Happyish Holidays
Two days after Nora’s husband Aaron died, she celebrated Thanksgiving with her family.
Well ... maybe not “celebrated.”
Every year, millions of people do the same thing during the holidays. In this episode, we talk with some of those folks, including Dr. Lucy Kalanithi and comedian Amber Tozer.
We also spend some time with some of the women of the Hot Young Widows Club, talking about their hopes and dreams for the upcoming year.
Plus, stories of some of the worst holidays ever.
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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.
Nora McInerny: I basically just assume that you are always here and always recording, like its “The Truman Show,” but with our ears.
Hans Buetow: We’re recording.
Nora McInerny: Oh. Shit! Now we’re recording. [laughs] Okay. We need some kind of signal. (Clicks tongue.) How do we start? Do I say this is “Terrible, Thanks for Asking”? I can’t remember.
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Nora McInerny: This is “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” The holidays can be a really difficult time for a lot of people. You have all of these parties, and people keep expecting cheer. They ask how you’re doing, and they want you to say, “Amazing! I love everything! Cheer, cheer, joy!”
But a lot of people don’t feel that. They’d rather respond with, “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” And if that’s you, you’re gonna love this show! We put together a holiday special filled with different kinds of holiday stories. Stories that are sad and funny and wacky and weird. Basially like every holiday you’ve ever experiened … except without food, because I didn’t bring enough for everybody.
So, here we go.
My family was never great at holidays.
Madge: Oh, one Thanksgiving I tried to have courses. And …
ALL: [Laugh]
Nora: You made Cornish Game Hens for everybody.
Madge: Yeah.
Austin: That was pretty cool.
Nora: I told everyone at school I ate a baby turkey!
ALL: [Laugh]
Nora: I was like … “We all got our own turkeys!”
But for my family, even our worst holidays are at least memorable.
Madge: Do you remember that Thanksgiving when I made lamb…I cooked lamb and turkey in the same pan or something.
Meghan: In the same pan … Dad freaked out. But Mom … you knew he hated lamb. Why would you put it in the same … like did you think he wasn’t going to notice?
ALL: [Laugh]
Madge: I didn’t think they would co-mingle so much.
Nora: In the same pan?!?!?
ALL: [Laugh]
Madge: And I was trying to be efficient, like I didn’t want to dirty too many pans.
Meghan: I just remember Dad taking a bite of the turkey and going, “Goddamn it!”
ALL: [Laugh]
Meghan: … and then he was done!
ALL: [Laugh]
They’re never perfect, but they’re always memorable. Even Thanksgiving 2014, which no one in my family can really remember. This is my big brother, Austin.
Austin: I ... I don't even remember very well, to be honest. Yeah. It's all just kind of a blur.
And this is my big sister, Meghan.
Meghan: Oof. Thanksgiving week? It's really hard to remember.
The date was November 27. Two days before, my husband Aaron had died of brain cancer at age 35. And six weeks before Aaron died, our dad died of all the cancer. If ever there were a time for us to cancel a holiday, put on some sweatpants and eat Chinese food and just watch movies ... this was it. But we didn’t. We all dressed up, went to our mother’s house, and pretended like it was a normal holiday.
Here’s my sister Meghan again.
Meghan: And then all these people just offered to like bring us food ... cook us food for Thanksgiving. And for some reason we all decided not just to do Thanksgiving but, like, to get dressed up. And there was all this food. So it was really weird because there was nothing to do because everything was here. And I do remember, like, looking forward to it and thinking this is going to be good we're all going to be together this will ... this will be good.
It was NOT GOOD. This was NOT A NORMAL HOLIDAY. Two of the most important people in our lives were dead, and we were wearing fancy outfits and eating stuffing and NOT TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING.
Meghan: I don't even remember if we talked very much. I remember dinner went by really fast. And then I remember this feeling of ... is that it? I guess that's Thanksgiving. We all just ate food. Now we're done, I guess. Now we go sit in the living room with each other. We just didn't know how to be. We didn't know how to be.
So why did we do it? Why didn’t we just call the whole thing off? Why didn’t we look at one another and say, “Wow, isn’t this just the worst?”
Nora: It was. It was insane. We should have gone to a movie. Or gotten Chinese food.
Meghan: We should have just stayed in bed.
Nora: Yeah. We should have opted out.
Meghan: I mean, it was good to be together…
Madge: I wouldn’t have wanted to have been alone on that day
Meghan: I wouldn’t have wanted either of you to be alone. But we had this weird play acting Thanksgiving then.
Nora: Yeah.
48 hours before this Thanksgiving dinner, my brothers helped me dress my dead husband’s body. They picked out the right socks for his cardigan. They felt the warmth leave his body.
My sister was the first person to come to my house when Aaron died. I didn’t even have to tell her what happened, she picked up the phone and knew the moment I said her name that he was gone.
Meghan: I don’t even know if she said anything, but I knew as soon as he called what had happened so I drove over to her house, and … just … walked into his room and she was just laying there holding him and … it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen but also so loving
Something happened in those 48 hours. Without the nucleus of what had brought us so, so close, we were all just suddenly adrift.
Meghan: I think we couldn’t deal with how it felt for that to be gone, for them to be gone, but also like all of that physical and emotional work of taking care of them and doing all that stuff. For all that to be gone was … I think we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
So then suddenly it’s Thanksgiving.
Meghan: Nora was in her own world. We each were all in our own little worlds but trying to act like you're supposed to act on a holiday. I don't know it was ... in retrospect, it's so surreal.
Surreal because we didn’t know what to do with the two empty seats. Or a table of food that wasn’t ours.
Madge: Couldn’t even say, “Mmm ... Mom ... that’s really good … dressing … or this turkey’s fantastic…”
N: I don’t think we ever said that to you.
ALL: [Laugh]
Ma: Like … “Did you leave a salad in the refridgerator? What have you forgotten to put on the table?”
Me: What’s burning?
Ma: See we’re missing all that good stuff!
I also have very few memories of this holiday together aside from laying on my mother’s couch, staring at my phone. Because what else do you do when you don’t know what to do with yourself?
Meghan: And then Mom yelled at you.
Nora: You yelled at me.
Madge: To put your phone down.
Nora: I thought that was Austin.
Austin: I think we all did.
Nora: Yeah. Everyone was like on my case about being on my phone and I was like “I don’t want to be on this planet right now.”
Madge: I know. We just wanted…
Austin: We just wanted to be with you.
Nora: I know...
My family just wanted to BE WITH ME. And I think I wanted to be with them, too. But none of us knew how to do it, so we just sat alone, together, in the same house, eating food we weren’t hungry for, pretending that our worlds hadn’t been turned upside down, that we weren’t having the world’s worst holiday.
And last year? Last year we skipped the holidays entirely. We disbanded for Thanksgiving, and I flew with my son to Los Angeles and went on hikes and ate pizza. For Christmas, we fled to Mexico and sat by a pool and didn’t even pretend to be normal.
This year, my family is coming to my house for Thanksgiving. It’s a new house, a new place for us to gather and make fun of our mother. It’s a new place for us to try...not to be normal, but to be as normal as possible for a family with a very, very poor track record when it comes to Thanksgiving…
Meghan: Yeah, this year will be better.
Nora: It can’t get worse.
Meghan: We’ve always got that…
ALL: [Laugh]
When we asked people for their worst holiday stories, we got a full inbox. And you know what everyone agreed really ruins a holiday? Death.
Mark grew up in Minneapolis with a mother, Mary, who spent most of her life with chronic medical issues. Mary had Type 1 diabetes. She had rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid issues. And in trying to medicate herself with copious amounts of ibuprofen over many years, she damaged her kidneys, resulting ultimately in kidney failure that necessitated dialysis.
Mark himself was born with hearing loss, so he is no stranger to managing medical challenges. But Mary taught him by example how to flourish under difficult circumstances.
Mark: I would have to think just how I feel even if I get a really bad cold, how crappy and worthless I feel, and how I really don’t want to do anything. And she spent 30 or 40 years being in pain or dealing with various health ailments and still getting up and doing all the things she was doing … raising me, raising my sister, going back to school and becoming a paralegal, being an aid at my school when I was a little kid, serving on the neighborhood board.
In 1997, just before she turned 51, Mark’s mother developed yet another infection. Mark was 25 years old.
Mark: Thanksgiving was mostly normal. The only thing that was different was my mom was in hospital. And we had to fix a plate for her of all the normal Thanksgiving stuff because, you know, hospital Thanksgiving food is going to suck.
What some people may have seen as a bother or an inconvenience — interrupting your normal holiday routine to deliver food to a hospital bed — was just what Mark did. Mary was his mother. He didn’t want her eating gross hospital food on Thanksgiving.
Mark: After Thanksgiving, later on into December, that was when she suffered a series of small strokes. And she was pretty much bedridden, or she could stop dialysis, and if she stopped dialysis, then nature would take its course and she would pass. The doctor explained what these options were and she was pretty much nodding her head at the “stop dialysis.” And I think that between the pain of the arthritis and the kidney disease and all those complications, she was just done. And I was torn because, you know, on the one hand it’s like … I mean, I was 25 at this point, so I mean you don’t want to say goodbye to your mom. But at the other hand you realize that your mom’s been alive for 51 years and just about all of them have sucked because of pain and various ... and I don’t want to make anyone live through more of that. And my grandmother was upset. She did not want to be giving up a daughter. I mean, I had medical power of attorney or whatever that term is, so I could have overruled and said stay on dialysis.
This is a heavy choice at any time of year. And when Mark is faced with it, it’s nearly Christmas. A time when Mark and his big, loving Polish family all convene in his grandmother’s house for countless pierogis. And at 25, Mark has the power to decide whether this Christmas will be his mother’s last. Whether he loses his mother. Whether his grandmother loses a daughter. And whether his mother can be free from nearly a lifetime of pain.
Mark: But I did what she wanted. And nobody really questioned it. That was about a week or so before Christmas. They told us that once you stop dialysis it’s going to be fairly quick and one of the things that reinforces for me that she made the right choice was they said that one of the factors that would influence how quickly it progressed would be her appetite. And she had had a lousy appetite for a long time leading up to this, and the hospice nurses, when we came over, said she’s had the best appetite we’ve seen. So, I mean she was ready.
Mary was born just before Christmas, so she celebrated her very last birthday in hospice, surrounded by her family, and lots of flowers.
Mark: Because there wasn’t any point in giving her birthday gifts.
And then it was Christmas. And even though Mark had made this monumental decision, things just sort of ... progressed as normally as they could, given the circumstances.
Mark: Christmas Eve was similar to Thanksgiving, where we had all the family together but she was in hospice care at that point. We were at my grandmother’s house ... this was as Christmas Eve had pretty much wrapped up … and we finished all the dishes and started to put everything in my grandma’s house back in order, when they called us and said, “OK, she’s getting close.”
So Mark and his family drop what they’re doing and head to hospice to be there as Mary dies.
Mark: She wasn’t really talking, so we couldn’t really have any conversation with her but her eyes … we could see from her eyes she could still look and focus on us. So it’s … this sounds mean, but you know it’s boring. It’s drawn out and there’s really nothing to do but just sit there. And you don’t really want to have conversations because it feels trivial, disrespectful.
By the way, this is not a mean thing to say. Death can be as tedious as it is holy and sacred. Do you have small talk? Do you eat snacks? Do you look at your phone? Play a crossword? Take a nap? The answer is yes. Or no. There is no answer. But as the hours pass, Christmas Eve turns into early Christmas Day. All over the world, kids are asleep, waiting for Santa, and Mark and his sister are waiting for their mother to die.
Mark: We spent four or five hours there together, and we actually were at the point where her breaths were getting so drawn out in between that we kind of were like, “It’s ok now. We’re here.” So we were kind of rotating, taking breaks from being bedside. And so my sister was bedside, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t actually see that final moment.
After all the waiting, after supporting his mother’s decision, Mark was asleep for the last moments of his mother’s life, in the small hours of Christmas Day. And of course, he’s conflicted about that. But he did get to say goodbye to her before she died. He did get some peace.
Mark: To know that it was largely painless at that point was I guess helpful for me.
Mark’s mother died on Christmas. And I guess that makes this a sad story. But to me, it’s such a beautiful story. At such a young age, with such a young mother, he was able to give her the only gift that she wanted. Even if it meant they would never have another Christmas together.
But almost 20 years later… Christmas still happens. And his family still celebrates it, pierogis and all.
Mark Snyder works as an environmental scientist with the state of Minnesota and volunteers his time all over Minneapolis … where he lives with his adorable cats.
Coming up, a conversation about holidays, love and loss with Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, who wrote the moving epilogue to her late husband Paul’s posthumous bestseller, When Breath Becomes Air. This is Terrible, Thanks for Asking
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You always know when you’re doing something for the first time. We measure our relationships in particular in firsts. Your first kiss. Your first date. But your last things … your last kiss, your last date ... can be harder to spot, even when the person you love has a terminal illness.
Lucy and I know each other because, we know this feeling. Our husbands died within a few months of each other. Mine from brain cancer. Hers from lung cancer. Lucy is Lucy Kalanithi. She is a doctor, a mother to a beautiful girl named Cady, and the widow of Dr. Paul Kalanithi. The author of the bestselling When Breath Becomes Air.
Nora: So your last Christmas together was Cady's first Christmas wasn't it? Did you know that that would be your last Christmas together? Did you have a feeling as like a doctor, or a wife or...a human?
Lucy: Yeah ... I think I knew it was more likely than not the last Christmas.
Nora: Here it is … <knocking sound>
Lucy: <opens door> Hi! Enter! Hello!
Nora: Oh my god!
Lucy: Nice to meet you!
Nora: You’re so tall!
I showed up at Lucy’s house in Northern California in early fall. Fall is hard for me. Fall 2014 is when everything fell apart. When I had a miscarriage. When my father died a few days later. When my husband died a few weeks after that. Fall feels like something bad is about to happen. Because this is when the bad things happened to me. This is when all my last things happened, and I didn’t even see them coming.
I use a photo storage service by a company that randomly sends me little presents from my past: a video or a collection of photos from a specific period of time. The other day, it sent me a photo of my late husband, myself, and our then-not-even-two-year-old son. We were dressed up for Halloween. In the photo, you notice that my costume is homemade, that I am mid-laugh. That my son is dressed as a hybrid of a rhino and a monkey. That my husband is wearing a full-on spiderman spandex outfit, including a mask that stretches over his head.
We look young. And happy. And silly. And we were. But that photo also doesn’t tell you that my husband had stage IV brain cancer, that he would die 26 days after that photo was taken. That it was our last Halloween. That we were in the hardest days of our lives -- but also, I think the happiest days of my life. At least that I can remember.
Lucy watched her own husband, the father of her own toddler, go through cancer. Lucy gets me.
Lucy: It was like the fully worst and fully best moments happening almost simultaneously. But the fact of not, for example that Christmas where it's like ... probably this is the last Christmas ... the fact of knowing that... it wasn't like, seize the moment, enjoy every one because it wasn't. It was more like ... there is no future. So like this is it, I’m not like daydreaming about the future or like crowding my thoughts with all these expectations ... it’s just like ... here we are guys and we love each other.
Before they died, our husbands, Paul and Aaron, were both young fathers. Young fathers who left behind toddlers who got one Christmas with their dads. One they have zero chance of remembering.
So, Lucy and I remember it for them. Lucy’s husband’s last Christmas was their daughter Cady’s first.
Lucy: You know, and she was like just starting to eat food ... and she had stripy candy cane pajamas and... like the trappings of that Christmas actually felt really good. And they were like something to do. And then we were at Paul's parents house where he grew up with all our family. And it was just kind of great.
It was great. Like my last Christmas with Aaron was great. Like that disaster of a Halloween was great. Because they were there. Because even their vague presence -- sleeping off chemo in a bedroom down the hall -- was presence.
Nora: Maybe it's almost made the holidays, like, less important to me in some way because ... it wasn't like that ... “Oh we got to do like this very specific thing together,” but it was just the fact of them like, being there. You know and even just the fact of like Paul being there and being so sick being three months away from his death on your last Christmas together but like, he was there.
Lucy: He was there. Right. Right. He's there.
When someone you love deeply dies, you know for certain that you will never be normal again. You will never do another normal thing. You write yourself and your family a permission slip to excuse yourself from normal things like holiday traditions. Like a homemade coupon good for one year of just not doing normal stuff. That’s what I did! And that’s what Lucy did.
Lucy: Paul died in March in 2015, and the next Christmas ... we ... none of us, especially Paul's parents could stand to have it at their house. And so we did a totally new tradition, in which we all went to Palm Springs, California and rented a house with a pool. And my twin, we were following my twin sister there, because she and her extended family on the other side go there every Christmas and we'd never done it. So it's like, we had a whole group of new people ... these two other little cousins, my sister, her in-laws, a new house, that we were renting, and just like a whole new flavor to Christmas.
I got one taste of the Untraditional Holiday and swore I was converted forever. I just wasn’t a holiday person anymore. Not really. The holidays would never be the same for me, so why bother? Instead, I reasoned, I can just choose the times I am joyful and thankful, like I’m at a cafeteria that only serves feelings. I’ll be grateful every week at brunch with our extended family. I’ll be generous all year round.
If you’ll notice, the only person who appears in this entire scenario I described? Is me. ME. A 33-year-old adult. Not my 3-year-old son.
Some of that is normal, right? Ralph was 22 months old when his father died. He doesn’t miss him in the same way I do, because he didn’t know him the same way that I did. And not just at the holidays, just ... all year round.
A problem with grief is that we don’t know enough about what it looks like, even when we’re going through it. And what the people who love us don’t know is that yeah, holidays can be hard, but really, it’s every day that can be hard. You may have had 25 Christmases with your beloved, but that doesn’t make Christmas mean more than the other 9,100 days you spent together over the years. You miss your person in the little things, every day.
Nora: Like because Aaron was four years older than me. And like last year I turned the age that he was when he was diagnosed. And so for me I spent all of age 32 being like, “This is when Aaron knew like his life was going to end.” But it's not as if Christmas and Thanksgiving or Father's Day or Mother's Day are like all that bad because, especially that first year, every single day is like, “This is my first April 7th without Aaron.” This is my first ... like this the first time I've gotten on an airplane and buckled the seat belt without him. Like just things like everything is the first thing that you've ever done.
Lucy: And that age thing is interesting because like I sometimes do that with my parents like ... oh this is the age at which my mom had me or ... whatever sort of milestones people have. The people who were important to you. But yeah this is the biggest one.
So yeah, I had written off the holidays because...they had lost meaning for ME. But that’s not how Lucy’s sees it.
Lucy: There is one thing that I'm really excited about for the holidays, which is having a kid grow into them, and a lot of the traditions will be the same. But like seeing the holidays through her eyes or in our town in California there's one of those streets where everybody just goes completely insane for Christmas and it's called Candy Cane Lane or something and it turns into a one way street in the neighborhood and people go park and walk around and look at these unreal Christmas lights. And, so to think about doing that with her, this year, she's old enough to be really excited about the lights. I think that... I think having a child like reopens traditions for you or makes you appreciate traditions in a different way. Just like many other things to do with seeing the world through a child's eyes, you know. So I think that's like the tradition stretch into the future in a kind of expansive way.
Nora: Yeah Ralph will be ... I mean, almost 4. Like, he will have a new understanding of it. Yeah … yeah maybe I've just been extremely selfish about all of this stuff. Probably. But also because he's just sort of been along for the ride, you know? And like now he is like expanding into his own like person-ness and human-ness.
What you’re hearing is the sound of a person realizing that they might not be the most important person in the equation anymore. Maybe most people realize that the moment they see their baby, but I’m apparently a late bloomer. Or one of those flowers that opens and closes over and over again, that needs to be reminded to open up to the world around it.
The world around me, closest to me, is a son without a father. A boy who doesn’t feel this season as a season of loss, or last things, or things that will never be. A boy who can give me new eyes. Who can force me off my own lonely planet and back onto earth.
Before I met Lucy, I read and re-read the very last paragraph of Paul’s book. Lucy has read it so many times that she can recite it from memory.
Lucy: Paul's talking about the way in which time and his relationship with the future and even the present is so different from when he'd been a future-oriented neurosurgeon ... and now he's dying, and then he says: "Will I write letters to my daughter. I don't know I don't even know what I would say. I only have one thing to say to her and this particular moment." And he says ... "When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been and done and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years. A joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing." Like, a little love letter to her. You know? See … I make the interviewer cry.
Nora: I know, I like read that when I was getting a pedicure. [laughs]
Lucy: So relaxing.
Nora: I know, the lady next to me was like, “Are you ok?” and I was like, “Are YOU ok? Are any of us ok?”
Lucy: Ever?
Our husbands are gone. We have had our last moments with them. And now, we are allowed a lifetime of firsts with the children they gave us. We are still here. And how dumb am I to forget even momentarily what a gift that is? I’m dumb of me, but this is also a process.
Lucy summarized this really well when I asked her the question I ask all of our guests, the question I want everyone to answer more honestly.
Nora: Lucy Kalanithi ... how are you?
Lucy: Oh. I don't even know how to answer that. I'm becoming a person again. That's good. Like, I feel like human participating in what's happening on Earth. Ummm …
Nora: That’s good. That is good.
That is what I’m going to do this year, right now. Be a human. Participate in what’s happening on Earth. I will try to stop making this a season of lasts and try to let it be a season of firsts. I will let this be a season that isn’t just about me. I will let this be a season where I am more focused on the presence of what Aaron left me -- our inquisitive, lovely son -- than the absence Aaron left in me when he died.
I’m going to try. I’ll try.
So, that’s my resolution. For today, for this season, for 2017.
Dr. Lucy Kalanithi is ... awesome. What do you want ... like what do I say? Lucy Kalanithi is a doctor, a mother, a public speaker, and she also wrote the epilogue to her late husband, Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s best-selling memoir When Breath Becomes Air. And coming up, we’ll talk to some of the members of the Hot Young Widows Club about what they want out of 2017, plus a story of holiday romance and petulance from comedian Amber Tozer. You are listening to “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.”
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Comedian Amber Tozer has written one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. I laughed so hard somebody on an airplane told me to keep it down. Seriously, if you still have gifts to buy for people… just get a copy of Sober Stick Figure.
Before Amber became a successful writer and comedian, she lived her wild, drunken 20s in New York. And during one of those years, she came home to stay with her mom for Christmas, like she usually did...
Amber: It’s Christmas eve and I wake up and I’m hung over ... this is when I was drinking heavily ... and I have to go do some last-minute Christmas shopping. And, of course, I just go to Walmart, because that’s what you do. And I buy some really bad Christmas gifts for my family.
Nora: It’s the thought that counts.
Amber: Yeah yeah! I’m a much better person now ... that’s the point. And I come home, and I’m still in my pajamas just hungover and just a little crusty ... and I walk into the house and it’s spotless. And I’m like, “What’s going on?” And I go into my mom’s room, and she’s in there and she looks beautiful. She’s in this dress ... it was long and like a v-cut...but it was green ... it wasn’t white. And I said, “What … are you going to church?” And she was like, “Oh, what are you ... what are you doing here?” And I said, “well, it’s Christmas Eve ... I’m home for the holidays. I’ve been staying here for a few days ... what do you mean what am I doing here?”
Nora: I’ve been your child for 22 years...we’ve been doing this for literally 22 years.
Amber: “Hi, my name’s Amber.” She was like, “Oh, I just thought you were going to be gone today.” I said, “I’m going to hang out here until we go to the Christmas Eve party.” I said, “What are you ... what’s going on? You going to church?”
Amber: And she said, “No ... Wayne and I are getting married today.” And I was like “what?!? Where?!?” And she said “in the living room.” And I said “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” And she said, “well I just...I didn’t want to bother anyone with it…” I’m like “Mom...this is huge.” And I wasn’t very articulate back then I was hungover, I was young I was just...I had all of these emotions that I coulnd’t really spit out. So my natural thing was to just shut down. So I was like “alright.” ” So then...I just feel like a fly on the wall at this point, because I’m not even supposed to be there. I wasn’t even invited. And I was just filling up with rage. I was like “I can’t believe this is”...
Nora: Also you’re still in your pajama pants. Just so everyone knows.
Amber: I’m in my pajamas with like plastic bags from Walmart. And everyone’s nice to me you know...Wayne is like “oh hey kid I’m glad you’re here now you can take some pictures.” And he hands me this disposable camera. So they have this little ceremony in the living room. They were just standing there by the TV...in front of a couch... And I sit off to the side… on some stair that lead to upstairs. And I’m...and I think...you know...I’m supposed to be taking pictures of this and I didn’t want to...so I just took pictures of the dog. I did not even...I don’t know if they have any pictures of that day because I was the only one with a camera and I just took pictures of the dog. Because I was so upset. And they have this cute little ceremony...it’s really short… and then I go upstairs and I send tons of emails to my friends being like “you’re not going to believe this...but I just walked in on my mom’s wedding.”
A: And...it’s over...but that night we had a huge party at my aunt Sabrina’s house. Which is traditional...you know there’s like 30 or 40 of us... And everyone is really upset with my mom. And she...honestly...I think that’s when she started to regret it... And...so we have the party and...my brother and I get buzzed...and I’m still staying with her. At her house. And it was late...I think it was like 1 or 2 in the morning. And we’re sitting in her driveway and we’re just...a little drunk and like “can you believe it? I can’t belive she did this.” And I’m like…”let’s TP...let’s go get toilet paper and TP her house for getting us a new dad for Christmas.” And he’s like “yeah!”
N: Wait...while she sleeps soundly on her wedding night.
A: Yes! God...it was...and then I remember being in the house and it was dark...and just having to be real quiet going to each of the bathrooms...I didn’t want to make too much noise and there was only a couple rolls of toilet paper…
N: You were going to TP her with her own toilet paper?
A: Yes! I went into her house to steal her toilet paper to TP her house on her wedding day. And… we need way more. And my mom’s friend Jan...who is this hilarious hippie lady...buys...every single family member...a roll of paper towels for Christmas. As a joke. For years she’s been buying paper towels...she wraps them up...we each get a paper towel. And we love it because you always need paper towels.
N: Had you already unrwapped them or did you unwrap them?
A: I think we had to unwrap them.
N: So you were like the Grinch stealing Christmas…
A: Yeah.
N: And then…
A: [laughs] we had loads of paper towels from Hippie Jan that are wrapped up and Christmas...so I bring out all the paper towels that Jan had bought...and we PT’d her house with paper towels. And then I slept in the house. That’s where I was staying. My brother went home… I slept in the house that I TP’d...and the next morning...most of it was gone because it was really windy. So it was like at the neighbor’s house...all the paper towels had just...it looked like someone had just trashed the neighborhood. So upsetting.
N: So you didn’t even get like the desired effect, which was...at the time...that night you were like “my mom’s going to wake up and just know ...”
A: Yeah!
N: “We don’t approve.”
A: She’s going to know we’re upset. But I do … you know, I sort of feel bad telling this story, because my mom is incredible. She’s not a horrible person. And I have more empathy for now because she honestly ... in her head I know she was thinking “I don’t want to bother anyone with this.” Even though it seemed like a selfish move. I know her well and I know she was thinking “I’ve been divorced twice”... and … thank God we all like Wayne ...you know, it wasn’t him at all.
N: Did you open presents that day then?
A: Yeah! We did. It was sort of business as usual. And Wayne was there. And we were like “well, he’s going to be here now.” [laughs] Christmas. But he buys gifts so that’s nice. He always gives cash so I was like “alright.”
Amber Tozer is a comedian and author. Her book, Sober Stick Figure, can be found anywhere books are sold, and it is so funny I would not recommend reading it in a public place because people found my laugh disturbing.
Moe: Can I ask you a question?
G: Yeah.
M: Are you afraid to make a mistake? Are you afraid to crumble?
G: Yeah. Absolutely.
When your life falls apart, people *always* want to know how you do it. How you keep putting one foot in front of the other. How you live. And the answer is mundane and true: you don’t have a choice. It needs to be done.
Nora: Well, should we call to order this first meeting of the HYWC? Should we?
Faye: You need like a gavel.
Right now, you’re listening in to a top secret meeting of the Hot Young Widows Club. Okay, it’s not a secret. We had it in my kitchen.
The Hot Young Widows Club started as kind of a joke. Something my friend Moe and I would use to refer to our time together. But it’s actually a real thing now. What qualifies you to be in the HYWC? Um … your person has to die. That’s basically it. You don’t actually have to be a certain age or look a certain way. Just to be clear. And as the club -- which is a secret group on Facebook -- grows, it’s cool and it’s hard. Because someone found a group they needed, but they need it because they lost their person. Every new member signifies a huge loss, a hole punched into the center of someone else’s universe.
We rarely meet in person, because we’re all over the world and a lot of us have kids and also, it’s just hard when you’re all grown-ups with full-time jobs and full-time grief, but I asked Faye and Gena and Moe to come over for Thai food and drinks and talk about the kind of stuff we talk about online in our secret Facebook group.
Nora: Okay ... so ... I’m Nora. My husband Aaron died of brain cancer in November, 2014.
Moe: I’m Moe. My husband died by suicide in September, 2014.
Gena: I’m Gena ... and my husband dropped dead on a run in September of 2012 ... and I was 20 weeks pregnant.
Faye: I’m Faye. My husband Jason died in a bike accident involving the light rail last December, so it’s almost a year.
Moe and Gina and Faye and I lost our husbands in wildly different ways. We have experienced each of these losses so differently. But we share this common thread of experience. Of losing our own personal north star, and then having to paw around in the darkness on our own. Through a full year of firsts...a first day without our person, a first week, a first Holiday. This is Gena:
Gena: We celebrated things differently… for Thanksgiving...I think we went to my brother’s house instead… usually we went to my mom and dad’s but... I think the thing that bugged me the most was they had some other people there and they .. they just kind of avoided the topic...and you know they...they kind of treat you with kid gloves or something...it was…
Nora: If you’re not going to bring it up that I will then forget.
Gena: Exactly...it’s not like it’s not happening.
Moe: I call that...everyone stares at me...the puppy that no one wants to adopt. They do talk it’s...tilt and an “aaaaahhhh…”
Gena: Totally!
Moe: … but they don’t know what to say and they don’t say it so they just stare and smile a lot or like...they have all these expressions but no one says anything...and you’re just like…
G: Just acknowledge it.
M: He’s...he’s dead
N: Talk about it.
G: Yeah. It happened.
M: And it’s the holidays and it sucks.
For those of us in the HYWC, all of our husbands are stuck in time. We will get older, and they will stay the same age, locked in the same year. But we do nothing for them or us or our children by trying to anchor ourselves to the past. The world, whether we like it or not, will keep spinning. And it’s our job to move ourselves forward. I don’t believe in moving on. I never say moving on. Moving on implies that these people we loved are left behind, and anyone who has lost someone they love knows that is impossible. We don’t move on. We move forward, and their love and loss remains a part of us, forever. So, that’s our job. With a New Year coming for us.
M: Well...I turn 40 in 2017...and that’s like...
G: So am I, Moe.
M: Yes! And feeling old and like... like I’ve been really working hard at setting boundaries. And I also have...a man friend...and figuring out what that is like. And being ok with saying that I have a man friend ...because that is awesome. You get happy about things. But you’re sad about it so I think it’s like… figuring out what I want my relationships with everybody to be and that I get to choose how I want them to be and if they don’t like it... they don’t have to be...my friend my family or whatever. So I think I’m going to learn to be...more selfish. Does that sound horrible?
All: Love it! Sounds good!
M: And...I want to get botox.
N: Same.
All: [laugh]
N: 2017 is going to be just a weird year for me. The next time you see me...I will have a new face.
All: [laugh]
N: Faye...what do you want out of the next year?
F: I think for me I spent 2016 like you Nora...really wanting to make everyone comfortable and I didn’t want to make anyone more sad and I felt like ... because I don’t have kids, I get to just focus on myself a lot. And I thought I would take a really long time to cope and figure this out and figure out who I was. And I found that the more I put my energy into that and made it like a priority to learn about myself and who I was without Jason, I found myself pretty quickly. And I purposefully did things like traveling by myself, just to see like what do I do when I’m traveling like, what decision do I make when there’s like no one here to collaborate with...or to share the moment with? Jason and I had been together since we were like 18 and became adults together and so eventually I came to the point where what I wanted for my future in 2016 was eventually to be married again. Now, 2017 looks weird and interesting and scary and crazy and.. I want to be. unapologetic. I want to celebrate being unapologetic.
Moe: I think when you lose your partner or someone close to you...they die...you’re reborn a new person...and then you’re spending the rest of this time like...learning this new life and this new person all at the same time and it’s like… I like parts of my new person. Being selfish is kind of awesome in some ways I don’t know if it’s being selfish I think it’s learning yourself and being ok with it.
Faye: Yep. And just making decisions based on...like what is my happiness look like and what am I pursuing in order to achieve that happiness versus...how can I make everyone else really comfortable. And I don’t want to be rude to anyone and I don’t want step on their toes and I don’t want to make anything harder for them...but at the same time...I think they need to understand too the steps that they need to go through to do the same thing like don’t look to me to...try and help you through this like...we all need to...I think just focus on… on ourselves a little bit.
Now it’s Gena’s turn. Gena’s the most experienced of us widows. It’s been four years for her. When her husband died, her daughter was a toddler, and her son wasn’t even born yet. She gave birth a few months after her husband died.
Gena: I think I was giving grief too much space in my life. And I just felt like I’ve been so focused on taking care of my kids and not letting things fall apart. And so in 2017 I think I would just like to pursue more that makes me happy. I would like to be in a relationship again and I haven’t found anybody ... and I think it’s partially because I compare all of them to Brian and that’s a really hard, high level for someone to be compared to, but I really like a lot of who I am since he died and ... I really realized how much I like being in charge. And that’s great for my family because I get to tell my kids what to do and I get to make the decisions for their upbringing and I’m really comfortable doing it. And I didn’t know that I was going to be that way. My husband was always kind of the stronger parent, and I think the day that I had to tell Zoey that her dad was dead was the worst day of my life. And I think about how strong I’ve had to be for her. And how I would like to now focus a little bit on me.
None of us are where we expected to be. None of us would have ever found each other without these losses. And it’s a weird thing, being grateful for people who are only in your life because of the worst thing that ever happened to you. But that’s what we have. We have our dead husbands, and our weird lives, and each other. And a future we’re walking towards, together, ready or not.
Nora: Well thank you for doing this with me, everybody. Cheers! We’re drinking, in case anybody was wondering, a new drink, invented by Moe...it’s called the Hot Young Widow. It is part lemon tea, part ginger tea, and part Fireball.
Gena: And it’s real good.
N: Ask for it by name...at any bar...they’re familiar with it.
All: [laugh]
I don’t have any science to back this up but I’m pretty sure that the worst parts of us comes out in various parking lots during this time of year. You know why? Because even if you are Susie Holidays, this stuff is stressful! I promise I’m not a Grinch, and I hope you all have the best holiday season ever. Or, if you’re having the worst holiday season, you just skip it altogether and go see all the movies or something. You’re totally allowed and I wish someone would have told me that back when I was trying to choke down mashed potatoes before my husband had even been cremated. You’re totally allowed to love the holidays, or hate them, or to want to love them and then actually decide in the middle of dinner that you hate them again. You are allowed to decorate your whole house like you’re a real-life Pinterest Board or...not even bother. You’re allowed all of your multitudes, and all of your feelings. Every day, of course. But especially these days.
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” Our producer is Hans Buetow. Thank you to Lucy Kalanithi, Mark Snyder, Amber Tozer, HYWC, McInernys … and thank you for listening. We wish you a very happy Holiday season. Seriously. So happy. We have a weekly podcast where we have conversations about difficult things with humor and frankness. You can find Terrible, Thanks for Asking on iTunes or wherever you get podcasts. Terrible, Thanks for Asking is a production of American Public Media.