Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
Speaker 1: Facebook watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. We've all been prolified by the news
Speaker 1: of Alec Baldwin killing cinematographer Helena Hutchins. Accidental killings have
Speaker 1: been over thirty thousand times a year. What's your emergency.
Speaker 1: They didn't know that I was a killer. They just
Speaker 1: knew me as the math teacher. That moment, with the
Speaker 1: smoke clearing and seeing my brother's body on the ground
Speaker 1: that I can still taste gunpowder, I flipped my car.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend died in the accident that I caused. Eight
Speaker 1: year old boy jarreted into the road and I hit
Speaker 1: him and he died before he reached the hospital. I
Speaker 1: had taken a child from his mother, caused them oceans
Speaker 1: of grief. Can you imagine killing someone by mistake? If
Speaker 1: I could speak to the Baldwin family, I would say,
Speaker 1: we're here for the nitty grids, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We've all been deeply sad and horrified by the news
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin shot and killed cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the
Speaker 1: set of the movie Rust. I am horrified for everybody
Speaker 1: that's involved to me and I work on the set
Speaker 1: a lot with guns and they're usually really fierce protocols.
Speaker 1: It was shocking. I didn't understand and I still don't
Speaker 1: quite understand how that could happen. In Have you always
Speaker 1: felt safe and set? Always? Really always, because usually the
Speaker 1: prop master will come and show you the gun and
Speaker 1: they'll demonstrate not I always have them demonstrating look inside
Speaker 1: of the barrel. They'll put the blanks in while you're watching.
Speaker 1: So you got training on how to use the gun.
Speaker 1: I got training on how to use the gun and
Speaker 1: also training on what I should be looking for in
Speaker 1: order to handle a hot weapon on set. Right, do
Speaker 1: you ever handle up a real gun? They're all real?
Speaker 1: Are there times when there are real bullets? No? No,
Speaker 1: there should see that's the thing that should never happen.
Speaker 1: Helena's tragic death should like on a shocking statistic, accidental
Speaker 1: killing happens over thirty thousand times a year. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. So meet John Arthur Green and Jennifer
Speaker 1: Eikenhorst who know all too well what Alec Baldwin must
Speaker 1: be feeling like. Jennifer, a high school math teacher and
Speaker 1: Mama four had just picked up her daughter from volleyball
Speaker 1: and tragedy struck motorcycle Bokay, John, a musician who competed
Speaker 1: on American Idol, will be forever haunted by a fatal
Speaker 1: mistake that took the life of someone he loved the
Speaker 1: most in the world. John, let's start with you. So, Um,
Speaker 1: we grew up in North Carolina and you know, country
Speaker 1: family and worked the farm. And both my parents are
Speaker 1: Southern Baptist ministers. And when I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: that was my parents wedding anniversary and they had left
Speaker 1: my brother and I home on that night. Um, we
Speaker 1: were playing cops and robbers, you know, as kids do.
Speaker 1: And um, and we always handled the guns. I mean
Speaker 1: the guns were always safe and never loaded, and we
Speaker 1: always were taught how to clean them and taught how
Speaker 1: to shoot, and also taught put him, put him away,
Speaker 1: picked up the gun and called him in the room.
Speaker 1: And when I pulled the trigger, it went off. And yeah,
Speaker 1: like that moment with the smoke clearing and seeing my
Speaker 1: brother's body on the ground, I can still taste gunpowder.
Speaker 1: He's bleeding. I held him for his last couple of breaths.
Speaker 1: He was thirteen, five years older than me, and he
Speaker 1: was my best friend. We did everything together. When the
Speaker 1: cops got there, I remember being petrified, right, being like,
Speaker 1: I can't Please, don't tell my parents, Please don't tell
Speaker 1: my parents. And not because I thought, I was like,
Speaker 1: they'll kill me my dad because the gun was loaded.
Speaker 1: They came for him too, I mean, they tried to
Speaker 1: charge me, and I remember my mom standing up and saying, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: this conversation is over. We're the adults. If you want
Speaker 1: anybody to be charged, you charge us. Goodbye. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: day I went back to school, which was like maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks after it happened, right, the girl
Speaker 1: who I had like the biggest crush on, she called
Speaker 1: me a murderer. And for a long time time, that's
Speaker 1: that's what yeah, And that's that's the narrative that kept
Speaker 1: playing over and over and over again. Every time I
Speaker 1: looked in the mirror, I hated what I saw. And
Speaker 1: this is the conversation with Alec. Right, So the media,
Speaker 1: she killed someone. It was an accident, yes, but people
Speaker 1: are going to say you murdered him, you did this,
Speaker 1: you did that, because they have to label something. Yeah, John,
Speaker 1: did you ever feel like you had to keep your
Speaker 1: story a secret? I mean I lied about my story
Speaker 1: for a long time because I didn't want anybody else
Speaker 1: to call me a murderer. And I mean I made
Speaker 1: up I made up stories that somebody came in and
Speaker 1: shot my brother. We should have all of us been
Speaker 1: in therapy immediately, and um, and we weren't. And that
Speaker 1: was something we thought that we could kind of handle
Speaker 1: it right here. And everything became a coping mechanism, you know,
Speaker 1: Drugs became for me. Sex became a coping mechanism, alcohol
Speaker 1: and any type of subs. And the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is I should be dead, and quite a few
Speaker 1: times over I used my industry. I was TV, film
Speaker 1: and the entertainment industry. I was laying all these really
Speaker 1: dark roles because at that point, it was like I
Speaker 1: just wanted to take my insides and throw them out.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to feel it. It was so painful,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I know I'm going to die
Speaker 1: because I'm doing so many drugs at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's inevitable. What was your rock bottom? When I
Speaker 1: was sixteen, I found out that my dad was cheating
Speaker 1: on my mom and had Parkinson's in the same night, uh,
Speaker 1: at the same time. And so at sixteen, I had
Speaker 1: all of this anger and and and and brokenness. My
Speaker 1: brother's dead and and I have shame from that, and
Speaker 1: I'm unworthy of that. But now my father has left me.
Speaker 1: He died December two thousand and nineteen. We never got
Speaker 1: to sit down and be like, yo, unpack it, like
Speaker 1: this is what happened, fathered a son and like man
Speaker 1: to man. We never had that that real moment. I
Speaker 1: had to officiate his funeral, And that was my rock bottle.
Speaker 1: When I sat up there and I go, I have
Speaker 1: not I don't, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Me and this man had such a hard relationship. We
Speaker 1: can't be mended right now. I didn't know if if
Speaker 1: he really could forget, forgave me or not. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to have a conversation with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt like I had killed my dad's son. That's
Speaker 1: what I thought, That's what I felt. I was so
Speaker 1: tunnel vision in my pain, and he was still in
Speaker 1: his pain and in his heard of, you know, feeling
Speaker 1: responsible losing his son, and in that moment, I go, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is the man that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be and I'm not going to succumb to all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to fall backwards. When he died, I
Speaker 1: knew that that was my time to step up. I
Speaker 1: started messaging people that I really trusted in the medical
Speaker 1: field and I said, I need your best PTSD therapist
Speaker 1: that you have ever encountered. It was a long process.
Speaker 1: Extensive therapy came in with that, and and and and
Speaker 1: you know, support groups and a bunch of things. Were
Speaker 1: you able to have that kind of deep dive with
Speaker 1: your mom? Oh, that's my girl, That's that's my that's it.
Speaker 1: That's the power in my story is the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm still here. You're still then, like, and
Speaker 1: I'm here and I'm breathing, and I'm coming into a
Speaker 1: place where I'm stepping into feeling like that unworthiness is
Speaker 1: like not going to hold it's grip me an what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, but I mean, for a long time, I
Speaker 1: didn't feel worthy of love, feel worthy of giving love,
Speaker 1: feeling worthy of breath you know, Jennifer, I know that
Speaker 1: you had picked up your daughter from a volleyball game
Speaker 1: and then what happened after that. So, my daughter had
Speaker 1: a volleyball game and a friend of mine was going
Speaker 1: to bring her to me, but plans change that night
Speaker 1: ten minutes before this accident happened. I mean, we just
Speaker 1: pivoted to me going to get her, and we were
Speaker 1: care free, you know, to know about her volleyball game.
Speaker 1: She finally got her serve over the net and I
Speaker 1: pulled out of my friend's driveway. It was dark country road,
Speaker 1: and I came to the stop sign and I pulled
Speaker 1: out into an intersection. And what I didn't know was
Speaker 1: that there was a man coming up over the hill
Speaker 1: and um, his motorcycle collided with my car. And when
Speaker 1: I came out of the entrance, I didn't understand what happened.
Speaker 1: It was so fast and it was like our car
Speaker 1: suddenly illuminated with light. And I remember looking over at
Speaker 1: my little girl and I braced for impact, thinking this
Speaker 1: is it. Then I just felt this bump. I remember
Speaker 1: just being stun because there was no crash, there was
Speaker 1: no brooch jolt, and I looked at my rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: and then I and I put it together and I said,
Speaker 1: mommy's gotta go help him. I just grabbed my phone
Speaker 1: and ran to this man and styled nine on one
Speaker 1: and I was screaming. Helped me. I just held his
Speaker 1: hand even when the ambulance, I just didn't want to
Speaker 1: let go of his hands, and I prayed over him
Speaker 1: and I did everything that I could, and he passed
Speaker 1: away two days later. And I'll never understand everything had
Speaker 1: to align just so, because what we found out later
Speaker 1: through the investigation was that there's a divot in that hill,
Speaker 1: and their hypothesis is when I looked left, he was
Speaker 1: in that It's like being in a blond. Yes, I'll
Speaker 1: always regret not treating that intersection like it was a
Speaker 1: busy road. What was part of your process of being
Speaker 1: able to heal from this? The first three six months,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how it was going to still live like.
Speaker 1: It was so heavy. I thought, well, surely my heart
Speaker 1: will give out. I'll just die early. And I remember
Speaker 1: there was a moment where I had just stayed in
Speaker 1: bed all day for weeks. I was like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: if I just stay away when I do go and
Speaker 1: leave this earth, it will be easier on my children.
Speaker 1: But like coping, I think originally like just my family
Speaker 1: surrounded me and even then my faith. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love the Lord. I was so like, Lord, you abandoned me.
Speaker 1: You abandoned me, this is not my purpose. Like wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you did not bring me on this earth
Speaker 1: to hurt this family. Because he had children, he was
Speaker 1: a father, he was a veteran. I think, um, my
Speaker 1: biggest shame was that I had judged people who were
Speaker 1: in scenarios like this. Here I am asking for mercy,
Speaker 1: asking for grace, and I didn't feel worthy and even
Speaker 1: as a mom, I didn't feel worthy to have my children.
Speaker 1: It felt like total devastation. I was totally prepared to
Speaker 1: walk up my house and be stoned. Did you lose
Speaker 1: a lot of family of friends over this incident? People
Speaker 1: got weird, My inner circle got smaller. I think there
Speaker 1: were people who were like, mm, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to give you compassion, because if I give you compassion,
Speaker 1: I am not compassionate towards a family. They don't know
Speaker 1: how to share right Because I'm the perpetrator. My whole
Speaker 1: identity was gone because I'm a school teacher, a wife,
Speaker 1: a mom, and then all of a sudden, I was like,
Speaker 1: I could go to prison for this every aspect of
Speaker 1: your life right, And my happy place was teaching because
Speaker 1: these kids didn't know. They didn't know that I was
Speaker 1: a killer. They just knew me as the math teacher.
Speaker 1: Can I ask your Jennifer, if you had any interaction
Speaker 1: with the family, it's really unfortunate, but you're advised immediately.
Speaker 1: We are told by law enforcement lawyers, you do not
Speaker 1: say anything. And I did it anyway. I had my
Speaker 1: own memorial because I knew I couldn't go to his memorial,
Speaker 1: and I just wrote a card and a letter and
Speaker 1: I gave us a victim's services and I asked them
Speaker 1: to please give it to the family. I was facing
Speaker 1: possible charges because he had the right of way. So
Speaker 1: here I am also facing the shame destroying my family
Speaker 1: to where you don't feel worthy. But if I were
Speaker 1: to pursue them, I feel like it would be selfish.
Speaker 1: That is their healing, and I want to protect them
Speaker 1: and I would never want them to say, oh, I
Speaker 1: forgive you to make me feel better. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's wrong, and at first that's what you want, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just want to tell him sorry, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: say sorry enough. We've done the worst of the worst
Speaker 1: to a family, the unforgivable. And if I can say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I accept who I am. I'm still guilty,
Speaker 1: but I've let go of the shame. I've let go
Speaker 1: of the shame. And part of that is by sharing
Speaker 1: my story. And when you get free, if you get
Speaker 1: you share, you share it. That's real talk. I'm just
Speaker 1: so inspired by just the fact that both of you
Speaker 1: are reaching for for that faith and reaching for the light.
Speaker 1: Because even with my little things that be happening to me,
Speaker 1: and I'll be getting all the present stuff and you
Speaker 1: can go into you can take yourself into a really
Speaker 1: dark space and to have come through something like this,
Speaker 1: it takes work, and not every day is gonna be easy,
Speaker 1: but you choose it right there you go. So this
Speaker 1: l A. Tom's headline grabbed my attention. The anguish of
Speaker 1: unintentional killing and how Alec Baldwin can learn to cope
Speaker 1: with it. It was written by psychologist Marianne Gray, who
Speaker 1: revealed I know this because I too, am an accidental killer.
Speaker 1: Marianne is the founder of Accidental Impacts, a support group
Speaker 1: for those who have unintentionally harmed someone. Jennifer says the
Speaker 1: community Maryanne created has been a lifeline. Jennifer, I know
Speaker 1: you have never met her in person. I never met
Speaker 1: her in person. Hi, Hi, welcome jention. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: what a pleasure you know? I know, so, Mary, I
Speaker 1: can you tell us your story. I was a graduate
Speaker 1: student living in Ohio and I was driving home one
Speaker 1: beautiful spring afternoon along a rural highway when an eight
Speaker 1: year old boy who family lived alongside that highway darted
Speaker 1: into the road and I hit him, and he died
Speaker 1: before he reached the hospital. His name was Brian. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, his family was devastated, and I also was devastated. Course,
Speaker 1: my mood kind of went back and forth from tremendous
Speaker 1: grief too absolute terror of what would happen to me,
Speaker 1: as well as the guilt sit in. Almost right away,
Speaker 1: I just felt that I did not deserve sympathy, I
Speaker 1: did not deserve compassion or support. So I almost immediately
Speaker 1: began to withdraw. And so what happened was all my thoughts,
Speaker 1: which some of which were pretty crazy, about myself and
Speaker 1: my feelings. It all went underground and on the outside,
Speaker 1: I tried to act like your basic, normal twenty two
Speaker 1: year old and everything is fine. But I'm getting over it.
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. I'm a stronger person, but inside I
Speaker 1: was just a mess. I couldn't drive. I would be
Speaker 1: so frightened. I thought I would see people in the
Speaker 1: roadway and I slam on my brakes, which is really dangerous.
Speaker 1: And so I sold my car. But I didn't say
Speaker 1: I'm selling my car because I'm afraid. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm selling my car because it's not good for the
Speaker 1: environment and I should just take the bus. And that
Speaker 1: continued for years, that divide between the innermy, which was
Speaker 1: self punishing, self hating, frightened, and the outer me, where
Speaker 1: I looked like, oh, you know, I finished my PhD,
Speaker 1: I got a great job, I married a good guy.
Speaker 1: You know, my life looked like it was working pretty well.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. And the cost of that is a
Speaker 1: tremendous loneliness. You can't live an authentic life if you're hiding.
Speaker 1: And so as I began my own process of finally
Speaker 1: dealing with it and speaking out and healing and recovering,
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't want anybody to be as alone
Speaker 1: as I felt, and that's a big part of why
Speaker 1: it started accidental impacts. I wanted to make amends and
Speaker 1: I wanted to make the world a better place. Marianne,
Speaker 1: you did mention that there was a level of self
Speaker 1: punishment and self hatred. What did that look like? I
Speaker 1: did not have children. That was a big way I
Speaker 1: punished myself. I felt, first of all that I had
Speaker 1: taken a child from his mother, that I had caused
Speaker 1: them oceans of grief, and that I could not give
Speaker 1: myself that that joy, that I had to deny myself
Speaker 1: the joy of my own children. More generally, I did
Speaker 1: not want to allow myself happiness. And every time I
Speaker 1: started feeling that unbridled joy, I would stop myself and
Speaker 1: I would say, you killed a child, Marianne, you killed
Speaker 1: a child. You do not deserve to feel like this.
Speaker 1: I think that's a very common thing with with trauma
Speaker 1: and PTSD, and anything that felt good is no, I'm
Speaker 1: not that's the voice. The voice is not worthy. I
Speaker 1: had so many negative voices. It was like a jumble.
Speaker 1: I kept saying, you're a killer, and I would ask myself,
Speaker 1: like Lord and my killer. I didn't understand how to
Speaker 1: put the language to it. So I started just writing
Speaker 1: each thought that kept reoccurring, those intrusive thoughts, had to
Speaker 1: write them down, and I bring this notebook to my
Speaker 1: therapist and we'd go line by line, thought by thought,
Speaker 1: and one day I was like, what did I believe before?
Speaker 1: Because like for thirty six years, I believed A, B,
Speaker 1: and C. And I would take those thoughts one by one.
Speaker 1: I would have to look back and be like, is
Speaker 1: this rational? Does this? Does this line up to my
Speaker 1: belief system, my faith? Or is this something that's a
Speaker 1: mental health issue and I need to let it go?
Speaker 1: How does it feel to be able to interact with
Speaker 1: other people have gone through a similar experience, because I
Speaker 1: would imagine that it has to be a relief, yes, lifeline.
Speaker 1: When I when I found mary Anne Sight, I had
Speaker 1: been praying for the Lord to show me someone like
Speaker 1: myself that I wasn't alone, because you feel like you're
Speaker 1: going crazy. I mean, every time I try to share
Speaker 1: my story, it would be like, well did you know him?
Speaker 1: And I would just be like no. But I was
Speaker 1: weeping and grieving as if it was so deep and
Speaker 1: no one could understand it. So then I thought I
Speaker 1: was something wrong with me. I did want to make
Speaker 1: a point. The victim is a person who died, and
Speaker 1: the people grieving for that person. We're suffering, and we're anguished,
Speaker 1: and we're despairing, and we're in need of support. But
Speaker 1: I don't consider us victims the person whose life was taken.
Speaker 1: It is about them, and I believe our hearts are
Speaker 1: big enough that we could have compassion for everybody. Men. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about Also, we had a close associate
Speaker 1: at one point whose steps on accidentally grabbed a gun
Speaker 1: and he shot his brother as well. When I think
Speaker 1: about so many people from our community who run into
Speaker 1: these incidents, you know, for black people, we have to
Speaker 1: feel the comfort that's right to even come out. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times I would imagine that
Speaker 1: there has been accidental killings where people have not been
Speaker 1: able to talk about it, have not been able to
Speaker 1: admit it because of the fear of the repercussions and
Speaker 1: because of the fear that they will lack the support
Speaker 1: and the willingness to be open to the understanding that
Speaker 1: it was an accident. Know, there's a lot of research
Speaker 1: out there that indicates that when emotionally upsetting events occur
Speaker 1: and when the person involved is perceived as other, we're
Speaker 1: even more likely as observers and onlookers to assign more
Speaker 1: blad add to that the bias that exists in our society.
Speaker 1: I would be willing to bet that people of color
Speaker 1: are far more likely in these circumstances to be arrested
Speaker 1: and then to serve time exactly. And so we're very
Speaker 1: eager to increase diversity within our community, and we're making
Speaker 1: some steps to do that. So, Marianne, you wrote an
Speaker 1: article about how Alec could heal. What do you think
Speaker 1: that journey looks like? Okay, I love the word journey.
Speaker 1: First of all, it is a journey, and I think
Speaker 1: there are three main challenges. The first challenge is managing trauma.
Speaker 1: Most people that I've encountered who have unintentionally harmed another
Speaker 1: person are traumatized themselves. When you're traumatized, it's all encompassing.
Speaker 1: It's not just your emotions. You can't think clearly. Your
Speaker 1: body is affected, your sleep is affected. So I truly
Speaker 1: believe that nothing much can happen until the trauma is managed.
Speaker 1: And there's super good treatments out there right now for trauma.
Speaker 1: So I really encouraged people to seek therapy. Getting the
Speaker 1: trauma under control allows us to think, and then we
Speaker 1: can say what was I responsible for, what is my fault,
Speaker 1: what was my fault? What does this mean for my life?
Speaker 1: And you could start to kind of journey down that
Speaker 1: road to some kind of healing or what I like
Speaker 1: to say is peace with yourself and you more old.
Speaker 1: But until the trauma is managed, that's very difficult. The
Speaker 1: second challenge is what I refer to as moral injury.
Speaker 1: It's a toxic stew of feelings when we let ourselves down,
Speaker 1: when we fail to live up to our own moral
Speaker 1: standards and expectations. So what happens with moral injury, Well,
Speaker 1: we can be self destructive, we can even be suicidal,
Speaker 1: or we can abuse substances and we deny ourselves happiness.
Speaker 1: But I believe that guilt when we harm someone is appropriate.
Speaker 1: We would we think about someone who unintentionally ran over
Speaker 1: a child and didn't feel guilty. So so I don't
Speaker 1: say we have to get rid of our guilt. I
Speaker 1: talk about channeling our guilt, and we do that, I
Speaker 1: believe through the third step, which is honoring our victim.
Speaker 1: And there's so many ways to do that. Some people
Speaker 1: invest in real pigeon. In spirituality, many people choose service.
Speaker 1: Some people invest in creative expression. I think you've done that, John,
Speaker 1: And many people just make a very mindful and conscious
Speaker 1: decision to live with greater compassion and kindness. Not that
Speaker 1: we're not compassionate and kind already, but can we We
Speaker 1: could always. If I could speak to the Baldwin family,
Speaker 1: I would say, I really hope he's got the support
Speaker 1: of people watching him, because this takes time. It takes time.
Speaker 1: I had people watching me, and you had people. They're
Speaker 1: sitting in the fire, sitting in the pit because there's
Speaker 1: no easy pill. And I would tell the Baldwin family,
Speaker 1: sit in the pit. If he wants to scream, you
Speaker 1: just sit there. If he needs to weep. I wept
Speaker 1: every day for a year, and my family caught those tears.
Speaker 1: They did. Thank you for sharing your stories, having the
Speaker 1: courage to share your stories with us, and the willingness,
Speaker 1: And I really feel like it's gonna help a lot
Speaker 1: of folks. And I want to say, as I participate
Speaker 1: in this conversation, which has been so rich, that I
Speaker 1: I want to again recognize the child that died, and
Speaker 1: that I try to be a better person in his honor,
Speaker 1: and I believe that all of you, the five of you,
Speaker 1: have helped me do that today. So thank you. Say
Speaker 1: his name, Bryant. Would you like to save it? Thomas?
Speaker 1: Thank you all, thank you, Thank you. Beautiful. Mark O'Brien
Speaker 1: made a fatal decision that killed his girlfriend Laura. Mark
Speaker 1: was sentenced to three months in prison, but says the
Speaker 1: reality of what he's done Hansom every single day, Mark,
Speaker 1: I have to start off with, I'm very sorry, and
Speaker 1: that is a brutal experience. I appreciate that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you tell us your story? So, my girlfriend Laura
Speaker 1: planned a birthday party for me. I just turned the
Speaker 1: day before, and we were living together outside of Annapolis
Speaker 1: in Maryland and I know here from there. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we went out drinking with friends all night at the bar,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the night, I made the
Speaker 1: awful decision to try to drive us home, got it,
Speaker 1: and I flipped my car on outside of Annapolis, just
Speaker 1: a few miles from home, and Laura died in the
Speaker 1: accident that I caused. UM. I woke up a few
Speaker 1: hours later in the Shock Trauma Center at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland and had no idea what had happened? And
Speaker 1: I kept asking people in the hospital, was anyone else hurt?
Speaker 1: What happened? Nobody would tell me, and then finally a
Speaker 1: chaplain from the hospital pulled back the curtain around my bed,
Speaker 1: and I knew that the chaplain was there to tell
Speaker 1: me something pretty awful. And she said, Mark, somebody else
Speaker 1: was in the car with you. And I said, was
Speaker 1: it Laura? And she nodded and I said, is she
Speaker 1: okay um? And she said, Mark, she didn't make it.
Speaker 1: And it was like my entire world just collapsed. In
Speaker 1: one moment, I was just full of despair and horror
Speaker 1: at what had happened, and the next moment, I felt
Speaker 1: nothing at all, and it was like I was watching
Speaker 1: this happen to this man that I knew was me,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't my story. And that was the worst
Speaker 1: day of my life. And then the state troopers showed
Speaker 1: up and said they needed to take my blood as
Speaker 1: part of their homicide investigation, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about this part of it. My
Speaker 1: dad came and I went to his house and I
Speaker 1: took a shower and I was just pulling like the
Speaker 1: glass cubes out of my head. I got out of
Speaker 1: the shower and I went to call David, Laura's father,
Speaker 1: and I just assumed that they would hate me, and
Speaker 1: they'd probably forbid me to come to her funeral, that
Speaker 1: they would never want to have anything to do with me,
Speaker 1: and and frankly, I would have been in total agreement
Speaker 1: with that sentiment. But he picked up the phone and
Speaker 1: I started to apologize, and he said, Mark, thank god,
Speaker 1: you're all right. The state troopers came to our house
Speaker 1: and told us about Laura, but they wouldn't tell us
Speaker 1: what happened to you. We thought we'd lost you both.
Speaker 1: They were living in Florida at the time. They came
Speaker 1: up a few days later, and I was so scared
Speaker 1: to see them. But when they opened the door to
Speaker 1: their home, they just wrapped me in their love and affects.
Speaker 1: And I get that you're not a stranger to them.
Speaker 1: And they had a sentence that this was an accident.
Speaker 1: I understand how they wrapped you in that love. It
Speaker 1: would take me a minute, Yeah, it would take me
Speaker 1: a minute. I was just sitting here, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: about Willow, you know, And I'm not saying I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have hurt in my heart and compassion in my heart,
Speaker 1: but I would be in a deep existential crisis. We
Speaker 1: all know we shouldn't drink and drive. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like it's it's a different level of responsibility when you've
Speaker 1: made a choice that created the risk versus the fact
Speaker 1: that we all live in a world that has risk
Speaker 1: in it. That's yeah. I see that you're married now,
Speaker 1: Is that it? Yeah? How was that journey for you? Well?
Speaker 1: After the crash, I drank the pain away every day,
Speaker 1: and I was at my friend chris Is. A group
Speaker 1: of our friends walked in with Um a woman I've
Speaker 1: never met before, Maria, and we strike up a conversation
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of like, Hi, Mark, it's nice to
Speaker 1: meet you. My girlfriend Laura just died. But Maria's father
Speaker 1: had just died from cancer, and I was surrounded by
Speaker 1: all these people who wanted to take care of me, who,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I just felt I didn't understand
Speaker 1: the grief. And meeting this person who I felt like
Speaker 1: could understand the loss part of it was really powerful,
Speaker 1: and we started spending more time together, and a few
Speaker 1: years later we got married Um, and we now have
Speaker 1: three children, an incredible life, and I can hold that
Speaker 1: in the same place that I can hold that I
Speaker 1: still really miss and love Laura and Maria can too,
Speaker 1: which is that's really that's important. That's Yeah, she's a
Speaker 1: really good one. Uncle went back to that question. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about if that happened with you and will and
Speaker 1: will was driving, Yeah, you know, and he was drunk
Speaker 1: and you got killed in our car accident or Willow
Speaker 1: withs been a part of our lives for I mean,
Speaker 1: he's part of the family. Yeah, it's tough. That's a
Speaker 1: tough one. We have Laura's father here, Um, David, we
Speaker 1: can talk to about this experience. Laura's father, David was
Speaker 1: crushed by the death of his daughter and he is
Speaker 1: with us today. Thank you for coming, Thanks for asking
Speaker 1: me to be here. Yeah, this is great. Wow, this
Speaker 1: is um powerful. Yeah, tell us how you got through this, Laura.
Speaker 1: Every move I made, what's what would Laura want me
Speaker 1: to do? So that's the answer. He did what he
Speaker 1: thought Laura would wanted to do. Yeah, I knew she
Speaker 1: wanted me to do it this way. I could tell
Speaker 1: how those two were and how they were together. That
Speaker 1: was a very strong and deep love between the two
Speaker 1: of them. It was so obvious. You could see it,
Speaker 1: you could feel it. How um elastic your heart has
Speaker 1: to be in that moment, you know, and it's so selfless.
Speaker 1: So how was it when you two first saw each other.
Speaker 1: We helped each other, and you know, we still had
Speaker 1: each other every time we see each other, so they
Speaker 1: don't bet At the airport last night, we didn't meet
Speaker 1: with a handshake. We met with a hug. So we
Speaker 1: had already lost Laura and we didn't need to lose Mark.
Speaker 1: And he made a mistake that you know, we you know,
Speaker 1: we all have to live with. But Mark, he's a
Speaker 1: good man. He was doing good things and he's continued
Speaker 1: to do good things. So I'm glad we still have them.
Speaker 1: It felt like, because you guys, we're so forgiving from
Speaker 1: the first moment. Sometimes I just wanted to be like,
Speaker 1: just hate me. Yeah, But at the same time, because
Speaker 1: you guys just removed that from the from the conversation,
Speaker 1: that there was more commonality and in this shared loss, yeah,
Speaker 1: well there was. That's unconditional love. I just have to
Speaker 1: say it. I I try to make Lord proud. I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, everybody's religious aspects here, but you know,
Speaker 1: if there's a heaven or not. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be wrong. It's if there's really one there, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be wrong. So my job is to get there.
Speaker 1: And so for eternity, that's the way I try to
Speaker 1: That's what I try to do. I'm not always were good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's and it's what we say about forgiveness all
Speaker 1: the time, that forgiveness is for you as much as
Speaker 1: this for the other person. David, can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about Laura before we go just a little.
Speaker 1: She really was one of those people when she walked
Speaker 1: in her room you knew she was something. She just
Speaker 1: lit it up. She just absolutely beautiful. You know, in
Speaker 1: my eyes, she was absolutely beautiful. Yeah. It was like
Speaker 1: do you talk about like a spark of life? She
Speaker 1: had like a bonfire of life. Well, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you both for coming story and thanks nice about Laura.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm actually one of his his daughter, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: I'm her godfather. Wow, you keeping the connection. It was
Speaker 1: quite an honor to be asked and to do that.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate you having us here. Well, thank you guys,
Speaker 1: just making you guys see you because this was an
Speaker 1: awesome show. This was so hard for me to come
Speaker 1: out here, and you made it so easy, just like
Speaker 1: sitting down and talking and you made it so easy
Speaker 1: for me. So I appreciate that. David. You are amazing.
Speaker 1: You are so sharp. I was watching you in the
Speaker 1: first series and it was just so you're so I
Speaker 1: see where you get it. But yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: forever you have to they rub off on you. You're
Speaker 1: goin to interject and it's like perfect and read time.
Speaker 1: So you do a great job. Well they do think
Speaker 1: so a lot of people thinking I'll be saying you
Speaker 1: crazy stuff. To join the Red Table Talk family and
Speaker 1: become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook Watch,
Speaker 1: Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.