WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice.
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You should seek the services.
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Of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. Behoy.
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Captain David Gallimore welcomes your board. The Regenerate Show live
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Monday's ten am Pacific on KFOHD Radio at KFOHD dot com.
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We dive into the real messy work of transforming our lives.
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Leadership and organizations. Bring your hot mess and confusion, lead
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with clarity, courage, and come together. Let's strengthen our resilience,
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accelerating the health of ourselves, people, plant and profits. Now
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here's your host, Captain Dave, your personal regenerator.
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All aboard, Welcome, Happy Monday. I am so delighted to
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be here with you for episode twelve, and the theme
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this week is living inside Grief. How do you find
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a way to regenerate life when people you love most
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are suddenly gone? I think that my friend Chris Dchi
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from college. I can think of no better person to
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help us understand the different layers and the nuances and
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the challenges of living inside grief. Chris lost his beloved
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son Diego, and a few short years later his really funny,
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smart and capable leader wife Hannah, and last Memorial Day,
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I lost my dear sister Pamela. So we're going to
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explore do we ever get over grief? But how do
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we learn instead to live inside it? So from the
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unexpected ways of loss and how it requires our daily
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habits through coping strategies that quietly carry us forward. So
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I believe that there will be at least one takeaway.
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Invite you to take some notes and apply one idea
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from today's show. I know your time will be a
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well spent. So our promise, if you haven't been here before,
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is to have some fun today, because when we're laughing,
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we're learning, and as heavy, deep and real as a
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topic of grief is, there's a way to I think
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approach this with humility and lightness of being. Second, we
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want to leave you inspired and finally invite you to
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take that one idea that you could apply today in
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your life transformations and here, so it's really a privilege
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to introduce my dear friend of several decades, Chris Decci.
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I'll never forget prior to freshman year at our college,
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I was in a bus sitting across the aisle from
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Chris on the way to the freshman conference, which was
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a way to kind of get introduced to college life
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and start to make new friends. And I'll never forget
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Chris's piercing blue eyes and just radiant smile and his curiosity.
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And I think it was probably a good hour trip
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in the bus, and I realized right then that I
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had found a dear friend. And we proceeded to entertain
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three hundred plus freshman with his piano and my piano,
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and I always was impressed with Chris's ability to improvise.
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So Chris, after college explore the theater arts very very
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talented writer a theater as well as performer. We all
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know how challenging that can be. So he had to
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also explore day jobs like legal field and then got
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involved in selling real estate. He earned his MBA in
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entrepreneurship from the University of Texas at Austin, where he
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met his beloved Honor and they proceeded to DC and
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he got involved in various nonprofit executive director roles, including
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the Connections Resource Center, Open Door Preschools, and Any Baby Can.
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He is most recently the deputy Chief Travis County District Clerk.
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He's an executive manager of a large team and a
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wopping big budget. We all know that working in state
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and local government is not for the faint of heart,
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and he absolutely adores his from a professional perspective. Of course,
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is current leader and I'm sure he'll go into a
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little bit of detail about that, so please, without any
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further ado, Welcome Chris.
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Thanks David, and just to update a couple of things.
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I met in in college and then we went to
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d C washingt DC together and then I dragged her
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down to Texas where he had tried to escape earlier
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in her life and ended up. We loved living in Austin,
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or at least I did, and she did the best
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she could. And I'm the chief deputy at the District
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Courts Office. My wonderful boss, Velva Price, is the elected
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official and I was very pleased when she hired me
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ten years ago and we've worked well together serving the
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Travis County community.
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Thank you so much. I appreciate the corrections. Thank you
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keeping the record straight. Like all good deputy clerk.
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Should there you go, there you go.
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So we always like to start the show off with that,
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what's that one thing, Chris that just truly lights you
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up that you love to be or do?
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And I wish I could make I want to answer,
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but of course the easy answer is family and friends,
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starting within in my boys, Diego and Santiago, and then
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the family that's grown through santi I would extend that
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out to all of my family and those friends, especially
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some of the friends who have regenerated with me around
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this loss. So it's interesting how friendships change as circumstances change.
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But then on a personal level, I love art movies,
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I love jazz music, and I have a love hate
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relationship with swimming. The happy moment is when you finish
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exercising and you've gotten past that lazy streak of I
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don't want to get up, but I don't want to
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do this. So that's that moment of pure happiness when
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you have finished doing something active.
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Oh man, I can relate to that. I was working
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on a fence project as we sell our house, and
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every muscle. Every joint was saying, stop, go back under
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the covers, go to bed. But you're right. When you
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overcome that inertia and just find your character, it's a
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great joy when it's when it's done. Plus you get
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a cleaning in the process, don't you. As a swimmer,
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there you go.
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Yeah, And I'm not talking a rigorous swim. I'm talking
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about fifteen or twenty minutes early in the morning. I
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don't wake up and get to it, then I won't
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do it.
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Oh my gosh. That's such the truth, isn't it. Yeah,
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it out of the way early. I find that my
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favorite way of regenerating now is being on the water
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with friends and family and with the new jailing students,
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and I get that endorphin kick and son vitamin D
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and physicality or that out in nature. So I know
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that many of our listeners have their own ways of
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great joy, and but we forget that sometimes in our
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day to day busyness and all of the email and
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all of the slack meetings and just you know, the
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modern day life. For you, water and for me water
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as well.
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Well. And for me it's jumping into the water is
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and I wouldn't say that I'm a water person. It's
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just that's such an at our age. It's a great
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way to actress.
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Yeah, Yeah, Easier on the joints than running, certainly.
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Yeah.
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So I know that we're going to get to know
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each other at a deeper level through this theme that
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we've decided to discuss today. But before we do that,
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what has formed you? What is the couple life experiences?
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And perhaps your word not necessarily a bio, but more
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what's formed you? What's your origin story? Chris Well?
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My origin story is very linked to Anna, my wife,
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my partner in life, who died, even though of course
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I did a lot of growing before I met her
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in college. I come from a wonderful family, but they
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divorced very early and I was an only child until
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my father we marry and had my brother and sister
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much later, ten twelve years after I was born. So
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I was raised as an only child for a lot
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of my existence with one parent. I think that set
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up a lot of there I say, neediness around relationships
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and looking for a partner. And when I found in
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As she filled a lot of things I was looking for,
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and more important, beyond that, she also changed my perspective
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on life. While I was following her around to DC
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and seeing the study of law which she was exploring,
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I learned a lot about community service, nonprofit work, which
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was fairly foreign to me. It was just not something
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in my wheelhouse. And so that that key relationship, which
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is what I then lost a couple of years ago
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when she died, is what actually ties in both to
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the answer to your question, but also the topic of
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this discussion is, you know, how do you take a
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I forced someone who not only was your partner but
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became the family unit and raised children. What do you
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do at our stage of life when you lose that
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partner which you might have thought, yeah, this could happen,
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you never think that it will happen.
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Yeah. I've been married now to Margaret, my friend, best
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friend and soulmate and wife of thirty five years. Still
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in training.
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As she will tell you, I make sure you use
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the words yester dear as much as possible. That helped
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a lot.
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Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
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Whatever the question, just to answer yesteryear it really worked
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its magic.
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Yeah, And I think she's also realized that, especially now
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in our sixties, it takes two brains to be effective
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as we once had one brain in our twenties and thirties.
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And I would argue that a good marriage, you become
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your own entity as a couple. And that's what's star
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wrenching for any of us that go through life and
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aren't the first one to die, which is inevitable for
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all of us as couples. It's very rare to have
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two people die within proximity time wise at each other.
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So this is an inevitable thing that we just don't
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always face and know is going to happen, but unfortunately
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it does happen.
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Yeah, well, that's maybe a great transition to our topic.
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And I really want to tip my hat, my virtual
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hat to you, because I think you came up with
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a really, really helpful expression around living into grief. So
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we're going to kind of tease that out, but i'd
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love to the extent that you're willing, Chris, speak about
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how things started to unfold and with Anna and her
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help and then her eventual passing, and what are some
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of the real challenges that you've had to navigate that
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we can talk a little bit about what lessons you
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might have learned in that process. I want to start
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with honor rather than the air, because obviously we've been
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chatting about her the last few minutes, it seems want
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to honor her as much as possible.
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Well, the strating thing about Anna and her experience was
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she died from ovarian cancer and had a fairly textbook
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relationship with it in the sense that they said, oh,
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the average expectancy is a year for the level of
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severity and unfortunately the late catch of it. And by
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the way, I would put a plug into any additional
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screening that can happen for women with cancer, which I
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think they're coming up with some new new efforts, is
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something I would always hoped that could be increased because
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we as men have a lot of screening, and partly
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it's a cost issue. But in my mind, that's one
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thing I look back with regret is that Ann and
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me and the medical professionals didn't screen things as early
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as we could have and should have. So her life,
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her life with ovarian cancer was a year long. And
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the thing I would say that was so striking is
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she lived so fully. Any of our listeners who knew
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her know that she was just a life force, a wonderful,
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lovely person. And so what was shocking was to go
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through that caretaking year and be by her side and
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not realize that she really could be gone until the
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night she was gone. She lived life so fully that
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on the last day of her existence, she was spending
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it focused on her new grand baby, who's one of
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the other things that drives me positively through life going forward.
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But she had time with her son with a man,
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to her daughter in law with as mate with me
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and died that night after having had one of the
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most beautiful days she had in months, because she gotten
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back home to Austin. She was hoping to come home.
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Unfortunately she wasn't able to get home. But so that
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in a nutshell is both the quick story of her
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death but also an affirmation of an incredible life that
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actually made it difficult to transition from because it made
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me miss her so much, which days to this day.
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Yeah yeah, and thank you for correanting the pronunciation of
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your wife.
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Oh no, she went with both both pronunciations work Anna.
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Anna, Okay, I remember the Ana, but I want to
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be honoring how you.
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I mostly did Anna, but she I mean, I think