Giving Men Permission To Grieve With Herb Knoll

I am so thrilled to welcome you to the podcast this week,

Not only because I will be seeing you very soon in March of 2019 on the bereavement cruise,

But because you are one of few men who has graced the Coming Back podcast.

And I'm so excited to hear your story and hear your perspective on how grief has changed you and your life.

So if you could please,

We'll start where we always start on coming back and share your lost story with us.

Well,

Okay.

I'm one of 11 children born to Herb and Violet Knoll in suburban Buffalo,

New York.

Pale blue collar family,

Been working since I was 13.

And it started in banking very early on and ended up staying in banking for 38 years.

But although I did have to travel quite a bit in order to seek out opportunities in the industry.

I'm a proud member of the former member of the US Army,

Where I was able to serve as a drill instructor at Fort Dix,

New Jersey.

So anybody listening who went through Fort Dix for basic training,

You may remember me.

Let's see,

What else?

I was living in Nashville,

Tennessee,

When in 2004,

On her 49th birthday,

My wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

And the next 39 months changed me to the point where I walked away from my career following her passing and rededicated my life,

Not from finance,

But rather helping widowed men and the families who love them.

I really want to explore what you were taught about grief growing up and kind of how you applied that or maybe had it changed after your wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and eventually died.

Well,

As a youth,

Regrettably,

I was introduced to grief when my grandmother passed away.

And at the age of 10,

A seven-year-old girl who lived across the street drowned at a local beach.

And on my 10th birthday,

I served as one of her pallbearers.

When I was 16,

I was working at a gas station all night on New Year's Eve 1966.

When there was no traffic,

It was six o'clock in the morning and there was a terrible crash.

Two cars,

The only two cars on the road found each other and one man's body was thrown from the car.

At the age of 16 and alone and absolutely nobody else around.

I ran out to the two cars and saw one man run away and I found the other man who was thrown from the car and I knew right away he was deceased.

And the reality of death at age 16 was significant for me.

In the military,

I had occasions where men were close to death and it changes you.

But nothing changes you quite like the loss of somebody very close to you,

Particularly a spouse.

I'm sure a child is just as severe if not a parent.

And today when I learn of the passing of anybody,

Just their name,

Regardless of their age,

Regardless of their social status,

Regardless of their origin,

It bothers me.

It bothers me when people say,

Oh they had a good long life.

It bothers me when people say,

Well they're out of pain now.

I actually wrote an article about this.

What if that person wanted just one more day to thank the paper boy for his service over the years?

What if that person needed one more day to finish a quilt that they had been working on and wanted to leave their grandchild?

What if they just simply wanted to tell their sister or brother that they love them and they'll see them in the next life?

But instead we say things that are frivolous usually.

And in particular,

I'm critical of the society that we live in that is not very sensitized to death.

And working with men,

I hear all the times,

Why don't he just get over it?

Well,

It's not that simple.

But we are taught in the United States and elsewhere that boys don't cry.

From the time we're able to first walk,

We're taught boys don't cry.

We go to war and we kill people and we experience horrific situations.

And we come home and we don't even talk about it.

We don't even talk about it because nobody,

Men generally do not believe that they have permission from society to grieve.

And that is the void that I try to fill in some small way.

And I take it on with all my gusto because men need to cry.

Grief is part of love.

It comes with it.

You can't have one without the other.

But men don't know that they have permission to grieve.

So they retreat into the shadows of society.

They stay in their house.

They tell people,

Oh,

I'm okay.

Just leave me alone with my thoughts.

They're not okay.

And that's why their suicide rate is so high.

Three or four times greater than that of married men.

That's why their consumption of drugs,

Illegal and legal,

Is so high.

Increased rate of diabetes,

Hypertension,

And other ailments because they're holding everything in and the human anatomy is not built to withstand that.

And that's why so many men,

As this society will label it,

Die of a broken heart.

I don't accept that.

I think they die because their life is one that they can't even express their pain.

And so they go inward and they suffer the consequences.

And they can be severe.

So to answer your question,

I will say that death is something that I've learned a lot about after I lost my bride.

Her name was Michelle.

I've studied it for 10 years.

I didn't know hardly anything about it at the time.

But I'm very aware of the world around me and what events took place in and around me as my wife for 39 months was dying before my eyes.

Before I opened my eyes every single morning,

I could feel her presence in the same bed with me.

I knew that that lady next to me,

The love of my life,

Is dying.

And I have to give her a good day.

That was my job.

And for 39 months,

I did my very best.

And then you come home after the passing to a house that still has her fragrance in it,

But it's silent.

And it's deafening.

And I know that I needed help when one day,

Working in a bank,

One of my employees,

Who I didn't even know her name,

I had a lot of large staff,

Walked into my office and said,

The entire floor misses your laughter.

And I knew that I needed help.

This is four months after my wife's passing.

So I went to my church,

The Catholic church.

I went to the Veterans Administration because I'm a disabled vet.

And I went to Barnes & Noble.

And I asked the gentleman at Barnes & Noble,

What do you have for a widower?

He typed widower into his computer search engine,

Looked up at me,

And said,

Mister,

I don't have a damn thing for you.

And I thought,

Nothing?

Well,

As it turns out,

There are books out there for men,

But there's very few because publishers will tell you that men don't buy books.

My response to publishers is,

They certainly can't buy what's not on the shelf.

And having been published in the past,

I decided I was going to write the book.

But nobody wanted to hear my story.

And I understand that.

So I didn't write my story.

My book explores the circumstances,

The events surrounding loss,

And the challenges that men face.

And I was able to convince 40 men from across America who lost their wives at different ages,

Some of them even in their 20s,

To talk to me for nine years.

And for nine years,

They shared their stories and their best practices and et cetera.

And we broke down the issues that men face.

And we sprinkled it with little vignettes of these various 40 men's experiences to validate the point we were making.

Then we surrounded them with 15 subject matter experts,

From psychology and sociology to members of the religious community,

Lawyers,

Financial planners,

And more.

And we sprinkled their intelligence over the words of these 40 men.

And nine years later,

We released the book,

The Widower's Journey.

So I would say death has impacted me in a significant way.

And most of all,

I'm pleased that my career gave me the skills that I acquired while working that enables me to be of service to the men today that I serve and those families of those men.

And I will share with your audience that it is by far the most gratifying thing I've ever done.

And the men are very quick to express their appreciation because they can't find help elsewhere.

That's such an incredible story,

And I want to go back really quickly to the concept of anticipatory grief,

Which is something that you repeated once and I kind of missed it the first time,

But when you said it again,

The number 39 months stood out in my brain as this is the amount of time that I watched my wife die.

And I have received so many questions and comments lately on what it's like to be grieving somebody before they're actually gone.

And your kind of solution was,

I wrote this down,

I have to give her a good day.

And I get chills talking about that and saying it out loud because this is the mentality that I also held watching my mother die,

But I never verbalized it that way.

It was just this notion of,

If this is how long we have left,

I'm going to give her a good day.

And can you speak more to what it's like,

Not only as a man,

But just as a grieving person to watch somebody you love die and how you manifested good days in the midst of all that?

Sure,

I'm happy to,

And actually I will tell you those 39 months were the finest months of our marriage.

For me,

The realization that loss is likely caused me to mature,

Caused me to appreciate life where the rest of the world,

Many of us anyways,

Take life for granted.

I will say that we live life to its fullest,

And Americans as a general rule don't like to talk about death and don't like to talk about the eventuality of it.

A lot of people go to the next life having never talked about it.

There is uncomfortableness in our society,

And people will say silly things after someone dies like,

Oh,

I didn't want to bother you.

Well,

I wish you would have.

And even when someone is sick,

A lot of folks keep their distance,

And they don't invite the couple over or out anymore,

Or they don't stop by because I didn't want to bother you.

Well,

I still have to live,

And I don't know how many days I have left.

And all of our days are numbered,

Right?

There's a wonderful song by country artist Ken Harold.

It's Your Days Are Numbered and You Don't Know Which One You're On.

I highly recommend it.

But my appreciation for life crystallized for me.

And I would say one of the benefactors of that crystallization is my new wife.

I did marry several years after Michelle died.

I married a beautiful woman who's from Cuba.

And having lost a spouse who you truly loved,

If you ever are fortunate enough to be blessed with another spouse,

You will find yourself cherishing every moment with it,

With your new wife,

Or perhaps husband,

Because you recognize that in a single moment,

That can be over.

It only takes a single second to die,

And you don't know when it's coming.

So I would say I have a very strong appreciation for this life.

And I would also say to you that I am a man of faith,

And I turned to my church,

Which gave me an unmeasurable amount of strength to go through and deal with what I dealt with as a caregiver.

By the way,

65% of all survivors,

All widows or widowers,

65% of them will have a life-threatening illness within 12 months.

So 10 days after my wife passed,

I collapsed in my driveway upon my return from my first day back to work.

My stepson,

Who was about 22 at the time,

Found me in the driveway,

Raced me to the hospital.

I'm laying on the gurney.

The doctor's on one side.

He's standing on the other,

And he says to the doctor,

I can't afford to lose two parents in one week.

And as it turned out,

I had a problem with my kidneys.

Doctors have told me that even though I may have thought that I handled my charge as well as I could,

That your body can only handle so much stress.

And this is a big problem for men.

A lot of men think they're pretty tough stuff and that they can handle it.

Well,

I'm here to tell you there is not a man alive who can come through serving as a caregiver or perhaps just a death,

But the caregivers cannot handle all the stress that's loaded upon them.

And then also,

When caregivers have aches and pains while they're caregivers,

They sort of dismiss them in favor of the care that they're giving their spouse,

Who's,

After all,

Very sick and perhaps even dying.

So that neglect of that ache and pain could be a dreadful mistake because you're giving perhaps a serious problem time to take hold.

So that's why so many people who are widows and widowers have life-threatening illnesses within one year.

Now,

Following my kidney problem,

I was diagnosed with cancer.

Doctors will tell you again that stress can contribute to cancer.

So I don't know if my stress,

Which I thought I had under control,

Contributed to either my kidney problems or cancer,

But it sure is interesting timing.

I will also tell you that I am a huge believer in the mental health profession.

I think there's a reason why they give these people PhDs.

And while I was a caregiver,

I went to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville,

Tennessee,

And was examined by a psychiatrist.

I wanted a medical professional to tell me that I'm properly anchored,

I'm thinking clearly,

I'm making good choices for my wife who's so dreadfully ill.

Now,

I didn't have to do that,

And most men wouldn't have chosen to do that,

But I'm just very tactical.

And I wanted to be sure that if I'm being charged with caring for her and making good choices,

I want to be sure that I was on top of my game.

And the good news was the doctor thought I was.

It's so interesting to me what happens with our health when somebody that we love passes away or when they're in the process of dying.

I myself,

I tell my grief growers,

Which are the listeners of this podcast,

Quite frequently that I was very ill within probably like 12 to 18 months after my mom died and had to get medical help for that.

And so it's not uncommon.

I think I want to veer into a question that I wrote down as you were just right out of the gate telling your story.

And it's kind of related to the fact that your wife,

Michelle,

Received news of her pancreatic cancer on her birthday.

You also experienced a great grief,

A loss on one of your birthdays and then another on New Year's Eve.

And so I'm wondering if the losses that you've experienced have made you apprehensive about birthdays or special occasions or holidays,

Because it seems like,

At least from the timeline that you've laid out,

That quite a bit has happened on these significant days in your life.

Dave Asprey You know,

That is an amazing observation of yours.

Really.

And I'm sitting here thinking,

She's right.

My wife,

Michelle,

Went into the hospital for the last time on Valentine's Day.

And she never came home.

And every year,

I relive those 21 days between Valentine's Day and March 7.

And I can tell you what happened on our timeline over those 21 days.

So Valentine's Day is significant for me.

New Year's Eve is significant because it was me that had to cover this man's,

His body with his coat.

It was an awful scene.

And at 16 years old,

You know,

I'm getting on a radio asking the police and everybody to come and help me because I'm here with this man who's not alive.

And then my birthday,

I was a pallbearer at the age of 10 years old.

At the age of 22,

A very good friend of mine was murdered.

He was actually assassinated.

And so I've had these events.

And I don't wish them on anybody,

But I don't shy away from holidays.

I'm,

That doesn't,

I mean,

I remember them.

And there's a subconscious life that I live that I don't share,

Like the 21 days between April or Valentine's Day on March 7th.

I just live that 21 days every year all by myself.

And I'm still smiling.

I'm still servicing people.

I'm still living life to the best I can.

But I carry that load by myself.

And it really causes me,

This is another realization of mine,

That there are tremendous,

Tremendous number of people walking the face of this earth who are carrying very heavy crosses.

And it could be financial.

It could be physical.

It could be emotional.

It could be any number of things.

And it could be a family member that they're fearful for or they're worried about,

Or they could have somebody over in a combat zone.

I mean,

There's so many issues facing a person that they walk this earth and they just carry their cross.

And you don't know it,

That they're carrying it.

And every time I go to church,

I look around,

I wonder to myself,

How many of these people are hurting right now?

And you'd never know it by watching them walk in and walk out.

I think about it every single time that I see a person on the side of the road begging for scraps from people at a traffic light.

And I think to myself,

That is somebody's daughter,

Somebody's son,

Somebody's brother,

Sibling,

Cousin,

Buddy,

And maybe reason for living.

And there they sit on the corner of a highway begging for anything they can get.

And how did they ever end up there?

And so I think about those things a lot.

And then I think about what I can do to correct it.

And that's why I established the Widowers Support Network.

That's why I do what I do.

That's why I do it for free.

And that's why I don't even take donations.

I just do it.

And I would hope that somebody listening to this broadcast would be touched by that and maybe just do a little bit more tomorrow for somebody else.

Because we need more people doing more kind gestures for others because there's a lot of pain out there.

That's absolutely right.

And it's such a big reason that this podcast exists,

Not only to remind people that there is other pain in the world,

That you're not alone in what you're experiencing,

But that there are kind voices that in essence,

This is going to sound kind of religious leaning,

But there are other kind spirits in the world that are watching over you and witnessing you in your grief.

And Herb is one of them.

I am one of them.

Everyone listening to the show is one of them and has that capacity to take that forward into your life.

The next question that I want to get into is the theme of the show coming back.

And you talked earlier about not having permission to grieve as a man,

Which is something that has been swirling around in my head for the longest time,

Just that phrase permission to grieve,

Regardless of gender,

But especially as a man.

And so I want to know what was it in your life,

Because apparently it wasn't the Barnes and Noble.

That assistant offered you nothing,

But what was it that allowed you permission to grieve?

And what was it that helped you come back from the death of your wife,

Michelle?

I'm sure probably a psychologist would probably say it dates back to how I was raised and what values were instilled in me.

I would say to you,

It was a sense of I had to live on.

I had to prosper.

I had to prevail following the loss because my stepson was counting on me.

My children were counting on me.

And I think my Lord was counting on me.

I've always held leadership positions,

So I'm sure that had something to do with it.

But I've also seen other men suffer,

And I'm one who's not going to sit back and see people suffer and not respond.

So I started the Widower Support Network.

Actually,

I started writing the book first and studying the lives of widowers and doing all my research.

I did that,

And that was frankly,

I'm sure,

Therapeutic for me.

And I'm sure many of my friends and family members probably thought,

Oh,

That's just Herb.

He's grieving.

He's still doing that research book thing.

He'll probably never publish it.

And they came close to being right.

There were several times when I almost gave up.

But I had people backing me.

When I met my current wife,

She encouraged me.

She knew I had developed a lot of quality material,

That substantive material,

Material that men can action rather than just hear a theory.

And I knew that if I didn't do it,

Who would?

It hadn't been done before me,

And I didn't see anybody else lining up to take the charge.

And I sort of like noble causes,

And I knew it would be therapeutic for me.

So I took it on.

And like I said,

It's the best thing I've ever done.

I love this path for you.

And I want to segue now into what you're going to be presenting on the Bereavement Cruise,

As well as how you got involved with the cruise in general.

I happened to meet some folks that were involved with the Grief Cruise.

And they invited me to participate.

I've done a lot of public speaking over the years.

I did it professionally,

And I also did it inside the bank and outside the bank professionally.

So they knew that I was a speaker.

They knew that I had written another book.

They knew that I had done a lot of research in a world that,

Frankly,

There aren't too many people who've done any work in,

And that is specifically around widowers.

And very few people,

By the way,

Can even tell you the name of a single widower.

Yet 16 US presidents have been widowed.

2.

7 million widowers exist in the US of A with 420,

000 new ones every single year.

In fact,

You're too young,

I know,

To remember some of these TV shows.

But years ago,

There was the courtship of Eddie's father,

Who was a story about a marketing executive who lost his wife and was raising a son named Eddie.

And it was almost glamorous watching him as a widower.

Although the name widower never really came up,

But he was always dating these very attractive women.

And as a young boy,

I remember almost fantasizing about what a cool life that guy's living.

And then there was the My Three Sons,

Where the father had three sons and he was widowed.

Bonanza was,

Lauren Greene played the part of a widower three times over.

He had three sons and all three of his sons were born to women,

Different women,

Who'd all died at childbirth.

That's the story behind the TV show Bonanza.

And even Mel Gibson made a career out of being a widower.

He was a widower in The Patriot.

He was a widower in,

Let's see,

What's the one where he was fighting in Scotland?

Oh,

I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's where he paints his face different colors.

Yeah,

So he was a widower in that one.

Then he was a widower in the Dorsey Glover Detective Series,

Lethal Weapon,

One,

Two,

And three,

And there might have been four.

But he's made a career out of being a widower.

But very few people can name a widower when I asked them to.

Yet,

Five minutes later,

They will usually say,

Oh,

Wait a minute,

I do know one.

He lives down the street.

Or he works in the next apartment over.

I forgot about him.

And that's the problem.

People forget about the widowers.

And go to a grief group.

On the bereavement crew that we're going to be on,

Watch how many men sign up and how many women sign up.

Men won't grieve in front of women.

Men will show up maybe at a grief group at a church,

Whether it's Grief Share or whatever.

Hospice has programs.

There's lots of different programs out there.

And they'll show up for one or two weeks and then they'll drop off because they don't want to cry in front of women.

So where are they to turn?

They don't want to cry in front of their children.

They don't want to cry at work.

They can't cry at church.

They won't want to cry in front of women.

Where are they to go?

Yet for some reason,

People think that they should get over it.

It's unrealistic.

So on the bereavement crews,

Which I was invited to by Glenn last year,

There was surprisingly quite a few women who attended my session.

And there were several men,

But not as many women.

And I talk about tangible steps.

And this is where maybe my approach to grief differs a bit.

Men are fixers.

You give men a problem,

They come up with fixes.

Their mental Rolodex starts rotating until they come up with the first reasonable fix and they apply it.

If it doesn't work,

They'll spin the Rolodex again and they'll come up with another fix and they'll apply it.

That's what men do.

And I tell the story of my brother Don who was traveling with his wife,

Kathy.

And when they're on the plane,

Kathy leans over to Don and says,

That little boy behind me is kicking the back of my seat.

Well,

Don,

Being a man,

Leans over the top of the seat,

Looks at this young boy and says,

Knock it off.

Well,

Kathy leans over to Don and said,

What'd you do that for?

And Don says,

Well,

You told me he was kicking your seat.

And she said,

Well,

Yeah,

He was,

But I didn't want you to do anything.

I just wanted you to know about it.

Well,

That's what guys do.

Don't give guys a problem and don't expect them not to try to come up with a fix.

You're absolutely right.

It's in our job description.

It's everything we stand for.

And I think,

Frankly,

Too many people who are grief consultants or grief speakers or writers or whatever deal too much with the supernatural,

Too much with theory and not enough tangible steps.

I like tangible steps.

It's not that I want to prescribe actions to people.

What I want to do is stimulate the minds of those that I'm helping.

I want to give them samples of the 40 men in my book and others that I've accumulated over now 11 years and best practices that this man tried this,

This and this.

You may want to try it.

Oh,

You say it's not going to work.

Well,

What if we made it six inches longer and we painted it purple?

Oh,

That would work then.

That's all I want to do is I want people to realize that the answers they're looking for,

They already possess the inner strength they can muster and they probably already possess it,

But they need some guidance just to uncover it all and then apply it.

I found it in the church and I found it in my desire to be of service to other people.

So even though I may have hurt on occasion,

I rewarded myself by helping somebody else.

And by the way,

There's a tremendous amount of validated material out there for people who are grieving to serve others and you will be served in the process.

So my approach during the bereavement cruise is to give people 15 actionable steps that they can take.

And they want to try two of them,

Fine.

But I will tell you,

The first one is always give your grief to God.

If you're a person of faith,

That's where I would apply it.

And the next thing that I recommend that everybody does is see a medical doctor.

We talked about that a little bit earlier,

That everybody has been through a difficult time,

Whether you were a caregiver or whether or not you simply had the loss and you endured the pain of the loss.

You have been through a lot.

It is unrealistic to assume that you're not going to be adversely impacted by that.

Why take the chance?

You're not the only one that's grieving.

Other people are grieving too.

So if you lost a spouse,

Your children are grieving.

If your neighbors are grieving,

Your spouse's siblings are grieving,

Their friends are grieving,

Their friends at work are grieving.

You're not the only one.

So you need to take care of yourself so you can help others grieve too.

So go see a doctor.

And my desire is that hopefully they will also tell you,

Why don't you go have a short visit with a mental health professional just to be sure that everything's in its proper place.

To me,

It's money extremely well spent.

But it's difficult for men particularly to say,

Yeah,

I'm going to do that.

Because heavens forbid anybody finds out that they went and saw a doctor and then they talk about it.

And men don't want to be viewed as being anything other than strong.

And we created that environment.

And we sustained that environment.

And I try to break it down on the cruise ship.

That sounds like such a beneficial course for people to take,

Especially for widowers,

But for the people who love them as well,

Which I know is a subset of the people that you work with.

It's not just widowers,

But people who are surrounded or surround widowers.