Hi and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened, the podcast that features folks from all over
the world.
I'm your host, Jay Rehat, and like you, I've had my share of childhood experiences.
Some of them painful, some of them quite pleasant, but I'd like to think that everything that's
ever happened to me has made me who I am today and I'd like to think it's made me a better
person.
Now, that may not be true, but that's what I'd like to think.
Anyway, Tell Me What Happened is sponsored by Sidelining Publishing, publishers of quality
books including Susan Salazar's classics I've Got Peace in My Fingers and One Little Act
of Kindness.
All right, today I have as my guest, John Tabor, host of the Audit15 Fund podcast and
Audit Professional Living in Iowa.
Welcome to the show, John.
Thank you, Jay.
Thank you, Jay, for the opportunity and the platform here to share my story.
I'm really looking forward to it, John, although I do know because I read a little description
beforehand that it's not going to be a very happy story, but I'm going to leave you to
tell it.
John, at the end, I'm going to ask you absolutely one question and that one question is this.
How do you think what you tell me, the experience that you had, has impacted who you are today?
But I'm going to stop talking now, John.
Take it away, John Tabor.
All right, thank you again, Jay, for the opportunity here to be on your podcast.
And yes, indeed, it's not a very...
It's a sad story.
So 30 years ago, in 1993, my brother, who was then 13 years old, he died in a drowning
accident.
I was 10 years at the time and it's a memory that I carry with me until today.
But I do hope that at the end of the story, I'll have a positive message to the listeners
here.
Basically, when he was 13 years old and I was 10, we went to a club, went to a swimming
pool.
It was not present at the time when he had the accident.
I had to just step outside of the club for a few moments and maybe that was God's way
of making me not be present there at that moment.
But when I came back, I remember the ambulance was coming in, emergency people or the people
who were helping him try to revive him were there and went to the hospital.
When we got to the hospital, it was kind of a blur.
A bit of a blur in my memory here, but got to the hospital.
I remember seeing...
I saw my mom crying and I knew that something bad had happened, but I did not know exactly
what had happened.
Then I remember my uncle picked me up at the hospital because my mom, she just could not
talk to me at that time.
We'll get to that in a little bit here, but I remember being in the car with my uncle
and my uncle told me they could not save him.
I was 10 years old and I'm like, what does that mean that they couldn't save him?
When I got to his house, I think it dawned on me.
He was gone.
Fast forward a few months after his death, I was just coping with the pain.
It's a pain that you just cope with it through your life.
It never goes away.
There's a hole for any people who have experienced death before.
That's something that everybody will experience.
There's a hole in you that will never be filled again.
But yes, so fast forward a few months.
I remember I wrote a poem to express my feelings.
It was a very short poem.
At that time, I was still living in Brazil.
I'm originally from Brazil, so my family was there.
My dad is from Iowa.
That's why I live now in Iowa and have the Iowa connection.
I wrote that poem in Portuguese.
I don't exactly remember what the poem was, but I just remember that it was something
to the extent of he was here yesterday, he's not here today.
The sudden death, just that hole that you have after someone is gone suddenly.
I shared that poem with my Portuguese teacher and she liked it.
She shared with other teachers.
She shared with my mom.
I remember at that time in that school that I was going to, they had a science fair, which
is something that they did every year towards the end of the year where they would have
different projects, different things that the students were working on that would be presented
to not only the students, all of the other students, but also to the parents.
It was a big deal.
I remember there was some conversation about my poem being display, some sort of display
in the science fair.
Granted, a poem is not a science type of work, but I thought that was interesting.
They decided ultimately not to display that poem.
I question, why didn't they want to talk about that?
Thinking about their memory back, and this is something that I was just recently thinking
about this, people don't want to talk about death.
People don't want to talk about pain.
For any of your listeners who have lost their relatives, who do they feel comfortable in
talking to about their relatives who have passed?
There's not a whole lot of support.
Maybe for adults, you have support groups that you can go to, but for kids, for a 10-year-old,
doesn't exist.
If it exists, it's not too widely known.
That's the, I think it's the core message here is, we need to make,
talking about death, and talking about losing your relatives, and the pain that you're going
through, more normalize.
That's the message that I would like the listeners to take away from this episode.
On the negative side, I would say, how it has impacted me is, I tend to hold my feelings
more than some people do, and maybe that's because of my brother, that's just who I am.
On the positive side, I would say, I'm more understanding of people who are going through
the same situation.
Recently I had a neighbor who lost her father and had a conversation with her, and I knew
the pain that she was going through, and I knew the questions to ask without being too
invasive into her privacy, but at least showing that the support that people need to have
when they're going through that pain.
Yeah, I can't imagine your loss, but I can tell you that when you told the story, I flashed
back to my own life when I was 14, one of my good friends drowned in an accident, and
his brother called me and told me, and I said, I was 14, but I said, that's impossible.
I talked to him yesterday.
It was impossible that he had died, and obviously that's illogical, but I felt your pain when
you were saying as a 10-year-old trying to have your uncle or your mother try to explain
to you what had happened, because it doesn't register for a little bit.
Even in terms of listening to your story about trying to add the poem into the science fair
and the idea that you're trying to express yourself, and it's good that the teacher acknowledged
that I'm sorry that the rest of the community couldn't, and then I think I just can say,
John, that I absolutely agree with you that most of society doesn't really like to talk
about death at all, and it's somehow, as if you don't talk about it, you won't have to
deal with it, which is absurd, of course, and we know that.
As young children, we don't often, because we don't always experience it young, and I'm
sorry you did.
As you think it's made you more empathetic to everybody else, though now, do you think
that you're able to articulate it, sort of understand it better than other people, or
do you offer your help to people when they go through these types of experiences?
Yeah, it definitely has maybe more empathetic, it has made me stronger as well, and yeah,
definitely when you're 10 years old, it doesn't register.
It's not something that you understand, and here I am 30 years after the incident talking
about it.
This is the very first time that I'm talking about it in a public forum, and I'm doing
this for a couple reasons, Jay.
First one is, this is the 30 year anniversary of his death, and I do, he's still very alive
to me, even though he's not present with me.
What was his name, by the way?
Luis Felipe.
So even though he's not present with me, I think that he's very much alive, and I want
to keep his memory.
So maybe this is a way to immortalize his memory.
And the second reason that I'm doing this, I have a four year old daughter, and she reminds
me quite a bit of him, because she's very artistic.
She loves drawing, she wants to play the guitar, and that's what my brother used to love to
do, drawing and guitar.
So I'm reminded of him every day by seeing her, and I want to make the best out of her
life, giving her the support that she needs as she goes through any pain.
Hopefully she doesn't have to go through any pain like I did when I was young, but as she
gets older and is facing challenges in her life, I want to be there to support her.
I want to be there to just be someone that she can talk to.
And I think that's the most important thing here.
People who go through that experience, in a way they feel invisible, because they can't
talk about it.
There's no one to talk about it.
And that's the message that I want the listeners to take away here.
If someone is going through that pain right now, make them visible.
Talk to them.
Show your support.
Yeah, I'm with you.
I hear you.
I was a school teacher for 36 years, and I know the value of more or less acknowledging
experiences that occur rather than ignoring them, in other words, somebody goes through
something.
You certainly don't have the answer to their problem.
I mean, there's nothing anybody could ever say about Luis Felipe, and that would somehow
say, oh, it's better.
We get that.
You cannot make something better, but you can also, to a certain extent, I do believe,
make it worse by ignoring it, almost acting as if, well, if we don't talk about it, then
it didn't happen.
And your brain sort of says, wait a minute, this is my brother.
It did happen.
I'm worn for it.
And when you at least acknowledge it to somebody else, again, it doesn't solve the issue.
The loss is the loss.
But to be able to say, yeah, I mean, as I was thinking about it, thinking about your
daughter or whatever, I just kept thinking, the whole time I kept thinking, Luis Felipe
presente, and that notion of somebody still being alive through the genetic world, but
also just being reminded, say it out loud, that type of thing.
The fact that you mentioned his name, that you told the story, he lives on in a way.
That's all I'm going to say.
Absolutely.
And to your point, Jay, and you just reminded me here of a book that I read to my daughter
some nights, and it's called In the Rabbit Listen.
I don't know if you know what book that is.
I don't.
But it's a book that just talks about sometimes people just need to be heard.
So for anyone who is going through that pain, just lend your ears to them.
What was the name of that book again, just so I can write it down?
In the Rabbit Listen.
Okay.
In the Rabbit Listen, okay.
It's a children's book, but it has a powerful message.
Well, I'm going to link it on your particular episode, because I think it's worth reading.
It sounds like it's worth reading.
And the idea of the importance of listening, I think every young person should know, but
also old guys like me and everybody that you meet, it's the idea of about listening.
Absolutely.
Being the support.
Well, thank you, John, for your story.
Again, I'm sad for your loss.
I do want you to know that through the retelling, I now, when I think of you, I will think of
Luis Philippe and his short life, but the impact it's had on you and, of course, now
your daughter.
So thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you so much, Jay.
This meant a lot to me to be here and to tell my story.
Been 30 years in the making.
And hopefully I did a good job telling the story.
Yes, it's beautiful.
Yes.
So really appreciate the opportunity here, Jay.
Thank you, John.
All right.
Well, that's our show.
I'd like to thank John Tabor for that very painful, but personal story that I think resonates
with many of us.
So until next time, this is Jay Rehack asking all the police, stay safe out there and try
not to hurt anybody.
Dad, tell me what happened to you.