In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share their experiences with grief and how they chose to say farewell to their dearly departed.

Part 1: When Sanjana Murthy misses her grandfather’s funeral, she struggles with the lack of closure.

New York City based Research Coordinator Sanjana Murthy is thrilled to be here. Her lab's work at Mount Sinai (Dept of Psychiatry, Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics) identifies neurophysiological biomarkers to improve treatment for depression.  She holds a B.S. in Brain and Behavioral Sciences from Purdue University, where she curated shows for the TEDxPurdueU stage. 

Part 2: Paul Barach impulsively decides to walk the Pacific Coast Trail to escape the grief of his girlfriend’s suicide.

Paul Barach is a writer, storyteller, and thru-hiker from Seattle, Washington. A 2013 Moth GrandSlam runner up, his stories have been featured on Risk, Out There, and other podcasts. Paul has also been a featured guest on Deviate with Rolf Potts, Backpacker Radio, Zero to Travel, and Armchair Explorer. Paul has hiked the Shikoku Pilgrimage, Colorado Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail among others, bicycled the Trans-America Trail, and most recently completed the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. He is the author of the travel memoir "Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains: Misadventures on a Buddhist Pilgrimage" and is currently working on a memoir about the Pacific Crest Trail, as well as a comedic novel about a vampire hunter who's sick of his job. Paul currently lives in Tacoma with his wife Michelle and their dog Izzy.

This story does include mentions of suicide. In case you’d find them helpful, now or at any point in the future, we have some resources available on our website.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

It's the fall of 2022, and I feel like I'm doing everything correctly. I just graduated with a degree in Brain and Behavioral Sciences from Purdue, and I was about to move here to New York City to start a full time research position.

The goal has always been to study clinical psychology, become a clinician, work with patients, and so this, this was a step in the right direction. But it also just felt like such a big move coming from California.

I called my grandfather, I remember, and I was telling him all about the new job, the new apartment and how it felt like everything in my life was about to change. I remember saying, “Thatha, I hope things go well. I really just don't want anything bad to happen.”

And he said, “Sanjana, nothing bad is going to happen. But even if the worst thing imaginable happens, you are equipped to handle it. You can handle it.”

He's always made whoever he's talking to feel so seen and I've always thought that that was so remarkable to do. Just like in this case, for example. He and I grew up in wildly different contexts, different generations, different countries, but he still, somehow, just makes me feel so understood.

So I move here to New York City with the attitude that I am equipped to handle it all, the rats that are shaped like small dogs, all of it. About a year in, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling confident that the field I'm in is the right one for me, neuroscience, mental health. I go into work every day and I'm surrounded by the most supportive mentors and scientists. And I get to hear our patients with depression talk about how deep brain stimulation is changing their lives. I have this feeling, like, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I'm at work one day and I see my phone light up with a notification. It's from my mom. And it says, “Thatha had a heart attack. He's gone.”

In that moment, it feels like everything has shifted. My heart is pounding and my head is swimming with incoherent thoughts. I stumble to the decision that I need to be there in India, for the funeral. There was going to be a funeral.

I'm told that they can only keep his body for two days before the cremation, and it takes two days to fly to India. If I wasn't on a plane by tonight, then I wasn't going to make it. But I could go home right now and I could pack a bag in like, what, 30 minutes. What do I need? My clothes, my passport? Did I have my OCI card? I can't remember the last time I saw my OCI card.

OCI stands for Overseas Citizen of India. It acts like a visa and it's a pretty important travel document. I remember, it's an important travel document. It is at home in California for safekeeping.

My heart drops. I'm switching between calling my parents who are currently in India and calling my friends here, anybody who would know what to do without an OCI card.

My friend tells me that there is an Indian embassy on 34th Street. If I can get there fast enough, maybe they can issue me an emergency visa.

So, now, I find myself rushing through the streets of Manhattan and I get to this building. It felt so important to me that I assumed it would look grander than what it does, but it fully just looks like every other building in New York City I almost walk past it, this all important building that's supposed to help me get to India tonight.

I walk in, I make my way in and there's a man at the front desk. I walk up to him, I look at his face and he looks so irritated. He looks irritated that he's not at home right now. He looks irritated that someone just walked in the front door on a Friday afternoon, so it's not looking great for me. But I try very lightly to request an emergency visa.

He barely looks up at me and says, “Come back Monday.”

Any drive I have to be polite goes out the window and I'm now a ball of rage. I'm thinking to myself, “I need to explain to him that this is an emergency. That there has been a death. That I'm not missing my grandfather's funeral. That my best traits, thoughtfulness and empathy, they come from him. I'm not missing his funeral.”

His eyes meet mine and all he says is, “There's nobody that can help you right now.”

I'm sure he'd probably mean for it to sound that dramatic, but I'm feeling the weight of those words, and I find myself outside. With the ambulance sirens and the car horns, tears just start streaming down my face. I'm fully crying on 34th Street.

It's the first time I've cried in public, mind you. I'm feeling defeated and alone. But what I think I'm feeling most of all is the sense of shame. Like, I should be able to handle this. I'm just not.

I did get a flight out that night, but it was to California. I flew home to California to pick up the OCI card and then I flew to India from there. But it was too late. I'd missed the funeral.

And for months afterwards, it had felt like the worst thing imaginable had happened. All I wished I could do was tell him, tell him how special he is and how much he's missed and how much I try to be like him.

It had felt like every time I thought about him, I would remember that he wasn't there anymore and I would just feel that loss over and over again. I struggled with the grief and the guilt and this feeling of unending absence.

For so long and for so much more than I thought I should, I identify so much with wanting to become a clinician and being a scientist, understanding human behavior and emotion regulation and stress resilience, that some part of me felt like I was supposed to know how to navigate grief correctly. I felt like, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I was supposed to be the poster child for navigating loss. Because I kept thinking, how am I supposed to show up for other people one day when I don't even seem to be able to show up for myself right now?

A few months go by and I'm back home in California, just visiting for a little bit. I come downstairs one morning and my parents are there having cups of coffee, just chatting. I make myself a cup of tea and I come join them and we start talking about Thatha. And my dad pulls out this thick, red file just filled with paper.

And he says, “Look what I brought back from India Thatha saved we ever sent him.”

So we're looking through it page by page and there's letters from my dad when he was in college and when he came to the US for the first time. And we're laughing because he's talking about using a microwave for the very first time and how spectacular of a machine it is, which is the height of the American dream right there.

And there's letters from my mom when she was pregnant with me and there's drawings from six year old me. We just keep looking through it page by page, until we get to the very last thing. And the very last thing in there is a letter that I had written Thatha in 2017. I was in high school at the time.

I'm telling him about how my senior year of high school is going and how excited I am to study the brain in college. The very last paragraph that I have in there, just right above my signature, I say, “Thatha, I'm not sure if I've ever told you this, but you are the strongest person I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Your endless patience and wisdom continue to inspire me. And, one day, I hope to be just like you.”

I imagine him in 2017, just a few years ago, in the house in Bangalore. He's sitting in a chair by the balcony and he's unfolding this letter and reading these words, my thoughts, reading my thoughts to him, and I think about how he's just always seemed so kind.

I wonder how somebody manages to stay so soft and so patient and so understanding, despite everything a lifetime has to offer? I think about how empathy and resilience, the things that I associate with being a good clinician, these things fundamentally arise from suffering. I think about how expecting a clinician to never feel grief is kind of like expecting a doctor to never get sick.

Ultimately, I think there is no way to do grief correctly. There's a lot of ways to do grief incorrectly, but we're going to do all of them. And it doesn't matter. What probably matters now is just to tell the people we love that we love them.

Thank you.

Part 2

I always hated memorizing dates in history class and not because I always got them wrong. That mostly wasn't it. It's just that It never made sense to me because, like, for real, who cares when some event fell on the calendar? What matters is how the world changed afterwards.

That's what I thought, for decades, until my world changed on one specific day, October 23rd, 2015. That's when my girlfriend Meredith killed herself.

It was impossible not to love Meredith. She had a voice of a cartoon mouse and this big snorting laugh and just an inability to not say everything she was thinking. She was complicated, self‑centered but fiercely supportive of you, and perky with just the darkest sense of humor from dealing with depression and chronic illness. But right off the bat, she let you know that you could stop pretending to be normal around her and just be yourself. I think that's what I love the most.

We met through stand‑up comedy and instantly just fell into orbit. We had as much choice in the matter as gravity. And we weren't perfect. We dated and broke up but stayed in orbit until, finally, we decided to quit fighting gravity and give it a real shot because we loved each other.

Eleven days later, she was gone, and I was untethered from gravity, floating through cold, empty space.

At first, I was shattered. Then I was just numb. This chunk had been torn out of me and I had no idea how to process that much grief. So because therapy is expensive, I moved to Denver and just toughed it out. Got a new job, made friends, eventually tried dating again, but every day was a countdown to the next October 23rd, which I knew would be a bad day.

And I was right. I wake up and it all comes rushing back. The phone call from her roommate, hyperventilating, the shock, her mom collapsing by her casket, the dress with the high collar they put her body in, and the particular weight of all the words that I wish I was saying instead of goodbye.

But I toughed my way through work and then drank my way through the rest of the night alone in my room. And when I woke up the next morning, the countdown started again to the next October 23rd. I knew that day would be just as bad and I would be doing the exact same thing.

But then, things got worse. There was another suicide that tore the rest out of me. Since therapy had not gotten any less expensive in one year, I left to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, which sounds impulsive because it is, but I've never been shy about leaving my job to, say, walk a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan or bicycle across the United States, because I've just never fully bought into this.

So, the Pacific Crest Trail runs 2,650 miles from the deserts of Southern California, up and over the Sierra Nevadas and over the Cascades into Canada. That first day on trail, I'm worried. My bag's overpacked, it's already too hot and I might not finish this thing. Most people don't. I could get injured or run out of money and then where do I go after that? Where will October 23rd not be waiting for me?

But two miles in, I look up and even in that burnt desert it is so pretty. There are these red hills and blooming cactus flowers and this unfamiliar feeling that I cannot name wriggles through my chest.

As I continue on, the numbers start falling off the calendar. I mean, there are days on trail, sunrise to sunset, and sometimes deep into the night, but they're not numbered. I'm just here, on trail, alive.

And there are bad days. Injuries, burnout, wildfire smoke, vomiting until I was sure bones were coming up next. And, the news, when I do get it, is always bad because, well, we all remember 2017. The worst thing is I'm deep in grief and people I know keep dying. Older people from heart failure and suicide and people my age from brain cancer and diabetes and suicide, because it's a national epidemic that we all really need to start talking about.

But, even at its worst, there's a comforting simplicity to each day. And progress. I wake up and, with simple effort, I will lay back down a couple dozen miles later, having seen at least one thing along the way that fills me with awe. It could be something small, like sunlight hitting just one fern in a thick forest or cat paws sparkling on a lake.

But usually, it's something huge. Full moons in the desert and stars like a floodlight through black silk and mountain glaciers glowing pink in the sunset or, one time after 10 days in a thick forest where there were more mosquitoes in the air than air, stepping out into an open meadow where all the mosquitoes transformed into butterflies. Each time, my hand would go to my heart like I'd been shot by awe.

And day after day, that unfamiliar feeling keeps blooming in my chest, growing into the place where the suicides had ripped out. And it's not just awe or wonder. It's something else that I cannot name for months.

Until, one evening, I'm racing up near a pass in the Sierra Nevadas and I crest the rise by a stone rescue hut and see this oil painting sunset and just start crying. Because, for years, I've been focused on toughing out the depression and the grief, but out here, life isn't something I have to endure. It's something I can love.

And as Orion emerges above me and tears stream down my face, I keep repeating, “I get to be alive. I can't believe I get to be alive. I'm so lucky.”

A week later, I'm sitting on top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park feeling lucky, staring out at this churning ocean of white granite and just wondering how I'm supposed to return to the default world after this.

But it can't last forever. I'd skipped around the Sierras and come back in September, and so after Half Dome, days begin to matter again because they are numbered. The countdown has started to the end of the trail, back to the default world, and to October 23rd.

I step off the trail on October 8th and, pretty quickly, things get worse. I walk across the Golden Gate Bridge back into civilization with just a biblical amount of wildfire ash raining down from a dark sky. And then I catch my flight home, staring out the window at the Pacific Crest Trail below me and all the wildfires consuming this place that meant so much to me.

When I land, things are no easier. I've got no job, no apartment, October 23rd is approaching, and, really, the only thing I have to look forward to is meeting up with this acquaintance from back when I did stand‑up who'd just gotten back from her own big journey, a university fellowship where she'd gotten to travel through 10 countries for eight months.

She had messaged me to say, “Hey, welcome back. You want to meet up sometime and talk travel?”

And I'm like, “Yeah, I love talking about myself.”

The only problem is she's heading back out of town, so there's only one day we can meet up, October 23rd.

So I say yes and then spend that week counting down to canceling. And when I wake up on October 23rd, reliving the worst day of my life, I write the text to cancel, but I don't send it. I don't want to sit alone in my room again. I want to talk about Joshua trees reaching up towards desert moonlight and how blue Crater Lake is and how godlike Mount Rainier is and what Half Dome is like from the top and mosquitoes transforming into butterflies and how, sometimes, you just can't believe how lucky you are to be alive.

And, also, how was her trip?

So we meet up and we talk about life and travel and laugh until the bar kicks us out.

Because of the Pacific Crest Trail, my life has now changed twice on October 23rd. It's a day Meredith killed herself and it's my first date with my wife, Michelle.

Life is complicated. Even the worst day of your life can also be where the best days of your life begin.

Thank you.