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The story behind the lungs that saved my life · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

0:00
SPEAKER_07: Hey everybody.
0:00
SPEAKER_07: We've got a really cool, exciting, challenging conversation we're gonna have today.
0:04
SPEAKER_07: We're gonna talk to the awesome, brave, strong lady, Lauren's her name, and you'll meet her in a minute, who made the decision to donate her husband's lungs to me.
0:14
SPEAKER_07: And you've heard the story of what Coley and I have walked through together.
0:16
SPEAKER_07: So we're gonna talk to Lauren today.
0:21
SPEAKER_07: The purpose of this is to just honor Lauren and honor the gift.
0:26
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I'm alive because of a choice that she made.
0:30
SPEAKER_08: There are not words to express our gratitude for the lungs that PJ donated, but I don't ever want you to underestimate our appreciation and the generosity in the midst of grief and thoughtfulness that you exuded through this whole thing.
0:46
SPEAKER_08: I'm just completely humbled and blown away by the whole process.
0:53
SPEAKER_03: But that's what I believe.
0:55
SPEAKER_03: It's cumulative PTSD from things he experienced on the job and work and things in his personal life.
1:01
SPEAKER_03: What happened the week leading up to his death is he started to go into a paranoid state of psychosis where he was delusional, and then each day it got a little bit more extreme.
1:16
SPEAKER_03: It was almost two days in before I realized there's something wrong.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: This isn't right.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: And I'm pulling him back and he's walking forward.
1:25
SPEAKER_03: He's like, let go of me.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm just gonna go in the woods.
1:27
SPEAKER_03: I said, You stop, don't do this.
1:29
SPEAKER_03: I was holding him so hard he couldn't get to where he was going.
1:33
SPEAKER_03: Like I knew what was happening, but it's happening in slow motion.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: You you just react, and I just threw my hand out and tried to stop him.
1:43
SPEAKER_07: We don't know what the actual diagnosis would be.
1:46
SPEAKER_07: I don't know what the psychiatrist told you.
1:48
SPEAKER_07: Lots of ways look at it, but in a sense, it's different parts of the brain just aren't talking to each other anymore.
1:52
SPEAKER_07: And the and the part of the brain that makes sense of reality apparently disconnected from the threat detection part of the brain.
1:58
SPEAKER_07: And so everything felt like a threat, and there was no moderator.
2:01
SPEAKER_07: There was nothing managing, and that's mental illness, I mean textbook.
2:06
SPEAKER_07: Anybody who lives in the world that PJ lived in for as long as he lived in it, there's a cost to that.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: The fact that we can then take something and extend his life.
2:17
SPEAKER_03: This was gonna happen either way.
2:19
SPEAKER_03: There's beauty in the fact that we were able to do something really incredible.
2:24
SPEAKER_03: His life is extended in a in a small way here through the organs that went to five different men.
2:31
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's amazing.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: It does feel like there's positive in the storm.
2:36
SPEAKER_03: It's right in front of like I won't, it's not like you have to look for this.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: This is really remarkable.
2:42
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
2:45
SPEAKER_05: Why don't you tell everybody who's on?
2:47
SPEAKER_05: All right.
2:49
SPEAKER_05: We just disappointed a lot of people when they heard my voice.
2:51
SPEAKER_05: They're like, Daggummit, that guy.
2:53
SPEAKER_05: Why did they even have to have him in?
2:55
SPEAKER_07: Well, I didn't want to say that, Joey.
2:57
SPEAKER_05: I was going to say, Hey, I'm getting ahead of you with the jokes on me, so you don't have to do it.
3:01
SPEAKER_05: I'm getting ahead of you.
3:02
SPEAKER_07: All right.
3:03
SPEAKER_07: All right.
3:03
SPEAKER_07: Who we're gonna have the on the call with us today.
3:06
SPEAKER_07: And again, I hate to have to tell you this, but Joey's gonna be on here.
3:10
SPEAKER_07: And I know and I know many of you are disappointed about that.
3:13
SPEAKER_04: Sorry, everybody.
3:15
SPEAKER_07: But uh, my wonderful wife, Colleen, is gonna be on here.
3:19
SPEAKER_07: And a really, really special guest is Lauren Trainer, and she's in Baltimore area or Maryland for sure, right?
3:27
SPEAKER_03: Maryland, yeah.
3:29
SPEAKER_07: All right.
3:30
SPEAKER_07: And uh I already told you what we're gonna be talking about, so just wanted to introduce you to them.
3:35
SPEAKER_07: Joey's gonna kind of direct us a little bit with some uh kind of nudging questions or topics.
3:41
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
3:42
SPEAKER_05: Man, this is uh I think we got probably the only laughs in for this episode, unless we're able to turn a corner after we talk about all of this and and get to a lighthearted moment, but this is really a heavy conversation.
3:56
SPEAKER_05: I'd love to for the listeners to know, Lauren, just what your connection is to Chip, like a little history lesson for people.
4:06
SPEAKER_05: How how do you know them and why were you persistent?
4:10
SPEAKER_05: And I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm pretty sure when your husband passed, you knew right away that you wanted Chip to have those lungs.
4:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
4:17
SPEAKER_03: Hi, everybody, and thank you for having me here, guys.
4:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, so my connection to Chip is through my best friend that I met in sixth grade.
4:29
SPEAKER_03: And we grew up together.
4:31
SPEAKER_03: She lived in the back of the neighborhood.
4:33
SPEAKER_03: I lived in the front.
4:34
SPEAKER_03: We met each other on the first day of sixth grade at the school bus stop.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: Um, her father is Chip's former college roommate and also one of his dear close friends.
4:44
SPEAKER_03: Um, so I knew of Chip through mostly stories and just, you know, catching up with my friend Heather and her family.
4:53
SPEAKER_03: And I met them also when I was younger.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: I think you all visited Maryland.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't remember much about the meeting.
5:00
SPEAKER_03: I was young, and you know, it would have been a quick kind of in passing.
5:04
SPEAKER_03: You guys might have been headed out to dinner, or who knows?
5:07
SPEAKER_03: But I had seen the Facebook post that you all shared, um, chip you shared and went kind of public with your health condition.
5:16
SPEAKER_03: And it that wasn't front of mind.
5:19
SPEAKER_03: I actually, I don't know how much in detail you want me to tell you about the story of how it all came to be.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: Heather really connected the dots for me in the hospital and reminded me about it.
5:29
SPEAKER_05: I want to know just right up top before we get into the story and answer it however you want, but how how are you doing currently?
5:39
SPEAKER_05: I mean, you you have suffered a tragic loss and you're you're not even well, I guess you're over a half a year into the grief.
5:47
SPEAKER_05: Like how would you describe how your heart and soul is right now?
5:51
SPEAKER_03: It's been about nine months as of yesterday, actually.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: Um the date of the the incident was 1214.
5:59
SPEAKER_03: He didn't officially wasn't officially pronounced dead until 1217, but I'm counting based on the the 14th when the accident happened.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: It's so hard to say, like there's no simple answer of how I'm doing.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: I would say I'm doing okay.
6:16
SPEAKER_03: I I truly understand what day by day means now.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: It's you know, if I were to look at all of this from a macro level and it's awful and terrifying and it will crush me, but I don't.
6:31
SPEAKER_03: I tend to really be cognizant of how I frame things every single day because that is what I think is able allowed me to be as strong as I've been able to be for my kids and still see the blessings that are in life.
6:46
SPEAKER_03: And I think there are still so many, and really understand why all this has happened in my life and and try and understand what the journey is supposed to mean.
7:02
SPEAKER_03: What is my purpose in here?
7:04
SPEAKER_03: What was his purpose?
7:05
SPEAKER_03: What's the purpose for our children?
7:07
SPEAKER_03: That's where I'm at.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: Grief is is so complicated and it's different for everybody.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: And who knows?
7:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm probably still in shock too.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: It's, you know, even though it's been nine months, like a lot of people say the second year is the hardest.
7:21
SPEAKER_03: And I wouldn't be surprised by that.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: Actually, just recently, I've had moments where I've cried more than I did in the first two months.
7:29
SPEAKER_03: But I I think I'm doing okay.
7:31
SPEAKER_03: Like I still laugh and I still enjoy life and people and so many things, and I still have hope for the future, and I'm optimistic about so many things, and and I feel him, I feel his spirit, and the memories are still so vivid, and that brings me, you know, every emotion, peace, comfort, joy, sadness, anger, all of them.
7:55
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
7:56
SPEAKER_05: How long were you guys married, Lauren?
7:58
SPEAKER_03: We were married 14 and a half years, and we were together 21 and a half.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: So we've been dating seven years.
8:05
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
8:05
SPEAKER_05: Do you want to give people a ballpark of y'all's uh ages, like how old he was when he passed away and how old you are now, or just are you fine with giving us your exact age?
8:14
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
8:14
SPEAKER_05: Just so people have a reference to it.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: No problem.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
8:17
SPEAKER_03: Um, so he was seven years older.
8:19
SPEAKER_03: He died at 51.
8:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, I was uh 44 when the accident happened.
8:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm uh 45 now.
8:28
SPEAKER_05: How are your kids doing just in in general, to your best knowledge?
9:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I'd have to say um my family, this family went through a tragedy not that long ago.
9:20
SPEAKER_03: And everyone asked how the kids are doing, how the kids are doing.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: Not my kids, but relatives.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: We would always kids look like they're doing fine, and we base that answer on like how we know they're doing, how they look.
9:33
SPEAKER_03: And kids, people also always say kids are resilient.
9:38
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if I love that answer either, because you know, it's scary as a parent.
9:45
SPEAKER_03: I want my kids to be resilient and I'm gonna do everything I can to teach them what resilience is.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: But I don't necessarily think that's what happens.
9:54
SPEAKER_03: I think for kids, they just are compartmentalized differently and processed in a completely different way.
10:02
SPEAKER_03: And how do you really know how death feels and what it's going what it means if you haven't experienced it?
10:08
SPEAKER_03: And most kids haven't.
10:10
SPEAKER_03: And even if you have, the way you experience it is different based on your relationship.
10:15
SPEAKER_03: So my kids have never felt the loss of a parent.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: They would never know what that feels like.
10:22
SPEAKER_03: And you don't until I truly think that's why they they go through life and again the day by day, going back to that, like, you know, I think in their minds, it it goes through mind all day long because it goes through my mind also all day long.
10:37
SPEAKER_03: But I do think they're doing well because in my like they are in activities or in sports and they're thriving there and they're thriving in school, and we still have goals and we still have aspirations to be great and do great things, and we still talk about dad like he was here today.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: You talk about a mess that we could still see in the garage that he left, or someone stole his shaving cream because there was eight cans of it.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: You know, it there are times where it feels like wow, we're okay, we're gonna be okay.
11:13
SPEAKER_03: And then there are times where I can't imagine how they're able to get through a day and and how it's gonna be all okay in the in the end for them.
11:24
SPEAKER_05: How many are there and and what what ages are they?
11:27
SPEAKER_03: Uh we have three kids together.
11:29
SPEAKER_03: There's uh 14, 12, and 10.
11:32
SPEAKER_03: So they all just turned that ages and the and those ages in the summer.
11:37
SPEAKER_07: And Joey, the you know, there's a what you were saying a minute ago about your questions.
11:41
SPEAKER_07: I mean, part of this, the purpose of this is to just honor Lauren and honor the gift and the sacrifice.
11:50
SPEAKER_07: And uh I mean, I'm alive because of a choice that she made.
11:55
SPEAKER_07: Colleen, I don't know how many months before the transplant, or maybe even a year or two couple, I don't know.
12:00
SPEAKER_07: But we were praying one day and we were praying about the transplant.
12:05
SPEAKER_07: And um Colleen started crying.
12:08
SPEAKER_07: And I don't know if I've ever told you this, Lauren.
12:10
SPEAKER_07: And Colleen started crying, and I said, Baby, what's what's up?
12:13
SPEAKER_07: And she said, I just realized that for you to get lungs, another family has to suffer.
12:20
SPEAKER_07: As dumb as it sounds, it it just hadn't hit me.
12:22
SPEAKER_07: And this is a couple of years before the transplant.
12:25
SPEAKER_07: And so since then, uh or up until the transplant, and of course now we pray for you differently.
12:32
SPEAKER_07: We prayed virtually every day for that transplant family.
12:36
SPEAKER_07: God, whatever whatever's gonna happen that we get long, please be with the family.
12:43
SPEAKER_07: I I just want Lauren to know, and I want the people that are listening to know that that you've heard my side of the story and how grateful we are.
12:49
SPEAKER_07: Well, this is the person sitting in front of you that courageously made that possible.
12:55
SPEAKER_07: I just want to honor her.
12:56
SPEAKER_07: And and Lauren, I want you to feel comfortable going wherever you want to go, because part of the purpose of this is just to honor you and and give people insight into uh how the journey has been for you.
13:08
SPEAKER_07: And we just appreciate you, period.
13:11
SPEAKER_07: But we appreciate you being willing to do this.
13:13
SPEAKER_05: Do y'all do y'all have any memories of her as a little girl?
13:15
SPEAKER_05: I I don't.
13:17
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
13:17
SPEAKER_07: Um I uh well, maybe.
13:20
SPEAKER_07: I remember being out I well, here's what I mean.
13:23
SPEAKER_07: I remember being out in their like their their paved driveway area.
13:27
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:27
SPEAKER_07: And I remember meeting some of the kids' friends.
13:31
SPEAKER_07: So it's possible that's when I met her, but I don't I don't really remember.
13:35
SPEAKER_07: I do remember that it happened, and I remember where they lived at the time.
13:38
SPEAKER_07: And and by the way, I'm gonna use something you said, Lauren, on Mark.
13:42
SPEAKER_07: Uh you said that they lived in the back of the you lived in the front.
13:47
SPEAKER_07: So I'm gonna use that on Mark, that Lauren's family lived up front.
13:51
SPEAKER_07: You lived way in the back.
13:56
SPEAKER_05: Colleen, did that did did that revelation just hit you out of nowhere?
13:59
SPEAKER_08: It did.
14:00
SPEAKER_08: Like you said, we were praying um early one morning and it just that hit me, you know, that I hate for another family to have to lose someone for us to get lungs.
14:09
SPEAKER_08: And uh when I shared it with Chip, his response was, wow, you know, he was kind of like, that's right.
14:15
SPEAKER_08: But his response was, that's above our pay grade.
14:19
SPEAKER_08: So all we can do is leave it up to God how I get the lungs, but we can pray for, you know, then we started praying for the donor's family daily, and uh never dreaming it would be somebody we had met before.
14:32
SPEAKER_07: Lauren, I don't know if I've told you this, but um even my my transplant team, every doctor and nurse we've talked to, they they have never heard a story like this one.
14:43
SPEAKER_07: Never.
14:44
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I I would probably say three out of four people I tell the story to just start crying when they hear the story.
14:51
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and uh it's just got layers to it that are just just have God's hands all over them.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: So many.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: So many layers.
14:59
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and not that that God took PJ or any of that kind of stuff, but God used a horrible situation to bring good out of it.
15:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that's how I I also look at it with that same lens.
15:12
SPEAKER_03: And you know, I appreciate the prayers and I'll take them from everybody because God knows we need them, and I feel lifted up in this through God.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: I I really do.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: And sure, you know, I there's just so many miraculous kind of stories, and the people that have been uh crossed our paths through this tragedy have been amazing, you know, never wanted to be in this, but you know, when you have something that happens that's so bad.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh for me, I was telling you this before, Chip, like you just let go of your control, right?
15:49
SPEAKER_03: You you know like you're not in control.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: And when that happens, you know, you let I'm just open to all these things, all these people coming in front of me, the doctors, the surgeons, the OTs, PTs, the nurses, the strangers that deliver food to my house and then start a conversation and and their connection, like it's so remarkable.
16:11
SPEAKER_03: I never I look at it, I think like you do.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: This event happened and it was horrible.
16:17
SPEAKER_03: And I'm very grateful that PJ was a donor because I really never even understood how much like he was able, his organs went to five different men and saved their lives.
16:29
SPEAKER_03: As far as I know, everyone's doing well.
16:31
SPEAKER_03: And he was so healthy, so healthy.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: And I would like to believe that his lungs were probably the strongest out of all of them.
16:40
SPEAKER_03: That helps us to feel like there's something more than this and the ending, the tragedy and the ending.
16:47
SPEAKER_03: There's an extension of his life, and there's an extension of you know, a connection to your life and whatever you do with it, and no pressure there.
16:57
SPEAKER_03: But you know, it I I want like it, it feels like there's something so much more powerful and meaningful than the than the tragedy and where that happened and started.
17:09
SPEAKER_05: I want I want there to be pressure on you, Chip.
17:11
SPEAKER_05: Don't drop the ball, man.
17:13
SPEAKER_05: Do not drop the ball.
17:14
SPEAKER_08: But Lauren, I also I also want to add, Lauren, for you.
17:18
SPEAKER_08: I mean, we are there are not words to express our gratitude for the lungs uh that PJ donated, but I don't ever want you to underestimate our appreciation and the generosity in the midst of grief and thoughtfulness that you exuded through this whole thing.
17:38
SPEAKER_08: I'm just completely humbled and blown away by the whole process.
17:42
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Colleen.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: It isn't me and and you know, the event.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: Like I when I look at like how things happened, so he shot himself and I was right with him, and I tried to stop him and I reached my arm out, and we were both flown.
17:58
SPEAKER_03: He didn't die right away.
17:59
SPEAKER_03: He was breathing.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: They flew us both to shock trauma on two different helicopters.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: We ended up in Baltimore on in ICU.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: Um I ended up just losing two pieces of my bone in my wrist, and that's also a miracle in and of itself, how that close range bullet went through in one side and out the other and didn't hit a tendon and didn't hit any kind of artery, muscle, all the things and bone can be easily fixed the most.
18:32
SPEAKER_03: We we end up in the hospital together on the same floor.
18:35
SPEAKER_03: And I wouldn't have had that any other way either, like the people that I got to see.
18:41
SPEAKER_03: That's all him and then me.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: When I look back, I think about like seeing all the people that he loved, and for me to be able to be in that hospital at the same time and everyone visiting both of us.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And then like I called Heather and told her what had happened, and she decided probably she I think she went to go to bed and decided she she was gonna fly in.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: So she flew and just came in the room the next day.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: I think this was like a Saturday and my first surgery, and she was there, I think a Sunday.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And then everything was so fast, and we knew we wasn't gonna make it.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: And so we, you know, then the people who worked for the donations camp came in and and she was there, and you know, and I was very aware and cognizant, like, you know, I was aware you're in a fog, but you're not, you're still in shock.
19:42
SPEAKER_03: So like this happened, but I'm still my normal person.
19:45
SPEAKER_03: I'm a mom, I've got three kids, and figuring everything out.
19:49
SPEAKER_03: And she comes in and and they're talking about the donations.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: And they said, Do you know anyone who would maybe you'd want to donate to?
19:57
SPEAKER_03: And in that moment, like, I'm like, Oh yeah, let me look.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: There's like a neighbor who needed something I knew of.
20:04
SPEAKER_03: And um, my my husband was a police officer and my sister's a police officer.
20:09
SPEAKER_03: She was there and she's she had reached out to the FOP site and had a list of this man who was a police officer local and in need of a kidney.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: And then the fact that Heather was there in that moment and she said, Lauren, chip.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Yeah.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: And like there's when you're in this situation, it's awful, but you are able to help somebody.
20:34
SPEAKER_03: That's all you ever want to do, right?
20:36
SPEAKER_03: You want to help.
20:37
SPEAKER_03: Like it everybody's helping you, and you want to also help.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: And to be able to pick somebody that you knew or have a choice there, otherwise, yeah, it would be great.
20:48
SPEAKER_03: I'd get to meet some other person, but I would absolutely list everyone I knew in that moment.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: And then I think the real, like the miracle, if you look at all the things, the fact that understanding how the recipient chip that you had to have the same kind of size cavity to fit and the absolutely your stature was similar to his.
21:09
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, all the things, and your age probably wouldn't have made you eligible to get two lungs, but because you knew, like it, I mean, those are the things where and like Heather was that piece right in the middle of, you know, for between you and I, because to be honest, I probably wouldn't have remembered if she wasn't there and she reminded me, and then it all just went from there.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: And and then just to follow along in your story of how it's been working and how you're healing, you know, I'm praying for you guys in in all of this.
21:44
SPEAKER_03: Um it it's it's been amazing.
21:47
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
21:47
SPEAKER_05: I want to at some point give you an opportunity to tell us all the awesome things about PJ and maybe even a snapshot of how y'all fell in love.
21:57
SPEAKER_05: I want to just give you a reference point that about six years ago I was in a mental health crisis and was suicidal for about three days.
22:06
SPEAKER_05: And I'm just saying that because I know uh obviously I can't get in PJ's shoes, but I know somewhat of the depths of that sort of pain and what it feels like.
22:15
SPEAKER_05: Chip was pretty instrumental in helping me through that, but I was out of commission for for months.
22:20
SPEAKER_05: And I'm I'm curious because people who struggle in their mental health, I mean, that's a a very, very soft spot in my heart for that.
22:29
SPEAKER_05: Like, did he have a history with mental health issues?
22:32
SPEAKER_05: Was there was it situational?
22:34
SPEAKER_05: Like it had was he having like a hard couple of months?
22:37
SPEAKER_05: Like, what what's the storyline there leading up to his Death.
22:41
SPEAKER_03: He did not have any mental health history, anything that we know of.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: In fact, to be a police officer, you go through psychological testing and each time you have an incident, you also get evaluated.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: How in depth those are, I really don't know.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: Um, he worked for two different departments.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: He just got hired for the second one, and he would have had to do all of that kind of like background checks and all of those things.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: Um, he was a very stable.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I when I I would say he was crazy.
23:10
SPEAKER_03: I would say I'm a little crazy, but that was like the part of him I loved.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: I loved all he was this very stable, um, strong, poised man.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: He he loved helping other people.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: He talked people out of suicide, several of them.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, he saved people's lives a lot, a lot of different people in his career.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: And and personally too, friends and people he knew, family members.
23:37
SPEAKER_03: Every time we got a phone call, that was like a weird after hours.
23:42
SPEAKER_03: Usually somebody in some kind of trouble, whether they did something wrong and they needed advice from a legal perspective, or you know, he he was that guy.
23:51
SPEAKER_03: It makes it all the more shocking to accept this, that he became victim to this.
23:59
SPEAKER_03: I call it an acute mental health, you know, a mental health.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think he had he was in a state of psychosis.
24:08
SPEAKER_03: But, you know, for the kids and and oversimplifying it, I say um he had an acute mental health issue and over a week time.
24:19
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think he was really suicidal.
24:23
SPEAKER_03: Like there are, you know, I could tell you this story, but essentially, I I think it's personally um, we're trying to apply for um, it's PSOB, Police Survivor of Benefits program, in order to get these benefits.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: In 2022, they passed legislation to include suicide as line of duty if you can prove that there was PTSD for a job-related incident.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: He did have an active shooter um scenario that he was the first responder to two and a half, almost three years ago.
25:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, the hard part is he was masking any kind of real symptoms.
25:07
SPEAKER_03: But he had a long career of a bunch of other things with incidents, and you know, and our family experienced a tragic loss of both his sister and brother-in-law in an accident that orphaned their three kids.
25:22
SPEAKER_03: And then his mother died a year and a half after that.
25:26
SPEAKER_03: And then within months, his father became ill and unable to walk and had to be cared for, um, refused to go in a hospital.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: So they were figuring out care, and he was one of the primary caretakers, along with his two sisters.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: So, all of that, I think those stressors, I think he was really good at dealing with the stresses of his job and taking his vest off and coming home and being a dad and being a brother and you know, a father, all the things in the husband that he was that he did great.
25:59
SPEAKER_03: And then when the personal thing started getting layered in there, I think he didn't know how to deal with these things that were hurting, these things that were happening and hurting.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, you you never know, right?
26:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what really led to it, but that's what I believe.
26:18
SPEAKER_03: It's cumulative PTSD from things he experienced on the job and work and things in his personal life.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, what happened the week leading up to his death is he um started to go into a paranoid state of psychosis where he was delusional and started to have a fear of being incarcerated himself.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: And he flipped from being the police officer to being the bad guy.
26:49
SPEAKER_03: And all of a sudden, every minor infraction, you know, not turning in old equipment, not, you know, but not clocking in exactly when you started or ended, or every little thing he'd ever done was flooding his consciousness.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: And he started to think he was going to get arrested.
27:12
SPEAKER_03: And it was crazy, but it was believable at first.
27:17
SPEAKER_03: And then each day it got a little bit more extreme before I realized it was almost two days in before I realized like there's something wrong.
27:27
SPEAKER_03: This isn't right.
27:28
SPEAKER_03: By Wednesday, he checked into work and and left, told them he wasn't comfortable being there.
27:34
SPEAKER_03: And he thought he was gonna have his gun taken away and he thought he was gonna be taken in.
27:40
SPEAKER_03: And he went and sat in his car for over 12 hours.
27:46
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and maybe he he was going to do it then.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
27:53
SPEAKER_03: He wouldn't answer my calls or text.
27:55
SPEAKER_03: I thought that he was at work, but then I thought he might be getting investigated.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: And I I finally reached out to some people that were close and also police officers that were able friends of his, they were able to get in touch with him.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: He answered and they found where he was.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: And it took hours more.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: And his higher-ups um came and you know, talked to him, and he eventually came home and slept and woke up the next day a little better, but then he'd go right back into the paranoid state.
28:29
SPEAKER_03: And we got him to see a psychiatrist on um Friday, and he was evaluated again, very good at what he did, probably masking over.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: The guy brought me in after their session and just kind of, you know, was making sure I knew all the details and what he had gotten.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: And he was like, Yeah, I think he's, you know, upstanding guy.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: He's just had some stress in life and you know, dealing with some stuff and not sleeping well.
28:57
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Did he tell you how he thought he was gonna get arrested?
29:01
SPEAKER_03: And he thought our house was surrounded.
29:03
SPEAKER_03: And and then my husband hit me with his knee, nudged me under the table, and I just put my hand on his leg and I looked at him and I said, We're in a safe place.
29:14
SPEAKER_03: It's okay.
29:15
SPEAKER_03: We're here for help because this you're okay.
29:18
SPEAKER_03: You haven't done anything wrong.
29:20
SPEAKER_03: And we had hired this guy off the record, out of insurance, out in like a way far place from where we lived, from where we worked.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: So he felt that security.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: No one brought phones in.
29:33
SPEAKER_03: He was thinking we were being recorded.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: We left there on the way home.
29:38
SPEAKER_03: We went out to lunch.
29:39
SPEAKER_03: We probably shouldn't have because at the end of lunch, he started to get tired and stressed out and overstimulated, and he started to have anxiety, which he never even had anxiety before in his whole life.
29:51
SPEAKER_03: Like that ever.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: Like he he looked like he could care less.
29:55
SPEAKER_03: Nothing would faze him.
29:56
SPEAKER_03: He could run into a fire and he would never freak out or show that stress ever.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: It's what he was really good at.
30:03
SPEAKER_03: He was very poised.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, tried to calm him down.
30:06
SPEAKER_03: And before we went, I forgot this was one of the key things because this is so critical and just understanding what he was going through.
30:14
SPEAKER_03: We we saw that psychiatrist on Friday afternoon.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: He had gotten really good sleep finally that Thursday night into Friday.
30:21
SPEAKER_03: He seemed normal when he woke up for the first time in five days.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: And he was sitting on the couch and he was just rubbing his temples.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: And he said, I can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: That's like all I knew of I already knew, but he was so convincing with some of the stuff he was saying in the beginning that I was validating it all.
30:46
SPEAKER_03: Like, what you what did you do?
30:48
SPEAKER_03: Why'd you do that?
30:49
SPEAKER_03: Like, but then I was like, wait a second, he hasn't done anything.
30:52
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's nothing here.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: And then for him to like be able to describe in a normal state of mind for a short time.
31:00
SPEAKER_03: And he woke up, we locked up his guns earlier in that after Wednesday night.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: After that, we got him to put his guns in the safe, take them, which by the way, that's a whole other thing.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: If you're a police officer, it's your identity.
31:14
SPEAKER_03: He carried a gun everywhere he went.
31:17
SPEAKER_03: He carried a gun to church, he carried a gun to down the street, drive everywhere.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: He was ready to save someone's life.
31:25
SPEAKER_03: If he was ready to get any kind of perpetrator, anybody.
31:28
SPEAKER_03: That's how he lived.
31:29
SPEAKER_03: That's that's just how he was.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: And when you're a police officer, that's a huge piece of who you are.
31:35
SPEAKER_03: And and to take his gun away.
31:37
SPEAKER_03: And and we weren't, you know, we're I was just me and his his sister, and we got him to lock it up.
31:44
SPEAKER_03: At this time, I don't even know the safe.
31:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't even know how to open.
31:47
SPEAKER_03: I've never opened in my life.
31:48
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, he knew the code, the code.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: I didn't change it.
31:51
SPEAKER_03: I probably, in hindsight, should have.
31:54
SPEAKER_03: Friday night, he must have woke up in the middle of the night.
31:58
SPEAKER_03: He did wake up in the middle of the night.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: I am a light sleeper, but I had up so much that week.
32:03
SPEAKER_03: I didn't even hear him.
32:04
SPEAKER_03: And it was like two or three in the morning, and I feel the bed is empty, and I pop up and I run downstairs and he's on the couch, but he's like on the living room couch, which he'd never be there.
32:15
SPEAKER_03: And he he was he couldn't sleep, and you could tell he was kind of laying down, but like awake and frantic.
32:22
SPEAKER_03: I said, What's wrong?
32:23
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I'm trying to, I just can't sleep.
32:25
SPEAKER_03: And I got him to come back upstairs.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: I just rubbed his back, rubbed his head, tried to get him to calm down and he fell asleep again.
32:33
SPEAKER_03: He woke up again before me, and I came downstairs and he was at the counter.
32:37
SPEAKER_03: He was writing something, and I came and and he stopped.
32:41
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Hi, what are you writing?
32:44
SPEAKER_03: And I kind of was talking like that because this is odd behavior for him.
32:49
SPEAKER_03: Um, he said nothing.
32:50
SPEAKER_03: He stood up and he put the paper in his pocket and he kind of backed away from me and backed away across the house, opposite of where I was in between the couch.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: And I followed him outside, and he kind of he even the way he ran, the way he was eating was different, the way he was running, talking, everything was different.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: His eyes were different.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you could there were physical changes and you could see them.
33:18
SPEAKER_03: And he like ran out, and it was early in the morning Saturday, and I said, VJ, stop.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: You're scaring me.
33:27
SPEAKER_03: Please come back.
33:28
SPEAKER_03: And he kind of and I broke down.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: I like went down to my knees and I it was like almost crying, but like a scared voice.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: And he came back up and then went back into like protector husband mode and was like, It's all right.
33:45
SPEAKER_03: It's all right.
33:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing nothing.
33:47
SPEAKER_03: Look, this is and he pulled some other thing out of his pocket.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: I said, Come inside, come on, let's have some coffee and sit down.
33:54
SPEAKER_03: I had reached out to that psychiatrist when we got home the day before.
33:59
SPEAKER_03: PJ didn't want to do any medicine, he didn't want any help.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: He was trying to convince this guy that he was fine.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: I reached back out and I said, I think we need to keep put him on some medicine.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: He's not okay.
34:10
SPEAKER_03: And so he'd called that prescription in, and it was a prescription for an antidepressant, which now I've learned like that that could have actually exacerbated it.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: It's not the right thing.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: But either way, I said, Let's go, let's go to the store.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, let's get this prescription, let's get it on board so we can start to feel better.
34:27
SPEAKER_03: And uh he's like, No, I'm just gonna go for a walk.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: And I knew at that point, I knew, but I didn't.
34:35
SPEAKER_03: Like I he was already so different all week and he was paranoid.
34:40
SPEAKER_03: I went to go get my shoes on, and I but I'm keeping him in sight, and I come up like the shoes are we have an open house, so I can't kind of in another room, but not I could see through, and I see him reach up and like get his gun and tuck it in his waistband, which is normal for him.
34:58
SPEAKER_03: Like that's if we're going somewhere, that's what he's gonna do.
35:01
SPEAKER_03: But he's trying, he his gun's supposed to be locked up and he's telling me he wants to go for a walk.
35:06
SPEAKER_03: And the kids were down, you know, they're awake now, and it's almost Christmas time.
35:10
SPEAKER_03: We have I'm writing Christmas cards on the counter and doing their normal Saturday morning things, and he um goes outside and I'm trying not to draw any attention from the kids to it.
35:21
SPEAKER_03: So I just followed him and I said, PJ, stop.
35:24
SPEAKER_03: And I just was pleading with him.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: And he walks down the steps of our deck and I grabbed onto his sweatshirt and I just held him.
35:31
SPEAKER_03: I I mean, he's strong, stronger than me.
35:34
SPEAKER_03: And I'm I'm pulling him back and he's walking forward.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: He's like, let go of me.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: I'm just gonna go in the woods.
35:39
SPEAKER_03: I said, You stop, don't do this.
35:41
SPEAKER_03: This is, I mean, and I now know, like you I look back and I just wish there were so many other things.
35:48
SPEAKER_03: Like, had I called somebody that first hour, you know.
35:52
SPEAKER_03: I I think only 30 minutes had passed since I first saw him to where we are now.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: But I was holding him so hard he couldn't get to where he was going.
36:01
SPEAKER_03: But he wanted to get away from me and he turned around and looked at me, say with the meanest voice and something else in his eyes, and he said, get away from me.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: And he leaned forward away from me, uh, all like in safety and protection because I was not letting go.
36:17
SPEAKER_03: And I just like I knew what was happening, but it's happening in slow motion.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And I just you you just react and I just threw my hand out and tried to stop him.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: And it hit me and then went through him.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I just knew right then, like, oh my god, you just know it's happening, but it's happening so slowly, and it's so unbelievable, and it's the worst thing you can imagine.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: So I I when I got hit, I just like I thought he was dead immediately.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: I looked at him, but I didn't want to see anything that would be so horrific that it was my last sight.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: But you're just human curiosity.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: I looked at him.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: He he looked like he was alive, actually.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: He had like a feeling on his face, so but I don't, you know, I looked at my hand and I know the kids are inside, and I just saw my hand for a millisecond and I saw the bone.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want to like pass out or do anything, so I just went into the fight mode.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: So I went inside and the kids were um it just asking, what happened?
37:28
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
37:29
SPEAKER_00: I said, call 911.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, the phones had gone off, the internet went down.
37:33
SPEAKER_03: We lost internet in our house, which he's already paranoid.
37:38
SPEAKER_03: And I sometimes I wonder if that was his last trigger of him thinking somebody was coming after him.
37:44
SPEAKER_03: They shut down the phone lines because it beeps and it sends him an alert on his phone.
37:49
SPEAKER_03: So that happened.
37:50
SPEAKER_03: So they pick up the phone and it's like the like the worst sound.
37:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my God.
37:55
SPEAKER_03: And I run over to the counter and I turn a kid at my arm.
38:00
SPEAKER_03: I had the kids bring one of them had an iPad and so it was on Wi-Fi.
38:06
SPEAKER_03: That wouldn't have worked.
38:08
SPEAKER_03: How did they do this?
38:09
SPEAKER_03: Well, actually, I had them get dad's phone.
38:11
SPEAKER_03: I said, get dad's phone and get my phone.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: And they got um, I called 911, but I didn't want to say what had happened in front of the kids.
38:19
SPEAKER_03: So I went outside and I just leaned.
38:23
SPEAKER_03: I also needed to put pressure I knew on my arm.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: I tourniquet it in like a dish towel, but I couldn't move it or do anything.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: And so I just l knelt down on the front um patio and I just pushed my body into my my legs to compress my arm.
38:39
SPEAKER_03: And and then I had the phone on the patio on speaker, and the kids were inside, and I just made the 911 call, and by then they got me dad's phone, and um I called my sister and brother-in-law who live 10 minutes away, and um, one of them, the brother-in-law's a police officer and a good friend, and knew what was happening.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: They both did.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: So um they came over, thank God, and um the police came, but the I'm not exactly sure what I said on the phone.
39:11
SPEAKER_03: I the emergency was that I had been shot because I thought PJ was dead.
39:16
SPEAKER_03: I I I know I told this story, but I think I started with I've been shot.
39:20
SPEAKER_03: And so they barricaded out from our house.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: They didn't bring anyone up to help us.
39:27
SPEAKER_03: They were kind of far.
39:29
SPEAKER_03: And um, they pulled the police came very quick and they were like, Come down.
39:33
SPEAKER_03: And I'm here I am.
39:35
SPEAKER_03: Like, I know I need to compress this arm, and we live on the top of a hill, and you know, it's a really long driveway.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: They had me and the kids run down to them up the street.
39:47
SPEAKER_07: So they thought there might be an active shooter.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: I said that I had been shot, my husband shot himself, and I reached my hand out.
39:54
SPEAKER_03: I know I said it just like that, but I started the call with, I've been shot.
39:59
SPEAKER_03: And I was yelling.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, he's needs help.
40:02
SPEAKER_03: Like he's, you know, I and I've since talked to the police officer.
40:07
SPEAKER_03: I know it's so crazy for everybody in the in a scene like that, but they rushed me.
40:14
SPEAKER_03: They brought a they called for a Medevac, took me up the street out of the neighborhood to where there was a flat field to land the Medevac.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: Um, we were waiting for that, and then the radio, somebody came over the radio, paramedic came back and said, Are you okay if we call a second helicopter and you wait for that?
40:35
SPEAKER_03: So it it said patient number one is can we need a Medevac for patient number one?
40:40
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Is he alive?
40:43
SPEAKER_03: And they said, Yeah, he is right now.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: And um, I said, please fly him out.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: Like, absolutely.
40:49
SPEAKER_05: And so that was shocking to hear, I bet, right?
40:53
SPEAKER_03: It was so shocking.
40:55
SPEAKER_03: I already felt like I knew the end.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know how to explain this when you go to pray for something, but you feel like you know it's not gonna happen.
41:05
SPEAKER_03: I already felt like I knew this was the end.
41:09
SPEAKER_03: I I know I prayed in that ambulance that he would be okay.
41:14
SPEAKER_03: And you know, I guess for a second I thought, gosh, if there's some good that can come out of me having my arm destroyed, maybe it's I actually saved his life.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: I know I did feel like that for a day, maybe, because even in the hospital, there, you know, uh Saturday he went through a surgery and there were chances.
41:34
SPEAKER_03: They said the damage was tremendous, but there was a chance he could live.
41:38
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't know any how what state it would have been in.
41:41
SPEAKER_03: But, you know, when you hear that, you hold on to it.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: I thought, wow, you know, this this was worth something for me to to do that and possibly have saved his life.
41:52
SPEAKER_03: And I still think, you know, there are many blessings that for me have come out of my injury.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: And one of them was just, I do think that he was able to be alive in that hospital for a little longer because of it.
42:05
SPEAKER_03: You know, I think if it was a straight, he was the first to receive the bullet that it would have been more fatal.
42:12
SPEAKER_03: You know, he knew he was knew what he was doing to be able to be in that hospital together and the people that again and the people that got to be there to see him.
42:23
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
42:24
SPEAKER_03: And in the fact that he didn't die in our house in our backyard.
42:28
SPEAKER_03: Like I think there's so many things where I look at and say, I I'm glad it happened this way and not that way.
42:36
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
42:36
SPEAKER_05: If that doesn't illuminate just how it is a sickness and, you know, the challenge of mental health, and it reminds me of more of like, you know, somebody gets some really bad news, for instance, of like a super aggressive form of cancer and they're given two weeks, like that's some intense sickness.
42:59
SPEAKER_05: Well, that's what happened to your husband, except it was his brain.
43:03
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
43:04
SPEAKER_05: Um Chip, do you have it like do you have any extra insight from a mental health perspective?
43:10
SPEAKER_05: Like, does it sound like to is it okay if I ask him that, Lauren, as far as just like does it does it sound like there was just a buildup of PTSD that just wasn't being addressed?
43:19
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, Lauren and I talked a little bit earlier uh off this call.
43:22
SPEAKER_07: Like everything she's already shared about the last couple of years and what they've been like.
43:27
SPEAKER_07: And you know, she said uh on this call uh a minute ago, how I'm trying to think how you worded it, Lauren, that you said he it's just like he wasn't the same person.
43:35
SPEAKER_07: You said something like that.
43:37
SPEAKER_07: You know, schizophrenia paranoid, you know, we don't know we don't know what the actual diagnosis would be.
43:43
SPEAKER_07: I don't know what the psychiatrist told you.
43:45
SPEAKER_07: Lots of ways look at it, but in a sense it's different parts of the brain just aren't talking to each other anymore.
43:50
SPEAKER_07: And the and the part of the brain that makes sense of reality uh apparently disconnected from the threat detection part of the brain.
43:59
SPEAKER_07: And so everything felt like a threat, and there was no moderator.
44:03
SPEAKER_07: There was no there was nothing managing uh, you know, and that's mental illness I mean textbook.
44:10
SPEAKER_07: And I'm not saying what I just said was a perfect description, but uh anybody who lives in the world that PJ lived in for as long as he lived in it, there's a cost to that.
44:21
SPEAKER_07: There's there's a there's a price you pay.
44:24
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I had a uh uh anxiety burnout, what, ten maybe ten, eleven years ago, twelve maybe.
44:31
SPEAKER_07: And I I don't live in that kind of world.
44:33
SPEAKER_07: I did it to myself just by overscheduling, et cetera, et cetera.
44:38
SPEAKER_07: Um but when you live in a world that It kind of immerses you in a level of anxiety, tension, fear.
44:45
SPEAKER_07: You're at a state of alertness that is unnatural.
44:49
SPEAKER_07: There's a price for that.
44:50
SPEAKER_07: There's a your brain pays a price for that.
44:53
SPEAKER_05: I wanted to ask Lauren, did you already have uh a good feel and uh in-depth knowledge of mental health, mental health challenges, or has this been in a big time informing situation?
45:10
SPEAKER_05: Like has it reframed your thoughts on mental health or suicide in any way?
45:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it has completely changed.
45:16
SPEAKER_03: I think every experience you have, especially one that's this big and traumatic, changes you.
45:25
SPEAKER_03: And I lost a cousin to suicide when I was 14, he was 13, we were close.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: And then I lost another cousin, other side of the family to suicide when he was 29 and I was 35.
45:42
SPEAKER_03: I babysat that one in those both of those situations, and with most suicides, I find that everyone, it's so catastrophic because everyone asks why, and everyone carries some kind of guilt, blame.
45:57
SPEAKER_03: I should have called them, I should have said this the last time we were together.
46:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, all the things you go through your head for PJ.
46:05
SPEAKER_03: I don't have that because I saw the mental breakdown.
46:10
SPEAKER_03: I saw that he was mentally not okay and something had taken over.
46:16
SPEAKER_03: It's not a question of why did he do this?
46:19
SPEAKER_03: He was in a psychotic state.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: He would never in a million years have done this.
46:24
SPEAKER_03: He would never have done this to hurt me or hurt our kids.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: He, by definition, what he did for his entire life and who he was was a protector.
46:36
SPEAKER_03: I can't, they're all different, right?
46:38
SPEAKER_03: I've heard of so many mental illnesses, and a lot of them are over long periods of time and with really um present symptoms of uh, you know, sadness and depression and all these things.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: He didn't harbor any of those.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: I spoke at his funeral because I felt this need to explain to people who knew him that he had had this.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: Not a lot of people knew this.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: This was like what transpired over a week.
47:08
SPEAKER_03: And I felt like I could connect the dots to help people process this so that they understood and got a glimpse of what I experienced and what I saw.
47:18
SPEAKER_03: And my kids say this too, you know, if my 10-year-old told her class or told her she also went to a grief camp this summer and stood up and said, My dad got a mental illness and shot himself.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: That's the story.
47:35
SPEAKER_03: The story is one then the other.
47:38
SPEAKER_03: And so there's kind of a explanation.
47:42
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why he got that mental illness.
47:46
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not that simple, unfortunately.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: Even if I told you about the events and the what he did for a living, you know, there's so many layers of things that make a person and and that affect our our thinking and our brains, you know, who know it it's like a bad combination.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: When someone says like bad timing, it's also like timing of what the events are when they're coming in, when he was already under stress.
48:12
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it's completely changed how I think about it.
48:16
SPEAKER_03: There's not, I think as humans, we always want to understand.
48:19
SPEAKER_03: So we want this pretty organized picture and understanding in this little box.
48:25
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, you're this, you're that, you're, but it's not that simple.
48:30
SPEAKER_03: And even though we might be able to say, yeah, this is PTSD-sd or this or that, we'll never know, you know.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: But it's scary, Joey, actually, because in this case, it's so much more scary because this happened so quickly to a guy who was completely normal the week before.
48:53
SPEAKER_03: And so I've always had a fear of suicide, probably because I experienced it so young with people so close to me.
49:00
SPEAKER_03: Now I can't even like if I see somebody in distress in their personal life, like I don't want my own, like this equals that, you know.
49:09
SPEAKER_03: Um, there's so much I could say about like how we can help people.
49:12
SPEAKER_03: Like I can go on a thousand different ways on this journey.
49:17
SPEAKER_03: I think for me, the things that resonate the most are I think will understanding like how this affects people in the line of policing the most and and all of those different characteristics that they possess that only make it harder to detect and how that system isn't properly set up with the support it needs for how prominent mental illness, mental health is for all of us.
49:47
unknown: Yeah.
49:47
SPEAKER_03: And how big of the issue is.
50:06
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it can affect your career.
50:08
SPEAKER_07: Actually doing the healthiest, smartest thing you could do, which is asking for help.
50:12
SPEAKER_03: And your and your gun taken, which going back is your identity.
50:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's your whole everything.
50:19
SPEAKER_03: And to understand that, I I don't know that some people really can, because it's a different kind of career.
50:26
SPEAKER_03: It is who they are, and it's a job that I has such a strong identity to it.
50:32
SPEAKER_07: Well, and you have to be yeah you have to be wired for that.
50:35
SPEAKER_07: Like, yeah.
50:36
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I you know, forgive me, this lands wrong, but you know, like I think who gets out of bed in the morning, wants to put a gun on, and chase scary people all day.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: My husband.
50:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean I mean, but you have to be I used to say I would get annoyed because he would like whistle on his way to work.
50:56
SPEAKER_03: He would get up at 3 a.m.
50:58
SPEAKER_03: for a raid.
50:59
SPEAKER_03: Who likes to wake up at 3 a.m.?
51:01
SPEAKER_03: And he'd be going to get a drug dealer or murder suspect, and he'd be like he'd I'm I I'm convinced he'd be driving with a smile and a coffee, like you know, whistling on the way to work.
51:16
SPEAKER_07: Lord, Lord.
51:17
SPEAKER_07: I thought you told me he was normal up until the week ago, a week before.
51:22
SPEAKER_07: That ain't normal, girl.
51:25
SPEAKER_05: You know, for people that for people who don't see mental health in the in its right weighty place, I mean Chip, wouldn't you say I mean, obviously we we know that he took his life, but wouldn't it make sense?
51:41
SPEAKER_05: And I love how you articulated what your 10-year-old is able to say, like he got mental illness.
51:47
SPEAKER_05: Like, Chip, couldn't you say he PJ got PJ got real sick and passed away?
51:53
SPEAKER_05: To me, that makes sense.
51:55
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I know there's more to the story, but his brain got really sick and he didn't make it.
51:59
SPEAKER_05: It was it was too s he was too sick.
52:01
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
52:02
SPEAKER_07: A normal everyday person, no, that's not that's not gonna work.
52:05
SPEAKER_07: But if you really understand mental health, if you understand what's involved in maintaining mental health, your brain and relationships, I mean it's multifaceted in effect and every area of your life feeds into your mental health.
52:18
SPEAKER_07: And if you understand it properly and realize the brain is the one who deter that determines whether we make good decisions or bad decisions.
52:26
SPEAKER_07: Well, if your brain is in a bad place by an illness, um it's not like a flu where you got a bacteria or something.
52:35
SPEAKER_07: It's it's life events and different things altering.
52:38
SPEAKER_07: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
52:39
SPEAKER_07: I uh you know it used to be, and again, don't mean to get on anybody's bad side with this, but it used to be that the church's mentality was if you commit suicide, you can't go to heaven.
52:49
SPEAKER_07: Um I've always thought that was ridiculous because God of all people forgive me, Lord, for calling you one of us, but He understands mental health better than we do.
53:00
SPEAKER_07: He knows, as we know, no one in their right mind, as we say.
53:05
SPEAKER_07: No one in their right mind.
53:07
SPEAKER_07: Joey, when you got close, you weren't in your right mind.
53:10
SPEAKER_07: No one in their right mind would take their life.
53:13
SPEAKER_07: Period.
53:14
SPEAKER_07: End of discussion.
53:16
SPEAKER_07: So to say your eternal destiny is going to be affected by your worst moment in your worst mental state, that's absurd.
53:23
SPEAKER_07: It's just absurd.
53:25
SPEAKER_03: And it's funny, I'm Catholic and I was born and raised Catholic, but my parents kind of veered away from the church, and I stayed on and I would go to any church, any denomination.
53:37
SPEAKER_03: I went with Heather and her family to their church.
53:39
SPEAKER_03: I always had a relationship with God.
53:42
SPEAKER_03: PJ was also raised Catholic, very sh much different than I was raised and very strict.
53:48
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, when he was in his 50s, his dad was still calling to make sure he attended mass on a holy day.
53:55
SPEAKER_03: Um but he always believed.
53:59
SPEAKER_03: And when I was young, when my cousin died, I always struggled with that.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: Like, how could this child, and I was a child, I was the same age, how could we say that he's not gonna go to heaven?
54:12
SPEAKER_03: He's a young kid.
54:13
SPEAKER_03: You don't even know that you have the ability to do.
54:16
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think as a child, I think that's exactly what you don't think you have that power and you're not doing what you're about to do.
54:25
SPEAKER_03: You you don't think about it.
54:26
SPEAKER_03: And then when you know, with PJ, like he believed he said the rosary carried the rosary around in his pocket.
54:33
SPEAKER_03: It was in his pocket when he shot himself.
54:36
SPEAKER_07: And that's a symbol of faith to a Catholic.
54:38
SPEAKER_03: That was a huge symbol of faith, and he said the rosary every day.
54:42
SPEAKER_07: You know, feelings you may have about all that to a person raised Catholic, that represented a practice that enhanced your connection with God.
54:51
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
54:52
SPEAKER_07: Somebody that doesn't want to stay connected to God doesn't carry rosary in their pocket.
54:56
SPEAKER_03: No.
54:57
SPEAKER_03: Um he was a true believer and more, I'd say, one of the most devout people that I know.
55:04
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, for my kids who are angry, I'm sure, with God, and we still go to church and we still do all the things, but you know, this is hard.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to explain to them that I believe that for the people that do go to heaven and and that are believers, you, if you are also a believer, you will feel them.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: And there is a pathway and there's a connection.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the gift of faith.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: I think I feel him.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: I do, even though he's not here.
55:40
SPEAKER_00: I I feel him all around me.
55:42
SPEAKER_00: And I want my kids to feel that.
55:44
SPEAKER_07: And I don't know if it's helpful or not, you would have to determine this, but they're gonna see him again.
55:49
SPEAKER_07: You know, I mean that's one of the cornerstones of our belief system.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:53
SPEAKER_07: That we we believe there's life after life.
55:56
SPEAKER_07: I remember as a young pastor doing my it wasn't my first funeral, but it was my first up close uh Colleen, it was uh Glenn, Booty and Nadine's son.
56:05
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
56:05
SPEAKER_07: It was the first time it was people that I knew the person who had passed and the family really closely.
56:13
SPEAKER_07: And I remember I remember when I looked them in the eye in the funeral and said to them, You will see them again.
56:20
SPEAKER_07: I remember you know how something can happen in a flash, the fashion it can take you to explain it.
56:25
SPEAKER_07: But in that moment, it's like I had to decide, do you believe that?
56:31
SPEAKER_07: Do you believe what you're saying?
56:33
SPEAKER_07: And I do.
56:34
SPEAKER_07: I do.
56:35
SPEAKER_07: I believe that we're gonna see them again.
56:38
SPEAKER_07: Depending again, depending on where the kids are at in processing this and their feelings with God, you know, you may or may not want to share that.
56:46
SPEAKER_07: I mean, they already have, I don't know.
56:48
SPEAKER_03: But uh Yeah, I mean they're in Sunday school and I think they're learning those foundational kind of principles of the that belief system.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: And um, I think for my perspective, if I were them at that age and they're gonna live to be 80, that's a long time.
57:06
SPEAKER_03: And that's probably not as promising as where I think it's a little bit more tangible to say right now that you can feel him, you can talk to him.
57:17
SPEAKER_03: And you know, my 10-year-old again, she's a different personality, but she's more extroverted.
57:22
SPEAKER_03: And she went skiing this winter and went down our first black diamond, and she told me later that she was talking to dad the whole way down.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: And I love that.
57:32
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's what I want them to do.
57:35
SPEAKER_03: He's always in there, like have him in your soul, have him in your he's in your memories, but like he's here, you know.
57:43
SPEAKER_05: Chip, if Lauren was uh are they clients?
57:48
SPEAKER_05: Like if you're counseling someone, do you call them clients or patients?
57:51
SPEAKER_05: I just call them friends or something.
57:53
SPEAKER_05: Well, if she if she came to you for counseling, now there's a few, Joey.
57:57
SPEAKER_07: No one, no one in front of a microphone right now that uh I call by other names.
58:04
SPEAKER_07: Okay, gotcha.
58:05
SPEAKER_05: Behind behind their back.
58:07
SPEAKER_07: I'll say it to their face.
58:08
SPEAKER_07: I'll say it right now if you want me to.
58:11
SPEAKER_05: What what were you gonna say?
58:12
SPEAKER_05: Would it be a reasonable thing to unpack that the gravity of how Lauren lost her husband?
58:19
SPEAKER_05: I mean, there's she's dealing with grief, but then the the gravity of how she lost him, like that that's very significant here.
58:28
SPEAKER_05: It's not like going to the hospital and being at his bedside for a couple of weeks and then passes away in his sleep.
58:35
SPEAKER_05: I mean, this was a very, very intense situation.
58:38
SPEAKER_05: So there's probably we're talking about you, Lauren, right in front of you, but there's probably a couple of things going on as far as grief and immense PTSD, right?
58:47
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
58:47
SPEAKER_05: What do you think, Lauren, when you hear that question?
58:50
SPEAKER_03: This goes back to just me and how I am.
58:52
SPEAKER_03: I I don't think I have PTSD.
58:55
SPEAKER_03: Maybe I would if uh, you know, I I am fearful of people committing suicide because this has happened now three times in my life.
59:02
SPEAKER_03: And uh it's scary, you know, scary to have teenagers who are all over teenagers too.
59:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, they're not emotionally stable and they're not cognitively developed or rational.
59:15
SPEAKER_03: And right, you know, that that's always a fear.
59:17
SPEAKER_03: Like what's going through anyone's head at one time?
59:20
SPEAKER_03: That that part maybe I have PTSD.
59:22
SPEAKER_03: But otherwise, this is also where not everyone would feel this way.
59:27
SPEAKER_03: But I'm grateful that I I don't think that I didn't do everything I possibly could have to save him.
59:34
SPEAKER_03: Do I think of could I have done something better, different?
59:36
SPEAKER_03: Sure, you could always do that.
59:38
SPEAKER_03: But I can truly stand here and say that I tried, even when I wasn't thinking, I my last effort was to save his life, like to try and stop him, even maybe risking my own safety to do it.
59:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking for that like heroism with that.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking like I don't have guilt.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: I sleep at night.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, I saw what he looked like right then in his last moment.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't wonder what he was thinking because it wasn't rational.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: I like it wasn't like I was he went off by himself on this long walk or it was in a sitting in a car in a parking lot and we don't know what he was thinking through his last minutes.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_03: We I saw the psychotic state.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_03: And I'm thankful for that.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Um it helps me to process this.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_03: I think it's helped it maybe as much as I believe like there's grief is crazy and the timing and delay and compartments.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_03: It's probably accelerated my processing because it happened right in front of my face, where someone tells you bad news and you're, you know, over and over and over.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_03: It's like it's almost like like I told you it was slow motion, like I knew it was happening.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it when I played in my head, it's I could be like cooking dinner or driving and nothing changes.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_03: Not like I break down all of a sudden.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: It's just like the story going through, you know, the fact of life to remind you.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_03: And just I I don't know why we do that as humans.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why I tend to frame things in an optimistic view and look for like the understanding in a good light, not a bad light.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_03: And I and I'm doing that with this.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_03: Don't get me wrong, I have moments where I'm like, I don't understand and why.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_03: But I also look for again, I gave up that control and I look for a greater understanding to follow this journey that I'm on and make sure that I'm on still following that right path and doing the right things and seeing the right things while I'm on it.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: I can't take it back, even crying.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_03: Like, what's the point of it's not changing the event?
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: How can we make this the best it can be?
1:01:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna look at the blessings, I'm gonna look at healing, and I'm gonna look at leading my kids to healing.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_03: And how can I do that?
1:01:54
SPEAKER_03: That I I that's the state I'm in today.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_03: I pray that I continue this way, but she has an exceptional posture, right, Chip?
1:02:03
SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's not normal for nine months.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, Colin and I talked about it.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_07: I mean, even way back at the beginning when we talked uh the first time.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_07: You know, fancy word reframing, which is basically just how you explain things to yourself.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_07: You you do a really good job of that.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_07: I remember way back then, Colin, you remember on that call, you you shared with us how you were gonna how you presented things with the kids and all.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_07: And some of it was just brilliant.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_07: You weren't uh not telling them the truth, right?
1:02:32
SPEAKER_07: But you worded it in a way it was more more carryable, if you will.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_07: Like like a child those ages could carry it better.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_07: You know, with emotion from a counselor's perspective, you look at uh a couple of things.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_07: You look at uh the the appropriateness of the emotion, is it the right emotion for the situation?
1:02:52
SPEAKER_07: You look at the intensity, duration, those kind of things.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_07: Obviously you value strength, but do you fight conversationally?
1:03:00
SPEAKER_07: You know, we we ask you a question and you fight like taking the answer all or no.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_07: You just answer In other words, you don't avoid subjects, you you've had some emotion expression on this call, you're not ashamed of your emotions.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_07: All that's gonna serve you well in in short term and long term.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_07: The only thing I'd probably say, I don't know if you're going to a council or not, I know the kids are, but uh you know, just be honest with yourself at any point where you feel like um you know, I feel like I could use some help processing this.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_07: Like you said earlier that you've heard the second year is worse than the first.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_07: You know, if you hit somewhere in your second year and it's like, you know, I'm I'm not getting out of this cycle.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_07: I need I need somebody to help me get out of this cycle.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_07: I I'm not saying you will.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_07: Those would be the things I would watch for.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_03: I again we have resources that are amazing.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_03: I do see um a psychotherapist and two of them actually, and they're amazing.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_03: And I started seeing one before for really minor things, um, just for self-help.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_03: And that's again destigmatizing mental health that you don't need to have anything really wrong with you to go see a psychotherapist that you know, they used to be called a shrink.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_03: Like that's awful.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_03: Like that, you know, there's that stigma there still.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_03: I was seeing it for to help with like my overscheduling and you know, like why I needed to fill my calendar like this, which a million of us do, you know, and it helped me to see like, okay, this is why I lose my temper and blow up when something doesn't happen.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_03: That that's why I was going and to improve my relationship with my husband and you know, to be the best person I can be.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: That's why I went.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: Now it quickly, I mean, I was really telling about to tell my my therapist, like, hey, you know, I think I've graduated or whatever that looks like.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_03: And then all this happened.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: Hey, we're really gonna, I'm really gonna need you now.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_03: And then I picked up um another psychotherapist.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_03: Actually, my husband had started seeing somebody he just had.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_03: And we saw a couple's therapist, and that couple's therapist recommended we each see a personal therapist.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: And he was resistant for almost a year, and I had started before, and then he finally did it, and um, he loved her, and he's like, I don't know why I was so resistant and stubborn about this.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I picked her up because she, well, you're you know, you you have to protect some some of the information, she could also help validate some of my feelings and she just she was a link to him, another link to him that I needed.
1:05:51
SPEAKER_03: And I started talking to um, I've become, I think, friends.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_03: I hope he doesn't mind that I call him that, but a therapist that worked for where he worked in Prince George's County.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_03: Um, and he was led that department and started it, didn't exist before.
1:06:08
SPEAKER_03: And he has been invaluable because he has that unique perspective to understand police work, to personally have known and had a relationship with my husband, um, and to understand mental health and and be a professional in that field.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_03: He's been tremendous for me because I am doing okay.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: And I am thankfully a talker and I talk to everybody.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: And every time it feels like that's healing, whether you're a professional therapist or not, I get something from that exchange with people.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: Heather might, you know, I think she should be a therapist.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I always tell her, I'm like, you're better than my therapist.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_03: Like the things that you say in your perspective.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have a couple of friends like that where once you they're therapeutic, once you talk to them and you're like, gosh, that's what I need.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: I, you know, and they're honest and I'm honest.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_03: And it's that honest open exchange where it's, you know, they'll tell you when you're being out of line, but they'll, you know, it's so healing.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's why I I'm glad that I was seeing somebody before this happened.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_03: That's also one of the things that I think is where I can see where God was in this the whole time, right?
1:07:20
SPEAKER_03: All these things, if they happened in a different sequence, it would have been a completely different result.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: And I wouldn't be here like I am today.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_07: Heather's a really special special Heather's a really special lady.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_07: She really is.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_07: Lauren, by the way, do you have any extra time?
1:07:37
SPEAKER_07: You were talking about going to counseling for your uh overscheduling and stuff.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_07: Could you meet with my wife for a little bit?
1:07:45
SPEAKER_03: What does she need?
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: She looks great.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_03: We don't have what do you need, Colleen?
1:07:51
SPEAKER_07: We don't have time.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_07: We don't have time.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_03: The over the overscheduling.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_07: You want to talk to her for a minute, Joey and I'll just be quiet.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_07: We can bounce for a while.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_03: PJ hated that.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_03: And you know, but part of it is you're just I am super ambitious, even like and through the injury, you know.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I was complaining that my hand was hurting.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, you know, these tendons are kind of sore.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_03: Is that normal?
1:08:21
SPEAKER_03: And they're like, well, how many times are you doing the grip exercises?
1:08:24
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, well, you know, I keep it in my car.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_03: So the other day, it's probably like two hours.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_03: And they were like, uh, yeah, no, that's the problem.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_03: So now they have everything with like a limit.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_03: They're like, um, you're only gonna do that um 10 reps three times a day, that's it.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_03: And then so I was like, Oh, thank you.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_03: I tend to overdo it.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_07: Wow.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_03: But self-awareness, I know that.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_07: I doubt that's I doubt that's common with most of their patients or whatever.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_07: That they have to give them limits on how much they do it.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_07: That's interesting.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_05: One of my questions that I was gonna ask, and I think it's already been answered, was whether or not you ever struggled with anger towards PJ.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_05: And I would imagine because it was so clear that something had gone awry in his mind that that that that was never even on your radar.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_05: That would be my guess.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I anger's like an emotion I have a lot, even though I'm happy and optimistic and all those things.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_03: Anger's a natural, like I was, you know, I'm pretty feisty.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_03: I I like to think that I get my anger out when I exercise.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_03: And if I don't, it could be bad.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_03: And PJ got a lot of my anger, and he was also feisty.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_03: So two the two of us, we're very similar.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_03: So it made for some pretty healthy debating, but no, not in this situation.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_03: I don't, and I that's another thing that I think a lot of people have with suicide that I probably never will with this.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_03: Like I I've said it to before to I can't be.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_03: No, I'm not angry at all.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_03: He wouldn't have ever.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_03: It's like two different people, Joey.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_03: It's like there's my husband, and then there's this person that took over his brain.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_03: I I it's I bifurcate them.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_03: Like they're two separate things for me.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_03: And no, I actually feel sad.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_03: I feel sad and sorry for him.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_03: Like he was such a tough, strong man who endured so many things and overcame so many challenges physically, mentally in his career.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_03: And I'll always think of him as that.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_03: There is some kind of also stigma of like weakness with the mental health, I think, of feeling like you can't ask for help.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_03: You can't call for backup, you know.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_03: I I think that plays into like how how he ended up getting to where he got without correcting.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_05: And that's that's what I can really relate to is when I try to relate to the thoughts that I was thinking when I was suicidal, it's like, I know I was thinking those thoughts, but I just can't imagine thinking those thoughts.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_05: Like when I was in the hospital looking at pictures of my kids, I seriously was a hundred percent convinced that I was never gonna be able to be their dad again because I was never gonna get better again.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_05: And now I can't even imagine like I almost took my life because I didn't think I would ever be able to be their parent again.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_05: That doesn't make any sense.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_05: Like, I don't I don't even understand where that was coming from, but it it was a different, it was a different person functioning in there for sure.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's I would like to believe when I think of how can we change this?
1:11:27
SPEAKER_03: How can we make this to help other people?
1:11:30
SPEAKER_03: That misconception is what I would love to like the the disease versus illness, that this could be temporary.
1:11:38
SPEAKER_03: And if this is temporary, all we need to do is heal you.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_03: And however long that takes, that can look different for people.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_03: And for some people, that could be permanent.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's so scary.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_03: That's what's so scary about it is I think people think that it's permanent.
1:11:54
SPEAKER_03: And I really think, you know, even though this thing has taken over and it controls your thoughts and words and actions, and it's in an altered state.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_03: So how do if you're in control of yourself, how do you get help when you're not that regulatory system is completely flipped on its side, it's upside down, you know?
1:12:17
SPEAKER_03: But for for me, like to understand like this could have been temporary and if that could have been explained, and if I said that to him, like I feel like there could have been to know that there's help, like maybe going into it.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_03: I don't, I don't know.
1:12:33
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, when people told me that this is temporary and Chip was trying to talk reason to me, I couldn't I couldn't take it in.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_05: Like I just didn't believe it.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_05: I was convinced that it was permanent.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_05: So you guys have a plan to get together when?
1:12:50
SPEAKER_07: Uh late October, is that the right way to say it?
1:12:53
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_05: So Lauren, it's been awesome getting to know you here.
1:12:58
SPEAKER_05: And I I'm curious as a mother with these three children that you that you love so dearly, what are what are you hoping that visiting with Chip and Colleen and meeting their kids, like what are you trying to accomplish?
1:13:13
SPEAKER_05: Or is that even a bad choice of words?
1:13:15
SPEAKER_05: I mean, obviously it's a it's a special gathering regardless.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I mean, my hope is with all of this, like I said, it's a journey that I am open to every little thing and it's a healing process.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_03: And I hope that there's healing in that for my kids.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_03: Here you can see there was a terrible event that we experienced as a family.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_03: But look at what a beautiful thing that had happened that is connected to this tragedy.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_03: One didn't cause the other, but there's a connection here and it's positive and it's great.
1:13:53
SPEAKER_03: And and with kids, like that doesn't need to be said out loud.
1:13:57
SPEAKER_03: Like we're not forcing this down their throat.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_03: All I want them to do is meet these people.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_03: And I know that there's gonna be a connection and there's gonna be laughs and love and tears and all the things, but they're going to, I hope, understand how life, how there's beauty in it, just the same way that there's tragedy and sadness and all the things.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_03: And this is a beautiful time and a beautiful moment of chip is able to live because of something that your dad had and and gave to him.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, they do understand that there's they understand that this man is living, but to see it, I mean, there's just so many things that come from this that that it feels like God's speaking that absolutely there's something more than you know, there's something here between you and him and us that is meant to be in this way.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_07: There's no doubt about it.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_07: Joey's the first one who who made that connection, uh, as much as I hate to give him credit.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_07: He uh Yeah, you could say it, Joey.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_07: Go ahead.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_05: I mean, just just the fact that Chip's life calling, you know, we'll we'll call it that, is is to bridge a gap between you know, between how the church understands mental health and mental illness and you know his background as a pastor, but then his expertise in the mental health field and and helping with understanding, he's he's telling me and uh another guy named uh Roy uh about the scenario with PJ, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_05: So someone who was struggling with mental illness to the point of taking his life, that's the lungs that you have.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_05: So, you know, someone who who didn't make it through the struggle is keeping Chip alive.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's just I I don't want to say that's beautiful because I there there's some beauty to it, but you can't say beauty without saying also very tragic and horrific, but that's what life is all about.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_05: I mean you you you worded it earlier.
1:16:14
SPEAKER_05: I mean, life is beautiful and life is horrific.
1:16:17
SPEAKER_03: And you know, I wanted to take like because Chip and Colleen have been so compassionate through all this, I did want to say, like, and you guys understand this too, but like this happened, and it was gonna happen either way, and that ended that tragedy.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_03: The fact that we can then take something and extend his life.
1:16:39
SPEAKER_03: This this was gonna happen either way.
1:16:42
SPEAKER_03: There's beauty in the fact that we were able to do something really incredible from PJ.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_03: His life is extended in a in a small way here through the organs that went to five different men.
1:16:58
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's that's amazing.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_03: It does feel like there's positive in the storm.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_03: There's it's right in front of like I won't, it's not like you have to look for this.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_03: This is really remarkable.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_07: Well, scripture says that all things work together for good.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_07: It doesn't say all things are good, but they work together and produce good.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_07: Like I told you, you know, the doctors and other people we've shared it with, they're just like, I've never heard a story like this.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_08: The doctors also they have told us numerous times, like, man, you got so good lungs.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I forgot to tell you that, Lauren.
1:17:33
SPEAKER_07: They told me I got some really, really good lungs.
1:17:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_03: That's I love I love hearing that, Colleen.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: He was so healthy.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_03: And I told Chip, like, he never smoked a cigarette, never tried any drug.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_03: He and he grew up in a really bad area that was like drugs all around and you know, crime, and it's not because of that.
1:17:57
SPEAKER_03: Like he was just so adamant about not doing that.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_03: And he ran and he just ran the Army 10 Mile in uh October.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, he he worked out every day, and he had amazing, he was in amazing health, and he loved to rub in that because I was seven years younger, but people always thought we were the same age or he was younger, and he loved to point that out.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_05: I think you I think you know this, but I just want to even say it.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_05: I mean, you have nothing, no reason to be anything other than just deeply, deeply proud of your husband.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_05: Like I could just see the pride coming out as far as hearing about how healthy his lungs are, and he got sick and he didn't make it.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_05: You have nothing but pride.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_03: He was a great, he was a great man.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_08: Anything else that I would say just in closing is that we are so excited and beyond grateful that we're gonna get to see you in person and your kids and hug you.
1:18:56
SPEAKER_08: We know it's a celebration for us and chokes and new lungs, but we also want to celebrate you and the kids for your generosity and uh thoughtfulness because that had to be tough.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_08: But we're just so excited to see you in a few weeks.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I am too.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_03: And my kids, I took them to see the sound of music.
1:19:16
SPEAKER_03: It was at the Kennedy Center, and my dad called with free tickets, and they're at the ages where that is not cool.
1:19:23
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, well, we're going.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_03: And it's just like every, you know, they didn't want to go, and it was so great.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_03: And it was such a great show.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, they walked out and asking questions about the movie and now want to see the movie.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, they I am there.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_03: I'm thankful they're still young enough where they have to do what I say in a way because there's so many things they wouldn't do out of un not knowing and fear and fear of that expression of emotion, you know.
1:19:53
SPEAKER_03: For me, that's the healing.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_03: This is hard.
1:19:56
SPEAKER_03: I hate crying, I hate the way my face looks right now, but it's you know, it's part of healing, and I want to heal because I want to be okay.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_03: I want to help people through telling the story.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_03: I want to learn more about what has happened because I feel like that's part of my purpose to be able to educate, to educate my kids and help them heal, but educate others, educate police, educate the people making the laws and setting up the systems, the resources to support.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have a great time and we're gonna be there to celebrate this too, because it is a celebration.
1:20:34
SPEAKER_03: And again, we're not celebrating the death of PJ, we're celebrating that his life could be extended, and here it is, you know, and that's that is a celebration.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_05: That's awesome how you worded that.
1:20:47
SPEAKER_05: All right.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_05: So, can you gift us all with a snapshot Lauren and PJ story?
1:20:52
SPEAKER_05: How did you guys meet and how did y'all fall in love?
1:20:55
SPEAKER_05: And when did you know that you were gonna marry him?
1:20:57
SPEAKER_03: Well, it took seven years um for me to know.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_03: He he was um we met, it's not a great, like it would.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_03: I I had like uh I went to California and got into um like I rode motorcycles on the back of motorcycles.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_03: I was not driving them out there.
1:21:15
SPEAKER_03: It was beautiful on like the coastal highway and through the mountain ridges, and I was wanted to move out there.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
1:21:24
SPEAKER_03: And I came back and I was walking into um a restaurant I worked at.
1:21:29
SPEAKER_03: I was bartending.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm never early, and I was early for my shift.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_03: And here's a motorcycle, a sport bike, which is what I loved, parked.
1:21:38
SPEAKER_03: And I went over to like admire it.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_03: No one's there, it's over by itself, and it's an empty parking lot pretty much.
1:21:44
SPEAKER_03: It's early.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_03: Here comes this guy walking out, and there was nothing else around, and it was so embarrassing because I couldn't lie or act casually, like I wasn't.
1:21:53
SPEAKER_03: I was obviously at this motorcycle, nothing else is around.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, Hey, what are you doing?
1:21:57
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, uh, I was just looking at this bike, it looks cool.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, he was in one restaurant with his buddy, they switched and came into the one I was working at.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_03: We exchanged numbers.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_03: I really didn't like him at and I said this in the eulogy too.
1:22:14
SPEAKER_03: He was very cocky, and I also had a lot of speeding tickets at the time, and I did not like police officers.
1:22:22
SPEAKER_03: When I found out he was a police officer, I was turned off right away.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_03: And um, somehow he talked me into going on a ride.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, he's just it was we were so adventurous, both of us, and it was meeting someone who's just adventure as adventurous and kind of crazy.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_03: Like I told Chip, like we both had a little of that.
1:22:44
SPEAKER_03: You know, we live similarly in in the way that we lived, and we were, you know, I think you meet that match, and you it's kind of scary too, because you we both wanted to be in charge and be leaders, and so it was very, you know, could be contentious at times.
1:23:02
SPEAKER_03: Like we had to learn to like really respect it.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_03: It's been a journey, and I know marriage is a journey for everybody, but I knew him very well, and he knew me very well, and it was beautiful in that way, and to be able to have kids together and see him and them is amazing physically, and and also like you know, there's some other things they say and the way they think.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_03: Like, I think that's another thing that's so beautiful.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm forever grateful to to be a mom and then to have children with him and for them to carry on who he was.
1:23:39
SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
1:23:40
SPEAKER_05: Well, you sound to be an amazing person yourself, and I I'm so excited for all of y'all to to get together.
1:23:47
SPEAKER_05: That's uh so much beauty in this, and thankful to God that there can be beauty in such a horrific loss.
1:23:54
SPEAKER_05: I'm very, very sorry for your loss.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Joey.
1:23:57
SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.