business of death kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01: And so once he got off the phone with with the organ donors, then we kind of just kind of collapsed and then I was able to fall apart.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're basically living in survival, man.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow.

So at that point, though, you said it was going to take four months for a toxicology report to come back.

Yes.

That's a long time.

Yes.

To not know anything.

Right.

SPEAKER_02: And the kids he was with didn't I to spoke with both of them and they just Said that he was drinking, that they hadn't done anything.

But there was in the police report, there was one of the kids had some white powder that they thought he said was cocaine.

And it was actually, when they tested it, it actually tested positive for morphine.

So I had this like niggling at the back of my mind, like, oh my God, I hope it wasn't drugs.

Like I, you know, because they didn't find anything.

They didn't find any paraphernalia or anything.

And I just kept thinking, please let it be his asthma.

Because he had he had really bad asthma.

And I thought, please let it be his asthma.

Please don't let it be drugs.

The sad part of that is that the stigma that goes with the drugs, with overdose, is so prevalent.

And I didn't want people to think differently about him.

And I just wanted people to remember him as the funny, wonderful human being that he was.

And but I thought that if he, if it was drugs, people would think differently of him and they'd think of him like, you know, well, what did he expect?

And that was completely unacceptable to me.

And then the other part of it was, you know, what kind of mother was I?

What, you know, like what did I do wrong?

Well, what did why couldn't I have stopped this?

How did I not know he was doing those kinds of drugs?

You know, so there's that that stigma casts such a big net.

You know, it's the person that, it's the judgment of the person that died.

It's the judgment of the family, like what happened in that family, you know, what something must have gone wrong there.

And then there's the judgment of the person that's grieving, which was me.

I was judging myself.

So it was like the shame just overcame me.

And the anxiety of, you know, not knowing and potentially being drugs was like all-consuming.

And it really impacted my grief in a way that I just could not move, move at all.

I was just completely polarized by the stigma and the what if.

So that was kind of my grief was in like limbo.

Not that I wasn't grieving because I was, but it was just the questions, the questions.

People just kept asking me questions.

Well, what happened?

What happened?

And then it was like, well, we're not really sure.

Well, what do you mean you're not sure?

And you know, and then, you know, then the kind of their faces, you know, changed a little bit, like, oh, you know, they're not really sure.

There's a toxicology report involved.

He was 25, you know, and they they just assume that it was drugs.

So all the while, you know, there's the anger and the and the shame, the defensiveness, it just made me go inward and really isolate myself and didn't want to leave the house.

So it was um an additional burden on top of the grief.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, talk to me about when you actually got the results of the toxicology report.

SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I knew that it was gonna take four months.

So right around that mark, I started like really getting anxious whenever I saw the mailman pulling up to the mailbox.

And the day that I actually pulled it out, it was sitting right on top of the mailbox, right on top of the mail, you know, Kitsuck, California.

I went in the bathroom, I locked the door, and I opened it up, and it was um morphine, ethyl alcohol, and codeine.

And it said 6 MAM present.

And I had no idea what that meant.

And it said at the bottom, cause of death, multiple drug intoxication.

And I went to my computer and I typed in what is 6 MAM?

And it said 6 MAM is present only for, I think it's like less than 24 hours.

I think it's like 12 hours in the system when uh heroin is used.

And it's a definitive for heroin.

And I just lost it.

SPEAKER_01: I just, I couldn't believe it.

SPEAKER_02: So it was the numbers, the percentages of what he had in his system.

You know, like I started Googling that, and it was like, well, what do you mean coding?

Like, I like I don't understand.

Like, they didn't say that there were drugs there, and it doesn't say heroin.

And I, you know, I didn't know, I'm not a chemist.

I didn't know what I was looking at.

And what it was is it's that's the way heroin breaks down in the system.

So once I saw that, you know, that's how it was broken down in the system, and then the 6 MAM, then, you know, I I understood.

And it and the levels weren't ridiculously high.

It was like it said like potentially fatal.

And but what it was was that he mixed it with alcohol.

That's what killed him.

So you can't mix opiates and alcohol.

So, you know, my parents had been, you know, everybody had been waiting for this toxicology report.

And I said to my husband, I said, There is no way I am telling anybody about this.

I'm just, I'm not, I'm, I am not putting him up for judgment.

I am not putting myself out there for judgment.

I was doing enough of the judgment anyway, you know.

I was judging myself so bad.

I was, I was so hard on myself.

But I thought, there's just no way.

This is my baby, and you are not going to make an assessment of him based on how he died.

No.

You know, my parents, my mother said, you know, have you got the toxicology back?

I said, what does it matter how he died?

And she never asked me again.

And people just knew, my family just knew at that point not to ask me.

They assumed it was his asthma.

I don't know if, you know, they were just hoping that's what it was.

And I ended up keeping it a cause of the cause of death a secret for two years from everybody.

I didn't tell anybody that I worked with, I didn't tell any of my friends, none of my family.

The only people that knew was myself and my husband.

And that was a huge burden to carry because when you don't tell somebody the cause of death, you actually get to hear what their real thoughts are about overdose and, you know.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: So that became a big thing for me.

I had several very personal encounters with people over their opinions of overdose that that I talk about in the book that were just I think about it now, and it just makes me cringe.

SPEAKER_00: Would you mind like what would people say to you?

SPEAKER_02: So one circumstance was I was at work and this guy that I worked with, we used to talk about music all the time.

You know, he was the same age as me.

And so have you heard of the band Stone Temple Pilots?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love it.

Okay, right.

SPEAKER_02: So, so Scott Wyland, when he died, it was he Scott Wyland died two months after Kevin did.

So we didn't know the results at that point.

But I was, you know, I had that thought that maybe in the back of my mind, because they had found that white powder.

So I was at my desk and he came up to me and he said, Hey, did you hear Scott Wyland died?

And I, you know, I kind of just froze.

And he said, and they hadn't, they hadn't come out with the cause of death yet.

And it was like, I don't know, a couple days later, he came up to me and he said, Did you hear Scott Wyland died of an overdose?

And he said, No surprise there.

And I didn't say anything.

And he wrapped his knuckles on my desk, kind of like, you know, you know, oh well.

And he said, Oh well, one more drug addict off the streets, and he walked away.

And I I was like, I felt like he tossed a grenade in my lap.

I was just speechless.

And I, you know, I went in the bathroom and I sobbed, and I thought, this is how people are gonna think of him, you know, one more drug addict off the street.

It was just, it was awful.

And then I had another experience.

I was doing training for hospice.

I was becoming a hospice volunteer, and we were, there was about 25 of us, and we were talking about the need for more volunteers in the grief support group because of the opioid crisis.

A lot of kids were losing a parent to opioids.

And this one voice I heard in the din, and he said, Well, we all know what would, what'd he say?

He said, We we all know what would help with the opioid crisis.

And I I kind of I, you know, my hands were all sweaty because we were talking about drugs, you know, and I still hadn't come out and told anybody yet.

And I looked around the table, and this guy was just sitting there so smug, and everybody was staring at him, and he and he kind of just dropped his pen, you know, like he said, we nobody has family dinners anymore.

And I thought, what?

And I absolutely, when I say I lost it, I went ballistic.

Like I immediately I stood up, I started pointing my finger at him, I started screaming.

I'm like, I had, I made family dinners, you know, and then I realized I had come out, you know, because, you know, when you go through the training, you have to talk about your own grief experiences.

So it was a very, it was very healing experience up until that point.

And I was just, I just reamed him verbally.

And I got my stuff and I left.

I just walked out.

I was like, this is what everybody thinks.

Everybody thinks it's they're pointing the blame at the parents for not making the meals, not having, you know, not talking about drugs.

And I'm like, we talked about drugs, you know, like like we did.

And I, and it was just, it was me being in a defensive mode because I wasn't there yet.

I wasn't in a place where I could confidently say, I did a good job.

Like I, I, I was a good mom, you know, but on paper, it didn't look that way.

And so I felt like I was continuously defending myself and the anger and the it just ate away at me for for two years.

And that wasn't even that wasn't even the the final thing that made me come out and start talking about it.

So, I mean, there were there were several really big impactful moments where I got face to face with the stigma.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I mean, I I just I I listened to your story and I think to myself, I gosh, what you were carrying.

Not only did you lose your son, not only are you probably mad, you're upset, you're angry, you're confused, why he had to die like this.

You're now carrying this whole burden on your shoulders, not wanting the world to judge your son while still just trying to heal because you lost your son.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So, what was the breaking point when you finally said, you know what, here, this is how he died.

SPEAKER_02: So I had found a group called Helping Parents Heal.

It is a support group for bereaved parents, and they really talk about the spiritual aspect of our kids still being with us.

And they talk about signs, and it was very educational.

And I was doing a lot of the online meetings with them because they were based in Arizona, and there wasn't at that point, there wasn't any in-person groups in where I lived at all.

So I decided, I contacted the founder of the organization and I said, I'd really like to be a facilitator in my area.

So part of, you know, I had to secure a location and, you know, do all the groundwork for that.

And then I wanted to get the word out.

So part of, you know, part of that is the media coverage.

So I contacted a local newspaper in my, you know, area, and they have a free paper at the time that would go out on Fridays.

And it went out to like six towns around where I lived.

And so I was going to be the facilitator for Southern New Hampshire.

So the reporter said, Yeah.

Well, I said, Would you like, would you do a feature on our group so I could help get the word out, you know, because it's all about supporting the parents.

So she said yes.

So she came to my house and she was here for almost two hours.

And she interviewed me and was asking, you know, we I got the photo boards out that we had at the funeral, and you know, she got all the questions answered.

And right before she was ready to leave, she said, we didn't talk about how he died.

And I said, Well, technically he died of a multiple drug intoxication, but I do not want to include that.

I have not told anybody, I've not told my family.

She, you know, when I think about it, she was the first person I told.

I said, I don't want it printed.

We haven't made that, you know, public.

So she said, okay.

And she left.

And I sent her an email and I said, I didn't ask you what issue the, you know, it was going to be in, because it was literally two years after Kevin died.

She came here in the beginning of October.

So it was like right around his second anniversary.

My first meeting was going to be at the end of October.

So I was hoping it was going to get in the next couple of, you know, because the paper only went out on Fridays.

So I was hoping it was going to get in soon so I could, you know, kick off the first meeting, you know, with people knowing about it.

So I sent her the email and I went, I got the dogs, and I thought, all right, you know, this is something positive.

I'm going to help other people.

I felt really good.

And I got the dogs, and we got in the car, and we went to, we drove to a trail, and I forgot to tell Tom.

I was going to text Tom and tell him that, you know, oh, things went really well with the meeting.

And I saw that she had replied to the email.

And I opened up the email and it said, Susan, while I can appreciate what you're trying to do without including the cause of death, it leaves a large and unacceptable hole in the story.

So I can't print your story.

And I saw red.

I just, Kevin, I was, I was afraid of how angry I was.

I was so angry.

I got the dogs out.

I and and this is like I went to my favorite trail and I call it like walking up to heaven.

I mean, it is like steep.

It's like a steep upward hill.

And I am, I practically ran.

I had so much adrenaline, practically ran up that hill with the dogs.

And I started like screaming at the top of the hill.

And I walked around the field.

I had like this, you know, just crying hysterically and, you know, having a fit.

And I decided I was going to go over to this beech tree that I loved.

So the energy of a beech tree is that it shows it so because the beech tree is the type of bark that you carve your name into, you know, that's the one you see, like the hearts and the, you know, Jason loves Susie.

And um, so they're able to live and display their wounds.

And I I just love the energy of that.

And so I would would often go to this beach tree and and be like, you know, okay, help help me heal my my wounds, right?

So I went over to this beach tree and I just leaned up against it.

And I was just crying.

I I told the dogs to lay down and I said, why?

I said this out loud, I said, why am I so mad?

What about this situation is making me so mad?

And I often I meditate.

So that was a big part of my grief process was going in Kevin's room and talking, talking to Kevin, talking to myself, finding out, like, okay, Rick really examining my thoughts and my feelings.

And I would journal.

And I was able to process a lot by doing that.

And so I, when I said that, I said, what about this is making me so mad?

And instantly, Kevin's mugshot on the front page of a different newspaper came to my awareness.

And it was when he was in high school, he had been arrested for underage drinking.

He was at a friend's house.

They had a bonfire, they had, you know, like not a bonfire, but like a little campfire.

And they were sitting around the fire and they were drinking.

And one of the neighbors saw them and called the police.

And while I am not a proponent of underage drinking, they were not driving.

They were, you know, whatever, 17 years old.

And he got arrested, and his mugshot made the front page of the Nashua Telegraph, which is a huge newspaper in my area.

It's in like the city of Nashua.

And I thought, since when is underage drinking front page news?

You know, and but because it was a doctor where they, the house they were at, it was a well-respected doctor in the area.

It made the, it not only made the the newspaper, it also made the Channel 9 news.

And I thought, okay, this is, I see the parallels here.

And I felt at that time when Kevin was in high school, I was so afraid that this was going to affect his college.

I live in a very small town.

So I, you know, if I saw somebody, I was like afraid that, you know, they were judging Kevin, and it was all the similar, same theme, right?

But 10 years later, now Kevin's dead, and they want to put that salacious detail of how he died in the paper to sell papers.

I mean, because the because the reality is the story I wanted, the feature I wanted wasn't about Kevin.

It was about how we can, you know, how we can support parents whose kids have died.

That was the, that was the what the story was supposed to be about.

And for her not to print it because I wouldn't give her that juicy tidbit, you know, that it was uh overdose.

So I said, oh, that chip on my shoulder from 10 years ago had turned into a boulder and I didn't even know it.

And it took this to really bring it to the forefront.

And I thought, well, I can keep going the way I'm going, which clearly isn't working for me.

Or I could just tell people what happened.

At that point, I realized that if they thought differently, if my parents thought differently of Kevin, right?

That was on them.

That's that's not that's not on me.

It's not a reflection of me.

It's not a reflection of my parenting.

It's not a reflection of Kevin.

It's a reflection, you know, it's that's their stuff.

So I was really, by by not telling people, I was trying to control the outcome, like trying to control how people would remember Kevin.

And it was just, it was too heavy of a burden for me to carry around.

And I and I just I just decided at that point that I was just gonna let it go and and tell people.

And I did.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So what what happened with that article?

Did it run or no?

SPEAKER_02: I didn't, I didn't, I wouldn't give her permission.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: I said, you know what?

I I'm sad that you think that this is important to put in the paper.

And I think that there are so many people that will judge based on how a person dies.

And I don't want to perpetuate that.

SPEAKER_00: So that was it.

And to be and to be honest, doesn't it speak to a problem with society?

Oh, yes.

That that that we feel as though we have to have the reason why, how they died.

What does that really matter?

Well, you know what matters is the fact that they're gone, that this person lost their life.

It doesn't matter how, in a sense, you know, the the impact of his story is that he is gone, that he lived in, you know what I mean?

And and and I and I can understand for different points of view, I guess, where you know, in different situations, you know, it you could say it's important piece to the story, but in the gist of of your story that you're trying to tell, it didn't matter.

SPEAKER_02: Right.

And I think I think that, you know, I I really found the I call it a grief hierarchy.

It's like there's such a disproportionate amount of sympathy and compassion that go towards people grieving.

It's like they're in two camps, the camp that, you know, wasn't was no fault of their own, you know, like an accident or cancer, some kind of illness, versus suicide or overdose.

You know, that's that's they consider that more of a choice.

And while that may be true, it doesn't mean that the families that are left behind deserve less compassion or sympathy or empathy.

And so I really try to point that out, and because I found that to be true even in grief groups, grief support groups.

I, you know, we sit in a circle, we go around the circle, tell uh who our loved one, you know, tell their name, their age, and how they died.

And the suicides and the overdoses got more quiet responses versus, you know, Sally that was killed by a drunk driver.

Oh, you know, they get so much more sympathy, or this one that had cancer, or, you know, and it's just makes us as the the grieving person makes us feel like, well, maybe maybe we don't deserve as much sympathy.

And it's just, it's just really messed up.

It's really messed up.

And I I don't know the answer like to how to not do that, you know, by saying how the person died.

Because some so for some people it's really important to to share that.

But when you're feeling ashamed or you're you're grieving a stigmatized death, there is a level of privacy that people don't seem to respect, you know, like if you don't include the cause of death when you say, my son died, that's a kind of a little barrier, a little, you know, screen that you shouldn't cross.

Like, don't ask that question.

If I wanted you to know, I would tell you, right?

And same thing with obituaries.

So many times you see people that don't include the cause of death in the obituary.

And then it just becomes like a gossipy thing, you know.

Well, I saw that, you know, he had knee surgery, and then they didn't put the cause of death in afterwards.

I was it drugs?

Was it like, did he overdose on the on the medication?

You know, and it's like, we're talking about somebody that died here, you know, and and it's the it's the leapfrogging over that, the compassion part to get to those salacious details.

So that was the that was really the big, my big message that I wanted to get out was, you know, there is some time that a grieving person needs to unpack that.

You know, I needed to take a lot of time to unpack my feelings around how he died, the shame that I felt.

And again, it was not the shame toward Kevin, it was a shame toward myself.

Like, what did I do wrong?

And until I got that right in my head and was able to figure out my feelings around it, and you know, if there was any truth to that, I wasn't ready to share that with the world.

But, you know, I mean, if you think about it, if you hear about somebody famous that's young, that, you know, it comes out in the news, oh, so-and-so, you know, died, found dead in his apartment, you know, 26 years old.

What's the first thing we do?

We go to our phones, we go to our computer.

What happened?

What happened?

And it's like I try to tell people, you know, that person has most likely parents, friends, cousins, siblings, you know, that are grieving them.

Can we just sit with that for a second, you know, and and be with like mentally just be with those people instead of going to find out the details about what happened?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I I just I sit there and I I think, wow, what a what a deep meaning, what a message that I can only hope that the people listening to this podcast today can take this message to take what you've shared today and take it to heart and spread that and really think about it because that's how we make a difference is we share the stories of people like you and let people just open our eyes.

It's not that people are doing it out of malice or or being mean.

It's just what people do.

Well, we've got to help to change that mindset, you know, and and help people to realize that's not the important thing.

That's not what matters.

SPEAKER_02: I agree with you 100%.

I do, I never thought that people were doing it to be malicious.

And I I also know that people want to help, right?

They want to, they want to be able to do like, what can I do?

What can I do?

So I just want to give the the scenario, okay?

So for the person that is grieving a stigmatized loss.

So I'm gonna use myself as an example.

When I would be outside of my house, which I never wanted to be outside of my house because I didn't want to run into anybody, but if I did, kids always come up, right?

It's like the weather, it's like it's just an easy topic.

And if I didn't know the person, or if I did know the person, I would say, you know, I had a decision to make.

Am I gonna tell them that Kevin died?

My son died.

If I do tell them, they're gonna be shocked and they're gonna start asking me questions.

Because 98% of the time, if I chose to say, my son died, they would say the response would be, oh my God, I'm so sorry, what happened?

Or, oh my God, I'm so sorry, how did he die?

And it was like, it's like if you can picture yourself, you know, saying that to somebody, and you feel shame around how he died, it's like I was I was like, well, um, we're not sure.

Um, you know, and then they'd be like, well, what do you mean?

You don't know.

And then that would lead to more questions and more questions, and I'd be like, like, you know, trying to be like, well, we're not sure.

And then that was like not embarrassing, but like just awful in the fact that I didn't get any answers.

I still don't have answers about what exactly happened that night.

And so can you imagine that your loved ones' life or the end moments of their life, it was like they it's like it didn't matter enough that anybody remembers.

And I know that's not true, but that's what it sounds like, and that's what it feels like to a person who's lost someone that they love.

And it's again, it's always this chronic anxiety over do I share it, do I not share it?

It becomes, like I said earlier, it's just this added weight to your heavy grief.

So you're never able to really move forward toward healing.

Until you resolve that stigma and the shame part of it, it's like your healing just is is at, it doesn't go, you don't go through the normal grieving process.

You just don't.

And that's not just, you know, just not just child loss.

I mean, if you've lost a a sibling or a a friend, even if if you have that stigma, if you have that shame, you have to be able to really deal with that.

And and because I was facing all of these people that, you know, I felt more judged.

It was feeding my shame, you know.

It was like I couldn't, I couldn't, it was like just like this awful spiral snowball effect that I just couldn't get out of until I just came out and it was like, okay, forget it.

I can't do this anymore.

Two years was enough.

I'm I'm gonna come out.

And then I thought, okay, if I am gonna talk about it, I'm really gonna talk about it.

I'm I'm really gonna be open and I'm gonna do what I can so other people are aware, you know, to spread the awareness and to give more empathy to this thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people who are grieving somebody that has died a stigmatized death, whether it's suicide or overdose.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, well, shifting gears a little bit, I wanna I want to kind of go back in time a little bit in the timeline of our story.

And I want you to share with me a story that I find really remarkable.

And it was when you were really wanting a sign from Kevin.

SPEAKER_02: Oh.

So the day of the funeral, you know, you have the last viewing.

I went in to, I made sure I was the last one to see Kevin.

And I went in and I said to him, I didn't ask him, I told him as his mother.

I said, You must send me a sign to let me know you're okay.

You have to let me know you're okay.

Like I, I, I will not be okay until you let me know you're okay.

I had no idea what I was asking.

I just knew that I needed something.

And so the next day we took Kevin's girlfriend had flown out from California.

So we had taken her into the airport and we came home.

And I said, I haven't heard from Kevin yet.

And it had only been a day.

But I again, I have never had anybody that impactful die.

And I thought, I just need to get a sign.

And and I said, I haven't heard from Kevin yet.

I, you know, I'm really stressed about it, and I don't know what to do.

And Tom was like, he just didn't have anything to offer me.

And I said, let's take the dogs for a walk.

You know, I said, I want to go.

We have 85 miles of trails where I live.

And I said, I want to go and I want to walk, and I want to take Kevin's open, friendly demeanor with us.

Like I want to, I want to be open and friendly.

Because normally when I walk my dogs, you know, people say, Oh, my dog is friendly, and they're really not.

So I just like avoid it altogether.

And like when I see somebody coming, I usually kind of walk off to the side of the trail.

I make my dogs sit and I let them pass and I don't engage.

I mean, I'll say hi, but so we go to this trail and we were walking the dogs, and we come across this lady, and she's, you know, making small talk with us and whatever.

And so we say goodbye and we keep going.

And we're almost to the end of the trail.

We're almost back to the parking lot, and we see this family walking in with a very excited boxer mix at the end of his leash.

And so we go in and we see this very excited boxer mix at the end of his leash.

And he's with there's a mother, what I think was a grandmother, and two kids.

The kids were like, I don't know, like 11 years old.

And they're walking toward us.

And I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

But I'm like, no, we're gonna take Kevin's excited nature, you know, like, you know, open and friendly.

And so we stop and we make small talk with this woman.

It was a beautiful day, and I'm paying attention to the dogs, and they start, you know, getting, I'm untangling leashes and everything.

And all of a sudden, the boxer mix goes down on his elbows, his butt's up in the air, like, game on, let's let's play, you know, chase, right?

And I'm like, okay, that's our sign, we're gonna go.

So we say goodbye, and we turn to leave.

And the woman says, Let's go, Kevin.

And of course we froze, you know, you you hear your loved one's name, and it's just like, what, what?

And so we turned around and we looked at her, and I expected her to be looking at her son, but she was looking at her dog.

And we just our mouths were just like, you know, our jaws were like on the ground.

And she says, Come on, Kev.

And I looked at her, because we used to call Kevin Kev all the time.

And I looked at her and I said, Is your dog named Kevin?

And she said, Yeah, he was a rescue.

Like, you know, that was the explanation for the unusual name.

And of course, you know, I start bawling, crying, and Tom's, you know, crying, and he's like, Should I tell her?

I'm like, tell her.

So he walked over to her and told her.

And, you know, like I said, we have 85 miles of trails that we could have walked on.

If I didn't see, if we didn't see the lady before, you know, we would have already left the parking lot because they had just arrived.

I mean, so many things had to line up for that to happen.

And I, you know, normally I don't talk to people, you know, when we're on the trail.

So I never would have even known this dog's name.

And I thought, oh my God, that's my sign.

And it was just, you know, in hindsight, I look back and I say, I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful for the sign, period.

I mean, it was still just still to this day, I can't believe that it happened.

But I'm so grateful because the doubt that, you know, normally people, you know, are like always doubtful, like, oh, you know, that's not true.

And, you know, like it's they're gone.

Like that never set in for me because I said, you gotta let me know you're okay.

And the next day I got the big sledgehammer signed.

Like, I was looking for like heart-shaped weaves.

I mean, I was like, I was reaching for anything, right?

But I mean, a dog named Kevin, and I and he again, he was hilarious.

And I can just picture him going, ha, how'd you like that?

And I could just see him head tip back, laughing his head off.

And I was like, man.

And it was just so in character with his personality.

And I thought, well, okay, this is how it happens.

I ask him and he lets me know.

And this is how we're we communicate.

And so after that, I was like, oh, I want it, you know, that elation lasts for like maybe a week.

It was probably more like four or five days, which sounds unreasonable, but you want more.

Like, I'm like, okay, I want another one.

Like, I want another one.

And it becomes like this thing that you want to be able to have these kinds of like new ways of connecting.

And so it became my not obsession, but it was my goal, my my purpose to find out how I was going to have this new relationship with Kevin.

I had to figure out how to make that happen more often.

And I did.

SPEAKER_00: And so what would that look like long term when we when we talk about this, this new relationship with your son?

SPEAKER_02: So in the beginning, it was very practical.

I would go in his room and I would just start talking to him.

And I would just be like, okay, Kev, you know, show me what I need to know today in a way that I can understand.

That's what I would say every day when I was in there.

And I would just, you know, check in and see what, like, like when I was at the Beach Street, like the things that just pop into your head.

And sometimes it's like, where did that come from?

Like that, that's not even something I'd say, you know?

And I started writing it down and started really just kind of trusting that that information was coming from Kevin.

And then, you know, I would ask for specific signs.

And as long as I was open to the ways that I would get them, I would, like, for example, one time I asked, I'm like, all right, Kev, I'm having a hard day today.

You know, like I would like a gold ring.

That's just the first thing that popped into my mind.

And I was, I like I said, I was a hospice volunteer, and I remember sitting with the client that I was with, and I was going through a magazine with her, and the game Monopoly was there was an advertisement for it there, and it was uh zoomed in on the luxury tax with the the ring.

And I was like, oh, thanks, Give, you know, and so it was just like just stuff like that, and it just kept happening more and more and more.

And this, I'll give you another example, this past October, which is when I launched my book on his seventh anniversary of his passing.

So he died on October 3rd.

On October 3rd, I launched my book because I wanted something positive.

I wanted to create something positive on that day to kind of offset the what is normally the saddest day on the calendar.

And so Tom and I went out for a ride on the motorcycle.

And I don't normally ask Kevin for signs anymore just because like things come up a lot, you know, that just are just random.

But I said to him that day, I said, you know, Kev, I said, just give me something.

And five minutes later, we pull into a gas station, and you know, Tom's pumping gas, and the gas attendant comes out, and he's this really older gentleman.

And his, you know, they wear the the jackets, like the blue jackets, the mechanic jackets, and he had this jacket on, and his name badge was on the front of it, and it was Kevin.

And I said, I go, Your name is Kevin?

And he's like kind of looking side to side, like what.

You know, like candid camera, like what's, you know, he's like, he goes, Yeah.

I said, oh, and then by the way, October 3rd, this is like another random thing that I found out about Kevin's death date, October 3rd, is in fact National Kevin Day.

So I said to him, I said, Did you know today is National Kevin Day?

And he's like, again, looking around, like, what's the joke?

You know?

So there was a policeman at the next pump, and he was pumping gas.

And he says, Hey, I want to know when it's going to be National Tyler Day.

And Kevin, the gas attendant, goes, Oh, you missed it.

That was yesterday.

And I thought, oh my God, leave it to my Kevin to bring me to a funny Kevin, right?

Which would have that would have totally been his sense, his, you know, style of humor.

And I thought, and I'm, you know, here we are, the four of us strangers, and we're all laughing about this little joke.

And I thought, how perfect is that?

You know?

So that's just, it's just an ongoing way of trusting that he is guiding me every step of the way.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

So along this journey of healing, of of learning to have your son in this new way, at what point do you decide to write a book?

SPEAKER_02: Well, I went out to the Helping Parents Heal conference in 2018.

And I had a reading with a medium, and she gave me the most unbelievable sign from him of something that happened in my hotel room the night before.

And I I'm not, I won't do a spoiler because it's it's definitely in the book.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02: But it was it was absolutely incredible.

And I thought, oh, you don't understand.

This just happened.

And she's looking at me like, you know, yeah, I hear this all the time.

I'm like, no, really, this just happened.

So I was just blown away by that.

And toward the end of the reading, she said, he is telling me you are supposed to write a book.

You're supposed to write your story in a book and share this with other people.

And I thought, oh boy.

And I had, you know, I had been told before because, you know, just the signs alone that I had received from Kevin were just really incredible, incredible.

And there's just so many of them.

And my dogs were a big part of my healing as well.

So it was like these three themes kept running around in my head, and I thought, okay.

And I was in an online course with this group of women.

It was an all-women group, and there was a book coach actually in the group.

And I really connected with her.

And I just reached out to her and I said, you know, what do you think?

And I, you know, we we met for like a half hour online, and she's like, oh, absolutely.

She's and I just, I just felt like it was all lined up just so perfectly.

I didn't have to look far for her.

She was right in my group.

We became, we worked together for two years.

And when the book, when I had my book launch, she actually came to my house and stayed at my house.

I'd never met her in person before.

It was our first time meeting a person.

And it was like meeting my like a long, long lost friend.

It was, it was incredible.

So I had my story, I had what I wanted to say, but I needed somebody to help me be able to, you know, come up, like figure out the stories that, because I had a lot of flashbacks, you know, well, because it's all a flashback, but I had stories from when Kevin was little, because my goal was to, you know, we always think about overdose in statistics, right?

And I didn't want, I wanted to humanize overdose.

So I wanted the reader by the time they were done with the book to know who Kevin was as a person so they could put a face to the overdose.

So they couldn't think of him as a statistic anymore.

Because I know I can't change somebody's opinion of overdose.

You're gonna feel the way you're gonna feel.

But my goal was to give you something to think about.

So, in order for me to, you know, get in, I had so many funny stories and just impactful stories of Kevin throughout his 25 years.

And I needed to know how to thread those through in a way that it would be compelling and make sense.

I had never written a book before, so she was very helpful in that respect.

But I wrote the whole thing myself, and at the end of it, I was like, I felt so good.

So it was so cathartic.

And I thought, you know, I said to you earlier, Kevin's death can't be for nothing, right?

If he was gonna die, if I was gonna, you know, be learning stuff about whatever I was supposed to learn from his death, I was gonna give it meaning and share what I've learned with other people and hopefully that it would help somebody else.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's what you're doing.

That's what you're doing.

And it's absolutely beautiful.

I mean, my my heart breaks for you when I hear this story.

And but at the same point, as you said, in this life, there's a bigger purpose at play.

There's something bigger than us.

Whether that's that you believe in God, you believe in spirit, whatever it is, you have to realize that there's something bigger at work.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: And as you said, nothing in this life happens for nothing.

It's all for a reason.

And you know, it kind of goes back to a saying that I say all the time is that, you know, I believe, you know, everything in this life happens for a reason, and a good reason at that.

And I say that's true even for the bad stuff.

Sometimes it just takes a while for us to travel down the road to be able to look back and understand how it all fit into the puzzle of life.

Yeah.

I just wanna I want to thank you literally in the most sincere way possible for being so vulnerable, for being so open and honest about your story, about your son's story, and about the story of the two of you together.

It's absolutely amazing.

Please let my listeners know the name of your book, of course, where's the best place for them to go to get it?

And I will be sure that every bit of that information is inside of the episode's show notes for easy access.

SPEAKER_02: Sure.

So it the book is called Life After Kevin: A Mother's Search for Peace and the Golden Retrievers that led the way.

It is available on Amazon.

It is any online retail, barnesandnoble.com, plommart.com.

Um, you can find a link to it on my website, which is susan-lynch.com.

And yeah, it's out there.

And if you, you know, there's a way to connect with me on my website.

There's a contact page.

If you've read the book, if you, you know, want to reach out.

I always love to hear from my readers what their thoughts are.

So please let me know.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, amazing, amazing.

Susan, again, thank you so much for being here today.

It has been an absolute just pleasure to meet you.

And um, I really appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me, Kevin.

It's been great.

SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.

Well, thank you.

And for you listening today, I I truly hope that today's conversation with Susan can be an impact.

That you don't just take this as another story, but you take this as lessons on life, as a reminder of how short life is, that we never know what tomorrow will bring.

So be sure that you smile big.

Smile big like Susan's son Kevin did.

Live life to the fullest like her son did.

And ultimately, just be sure that every day that you wake up, you appreciate it, you're grateful for it, and therefore, you be sure to make the most out of it.

This is Kevin Lowe with great grace and inspiration.

I hope today's episode blesses you, encourages you, and inspires you to get out there and take on the day.

Hey, real quick before you go, I have one last thought to leave you with.

I of course hope that you've enjoyed today's episode, but more importantly, I want to remind you that I never want you to listen to an episode of this podcast to hear something that I have to say or that my guest has to share and think, wow, I wish I could be like them.

I wish I could overcome my own challenges and do the great things that they are doing, but I just can't.

Well, friend, that's where you're wrong.

unknown: You're wrong.

SPEAKER_00: You are capable, you are able, and you darn sure are deserving of having all that you can imagine in this life.

There's nothing special about me or any guests I have on this podcast.

We are all just normal people trying to make it in this life.

And so I encourage you to take a look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself that you know what?

I can do it too.

Now, of course, if you would like help along that way, reach out to me.

Whether that's as a listener of this podcast, a friend, or if you'd like to work with me as a coach.

My contact information is inside of every episode's show notes, just like this one.

So go down, check out my contact information, and reach out to me today.

With that said, I encourage you to take on the day every day with great grace and inspiration.