Hi and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened.
The podcast that features folks from all walks of life telling us one true story, one experience,
one childhood event that's impacted who they are today.
I'm your host, Jay Rehak, and like you, I've had my share of childhood experiences that
have been eventful, impacted my life in dramatic ways and subtle ways.
And as my listeners know, I always say I try, I imagine that everything that's ever happened
to me has made me a better person.
I know many of my friends say that's not true.
But that's what I'd like to think.
It gives me a certain sense of optimism.
Before I go any further, I'd like to also mention that I just uploaded onto YouTube all
62 of my current podcast.
That's three seasons plus the beginning of season four.
We're now in season four.
My guest today will be actually my fourth guest for season four.
And I'm very excited because people seem to be listening through YouTube as well.
Anyway, Tell Me What Happened is sponsored by Sidelining Publishing, publishers of quality
books including Susan Salador's classics.
I've got peace in my fingers and one little act of kindness available anywhere where great
children's books are sold.
All right, today I have as my guest, Allie McRaeff.
Allie is a longtime friend of the family and she's a fellow Chicago native.
She currently works in Democratic politics and is nomadic.
She's probably on a beach somewhere right now.
Welcome to the show, Allie McRaeff.
Hello.
I am in fact not on a beach today, but hopefully soon.
Oh, I'm so sad.
I mean, I know your life a little bit and I know that every time I talk to you, almost
every time I talk to you, you're in another country.
And it's amazing.
But you are currently in Chicago, is that right?
I am currently in Chicago, yes.
All right.
Well, it's raining right now, but who knows what it'll be like in October when this airs.
But that's not the point.
The point of the story is, is that you do have a story to tell.
I've been lucky enough to get you on the show.
Actually my daughter invited you a while ago and it just finally happened and it's sort
of one of my personal philosophies that everything happens in its time.
So I'm really honored that you take the time.
I know you're a busy person and I actually know also a little bit about your story,
but I'm going to leave that to you right now.
I'm going to mute myself at the end.
I'll come back and ask you absolutely one question and that one question is this.
How do you think that the story that you're telling me has impacted who you are today?
So take it away, Allie McGrath.
All right.
Suddenly, I'm so nervous.
Well, yeah, when I'm thinking back over my childhood and being back in Chicago makes
me really reflective.
We're recording this in September, which is actually the month that my mom died.
And so obviously I've been thinking a lot about her this month.
And when people find out that she had cancer for 20 years of my childhood, nearly 20 years,
a common follow-up question is, did I know she was dying or did I know how sick she was?
And sometimes I'm like, I don't know.
And other times I think back to, so I'm the oldest of three kids and I was determined
to get out of town, to get out of Dodge.
I went to Portland, Oregon for school, which was pretty far from Chicago.
And I was home one winter break, laying in my mom's bed watching her get ready for some
event like I love to do for my entire life.
And she was having a really hard time getting dressed, which happens to the best of us when
you hate all of your clothes.
And these were some of my favorite moments with my mom.
Even just because I idolized her and I could love, I loved rifling through her closet with
her, trying on clothes.
It was like, you know, a little girl's dream of dress up.
Now this little girl was about 19, so I was still playing dress up with my mom.
But I was just laying in bed and she was trying on shirt after shirt and hated everything
that she was putting on.
And finally I was like, mom, they all look great.
What, like, what's wrong?
What's going on?
And she had a port for chemotherapy right under her collarbone, which for those who
may not know, it's just like an intravenous port so that every time she has to get chemo,
she didn't have to get it in her like arm basically and kind of ruin those veins.
So it was easier.
It was under a little flap of skin.
And it was like a plastic port, literally, that opened up and let the chemo drugs in.
I guess there's a big vein there.
And for being around chemo and cancer for 20 years, I probably should know more, but
I'm not a doctor.
And that is all I know.
And she was just like, I hate this ugly thing.
I do not want this to show.
And it was, I would never have told her this, but it was a little bit gruesome.
It was bruised.
Every time it got opened up, it was, you know, I mean, it looked like a scar and it was a
literal battle wound of her many years.
And I said something really flippantly to make her feel better.
Just sort of like, well, you'll get it taken out one day.
Like it, you know, it'll, you, when you're done with chemo, you'll get it taken out
one day.
And she, she came over and sat on the bed and looked me in the eyes and said, oh, Ali,
I'm never getting it taken out.
And I was like, very confused because I was like, so you're, you're never going to be
recovered.
You're never going to be off chemo.
And she said kind of all of it, right?
She was never going to be in remission anymore.
Remission was not the goal.
A stable prognosis was the goal.
And that was the really the first time.
And now we had had a remission party when I was in second grade.
It came back when I was in high school.
She lost her hair again.
She lost her hair when I was in college.
So really cancer was the backdrop of my childhood, but she never made it feel that way.
And this night, I think was why it was really, I mean, I burst into tears instantly because
it really was this sense of mortality and doom over, over my life in a way that I hadn't
really felt ever before.
And I don't, I wish I could remember the exact year it was.
I think I was 19 or 20, but that was the first time I think I truly realized that for however
long my life, my mom's life was going to be from that point on, it was going to be with
cancer in whatever way that cancer would allow her to live.
And some years it allowed her to live a really full life and not spend a lot of it in hospitals.
Other years, that wasn't the case.
And yeah, something that became such an innocuous comment really, really changed my whole mindset
around the rest of my mom's life.
And Jay, I think that's my story.
Yeah, it's a sad story.
I got to pull myself together for a second here because actually, I knew your family a
little bit.
I did not know that your mother suffered for so, so long.
And one of the reasons that I mute myself when I hear your story or I hear one of my,
one of my guests, when I hear one of my guests tell the story, I mute myself because I get
flashes in my own mind of experiences that I had.
And everybody's unique.
And I warn you that that moment when you realize what was going on, my mother suffered from
cancer for 17 years.
She told me, she said many years before she died, she said, I'll never make it to 65.
And she died one day before she turned 65.
But that's not my story.
I mean, it's not the story of the story.
It's the moment that you recognize.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
How do you think, Allie, that that moment, the story that you just told impacted who
you are today.
And I also am going to have to ask you how much longer, how, how, how, how much longer
did your mother live beyond that?
She lived about four more years after that.
Never not on chemo, never not pretty sick.
The last two years, I would say she was pretty sick and her quality of life was not great.
You know, I've been thinking about the ways it impacted my life this month, especially
grief is heavy.
Her birthday was a few days ago.
So I was thinking a lot about her.
She would have turned 60 years old.
And you know, so I obviously, she told me that and I went back to college because what was
I supposed to do?
And I remember my dad drove me to the airport and I'm sobbing, like bawling my eyes out
and something he told me from every time I left the house for a long period of time,
like I studied abroad or I went to school or whatever.
He was like, I will always tell you if something happens with mom's health because he knew
that my mom would not maybe be as forthcoming if I'm studying abroad.
You know, she doesn't want me to come home because she's sick, which was such a selfless
gift she gave me, but it also gave me a lot of guilt and fear every time I left.
So I went back to school, kind of, you know, didn't think anything of it graduated a year
later, was went back abroad and got a call from my dad when I was abroad that, that my
mom was pretty sick and that the doctors had started to give a timeline to how much longer
she might live.
And I pretty instantly said, okay, then I'm coming home because Italy will be here.
I was picking olives on a farm in Italy, which sounds very fun.
It was very fun.
But guess what?
There was an olive oil harvest every year.
Yes.
And I just decided to come home and she died 18 months later and they had said she would
have about three to five years and she had way less than that.
And my siblings didn't decide to come home.
No one told me to come home.
I just knew that I really needed to be home.
I needed to be with my mom.
And then it felt really hard to leave again.
I felt really stuck here because I was 24 and so sad and had just lost my mom.
And the pandemic happened and I just felt so claustrophobic and I, my lease was up in
2021 and I just knew I had to get the fuck out of Dodge again.
But this time there was no sick mom that might pull me home.
But that had kind of become my anchor.
Like she was my anchor coming home to see her was my anchor.
And so the last two and a half years of being fully nomadic, my dad sold our childhood home.
Have really, I've just had to dig super, super deep, which isn't, it's such a cliche, but
I've had to find that kind of home within me.
I've had to find that, you know, all the kind of woo woo dialogue about the inner child,
parenting your inner child because I don't have that maternal figure sort of always checking
up on me.
But I think it has made me really appreciate being able to travel freely like this when
I couldn't for a while.
And I had this sense of wonderlust that I couldn't always lean into because, you know,
my mom was so sick and I would never have told her that she would have been so sad to
hear that I was changing the way that I was living my life.
And I just know that somewhere, and I don't think I'm articulating it the best here, but
some way somehow the grief and losing my mom have really shaped the choices I've made to
be nomadic, whether it's a freedom or a escape.
And some days it's both, some days it's one, some days it's the other.
But yeah, being in Chicago when the grief feels really heavy like this on anniversaries
is really tough.
So I'm leaving town next month and I'm really excited.
Hopefully in search of better weather as we were talking about at the beginning, but also
just in search of kind of finding new connections, meeting new friends, living life to the fullest
while I'm healthy enough to be able to do that because my mom wanted to travel a lot
more than she was able to.
So yeah, I think those are just some of the some of the little ways it's impacted me,
but I'm sure there are many more that I'm not even aware of yet.
Each year I find a new one or a few new ones.
Yeah, well that's well said.
I mean, I guess that, Ali, I've known you for a number of years and I always think of
you as someone who's someplace else.
And it sounds harsh, but I don't mean it like that.
Oh, it's true.
Like, where is she today?
I'll ask my daughter, Hannah, as a good friend of yours.
And I'll say, Ali McRaeff, where's she right now?
And then usually it's some other country.
And when you're in town, I'm always a little surprised like, well, how long she year for
and then Hannah will say to me, I don't know.
But I think it does seem that your mother's illness, especially all those years as a young
woman for yourself, a child for yourself and I'm like that.
You sort of, like you said, in some ways, maybe you do it for your mother.
Maybe in some ways you do it to get away from all of the memories of Chicago because I'm
sure you can't really go anywhere locally without some sort of a memory or wherever.
Just where my mother and I were.
And I'm sorry your mom didn't get a chance to travel as much as she would have liked.
Also the fact that she died so young is, yeah, is a real tragedy for everybody I know, but
especially a daughter.
I mean, and a son, a son, a husband as well.
I don't mean to minimize it for your dad or anybody else, but knowing you, I can't imagine.
Well, again, I, yeah, my experience was different.
My mother got sick when I was 16 and she died when I was 33 or whatever, but 17 years of
close to, you know, passing to resurrection and thinking maybe this is going to work out.
And your mom telling you at that moment, it was a very real moment that I'm sure shook
the foundation of the idea that, oh, we're going to get through it somehow.
Some way we're going to get through this.
Well the last thing she said to me in the hospital was I'm not going to die here.
So she didn't want to.
And I know she was fighting and she fought a long time.
She fought a long time.
So if I can honor her legacy by leaving or being here either way, I hope I'm doing her
proud some way.
Well, I think you are just in the sense that, like I said, every time I talk to you, you
seem to be living quite, quite well.
I mean, in the sense of, you know, your activities, your actions, you're not laying around moping
or whatever.
It seems like you're very, very active, but well, I want to thank you for being on the
show, telling your story resonates with me.
I'm sure it's going to resonate with thousands of other people and I always tell everybody
your story is unique.
I don't mean to suggest that I in any way fully understand what you've been through,
but I have a taste of it, a sense of it, I should say.
And I'm sorry for your loss and your family's loss.
Thanks, Jay.
You too.
All right.
Well, that's our show.
Again, thank you, Allie McGrath, for telling us that very deeply personal story.
Thank our sponsors.
So until next time, this is Jay Rehack, asking you all to please stay safe out there and
try not to hurt anybody.
Tell me what happened to you.