Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: We decided not to tell the kids. Marlon knew that
Speaker 2: once our three daughters understood that their mother had been
Speaker 2: given one thousand days to live, they'd start counting. They
Speaker 2: would not be able to enjoy school friends, their teams
Speaker 2: for birthday parties. They'd be watching too closely how she looked, moved,
Speaker 2: acted eight or didn't. Marla wanted her daughters to stay children, unburdened,
Speaker 2: confident that tomorrow would look like yesterday. We threw everything
Speaker 2: at her, disease lectures, research, involvement in cancer organizations, yoga, meditation,
Speaker 2: teas and soups. She even went to a storefront heuer
Speaker 2: who lit incense, read her palm, and led her in prayer.
Speaker 2: He declared her a badass because of her restorative powers.
Speaker 2: It was a nickname that I promoted with all of
Speaker 2: her doctors and nurses because it was not only hopeful
Speaker 2: but true. She didn't just by time, she cheated it,
Speaker 2: squeeze months and years out of it. Marla was a
Speaker 2: statistical frea conaboration and outlier. One thousand days landed firmly
Speaker 2: in our rearview mirror.
Speaker 3: That's John Melman. John is a New York City based
Speaker 3: real estate executive, and this is a story of a
Speaker 3: devoted husband and wife making a painful choice to keep
Speaker 3: a shared secret from their children, a complex and challenging
Speaker 3: decision made in the name of love. I'm Danny Shapiro
Speaker 3: and this is a special bonus episode of Family Secrets.
Speaker 3: Joining me to talk about a show we recorded way
Speaker 3: back in season two of Family Secrets is the wise
Speaker 3: and thoughtful doctor Ruth Fayden. Ruth is the founder of
Speaker 3: the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Philip
Speaker 3: Franklin Waggly Professor of Biomedical Ethics at Johns Hopkins. Today,
Speaker 3: we'll be discussing The Loving Choice. I hope you'll go
Speaker 3: back to season two in the feed and listen to
Speaker 3: this heart wrenching and profoundly moving human story. Ruth, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining me in conversation on Family Secrets.
Speaker 4: Of course, my pleasure.
Speaker 3: So the episode that I asked you to listen to,
Speaker 3: given your area of expertise as a bioethicist, is The
Speaker 3: Loving Choice. And it's one of those episodes that has
Speaker 3: continued to haunt me even after I've now recorded ninety
Speaker 3: of these episodes.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to start with what most stood out
Speaker 3: for you as you were listening.
Speaker 5: Well, I think what most stood out for me was
Speaker 5: the intensity of this woman's love for her children. I
Speaker 5: just think it's overwhelming what Marla did in order to
Speaker 5: ensure that her children have as regular childhood and adolescence.
Speaker 4: As they could possibly have. That's pretty stunning. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Loving Choice the title of the episode, which comes
Speaker 3: from John Melman's description of what he and his wife
Speaker 3: Marla chose to do, the decision that they made to
Speaker 3: keep the extent of her illness from their daughters. When
Speaker 3: I was preparing to record the initial episode, if I
Speaker 3: remember thinking about all the different reasons why a choice
Speaker 3: like that might be made, and I was remembering something
Speaker 3: that you said to me when you and I first
Speaker 3: met a number of years ago, And it's an ethical term,
Speaker 3: which was retrospective moral judgment. You know, in stories like these,
Speaker 3: where illnesses are kept either from the person themselves or
Speaker 3: from children, they seem more common back a generation or two,
Speaker 3: when you know, people really believed wholeheartedly that it was
Speaker 3: just better not to know, that it was better to
Speaker 3: keep secrets. And I mean that's less that's less true
Speaker 3: today from an ethical perspective, where does that reside?
Speaker 5: Well, I want to draw and a really sharp distinction
Speaker 5: between professional medical ethics and personal interpersonal ethics. So you're
Speaker 5: absolutely correct that the era in which it was thought
Speaker 5: best for physicians to keep diagnoses from patients it has
Speaker 5: long left us. It's now considered completely inappropriate for doctors
Speaker 5: and nurses to make judgments about what patients should know
Speaker 5: about their own health, and even in context in which
Speaker 5: they have to deliver devastating news, they know they have
Speaker 5: an obligation to do so, and although it can often
Speaker 5: be wrenching and sometimes deeply damaging, there really is no
Speaker 5: other alternative except to inform the person about the status
Speaker 5: of their health so that they can make whatever decisions
Speaker 5: they want to make about how they want to live
Speaker 5: their lives in the face of whatever diagnosis they've received.
Speaker 5: It's a separate set of issues, whether under what conditions,
Speaker 5: into whom the person who's received the devastating diagnosis, or
Speaker 5: at least the challenging diagnosis which it was from Marlin
Speaker 5: in the beginning, it sounds like from John's telling that
Speaker 5: she refused to accept that it was devastating for a
Speaker 5: very long time, and she turned out to be right.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: But it's a totally separate kind of ethics question what
Speaker 5: people owe to those they love about their diagnosis right,
Speaker 5: and that becomes deeply personal. Now it is much a
Speaker 5: matter of in the case of children, what is in
Speaker 5: the children's best interest to know and when than it
Speaker 5: is of anything else. And arguably nobody was better positioned
Speaker 5: than Marla and John to make that call. It sounds
Speaker 5: like they didn't deny Marla's illness or the fact that
Speaker 5: she had the diagnosis of breast cancer. They shared part
Speaker 5: of the story. I think you said at one point
Speaker 5: in the episode.
Speaker 4: It was partial truths that they gave the girls.
Speaker 5: Right, and it seems to me an eminently reasonable decision. Now,
Speaker 5: when you raise the issue of retrospective moral judgment, I
Speaker 5: certainly don't feel positioned to look back at Marla and
Speaker 5: John's story and in any sense criticized them for what
Speaker 5: they decided to share and what they chose not to share,
Speaker 5: and when they decided to share in the end that
Speaker 5: there really was no hope. It's heartbreaking. I think the
Speaker 5: mistake would be to generalize from their experience to what
Speaker 5: parents ought to do in all cases, in all families.
Speaker 5: It sounds, from John's telling, as if the strategy that
Speaker 5: they adopted was, first of all, the only thing that
Speaker 5: was possible for Marla, that's how she wanted to live
Speaker 5: her life, and also I think actually worked well for
Speaker 5: her girls. It sounds as if they did well. I mean,
Speaker 5: by John's telling, they had a pretty successful slash normal adolescence.
Speaker 5: The youngest one didn't quite make it to college before
Speaker 5: her mom passed away, but the other two did, And
Speaker 5: I don't think they ever questioned, right the intensity of
Speaker 5: their mother's love for them or her hopes for their future.
Speaker 5: But whether this would work in another family, with other
Speaker 5: children and other parents, I don't think you can go there. So,
Speaker 5: in keeping with the theme of the podcast, what works
Speaker 5: as a secret for some people would be a disaster
Speaker 5: to keep secret in other families. It seems to have
Speaker 5: worked here.
Speaker 4: I hope it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such an important and interesting distinction, the idea
Speaker 3: that in any given family, you're dealing with a constellation
Speaker 3: of human beings who have very specific needs and psychologies
Speaker 3: and histories, and that these kinds of choices are so
Speaker 3: deeply deeply personal. The way that John describes her profound
Speaker 3: need for her kids to see her living normally and
Speaker 3: to show them strength and resilience. And I remember when
Speaker 3: I interviewed John, and you know, I don't I've done
Speaker 3: so many of these interviews at this point that I
Speaker 3: often don't remember, you know, details or where I was
Speaker 3: or exactly at what point it was in my own life.
Speaker 3: But I do remember this one because I interviewed John
Speaker 3: in person in New York City because I was living
Speaker 3: there because my own husband was sick with cancer, and
Speaker 3: you know, we were very much in the phase that
Speaker 3: Marla so did not want to be in of people
Speaker 3: bringing lasagnas and castle roles and the thing, the thing
Speaker 3: that John talked about, you know, with with a sense
Speaker 3: of humor. But she didn't want, as he said, the pity,
Speaker 3: and she didn't want the whispers, and she wanted her
Speaker 3: daughters to be protected from that. And I, I really
Speaker 3: I felt for them so much, and you know, for
Speaker 3: him in recounting the story so much, because there is
Speaker 3: something that can happen when normalcy suddenly or you know
Speaker 3: the rest of the world is kind of you know,
Speaker 3: just bopping along, and and suddenly we are on the
Speaker 3: other side of that divide that separates the lucky from
Speaker 3: the unlucky, or the well from the unwell.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and I want to underscore because there is a
Speaker 5: risk as we talk about this, for other people listening
Speaker 5: to think this is the only way to handle a
Speaker 5: devastating diagnosis with your children, and I'm failing because I
Speaker 5: can't do it. So there's that worry I have to
Speaker 5: Marla was who she was, right, the kind of person
Speaker 5: with a kind of strength. There's also a different kind
Speaker 5: of strength that manifests itself in bringing your especially as
Speaker 5: they got older, children along with you, and thankfully I
Speaker 5: have not had to do that with my own kids.
Speaker 5: I don't know which way I would play it, but
Speaker 5: I wouldn't want to judge someone who just says, at
Speaker 5: a certain point, I really think it's I can't hide
Speaker 5: it anymore. She reached that point only at the very
Speaker 5: end Marla did, right. I would think a lot of
Speaker 5: people reach it sooner, right where they just say, I
Speaker 5: can't hide this anymore. I'm exhausted, I feel shitty. I
Speaker 5: can't be the upbeat, perky parent I've always been. I
Speaker 5: can't mother them the way I would like to, and
Speaker 5: I don't want them to suspect or think that it's
Speaker 5: about them, and so I need to tell them why.
Speaker 5: I need to tell them why I am not the
Speaker 5: same kind of ammy what six months ago or whenever? Right,
Speaker 5: it sounds like by John's telling that Marlow was able
Speaker 5: to do this for years, right, somehow was able for
Speaker 5: many years to conduct yourself in ways that never raised
Speaker 5: worries among her children. They knew she had a disease
Speaker 5: and she was being treated, and that was it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: It's pretty amazing. But not everybody can do this, and
Speaker 5: it's not necessarily good for every family. I guess if
Speaker 5: I had a message, it would be that there's a
Speaker 5: related thing too that I wanted to bring up as
Speaker 5: I was listening to talk about your own experience with
Speaker 5: your husband very briefly just back there, and that is
Speaker 5: there is this a little bit, and I think John
Speaker 5: references it. There's a kind of voyeurism that is actually troubling,
Speaker 5: if not outright offensive. Right, when people find out that
Speaker 5: someone has a serious illness, oh, they can't wait to
Speaker 5: contribute to the meal train, and they want to come
Speaker 5: visit and they want to know the details of the
Speaker 5: illness and how is it going and how is the
Speaker 5: treatment going in now? It's not necessarily anybody's business, and
Speaker 5: a part of it is this I want to know
Speaker 5: because I want to make sure that I can kind
Speaker 5: of find things in my own life that will make
Speaker 5: me feel better that this is not going to happen
Speaker 5: to me. Right, So you know, in this case less
Speaker 5: likely with the b r c A one and two gene.
Speaker 5: But how can I reassure myself that this is happening
Speaker 5: to Marla, but it's not going to happen to me.
Speaker 3: It's well meaning people who don't realize that that is
Speaker 3: what they're doing. But it seems like it's a kind
Speaker 3: of human impulse because it's so pervasive that you know,
Speaker 3: that feeling of you know, well, was there a family
Speaker 3: history or did this person smoke? Or finding an narrative
Speaker 3: that will draw a bright line between this unfortunate and
Speaker 3: terrible and tragic experience and you know, my life and
Speaker 3: why that's not going to happen to me exactly.
Speaker 5: And that's exhausting for the person who's got the illness.
Speaker 5: It's like, excuse me, right, I'm dealing with this. It's
Speaker 5: hard enough. I don't need you prying into the details.
Speaker 5: Of the origins of my illness or my prognosis or
Speaker 5: any number of things. I've gone through this with friends,
Speaker 5: you know, over the years, where let's say, you know,
Speaker 5: you're the trusted friend that knows the details, and then
Speaker 5: all these other people who want to know, So, what.
Speaker 4: Did she tell you?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 4: Not of your business?
Speaker 5: Honestly, right, And I think some of that sounds like
Speaker 5: some of that was operating for Marla.
Speaker 1: And fra John.
Speaker 5: They did not want to be caught up in that dynamic,
Speaker 5: and they certainly didn't want their kids to be caught
Speaker 5: up in that kind of dynamic either, and so they
Speaker 5: you know, they chose the path they chose, and it's
Speaker 5: it's tragic, like in the context of you know, Marla's
Speaker 5: untimely death to say it worked for them, but it
Speaker 5: worked for that.
Speaker 3: It should also be said for people listening to us
Speaker 3: who haven't gone back and listened to that episode yet
Speaker 3: that Marla was someone who, after having had her ovaries
Speaker 3: removed after six rounds of chemotherapy after a bilateral mass ectomy,
Speaker 3: was back out running four or five days a week,
Speaker 3: and that was after her first diagnosis. Considered that a
Speaker 3: speed bump, you know, and going on you know, adventurous
Speaker 3: sports driven vacations, and you know, just that was the
Speaker 3: kind of particular superhuman quality that she had and that
Speaker 3: John uh So clearly really loved in her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you've said it so well. And I think lots
Speaker 5: of people after that first diagnosis, especially after she's done
Speaker 5: everything she can to prevent a recurrence, might reach the
Speaker 5: same conclusion about how to handle it with their kids.
Speaker 5: They're hoping it's not going to come back. There's no
Speaker 5: reason to scare the kids into thinking it might come back, right,
Speaker 5: the kids are younger then also when this begins, but
Speaker 5: when it does recur and when her prognosis becomes more dire,
Speaker 5: some people would at that point say they're older, right,
Speaker 5: and it's time to bring them in. And yeah, I
Speaker 5: was thinking about this as I was listening to the episode,
Speaker 5: and I appreciate that not all your readers would have
Speaker 5: listened the way I did, which was just before a
Speaker 5: conversation to thinking about to some extent, this is outside
Speaker 5: the realm of ethics and more in the realm of
Speaker 5: family therapy and family support. It seems so critical. Now,
Speaker 5: maybe this couple didn't need it, but lots of couples
Speaker 5: need help. Understandably trying to figure out for their families
Speaker 5: with their children at whatever ages the children are at
Speaker 5: the time when the really bad diagnosis comes through, So,
Speaker 5: what are the options? How should we play this right
Speaker 5: with our five year old or a fifteen year old.
Speaker 5: And so it's in part a matter.
Speaker 4: Of sort of personal ethics. It's the sort of ethics.
Speaker 5: Of your family, how you've conducted your family until then.
Speaker 5: And it's also i think largely a parent or parents
Speaker 5: in this case, trying to figure out what's in the
Speaker 5: best interests of our kids in this family at this
Speaker 5: point in their lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that's so well put. And it also strikes me
Speaker 3: that it goes against the grain of what it is
Speaker 3: to be a parent to have to do or to
Speaker 3: contemplate telling your child something so devastating. All we want
Speaker 3: to do is protect our children, and it brings you
Speaker 3: right up to the edge of the awareness that, of
Speaker 3: course we can't. You know, we can't protect them from
Speaker 3: bad breakups. We can't protect them from a divorce if
Speaker 3: we get divorce. We can't protect them from our own mortality.
Speaker 3: We can't protect them from their mortality. We can't protect
Speaker 3: them from the state of the world, and to have
Speaker 3: to make that choice, whatever that choice is to tell
Speaker 3: to not tell, whatever it is is coming from such
Speaker 3: a primal place, no matter how we might you know,
Speaker 3: intellectualize it or figure out, you know. I think John
Speaker 3: used the word script a couple of times.
Speaker 5: Yes, one of the things I kept thinking about when
Speaker 5: I was listening to John.
Speaker 4: Realizing that the whole discussion.
Speaker 5: Conversation that the two of you had was around how
Speaker 5: they only shared part of the truth with their girls
Speaker 5: until the very end. I kept wondering about their parents.
Speaker 5: So again, it's deeply personal. You know, what's your relationship
Speaker 5: with your parents, your in laws, right, how close are
Speaker 5: you to them? But I would imagine you have a
Speaker 5: different relationship with obviously your parents than you do to
Speaker 5: your children, and all together different moral obligations. You were saying,
Speaker 5: how probably the most defining characteristic of parenting, which we
Speaker 5: all fail at, is the impulse to protect their children,
Speaker 5: to make their lives perfect, right, to try to keep
Speaker 5: them from never having to eat alone in the lunch room,
Speaker 5: right or never you're in cypergollying, or never be excluded
Speaker 5: from the birthday party, or not have anybody to go
Speaker 5: to homecoming with or whatever. We want to keep all
Speaker 5: of those kind of minor, but at the time, you know,
Speaker 5: very difficult, challenging experiences for our kids. To a middlemum,
Speaker 5: we want to fix it and we certainly don't want
Speaker 5: to have to tell our kids something as awful as
Speaker 5: they're about to lose us, right, no matter how old
Speaker 5: they are, but especially when they're school aged. But with parents,
Speaker 5: it's a different kind of relationship. Their job still is
Speaker 5: to protect you. And even though you're a grown up
Speaker 5: and an adult and you have your own kids, and again,
Speaker 5: every family is different. Every relationship between an adult child
Speaker 5: and their parents or their in laws is different. That
Speaker 5: I could see parents being deeply hurt, which is something
Speaker 5: else you need to take account of, right, deeply hurt
Speaker 5: if the diagnosis is with help from them. And I
Speaker 5: have no idea what they did, obviously what John and
Speaker 5: Marla did with her. I guess they each have one
Speaker 5: surviving parent at that point, or siblings. But I only
Speaker 5: bring that up to say it's not only that each
Speaker 5: family is different, it's also that the different relationships family.
Speaker 5: So parent to child is different than sibling to sibling,
Speaker 5: spouse to spouse, partner to partner, The relationship between the
Speaker 5: adult person and her parents. They're all very different dynamics.
Speaker 5: The one between the parent and the child, especially when
Speaker 5: you're still talking about school age child is so defined
Speaker 5: by an obligation to protect them and to advance their
Speaker 5: own interests. Right, that's what you're there for. You're trying
Speaker 5: to make every single decision based on what's best for them.
Speaker 5: And there's no question that Marla and John that's what
Speaker 5: they were doing, right. They were determining that this is
Speaker 5: what is best for their kids. Somebody else can say,
Speaker 5: this is not what's going to be best for my kid.
Speaker 5: When my kid HiT's sixteen or whatever age, it's just
Speaker 5: not going to be good for them because I'm not
Speaker 5: going to be myself and they need to know why.
Speaker 3: Except Marlow seems that it seems that she was able
Speaker 3: to be herself for a very long time, way longer
Speaker 3: than she was given to live. When she receives her
Speaker 3: diagnosis that her cancer had metastasized.
Speaker 5: Yeah a thousand days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a thousand days, and then she lived like something
Speaker 3: like eight or nine years.
Speaker 5: It's stunning. Right, So again I keep like wanting to
Speaker 5: have or this one thing. Oh, it's not a failing
Speaker 5: if you can't live your life like marlat did. She
Speaker 5: had a certain character and constitution and discipline, maybe in.
Speaker 4: Part because she was always athlete.
Speaker 5: And she know exactly how she wanted things to go
Speaker 5: for her girls, and she could do it well.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because the whole, the whole family. I mean,
Speaker 3: that only works if it if it works in a
Speaker 3: whole family, right, And and it struck me that John
Speaker 3: and Marla were very committed to the same kind of
Speaker 3: you know, his word was lifestyle, and you know, the
Speaker 3: same kind of child rearing and the and the same hopes,
Speaker 3: particular hopes for the kind of track that you know,
Speaker 3: each of their daughters would be on. And they lived
Speaker 3: in a very sort of pressure cooker kind of suburban
Speaker 3: community that I know, well, Scarsdale and that whole area
Speaker 3: of you know, Westchester, you know, bedroom community of New
Speaker 3: York City, very high octane and you know, not every
Speaker 3: kid is high octane. And John and Marla had three daughters,
Speaker 3: all of whom were high octane, by which I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, really sort of superachievers and incredibly athletic and
Speaker 3: inherited Marla's athleticism and you know, very good students and
Speaker 3: you know, all three of them played Division I sports
Speaker 3: at create schools. You know, this is no small thing,
Speaker 3: and I think that those shared values were shared, it seems,
Speaker 3: by the whole family.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 5: I want to go back to the language of retrospective
Speaker 5: moral judgment. So that term is very important in thinking
Speaker 5: about the ethics of something that has occurred in the past,
Speaker 5: and it addresses the question of whether all more is relative,
Speaker 5: or whether, in fact there is some enduring features of
Speaker 5: the moral life that can be used to think about
Speaker 5: conduct in the past as well as in the present.
Speaker 5: I think in the case of interpersonal decisions like this,
Speaker 5: family decisions deeply unique to the person, the partners, the children,
Speaker 5: that it's a very different dynamic. And we're talking about
Speaker 5: the kinds of ethics that show up in the ethicistem
Speaker 5: the New York Times. Right, it's sort of you know,
Speaker 5: my girlfriend is lying to me, what should I do?
Speaker 4: Kind of thing here.
Speaker 5: I just would caution everybody both to avoid judging Marla
Speaker 5: and John as moral giants, right who managed to do
Speaker 5: what most of us couldn't do, or as morally flawed
Speaker 5: persons for failing to share the reality of Marla's condition
Speaker 5: with their children as the children got older and could
Speaker 5: have integrated it. I don't think this is a context
Speaker 5: in which we can look at their lives and draw
Speaker 5: any conclusions about the rightness or wrongness of what they
Speaker 5: did for their family, or any inferences for what we
Speaker 5: should be doing in our own families. If tragedy like
Speaker 5: this strikes while we still are taking care of kids,
Speaker 5: I just don't think it works that way here. Now.
Speaker 5: When I say that, I don't mean that you can't
Speaker 5: judge or shouldn't judge parental behavior. In many cases, you
Speaker 5: can look at, you know, the way a parent is
Speaker 5: treating a child, and it's totally appropriate. That is unconscionable, right,
Speaker 5: that's emotional abuse. God forbid, that's physical abuse.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: No one should parents a child in this way. But
Speaker 5: we have to be really circumspect because we don't know
Speaker 5: right what is going on. I mean, I'm sure that
Speaker 5: I'm not alone in having been, say in an airport
Speaker 5: lounge meeting area and seeing some mother yell at their
Speaker 5: kid and cringe, you know, and want to go in
Speaker 5: and rescue that child, and you have to hold back
Speaker 5: because you don't have any authority, any moral authority to
Speaker 5: intervene unless you really thought the child was, you know,
Speaker 5: at serious risk of serious harm. So you know, Danny,
Speaker 5: one of the risks with keeping secrets, and you know
Speaker 5: this probably better than anyone is you are my expert
Speaker 5: on all thanks secrets, is that you are often less
Speaker 5: successful in keeping the secret than you think. More and
Speaker 5: the people who love you, especially in the context of
Speaker 5: a close, clearly devoted family, is that the girls at
Speaker 5: some point started to get suspicious or concerned. And what
Speaker 5: I couldn't tell in listening to John was whether that
Speaker 5: was ever a really big problem, either for him and
Speaker 5: Marla or for any of their daughters. But there is
Speaker 5: that caution, right that, even though you may think that
Speaker 5: you're doing a great job keeping this secret and revealing
Speaker 5: only the parts that you think are compatible with your
Speaker 5: children having a let's just call it a normal adolescence,
Speaker 5: kids are incredibly emotionally intuitive in many cases, not all kids,
Speaker 5: but many kids, and especially about their parents. So whether
Speaker 5: it's a marriage that isn't going well or someone's health
Speaker 5: isn't going well, you just have to look out for
Speaker 5: the possibility that the children may be suspecting more than
Speaker 5: you think, and then that raises trust issues and confidence
Speaker 5: issues for the children and for the relationship. Now, I
Speaker 5: have no way of knowing from your conversation with John
Speaker 5: whether that was ever a serious concern, but I'm guessing
Speaker 5: that if you were to talk to a family therapist
Speaker 5: about how to handle a very bad diagnosis of a
Speaker 5: mother or father with adolescent children in the house, that
Speaker 5: they're going to be pointing out the importance of staying
Speaker 5: at tunes to the possibility that the kids are starting
Speaker 5: to get anxious, starting to distrust the messages that they're
Speaker 5: getting from their parents, and of course you don't want
Speaker 5: that to happen. So nothing is straightforward and nothing is
Speaker 5: simple about the you know, the horrible situation is what
Speaker 5: did John say that a shit sandwich or something craft sandwich,
Speaker 5: crap sandwich? Right? Yeah, I mean this family was dealt
Speaker 5: a horrible you know, a horrible set of cards, right,
Speaker 5: And there's no great way to deal with this.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the things you've been saying,
Speaker 3: Roth is that there's no right way of dealing with this.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I think there could be some
Speaker 5: wrong ways of doing it. I think there could be
Speaker 5: some very wrong ways of handling this, in ways that
Speaker 5: really make the whole dynamic and tragedy even more traumatic
Speaker 5: for the children than it already is. You definitely have
Speaker 5: a primary obligation to advance the interests of your children,
Speaker 5: like that's your biggest moral obligation as a parent. You
Speaker 5: also have an obligation to love them, which people think
Speaker 5: is really odd to say that you could have a
Speaker 5: moral duty to love. But I believe you have a
Speaker 5: moral duty to love your children to the extent that
Speaker 5: you can, right, and also to the extent that protecting
Speaker 5: them doesn't weaken their capacity to deal with what life
Speaker 5: will hand them as they get older. Right, But you
Speaker 5: also have the duty to treat your children with respect,
Speaker 5: especially as they get older. Right, So, as your children
Speaker 5: become middle school and later adolescent, their own sense of self,
Speaker 5: their choices, their autonomy matters too, right, And in respecting
Speaker 5: your children, this is where honesty comes in. You want
Speaker 5: to be honest with your children. You want to give
Speaker 5: them the opportunity to make choices on their own, within limits,
Speaker 5: so that they can learn how to do that. And
Speaker 5: you want to create a relationship in which they can
Speaker 5: trust you and you can trust them. So through all
Speaker 5: of this, Marla and John had to balance the obligation
Speaker 5: to protect your children with the obligation to respect your children.
Speaker 5: I mean, at some point Marla knows, right, it's a
Speaker 5: matter of days, it's a matter of weeks, it's a
Speaker 5: matter of months. But at some point she gives up,
Speaker 5: even with her superhuman determination, there's a point where it
Speaker 5: sounds like she recognizes there's no more beating the odds, right,
Speaker 5: and at that point she turns from protecting them because
Speaker 5: that you can't anymore right, to respecting them and bringing
Speaker 5: them in to the conversation.
Speaker 3: And the way that John describes the you know, the
Speaker 3: very end of Marla's life and the week before she dies,
Speaker 3: gathering each one of their daughters, and almost it sounded
Speaker 3: like a sacred holy thing in some way, you know,
Speaker 3: not his word at all mine, but blessing them in
Speaker 3: a way with her hopes for them and her desires
Speaker 3: for them. And he describes it as incredible, eloquent, as
Speaker 3: if she was reading off a teleprompter. He said, But meanwhile,
Speaker 3: she's on death's door and her eyes are closed, and
Speaker 3: she's just channeling something. And it just seemed like there
Speaker 3: was so much pent up and stored up love and
Speaker 3: wisdom and desire there to give her daughters everything that
Speaker 3: she had.
Speaker 4: Yeah, without doubt, without doubt.
Speaker 5: And when he got to that part of the story,
Speaker 5: I was speechless trying to imagine where the strength and
Speaker 5: the wisdom came from for Marlowe to be able to
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 4: People talk about leaving their.
Speaker 5: Children values testaments as opposed to you last will and testaments.
Speaker 5: Here's who's getting the necklace and who's getting the house
Speaker 5: kind of thing. It's how do you leave your children
Speaker 5: with a script for how to live your life when
Speaker 5: I'm not here? And it sounds like Marla provided them
Speaker 5: with something like that, Here's what I wish for you
Speaker 5: when I'm not here anymore. And I'm guessing she was
Speaker 5: very insightful about each of her three each of her
Speaker 5: three girls.
Speaker 4: It's a tragedy.
Speaker 3: Ruth Faidon, thank you so much for joining me to
Speaker 3: talk about this really heartbreaking and remarkable story and to
Speaker 3: offer your thoughts which are so valuable and I think
Speaker 3: will help so many people.
Speaker 4: Danny, You're very kind.
Speaker 5: It's totally my pleasure, and you're such a fan of
Speaker 5: your work and so grateful that you're bringing these issues
Speaker 5: to a wide audience
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