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#063

Grieving the Loss of a Child with Barbara Legere

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Grieving the Loss of a Child with Barbara Legere

In this episode of The Matt Feret Show I interview published author Barbara Legere. We discuss her experience with grief and loss after losing her son to suicide and the challenges she faced trying to support him through his addiction. Barbara emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding for the individuals and families impacted by grief, addiction, and mental health struggles. Barbara also offers advice on how to support someone who has experienced the loss of a child or grandchild. She discusses her new book, Talk to Me, I'm Grieving - Supportive Ways to Help Someone Through Grief, which aims to educate people on what not to say to someone who is grieving, and offers suggestions for more helpful ways to provide support.

If you enjoyed this episode of The Matt Feret Show, you may enjoy:

Loneliness, Contentment and Inner Peace with Speaker, Author and Health Food Entrepreneur Udo Erasmus

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Grieving the Loss of a Child with Barbara Legere

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Quotes:

“People are so uncomfortable about death in our culture. They avoid talking about it. They avoid me. They see me, they look the other way because it's so uncomfortable. They don't want to bring it up. Either they're not sure what to say or they're afraid they'll remind me of it, which obviously I'm thinking about it every minute of every day.”

“Another thing that happens a lot when someone passes away is we say, let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm here if you want to talk. But you're putting a burden on that person. So what I recommend is thinking of something to do and then just doing it. I had some friends drop off a bunch of paper goods, plates and napkins and cups and stuff. They just said, here, here's a whole bunch of this. Now you don't have to do dishes for a really long time. It was a simple little thing, but it helped me.”

“Grief looks different for everybody. And whatever you're going through is okay, because that's your personal way of dealing with it. If you need to go out and start living your life again in three weeks, that's what you need to do. And no one should tell you it's not right. If you need to take a year for you to be able to go out again, that's okay too. It doesn't matter. It's what works for you. And it's different for all of us, but there is joy again in life. I just don't want people to lose hope, because that first year you don't think you're going to make it yourself.”

#063

Grieving the Loss of a Child with Barbara Legere

Selected Link from the Episode:

Host’s Links:
All Things Medicare: prepareformedicare.com

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My Written Works on Amazon: www.amazon.com/stores/Matt-Feret/author/B09FM3L4WW

The Matt Feret Show YouTube: www.youtube.com/@themattferetshow

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Guest’s Links:
Barbara’s Website: https://www.barbaralegere.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaralegere/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.legere1/

Barbara’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Barbara%20Legere/author/B09WM2ZZ46

Show Notes:

Full Show Transcript:

Announcer:

This episode of The Matt Feret Show is brought to you by the Brickhouse Agency. Brickhouse is a boutique independent health insurance agency that focuses on finding the right Medicare coverage for folks across the country. Matt's wife, Niki, is the heart behind Brickhouse. She's great at making confusing things clear and is passionate about helping people find a Medicare insurance policy that suits their individual needs. To schedule a free one-on-one appointment with Niki or a member of her team, head on over to brickhouseagency.com or simply call (844-844-6565), and someone will help you schedule a phone call or a Zoom meeting. The consultation is free because the insurance companies pay Brickhouse, not you. There's never any pressure or obligation to enroll. Your clearer, simpler Medicare journey is just a call or click away. brickhouse agency.com. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the government or federal Medicare program. Contacting Brickhouse Agency LLC will direct you to a licensed insurance agent.

Introduction by Matt Feret [1:08]

Matt Feret:

Hello everyone. This is Matt Feret, author of Prepare for Medicare and Prepare for Social Security Insiders, guidebooks, and online course training series. Welcome to another episode of The Matt Feret Show, where I interview insiders and experts to help light a path to successful living in midlife retirement and beyond. Barbara, welcome to the show.

Barbara Legere:

Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Feret:

It's such a pleasure to have you on. So tell everybody what you do, how long you've been doing it, and how you help people.

Barbara Legere:

I have been helping people deal with their grief, and I've also been trying to spread awareness about harm reduction and mental health awareness for about 13 years now. The grief aspect has come in about five years ago when I lost a young man who was like a son to me, and then almost three years ago, I lost my son, Keven, to suicide. So I have decided that that's what matters to me. Everybody deals with things differently, and for me personally, what helps me the most is to reach out and help other people.

Barbara Legere’s Story with Grief and Child Loss [2:26]

Matt Feret:

Thank you for that. And very, not only personal subjects, but very serious subjects as well. So you said you've been doing this for 13 years and your emphasis has grown over the last five. How did you end up getting into it prior to the 13 years? What made you move into this space?

Barbara Legere:

Well, my son started using heroin when he was 17 years old. He had some mental health issues, depression, paranoia, anxiety as he was growing up. And when he started using drugs, that's when he found that was the way that he wanted to treat himself. It made all his problems go away at first, because it makes you feel so good. Heroin does that, that's why people get addicted to it so easily. But then the problem becomes you're not even using heroin to get high anymore. You're using it so that you don't go into withdrawals and it takes over your life. And the next thing you know you're doing things you would never have done before; breaking laws, doing things immorally that you wouldn’t do, your whole life gets taken over by it. And so I spent those years trying to support my son through it, doing whatever I could to get him help.

And eventually he lost that battle. He was no longer able to move on, and he chose to take his life. So, I tried to help people understand that there are so many people like Keven out there. He's not unique. I'm certainly not unique. There are so many parents suffering, that are watching their children go through this or that have lost their child to overdose or suicide, and it's just heartbreaking. And I try to help people understand that we need empathy and understanding. It's a very lonely, hard place to be. And I wrote a book called Talk to Me. I'm grieving because I want people to understand how to support each other. People are so uncomfortable about death in our culture. They avoid talking about it. They avoid me. They see me, they look the other way because it's so uncomfortable. They don't want to bring it up. Either they're not sure what to say or they're afraid they'll remind me of it, which obviously I'm thinking about it every minute of every day. So that's why I wrote that book, and I really think it's needed. I talk to people all the time. I think almost any grieving person I've talked to relates to what I'm trying to share in the book. So I'm really hoping it helps open that conversation and takes away some of the uncomfortableness by showing people what they can do and say and what not to say.

Barbara Legere on the Healthcare System, Society, and Addiction [5:17]

Matt Feret:

We’ve had family, not family members, but close family friends or acquaintances that have had children get hooked on heroin and other substances and go through a similar experience. I’ve been reading, and you probably have too, that they're called deaths of desperation. I think that's what they're called, when it's alcohol, or drugs, or oxys, or heroin. And it's been called and labeled an epidemic. And it got worse during COVID, right, because a lot of different reasons. And not just all the stress that it created on societies around the world, but also more time. More time with yourself, more time in closed doors, no social interaction. So, you went through this journey. A lot of people have gone through this journey. What did you find, from the start up through where you are today, about how society does deal with this or doesn't and how the healthcare system deals with this or doesn't, and the stigmas associated with it that you want to bring to light?

Barbara Legere:

One thing I've discovered is that the problem with the healthcare system is that when you want or need help, it's often not there. For example, if Keven came to me and said, mom, I need to go to rehab. I'm ready. Please, let's let me go. I'm like, okay. We get all everything ready to go, but there's nowhere for him to go. He has to wait a week or even a week or two weeks or a month or three days, whatever it is, it's too long because by the time that bed is available for him, he's already changed his mind and he doesn't want to go now. So we missed an opportunity. A lot of places only take PPO insurance. So that's a problem because a lot of people that live that lifestyle don't have good insurance. They don't have a job, and they're on Medicaid or Medi-Cal in our case. And that's an issue. And the same with mental health. There's still such a stigma attached to it. People are uncomfortable about it. And so they make it difficult for the people that are struggling to ask for help. They don't want to be labeled mentally ill. They don't want that stigma on themselves, so they try to deal with it on their own. And that's not helpful.

There was really no place to take someone who is going through a mental health crisis other than a 51 50, which is the 72 hour hold, where they watch someone who's in danger of themselves. But that's it. 72 hours, and that's not long enough. So we went through that many, many times.

Barbara Legere’s Experience with the Stigma Associated with Grief and Addiction [8:31]

Matt Feret:

What are the stigmas associated, not with just the individual, but the family members and the system together? Talk about what you ran into during that.

Barbara Legere:

Absolutely. Well, here's an example. I shared this today with someone else. I had someone say to me once, “Well, at least I raised my kids right.”

And I thought to myself, I love my son unconditionally. I have done everything in my power to help him. I'm a single mom, he’s my only child, and I did everything I could. He had the best life I could provide for him. He didn't suffer for anything. He was privileged. And so things like that really hurt. People think that it will never happen in their family, it won't happen to their children. And I think part of that is because they don't understand how prevalent it is. And the other part is they just want to be in denial that no, this is not something that happens in our kind of family, where it could happen at anyone's family at any time. Especially the mental illness. It usually shows up in the later teens and early twenties, and it can just come on very suddenly. And I really recommend people to educate themselves on that as well as addiction and substance use disorder because if you're prepared and it happens, at least you recognize what it is and you're able to get help.

Matt Feret:

Is part of what you found during this time, I mean, I have to assume that's why you wrote the book, that in terms of support and awareness, this isn't some “back-alley” problem anymore. This is all over the news, with even the settlements with the opioid manufacturers. What prompted you to write the book? Was it because you didn't find the resources out there and you went through it and you're like, gosh, other people have to know this? Or was it some other reason?

Barbara Legere:

It was definitely that reason. And I guess I didn't mention the first book I wrote. The first book I wrote is called Keven's Choice, and it was about my son's life and why he made the choices, but also to bring awareness. I wrote that three months after he died because I felt like I had to, it was bugging me. I didn't want to, it was like I had to. So I wrote that hoping that people would read it and go, okay, this is what it looks like. This is what those poor families are going through. I mean, there's so many of us. This is what I can look out for, and these are the challenges that people face. And I talk about prison. I talk about harm reduction, tough love, because I'm not a proponent of tough love in our situation. It was the worst thing I did for him. For some people it does work, the family says, you can't live here. I'm done with you. And that does help people. So I don't want to put it down completely just for us. It did not work. So that's why I wrote the book. I just want people to be aware and to have more compassion. I mean, Keven would be walking somewhere with me. We'd be in a grocery store and he'd be walking down one aisle, I'd be walking down the other, and normally you couldn't tell he was someone that used drugs, but every once in a while he'd go out when he was kind of high, kind of not looking as good as he usually does. And I heard people talking about him. They didn't know he was my son. And it just hurts to your core because we shouldn't be judging each other. We should be kind to one another. And it's just such a simple thing to be kind and to try and understand one another rather than jump to conclusions that, oh, that's a bad person because he uses drugs. It just seems like we should know better, but we don't. It happens every day.

Matt Feret:

And heroin addiction, drug addiction, cuts across all swaths of socioeconomic territories. I mean rich to poor and everywhere in between. I mean, right?

Barbara Legere:

Absolutely. Absolutely. It really does. And unfortunately in the lower income families, it's even more prevalent, but it certainly happens at all levels of society and every type of raise, every type of income, every type of wherever you live, it happens all over. I live in Orange County, California where everybody here is at least middle class to upper middle class, and we've had such a huge epidemic in our county. It's just been awful. I can't even tell you how many people I've talked to that have lost a child in the last 13 years, I would say. It was the very beginning of it, and it's still going on, but now it's fentanyl, heroin's not even out there anymore. It's all fentanyl.

Barbara Legere on Lessons from her Journey [14:02]

Matt Feret:

Geez. When you wrote the book, I'm sure you had time during the process to reflect and write. Were there tips or moments where you looked back and you're like, man, if I just had this at this point, that would've been so much more helpful. If I would've done this year one rather than year four, not in sort of a self-faulting sort of way, but knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?

Barbara Legere:

Absolutely. Yes, definitely. In the beginning, when he came to me one night when he was 17 and said, “Mom, I've been using heroin for three months and I don't want to do it anymore. I want to stop.” I was so naive. I thought, okay, we'll put you in rehab and that'll be the end of it. We'll move on with our lives. I wish at that point, I would've educated myself better because it took me at least a year to really understand why he could not stop using. He would stop for a little while, then he would start again, and to understand that he couldn't get a diagnosis for depression or any of the other things he had going on. I mean, he got them. He got several different ones, but you can't really diagnose someone if they're using drugs. So it was like a cycle that we went through all the time.

So I always recommend to parents to educate yourself, and that's one of the things my book will do. It will educate you on what it looks like, what they go through. I got very close with a lot of his friends, so I talked to them and they openly told me what they were going through. I've been in those drug houses. I've seen it with my own eyes, and it's not something you want for anyone, especially your child. And if you can stop them before they start, that's the most important thing, especially today. I mean, it's so scary. Fentanyl is out there and it's, it's wreaking havoc. It is killing this whole generation of people. I mean, thousands and thousands of young people are dying, and it's really scary.

Matt Feret:

It is. So right in the beginning, you've got some advice there. And then if the disease progresses, if you talk about a five year in or even longer than that, is there a point where it's, I mean, I don't want to seem cold, and definitely I'm uneducated about the topic, but is there a point of no return that is in there, or is there never a point of no return?

Barbara Legere:

There's never a point of no return. We have a saying among parents that is, as long as they're breathing, there is hope. So as long as anyone is breathing, there's hope for that person. I've seen people change their lives, get their lives back, and go on to do wonderful things, helping others, but there's always a risk that there's never a guarantee that someone will not go back to drugs. I always think of the actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman was his name, and 25 years of not using heroin and he went back to it and he died. And that is a possibility. It's scary to think that, but it's part of something you need to know. It's always a risk.

Barbara Legere’s Advice for Parents Grieving the Death of a Child [18:02]

Matt Feret:

So your son took his own life.

Barbara Legere:

Yes.

Matt Feret:

I cannot imagine the pain. I would feel if one of my kids did that, and I don't want to. But what did you learn about that and the grieving process and the way you've handled it that you're passing on to others in hopes that it helps?

Barbara Legere:

Well, Keven told me for many years that he was going to end his life. He tried to prepare me. He made several attempts to overdose himself. I always found him in time or one time he was left for dead in an alley and a passerby found him and called 911. But this time he was very serious. He used a firearm to make sure that he completed it. It changed me in that moment. That whole moment just changed me. I saw him. I was there when it happened, and it's like your whole world just goes into turmoil. You're devastated. You're in pain. You don't know if you can breathe. I had a pain in my chest for the first year. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare that no parents should have to go through. But since we do, some of us do have to go through, what we need to do is support each other.

And my biggest recommendation to any parent who's lost someone to overdose or suicide or grandparent, there are a lot of grandparents in my support groups, is to find a support group specifically for that type of loss. Because people will either want to understand you and what you're going through, but they can't and you wouldn't want them to. Don't want anyone to understand how horrible it is. So if you find that group of people that can support you that really get it, that you can talk to whenever worrying that, okay, I'm going to upset them, no, it's okay to talk to another parent. That is the most important thing. And for those that really sincerely want to help someone through grief, understanding it better, I think, for example, I call my book Talk To Me. I'm grieving because a lot of people avoid talking about it, and the majority of people I've met, and I've talked to hundreds of parents, we want to talk about it.

My favorite thing is to talk about is Keven. I could talk about Keven all day every day, and that makes me happy. But people, even my own family on holidays, they don't bring him up. So, I bring him up, but I'm trying to train them or teach them or show them, look, let's talk about Keven. Share some fun memories. Let's remember the good times. That's what keeps his memory alive. And his friends are actually way better at that. They text me and talk to me, and it doesn't have to be a big gesture. If you know someone who's lost a child or a grandchild, write down the date that it happened and write down that person's birthday. Put it on your calendar to show up every year and send them a text and say, “Hey, I'm thinking of you today.” That's all you have to say.

They'll know what it means. They'll know that that means I care about you. I care about your loss. I care about the person you lost. And that speaks volumes. I mean, it just touches me so deeply when someone does that for me. Or you can say, I lit a candle for Keven today. I'm thinking about you. I lit a candle for Keven. It doesn't even have to be on one of those days, but just to let people know that they're not alone and to recognize their grief. I think, I can't remember who said it. It was one of the most famous grief author, I believe it was David Kessler who said, grief needs to be acknowledged. It needs to be recognized, and it hurts when someone doesn't recognize it. They don't know that your whole life has changed. I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't be talking to you before because I was so introverted, and I just would like, I have nothing to say. I'm not going to talk to anyone. I'm not going to write a book. But now I do it because I want to. It gives me satisfaction to know that, okay, maybe Keven's life didn't end in vain. Maybe somebody else will learn something. Maybe I can comfort someone or teach them how to comfort someone. That's what keeps me going. Everybody else has, everybody has their own thing. That helps. But for me personally, that's what helps me.

Matt Feret:

So advice is find a group of people who have lost a child in a similar way. What about individual counseling and therapy? Helpful? Not? What's your approach there to grief?

Barbara Legere:

It's very up to each person. Everybody is so different in their grief. You do have to look around to find someone as a therapist that suits you. There's a lot of sites online. You can just look up grief therapy and start there. Some people prefer a group. I prefer a group. I didn't seek out individual counseling. I kind of felt like I've been through so much already that I didn't need it. I don't know. That was just me personally, but a lot of people find great comfort in it, and they get a lot of help from it. There's resources out there. There's books that I always recommend. One I recommend to everyone is, it's called It's Okay Not To Be Okay by Megan Divine. To me, that book says it all. It explains that grief looks different for everybody, and whatever you're going through is okay, because that's your personal way of dealing with it.

If you need to go out and start living your life again in three weeks, that's what you need to do. And no one should tell you it's not right. If it needs to take a year for you to be able to go out again, that's okay too. It doesn't matter. It's what works for you. And it's different for all of us, but there is joy again in life. I just don't want people to lose hope, because that first year you think you don't think you're going to make it yourself. You really don't. It doesn't matter if you only have one child or if you have six children, losing that one is, it's like losing a part of yourself. It really is. I've talked to moms and dads that have shared that with me.

Barbara Legere’s Advice for Family and Friends of Someone Grieving the Loss of a Child [25:17]

Matt Feret:

A lot of people, I don't think they know what to say or I think they're probably scared they're going to bring up, if you're out there skipping through daisies and all of a sudden you get a text reminding you of a massive loss, nobody wants to do that. Right? Nobody wants to feel like that. So if I'm a family member or a close friend, what's your advice? What's the most helpful thing in this type of situation?

Barbara Legere:

That is such a great question, and I'm here to say that you cannot remind us because we're already thinking about it. I don't know if it's the same for losing a spouse or a sibling. I do have other people writing in my book, sharing about those experiences because I don't know those, but we are so aware of our loss at all times that it feels better to have somebody say something than to have somebody not say something. Even if I'm having a great day, and then I hear someone mentions Keven's name, maybe I wasn't thinking of him at that moment, but it's embedded in my mind and my heart. So hearing something is so much better than hearing nothing and just to simply say, “Hey, how are you doing?” I wouldn't say that at the very beginning because the answer is terrible. I would wait six months to say that, but just to say, I'm thinking about you. I'm here for you. Do you feel like talking about anything today? I had a memory of Keven or whoever. Those things just are so helpful to most people.

Matt Feret:

And time marches on. Do it for 10 years, 20 years, do it for the rest of your life? Check in?

Barbara Legere:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was with three older gentlemen today and they were all in their seventies, and they had all lost a son. I had lost my son too, and we were talking, and they all lost for different reasons, cancer, car accident, et cetera. And it had been many, many years for all of them and two of teared up talking about it, and I was a complete stranger to these two men, because it still hurts. It still hurts. We were there specifically to talk about grief, so it was an open conversation, but I was just observing them going, wow, it's been such a long time for them, and it still hurts so deeply. And they just wanted to talk about how wonderful their son was, what a great guy their son was, what the world was missing because their son wasn't here, and it made them feel really good.

Matt Feret:

Is there a different approach or a difference between losing a child or losing a grandchild?

Barbara Legere:

I don't think so. I know a lot of parents because of the drug epidemic. Something else that you may not be aware of that is very common in today's world is that grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Parents are either dying or they're incapable because of the drug use. And so a lot of times, I mean, I can't even count on both hands how many grandparents I know that are raising all of a sudden their parents, again, raising these little children up till their adults because their son or daughter is unable to, I don't know. I've never had a grandchild, but I imagine it would be extremely painful. And I know Keven waited until my mom was gone because she helped me raise them, and they were so close, and he knew, and he told me many times, he goes, I know grandma couldn't handle it if I died. I said, you're damn right. She couldn't. And he thought I could.

Matt Feret:

When, again I'm not an expert in any of these areas, but you've experienced them, when you are with someone who has addiction and mental health issues going on alongside of it, and they're openly talking about suicide for years leading up to it, what do you do? How do you handle that mentally? How do you handle that? I mean, I would've no idea.

Barbara Legere:

I didn't handle it. I was so stressed out. I was an absolute wreck for years. I didn't handle it well. I did everything I could to help him. I encouraged him every day. I told him he was loved. I offered any kind of support. I offered to move to a different area. I mean, we tried everything, and unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't work, and I could not blame myself after he died or I would not be able to get out of bed if I blame myself. I just had to tell myself that I know I made mistakes because all parents do, but the mistakes I made were made in love, and I would just highly encourage people if they recognize something in their child that is not right, and you kind of know. You can see if your child is withdrawing. They're acting different. They're not smiling as much. They're not laughing. They don't want to be around people. That's a sign that something's going on and offer to get them help and let them know that they can tell you anything. I told Keven early on when he was a kid that whatever you do, I don't care what it is, you can tell me, and I will not get mad at you at first. I'll listen to you depending on what it's, I said, I just want you to be able to tell me anything without fear. And so he did tell me, he came to me that night and he said, I've been using heroin for three months, and he told me all kinds of things, but a lot of kids fear that they're going to upset their parents. They're going to get in trouble. They don't want to hurt their parents. They don't want to scare their parents. Kids are very aware that their parents love them, and they don't want to rock the boat. So the parent needs to take the initiative if they notice something wrong with their child and try to get them counseling and just do whatever they can to help that person feel better about themselves and get a point where they can function in life.

Barbara Legere on her New Book [32:15]

Matt Feret:

So I know you talked about it earlier on in the show, but talk about your new book. Well, by the time this airs, I think it'll be out. So tell everybody what the new book is about and how you came up with the inspiration for that.

Barbara Legere:

Well, after I wrote my first book, I joined a writing group to write my first book, and I give them a lot of credit because they didn't let me give up. I learned so much about self-publishing and this and that, and I wanted to stay in the group, so I had to write another book.

Matt Feret:

But that's a very funny and honest answer.

Barbara Legere:

I've never said that out loud before. It just came out. That's so funny that I said that. But it's true. I love these people so much. I see them five days a week on Zoom. But anyhow, I wanted to write another book, and the only thing I could think of was I need to help people understand grief and what not to say, and we don't think about it. We use those cliches and platitudes that have been floating around forever, and we say things that if you would actually stop and listen to what you're saying from the perspective of the person that lost someone, some of them are pretty bad.

Matt Feret:

Give me some examples. What should I not say? I don't want to hurt anybody, and I don't think anybody really does.

Barbara Legere:

I know. Oh, none of us do. And I'm guilty too. I'm in the same boat. I am just as guilty because I didn't think about it before. But the number one thing that people seem to do is try to make you feel better. And so they try to justify your loss by using phrases to start with “at least.” So if you hear yourself about to say at least, at least you can have other children, or at least he was old, or at least he died suddenly and didn't suffer, or at least you can get remarried. Anything that starts with that lease is like saying it doesn't matter that you just lost this person because you can, at least there's this other option for you.

Matt Feret:

Yeah. So it sounds like don't tell someone to look on the bright side.

Barbara Legere:

No, that is it. No, that is not a good thing to do. That's very hurtful. The other one that happens quite often is people compare their loss to your loss. Like, oh, my mom died of cancer. And then the person is saying, oh, my dad died of cancer, and this is what happened. And five minutes later, you're not even addressing the mom that died of cancer because you're talking about your dad. And so that just kind of dismisses the grief of the person that just lost somebody. What's another one that happens a lot? I tell people it's not about you. Not I have a whole list of the books. Of course. I can't think of them.

Matt Feret:

No, that's okay. And you don't have to give the whole book away.

Barbara Legere:

That's true. But I do have a chapter called It's Not About You, and we're so uncomfortable we don't know what to say. So I'm really hoping that people can read this and go, okay, and I'm not saying I'm the expert. I've just lived it for a long time. I lost my dad when I was 15, and I've lost so many people in my life over the years, which I talk a little bit about in the book. It's something that I've experienced a lot, but not until losing your child, do you really get hit hard with some of the things people say that just don't help.

Matt Feret:

Yeah. Talk about saying what not to say. I think there's probably a, and you probably addressed this in the book, when someone dies when they're 90, it's, well, they lived a good life, or someone dies tragically, oh, that's such a shame. Or, she was so young. I mean, I've heard people say, yeah, he had a heart attack at 50 and he was 310 pounds. Like it was their own fault. Yeah. It's like some sort of lack of empathy, and I've listened to people who have said that. I'm kind of like, that's really callous.

Barbara Legere:

It is. I had the assistant coroner say to me on the day they came to my house, the day it happened, he said, suicide's so selfish, and I didn't say anything. I was in shock at that time. I was incapable. But later I thought of what I would like to say, and it's very rarely that suicide is selfish. It's hopelessness that the person is feeling, they feel hopeless. They feel like this is the only solution to their problem. They don't want to leave their family hurting. Keven didn't want me to hurt. He loved me. It was not selfish what he did. So to be very careful, and even if the person's 99 years old, whoever lost them is going to miss them. They love them. I have an aunt who's 95. I'm going to be devastated when she passes. She's the last person of that generation, and I hope no one says that to me because that will hurt me a lot.

Matt Feret:

Yeah. Gosh, we've covered a lot of ground and a lot of sensitive ground. I hope I didn't say anything.

Barbara Legere:

No.

Matt Feret:

No. Okay, good. Yeah.

Barbara Legere:

Absolutely not. No, no.

Matt Feret:

It's tough to talk about. I mean, right. You wrote books about it. It's tough to talk about. Tough to know what to ask and how to ask it. So I'm really glad that you let me ask all those questions and be open and right. Vulnerable. You and me.

Barbara Legere:

Yeah, and like I said, I do too. I'm in the same boat as everybody else. I need to read my book. I need to remember these things because it's just so easy not to think before you speak. So yeah, it's all of us that just need little reminders, and hopefully it'll help people.

Matt Feret:

Be kind.

Barbara Legere:

Be kind. That's my motto. A little kindness goes a long way.

Matt Feret:

What questions did I not ask that I should have?

Barbara Legere:

One thing that comes to mind immediately is I just remembered another thing that happens a lot when someone passes away is we say, let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm here if you want to talk.

Matt Feret:

Oh, I've definitely done that.

Barbara Legere:

Yeah. But what you're really saying, you're putting a burden on that person. That person can't even think, I mean, that person has a hard time brushing their teeth. That person can't even walk to the mailbox at this point because it's so early on. So what I recommend is thinking of something to do and then just doing it. I had some friends drop off a bunch of paper goods, plates and napkins and cups and stuff. They just said, here, here's a whole bunch of this. Now you don't have to do dishes for a really long time. It was a simple little thing, but it helped me. They would say, I'm leaving a meal for you. Would you prefer this or that? It's not. Would you like a meal? It's like, I'm leaving one if you like it or not. I have a whole list of things you can say. I'm going to come over and walk your dog. Or I'm at the store, can I get you this? Are you running low in that? I mean to kind of think for them in the beginning because they're not going to pick up the phone and say, I need to talk, or I need this and that. Would you do that? It's so hard for any of us to pick up the phone and ask for that kind of help, but especially somebody that's just lost someone significant in their life. It's really, really hard.

Matt Feret:

Just do something, even if you're not sure it's the right thing.

Barbara Legere:

Yeah. Because what I hear when someone does something is, I care about you. I care about what you're going through. I really care. And it's really not that hard.

Matt Feret:

Yeah. Leave a lasagna. Even though we don't know if they like lasagna.

Barbara Legere:

And if they don't, that's fine. They can give it to their neighbor or throw it away. But yeah, something is better than nothing.

Matt Feret:

Yeah. Barbara, thank you so much for being on the show and talking about this topic.

Barbara Legere:

Thank you, Matt. I really enjoyed talking to you. You have a great show.

Matt Feret:

Thank you very much.

Matt Feret:

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Matt Feret is the host of The Matt Feret Show, which focuses on the health, wealth and wellness of retirees, people over fifty-five and caregivers helping loved ones. He’s also the author of the book series, Prepare for Medicare – The Insider’s Guide to Buying Medicare Insurance and Prepare for Social Security – The Insider’s Guide to Maximizing Your Retirement Benefits.

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