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Episode: A Son’s Struggle, A Father’s Grief

Author: CNN
Duration: 00:32:56

Episode Shownotes

Charlie Shelin was an exceptionally bright child who worked hard for years to keep the dark thoughts in his head from consuming him. In this moving conversation, his dad, Randy, talks with Anderson about Charlie’s mental health struggles and the layers of grief their family has lived with for years.

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Summary

In this episode of 'All There Is with Anderson Cooper,' Randy Shelin discusses the emotional journey of coping with his son Charlie's mental health challenges and their profound impact on the family. As Charlie faced escalating struggles, including a diagnosis of ADHD and feelings of isolation, Randy recounts the difficulty in finding adequate support. The conversation highlights the significance of wilderness therapy in Charlie's recovery and the ongoing grief Randy experienced, culminating in the tragic loss of Charlie to alcohol toxicity. Through this narrative, Randy emphasizes the importance of recognizing mental health struggles, fostering parental awareness, and cherishing the small moments in life amidst sorrow.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (A Son’s Struggle, A Father’s Grief) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker_00
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00:00:35 Speaker_09
Welcome to All There Is. This will be the second to last episode this season. I'll likely do another season down the road, but I'm going to be taking a break for a bit.

00:00:43 Speaker_09
I've already started to listen to some of the many voicemails that you've left, and they're incredibly moving. And I'm really grateful for all of you who've taken the time to call and leave such thoughtful and personal messages.

00:00:55 Speaker_09
If there's something you've learned in your grief that you think might help others, feel free to call and leave a message about it. I can't promise I'll use it in next week's episode, but I do promise I will listen to all of your messages eventually.

00:01:08 Speaker_09
The number you can call is 917-727-6818. That's 917-727-6818. I'll leave it again at the end of the podcast. When I was listening to your messages, I kept thinking that I wish I could put all of you who are listening in touch with one another.

00:01:27 Speaker_09
Because hearing your messages, it really became so clear to me that all of us are part of a community, a community of grievers, a community of people who know and feel loss.

00:01:37 Speaker_09
It's a community, though, that's too often hidden, but it's actually all around us.

00:01:43 Speaker_09
I've talked about this before, but I've felt so alone in my grief for so long, but hearing all of your voices, it's just a reminder to me yet again that none of us is alone in our grief. In today's episode, you're going to hear from Randy Shaleen.

00:02:00 Speaker_09
He's a radiologist who spent much of his career as a flight surgeon in the Navy. I met Randy several years ago by chance. It's actually kind of a funny story. Randy looks a lot like me, so much so that he often gets mistaken for me.

00:02:14 Speaker_09
Randy lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Jill, and daughter, Chelsea. Randy's son, Charlie, died in August 2022. He was 18 years old. Charlie struggled with mental health issues for a long time, and it took a big toll on Randy and the whole family.

00:02:31 Speaker_09
In this interview, you're going to hear some recordings of Charlie as well, and there are mentions of suicide. If you or someone you love is struggling, help is available.

00:02:40 Speaker_09
In the U.S., you can call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. We'll be right back with a son's struggles, a father's grief.

00:02:54 Speaker_04
Support for this podcast comes from USA for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. People facing war and violence are now facing winter far from home, in temporary shelters, and with little to keep them warm.

00:03:08 Speaker_04
As humanitarian needs in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and beyond increase, Ensuring continued funding for our work to help the most vulnerable is more urgent than ever. You can help us. Please donate today to keep families safe and warm this winter.

00:03:24 Speaker_04
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, works around the clock to support the most vulnerable throughout the year, providing blankets, cash to buy warm clothes, fuel for heaters, and shelter.

00:03:36 Speaker_04
It's during the winter months that your support makes all the difference. Help protect refugees and people forced to flee as they face winter far from home. Your gift is matched for a limited time. Give now at unrefugees.org slash winter.

00:03:53 Speaker_03
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. There's nothing sweeter than baking cookies during the holidays. With Prime, I get all my ingredients delivered right to my door, fast and free. No last minute store trips needed.

00:04:05 Speaker_03
And of course, I blast my favorite holiday playlist on Amazon Music. It's the ultimate soundtrack for creating unforgettable memories. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com slash prime to get more out of whatever you're into.

00:04:24 Speaker_09
Welcome back. Charlie Shaleen made this recording on August 26, 2018, when he was 14 years old. His father, Randy, didn't find it until several months ago.

00:04:38 Speaker_10
This is Charlie. Starting tonight, I am setting a challenge for myself for one week. getting all your homework done, studying, showers every day, brushing my teeth, hygiene, exercise.

00:04:56 Speaker_10
If I am unable to complete the challenge, then I must pretty much confess everything to my parents. I just need to have control of my life and what I'm doing. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole.

00:05:12 Speaker_08
What do you think when you hear that now?

00:05:15 Speaker_05
Well, now I know and understand the pain he was going through back then. Because at the time, frankly, I had no idea. We didn't realize how serious things were getting at that point. Everything that he communicated to us was, everything's okay.

00:05:27 Speaker_05
I've got it under control. I'm doing what I need to do to get things done. Tell me about Charlie. Charlie, he was just a great kid. You couldn't ask for a better child. He was very bright. He was getting all A's in school.

00:05:40 Speaker_05
He was doing well in the Boy Scouts. He didn't talk back to us. He didn't yell at his parents or cuss at us, which probably made it more difficult for us to understand how challenged he was.

00:05:50 Speaker_05
Going into elementary school, he was having trouble just trying to stay focused, getting homework done, projects, et cetera. He did test positive for ADHD.

00:06:00 Speaker_05
In the past, I've been somewhat skeptical of that diagnosis of ADHD, but having Charlie, I'm not a skeptic anymore. We found a good medication that helped tremendously until we got to middle school. And that's where things went a bit sideways.

00:06:15 Speaker_05
there's something called twice exceptional. Twice exceptional? Yes, or 2E. And that's where a child is highly intelligent, but they also have a learning disability. And because those two together can be a very difficult combination.

00:06:30 Speaker_05
Their brain tends to function in a different way that can be very challenging for them and they have difficulty socializing. So what was happening to Charlie is that he could learn the material very quickly.

00:06:42 Speaker_05
but because of his ADHD, he couldn't actually complete assignments and get things done. And what he started entering was a pattern of procrastination and avoidance.

00:06:51 Speaker_05
He'd be so frustrated that he'd say, well, I'm just gonna put my homework off until the last minute. And then literally at the 11th hour, sometimes late at night, he would just do this amazing amount of work and get all A's.

00:07:04 Speaker_05
We recognized that he was becoming more withdrawn and we found a therapist for him in middle school who was,

00:07:11 Speaker_05
frankly, not particularly helpful, but at least we're doing all the things we can because it's also difficult to find effective therapies for kids.

00:07:18 Speaker_05
I mean, right now we're having a mental health really crisis in our country, and there's just not a lot of resources out there. Charlie was so frustrated.

00:07:25 Speaker_05
He was developing, unbeknownst to us, an incredible sense of self-loathing, and it really played on his psyche.

00:07:32 Speaker_07
What began to change that made you think, wait a minute, there's something really seriously going on here?

00:07:39 Speaker_05
We didn't reach that point until he started high school and he started taking AP classes, he's taking advanced physics, and you simply can't wait until the 11th hour to get the work done.

00:07:49 Speaker_05
And he was doing a lot of video games, excessive video games, and we weren't really aware of how much time he was spending online cruising the web and how much he was actually getting his work done. We could see that he just was definitely struggling.

00:08:03 Speaker_05
He knew what he needed to do, but he'd always fail and he couldn't get it done.

00:08:09 Speaker_09
It's around this time that Charlie left that voicemail we played earlier, talking about challenging himself for one week. That message that Randy didn't find until just recently.

00:08:19 Speaker_05
So here's where our worlds fell apart. Basically... He got to the point where he procrastinated so much that you couldn't catch up. And what happened was Charlie said, Dad, I can't face my teachers. I can't go to school.

00:08:35 Speaker_05
And then as we were trying to convince him, it just got worse because we're butting heads because like, Charlie, you've got to go. And he just shut down. He really just fell apart. He would isolate in his bedroom. He would not interact with the family.

00:08:48 Speaker_05
He stopped showering. He would just spend time on the internet playing games. And he really didn't want to talk with mom and dad, and we're not sure what to do. So we got him to see a child psychiatrist. We actually found one that was highly regarded.

00:09:04 Speaker_05
And the day we went to go see her, Charlie's in the car and says, no, I'm not going to go in. I won't go see her. And she's like, no, if he can't come here, I can't see him. And this is a person that was supposed to be really good.

00:09:18 Speaker_05
We received nothing other than the bill. And his parents were like, time's running out. We were watching our son just disintegrate at home. And we're desperate to find resources to help us. He was very protective about his laptop.

00:09:33 Speaker_05
And one time I looked on his laptop and discovered that he had gone to a suicide chat line to try to seek some help because he's having some suicidal thoughts. And of course, that was a big wake-up call for us, clearly.

00:09:45 Speaker_05
And we are just beside ourselves.

00:09:48 Speaker_09
It's a very unique kind of grief, the grief of a parent who is struggling to figure out how to help their child in a mental health crisis.

00:09:58 Speaker_05
Absolutely, but the frustration is that you don't know what to do to help them. You're trying to do all the right things and you're afraid of making a mistake.

00:10:04 Speaker_09
You end up deciding to send Charlie to a wilderness therapy program.

00:10:09 Speaker_05
We did because at this point we just felt we couldn't keep him at home and be safe. And we also thought, well, he's spending so much time online. and by himself and isolating, how do you break this?

00:10:21 Speaker_05
And effectively what wilderness therapy is, and it's a very frightening thing for a parent to choose, your child is basically sent to this facility, this is in Utah, and given a backpack and some very basic essentials for being in the outdoors, and they spend the entire three months

00:10:40 Speaker_05
with no technology, hiking, backpacking, and doing therapy, group therapy, individual therapy, journaling, and different readings to help them. And it's harsh.

00:10:51 Speaker_05
I know some people have been critical of these programs, but I can say this with complete conviction that wilderness therapy is what saved our son's life. I think we've lost him to suicide at some point, if that had not taken place.

00:11:05 Speaker_05
He was journaling while at Wilderness and I had access to his phone and his laptop and I found out he'd gone to all sorts of inappropriate websites, not just pornography, but also websites that actually had violent images that no 14-year-old should look at or ever see because they don't know how to process it and you can't unsee this.

00:11:22 Speaker_05
So he had developed a friendship or a relationship with this person on Instagram who initially was portraying themselves as a woman and Charlie discovered that he was a guy, and this person claimed to have stabbed someone to death.

00:11:40 Speaker_05
And Charlie maintained this relationship and sort of embraced this person, which just emphasizes for us how he was so desperate for social connection, and he's just living this world by himself.

00:11:54 Speaker_05
He really lost concepts of reality and lost touch of what we consider to be anything that would be healthy.

00:12:00 Speaker_09
You said you read his writings. What did you learn in his writings?

00:12:05 Speaker_05
He was writing things that were extremely dark. One of the things that I discovered was a journal he'd been writing in.

00:12:11 Speaker_05
And one of the things he wrote was, I think of all the ways I can injure or kill myself, mainly kill myself, using objects or environments around me. Sometimes, not often though, I think of objects that I can't see in the room, like a game.

00:12:29 Speaker_05
And again, as a parent, to read something he's journaling, can you imagine reading this and discovering that this is what your child's writing? And he's 14 when he's writing this. And he's 14.

00:12:38 Speaker_05
He writes other things that they're all just very dark and very frightening things of a child who's clearly struggling profoundly, having these thoughts of suicide, potential harm to mom and dad or harming others. But it was terrifying.

00:12:57 Speaker_05
And you just realize that This is a child who really needs help.

00:13:01 Speaker_09
He'd written about harming his parents.

00:13:05 Speaker_05
Yes. He had said that.

00:13:07 Speaker_09
That's terrifying for you to read.

00:13:09 Speaker_05
It was beyond terrifying, but he'd write some of those things and they are dramatically, profoundly difficult to read as a parent and even to share. And it's so painful because you know, this is not your son. This is,

00:13:25 Speaker_05
you know, his illness, and we're just thinking like, how can he write this? How could he be so mad at himself and mad at the world that he feels the need to write such lines of hatred and potential violence?

00:13:37 Speaker_05
And over the course of three months, he actually started to significantly improve. I remember one time we were given the opportunity to go visit him while there. He ran over and grabbed mom and lifted her off the ground. And it was just,

00:13:59 Speaker_05
It was just so wonderful to see him experience joy and to be happy to see us. It was a very rare moment.

00:14:10 Speaker_09
When Charlie's at wilderness therapy, he's 14, but you find a recording that he had made when he was 12 years old that you didn't know about.

00:14:20 Speaker_05
That's correct.

00:14:21 Speaker_09
And it had been sitting there for two years.

00:14:23 Speaker_05
For two years it sat there. Charlie made no mention of it. We had no idea it existed on mom's phone.

00:14:28 Speaker_08
And you played it.

00:14:30 Speaker_05
Oh, yes. It was so profound. We actually call it the revelation. That recording was the key for us to understand what we had been missing for the last two years of how much our son was truly suffering.

00:14:43 Speaker_05
We'd found it that we maybe could have done some interventions at a much earlier time that we didn't know were necessary.

00:14:50 Speaker_09
Charlie made this recording on his mom's phone in her voice memos, an app she never used and never checked.

00:14:57 Speaker_09
While you listen to it, remember this is a 12-year-old boy speaking to his mom's phone in their home while his sister practices piano in another room.

00:15:07 Speaker_02
This recording is about my thoughts and feelings and the darkness that I go into. For example, today, during tennis, from the first hit to the last. I missed balls. Almost every single one of them, I was missing the balls.

00:15:28 Speaker_02
And I started getting discouraged because my friend, he was just hitting the balls so well. And I started murmuring to myself, I'm a nothing. The entire world hates me. I hate who I am. I believe that with everything that I do, I will fail.

00:15:45 Speaker_02
And I couldn't get out of it, you know. And with every passing thought, I thought, make it end faster. Bring the doom to me. And I just felt nothing. Blank. A nobody. An outcast. I really was thinking about suicide.

00:16:06 Speaker_02
Not that I actually really wanted suicide, but It's like a demon possessing you. He just comes out of nowhere and starts putting the words into your mouth. He starts saying into your head, commit suicide, commit suicide, commit suicide, commit suicide.

00:16:23 Speaker_02
And really in your mind, you're just thinking, no, I don't want to, I still have a whole life. And he just keeps on going, relentless. It just takes over. It never stops. Although we're doing a lot to try and fix this, the thing is, in my heart,

00:16:42 Speaker_02
I believe that I can't. Darkness is inevitable.

00:16:52 Speaker_07
He was 12 years old. It's devastating.

00:17:00 Speaker_05
Yeah. Sorry. We had no idea. We had no idea. And I mean, you go through life and you have all the sort of the coulda, woulda, shouldas, but.

00:17:22 Speaker_05
If you just slid that phone next to mom and say, hey, listen to this, anything, just something that would have just let us know that existed. And to hear that recording at that age, at that time, I can't even tell you how much it hurts us as parents.

00:17:36 Speaker_05
Because like I said, it's the revelation. It just suddenly, like someone turned on the lights. Because all the struggles he had with procrastination and frustrations and the social isolation, we just had no idea how deep it went.

00:17:49 Speaker_07
When, you know, a 12 year old boy has that voice in his head saying those terrible things to him, of course, he's going to procrastinate on work and not be able to focus.

00:17:59 Speaker_05
And it's just... And of course, as us, we're thinking, okay, all the times like, Charlie, you've got to do this, you got to get your homework done, you got to... And you're thinking to yourself, oh, my God, I had no idea what he was struggling with.

00:18:14 Speaker_05
And I'm just... And you love your child. You love your child so intensely, you don't know what to do. And you feel very alone because there's very few people you can discuss it with. It weighs very heavy on the entire family.

00:18:35 Speaker_05
And with these mental health issues, it's not just the patient, it's the entire family as a patient. Everyone suffers profoundly and deeply. And it's a very, very difficult, isolating journey.

00:18:48 Speaker_09
After discovering that recording and Charlie's writings, they decided that when the wilderness therapy program ended, Charlie needed to be in a safe environment where he could go to school and get treatment.

00:18:59 Speaker_09
They eventually sent him to a therapeutic boarding school called the Grove School.

00:19:04 Speaker_05
I guess the first thing that saved Charlie's life was wilderness therapy. And the second thing that actually brought him to being healthy was the Grove School. He was there from 10th grade through graduating from high school.

00:19:18 Speaker_05
And in this process, slowly and incrementally, he got better. And they've got advisors that are watching over them. They have different levels of how controlled they are or how tight the container may be where the child is.

00:19:30 Speaker_05
And they have very intimate classroom settings. There might be four students or five students with a teacher. And for someone like Charlie, who tends to procrastinate, you can't hide.

00:19:42 Speaker_09
Was there a moment when he was at the school that you could breathe a sigh of relief? Or was it every day holding your breath?

00:19:53 Speaker_05
No, I'd say after the first year, we actually became much more confident in his path. He was doing exceptionally well in his studies, and he basically was becoming healthy.

00:20:05 Speaker_09
He got like a, was it a 1500 on the SATs or something? A 1550. 1550 with the top is a 1600. So that's, I mean, that's extraordinary.

00:20:14 Speaker_05
And on the ACT, which the top score is 36, he got a 35. Unfortunately, he was rejected from a lot of schools, which was for him very disheartening, but he took responsibility for it. He says, Dad, this is on me. I'm going to make the best of this.

00:20:27 Speaker_05
And it came down between engineering at NYU or UC Davis to study aerospace engineering. And we talked about the pros and cons and we chose UC Davis.

00:20:38 Speaker_09
At his high school graduation ceremony, Charlie made an impromptu speech. For Randy, it was a sign of just how far his son had come. This is part of Charlie's speech.

00:20:50 Speaker_01
About four years ago, I wasn't even sure I had a reason to live. Yet, standing here today, I think I might know my reason. It really is just to live. It's simple as that. But really, this advice extends to all of you beautiful people in the audience.

00:21:04 Speaker_01
Parents, faculty, students. My hope for us all is that we leave today knowing that we may have many tomorrows, and that we may live life knowing that no matter what happens, we will be okay.

00:21:21 Speaker_09
It's nice to hear everybody shouting out, I love you, Charlie.

00:21:26 Speaker_05
Yeah, mom's a big cheerleader. What a great moment.

00:21:35 Speaker_07
He came home after that.

00:21:37 Speaker_05
Yes. After that week, he came home and I just was so happy for him and everything was good. Everything was good.

00:21:44 Speaker_05
After years of just such horrible pain and suffering and isolation, we're like, wow, okay, we're going to turn a new chapter and let's bring it on. And things weren't going to turn out that way. because on Thursday night, this is now.

00:22:11 Speaker_05
August 25th of 2022, I went to go up and say goodnight to him. And I knocked on his door and the way his bedroom's configured, when I look in, his desk is around the corner, I can't see him.

00:22:23 Speaker_05
And I opened the door and I can hear him on his computer with headphones and a microphone talking to his friends. And he's just joking around saying, oh, people, they say Nevada, but you're supposed to pronounce it Nevada.

00:22:32 Speaker_05
And he's just having a casual conversation with someone. So I said to myself, I'll let him talk. We'll talk tomorrow. And I closed the door. And I didn't know that'd be the last time I'd ever hear my son speak again.

00:22:48 Speaker_05
The next day he had left a note outside the door saying I was up late playing and let me sleep in. So we just go through our morning routine. His sister goes to high school. I go to work. I'm at a medical school and the phone rings and it's my wife.

00:23:04 Speaker_05
She was just screaming his name, Charlie, and trying to explain how she found him. The sound of her voice was just pure pain and anguish, like her soul was being ripped in two.

00:23:25 Speaker_06
And immediately before she could even say anything else, I knew. I knew.

00:23:29 Speaker_05
And I ran for the door. I told my colleague, I think my son is dead. I ran to the car, and I'm just trying to get home as fast as I can. And we're on a three-way call with the 911 dispatcher. He's not responding.

00:23:53 Speaker_05
And as it turns out, when I was driving to our community, I was driving in with the fire truck and the ambulance. We're getting to the house at the same time. And of course, there's nothing they could do.

00:24:06 Speaker_05
Charlie had been gone for probably for several hours by that time. He's just lying there. And your mind is just racing. Like what happened? How can this be?

00:24:18 Speaker_05
Because the past several years, you'd opened the bedroom door, you're afraid of what you'd find, but not now. Not now. I mean, Charlie made it. We all made it.

00:24:30 Speaker_06
After all this, it just defies belief. Your world just ends and you just don't know how you're going to go on. You just don't know.

00:24:42 Speaker_07
That was August 26, 2022. Yes. Have you learned what happened?

00:24:52 Speaker_05
Well, I mean, for my wife, Jill, and I, we felt confident, very confident this was not suicide. And it took about eight weeks to hear back.

00:25:04 Speaker_05
And the coroner called me personally and said, Randy, your son died from alcohol toxicity, from just too much alcohol in his system. And also he said that he had a cardiac condition that was undiagnosed.

00:25:19 Speaker_05
It's a type of arrhythmia, which he said may have played a part in his passing as well. And it was an accident. In the bathroom next to his bedroom, there was these two cans of like cocktails in a can.

00:25:35 Speaker_05
There's two of those that were empty on the counter. Our speculation is that he decided to drink and drank a lot in a very short period of time on an empty stomach that would run his blood alcohol to the point where he couldn't survive.

00:25:48 Speaker_09
And it was just those two drinks that you found?

00:25:53 Speaker_05
That's all we found. And although there's maybe like two cocktails per, that'd be four drinks, but perhaps he'd gone downstairs and drank something else.

00:26:00 Speaker_05
I mean, we had a liquor cabinet that was in a pantry and he may have had more there and then went upstairs. I don't know.

00:26:07 Speaker_09
You're still discovering things about Charlie.

00:26:09 Speaker_07
Is part of the grief a feeling of, did I know him or I'm just getting to know him now?

00:26:17 Speaker_05
Well, that was one of the profound frustrations we had because we just lost those years of having our son with us and getting to know him. And we really don't know who he is. And we're just desperate to learn about our son.

00:26:32 Speaker_05
And we're doing everything we can to find these scraps of information to try to build more about who he was. And this past year, I'd avoided looking at Discord because that's where he primarily communicated with a lot of his friends.

00:26:47 Speaker_05
because I wasn't sure what I'd find.

00:26:49 Speaker_07
You were worried about what he might find.

00:26:51 Speaker_05
Yes. And finally, as the one year anniversary came up, it came on us. Then I said, well, I've got to do this. And I went in looking at the posts that he made and I found nothing that was disconcerting those last moments.

00:27:04 Speaker_05
In fact, the night he passed was just his last posting was around 1230 in the morning on the 26th. And it was just the usual teenage banter going back and forth. But, um,

00:27:15 Speaker_05
I did come across one thing that he posted four days before, and this was actually very moving. So it was at a conversation with one of his friends online, which he was trying to offer words of comfort and support. And this is what he typed.

00:27:37 Speaker_05
Always watch the sunrise as if you were a child, as a child watches it as if it were his first. A Taoist quote. If you know everything, you don't have wonderment or curiosity. Sometimes it's just nice knowing that existence itself is beautiful.

00:27:57 Speaker_05
Sorry for the monologue. It's a subject I feel quite passionate about. Life, I mean.

00:28:02 Speaker_07
And that was four days before he died.

00:28:07 Speaker_05
Four days before he died. I am so proud of my son. Charlie's taught me more about grit and inner strength of character than I learned in 20 years in the Navy.

00:28:22 Speaker_05
He's taught me more about compassion and the value of life than I've learned in a lifetime of practicing medicine. And for the families out there that are struggling with kids that are having mental health challenges,

00:28:34 Speaker_05
I understand their isolation and their fear and their grief and their sorrow and what they're going through.

00:28:40 Speaker_05
And it's a very lonely, isolating journey that I want them to know that others out there have been through this and can support them and want to give them strength. I just want to encourage them to never give up.

00:28:55 Speaker_08
When people ask you, how do you survive? What do you say?

00:29:00 Speaker_05
Well, you have to rebuild your life. You spend your life putting together this very complex puzzle that has all the pieces of your life.

00:29:08 Speaker_05
And this event comes along and basically the table gets kicked over and the pieces go flying and you realize those pieces will never fit back together again the way they were. One of my colleagues had lost his child about 16 years ago in an accident.

00:29:26 Speaker_05
And he uses this expression, you no longer get to live in the ordinary world where everyone else is living. Because once you've experienced such a profound sense of loss and grief, things that used to bother you before no longer matter.

00:29:39 Speaker_05
And you have to sort of find new purpose in your life and new ways to experience joy. In the week Charlie was home before he passed, he talked for a long time about, Dad, I love this Star Wars program called the Mandalorian.

00:29:53 Speaker_05
Please let me show you the Mandalorian. And eventually I said, okay, fine. And as we watched this, he was telling me about the characters and the backstory and how he really enjoyed this. And I thought it was okay.

00:30:08 Speaker_05
And after that, if you asked me on my own, would I go watch, you know, an hour of the next season of The Mandalorian? Maybe, maybe not.

00:30:16 Speaker_05
But would I watch The Mandalorian with my son on the couch next to me, watching TV, talking to me about the characters and how much he loved it?

00:30:26 Speaker_06
I would do anything on earth to be able to do that again. Just enjoy the small moments with the people you love.

00:30:40 Speaker_05
You think you have control in your life and you don't. You don't know what's going to happen in any given moment. And finding joy in those everyday moments is how I get through my grief. I'm much more tolerant of

00:30:57 Speaker_05
listen to people in their trials and tribulations of just what's happening in their lives because I just appreciate the frailty of life and how fragile it is and how fleeting it is. It just, I have a new appreciation on what's important.

00:31:15 Speaker_07
Randy, thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing with us, with me.

00:31:20 Speaker_05
And Anderson, I want to thank you for giving Charlie a voice. because you gave him the opportunity to help others. And I know that's what he wants.

00:31:35 Speaker_09
If you or someone you love is struggling, help is available. In the U.S., you can call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Next week's episode will largely be made up of your voicemail messages.

00:31:51 Speaker_09
If there's something you've learned in your grief that might help others, feel free to leave a message. I can't promise we'll use it, but I do promise I'll listen to all the messages.

00:32:00 Speaker_09
Feel free to leave your name and phone number as well, but you don't have to. The number to call is 917-727-6818. That's 917-727-6818. Wherever you are in your grief, I hope you know you're not alone. All There Is is a production of CNN Audio.

00:32:25 Speaker_09
The show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom. Our senior producers are Haley Thomas and Felicia Patinkin. Dan DiZula is our technical director, and Steve Lichtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio.

00:32:37 Speaker_09
Support from Charlie Moore, Kerry Rubin, Shemrit Sheetrete, Ronnie Bettis, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, John D'Onora, Lainey Steinhardt, Jameis Andres, Nicole Pesseru, and Lisa Namro. Special thanks to Katie Hinman.

00:33:08 Speaker_04
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00:33:18 Speaker_04
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