Lauren Bernick - The Experience of Losing a Parent and Season 2 Wrap-up

Season 2 wrap-up, and Lauren shares her experience of losing her mother. For many months, Lauren has been dealing with her mother dying. She shares advice about logistical things you should be aware of, the funny parts, the common things to expect about this experience, and why you are lucky to have this experience.

Transcript

0:00

Hi friends, I'm Lauren Bernick and I'm flipping the script about growing older. My guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing. Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast. Welcome to age like a badass mother. Hi, friends, it's Lauren. I'm doing, well. Really? I'm wrapping up season two, and I. I just want to thank you for listening. I when I look at the numbers each week, I mean, and they're growing and I appreciate that that I know you're sharing with your friends. But when I look at the numbers, I just literally try to picture that many people. And I try to picture your faces, and I want you to know that it means something to me. This is my dream, being able to share good information with you, about aging well and staying healthy until the end. So you know, it's you're just not a number. Your, listener to me, a friend. And I really, really appreciate that. And I want you to know that and know how much I appreciate you. So season two. I cannot believe the great guests we had. If you'll go back and listen, if you haven't yet, chef AJ, my good friend, chef AJ, she was phenomenal talking about lasting weight loss. She's just had such a life. And I hope that you'll give a listen to her. John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. He was just shockingly open and, refreshing and full of good information. He was not at all what I expected. His book was phenomenal, the whole story. So if you'll go back and listen to that one, if you haven't listened yet, Trish Murphy, like incredible musician that if you're from Texas, you know her. You might know her outside of Texas too. But I mean, she was she's just, like, so full of life and full of good information. And she's 60 years old. You have to look at her. She is gorgeous. And still just rocking her ass off. So, give a listen to Trish Murphy if you haven't doctor Joel Furman. I mean, I don't have to tell you who Doctor Joel Furman is, but he really knows his stuff. I also loved Candice Thomas. She talked. Her book is your vitality. What is it called? Your vitality? Personality. Sorry, Candice. Your vitality. Personality. And that was really, really eye opening. She talked a lot about, you know, your higher self and your lowest self and where you operate from. And you can take a quiz and find out, you know, what archetype you are, and then you know, follow the steps to make sure you're living at your highest self. There were so many. So just go back and look through and give a listen if you haven't. But I really appreciate you. We're going to take a little break through January and do some reruns from season one. Some of my favorite episodes, with my dear friend Lisa Rice. And we're going to do a little rebranding the movie back in February. I need to bank up some episodes. And I want to tell you why I don't have a lot of episodes banked up right now. I recently lost my mother. She died a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and I've talked to. I know I shared with you that she was on hospice, so, I was just running my ass off back and forth between Austin, where I live in Houston, where she lived, and that's a three hour drive in each direction. And I was just, you know, understandably struggling to keep my head above water and keep the wheels moving. And, you know, I had a cancel a lot of interviews or reschedule them. But I kind of wanted to share a little bit about the experience of losing my mom because I feel like it's common at this age. If you are lucky, if you have not lost your parents early in life, and I am lucky my my dad's still alive, I did lose my stepfather 24 years ago. He was very important to me. But, you know, lose. Losing your mom's like, it's next level. And, I think that, you know, I'm a Gen Xer. I think it might be a common experience of having a complicated relationship with your parents. Just as the way we were parented on a whole as generation X, but my mother, Linda, was a larger than life character, and my friends were all afraid of her when we were younger. But when we were teenagers, she, ingratiated herself by letting us drink and smoke at my house. I mean, from the time we were, like 15 years old. I remember my mother. I've kind of talked about this before. My mother caught me smoking out of my bathroom window, and she and my stepfather both smoked, and she caught me smoking out of my bathroom window when I was like 14, 15. I don't know, it was terrible. This is here you're getting your health advice from. She caught me smoking and she was a New Yorker and she walked in, saw me smoking, and she's like, what are you doing? Smoking. All right, come downstairs. You could smoke. Just don't smoke outside the house like a common whore. But you could smoke in the house. That's fine. Helps you keep your weight down. That was her, reasoning. So, so my friends would come over, she'd make us a pitcher of margaritas. We were 15. Keep in mind 16. Maybe they could drive over there. Even worse. But then she would, like, start taking advantage of my friends, like, well, if you can lean, you can clean. Grab a sponge. Mike, you go out to the garage and sweep. I mean, she always had, like, a job for somebody to do, but, you know, then my friends kind of came around to her. They weren't so afraid of her. They realized she just had that, like, gruff exterior and kind of in the middle and, She, you know, I'm just. I'm obviously going to miss her a lot, even though we did have a complicated experience. I've just been thinking about her so much lately because I feel like in maybe the year before she passed away, it was so much just managing her logistics. Day to day. I feel like I was in charge of her life. Basically, it was like having a very nice, cute little child, a very demanding, not cute little child. And, you know, I just wanted to to do right by her and make sure that she had. What she needed and that she was well taken care of. I mean, she she was a good mother in, in many regards, even though she was difficult. But, you know, she was also my cautionary tale. I've also talked about this. She for years now, I think maybe she had a heart attack probably about six years ago. I think it was her second heart attack. She was just my cautionary tale. She was on ten different medications, had two heart attacks. You know, she had smoked for 60 years. She was pretty sedentary. She lived on the Atkins diet, which was just high fat, high protein, the precursor to the keto diet. So she lived a really unhealthy lifestyle. So after her. Well, let me tell you about her second heart attack. I don't really remember much about the first. She was intubated. I know that she was intubated. Her second heart attack, because after that she told me, don't ever let them do that to me again. But when she had her second heart attack six years ago. This is my mother in a nutshell. She was intubated, she was unconscious. And for some reason, the doctor came in and thought it would be a good idea to just be really truthful with her. And he looked down at her and he said, you're going to die, okay? I was like, are you kidding me? Get the hell out of her room. I took him out in the hallway and I said, I don't know why you. Oh, and her eyeballs popped open. She was unconscious, right? She was unconscious. He yelled, she's going to die. Her eyeballs pop open. They got huge. She couldn't talk because, you know, she she was intubated and I told him to get the hell out of the room. And I was like, why did you do that to her? And he said, she needs to know the truth. And I'm like, you know what? You're an asshole and you don't know what she needs to know. Why would you tell that to somebody? And I'm like, also, buddy, you have no idea who you're dealing with. Absolutely no idea. And true enough, she got well. Well enough to leave the hospital. She knew she was never quite the same, but she said, we'll meet past that doctor. The one that told me I was going to die. I have something to say to him. I was like, okay, so we asked for the doctor. We find him, he comes. I'm like, you remember this lady that you screamed in her face, she's going to die. And he's like, yeah. And I said, well, she's not dying. She's getting wheeled out of here, she's going home, and she wants to tell you something. And he and she's like, fuck you very much. And I'm like, oh my God, mom, you could phrase that a little nicer. She's like, okay, I'm sorry, but you know, you shouldn't have said that to me. And he goes, okay, I changed my diagnosis. I change my prognosis. I'm like, oh my God. So that was my mom and in a nutshell, you never told her what she was going to do. You never told her how she was going to be. And I'm also going to tell you there's a lot of power in your beliefs, and we've talked about that. But, you know, she also she had a tumor in her lung and she just kept saying, I don't have cancer. I don't have cancer. I was like, well, okay, fine. And so, she had had that tumor radiated before. And then it came back. And her doctor, her oncologist told me, you know, this is also around six years ago. The oncologist told me, no, maybe like four years ago, we can't radiated again. We can't do anything. We can't operate. But just keep bringing her in for Pet scan every six months. And I'm like, why? He's like, well, so we can keep an eye on it. And I'm like, why do you need to keep an eye on it? If you can't do anything about it? And he just gave me some ridiculous answer and I said, you know what? We're not going to come back because there's nothing to be done. And why am I going to drag her here for a Pet scan? It's just so hard to get her in and out of the car. She has a lot of pain in her leg. She had venous insufficiency, bad circulation, I mean, you name it. So I didn't bring her back to the doctor. And when she, got really sick this last time, she, I they did a chest X-ray, and they said. I said, you know, she has a tumor in her lung, and they're like, where? And, she just totally forgot about this tumor in her lung because I stopped taking her to the doctor and we just didn't talk about it. And her memory wasn't great. And so, the funny thing is, they were like, oh, yeah, I see it. It's really small. And they looked and it was exactly the same size is when we stopped going to the doctor. So there's so much power in your mind and you have so much control over what's going on. But anyway, you know, after her second heart attack, she was really weakened, but she was able to go back home. She lived in an independent living place. She had some caregivers and she enjoyed her life. She mostly sat in a recliner and watched the King of Queens and Reba and Mike and Molly, and she got wheeled down to the dining room. First she was on a walker, then, you know, progressed to a wheelchair, got real down to talk to her friends at dinner. And, you know, she enjoyed her life. Until about three months ago, she had an episode that ended her up in the hospital. She had been on oxygen after her second heart attack. And then a year ago, she decided she didn't need oxygen anymore. And you cannot argue with this woman. So we took her off her oxygen. She really did seem fine. Until three months ago, I had just moved her to an independent, out of her independent living into an assisted living place. She needed more care and variety of reasons. She was running through all of her money, and, anyway, put her in this assisted living place. It was beautiful. Very nice. I don't think she was getting exactly all the care she needed. That's another story. But, you know, my sister was there checking on her every day, and, Anyway, long story short, she had this episode. They came in to get her in the morning for breakfast, and she was really loopy and kind of unresponsive. And so apparently she wasn't able to push the CO2 out of her body and she wasn't getting enough oxygen. And from there, it was just in and out from the hospital to a skilled nursing home to recuperate back to the hospital. Just she never went home again. She ended up like a month ago, being on hospice at the skilled nursing facility. And, you know, the hospice did a good job until, I guess it was the night before she passed. I don't even know what happened. You know, my sister again was checking on her in Houston every day and doing a really good job. I don't think that she understood. Nobody knew. Not even the nurses. Like the nurses noticed the day before that she was running low on her medication. She. My mom was allergic to everything. She couldn't have morphine. She was on Dilaudid, and I don't know why. I don't really know what the. There was some miscommunication. She was running out of, medicine. Pain medicine. And by the time this came to my attention, it was like, oh, your mom only has one dose? No, your mom has, like 2 or 3 doses left, so I called the hospice. They're like, yes, we're on it, no problem. And then the nurses kept calling me when I went home for the evening in Houston to my friend's house to spend the night. They were like, we don't have any more medication. We don't. They keep saying it's on its way, everything's fine, but it's not coming. And let me tell you, I called this hospice.

It was probably nine, 10: 15:41

00 at night. I went full terms of endearment on these people. I just can't even begin to tell you. But finally, you know, within a few hours, they had the medication there. You just have to advocate for them. If you're in this situation, you have to have somebody check on them. It was just heartbreaking. I just crashed. Luckily, she didn't end up suffering. She was just so knocked out. But you know, I just want to tell you the things I learned to get a power of attorney and a medical directive and a will from your parents while they're still able to do that. Have your parents add your name to everything bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards so you don't have to execute a will. If you have to execute the will, of course, like $5,000. But if you're the beneficiary for everything, if you're the power of attorney. So you could talk to, you know, people when you have to ask a question about their credit card or whatever. But try to get your parents to let you put their, their names on everything. Your name on everything. And, you know, I'm looking back at these videos and things over the last three months, and I just, I it it hurts me for me. Like, I just look like, you know, I was compartmentalizing, which I was. And what can you do except for go through it and feel your feelings and it's very, very, very difficult. And, I just felt like I really wanted to share this because if you're going through this too, you know, or you will go through this, it's it's okay. You know, just do the best you can. Feel your feelings, be exhausted, take a nap when you have to. Be really gentle on yourself. Wrap up on the couch and watch a mindless, you know, Netflix thing. But some really cool things happen, too. And I want to tell you this wild story, that always reminds you to watch for the magic. And I talked about this with Candice Thomas. An episode in, her episode, your, vitality. Personality. She's very, you know, into looking for the magic in life. And so two, I guess it was about two weeks before my mom died. I was driving in the car doing some crying, and my my head started tingling. And I have, you know, had episodes where I feel like people from the other side are communicating with me. I don't know how to control it or really. I mean, everybody feels people around them who have passed. But my thing is, my head always starts tingling. And so I'm driving, I'm crying, I'm feeling all my feelings, and I'm like, who? Who is that? Who is that? And I don't know why this popped into my head, but I said, ABA, is that you? ABA is what I called my stepfather. And I was like, I, I don't know who that is. I don't know what you're trying to say, but okay. What? I feel you. And so I go back to my mom's house. I was packing her up. I was moving her stuff. I was having the realization that this woman is not going back to her assisted living facility. She's going to end up dying in the the nursing facility. So now it's like, you know, eight hours later, I'm driving back to my friend Nikki's house. I always spent the night at her house in Houston, when I was staying overnight to be with my mom. And I'm driving and I'm crying again, and my head starts tingling, and I'm like, ABBA, is that you? I don't I don't know if that's you. I don't know what you want to tell me. And I'm like, let me know if that's you. And I swear to God, hand to God. I look over out my car window and the car next to me. It was a truck next to me pulling a carousel, actually, and it said events by ABBA. And I'm like, well, okay then I guess, I guess that's you. I guess you really are trying to tell me. And I, you know, I just listen to like, what do I think he's trying to tell me? And I think he was just trying to come for me and tell me I'm going to be there, you know, to get your mom and everything's going to be okay. And I'll be there to greet her and receive her, and it's all going to be okay. And it was so beautiful. Like, that was just one of the times I, I had so many beautiful experiences during this. And, you know, even though, like I said, my mom was difficult and she was a force and she loved me. I always felt loved by her. And when she was in hospice, my sister and I, it was probably about around this same time, maybe a week or two before she died. And of course, we were holding her hands and she wasn't really responsive at this point. Maybe it was a week, a week out. And she wasn't super responsive. We were each holding her hand and we were like, you were a great mother. We love you. There's nothing unsaid. You know, we're going to be okay. And, we said, you know, ABBA is waiting for you. And John, which was her last husband. She had three husband. She was quite the woman. So we said, your parents and ABBA and John are waiting for you. And her eyes popped open and again, she had been unresponsive and we said, they're waiting for you. And she said, where? And we said, on the other side, do you want to go be with them? Which she's like, no. It's so oh, it was two weeks out because she lived for another two weeks. We're like, damn, this woman. It's tough. And, all the hospice nurses were like, we cannot believe this woman is still alive. She has all the signs of, like, you are about to die. And she just wouldn't let go. For whatever reason, she wasn't ready. And, so, again, I feel like people have a lot more, agency over when they're going to go. And so the day that she passed, I sat with her on her bed, and I, she was really cold. So I had her blanket pulled up over her, and I was holding her hand above the blanket, so, you know, wouldn't be cold. And she started moving her hand around. And again, she had been unresponsive and not eating or drinking for for a time now. And so she was started just moving her hand. And I was like, oh, you want to hold hands below the blanket? You want me to hold your hand? And she I held her hand and she squeeze my hand really hard. And so, you know, I said again, all the things that I, I know she wanted to hear and all the things that I wanted to tell her, all, all nice things. No need to rehash anything at this point. And, then my sister came and, you know, we went out in the hallway to, handle some business. I was actually trying to make some arrangements at the funeral home because I just knew it was inevitable. And, the nurse came and she said, I think your mom has passed. You should go back in the room. And so, sure enough, she had passed, and, it was, you know, all the emotions. I can't even tell you, but I have to say there was a huge sense of relief because I. She knew it. I don't think she was really suffering at the end, which I'm so grateful for because she had COPD. She had everything, as I was saying, congestive heart failure and COPD. The woman had been living on 20% heart and lung function for six years. You want to talk about a badass in the greatest way, but stubborn and on her terms. But anyway, it was kind of a relief because I was going back and forth to Houston sometimes three times a week, and I was absolutely at my wit's end, exhausted. And, you know, the Jews were Jewish. The Jews bury quickly. And I have to say, I really think that they're on to something because she died on a Tuesday. We had her buried by Friday. This is the week of Thanksgiving. So she died on a Tuesday. I called the funeral home and I'm like, look, I know it's Thanksgiving week, but my mom needs to be in the ground fast. And they were like, look, that can't happen. I was like, let me tell you what's going to happen. And I'm not really usually a very forceful person, but I knew it would mean a lot to her. I knew she didn't want to be embalmed. I knew she wanted a Jewish funeral. And so, I'm like, it has to happen. And so they made it happen. I will say that. And, so she died on a Tuesday. I drove back home. As I was driving home, I could smell her in my car like I, I felt her, I really haven't felt her since, but I, I smelled her. It was the craziest thing. And my head did not tingle, but I there was no mistaking it was her perfume she would wear. Shalamar, her perfume. And if you've ever smelled Shalimar, there is no mistaking that Shalimar. And so I smelled her, and I knew she was with me and went back home Tuesday night. Had Thanksgiving at my house on Thursday. I really wanted to. I wanted to have my friends and family around. I always make Thanksgiving, and it was really important to me to be surrounded by people that I loved. And, my husband was like, busy making her video. I gave him all the photos and, you know, he put it to music. I told him what music, but he did the hard work and that was, you know, a great thing. And so Friday morning we got up, you know, after Thanksgiving, after having all these people at our house and we got up early, drove to Houston, got to the funeral home, and I walked in, and I was so incredibly overwhelmed by seeing my good friends that I grew up with in Houston, and even my friends from Austin who had come out. You know, these are my good, good friends. And they showed up for me. They were there and it was beautiful. And my mom's friends and, so many things went wrong at this funeral. I can't begin to tell you. And I won't because I learned something from season one. Doctor Gladys McGarry. She's a 103 year old doctor, and one of the things that I remember her talking about is this concept. It's, Oh, I forgot, I think a Hindu Hindu concept. And it's, she would say could spawn and then she'd make this, you know, motion, like letting something fall out of her hand. Quick, Boney, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And I thought about that, you know, with all these things going wrong and I'm like, does it matter? I just want to give her a beautiful sendoff. I just want to give her a good sendoff. And so these things are going wrong and it doesn't matter. A lot of things are still beautiful and going right. And so I just chose to focus on that. So we buried her. My sister spoke. We had a rabbi speak. My sister is, she's an adopted sister and she's a preacher, so. But she was raised Jewish, but she is a preacher. But she knows everything about Judaism. She's been my sister since I was six years old. And, so she did part. And then the rabbi did part, and it was perfect. They really captured the essence of my mother. All the good things about her and all the, you know, things that she was known for. Some of her difficult behavior. But we go into the funeral home or, you know, they have, like, this nice, celebration space. And I ordered food from her favorite Jewish deli in Houston, Kenny and Ziggy's. And, you know, it wasn't exactly, a vegan spread. We had, like, tuna and egg salad. And then I did have, like, a lot of, you know, I had cream cheese, and then I had vegan cream cheese. I had a lot of hummus and roasted vegetables and cookies. And then we had beer and mimosas, big Ole open bar. And, you know, I, I made a toast to her tenacity and, told the story about the doctor who told her she was going to die and, and the story about telling her to let go so she could go be with her dead husbands and her parents and her saying no. And everybody was cracking up because, you know, they knew her. And people were coming up to me saying, this was the best funeral I've ever been to. She would have loved this. She would have loved being the the center of attention and my husband did make this beautiful video and I had forgotten. Just my mom was gorgeous when I mean, she was beautiful through her whole life, but when she was young, she was incredibly stunning. She was a professor of, assistant professor of fashion and merchandizing at, Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. And she just had a way about her and, the video was just beautiful. And, I loved, you know, just seeing her with all these phases of her life. And the songs I chose, were wildflowers by Tom petty talking about, you know, You Belong Among the wildflowers and then old days by Chicago and My Way by Frank Sinatra. And I mean, people were just sobbing, and then they were just coming up to me, telling me these stories about her, and I was having this big fish experience. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Big Fish, but, you know, it's about this guy. And his dad was always telling me these crazy stories, and then his dad dies and he finds out these insane, like, Forrest Gump type stories were true. And I feel like that's what happened at my mom's funeral, because she always told these crazy stories. And sometimes she had, I don't even know how to say she lied. She didn't have, always a, truthful story. She liked to make herself, you know, the star of the story. And she told some crazy ones, like, I don't know, she was always telling stories like, Yeah, I taught guitar to the blind, but she didn't know how to play guitar. She was at Woodstock when I know she wasn't at Woodstock, because Woodstock was on my first birthday and she was home with me. She said she wrote the jingle. Who wears short shorts? I don't know if that's true, because after these stories, well, the best one was we were in CVS one time, and the pharmacist is like, is anybody in here speak Spanish? She does not speak Spanish. And she raised her hand. She's like, I do. And I was like, oh, I'm just going to sit back and see what happens. This is going to be good. And the pharmacist is like, can you tell this person blah, blah, blah, whatever. And she's like, and she just like stumbles for like, you know, 30s and he just like, shakes his head and moves on. So, you know, that was her. And she had told me all these crazy stories like she told me, Oh, yeah. Trini Lopez, who was like this singer from the 70s, I dated Trini Lopez, and I was like, you know, when we were in Puerto Rico, I dated Trini Lopez. Well, when I was going through her photos, I, I said to my husband, I think this is a photo of Trini Lopez. And he's like, no, it's not. And we looked and we googled Tim. I was like, we were both like, Holy shit, that's Trini Lopez. Maybe she did date him. Then she told me Benjamin Netanyahu hit on her and I was like, oh, for God's sakes, woman and her friend came up to me at the funeral and was like, oh, did you ever hear about that time your mother and I were at this fundraiser? And Netanyahu is the keynote speaker, and he was trying to get us to come up to his hotel room. And I was like, what? So I was like, oh my God, she was telling the truth. And then, there was another story about she told me she dated Jackie Mason. Like, I don't know why you would want to date Jackie Mason, but I didn't believe her, because I don't know if you know who that is, but that's like this, you know, Jewish comedian from the 70s. And I was like, okay, whatever. That's stupid. I mean, she had been a single parent since I was like 4 or 5 years old. So she was single and she did date a bunch of guys. But I was like, okay. Yeah, right. You did Jackie Mason. And then her friend was like, oh, yeah. I remember when she was dating Jackie Mason. She got my husband who worked in advertising this big account from Jackie Mason. He handled his whole thing, and I was like, what? She did it. Jackie made, like, for real. And so then I just had to start thinking about all these other things. She told me. And I'm like, okay, well, I know she didn't play guitar or speak Spanish, but maybe she did write. Who wear short shorts and it got stolen from her. Maybe she did. She told me she wrote Soulja Boy to, Connie Francis, and that got stolen from her too. Who knows? My point is, she was larger than life. I'm going to miss the shit out of her in ways I won't even know. And, I just want to tell you, I just wanted to tell you about my experience of losing my mother, and, that if you haven't gone through it yet, or even if you have, I just wish you an easy time with it, because it's, It's a rite of passage. And if you're lucky enough to be doing it at this age, then you are lucky because you didn't lose your mother or your father early. And, that's that's so sad. If you have in my heart goes out to you. But at any age, it's hard. And I just wanted you to know a little bit about Linda and and the experience of losing her. And again, I want to thank all of you for listening. And, you know, I know I always say hi, friend. And that's because I mean it. I mean that you are a friend to me. You know, even if we've never had a conversation. You do mean something to me. And I am trying to make, you know, this podcast something useful for you, that you can learn something from it to make your aging process better. And I guess the takeaway from this is, you know, whatever you have to say to your parents to make things right, that you should do. And with my case, I don't think I could have said what I really needed to say to her. She wasn't receptive, and so I just had to quit. Spoony let it go, and I did. And I do, because there were still so many good things. You know, she made me the person that I am, and, and I, I am comfortable with myself. And I do like myself. And, you know, a lot of people can't say that. And so just do what you have to do and make things right and get right with your parents and tell them you love them and tell them they did a good job, because I promise you, they did the best they could. And, thanks again for for supporting this podcast. And, we'll see you for season three. So happy holidays. My deepest love to you. My deepest wishes for you to be healthy and happy and, to enjoy. Goodbye. Na. Thanks for listening, friend. From my heart to yours. Be well. Until we meet again.