Well. Hello, hello.
We are back again and thank you so much for joining us.
What's good, John and Joy is available in all the streaming platforms.
What's Good with Johnny Joyce is sponsored by woodwinds Wedding and Special Events
Venue in Branford, Connecticut and Silvio's award winning Italian sauces,
which you can buy anytime online at silvio's.
Sauces.com that's silvio's sauces.com.
We'd like to thank our sponsor New England Collision.
From the time they pick up the phone and receive your initial call
until the time they deliver you repaired vehicle back to you,
your satisfaction and safety is their number one priority.
New England collision.
And they were established back in 1996.
So relax. It was just an accident.
Go to any collision.com tactics provides
extra repair services for laptops, desktops, home networks and smart devices.
Matthew Rader and his certified technicians are equipped
to handle both hardware issues and software glitches,
ensuring your devices are back in working order quickly and affordably.
For more information, go to Tech Fix Wkyc.com.
That's tech fix wkyc.com t e chf I fix.com.
with me and my co-host.
My friend of a long time.
We go way back home to have a go enjoy slogan choice.
Good to see you. Oh, it's always good to see you.
This is my therapy.
Oh, you know, I'm glad that we get to help others
with our positive podcast because it helps us to. Yes.
Yeah, it does because it reminds us of what's good.
Yeah.
And there's so many things in the world that is good.
But ironically, we are speaking about grief.
We're continuing the talk we have with, Reverend Frederick Marathi,
and he was about Greek as we all go through it.
And you were sharing a story with me
about your first experience with grief was your hamster.
Don't laugh.
You think you gone through it too? Okay? Yes.
And he was 30 years old.
Oh, so years old. I lost my hamster.
Boy, I mean, you got to be able to laugh.
I know we're talking about grief, but the thing is, we got to be able to laugh.
It's great therapy.
But, you know, I remember being, like,
three or 4 or 5 years old and having a hamster.
And the only live, like, two weeks anyway.
Right.
And as for things maybe a little longer, maybe, maybe a month or two.
Take care of it.
But this poor thing just passed away, and I was beside myself.
But to my mom and dad's credit, they, you know, didn't,
you know, make fun of me or try to diminish it.
And they consoled me.
And that meant a lot to me at the time because, yeah,
I mean, I've never had children of my own, but I've had a zillion animals
over the years, and every time one of them passes
and goes to animal heaven, I've been, like, beside myself.
Joyce, I know. Yeah, like a baby, right?
I you know, I understand that we should never diminish grief and children.
No, no, you know, like with a pet or anything like that,
because there is like a rhythm, I call it to grief.
And we all have our own basic rhythm to that.
And sometimes it's anger initially or depression and anger.
Then where do you end up?
Well, the good thing is to end up at acceptance. Yes.
And when you accepted and then you look back on it
and, Reverend, Mourad is brought up a very good point about guilt.
Guilt is the one that is, sticks with a lot of people.
Could I have done?
Did I do this wrong? Did I should I've checked on this.
Should I have gone to the doctor or should I? I know we do that. What.
It could, it should it. Right.
You know, and that's natural.
What shocked me when my mom died
is that I was very close to my mother,
and we did everything together.
And I was with her when she had her stroke.
We were planning on what we were doing for Thanksgiving.
And then I was making her a sandwich and she wasn't answering me.
It's like, mom, do you want tomato on this? Like mom?
And she was like, right in a stroke.
So that was, a month long journey.
Then, you know, before she passed and I would lay in hospice
bed with her and, and hug her and talk to her and
and the moment she passed, you know, I shocked myself
with the thought of, oh, my gosh, I should have picked her up more.
I drove by and I was going to the store, and I thought
I didn't want to pick her up because I didn't want to slow down.
Why didn't I pick myself her up?
You know, why didn't I go there?
I shocked myself with that immediate.
It was like knee jerk reaction that, oh, I should have done this.
I had to really remind myself that, no,
I did a lot, you know, I did all that I could.
I didn't know this was going to happen.
No, dear human, you're you're.
Yeah, but we don't want to live with.
We can't live with always taking care of that one person.
What if they die? What if they die? What do they die?
So you just do the best you can, right?
Yeah. Exactly. Right.
And I think about my mom, who passed away back in 21,
and my mom was my first best friend.
And we, we communicate every day on the phone.
I would call mom.
Guess what have I love to share every single life instance with mom, right?
Loved it, loved it, loved it.
I remember when she passed on, I would look at the phone,
you know, and I want to call her.
And then I would call that number just to hear her voice.
Yeah.
And thank goodness, Joyce, I still have many of her messages on my phone.
Still.
Yeah. No, no, no.
And then I might go back and listen to it.
And you know, she would always.
Honey, I love you and I, we just had such a great relationship.
But I would go do the same thing you did.
Maybe I should have visited a little bit more often.
Was I too busy?
You did this and that, and I just said, come on.
I got to cut myself some slack here. Yeah.
You can't. Yes, I love mom. She knew that.
And she was so supportive. We loved each other.
And mom is is in a great place right now.
You know I found something online by anonymous
and I added to it and
it says grief may never fully leave us
but it does transform over time.
And it does.
It transforms into different ways of looking
at it, different ways of, appreciating.
And it's not a place to live forever, but a passage to walk through
when you're ready.
Allow gratitude to child.
They take up that space.
And I love that sentence
because gratitude is what heals everything.
Grateful that that person was in your life.
Yes. Grateful that you had a chance to get to know that person,
even though their life may have been cut a little bit shorter than we like.
You know, God has the final say.
When are they gonna say when he's ready to call us home?
We go.
But in the meantime, I think a lesson to be learned in so many ways, Joyce, is
just be the best person you could be, you know, everyday, like,
you know, Reverend Frederick said in the last episode, I said, any final words?
He said, just be kind.
Just be kind.
It was the best ending ever find. Yes.
Just courtesy of a dear friend of ours, Ken Engelman.
Yeah. Yes. Thank you Ken.
So love never ends.
It simply shifts with time.
The heart learns to hold both the sorrow and the blessing.
And that is it.
When you focus on that, the pain will start to lessen.
But then people get afraid of.
I'll forget them.
What if I forget them? What if I forget the sound of their voice?
What if I forget?
You know what they looked like?
It's like no.
When you get panicky about something, you tend to block things out.
But if you just relax and think about it,
you will hear it.
And even if you don't, you know it.
Now, you.
You lost your husband, Wayne.
Yes, I lost my first wife, Darcy.
What do you remember about Wayne?
Do you do you remember his voice at all or the sound of his voice?
Yes. You do?
Yeah, I do, I usually do because I think
even my sons, you know, remind me.
But he always had a nickname for me, so I can almost hear him, you know,
calling me, and, And I dream about him a lot.
He just shows up sometimes.
He's just sitting in a corner, sometimes he's driving the car and I'm in the back.
But they're all pleasant. Oh, yeah. Oh, great.
No, they're all.
They're all really right.
Yeah. Really great.
So, I, you know, sometimes I,
I mean, I talk to him, even with laughter, it'll be like.
Wayne, why did you leave me with this?
You know, get back here.
You know, but I don't say it like it.
Oh, why did you leave me?
You know, it's just like when I get frustrated about something
that he could have handled, and I just really am.
I'm overloaded.
So I'll just say, get back here and take care of this.
Why'd you leave me?
And then I have a picture of my mother by her urn.
So when I get just in the morning, I say, you know I love you, mom.
You know, so I, I know they're around.
I know they're not gone, gone, gone.
I just I just feel that even if I didn't believe.
So, let's say you're not a believer
and let's say you don't believe in an afterlife.
Then believe in what they left you. Yes.
You know, believe in the love they gave you.
If you miss them, that that deeply, you must have loved them that deeply.
What a gift that is.
That is a gift to be able to love one so deeply that it hurts.
When they left, how long did it take you to really make the transition from that,
that grief in the beginning to just being okay with it?
And quite frankly, you've thrived, Joyce, in so many ways.
You continue to go out there and do amazing things in this world.
You work hard, you're a great mom.
You're a great friend to so many people.
You've been a great friend, Nick. Yeah.
But when, when when was that kind of transition from.
Well, I did have the long goodbye.
Okay.
You know, it was eight years, and I think
when I, when we first got the diagnosis,
I think of Alzheimer's.
And it was, it was, you know, he was in his,
late 60s and he was like, ten years older than me.
And it was,
I don't think he fully comprehended that.
That's when,
it took me to my knees because I knew
I knew what was going to happen,
and he didn't really.
So I had this long goodbye.
And I reached out to some of my doctor recommended,
and it was a wonderful therapist who dealt in geriatrics.
And I felt if he dealt with geriatrics, then he's gone through
speaking to family members that, you know, with Alzheimer's.
And he gave me wonderful tips. Why?
Because there are a lot of things I was doing wrong.
And I think many people who are dealing with people
with Alzheimer's in the beginning may be doing that frustrates
you very hard on the people that are dealing with people
with Alzheimer's and also to, to kind of like expand upon that.
How many times do people call up and ask about that person,
but they never ask about how you are doing?
Yeah, like 99% of the time, right?
Yeah.
That's why it's so, so important if somebody is going through something,
realized they're the caretaker in many cases.
But never
forget to ask how they're doing too, because too many times they're forgotten.
And this right now, the whole focus, the whole focus, you know, was on him.
And I hear people doing that now who are dealing with people with Alzheimer's.
And I'll say to them, this is what I learned.
Don't keep
saying remember mom or remember dad.
Here's pictures. Remember?
Remember we did.
I just told you that. Don't you remember?
That is not only frustrating on you,
but it's making them very confused.
So they sometimes begin to say yes.
Yes they do.
So John, I would have people, family members
like come over to the house and say, see, he remembers
me, you know, because we would just nod and you know him.
He was very good hearted, smiley, good natured person.
So that good nature, thankfully for me,
stayed throughout his last days
and they would almost leave like, I don't know what she's talking about.
He knows everything.
And he would look at me and I would say, wasn't that nice that so-and-so visited?
And he'd say, who's so-and-so?
I said, the person that was just here, he said, I don't know what you mean.
So what?
They didn't know as soon as they walked out of that room,
he had no idea who they were,
but I, I was getting frustrated
because they weren't getting that.
And they were thinking, Joyce is fine.
He's fine.
He knows.
But he knew nothing.
He didn't know where the bathroom was.
He didn't know how to do anything.
So the the last year when you said that I really grew from this,
John was the last year of his life.
Now Covid pretty much just began.
And hospice, I did get hospice to come in,
but they came in for two hours a day, five days a week.
That left me alone with
him for 22 hours a day,
and I rarely got more than three hours
sleep because he had to be cleaned.
And he had to be, you know, get back into bed.
And sometimes even with the railings on the bed,
he jumped over the railings and then they had a catheter in him.
And then he ripped out the catheter and was standing in the kitchen
the middle of the night and a puddle of like, blackish blood.
It was.
The last eight months were exhausting, but the last eight months
became exhilarating for me at the same time
because at my darkest time,
that's when I sat outside.
Even winter time, and my grandson still reminds me of that.
He said, I always thought you were crazy sitting out on the snow,
just like talking to God.
And I said I had to or I would break.
And then
it was like the color of the clouds parted
and as if God were saying to me in my mind,
look up, look up.
And I.
It was like almost seeing the curvature of the earth.
That was a this was a sunny, sunny, blue sky day.
And he said, I've given you all of this
and it and I had these flashbacks
because I used to put myself down, that I was a teenage mother.
I used to put myself down growing up.
There's a lot of things.
And he said, you gave birth.
A lot of women can't give birth.
You raised children you loved deeply.
You've had a great life.
And Wayne was a great husband to.
Are you blessed? Are you blessed?
It was like, I it's hard to put it into words.
It really was an epiphany.
But with that came forgiveness.
And that's where the magic happened.
There were a couple of people in my life that I had a very hard time with,
and if I couldn't join in on the negativity
about a couple of people, I joined in because it had been very hurtful.
I came in and I sat on my bed
and both those people, I said, I forgive you,
I don't know what your life was like.
I never walked in your shoes,
but I'm going to send you love and I forgive you.
And 48 hours later, or maybe sooner,
I may have told this story before, but it's still mind blowing to me.
That one person who hadn't been in touch
with us for over three years
sent me an email saying,
I don't know why we don't speak, but it's probably
my fault and I want to know if we can get together.
And I welcome that person into our home.
At Christmas time, we hugged.
We never spoke about the past
and, we're great now.
In fact, if somebody says something negative about them,
it just slides off of me.
There's not an ounce in me that wants to engage like a cleansing.
It has happened with the second person.
Also, during Covid,
they brought me over toiletries and different things
that I might have seen them in 15 years.
And those were the two people that I asked,
you know, I forgave.
I didn't even ask God for that.
But it was in the moment of being appreciative of my life.
Let's say gratitude is riches.
My goodness, I believe I mean, I believe divine intervention.
It was it was definitely divine intervention.
And that brought me to a deeper level
of faith, of love, forgiveness, gratitude.
But because I also went through this with eight for eight years,
I am so sympathetic to people
going through it on a level that I couldn't have been before,
because I have walked in those shoes and now I know I don't.
I don't preach about it like the stories I'm telling now.
I may not say any of that to them initially, but I listen
and I offer some advice about maybe what to do for themselves.
And, that's a good idea because you want to keep yourself
healthy as well, because you got to put your oxygen mask on first, right?
If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others.
That's a great analogy.
Yeah. Yeah.
So so that's really brought me to a new level of
dealing with
what I'm dealing with at home with my son.
That's in the spectrum.
My grandson that's in the spectrum to be
like many times I would like to be left alone,
but they're talking to me and they're very animated,
which they're not with the public as much.
And I just remind myself, and I put down whatever I'm doing,
and I just listen to them, and I remind myself how grateful I am
to have these beautiful souls in my life,
you know, that really do bring me joy.
They bring me a lot of work at times because I'm the only driver in the house,
really, except for my my other son, Jim, who's been very helpful.
But, it just gives you a new understanding and what hurts you the most.
You can help other people.
Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?
Take our pain and don't live in the pain, though.
Remember the good times.
Don't beat yourself up. Like,
oh, like I
could have said, oh, why didn't I get Wayne diagnosed earlier?
But it wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway.
You know, it just,
you know, I just accepted it.
how do you think you came out?
What what made you different from the previous eight years to when you came out?
How did you change as a person after this?
After Wayne, I became very mindful of everything good around me.
I'm very mindful that instead of saying,
I have a house with a mortgage, I said, I have a house,
I have a house.
You know, I have a house to take care of.
Aren't I blessed that I have that?
It made me so aware, John, of,
to look at the blessings of friends in my life,
to not be critical of people and,
you know, it's hard not to be judgmental.
And, I mean, we all are in some way.
Sure, you may look at what someone's wearing and say that
so I can watch, like all the
reality shows, let's say The Housewives of Beverly Hills or that.
And I used used to some of them would make me really angry.
Now. Right now they would because of the way they treat us right, right, right.
And so now I look at it as, like I'm in school
and I'm looking at this like they're
all good people in their own way.
I'm not going to I'm going to watch this without judgment.
I'm going to watch Big Brother and not root for just this one person to win.
I'm going to root for everybody to have a chance.
So it's a very mature attitude.
It expanded me that way.
So I look at everything almost like my own personal science experience.
Right.
It's like your own petri dish.
Yes, I can I do this can I listen
to this newscast or this person and do this?
And if I can't, I turn it off, right?
Because I, you know, I don't need that's just something that I'm.
Yeah. You start finding anger or something.
Welling up inside. It's not worth it.
No, I think I just changed my focus because I know as a hypnotherapist
and going through hypnotherapy because of anxiety and all that,
it's only a thought, a way of what you really want.
You can shift your thoughts from, isn't this horrible
to maybe you say, isn't this interesting?
Right? Well, this is challenging right now.
Not like, oh my God, this is so awful.
Now I'm going through a bit of a challenge
and I love that we're rather than we have a problem.
Say the challenge. Yeah, right.
Rather than say like, you know, I can't do this.
How can we do this?
Or I, like you said about the house, I have a house.
Yeah, I think about the mortgage, and, I'm not making enough money here.
Well, if you're making over $30,000 a year here
in this country, you're in the top 80% globally, right?
I think about that.
So it's all about perspective.
Mind shifts focusing again on gratitude. Yes.
Gratitude. Gratitude.
Gratitude gratitude.
And appreciation for what you do have.
And I don't care if it's just the rug you like in your house
or a pet or whatever it is.
Focus on that.
Right when I wake up in the morning,
I'm going out and have my coffee, and I look in the back
and I see the morning doves and the cardinals, and
I just focus and, you know, I just say, wow, I'm just mad.
Just do I love birds?
Yes. And I just focus on nature.
And I look at the trees and I think about if they could talk,
you know,
the things they've been through over the years with weather
and everything else and how they're still standing.
Yeah. It's kind of a metaphor for life.
Yeah.
I really sincerity way is and just trying to be a lot more aware as I get older.
I just have my senses, my senses heightened more.
But again, you have to be intentional about that.
You do.
You do have to be intentional.
And I watch myself like a hawk.
And so if I feel like I'm getting off,
you know, that road drifting, I don't let it go long at all.
I pull myself right back in
and it's easy to get caught in the drama.
Oh my.
Like so much drama out there, especially because of social media.
Even though most of the people I have and I have a lot of people on Facebook,
I try to handpick the ones that are very positive.
But if someone shows up and they're not baby, you know?
Right.
Just because I, taking care of myself
and I have to do that and, you know, so
whether they like it or not, it's just I'm not saying anything bad about them.
I'm not going to respond.
You know?
I just let it go. You got you.
You can't please everyone. No matter what.
No matter what you do in life.
And you really just have to just sometimes
let go and let God.
Yes, let go and let God just
let them go. Pray for them.
Right, right. And move on.
So let me give you a little analogy of what of what happened in my life
last night that shows you what happens
when you okay when you're not at ease.
Oh should I even say this.
This is a thing.
So my son, if there's a bug in the house, it could be a wasp.
It could be a spider. Whatever.
He gently gets it out.
He may put a cup on the wall and he puts a thin piece of paper.
Oh, boy, that sounds familiar.
And does it? Yes, because.
Because I do the same thing.
I don't want to kill anything. Yeah, and my wife thinks I'm nuts.
She's just getting out of here. This, I think, is I.
I like spiders.
Yeah, well, I like these, and I just don't want them in my bedroom.
That's what somebody says.
Same thing, I don't know, crawling up my nose or my in my ears.
Or if I say, like, a little mouse or something like that,
I'm going to put a cup and I'm going to put it over the mouse
and put them outside and probably end up coming back in anyway.
But I just, I don't know, I just I can relate to that.
And I've done that too. And
but there was something in my room last night
I wasn't sure what it was, but I'm now I'm speaking I'm looking at my grandson
standing at my doorway, and he says, what's that?
This is what's what he says on your lamp.
And I turned and looked.
It was the ugliest looking.
I don't know what it was.
Well, I know I was sitting there with the ice pack on my back
because my doctor said three times a day, use the ice pack and
and I'm just sitting there. Come.
I just, you know, I just I got up,
I knocked over the lamp, I knocked over all the books next to me.
It landed on my TV.
I took a towel. I was like, swatting it.
He said, come on, you're going to break the TV.
My room.
I caught myself on a, I had said none of this was documented.
Oh, he said, I wish my my phone were on.
Oh, yeah.
He said, you're so relaxed in life about things.
So now I'm bleeding from my finger because I punctured it.
Something that was sticking in a mug
where I have pens and pencils and things like that.
So I put a puncture hole in my finger.
I've got blood everywhere.
I, I this thing is flying around,
and I finally get a towel and I dive on top of it, and I wrap it up
and I throw it out the back and and I'm looking at my room.
My room is trashed.
It sounds like a skit on Saturday Night Live.
Well, you was all right, but had I called my
if I just went to my son's room, think he was sleeping?
And I said to him, could you come in here for a minute?
He would have gently, you know, it's like they know
you know, he won't kill, any kind of bug moth, nothing.
He just gently gets.
I wanted to get it out, but
the way I didn't, you never would have experienced all that drama.
Well, that's what I mean. Drama is not good.
No, not good, because I was exhausted.
Then I
had to wash my hand, kept putting Neosporin on it.
Right? Right.
Hoping I didn't get an infection because it was like a rusty end of a safety pin.
And it's like what not to do in a crisis.
And that's a whole episode. Maybe we'll have to do that.
What not to do on what's good with John and Joyce.
What's not good.
So when somebody even passes,
there are people who react that way,
and maybe it's good to
wail it out, I don't know,
but whatever you need to do, do, but don't get stuck in it.
I think that is the message for today.
Find things you're grateful for.
Be very grateful. They were in your life.
Yes, and kept busy.
Help others.
That's the whole point to them that is so important.
Whenever you're feeling down or feeling stressed in your life,
go out there and do something good for someone else.
Like we said in the previous episode, it's amazing how that will uplift
not just them, but uplift you and your situation as well.
Yes, 100%.
And you'll you'll see that you'll feel better
and you'll be helping somebody else.
But focus on, you know, appreciate everything around you, everything.
And don't feel guilty.
Everyone feels guilty. You're not alone with that.
Everyone has those fleeting thoughts when something happens and just know that
you you could not control it all unless you murdered the person.
But you couldn't. You couldn't.
You could not.
All right.
You I most things that happen in natural way.
Right. You have no control over that.
And it's being resilient and accepting,
that those two words alone will get you through things.
And I know it's easier said than done, because some of you
who are watching right now
might be going through a really tough situation and said, yeah, okay.
It's I'm not quite there yet,
but everybody handles grief different and there are different time frames.
And, we just pray that you get the grace you need
and the help you need and the support system around you.
And we want to let you know that Joyce and I are
and all of us here at What's Good with John and Joyce are praying for you
and your family as well.
And we just yes, we do.
And we just we just believe in our hearts.
The better days are ahead.
You'll be the optimist that we are.
Yes. You know, just honor those who were before you by the way you live your life.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we'll be back again with another edition of What's Good
with John and Joyce available on all streaming platforms.
We appreciate you.
We appreciate your family and friends, and thank you so much
for making us a part of your your day, your night.
And, many blessings to you and your family.
Thank you. Till next time. Bye. Love you. Walk.