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A heartfelt journey through loss, love, and healing.
After losing both of his parents, host Stephen shares real stories about grief — the moments that broke him, and the ones that helped him keep going.
Grieving Son isn’t about answers. It’s about honesty, hope, and learning how to live again when life will never be the same.
You're listening to Grieving Son, real stories about loss, love, and learning to live again. Welcome to Grieving Son. I'm Steven, a son, a creator, and someone learning to live with loss. I lost my dad when I was 10 and my mom when I was 35. I don't know if this podcast will reach thousands or just a few, but if my story can help even one person hold on a little longer, then that's enough for me.
Stephen:This is Grieving Son, the podcast. I need to really emphasize that I'm not an expert in grief. I'm not a therapist, and I'm just someone who's been broken by loss and who's finding healing and sharing my story. I also want to acknowledge that grief is not a monolith. There's no single way to experience it and no right way to move through it.
Stephen:It's yours to honor however it shows up. And this podcast is just the way I choose to honor mine. After losing my mom, something inside me shifted, and I stopped being afraid to die. This is episode three called When the Fear of Death Let Go. When my dad passed, I was 10.
Stephen:He was 32, And that number, it haunted me. For years, I was convinced I'd die young too. Every birthday past 32 felt like a ticking clock. And it wasn't just about me, you know, that fear seeped into my relationships. I didn't let people get too close because closeness meant the risk of loss.
Stephen:I think, you know, if I love too deeply, it'll hurt too much when it ends. So I tried to stay safe. But that kind of safety comes at a cost. I put a lot of pressure on my relationship with my mom, a ton. Because, you know, deep down, I was terrified I'd lose her too, just like I lost my dad.
Stephen:Every visit felt sacred. Every goodbye, heavier than it had to be. Every missed call, my heart dropped. I was like, you know, this would be the what if this is the last time she ever calls me? You know, I remember times I called my mom twice, three times, just to hear her voice again.
Stephen:I wouldn't tell her why, you know, but maybe she sensed why, but I had this fear of losing her. You know, I didn't realize it then, but I was trying to outrun the inevitable. Because a hundred percent of us are gonna die. So that fear of separation from my mom was something that was gonna happen anyway. Right?
Stephen:I talk a lot about the fact that my mom's last call I missed. And it's crazy because you become hyper fixated on every call and picking up every phone call. What happens if you miss one? And even with this fear that was built up inside of me about losing my mom, or me dying young and being separated from my mom, it still was something I couldn't prevent. I still ended up missing that last phone call.
Stephen:So it's just ironic how much you can fixate on something that you really can't change. Looking back, I can say it now. I was diagnosed with hypochondria in 2018, after multiple hospital visits for what I thought were heart problems or something worse. I was running up hospital bills. You know, it was really anxiety.
Stephen:Anxiety that showed up as chest tightness, headaches, shortness of breath. It was terrifying. But this wasn't new to me. I had probably had my first panic attack when I was about six or seven years old. I remember being in a car with my father, and we were coming back home for the holidays, and I remember having a panic attack in my grandparents' driveway.
Stephen:And when I walked into the crowd of my family, they were wondering, What going on with me? But I had a real fear that I was dying, or something was going wrong. So I had this understanding about death that was probably, you know, brought on way too young. And it was also brought on a lot, I think, by anxiety. So every time doctors told me I was fine, I'd leave still convinced that something was wrong.
Stephen:Eventually, I started doing immersive exposure therapy. And this was intense. This was something I was doing every day. I was a teacher at the time. Every day after school, I would go to therapy.
Stephen:I started off with a group therapy, then I would have a private therapy session. And we had all these exposure therapy sessions. And if you're familiar with this, it's basically looking at your fears head on. So, I had a fear of death, so they made me write my own obituary. I had to go to a cemetery, walk around the cemetery, and imagine my plot.
Stephen:You know, was intense. It was the kind of thing you do when fear runs your life. And I really felt like it taking complete control of everything. You know, after all that, I was still afraid of dying. It didn't change much, you know?
Stephen:Still, a chest pain meant a heart attack. A headache meant a stroke. I couldn't rest. I was hyper aware of every sound my body made, something they called self scanning in therapy. I would scan my body for what I felt, you know, if I felt a sensation, it felt like a signal that death might be closer than I thought.
Stephen:You know, my dad's death really planted this seed that life could end suddenly. Remember, I was in a car with my father, and everything seemed like it was good, and minutes later, my dad gone. And for a long time, that seed grew into fear instead of appreciation. Fear that love meant loss. Fear that time meant a countdown.
Stephen:And I didn't understand that living in fear of death was its own kind of death. I wasn't living. I was waiting, literally just waiting on the next shoe to drop, as my mom would say. This countered with the fact that my mom was battling health issues, made it the perfect storm for my anxiety and my fear around death to really grow and thrive. But when my mom passed, something inside me broke open.
Stephen:And strangely, something broke free. At first, it was unbearable. The silence, the empty room, missing calls, missed the calls that weren't there anymore. My mom called me a lot. I could count on looking at that phone and seeing it ring and seeing mom's name on the other end.
Stephen:You know? And as I sat in that stillness, I started to realize something profound. A hundred percent of us will die. And if that's true, then maybe death isn't the enemy. Maybe it's just the door we all eventually walk through.
Stephen:I started paying attention to how I responded to my mom's death, and I realized it really reflected what I truly believed about death itself. See, I don't really believe I lost my mom. I used that word in my intro to describe losing my mom, my dad, But I use that word because people understand it. But I don't feel like she's gone. I feel like she's alive.
Stephen:Just somewhere I can't see yet. And, you know, the same with my dad. Don't say I'll never see them again. I say I'm just not where they are right now. I won't get into deep theology on this episode, or heaven here, but I believe my mom is experiencing everything she spent her life talking about.
Stephen:My mom was big on church. We were in church all the time. I had a mom that was taking me to church three days out of the week. We had Bible study. We had another service during the week.
Stephen:We had a prayer service, then we had Sunday service. We had two services on Sundays. I was a musician in church, and I would play at church on Sunday. We would drive an hour to Virginia to have another service where I would play, and then sometimes we would come back to Maryland and play. I'd play in a third service.
Stephen:It was church. But my mom always taught me to put God first. And she would say, If you don't remember anything else, just put God first. You know? And there is this peace, this the rest, this love she gave to everyone else.
Stephen:And I always wanted my mom to experience that for herself. My mom was just really humble about things that I would be excited about, you know. When she retired at a retirement party, I remember her saying, Hey son, whoever comes, comes, I don't really care. And I was like, Nah, we're gonna turn it up. We're gonna have as many people possible.
Stephen:But that's how my mom thought about things. It was like, you know, whoever shows up for me shows up. But I would want everybody to show up and see how great her accomplishments were. You know, it's almost surreal sometimes when I stop and think, knowing my mom's walk with God, going into her room, seeing her she had the same Bible, and she had her mom's Bible, and that Bible had pages falling up out of it, and she wouldn't let me get her a new one, but she had it marked up. It was like the whole Bible was marked up with yellow highlighters, and she knew it, front and back.
Stephen:So knowing the woman who prayed over me every day is now in the presence of the God she prayed to is just a surreal feeling. And somehow, knowing that, my fear of death started to really dissolve. Think had Like I said, I was diagnosed hypochondriac, always afraid of death, of fear. If I had a headache, oh my goodness, something's wrong. And at one point, after my mom's passing, probably a few months, I had a headache where I didn't think anything crazy.
Stephen:I had some chest pain. I said, this might actually just be gas this time. You know, something started to lift. You know, my mom never talked about death. She really avoided the conversation, and honestly, so did I.
Stephen:You know, one of our last conversations when we were together, she was having a rough day, wasn't feeling too well. And she asked me straight up, she said, Son, are you afraid I'm gonna die? And I remember saying, Yeah. And that was it. We didn't go into it any further.
Stephen:I think she made a joke, I made a joke, and we just moved past it. But that was probably our first time acknowledging that, you know, or me acknowledging that I was afraid, or seeing almost that maybe my mom was a bit afraid too. You know, every now and then she'd mention someone who had passed suddenly, and I could tell it was something she thought about, even though she didn't say it out loud. I remember when a close family friend passed away out of nowhere, she called me and said, You know, I just want to make sure you and your brother stay close, because you never know. That's as close as we ever really got to talking about it.
Stephen:But looking back, I can hear what she was really saying. She was preparing her heart, and maybe mine too, without either of us realizing it. When she was gone, I found myself thinking about those moments differently. All the things left unsaid suddenly carried new weight. And somehow, it didn't make me more afraid of death, it made me wanna live better.
Stephen:It made me wanna love harder. It made me wanna forgive faster. Because when you stop fearing death, you start appreciating life in all its fragile beauty. I have a tattoo on my arm that I just got a couple weeks ago that has it's 13,045, and that's the amount of days I was able to spend with my mom. And honestly, if that number was double, which meant, what, twenty six thousand ninety, maybe?
Stephen:That still wouldn't be enough. Our our our time on Earth is so short. And and it taught me how precious those moments are. So now I'm full of so many memories. Right?
Stephen:I have so much peace because of the way I was able to love my mother, trips we were able to go on. Yeah. We missed our last trip to New Orleans, and I know that when I see her again, we'll talk about it, and we have some she might have some special plan for me. But there's a peace I get from knowing that I tried my best to give my mom flowers while she was still here. I have my mom's name tattooed on my body, and I think it was the first tattoo I ever got.
Stephen:My mom was always like, No tattoos, no tattoos. And after my mom got sick a few years ago, I decided to get the tattoo. And when my mom got out the hospital, and we threw a surprise birthday party, I drove to Detroit from Nashville, and I got the tattoo, and I was able to show my mom that tattoo. And for the first time, she said nothing. There was no complaints about a tattoo then.
Stephen:She was like, Oh, wow. She was really taken aback. But blessed that I got a chance to share that moment with my mom. So many people, unfortunately, you know, get tattoos or things like that in people's memory, and they don't get a chance to just experience being able to show them that. I was able to, you know, give my mom that celebrate my mom in that way while she was still here.
Stephen:I think grief stripped away my illusions of control. And in that stripping, I found peace. I realized that death isn't punishment, it's passage. I was so afraid of my mom passing away and transitioning. I afraid of it, and I felt like, she deserves to be here.
Stephen:Right? And when I really started to think about what I believe about what happens once we leave here, maybe it wasn't a punishment. And maybe for the first time, I'm living fully because I know I won't live forever. I know this time is so temporary. And grief taught me to stop rushing through moments.
Stephen:And I'm not perfect. I still struggle with this. And I'm trying now so hard to just slow things down a bit, to stop fearing the end and start noticing the middle. You know, there was so much here to unpack, but, you know, my time spent with my mom is so beautiful because of the moments in the middle. The way it ended, I wish it ended differently.
Stephen:I wish I got one call with my mom. I wish I got a chance to hold her. Wish, you know, maybe she passed away. Don't it's all different things I wish, but it's that middle. It's those memories.
Stephen:It's the voicemails. I have over 200 and counting voicemails on my cell phone left from my mother that I have saved. And I'm thankful that she was able to send those to me, and technology will make it so that I could save those. I have so many videos of my mom, so many pictures of my mom, and, you know, it's the middle that's beautiful. And sometimes you focus so much on the end, and what if it doesn't happen, or what if she I lose her.
Stephen:I'm so grateful to my partner who really, really, really, really challenged me at times where I didn't want to hear it, but she challenged me so much to slow down, Steven. It's you're you're fearful of something that's going to happen anyway. It's going to happen. You you may die. It's going to happen.
Stephen:But please don't take this time for granted. And I'm I'm so grateful for my partner who saw that at times where I didn't wanna see it, I didn't I didn't really wanna hear it. You know, the the fear of death is something that could really take over your life to a point where you think about it so much that you've really stopped living, and you stop engaging with the people who who love you and and who need you and who are gonna really miss you when you are really not there. So I'm so grateful for the this newfound life that I was not expecting to find after my mother's transition. Thank you for listening to episode three of Grieving Son.
Stephen:This one was deeply personal, but I hope it reminds you that peace is possible even after loss. If this episode gave you comfort, share it with someone who might need to hear it too. Leave a comment or review. It helps the message reach others walking the same road. Next time, I'll talk about how grief changed the way I love, how becoming a father taught me to let people in, not push them away, and how learning to love my daughter has also been a way of learning to heal.
Stephen:Until then, hold close what's still here. I'm Steven, and this is Grieving Sin.