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ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hi everyone. Just wanted to let you know that this episode was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic. That's why you won't hear us talking about it and you won't hear us talking about the impact it's had on how we grieve. Hope you enjoy.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hmmm.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So now that we are talking about it, do you feel comfortable talking about your mom?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, I think I largely do. The uncomfortable thing for me I think is when I'm afraid I'm gonna make the other person feel uncomfortable. Cause you know I bring up my dead mom, it's like the air gets sucked out of the room. So I, I mostly want to be able to just talk about it and feel comfortable sharing this truth about my life and not make everyone sad or scared or uncomfortable.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Well, what I am hoping to learn is how to be able to share your genuine concern, your genuine emotions.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And use the right words, which show the person we care about them.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And also are not uncomfortable ourselves in that situation.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah. Bingo. I think that is a lofty goal, but we shall strive for it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Absolutely.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Let's get into it.

VOICE 1: Are you okay? How are you doing?

VOICE 2: It's an unmanageable question for people who are dying or people who are grieving.

VOICE 3: You realize very quickly that this feeling that you've been keeping inside of you, everyone you know has been keeping that same feeling inside.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Today, we are talking to comedian Michael Cruz Kayne. Michael lost his infant son, Fisher about 10 years ago. Until recently, he has been very private about his grief.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Michael took to Twitter and wrote, "Ten years ago today my son died and I basically never talk about it with anyone other than my wife. It's taken me ten years to realize that I want to talk about it all the time." Michael's tweets about grief went viral. His thread goes on to talk about grief and how complex it is. It's really beautiful, but his overall message is pretty simple; ask your friend about the sad thing that you never talk about. Can you tell us a bit about Fisher's story?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Sure. So my wife and I were hoping to get pregnant and she got pregnant with twins. Shortly thereafter, we found out that our twins had something called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, which you probably don't know about, but basically what it means is that one of the twins gets more nutrients than the other one and as a result, they kind of both suffer from it. So we went to Philadelphia to have this sort of cutting edge surgery where they to really dumb it down, shoot lasers at your kids and help them reallocate the nutrients. And basically the surgery worked, so the kids were both in really good shape. They were delivered at 32 weeks, which is a little bit early, but not crazy early. And then just sort of all of a sudden they both got incredibly sick, seemingly out of nowhere. But Fisher, who was the younger of the twins, I mean you know, younger by a few seconds.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: He was perhaps less equipped to deal with whatever the illness was and that's what he died from. So he lived to be 34 days old, was in the hospital the entire time. That's the short version of it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Very sorry to hear that.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Thank you so much.

HARVINDER WADHWA: We understand that you did not speak with anybody for ten years. So.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Well, it wasn't that I didn't speak with anybody. It just it was like, you know, people would ask about it, but grief is like such a complicated issue and really something that's so suppressed that people really don't know how to how to deal with it. So I think I wasn't comfortable talking about it because I could sense that other people were also not comfortable talking about it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: And so and maybe it took me a decade to get to a place where it's like I kind of don't care as much if you're comfortable or not, it's something that I want to talk about now. And I wouldn't say that I'm forcing people to talk about it, but I'm not dodging it as much.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: So I have a son and a daughter at home right now. If someone says, you know “How many kids do you have?”, I'm much more likely to tell someone I have three kids, one of them's dead. And then, you know, that is a fucked up thing to hear.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: It freaks people out, you know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: But I don't mind that as much as I used to. I used to be really scared of like, what's gonna happen when I tell this person who was just like asking just, you know, they just want to go on with their day.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: They don't want to have to talk with me about this, but I think it just became a thing where once I was comfortable talking about it, I felt sort of obsessed with it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: And that's where I'm at now.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So did you feel that now when you started talking about it, people were more comfortable, or whatever the hesitation people had prior to this, it was kind of similar?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: I think that in general, I have found people to be more comfortable than they perhaps would have expected themselves to be.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hmmm.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Do you know what I mean? One of the main reasons for that is so many people have gone through something like this. I mean, like death of a child is almost an absurd level of tragedy because it like inverts the way you think the world is supposed to be.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Pretty much everyone has lost a parent or, you know, a cousin or whatever. You've seen somebody die that you were like wait, they were not supposed to die.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right, right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: You realise very quickly that this feeling that you've been keeping inside of you, everyone you know has been keeping that same feeling inside. I mean maybe not the same.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: But you know what I mean?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: A feeling in that family.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: So the thing that I've found is the more that I talk to people about it, the more that someone tells a story to me that I didn't know. So like someone who's been a friend of mine forever and I start opening up about Fisher, and they're like, you know, I never talk about this but, you know my wife had four miscarriages or whatever. Stuff like that. And so it made me feel much more comfortable asking people about it because I've harboured this suspicion that people wanted to. Especially when you talk to someone about grief and you go beyond the first or second question, right? The, you know, your dad died or whatever. “I'm so sorry to hear about that.” “How did he die?” “Man, that's brutal.” And then the next thing is usually like, “So do you guys want to get quesadillas?” Like what? There's like an abrupt shift back to normality.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: And what I found is if you follow up with, “Tell me about your dad,” that unlocks, you know, this whole chamber of a person who's like, “Oh my gosh, you know, my dad had this...” whatever, “this really funny thing about him,” or “My dad was a cheap bastard.” There's a whole universe. Like death, I'm stealing this from a play, but death ends a life, not a relationship. You know what I mean? So there's still like this, you're still having this relationship with your deceased other.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: And it's ongoing. And I think there's a thing where people are like, you know, I don't want, the reason I never ask about it is I don't want to remind you of that thing. And for people who've gone through it, it's like “Bro, I'm not forgetting it.” Like there's, I'm never going to wake up and be like, “Oh, you know what and also my kid died.” It's like I, that's always playing. You know, that's one of the many parts of the orchestra or whatever that makes up the soundtrack of my life. What is that metaphor?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I could track. I could follow.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Thank you.

HARVINDER WADHWA: It's very, it's very interesting what you said, because I have found myself in situations and I am just dumbfounded. I have no idea what is going to be the next question or what am I going to say to that person. And I'm just quiet and it's so uncomfortable for everybody.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Yeah that like 40 second awkward silence.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Waiting for something else to happen so we can talk about it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: For the quesadilla invite.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And then you walk away?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Exactly. I don't want to give the impression that I'm like, you simply must ask another question.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Cause it's not, it's really not that. And it's all to your level of comfort. I think it's more that a lot of people are holding something in them that they would love to get out, that they would love to be like, “I want you to meet my dad, even though he's dead. I want you to meet, I want you to know who that was, cause you're my friend and that's a very important person in my life.” And when you give them that opportunity, I have really seen them, like light up. Like the joy that it brings to them to connect other people to their deceased relative or friends or whatever. It's really rewarding and humbling and honouring to be able to be in the presence of that. It's cool. I like it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So it's cathartic to talk about.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Harv, that's the word I should have said. It's cathartic. Can we, is there a way to edit this, so I say it?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I, in my experience, I lost my mom in my teens and I just want to be able to talk casually about it. I kind of want to be able to be like, “Hi, I, you know, took some clothes from my dead mom's closet today #privilegesofadeadparent,” I don't know. And have someone be like, not, like maybe laugh at that or just be like, oh, that's cool. Like people are like, “...oh.” And you're like I didn't mean to punch you in the gut, I just wanted to tell you the truth about my life.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Elena, just going a little bit on tangent. Why is, why would you tell anybody that this particular piece of clothing belongs to your dead mom as opposed to your mom?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh, I mean good question. I guess I just don't want to lie. I guess I want to be honest about my circumstance. Or like sometimes — I don't know if you've had this, Michael, if you talk about maybe your kids — and then someone, they may make these assumptions that someone is still in your life and then you have to be like, “Actually, no.”

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Yeah. Oh, totally. I remember when my son died, you know, like months after, I sort of was like in a cave with my wife, basically, where we didn't really see people except for very close friends and family. And then, you know, I was still doing comedy at that time and I remember one of my close friends coming up to me — and a bunch of people knew that I had twins — coming up to me and being like, “Hey man, can't wait to come by and meet the twins.” And just having to put my arm around him and be like, “Bro, I don't want to tell you this, but one of them died.” And then the two of us walking directly into rehearsal and being like, “I'm so sorry I said that to you.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my gosh.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Like just a guy trying to be nice.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Or like, eventually having that guy come over to my house and having him be like, “Well, here's one, where's the other one?”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my God.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: You know, at some point people are going to find out. So for me, it's like, if there's a time to drop this early, I'd rather do that now...

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: ...than have these people ask a bunch of questions about the twins and be like, “You know, things are, things are going really great actually,” or whatever and have them find out eventually.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: It's difficult to broach it, but almost mean to withhold it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: How are you? Did you get asked that or questions similar to that?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: The thing that was most common and I wouldn't want anyone who'd ever asked me this question to be like, “Oh my God, what have I done?” But I would say the most common thing would be stuff like, “How are you doing?” and “What can I do to help?” Like those are very benign, pleasant, nice, good questions, but when you're in that mode, you're not really in a place to like delegate responsibilities. Or like, the question was one that I didn't know how to answer and almost asking me the question made me feel like, “I don't fucking know, I gotta respond to this e-mail now? I guess, I guess bring some some gift cards to iTunes? I don't know.” But for me it was more like, this is a time when I'm fielding a bunch of stuff and I don't want the homework of you asking me to respond to your email.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Or to, you know, for me to think of the scheduling to make sure that, you know, just that kind of stuff I think was a little bit onerous. But again, I don't hold that against anybody. And, you know I don't think the Internet would agree with me in most cases, but intent is like 95 percent of the whole thing. It's just like, are you trying to make me feel bad? If no, we're good.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right. Exactly. What is the right question at that time?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: That's tough. What is the right question? I should've prepared this, Harv.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Or the appropriate question. Because we need to stick to our brand, right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Branding!

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: I guess it's like, “How are you doing?” But it's really like, if the question is a little more active, then it feels less like something you're doing in a way that's obligatory. Or if you follow up, then there's a sense that like, “Oh, I actually do want to know about this.” That's when I feel able to engage and like unload some of the stuff that I've been feeling.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: You know what I mean? Knowing that the person I'm talking to is comfortable with me getting into whatever part of this I want to get into without recoiling. And I think that's very hard for people. Because my instinct in most of those circumstances is to deflect probably, to like make a joke, which is fine and good also, but I think there's a part of me, especially then, that wants the therapeutic release, that catharsis of being able to talk about it for real.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hmm.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: In your Twitter thread, you talk about how complicated grief can be. You call it a galaxy of emotions. And in particular, I found it interesting how you talked about how parts of grief were funny. I think that would surprise a lot of people. What parts of grief are funny for you?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: I mean there are a bunch of moments where even the day that he really got sick until maybe like three or four days after he died, at least part of that would include some of the times I've laughed harder than like at any other time in my entire life, just because you're so in the gallows, like anything peeking through feels so absurd. I remember there were things like where the place that did the funeral that ended up cremating our son, they had at the bottom of the receipt there, it said, "Thank you, come again," which is just an insane thing to write.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I read that.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah!

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: That's just absurd. I mean probably the like darkest thing that I remember really being funny then to me was that one of the doctors gave a onesie to my surviving son, and I was opening it in the car with my brother and sister and they were like, “What do you think this onesie is going to be?” And I said, “I think it'll say something like, ‘My brother died and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.’” And I just remember cackling for like ten minutes at how funny we all found that just because, like I don't know. So there are moments like that that are so funny, and part of what I have wanted is to just be able to talk about that stuff with people, because I think the only thing that we're sort of permitted publicly is this complete and total surrender to the sadness. And you should have that, like and you should have that for as long as you need to have it. I'm not trying to rush anybody out of it. Again, I don't want to speak for, I don't want you to go to your friend's funeral and tell jokes, and have them be like “Get out!”

HARVINDER WADHWA: So, Michael, how do, how did you or how do you talk to your kids about their brother?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Oh, cool question. So we talk about it periodically. So it's something that they're aware that they're aware of. That's not, it's never been a secret. So my son, who's alive, it was his birthday recently and my daughter was like, “Oh you you know, we should put another candle on the cake for Fisher.” Stuff like that. So they're definitely aware of it. My daughter, who was not alive during any of the time that Fisher was alive, will sometimes say, you know, tearfully, “I wish I had met Fisher.” I don't know truly what, how that will manifest itself as they get older. I really hope it's not going to be the thing that they're, you know, with their therapist being like, “I can't fucking believe my parents told me this shit!” But I don't know. We just, we, I didn't, we didn't know how to, what else to do, so that's what we did. We told them about it, we talk about it and we do our best to like, field whatever questions they have about it and not make them feel like bad kids or whatever for asking. Every year on the anniversary of his death is like Fisher Day and so we try and do something, you know, generous or charitable.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Do they, do they really enjoy taking part in these rituals? Like how do they feel about it?

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: I think they like it. I think it's like, I think it's cool to them to be a part of it. I think they've had at least one argument about which one of them Fisher would like more.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my God.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: You know what I mean? So there's like, there's definitely stuff like that, that I think they look at the idea of Fisher with like a sort of a pure childlike, like wonder and appreciation.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Thanks so much for speaking to us. That was wonderful.

MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE: Thank you.

[Music]

MADELYN CHUNG: My name is Madelyn Chung and I experienced two really significant losses in the past year. It's funny being a Canadian-born Chinese woman because I didn't really see my parents express too much grief, which I think, when the people who are around you going through the same thing as you are not expressing their emotions in the same way, or are not really open to discussing it in the way that you'd like, it's difficult. I think that personally, I’ve found in the past when someone had experienced a loss, I was always scared of bringing it up because I didn't want to make them emotional in the moment. But I've realized now that, I mean, it's not a bad thing for that person. That person is grieving. That person has gone through a loss and it's normal for them to become emotional. I think people in general tend to get uncomfortable around other people's emotions.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Even when we're ready to open up conversations about grief, it's still really hard. For some concrete tips on how to do this well, I spoke to Kayla Moryoussef. She's a death doula, which means she prepares dying people and their loved ones for death and its aftermath. And she's also a grief and bereavement counsellor. Here's Kayla's advice on what is and isn't helpful to say to people who are grieving.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: While we are compassionate and we try, we have the best of intentions as a society, we are not educated, we are not equipped and we do not actually handle it well.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Grief. We say the wrong things. One of the worst things we say a lot to grieving people are a slew of statements, beginning with the words “at least.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh, I hate those.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Yeah. Like “At least he lived a good life. At least you have time to find another husband.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh no.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: “At least you still have two kids.” The “at leasts” have got to be removed from your lexicon of grief speak. And but, it's the best of intentions again, right? When somebody says, like, “I have cancer” or “Somebody I love just died of cancer,” you want to relate, right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: So you tell a story of the person you knew who had cancer.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: And it's not helpful. And it also turns it onto the grieving person to suddenly want to comfort you.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: So that's a problematic dynamic. But again, built on the best of intentions. Also, we do things like — it's just nuanced things. We say “Let me know if I can do anything for you.” A grieving person isn't, A, doesn't know what help support they need, and B, isn't going to come out and ask you for support. So what we need to do for a grieving person is just show up, show up and do their laundry, show up and take their kids out for a day. One of the best things you can do for a grieving person is show up with food. People in like immediate grief, they're not thinking about or prepared or in a place to like make all of their meals. So that's one of the best things you can do, is just show up with some food.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: But like saying “How can I help you?” or “Let me know how I can help you?” is actually really confusing and a bit overwhelming for a grieving person to like come back to you with an answer or response. So yeah, our society is pretty good with being compassionate, but not really good with acting on it or actually being equipped with the right words.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: The one really nice thing you can do, and this includes in condolence cards, is offer an anecdote of their loved one who died, or “This is like a really nice story” or “This is how they were meaningful to me, or how they affected my life.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Cause that could be really meaningful to them to hear a story about their loved one they never heard before.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah and it helps you realize, as a grieving person, how big of an impact this person might have had.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Exactly.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And that it wasn't just you who cared.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Exactly. Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah. You were talking about a lot of statements that aren't very helpful. What about questions people can ask a grieving person?

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Yeah. So the big one is, the big one you shouldn't ask is “How are you?” Because, as you can imagine, that's like a bit of a slap in the face. It sounds really patronizing. You know that when you're in a bad mood and somebody says, “How are you?” you want to punch them in the face. And on the say, on the flip side, it also applies to people who are dying. If I found out I was dying and somebody asked me, “How are you?” It's an unmanageable question for people who are dying or people who are grieving, “How are you?” And the really cool thing about it is you just have to add one word to that question to make it manageable. “How are you today? or “How are you managing today?” is compassionate and manageable. And you can ask that to a dying person and you can ask that to a grieving person. And it's an honest question, and it really like kind of offers them an opportunity to breathe and say honestly how they're doing. It's, it really moves a question from being a scripted thing you do, a scripted part of our societal mores, right, to a sincere inquiry. How are you doing today? That is your opportunity to say “I'm listening.” Other than that, I wouldn't ask anything really prying. I wouldn't. Anything else would feel prying to me. I'm a counsellor. It's a little different. But as a friend or like, you know, don't ask too much about like, “What was it like?” “Are you sad?” “Like what was it like when they died?” Or like, you know, don't ask too many questions. Just be, hold space for them to talk.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: For sure, because you don't want to, you want to let them decide where they want to be in terms of what they want to share.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Exactly. It's not about your agenda.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, yeah. I sometimes have a hard time with, sometimes people can retreat when they're grieving.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Sometimes they're not in touch as much or they're not really talking or active on social media as much.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And I don't really know what to do with that. I'm not sure if I should give someone space or if I should check in with them.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Check in.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: How do, yeah, you check in?

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: You check in. When someone's grieving, you check in.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Okay.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: And oh, and you check in after someone's grieving. You check in on the holidays. You check in on the birthdays.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: You check in on those times of year where grief resurfaces and is harder than usual. Because what happens after somebody dies and everyone's showing up, right? And then slowly they taper off. They taper off and it becomes very quiet.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KAYLA MORYOUSSEF: Because you've lost the person you love and you've lost all the hubbub that came after they died. And it's extra silent. That's when you really need people to check in. Is not the weeks after the person's died, it's the months after the person died. It's when people stop checking in.

[Music]

MACKENZIE WILLIS: I'm Mackenzie Willis. Within this past year, I lost my mother-in-law, who I was living with. My first day back from taking bereavement leave, you know, people coming up to me and like being like, “How are you?” And wanting to tell me stories about like their trauma and their grief. And I had a friend who saw me for the first time since I had been back. She's like, “Hey, how are you doing? What am I asking? Like, that's the stupidest question ever. You're terrible. You're horrible. Why would you be OK?” And it was just the best thing, just this moment of solidarity and just being understood and being seen. Like it was amazing. I loved it.

SARAH KEAST: My name is Sarah. I lost my husband, Kevin, on August 7th, 2016. Kevin passed away at home alone and he died from an accidental heroin overdose. We have two daughters and they were five and two at the time of his death. Grief for me and grieving an overdose death has been complicated. From society's perspective in an unspoken hierarchy of death, overdose death, it's pretty well at the bottom. And people don't have the same level of empathy or sadness for you or sympathy for you when the person you love essentially brought this on himself. People would say that my husband chose to use drugs and he chose to use too many that night, and so therefore he deserved to die. It's such a strange thing to wrestle with that I have all this beautiful stuff because of this trauma I went through. And another thing that I've had to grapple with, you know, in addition to feeling sad and angry that Kevin died, I also feel happy and relieved. And that's pretty terrible to feel, that you feel happy that the person you love most in the world died. But through my grief journey, I've come to understand that you can be two feelings at once and you can be feelings that are in opposition. And it's OK. So I can be sad and angry, devastated that my best friend and my person I love most in the world is dead. And at the same time, I can be happy that he is because my life is easier now and I don't have to live with that level of stress that I did. So I can be happy and sad. Grieving for me, it's been a, I hate to say it, but it's been a beautiful lesson and I've learned a tonne of things. One of which is it's OK to ask for help. And when people are asking you how they can help, a better way to ask that is to be specific to the person who's grieving. So instead of saying, “Let me know if you need anything,” they could say, “I'm going to bring dinner by for you and your family. Is it better for me to drop it off on Thursday or Friday?” It takes the decision making out of the griever's hands. I think one of the best things to think about is how much the grieving person wants to hear about the person that they lost. So don't be afraid to bring them up. Don't be afraid to ask questions about them. Don't be afraid to share a memory or a story. If you're worried that you're gonna make us sad by bringing up the name of the person we've lost, we are already sad and by bringing up the name of the person we lost and talking about them, you might actually be injecting a moment or two of happiness into our day. So ask about them and talk about them.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So Harv, how do you feel about talking about grief now? Do you think it's going to be easier now that we've had to do it a bit?

HARVINDER WADHWA: I, I feel I am now better equipped to show my actual emotions than being uncomfortable in that situation. When you are uncomfortable it becomes more about you than about comforting the person who is grieving. So I think this episode has really helped me achieve that.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's awesome. So you feel like you're going to be, I guess, more open to these conversations and honest with people?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yes. Yes, I can, I don't need to tippytoe around it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. Yeah. That's really great, Harv. I think I also have gotten a bit more, a little kick in the pants, slash courage. I'm gonna check in with people who I know who are grieving more often, because I get really awkward around that and maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it's good to check in and not get scared about it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And don't forget the food.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And the food. Yes, let's practice our casserole making, Harv?

[Theme out]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And I'm Harvinder Wadhwa. Thanks for getting inappropriate with us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Thanks so much to our guests this episode. You heard Michael Cruz Kayne and Kayla Moryoussef. You also heard voice notes from Madelyn Chung, Mackenzie Willis and Sarah Keast. We've got more tips on how to talk to people who are grieving at cbc.ca/iqpodcast. This week's webcomic was drawn by Sara Goetter. You can find it on our Instagram @IQ_podcast.

HARVINDER WADHWA: The tremendous trio behind this podcast are Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long and Elena Hudgins Lyle.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The show is mixed by Andrew Norton.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Our digital producer is Judy Ziyi Gu.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and the executive producer is Arif Noorani.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: An inappropriate question is like your parents going on vacation without you and only bringing you back a lousy t-shirt.

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TRANSCRIPT: Inappropriate Questions - Season 2, EP 2

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