-Hello, everyone. My name is Matt Cassady.
I'm one of the chaplains with the National Chaplain Service
out of Washington, D.C., here to talk to you today.
We're looking at the topic of grief and loss,
specifically with the Afghanistan withdrawal
and what you might be experiencing.
First off, I'd like to say that if you're looking to read more,
to educate more just to get a better sense
of what grief and loss is, I think Dr. Alan Wolfelt
has written extensively on grief and loss.
He has books.
He has workbooks that you can work through, as well.
They're a great resource, but let me first follow up,
and let me say this a little bit more succinctly
than anybody else you will probably read will say.
The term closure is a crap term,
and so I want to just throw that out there for y'all.
Folks will look at you and say,
"Well, why don't you have closure yet?"
or, "Maybe you need some closure,"
or, "Let's work towards closure."
Do you think you'll ever really be closed
on grieving a loss and grieving a sacrifice
that you've experienced, either in your life in general
or during your service in Afghanistan in particular?
I don't think so.
So I think one of the realities is what we try to work towards
is some type of understanding,
some type of incorporating our grief and loss into our stories,
but the thought that closure can happen is nonsense.
And so I want to encourage y'all that if you feel like,
"Wow, you know, the last time
I was in Afghanistan was 10 years ago,
and I'm still grieving the loss of my friends,
still grieving the loss of my marriage
that ended during that time," that's okay.
That's pretty normal.
I wouldn't expect that you would ever not grieve
the loss of a friend or grieve the loss of a marriage.
There are certainly going to be times
where those losses become more present,
and you feel them more.
You might become very sad.
You might become more emotional.
You might even cry, and that's okay, right?
But the thought of closure I think
is more to help the other people around you
so they don't have to see your grief,
and so I just encourage you to put good people around you,
people that are going to understand
that grief and loss is an ongoing thing,
that you're going to have good days,
and you're going to have bad days.
You might have good weeks, and you might have bad weeks.
You might have good months and then maybe have a bad month
depending on what's going on in the news,
what's going on with your time line of life
but then also with anniversaries around deaths of friends.
You might have times that are very difficult and just hurt,
and that's incredibly normal,
and so I want to help normalize that for you.
I think there's another piece
that's very important for everyone to understand
is that how we measure time is linear, right?
We have -- October the 1st was just a few days ago,
and so we measure time by a calendar.
That makes sense. That's all very linear.
How we experience grief, loss and healing
is not a linear thing.
It can go up and down.
It can go sideways, back and forth.
It can kind of dip down and curl back.
I mean, that's grief.
We don't get to determine how the course of grief goes.
There are some things that are more important or more helpful
as we cope with grief and loss, but one of those things --
I had an old provider for me once upon a time that said,
"You know, you have to begin to make peace with your past,
with your grief and your loss,"
and I was like, "Well, that's crazy.
I don't know how you expect me to do that,"
and he said, "Now let me just take a couple steps back.
I'm not saying you have to get over it.
I'm not saying you have to just get on.
I'm not saying you have to be better
or be different about this loss.
I'm saying that you need to make peace with it,
and so every morning when you get up,
you're going to have the grief with you, right?"
That's how grief and loss works, right?
It happens.
You know, you'll might have some remembrances
in different parts of the day. You might have smells.
You might have sounds.
But he said, "When you wake up in the morning,
go to that place where you can remember your friends,
where you can remember your loss,
and if it's you're going to say a quick prayer.
You're just going to say,
'Hey, miss you guys, miss you, buddy,'
something that kind of marks that time every day,
and so you're recognizing that you've got this grief and loss.
You've got this horrible thing that's happened in your life,
and to recognize it every day instead of waiting for it
to show itself in your life
in maybe an unexpected way can be incredibly healing
but also incredibly empowering to how you cope with that loss
and then with that grief."
I think William Shakespeare said a long time ago, right,
in "Hamlet," he was talking about --
Actually, it was Ophelia that was talking about
all these different herbs and what they do,
and she mentioned rosemary specifically,
that rosemary is this thing that, you know --
She said, you know, "Take rosemary. Use rosemary.
Pray, love and remember,"
and so I think just looking at that old, you know,
in "Hamlet" and what Ophelia's guidance was to pray, love
and remember,
I think those are good ways to address grief and loss,
to allow grief and loss into your life,
that, one, you can pray certainly,
that you can love others,
that you can emit love for those that you have lost
and for the time that you've lost,
for the life that maybe you have lost around you and to remember,
and rosemary is one of those insidious herbs
that grows in your garden.
If left untended, it will take over everything.
It will grow.
It will spread.
It will permeate every part of your garden if you allow it to,
and so what you have to do with rosemary,
even in tending to it, is you have to maintain it daily,
at least every few days. You have to go out.
You have to clip, especially if it's getting large.
You know, if you let stuff go along for a long time --
We all like to talk about student loans.
We think student loans are wonderful.
They help us get through education.
They help us get to a point.
Hopefully, we get a degree at the end of that time,
but I like to throw in my student loans
every once in a while.
I did everything I could to not pay back
those student loans for the first 5 years.
I took forbearance, took whatever else they had and said,
"Okay, 5 years, I'm going to try to do everything else
and just kind of establish what I've got going on,"
and I ignored the student loans.
Now at the end of that time, I still had the same degree
at the end of paying off my student loans,
still had the same degree,
but what I did was I took a $60,000 debt
that has me pushing it off for 5 years,
made it a $90,000 debt.
Did I have the same degree? Absolutely.
Did I have a different bill to pay?
You bet, and why was that?
It's because I pushed it off as long as I could and said,
"I will address that.
I will attend to that when it's more convenient,
when it fits more into the life plan that I have
or where it just seems to make more sense for me."
Now if I could go back,
I would start paying on the student loans right away, right?
I would just hop right in. I wouldn't miss a beat.
I'd make some sacrifices in other places, make time
and maybe work an extra job
so I could pay those student loans down.
That's how grief is, and that's how we experience grief and loss
is that the loss, the loss of a friend,
the loss of time,
the, you know, sacrifice that we have made for our nation,
the loss of marriages, friendships,
the reality is the end thing is still there.
We have still lost friends.
We have still had friends that have been killed in combat.
We have still spent 20-plus years in Afghanistan.
Those are all true things.
The longer we let them go untended for ourselves
and untended in our own lives and hearts,
it will continue to grow if we don't maintain it,
and so one thing I'd like to encourage y'all to do,
you have a lot of resources from the VA.
You can go to your local chaplain service.
You can go to your local mental health team
and just to throw a plug in there,
if you go to your local mental health team,
it doesn't mean that you're crazy.
It doesn't mean that you need to take medication.
It doesn't mean that you have some pre,
you know, "Oh, if I walk in,
they're immediately going to say this, this and this about me."
Go in and talk to people.
There's no harm in talking to folks.
I have had a lot of vets that I've worked
with over the years that have said,
"Hey, I don't really want to take any medication."
Okay.
The medication might help, but if you want to do it
without the medication, that's fine.
We can certainly work towards your goals,
and we'll work in concert with the mental health folks.
We'll work in consult with docs.
We're also going to work together to help you,
and we don't have a prescribed notion of
when someone walks in the door, we have to do A, B, C.
First thing we're going to do is talk to you
and do our best to understand you,
to give you a safe space to discuss what's going on,
what you're feeling, what you're thinking
and just hear your heart's cry.
One organization that we've done work
with a lot in the past is the TAPS program.
It's Tragedy Assistance Provide.
It's a network that allows you --
that has allowed Gold Star families to grieve,
that has allowed those folks that have survived suicide,
those folks that have been around suicide,
that have lost family members to suicide, that --
They help with grief and loss.
They have a lot of amazing, great resources.
Of course, we have the VA Crisis Line.
There are a lot of things that you can reach out to,
to talk, to help and just to simply say,
"Hey, I can't do this on my own,"
or, "I don't want to do it on my own,"
or, "Maybe me doing it on my own hasn't been very effective.
It's time to just -- you know, to ask for help,"
and that is okay, and that's actually pretty darn wonderful.
Asking for help especially when you're looking
at the immense grief and loss,
not just friends that you've lost in combat
but then also looking at,
"Hey, how's this withdrawal from Afghanistan impacted that?
The sacrifice of time and the loss of life
that I've experienced and been a part of,
how does all of that stuff, you know, work in my life?"
That's a lot to unpack, and that's a lot to unravel.
I don't think it's going to happen in a 10-minute podcast
that, you know, I think if you can start
the conversation with somebody,
go to those people you can trust.
Start the conversation.
Look out -- You know, the VA is always there.
We're always there to help.
Look at your local Vet Center.
They're attached to the VA
but in a very anonymous type of way,
so you can go in and talk to the Vet Center,
and they keep things pretty private,
and we have a lot of active duty folks
that will go to Vet Centers
because they want to stay outside their chain of command.
They want to stay apart from the medical system.
That's okay. Go to the Vet Center.
The big thing is, is that you talk to somebody
and that you have help in addressing your grief and loss.
I want to thank y'all for tuning in today,
clicking on a couple buttons and joining this podcast.
Thank you all so much.
I pray that you would have a wonderful day
and that as you approach your grief and loss
you would give yourself the space
and also yourself the grace to allow for the hurt
and the pain to be addressed in your life.
Thank you all so much. Have a great day.
Goodbye.