Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Kate Bowler: Oh, hey there. Okay, I just wanted to give you a little heads-up that today’s episode mentions drug use and suicidal ideation. So just check in with yourself. And if this isn’t what you can handle right now, no problem. We have an episode linked in the show notes if you need something different.

Kate Bowler: Hello, I’m Kate Bowler, and this is Everything Happens. Today we’re talking about tragicomedy. It’s a genre that includes tragedy and comedy, intuitively all mixed together. But isn’t that all of life? The absurdity. The horror. The wonder. The laughter that somehow cuts through the most insane and terrible moments. When you think about the tragicomedy of your own love or loss, what memory comes to mind? Maybe it was the time a relative fell into a freshly dug grave. Yes, that really happened to comedian Tig Notaro. She retold that story when I talked to her on the podcast, and it was everything and more that you could have possibly needed. Or the time I woke up from an absolutely terrifying surgery and just looked down, realized that I was wearing a slap bracelet that a friend had like, snuck through security, seen my sleeping form, and took one of those bracelets. You know, the ones from the 90s where you just like boop and it just, like, wraps around your wrist? Yeah. And there is… There was, I think it said something like, I don’t know, joyful or just something ridiculous. But immediately I woke up and burst out laughing. Because it was the thing that cuts through all the noise of whatever else is happening. Life, it’s just, all of it. All the joys and pains and ups and downs and in-betweens. The tragedy and the comedy. Today I’m talking to someone who gets that. But before I introduce her, we’re going to take a quick break to tell you about some of the sponsors of the show that make everything well happen. We’ll be right back.

Kate:  My guest today is Stephanie Wittles Wachs. Stephanie is the co-founder and chief creative officer of my new podcast network, Lemonada, where their slogan is, “When life gives you lemons, listen to Lemonada.” So yes, Steph is just my kind of person. She hosts the award-winning podcast, Last Day, and she wrote a beautiful memoir called Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful about the death of her brother to an accidental heroin overdose when he was just 30. And “everything is horrible and wonderful” is, is just is my worldview and soon to be my chest tattoo. And Steph, I feel so grateful that we are doing this at long last. Hello my dear.

Stephanie Wittles Wachs: Hello my soul mate in podcast form. So nice to be here with you.

Kate: I know, so long ago our hearts made a rainbow bridge.

Stephanie: And we were destined to find each other at 9 a.m. Pacific on whatever day this is.

Kate: Yes, that’s exactly right. Oh, hon. Like so many people I meet and immediately adore, it comes at a really heavy cost. You are someone who knows befores and afters in a very intimate way, and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind if we started there with your incredible, hilarious, wildly oh, wildly charismatic brother, Harris. What was he like when he walked into a room?

Stephanie: Oh, he was, the life of the party. He was, he was everyone’s favorite dude. He was my favorite dude. From day one, we were just the two of us. And three years apart. We were both very weird. We had normal parents, but we came out, actually, let me scratch that. They’re not normal at all. They have normal occupations and appeared normal to the outside world. But very strange and funny. Strange, strange people. And, we as a family, like, leaned into that, and we, we were funny. We loved having fun. We just liked each other. And every holiday and every part of my childhood, like… It was hard, it was hard, obviously, but is colored by laughter. I think that’s the thing that I remember most of the before times. And in addition to being, you know, everyone’s favorite, was just profoundly talented and, and not of this world. You know, he just was, he came out different and, and kept on that path the entire time. And we didn’t know whether he was going to be like, a massive failure or a whopping success. Like, we if, like we always said, like, I could go either way, he could be the best, most successful human in the world. Or truly live in the basement forever. We don’t know. We’re not sure. Because he only did what he wanted to do, you know? So, like, school wasn’t necessarily that. Although he was that student that had the profound respect of his teachers, but he just still made Cs, you know? When he was 22. He had this magical moment of meeting one of our dear friends, Sarah Silverman, outside of a comedy club. They were doing an open mic. He was 22. He was a baby child. He was like, no one should have ever given him any opportunities at 22. And yet, she fell in love with him like we all do and, remembered him and then offered him a job on her show, like three months later. And I think the email was like, “Hey, I need a young greenie for the room, do you want to come?” Like, I know you don’t know what you’re doing at all.

Kate: Come be my fetus.

Stephanie: Totally, yeah. And he was like, let me think about that, yes, I would I would appreciate the opportunity. You know, he was like, so out of his elements in, in so many ways. But like, yeah. Everyone there fell in love with them. He told Sarah, like, before she hired him, like, I’ll come work for you, but I do have to go to a Fish show for like four days, the first day of work. So can I still have the job? And he still got the job, like, that’s that’s who he was. You know? Just like, not playing by our rules, but another set of rules. But they still worked, which, is maddening too. So like the flip side of that kind of person is like he’s constantly frustrating because he’s not following the rulebook and still like getting all the, you know, green lights along the way or whatever.

Kate: And he stays wildly successful.

Stephanie: He stays, yeah. He climbs.

Kate: It sounds like he was, I mean, he writes for Eastbound & Down, he writes for I mean, the funniest jokes on Between Two Ferns, which I still rewatch.

Stephanie: The president, yeah, President Obama jokes, you know what I mean? Like he wrote like, oh yeah, he wrote for President Obama. No big deal. He got everything handed to him, it felt like. You know? In many ways it felt like that. He was a co-executive producer on Parks and Recreation. He played Harris, the animal control guy. I’m introducing my nine-year-old to Parks and Recreation, now. We’re starting from the beginning, and it’s so fun to, to show her him in this way and through this lens. But then, also, like he… Anybody who’s super funny like that is, is also deeply sensitive and and caring and compassionate. And he had that too. And so he would write scripts. And not have them bought. And that would be horrible for him. He would feel like a failure. And he, there’s this like level of rejection. That he was getting accustomed to living in that world that I think just stung a lot. And he started using drugs. And, and that was like. Where the story turns really sad and sour.

Kate: That must have been very surprising information, because on the outside, especially jobs in the entertainment industry, in my limited experience, I found that sometimes the shininess of those jobs is like, pretty blinding. And, and especially when it looks like everything is, you know… People are making money doing what they like, and it looks so…

Stephanie: I would always say he is, he’s the most successful person I ever knew. And and he loved his job. He loved it so much. But it’s also yeah, it’s full of pressure. You have to pitch ideas constantly in a writer’s room with people who you admire and revere, whose work you’ve been watching for years and years and years. And you have to show up ready and, like, contributing every day. You can’t phone it in. And it’s a lot of pressure for, for for a child, for, for 25, six seven, eight, nine, kid, you know? I mean, he, I mean, there’s some 29 year olds that are not kids. He was.

Kate: Yes, yes. It’s so helpful too, to hear you like describe him, because I think it can be easy to get tripped up on what addiction looks like, that it has to be someone who had a really difficult childhood or like a traumatic, you know, a fault line in their life. And, and that just wasn’t the case with him?

Stephanie: No. It was…yeah. His blueprint was, was pretty rad. He… It’s so funny, I talked to, I did a show, I do this show, Last Day. You said it. I do a show. It’s no secret. And, I don’t need to be coy.

Kate: I’d like to reveal to you something, that I’ve been meaning to tell you.

Stephanie: Have something to share.

Kate: There is a podcast available online…

Stephanie: There’s like, 4000 episodes. Anyway, first season was all about opioids, and I dug deep into it and explored what you’re talking about. And I sat down with this guy, Dr. Gabor Maté, who is the most world-renowned-trauma specialist there is. And he basically changed my entire understanding of, of trauma, of addiction, of everything. And I was like, hey, man. I brought you here today— I was a little bit nicer. But that was sort of the tone to be like, our childhood was perfect. We had no trauma. We were super happy. And he was like, by the end of it, like, nuh-uhh, nope. That trauma is not what happens to you. It is what happens inside of you. So Harris might not have had overt trauma that looks like a textbook, but, but whatever happened to him, and our experiences are different. He always says, two kids have two different parents. Two kids grow up in two different households. Whatever happened to him, the way he processed it was painful. And, you know, that’s because of all sorts of things, right? Like wiring and, you know, disposition and all of that, that you sort of come out with. But I don’t know, he helped me understand that really, truly, living in the world is traumatic for anyone, everyone, everyone. And how we deal with that makes permanent, sort of lasting marks. And I don’t think I understood how deep Harris’s well was, you know? I don’t know if that makes sense.

Kate: Yeah. That’s a perfect way of putting it. And just like this, that the stories we have about who we are can sometimes be really painful and not sustainable, and then we don’t know that until we, you know, trip over something. We like fall in the tar pit that we can’t then get out of. And it sounds like such a minor thing was his tar pit. It was the, like he hurt his back.

Stephanie: He hurt his back, um, yeah. He, he had this, like, back issue. We have it. My mom gets a bad back, I get a bad back, it’s a thing. And he was like, on the floor, like writhing in pain. Could not move, had to call an ambulance. It was horrible. We were all living in Houston at the time, he was in LA. We were far away from him, which was hard because we’re a close family and we couldn’t go there. You know, to help him off the floor. So, he had lots of wonderful friends and chosen family out there that were so good and kind and lovely to him. But in this case, yeah, he had to get medical intervention. And this was, you know, itwas bad timing. He was right in the moment where doctors were overprescribing really potent medication. So OxyContin is what he was prescribed. And I also don’t want to make it sound like he never did a drug before that. He sure did. He sure did. He loved to be high, right? Like that, that’s another thing that I just need to say. I don’t want it to sound like, ever, he got this prescription and boom, he was addicted, right? Like he liked to numb out. He liked to turn his brain off. He liked to stop feeling things. And he usually did that with various substances, you know? I think we like hierarchy things in our society, right?

Kate: Yes, we do.

Stephanie: Some things are better or worse.

Kate: Some things are socially acceptable, or not socially acceptible.

Stephanie: Totally. I have my glass of Pinot Noir every night and it is absolutely fine. My son made a joke about it to his kindergarten teacher and she was like “L-O-L,” like, you know? And it’s still, like everything has degrees of, like can be problematic. So, I think his combination of liking to kind of go away, and escape whatever he was feeling and then, the real easy access, he finally got to a very potent go-away facilitator. Was really, was really, really terrible for him. And yeah. And, and, for anyone it would be.

Kate: Yeah. I’ve struggled a lot with chronic pain in my life and I, I mean, when you describe his back issue—and I mean, I’ve had whole days and weeks where 4 to 5 hours a day, I’ve had to lie in a bathtub just to try to, like, alleviate one pressure on one disc just to get my, like, brain back for a second. And also, aren’t I supposed to be empathetic and funny and, well, that, that goes away. And yeah, I, I’ve really, I’ve really struggled with, wanting so desperately to gosh, if I, I mean wanting so desperately for there to be a medicated solution to the chronic, the like devastation of chronic pain. I was reading um, okay, Steph, this is very dark, so just permit me…

Stephanie: Bring it on, you’re in the right place.

Kate: I need, I did need that song, in order to say—

Stephanie: The darker the better. Let’s go. A 123, a 5678, ba nah nah nah nah, let’s go.

Kate: Oh, well, I’ve. I got something for you. I um, gosh, so Canada changed its euthanasia laws. And so in the sort of like a, in a very short period of time, the number of people applying to die skyrockets. And they have this process by which there’s an outtake interview with people who are applying to die and the number of cases of chronic pain? I actually spent just a whole weekend reading them and weeping because it was people saying, “It’s not that I wanted to die. I just, I just don’t know how. I just can’t live like this.”

Stephanie: I want the pain to end. That is what it is. It is, we did an entire season on suicide after opioids. I’m very fun at parties. And that was the thing. It’s not that I want to die. It’s. I want my pain to end. And that physical pain, like, that’s that’s the thing. Like, I feel like with all the work that I’ve been trying to do, accidentally, truly. It’s like, “Please just understand and relate and empathize.” Like, have you ever been really hurt? Have you ever just been, like, so in pain that you can’t breathe? Okay, now imagine that just lasts all day, every day. Forever. Like you don’t— you just want it to stop. And a lot of people, they, they try lots of things. And then it’s like, well, I don’t know. I just want to. I just want it to end. And it breaks my heart like, it tears me up to even say it because I’ve met so many people who, like, what you’re talking about, it’s just… And I have so much empathy for what my brother was going through. I just. I really do. I just, really… It’s… I don’t, I don’t like, even cry about him anymore. Whew. I’m never interviewed anymore. So I’m, ike, oh, my God, is this what it’s like? But he was like, really in so much pain and I, and I just, he didn’t know how to stop it, you know? And it’s really hard and I just, I feel so big for people who are, who are, who are struggling. I just really do. I know you do, too.

Kate: Yes. Yes.

Stephanie: It’s like, to go through life like this, you know?

Kate: Yeah, where’s the volume setting on this? On this project?

Stephanie: Can I turn it down?

Kate: Yes, how far can it turn this down? Totally. Oh, yes. yeah. We’ll be right back.

Kate: I read your memoir, but I loved listening to the audio version. Because it’s it’s so honest and it’s so funny, and so very, very transparent about one of the things people don’t love talking about, which is how loving someone who struggles with addiction is so difficult. Because wound up in this disease is some very difficult personality traits. It sounds like there was a big difference between Harris sober and Harris using.

Stephanie: Different humans. So much so, Kate, that I… I wrote the book, truly, in nine months after he died. I wrote it in a fugue state of… Like, I wasn’t here. I wasn’t on the planet anymore. I was in grief land, and no one was there with me. And I was like, well, there’s no other people here, so I need to just write by myself. Like, yeah, I shared a bed with a person who I married.

Kate: Yeah, people keep talking, people want things.

Stephanie: I see a physical form walking around my house. He looks familiar. Can’t talk to him. There’s a baby here who I delivered a year ago and needs me. So I will smile at the baby, but I really, it’s taking all my energy to smile at the baby. So the only thing I can do is crawl into my bed and write at night by myself. Like, that was how the book came out. And so it is when people are like, it’s so raw. It is so raw. I, there was no, so much so that when. I went back to edit it, when I was less raw, two years later, you know how books work. Kate, do you know how books work? You write this book, then it goes away. Then it comes back to you. You’re a different person at that point, and then you’re like, I’m sorry, no no no no, no.

Kate: That’s real. What was she like? That sounds very upsetting.

Stephanie: She needs to take a moment. This person who wrote this book is very distressed and I don’t agree with her tone all the time. But my editor was so good. She was like, don’t take that anger out. Don’t take that stuff out. That is, you have—don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t, don’t. Don’t put a blanket on that. Don’t dampen it. Because I wanted to be like, oh no, no, no, no. Because I wasn’t as mad at him anymore. I wasn’t as mad at him. Like two years later, I was just like, oh my God. He was perfect and wonderful and amazing. And I had made him a god among mortals. And I, I didn’t feel angry anymore. But I was really, really angry after he died. And it was in there. And it is so hard. It’s so hard because you’re like, who are you? Where did you go? You’re my, where’s my best friend? Where’s my brother? Where’s my funny dinner table partner to be looking at and like, making un-voiced commentary about every moment that father and mother are acting like complete weirdos. Like, where are you? I felt so robbed of, of my person, you know, and I really needed him, too. Like, at that moment, I had had a baby. She was born with hearing loss. It was my first child. I had no idea how to navigate that or disability or… I had a vision of like, I’m going to have her and then we will be beautiful, a beautiful family and everything will be perfect. And I will walk her and everyone will be like, she’s so beautiful. And I’ll be like, I know. And then I was just in the hospital for like six months, like, like trying to draw. blood out of a two-month-old baby. Like giving, putting a one-month-old baby through an MRI machine. Like all this stuff that just was so hard and he was so high. And I was just in, in hell. I just I was in a horrible place. It was horrible. I know, I’m so sorry. This is so sad. Is this too sad?

Kate: Not—no! “Is this too sad?” will never be a question I will entertain.

Stephanie: Do you want me to dial it down?

Kate: Never. Oh, lovey. Because there’s that feeling with like, the two-peas-in-a-pod feeling. And especially when you’re so vulnerable. Like new baby vulnerable, managing fears about hearing loss, like endless appointments and bills and appointments and therapies. It sounds like you were in the treadmill of diagnosis. And treatment, and…

Stephanie: Yes. Oh my gosh.

Kate: And who’s she going to turn out to be? Because this is, is, how much of an obstacle is this going to be in her life?

Stephanie: 100%? There was, there were so many scares. I have like profound medical anxiety anyway. Why, I don’t know. Let’s ask Dr. Maté. My father was a doctor. I’m like, I don’t know. I’m always afraid of medical stuff. It’s a thing. It’s always been a thing. So when my daughter had this thing, it brought out the absolute worst in me. The anxiety was off the charts. And all these things kept happening where they did a urinalysis and they contaminated it. And then I got a hysterical call that we needed to bring her immediately because she was having kidney failure. Like what? I mean, she was a baby. My anxiety was just off the charts. I also, we had been displaced lol, there was mold “hahaha.” There was mold in the nursery. In the baby’s room there was a mushroom growing out of her carpet. Literal mushroom. We had to move out of the house when she was one month in with my parents with a newborn. My mother was like, “Why don’t you just give her Benadryl?” And I’m like, she is six weeks old. Like, but she keeps crying. I’m like, she’s a baby, I don’t—Do you remember babies because they do this, you know, everything at once. So. And he went into rehab for the first time when she was one month old. So it was just a nightmare. It was a nightmare, it was terrible. It was terrible. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. It was terrible. And I was worried about him all the time. And he kept letting me down and I felt very selfish about that. I felt like I need you to show up for Thanksgiving and be a human. You know? I need you to help me navigate blah, blah, blah. I need you to be at the airport at this time. And I pick you up, and we’re going to go on vacation with the baby that’s cute. And I need you to be in pictures and behave.

Kate: Yes.

Stephanie: And he was like, lady, I am too high for this. I don’t I don’t have a desire to do anything that you’re telling me to do. And I’m going to lie to you also the entire time so that you’re going to feel a little cuckoo, you know. Like, that’s the thing, too, when you’re dealing with somebody who’s addicted so profoundly. They have to get high. And, and so they have to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Because if they don’t, they will be very sick. And unable to function. It’s this wild thing that, that, if you are not somebody who struggles with addiction, you can’t understand. And I still can’t understand it. I’ve done hundreds and thousands of hours of work in it so I can try to understand it, but I don’t know for my, you know self really what it feels like. But what I think it feels like is, if I don’t like eat this food, drink this water, I cannot survive. And so that means that you lie to people. And you do whatever it takes. The addiction is in charge. And so he wasn’t lying to me because he’s a terrible person. He was lying to me because he had a disease and his disease made him lie. It was really bad.

Kate: Yeah. I know that it must have felt impossible. It sounds like it felt impossible from the outside to know how he was really doing. But it, it really did seem like he was doing well like right before he died.

Stephanie: Oh my golly goodness. He was at the top of his game. He was about to like be a very successful actor. He he always, he was so good on screen. And he’s so funny and so charming. He just, every character he played was named Harris. Like, they just were like, you just be you on screen. His animal control guy was Harris. He was, he was working with, Aziz Ansari on Master of None, and it was before it came out. And it was just him and Alan Yang and Aziz, and they, it was the three of them writing. And Aziz’s little brother Aniz, he was also there in the first season, and then more and more and more as the show went on. He was in a sober living house and he convinced them, because he’s him and he doesn’t play by the rules, to let him leave every day to go write on the show. So he would drive himself to his house. And Aziz would pick him up every day. I don’t, he didn’t even know he was living in a sober living house. And he would go to the writers’ room and write all day. And then go back home and then go back to the sober house. And he was doing this, and he was loving writing on the show. He, they, Aziz’s best friend on the show was named Harris. And he was going to be the character that Eric Wareheim played on the show. And then it was really funny because he had to audition for himself.

Kate: Yeah. You might know me from such things as…

Stephanie: As my own life. Yeah. He had to audition for the role of Harris that he wrote as himself. And it was so dumb. And we were just like, what is this world, this Hollywood thing is so ridiculous. What a waste of time. And he did it. And he, like, crushed it. And he was really nervous about it. And he did such a good job. And he got the part. And this was like a week before he died. And he had, like, he was looking for AirBnBs, they were going to start shooting in New York two weeks after, early March. And, he died February 19th, 2015. And he had done a stand up, he had done stand up the night that he died. And, which is his favorite thing, and he’s so good at it. And he did that. And then he came home and he wrote my mom an email. And the other really, like, sad and universe-weird thing about it is that Parks and Rec was wrapping that next week. Like the series was ending. And so he wrote my mom an email when he got home and was like, you’re going to love the finale. It’s so special. I’m so happy. I feel so good about it. And then he died. He used and he died. Yeah, I know, so sad. I know. It’s really sad. I’m sorry. Why am I apologizing? I don’t, this is I just, I don’t…

Kate: I wish I could hug you right now.

Stephanie: I just I just don’t revisit this ever anymore, you know?

Kate: Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie: It was so, it was like, nine years ago at this point, almost. Which is also crazy.

Kate: It sounds also like, you had a very surreal kind of mourning, too when you have your little brother, who’s your little brother, and then you’re grieving a person who the public is also grieving, and that…

Stephanie: Do not recommend.

Kate: I can imagine that it feels entirely inside out.

Stephanie: Do not recommend. Zero out of ten. No stars. It wasn’t…yeah. It was, it was so weird. It was so weird. We were grief-stricken. And then there was this whole other layer of public grief that I did not prepare myself for and was not expecting. But, yeah, I mean, TMZ broke the story. That’s how my mom found out. Horrible. And it was like, it was, there were some parts of it that were lovely, like…

Kate: Oh, you loved him too. Oh now I get to see your love. And he was important. And he’s not just important to me.

Stephanie: Totally. And everyone is writing beautiful things about him, and he’s the center of all of it. And I’m not just grieving by myself. Everyone’s grieving, and everyone knows that he was the best. I agree, yes, we’re all in agreement that he was the best and that this is really sad. And then what happens with the news is that people stop caring very quickly. And that was heartbreaking. I was like, but y’all, we were all upset together! And now you have moved on to Leonard Nimoy, who died two weeks later, and I am still devastated with Harris. And, so I think all in all, I would have rather everybody not because, yeah, it was…

Kate: Yes. As the temperature taker of grief, you’re like, oh, okay. I guess it’s down to, yeah, down to a reasonable room temperature. Whereas I’m, I’m still in the apocalypse. In one of my favorite movies, Trainwreck, the Amy Schumer character is presiding over the funeral of her dad, who was a difficult person. And finally, at one point, she’s like, “Put your hand up if my dad was an asshole to you.” Like, I just, I thought that was kind of a, I just felt like that would have been also a wonderful part of funerals.

Stephanie: So good. I mean, that is that stuff is truly, it’s like medicine. It’s we, we, we joked all the time, still to this day. We were writing the obituary. And I had assigned my husband the job of like, giving it to the newspaper and all of that. And so he came back and he was like, “Uhh…it is $2,500 for this.” And I was like, pause the grief. I’m sorry. What did you just say to me? What are they charging per word? Okay. Can you edit it down to like, I don’t know, what is it, five, $500. Mom? Does it does that feel…? Like, how much do we want to spend on this? Like, what is that? And then I was like, quoting The Big Lebowski, where John Goodman’s characters like, “We’re grieving, we’re not saps!” You know? And he like, like he’s like, I’ll take the ashes in the Folgers coffee can, you know? And I was like, lol. Okay, now back to grief. You know? Like there’s these moments of…

Kate: Yes, oxygen.

Stephanie: Oxygen. Where we’re, we’re in the negotiation of how much we want to spend per word on the dead brother’s obituary. We were like, this is so funny. Anyway, make it cheaper, and now let’s keep crying, you know?

Kate: Totally. Oh, that is so relatable. That is so relatable. Because it is like, there’s that, just the endless drowning. And then, and then someone hands you. Terrible behavior.

Stephanie: I mean, my mom was so upset about, like, the deli platters and they didn’t have enough lox on them. And then when I was watching Transparent a couple years later, and Judith Light is like carrying the big mustard containers at the funeral, I’m like, this is… yeah, what a joy. What a tragicomic farce.

Kate: Yes, yes, absolutely. I remember I was arguing, I was—so I thought I was dying—so I was trying to buy a burial plot.

Stephanie: Hilarious!

Kate: And it quickly devolved. I was in the field with my in-laws, which quickly became… So I was like, I would love there to be, like, a like, a memorial tree. You know, we just plant it right here because it’s a farmer’s field right outside my, like a like a family, like our family farm. So I was like, well, you’ll be here. It’ll be so lovely. We can plant a tree. And immediately I could hear my father-in-law being like uhhhh it’s actually really difficult to mow around a tree? I was like

Stephanie: Oh, it’s delicious.

Kate: Oh, we are in it.

Stephanie: We have signs of life, everyone.

Kate: Like, do you think it’s because when grief is so devastating, you feel almost like you could never be surprised by anything? And for something to be, like, the paddles on your heart?

Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, the new status quo is just suffering and pain. That is it. It’s like, now I live in pain and suffering. Now I am a sad person who will never be happy again. This is like what I was convinced of and then when you have this moment of like a laugh that goes past your brain and into your gut. Yeah, it’s like a life raft. It’s like… I, I used to teach acting. I’m sorry to say. I taught in the performing arts school for many, many, many years. And it was such a joy. And I taught amazingly talented teenagers. But I would always like say to them, “Guys, humor, humor, humor, human,” get it? Get them to see that, that you cannot have humanity without humor. It is such a core part of it. And they would do these scenes, you know. And they were so sad. And I’d be like, nope, this is so not real. I do not believe you because there’s no laughter. And if there’s no laughter, there’s no levity. It is not human. I don’t believe it. I believe you are acting. Now, if you joke at the really dark part, then I’ll be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s more lifelike, right?

Kate: Yes.

Stephanie: And I think it’s the thing that keeps us from you know, I don’t know. Driving into the ocean.

Kate: Yes, exactly, exactly. I also thought that you may be on to a stage of grief that you could let Kubler-Ross in on, that there’s a stage of grief known in, in your opinion, as manic investigation.

Stephanie: Yes.

Kate: I thought that was such a perceptive description of, like, your brain on grief. Like, what did that look like for you?

Stephanie: It was maniacal. Is what it was. I decided I needed to be, that somebody had assigned me the task of being the detective of my brother’s entire history, past our relationship. What went wrong? When? Where did I miss the clues? I think this is particularly present when it is when it is a sudden loss, when it’s something that doesn’t make sense. So something that feels shocking. I mean, obviously, he was shooting heroin. I knew that there was a risk. But you don’t think a 30 year old bright beaming light is just going to stop living, you know, or stop shining, rather, to go on with my, my metaphor. But yeah, I was like, okay, let me look at every email. I mean, look at every text message. Let me analyze every voicemail. Let me look at every picture. Let me go back and look at home movies when we were two. And see what I can find from there and I just needed to piece it together. I needed to make it make sense. And, and it never will. It never did make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me. Still, to this day, I do not, I have not cracked the case.

Kate: Yes. Yes.

Stephanie: I mean, I have. The case is that he was a human being who became addicted to a substance that made him feel like he could live in this world, and then the substance killed him. That is what happened. That is like the beginning, middle and end of what happened. And that is so simple in many ways and incredibly complex. And I have now spent the last four years of my life trying to, like, articulate it in the spoken word.

Kate: Hon, you did such a, that was, but that like, that crystallized truth right there. It’s like, it’s just, it’s like the difference between every time you open a Dove chocolate and see whatever crap they’ve written on the inside.

Stephanie: But you read it every time, don’t you?

Kate: And it’s like, “A smile is a hug your mouth gives.” You know, it’s always got that weird tone. But, like, what you’re describing is, it’s just, it’s wisdom. Like you arrived at something painful and crystalline and true, and I, it’s—it takes so long to get to those truths. Like, truths that are durable enough to, like, hold us as we try to figure out what, what survival looks like without. Without the people we love and the life we imagined.

Stephanie: Yeah. And I think like. I think that that wisdom does penetrate the choices that I make actively every day. I will talk to my children about every feeling they are feeling, every day, forever. Right? Like nothing is off limits. Nothing can hang out in shadows with me. I am like, we, we, the world is painful and hard and that is just a truth. That is something that I accept. So what can we do in our little nook, in our little corner to make it a little more palatable? And. I don’t know if I even am conscious of that, you know, but I do feel it coming into my relationships and the way that I approach every human. And I don’t know, I just like look at someone and I’m like, oh God, you’re going through it. I know you are. I know you are. Aren’t you? You are. Let’s be friends. You know? There’s just, and I’m always like, why do people tell me everything that’s wrong with them all the time without my even asking? And I’m like, occupational hazard. But then I’m like, no, no, no, no, I it’s because that’s my energy. You get it, too. I know you get it, too. It’s the, let’s just get into it.

Kate: Yes, it is, fully. It broke, and now it’s cracked open. So I guess we’re just gonna have to do this now.

Stephanie: Yeah!

Kate: You… There’s one sentence that I underlined a million times, and it was when you wrote, “I finally understand the meaning of acceptance on the grief chart. It’s not that the bereaved ever accepts the death of the loved one. I will never accept your death. It’s that you come to accept that these really are your shitty, irreversible circumstances. You write that in the most redemptive way. I mean, because it’s not an arrow pointed down. When, when I, when I read that from you, I hear, like, these are the lives we have. These are the loves we have. Like, we are going to be, we are going to be eyes-open on this. And it sounds like it really has transformed your, the parenting decisions and your determination to love everything.

Stephanie: Like I, I do not accept that this beautiful human is not here. I do not accept it. But I accept that, that this is what it is. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t, I it’s not like I’m like, “Yes, I have come to terms.” No, I haven’t, I have not. Yeah, it’s just hard, this stuff is hard. And you have to just keep going in reality. This is the reality. The reality is he’s gone. He is gone. That is the reality. It is garbage. And it’s stupid and I hate it.

Kate: Steph. Your determination to be wonderfully, unflinchingly honest about that has, is, is really helping change how people talk about it. And it has certainly been a balm to my little soul. And thank you so much for this conversation. This has been, in a very deep way, a joy to me.

Stephanie: Are you sure?

Kate: Yeah. No, it really did make my day.

Stephanie: I’m so glad.

Kate: Thank you, hon.

Kate: Steph is our people. And she, she’s one of those people that get that these are the loves we have and the lives we have and that more often than we like, life is so unfair. We can’t get them back. We don’t get the reason we hoped for. We wish we could turn back time. But all we have is this. These beautiful, terrible days. So I thought maybe we could close with a blessing for that feeling. The unfairness, the intensity of all of that. So here’s something for when life isn’t fair. The last time anyone let me say it—tears in my eyes, straight from the heart—I was a child. Didn’t anyone tell you? Life isn’t fair. So I swallowed it up. But God, without hearing you say it—”My love, this isn’t fair”— I am heartsick. I ate the sadness and it became embarrassment. I ate this disappointment and it became bitterness. God, let me hear you say it again, “My love, this isn’t fair.” You will give me the strength to take another step and courage to face my circumstances. But before the doing and trying and getting-back-up, you simply look at me and say, “I love you. I’m sorry. Let me bless this heartsick day.” Bless you, my dears. And if you’re needing a little more spiritual honesty for whatever day you’re having, the ups and downs and in-betweens, that blessing is from my new book. Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! And you can get it anywhere books are sold. Oh hey, and lent if you can believe it, starts next week, which is the most bummer time in the church calendar! How’s that for a pitch? It’s that 40 days before Easter where we join the church in that downward descent. Some people have to practice lent by stripping themselves of what makes them feel comfortable. And others of us know that Lent feeling all too well. If you would like, we’re inviting all of you, no matter how churchy you are, to join us for Lent. You can sign up for free daily emails at KateBowler.com/lent.

Kate: A big thank you to my team and our partners for the work that they do to put this podcast together and all of the beautiful resources Lily endowment, the Duke Endowment, and Duke Divinity School. Thank you. Your support really, really does actually make everything happen at Everything Happens. And this podcast is the closest thing to my theological heart. And, the people in it are precious to me. Jessica Richie, Harriet Putman, Keith Weston, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Jeb Burt, Sammy Filippi, and Katherine Smith—I love making beautiful things with you, and we do it all really because we love you guys. We love you. The person on the way to a funeral, the person having your very first anything without that person you miss, or you, that person in the self-checkout line, where you keep fighting with a robot machine whether you bagged it appropriately or not. We see you. In a non-creepy way. You are our absolute favorite and we are so grateful to get to make things for you. Let us know who you want to hear from this season and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you so much, that matters so much. It only takes a few seconds. I’ll talk to you next week when I’ll be speaking with Sarah Polley. Okay, look, if you’re my age and Canadian, you’re going to know her from Road to Avonlea. Or if you’re just like a regular adult in the world, you’re going to know her from her gorgeous work writing and directing the Academy Award winner, Women Talking. Yeah, you can tell I’m fangirling a bit. I can’t wait for you to hear this one. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.