Shaun Dawson (00:00.046)
this episode's gonna be a little bit different. About 30 years ago, tomorrow, my brothers and my dad and my family sat around, my mom, in her bedroom in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we watched as she took her last breath.

There was a hospice nurse there who kind of warned us that.

there were times when they would stop breathing for a while and then start again. And that that was just part of the normal process. These hospice people, man, they're special people. This is what they do for a living. They...

Shaun Dawson (01:01.09)
They guide people through that door and they have two clients in that sense. They have the client, the person who's dying and they have the family and they're indispensable for both, at least in my experience.

Shaun Dawson (01:25.078)
You know, couple, about a week earlier, I had come home from work and I'd walked into the house and there was a hospice nurse in there that I didn't recognize. And I introduced myself to her. This was common. We had a lot of different hospice nurses and this gal...

I introduced myself to her, she was in the kitchen and she had just gotten done tending to my mom who was in her bedroom.

Shaun Dawson (02:01.586)
And she introduced herself to me and I introduced myself to her and she said, you know, I just got finished tending to your mom and my mom didn't recognize her, right? She was new and my mom woke up while she was being tended to and she looked and saw this new hospice nurse who was backlit by the sun and

And she woke up and she said, are you an angel?

and

The hospice nurse relayed that story to me.

and said, wouldn't that have been a beautiful time for her to.

Shaun Dawson (02:53.078)
And I was so mad. I don't remember how I responded. probably just...

Shaun Dawson (03:02.23)
I probably just looked at her incredulously or something. But I thought, no, there's no beautiful time for her to go. was still fighting it, but.

Shaun Dawson (03:21.432)
but a switch flipped for me at that time. I realized that.

Shaun Dawson (03:29.73)
that this was inevitable and I could fight it and make it worse or I could try and make it as wonderful as I could.

Shaun Dawson (03:48.248)
There was this.

Shaun Dawson (03:51.939)
There was no real moment. We were all there. And the hospice nurse, by the way, was instrumental in that. She made it clear that we're getting there. And she gathered us all around.

You know, I think you hear these stories about, you know, there's this moment on death and you almost feel a soul leave the body and those sorts of things. None of that stuff happened for us. There was just this slow kind of realization that this thing that we had been living with, this fear, this inevitable train coming down on us was here.

was finally happening.

You know, about six weeks or two months, something like that earlier, my mom was, she was confined to her bed. And I think I had just had enough. And I left. I had a friend who was coming through town and he was moving.

to Los Angeles and he and I and he had and we spent three weeks driving to California. We went up to Yosemite. I was a rock climber back then and we climbed.

Shaun Dawson (05:21.046)
And as I was taught telling everybody that this was my plan, nobody was willing to say it, but everybody thought it, which was that what if she dies while you're gone? You're planning to be gone for three weeks and she's confined to her bed. What, what if she dies? And somehow I felt like I knew that that couldn't happen. And it didn't, I can't imagine what I would have.

Shaun Dawson (05:49.294)
I would have felt about that decision. It worked out okay, but it was the wrong call.

But when we went in to say goodbye, my friend, who, you my mom had been a big part of his life too.

We were saying goodbye and my friend said, I'll see you later. And my mom said, I hope not.

She was funny.

I was really.

Shaun Dawson (06:28.738)
I was really awful.

to her sometimes.

Shaun Dawson (06:38.7)
In those last months, I was so mad. I was so angry. And I blamed her. Right. I blamed her for leaving us.

Shaun Dawson (06:53.728)
I moved home, I was in college when we found out that she was terminal. And I had the presence of mind to move home, to move where she lived. It wasn't my home. They lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I came back and I stayed for six months. And then I went back to college after that.

And I think I was resentful about having to uproot my life, I guess. But mostly I was resentful that.

that she was leaving. I remember this one time we were driving to the train station, I think, to pick up my brother or somebody. I just laughed out at her. I was driving and she was in the passenger seat and I was just so ugly.

Shaun Dawson (07:51.983)
She just, she just listened and she got it. Like she reached over and.

Shaun Dawson (08:10.518)
She forgave me.

Shaun Dawson (08:15.086)
Yeah.

It's been 30 years. I feel shame about that to this day about the way that

Shaun Dawson (08:27.32)
about the way that I treated her. I wish I could do that over again. She left us these tapes, audio tapes, right? And she went away for about a week and...

recorded messages to all of us.

Shaun Dawson (08:51.778)
I listened to mine recently. I still have it.

I listened to it a couple of months ago and I was struck by how human she was. In my memory, she has become this mythological figure. She's like Athena. And listening to that tape and listening to her voice and listening to the kinds of stuff that she was, the kinds of wisdom that she felt was important to impart to me.

Shaun Dawson (09:30.114)
brought me back and made me realize that she was a real person, right? And she was human in the way that we all were.

Shaun Dawson (09:40.044)
because she's been gone all this time. She's been mythologized in my head as this ideal perfect person and she wasn't that. And that...

Shaun Dawson (09:53.784)
think about my own legacy, my...

You know, I'd be proud if my kids think about me remotely as positively as we think about her. You know, I had kids much, much later than she did. I was much older. And there's a real possibility that I'll be gone while they're still pretty young.

By then I'm sure that my kids, you know, they'll probably have AI avatars, right? That they can consult and talk to in my voice. And they'll have so many more pictures and videos and recordings and text messages and emails and all of this stuff that will keep it, that will keep it real. I wonder.

I wonder if that will prevent them from generating the kind of mythology around me that I did around my mom.

I if that's good or bad.

Shaun Dawson (11:12.174)
Probably both.

Shaun Dawson (11:21.696)
I wish that she'd gotten to meet my wife and my kids. Man, she would have loved my kids.

Shaun Dawson (11:36.366)
they would have loved her.

We talk about it a lot.

Shaun Dawson (11:46.599)
They ask me about her.

I tell her whatever I can, whatever I'm.

Shaun Dawson (12:01.314)
They get to experience her a little bit.

Shaun Dawson (12:06.732)
I hope that I'm around to be able to meet my kids' spouses and my kids' kids.

Shaun Dawson (12:18.444)
I grieve, I grieve sometimes that I might not be around for that.

Shaun Dawson (12:28.462)
think about that a lot. I think about how long I waited to have my own kids. And on one part of it, I'm glad I did that. I was wiser. I was wealthier. I had more resources, both I more time. I had more money. I had more strength and flexibility.

Shaun Dawson (12:54.83)
But the cost of that is everything that I'm gonna miss in their lives. And the more I realize, the more I think about that, the more...

Shaun Dawson (13:14.562)
The more I see how capable they're becoming as they grow older, the more enjoyment I get out of watching them navigate the world.

Shaun Dawson (13:28.428)
I feel like...

Shaun Dawson (13:32.824)
the older your kids are, the better they are, the better your relationship with them.

I have friends for whom that's not true. I have friends whose kids struggle with addiction. Or...

Shaun Dawson (13:55.631)
They just don't have a good relationship with their kids for whatever reason. And so maybe it's not like that for them. Maybe it's, you know, they think back to when their kid was eight. It didn't hate them yet, right?

Shaun Dawson (14:15.924)
interested to see how it plays out for me. I have such a great relationship with them right now but nothing's forever and I can see you know they get right now they want they want closeness right now they want

Shaun Dawson (14:36.398)
They want connection, but.

Soon they'll want independence.

Shaun Dawson (14:45.566)
So if I'm not ready for that, or if they're not ready for that, then I think it could get ugly.

Shaun Dawson (15:04.248)
She would have loved him. My mom would have loved my kids.

Shaun Dawson (15:20.686)
But here we are 30 years later and it's still...

Shaun Dawson (15:33.474)
feels as raw and as painful as it did back then, but it's not.

I get to choose now whether I want to feel that way. And I didn't back then. It was imposed upon me.

Shaun Dawson (15:57.827)
But it.

Shaun Dawson (16:02.382)
Sometimes it gets imposed upon me in ways that I don't recognize consciously. And that happens a lot. Around this time of year, I struggle. I struggle with, and it's, I don't even recognize, just feel, man, life is really, really hard right now. And then I realize what time of year it is. And it just, I mean, it just bubbles up in these unconscious ways.

Shaun Dawson (16:32.814)
And that's part of it. And that's

For a long time I didn't understand that connection and now I do. And so now I can see it happening. And it allows me to control how I decide to.

Engage with that.

Shaun Dawson (17:05.358)
But I hope that...

Shaun Dawson (17:11.982)
You know, I love you, I miss you.

Shaun Dawson (17:19.926)
and I hope that I honor you.

in this work and in all the other work that I do and in my relationship with my own kids that...

that you

Shaun Dawson (17:41.676)
You were a great parent.