Welcome listeners as we dive into another profound and often overlooked topic, and that's sibling loss.
Uncovering the profound power of writing as a tool for navigating grief, we sit down with author Ronald Kimmins, who beautifully intertwines his personal experience of loss with the compelling narrative of his fantasy novel, Wild River. A raw, honest and deeply moving journey, we delve into the ripple effects of Ronald's sister's sudden death on his family, understanding that grief is not a singular emotion, but a multifaceted experience that can vary dramatically from one person to the next.
In an intimate conversation, Ronald shares how his brother's perspective on their sister's passing provided him with a sense of peace, reminding us all of the importance of hope in the face of tragedy. Ronald's story is a testament to how belief and purpose can be a powerful force when grappling with grief.
As our conversation draws to a close, we explore the lasting impact of Ronald's loss on his family and the decisions they continue to make in its aftermath. Ronald's journey isn't just about writing; it's about finding joy amidst sorrow and understanding that it's okay to reach out for support when grieving. This episode offers an illuminating glimpse into the complexities of grief, the potential for hope, and the transformative power of storytelling.
In this episode, we explore the personal journey of our guest, Ronald Kimmons, who experienced the tragic loss of a sibling at a very pivotal time in his life.
Through these conversations and reflections, we gain valuable insights into the complexities of grief and the profound ways it shapes our lives and our family relationships!
Here's what we talk about:
People's internal beliefs about loss play a crucial role in how they process grief.
How does the grieving process for parents differ from that of other family members when a child is lost?
A family who speaks openly about their feelings regarding their loss greatly helps the healing process.
What forms of emotional support are most beneficial for parents facing the loss of their child?
Welcome listeners as we dive into another profound and often overlooked topic, and that's sibling loss.
Uncovering the profound power of writing as a tool for navigating grief, we sit down with author Ronald Kimmins, who beautifully intertwines his personal experience of loss with the compelling narrative of his fantasy novel, Wild River. A raw, honest and deeply moving journey, we delve into the ripple effects of Ronald's sister's sudden death on his family, understanding that grief is not a singular emotion, but a multifaceted experience that can vary dramatically from one person to the next.
In an intimate conversation, Ronald shares how his brother's perspective on their sister's passing provided him with a sense of peace, reminding us all of the importance of hope in the face of tragedy. Ronald's story is a testament to how belief and purpose can be a powerful force when grappling with grief.
As our conversation draws to a close, we explore the lasting impact of Ronald's loss on his family and the decisions they continue to make in its aftermath. Ronald's journey isn't just about writing; it's about finding joy amidst sorrow and understanding that it's okay to reach out for support when grieving. This episode offers an illuminating glimpse into the complexities of grief, the potential for hope, and the transformative power of storytelling.
In this episode, we explore the personal journey of our guest, Ronald Kimmons, who experienced the tragic loss of a sibling at a very pivotal time in his life.
Through these conversations and reflections, we gain valuable insights into the complexities of grief and the profound ways it shapes our lives and our family relationships!
Here's what we talk about:
People's internal beliefs about loss play a crucial role in how they process grief.
How does the grieving process for parents differ from that of other family members when a child is lost?
A family who speaks openly about their feelings regarding their loss greatly helps the healing process.
What forms of emotional support are most beneficial for parents facing the loss of their child?
Hello and welcome listeners to the Let's Talk About Grief podcast. If you've followed or listened to previous episodes, you'll know I like to offer hope by sharing my guest stories with you. You get to hear how they have navigated their own grief, which can be both helpful and healing, knowing you too can move forward after a loss. If this is your first time and you don't know me, I'm Anne, you're host and author of Grief Abyss and this is part of my mission to help demystify grief. Welcome listeners as we dive into another profound and often overlooked topic, and that's sibling loss. In this episode, we're going to explore the personal journey of our guest, Ronald Kimmins, who experienced the tragic loss of a sibling at a very pivotal time in his life. I find through these conversations and reflections that we gain valuable insights into the complexities of grief and the profound ways it shapes our lives and our family relationships. Welcome Ronald.
Ronald:
Ronald, hello, hello, thanks for having me.
Anne:
You're so very welcome. Now you too are an author, and let's start with that. Your book is called.
Ronald:
Wild River. It's a fantasy novel.
Anne:
It's a fantasy novel, not what I'm certain our listeners were looking for. Normally our guests have written something on their experience to help with grief. I understand when we chatted last that it was your experience with grief that gave you a deeper understanding and to be able to presence it in your novel.
Ronald:
Right. Yeah, when I write all my characters, I feel have a piece of me. That's like there's a some. I can only write what I know, right, I can only write what I am to a certain extent, all my characters. I take a certain aspect of myself and go with that and maybe change it into something else. Even the villains o f course, end up being very different for me, but there is always some connection to me, something that makes me understand them. Yeah, I feel the grief that I've seen in my life has definitely been one of the key factors shaping my characters, my main characters in the story and also the narrative of the story.
Anne:
When you say it's created or helped you form some of the characters. Were you able to sort of bring into being the emotional component that you may have experienced with your own losses?
Ronald:
Yes, yeah, I feel there are two main instances of grief that I talk about the protagonists in the story. One is a character named I guess there would be three actually but one is a character named Errol and she witnessed her mother murdered when she was young. Another is another character named Lorna, who's part of a wealthy family and something happens where her family member is missing and she's trying to find out what happened to them and everything. As the process progresses, she starts to discover that they actually died. There's another character named Bondis, who his grief is twofold there's the grief of losing his brother, but also there's the grief of where he was sort of forced to do something terrible by someone else. Even though he was forced, he feels this guilt and it's been a big driving factor and a big driving force in his decisions in life, seeking restitution, seeking wholeness after losing his brother and also after having done something that he knows is terrible.
Anne:
Okay, it sounds as if you're exploring the character from a male perspective as well as the feminine perspective. With the female protagonists, for sure, did you find that they explored their own emotions a little differently? Did you go into that, or was that not really necessary?
Ronald:
Yeah, they certainly do, because they're different people and part of it is because they have different characteristics. Part of it is because their situations are different. With Pallorna there's doubt because she doesn't really know what has happened in the beginning. It's not so much like this immediate shock of, oh, someone died. It begins with worry. "I don't know if someone has died or not. I don't know what has happened to them. In modern America, If your child goes missing, you don't know If your maybe years pass, you don't know if your child is still alive or not. That kind of a thing.
Anne:
That kind of not knowing Right.
Ronald:
It's a mixture of feelings. It's a very different situation than from, for example, Errol, who saw her mother murdered right in front of her. They have to approach these situations very differently because there are different situations.
Anne:
Sounds like it. Did you find, by having your protagonists work through their own grief actually helped you with yours?
Ronald:
Yeah, I do. It has been a long time since I lost my sister, but it was still an important point in my life. It was still a sort of an inflection point in my life. I don't think that it's something that I've completely gotten over. I know that my siblings and my parents also haven't completely gotten over it. Every now and then, someone will mention her, people will mention that we miss her, will mention that things don't feel right without her, right? Yes, it has helped me. I feel that I never had the kind of grief that is debilitating, but it has certainly it's affected my life for many years. Yeah, I think that writing about characters who are dealing with similar things it does help, for sure.
Anne:
Yeah, that's what I've heard from a number of authors. It's cathartic, yes, they're reliving it, but it's also a release at the same time as they're working through it. So your book is out and it's readily available.
Ronald:
Yeah, it's available on Amazon, you can see and you can get there for my website, ronaldmkimmonscom. But yeah, it's also available on Amazon and it's called Wild River. And yeah, it's a fantasy novel. It happens in a different world, but it's closely. It's very similar to our world. I based it on America right after the Civil War and they're very similar social and political things going on there, but it is a different environment and there are there are some numerous important differences that are there.
Anne:
So it sounds like, yes, it may be fictional, but there's elements of truth telling as well. And do you bring part of the history through, do you?
Ronald:
Right, right, cause I'd actually I've actually laid out the kind of macro history of this fantasy world where I want to write stories, different parts in this history over the span of thousands of years, right, but my initial plan was to write a, to start with a story in a medieval era. But I had actually, before this, I wrote a nonfiction book dealing with the American Civil War, right, and so I had actually researched that to some depth. And so when I finally set out to write my novel, I said, well, you know, I should write what I know, and I had just spent all this time researching that era, the American Civil War and so I said, you know, I'll just go ahead and focus on that. So that's what I did, and it was very enjoyable and I think it turned out really well.
Anne:
So we'll make sure we have the links to the name and where people can get it if they're interested. You mentioned your sister and she did die, as I mentioned, at a pivotal time. Can you sort of share a little bit about what that pivotal time was for you and how did her death affect you?
Ronald:
So, yeah, I had Actually, I had gone off to college. She was a year younger than me, okay, yes, but she had a mental disability, and so, you know, she was staying home with my parents they're they're nine kids in my family, by the way, but she was staying home with my parents and I went off and did my first year of college and then I came back for a little bit because I was going to go and go abroad for a couple of years for service and my I had two brothers that actually just returned from abroad doing similar things, and it was during that window that she suddenly passed away. And you know where. We were all there, Right, and I think that I was blessed for my parents having us all there, whereas we otherwise would have been, you know, across the ocean. But yeah, those have been a pivotal time for me because I was, you know, just having completed my first year of college and about to go abroad on what turned out to be a very important, formative, formative period in my life, and this, this definitely, it definitely had a big impact on me and caused me to really consider. You know, what do I believe? What relationship do I have with my family, with my siblings, with my parents, what is most important in life? These kinds of things. And I was, you know, I was 19, about to turn 20.
Ronald:
At that time and, like I said, her death was rather sudden because she had she had epilepsy and she did not have Down syndrome, but her behavior, the way she interacted with people, is very similar to someone with Down syndrome. She had regular epilepsy and she was on medication for that. But even with medication she would usually have a seizure about once a month. But that had been happening for so long that we were just kind of used to it. You know, and you want to do, I would imagine.
Ronald:
And she, we were just accustomed to it, because it happened. You know, it was kind of a normal thing for us. But then, you know, just one day I was about to go to the hospital and she was about to go to work and she started having a seizure, and then all of a sudden she started, and it wasn't like we weren't really scared, because this has happened many times, but then all of a sudden she started coughing up blood and that was different. And so then my parents rushed her off to the hospital and she never made it to the hospital.
Anne:
Oh, she died before she got there, it was just heart failure and that was it.
Ronald:
So it was. Even though it occurred due to conditions that we knew she had, it was still an unexpected thing. You know, we were, we were, we kind of saw her as just this very resilient person who was going to be around for a long time. And she wasn't.
Anne:
Yeah, especially when you expected Roxanne, at least once a month, to have these seizures. So when this happened, you probably were okay, here we go again, we know what to do. And then, as you say, she started to cough up blood, and it was a little bit more serious. It's still a shock, though, isn't it? Because it was almost as if you had been lulled into that sort of sense of security it's going to be okay, we know what to do, and then, all of a sudden, it wasn't Right. How did your family react to all of that? I can't imagine.
Ronald:
It was definitely a shock, I mean yeah, okay, you know, like I said, we all we knew she had this, but we all were. Just, she had had multiple instances where she seemed like this at one point she was actually in the hospital and doctors, she wouldn't stop having her seizure, and so the to to stop that, the doctors actually stopped her heart, oh gosh, and then waited a little bit, yeah yeah, and then restarted it, right. And so because and because she had lived through things like that, we just kind of assumed that she would stick around and it was resilient and she would get. And I know, like my mother told me, she had seen a mother and daughter in the mall where the daughter was disabled and mother was old, probably in her eight, her eighties, pushing the daughter in a wheelchair and she just said, oh, you know, I, I assume that would be us and and but that's not what happened.
Anne:
Right, it was, it was a big shock.
Ronald:
It was a big surprise.
Anne:
For sure. And being 19, going on 20, being faced with all these questions, it sort of brings death very close to you. And here you were, going abroad in service to the military, the army?
Ronald:
This is a missionary service.
Anne:
Oh, it was a missionary, sorry, so it wasn't like you will facing you facing your own immortality.
Ronald:
It was something a little yeah, and yeah, it did it up, you know it's being, it was something it was very, very difficult thing, but it's being a missionary is actually it's very difficult, but it was not. I wasn't. I wasn't facing death, for sure, it was not sort of thing, but I was. I was doing something difficult and I was, you know, for the first time, going and living in a different country, different culture, different, different languages that I had to learn, you know, and so that that was a big transition for me, for sure.
Anne:
Yes, and did you end up going still?
Ronald:
Oh yeah, I still, it was we'll see if she's ok, I don't know, she died in November, and then I, I left in January, okay.
Anne:
As you mentioned, your brothers had just returned, Right? So it was probably a bonding opportunity for the whole family, Right? Or was there a little bit of discord? You know, because families can, they all grieve differently. What was it like for your family at this time?
Ronald:
I mean it was definitely more of a bonding experience. I wouldn't say that there's anything about it. That was discord, I think you know we handled it in different ways, Some were harder than others and we felt different things. I remember my sister telling me that she just had this tremendous grief, in a sense of actually this sense of guilt, because she felt that she had not been good enough toward my sister who died, which really wasn't an issue, she was a great sister and then one of my brothers, you know, said that he was actually joyful about it because he felt we all believe very strongly that she didn't stop existing. She just went somewhere else, right, and she could not progress any farther in that condition here.
Ronald:
You know she was limited by her body because of her disability, and so now she could, she was free of that and she could start to actually progress and grow, whereas it wouldn't have been possible In that condition and that wasn't really something that I initially thought about, but that was something that was very, that realization was very important to my brother and he said that, yeah, like I said, he felt joyful because of it, joyful that she was free and that she could now, you know, go and progress and become more than she was before.
Anne:
What a beautiful way of looking at it. A lot of people, I find grief can actually be very selfish. How am I going to be without this person in my life, whereas he saw it from her perspective rather than his own loss. I'm going to miss her, but now she's free. Is this a belief that you have been brought up with? That your parents share that, because I just love that she's free to grow. She couldn't grow here on this physical earth in the body. Where does that come from?
Ronald:
Yeah, that's, that's definitely the belief that we, that we grew up with, that was inculcated on us. You know, this feeling that we're here, we're here in this life like this mortality, this existence, this isn't an accident and it isn't a tragedy, because we're here for a specific purpose to progress, to encounter difficulty and to grow within this mortal constraints, the difficulties we face in this life, these things that we're supposed to face, because this is what helps us to grow and progress. And we felt that she was in our family, largely for our benefit rather than for her, for her own, because, like I said, she couldn't really progress, she couldn't really learn and grow because of her disability. But her presence was beneficial to us Because, in a way, she was sort of this emotional bull work for the rest of us. Like I could.
Ronald:
I remember being a kid coming home from school. You know I had a hard day and, and you know I mean I like, I dealt with things like I had. You know I had bullies, I had, I had I had social anxiety that affected me a lot and and. But then, you know, I'd just be there and she just there, be there playing with her toys, I'd go and sit with her, and she'd be happy to sit with me, and, and, and she would hug me, and, and this, you know, this person having this person, who, who, who I could always feel loves me, who was pretty much always happy.
Anne:
Yeah.
Ronald:
You know this this person was always, always there, and and and that that that is something, that aspect of her presence was something that that all of us felt right and and so I think that we all agreed and felt this, that you know, she was there in our family for our benefit, and the reason that she left at that point was because we had finally kind of collective, collectively, we got to the point where we, where we didn't so much need that anymore.
Ronald:
We weren't as reliant on it as we had been in the past, and so, because of that, that was, you know, sort of her time to go, you know, so she is. It was time for her to go take the next step and for herself, and and and progress to her next state of being.
Anne:
Yeah, to where she needed to be. What a beautiful perspective. I just love, love, love it. And, not knowing a lot about Down syndrome children, I know they are very loving.
Ronald:
Right, yeah, that's why I say yeah, aren't they?
Anne:
So just being in in her presence, not being judged. She didn't make comment, she just loved you for who you were, unconditionally. It sounds as if that was perhaps the benefit that she was able to give you in those moments of high anxiety and high stress, almost like a safe place to a safe harbor, a safe space to come home to.
Ronald:
Right, right, you know, I would just go and sit with her and hug her and talk to her a little bit. She was there's this, this, this unspoken bond there, this, this happiness that was always there, right, like she didn't really have bad days, you know, and so every day was, was pretty much the same for her, and and that I think that's what made her such as a an emotional, like I said, emotional bulwark for the rest of us.
Anne:
Yeah for sure. When were you able to speak as a family about your feelings? Or was this something that just two siblings just happened to mention sometime later of how they felt?
Ronald:
Oh no, we, we spoke a lot and I think that was very good for for my parents in particular because, as you can imagine, they probably they probably took it the hardest Absolutely and they probably were the ones that had the most trouble dealing, dealing with the fact that she was suddenly gone and the fact that we could all sit down together and talk about it and and talk about how we felt and what it meant, I think was was very, very helpful to them in getting through this.
Ronald:
You know, I remember, I remember, just like the next day, my dad sitting with my, with my youngest sibling in his lap you know she was, she was very, she was very young at the time and just sitting with her in his lap and just saying, you know I, he just just saying I can't. Over and over again, you just say I can't, I can't, just not be being able to handle this. But but in the end he didn't have any tremendous emotional breakdown, he didn't become despondent, he didn't completely shut out the world or anything. He was able to work through it and I think that that was in part because of that, because because our family was able to talk about it, sit down and talk about it and be there for each other.
Anne:
Yeah, and that is so. So important is having the space to be able to talk about your feelings and not feel judged, because very often, yes, the parents are the ones who feel it the most as their child, and then society tends to they're the ones that lavish the support and attention on, and the siblings tend to get a little left out, even even to grandparents. Right, it's a strange hierarchy of needs, I guess, from a society's perspective, but that doesn't sound as if that happened. It may have in the beginning, but because you were so connected and such a committed, loving family that you did your own healing, your own grief, work together. Thank you.
Ronald:
And the interesting thing about that is that, even though we were talking about it a lot at the time, my parents didn't want to talk to other people about it. And and, to their credit, you know, a number of people came by the house, you know, to check on my parents and and and it's and I it's totally great that they did that. I'm I'm I'm grateful to them for doing that, but that's not. My parents wanted to meet it. They didn't want to talk to anyone else about it. So when it up happening was my siblings and I would kind of run interference. We would go outside and talk to them.
Anne:
Well, that's a total reversal, isn't it they? Are the siblings protective of the parents. Usually it's the other way around, yeah.
Ronald:
Yeah, but like we would go out and people would come and people knew my parents, friends, you know, family and people like from our, from our church and things, and they would come to To talk to us and express their condolences and see how we're doing. And my parents Didn't want to talk to them and it was totally fine that they didn't want to, you know, and so so yeah, I might like I would go out and talk to them and my other siblings would as well.
Anne:
Yeah, how did mom deal with it? Because, as you said, that she had seen this older person With a child in a wheelchair in the mall and she'd obviously thought Ahead that that was going to be her life. All of a sudden, she's no longer a caregiver at that level. How did her life evolve after Roxanne's death?
Ronald:
Well, you know, at that point, you, she still had young children To keep the busy, yeah, and so, like that, I think that I think that helped, that. I think that if she had not had that, I think it would have been even harder for her. But I remember Something curious that she did. Was was like almost immediately when Roxanne died, my mother came home and and felt this need to To to, like we had kind of a corner. It wasn't her room, it was like like the living room area. We kept her stuff.
Ronald:
Okay, yeah and my mother felt this need to come home and and take that out and get rid of it. And not it's interesting, because it's not like I think people might interpret that to me like, oh, like she was, like she wants to forget about her, she wants to get her out of her life and or whatever, and that that's not really what was going on. I, I still don't exactly understand, like why, like people who are grieving though, they'll do things like that, you know, and and, and they don't need to justify it. They it's just, you know they. Sometimes you, in order to, you know, to, to work through things, like you feel the need to do things without really understanding the reason.
Anne:
It may been that it would have been a trigger for her, and yeah, I think so, like especially the self-preservation.
Ronald:
Right, it might have been different if it'd been like in, like a, like a bedroom, but it wasn't you know so it was like they're in plain sight, you know, all the time, and I think that maybe that that was it, but it was. It was definitely difficult for her, you know, to and to lose a child, but also to lose this sense of what her life was going to be from then on out. You know, because she, as I said, she pictured herself as just always being a caregiver, basically, basically till she dropped dead, and she was, she was totally fine with that. That was, that was her Picture of what she would be, and I would have said that she was happy with that.
Ronald:
Yeah, but that's not what ended up happening, and so she had, you know rethink her life and her identity.
Anne:
Yeah, and that can be difficult. That's why I asked how? What does mom do now?
Ronald:
Oh, has when she do that, she, she, I mean she does. You know other things. You know she, she works, she, she has hobbies. She cans, she, my father, they do a lot of of canning. They have, you know they can, vegetables and fruits and meat and all kinds of things. You know they're very knowledgeable about that and they and they have, you know, and they have other things you know they have, they have, they raise animals and you know there's, you know there's very. They do a lot of things but she's still very much. You know that. That mother figure, right, she still reaches out a lot to her kids, to her grandkids and like, like I said, it's just as, as my sister's passing was an inflection point in my life, who's, it was very much so in the lives of all my family members, including my parents, you know, and I can see how that it still Influences the decisions that they make, even today.
Anne:
Is that right? Can you give us a, for instance?
Ronald:
Like, for example, like this, despite what I said about her, you know, removing Roxanne's stuff from the living room, like there's a whole wall, um, by our stairs, in my parent's house, with just uh, pictures and and and little toys and stuff that the rock in her hand had, you know, pictures of rock sand, like some of her favourite, toys, like she liked to hold them, uh, you know, like little things like dice and batteries In her hands, little rocks. She would always have anything that she could hold in her fists, right,, she likes having those things. And so, like you look there and you see, you know there's this wall of Photos of her and then under that, you see like these little jars of dice and things and okay.
Ronald:
We see the same thing she used to play with right and so you can see, like that, just this awareness of her as a continuing member of our family, right?
Anne:
And they are. Have you noticed any of your nieces or nephews Exhibiting any of those traits carrying little rocks or batteries?
Ronald:
No, not at an older age, like it was with her.
Anne:
No, Well, I didn't mean that, but I'm just wondering if at a younger age, your children have done that as well, and hopefully, your sister, who felt tremendous grief, was able to work through that guilt, because that is so common as well. As I wished I had have been a better, whatever one of those regrets, isn't it? It's a strange thing.
Ronald:
Yes, my children did similar things. Yes, my sister has. Actually, as we were walking away from the gravesite the last time, I just put my arm around her and as we walked to the car, I just started doing a little dance with her and we just kind of the two of us, just kind of danced back to the car, which kind of like helped. So both terrible dancers, but um, but you did it anyway and I sang a little song. I don't remember exactly what it was. It was a happy song, you know. And just to try to express to her, you know, my feeling that, not that this is a happy thing, but everything will be okay in the end, yeah, and my feeling that she was okay.
Anne:
Mm-hmm.
Ronald:
No, and I think that she really did pick up on that and she really responded to that at that time. Yeah, and I feel that she I don't think she still has those feelings of the same feelings of grief that she used to have. I mean, I'm sure she still has certain feelings of grief, but not like that.
Anne:
Yeah, oh, that was wonderful. I love how you just spontaneously went up to her and began to dance because being silly, having laughter, and feeling the impulse to do something like that is so healing and helpful when you're grieving. Grief is such a heavy emotion that to do something like that actually helps you process everything as well. So it was interesting how you just naturally did that. So congratulations, thank you. You didn't realize it was a thing?
Ronald:
No, I didn't. I didn't really think about it.
Anne:
No, well, so many people feel this is a very solemn occasion. Who am I? I'll feel guilty if I laugh if I smile, if I do something fun, you know when my person has died. So, not having any of those preconceived beliefs, you did what came naturally to you and when you think about it, grieving a loss is a very natural thing. Somebody we've loved or attached to, whatever our loss is, we're going to feel those feelings and if we allow our body to be able to show us how, which it sounds as if you were able to do it helps you move through it a lot quicker.
Ronald:
People. You know human emotion. It can be a complex thing and there's nothing wrong with that. You know we can feel joy and sorrow at the same time. Yeah, that's a very real thing. That shouldn't be confusing. But because it isn't necessarily a contradiction.
Anne:
Well, I think as well. For males it's a very different and difficult story to be in touch with their own emotions, because from childhood they're taught that they're not acceptable, you know, tears or too much anger for women, like the certain societal beliefs. So I totally agree, it is possible to feel all the emotions, and I think that's what makes grief so hard to untangle, because all the emotions are present all at once and I think that can overwhelm the person as well. Now I want to just go back to something that you said at the beginning. You didn't feel your grief that intensely. Was there a specific belief or a reason as to why you didn't feel it?
Ronald:
Right, and so, like I certainly did feel it, yeah, not denying that yeah. And in a way I kind of felt that I was closer to her than my other siblings were, because we're so close in age.
Anne:
Yeah.
Ronald:
You know, we kind of grew up together and we're just a year apart. We just I was surprised. I was actually I was surprised at how well I dealt with it, how I wasn't completely debilitated with sorrow and grief, and at that time I just had this very clear realization that the reason for that was that I just honestly and truly believed that I would see her again. Like she's not gone forever, I would see her again. It was just. But I didn't know how long it would be. It would be some time before I would see her again. And that made me sad, right. But it wasn't this, you know, destructive sadness, you know, because because it wasn't this complete loss of hope, because I knew I'd see her again, and it wasn't just something that I talked about, it wasn't something that I told myself to make myself feel good, it was something that I realized. I really just believed this. It was completely internalized and that is why I reacted that in that way and that's why I was surprised at how sad I wasn't because of that, yeah.
Anne:
I love what you said there because I really do believe it's what we believe in Internally will affect potentially how we actually grieve. Yes, you're going to grieve, but to be as debilitated as we've seen a lot of people, and I believe it comes down to their beliefs. And I love the fact that your family has said we're going to see her again, that it brings you joy. Yeah, I've heard a number of my guests say that. So there is a belief out there and I just wish we could encourage more people to have that belief rather than, when somebody dies, that's it. I have a hard time with that one. I like to think I'm going to see everybody again, and I've had guests who have said, yes, they're going to be there. When you die, your pets are going to be there, and that is the kind of hope and belief that I like to live my life with.
Ronald:
I don't see the point in believing otherwise. I don't see how there could be any benefit of that. Now, of course you don't. You can't just make yourself believe something just because it's a nice thought. But things I really do believe is so not just because it's nice thought, but because it makes sense. I see that there's a intrinsic and very real value to humanity. We are not just bags of meat moving around in a certain way where there's more to us than that and that doesn't die with our bodies. It continues. And I think when we have a realization of the truth of that, it helps us to live this life better. It helps us to put everything in a perspective and realize this is not all there is. And when we realize that this is not all there is, it paradoxically helps us to make more of this and not live in fear of what's going to happen, which is going to happen regardless, isn't it Right?
Anne:
I don't think I need to ask you what you would like to leave the listeners with, because I think that's beautiful. We are more than just bags of meat wandering around on two legs.
Ronald:
I mean we have a purpose. We have a very real objective value. We were created for a purpose. We're here for a purpose. When we realize what that is, we can work toward it and that brings us happiness.
Anne:
Absolutely, and would you say you're living your purpose, Ronald, now.
Ronald:
I certainly have a sense of what that is. I'm certainly working toward it on a daily basis. I'm actually trying to instill a sense of that into my kids. As with anyone else, I'm sometimes frustrated with my lack of progress, but I feel that I do have a clear sense of what that purpose is and that is a driving force in my life.
Anne:
Absolutely. Without that, then we have to question, don't we, Why? I'd like to thank you so much for delving into these spaces with me. I really appreciate your perspective and giving us a little understanding of your life With your sister, Roxanne. Having a with mental disabilities isn't an easy journey, but I really do love your perspective that she came into this world to live her life this way and now she's free of that. I think that's a beautiful way of looking at it. So where can people find your book? Again, it's on Amazon.
Ronald:
Amazon. com. You have to look for Wild River, Ronald Kimmons. I think there are other books called Wild River. Mine is the only fantasy novel. But yeah, Wild River by Ronald M Kimmons. It's on Amazon. You can also go to ronaldmkimmons. com.
Anne:
Ronald M Kimmons.
Ronald:
Yeah, dot com and get it there.
Anne:
And are you in the middle of writing another book?
Ronald:
Yeah, I'm actually, you know, I'm working on another. I'm in the last phases of another nonfiction book dealing with evolution, biological evolution, harmonizing biological evolution and belief in God. Okay, and I'm almost done with that, and I'm also working on my next book in this fantasy series, which is hopefully going to come out next year.
Anne:
Oh, so it's sort of a trilogy.
Ronald:
Yes, it is yeah Wonderful.
Anne:
Thank you again for spending time with us and sharing your experience of your loss with our listeners. Ronald - Thank you, Anne. You're so welcome. Well, listeners, that's a wrap. Be sure to follow us by clicking on the link and you'll be the first to know when a new episode drops. And if you are feeling inspired, please leave a review. And if you are indeed grieving, please know you don't have to feel alone in your grief but reach out. As a coach, I'm more than happy to chat with you about how coaching can support you in your chaos and pain without forcing you to endure your grief-stricken world. You can contact me at ann at understandinggrief. com, or you can visit my website at understandinggrief. bye bye for now.