A Club You Don't Want To Be In with Joan Vassos, Kathy Swarts, and Michael Allio

Hi, Michael.

Hi, thanks for having me on, guys.

You look great, and I'm so happy to be on here and be able to chat with you guys about all things and this dreadful club that we're all

yeah okay so um tell we since we are all members of this club um uh tell us about your late wife laura um and what she was like oh

i appreciate that question too um I met Laura when I was 18.

I was a freshman in college.

She was a senior in high school on a college visit.

And I saw her from across the quad walking around campus.

And I told her, no joke.

I said, if you come here next fall, then I'll make it worth your while.

I love that.

And this is without Facebook.

This is without I didn't have her cell phone.

I ended up seeing her in the cafeteria the following fall.

and lived up to my promise so we were together for 16 years we hit all life's milestones got the job you know moved together grew together and had a kid uh james and when we welcomed him into the world uh we had about seven seven months of bliss before uh we found breast cancer so he actually stopped taking milk from one side of laura's breast and that's how we found it and so it went from all of this bliss to kind of life just flipped upside down as it often does with any diagnosis that's out there and it was a wild ride uh she passed away in 2019 when james was two and since then been really solo dadding it until recently with my gorgeous gorgeous girlfriend uh jade who's just been such a blessing in our life but life is crazy and as you both know very well you can have as many plans as you want life doesn't necessarily care and sometimes we're left to pick up the pieces and find our way back

Yeah, that kind of leads me into the next question about being a father of a young child.

I know my kids were grown.

My last, my youngest, my fourth was in college when John passed away.

So I know that possibly my experience was a lot different than yours.

I'd like to hear about that.

Like the way you processed your grief, you have a young child, did you have time to process your grief or has that been like really delayed and coming in to focus now, you know, maybe a little later in life?

I think that's a great question.

And I think grief often gets this broad brushstroke.

You know, we all lost somebody, but all of our grief is so incredibly different.

And none is better, less painful than the other.