Esther Perel on Grief — In Memory of Blakeney Schick 53:55

Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeem Araza. If you listen to the show, if you like the show, and if you've heard our work over the last couple of years, you've really been hearing and liking the work of a woman named Blakeney Schick. She's been our senior producer, our colleague,

And a good friend. She was our first hire here at New York Magazine and Vox when we started this show, when Cara and I started this show a month in. And she worked with us for a year before that at New York Times on our show Sway. She did, and tragically, she passed away on Monday, July 24th.

After suffering a sudden cardiac arrest, entirely unexpected, because she's very healthy. She ran marathons and was, in fact, preparing for the New York marathon later this year. And she was only 40 years old when she died. Yeah. She would have turned 41 on Sunday, August 6th. And so we wanted to do, in her passing and on what would have been her 41st birthday, an episode in honor of her. And in a moment, we're going to bring on Esther Perel to talk about

with us about this grief that we're experiencing and Vikings friends and families are experiencing, but really everyone experiences in their life.

But before we get there, we just wanted to tell you a little bit more about who Blake Neistat is. Yeah, and at work. I'll start with work. She was a really fantastic producer. She produced some of the best episodes we've done and was quite enthusiastic about them, including recently Jake Tapper. But she also did Hillary Clinton, Brooke Shields, Walter Isaacson, Patrick Radden Keefe. She was very excited about doing—we were hoping to interview Martina Navratilova, and she was super excited about that. She liked to try to make us do sports content, even though we know nothing about sports. We both hate sports. We know nothing about sports. But she likes it, so—

We will do Martina Navratilova. For her. Yeah. And she had a very storied career in the audio community before that. She spent 10 years at the low-paid show, at public radio. She also worked on shows like Adulting, The Takeaway. She was a fantastic audio journalist. Yeah.

and a fantastic producer. She was an avid marathon runner and also a yoga instructor. I think she even taught Mike Birbiglia. Yeah. I don't know if you know that. I didn't know that. Yeah. One of our guests on this show. But what made her really great and the word that always comes to mind when I think about Blakeney is just

She cared so much about everything she did. She was so diligent, so disciplined, so compassionate, so caring. She cared about the work we made. She cared even more about the people who made it. She really noticed everything. And she cared in every aspect of her life. And, you know, every person on our team, we benefited from that every day. She cared about the people she taught and the causes she ran for and everything.

It's been a big loss. It's been a huge loss. But in that spirit, we didn't want to do just a memorial service here. We want to do something that helps our listeners and helps ourselves too. But to talk about something that's important, which is how you deal with loss at work of someone, your colleague, and someone, you know, so tragically young and unexpected. And the

The work aspect is interesting because we live in a society where we spend so much time at work. Blakeney was my colleague. She was my right hand for the last couple of years, my deputy. But she was also a friend. She was probably one of the people I speak to most in a day. So natural to pick up the phone and call her even now. And you know all the details about somebody. You form these kind of unique relationships. And yet...

We live in a society where there's a boundary. There's supposed to be a boundary at work. Yeah, but there isn't. It often doesn't feel like there is one. But there isn't. I mean, I don't like to use the term family at work because I think it's overused in a lot of ways. I think of a community or a town or something like that, people that you rely on throughout your life.

You know, and you have these different communities through your life. I've had a Recode community. We had the Wall Street Journal community, the Washington Post community. Some people have just scattered to the winds in a lot of ways over the course of a career. But many, many people stay with you and have been critically important to your career development or as a friend at work or someone to gripe about the bosses with or whatever. So it really is a very primary relationship, and that's important. I hired Blake Neat.

when my father was in hospice, just days before he passed away. And she's been with me like every day of work since then. And I think just everything that this show has been and our last show, Sway, she has been such a pivotal part of making that work and our teamwork. You're going to hear questions from our team as well in a moment. But

She has been the rock of the show that you guys listen to. Yep, absolutely. Every day. And we've been thinking a lot about how to honor her. We thought as someone who's constantly wanting to help others and been a rock that, you know, you never know how to deal with someone's loss, especially when it's so sudden and there's no preparation. But we wanted to make a show that would help people, that would be a rock for them. Mm-hmm.

And our guest for that is psychotherapist, author, and a friend, Esther Perel. Yeah. And she's known mostly for her work about relationships, but she's done a lot about grief, a lot about grief, particularly through the pandemic. But even her own story, she was born to Holocaust survivors, and grief has been a big part of her life, and I think part of what makes her special.

look for the things that make you feel alive. 100%. I mean, there's a famous quote that life is fatal. I think it's

I can't remember the singer, but it's something like that. No matter how you struggle and strive, you never get out of this life alive. And we don't think about that a lot. And the pandemic has been a lot like that. I've known a lot of people who have died during the pandemic and also in work over my many years. And so you can't discount grief anywhere it is that you have loss. And so it's important to talk about. Yeah. And now let's bring in Esther Perel.

Esther, thank you for joining us today. You're known for your work on relationships of all kinds, including romantic and professional, but recent years you've become also someone who's talked a lot about grief. Can you explain how those topics are connected? There is nothing more significant to relationships than the addition and subtraction of new members. So meetings and losses are

connections and disconnections are the bookends of all relationships. Grief is about loss. It's about longing. It's about interruption, disruption, endings, premature endings, anticipatory endings. But it's about the end of something, which means the diminishment of a member. Mm-hmm.

There is no way of looking at relationships without including grief. Grief also is the consequence of any choice. When you make a choice, you deal with what you didn't choose, you deal with the loss, and you deal with the grief that you have over that loss. But people have a hard time thinking about grief. Yes, more so today. Why is that? Because we are often given an illusion of control. Destiny is in your own hands. You make things happen yourself.

If you've been taught and told that you can hold on to things, change things, make things happen, etc., you are less prepared for the unpredictable, the uncertain, and the losses that come with it. This loss that we and others in Blakeney's life are experiencing is a sudden loss. It was a loss that you couldn't be prepared for in so many ways because it was a healthy person, a young person, someone you don't expect to go. And her father recently shared with me a quote

from Jamie Anderson that comes to what you're saying, that grief is the corollary of love in some way. And the quote was, grief is just love with no place to go. I think it's a beautiful sentiment. We hear this kind of grief is unexpressed love and joy and sorrow is two sides of a coin. That's the Khalil Gibran thing. But I feel like every time I've experienced someone passing, it still feels revelatory to me about the relationship.

Like I learn something about the relationship, about the meaning, about the person through the loss. And I wonder if there's a way that we can be more present in that joy or notice it and cherish it more without waiting for grief. It's interesting. You're saying three different things in this one sentence, right? Okay.

First is the connection of grief and love. I don't think that there is love that can truly exist without the fear of loss. They are interconnected. The more connected, the more attached, the more you hold...

on to someone. And the more you live with the parallel or the corollary fear that what would happen if you lost them? It could be a pet, it could be a child, it could be a friend. You know, the deeper the connection, the bigger the fear of loss. But it doesn't occur to you sometimes when it's a young person that you could even lose them. That's why those deaths are

even more kind of cataclysmic in our conception of the world. We accept that an old person will die. We accept that the passage of time brings you closer to mortality. We don't know how to connect youth and mortality. How can a child who still has their whole life in front of them, how can this woman who is just 40 and has her whole life in front of her, that is unfair. And that's why we are even less prepared to it because it shakes us

your kind of conception, your existential conception of the natural order of things. That is not natural. That is not the way things are to happen.

I think all deaths can be painful. That's not it. But there is something about the acceptance of death when it's the end of a life versus the lack of acceptance or the refusal to accept because it also touches us. I mean, that you can just like that vanish. That could be me. That could be you. And it's intolerable to live with that awareness. Because you don't want to become fearful. You want to live alive. Right.

Because it's the denial of death by Brecker. You cannot live if you are too aware of death. You need some awareness. I'm not so sure of that. You're talking to someone. Kara, by the way, is so aware of death that she sends me death quotes. She has an app called WeCroak. Yes, my boys read that too. Listen to it too. It's great. I would...

Because my dad died when I was five, so that's the most terrible thing because when you're five, you only know two people, your mother and your father, essentially. And so half—it's as if half your friends die or half your community. So I think about it a lot. Everything I've done has been informed by death, and I think about it all the time when I make decisions of living, like whether to have more children, which I have quite a few.

Or anything else. Everything I do was, I'll be dead in 50 years or 20 years or two days or whatever. And I think it's informed everything that I've done, interestingly. So I would say the same thing about me from a very different angle. But I think I was saying something else. So

You say, you know, this acute awareness of loss and of the fragility of life and of losing your father very young is a central axis of how you organize your life. So that when you have children, you do life-affirming acts that beat back death, that push it back a little bit. And you say it's at the core of my awareness. I don't think Brecker doesn't mean that we don't have the awareness, but it's like...

awareness is not the same as a fear of. If you are in the grip of the fear of some things, then you won't take risks, you won't take actions, you won't take chances, because it can be a paralyzing fear. And so he doesn't say, of course, you need an awareness of death. It is that awareness that propels us into creativity and art and children and all these hopeful acts that

that make the awareness of death tolerable. And part of what you discussed when you said before about, you know, when you discover new things about a person that you just lost is because absence is a very revelatory space. You learn so much when the person is not there of how you relate to them, of the place they had in your life, of the things that you shared with them, of how you thought, you think they would have reacted and what they did.

Now you begin to fill in the gaps yourself. Yeah. And about the person and also the meaning of that relationship to you. Yes. Like I didn't realize until Blakeney, until I was visiting my mother just days ago. And it was the day before Blakeney passed that, oh, I was in this room in my mom's house when I hired Blakeney. It was when my father was in hospice. It was days... And when she came back to work, she was the person that was with me that whole time. I had no...

realization of this in the two years and a half that we've worked together.

that that was the case, but I realize it now. And then you start to make all kinds of associations. You know, you fill in the gaps. You remember all the many places in which that person is connected to your life. And it's really a kind of taking off the threads one by one of how much, when a person enters your life, they occupy so many spaces. I wish our listeners could see you right now because the way Esther is almost like

peeling back a beautiful banana with many shards. But this idea of revelation and what happens, the struggle to make meaning from someone's death is a question that one of our producers, Christian Castro-Rizal, had raised. And I want to play his question. Blakeney was good to her core. And I didn't realize it until I stepped back and took stock of who she was. But I don't think there's many people like her who are genuinely good to

honest, earnest, fair, responsible, reliable people who cross all their T's and dot all their I's like she did. And I'm certainly not one of those people. So to me, her death has been a very harsh reminder of how cruel life, how cruel and unfair life can be. She deserved much better. Meanwhile, there's people who hurt other people who die happily of old age. So my question is, how do I accept that fact without becoming cynical or nihilistic?

Who says you have to accept it? That was my first thought. You know, some people think all deaths are tragic and some people think, no, they are gradations. You know, seriously, I think that there are people who look at death in a more even way. And so it's all deaths are.

And then there are sometimes, and I definitely think of that sometimes myself, I think not all death is equal. But it's a totally rational thought. I can't justify this way of thinking. Why does this woman who is incarnate goodness, you know, get to die, you know, when this other person who dies,

Either he's not a kind person or he's just miserable in life. Why wasn't that person then going first? But it's not accounting. But it's not. These are just ways that you're trying to deal with reality that you find so unacceptable. And it's unacceptable because it's painful. Because you feel like, you know, on some level, maybe Christian says like, it's, you know,

She didn't deserve to die, is what he says. And other people...

I deserve more to die. Even just the first... God wanted them. That's why. I heard that from my dad. God wanted... He was so good. God brought him home. And it was... And then the people who don't die, they're like, God doesn't want you. It's all the same. We have a number of very historical, cultural narratives. Every society, every civilization has them. That helps you make sense of...

of the unsensical. Why do bad things happen to good people? It is one of the central of the three tenets of all religions is to help you deal with the suffering, the unacceptable loss, etc., the tragic.

And, you know, what he's asking is a little different. He says, how do I accept it without becoming cynical? And I think one of the things he's describing is that Blakeney was not cynical. So it's about Christian, you know, asking himself, I mean, there's many ways I could answer this, but one thing I would say to Christian is,

Can you imagine taking a little piece of her and bringing it inside of you and carrying that? Because what she showed you is that there's a way of being less defended without being burned. And you are cynical, which is defended.

often as a way to not be burned. So honor her by trying a little bit of that. I think that's beautiful. That's an excellent case of advice. The question also is about, it is about that. It's also about making meaning, what you said. We have all these cultural, societal constructs to make meaning of death. And yet, when it happens, and you're just struck there on the floor in like,

shock of your loss, it doesn't compute. It doesn't make sense. And there's this desire to make meaning out of death. Is that healthy? Our desire to make meaning out of death? It's not a matter of healthy. It's human.

We are meaning making creatures. It's totally human. I don't think we can live otherwise. And so over time, we need to make sense. Why did this person go so soon? Why did this person, if they only had stayed five more minutes at home, they would have avoided the car crash. Why would, you know, we try to rearrange things.

if only is one way, you know, sometimes it's how do I give meaning to this loss? Is it about being part of the Parents Against Drunk Driving? Is it? Yes, it helps you

Making meaning gives you a sense of coherence, a sense for action, a sense for reaction, and a sense for connecting with others who have experienced something similar. Because one of the most important pieces of bereavement and death and mourning is the level of isolation. It feels like nobody else can understand your grief, can relate to it. Like it's...

it's so insulating you know you talked about your father I remember it but I also can imagine you at some moments because you were very close to him as well it's not just that he died it's that you lost this important important connection this real you know beautiful relationship and there is a sense that

You know, you listen to other people who are not getting along with their parents and you think that person is going to understand me when I had this incredible connection with my dad. Yeah.

And so it becomes very insulating. And the most important thing in the making of meaning is also connecting with other people. Every religion found a way to create mourning as a collective experience. It isn't meant to be done alone. And this is important for the workplace. Yeah. We saw that in Blakeney's life. People came together in her life.

in this sudden event and her hospitalization and all parts of her life were connecting. And it was in some way a beautiful thing to see this community come out of it, a community of Blakeney, really. Did you all know each other? We didn't. I mean, I got on the phone with her cousin and her friend from school and we all knew of each other because Blakeney always told stories with names.

So you knew, you know, so she, I would know who she went on that trip to Ireland with five years ago or 10 years ago and whose wedding it was. She told stories that had characters and places and she was a fantastic storyteller. That's what she did on our show. But let's talk about the work thing because one of the things that...

is important is that at work, we have so much connection with people at work, even though we try to keep it work, keep it at work, that kind of thing. So can you talk a little bit about that, that the dichotomy between loss at work and loss and say your friends and your family, even though you spend a lot of your time at work, or you have many connections at work? I mean, it really comes down to what is the culture at work, right? And,

And the culture is, it's as much about the births, the birthdays, the weddings, or the engagement ceremonies of any sorts, or the losses. It's basically to what extent does work become a place where people manifest the life cycle transitions? Yeah. We've had, in this loss, a real community of loss at work. It's...

Work is not isolating. It's also weird because it's not a place you can go to escape from grief in this situation for our team. But we have, you know, Christian actually just became a father and he was out on paternity leave when this happened. And so as a team, we were experiencing these two very different emotions at once. But also I think that the bigger question to like a more general question of work is that there's a

Work has become, you've written a lot about work as identity, and work has become more and more a part of our life and how we define ourselves, the identity economy. At the same time, there's a sanitization of work, you know, what work should be. And even in the making of this show, there was conversation about, well, we should keep this episode professional, even though it feels so deeply personal to every one of us. Because you make podcasts, you know, we spend every day together. We work 60, 50, 60 hours a week, you know, together. Yeah.

40, 50, 60 hours a week together. And so how do we reconcile the personal connections at work and not draw boundaries? Or should we?

I don't know that there is a set answer for this. I have an inclination. I lean towards something, but it's also because of who I am, what I do, the kinds of environments that I work in. I think I can imagine... When you say work, even if you're in a big corporation, you have your little team. And so it's really about the team, generally, and that response. I happen to think that...

If in a mature way and mature doesn't mean boundary. Mature means that you you there is a way in which people say, I'm having a really rough day. I miss her. I would be turning to her at this moment if I had this problem. She would have had she would have known what to do. Or do you ever think about her or how do we reorganize this?

You know, what do we do with her digital archive? You know, do we call the parents to come and get the stuff? Do the parents want the stuff? Do they want it immediately? There's so many aspects to how. And I think that the more you hush these kind of things, the more you create an environment that is placid.

But also placating. Which is not good. Look, we live in a world that wants to claim authenticity everywhere. But then you go and you check where the place is where it really needs to happen. Is it actually there?

But there's been a real push for work not to be that. You're not supposed to bring your... There was bring yourself work, and then it's like, don't bring so much. I will answer to you like this. You bring your whole self to work, no matter what. It may be conscious or unconscious. But you're... I call this the unofficial resume, right? Your relationship history comes with you to work, and it will determine exactly Christian's response versus Naima's response versus you, Cara's response, because you...

You know, it is a whole life that determines this, how you're dealing with this loss in the moment. But you are leaders and you can determine. You have the possibility of saying, we're going to have a meeting together. We're going to talk about her. We're going to cry if the tears come. We're not going to pretend, you know, that to be stoic is to be. And we continue to work an hour later. Yeah.

It's not like this is going to suddenly, you know, if a tear sheds, we're going to have a tsunami and nobody's going to be able to function. That's not actually the way it works. It's more likely that when things are repressed, that they're going to find a way out because they have to be expressed somehow and that the people are going to start acting out or be more absent or have all kinds of somatic symptoms. Yeah, that's a...

Perfect segue to a question from another of our producers, Megan Burney. She's one of our colleagues who joined the team just months ago and reported directly to Blakeney. Blakeney was her manager. Maybe we can play a clip of that. I found myself sometimes feeling awkward or uncertain about how to feel and act around the passing of a colleague. It's not like grieving a friend or family member because I don't know what is appropriate.

Simple acts that I do for a family member or friend now feel like I could be overstepping, or like those feelings and actions are meant for Blakeney's family and friends who deserve space to mourn and need not be reminded of this grief by my action. At the same time, when I've been in grief, I found it quite healing to hear how much my loved one meant to others. I just don't know what is right. More than anything, I don't know where to put all of these feelings and emotions.

Yeah, wow. That's something. It's really complicating. I mean, to me, being the first thing I think is you have all the right questions. Those are the questions and they don't have an answer. There is no clear, you know, code for this. It is...

It is sensitive. It is personal. In your case, you really like to know that that person was loved. And maybe you'll find out that that's the case for her family. Maybe you find out differently. I think the main piece is not to be afraid to find out. Well, she felt like her grief was an imposition or that she's, you know, that kind of way. So what advice would you give to someone working through those kind of feelings?

That it's not an imposition? It's to check. It's to find out. It's to find out. You know, I... Do you... You know...

The extent to which people want you to come and talk to them or don't want you to come to talk to them, you don't know necessarily in advance. Especially in a workplace, you don't know them. And you don't know the family. You know, work is not a family. So you go to the people and you just say, you know... Can I help? Can I help? I would love to be helpful, useful.

Do you want food? Do you want flowers? Do you want us to create a memorial for her? You know, what? And then the parents can say, this we want, this not at all. No, we don't want anybody in the house at this moment. Yes, we need people all the time because we can't bear the silence that surrounds us. It's...

You can't answer the question without asking the people who can help you answer that question. And also there's just different... I feel like I come from a culture where there's very few boundaries. You have to show up and if people turn you away, they can turn you away, but you show up. Yes, but you see, you...

That's where you are different from Megan in a way, right? Because you say, I have a culture and my culture is very clear on how you handle this. Therefore, I adhere to my code. With that code, I go and I don't question myself. And if I know that it's in a position, if I find out, then I retreat. But you're not asking yourself, what do I feel need or should do? You have a clear code from your culture that tells you how to do it. And with that certainty, you enter. When people don't have that...

They feel impolite. They feel impolite. I think that's what I, you know, they don't want to feel bad themselves because someone is suffering more. Yes, but they don't have the certainty. What they don't have is a code. And Megan is asking, what is the proper code? And Naima has a code. She may find out that these people live by a different code, but she goes with the code. When you don't have a strong cultural or religious or interpersonal connection,

on which to rest, then you find yourself grappling to come up with answers that usually cultures have given you. Especially when it's a work thing, as she noted, as Megan noted, because she didn't know her place. That's right. But what should be the clue to that code? If you don't have a cultural code, is the clue...

The strength of your feeling? The strength of, is that the clue? I mean, I think I could see. That's a great question. I mean, this is the struggle of individualism. Do I make decisions based on my feelings? Do you make decisions based on century-old practices with values? Also on my feelings. Yes, but the feelings are connected to a script that says, when people are in mourning, you go. Mm-hmm.

You don't knock at the door to see if they want you to come. You don't impose on them to know what they don't know in a period of grief. Yeah, you don't even impose the question on them. You just show up with food. I do think work does impose a stronger thing on them. I think Megan's got a point. It's like you don't quite know because you don't know quite your place. But one of the things that was interesting that happened, someone at a work thing whose husband suddenly died, no one would say anything. Sure.

to her, and she knew they wouldn't say anything to her, especially at work. And I remember running into her, not a good friend, but a good, worked with a lot. And I said, well, that sucked. And she's like, thank you for saying it sucked. Yes. Because it was really interesting because everyone was like, you'll be okay, it'll be fine. And she didn't want that. That's right. It was very interesting. But at work, they felt that that was the only thing they could say. No. I think you can, and neither do you need to restrict yourself just to the, I'm sorry. It's,

This must be such a shock. This is such a big loss. I can't begin to know what you are experiencing, but I'm here for you. I hope you find the solace and the strength with people that surround you to go through such a difficult thing. You know...

This is not a culture that knows to address death and loss. This being Western culture. No, U.S. U.S. culture. That's what you mean. I tend to think more of the U.S. It's like the tragic is not...

You know, you have to go to the poets. And work becomes the quintessential environment where people tiptoe around this. You know, it's always, it's going to be good. You'll get through this. Sickness too. Yes, yes. It's 9-11 was the same thing. You know, everything is all right. Go back into, you know, instead of, no, this must be so difficult, so painful, so painful.

You bereft, you know, and either I went through it too or, you know, you just ask every day, you know, how is it today? Yeah. You...

What people don't like is to feel that you're so afraid to touch them as if they have the plague. And that you have to basically make them comfortable because they're so uncomfortable about you. When I had the stroke, I almost died. People either said nothing, which was kind of ridiculous, or overshared, like way overshared. And told you all their stories. Or wanted to know all the details. And I'm very private about stuff like that. And it was really, it was nothing in between. It was really kind of fascinating, especially at work.

I want to ask a question about work, which is that work for many people is often a place they kind of retreat to when they're suffering from grief, that it becomes an escape. But I have found that, you know, in periods of loss, it can be a distraction. It can be a place that feels certain, gives me that sense of control. But here, it's like the work is the grief for everybody. For myself, grieving a colleague and a friend. For our colleagues who are grieving a colleague and a friend. I think it's better.

I mean, better in the sense that you have each other. Yeah. And, you know, what needs to really be, what needs to happen is there needs to be a general sense given by you about what we accept here. It's not just if you cry, you cry. It's also, you know, at some point you need to replace this person. It's a lot of issues have to do with timing. And in a healthy system,

You have different timing. Some people are ready to move much faster than others. Some people want to linger there and continue to hold on to the connection and they don't want to clean the office. They don't want whatever, you know. It happens at home too. So a healthy system allows for the differentiation in the reactions of its members. So that instead of imposing one and that tension that people usually think is a problem that some want to

to be done with this and you're still bringing this up and yeah that that tension is actually healthy for a system rather than a problem i i and it needs to be normalized yeah that needs to be said out loud we're going through this amazing change this really big change this shift is lost this

you know and some of us are going to want to talk about it and some of us are not some of us will want to remember her out loud and some of us will do it privately some of you lay out the many facets of this grief and you normalize it and the question of filling that role um

Because of the oddity that we had a new father at the same time that this has happened, that we actually have had a great gift in Meg Cunane. We have two Megs, Megan and Meg on our team. It's a bit confusing, but we had somebody covering for the paternity leave who's able to stay with us to help, you know, and was trained by Blakeney and worked with Blakeney for a month. So it's been a real gift to us, I think, also to have this, you know, team member with us.

Do you feel at this moment that it has brought you together or do you feel that there are tensions? No, I feel very much that it's brought us together, but I think the question is what's the meaning of the work?

And I think that's the question is like being productive while feeling sometimes empty or angry. And I almost, I think it's better actually we play two clips of questions that the team, actually this is going to be Christian and Megan. When something truly horrible like this happens, I usually feel numb. And I only allow myself to experience brief glimpses of extreme sadness.

The numbness is useful because it allows me to... Stop a second. You're listening to his words. I heard his... Yes. And at the end of the sentence, he choked. He's not numb. Yeah. No. Just so we establish that. If you just listen to the words, you think he is not numb. He's not. He can barely swallow. Yeah. And now let's listen. When something truly horrible like this happens...

I usually feel numb and I only allow myself to experience brief glimpses of extreme sadness. The numbness is useful because it allows me to carry on, but it's unsettling and I feel like I've lost a little bit of myself. So how do I get rid of the numbness? Or conversely, how do I allow myself to access the pain without falling apart?

He says, I react and I'm numb. But he ends by saying, how do I allow myself to express something without falling apart? Yeah. He's, do not fall for the trap of the numbness. But he says numb with period, glimpses of extreme sadness. But the main fear he has is that the well...

It'll fall apart. It'll fall apart. If I hear a person speak like this and he says, you know, what did he say after he swallowed? All I would do is... The numbness is useful because it allows me to carry on. Yeah. I would put my hand on his shoulder. I would just hold his hand and look in his eyes. But he's virtual in Maryland. Now what are you going to do? It's okay. I would say, look at me. Yeah. On Zoom, look at me.

I'm putting my hand on your shoulder. Do you feel it? Or I'm holding your hand, whatever. You're anything but numb. This is beyond painful. And you're not going to fall apart. And that's it. Then you sit there and you wait. And you know what? He, if I, I don't know the man at all, but I have sat with people where the tear is streaming down their face, but they don't know it. Yeah. Hmm.

They don't let themselves know it. They don't let themselves know it. It's like they're so, but meanwhile, it's all coming down. And then I just say, it's happening. Just let it come. Christian's a big heart. He's not a numb guy. He really is. As journalists, you're kind of taught also to stay disconnected to a story. So there is also that he's an excellent journalist and he's been, you know, that numbness comes from the perseverance and numbness is related. Yeah, 100%. Let's ask Megan Bruni's question.

I only had the privilege of working with Blakeney for a few months. I joined the team in April, but in those three months, Blakeney and I worked very closely together. She was my manager, but more than that, my mentor. After many long hours together, Blakeney came to trust me with more and more responsibilities. I was so honored to earn her trust. I admired Blakeney and sought her approval every day. It didn't take me long to see that she and I approached work with the same passion and shared similar traits. My work on this show is tied so closely to Blakeney.

I'm struggling to understand and accept how to continue the work without her. It feels different to me now. I know it does to us all, and I'm fortunate to have a team of wonderful people to lean on. I know that we'll all work to fill her shoes together, but I can't help but feel a lack of direction and motivation without Blakeney. I mean, this is the experience. You know, with mourning and with grief, you don't take it away. You just become a witness of it.

It's like when people say, how will I continue to live if you're not there? It's that the person who is not there wanted to live as well and they will gain nothing from your putting yourself in a premature grave. So...

You do it because you do it for them. It's affirming also of life. You know, I will continue the work that you started and did not finish. I will honor the mentorship and the teacher that you were for me every day. And the meaning that I will get is I will keep you alive forever.

by remembering you when I do those things. That's how we memorialize and incorporate somebody. And that's the meaning making. It's not a meaning of the death. It's a meaning of who you are. And every time I take on a thing, I may think, what would you have advised me? What would you say to me right now? How would you, what would you want me to improve? And you maintain a person's aliveness. Yeah.

in that way. I love what you said before about taking a piece of the person and having it in you. And the truth is that Megan and Blakeney have pieces of each other. I think that they had some similarities, as she alluded to. And Blakeney mentioned that to me, too. She saw that. I think there's... And you do that with your father all the time. I do, yeah. You do. I hear you talk about him...

And out just like that, my father this, my father... Because he stays alive. Yes. That's what we do. That is the meaning making. You incorporate the person. It's one of the greatest relationships to have had an incredible teacher. I mean, that accompanies you for life. Yeah, it does. Absolutely. In the short term advice and in the long term for someone like Megan, when she said, I can't help but feel a lack of direction and motivation without them there. Yes. Yes.

That's your answer, yes. Yes, what do you expect? I'd be worried if you didn't have those feelings. I'd be worried if you acted as if everything is normal. You just went through a major loss. This is normal. And you know what happens? After a while, you realize in the best of circumstances that it's been a few days now, and then it's been a week, and then you start to feel like you have less of that feeling of sadness,

overwhelming sadness, that emptiness, that void, that, you know, every time I enter the room, I realize you're not there. Slowly, I begin to enter the room and I know that you're not going to be there. And this takes time. And there's a reason why we have, in most traditions, a year-long mourning process. But what you said is really nice because a lot of people talk about grief as like a door that you can't open again. I've heard this analogy used. People talk about it. But I think you can still enter the room. You can still enter the room. You enter the room.

But you have a different reaction. You know, you don't have... The tears don't instantly come down. You begin to enter and you say, I so wish you were there. Yeah.

Where are you? How is it up there or down there? Or, you know, you talk to the dead. We talk to the dead. We talk to them as if they are alive. You know, we talk to them as if they're whispering in our ears. They stay with us in the good and in the bad, actually. Yeah.

Those two questions. But I can ask you, I answered you and I just said, yes, of course she will feel not motivated. And of course she will feel that she has an incredible group of people to whom she can say, it's hard to do this right now. My mentor, my partner, my colleague. But that's not going to make the feeling go away. And yet to be able to share it with a supportive group,

of people who go through their own experience of this is what helps us more than anything else. But it doesn't make it go away. You know, this idea that because I say to you and you say something back to me, it suddenly is gone. No, she's going to live with this for months, but it won't have the same intensity. That's why I say, yes, this is normal. Yeah. There is nothing to do

But to understand that and to surround yourself. But it is a really, I think there's two things I take from it. And one is a question for you, which is as a manager, I'm managing people who are processing this through different ways. We have a team of, you know, a few producers, engineers, fact checkers, entrepreneurs.

many people that work on this show that make it every week. And even the freelancers, Blakeney, one thing that was really exceptional about Blakeney is that she always... But she integrated the freelancers as if they were fully part of the team. Yeah, you know this, I told you. No, I... You can feel it as how we describe her. I love that. You already have a piece of her. But she really did. And even her father remarked this to me as something he had heard about her in her career. She...

had remarkable respect and people who worked one day a week on our show or five days a week that for her, they were even. But I think one is how do I create space for, as a manager, manager's listening to this, how do you create space for everybody to go at their own pace? You're helping everyone go at their own pace. You want to grieve yourself and the work must go on. And sometimes it feels like an iron triangle, those three things. Right.

That's correct. And look, if I answer you, I just want to be clear. I am very much like a tailor. I do fittings. I don't have standard answers that apply to everything. I don't think it works like this. So in your situation, I think that's right. You have work that needs to be done. You have your own personal experience. And then you have the diversity of responses in the team itself. You have probably a weekly meeting.

Daily meeting, stand-ups. Okay. And in that meeting, you know, for the next two weeks, three weeks, we're going to take a few moments to just address this so that it's out there for whoever needs to. Is there anybody who had a thought, a question? You know, those questions that you just recorded to me, they probably would have appeared in a meeting like that too.

we don't have answers but we are a group of people that make space for these experiences so that we can go and do the work so that we don't express them does anybody here need anything specifically today more support some of you are more able to keep the work going than others can you offer your support to those for whom this takes a little bit longer so you create these interactions and

After a week or two or three or four, whichever, you will see if nobody talks anymore, then you will say, look, once a month or once a week, I just want us to name Blakeney. We've named the name. And if anybody has anything to say,

Or a poem you want to read or a song we should listen to. It doesn't just have to be speaking, you know, or a photo that you want to show. And then slowly it becomes more spread out. And then it becomes an anniversary once a year. And this is what it leads to. Those are hard. Those are very hard. And you wrote me something when my father passed. The first and the last are always the hardest. Yes. Yes.

The last time you do everything and the first time you do everything. And that's why it's a year. It's a four season thing in which you remember the last time you did this and then the first time you did it without the person there. And there's something extremely granular about that. The last time I made coffee for two and the first time I made coffee for myself. But I think that the main thing I often say is,

The feelings that you're describing, the situations you're describing, the fact that there is these three poles that are all needing attention. This is the nature of the beast. This is not a problem. Yeah. So let's finish up by talking about coping, which is what Naeem is talking about. During the height of the pandemic, you talked about the concept called tragic optimism. Can you describe what that is for people?

I reread Man's Search for Meaning. Oh, wow. Victor Frankl. During the pandemic. Because his idea that you tolerate death by making meaning and you survive better, you fight for something because you have a reason. And all of these concepts became very relevant once again during the pandemic. And tragic optimism is...

is that it's the awareness of death that lives side by side with the things that bring you hope and joy and pleasure and connection. If you

You know, some people will not allow themselves to come close to others because they have experienced loss. You say, I make babies. I have children. I have experienced loss, but I have children. And you think this is the normal way. But there are people who do the exact opposite from you. I lost people.

And therefore, I make sure not to get too close to anybody. So I never have to experience that thing again. I did it with thought. Okay. They do too. What? You said I did it with thought. Yes, yes, yes. Because I didn't have connection. Because when people lose a parent at a young age, they get, it's called highly functional. Yeah. And so nothing, even earthquakes don't bother you. It's like, yeah, whatever. You know, that kind of thing. So that's, it was a purposeful thing. But when Carolyn had her surgery, she went by herself. I did. Like a brother.

She didn't want everyone to be you, see? I don't want to. Just my brother. Just your brother. But my children are the only end. Other everyone else, I'm fine. You know? It's interesting. But that's the choice I've made. Right. But you see that tragic optimism is what you do. Mm-hmm.

tragic that leaves you without optimism is when you isolate yourself and you make sure not to have any connection of meaning so that you never have to experience the pain again. The tragic optimism says, I may experience that pain again, but because of it, I'm going to surround myself with even more meaningful, rewarding relationships. Okay, last question. You and I did that story on grief and the pandemic. Yes.

And in it you said, you told me that your father used to say, "There is laughter in hell." That always stuck with me. But the idea that we talked about at the beginning of this relationship, joy and sorrow, relationships and grief, the flip side. So talk a little bit about that humor, lightness, and getting through tragedy. I mean, it's not always lightness. Sometimes it's very dark humor. Yeah. You know?

But seriously, when he said it to me, I've told myself, duh. Like, you know, I said, do you think we really managed to get up every morning and walk kilometers in the frost with newspaper around our feet to go work in the factory with a bowl of soup for the whole day, months on end, because we were in touch with our feelings? Yeah.

You know, I mean, humor saved us, you know, and it gave us a sense of mastery over what we were experiencing. You become the owner of the narrative when you have humor. You tell the story and you give it its twist and its meaning and its irony and its sarcasm, etc. And I just thought, of course. Yeah.

You know, you went to bed and instead of saying goodnight, you know, you said, you know, are you feeling the feathers underneath your back when you were on a piece of wood? You know, yeah.

And on and on like this. And then I saw, it's actually the title of a book, Laughter in Hell. And, you know, the place where I also learned it a lot is I was working with a group of Chilean refugees who had been in solitary confinement and tortured political prisoners for years. Here in New York, we worked with them through theater. And we played a whole scene of them in the cells. Wow.

And then when they came to watch it, so they would tell us the story, we would transform it into a theatrical performance and then we would play it in front of them. They basically said, and where is the humor? He said, you think we survived all of this because we were dead serious the whole time and weeping on ourselves and pity? No, you know, we had developed a whole morse on the wall in which we communicated with each other. And it was a lot about humor and humor.

I think it's the piece that people don't often talk about because they think it's misplaced. You know, how can you bring in humor in the midst of tragedy? Because it helps some of us, not all of us. You know, it really depends. But that's the concept of laughter. Astaire, thank you for being with us. It's a pleasure. Astaire, thank you so much.

Always a pleasure to spend some time with Esther. Indeed. Even in these sad days. Yes. Over the next week, we're going to take a break as a team in remembrance of Blakeney. On Thursday, you'll hear an episode she produced with comedian and her former yoga student, Mike Birbiglia. And next week, we'll play you an episode of Esther Perel's podcast, Where Should We Begin? We'll be back on Thursday, August 17th with a new episode. Cara, let's read ourselves out. And listeners, please stick through till the end.

Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, Fernando Arruda, Rick Kwan, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado. With music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, and Carol Saburo.

Thank you to all the people who helped care for Blakeney at the Brooklyn Hospital Center and at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, including CCU nurses Suzanne, Heather, Michaela, Ophelia, and Weill Cornell doctors Daniel McDonald and Babak Navi, as well as Brian Schaaf of the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and many, many more who provided exceptional care. And thanks also to Rashi DiStefano, Samantha Altshuler, Molly Fore, Matthew Vosberg,

And of course, to Blakeney's parents, Linda J. Schick and William Jerome Schick Jr., also known as Jerry.

And a very, very special thanks to, of course, Blake Neshek.