Translator: Rosa Baranda
Reviewer: Megan Mrozek She forgot one very important thing,
which was 'extremely sweaty person'. (Laughter) If you're wondering like, 'How do you get through
an event like this?' I had napkins in my armpits earlier. I was like, 'Remind me to take these out', but instead, they fell
through the bottom of my skirt. (Laughter) So it's just an efficient way
of sweat absorption, and that is the topic of my talk tonight. (Laughter) So, it's going to be a good one. I don't know about the rest of you,
but for me the year 2014 was ... a doozy?! I miscarried my second child
on October 3rd. On October 8th, my father died; he had had esophageal cancer
for six months, and then it just went everywhere. And on November 25th, my husband Aaron died
of brain cancer, after three years, and he was 35 years old. So, as you can tell, (Laughter) I'm known for being the kind of woman
who just brings up the energy in any room she steps into. It's not just you;
people say that about me. People are like, 'We should invite
Nora over. She's so fun!' (Laughter) 'She's like, always talking
about the worst things. We love it!' (Laughter) So, all of that happened,
and I was completely fine. I was fine! I wrote a book for Harper Collins; I started this non-profit
in honor of my husband Aaron, and eventually, I started a podcast
with American Public Media. So what proof do you need
that I haven't already given to you? People ask you this question a lot
when your husband dies. And I answered always the same way that I'd answered
since before my life fell apart. I said, 'I'm fine.' Duh. I did this for two reasons: One, because I didn't think I was lying. I'm - if you can't tell - I'm a white woman (Laughter) who is straight and able-bodied
and has most of her immediate needs met, so I am OK. (Laughter) And two, I knew it was
what everyone wanted to hear. And you know that too because at least once a day,
a co-worker asks, 'How are you?' and they don't even wait for the answer. And your answer could be 'Thank you for asking because
I'm having a nervous breakdown.' It doesn't matter, because Janice
is already in the conference room. She's got the printouts,
she's got the dial-in, she's ready to start. (Laughter) And I'm guilty of that too. I'm also a person who has taken
a huge and meaningful question and reduced it to small talk. If people even asked me
how I was at my husband's funeral, and I said, 'I'm very sweaty,
and I wish I was wearing more deodorant.' (Laughter) And that was basically the most honest
I was for a very long time. This is a very important number. I want all of you to look at it, commit it to memory, make it a part of your lives. It's my college GPA. (Laughter) (Audience) Wooh! Thank you! (Laughter) I think that it's a shame
that we work so hard for four years, and then no one cares about that number. (Laughter) (Applause) I'm not OK with that. I'm not OK with dedicating so much time
to something that people will say, 'You're 34. Take it off your resumé.' (Laughter) Why? I'll take it off my resumé
and I'll put it in a TED Talk! (Laughter) (Applause) (Cheering) I'm telling you this
because I loved getting good grades, my entire life. So all of that stuff happened, I lost that many people, and I thought, 'I'm going to go, and I'm going to get an A in grief.' Why wouldn't I, right? I mean, I'd gone
from being a great student, to having a good career, to being a pretty good girlfriend, to finding myself in the unexpected
role of cancer wife, which I was very good at. Aaron and I dated for one year before he was sitting at work
and he had a seizure at his desk and he was rushed to the emergency room, where they did all kinds of tests
and they told us, 'He has a brain tumor.' And then we found out
that the kind of brain tumor he had was a stage 4 glioblastoma, which is a medical term
for 'very bad brain cancer'. (Laughter) I Googled it. It's really bad. A month after his first brain surgery,
Aaron and I got married - in this Coca-Cola commercial. (Laughter) A year after that, we had our son Ralph. He's cute. (Laughter) And then we just lived our lives. We worked 40 hours a week,
we took two weeks of PTO, we separated our garbage
from the recycling, we mowed our lawn, we just did life stuff. And in between, we did the cancer stuff. And those were the hardest years
of my life so far, but they were also
the happiest years of my life. Because I was doing a good job for Aaron. And right before he died,
when we were lying in bed, I'm suddenly filled with this wave
of doubt, and I asked him, 'Was I any good at this?
Did I do a good job for you?' And he said, 'No, (Laughter) you did a great job.' So I got my A in cancer, my grief point average. I just thought of that,
but - right? Pretty good. (Laughter) (Applause) My grief point average
was already pretty high, but now I wanted
an A plus in grief itself. And what would that even mean? I had no proximity to traumatic loss. My grandparents died, and that was sad, but they were also old,
so it wasn't tragic. The only reference I had
happened in 7th grade: My uncle Tom worked construction,
and he had an accident at work, he fell. And he was in a coma,
and he died shortly thereafter. This was my mother's little brother. And I saw my parents' devastation
when the accident happened, I saw them fall apart when he died,
I saw them weep at his funeral, and then I didn't see anything. And I know now that it
wasn't over for my mother. I know it will never
be over for my mother; she's Irish catholic, one of nine. It does not super matter
that the eight surviving siblings are not all on speaking terms. (Laughter) It's like a very complicated web of who is
and who isn't cool with one another, but it doesn't matter;
that is a very deep and loyal love. It's always there. But what I saw was that grief
ends with the funeral, when the casket closes,
when the headstone is laid, but Aaron was cremated,
and he didn't have a regular funeral. We filled an art space
in Northeast Minneapolis with a thousand friends and family,
and I think some strangers. (Laughter) And we served cheesecake
and beer and wine, and I had too much of one of them, (Laughter) and ended up at an afterparty
at a karaoke bar, where I sang Meatloaf's
'Anything for love'. (Laughter) (Applause) You should be clapping
because it's 19 minutes long! (Laughter) And it's a duet, and I sang both parts! - (Laughter) (Applause) after explicitly being asked
not to by the staff. (Laughter) We'll get into that later. So ... it wasn't over, but it felt like it was,
and I didn't know where to go. A hundred years ago, I would have
taken a cue from Queen Victoria and I would have dressed all in black, maybe for months,
maybe for the rest of my life, and that widow costume
would have been a symbol, and it also would have been a signal to people who knew me
and to total strangers, like, 'That's a woman
who's been through something, (Laughter) for sure. Maybe don't engage.' (Laughter) 'You never know
what she's going to cry about.' (Laughter) But in 2014 Minneapolis, when you are a 31-year-old widowed mother, nothing happens. The rituals were done, and the grief was just beginning, and the problem was
there wasn't any time for it because I live in a culture that has
standardized and compartmentalized grief. We have it figured out
in the immediate aftermath of a loss, OK? It starts with Hallmark. We are going to find something
non-denominational and vague. (Laughter) Maybe a floral, maybe a landscape; it will not say 'death', 'dying',
'dead' or 'die' in the card, it will offer 'sincere condolences'
or 'warm condolences' - which to me sound like
a baked good that I would love to eat. (Laughter) I mean, I will take
a warm condolence, thank you! (Laughter) These are so flaky! (Laughter) Send me your recipe! We feed you. It doesn't matter if you are not hungry or if you have no appetite. If we see that your heart is broken, we'll try to mend it
with carbs and cheese. We will just heal you with a hot dish
and ask you to return the pan. (Laughter) And then we'll show up in all black
or something appropriately morose, and we'll stand around ackwardly, and we will maybe return to a basement in a building that we only go to
when something bad happens, and eat some ham sandwiches. And then we will just
move on with our lives because it's over! When you lose someone, your standard American grief process
will go something like this: Tuesday your husband dies - I'm so sorry. Friday, you're going to have the funeral, and then Monday,
you have to go back to work. And if you think I'm exaggerating,
I urge you to review your HR policies. Because most American companies
offer five days of bereavement leave when you lose your spouse. Now, it's a different story if you lose
a parent or a child or a brother because then you'll get two days. And if you lose a grandparent
or an uncle or a best friend, you could - I suppose you could use some PTO, or maybe you'll have a manager
who looks the other way. And also this assumes
you have a full-time salaried position, and if you don't, I guess
you just don't get to be sad. Whatever specific grief traditions
your heritage has, they have to fit within their HR policy
because your hiring packet was very clear: if you lose the love of your life, you will report back to that cubicle
within five business days. Warm condolences. The problem here is not just
our bereavement policies or the fact that we live in a culture that puts bereavement
and policy in the same sentence, it is this pervasive idea that we should
be good and we should be efficient at something that is messy
and is impossible to master. This is a news story
about Aaron's obituary. He and I wrote it
before he died, and it went viral, and it kind of explains how I ended up
with a book and a podcast and this talk. That message went everywhere; that obituary - fun fact: they're not fact-checked. (Laughter) Go home and write whatever you'd like! (Laughter) That obituary went everywhere,
and then my inbox filled up, and it was filled with people
who were basically saying, 'I'm going through this awful thing,
and I wish I were stronger; I wish I were more like you', and I thought, 'Like me?! The me who is filled
with a hot boiling lava of grief just below the surface? Who lets it
spill out indiscriminately and burn bridges and relationships
from her past, willy-nilly? The me who is so lonely she can't get into bed
without half a bottle of wine first? Or the me that
I was presenting to the world? The me who was traveling,
the me who was still putting on makeup? The me who pretty much looked
as fine as she said she was?' These people weren't spilling their guts
to a stranger on the Internet because they didn't have
friends and family; they had friends and family who assumed that this awful thing
was best left untalked about, who thought that
the person emailing me was fine, probably because they said they were. Why, in the face of tragedy,
do we just return to small talk? Why is it that I ask how you are
without wanting to know the answer and you reply to me with a lie? And I'm not saying
you should leave this auditorium and go to Wallgreens and unload your
emotional baggage on the checkout person. (Laughter) That's not appropriate. And that's what I do. (Laughter) That role is spoken for. (Laughter) You'll find your own retail establishment. (Laughter) OK? What I am saying
is that loss is always lonely; it's lonely even if you're surrounded
by people who love you, like I was, and like I somehow still am. And I made that lonelier myself. Every time I said 'fine', I put that word
between me and the people who loved me, and I made it impossible
for them to see me or know me or help me in any way. I made myself this lonely little prison, and three years later, I'm still trying
to break out of it like the Kool-Aid Man. And I don't want that for you. I don't want that for anyone! Because that was a commercial,
and it's not as easy as it looks. (Laughter) Truly, I think it all comes down to this. Everyone in this room knows
what it is like to lose someone, and if you don't, just wait! (Laughter) This is why I'm so popular. (Laughter) Because I am the kind of person
who will sit at dinner with you and remind you that everyone
you love is going to die, OK? I will remind you that sometimes
parents have to bury their children but children will always
lose their parents. That the young die too young, and that the old die
after everyone they love ... (Sighs) I'm a blast! (Laughter) What grief has taught me is that the beauty of life
is in moments like this. It's in these moments of respite
between losses, but also, that there
is beauty in grief too, and it is not something
that you are supposed to ace. It's not something that you can ace; it's not something to be rushed through,
it's not something to be cured, and it isn't small talk. So, like, what do we do? (Laughter) What now? People always ask me that, like,
'Nora, you know so many dead people. What do we do?' (Laughter) I do. And I'm like, 'I don't know!' I know that we need to stop acting
as if there's a standared - 'Standared'? Google it, 'Standared'?
Is that how you say that word? I do know that we need to stop acting as if there's a standard
operating procedure for grief, and like grief would care if we made one. And I know that this question
acts as if there is, so here is what I am proposing. I will swear that I won't ask you this question unless I actually want to hear the answer, if you will swear that you won't reply
with anything except the truth. Because everyone we love will die, and we can't protect
one another from that, we can't shield each other from that loss, but we can do
so much better than just fine. (Applause) (Cheers)
With today being Memorial Day in the USA, there's no more fitting topic for our MHM than grief. I've watched several of Nora's talks over the last few days as I work through a family loss and recommend her 1000% as an opening for healthy dialogue about grief.
Grief and the way we carry it is different for everyone. Even if you haven't experienced a significant loss, you may find that what Nora talks about resonates with you and helps you to understand how to talk with someone in your life who is grieving.
As always, my inbox is open to anyone who may just need someone to talk to about something they're going through in their life right now.
Let's all try to RatioAtSelfCare this week! ❤️🤍💙
Take care of yourself!