Dr. Jen Ashton is ABC’s chief medical correspondent and chief women’s health contributor on The Dr. Oz Show– and a good friend of the Oz family. In this interview, Dr. Ashton is opening up about one of the most painful periods of her life: the death of her ex-husband and father of her children who took his own life. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “help” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741, or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The only rational thought that I was having that next morning was, we have just suffered a massive trauma.
Not tragedy, trauma.
And if we were in a car accident, we would be in an emergency room right now.
If we were bleeding to death, we would be in an emergency room.
If we were having a heart attack, we would be in an emergency room.
We belong in a psychological emergency room.
Hi, I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
Dr. Janash is laughing at me right now.
She's the ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent, Chief Medical Women's Health Contributor for the Dr. Oz Show, which is a blessing to have you on the program all the time.
But more importantly, she's a fantastic family friend who we spent a lot of time with and we've done some grieving with.
Today, she's here.
Altogether, Lisa's as well joining us.
We're going to open up about one of the most painful periods in Jen's life, the death of her ex-husband and the father of her children, who took his own life.
This is difficult for me because I met Robbie Ashton 30 years ago.
Robbie was living with us actually, working in my lab when he met Jen.
And the kids one day said, Robbie didn't come home.
And then they kept asking that question for about six months.
We finally broke it to them that he'd fallen madly in love with this beautiful medical student who had actually also been in our division rotating through and they'd met and their life seemed like Camelot.
It was a dream.
I should point out that Jen is godmother to our daughter, Zoe.
Mm-hmm.
And Lisa and I are godparents to Alex, her son.
So we're intertwined, our family.
And I've avoided talking about this topic until today for a bunch of reasons.
One of them was it's not my story to tell, even though I feel some ownership over it because I loved Robbie so much.
But partly because I was personally struggling with what happened.
Because my friend Robbie Ashton threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.
And...
Jen decided bravely to write a book called Life After Suicide.
It just came out.
And let me just start off by asking why.
Why did you decide to talk, to repeat a story that was already painful enough the first time you'd lived it?
I think there were a couple of reasons, Mehmet.
One is that, as you both know, and I think this is probably true for both of you as well, I'm much more comfortable being the one giving the help than asking for the help.
I am much more comfortable being in the role of healer than the person who needs to be healed.
And part of the reason I wrote the book is because I realized through, partially through Serendipity, partially through my job at ABC and Good Morning America when I had to talk about Kate Spade's suicide and share my own experience then, So that was just June of 2018.
I realized that sharing our story would help other people and would help us heal and recover and that it could do both of those things in a way that honored Rob's spirit as a healer, as someone who always wanted to help other people.
But it wasn't until I started to see and hear the massive social media response when I started to share our story after Kate Spade's death that Chloe and Alex, my children, came to me and said, do you see how many people are hurting?
Do you see how many people are going through what we're going through?
You have to use your voice.
And they don't have a national media platform.
You do.
You have to help them.
And that's kind of the way it started.
Can you take us back to what happened?
And put it in the context of what was going on in your personal lives so people can understand Robbie.
Because much of what was happening was completely, even to me, Unclear.
I was with Robbie and you the weekend before he died at a track meet that our kids were competing at.
Oliver, my son, and Chloe, your daughter, are similar age, so they do things together a fair amount.
They fight a lot together.
Powerful story of the two of them when they were little kids sledding down the hill in Maine.
Oh my God.
And Oliver was just pummeling little Chloe.
Chloe's a world-class athlete.
She's going to be playing hockey at Harvard.
Yeah, until she pummeled him.
No, she was much smaller than Oliver.
Little kids are even smaller than each other.
I think he tried to pummel her And then she retaliated and came back into the kitchen and knew that she would get her best chance at getting him into trouble by going directly to Lisa and saying, you're not going to believe what Oliver did to me.
And then you, Mamet, went to Oliver and said, Oliver, why did you do that to Chloe?
Obviously, it's because you don't like her beating you.
And then it just...
Escalated.
Yeah, it was like tossing fuel on the fire.
But Chloe's gotten smarter and...
After one of their pummelings...
And possibly stronger.
And possibly stronger.
One of their pummelings said, Oliver, you're only beating me up because you like me.
Yes.
Which immediately got him to cease all type of...
That's correct.
...bullying behavior.
But we do secretly hope that there might be a future union.
But we were together at this track meet, sitting, and Robbie was explaining the track meet to me, because I don't go to a lot of track meets, and it is sort of confusing, all these different activities happening at once, how many meets are there, and how many heats are there, rather, in advance, etc.
And it was very matter of fact, and business as usual, and I was sort of impressed, because I know that you were finalizing your divorce right at that time.
Mm-hmm.
I mean...
What was going on personally for us, and I won't speak for Rob, but from my end, and it's not that different from the interpretation that you and Lisa had.
That day, I was out with Lisa the night before Rob killed himself directly across the street from his apartment.
And we were talking about kind of where things had been, what had happened between the two of us, and where we had hoped our future would bring us.
And basically, it was that, you know, we as a couple had so prioritized raising our children, largely at the expense of prioritizing our marriage and our relationship.
And after 21 years, had also grown apart because our individual paths had kind of taken different courses.
So the two of those things together had gotten us to a point after couples therapy and about five plus years of working to try to save our marriage to the point where we said to each other, And I definitely said this to Rob, and he echoed it back to me.
We loved each other.
We were no longer in love with each other.
We thought it was best for everyone that we separate and end our marriage, but we were so committed to having an evolved divorce, and we were really proud of the fact that we had done that.
There was no...
Ugly, legal evisceration.
We weren't trying to destroy each other.
We ended our marriage with the love and respect for what we had had and what we wanted to have in the future.
And I was very proud of the way we had done that.
I know Rob had felt that too.
I was sharing that with Lisa the night before Rob died.
And the only thing for me that was...
Almost Shakespearean in the tragic nature of it is that—and I remember telling you this, Lisa, when I called you both to tell you that we had decided to end our marriage and you were away with your family, And I remember saying to you, you know, I don't think Rob loves me anymore.
And I don't really think this is that upsetting to him, really, you know, and that that was so sad for me because part of me wanted him to fight to save our marriage, and he never did.
And so when we finalized our divorce, I remember thinking like a sigh of relief, like we had gotten through a horrible time in an evolved, kind, respectful way to each other, to our family, to our kids.
And I was hoping that we would then both of us go on to have, you know, part kind of part two of our lives together.
And when I found out that he had killed himself, I thought...
Maybe he wasn't pulling away from our marriage like I thought he was.
Maybe he wasn't pulling away from his career as a surgeon like I thought he had done in 2012. Maybe he was pulling away from life, and I didn't see that.
And, of course, that didn't make me feel better.
It was just—and I'll never know the answer to that, but that is how I started to kind of make a theory— We've got some more questions after the break.
Before we get into the specifics of the story, because the devil's in the details, I've been stunned at how frequently I have missed The profound depression of people who are about to commit suicide.
I feel like I can identify depressed people more than suicidal people.
And I've been told that's because suicidal people are so confident.
Because you don't commit suicide by mistake, right?
You know you're right.
You know everyone else is wrong.
And they're delusional because you've got to figure it out.
You're going to take your own life.
Because that's a pretty drastic step, right?
It's a long-term solution to a short-term problem, as is often said.
So...
There are a few other suicides that I have been involved with.
A classmate from medical school and college, no idea.
I'd seen the guy days before.
A guy who I was with at a party who I trained with later that night kills himself.
I mean, just completely out of the blue to me, but obviously there was something going on.
Is that what you have found as people have written to you?
Is that the norm?
From what I've learned, and this is in speaking to psychiatrists and suicidologists who have their whole career in this world, there are basically two categories of suicide.
There's the impulsive category.
Which, unfortunately, oftentimes, often, but not always, is the younger, the teenager, the young adult whose frontal lobe isn't developed fully, and they're impulsive, and they make a rash decision.
And I believe that Rob's was definitely in that category.
And then there's the chronic...
Relentless mental illness.
Oftentimes with people who may have an official diagnosis like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
But those people you might expect an issue with.
I bet you it's the earlier group that's the one that's so stunning to me.
And I think that when he left his career as a surgeon, to me, and I know that you guys must have thought the same thing, that to me was such a red flag of Not being quote-unquote normal, but did I say, oh, this could be someone who's suffering from untreated depression or this could be someone that would be suicidal?
No.
My reaction, other than being completely blindsided when he walked away from his career as a surgeon, is who does that?
And that, to me, in retrospect, should have been a red flag.
But you never know that until it's too late.
I was just angry.
Oh, you mean when he left surgery?
So I trained Robbie, very proud, recruited him to our program.
I thought he was fantastic.
And somewhere towards the end of his training, he stopped operating with me.
And I challenged him one day because usually the chief resident would operate with me because I was doing big cases and a lot of them.
And it's usually how chief residents would learn, just do the big cases with someone who does a lot of them.
So I was upset, disappointed.
And he said, I don't think I can do what you do.
I think I need to be a different kind of surgeon.
I said, what are you talking about?
We recruited you with the confidence that you could do this.
I spent my whole life playing basketball with you.
I know you can deal with pressure.
I know you can deal with decisions that own up to mistakes.
And he said, no, I can't.
So I was upset that he hadn't told me this ahead of time.
He decided on his own, and he was very secretive about these kinds of things, which is, I guess, another sign for anyone listening at home.
If you know people who are secretive in your life, don't trust that they'll tell you their secrets.
Right.
Because that's what secretive means.
Right.
And then when he left his position in medicine, I was disappointed that he didn't talk to me about it.
He seemed to make a decision based on a whimsical feel.
And he didn't talk to me about it either.
Yeah, which is even more difficult.
I didn't realize that.
I thought you were in on the...
So then, let's fast forward.
So you go to dinner with Lisa the night before Robbie takes his life.
You have no idea this is going to happen.
Right.
You go to bed.
And just to outline this, you have a beautiful apartment.
It's not far from where we live in New Jersey, but it overlooks the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan.
Yeah.
We used to.
Used to.
Used to, yeah.
But he lives, he moves to a building right next to you.
Mm-hmm.
And then he jumps out off the bridge where you could have seen him, theoretically.
Well, it's worse than that, actually.
And the...
You know, a lot of people, certainly the people whose stories I also share in the book, you know, when someone has been through a major trauma of getting this kind of news or watching something happen, but mostly getting, you know, things tend to slow down and go into that, like, slow motion, you know, mental movie mode.
And that morning was no different.
So that morning...
I woke up early, as I always do.
Alex was home from Columbia because he had had the flu that week.
He's a college student.
Yeah, my son, who at that time was 18, he was a freshman at Columbia, and he had Been sick that week, kind of with a flu-like illness.
He came home.
Rob and I were texting each other the day before.
Rob asked me, you know, is there anything you need for Alex?
I can get it for you.
I said, no, he's getting better.
Thanks.
No issue.
No sign.
Nothing.
Lisa and I go out to dinner that night, the night before he killed himself.
We're literally feet from Rob's apartment.
And we had...
A great dinner because we're so busy.
We don't really have the time to kind of really connect and speak, you know, unpressured, unhurried.
And we were really, you know, talking about a lot.
And then I went back to your house and saw your baby chick.
Remember?
Yeah.
We have chickens.
Control your excitement.
So you had just hatched a baby chick.
So Lisa and I were going to watch a movie and she showed me the chick.
And in going to your house, I made an illegal U-turn right by the restaurant.
And I got a ticket.
Which I'm such a rule follower that I was horrified.
I don't know that I've ever gotten a ticket for, you know, running a stop sign or anything like that.
Does ABC News know?
I've had to disclose that, yes.
Now they know.
And so when I woke up on Saturday morning, Alex was still asleep.
I decided to go to SoulCycle in New York City, which I often do on the weekends.
And I was running late, and I was driving over the George Washington Bridge, and I looked at the clock, and it was 8.13, and the class was supposed to start at 8.30.
And so I barely made it to the class in time.
The class started at 8.30, went till 9.15.
I got home.
Alex was starting to wake up.
I got in the shower, and I got out of the shower and finished getting dressed, and the doorman called me and said, there's Three detectives coming up to see you.
And all I could think of was the night before my ticket that I had gotten going to your house with Lisa.
They had come to get you.
And I thought, God, they're so, like, they really take these illegal U-turns seriously.
Am I going to get fingerprinted?
Like, my God.
Like, I literally, I was, I felt like my chest getting tight.
I thought, I cannot believe.
Then I started to think, like, maybe someone stole my car.
Maybe I have a stalker because, you know, I've had stalkers from being on TV. I mean, I didn't know.
But my first thought was that U-turn.
And I walked by Alex's room.
I told him that there were detectives coming up and he said about what?
I said, maybe it was that U-turn with Lisa last night.
I don't know.
I mean, I just, you know, and Alex was probably rolling his eyes.
I'm such a bad influence.
I know, right?
You know my mom, always getting into trouble.
And so then it became literally like a scene from a movie because I opened the door and The detective showed me their badges.
They said, are you Dr. Jennifer Ashton?
And I said, yes, what's going on?
They said, can we come in?
I said, what's going on?
And they said, ma'am, we think you should sit down.
And I went into the living room.
I still had no idea what they could be about to tell me.
I mean, my mind was completely blank.
It's not like I had an idea in my head.
And I sat down just as far as we are right now, Mehmet, maybe 18 inches from the lead detective, and he said, we found your name on the remains of your husband who jumped off the bridge at 8.34 this morning.
Oh my goodness.
And when I heard the word remains, I collapsed onto my knees, onto his knees, And started screaming.
And after that, you know, when I think back to that moment and that morning and those minutes and hours, the two things that I will never get out of my mind are that What ifs,
that everyone who loses a loved one to suicide, like you are being at a cocktail party with a colleague of yours and that night he kills himself, or, you know, that what if I had pulled out of my garage, seen Rob walking, And just thought, oh, he's taking a walk, and kept going.
Or what if I had been on the bridge and seen him go over?
Or what if Alex had been looking out his window?
I mean, it just goes on and on.
And so those thoughts are, I mean, to say haunting and upsetting is an understatement.
The other thought that I have, which is almost like the opposite, which I think is actually, I'm thinking of it like the end of our love story, really, is that in Rob's pocket was a note, a piece of paper, that said, had my name on it, had my cell phone number, and said, It didn't say call my ex-wife.
It didn't say call Jen Ashton.
And by the way, either of your names could have been on that note.
He could have had anyone's name on that note.
He could have had his best friends.
He could have had his best friend who lives in Florida.
Your names could have been on it easily.
But it was my name, and it said call my wife.
And...
I think that, I mean, I'm choosing to think of this as the end of our love story because I think it speaks to how, you know, we had just gotten divorced 18 days later, but we really didn't act divorced in the connection that we still had and that I'll always have with him.
More questions after the break.
I'm going to get back to the personal, how you coped in a second, but the first news, of course, was Jen Ashton's husband commits suicide, and then you started getting...
People critical of the fact that the suicide must have been related to the divorce.
Just putting the pieces of the puzzle together, you'd put them next to each other.
And we lived it.
We attest to the fact they had no idea.
I was also surprised.
In fact, Lisa and I would talk about it and say, I don't know why Rob has lost his machismo.
Why isn't he fighting for stuff?
The job...
The procedures he wanted to do, the tasks in life for you, the marriage.
I just couldn't put my head around it.
Again, as a male, it just angered me.
I expected more from Rob, completely at the lunch I was, about the possibility that he was just profoundly depressed and was expressing it in a way that I was not taught in med school to look for.
How did you react when people started saying, well, you just got divorced?
Well, I mean, two plus two is...
I mean, you know...
I reacted a couple of ways.
Number one, and this is actually something that Chloe, Alex and I feel very strongly about to this day, is that those headlines, which they were national headlines...
We're more about me than about Rob and more about the way he died than the way he lived.
And so being protective of him and his memory and his legacy, that to us is a real shame, to put it lightly.
It's insulting to him and it's hurtful to Alex and Chloe.
He had his own identity and wasn't just surgeon ex-husband of TV personality doctor.
So to have that be the headline, I think, is really kind of disgusting and disrespectful to him.
To connect it with our divorce...
Which I understand from people who didn't know, but think about that.
That's the definition of keyboard courage, right?
People who don't know anything about the real you or the real situation or what's really going on think they do and come to a decision that they're completely out of line to formulate.
And what they didn't really know, and what we've just discussed, is that First of all, in a relationship, it takes two people to have a successful relationship.
It takes two people to have an unsuccessful relationship.
So the fact that our marriage ended wasn't Rob's fault, just like it wasn't my fault.
There were two of us involved in that relationship.
Sure.
So I think that, you know, it's unfortunate, but on a macro level, what's really unfortunate about it is that for people to think that the people who die by suicide, that it's as simple as a divorce or losing a job or being insulted, or it's not that simple, right?
Because people are insulted every day.
They don't choose to get off the planet.
60% of marriages end in divorce.
They don't end in one of the people's Killing themselves.
So it reflects an ignorance as to how complicated this issue really is.
How were you dealing with that, Lisa, when you'd hear those stories?
You were first on the scene, right?
Literally.
I should tell that story.
So the police officers, who I know you're very appreciative of, because I don't know how detectives tell people bad news.
They come out of nowhere, they have no idea who you are, and they've got to tell you stuff that is earth-shattering.
I mean, I was, obviously, Alex and I were hysterical.
I was in worse shape than Alex.
I couldn't even dial my phone.
And the first thing I said to Alex after the detectives left was, call Evan, call Uncle Evan, my brother, who's also a surgeon who lives 15 minutes away in the city.
And when he got to our apartment in 15 minutes, and I told him to call three people.
One is my best friend Alice, who's a doctor, whose sister, also a doctor, had killed herself six months before.
The other one was my then best guy friend Michael, and the third person was Lisa.
And Lisa was at our apartment within a half hour.
And, you know, we've, as you said, we've been...
Closer than close, you know, for 25 years.
And I've certainly never seen Lisa in that condition, just like I know she's never seen me in the condition I was in.
Robbie dated Lisa's sister, everyone I know.
So we actually have known Robbie, like, I mean, his husband family for longer than even you've known him.
Right.
Which, again, it throws a monkey wrench into your worldview when you know someone that long.
I don't know.
You think you know them.
Right.
And that's part of the problem, too, is that suicide also...
Impacts the past because all the things you thought you knew about someone are blown up with that choice.
Because if you had asked me a week before if Rob would ever kill himself, I would have staked my entire net worth on the fact that no way.
That's not in his DNA. And I would have been so wrong.
And so now there's a filter on every memory I have of him looking at it through his last...
Right.
Right.
That I remember.
I mean, I know exactly what you're saying, Lisa, because I I look at a picture that was taken in the delivery room right after I gave birth to Chloe.
And it's, you know, Rob with his arm around me and we're holding Chloe.
And I thought and I look at that picture and I think to myself.
Was he having thoughts then?
You know, like, we had just had our second child together.
Like, was he thinking that he wanted to kill himself then?
You know, so it's that kind of filter that now, you know, I go back also and think, when is the first time he thought this?
When did he think of it before?
You know, it has made me second guess a lot.
How have the kids dealt with that specific issue?
The fact that their father...
The father did not communicate to them what he was actually thinking.
You know, Alex and Chloe have used that as actually an incredible life lesson taught to them by their father, which is they have learned through his inability to do so why it's which is they have learned through his inability to do so why it's so important to be expressive and communicative and open and honest
Because as you guys know, and you know, Mehmet, I think this would be also true for you, I would say, from my vantage point, although I want to, of course, Lisa to weigh in on this.
But, you know, Rob, as a cardiothoracic surgeon, was very kind of typical of the personality in a lot of ways, which is...
A very restricted emotional range, right?
Because that's how you guys do what you do.
You don't want to be too excited and you don't want to be too upset when the highs and lows happen.
So you keep things in a controlled middle range.
Now, Rob's middle range was more restricted and constricted, I think, than yours.
But it was pretty kind of classic heart-lung surgeon.
Wouldn't you agree, Lisa?
Yeah.
You know, I never saw Rob angry.
Never.
I mean, even when your whole, you know, the demise of your marriage, the divorce, I mean, never.
I never heard him raise his voice.
So I never saw angry Rob.
But now that you mention it, he was always even-keeled.
He was not like the guy who'd go crazy at a party.
No.
I never saw him drunk.
Right.
He wasn't like loud and boisterous and having like gleeful.
The happiest I ever saw him was like the day he came home and met you.
And you could tell he was radiating.
But it wasn't like, you know.
But your point's a good one.
There's a poker face.
Yeah.
That we're taught to have.
Right.
Although I do believe some of that Robbie had already.
I do too.
I think that that has to do with who he is and how he grew up.
But if you, my opinion as a mother now, this is not as a doctor, this is not as a suicide survivor, my opinion as a mother is that if when you're a child, you don't learn to be okay in pain and fear and upset, set, just as you're okay when things are great, you don't develop that distress tolerance, as the psychologists call it, to go out there into the world.
And I think that's one of the biggest jobs or responsibilities that I see as a mother is teaching my kids that it is okay to experience the lowest of the low and the highest of the high and find your way back in the middle and know that you'll be able to survive that.
I don't think Rob ever had any comfort with distress tolerance.
I also, as you just play off that, I don't think Rob was thinking about suicide frequently, if I had to guess.
And I say that because when you came on the show to talk about Rob's death, there was a woman who we had on that you were going to help.
And you did help her.
But after the lights went off and the cameras turned off, she says something that I'll never forget.
I was so stunned by it.
She says, you know, my husband committed suicide two months after Robby.
And we remember watching the news story of his death.
And my husband said, I have no idea how a man could do that to his wife.
I would never do that.
So at least in her case, and she was brave to share the story, her husband had actively told her he wouldn't do it.
So it makes me think that the lack of resilience is not that all along you're tempted to do bad to yourself and then you don't.
It's literally you don't have the coping skills to when it really, really goes bad.
When Camelot ends...
And you've lost your wife.
You can't acknowledge that reality to yourself, so you pretend it's not really happening, at least to the world around you.
Calls you his wife still, but sort of...
Almost underlines the reality of the connection here.
But again, not about your role and about Robbie's role in it, which is again the call to action to all the folks listening right now.
Because it'll come out of left field and it'll often come because there's not a lot of resilience.
What was the word you used?
Distress tolerance.
Distress tolerance.
Yeah.
Which again, that's one of the reasons I love sports is because you learn to lose.
You don't learn to like losing.
You learn to lose so you know what it feels like so you can avoid doing it and cope with it when it does happen because it's going to happen.
Exactly.
And I think that that's how the kids have processed what they now know their father to have been, obviously, his fatal flaw, was that he was incapable of expressing his true feelings to himself, to other people, to experiencing those ranges.
And they've seen what it did to him.
So let's walk through what happened afterwards.
So you've got your brother, these other friends there.
You decide to go to a therapist within 24 hours of losing Robbie.
I mean, you make some pretty bold decisions.
I probably would have simply rolled up in my bed.
How did you decide to do what you did?
How did you get the kids?
There's a second tragedy, right, when there's a suicide.
There's also the tragedy of the family left behind.
Right.
I mean, first of all, we were all in shock, as I know you guys were.
But the physiology of that shock was something that I have never—first of all, I've never seen it in someone else, and I didn't even know as a doctor that that's what people experience.
But— You know, we were literally, I felt like I was walking through cement.
I lost nine pounds in ten days.
I literally couldn't eat.
I couldn't sleep for more than two hours, even with medication.
And the only rational thought that I was having that next morning was, which I attribute purely to maternal instinct of protecting your children in a situation like this, is we have just suffered a massive trauma.
Not tragedy, trauma.
And if we were in a car accident, we would be in an emergency room right now.
If we were bleeding to death, we would be in an emergency room.
If we were having a heart attack, we would be in an emergency room.
We belong in a psychological emergency room.
And all three of us, thank God we were already plugged into this woman because of the couples therapy that Rob and I had been through.
This was the woman that had asked Rob overtly about any suicidal ideas.
She must have been shocked.
We got the news.
She was.
She was.
And this is a woman who's in her early 70s.
She's been doing this a long time.
Oh my goodness.
And we got ourselves to her office on the Sunday afternoon.
I thought we were there for an hour.
I describe in the book we were there for over three hours.
And she was, you know, if you have a hip replacement, they don't just operate on your hip and then leave you in a bed.
There's someone there who gets you out of bed a couple hours later and says, OK, take your first steps, new hip, you know.
And that's literally what we were doing in there.
And she was saying, you know, this is, you know, how you're going to feel.
This is normal.
This is what you might expect.
She gave us some stuff to read.
She said, if you feel up to it, you can maybe this will, you know, help you a little bit.
I'll see you in three days.
You know, there was like immediate follow up and, you know, she gave us a place that was safe and supported with knowledge and expertise to help us navigate, you know, the trauma that we had just been through.
And it made a massive difference.
As you look back on those critical first days, what do you wish people had told you?
What do I wish they had told me?
What do you wish you had realized or known that you've figured out later on?
What's the big epiphany?
You know, I think that there's nothing that would have helped in those first few days.
The things that did help were just people being with us.
You know, I mean, I don't remember a single thing that Lisa said to me.
I just remember us holding...
I have that problem a lot.
That happens all the time.
I'm often asleep when she's saying them.
That's the idea.
She's very sneaky like that.
But I remember us just holding each other and hugging each other and crying.
I remember what you said to me, and I remember how angry you were at Rob.
And then I remember you asked me if we needed anything.
And...
You know, I don't think people—there's nothing people need to say.
They just need to, you know, be with you and hold your hand and hug you and be in the same room.
Or, you know, I do remember a couple of days after Rob died, the kids said, Mom, we can't stay in this apartment.
I mean, all the shades were down because every window on the 40th floor looked out onto the bridge.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And I remember Lisa said, move into our house.
Right now.
With your three dogs.
And right now.
You never have to go back into that apartment.
She cleaned the house.
Seriously, she thought you were moving in.
I thought you were moving in.
It was really helpful.
You should do that again.
Should I move in again this year?
I'm coming over.
Cut me over.
Did you hear that?
And that is really helpful because sometimes things seem like they're so insurmountable and Lisa made it seem really easy.
She was like, don't overthink it.
Get in your car, come down with your dogs, and you don't have to go back to that apartment again.
People I respect most in...
In the grief management space, give that advice.
Don't ask people what you can do for them.
It's like asking, what do you want for your birthday?
That's not a present.
That's homework.
Exactly.
You do that every year.
I know.
I'm not a good example.
I'm the anti-example.
I'm the anti-good behavior person.
I would never ask you what you want for your birthday.
Notice I offered the house.
Exactly.
But very concretely, make lasagna for them.
Take it over.
If they don't eat it, they will eat it, but give it to them.
Give them the stuff that you would want if you were in their shoes.
If you're wrong, it's okay.
I get to see the kids, but just to lay everyone's concerns.
How's Chloe doing?
Chloe and Alex are amazing.
And they're doing...
We all have our sad days.
We all have our great days.
And on those great days, we all think of Rob in...
In only positive, kind of loving way, which was my biggest concern as their mother, because I thought is now every major celebratory event in their lives, will it be ruined by what Rob did?
And I will say that so far, not that there won't be those days, but you might have to walk Chloe down the aisle with Alex when she marries Oliver.
Yeah.
But she has gotten to the point where, you know, she's about to graduate finally from high school.
And, you know, she feels Rob's presence in her life and knows that he would be so proud of her.
And Alex, also, same thing.
I think they both miss their father, but they understand that he, you And with the therapy that we've all had and will continue to have, they feel, I think, very fortunate that they've experienced a degree of post-traumatic growth.
And they feel very close to you and your family and two of Rob's best friends.
They feel that connection to Rob through those friends and through you, which I think is really important.
What would you say to Rob?
If you had seen him on the bridge that morning, riding, and you just called on the phone and said, hey, I just saw you walking on the bridge, and you realized what was happening, what would you tell him?
I would say your kids need you.
Don't do this to them.
And it will get better.
Um...
I think that the hardest part of being a mother to two children whose father died by suicide is that we all want to protect our kids from hurt and pain in life.
And I definitely feel like I've failed in that.
You know, I wasn't able to protect them from the worst pain that they could possibly go through.
And I've had to come to terms with that because, rationally, I realize that, you know, as my brother said to me, and I describe his words in the book, you know, if someone, unfortunately, wants to kill themselves, they will kill themselves.
I think.
So the blame or guilt that I have for not protecting my children from this kind of pain, I realize is just not logical.
But that is, it's one thing to see someone hurt themselves.
But when you see them hurt your children, it kind of takes the pain to a whole new level.
you Jen, thank you.
I know it was difficult to talk about, but I think it's a very brave story.
You tell us beautifully in your book, Life After Suicide, Finding Courage, Comfort, and Community After Unthinkable Loss.
I want to point out to everybody, and this is important to Jen and Lisa as well.
If you or someone that you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. That's 8255. Text HELP to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or just go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
Do it.
And, Mehmet and Lisa, you guys know that...
Rob always wanted to help people.
And even in this very, very poor decision he made, I know that he would want this story to help people suffering.
And so the profits from the book are being donated to two organizations in his memory, Vibrant Emotional Health and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
So...
You're shining a light on this issue.
I have to believe Ken can help save lives, and that's what I know he would want, too.
