The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss

Loss 36/101: Loss of a young granddaughter: Greg Williams

October 18, 2022 Chris Sandys, Claire Sandys, Greg Williams Episode 54
The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss
Loss 36/101: Loss of a young granddaughter: Greg Williams
Show Notes Transcript

#054. What’s it like grieving the loss of your child’s child? How does the grief of a grandparent differ from that of a parent? 

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around loss and grief and to see if hope can be found in 101 different types of loss.

Loss #36 of 101 - Loss of a young granddaughter

Meet Greg Williams from Cayuga, Indiana, where he lives with his wife, Marsha. Greg has been an English Teacher for 40 years, and he and his wife have five children and twelve grandchildren. Sadly, their first grandchild, Reagan, died in 2006 at the age of just two years old, and in this episode Greg shares his grief journey with us.

Reagan’s death was diagnosed as Shaken Baby Syndrome, also known as Abusive Head Trauma or Shaken Impact Syndrome, and her death was the result of being shaken violently by her mother’s boyfriend.

We've spoken to several parents who have faced the grief of losing a child, but this is the first time we've spoken to a grandparent about what the grief feels like from their perspective.

Greg openly and honestly talks to us about the grief of losing a granddaughter he was very close to, the frustrations with the DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) system, the complexities of grief when the death is at the hands of someone else, the feelings of guilt, the challenges of trying to help in the area of preventative abuse, and setting up their charity Reagan’s Rescue.

For more about Greg and Reagan’s Rescue visit: www.reagansrescuefund.com

And you can buy Greg’s book, which includes his equally beautiful and heart-breaking journal entries, on Amazon:
https://amz.run/62NC (UK)
https://amz.run/62NE (US)

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Thank you for listening.

Greg:

I'm Greg Williams. I'm going to talk about the loss of my two and a half year old granddaughter, Reagan, my sunshine. And the healing journey that began when she left us.

Claire :

This is The Silent Why a podcast with a mission to explore 101 types of loss and to hear from those who have experienced them. I'm Claire.

Chris:

And I'm Chris, and this is Episode 54, in which we hear from Greg Williams from Cayuga, Indiana. He's an English teacher of 40 years and very much a family man.

Claire :

But also grieving the loss of his first of 12 grandchildren, his beloved Reagan whose life ended at the age of two and a half in 2006, because of the criminal actions of another.

Greg:

I found out that she had died when one of my daughters and I arrived at the hospital. I remember there being just a kind of a swirling around me. At this point, we didn't know exactly what had happened. But as soon as I kind of heard, it just didn't seem right.

Chris:

Regan was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome. And her mom's boyfriend Ryan pled guilty to killing her and subsequently was jailed for seven years.

Claire :

Since then, Greg, his wife, Marcia, and Reagan's parents; Ian their son and Tracy, and the rest of the family, have had to come to terms with this cruel loss.

Greg:

I cried every day, for three and a half years, every single day. Because I felt like if I ever stopped crying, I was somehow dishonouring her memory.

Claire:

And not only that, but also processing being so badly let down by the systems in place to stop harm coming to children. In America, that's the Department of Children and Family Services.

Greg:

I got a phone call very early that Monday morning. And they said we understand that you have a concern about a child who is being abused, and you know, I said 'not anymore, it's a little too late'.

Chris:

But out of the tragedy has grown hope and awareness, advocacy for other children through a charity their family setup called Reagan's Rescue, and a wider network of support and community all part of the healing journey.

Greg:

The grief never goes away, but you find a way to live with it, and that's important. It's just amazing the support that we had, we do not grieve alone.

Claire :

Greg is a great example of what a tragic grief like this can look like when you allow yourself to feel it for as long as you need to, and in all the ways you need to.

Chris:

So let's hear more from him as we get our chat underway.

Greg:

My name is Greg Williams, I am an English teacher of 40 years, I live in Cayuga, Indiana with my wife, Marcia, and two dogs and a cat. We have five children. My oldest daughter was born in 1982. We have 12 grandchildren now and for my children live in the area, so we see each other regularly. It's a whirlwind of activity. Now the kids are involved in cheerleading football games and soccer practice and dance and theatre and so forth. We are constantly on the go, we are we're blessed to have them around us. It's an active family.

Chris:

So how would you summarise your experience of being a parent, being a dad, and being a granddad?

Greg:

I think one big difference is that when you're a parent, you can talk to your children directly and you can kind of guide and you know, tell them sometimes what to do. When you're a grandparent, you don't want to interfere, you may have wisdom that they don't. You've gone through what they have are dealing with right now. They sometimes will reach out to you, often though our kids as parents would not contact us because they didn't want us to feel like they were not doing the job properly. But I think for Marsha and me the challenge of knowing how much to interfere how much advice to give was was difficult for us. We wanted to intervene sometimes and maybe we should have done more, but you kind of kind of stand at the back of the circle and and you know, look at what's going on. And you you can't always get directly involved.

Claire:

So, Reagan was your first granddaughter.

Greg:

Yes.

Claire:

Tell us a bit about what your relationship with her was like?

Greg:

Well, Reagan, my first grandchild. Her parents were my son, Ian and his then girlfriend, Tracy. Ian and Tracy split up about eight months after Reagan was born. They stayed friends, they shared parental duties. Reagan, I called her my sunshine, when she would come to visit us, she typically would come in the door. And the first thing out of her mouth would be 'Papa, Papa', which was her name for me. When I held her, she fit just right, you know, like there was a place on my chest, that was meant just for her. And we had a really remarkable relationship for those two and a half years.

Claire :

And then there was a point, obviously, when you started become a bit more concerned about her. And I know it just really stuck in my mind when I spoke to you before that you said you wrote something in your diary on the 26th of October 2005. So tell us a bit about what that was and why you were becoming concerned.

Greg: Okay, October 26 2005:

'My precious little one, I'm so frightened for you. We found out that you got hurt over the weekend, while your mom's boyfriend Ryan was watching you. We first heard that you fell off the couch, and then that you ran into a glass coffee table while Ryan was in another room getting a drink. When your mom and dad took you in to see the doctor, he suspected that the extent of your injuries did not match the story and that abuse might have happened. Someone from the Department of Children and Family Services is supposed to come out and investigate. I'm writing about this now, because my heart is breaking. A little Reagan is injured. And I want so much to hold you and sing to you and read to you and play together. Anything to keep you from harm. You have been the light of my life. I've been your Papa. And I want you to be healed, and happy. I never realised how tough being a grandpa was. On Monday, you have to go in for an extra procedure, a kind of X-ray to make sure you have no skull fractures. I want so much to be there.' Although Tracy tried, you know, living on her own financially was kind of difficult. And eventually she moved in with a new boyfriend. And that is when we started noticing like signs of abuse and so forth. We sought help from the Department of Children and Family Services on several occasions. Reagan's daycare provider also put in a call to DCFS. And we returned away on numerous occasions. The the other investigation was determined to be unfounded. So we were extremely frustrated with the system. And even though you don't think that something like this would happen, some kind of tragedy like this would happen. And maybe you've you know, just by saying we're watching, you know we are we're paying attention and we've already called the authorities. And you think okay, we're okay, we've prayed about it in church and she is safe. July 2 2006 - we got a phone call. And she had that she had lost consciousness at home. It was a Sunday morning. And by the time we got to the hospital, she had passed away. The cause was Shaken Baby Syndrome or Abusive Head Trauma. And the perpetrator was her mother's boyfriend.

Chris:

What do you remember about your response? What was that like? How did you respond to hearing that news?

Greg:

I found out that she had died when one of my daughters and I arrived at the hospital. Marsha was already there. And I walked into the waiting room, and you know, Marsha came up to me, her eyes filled with tears. And she said 'She's gone'. I remember there being just a kind of a swirling around me, you know, I couldn't quite get it together. I tried using one of the hospital phones to call my dad who was a United Methodist Pastor, and also just a very wise man, still instructs me and teaches me by example. I tried to get him on the phone. I couldn't even figure out how to dial and so someone else had to do that. And I remember just family, some of Tracy's family was there, the boyfriend Ryan was there. You know, at this point, we didn't know exactly what had happened, but as soon as I kind of heard the things that had transpired at Tracy and Ryan's house that morning, it just didn't seem right. And the police showed up too, at some point and I just I felt the need to go up to the police officer and say, 'I hope you will check out his story' referring to Ryan. So the police came, several of us had to go into a room to be interviewed. And I also happened to mention that I had kept a journal for Reagan from when she was very young, just writing down all the the things that happened in her life and so forth with the intent of giving the journal to her on her 18th birthday. And I happened to mention the journal, and the police officer said, 'Can you go get that?' And I, you know, I brought it back showed him. I said I didn't want to hand it over, because there were things in it about the abuse that we had seen. I wanted to tell it honestly, but I did ask 'Can I make copies of this and give you the copies? And he said, 'Okay', but that that again started, you know, this whole series of investigations and so forth. I know when we went home that evening, a lot of Ian's friends showed up on our porch and I remember having a kind of a breakdown that evening, I used to sing 'You Are My Sunshine', to Reagan, and I remember sitting there in our den at the time, and Marsha was there, and I was kind of just humming that to myself. And I said to her,'They they took my sunshine away', you know, there's the line, 'please don't take my sunshine'. And they took my sunshine away. And I just lost it. It would not be the last time that that kind of thing happened. But I also said to her I don't know, I had to get this clear in my head, I guess I said, 'I've been writing this journal to Reagan, what do I do with it now? Is it okay to continue writing to her?' And I did. And I ended up with like four volumes of journals. And I continue to write to her, you know, obviously, it's not for her anymore. I've given a few of the early volumes to my son already. But it's become therapy for me, and it was one of the ways that I dealt with everything by writing to her. I feel when I'm writing to her in that journal like she is standing beside me listening to me, and we have we have a conversation also, you know, frankly, there were there were things amazing things that happen, call them coincidences call them fate, I don't know, signs, that I would write down as they occurred. And those kind of got me through as well, they were part of the healing process.

Chris:

You've obviously had, you know, 15 plus years to work out how to retell that in such a short and simple way. But at the time, that was spread out from the sounds of it over many weeks and months before, and concerns, and then right through to getting that such tragic news. So what do you remember about that season, that time?

Greg:

When I think back to all of that time leading up to it, the thing that really stands out is that frustration with our social services system. It is in many ways a broken system, and I'm sure it's probably true of many countries. Social workers are overworked. They're not enough of them. I think that plus every chance we had to get together with Reagan and with the rest of the family. We kind of felt like, okay, we're safe up to this point. Everything should be all right. There are pictures of of her on Easter Sunday, and this would have been just a few months before she died with my other grandchild at the time, my second granddaughter, and they're sitting out, you know, in our front yard, they're in their little Easter dresses and so forth and was just a sweet moment. You look at those pictures, and then you think ahead to what would happen a few months later. And it's still in many ways unbelievable after all this time, you know, Reagan's death then was was ruled a homicide, and because of that, while we're grieving. We also had to add to that all the official procedures now autopsy inquest police investigation, reporters from the news media, you know, knocking on our door. There was an internal probe from the state of Illinois on the DCFS office, there were medical inquiries and about a year later, when charges were finally filed, you know, now we had the state's attorney involvement and lawyers and court appearances and hearings and continuances, and so forth, and it went on for several years. So we're trying to manage both our, our personal loss, and all of this other stuff going on that we were not used to at all. I mean, this was all brand new. At the same time that all of this was happening, we add an extra layer to it, and that was very early on, the family came together and said, We don't want Reagan to be just another statistic, another child abuse statistic, we want her to become a cause because her brief life mattered. And so that's when the idea of Reagan's Rescue was formed a public charity and child advocacy organisation with two goals, really, to spread awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome or Abusive Head Trauma, and to meet the needs of children and families at risk in basically Illinois, Indiana area, where we lived.

Claire :

It must have been very hard to get any kind of... I want to use the word closure, but I don't want that to sound like it's closure on the grief, but when you heard Ryan talking about what happened initially, he wasn't telling the truth so he wasn't telling you what had happened. So was that very difficult, even in those early days? Because you didn't have an answer you had your suspicions that something else had happened? There was no immediate answer as to what had happened. Did that confuse the grieving process at all?

Greg:

I don't think it really confused the process. You know, there were, as part of the investigation, there were lie detector test take. And really, Tracy and Ryan were the only ones in that house, other than their new baby who is I think, was just several months old. And then there was Reagan. And so, obviously, it was one or the other. When the lie detector tests were taken, Ryan failed miserably. I didn't know this. Because, you know, I watched television dramas and detective shows and courtroom dramas and so forth. And they always wrap things up in an hour. I did not realise in Illinois, anyway, that a lie detector test is not admissible in court, it gives the investigators a direction to go, but you could not get up there in the courtroom and say,'Well, you know, look at everything that he lied about'. So, you know, we were learning how the legal process works or doesn't work sometimes, and that was that I think was a frustration, as well. But again, we didn't want to dwell on that, if at all possible, we were now ready to, you know, work on this third component, which was we're creating this, this organisation called Reagan's Rescue in her memory. And you know that a whole series of events and responsibilities, then that kind of took our mind off of some of the grief that we had. Besides the grief, one of the most overwhelming feelings that Marsha and I had was guilt. We wondered, could we have done more? Should we have done more? Should we have taken the door slamming by the Social Services? Should we have taken that? Well, I've told some people, I should have gotten in my car in the parking lot and hit the accelerator and I should have driven through the front door of that place so that they would listen. You know, it's kind of a bitter irony, I guess, the day after Reagan died. I got a phone call very early that Monday morning from DCFS. And they said we understand that you have a concern about a child who is being abused. And you know, I said 'Not anymore. It's it's a little too late.' And I think they were, at that point, just trying to cover themselves a bit. So the guilt, the guilt was tough.

Claire :

Yeah. And it's so awful because that guilt is actually just, it was just trust, you had trust in a system that would function as it should, and would protect her in ways that you couldn't, and in ways they could intervene in which no one else could, it's so awful that you get left with those feelings and I know that there's no nothing anyone could say to make you take that away. I'm sure you've had 100 people tell you, you shouldn't feel guilty about it. But it doesn't make any difference if you're you're feeling that and it's just sad, that they let you down so badly.

Greg:

That's right. And I really did not know, that's what it was like. To be honest, and we do take some responsibility for this, the way that it's set up here, I don't know about where you are, but that if you have suspicions of abuse, you are supposed to call a hotline and it's supposed to be anonymous, but they ask you for your name and number so that they can call you back later on. We were afraid that if we did too much, that it would somehow affect our relationship with Tracy, with Tracy's family, we were concerned for Reagan, but we were afraid that, you know, somehow, if they found out that we were the ones who called in, that we would lose access to her. And you know, of course, unfortunately, that's what happened anyway. We, some years later, my dad, my son, Ian, and I went to Springfield, Illinois, you know, we were living in Illinois at the time, so we went to the state capitol and talk to the director of the Department of Children and Family Services, we sat down with him. And we said, 'what you tell people about, you know how to make a report, you have to be more clear about what anonymous means'. You can't just call up and say, 'I'm not gonna give you my name, but here's what I know', because people, you know, of course, human beings would be doing that to each other all the time just out of spite. And but we did not know it at the time. Again, this was absolutely new territory for us. And, you know, we did suggest to him some ways that they could make the process more clear to anyone else who ever has to make that that phone call.

Chris:

In terms of the guilt when you were talking about just the weight of the guilt that you and Marsha both felt, how long did that last four, do you reckon?

Greg:

I think like grief, which you know, you never get over a loss, especially one that is so devastating, you get through it, I don't think we've ever fully let the guilt go. I think there will always be that guilt there. But again, you listen to those people who comfort you and say, you know, you did all you could, and you know, you try to believe that as much as you can. One way of I think dealing with the guilt is again, through our organisation to try to make things better, and to inform people who are in maybe some kind of abusive situation. We don't want we don't want other families to lose children. We don't want them to go through what we've gone through. And I think that's part of our, I don't know, maybe maybe you call it penance or something like that, that we try to make the system better, so that the guilt will begin to diminish.

Claire:

How do you think, and I know you haven't got a direct comparison for this, but how do you think the process of grieving a grandchild is different from grieving a child as a parent?

Greg:

You know, again, I think it has to do with that guilt we had, like, should we have done more? You know, maybe, maybe we should have been more, more direct, and not chosen our words so carefully. You know, again, we tried not to upset our children. We try not to do that ever, in giving advice to them, but sometimes I think, you know, maybe if we had been more direct with them, that, that maybe things would have turned out a little differently. I think that's a difference. You know, I will also add that, and I'm speaking I think just for me, that because I had such a wonderful relationship with Reagan, that there were times when I felt like I was the only one who was suffering, you know, like I was suffering the most. And I had to remind myself, 'No, you're the grandfather, you are married to her grandmother, she had another grandfather and grandmother, she has aunts and uncles, and she also had parents who loved her, too. And it's a loss for everyone, not just for me.' And I had to remind myself occasionally that it was just not my own personal loss.

Claire :

How was your time split when you're grieving like that? Because you've obviously got like you said, you've got your wife, you've got your son, you've got Tracee you've got all these other people grieving in very different locations, in different stages, in different ways. Is it a very, sort of a selfish time when you can only really think of your own grief because it's just so all consuming? Or are you sort of having to split yourself, and it's hard to look at your own grief? What what does that really look like?

Greg:

I think one of the things that we learned, Marsha and I talked about this a lot, was that you have to negotiate grief. With Marsha and me, you know, of course, we would sit on the couch together, we would we would cry in each other's arms, we would hold each other. But there were also days when, like, I would get up and want to go out on our front porch, we had, you know, a covered front porch, we had wicker furniture, we had a swing, it is the very porch that we would be sitting there waiting for Reagan to, to come and be dropped off if we were going to look for her. Or if I happen to be at at school and I'm coming home, at the end of the day, Marsha might be sitting on the swing with Reagan, and you know, Reagan would be so excited when she saw me. So this, this porch was a very important place for us. And there would be times when I just needed to be alone, and I would go out on the porch and sit well, if I didn't say anything to Marsha, she might come out on the porch and ask 'Are you okay?' And I'd say 'yes'. And then she would ask, 'do you want to be alone? Or can I sit with you?' and sometimes I wanted to be alone, and sometimes, you know, I wanted her there. And the same thing would be true with her. And I had to be there for my children to celebrate their victories, and you know, their, their awards and so forth and not be the downer all the time. And that's part of the negotiation process, as well.

Chris:

Yeah, from an emotional or well and/or relational perspective, were there things that you and Marsha did in the aftermath that you look back on and think that was a really good thing? I'm really glad we did that, that was a really healthy thing to do, that has helped us in the long term. And examples of things that you think, yes, that was

Greg:

healthy. Well, obviously, putting a lot of our efforts into Reagan's Rescue. But I also think, we got more interested in signs. Butterflies, for instance, had meaning for us. As a family, whenever we get together now, we say, I love you, much more than we ever did before, the love was always there. But you know, now we make sure to have proper goodbyes. And we say I love you as much as we can, because, you know, everyone needs to hear that. And again, you never know. I mean, this is the thing about life, you never know when it's going to end. And so you have to enjoy and appreciate and savour the moments that you do have together. We went to counselling, grief counselling for a while, together sometimes, and sometimes separately. My grief counsellor said to me that the way that I was kind of handling it by writing in the journal by finding little rituals that I would kind of schedule, that I was doing in a very healthy way because I was letting my my grief out in small doses that I could handle, you know, I would get to a place I would feel sad for some reason I would cry over it, maybe write about it, and then I was ready to go on. Whereas, you know, some of my children might bottle things up for long periods of time, and then when it did come out, it was it was almost volcanic, I guess. The rituals, I would go up on a couple times a week to the cemetery and I had a little camp stool and I would sit there and talk to Reagan and so forth. I still have every Christmas Eve, I go up to be with her and I read her a couple of Dora the Explorer Christmas stories that I have. And I sing to her and so forth. You know, rituals like that really helped me out. I cried every day for three and a half years, every single day. First of all, just because of the overwhelming emotion, after a while when the tears didn't come automatically. And that's, you know, that's part of the healing process. But I would I would stop and just think about everything and be again overwhelmed by it and start to cry because I felt like if I ever stopped crying that I was somehow dishonouring her memory. Three and a half years later, I was directing a musical production of The Secret Garden and The Secret Garden It's all about loss and grief and you know, reclaiming this, this garden making it beautiful again. And I had a wonderful cast, very supportive. And I loved this show so much. And there was one day when I got home after rehearsal, and I realised I didn't cry today. Of course, the next day at the rehearsal, I got the cast together. And I said, I want to thank you, because I think I have reached, you know, an important point in my healing process that I don't have to cry every day, I can still honour Reagan's memory.

Claire :

It sounds like such a good example of how to, as we

Greg:

I heard that a lot early on, you know, 'give it time' and hear a lot, 'feel the feelings' that you're feeling, which is not something that a lot of people allow themselves to do. People say, time heals. And a lot of people get very angry with that statement. And some people say, I would think that's so forth. And I didn't want to necessarily believe it, in in true, it seems to divide people we've spoken to. But I'm just wondering if maybe if you do grieve healthily, and you allow those feelings out, if eventually, the time does start our case, but you know, that that three and a half year later to heal you in some way, because you've allowed yourself to moment, it snuck up on me. Again, I realised that tears grieve to the full extent, and that might be three years, it might be 10 years, it might be 20 years. But what do you think of the statement that time heals? Have you seen that to be true in any way? were were harder to come by, I was almost having to having to make them happen for a while. And then that one day, suddenly, I didn't cry at all, maybe it slipped my mind, maybe I was very busy with work and with going to play practice. But I do believe that, again, it never goes away, the grief never goes away, but you find a way to live with it, and that's important.

Claire :

We've heard it said a few times since during the podcast I hadn't really heard before much was that grief is just love. And it's just not having a place to go. But you know, we never say love goes away, so why would grief go away? It makes sense when the two are linked so so closely that it would stay with you.

Greg:

Looking at all of the news reports from the death of Queen Elizabeth. She's been quoted, I remember her saying this originally, but it's been part of the broadcast, she said'grief is the price we pay for love'. And I started thinking about my go-to quote, one of the most important quotes for me, to get me through that healing process was from CS Lewis, A Grief Observed of 'pain now is part of the happiness then, that's the deal'. And I have shared that with so many people, friends who have lost their pets, for instance, friends who have lost relatives, and I shared that with them, that's kind of my mantra, because it's been so true for me. And it's guided me through a lot of this as well. But I love how he ends that with 'that's the deal', because that's what it's, what life is, we would like to have a carefree life of happiness and peace. But we've kind of insulated ourselves from so much of the danger out there with our homes and our security systems and so forth. The danger is still there. And there's a lot of new danger that we've managed to create in the meantime. So the pain is going to happen, and we have to realise that we enjoy the happy times now. But when we grieve, it's almost a celebration of the happiness that we had.

Claire:

Have you found it's allowed you to appreciate the happiness more with other grandchildren? Or did it bring in a fear of what if I have to go through this again?

Greg:

Marsha and I were talking about this the other night, I said sometimes, even though Reagan is not here, physically, sometimes I feel like she is closer to me than my other grandchildren because I always have her with me. I always carry her with me. I wrote a poem some years ago about the screen door which is on the front of our house that led out to that front porch, so many times we looked out the screen to wait for Reagan to come. And you know, one day I'm standing there looking out at that place that had been so special. And I thought that screen door you can look through the screen and see life all clear. And that's kind of how I look through Reagan and through everything that happened with her at my life now or you can shift your focus and look at the screen itself and the rest of the world kind of gets a little fuzzy. Sometimes I focus on Reagan and our time together forgetting the rest of the world for a while, but most of the time, I'm looking through that screen at everything that happens to us, she never goes away. You know, there have been a couple of times with my other grandchildren that they have had challenges, they've had hardships. And you know, there's that part of you that says it can't happen again, like we've we've given one of us already, there's no way that my other 11 grandchildren could ever be injured hurt, we could never lose them. Of course, that's not entirely true. But we do think about Reagan, think about what we went through, and we have maybe more fear and anxiety when the other grandchildren and their parents are going through some rough times.

Chris:

There's something you said when we first started speaking, that felt really special, but that was how you described how well Reagan fit how well she fit on you when she was a small child. And that reminded me of a podcast episode that Claire did with another mother who talked about grief being a shape that just isn't welcome. It's a shape inside of you that just doesn't fit. With that in mind, did you find that you were quite okay with that sort of empty space that Reagan left to not be filled, and we'll just carry on, or were there other things that you tried to fill that void?

Greg:

As each grandchild has come along, I think I've tried to establish that connection again. And it's kind of hit and miss. My second granddaughter was like, eight months younger than Reagan. So they would have, they would have grown up together. She would get stiff when anyone other than her, her parents would hold her, I would try to hold her I tried to sing to her she just didn't want to have much to do with it at all. We're very close now because she's taken over that responsibility of being the oldest grandchild, the oldest one of that generation. And I love her to pieces. But I think all of the grandchildren in a way have kind of gone through that test with me. You know, Okay, which one of you is going to be the one that fits right there, and which is going to be kind of the 'no get away grandpa'? It kind of almost fluctuates, you know; yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, through all of them.

Claire:

So for people who are listening who might have been through something similar? How have you navigated the question of people asking you how many grandchildren you have?

Greg:

I always say 12. Even though Regan is not physically with us, again, her life matters, and she she is very much a part of our family. You know, we have reminders of hers. I have in my my study, where I'm speaking from, I have what was her wooden rocking chair when she was younger. And I have it sitting there. At Christmas time we pull out a special Christmas tree that was created for her. So she continues to be a part of the house. We have 12 grandchildren, sometimes people talking to us will kind of falter and you know, afraid to say the wrong thing, but we are we are 12. I think William Wordsworth wrote a poem called'We Are Seven', where the poet talks to a little girl about how many siblings there are. And even though several of them have died and everything, you know, she continues to say 'no, there are seven of us'. And that's how I look at the grandkids.

Chris:

We've spoken in podcast with parents, certainly when it comes to child loss and the support they had, it's new to speak to a grandparent. So from your experience, were there any really good and helpful things that your friends did, or fellow grandparents, to support you and Marsha to hold you up?

Greg:

As odd as it might sound, you know, even early on with this terrible, tragic loss. There were blessings that started to appear right at the beginning. Our friends, our community, held us up, you know and embraced us and, and physically would would hug us and say, you know, you are not alone in this. We are with you. You are our family, you are loved and so forth. The churches, the first responders, the schools and the individuals, they were there not only to support us emotionally but also when we started our advocacy efforts. Fellow advocates, child advocates, locally in the state, nationally, internationally reached out to us as well, the friends we've made travelling to Shaken Baby Syndrome conferences, and in various parts of North America, some of them with children who survived being shaken, some of them who lost children like like we lost our granddaughter, businesses that supported us. It's incredible. There used to be something called Boyd's Bears. They were they were just, you know, really beautifully designed stuffed bears that many people would collect, and Boyd's Bears named a bear for Reagan, I wrote to them and told them the story and that one of the last gifts she ever got was from Marsha and me, a Boyd's Bear that we picked up when we were in Tennessee travelling and, you know, she was actually buried with it. In her tiny coffin. There's a playroom at our local women's shelter that was was named Reagan's Room, it's called, it was created in her memory. It's just amazing the support that we had, we do not grieve alone, and that that has sustained us as well.

Claire:

You mentioned a small coffin there, what part did the funeral play in processing what you're going through and having people around you at that point?

Greg:

As a someone who thinks through things and likes planning, I jumped in that that very first week and tried to plan the service as much as I could, I chose music that I thought was appropriate, 'You are my sunshine', you know, I found a recording of that, another song, kind of a campfire song called 'Tell Me Why' that I found and I put the service together that helped me again focus energies on on something. We were all astounded by how many people showed up at at the funeral, they just kept coming and coming and people that I, you know, I didn't ever expect, people who lived, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles away, you know, would would show up to be there for us. Again, a lot of that is all kind of a blur, but it got us through that love that we felt.

Claire :

You mentioned the song there 'Tell Me Why', has 'why?' been much of a question for you? Because it's must be very difficult when you've got a death like this that I've heard you mentioned is a preventable death, really, so does why kind of haunt you at all? Or did you have to deal with that at some point?

Greg:

I think early on the why part really affected my faith, at the time, because I belonged, and one of my daughters belong to a praise band at our church, so we would rehearse every Wednesday night, there were probably 10 people in the band. And we would always end with a prayer circle. And you know, we'd go around, what prayer concerns do you have and so forth. And for weeks and weeks and weeks, months and months, I would always bring up Reagan, especially when there were new signs of abuse. And you know, so prayers would go up for her to keep her safe. And then she ended up dying. My faith was rocked, we tried to go back to church, because she died on a Sunday morning. And it was difficult going back to church being there knowing that an earlier Sunday when we were here at church that was going on. So one by one, everyone kind of dropped away from from going to our church, as good as those people were and as loving and supportive as they were, we just couldn't do it anymore. I mean, we would go in there and halfway through the service, one or two of us would have to get up and leave. I personally felt let down by God. Again, because I was always taught, you know, if you pray for something, you know, it will be given to you. And you know, my dad again, the pastor, you know, has taught me all my life that sometimes when you pray for something, you may not get the answer that you want or the answer when you want it, but there will be an answer eventually, and you have to sometimes give it time, you have to kind of wait it out a little bit. I just I had a lot of shouting matches with God, you know, private shouting matches, you know, 'we prayed to you why, you know, why didn't you save her? Why couldn't you intervene?' Eventually, the whys go away. And I think you realise that nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes your best efforts don't work out. As hard as it is to admit that, you know that, you can't ask why forever, because there aren't going to be any new answers. I'm just hoping for some kind of reunion with her eventually. That gives me hope.

Claire:

You mentioned hope there, has that been a big part of your journey? And when did that start?

Greg:

I think when we began Reagan's Rescue, putting our loss into something good creating something that would help other people out. I really believe that that's how our family operates. Just a little sidenote that Ian and another daughter, since Reagan died, they have both become social workers, they have gone into the very system that led us down. And they are doing a wonderful job, both of them at, at trying to make things better. That's what we're like we, you know, our family, we care about abused children and animals and unfair treatment of people and so forth. So that's that's where the hope is that little things we can do will make the world a little bit better place.

Chris:

And then with Reagan's Rescue in mind setting that up, then I have no experience. I imagine it's difficult, with an effort or a charity that revolves around preventative measures, that it's very difficult to actually measure the success of that. What to you, is proof of the fruit growing because of the charity's work or the results that say we're doing a good job here?

Greg:

You're absolutely right, that it you don't know how it's going to affect. You just have faith that your message, however, it's gone out there, whether it's been a billboard or advertising on the side of a bus or radio, public service announcement, or someone coming to one of your discussions, you hope that it will make a difference to get the word out to spread the word. And I believe it has, we have heard from people over the years. We also we have this logo, one of the earlier things that we did do is create a logo for you know, to use on posters and business cards and everything it's a silhouette of a little girl looks very much like Reagan might have looked and she's standing with her handout. And there is a butterfly just kind of hovering over her hand. I don't know whether she's letting the butterfly go or whether she is ready to catch the butterfly to save it, but we have had so many people say 'Oh, Reagan's Rescue, oh, yes, that's the girl with the butterfly'. So it's out there. You know, in the 10 years after losing Reagan, there were occasionally a new story of a child being shaken, and child abuse certainly goes on. But we've also we've also seen the numbers go down quite a bit to in the area. So we're we're hopeful that something we've done has made a difference.

Claire :

A question I want to ask is, which is quite unique to situations where there's a criminal act involved. How important was justice, in either processing it or putting some sort of conclusion on all the long court dates and inquiries and everything you were going through? Sometimes when we see on TV, there's been justice achieved for something, you know, the families are the ones that are focused on because they finally feel they've had some sort of closure on the situation. Was that the case for you at all?

Greg:

If we didn't get justice, we wanted some justice. Ryan spent, with all the continuances and all the delays, that spread out over several years, he spent quite a bit of time in the public safety building. And he was not free to roam, you know, he was incarcerated there. We reached the point where as the defence and prosecutors, you know, we're kind of like working together on the case and figuring out what one was going to do and what the other was going to respond when, you know, we started to see this kind of'okay, we'll bring in these people', 'Oh, yeah, well we'll bring in these people to say your people don't know what they're talking about', and we saw that kind of getting out of hand. Because Shaken Baby Syndrome itself is is somewhat controversial cause of injury or death, and there are experts out there for hire, who will come in and tell you it doesn't even exist, like a child cannot be injured or killed by having it violently shaken and its head bouncing up against its skull. You know, I think a football players, American football players who, who end up with concussion after concussion and end up with terrible brain damage when they're older. I mean, that's kind of what's happening with a child. So we reached a point when our district attorney said, we can go to trial, and we can either let a judge decide or we can let a jury decide. And we can take a chance, but if we if we settle this, you know, if, if there's a plea agreement, he would not spend as much time in jail, but at least you get something out of it. So we got together, the thought of him walking, even even after spending two or three years in jail waiting for everything to end, we still wanted that kind of vindication. So we went with a plea agreement, and he spent about two years in state prison. It could have been 0 to 14 years, the judge came right in with 7. But with time served, it was reduced to two years in in a state prison. That was frustrating for us. But again, some justice rather than no justice.

Chris:

What have been some of the main elements of your experience that you've passed on to other grandparents, when they ask questions about how do you deal with this?

Greg:

Actually, through my involvement with the National Centre on Shaken Baby Syndrome, often grandparents around the country will call up the national centre, and explain a situation that seems very much like ours. And it's grandparents who are saying, 'we just don't know what to do, you know, our, our children and our grandchildren are involved in, in this and we just feel helpless'. And the centre often will, will forward that information to me and I have had a chance to talk to grandparents about that from from all over the country, I try to give them some practical steps to take who to call what to say. But I also, you know, just try to let them know that they're not alone in this and that they can always call whatever they're feeling. If they need to talk to someone, they can certainly do that. And for now, that's kind of the best that we can do. Hug your children and grandchildren and support them as much as you can talk to them, be a little more open about what you are feeling with them so that they know what the options are, you know that they can rely on you if they need to so forth, that if if your kids, your grown kids who are parents are having difficulty, it's no shame at all. You know, most parents go through that learning process. It doesn't mean that if they're having difficulty that they are somehow not effective or not doing their job.

Chris:

It's been such a rich conversation. And we're so thankful for you sharing what you have, which has been a real blessing to us and will be to others as well. Final question then Greg, what's your Herman?

Greg:

I have a brief story. Some years ago, my wife and I were driving from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, back up north to Illinois. We started out early in the morning, and the sky was bright gold, and blue, the thick mist covered the valleys around and below us. And the mountain tops around us were peeking out of that, that fog and that mist. It looked like a sea with little islands just stretching out as far as you could see. It was heavenly. Just a moment of pure grace, as we got into Kentucky, and we started to drop in elevation, and we descended into the clouds. And suddenly, everything was grey, and drizzly and dark. And I remember having this epiphany that I realised that when one is like really enveloped in grief and depression, that you have to remember that that light is still up there, that light of hope, healing, wholeness, it's not very far away. It's still there. It hasn't gone away, it's still there. It is still a wonderful life, despite the difficulties that you go through. That's my Herman.

Claire :

It's still a wonderful life. It's so true, and yet to find and grasp that truth amidst the hurt and pain of grief and loss can be so hard, especially when death comes so suddenly and prematurely mixed into a preventable loss that contains feelings of guilt and all the complexities that brings. Greg's journey with grief has been a great example of what it can look like to face the pain and the tears on a daily basis, letting the grief flow through you for as long as it needs to, while time works is intricate job of healing. And that path will be very different for every loss, every person and every grief.

Chris:

Thank you, Greg, for sharing your story and all you've learned along the way.

Claire :

Maybe you'd like to read more about Reagan or Shaken Baby Syndrome. You can do both of those at www.reagansrescuefund.com or you can purchase Greg's book containing his journal entries and we'll put links to these in the show notes.

Chris:

And for more about Claire on myself, have you found us on social media yet? We're@thesilentwhypod or check out our website which is www.thesilentwhy.com.

Claire:

We're handing over to Greg for the final word of this episode and he kicks it off with a Luna Lovegood quote from Harry

Greg:

"Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect." Regan keeps coming back to us. Reagan continues to rescue us in our efforts. She's still very much a part of this world and this family.

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