What Death Does Not Take -E428

When a child dies, it can feel like everything is taken, your future, your identity, your sense of who you are. In this deeply honest conversation, Bruce and Kristin explore that raw reality, and then gently turn toward something many grieving parents eventually begin to notice, not what was taken, but what remains.

This episode sits in the tension between loss and love. It gives language to the feeling that death took everything, while also holding space for the truth that it didn’t take everything. The bond, the love, the influence of our children, those continue, even as everything else changes.

Through personal reflection, they talk about identity after loss, the fading and reshaping of memories, the evolution of relationships, and the quiet ways connection continues. They introduce the idea of continuing bonds, not letting go, but learning how to carry our children differently.

This is not about finding silver linings. It is about recognizing what still belongs to you.

If you are navigating life after child loss, or supporting someone who is, this conversation will meet you exactly where you are.

Because death may take their presence…
but it does not take your love. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome to Don't Forget to Breathe. I'm Bruce Barker here with my co-host, Kristen Glenn. You know, when a child dies, it can feel like everything has been taken from you. Not just their presence, but your future, your identity, your sense of safety, your plans, your assumptions about how life was supposed to unfold. There's this overwhelming sense that death didn't just take your child, it took everything. But over time, and not because time heals anything, but because we begin to look a little more honestly at what's still here, we may start to notice something else. There are things that their death couldn't take from us. It couldn't take our love, our memories, the bond we still have with them, the ways they shaped who we are and continue to shape us. So today, Kristen and I want to talk about what death doesn't get to keep, what still belongs to us even now. You know, so Kristen, for me, that immediate aftermath, it took everything. It it felt like my role as a dad disappeared overnight. And as we we've talked about in a previous episode, the future I imagined for Kristen was gone. And certainly, and I believe our listeners can relate to this, is just even my sense of who I was changed.

Identity After A Child Dies

SPEAKER_01 2:20

For me too. Zachary was our only at the time as well, different stage of my life since I was so young when he died. So didn't it remain that that way. But you know, just this overwhelming sense of everything is gone. There's nothing remaining. I'm just an absolute shell of the person I ever was. I am really more of a burden. I'm more of a placeholder. I'm not a full person. You know, I just felt like I was see-through because I was so lacking in any substance of being. It felt like the death that trauma, that devastating loss took absolutely everything, all of my relationships, all of my worth, all of my my own future, certainly Zach's future, my ability to be optimistic about life, to be helpful. It was it was almost kind of insulting if people would suggest at that time that I had something to live for. You know, I mean like people would try desperately to be like, but you're s you're young, you have so much to live for, so many people need you. When I was pushed into that, you know, instead of discovering in that ourselves, it felt really unnatural for others to try to define what death didn't take from me because it I had to discover that in my own timeline, not to be told that or pushed into that. Does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Oh yeah. A whole new identity. Did you feel like your identity as a mother changed?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Oh, absolutely. I what I wouldn't feel like I was a mother, you know? And again, very well-meaning, reassuring folks saying, of course you'll always be Zachary's mother. But where is he then? Who am I cuddling? Who am I making dinner for? Whose laughter is in the house? Who's who's asking me to be his mommy? No one. It's just silence. So it sure didn't feel like what motherhood felt like the day before this tragedy. That's not that's not a motherhood that I had ever imagined. You know, a motherhood full of memories only.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

I think we all agree in uh the immediate aftermath of losing our child that death took everything. But as we're all at different places on our on our grief journey, what death couldn't take? Yeah. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

I appreciate the question because I feel like sometimes it's tough not to, you know, think it it still did take so much, you know, especially over this much time and uh how the memories aren't vivid. They're not vivid. I can't I can't say that I remember his little nuances unless I go seek them out in a picture or the few videos we have, because it was pre-cell phone like you and I've talked about, right? But it didn't take the lessons he taught me. It didn't take what he gave me, it didn't take becoming a mother from me. It didn't take r his role in our family as our firstborn. Maybe death didn't take all those memories, but maybe that is what happens over time. Time's not healing my grief, but it is robbing me of the vividness of my memories. So I'm mad at time. You know, I'm mad at some of the time that's passing and trying to imagine who he'd be now and not not being able to remember did he did he do this? Was he like this? And having less and less people share those memories also is a thief, kind of of the memories, you know, kind of a taking those away because I'm not getting those new memories from the others in my life. How about for you? What do you feel about that same?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I mean, I think the relationships that didn't vanish and many did, those changed. They changed form. So death didn't take the relationships that I guess it sounds harsh to say, but for those people that matter, the ones that are that are always there, it didn't take them away, it took a lot of other people away, but it changed that that relationship. So whether there was more tenderness or understanding or connection, but also a higher level of trust, I think. So when they ask, you know, how you doing, how you holding up, it's not a platitude. They want to know.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Right. What a gift.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

And they're willing to listen.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

And they're not trying to fix it. So the influence that Kristen still has, I mean, that's still alive in how I move through the world, how I function. I think it was easy to be non-emphetic before. And now empathy is at a forefront. It's right up, right up there. And some of that, sure, we could attribute to age, but not early on. It was, you know, whether it was seeing, whether seeing a commercial and it felt different and feeling the emotion from it. And I know I was I was a girls lacrosse coach um for about 10 years, and it influenced how I coached and how protective I was of the girls that um that I coached, and also how I viewed the parental relationships they had. And I was probably less patient from and seeing things that I didn't agree with, knowing what can disappear instantly. Right. Where before it would have just been, well, it just would have been completely different. You know, I could have been apathetic about it, or I could have like whatever. But this was it changed my view of the world as a parent who's lost a child, and then it just seemed like every news story was that. So now, you know, so when I would see uh a story as we've seen far too many times and countless times of children dying, whether it's school shootings, whether it's whatever tragedy it might be, where before I might have felt a little sad thinking of the child that they're not here, now my view was immediately going to the parent.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Wow.

Time As A Thief Of Memory

SPEAKER_00 9:04

And that didn't take away what Kristen her life and her death was it was influenced me and how it changed that. And and for sure, and I think every every parent, every listener can attest to this, is it didn't take the love away. Like it, if anything else, it amplified it.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

That's exactly right. That's what I f that's what I was trying to put into words. It's like that is the part that is so deep and so full in my heart that it takes away some of the sting that the vivid memories have faded. But when I hear his name, when I think of him, that warmth that you can just feel radiating in your core is is is as big or maybe bigger than ever.

unknown 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Because that's that's what remains, right? There's no there's nothing that's darkened that or that's taken that, or it's like I'm even more protective of that than ever before. That deep, deep love and the things I've done in my life that I feel like were to honor him, and how protective I feel of those, those efforts to find meaning by, you know, reaching out to others. I think it's why this podcast speaks to me so much. Like how lucky I feel to have this outlet. I feel sad that so many people, years after loss, don't get an opportunity to to talk to someone that gets it, and maybe have other listeners that get it, and I get to say his name and feel that warmth and feel that that deep connection. And there's no way death will ever, ever take that from me.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah. When you look at death as this entity, so to speak, and you know, there's there's lines and and songs and music and and plays and poems, and you know, that death doesn't discriminate and whatever it is, like it's it's cold, right? And this is kind of one of those, yeah, but you didn't take this. Exactly. You could not take away the love. And that, as we've talked about before, is that depth of love equaling that depth of grief because of that connection. And sometimes it's depending on where you are in your journey, that's hard to it's hard to process. But it took a while, you know, again, after that immediate shock and and heavy, heavy sadness, I actually have that realization that my love for Kristen had not gone anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

It was still there. And I didn't know at the time that that was directly related to that feeling of grief of how sad I was, but realizing that, yeah, my love for her, while she was not here on the earth anymore, my love for her hadn't gone anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Well, and I appreciated hearing like what you've done on birthdays to specifically. I know you do this on, you know, these connected activities on a daily basis as you think of her, but those very intentional moments of whether it was your art through pottery or a slideshow with her music, and you know, you have inspired me to do more of that because I think I haven't done that, and I want to. I want to find something again, because I think I did that more for myself in the beginning, and I've let that go, and it makes me, gosh, feel neglectful of his memory or like I'm letting him down. And I don't want to do that. Birthdays are a really big thing in our family. I really like to celebrate birthdays, and maybe that's his influence too. You know, don't let one birthday go without really celebrating it. But I wouldn't I want to do something between him and I. So I'm gonna I'm gonna be looking. A mom, a mom Zach moment. I haven't I haven't found that for a while, and I can I don't know what it's gonna be, but I'm I'm inspired to find it.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

It'll come to you. I mean, that's just that's it is I I avoided it for the longest time. It was so painful until I made that conscious decision to embrace it, and it it would be the two of us.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Yeah.

What Survives In Relationships

SPEAKER_00 13:39

And I think that's diff that's the difference. I mean, I know I've talked to other parents who've uh and some have struggled through parties, you know, where there's birthday parties and everybody comes and they and they're struggling through that because it's a a bigger event, you know, for families and and missing out on that one-on-one. I mean, I encourage that. My relationship with her continues, and especially on those days, you know, we're talking. And it can be obviously it's emotional, and there's moments of tears, and then there's smiles. It's all mixed in there together, but there's super special birthdays.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

I don't know what the next one's gonna be, but it'll come to me. It will.

unknown 14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

I'm gonna give myself permission to to reflect on that more than I have over over the years. I think I've tried to just get through the day.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

And I I want it to be more than just getting through the day. I want to mark and became a mother on that day. You know, that was both of our shifts. Their birthdays are the moment that we knew what it was like to become a parent as our, you know, the first time we'd known that kind of love. And I think it's it's worthy of me taking some time, like like you've shown me, to to find something. And it can't be forced, and it can't, you know, feel disgenuine or something out of a Hallmark commercial, but it'll be something that's just between between Zach and I. I need that, really.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah, you'll you'll just know. And at the end of the day, I felt each time since I've been intentional with this of feeling full. I mean, uh literally, I just I like we had a great day together.

unknown 15:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I want that. So there's still the bond, right? And I don't believe that changes. There's this theory, it's it's called um, it's the continuing bonds theory. And so it was introduced in in uh 96. There were three people that introduced it, and and what it was is their their theory was it was uh that healthy grief doesn't require letting go or getting quote unquote closure, because we know how that works. Um, but rather it's transforming the relationship with those who've died into something new and symbolic or internal, like having an internal connection. Basically, it encourages integrating their memory and their values and their love into your ongoing life rather than detaching. Super easy to detach. And again, for the birthdays, I did that for the longest time. But to reintegrate her back into my life, I mean, I talked to Kristen and I've talked to other parents who say they do the same thing. You know, we can have conversations, and even some of the decisions that I make, um, she influences that. So I want to honor her the same as as if she were here on earth with some of the things that I do. So, what are some of the ways that you maintain that bond with Zach?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

I think it really has been embedded in supporting other people in their grief. Like that has been, and I think as I've done less of that over the last two years, I'm struggling to figure out how to refine that because that was pretty all-consuming for 20 years. I didn't have to ask what I was doing to honor Zach, because it was my daily outreach and purpose, and I was doing it every single day in some form, interacting with someone else that knew the depth of their own loss. And we didn't know each other's we didn't share each other's stories, as you and I've said, but we knew we knew how incredibly bewildering it was to try to find out what was next. And you know, I think without that, it's still a big part of my life, but it certainly is not what it was for that that couple of decades. So it's healthy um for me to redefine that. And it's hard and it's a struggle, but it's been it's been beautiful to just be able to pause and say, actually, this I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna focus on the fact that I need myself as a support this week. You know, like I only am going to have my own story filling my heart for a little bit of time, which is not that all those other stories and people don't have spaces in my heart and mind, but that it's not selfish for me to also just return to a space where it's just Zach and I. And I haven't done it long enough. I feel kind of brand new to this. I know it will have something that's very much little boyish because as much as the calendar and the years passing say he's 36, he is he's three and a half. So doing something that's a three and a half year old type of bonding. We didn't have deep conversations. We didn't, you know, we were a mom and a little boy. And to have that be more of the tone feels very appropriate than to try and imagine who he'd be. I've I've done things where I try to imagine who he is now, and there's just no way I can fantasize about that. Yeah, I don't I don't have any idea. And I think as I do have adult children, I could never have imagined who they would have been when they were babies. They've surprised me in so many ways, you know, good and good and scary ways. They surprise me all the time on who they have become as their own people now. So to think that I could imagine who this little guy would have become doesn't feel authentic to me.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

What I saw in you and and my experience with you of what death didn't take and where it landed with you was what I saw in the role that you had for so many years was what it gave you, and what I believe that Zach gave you. You know, this is just my observation is the compassion that you have and and perspective that only a parent who has lost a child can have, and that advocacy, the strength that you showed, and you were there for so many parents in that in those immediate, life-altering, shattered, fragile moments, all that strength and purpose with what you were doing with that and and co-founding that nonprofit and all the time that you spent doing that. But I'm seeing that shift here now too in bringing that to this podcast. And I know you continue to work uh with groups, you know, supporting groups, and I, you know, and I do the same, and I think by you know, bringing all of that together is something that that death didn't take away and and what I think Zach gave you.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

I mean that's such a gift to do that.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

What ways do you think he still guides you?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Well, I hope the ways that you said, you know, I hope that he's given me a lens of compassion. I think he's given me a sense of in most situations apathy doesn't work for me.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Yeah.

Building Rituals For Birthdays

SPEAKER_01 21:44

I tend to be pretty action-oriented. I want to make a difference. I'm not very good at just kind of hanging back and thinking, well, someone else will take the lead on leaning towards grief. I don't take the lead in situations that I don't know, and I don't know very much about most things, but I really know grief. And so I feel very compelled to lean into that and to do to be an advocate and to be kind of gritty about it, you know, and I think he's given me that that bravery to say I don't know what to say, but I know I can be there. I know, I know I can show up for people in some dark times, and it's not Gonna break me and I'm not gonna say the exact right thing, but I'm gonna be a shower-upper for people. You know, I think he's changed that about me. I don't know if that would have been me. I don't think it would have been me. My pre pre-self, I think, would have been very much like, ugh, that's that's sad. I'm gonna avoid that. I don't I don't want I don't want to risk saying the or doing the wrong thing, and I'm not equipped. I would definitely not feel equipped. And maybe I wasn't, but death has given me a um, I feel equipped to handle my own stuff and to lean towards other people in hopes that I can show them that they also can navigate theirs.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah. I mean, I know we've talked about, we all know what death took away, and we've talked about in this what death couldn't take. I know this isn't a silver lining. Certainly that's not a way to describe it because none of this makes their death okay. But this is about what survived, not what was gained. We're not gaining things, but just what survived.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

That is so much better than saying gained for me.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

I don't want to ever view this as something I gained so much from this. I'd rather have gained nothing.

unknown 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I want to be naive again. I even want to be lacking in compassion again, if that's what it takes. Do I get to have a magic wand and have my Zack back? You know, I mean that's that's the bottom line, is that's the truth. But what has come, you know, from this darkness, I think that it's okay that something does come from it. I thought I had died with Zack. That's ooh, that's what I thought death took was me. You know? I thought, well, Zack and I both died that day. He died in his body from this earth, and I my soul just died. And I'm just gonna have to be uh body until I can leave this earth. That's all I'm gonna be. It's just a shell. And that didn't get to take that. I got to regain who I'm meant to be now, I guess, or who I am now. I don't think it's meant to be, but who I've decided to be. Do you think you've decided to be this this version of Bruce? Is this a decision, a conscious decision that you make to be this version of yourself that Kristen taught you to be?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

It took it took effort. Yeah, I mean, I had to step into it. I it was finding meaning without justifying the loss. It was finding it over a period of time, and it just a lot of it just fell into my lap as I just kind of explained in the first season how this whole podcast, how it all kind of started, and it wasn't about any other anything other than I just needed it out of me, all of those things. And really, all I was kind of getting was enough light to see the next step. I didn't know what was ahead of that and didn't see where the path was going.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

So it was really just making that decision to take one more step. And now 19 years later, here's where I am, and hoping that there is meaning with what has happened that Kristen is influencing and helping others, other parents.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

But again, it's not justifying it at all.

unknown 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

You know, so the thing with that we've talked about tonight, like death absolutely took their physical presence away. But it didn't take our love at all. And it didn't take our memories, even though they kind of get cloudy now and then, it still didn't take it.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

That's absolutely right. And I would add that it didn't take the essence of who we were and who we've chosen to become. I feel like I've chosen to allow this to shape me in good and bad ways. But I I have allowed this experience to change how I view the world and how I love people and how I take risk and how I show up for other people and how mad I can get when people aren't appreciating their fellow human beings.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

You know? It's changed my my emotions are intense. They're not gray. Yeah. And so death probably taught me some of those things that I I didn't want to be taught. But I got those lessons just with the fate of that that life handed this tragic accident to our family.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, there's still things that belong to us.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Absolutely.

Continuing Bonds And Staying Connected

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Just doesn't get to keep. No way. You know, to our listeners, you know, if you feel prompted in any way to share your child's story, we invite you to reach out. This podcast exists so parents can speak their truth, introduce the world to their child, and share not only their grief, but their love and what death did not take from you. So we have more parent stories coming in future episodes. Uh, we'll be doing several of those in-person recordings in a couple of weeks, but you can share your story right where you are. Doesn't have to be in person. You don't need any special equipment. Uh, we've talked about this before. We can record right where you are, right through your computer. Our contact information follows the end of this episode, so we invite you to reach out. If you carry anything with you from this conversation, let it be this. Death may have taken your child's physical presence, but it did not take your love. That connection, that bond, it's still there. It just takes on a different form. However, that looks for you, there's no right way to do this. You're allowed to find your own way in your own time. And if you feel called to share your child's story, we invite you to reach out. This space exists for you. So until next time, be gentle with yourself. Take care, and please don't forget to breathe.