EP025: Embracing Grief: The Night A Cheeseburger Changed Everything!

Grief can make you feel like your body is electric, like you’re back in the storm without warning, even years later. We wanted to tell the truth about that, so we invited David Linnell back to the show. David is the Director of Meals on Wheels Diablo Region, a CrossFit guy, and a servant-hearted leader but today he shares the part of his life that reshaped everything: losing his son Justin after a 14-year battle with opioid addiction that began when Justin was just 14 years old and ended with fentanyl. 

We talk through what addiction looks like inside a family: the fear of “the call,” the chaos of relapse, and the fragile wins that can come with treatment tools like Vivitrol. David also walks us into the aftermath, including the federal case and the victim impact statement he was asked to give in court. Then the story takes an unexpected turn: the night before court, a stranger feeds him after hours and introduces himself with the same first name as the dealer. That moment flips David’s posture from rage to a kind of grounded compassion, leading him to speak to the dealer’s mother with empathy and a challenge to keep showing up for her son. 

We also get practical about healing in the fourth quarter of life: grief counseling, leaning on friends, finding peace outdoors through camping and fly fishing, and giving ourselves permission to cry when it hits. David’s hurricane metaphor for grief is one you’ll want to share with someone you love. 

If this conversation moves you, please subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. And if you want to support our community work, look for the donation link for Meals on Wheels and come out for Ted’s birthday challenge on July 18.

Transcript

Wake Up And Welcome

SPEAKER_04 0:08

Wake up, wake up, and listen up. Welcome to the fourth quarter podcast with your hosts, Doug Telmich and Ted and Mia. Tune in as we dive into living your best life in the fourth quarter of your life. Hear from health and lifestyle experts, inspirational stories, learn simple steps to keep you motivated or to help get you started. Finally, join us as we coach others live on air who want to begin a healthy lifestyle or just might be stuck and need a breakthrough. Remember, it's never too late to decide to be great. Momentum keeps you motivated, so take a deep breath, lean in, and let's go. Hey, welcome back to the fourth quarter podcast with Doug and Ted. I am excited for this week. We've got a returning guest, but we are going to take the topic just in a little different angle this week. And it so tune in. I think you are going to be deeply touched and moved. But we also got some other exciting things going on, Ted. Your birthday challenge is right around the corner. I want you to talk about that a little bit. But before I hand over the mic to you, last week's episode with Lisa from the East Coast was just on fire. That girl is, I'm telling you, you don't, you do you listen to her and you do not need to drink coffee. She just got energy oozing out of the uh the airwaves or whatever you want to call it. And it's just it gets you moving, it gets your your blood pumping. You're like, okay, I gotta go do something. But she is definitely into that mountain climbing. What is she bagging peaks? And what's the what's the game she's played with the tennis racket thing? Yeah, pickleball. Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. And what is it? Uh she called it when you don't dink it, you think it she's a banger. A banger. There you go. Thank you, Ted. I my memory's terrible, but thank you. I'm in the fourth quarter now. You know, I got an excuse.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

I listened to that thing. I didn't know whether to go climb a mountain or go take a nap. I was exhausted after hearing her.

Birthday Challenge And Guest Tease

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Yeah, but Lisa, if you're listening, thanks for uh jumping on and and sharing your life with us. I'm sure you inspired and motivated and energized a lot of people out there. But Ted, what do you what do you got? Tell us what's happening on this episode, but and also what else is going on with Ted?

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Well, we we've got some guests planned, but we're not we're not gonna put them out there because every time we do, it seems like the schedule changes. So yeah, there will be guests. We manage to get somebody on here every week. But this week we have uh David David Linnell is back. David's a director of Meals on Wheels, Diablo Region, and he was on, I don't know, two months ago, maybe longer, and was telling a story about well, first of all, meals on wheels. I'm I'm a volunteer, and that's what got us started. And we met David last year at my birthday challenge. He came out and joined in with us and got to learn his story a little bit. So he came on and shared shared that and what he does to stay in shape. And when we we spoke with Tim last year at the challenge, he told us there was a lot more that was going on with his life and very important stuff. And we didn't bring it up last time because we wanted to give it the time it deserved, and we didn't want to just discuss it at the end of the episode because there was so much going on with that one. So, you know, we we want to dig a little bit deeper into his story, and he's open to sharing that with us. When we got off the air when we finished recording last time, he mentioned that he thought a good topic for an episode might be having uh grief counselor on because that had helped him out, and we'll get into that a little bit more, and just because people our age in the fourth quarter are losing parents, losing siblings, and losing friends, and you know, we all go through that depression and a lot of grief. So we we decided to have David come back and really dig a little bit deeper into his story, and we appreciate you coming on. I'm going to let Doug kind of lead this. He and David have spoken about this in the past, and so I'll turn it over to you, Doug. And David, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, and David, thank you. Thank you. You know, David, the first time I met you, we're just literally at this park in Walnut Creek or Danville, and you know, you're you're just an open book. You started sharing a little bit about your life, and all of a sudden you started breaking, unpacking the story about a story about your son, and what uh you know, what had transpired with that. And I was just the the story had so many incredible moments throughout it. And but the most incredible thing that I got from the story was just the way you were able to come around, navigate things, respond to things, and it I know it had to be hard. And then to find out that, you know, as part of your lifestyle, you know, you're you're into CrossFit and you exercise a lot. And and I think I had asked you back then, and maybe we can touch on that a little bit, uh, you know, how much does exercising and working out help you to deal with with that story? And and if you're okay, David, I'd love you to jump in. And if there's anything you want to mention about yourself and and then share the story about your son, share a little bit about what you shared with me. Uh, I think that would be very helpful to our listeners. Right.

Justin’s Addiction And A Parent’s Fear

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Well, thank you. It's kind of a difficult subject to start talking about. I see it's like, where do you start? So I I used to have a son named Justin. I've got three other children. I used to have four. Justin, when he was 14, was starting to get into trouble at school. And it was discovered in his locker by the principal or so. This is sort of how it started, that he had a bottle of pills that didn't belong to him. And Justin swore up and down they weren't his, that he was carrying them for a friend, sort of like the common excuse that kids give to their parents and others when they're starting to get mixed up in the wrong things. But it was shortly thereafter we'd learned that he was developing an addiction to oxycodone and was sort of willing to do anything. And now he was only 14 at the time, and I think that's important for people to understand that he was just a young teenager. Wow. So my ex-wife and I, when we were still together, were trying to do everything we could, getting him into counseling into rehab, and and we sort of fought that struggle for a long period of time. His battle with his addiction before he finally passed was also 14 years. He died when he was 28. And that during throughout that process, uh, he had some moments where he was successful in his his being clean and off the drugs, and then there are other times he wasn't probably the most successful he'd ever been on it. He was using a drug called Vivitrol that was offered to him through a clinic that he was attending when he was living in Florida. Vivitrol has a way to block your opiate receptors in your body so you don't crave opiates. So he was very successful with it. It's an injection you get once a month, and this the state was sponsoring it. And then COVID hit and they closed the clinic, and he didn't tell us. So when he was had gotten past the vivitrol that was in his system and started to crave the opiates, he went on a bender and started using again. So this time he was now uh had switched from oxycode into heroin. And then when heroin wasn't available, he'd switched to fentanyl, which ultimately took his life. But even in during that time, from you know, I think it's important to understand as a parent that my emotions were all over the place when you have a child or a loved one that is going through this. Right. And I had many nights where I thought I'm gonna get the call that um he didn't make it, especially when I knew he was using again and I couldn't communicate with him because he wasn't living with me. And I had the fear that I was gonna ultimately was not gonna make it. And that day came. Man. So I had a really hard time dealing with it, as any parent does. Right. I'm certainly not special in that regard. I think the hardest part for me was having to, once I was informed, because I was informed by a sober living house where he had moved into. He was down back down the floor, and he had moved into a sober living house, and I didn't know he was there. And I received a message from the owner of the the sober living, who was desperately trying to find any one of his family members to tell them that they had found him dead that morning.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Um I had to tell him his sister and his brother. I think he wasn't with us anymore.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Then I had to tell his mother that we had lost our son.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

This is still really hard. So after his his death and we tried to get some of his personal items from the police that when they came because they compensated his telephone and we wanted his property back, and they said that they were doing an investigation trying to find the uh the dealer. And because of the communication Justin had had with his dealer, that was still available in his phone. So they had set up, this was a federal case, they had set up a sting to try and catch the dealer. And they did. The individual who sold him the drugs had sold the undercover police officers several several lethal doses of of fentanyl. Wow. And um so as part of that, um when they caught him, they notified him that when they arrested him that he was being arrested for the being complicit in the uh death of another person as a result of his selling these drugs. And because it was a federal case, he was going to do a mandatory 20 years. As part of that, the city of West Palm Beach had reached out to me and asked me to come and do an impact statement for the court. And it's something that's sort of mandatory. They don't like it if you if you miss it as a parent or under these circumstances. So I flew to West Palm Beach to have this conversation with the authorities and also in front of the judge. And I had learned his name and I learned a little more about him before I got there. I knew that he was a father of four children. He had uh two different women that he had children with. One was three chit kids and one was one other child, that he worked several different jobs. So he he he wasn't just only a drug dealer. So his name was uh Dante, and I won't give his last name because no one will ever figure that out. So, you know, as a human being, you start to think about why would anyone want to sell drugs knowing they're lethal, why would anybody be in that position? And I was really angry. I wanted to to just, you know, go beat what out of Dante. And I went and I and I was harboring a lot of anger in the couple weeks prior to to

Fentanyl Loss And The Federal Case

SPEAKER_00 12:55

actually flying down there for this particular event. And I flew into West Palm Beach and it was about midnight. And I was hungry. So I went to a Shoney's that was supposed to be open 24 hours. And this is and I found myself in an all-African American community down in the poorer parts of West Palm Beach. And I got dropped off by an Uber. I walked into the restaurant, and I have previous restaurant experience. So as soon as I walked in, I knew what was going on. I could tell by the way they were covering all the equipment with plastic that they were gonna do fumigation that night, and they were probably closed. And I walked in and I and I said, Hey, you guys open? It's pretty clear you're not. And she and I said, Is there another place nearby here that I could walk to to have get something to eat? She said, In this neighborhood, you don't want to be walking. And I went, fair enough. I I appreciate the warm.

unknown 14:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

And she said, How did you get here? Why don't you just drive? And I said, Well, I got dropped off by an Uber. She said, Well, I'm not even sure if the other restaurant's even open or not. And I hear this little voice out of the back of the kitchen offering to make me something to eat. And just said, Hey, if you're hungry, I'll make you something to eat. And the guy didn't know me from Adam. And I said back to him, and the woman said, Hey, if he's willing to make you something, he's the cook. If he's willing to make you something to eat, and I said, I'll take whatever's easiest. How about and he said, How about a cheeseburger and French fries? I said, That sounds amazing. When your hunger's on him, I'll eat anything. So he made he made me a hamburger and I ate it. And I wanted to walk back and thank him because you know they didn't have open registers, they did it on the house. They I was a perfect stranger. This was about you know a little after midnight. And uh I walked back and I had cash on me, and I handed him a hundred dollar bill, and I said, Hey, I want you to take a loved one or somebody out to eat. I said, Because your generosity of feeding me is not something that happens in these circumstances, and I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I said, You have no idea how much this means to me the night before something that I've gotta do. I said, My name's David. What's yours? And he said, Dante.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Man. And I really felt like it was a mission, or it was a message from God that I was gonna be okay. And the situation needs to be different. I need to let the anger go. Wow. So I left the restaurant and I woke up the next morning and went to the courthouse, and my ex-wife was there, and we're standing before the judge, and the judge is saying, You're just here for an impact statement. You have no effect on his the length of time he's gonna be in prison. This is a mandatory 20 years. Unless you would like to see if you could talk about it being expanded beyond that based on the impact this has had on your family. Dante's family was there also, including his mother. His mother was crying. Of course, a mother's gonna be crying because she's losing her son who's gonna go to prison for 20 years. At least that's what I thought. So I went first. I was ready to get it over with. And I looked over at Dante and it turned out that, you know, I know Justin very well. Or at least I did. Justin isn't friends with anyone. Or or or when he's doing this type of thing, he doesn't do it with people he doesn't know. So he knew Dante. I knew he knew Dante. And it turned out Dante knew him. And when Dante found out that Justin had passed, he said he was, he just sort of just threw his threw his hand, threw himself at the court and said, Yes, I'm at fault. And he couldn't believe that he actually killed one of his friends with this with the drugs. And I said, Dante, and I I turned away from the judge and I looked Dante straight in the face. I said, Unfortunately, my son was involved in something he shouldn't have been involved in, and you were selling drugs like you should not have been involved in. He's paid the ultimate price, he's he's dead, and now you have to pay your your time too. And then I turned to the judge. I said, I have no other comments, other than I'd like to say something to Dante's family.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I turned to his mother and all his family, and I said, You've got to go visit Dante.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

You gotta visit him every day. Because when he gets out of prison, he's gotta know that someone loves him while he's there and turn something positive out of all of what's happened. He needs to come out a better person, and he's only gonna do it with your support.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

And Dante's mother came running over to me to give me a hug. And I grabbed her and I said, I don't blame you for this. She said, That's my biggest fear, is that I killed my son killed someone else's family. And she said, I've not been able to sleep since. I said, I want you to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I want you to let go of all of this. I don't I don't hold this against you. And you need to take care of Dante so that something positive out of all this happens because I've lost my son and I don't know what else to do. And so, as you can tell through this conversation, I've had a really hard time with this. So I had to get great counseling when I got back to California.

Counseling And Learning To Breathe

SPEAKER_00 19:39

And so to try and shift this conversation a little bit. I found myself having to uh be outdoors more. I started going camping, trying to figure out what's it all for. Why do these types of things happen? And working with some counselors, some grief counselors, they really helped me sort of sort of piece it all back together again. And one of the things that I learned from counselors was that when you feel the grief and you feel the sadness of a loss, it's that person that he's still present that um I start to talk about this and I become emotional about it. It means that he's still with me and that I still miss him, and that I still love him. So I have to embrace the grief, I have to embrace the pain because he's still here. Amen. So how about those giants?

SPEAKER_04 20:58

David, you you like I said, you're you're an incredible human being, and you know, you first time I met you, you shared that story with me, and it just blew me away and immediately revealed, you know, this incredible man that I get to walk next to and talk with and and learn from, and just you know, so and celebrate our friend Ted's birthday challenge in that moment as well. But that and that story has impacted me back then, and it's I still live with that story to this to this, and it's part of my DNA now, you know. So just just so you know, Justin is part of my life. I share his story with others when they need encouragement, when they know there's hope on the other side. And yeah, you're you have a very I'm into fitness, I'm into faith, and I'm also into forgiveness. And your story embodies those, you know, a hundred percent. You've got a ton of forgiveness, ton of faith, and and and then your life is filled with fitness as well. And I think the way you carry those three things in your life has helped you become who you are. I mean, you're the Director of Meals on Wheels in the Diablo region. And your your heart and your mission is to serve so many people. You've got a, you know, you've got a lot on your shoulders, a lot on your plate every day in that organization. And you show up and you get it done. And I can see why. You know, with those core pillars, forgiveness, fitness, and faith, man, you you do get a lot of stuff done. And I just want thank you for sharing that story. Thank you for letting people hear that you can go through some really hard things, but you can still have a little bit of hope. You can turn to somebody's mom and say, I don't blame you. And you better and show up every day for him and do those kinds of I mean I mean these these aren't the stereotype. We, you know, when we watch the news, we hear the other stories about the you know the violence and the revenge and the vengeance and all this stuff. And you know, your story, what a great story. Thank you for being a light in a world where sometimes it's it seems very dark for a lot of people. And so just appreciate your your tone and your willingness to share.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah, you're welcome. I I think a lot of it has to do with trying to recover too. It's not good to hang on to anger. I thought that was one of the first things I had to solve was I had to I have to accept the fact that Justin was by the time he had reached his 20s, he was a full-grown adult. I couldn't really control, I couldn't control him when he was 14 either, but I couldn't control him as an adult. And I have to accept whatever the outcome was gonna be is not my fault, even though I tried so desperately to get him clean permanently. I mean, I had a couple good years with a vivitrol. But to have anger over someone else that sold him drugs when he had his own, he had his own fault in this, you know. He had to he played a major role in it. He was the one that or the disease had played a major role in it. So I can't place all of the anger on the other individual for this because he played this such a significant role in it. So I had to let that go. And then I had to learn how to deal with the loss. And I think there were when we when we were walking, we talked about the fact that, you know, as I've gotten older, I've I've lost friends. We've you know, I've got uh family members and for other friends that are losing their parents. You know, and when we're in this fourth quarter, as you guys like to describe it, we're we're dealing with it so much more. Right. You know, when I was going through the grieving process when it first happened, I told myself, I said, I'm gonna, I will explode if I don't just cry when I feel it. And I don't get emotional when I feel it. And I gave my permission I gave myself permission and the courage to say that I'm gonna weep when it comes and I and I don't really care what other people think. I like that. I think I have to stop thinking about what they think of me if I do. Right. Um and I think a lot of men in general have a tendency to say, I can't show my emotions. Right, I can't let that, I can't do it in front of people, and I and and they try their best not to. And maybe that works for some. I'm not certainly gonna judge them for it, but I don't think it's healthy. Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

I agree, I agree. I think it I, in my opinion, for whatever that's worth, it it takes a much more courageous human being to go ahead and feel. Number one, you gotta allow yourself to feel, give yourself permission to feel, yeah, and let yourself naturally and organically respond to that feeling, to that emotion. If it's breaking down and crying and, you know, having yourself a moment, then God bless you. Enjoy. And, you know, it's I gotta say though, David, it's hard to, you know, give yourself permission to even know you have to give yourself permission. It that's a lot of wisdom. Somehow you you've been granted this wisdom. What what what what makes you think on that in that lane to to say this is what I need to do?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I don't really know how to answer that. I I think maybe it's just coping. Yeah. I don't think it's anything special. Yeah, I sp I spent a lot of time or I have spent a lot of time thinking about my son in this process of the 14 years of him using as I had mentioned earlier that I always thought or I had nightmares of the day it would happen where I would get notification that he had overdosed because you know he was using heroin for a number of years. And that's not not something you really want to play with. And there are times when he's he's probably come extremely close to ODing. In fact, there was one time when he was down in Florida where my ex-wife was living, and she's a trauma nurse, and she actually, when she was in communication with the ER doctors when he was overdosing, she she told the doctors, you do not stop giving him CPR or I will sue the hospital. I don't care how long it takes you. And ultimately he did come through. Wow, and they probably would have given up on him.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

Wow. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

So we've had some we've had some really really tremendously stressful times through this process. And I think when you you dwell on it or you have nightmares about it, or you're lying awake at night wondering if it's gonna come tomorrow morning because you're trying desperately to reach him and you can't get a hold of him. So you know he's using. How do you deal with it? So you start to say, okay, when it does happen, because it feels like it's going to, how am I gonna handle it?

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Right. I don't think you can ever be prepared for that either. No matter how you try and rationalize it in your head when the time comes, never be prepared.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

No, no, you can't. You can't. Um you said it's been five years now, David? It's been five years this past April.

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Um what are some of the things that you that work for you when you feel those?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

You know, I think I really I I give a lot of credit to friends. I had a really good friend of mine, still had he's still a good friend, I shouldn't say I had a good friend, a good friend of mine who shortly thereafter it happened, it was probably a month later, you know, I was really struggling. And he said, you know what? I'm gonna take you fly fishing. Nice. And I and I and I said, I don't even know what that is. I know I know kind of what it is, but I've never been fly fishing before. He says, that's okay, because I'm gonna take you to a place where there's gonna be a bunch of guys that that what they do this this on this particular week is teach other people how to fly fish. So we went camping for a week, and you know, they were sort of teaching me how to do it, which learning to fly fish is not easy, by the way. But what I found was I was given some time alone, which I needed, and I found myself standing in the middle of a creek by myself in the woods with all the sounds of the water running past me. And where you just look at nature and you've got birds flying around you, and I didn't even care if I was casting or or trying to catch a fish at all. I just found myself in a very peaceful place that I so desperately needed. And then when I got out of the water and went back to the campsite, there were people there that were sort of embracing me. They knew because um I talked about why I was there. So I found myself in a very supportive group of friends in a very outdoor place, and I think that really started to begin the healing process.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

I love that. I think that's so important. I mean, just leaning on others and not going through something like this, trying to go through it on your own, you know, and the thing that struck me that you meant you said was embrace the grief.

Grief Comes In Waves Like Weather

SPEAKER_03 30:33

You know, it's it's there, it's always going to be there, and you can't try and push it back. You've got to embrace it and you know, face it. It's you know, it's the only way to heal in any kind of way.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Right. Yeah, so I when I talk to other people about grieving, especially when I meet someone that has just recently lost someone, I sort of try and help them with the idea that it really feels like you're in a hurricane when it first starts. Like the storm just doesn't want to end. The wind is just in your face, and it just feels overwhelming. And then all of a sudden you get this little tiny patch of sunlight, the eye of the storm, and then the storm comes again. Well, then the hurricane turns into really major thunderstorms and electrical storms, and then it turns into rain, and then it then you get eventually you've got more sunny days than rain as time continues. But then some days you end up in a hurricane again, because that's the way grief works. It just comes right back at you. You least expect it.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

Yeah, out of the blue, out of the blue.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

So, how do you learn to cope with that? And one of the grief counselors that told me about embracing the grief really set it home for me when he's made that statement. And said, when that hurricane comes back, it's your it's Justin inside you. He's here, his his spirit is back inside you. And if you can welcome his spirit, you can say, Oh, there you are. You're back again. I still do miss you just as much as I did the day you passed. And here I am letting out a tear or being sad and emotional, but I can definitely feel you because your whole body is just feels like it's electric, like I was probably 10 minutes ago.

SPEAKER_05 32:26

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

I love that analogy. That's powerful. Wow. So that when you have that, when you have those moments, just know it's the other person present. And it does make it really truly does make it easier to deal with.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

Yeah. I can feel I can see where it could create cause an almost immediate paradigm shift if you really stop and take that moment to say, oh, he's here. And then now you have a paradigm shift. It's yeah, that that's awesome. That's a nugget, people who those of you are listening, man. It's I'm telling you, write that down, share that, because that is a golden nugget to share. That's a lot, that's some deep wisdom right there. And and also you know, the other nuggets of just forgiveness, you know, find a way to forgive because unless you do that, a lot of this other stuff is not gonna be able to happen. You're gonna have this block, this psychological block without for you gotta forgiveness is just letting go. And again, forgiveness isn't for the other person a lot, you know, most of the time, it's for you, so you can start releasing and moving forward. And and then the the other part, the other nugget you talked about, David, was nature bathing, right? I think the Japanese coin coined it.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

That's what you've been doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Nature bathing, and you know, and there's so much healing in nature. If you especially if you can be in a situation where you're dropped off in the middle of a pond or creek right there, and you hear the sounds of the water and the birds and the trees and the rustling of the leaves. And I mean, you are being cleansed by the Almighty, literally, yeah, and then community. Ted, you talked about that as well. But you know, community is so important. I I think these are the pillars that I just named off right there. And there's a lot of things in between as well, but I think those are the pillars in your story, David, that have helped you become who you are today, that allow you to continue to go on and move forward and and do big things, you know, despite even now, right here, live on this episode, we can clearly see the pain and hear the pain. That, you know, it's it doesn't, it hasn't gone away. It hasn't gone away, but you have learned to embrace the grief and to welcome Justin. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Wow, powerful, powerful, powerful.

Seeing The Dealer As Human

SPEAKER_03 34:38

That and you know, it's always there are signs out there, you just have to look for them and see them. And you saw it in the restaurant at night, and it changed your completely attitude.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

I my attitude going into the courts totally did. I went got back to the hotel room later that night and I lied there. Of course, I was never gonna sleep in a strange hotel, especially knowing that I had to do what I had to do the next day. I mean, just sort of really thought about Dante as the individual who was the not the not the Dante that served me the food, but the Dante, the one that was unfortunately the dealer in the situation. That he's a human too, that he is the son of someone, the brother of someone, hopefully, and so on. And then to have them all be in the courtroom. They actually had the opportunity to speak before I did. So there was the mothers were talking about their their children losing their father to going to prison. Dante's mother didn't speak at that moment, and then learning from his employer. His employer was there, and Dante was an artist. He was trying to learn how to become a sculptor with um working with marble and granite. He wasn't paid much money, and he was trying to support his family. So there was this hustle of selling uh fentanyl. God forbid did anyone use this as a side hustle, but that was a really quick way to make a lot of money. And he was just trying to make ends meet. Right. In a in a in an area where it was really, really difficult to even have a job, let alone be able to support yourself. And we have a lot of that in this country uh where working even working a full-time job isn't enough. But at any rate, I just sort of started to really see him as a human and something instead of something that I was angry about. I'm not a vindictive person. So when I started thinking about, you know, my first thoughts, I wanted to rot in prison. And then started to think about this is a person that if if if I believe in God and if I believe that there is a way to show restitution, what does that look like? And it looks like someone who's gonna learn their lesson from all of this and come out a better person prepared for being able to support their family. So that became my position going into the court. That's what I wanted to have happen, especially hearing from his family that I need something positive from all of this. It's because it's such a tragic event, right, and tragic situation for both families. And he's he's still alive, so we need to do the best to make him into and make the situation as as good as it can possibly be. So that's why I took the position that I took.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

Yeah. And God bless you for that, man. That's that's a tough, tough turnaround, but once again, you show that it is it's possible, right?

SPEAKER_03 38:11

It's like uh probably this probably the start of the healing process for you. It was.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, I really I really agree with that. I think it was the beginning of the healing process because my demeanoring that day, which I can reflect on, um, went from being on the plane just like in rage, flying out there to I was very calm. And I was just sort of really was really looking at it as this is a room full of hurt people, individuals, their kids were sad, he was going to jail, his mom was sad. I thought at the time she was sad because he was going to jail, and it turned out when she told me that she was just so broken that her son killed someone else's child, and then how much it was just eating her inside. Yeah. And I needed to give her relief of that.

SPEAKER_04 39:08

Yeah. Wow. Powerful. Powerful.

The Core Message On Grief

SPEAKER_03 39:15

Well, don't even know where to go after that. I mean, we appreciate you so much coming on and sharing that with us.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

I guess I think any message to take from today when it comes to grief is don't try and accomplish it by yourself and recognize that it's happening to a lot of people out there because loss is everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

And we see more of it at our age in this fourth quarter. We see so much of it. Right. And everyone has their story.

SPEAKER_04 39:54

Amen. Amen. Well, Ted, with that said, I mean, let like you said, with I mean, it's it's packed. This is a very packed, deep, emotional, full of wisdom episode. And David, again, we can't thank you enough. But let's uh let's just move to said Ted always picks a song, Ted. I feel sorry for you, man. I don't know what song you're gonna pick for this one, man, but I a lot of pressure, Ted.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

But uh well, let's move into the song and then and then uh we'll wrap it up. Yeah, and then after the song, we can talk about it and just touch briefly on the uh on the birthday challenge and meals on wheels.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

Yes, because we want to support me. You have you're supporting meals on wheels through this birthday challenge, right, Ted? Correct. Okay, and you guys have a website coming up for something or something for that as well.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

Fundraising a link, uh, should be out within a day or so. Okay. And get it out on social media. There'll be a link to donate to Meals on Wheels. If anybody feels that, I mean, we would really appreciate it. Yes. But uh, you know, right now, I I think we talk about, you know, obviously grief and all the things we talk about on on this podcast, whether it's you know, we've had people on with with addictions, and we've had people just working out and trying to push the limits of the physicality. And I think the message that we can get from that is no matter what what we do, you just need to keep going. Yeah, yes.

Keep Going Song And Reaction

SPEAKER_06 41:44

Some days ahead, some days are long, someday you wonder how you're still holding on. But you woke up this morning and your heart still beat a that's enough. That's enough.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

Wow, that was amazing. That was very amazing. Holy smokes, Ted. Excellent choice in the song.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Let's give let's give some credit to the artist, and who was that?

SPEAKER_04 43:14

You know, I've got to go back and look. Uh hold on a second. No worries. But Ted, I'll tell you, while you're looking that up, I tell you, that's there's really not much to say after that song because it's you know, after what David just shared, and and David again, I can't, I can't stop saying thank you. You know, you're such a beautiful soul. And I hope this episode breaks listenership records, because everyone needs to hear the nuggets that you dropped in this, the wisdom, you know, and and they also need to hear the authenticity from from your tears, from your your trembling voice, that this is a real thing. It's still happening, it's it's alive today. And you still, but you know what, David? Just like the song said, you showed up here to do this, you're still going, you're keeping going, you know. And and I I think Ted, I think that the the title for this uh episode we already have, it's called Embracing the Grief, man. It's you know, that's gonna set this baby up just right. And what a great song choice, David. What a great story. What what what were you feeling when you heard that song, David?

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Perfect. I was like, this is perfect, and I was like also just uh the way she was singing it was very emotional. She definitely it it's a song that resonated for the subject matter as well as just resonates in general. I just thought that I would like to know who she is.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

Yeah, it's Jada Monroe. Jada Jada Monroe, and the song was keep going. Yeah, she's beautiful, very nice.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

I'm gonna have to go do some little bit of research and and and check her out as an artist. That was that was great. It was an excellent selection, Ted. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah.

Meals On Wheels Fundraiser And Farewell

SPEAKER_03 44:57

Well, we're gonna keep we're gonna keep going. July 18th. Yes, we're gonna get out there, we're gonna push ourselves, and we're gonna make some money for meals on wheels. Uh we'd love to see as many people out there to come join us, get to meet David in person. You know, we we look forward to it. I think these challenges are less about the physicality and more about just being out there with the community and and being around people and and sharing it with others. And uh it's just a great day. I look forward to it every year.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yes, we appreciate that. Thank you, Doug, as well. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

All right, gentlemen, we're I'm gonna just sign off like I always do and say God bless and peace out. Peace out. If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe, follow, share an episode. If you want to leave a comment, go to the show notes. There's a text link there. We will receive an anonymous text from you with any comments or suggestions. Thanks again for tuning in, and most importantly, keep on coming back.