Death knows no boundaries and Jay Pernu's story shows us the painful reality of drug addiction beginning with a prescription for opioids after his son experienced a sports injury. Jayson Pernu grew up in a loving home and was a talented, young baseball player until an injury sidelined him and led him on the path of addiction which ultimately took his life.
Jay talks about what support has really helped him as a grieving father.
He has found his voice through writing and speaking publicly as a way to raise awareness of the impact of opioid addiction and to honor his beautiful child.
If you are grieving the death of your child and would like to get a free copy of Pat Sheveland's book: How Do I Survive? 7 Steps to Living After Child Loss, go to: www.healingfamilygrief.com and order your copy today.
Grief is not meant to be done alone so please reach out if you are feeling isolated or abandoned in your grief.
You can reach Pat at: patsheveland@msn.com.
#griefandlosssupport #griefsupport
Shownotes:
Hi, thank you so much. It is Pat Shepard again, and I am here with Jay Pernu, who is a grieving dad. I connected with him just through Facebook. I think it's just through Facebook interactions. And he had written a beautiful poignant post not all that long ago. And so I just said, Would you be interested in having me interview you? Because as you know, I... Oh, I just get my screen. As you know, I am always so honored when a grieving parent will share their story with me. And as I just told Jay, I think it's so important for those who grieve to be able to share their stories. But also it is so incredibly healing for other people to hear those stories, especially if you are grieving the death of your child to know that you're not alone out there. There's so many parents that are here and they're willing to bring their energy to you. And together that's a healing process. So, Jay, welcome so much.
Thanks for having me.
Great. So you wrote this beautiful post a while back, and you are very eloquent in your writing. Now, I don't see a lot of it because I think it probably comes in waves for you as grief does and as healing does. But you wrote just a beautiful post and you talked about going to the ball field and that type of thing. Could you just start out by sharing a little bit about your story and about your family and just sharing what feels right for you this morning?
Well, I guess I'll start with my family. I have a wife, Vicky, and a daughter, Jenna remaining. My daughter's 30. My son, Jason, who passed away a little over a year ago. It was last May. He would be 26 or 28 this month. I mean, it's 26 when he passed away. He passed away from an overdose, opioid overdose. And I guess I'll go back to where it started. He was a very good baseball player, very good pitcher in high school all through his life, actually. And in between his junior and senior year, he hurt his arm just playing a pickup football game. So long story short, he missed his senior year, which just crushed him. And he did have surgery prior to his senior year, trying to possibly play, but it didn't work out for him. So he sat on the bench and watched and had a tough year at it. And shortly after that, he graduated. He went to a local college and was able to play some ball there. He started changing quite a bit. And we didn't know what it was, if it was just a growth thing. And we went through two, three years of not knowing what was going on.
And ended up, he finally came out one day and said, Dad, I'm hooked on opioids. I started back when I had my surgery on my shoulder and I could kick it for a while. Then I came back. So he rode this roller coaster for a while. He'd be good, he'd be bad, he'd be... It was tough. And then it progressively got worse. We believe what we wanted to believe. We didn't know what to believe. When you're in that state, you're a master manipulator. He was telling us things we wanted to hear. We were both busy with our careers and trying to make a living. And towards the end, it was probably a five, six year struggle. My wife and I went to work out one morning. We work out early in the morning, like at five, and we came home and we found him passed away. And like I said a year ago, and it turned out it was an overdose. We guess that, but we just didn't know. It was a tough six years of our life, five, six years of our life, and it hasn't gotten much easier. But we know he's at peace, which is good.
And that's where he stand today.
And just in that hole, because when you have a five or six year process, and I'm speaking with some familiarity around this because my niece passed away years ago and hers was a long process. And you never knew and you're just waiting for that other shoe to drop. But then you get hope and then it's just that's the roller coaster. But then all of a sudden the reality hits when you come upon them and find that they have transitioned on. So my heart is just I'm a registered nurse by background and I worked in the war comp field for 25 years. And towards the latter, I've been gone there for five years, almost six years. But we really started working on the opioid epidemic within our own organization because we know that that is really, I'd say, the gateway because if you can't get a hold of the opioids and the doctors aren't able to prescribe anymore and that type of thing, what's the next thing is going out onto the streets and finding drugs such as heroin or something like that. And then now with the horrible things that are going on where people are just lacing it, I've known too many families that have experienced this.
And yeah, it is absolutely tragic. So talk to me a little bit. So it's been a little over a year. I like to talk a little bit about the differences in grieving in a family because when I work with my clients, I encourage them to find support systems that aren't just necessarily the family. That's one support system. But what I found, and perhaps you've seen this too, is you go on different trajectories. You may not be on a different path than your wife is or that your daughter is. And so can you talk a little bit about what that's been like in the last year?
Yeah. And you're totally right. It's different paths. I don't know what Vicky's feeling. I don't know what Jen is feeling. Luckily, we're not at each other's throats over all this. We give each other our space. And myself, my first thing was to read books, learn more about what took my son. How to Grieve was a big one for me. And not so much how to grieve, but what to expect, which was very helpful for me. Read your book, someone sent it to me. So I did a lot of reading, research. My wife probably isn't so much that way at all. She's more just motherly and internalizes it, talks to whoever she can, which is a similarity for me. The thing that really helped me with grieving is talking to people. I know there's probably people that don't even want to hear me talk about it or are sick of it, but anyone who listens is a great help to me. People would always come to me. I just don't know what to say. I said, If you can just listen, that'll be great. I talked through it and it was very helpful for me. And another thing I'm trying to do is put together something to raise opioid awareness, maybe start a nonprofit.
I started right away, maybe three, four months into it, but I was just so exhausted and drained. And I still feel some of the after effects of it. The grief is such a physical thing. It is, at least for me, and it just hits you at times. You're just exhausted. You don't know why. But I think it's because your mind never turns off. But to answer your question, a lot of things, I developed a ribbon, purple ribbon with Jason's initials on it. And I've got that on can coolers and shirts. And it's a bittersweet thing for me. You're excited to get it out there. But it's like, Why do I even have to do this? But I guess my thing is, the day he passed, I remember, it was yesterday I was standing outside in shock and I just said, Something good has passed to come out of this. Something good. And I've always remembered that. And hopefully if I can help one kid, or if we can, it's not a personal journey. But if our family can, that would be great. So my daughter, Jenna, she's a little more subdued. I don't know what she's thinking.
I don't see her all the time. So I worry about her a lot. And I just hope she's finding ways to breathe health in a healthy manner.
And you just touched on so many things that I've learned. My book was not, and I tell people this, all the information I got out of the book and put into those steps was really from grieving parents and families. You all are my wisdom keepers. And I just was able to take that information, gather the stories and the information and put it into a program that, again, is not cookie cutter. It's just giving some thoughts and ideas. But you touched upon some things that I think are so critically important is to understand that grief is exhausting. It's hard work to grieve, very hard work. And people, I don't think quite understand that until you're in it. But it's just as you said, your mind is constantly going. And I think for a lot of guys, especially that I've connected with, you're doers. So that's part of it is getting into action and moving some of that energy through that way. And you touched upon that, developing the ribbons and thinking about the nonprofit and that type of thing. For anybody who's listening to this where this has not affected your family, I guarantee you at some point you are going to be affected by someone in your family is going to experience a deep loss if you don't.
And I hope it doesn't happen to you. But unfortunately, the statistics are out there that it's happened to Jay, it's happened in my family, happened in so many people that I've touched base with. But just being able to sit and meet the person who's grieving like Jay, just meet him where he's at. We don't have to say something. Silence can be such a beautiful thing to sit and let me listen and listen to me and let me talk. Which brings me to another point is how important it is to honor your child, whatever that looks like. So you created the purple ribbons with Jason's name and putting him on everything. But you're also taking a look at that bigger picture of, okay, his life was not going to be for not. There's a purpose. There's a reason, and you want to go out there and help others. And that's where I know that I have seen with so many grieving parents and grieving spouses, but especially grieving parents is when you can take some of that exhaustive energy, it is exhausting, but channel it into something that where you're helping another family, another person, that is where some true healing can begin.
But healing, grief is always there. To me, it's, and I've shared this many times, but I view it as I'm a nurse, so I think about it as like in medical terms, if we were crushed by a horrible injury and just suffered something just severely traumatic physically to our body, oftentimes we're taken to the hospital and our physicians may put us in an induced coma. Grief does that, the emotional coma to help when you first are stepping on this horrific path to start healing. And so then you're numb for a while, right? Like you said, you tried doing some of this, even three to four months out. Might have been a little soon because your body is still doing some of that healing. And then as you start emotionally healing from this very traumatic event, it's just baby steps. I liken that to being in the hospital. And first, you might just dangle your feet over the edge of the bed. Then they might get you up and stand you on your feet. Then they might get you into the chair and have you sit for 15, 20 minutes. It's just building that strength again.
That's the healing process. So if we don't grieve and don't go through that process, then you may not find that healing. And I talk about my own parents, and I coin the phrase that it was failed grief for them because they never were able to talk about it. No one listened. They just pushed it under the rug because that's what you did back then and never were able to honor their child. So you're doing all the steps. I mean, I think that your research and doing what you needed to do in those beginning phases is very helpful for the people that are listening here because it takes action. It does take to, even though you don't want to a lot of times. Yeah, I agree. Our families may be on a different path. And so what are some of the things now that really you have found helpful, whether it's physical things that you're doing or spiritual or mental emotional? What are some of the things, J that you found over the last year that have been really helpful for you? And are there some things that were not so helpful?
Yeah, there's a lot of things that are helpful. The spiritual part, we actually found a church in the middle of all this while Jason was still alive, which thank God, and it helped us a lot and it still does. I'm very thankful that we weren't pushed away from the church when this happened. We actually became stronger with it, which was awesome. I know it can go either way, and I'm glad that's the way it went. One thing that you mentioned was the baby steps. I don't think Vicky, my wife, or is as good as that. She put grief by the side a little bit and just focused on her work. I tried to at least grieve somehow, not ignore it. Like I said, doing things with the ribbon. But big thing for me was the Facebook post. I would do one a month on the anniversary of his passing. I just started at one month and it just kept going through a year. And that was physically exhausting. You probably read it in five minutes, but it felt like it took 10 hours to do and it probably took 10 minutes to write. It was easy to write because it just poured right out of your heart.
And I normally didn't think I was that person, but that has helped immensely to write about it. And just to read people just sharing and how many people are in the same boat. That helped a lot to talk to people that had the same situation. I had a son or daughter that passed, and you don't wish for that. But it was sure helpful when you talked to people. And I guess what I learned from that is how differently people grieve. I might have found some of that was almost in the exact same situation, but they were very bitter. They were mad at whoever gave them the drugs. And not that that's wrong, they should be. But I was like, Nothing I can do now. Let's move on. And like you said, a good word is honor. The big thing for me is to honor Jason somehow. I couldn't fix it. Like you said, a guy, you're trying to fix everything. Didn't fix it. You feel like you really failed. But now I found that it's very helpful to just move on and do what I can and hopefully help someone else and help myself at the same time as well as my family.
Absolutely. And I can see that and I can hear that. And I actually am very excited to get this out because as you know, I'm getting out there more with groups and that type of thing on Facebook and social media just because I just want to be able to, like you, just be able to share with others. Because I know people grieve so differently, and it breaks my heart when I see those that are just they're so deep in their own depression and their deep grief and not feeling like there's any light anywhere. And I'm so glad to hear about your spiritual family and that spiritual faith because I know that that's extremely important. If we think that this is all there is, well, then, of course, it's going to be very, very difficult to be able to see any future because it's like, well, this is all there is. Where when we have a spiritual component, we know that there's something beyond this earthly existence and that Jason's life, his living and his death are actually what is helping other people. And it doesn't sound right or fair or any of that thing. Absolutely not.
But to honor and be able to share your story, I think, is so deeply important. And that's what I've seen for people that are able to... And I don't even want to call it successfully grief. It's just to not have that failed grief because we know that failed grief, when we're not dealing with it, can create so many things. It can break up families and relationship. It can cause very serious physical issues, certainly the emotional pieces, some people even start losing their jobs and everything because it's just like they just can't handle it. And so if we can get out there and share and be able to give hope, hope. And I coined the phrase, and you might have seen that in my book, too, but I coined this a long time ago, hope as the acronym for honoring our purpose every day. And that may be something very small one day. And it could be something huge like getting out there on public stages and talking about opioid addictions and what's out there.
Yeah, that's a big goal of mine. I did speak at a college before COVID came, right before. So I had the opportunity to do it for a couple of nursing classes. And it was such a nice platform. And I was exhausted when I was done, but I was so glad I did it. And people were so interested in it. In their class, you could tell they knew about opioids, what they did, the chemistry of it, but they didn't really see the personal side that much and what they actually do to people. And yeah, that's my hope to continue to do that.
That is so beautiful. So beautiful. Anything else that you want to share with people, just any insight, any piece of wisdom as a dad who's still fairly new at this... It's been a year since the physical death. You had several years before that of a lot of grieving in and out. Anything at all that you would like to share?
I would say grieving is hard work, but I think part of it is you have to let yourself go down in the dumps a little bit once in a while, just feel it and feel bad. I mean, it's not bad to say, What could I have done better? And that thing. But you got to limit your time at doing that. You can't just ignore it. You have to go there. For me personally, I have to go there and say, Man, did I really screw this up? And maybe I did. But then come back and say, Well, what can you do now? And again, the grieving part, like I said, it's physical, it's mental. One of my worries when he first passed was, am I going to forget about him? I feel really bad. I almost want to feel this bad all the time. And yeah, there's no worries there. It doesn't go away. And as I'm sure you know, I can see myself 10 years from now feeling the same way, and that's okay. And I'm sure in 10 years, we probably would have made a lot of progress, too, and things that would have made Jason proud.
Absolutely. And I'm glad that you brought that up. I actually have a friend of mine, her son died at the age of 21. This was a military incident, but it's 11 years now. And she did pretty darn good for the first 10. She kept busier than heck. She was busy, busy, busy creating awareness, getting up on stages and talking, has a benefit in his honor where she raises funds for veterans and big component about talking about organ donation, that type of thing. And I just knew, having known her, that I could just sense that there was a bit of a crash going to be coming. And year 10 was really, really tough for her because of that fear of forgetting. Oh, my gosh, it's been 10 years. And that was just a huge struggle. I've been doing all this stuff. And we had lots of wonderful conversations about that because she needed to go in deep. She had to go in deep that year 10. That was important to her in order to be able to successfully get out of that. So I appreciate what you're saying is, yeah, it's okay. All feelings are okay.
And I think people sometimes feel ashamed or that they should have, could have, would have, and should be thinking that. And these bad thoughts should be in their mind. You can't process if you're not thinking about it. And so, again, I love the wisdom that you have is you're just not staying in it for too long. So do you have one little piece of what works for you to when you're going into that darkness, so to speak, and into that deep sadness or anger or whatever the emotion is, what does one thing that helps to bring you out of it? Is there something that you do physically or mentally to pull that trigger to help you get moving?
Physically, if I'm really down, I like to go for a walk and just enjoy nature and see what God created and just know that Jason's watching me walk. He knows what I'm doing. He knows I'm thinking of him. Because usually when I'm down there, it's more of a guilty thing. It's what could I have done better? But in the end, in my mind, I know that there's nothing more I probably could have done or nothing more we could have done. And then he's good with it. He might have left on a bad note, but he's in the best place he can be right now. And it just helps me to see nature and see his face in clouds and everything. That cardinal that just moved by, that was Jason looking, things like that. It's healing for me.
You'll see, I have a cardinal right up above me. I got a picture of my head. That and butterflies. So that is so awesome. And I agree, nature is so healing in so many ways. And I really encourage people to, if you're feeling like that, just stepping outside the door, opening up the window and listening to a bird sing and just breathing. Breathing is just so very, very important. So, J, I really appreciate it because I know it's not easy to talk about this. And some days it's probably easier than other days. And I am, as always, so honored when someone like you is sharing your story, sharing your son, because I feel like your child is just right here. Jason's right here. I felt that since I think one of your first posts early on. Just a beautiful child who absolutely is so happy that you are honoring him, remembering him, and serving to help others. And so that's really beautiful thing. So thank you so much. I'm so honored that you spent some time with me this morning and with all the people who will be watching this in the future.
Yeah, thank you, Pat. And like I said, it helps to talk through this thing. It's another healing day for me.I appreciate it.
Wonderful. Well, just hang on. I'm going to say goodbye to everybody here and have a wonderful week, everybody.
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