Episode 22: Death

Well, hey, everybody. My name is Mallory Durrick. And welcome to the 22nd episode of Don’t lose your balance. I have taken a break from recording, I had recorded many of the episodes that everybody has heard up to this point. In October, I think that was the last time I had recorded an episode. And I, I have to be honest, I really didn’t know where I was going to go with all of this, I have a bunch of different topics in, you know, in the queue of what I wanted to talk about. But I I don’t know what is really super relevant. I feel like I’ve made incredible progress with how I wanted this podcast to go and where I wanted to be with it, as well as how I would ultimately feel. And I can say that the original goal of creating this podcast was to help me feel better, and to recognize and acknowledge all of the things that I had been through and how was it impacting my present? And was I going to carry it into my future? The answer was no, I wasn’t going to do that I was going to face whatever conflicts I had within myself and just say, you know, Mallory, yeah, you’re a human being. And these are the, these are the things that happen. And you can acknowledge them, embrace them, and change some of if not many of the qualities that you don’t like about yourself and then continue to go forward in life. And, and isn’t that what this is all about? For all of us? This is about living, right? Well, today is Monday, and today is January 10, of 2022. We’re two years into a pandemic. And it’s not necessarily getting any better and a lot of people are facing for the first time, what we all know is to be the inevitable for every single one of us, which is death. And that is what I want to talk about today. And I don’t want to turn it into some kind of sad and, and gruesome conversation, but embrace it for the reality that it is for all of us, we are all going to die. And for many of you who don’t know me, I am. My maiden name is Saget. And Bob Saget was my first cousin. And he died yesterday, and he died very suddenly. And that does not come as a shock to this family. My father died at 36. Suddenly, from a heart attack, my uncle’s died before they were 40, all from heart attacks.

03:38

And we’ve had a lot of different tragedies in our life where some didn’t die suddenly, but they had diseases that took over and then they died. So why am I bringing this up? Well, you know, the inevitable is that we all go and we hope that we go in our sleep and we hope that we don’t feel pain. And for many of us, that is not going to be the case. And for many people who have lived through this pandemic, they too have lost loved ones. My feelings about losing somebody again in my family is just Well, here we go again, and and this is one feels a little bit different. You know, if if somebody were to say to me, Well, how do you feel I would say oh, about the same mostly because I have somehow learned to accept that death is an inevitable is an inevitable part of living. And that it does come with this element of weird shock. You’re going along in your day, and somewhere along the line somebody in his family just dies and then you get this phone call. I mean, we get to a point in our lives where we say when you get this, this call that ringing ringing ringing from somebody and you’re like, what’s wrong? I’ll call you back and you know that it’s something’s wrong or if somebody calls you while you’re on vacation, you know who’s dead and losing somebody like, Bob. And I always call them, Bobby. But losing someone like him in our family, for me, was very forget, let’s take the celebrity out of it for me, because that’s not what this is about. For me, what this is about is he somehow made it to 65. And in the context of all the men, in my family, none of them, very rarely did they get past 40. And if they made it to 50, they were lucky. So you know, I want to I want to extend this, you know, warm heart to the other members of my family who are not going to ever hear this podcast, except maybe for my mother and father. You know, when I got that phone call yesterday, my mind went straight to my dad, my stepfather. And I want him to know how much I love him. And if he does hear this, I want him to know that, of course, I would think that and, of course, that is something that I’m preparing myself for. But I don’t know, if you can really ever prepare yourself for what you’re going to feel when the reality happens. I would like to believe that I’m in a much better position in place within myself, to accept the reality of what we all have to accept, which is losing people. And that we have to go through these emotional roller coasters and courses of what grief looks like, it could be anger, it could be denial, I mean, we know what these five stages are intellectually, but that doesn’t mean they come in order. And it doesn’t mean they come in 10 days, you know, it could happen over years, unless we sit and embrace whatever the feelings are head on, you know, I was gonna have a different topic for today was going to be about opportunity. And I had scripted, maybe I don’t know, the first, the first six, six sentences, and then I was just gonna read off the cuff, or speak off the cuff kind of like what I’m doing now. And I decided, You know what, in two days time, this podcast needs to go back in air, and you can either not air anything, or you can sit down and just start recording and talk about what it is that you’re feeling and talk about what it is that you’re feeling and where you want to go with this podcast. And the truth is, I don’t know, I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t, I don’t care about the metrics. And I don’t worry about whether there are listeners or whether there aren’t listeners, I just know that there’s something that happens for me that feels very cathartic about recording, putting it out in the universe. And I’ve talked about that in the past. And, you know, I got through the holiday season, and I feel like you know, now that this is a new year, it doesn’t feel much different than the old year to be honest. And things are gonna happen, you know, death is going to happen, and life is going to happen, babies are going to get born and people will move beyond the living and go to what we know is death. And what do we feel about it? And and how do we accept and acknowledge that there that is the reality and not to so much be afraid of it?

08:42

When I think about myself with death, I don’t fear it. I fear what it might look like for the people who might have to pick up after me or am I going to suffer along the way and I do everything that I can to ensure that that doesn’t happen. i i You know, we all know I’m sober, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. I sleep by, you know, eat really healthy healthfully? And I do all the right things that I share with exercise, maybe not as much as I could because I’m feeling in my age, but I’m revisiting how I’m going to approach that. And I hope I’m doing the right things. And you know, some people will say you’ve done everything you can and maybe I’ll get sick because of the genetics in my life, and maybe I won’t. But I do want to say to all of my family that you know, when we go through this every single time that we go through this, it’s different for each individual and for some reason this feels extraordinarily different. Mostly because like I said he managed to achieve something that the men in his family Few men in this family have managed to achieve. Thankfully, we have the technology, we have good medical, we have all these things. And then you elevate that to the fact that he actually had this career that has touched so many millions of people. And I want to say to his daughters of my cousins, how sorry and sad and I am about their loss, because I know what that feels like to lose a father, who’s young. And while 65 may not be young to many people, and I was seven, and my father was 36, it’s still young, you know, we want our family members to live well into their 80s and 90s. And then we sort of maybe embrace this idea that, yeah, they’re gonna die. I mean, when you think about people who are getting up there in age, you say, well, they had a good long life. And we hope that’s the case for everybody. So, you know, we can approach death, one of two ways we can fear it, and be afraid constantly about when am I going to die? Or how am I going to die? Or we can say I am going to die, and how am I going to live in the present. And hopefully, it’s the latter and not the former, because how you live in your present will make everything better. In the end, I know it will, because I’ve made a lot of changes, really positive changes, and super wonderful shifts that to even two years ago, I would have never dreamt possible, and I get it, I truly get it. And last night, I was also just listening under the stage in a clubhouse room, and about people who were memorializing Bob’s life and I am so grateful that clubhouse exists and that that room existed for people who wanted to come together. But there was one common thread that I was troubled by. And that was assumptions about certain things. And that one thing, I think I hope I mentioned it earlier, was that we found out from TMZ, we didn’t, we did find out from family. And when you get in a space where you share your opinion, please say I don’t know this, I hope this wasn’t the case. And I did hear that don’t make people don’t put an idea in somebody’s head that this is what happens. I’m sure it could happen. But the likelihood of it happening is very slim. Usually when police find somebody, no matter who dies, whether it’s a celebrity, or it’s a non celebrity, the family is notified. And then things go sort of public, you know, unless it’s happening right in front of somebody live.

13:16

And I I want I want to express that. Learning to embrace the inevitable, makes the inevitable, a lot easier. And I’m feeling pretty, okay. And I want to say thank you to all of the people who knew me in high school and my younger years and who know me today and who all sent me messages call, you know, messenger or text message, or I really appreciate that when you heard that news that you thought of me and said, What can I do to be there for you? And that is so amazing to me, and so greatly appreciated and 100% Unexpected? You know, I? I didn’t, I didn’t I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, obviously I didn’t even think about him passing but I certainly never expected that I would have so many people reaching out. And people I really know and some people I barely know. So that’s all I want to talk about and say and I know this is a little bit of a scattered episode, it was completely again off the cuff. I wasn’t planning on this topic. I hoped when I listened back I can air it. And I’m just going to work on a little bit of the creative start editing, whatever just doesn’t sound right. And in all likelihood, it’ll just stay the way it is. Except for some, you know, dings or whatever. Anyway, so thank you so much for listening and for the people who support Me in clubhouse, especially, especially our gratitude room, I want to echo what I said this morning about vulnerability. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to share what I was feeling and to be so open and welcoming and for always coming in our space that we’ve cultivated and being together for 30 minutes every single day so that we can feel gratitude even when gratitude doesn’t feel easy to share. Okay? So, if you like this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance, feel free to share it with somebody. Download it, follow me on my website, don’t lose your balance calm. I also have two Instagram handles don’t lose your balance Emma’s and Mary SS and Sam Diaz and David MSD and Mallory underscore Juric you can send me a message or share this. If you feel that this podcast on any episode can have value. That would be a great feeling for me knowing that I could help one more person not lose their balance along their life journey. See ya!

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.