Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 25

Brandon Howe discusses the challenges he faced with recording quality for his podcast. He also mentions the sequential nature of his podcast and encourages listeners to start from the beginning. He then talks about his grandmother's passing and how significant she was in his life. He describes her as a strong and loving woman who instilled in him a strong work ethic. He shares his last moments with her and the emotional impact her death had on him. He also briefly mentions difficulties with his son during a visit. Welcome back, this is Brandon Howe's Life is Crazy, episode 25 of The Joys of Podcasting. So I had already completed this episode, and then, you know, I went back to listen to it after the fact, and the recording quality was just awful. Just awful. I was trying to convince myself to just let it ride, but I couldn't even listen to it. It was my own podcast, so I sounded like I was in a tube, and I was talking through a tube into a microphone. You know, I paid a hundred bucks for this microphone, and I'm not saying like that's professional grade quality or anything, but it is disappointing for a hundred dollar microphone, the way I feel like the quality of this microphone happens to be. So anyway, enough about that. I also wanted to tell you that if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, we started episode one. This is a sequential podcast of the story of my life, and episode one obviously is the beginning, and you go to BrandonHowe.com no matter where you found this podcast, because I am listed on every type of podcast except for YouTube, but I prefer people go to my page and listen from there, please. BrandonHowe.com. So having said that, last episode I went off on a tangent about becoming a better man, which is, you know, a big point of emphasis my entire life, but that was more related to relationships. So I'm going to finish out this episode and bring you to the current state of my life. And so I'll go through the last couple years pretty quickly, and I'll start with what was one of the most difficult times of all for me, and that was the passing of my mamaw, my grandmother. She was one of the most significant people in my entire life. You know, so was my great-grandmother, honestly, and, you know, she was in my life until I was in my early to mid-twenties, and, you know, she was a strong, strong woman who, you know, was kind of so strong and, I thought, mean that I didn't think, you know, loved me until I became an adult. I understood otherwise. She had put a strong, you know, work ethic in me and an understanding like, you know, don't just half-ass your way through things. If you're going to do something, you know, give it your best effort, and that gave me a sense of pride for things that I do. My great-grandma did that. My mamaw, my grandma, was more the, you know, just soft, loving type, you know, just kind of a, I'll love you no matter what or who you are type, and, and, you know, for me, that worked out great. I can't say so much so for a lot of other people. She's, as much as I love her and loved her, she was just an enabler to some of the, you know, my uncles being alcoholics and some of the problems they have, but that's just because that's the way she was. She just loved you no matter what, and anyway, I went back to Ohio with my wife, Ju, when she was, you know, essentially towards the end of her time. She had been on dialysis for some years, and now she was just in so much pain that, you know, it was really bad, and my mom had relayed to me, I need to come see her if I wanted to see her alive again, and I had a choice. I could go see her alive and miss her funeral, or I could wait till she's passed and go to her funeral, so I chose the first option, and she made it clear to me when I was there that she was glad I chose that option. She was constantly telling me, I'm so happy to see you, you know, I'm glad you're here, and, you know, that felt good, and she made it clear that she would rather me be there towards the end than, you know, wait to have shown up at her funeral to pay my respects, so I made the right decision, and when I was there to see her, it was a good and bad time. The good time was, you know, I got to see my brother, which is always great. I love my brother, RJ, very much. You know, he has his own demons and stuff to work through, but he's still my brother, and it's always great to see him. I got my son, Ethan, to come up, drive up, like, almost three hours, I think, from Dayton to hang out while we were there, and my wife, Ju, was meeting the whole family. Juliana was meeting the whole family, and my son, Ethan, for the first time, and it was all pretty good. The only real issues I had, obviously, were my grandma was bedridden, and she couldn't get up, and my aunt, her oldest daughter, was, you know, like a pit bull, you know, not wanting her to get up or move or do anything, live any kind of life at all, just be this sedentary, you know, woman in bed who basically only got up to go to her dialysis, and that was it. And, you know, my grandma was 92, and she would take herself to her own dialysis, you know, she could barely walk. She, you know, just to tell you what kind of person she was, she didn't want to inconvenience, you know, any of the other people around her, some who were unemployed and had nothing better to do, and she still took herself to her dialysis, which was wild to me when I found that out. But anyway, you know, my aunt and I got in a fight about, you know, I wanted to take my grandma out to eat because that was our thing, that was, you know, a big part of my childhood and my memories with her was her taking me and my sister and sometimes my brother out to eat, you know, every once in a while. She did other things like take us to Cedar Point and take us, you know, to on vacations, not like anything extravagant, maybe a hotel about an hour away or something to have a pool and arcade games or whatever, but it was the only, you know, type of things I got to do that were outside of just growing up in my small town and living in my small town because my mother wasn't able to provide those things, and she didn't take us on trips or vacations or anything like that or even take us to Cedar Point. You know, my mom was a very absent mother. She was a very hands-off mother, and my grandma kind of filled that role a little bit, and so it was a tough time that she was at the end of her ropes. And so finally, you know, after fighting with my parents, my final morning there, I got to take my grandma out to breakfast and, you know, we went with, I don't know, a bunch of family members. There were probably 10 to a dozen of us and went to a breakfast at Bob Evans, which was kind of a, you know, classic thing we used to do, and it was just great. It was a wonderful, you know, time with her and a final memory that I will always get to keep. And so by the time I left Ohio later that day, you know, everything was good. I got to see my grandma. You know, my aunt and I had said our apologies after fighting. I got to see my mom, my sister, my brother, you know, my son Ethan, my brother's family, and everything was cool. Me and Juliana were flying back home to Arizona to go back to our lives, and after we had returned, it wasn't but I believe about three days later that my grandmother passed, and that was really, really difficult and hard. And, you know, as a almost 50-year-old man at that time, I cried, and it was painful, and it's still painful to this day. You know, and there's been multiple times when I've thought about her just out of nowhere or something has happened, and it makes me sad and sometimes brings me to tears. I was at a theater, and this was before I went to see her, but I knew she was, you know, in bad shape, and I was at this gaslight theater in Tucson, Arizona, and at the end of the show, they were, you know, paying homage to people who were there for anniversaries or whatever, and they just started singing a song called Don't You Call Me Sweetheart, and my grandma used to sing that to me when I was a kid, and I literally just from nowhere, like, crying in a damn show, you know, people probably thinking I was crazy if they saw me, but it just hit me like if someone had punched me right in the face where I was fine, and then all of a sudden, boom, I got hit with this flood of emotion of my grandmother, and it was really tough, and so I've been going through that, and that was the toughest loss, and then also shortly after that time that I visited Ohio, you know, Ethan, who I was on good terms with when we left and had always been on good terms with as far as I know except for one difficult period in our relationship where, you know, I used to get him for every summer after I joined the army, and he would stay with me until he was 14, and then the year that he was 14, and he came to stay with me, him and my ex-wife were just at each other so badly, you know, that it was miserable for everyone involved, including myself, and, you know, he was, you know, breaking some rules, being a little rebellious, 14-year-old, a little bit, you know, again, not in my opinion at the time or now, was he like out of control or anything, you know, and didn't want to follow every rule that was set forth because he wasn't used to that life when he was with his mother, but, you know, still a little like, uh, can't you just help me out here, and then with her, you know, I'm trying to balance having my son there and make her happy, and she was just, uh, just someone that you couldn't rationalize with. She was irrational, and she just had this ridiculous set of rules and, like, would just lose her mind if he left his towel in the bedroom instead of taking it back to the bathroom after he showered. Like, one thing she definitely always struggled with was the important things in life, like the things that really matter. She would get so upset over the dumbest things. I remember one time my kids got a, you know, a toy from Chick-fil-A, and their kid's meal, you know, was a cheap little thing, and, you know, Maximus broke it, like, pretty much within an hour of getting it, and she, like, lost her mind screaming at him over breaking a Chick-fil-A toy. I was just, like, I'm the Lord. I was just, like, I was just, like, what is wrong with this woman? Like, she has no perspective on what's important in life, and I always felt that way about her, um, and I tried to help her get perspective, but you can only do so much. People are who they are, and so, anyway, uh, I told Ethan, I said, look, you don't have to come back here next summer if you don't want, you know, you don't have to come back again if you don't want to, because if I were you, I wouldn't want to be here, and I said, you know, I love you, and I want you here, but I also love you enough that I want you to be happy and in a good place, and this isn't a good place when, when she is the way that she is, and you're not helping because you don't want to listen and follow her rules, and, uh, he never did come stay with me again, and, you know, I got divorced when he was turning 18, so that was the end of that. He was off to college and living his own life anyway, so those summers together were gone, uh, but, um, you know, you know he got to come stay with me at one point, and what happened through that, because I already explained that to you, and, and through it all, I tried to be a good dad to him. I tried to give him sound advice and guidance in life, and, I don't know, he just decided to cut me off a couple months after I was in Ohio to see him. Don't know why, don't understand why, you know, I love him, I miss him, some days I cry about it, but, uh, you know, I'm gonna let him be. I'm gonna let him be until he's ready to be in my life again. I'm, you know, I'm not, I want him in my life, and I miss talking to him, and I miss seeing him, but I'm also not going to try to force him to be someplace he doesn't want to be, so that's where that relationship is at right now as I record this podcast, um, and so back here in Arizona, my wife and I decided that, uh, you know, we were done renting the home that I had moved into when I got out of that ugly breakup with my last girlfriend, and I wanted to buy a home, so we did that. We bought a brand new home in, um, July of 2023. It was newly built, when I say brand new, and, uh, I love the house, and I hope I could stay here, um, for a while, but I don't know if I'm going to, but what's cool about it when we moved was her mother, who is Brazilian and speaks Portuguese, doesn't speak English, she got to come visit us in America for the first time, and she helped us move, and it was great to see her. It was my first experience of just being around her on a regular basis, and she has, like, a fun, loving energy, and she's a great cook, and she's, you know, a hard worker. She was helping us move, and, um, you know, that was nice. That was where we started to, uh, start a bond together, her mother and I, and, you know, her mother has since visited again, and, you know, we get along great, and we love each other. Um, she, she, we have to translate when we talk, you know, either through my wife or through a translator, but, uh, it's just all good. It's all positive, you know, there's no translation needed in hugs, and, uh, you know, you just know when two people care for each other, and so her mother and I have a really good relationship, and so she got to see our new home, and, you know, how well her daughter gets to live here, uh, with me in America. Um, not saying she didn't before, but, you know, you don't know what your daughter is going to be in in another country, and so you get to come see it for yourself, and so I think she's happy with, uh, everything that's going on with her daughter, and our relationship, and her life in America, even though they're apart, and for that she's thankful, and, you know, she has shown that to me, and I can tell that, and I appreciate that. Um, so, you know, my wife is currently working full-time as a contract analyst, and, uh, she also goes to night school to get an LLM, uh, which is, uh, basically a master's degree in law, uh, but she has decided and realized as her intending completion is approaching that she wants to get a JD, so she's going to be applying for law school to get a Juris Doctorate, and depending on where that law school is located, I may have to move and not live in this new home, um, even though it's not even two years old, but, uh, and that will be kind of a bummer because I love this house, uh, but I can't, you know, bring my wife from another country who gives up everything and everyone she knows to be with me, and just be like, oh, I can't move to another city because, uh, you know, I love my house, and I want to be close to my kids, so, I mean, it's not far away we would potentially move to Phoenix, uh, which isn't that far from Tucson, and I could still see my kids, but it would mean leaving this home, so that would kind of suck, uh, so let's just see what happens. She doesn't like me talking about that stuff, but she's like, what if I don't get accepted into law school, and you're telling people this, uh, but she will. She's, you know, English is her second language, and she gets straight A's in college, master's degree English, and she's, she's just really smart. She's someone that I really respect, uh, and she doesn't even, I think, sometimes understand just how capable she is, and so I try to pick her up when she needs that, and then finally I have been, you know, working out getting back in shape, uh, to back track that a little bit, uh, uh, back in 2023, I turned, in August, I turned 50, and I was about in the greatest shape of my life, you know, I don't know about cardiovascularly, but strength-wise, um, I could, according to muscleandfitness.com, most likely bench press 400 pounds, which is by far the strongest I had ever been, and I don't max because I don't like putting that kind of pressure on my joints, um, but I was able to bench press, you know, 315, I could rep that eight times, um, in incline bench press or flat bench press, and I was doing shoulder presses with, you know, 95-pound dumbbells, eight repetitions of 95-pound dumbbells, and, you know, legs were strong, calves were strong, everything was strong, back was strong, uh, I was doing really well, and then kind of out of nowhere, I had two medical issues pop up, the first was, you know, nerve pain, I had this feeling in my arms that basically started from my shoulders and shot all the way down my arms to my hands like, like a lightning bolt, you know, imagine a lightning bolt striking your shoulder and going down your arm, that's what that was feeling like, and so, um, I had gone to some doctors, and I tried to see what was going on there, and no one really had any answers for me or how to treat it or anything I could do, and I just actually recently had, um, a PA at an allergist's office really give me a solid explanation of what could be going on with over, nerve overuse, um, you know, just like you can do overuse of your joints and stuff like that, you can do the same thing to your nerves, and that's probably most likely what was going on in that situation, and very shortly thereafter that, I got this insane, insane, insane headache that was incredibly painful, so painful I had to take, you know, a full week off of work for a headache, you know, I barely ever had headaches in my entire life, and then I get this thing, you know, probably equal to a migraine for the first time in my life, because I had never had a migraine, and, uh, it was terrible, it shut me down, and nothing was, you know, I was taking Motrin, Excedrin, Tylenol, nothing was making this headache go away, and then finally after a week, like seven days, it finally decided to die down and give me some reprieve, I don't know what I did, or how it happened, or why, but it happened, and, uh, but it never went away, um, and so for a year and a half, I had been going to doctors, and, and all these things to try to help take care of this headache, I had even gone to the emergency room twice, the VA emergency room, and they really just gave me some Motrin, threw an IV in me, and sent me on my way, and finally I got to a neurologist who, uh, you know, really helped me by, uh, putting me on a medication called nortriptyline, and, um, it finally got to where my headaches were controllable again, uh, and they were exercise-induced before, if they were, you know, if I woke up and it was like a level two or three pain, if I tried to do some kind of workout or exercise because I was like, oh, it's not so bad today, yeah, any type of heart rate, uh, activity where my heart rate rose, uh, it would make the headache worse, so I was in pretty bad shape, and I got, I got out of shape over that year and a half, and not only wasn't I able to work out, I, you know, went crazy on letting go of my diet, because for whatever reason, when I'm exercising and working out, I only want healthy food, it's wild, and then when I stop working out, my body's like, oh, give me sugar, give me, you know, pizza, give me snacks, I love sugar, give me sugar, and I gave into it, I wasn't holding back, uh, part of it was because I had been on such a structured, regimented lifestyle prior to that to get in that shape I was in that I let go, and the other part was like, fuck it, I have these headaches that are hurting me like a bitch, and it's never going away, so I'm going to get comfort somewhere, and I got it in food, so I allowed myself to get up to about 246 pounds and a little bit of a belly, and now I'm back to the more structured, healthy eating, and starting to work out again, and, you know, trying to get myself as close to back to where I was at 50 as I can, probably less strength and more, you know, just fitness this time, I'll probably trim down, you know, I don't know what the reality of my situation is going to be, I think in my head, 215 would be a good ideal weight at six foot one if it's muscle, uh, but, you know, that's 30 pounds away from where I am right now, so that's what I'm going to be doing, and that's what I'm going to be working on, and so this brings, you know, the end of my life story, and current to where I'm at right now, and I have jotted down some ideas for future episodes, uh, you know, talking about my time in the Air Force versus the Army, and comparing the two, um, talking about lessons I learned from marriage and divorce, I'm on my fourth marriage, uh, lessons, uh, in fatherhood and being a father, um, lessons on my professional journey for work, and, um, some of my personal training and fitness and, and, uh, you know, nutrition stuff that I know and have learned along the way in life too, and those are just some of the ideas that I have right now for different podcasts going forward, and, um, I thank you for listening to my life story, and I thank you for listening to this episode, and, uh, I hope you continue to listen after this.