The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
There are some stories so plainly horrifying, some crimes so gut wrenching, that it can be hard to imagine the perpetrator as anything other than a villain. A drunk driving accident that killed 6 people does not sound like the beginning of a redemption story. But this episode isn’t about redemption — it’s about learning to live alongside an unthinkable mistake.
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This transcript is a living document and is not in its final version.
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Podcast Intro: How are you? Most people answer that question with fine or good, but obviously it's not always fine and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain, to just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated.
I'm Nora McInerny and this is terrible, thanks for asking.
L. Robert Veeder: I speak at public schools, Quite a bit. And I always hold off why I'm there. They don't know why I'm showing up. I'm there to talk about addiction, and then I'll share some of my own story.
L. Robert Veeder: And then when I get to that point where I'm like, I was in this drinking and driving accident, six people died. That's where the room goes quiet, and so I don't, so I think people aren't used to hearing that sort of level of devastation,
You've probably seen a car wreck on the side of the road at some point: cars crumpled into each other, EMTs and Firefighters swarming around. They're horrible...but we always look. We want to know what happened.
Maybe you've been in a horrible wreck. Maybe you've lost someone in one. But you probably haven't been the person who caused it.
But Robert is.
L. Robert Veeder: It was, it was my fault. And so I get out of the van and I'm just trying to figure out what had happened and, and there's just people lying everywhere, people screaming. Somebody was standing behind me and they said, Who did this? Who caused this?
And he has spent years of his life since this accident bearing his darkest moments so that teenagers might avoid the depths of addiction that he faced. The choices he made because of that addiction. The consequences of those actions, some of which are so big they can never be righted.
How does someone get back from that point? A point so low, that so few people sink to, let alone come back from? And how did they get there?
L. Robert Veeder: I grew up in a house where there was always alcohol available. I wouldn't describe my father as having an alcohol use disorder, but he was, he drank constantly. Mostly beer.
There was wine in the house. And my sister was religious and she I don't know if she's ever drank at all in her life. She's a little two years older than me. She, and so I grew up as an eighties kid where I think drinking was very modeled, like the best the shows we watched were Cheers and mash and in Cheers, it was like the, there was Cliff and Norm who went to the bar every day after work and they talk, and and then Mash, they had a martini distillery in their tent, it was the eighties, right?
And so it's just a different different time
I started probably drinking, like sneaking drinks when I was between 12 and 14. Around then, and I started like many of the kids back then smoking weed about the same time. Weed was probably easier to get than alcohol. I think that's probably still true because alcohol's so regulated.
And but I didn't for me it wasn't like a thing of wanting to fit in so much. I, I just was genuinely curious about substances themselves. I, you hear all the, you would hear all these things in school about if you drink alcohol and it'll make you act goofy and you'll lose all your sort of social filters.
And if you smoked weed, you'll be like really laid back. And if you take hallucinogens, you can see things that aren't there. And, and and so I wanted to do those things. I just wanted to know what that was like. I didn't understand how your brain could do that I always thought of myself as doing sort of a chemical experiment with all of the above, meant whatever was put in front of me.
Throughout high school when I, when bad things would happen in my life, I had a friend who had been in a drinking, in a driving accident. He ran through a mailbox, a brick mailbox and a brick split his head open. And he lived through that. But after that he had pro, the mental capacity of maybe a two year old, and so when that happened, the way we handled that was not to go, not to discuss it. It was, we got high at it. That's just what we did, and when my girlfriend broke up with me, I got high when any ever, anything bad would happen, that was my, became my go-to.
So I would say that was my resource for when things go bad. This is what you do, this is how you handle life.
Nora McInerny: So that’s how he handled life. And it didn’t work all that well.
In between high school and college he ended up in court mandated counseling for about a year after a drinking and driving accident. It was a new scene for Robert, sitting in a circle of a lot of older, tough guys who were bearing it all for their AA group.
L. Robert Veeder: but they started talking about our fucking feelings. I was like, what is this? I'd never seen anything like that in my life. So I was like, whatever they're doing, I want to do that. But I didn't wanna not drink, so I just wanted what I liked that I liked the community. I like how open people were and how they talk about things so openly, especially like old, older, white men.
You just didn't see that.
I wanted whatever they had because it felt like I belonged in something. But they were like, you know, they were talking about like beating up little ladies with baseball bats, you know, and I had never done any of that stuff. So I was 18, you know, so, um, so I didn't wanna, um, so I just felt like I didn't fit in.
And then I started going to, um, other Narcotics Anonymous meetings, cuz they had a younger crowd, you know, and I was joking, like, well, the girls were better looking. That was why I went there, you know, which also did not keep me sober. That didn't work, you know? Uh, so I even there, I did that for maybe like in and out for like a year.
So I, I guess I was like 19 or something, maybe 20. And then all my friends were going off to college and like partying and I was like, well maybe that was, maybe I was just, I didn't have any like evidence that this was a problem other than like, sometimes things went a little haywire. Most of my friends who were in college sort of said the same thing, right?
They went off to school, they partied and woo got outta control and now I reel it back in, you know?
So it's hard to see as a problem
L. Robert Veeder: just thought maybe I'm just around the wrong people and I, and I don't know where the right people are. So if I can go to this place that'll solve it.
I went to college and it was a party for all of nine months maybe. And then I checked myself into a treatment center.
I had met a woman who I spent probably, I think the next nine years with about, and and had really started to mellow out.
wedding in like her grandmother's backyard, like little grassroots, very sweet. But we never signed a marriage certificate. In fact, we had the money to go, we were very poor.
We went to go buy, go downtown to get the marriage certificate. And both of us were like, there was a line, we had money in our pocket. So we were like let's go to the bar, have a couple of drinks. And we just never got a marriage certificate, so we never got legally married.
We were together for a few more years and then one night, I think she had just reached a point where she's I I really had it.
And she walked out and and I didn't even know there was a problem.
MUSIC
I think we really cared about each other a lot. I think we grew up together. We were young when we met, and we were trying to put a life together. think I probably like looking back wasn't very present for a lot of the marriage. I think my marriage today is very different, but we were good friends I think There wasn't a lot of fighting. There wasn't like we didn't argue a lot. We had very similar worldviews and even similar upbringing I think we were good friends. We, but my use was increasing and I, my dependence was increasing and I think it was just really hard for me to be present in her life.
And so I just ended up like losing, I was just high all the time. I got, I ended up losing my job. My house was foreclosed on.
And then the only thing that's actually helping me feel okay is the drugs and the alcohol. So I'm not gonna stop that. That wouldn't make any sense at all. And then I started, ended up at, which is also not uncommon, I ended up having a lot of suicidal ideation, right?
So then I wake up every morning with I'm sleeping on a friend's couch, and then this friend's couch and I'm driving around with a toothbrush in my car. Cuz then I don't know where I'm gonna be tomorrow. And so then I'm thinking like, I don't, I'm not sure that I can keep living at all. So I wake up every day with the suicidal ideation and rather than kill myself, I drink, I get high.
And helps me make it through the rest of the day.
Nora McInerny: Drugs and alcohol are how Robert gets through the pain of being alive. He's 32 and he's been through a series of big losses, including the death of a very close friend. He feels like he’s coming undone, and even though it might not look like it, he IS trying. He spends more time with family, more time trying to get sober.
Robert’s substance abuse has a cycle to it, and part of that cycle is thinking he’s on sure footing, playing with the ideas of sobriety and moderate alcohol consumption.
MUSIC
But what's "moderate alcohol consumption?" Because -- and people hate to hear this -- there's no amount of alcohol that is actually healthy for you. It's just so well-marketed. It's a part of American culture. Alcohol IS American culture.
[SUPERCUT OF ALCOHOL COMMERCIALS, MUSIC REFS, TV REFS, ETC]
Societally, there's nothing dissuading us from participating in the culture of alcohol. There is only the encouragement to participate, and participate HEAVILY.
The CDC says that binge drinking constitutes having 5 or more alcoholic drinks on one occasion for a man, and 4 or more drinks on one occasion for a woman.
I don't know about you, but by those measures, I was binge drinking almost every time I consumed alcohol as a young adult and adult adult. There was zero sense of moderation, and zero incentive for moderation. My friends and I just wanted to get fucked up.
And the more you drink, and the more people you know who drink, the more normal all of this excessive, crazy drinking seems.
L. Robert Veeder: if you drink like I drink, Halloween's a great holiday Halloween at New Year's Eve because everybody looks like you do for the night so you're not doing anything abnormal.
This -- Halloween 2003 -- is the night that changes everything.
MUSIC FADE OUT
MIDROLL 1
THEME CHIME
Halloween of 2003 is the night that sets everything in motion. But it's the events of the following day that are forever etched in Robert's mind.
Robert spent Halloween like he spent most of his days: he woke up hungover and smoked weed. He did his job assignments as a tile worker. And by the end of the day he was drinking heavily with a group of bar friends, playing bluegrass music and hopping around town.
It’s now November 1st:
L. Robert Veeder: I woke up that morning and I was just hungover. I was living with a friend named Tommy. He was a really good, he was a good guy, but he wasn't there. And I had a little dog named Gracie, who I named after Gracie Allen. George Burns his wife, and I just love that dog so much. And so I woke up and played with her and wrestled and she wanted she played tug of war and all this stuff, but I was feeling sick because I was hungover and I was pretty severely hungover cuz the day before his Halloween.
and also I don't know, just tired. I think I was tired a lot in those days. A lot more tired than I am now. And and maybe a little sad and a little lonely. And I went to the local, it was a sandwich shop, but it was a bar where we all hung out and it was like 11 in the morning.
I was just trying to take it easy that day and so I just had tried to order a cup of coffee and they had run outta coffee, so I ordered a beer mostly to make the hangover go away. It was a kind of a normal day for me. There was nothing that unusual about that day, i. I had gotten to a point where I didn't like people to know how much I was drinking, so I would not spend a lot of time at one bar or another. So I spent a little, maybe a couple of hours there, and then went to another bar down the street and spent some time there and saw some friends there and hung out.
And, then another bar that evening but I was really, genuinely just tired and wanted to go home. And I had been out late the night before. My hangover was mostly gone. I was feeling like comfortably numb. I didn't feel intoxicated. I'd I wouldn't say I'd drove intoxicated frequently that time, that night I didn't think I was intoxicated, so I'd gotten to the van to go home
MUSIC
highway 54 in Raleigh, North Carolina, behind the state fairgrounds. And so they t-boned into another car and somebody had been hurt and some people heard that accident or saw that accident, and a bunch of people stopped to help. So some kids go into a college party, I think.
I'm not positive about all of this. They stop, they see this accident has happened and they pull this guy outta the car and another guy who's on a bicycle, here's the accident and he rides up. And and it's not even late, I don't think. I think it was like around 8 15, 8 30 and I hop in the van and I gotta go home.
It's only three miles to my house, so this is like textbook, and I another couple had a football game had just led out at the local university at NC State University. And people had were leaving that and a couple had stopped with their, I think two of their three sons in the back of the car and they pulled over the side of the highway to help.
So just a bunch of people stopped to help, and and I'm driving home and I took that highway. Because I knew there wouldn't be any police on it. It was a straight shot. I gotta make one right turn and then I'm home. And I came over a hill and there's just a bunch of people in the middle of the road, so I didn't know what to do.
So I slammed on the brakes, which didn't work cuz of anti-lock brakes kicking in, and then I looked across the highway and I was like I'll go across the highway. There wasn't anybody there, so I turned it, turned the wheel to try to head that way, which might have been the worst thing I could have done.
MUSIC
it's been almost 20 years since that night, and I can still see their faces before I hit them. And I didn't even know that I had hit them I didn't know what had happened. I was just trying to, I didn't understand why there were people in the road. And so I just tried to go into the oncoming lane, and then I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, so I was thrown out of the car seat because the airbag had gone off the car alarm is blaring. So I got out of the car and then was like, it was such a such a confused scene. There were like, there were people screaming and there were bodies and there were people running trying to help.
And then a kid who had just watched both of his parents get killed said, who did this? And so I started screaming, oh my God, I can't believe I've killed these people. Then I wanted to help. But I didn't know what to do.
And so there was a guy who was dying on the highway and I just went over to him and I was, he was screaming and I just said, I, you've just been in a terrible accident. And then I just went over and sat on the side of the road and I started holding my knees and rocking, so about that time the police showed up and said, did you do this? And I said, yeah, I guess I did. And so they put me in the car.
it's one of those things your body doesn't know how to process. I think about this often with I didn't people do hit and runs and we always think that's like the worst thing anybody can ever do. But say I understand why people run I didn't feel like, oh, I gotta get away from this. I'm gonna be in so much trouble. more like something that's just buried deep down within us that when you're encountering this much overwhelm and trauma than we have to flee. We have to get outta there fortunately for me, legally, I froze rather than them fled. I tried to go help somebody, but I didn't know what to do.
MUSIC FADE OUT
They took me down to local ATC center or something. And while I was in there, they said, we have a warrant for your blood here. You can either fight us and we can strap you down at the table or we can just take it. I wasn't trying to be a dick. You can take my blood. And I just was told not to take a breathalyzer and So they did.
so we had to wait for blood results to come back. And and I figured I might be close to the legal limit, but I wasn't beyond it. And it turned out I was over twice the legal limit, but I just had such high to tolerance,
So at that point, when we were walking out of there to be taken to the local county jail, they said I heard on the television that an alleged drunk driver had just struck and killed, I think six or, and they might have even said eight people or something like that. I ended up hitting nine people altogether, and six of 'em died. And but even then I was like they, no, I couldn't have done all that. I didn't, I'm sure certainly there's just some, there was so much chaos, they just don't know what's happened yet or something. So they took me to the jail and about that time, I think I had just started having I don't know, involuntary twitches and eye twitches and shakes, and they put me on suicide watch in the county jail. Which is they just give you a suit made outta like a paper towel so you can't hang yourself. And they, the cell's made outta like, it's like a fish tank. Like they, everybody can see you so they can see you go to the bathroom. Not that by that time all everything's shutting down anyway. You don't have to go to the bathroom. Yeah, that was that was it. And I didn't know like enough about the criminal justice system to know like what they do for anything like that. Is that I don't I'd never thought about prison or jails. Is that something you get a death penalty for? Is that something, do they put me in prison for the rest of my life or I had no idea.
And I think the very first time I really went this is just definitely a problem was I several days, maybe a few days later, my, it's all mashed up in my head still, so I'm, but. I was told by my family that bail had been set and they could bail me out of jail, but they were afraid until the trial. But they were afraid to do that because they thought that if I, if they did it, I might drink and get or, and get high or kill myself. And and it was such a huge media event at the time that I was afraid that they might be right. And then, so I remember going holy, I've been waiting, like my whole life for things to get bad enough that I'm just gonna stop.I've been homeless twice, had lost every relationship. Now six people have been killed and it still wasn't bad enough. So there's not a bad enough, during my trial, many of the family members got up to say their peace. I had pled no contest, which is like guilty, the family members had all begged over and over whatever you do, please don't drink again.
Please don't use drugs. So that was done for me. It was just for a while I was like I'm just gonna try this as an experiment. I think I had this very visceral thing of I've been getting high. More of my life than not, like what would happen if I just stopped, if I just stopped doing that,
MUSIC
This is sounds so stupid to say. I think this a lot though, but I, back then I genuinely didn't see it as Putting other people at risk I thought eventually I was putting my driver's license at risk. Eventually I'd get caught. Many of my friends had DWIs. gonna be expensive and annoying, but so what? So I didn't see it as oh, this could really harm somebody cause I've heard other people say the same thing oh, I think I'm a better driver under the influence. I don't think that was true for me. But I think what they're missing in that equation is might be true. You might be able to pull it off all the time successfully, as long as nothing happens. As long as a weird event. And I think that was what happened for me was like, if I was just going home, I was, nobody's in this discovery.
Nobody was saying, oh, he was weaving. I wasn't speeding. I was keeping it in between the lines, as long as nothing unusual happened, I would've been home, probably safe and sound that night.
Nora McInerny: But 6 people are dead: an 18-year-old college freshman, a young father and his friend who’d just gone to a college football game, a couple visiting from Charlotte, a man who lived nearby… all good samaritans who had gotten out of their cars to help two people got into a fender bender on the highway.
At the sentencing, when the families gave their victim impact statements, the parents of the college freshman offered to donate his remaining college money to Robert’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
Robert was sentenced to up to 12 years in prison. He served 9.
L. Robert Veeder: You can't even complain about that amount of time. They genuinely could have locked me up forever. prison and jail, there's like a parallel process, right? So you're trying to wrap your head around this whole huge event thing that's happened. This person that you're be, you've become and you still have to survive. Like jail culture, prison culture. You have to not get stabbed, not get raped, not, all the things that go along with that.
I was so sad, on just all the time, and I didn't think there would ever be a way I could not be sad anymore, and that lasted for years. Every day I would just, I cried so much that that it just hurt, like my physical cheeks hurt just from the, I don't know, from the tears and they just wouldn't stop running all the time. And just couldn't believe I had done this to people. Not even just the people who had been killed, but my god, their families. There's just, and there's just no way to make it better. No way to take it back, so I had a friend, Dino, who I was locked up with, he'd been locked up since 1957.
Yeah. Still he'll never get out, and he was just immensely helpful for me. But I remember asking him one time man, how do I make amends for this thing? And Dino was like, you just do it by the way you live. And by the way, you live your life. And so I think that became really profound for me.
MUSIC
I had been passively suicidal for a couple to a few years. And I was, the yard had just closed. And I was going back in from the yard and it, I don't, I couldn't even tell you the time of year, but I remember going into my I was lucky. I was at a single cell unit for a while so I had my own cell, which is actually nicer than being surrounded by bunks. I, so I had, I went back to my cell it was sunset. You can't see out of the windows. They're just lanne and they're all scratched up, so you can't see anything. But I remember the light was coming through the windows and I had this sort of epiphany where I was somehow obsessively making this whole thing about me still, and like all I could think was like, poor me. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I've done this. I can't believe how I've hurt these people and their families, and. How am I gonna be this person who walks through the world? Is this, who's done this horrific thing, this unfixable thing, and was, I just had this, it was just this great moment of oh man, I'm still making it all about me. I'm not even grieving them properly because I'm not giving them the space their grief. I'm still being self obsessed, and And think, and I remember thinking like it I, that dishonors them my sorrow. And I, and so I don't want that misunderstood because I don't, because I think it's important to have sorrow and grief. But there was a point where my sorrow was doing them a disservice. It did the opposite of honoring them. And that if then I was able to think okay, what should this look like? How do I turn this into something that can be useful and helpful? And I didn't know the answer to that question, so that's I think what you had said really was like it wasn't like, Oh, at that moment everything went it was like let's clean out the old barn and put on a show but that was the moment where I think I started realizing, oh, I think I can heal and I can get out and I can help. And that this story doesn't have to just be a tragedy that there can be, that this can actually help other people too,
Nora McInerny: where do you start?
L. Robert Veeder: That started in prison. It was Christmas and they had asked me to join the men's club in prison. In prison. So the men's club is just like this. They take pictures during visitation of people with their families. They sell the pictures for $2 and we raise money for different things around the community or whatever else we can do, and so I was in the men's club and it was Christmas time and I had been called down to programs to wrap Christmas presents that somebody had gone out and bought for us to give to other people's kids.
Men who's who were incarcerated. They weren't home, so they couldn't provide presents. So we would wrap presents and their kids would get some presents and so I'm in programs and I'm laughing because I'm like, I have to be. Now monitored in my life to manage tape and scissors.
I'm too, Dan. I've reached that point of I am that dangerous to society that I can no longer have tape but but it was okay. It was Christmas time and so I'm in programs and I'm wrapping these presents and I'm like, man, this actually is awesome. I feel pretty good, and and I'm like, this is. This is what I should have been doing the whole time. This is what
To be doing with life then it turns out that I have that epiphany and it, then they don't let you go. They're not like, okay, you get it now, you can leave. I think I still have six more years to do after that. But it did add to the oh, okay. It's really? That's what it's about. Service to others. That's what we are we're here to do. Maybe not everybody, but that's certainly what I'm here to do and when I do that, I'm living my of right life that's, There's nothing that can compare to that.
There's no amount of money, there's no amount of stuff that just can compare to I can help other people
There's not much use in you just spending the rest of your life wearing a hair shirt and beating yourself with a whip. Get to work, go do something. Find a way to help people. And and so that was huge for me.
Cuz all of a sudden I went from being the, being another person in this accident whose life had been devastated to being a person in this accident who had a purpose.
Nora McInerny: What did it look like to build a meaningful life once you were already dead? Once you were already in prison?
L. Robert Veeder: I don't know if this is a true story, but R. Buckminster Fuller was a sort of famous inventor and back in 1929 during the stock market crash he was, he had lost everything.
He was a newlywed. I think I remember reading this, so sometimes I might not be getting this exactly right. And he had stood on the edge of a cliff and he was like, that's it, I'm gonna take my own life. And he just couldn't go on like that.
There's also a great quote from the movie, Heathers from the eighties. From the 1980s that Christian Slater, was he the guy? Yeah. So his character said this in that movie too, that was similar.He goes, now that you're dead, what do you wanna do with your life? And that's my Christian Slater impression.
But that was Buck Mr. Fuller, who was like as long as I've. As long as I've reached this point where I'm no longer alive then there's, I can do anything.
There's if it life, if life is empty and there are no rules then I get to decide what my life is gonna be. Like all the norms that we grew up, all the expectations that we grew up with for ourselves was thrown out the window and now I'm empty. I'm just a vessel for. And I don't have any expectations or norms. I can go anywhere with that. I can do anything with that. And but again the question becomes how do you make that meaningful? So you can fill that bucket in a lot of different ways, but if you want to have a good life, to me it seems the way to do that is to. Embrace the joyful moments. Really celebrate everything that we can.
MUSIC
And I thought of my sobriety as that, of like, all right I'm gonna stay sober and I'm not gonna hurt anymore people. There's no way that in hell I'm gonna do that anymore. So we'll just see where this thing goes, and if it reaches a point where I have to drink or get high again, I'm gonna take my own life, because I'm just not willing.
Because every time I've gotten high, it's gotten worse and I'm just not I don't know what's worse, but I'm not gonna find out either.
Robert seems like he got everything he could out of his time in prison for the crimes he committed. It gave him the time and space to actually reflect on his life and what had led him to his prison cell. It aided him in getting and staying sober, at least at first. He even met his current wife, Cara, through writing letters to her while he was in prison – that’s another podcast.
But what comes after prison? Who is Robert nine years after the worst day of his life…and the last day of 6 others?
MUSIC FADE OUT
MIDROLL 2
THEME CHIME
Nora McInerny: Those are some good bird sounds we have.
L. Robert Veeder: yeah, actually I've got the window open. We live across from like a farmland, so there's not much here. Is it gonna be driving past on occasion,
Nora McInerny: And now it's I like a little texture to the audio. Like I like hearing a,
love hearing a crow. I really do.
As I sit down with Robert, I don't know what to expect. But a harmonica solo wasn't on my list.
L. Robert Veeder: I ask one favor real quick?
Nora McInerny: Megan? Yeah.
L. Robert Veeder: Meg. Okay. That I, if I can, I'd like to play harmonica for a minute. Can I give you the background story behind it?
All right. I I've always played music and I've always played something.
I was in high school band and then I started playing harmonica years and years ago. And when I was in active use, when I was drinking down south, they had liquor houses. I, that doesn't really exist anywhere by the south anymore. So liquor houses tended to be in people's neighborhoods.
They were usually like in black neighborhoods. And Way back in the day when black people weren't allowed to open businesses down south, they would just start selling liquor out of their living room. And so most of the neighborhoods that I went to that were like poor neighborhoods, had liquor houses. And I would go there and hang out and you kinda had to know somebody. And we'd play music and I'd play harmonica, and so what I thought was like, I was like, Alan Lo Lomax, who was the music ethologist? I was like, so I'm studying this culture that's going away. And the truth was I was just staying drunk all the time, but so I would do that and I'd play in bars and clubs and everything else. And then when I got locked up, I was in the prison. Choir, was just a blast of playing harmonica there. And I was like, I don't know. And I'm not religious. I just wanted to play music. And that was the only way I could navigate that. So when I got sober, I was like, I don't know where I'm gonna play music anymore when I get out. Because I don't really go to bars, it's not really my scene, and I'm not religious, so I'm not gonna play at churches. So now I do a lot of public speaking at different places, and I always have this sort of captive audience. And now I'm like now I can make them listen. And we play harmonica and they're stuck. They can't do anything about it. It also helps me relax a little bit. So I wanted to play harmonica for you guys, if that's all right.
HARMONICA SOUNDS HERE
In the almost 12 years since he was released from prison, Robert got married. He had a daughter. He became a therapist.
Nora McInerny: So I guess sort of describe a day in your life.
L. Robert Veeder: I don't do like traditional sort of, Therapy anymore.
So a lot of my job yesterday I was, I still do like a lot of the same sort of stuff that you do in therapy. So I still use motivational interviewing, C B T, a lot of the other stuff, but but I just don't like being in an office very much and I don't think it's good for other people necessarily either.
So a lot of the clients that I work with we went kayaking yesterday and this morning I met somebody and we went for a hike in the woods at seven in the morning and, Then I went to the Zen Center and sat meditation for a while and I'm a long distance runner, so I go, I try to run a few times a week. But so I'll have my work day, which is just interacting with clients. I spend a lot of time talking about addiction and trying to help people through. Challenging moments so I'm on my phone a lot. I like a lot of us because I'm texting clients a lot just to try to help out there.
And then at the end of my day we sit down at a table in the kitchen. We have dinner. My, we laugh and joke and play, and eventually my daughter goes to bed, begrudgingly, she goes upstairs. My wife and I make tea. Hot tea, just about every night we sit down and watch some form of media or we play games, or we do a puzzle that's it's boring but but I also think so that's what's never lost on me.
I watched two guys when I was locked up, get into a damn knife, fight over a pillow over who's, who owned the pillow in this cell and. And they're, they were fighting each other trying to cut each other off over it. So get me boring. I'll take boring, that's great. I love a good, boring night at home,
Nora McInerny: i, there's nothing better.
L. Robert Veeder:I was working with somebody recently who was in a drinking and driving accident and somebody lost their life. So we're talking about preparing for prison and I keep saying to them like honestly, some of the best people I've met in my life were in prison. Because they're, we're all so vulnerable. It's stripped down and there's just nothing left to hide and it'll ruin you for conversations on the outside.
Most of us want to have good, big, deep connections, and so I think that really helped imprison was like just being able to like, sit down and talk with a complete stranger about where they've been, what they've been through what happened to them and then you hear just the most devastating stories over and over, and you realize that this is all of us.
This is it's easy in prison because there's the very obvious, how did you get here? But when you get outside of prison, you find out that still holds true. We're all in this, we're all going through some stuff.
My wife actually had, she had gone to a talk and came back and I was working in the yard and she was like, I just heard this great thing, you gotta hear it. And it was, we are all the victims and perpetrators of trauma. And I just loved it. I just think it captures the whole thing.
Nora McInerny: I think what people are going to wonder is how a person can carry what you carry. And your wife had such a. Great quote that she was able to share with you, which is, we are all victims and we are all perpetrators.
something of the magnitude that you are carrying is really rare and to maybe people who have lost family members in a similar way, like you are the big bad wolf.
L. Robert Veeder: Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And there's no way to ever make that better and the, and was actually just in a 12 step meeting the other day talking about this. It's a very specific thing. I like all people, like most people, I shouldn't say all, but I wanna be liked, I want people to like me and I had to come to terms with that, that those members are never gonna like me. It doesn't matter what I do. Doesn't matter how much joy I bring to the world or how many people I help, they have the absolute right to hate me and I can be big enough to be hated for that, that's okay. If that's what they, if that helps them heal then I owe that much so I think about them all the time and everything all the time. I think about the people who lost their lives in every joyful moment that I have, that's something that I took. Was it was that ability there's no way to make that better, and I wish I could. It's just not, and I think I'll always I'll always be sad about that. I never we just never wanted to want, nobody wants to hurt. Anybody like that.
MUSIC
Robert still commemorates the anniversary of the crash. Though it looks different every year, he carries the significance of November 1st.
I did a marathon fundraiser in prison. I almost got thrown in the hole for it. Because I was trying to, reframed that date. And so I had been a long distance runner and I was gonna, and I, we had snuck out, me and some guys that worked in the wood shop had snuck a tape measure out we went out and measured out the goat track around the edge of the fence and just measured out how many laps so we could do the math and figure out how many laps were a mile.
And we figured out was 182 or something like that lapse. And So I had talked to Cara who was outside and she was outside at the time. I don't, I'm not, I think we, we were dating at the time and I said I wanted to do a fundraiser for Mothers Against Drunk Driving and just as a personal let's do that.
And so she did all the fundraising outside and was like riding family and friends. And then I'd write it letters to anybody who would make a contribution. And the only day I could do it all was November 2nd. At that time she was allowed to come to the prison and bring food. So she came on November 1st, which was a Sunday, and then I fueled up and ate everything I possibly could eat, and then Monday the sort of marathon and we ended up raising over like $5,200 or something, over $5,000.
Nora McInerny: You had said that you make amends by the way you live. How do you live?
L. Robert Veeder: How do I live? So I try to model joy to others all the time and all things. So I had a client, woman I've been working with for a while. I love her dearly, but she said she said some people are a glass or glass half empty and some people are glass half full. You're a glass full person at that time we were talking about rainy days and I was pretty excited about a rainy day. So it took me a while to figure out, oh, it was because on rainy days when I was locked up, you could go out in the yard and nobody would be on the yard. So you have the yard to yourself, right? So you start learning to love rainy days but I do think I'm pretty optimistic and I think I really try to that to other people. I try to live really. Joyfully and everything I do, I think it's really important. I think I my victims lost everything. Everything I owe them I owe them a joyful life otherwise, it's, it is just that much more wasted,
Nora McInerny: my friend Marian have said this on the podcast about a million times, but she had said to me she lost her husband. And then a maybe a year or so later, she lost her son and she said, we have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the face of loss. And the next line of the email was, it's a bitch though.
L. Robert Veeder: Yeah. Yeah. It's not always easy, it's a bitch.
Nora McInerny: But I do think like you do have this, it does feel like a sacred responsibility. It feels like it could also be a lot of pressure.
L. Robert Veeder: Is it a lot of pressure? Maybe I. I don't know. It feels really good to me most of the time.
I. feel oh I ha like you said, I have the sacred responsibility and I think not everybody is fortunate enough to wake up every day knowing what they have to do.
We have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the face of our losses. And we also have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the face of our mistakes. OUR mistakes. No matter how fatal, tragic and irreversible those mistakes are.
Because there is no math that will ever make what happened to the six people Robert killed okay. There is no number of hours Robert can counsel people through addiction, no number of people he can guide through the criminal justice system, no amount of money he can raise every November 1st for the rest of his life that will ever make what happened acceptable.
You can't do math with human lives. Beautiful, vibrant lives that did not deserve to end on the blacktop of a highway on a cold November night. Their value and worth is immeasurable, unquantifiable. You can't balance an equation like that. You cannot do math with human lives.
Robert knows this. He came to terms with this long ago, during his time in prison.
That doesn't make his efforts to do as much good as he can with his life futile.
He simply has the fortune to carry out his sacred responsibility.
THEME OUTRO MUSIC
CREDITS
An immense thank you to Robert for being deeply honest and vulnerable with his story.
Terrible Thanks for Asking is a production of Feelings and Co, an independent podcast company. Our team is me, Marcel Malekebu, Claire McInerny, Megan Palmer, Michelle Plantan and Grace Berry.
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