Recognizing Ambiguous Loss Pt 1-Pat & Tammy McLeod, episode 137

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal, and also help and hope for your own life journey. I trust that our seven weeks of learning to live in love like Jesus really challenged you and blessed you and gave you new insights in the positive ways to live with, even if they don't live with you, your prodigal. Learn to love your prodigal well. Today we are going to go deeper into the losses each of us has experienced on this difficult journey.

0:41 Our special guests are Pat and Tammy McLeod, who experienced a very difficult loss through their son's accident. We will be doing this in two parts so that we get time to really hear from them. So welcome, Pat and Tammy. Thank you. I'm so glad you could join us. I think you have a beautiful story. It's a very hard story, and many of our listeners are going through very hard stories too. And though yours is not exactly the same, it's going to be wonderful, I think. But let's start with just a little about your family and your life kind of in the ministry that you're having.

1:25 Pat and I both became Christians through a crew in college, and then we met on a summer mission, fell in love, got married, and joined crew staff. And we worked in California for a few years and then went back to Boseman, Montana, where Pat studied in college and played football. We lived at the edge of a national forest, so in one of the most beautiful places in the country. Yes. All four of our kids there. And I know, Judy, you have a daughter there now with grandkids. Yeah. Yes, Boseman is wonderful, and I love being there.

2:08 They just think it's great. All five of my grandchildren there love it. They all ski and fish and do all mountain climbing and stuff. So yeah, it's a good place. So I'll pick it up from there. In 1999, Tammy and I moved to Boston in our carousels. That was a switch. Pretty big switch. Yeah, we live on the busiest street in a major city, and from a place that bordered on a national forest to that is a big change. We were there for graduate school, although I sort of reluctantly, not reluctantly, but at least temporarily, was going to assume the role of Metro Director for Boston while they found someone to take it permanently.

3:00 But that became a permanent thing, and I did continue on as a grad student. Tammy also did graduate studies there, and it was just when I was finishing up my own dissertation that our life plans were interrupted by a phone call. And that's the story of our book, that interruption. Well, I imagine that it's never easy to tell the story of Zach, even living with it these years. That's a hard story. I just read your entire book this weekend, and I wept through Part 7, and I know you've wept many tears.

3:47 But tell us first about Zach and what he was like, and then into the accident that changed everything. Zach was easy to love. Zach and I had a very special bond, the mother bond, but also a deep spiritual bond. So we would pray together every night for people in his school. We would talk together about what are we learning in God's Word, what do we want to see God do in our lives. So many great connections. We would sing together. So he taught me a lot of worship songs.

4:28 We would lead worship together. Right before we got this call that Pat talked about, God was doing something very special in Zach's life. He just got back from being in South Africa with our family. We take Harvard students and others in Boston to work in a township called Maumalodi, and he had just decided that he wanted to graduate from college and then move to the town. Oh, he wanted to drop out of high school. Well, he wished he could just go straight to the town. He thought maybe he could become a doctor and then go use his skills in the township, but he wanted to marry a South African and adopt 10 AIDS orphans.

5:15 That was his plan for his life. So I will never forget him writing out the door one day and saying, bye, Peach. I love you. And never... Peach is what he called you, right? Yeah. So, never did I realize that that would be the last time that I would hear his natural voice. Yeah. So, later that night, Tam and I were at our first meeting of the year for the crew Boston Ministry. And it was... If you can imagine a auditorium packed with students who'd been away from each other all summer, and a lot of the meetings that we'd lead are kind of like stepping into a concert with a band singing, and someone came up behind us and sort of rudely interrupted our conversation because the meeting had just ended and we were talking to some people.

6:17 And a friend of ours said, your son is calling and he's trying to get a hold of you. Both of our phones had been packed away, so we weren't getting any of his calls. And so he called someone that was at the meeting. This was our second son and our third child, Nate. He was home. We were at this meeting with our youngest son, Soren. And anyway, I got on the phone and Nate was panicked. He was almost hysterical saying, dad, why aren't you answering your phone? He's like, parents have been calling, coaches are calling, now the hospital's calling.

6:57 Zach's been hurt. And he's being airlifted to a hospital where he's going to have to undergo some kind of an emergency brain surgery. And they need you to get permission to do this operation. So we jumped in the car and drove to a hospital that we didn't even know existed. We had to get coached there by someone on the phone to get to the hospital. So when we arrived, there were coaches outside waiting with very somber looks on their face. And the staff immediately ushered us into the emergency room, operation room, I guess, whatever you call that.

7:39 And the doctor busted through the doors and explained to us very quickly and kind of impatient. Well, I don't know how it is. But anyway, he said, listen, your son has suffered a major brain injury and we have to open up his skull cap and extract some blood and cauterize some vessels. And this could result in death or he could have a full recovery or anything in between and what we need you to sign right here. And so we did as we were looking at our son still dressed in his football uniform but intubated and they gave us a moment just to kiss him and pray for him.

8:24 And then they, you know, unclutch the brakes on that bed and whisked him away. And it was probably four hours later by maybe five that we were told by a nurse that the operation had been completed. And we went and met the doctor and he said, you know, we did what we could do and now we just have to wait. Long wait. Yeah. Yeah, it was a, it was, we soon found out that Zach survived but a portion of his brain, a pretty significant portion of his brain did not.

9:09 And that sent us on a journey that we weren't expecting. So what a terrible thing to have happen and how you didn't have a really a clue how that was going to impact you. So what, how did this unfold then as, as Zach was quote recovering in the, from the operation and I know that they had to do some other surgery on him as well. And then what kind of hope and possibilities were they giving you?

9:50 He had four months in an acute rehab and then he went to a brain injury school. But after two years, he had very little short term memory, barely any speech and right side weaknesses of all kinds. So by that point, by the two year point, we realized that what the doctor said, death before recovery or anything in between that we were going to have Zach in between. And so he wasn't going to be the same as he was. And people were telling us that at about the two year mark for the first two years, they were hopeful he could regain some things, but he never regained his short term memory or speech to speak of.

10:39 Do you want to mention about how it affected shelves and the. We, for us, for me, especially missing his voice because of he talked all the time. I was so sad when I heard that he wasn't going to get his voice back again. But one day my daughter said to me, you think it's bad to lose a son. I lost a best friend. And so we started to see not only our own losses, but our other children's losses. Our sons were also close with him and to not have Zach in their lives anymore in the same way, because he was away all week at a residential brain injury school was very hard on them.

11:32 He had a close connection with them. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say in the book, which you wrote partner in kind of one after another, you talked about your whole family, the different ones and impact on them and missing Zach, but you also talked about the struggles you had with each other as well as talking to the Lord and saying how, you know, did this have to happen? Kind of thing. So give us at least a little picture, what you're comfortable with about the interactions and impact on family.

12:15 Yeah, I think one of the best things that we did within probably about six weeks or I don't maybe it's even a little more than that, but we began to see a counselor together just because we were in the midst of our own grief journey and it was rough. And one of the things that we learned early on in that time was that when a tragedy like this hits a family, it doesn't just affect the relationship between each family member and that person who is tragically injured or experiencing some kind of loss like this, but it affects everyone's relationship to everyone.

13:06 The whole family is torqued by this and we definitely experienced that. It was obviously tough for Tammy and I because we were having two very different experiences of grief and I was pretty much caught up in a comeback story, living in that story and very energized by the sun that we were going to hopefully get back. And Tammy meanwhile was kind of left alone to just grieve without a whole lot of support from me.

13:50 The counseling was really helpful because the gentleman who was working with us said, just remember be gentle with each other. Say that again. Be gentle with each other. Yeah, be gentle. So can you go a little more Tammy into what you talked about on just how different the way you all processed was, how that caused conflict some, but mostly probably pain. Yeah. So I was flat on my face on my bedroom floor bawling. And like Pat said, he was the comeback story guy.

14:31 And so he was always more on the cherry side and I was like, just let me grieve. Let me experience my pain. So one night at a friend's house, we got a big fight. He sat there telling all these fun stories about Zach and I was the only one not smiling. After the night, I wanted to be valid. I wanted my pain to be valid. I didn't want to sit there hearing all these great fun stories about Zach, but I wanted to talk about the pain. So we got in the car and he was like, why can't you just admit that there are great things about Zach?

15:14 And I'm like, I do, but also you need to understand that there's a lot of pain. And so we just went back and forth sitting in the car before we drove away. And then I even remember saying that night, you think that I'm somehow less spiritual just because I'm grieving the loss. As I was just so frustrated, I even brought that aspect of it into the mix. And I don't know if Pat wants to share anything else about that fight. But we decided to take our big conflicts to save those for counseling because if we would do them in front of a counselor, we would have a lot better conversation about it instead of sitting in a car going back and forth.

16:07 So that became our pattern. We already had a pattern weekly date nights. We already had a pattern of not talking about tough things after 9 p.m. But we added a new one, saved their really tough conflicts for counseling. And I think that was excellent, really. That sounds wise. I know that in our audience, there's a lot of extra conflict that they haven't had before when all of a sudden a child or a loved one is making decisions that impact everyone. And almost always, a husband and wife process things differently.

16:48 That's one way you got together is that you process things differently. And so that, you know, you're pain and you're thinking he's not caring or very spiritual and you're like, can't you believe in hope for the future? He's going to recover. Those are not unusual kinds of attitudes. And so the counselor certainly is an important help to get an objective and wise person to be guiding you in that or referring whatever is needed. So but Pat, he wasn't getting better.

17:35 It became clear, especially after the second thing that happened that he wasn't going to. And how did that hit you? I mean, I know it's hard. I think, you know, that when I think about my life as a man who grew up in a family that both my parents were coaches. And it wasn't simply that I had never been taught how to agree, but I'd actually been taught not to grieve. To show no visible sign of weakness when you're hurt. That's kind of the one an axiom that was floated around our house a lot to be tough, to not whine and, you know, to stay instead focused on things that are positive.

18:31 And this is kind of the rule of life. And then, you know, I'd never seen my dad cry until his dad, my grandfather, passed away and I'd said, shed one tear and that was it. And then I became a Christian in college. And the one place where I had seen someone shed a tear, a funeral, the funeral of my grandpa had been turned into a celebration of life. And I'm like, well, you know, so, you know, even as a Christian, I hadn't like, I was never really taught how to grieve.

19:13 In fact, I was kind of, I feel like taught not to grieve at all. And so, yeah, it didn't come natural. It still doesn't. I don't think for me to go there. But when I finally did and things started to flow out of me like tears, it and my eyes would be leaking, you know, like I felt like poison was coming out of me, that all this energy and emotion that was inside of me needed to come out. And then it did. Praise God. I mean, that's, that's really important. And I'm sure that is more common with, with men than with women that they're told not to let their emotions have any opportunity to express themselves.

20:03 And so I'm grateful that God gave you the ability for tears to come and be cleansing. That is one of their roles. So Tammy, tell me about reading about ambiguous loss. Yeah. When it became clear that Zach wasn't going to have a full recovery, I started reading grief books and I realized these don't really apply to me because my person is still alive. So yeah, I finally just called the rehab hospital where Zach stayed and asked, what is the term of the kind of loss we're dealing with because I want to write about it in grad school.

20:50 And they got back to me the next day and said, the term for your loss is ambiguous loss. And I had never heard that term before, but I ordered the book by Pauline Boss and Coin the term, right? Yeah. She coined the term. She's worked in the field for 60 years now and is the expert on this area. So I just devoured her books and I thought, finally, I feel understood. So it was super helpful for me. So can you give just an explanation of that? Yeah. So ambiguous loss, there's two types.

21:33 The first type is when you don't have the person, but you psychologically have them in your mind, so it could be kidnapped, kids, terrorist attacks, divorce, adoption, immigration, things like that. Or it could be a person who has chosen not to relate. Yeah. But they're just no conduct. Right. And then the other side, the other type would be the type we were left with where you have the person, but they're not the same. So not only brain injury, but Alzheimer's dementia, mental illness, addictions, things like that.

22:23 So we're going to be continuing the following week with more to get because you have some interesting things you've discovered. But at this point, would you give us just a little picture of what Zach was like and what was happening in his life during this time? First of all, spiritually nothing changed. He just stayed close to Jesus. It's just awesome. I remember when you told the story of he got out of the bed and was on the side of the bed praying. Wow. That was a terrifying moment.

23:04 I mean, he had just been put on the floor after coming out of a second major brain surgery. And I came in and he was gone. And I was like, oh my goodness, what happened to my son? And I panicked. I looked in the bathroom. I thought maybe it got not to go to the bathroom with all these cords attached to him. And there was no one in there. And I ran back out in the hall to see what the heck was going on. But then I went and here he was on the other side of the bed kneeling praying. And I mean, he had really just come out of the ICU.

23:45 But he loves the Lord. And that was pretty common. That's still common for Zach. I mean, he prefers kneeling when he prays. And so it doesn't matter where he is, even though he can't walk safely or get up safely. If he decides he wants to pray, he just gets on his knees and prays. Yeah, right now he wears a gate belt. So we have to hold him every single step he takes. And he has 24-7 care around the clock. He has three shifts. People work with him for eight hours and then rotate. And so they're sitting with him all night long to walk him to the bathroom and things like that. So his body is in rough shape on the right side, but he can still walk.

24:27 He just limps a little bit. Like I said, he has barely any speech and barely any short-term memory that hasn't changed at all. We're now at year 15. So there hasn't been any change since about the second year. But his soul as well. Church, people like watching him worship more than almost anything else. So he has a big smile on here. That is just awesome. Well next week, when we're together with our listeners again, you're going to get to hear some stories of what God has done and how he has brought some healing not to Zach's brain, but to things, the life that they're having together.

25:27 And you're going to learn more about some practices that they have undertaken that have helped and just the whole family having to be open and honest about what they're going through. And so we're going to close out for this time. And we'll be back next week to finish our conversation. And I hope that you come because you've heard just a bit of the hardness of what has happened. And though probably your experience isn't this because your loved one is probably still alive, but there are lots of ways that they're lost to you still.

26:13 And I believe that Pat and Tammy and their family and Zach have some really hope to offer us. And so don't miss next week. Pat and Tammy, thank you so much. I'm just, again, I'm still reeling a little from reading your book just a couple of days ago. And so it's all very fresh to me, and I'm just sad for the loss that you've experienced and the hard things and the unfulfilled dreams and that kind of thing.

26:55 And yet I'm thrilled to see what God is doing in Zach's life, but in yours as well. Because God's not wasteful. He doesn't let even the most difficult, challenging things we experience go to waste. He does things that surprise us and change us on the inside and give us a way to touch other lives as well. Thank you so much. And we'll see you all next week. Thank you, Judy. Be sure to check out the show notes. I've included some resources from Pat and Tammy for you that might help you on your lost journey.

27:41 We're also giving away three copies of their book. Hit hard. I read this to prepare for my conversation with them. It was hard to read, and yet it was so helpful at the same time. And I think you would love it. Well, maybe not love it, but you would get a lot out of it. Instructions for being in the drawing for those books are in the show notes. I know this was a challenging session for many of you. I pray that God will give you comfort, hope, wisdom in your journey. And don't forget to join us next time to hear the rest of what they have to say.

28:25 God bless you.