The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

She qualifies for state and had to go down to Champaign, Illinois.

And that's when she decided

a note.

She didn't tell us.

She left the note saying, By the way, if you're wondering where I am, I'm in Champaign, Illinois, running in a track meet.

And I thought I ought to tell you in case you're not.

Just said, dropped dead.

Oh, man.

But she went on to qualify for nationals.

Yeah.

This episode is brought to you by DoorDash, your door to making Mom's Day, even from far away.

Alrighty.

Look at us.

I know.

One-on-one today.

Yeah, it's just you and me.

We figured, let's ditch the guests.

Let's just talk mono a mano.

Or is it mono a womano?

So how you feeling?

You know, I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good.

I mean, we've, you know, we've had a

year.

Yes.

So it's, you know,

as many people know, we lost our mom.

And,

you know, just kind of sorting through how you feel, you know, because the first instinct is to say, I feel good.

I'm great.

I'm good.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

And

I'm glad we're doing doing a show on grief because as you remember, I mean, mom was so beloved by so many people from your orbit, which is gigantic, and my orbit and her own orbit.

You know, we spent a lot of time managing everybody's else's grief and we really haven't.

talked much about our own grief.

So I'm happy we're able to do this now.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you put it well that we, you find yourself managing other people's grief, because particularly with somebody like mom, that was in her own right, amazingly, after all these years, she was a famous person.

She meant, she meant a lot to so many people, people who knew her well,

you know, friends who grew up with us from the time we lived on Euclid Avenue when we were little kids to, you know, I got letters from heads of state and ambassadors.

And, you know, she was a, she became a world figure.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Just amazing.

That's a pretty amazing thing.

And so

when you've got somebody of note who means so much, right?

And they, you lose them as a family.

You, you are managing a process now, right?

It becomes okay.

How do you create a memorial service that honors her?

Which, and she was very clear on what she did and didn't want.

Yeah, our the listeners should know that mom's been threatening to drop dead for 20 years.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was, she was, she has been preparing us for this.

So

she left very

direct instructions on what she wanted and how she wanted things to be.

And we had to take that into account when yeah, take it into account, but I don't think mom

that she would ever own who she really was, right?

No, she would not.

So her original requests were just, you know, don't make it anything fancy.

Just have a few people, you know.

And, you know, unfortunately, her only surviving sister died only a few months before she did.

That's right.

And so mom's view was, and that was our aunt Gracie.

She said, well, what, you know, what Gracie had was lovely, you know, you just had family and a few people speak.

And, you know, and I'm just sitting there listening going, mom, there's no way,

there's no way we can, you know, we can get away with that.

So there was also, I won't call it the stress, but I was concerned about making sure

that you, my brother, felt seen in our decisions to memorialize her.

because it it becomes a production.

Yeah, yeah.

And while that was very nice of you, I

felt very much a part of it.

You know, I thought,

as we both know, mom wanted it like, I don't want an hour and a half

memorial.

I think she was worried about the time.

She was worried about the amount of money we spent on it.

And she wanted to make sure that family was going to be involved.

And you made sure all of that took place.

And it was, it was, it was a wonderful memorial service.

It was a little longer than she would have liked.

Oh, for sure.

But she would have enjoyed it

if she were there.

So that's what we, we talked about that.

Well, that was always how mom was.

You know, mom was like, I don't want to fuss.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to travel.

She was, you know, that was her beauty.

She was mom, our mom was content with who she was and where she was.

Yeah.

And she found her happiness and joy where she was.

So that also was like a double-edged sword for her because in her process of being so content and so don't worry about me, she would,

you know, just sort of reflexively say no to everything, you know, um, throughout the whole eight years in the White House.

First of all, she didn't want to come, she didn't want to come in the first place, yeah, she didn't want to, she didn't want to move to the White House.

Why would I want to live in the White House?

I have a perfectly lovely house here on Euclid Avenue, you know.

Um, so you fortunately were able to convince her that she wouldn't be moving for her, but she would be moving for her beloved granddaughters.

Yes.

And that finally sealed the deal.

But then once she got there, she was like, I don't need, I don't want secret service.

I don't need this.

I don't need that.

I'm just going to be up in my suite of rooms.

And we took a lot of trips over the years.

We did some amazing traveling.

You know, we went to visit the queen, spent time at Buckingham Palace.

We were on the Great Wall of China, just us, because the wall was closed off to everybody else.

We had visits with two popes, one at the Vatican.

I mean, you know, we had a personal greet at the home of Nelson Mandela.

That's when

my kids came.

Yeah, Avery and Leslie came on that because we tried to include them.

But we generally did our travel

or my solo travel without Barack with the girls.

We tried to do it in the summer on breaks so that we weren't ever pulling the girls out of school for travel.

So we always had some major trips planned.

And

we, of course, you know, need mom to go, but it was always presented as a mom, do you want to go?

Right.

And if you asked her, do you want to go to China?

Her response would be, why would I want to go to China?

You know, or you already got me here at the White House.

I don't need to go to China.

So asking her what she wanted was never the approach.

You had to tell her, Michelle needs you to go on this trip.

The girls need you.

Because while I was doing all my official stuff, you know, the girls needed a chaperone to do their stuff.

And then once she realized that she wasn't going to take this trip for her, that she was doing it for us, then she could accept it.

But then once she got there, you know, wherever she was,

She had a ball.

She was like, oh my God, I'm going to the top of everything.

I'm going to see every dome.

I'm going to, you know, she embraced it once she got there.

But every trip, the answer was, no,

we went to Rome.

And then later on, we went to Venice, you know, another year.

And when we asked her about the Venice trip, she said, well, I, I've, I've been

to Italy already.

And I was like, well, Rome, you know,

Venice is very different.

from Rome.

And she was like, well, I don't, you know, I don't need to go back to Italy.

And I was like, well, why don't you just, why don't you just do this one for us?

You know, I, I maintain all of that.

Her time at the White House, all the travel, having to care for the girls added years to her life because she was just sitting over on Euclid, you know, on the porch, smoking cigarettes.

Because she had retired.

Yeah.

And she said she

would probably retire sooner than she was ready.

You know, that would be one of her admonitions to people out there.

It's like, well, if you, you know, don't just retire because you reach a certain age, because she still had a lot of life.

She still wanted to do

work, but it was the dream of people of that generation is that you hit a certain age.

And if you can afford to retire, well, that's the thing you do.

Yeah.

But fortunately for me, she did retire for both of us because she was retired.

She really was like our rock

when it came to the kids.

Yeah.

And I, and because you got her to do more, she would come out to visit us more because she felt like she had to even up the scorecard, right?

Because she was spending more time with your girls and not our kids.

And I was like, Mom, it's not, we're not counting, we love to have you out anytime you want, but we got to see her enough, which brings me to you know, dad dying.

So, people should know our dad died 33 years ago, yeah.

So,

my oldest, Avery, wasn't born, and none of your kids were born yet.

We all knew he loved us.

Him dying so early, that was devastating.

It was devastating for both of us.

It was really devastating for me.

When mom died, mom did the same thing.

She made sure all of her kids, all of her grandkids, all of her in-law, daughter-in-law, son-in-laws, all knew how much she felt about them.

And so, when mom died, while it was extraordinarily sad,

it wasn't as devastating.

And

I think managing the grief hasn't been as hard as it was when dad died.

I mean, when dad died, you know,

everybody looked at me like dad died.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And it was so hard to manage that.

Now, while we had to sort of manage more people when mom died, this was,

I really felt mom's whole life and situation in death was the way she would have wanted it to be.

Yeah, yeah.

And that gives you some comfort.

Yeah, yeah.

Mom never wanted to, she didn't want to be a burden to us.

Right.

She wanted her independence.

You know, so after we got out of the White House, the first thing she wanted to do was go back to Chicago.

And we got her a condo so she'd be in a doorman building because she didn't sort of appreciate the fact that she was a famous person.

She was well known.

You know, she's walking around with our faces.

We have her face.

Yes.

So she is known.

She can't, you know, even though she would try to wear a baseball cap.

Well, what she said she would do in the airport if she would travel and somebody would come up and say, you look just like Mrs.

Robinson.

And she'd say, I get that a lot.

Straight up.

She would think that wasn't lying because she didn't say.

I get

But all she wanted to do was have her own space.

And so as she aged and, you know, became increasingly

sicker,

she really resisted, you know, wanting because we were both ready and in a position to scoop her up.

and have her live with us

and provide her with care.

And fortunately, I got a lot of months with her because she was with me in Hawaii for this last winter.

And I got to take care of her and pamper her and have all the support she needed.

And she resisted at every turn.

You know, she didn't want, you know, the physical therapist.

She didn't want the nurse's aid.

So I had to tell her, I need them, you know, but she, all of that was because she didn't want to feel like a burden and she didn't want to just wither away.

She wanted to, she wanted to die

at her prime.

And that's, you know, just to make clear, that's the kind of stuff that mom prepared us for at a very early age.

She was like, I do not want to be here forever to a point where I don't have my memory.

I can't move around.

I can't do for myself.

She's like, that's not my idea of living.

Right.

And she didn't have that.

No, no, but she wasn't going to let her.

She was going to smoke cigarettes and drink wine and eat bad food until she until she

dropped dead.

Until she couldn't.

Yes, yes, to use her term.

And

folks should know when we say drop dead, that is a

term.

That is a comfort term for the Robinsons and the Obamas because that's what my mom always called dying, dropping dead.

Dropping dead.

It's like a a, you know, he just dropped dead the other day.

So

he just dropped dead.

And we find another way to phrase it.

Yeah.

But I think, you know,

what

mom did for us when it came to managing grief from as long as I could remember is that she and dad were never afraid to talk about death.

Right.

Just like every other topic in our household, you know, they parented with an openness,

with a philosophy that your kids were smart and capable, and that if you phrase things the right way and did it at the level that they could understand, there really wasn't anything that you couldn't talk to your kids about in terms of just broad topics.

I mean, they weren't the kind of we're best friends kind of parents.

It was like, no, you're a child, but we can have conversations

and we will encourage questions about everything.

That included death and aging

because we did grow up with a big extended family.

We grew up with all four of our grandparents.

Our parents each had big families, lots of brothers and sisters on both sides.

We had lots of cousins.

And within any extended family, over the course of your life, people die.

People get sick.

People age.

Yeah.

But

we say all that to say that we were introduced to aging and grief

and talking about it through our whole lives, which is the beauty of growing up in an extended family, right?

Because you

maybe things don't happen in your nuclear unit, but you'll see it.

If you have a big enough family and folks are around long enough,

you're going to be confronted with it.

And I think that our family, or our parents at least,

they just had a clear-eyed view towards life and death.

So, while dad's death was harder because it was unexpected, and I think for dad, I mourned less for me

than for what he'd missed.

Yeah, because I thought the thing I felt was like,

here is this man who sacrificed everything for us, who worked every day of his life, who

like was a role model to so many people, who gave us this amazing foundation, but he didn't get to see it, like the fruits of it.

Like, I don't think he would have been surprised how our lives turned out.

Oh, I think he could have, but I always think, what would dad have said?

He would have been enjoying that

at the White House, you know,

and he would have been the one, I'm going to Italy,

I'm going to the

Great Wall of China, I'm going to all these different places.

And I think about the fact that he didn't see you go to, you know, fulfill your basketball dreams.

He didn't get to meet his grandchildren who he would have adored and who would have adored him.

That's, I'm like, he shouldn't have missed that.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So I grieve for him, but I was good, right?

Because

mom and dad set us up

to be able to exist with and without them.

And I think that that's one of the bravest things you can do as a parent is prepare your kids for your absence,

not to prepare them for you being there every single second of their lives because you don't have control over that.

And so, you know, I think about that

with the girls and I with Mali and Sasha, I have those conversations with them all the time.

It's like,

you know what I think.

You know, I have said it enough times.

You, we have gone through the scenarios.

We talk all the time.

So, if something happened to me, you're going to be okay.

You know, you already have those messages.

So, I don't, I don't want them to be afraid of me dying.

I want them, you know, be sad, but a little bit sad, you know, but know that you, you got this.

Right.

And that's a peace of mind.

And you don't get that if you don't talk about grief, if you don't talk about death, you know?

And I just think

a lot of us don't, you know, at least in America, we struggle with looking at grief head on as the real thing that it is, the inevitable thing, the rewards of a fruitful life if you're lucky.

Right.

Right.

And then sometimes you got to just,

you just got to be okay with the hurt, you know?

Yeah.

I remember mom saying when dad died that you guys are

going to be really upset for a while,

but you got to go to work.

Yeah.

You got to go to work.

Cause I, and I remember going to work and my coworkers are like, what are you doing here?

It's like, I was told.

Yeah.

My mom told me I had to come to work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hi.

This Mother's Day episode is a special one for both of us.

And I know for all of you.

And it's brought to you by DoorDash.

Yeah, Misha, you remember what dad used to do for mom on Mother's Day?

Yeah.

And you, you reminded me of this.

It was, I had almost forgotten about it, but dad used to go go shopping for mom on Mother's Day at Carson Perry Scott and pick out an outfit for

a warfare

or a couple of outfits, a full, you know, top blazer, you know, skirt, all of it.

Yeah, and he took such great pride and in being able to do that for mom because our mom was pretty very frugal.

She never shopped for herself.

She

was a beautiful woman and dad loved to see her her in nice things.

And really, the only time she got something new was when he went shopping for her.

That's right.

And I didn't get to really understand how meticulous he was in his decision making until he got to a point where he couldn't go by himself.

Folks know our dad had an MS.

Everybody knows that story.

And so I would drive him and

we'd get to the women's department and be met by this wonderful woman.

I wish I could remember her name who worked at Carson's.

Then she'd take him and wheel him back into the section and she had things set up for him and he would pick something right off the mannequin sometimes and then he would go over and he'd feel the material and it was just, it was, it just brings back such a wonderful go and get it gift wrapped.

Oh, yeah.

At the gift wrap section at the time that they did gift wrapping.

Yeah, because we didn't gift wrap.

We always got it done at the store.

Yeah.

But I know you guys did some really cool stuff at the White House too.

Yeah, yeah.

When we were in the White House for those eight years, one of the things we did every Mother's Day is that we hosted military moms and the wives of our military for Mother's Day.

We would usually host a lovely tea,

either set in the blue oval room or in the East Room.

And we made it pretty with

all the china and beautiful flowers on the tables, trying to make it really special to honor those moms, the Blue Star and Gold Star moms that serve our country and sacrifice.

And we would allow them to bring their kids because we also knew that Mother's Day people, a lot of mothers were, especially if their

spouses were deployed, they have their kids.

So we would set aside a different set of activities in the stateroom for the kids where they could go and make what would be surprise treats for their mothers.

So they would do some crafting with the staff or bake with our executive baking chef, Susie.

And they would, you know, have something special so that after the luncheon, they'd come in, you know, run in and give their moms this gift that they made at the White House.

And mom always made it a point to attend that, even though she didn't do a lot of stuff.

She didn't do much.

She didn't do much stuff, but she always talked about how much she enjoyed that with you.

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Hey, everyone.

It's Craig Robinson.

co-host of the IMO podcast with Michelle Obama.

And I wanted to take a minute to talk about something that I don't usually talk about, my garbage bin, the one in my kitchen.

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I don't have to smell it.

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It's about the size and shape.

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That is, you can add almost any food scraps, even the tough ones like avocado pits and chicken bones.

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I can keep filling it for weeks and it never smells.

during that whole time.

Our mill turns all of those food scraps into clean, dry, nutrient-rich grounds.

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Good thing you can try it risk-free and get $75 off.

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That's mill.com/slash I-M-O.

Well, this might be a good time to go to our question.

Yeah.

I even forgot we had a question.

Yeah, I know.

This is, this is,

we went real in.

We went in for a bit, but

let's, let's take a, let's take a listen to our question.

Hi, Michelle and Craig.

My name is Madeline, and I'm 28 years old.

Last year, my dad passed away after a two-year fight with cancer.

He was just 57.

My parents were still together and happily married when he died.

And I have two brothers that I'm pretty close with.

My family was always very tight-knit and enjoyed each other's company.

We had no major issues.

That said, I was especially close with my dad.

My brothers had a good relationship with him, but for me, my dad was my guy.

We were very similar people.

He was also loved by so many other people.

And spending time with him was so easy and felt like home.

He was basically the number one person I would not have wanted to lose.

I never had a bad relationship with my mom, but we've had a harder time finding our footing since my dad died.

And I think because she had a mom who never fully encouraged her independence, And she married my dad when she was so young, losing him really was like having a rug pulled from under her.

My brothers and I were especially surprised when she started dating so shortly after he died.

She seemed like she was distracting herself rather than grieving him or grieving with us.

In the meantime, I've never felt further apart from my brothers.

I thought we might talk more after this happened, not less.

But it's like we're intentionally keeping our distance.

They're also both married and have partners they can talk about this with.

I'm single and suddenly feel even more alone.

It's like I've gone from someone with one of the best families to being someone without much of a family at all.

I never really imagined my dad's death could so swiftly destabilize our entire family structure.

How could losing the same person we all loved have created such a powerful wedge among us?

How can I begin to feel less alone among them in my grief?

And how can we begin to rebuild the support and closeness we implicitly had as a family while my dad was still around?

Thanks, Madeline.

Yeah,

that's that's tough.

Yeah, that's a tough one.

But I'm thinking about a couple of things in that.

And

the first one is

her brother's handling the grief differently than she does.

And

boy, if there was anything that I've learned with our parents passing away is that

different people handle grief differently.

And it's almost like a relationship.

You have to come to people's grief and meet them where they are, right?

And

the

first bit of advice I'd give

Madeline, in my opinion, would be

help your brothers grieve the way they need to grieve.

While I know you're going through your own

troubles, sort of

let them grieve the way they need to.

And it might be silently,

you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and one of the things you and I have learned,

we've shared with the world our stories of our upbringing and our relationships with our parents.

And in doing that, as close as we are and as close of a family as we are, there are ways that I saw

our parents and certain interactions completely differently than you did.

You know, we're in the same household.

It wasn't like there were a bunch of kids.

We weren't raised differently.

But, you know, the thing Madeline has to realize is that she was very close to her father and felt a certain way.

She probably has absolutely no idea what kind of relationships or set of feelings her brothers had.

Because if they haven't talked about it, right?

Words exchanged,

birth order sometimes makes one kid feel unseen by the parent who saw you so clearly.

And also with the gender dynamic, two sons versus a daughter.

So, you know, and if you don't talk to your brothers and

find out how did you feel?

How How did you feel about our father?

What were your experiences with our father?

Is there anything that I'm missing that makes, that is causing your grief to be different other than the fact that we all grieve differently?

I would just, you know, encourage Madeline to,

you know, not take this too personally

because it may be that the distance and the difference in mourning could

be

explained by a difference in relationship.

If they're not talking,

then she won't know.

If there's no communication at all

and it's causing her pain,

I would say that it's important for her to find ways to reach out.

Not to force them to grieve the way she is.

I think what she, she may have to be the convener now right because if they're her father served that role for the family and he's gone then somebody's got to step up and be it um and that's sort of the darn thing about being a grownup it's like when you lose your parents you lose the

you know

you're next up yeah right you know and i guess if anything with mom's loss i think that that i thank god you're my big brother.

And I have a husband who's older because Barack was saying, you know, well, you're next up.

And I was like, I'm not really ready to be next up.

So I told him, you're next up and Craig is next up.

I delegate that power to you

because it's a little, you know, that's when you, that's really when you become an adult is when your.

parents are not in that spot of managing and maintaining.

But that's going to happen at some point where each of us in our own lives have to, we, we become the parent, we become the convener, we become the glue, you know, and maybe that's daunting for Madeline to kind of, no, maybe you're, maybe you're next up, kid,

if it's important to you, because it may not be important to your brothers, especially if they have their own families and their own traditions.

Yeah.

And, and that's what I was going to say, because this gets back to her statement about the families now destabilized because the stabilizing influence is gone.

And

she has to remember that

these two guys, they've got, they're starting their own families and she isn't.

And she talks about not having any kids.

And if she feels like it's being destabilized, she might have to step up and say, okay, I'm the one, I'm, I'm the anchor here.

And that's, those are big shoes to fill.

It is.

Yeah, they are very big shoes to fill.

And, you know, now that you think about it when you think about uh the loss of a parent like what you you know it it's a major shift in your life for your parents yeah

you're you know i don't care how old you get right mom and dad are mom and dad right you know i you know even when i was taking care of mom you know It's like, I still got to listen to her.

You know, I can sort of boss her around, but in the end, she's my mother.

Yeah.

There's a comfort level in that and knowing that

no matter how wise or experienced I am in the world, mom was, mom always knew more.

Yeah.

It's like, even if that wasn't true, it was just a good feeling that,

let me go, let me, let me, let me, let me go talk to my mommy.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And then that's gone for the first time in your life.

That, you know,

that's going to throw Madeline.

Yeah.

That's a big dose.

And it's a big dose for all of us, especially if

your parents didn't prepare you for that, if they didn't reinforce in you the maturity and the capability that you have of stepping into those shoes or making the choice not to step into it.

Because that may be, maybe that's the daunting thing for Madeline, that she doesn't want to be the glue.

She's not ready, you know?

And that, that's okay too.

but she can't mourn it if other people aren't filling the gap and she doesn't want to right it may just be the way that it is for now the the next evolution of the family right it may be but

i would just you know

i i would urge madeline to fight for the family you know

because she

she right now she feels like a unmoored ship in the middle of the ocean and i feel for her because that's the

that's sadly the the trend in this culture now that people feel alone and they don't have connection to family or friends and so if madeline doesn't have her own community which I would encourage her, whether her fathers were alive, this is why I say people have to build their kitchen tables.

They have to spend a lifetime cultivating relationships within their family and outside of their families, right?

Because not everybody gets along with their family, you know, not everybody lives near their family, but you do need that support.

And I would hate to think that in the midst of her loss of her father, her best friend, that she's got no one, that she went from having a rock to being alone.

I don't, I don't want that for her.

Right.

So if she doesn't have that in her own community, then I'm like, then reach out to your brothers and figure out how to start rebuilding it

and it may take time it may take time because we're lucky we've been close since we've been little yeah right you and i but we work at it too but we do we we we work hard at it and this podcast

this is a good way for me the perfect me to make sure that i see him on a regular basis let's do a show

although it's it's it's kind of hurt our phone game game because we're saving everything.

It's like, don't tell me anything.

We got taping next week.

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One of the other issues that Madeline had in her

letter to us

was that

her mother started dating right away.

This is something we didn't have to deal with.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

Mom's

so nice.

Mom, our mother, not only did she not date,

she might have gone on one or two dates.

Yeah, her theory was like,

all these men are old and all they want is somebody to feed them and give them their medicine.

And take care of them.

And she's like, and I did.

The only person I was going to, the only man I was going to do that for was your father.

I was like, okay, mom.

All right.

Yeah.

So we, we had the opposite.

We had the opposite, but she's dealing with the fact that the person who was her main guy is gone.

And then, and then his wife is out dating.

Right.

Yeah.

That must burn.

That's got to hurt.

Yeah.

That's got to hurt.

Oh, it's probably me.

She's probably pissed.

And, and all I can, I, I want, Madeline, you have to, this is a, it could be a form of grieving.

Yeah.

Or it could be a form of relief.

Yeah.

She doesn't know.

She may not have known her parents' relationship.

You don't know unless you talk to your mom about it.

And to get back to your point about communication,

it's going to burn you until you talk to your mom.

can let her know how you feel.

That'll be part of your dealing with the grief.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we didn't have to deal with that.

No, but you know, Madeline points out in her letter, I mean, she makes a, an astute assessment that

her mom was never lived her life alone.

Right.

You know, she married at a young age.

So I think Madeline understands her mom, right?

And so part of that understanding,

I would encourage her to find the empathy in it that maybe her mom's fast dating isn't a reflection of her love for her father.

Right.

But it's just that she's, she doesn't know how to be alone.

And there are a lot of people in the world who don't know how to be alone, but that doesn't mean they didn't love or treasure the person that they spent their lives with.

Some people temperamentally are afraid to be alone or need a different kind of companionship.

And as you said, that's her mother's way of handling the grief is to fill it.

quickly.

Not saying that that's healthy, but that's what she's probably trying to do is fill that void very as quickly as she can um and it would be a shame if madeline's disconnect with her mother is due to a some judgment

that is you know lacking in empathy for where her mom is and you know don't don't don't let that burn the bridge you know i can't imagine that her father would have wanted her mother alone and lonely for the rest of her life even Even though our mom didn't date, that wasn't some wish that our father would have wanted.

I think if dad had had the opportunity, he would have encouraged mom to date and find love again and to continue to build a life if she chose to do that.

Right.

Or at least we hope that.

We hope that.

But I just knowing dad, I don't think he would have expected her to, you know, that he would have asked that of her.

Yeah.

You know, well, I just don't think it's realistic.

And we, you know, we, we've got some friends who are dealing with that right now.

And

the dad passed away.

The mom started dating really quickly.

And the kids aren't happy with it.

And the grandkids aren't happy with it.

And

there's a couple of people who understand it, but they can't.

get it out of their heads that it happened so quickly.

And

my advice is, you know, stop thinking about the speed with which this happened and think about

the joy that your mom can sort of replenish at this point.

And, but it's hard.

It's hard to get that through to people.

Yeah, well, and as big and bad as I'm sitting here talking, I don't know how I would have felt if mom had started dating.

Well, I mean, but after a while, it's like, you know, we wanted her to date, but if it had been the next month, I, you know,

I think I might have been a little insulted.

We would have been surprised.

Yeah, yeah.

We would have been surprised.

Be like, well, where did he come from?

Yeah.

Where are you keeping this old dude?

You know,

where'd you find him, mom?

Although she could keep some secrets.

I remember when she

ran, started running.

Track meets track meets

in her retirement.

Yeah, she was in her 60s and started running in sprint track competitions.

Sprints.

50-yard dashes, 100-yard dashes.

It's the senior Olympics.

Yes.

And she was wearing these skipped gym shoes.

She didn't even have the right grocery store gym shoes with no grip or anything.

The kind she get from Kmart.

And she was winning.

Winning.

Yeah, winning trophies, winning medals.

So in a period, this is, I guess, what she did instead of finding a man,

she started running.

running away from him right right so she didn't tell us she didn't tell us until she qualified for it was state so she went through all of this qualified for city in her age group came in first in the 50 yard dash in like the locals and then the citywide in chicago yes this is a lot of people this is not a little town right she qualifies for state and had to go down to champaign illinois and that's when she decided to sell a note she didn't tell us She left a note saying, by the way, if you're wondering where I am, I'm in Champaign, Illinois, running in a track meet.

And I thought I ought to tell you in case she was.

Just had dropped dead.

Oh, man.

But she went on to qualify for nationals.

Yeah.

And that was when she lost.

She fell because she got to nationals and realized that all these other old runners were serious.

Like they, they had trained.

She hadn't trained.

She got up from the kitchen table, put out her cigarette, and started running

in kids' shoes.

And she wouldn't let us like, let's get you a trainer.

Let's get you some real track shoes.

She's like, that's why I didn't want you to know.

I don't want your involvement.

So she got down there and they all had their starting blocks and all this stuff.

I think she had on a little t-shirt and some shorts and a kitchen and a wind

running in a windbreaker but she wouldn't didn't let us go so anyway that's that we digress but mom would mom could keep some secrets so maybe she did have a man for all we know

anyway madeline back to madeline sorry madeline lost track but

yeah we did lose track so but yeah um

don't let this

be the reason why your family falls apart after your father's passing.

Because what I would urge Madeline to think about is: what would her father want for his family?

And we don't know him, she didn't describe him to us, but if he was the glue, as she says, then that meant that there was something glued together, that he glued together.

He was the glue of a unit that he valued enough to be the glue for.

So, that without a clear directive was his

action in the world.

His family was important to him.

So I think I want Madeline to think about how horrible her dad would feel to think that his loss

was the end of it, that he and he alone was the only thing keeping things together.

He'd probably look at his little girl, his favorite, to say, hey, Madeline, or whatever her nickname was,

you be the glue.

You know, you know how to do this.

You know your knucklehead brothers.

They don't, they couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag.

You know, they, they can't get Christmas together or, you know, have enough foresight.

They've got young kids, you know, why don't you get on the phone with them and figure out, you know, because it doesn't even take much for the glue.

I mean, we don't live in the same cities.

I don't, I don't, I don't see you a lot often.

Right.

Because you're in Milwaukee, I'm in DC, you've got young kids.

You know, I'm the former first lady, so sometimes coming to your house is a little bit of a hassle, even though I do.

I even did pickup

for the boys, you did, and they were happy to see me in the motorcade.

I was like, and I told my detail, we're doing pickup.

We're going to go to grammar school and pick up my nephews.

And they were like, yes, ma'am.

So off we went.

Three SUVs later.

And

12 guys with

But

I don't get to do that often.

Even though when we were in the White House, we always made sure you guys came to all the fun stuff that they could come to.

But it's not like we had, that we even have

time in.

We don't live in the same city.

Sometimes we go for weeks and it's a check-in, right?

Right.

But then the other weeks, it's like every other day.

If there's something to be said.

So

I would say to Madeline, it doesn't, it doesn't take,

you know, you don't have to call every day.

Yeah.

You don't have to be together every Sunday.

It's not the frequency of the interaction.

It's the quality of the interaction.

Yeah.

So if we, if we wanted to give Madeline

a few pieces of advice, I like your

advice that she can become the stabilizing force of the family.

Become the glue.

So become the glue.

And I like the meeting your brothers where they are.

Everybody grieves differently.

Everybody grieves differently.

And you know, we, what we left out that you and I talk about all the time since dad died is it just takes time.

Yeah.

Time, it gets better.

Yeah.

But it takes time.

And it's different time for different people.

And it, it took me a long time to get over dad's death.

And while I'm not over mom's death, I feel more at peace with her,

with the grieving timeline than I did with dad.

So that's something, Madeline, that we want you to know or want to make sure you're paying attention to that this does get better.

It does get better.

And you just have to weather the storm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then there was a third point that you made that I'm drawing a blank on that I should have written down because we're all over the place.

You know, I think it's it's just,

and it's not just a message to Madeline or advice or our take on it is don't be afraid to deal with grief.

You know,

have the conversations

while everybody is healthy.

You know,

don't let your grief surprise you because it's going to happen.

And especially for parents dealing with kids, kids can handle it it if it's not done in a devastating way.

I mean, mom

could be a little harsh about it, but

our way of joking and teasing and our family set us up for that, not to totally, you know, mess our head, mess with our heads.

But

I think preparing your kids for your loss

is not a bad thing.

It doesn't even mean that you have to talk about when mommy dies, but it's just getting them to a point where they understand the expectation if something were to happen is that I need you to keep living and then do the work to help prepare them to be able to do that, that they feel secure in their own selves, that they don't feel overly dependent on you, that they understand that, you know, what lessons you expect them to know.

You know, that's even before you get down to the specifics of what do people want when they die and, you know, end of life, you know, kind of directives.

I mean, that's sort of the lawyerly thing to do because you want to know all that so that you're not trying to manage that while you're grieving, you know, arguing with family members over whether somebody is cremated or what have you.

It's better for the loved one, the deceased, to have made those decisions so that it eliminates the amount of tension and arguments that the survivors have to go through.

For sure, for sure.

Yeah.

But preparing your kids, if all goes well, you precede them.

That's in the best possible scenario.

So the question is, are your kids ready for you to precede them?

And not when they're 10, but when they're 60 and 70.

Because if you haven't dealt with this, age doesn't matter.

Right.

Right.

I have friends who.

are struggling mighty.

They're 70 years old.

They've got parents who are 90.

You know, um, if you, if you aren't ready for it, it, it's going to hit you.

So

help

find a way to get your kids ready to move on with and without you.

I think that helped.

I think that's helped us.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And one last point.

We didn't have to worry about this because we, like I said, have been close, but she could use this as an opportunity to get closer with her siblings.

Yep.

and she needs it and she needs it she needs it

so be be the glue yeah pick up the phone and good luck madeline you're gonna be okay

you're gonna be okay well thanks i'm glad you're you're doing okay i'm glad you're doing okay yeah but we'll keep talking we will spend soon you know that's the other thing it ebbs and flows there's some days when i'm great and then there are other days when something happens and it hits me i go to reach for the phone.

Man,

you know, it's funny.

Kelly used to talk to mom every Sunday.

It was like her thing.

It was, let me get the food ready for the week and who's coming in this week.

And, and there was this thing, she would put her phone in her

shirt and she'd be on the

earpods and she'd walk around on Sundays.

Talking to mom.

And the other day she was doing that.

And I was thinking,

I wish she was talking about it.

Yeah.

So,

whoo,

made it through.

Yeah.

Way to go.

Love you.

Love you too.

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