Ep #2 What the F..k and Double Rainbows

In this deeply personal and emotional episode of the Heartbreak Warfare Podcast, co-host Chase Peckham shares the story of his wife, Keri Peckham, and her courageous battle with stage 4 colon cancer—from the initial diagnosis to her final days.

Joined by co-host Carol, Chase opens up about the realities of walking through terminal illness as a family. Together, they discuss what it looked like to have honest, age-appropriate conversations with their children, how they navigated fear, hope, and grief in real time, and the unexpected strength that came from community.

This episode goes beyond the pain, highlighting the profound lessons Keri’s life and journey left behind—about love, presence, faith, and what truly matters when everything else falls away. It’s a raw and heartfelt conversation about loss, resilience, and the kind of perspective that only comes through deep heartbreak.

Whether you’ve experienced loss yourself or want to better support someone who has, this episode offers insight, comfort, and a powerful reminder: even in the hardest stories, there is meaning, connection, and enduring love. @fightcrc @coloncancercoalition, @exactscienses, @cologuardclassic, @chasepeckham, @sweetcareline

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Welcome to Heartbreak Warfare, the podcast about love, loss, and the absolutely unhinged things we do in the name of free. This definitely isn't a self-help show. And we're not here to tell you everything happens for a reason. Because honestly, sometimes it just doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

What does happen is heartbreak. And when it shows up, it doesn't just knock. It flips your life upside down, messes with your brain chemistry, and convinces you that crying in your car or laughing at the worst possible moment is somehow normal.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Here we talk about the love that mattered, the loss that changed us, and the messy, human, a lot of times questionable coping mechanisms that come with it.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

We're going to laugh and we're going to get honest. And we're going to say things people usually whisper, if they say them at all. If you're in the middle of heartbreak, coming out of the other side, or pretending you're fine when you absolutely are not. You belong here.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

I'm Caroline Matika.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

And I'm Chase Peckham. This is Heartbreak Warfare. And you're not broken. You're just surviving love and loss the best way you know how.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Let's get into it. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Heartbreak Warfare.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

All right. The Chase side of the story. We did. We kind of discussed we discussed in depth uh your history and why you're here for this podcast. And now the tables are turning. Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Indeed. So let's uh let's turn the tide over to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Get out your get out your uh tissues.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

We're allowed to get our tissues out.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, if you want to.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

I mean, I hope people had their tissues out during mine. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

I did. I I have to admit I lost it a little a few times. I got I got a little a little emotional there and quiet as you were talking. Um just, you know, the the listening to others is so therapeutic and yet it does conjure up a lot of memories.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah. Memories are a good thing. Memories are good. I think that they're powerful. And I think part of the process of us going through all this is just continuing to say their names and and sharing the stories about them. So I want to know about you and Carrie, and I want you to tell me about your story. It's an interesting path.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

We were we were a love story for sure. We never should have met each other in the first place. We were on different coasts. We were seven years apart in age. Um, she she was a relatively new college graduate when she and I met, but she graduated early. She was always an overachiever. Very type A, knew what she wanted. Gorgeous, beautiful, blonde beauty. Uh, and I met her at my brother's engagement party. Wow. In Big Bear Lake, California, and she had never been to California before, and in fact, almost canceled because she had just had a work trip to Vegas and was tired. And if it weren't for her mom and my future mother-in-law, I would not have uh met her. She made her go.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So she was like out of your league, kind of.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I way out punted my coverage. There's no question at all. But, you know, she flew back. We we spent every last waking moment together that weekend, and she flew back and called her mom when she landed and said, I met the man I'm gonna marry. And she was right.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

For better or for worse.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, she moved to California after a year of long distance, and we made our life here in San Diego and had two incredible kids, you know, both of them at the same school where her last position, her last job, was as the communications director at the Bishop School when Avery was just born. And so my kids have really spent their whole lives at this private school that, you know, my Carrie and I moved to North San Diego for school districts, had just this great little family and incredible friends, and we had a charmed love affair. I mean, we always just everything clicked, always. I mean, there was always, of course, there's marriage, right? It's it's difficult times as well. But for the most part, we our communication was extraordinarily good through all the good stuff and the bad stuff. Around 2016, uh, around the time you were going through all your stuff, my mother, we found out, had dementia, was starting to go through the early stages of dementia. And it was a it was a rough patch for us. Rough patch for me, because I'd really lived a charmed life, never had any major deaths in the family, no major illnesses. You know, everything just, you know, I got a great career early on. I mean, everything just went well. And looking back on it, I should have known the shit was gonna hit the fan at some point. Um, nobody gets away from life, right? We're all gonna get our curveballs, some just larger than others, and um at different times in our life, like some kids you know, go through divorces as child as children with their parents. And you know, I I just I didn't. I had a very charmed life. My parents were very happy all the way through. And so when my mom got sick, you know, she that was like something that was crazy. Like I she was the strongest person I ever knew, and Carrie was really good with me about that, but I went through some anxiety and also this stuff, and we were coming out on the other end of that around COVID. COVID was its own thing.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Ugh.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Um, we had lost my mom in 2018. We went through all that, um and COVID hit in 2020. That was terrible. Carrie didn't Carrie had a really terrible time with it because we didn't get to go to work, we didn't get to do anything. Her love was being on that campus with the kids and seeing them all struggle, and us watching our kids go through the Zooms and all that school. It was just, and you know, you can only be with each other trapped in a small space for so long.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

And we when when we started to slowly come out of it, we decided um we would um get season tickets to the Padres. That was the only way we could guarantee getting in with you know, sitting at a distance and social distancing and all that. And so, but we knew that that was gonna be a way for us to get out. Around that time, it was it was the season of 2021, and that everybody was we were back, we could sit in seats somewhat close to each other, decided to go get the, you know, we just really enjoyed it as a family. And one night, Carrie, we were walking after a game, big win, I remember, and we were walking up these stairs where we were parked, and she had this deep, deep pain in her lower, I believe it was her lower right side. And we thought it was appendicitis or something like that. But Carrie was really tough. Like she didn't I was a baby when I'm sick. You know, you never in a million years, I never saw her sick, never she never complained about being feeling bad or anything. So for her to be like I'm in a lot of pain, she must have been in horrific pain. Woke up the next morning and it was gone. Um didn't really think anything about it until a couple weeks later and it came back. And she was going through a period where we're looking at California, the cost of living, and everything else, and she was being recruited by a really prestigious school in north side of Dallas. And she had an interview that Friday morning, and that Thursday night, she was like in a lot of pain again. And so we decided in the middle, it was like one in the morning. She's like, I'm just gonna go to urgent care now, and hopefully we'll figure this out because we thought it was appendicitis, because it was right there where her appendix was. And woke up and I said, Okay, and Avery had gone through some our daughter, Avery, who was in sixth grade at that time, going into sixth grade. She was starting at Bishop's, she was going through some anxiety. Like she had it, we think it was COVID-related, um, new school, new whole thing. But we didn't want to leave her alone, so Carrie's like, you gotta stay. And then the next morning, I walked into Avery's room and said, 'You want to call mom?' And you know, she's at you know urgent care in La Jolla, and we FaceTimed her, and I could see in her face, her face was ghostly white. She had just gotten the news from a young doctor that they found a bunch of stuff on the CAT scan, and they were gonna admit her. And she couldn't say that in front of Avery. We didn't want to freak her out, and but I could see there was something wrong. So we got off the phone and I called her, and she's like, There's a mass on my liver, and it turns out there was a big tumor that was irritating and pushing on her appendix, which is why she was feeling the pain. Otherwise, there was no other signs of it. She had no blood in her stool, nothing like that. Your normal symptoms. We didn't have any of that.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

And so fast forward, we're now in the literally, I'm like, what the fuck? I think we all go into that mode, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Like that's called what the fuck mode. Your world turns up right now, and you feel like you're in the twilight zone a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yes, I feel like the world is looking at me going like I'm on some TV show. Like this can't be really happening to us. And not not to Carrie. Carrie's the most I mean, she eats right. We all I mean, she's in great shape. She rides that Peloton like it's nobody's business. She works out daily. Excuse me. And I I just felt numb. Um, but at the same time, something takes over in our bodies where we just, okay, we go into crisis mode and we let's go. We're gonna we'll go do this. And of course, we get to the hospital and you go through the hours and hours of different doctors asking you the same questions over and over and over again. We're then you know, we're gonna admit you, we're gonna try a course of action. We were at Scripps Medical at the time and in this beautiful hospital overlooking Torrey Pine's golf course, and it was the week of the US Open. So they were preparing the course, and Carrie had this room. She's like, Well, if I'm gonna be here, can you give me a room with a view of the golf course? as a joke, thinking that they don't just do that. Well, they did. They moved her there, and I went thinking she's gotta be in bad shape if they decided to move her to a room with a view. And they had found a bunch of spots on her liver. So then the whole idea of what's the course of action, are they gonna go? Um, so they started out, it was the chemotherapy. There was gonna be um six weeks every other week of chemotherapy, um, which was gonna take us into December at that point. Again, you mentioned in when we first spoke that you kind of were in a privileged space, and we were really lucky that Carrie working at a place like Bishops, there's a lot of very prominent people and you know, a lot of doctors, a lot of people that their kids go to that school, and she was very in her position involved with the involved with her parents' association. So as soon as people found out, I mean, doctors coming out of left and right from UCSD to you need to do this. I'm gonna introduce you to this doctor, and we're gonna introduce you to this. And UCSD being a teaching hospital and being a part of the um National Cancer Society and being that kind of a hospital, we ultimately needed to get over there because of the type of mutations she had.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Um and the So what was her diagnosis when she first when it sounds very similar to a lot of us.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah, it was she had a the tumor was up in the quadrant that was closest to her liver. So it went straight over there and metastasized to her liver. And at that point, only to her liver. It hadn't gone to her her any other parts of her body to that point. So they were gonna start chemo right away. They felt that that was the biggest course of action. We went to UCSD, met with a who ended up being her oncologist later on in her treatment. But we he's like, I agree with what the doctors at Scripts say. So there was there was a lot of cohesion there, like we're gonna go this direction. We didn't realize how bad it was until we went to go see some a liver specialist up at City of Hope in LA, and he was this world-renowned liver doctor, and he was doing resections and all these things that were all brand new at the time, like what you had gone through early on in that. And but he looked at her and he's like, until there's what I think the liver's in eight quadrants or something like that, and you have to have at least one of those quadrants that doesn't have disease in it to even be close to being that being an option. And that wasn't because she had it, it was even though the tumors were small, they were spreckled all throughout the liver. So there was like there was nothing we could do. So then it was like we're talking to doctors in Rochester and in Belgium and Germany of doing complete liver transplants, but then that's its own deal. Like you have to have no evidence of disease anywhere else but in the liver. And the good news was that the cancer went away, literally went away. We never had surgery in our colon. It the cancer was gone. Like the chemotherapy beat the colon, but the can't the mutation in the liver, they just never it it kept it at bay, but it never so we were we were not then at that point about six months into the whole thing of like, okay, we're gonna live with cancer probably in the long term, but can can we live a somewhat normal life with cancer in her liver? And as it went on, you know, we were really lucky because she went through the chemotherapies, everything where unless she never lost her hair, never she was always I mean, she had her moments where she she really was down in the dumps, but it was thank goodness for Reverend Nicole Sinopoulos, who was a colleague of hers at Bishops, and just helped her see things in a different light. And she never said, What was me again? Never why God, you know, all the things that we asked ourselves, why me? What did I do? What did I do to deserve this? All those things that we that we go through. Um of like, you know, what did I do in my life that I deserved cancer? What who did I screw? Who did who did I upset? And you know, you go through she went through all that stuff, and we I went through that of why us? Why, you know, what did we do? We've done everything right, quote unquote. And it you gotta realize that it just isn't about that. We we didn't cancer doesn't care.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

It doesn't discriminate, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

It doesn't discriminate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Say that a lot. It doesn't discriminate.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

We were lucky she worked through the entire thing, she looked healthy, you never would have known she had cancer if she didn't when she wore, unless you know she was wearing a tank top or a bikini where you could see the port, you'd never know. For whatever reason, she didn't lose her hair. She thinned out a little bit, but I mean, you wouldn't have really known.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

I had the privilege to meet Carrie in June of 2022, and she was a Titan. I appreciated how relentless she was, how passionate she was about everyone, about showing up for everyone. And I'm curious, you know, we unpacked a little bit in our first episode about my story and and you know, kind of how we found people and and um how our families interacted to everything. And you talk a lot about how, you know, you immediately felt empowered and you know, she didn't say ever say why me or any of those things. But I'm really interested in her perspective as a mom because I know that that was the most important thing to her and and me as a mom. You know, how did how did this evolve to talk to your kids and like how what did you do? Because Carrie was such a loving, like that was her world. Her babies were her world.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yes. So we we were always again, I mentioned our communication. We always communicated with our kids as if they were adults as well. I mean, we we as much as possible, obviously, you know, being that they're younger, but we never lied to them like everything's gonna be okay, we know everything's gonna be fine, we're gonna get through this. We we acted as if what we knew. We we would tell them what we know. Little bit at a day, little you know, the whole cliche of one day at a time, one treatment at a time, one scan at a time. That became our way of life. And we took the little, excuse me, we took the little positives, those little, you know, the the disease didn't advance. Those were wins. The wins we would share those with the kids. But we you know, they knew mom, they knew Carrie was pretty sick, and they knew what she was going through, and that not that she was going to die ultimately, but I know that went through their head. But we we talked with them constantly about the different treatments she was going to go through, where we stood, if she felt bad at the time. We were only completely honest with them because we never wanted them to come back and go, well, you didn't prepare us for this. They they were smart enough to know that, you know, mom's not in great shape right now. So we we were honest with them, but we also lived life that year, not knowing we only had a year. I mean, she diagnosed in May of 21 and she passed away on August 7th of 22. And when it went, it went quick. You know, we we talk about other people when they go through this period and they blow up like they're pregnant in their body. I mean, that's when the liver's shutting down, you get it what's called acetes, then because it can't break down the proteins. I don't need to get too graphic, but people who've they know what that's like, and that's when I really became a caretaker. And the kids did too. You know, they were there with her and helped her with her bandages and made them feel like they were a part of it and that we weren't protecting them from it.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

And I think when she ultimately passed because it it must be hard as a father and as a caregiver to like kind of like like ride that wave of balance, right? Between like how you protect your kids and then also not knowing any of those things that are out of our control and how to protect them from that, but then how to also make sure that they understand what's going on and and keep them informed, right? My kids all processed it differently. I don't know how yours did.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

My son is is a was a mama's boy, is a mama's boy, and he and Carrie had a really special bond. So did Avery and she. But there is something about mothers and sons and and and quite frankly, fathers and daughters, um, that are is a little unique. Avery was always a very spiritual person, girl, you know, our girl. Very spiritual. Believed Carrie if she passed, she was gonna go to a special place, and she'd always be with her. And Carrie told her, like she'd talk to the kids when when we finally got into the hospital, and and we knew she wasn't gonna come out. And that's a whole other podcast we could talk about. The decision makes it.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

We seem to be evolving that, right? Well, that's another podcast. That's another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

It is just dealing with hospitals and decision making and hospice and what when you can leave a hospital, when they make you leave, versus what you're eligible to stay. I mean, it it it's it's that's a whole other discussion that we can have. But at that point, it had been decided between her liver specialist and her oncologist that we were at that point, and she wanted to be able to tell the kids. And so she talked with them together and then individually at different times and had her moment with them to decide, you know, discuss that they weren't coming home. You know, her brother and his family, his wife and baby girl just flew out when we all knew this, and Ryan, um Avery Carrie's best friend, Ryan Overton, who was her best friend in college, their first they were roommates together in their freshman year. And she was in our wedding, and she just showed up. She just didn't even ask, she just was there. I'm here, and thank God for her, because it I'm a father still, and so I have to go home. The kids need me there. Sometimes I can't be in the hospital 247 because the kids need one of their parents to be there. So she and Ryan and I would go back and forth, and then we had the family, and but she had that really I mean, I remember the kids coming out crying, but yet smiling. Like, mom's gonna be okay. Mom's in a good place. And Carrie conveyed that at the end. Like, she was prepared to go. And even me, I had this weird comfort of like knowing she's leaving me. She's leaving us, but she's going to a better place. She's not going to be in pain anymore. I'm not going to have to see her go through these bandages and having to be drained anymore and have to go through the horror of having to be admitted and readmitted to emergency room and go through all that. That was harder on her than the cancer was going through all the freaking details and steps that you have to go through. Like we were in the hospital. She was getting drained when the acides and they were we were right next to the emergency room, and her liver numbers came back that and they were just awful. They we literally had to go out of the hospital, walk around the corner and readmit ourselves in the emergency room to be able to get a room. It was, you know, just that alone was so horrific for her. The mental anguish of having to go through that admin process again. Yeah. It was brutal. Um, and and I'm I think we were going through our anniversary at the time. It was our 15th wedding anniversary that after that even that day, and that was the last time she ever came out. And we went through, you know, the kids. She got to, it was almost that we talk about the type A thing. Somehow, in in the worst of times, that period was so beautiful. People look at me and like I'm cross-eyed, like what? She's dying. Like, you're gonna lose your wife, and yet everything worked out. We were in COVID protocols, they were only allowing two people in at a time. You had to go through you know the masks, and kids under 12 couldn't go. We had to fake, we just lied that Avery was over 12. And then when we were down to the last, we didn't fucking care. We were like, she's not gonna see her daughter. No shame, no shame whatsoever. Yeah. And thank goodness Avery Avery was at that point like almost 5'10 in seventh grade, maybe 5'8, 5'9. So she was a tall seventh grade, 6'2.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

25.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah. So she looked the age. And it just, you know, again, we go through the whole, you know, we have to make decisions if she's not sick enough at this point or it's not imminent enough. We can't take up a bed in the hospital. We have to look for hospice outside. So we were looking at houses and all these things. Like where she we made the collective decision, she made the decision with the kids that she didn't want to die in the house, our house. She didn't want that to be like something that the kids had to, you know, remember that this was where she took her last breath. And it just kind of everything went in order. Like she went fast enough to where she wasn't in pain for a long, significant period of time. She declined so quickly that we she we would now we knew we weren't gonna leave UCSD medical hospital. And we had this angel of a nurse, he was amazing. He moved mountains to get through these protocols so Carrie could say goodbye to her niece who wasn't even one yet. And so there were at one point, and her couple of her best friends, Heather from Florida, came out to see her and be with her. And Carrie had this group of friends here locally in San Diego. They called themselves the ninjas because they sound like a Carrie thing. Yeah, they would, they would. In fact, I had the number one in ninja. I had lunch with her yesterday. She was in town, but the these order since. Well, there was like the ninja, the leaders. Like they called us the ninjas because they would all of a sudden have these weekends in the desert on the books as girls' getaways. And the rest of us got and the guys at home would be watching the kids, and we we'd be like, Wow, how did they do this? And so but this guy moved mountains to get Carrie got to say goodbye to all her best friends and the group of us. Um she very quietly the night she passed away, Ryan was with her. Um that this was a Sunday, and on the s and it was the 7th of March or 7th of August. That six, she got to say goodbye to everybody. And she was feeling at that point like she didn't want to be seen. And and I'm like, your girlfriends, the girls, the ninjas, they really want to say goodbye to like I don't I don't want them to see. And I'm going, Carrie, it's not about you anymore. This is about the people that they will never have closure if they don't get a chance to say goodbye to you. And it all just it was beautiful. I mean, I passed the girls as they were coming in, all of them very being as strong and as they can. And you know, Carrie was like the strongest of all of them, right? She was that leader, like you said. And to see for them to see her kind of withering away like she was was something for them. But they laughed. A friend of ours recorded it so because she wanted to, she's like, I don't know if this is dark, but I just want to hear her voice. Um they got to spend that time. Ryan and I went over to local Regents Pizza for those who in San Diego. We had a beer, and it was just kind of time of levity. It's just we it's hard to explain. And I stayed with her that night. Ryan went home and was with the kids in the family, and then Sunday we flipped. I was with her most of the day, and then I went home that night, and I remember Mike, Clay loved a barbecue, and our barbecue was on the Fritz, and he loved he wanted to make Philly cheesesteaks. So Mike bought him a blackstone, and Clay made Philly cheesesteaks that night. And I was exhausted, and it was Ryan's night to stay there, and then I Ryan I called to say goodnight, and Ryan's like, I just have a feeling, but I I think I think Carrie needs you. I think you need to be here.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

And I said, Okay, I'm I'm on my way.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I don't know about the things that you remember, but that those parking lots and having to pay the parking fee every time. I would love to know how much money we spent. Parking meters here. And I don't know why that sticks in my mind, but it does. And I go in, it's quiet, it's after hours, and I knock on the door, I walk in, and Carrie's just laying there, and Ryan's on the her left side or her right side. I walk around the bed and she's laying there, and she's like, hi.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

She can barely talk.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And I just put my head on on her chest, and I looked at her, and I got back up. I looked, I remember this like it was yesterday, and I looked in her eyes, and I just said, I love you.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

You're my everything. You're my true companion.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

And there's something behind what those words meant. True companion was the song that we sing our that we did our first dance to in our wedding, and it was always something that was very close to us. And uh then I put my head on her chest and I got back up really quick and I looked at her and she breathed and I said, I love you again, and she mouthed, I love you, and I put my head down on her chest, and it then dawned on me. I looked up at I mean, my head there, and I looked up at Ryan, and Ryan's got tears coming down her face, and I said, She's not breathing, is she? I said, Her heart's not beating.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

I said, She and Ryan's like, she waited for you. I got to be there for that last breath and for her to tell me she loved me. And Ryan and I just sat there over her body, what seemed like an hour both of us gripping her hands. I had her left hand and she had her right hand. You know, and then I just kind of lost it and just cried on her chest for I don't know how long.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

And then, you know, at the some point I'm like, we gotta tell somebody. And it turns out that the nurses knew they could tell that she was going and they just wanted to leave us alone, which looking back on that now, I I mean my heart's off to those people that do that on a daily basis that watch so much death.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

And they were so unbelievably humanitarian.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

They could be very shallow and they see death all the time, and it's their job, and yet they didn't they I have never felt such humanity and felt so much like I have faith in humanity because I I truly believe there are more good people out there than there are assholes and evil people. They really, you know, then you have to go through the process of the paperwork. The finality of it is so dramatic, right? All this stuff that you're going through and the decisions that have to be made, and with her last breath now it's okay. Now we have to discharge her and we have to set everything in motion. And of course, as we're going through that and we're cleaning out her room, because they're gonna take her down and they're gonna get her prepped for her to be cremated. We like you said, you know, in our first talking, you know, you we we went through what we were gonna do. We knew what her what she wanted and how we were gonna do it and where it was gonna be. And thank God for my great friend Brian Blackburn and Amber, who Amber, we she went to go through the whole process of her being cremated and everything with me. That's a whole podcast into itself as well.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Also, thank heaven for the humanity of funeral homes and crematoriums.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Gave me so much advice in what to do and what not to do, and what who to tell and who not to tell. That'll save your life a lot of grief with paperwork and banks for one are the worst. And thank goodness we were somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

That could be four podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

It could be four podcasts, it really could, just getting your affairs in order. You know, and then I I realized it dawned on me that Ryan didn't really get a chance to cry. And so I just gave her a big hug and said, You gotta let it go too. And which she cried, and then she drove home, and um by that time it was around midnight, and the garage door to the house opened, and obviously my kids heard that. They came running downstairs. My mother, my brother-in-law, and his wife are at the house. And for us to be home, both me and Ryan, they went, you know, we had to say she's gone. And we all cried, and I had two bottles of Vouvre Cloco, champagne that Carrie loved deeply, and she loved her champagne and she loved her mimosas. Um, and we had our Vouve, we had Vouvre, which was really expensive for us back in those days when we got married, and we had the good stuff, and including the kids, we all got champagne glasses, and I had our wedding chute that was the crystal, and we all toasted her. Every one of us, even Avery and Clay, we set a toast to their mom, and we were in the backyard, and I think we talked until three or four in the morning, and I finally went to sleep. It turns out that my brother-in-law and Ryan and they never went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and my best friend Brian Blackburn and Amber were downstairs sitting on the couch waiting for me to wake up.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

It's a whole lot of looking around going, what do we do now?

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Heartbreak warfare.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

My brother my brother showed up. Yeah. We went we went to lunch. I'm like, what are we gonna do? Sit around the house and all just stare at each other. Thank goodness of my close friends, the Chicorellas, offered up their house in their backyard. They had a relatively new, it was new to newer to them at the time. And they have this resort-like backyard that Carrie and I, we just loved it. Like summers there were phenomenal. And they said, come on over. Um, but Carrie would want us to not be sad. They'd want us to get together and want us all to be together. And so we had this very impromptu party, and that sounds awful, right? What kind of assholes go have a party afterwards? That's what Carrie wanted, and that's what we were about. That's what our whole lives together, the group of us friends, and we played horseshoes, and we cried, and we drank beer, and we cried, and we there was a good six or seven of us couples and kids that were there.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

I think something that bonds us together is that we both had the opportunity and the honor to have our loved ones share with us kind of what they wanted and what their expectations. And you know, we talked about what Mike wanted as he left the world, and I think about what Carrie and Mike kind of charged us with, and and I don't think that it's out of sorts for her to be celebrating alongside of you in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

And it was so that's the so the reason I even bring that story up is um, you know, I mentioned how many times that Carrie almost it was like she orchestrated the way she was gonna go. And for whatever reason, leading up to her death, like the last month, friends of hers were sending her pictures of double rainbows all the time. Like I just looked out my window and she went to Florida State, so she has a lot of friends in Florida and in the south, a lot of thunderstorms and stuff there. We in California, we don't get our rainbows nearly as much. But for whatever reason, like there was probably 10 friends over that month reached out to her sending her pictures of I'm looking out my window and there's this rainbow. And we had been having some crazy weather in California in that August where we were getting a lot more thunderstorms than we normally would in San Diego. So even San Diegans were seeing rainbows and would say, Hey, I'm thinking of you. And so Carrie said, you know, this rainbow thing, maybe that's my thing. That maybe I'm synonymous with rainbows. And we're there's the group of us at this party, and we're all just kind of standing around, and Christine Blackburn looks up and goes, Oh my god, Chase, look up. And there was this extraordinarily bright double rainbow right over Jeff and Christie's roof. And it was as brilliant as can be, and all of us just shivers. Like we were all like shaking, like, oh my god, she's here. She's that's her saying, I love you, I'm with you. We're there. And then the craziest thing happens. All of our phones start buzzing, especially mine. But everybody around San Diego, all these people that knew, because Carrie was posting these things, like, do you see these rainbows? Like everybody in San Diego could see them all over everywhere. And people are going, Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this? It's Carrie, Carrie's there. All these, and it was just I get shivers and goosebumps thinking about it right now that she was there, she was with us. And uh I love it. Fast forward about four weeks later, Nicole Somopoulos, who is our re our reverend at bishops and close to she goes, Do you mind if I send you something that a friend of mine who is kind of a uh an empath and a spiritual guide, she's like, she got a visit from Carrie. I know this is weird, but she got to speak to Carrie the day she died, and and she's like, as much as she didn't want to leave her children and everything else, she she's gonna be okay, and that she knows that that Chase and the kids are gonna be okay because of the community and the people around us and those relationships that we cultivated. And that has never been more true through through this entire ordeal. The friends and the family, I'm still have every Christmas with Michael and his mom, um, Carrie's mom, who's going through her own health things now, and her his family. We're always gonna be family, and these friends and these people that were with us through this whole thing have propped me and the kids up. The bishop's family, everybody has held us together and kept her spirit and her life alive, and have helped with Carrie's golf tournament, which raises money for colon cancer awareness and the and fight CRC, and who you're very involved with, and the colon cancer coalition colon camp. Um I think through the that whole story, like what made me more than anything is just appreciate life more than I ever did before.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

I couldn't agree with you more. That like life is beyond that surrounds us, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:52

And life's beyond here. I truly believe that life is beyond this rock and this planet we live on. And I feel Carrie's energy anytime I'm feeling down. I feel like I'm screwing up the kids, or anytime I would go through like, am I feeling miserable at this solo parenting thing? You know, a rainbow would just show up, whether it was a sprinkler head that happened to just go off and it happened to be in the right, you know, like that's Carrie going, Yeah, you're okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Yeah, you're okay. I call those God moments or God winks.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

We had some similarities happen with Mike too, um, after he left us that evening, similar to Carrie. I don't know if we can unpeel the onion a little bit, but talk about the idea of like part of this story that you and I are now thrust into is first the pain of death is I think a little softer for me now that I've walked through it with someone and it's less scary. And I think as society, we like it's really scary, right? Oh my god, this is all gonna happen and it's all dark and it's all scary. I had a different experience with it. It was I did too. While it was painful nor me.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Personally, not afraid to die at all.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

No, me neither. Totally not. And I think it's because Mike and Carrie drove us and like they steered us through it, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

And I believe in a reason I brought up my mom earlier and going through that. I really believe that going through my mom and that whole ordeal really prepared me with how to handle Carrie's journey and the journey that we were going to go through as a family with that. You know, people say to me all the time, you know, it's the pain they're going through, whether it's a divorce, whether it's whatever, and they go, Well, it's nothing you've been through. And I go, That's that's not fair, because we all have our own stuff. And loss is loss, pain is pain, sadness. It's all emotion that we all carry uniquely through our own our own way. And not one thing is bigger or harder than anybody else's. It's just unique to you.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Yeah. I mean, that's like we're like kindred spirits there. I always tell people it doesn't matter if it's a sore thumb or if it's like it's it's your thing, and we, you know, we need to support each other and be there for each other. And here we are, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Here we are. Heartbreak warfare.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

We are left to pick up the pieces, yeah, figure out how life put them back together and then create new. And I think that's one of the things that I've learned the most is that that it's okay to change. It's okay because we we evolve as the experiences that we have and take in, and hopefully we learn from those experiences in a good way. I think, I mean, do I wish that my kids would grow up with their mom and be able to watch them get married and graduate from college and high school and all of the things? Yeah, but I also look at it like my kids are gonna be uniquely prepared for life because of what they've been through already. And that things that seem tough are not gonna seem as tough because what they've already been through is it doesn't get much more difficult than that.

SPEAKER_03 43:16

It's like Carrie's ultimate gift.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. And and I think I know that my kids both feel, especially Avery, but that Carrie's with her every single day, everywhere he goes, everywhere she goes. You know, Clay's a little more pessimistic that way. But he taught, he's like, Daddy, I taught me her a lot now. I go, openly? He's like, Yeah, because he used to laugh at me for that. Like he'd be like, Oh, that's you're so weird. And now he's like, It helps. I think she listens, she talks. And I said, Yeah, she does. So I love it. It's been a journey, and that it was thanks for walking down memory lane. We all have our unique stories, you know, like that. And you know, as we the podcast. As we go through in future episodes, the absurdity of hospital stays and rooms and uh going through the process of the mortuary. I mean, there are ridiculous things that are gonna be fantastic. It's gonna be really, really funny. And I I just hope through this that um people got a little bit of a glimpse of who Carrie was and and and is um and you know, her boost for blue golf tournament that that keeps her love alive and her spirit alive, and that we grow a lot more with that. Um as we, you know, advocacy as we're gonna we're gonna meet in Arizona this next week, where the cola cancer world gets together, we get to see a lot of the people that have been through the pain and are going through it. And I'm excited to see all our brothers and sisters in that light.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Yeah. I think this is the best way that we honor them. And also in this weird sort of way, the the way that we give them the hardest time up there, where they want to like come so close to us. You know, there's the they talk a lot about the veil and you know that it's and how you live your life to like to know that they want to be come through so badly that they're like right right there. So I think of our podcast as twofold. First, honoring Carrie and Mike in our lives by you know supporting others on this on the grief journey, right? Right and then also really annoying them so that they just want to come through and be like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah. Carrie's probably like, Man, you butchered that story.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

What?

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Come on. I let me talk, let me tell this story through my my lens. And of course, it's a completely different story than it is through through mine. And of course, the kids would have their own stories as well. Um But I love that.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna unpack those pieces. Like we get the last say, but because the beautiful the beauty of what remains. Like we get to tell the stories and talk about all the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

And it affects so many people in so many different ways. The effect that those individual, one one person, the the the impact they have on other people's lives. I see it all the time at Bishops. People talk about her all the time and the effect she had there and on them. And it's it's just it's so gratifying to know that when you know, as we live our life day to day and you're feeling down on yourself, just remember you you have an impact on all those people around you.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

The power of one, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:36

That impact on you, yeah. Um, and I, you know, I try to I really, really threw all this whole thing believe in energy and try to have a bring those people in that have the same energy, and that really, really seems to help. This is gonna be really powerful. God bless Steve and Christy and you know what they go through with with the pain in the ass it is to date a widower and a widow.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Another podcast episode.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

My God, that'll be an entertaining.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

We're gonna bring Steve and Christy on.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Yes, I can't.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

For one of the podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

To have that one. The emotional ups and downs that they have gone through. Oh my god, we're not easy.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

I love how we're doing this and we're honoring Carrie and Mike and all of the stories. And I'm glad that we had time to share in our first two episodes, you know, about our spouses and our our journeys and how it has shaped us to we're four years out of this, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:34

So we this isn't like we're just coming out of this in pain, and and this is like therapy for us to do. This has been thought about, and for years I've been thinking about this. And then when I met you, it just hit me that this is it. This this is the person from a female perspective who has walked the walk, lived the life. This is the voice that I didn't have. And we can bring the two together and we can talk about cancer and loss and illness and life from unique perspectives, and then get the perspectives of others that have walked through this because there are so many people that are affected by this thing, and not to mention just the disease itself and the work that's being done. Advocacy was so important to carry. And I know, Mike, um, and that standing up for yourself and not just taking one doctor's opinion and knowing that if you're doing your research, that you um, you know, we're gonna talk about those things that that don't just say, okay, ask questions. It's okay to ask questions, it's okay that you don't understand everything, and it's smart to ask those who have been um walk the walk, been through the been through it in in whatever period of time you're in as a caretaker or you're a patient or or a loved one of somebody that's going through something.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

I I couldn't say it better. And the thing I always say in like closing when I have conversations about community is we're better together. And the bottom line is we have to link arms, right? And that's what we're gonna do here is we're gonna link arms and be better together and support each other. So I'm super excited. I can't wait to see you in Tucson either. I have a question.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Heartbreak. It is heartbreak and it is a warfare. It is something that we are man, if I'm every single day. Yeah.

unknown 49:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

But it can be beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

It can, yes. And that's when that song came on and I called you. I said, I know the name. Because it just hit me. Even though I know that that song is about a breakup, it hit me in a different way. And so, you know. Thank you for being here. And um we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Hey, like us.

SPEAKER_02 49:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

We gotta we gotta ask for all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Please like us.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Please like us and share us and subscribe. Uh wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, wherever it is that you're watching us, please share this for those that you know. It doesn't have to be colon cancer. It could be any cancer, it could be any illness, it could be anything that you're going through with loved ones, children, whatever it might be. We hope that we can help just a little bit in knowing that you're not alone and you're going through things that a lot of us have either gone through or are going through.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great way to end it.

SPEAKER_03 50:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

I think we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

I'll see you next week, and hopefully I don't have this cough anymore.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:30

Heartbreak Warfare was produced and edited by Chase Peckham, co-produced by Caroline Motica. Please subscribe, like us, and share the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Heartbreak Warfare is also not intended to replace therapy. This is subject matter that covers great loss and tragedy. It is meant to be therapeutic and bring together those who have suffered great loss and tragedy. But it is also for those to help heal.