The Journey of Love Series: Love and Loss

What's up, guys? Welcome to Demo with Moe. I'm your host, monique Simmons. We'll be discussing dating, engaged and married objectives from a young Christian's perspective. Are you guys ready? Let's dive in. Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome to a new episode of Demo with Moe. I am your host, monique Simmons. Today we are starting our new series called the Journey of Love. Today I have a very special guest joining me. I'm really excited about today's episode. I have my girlfriend joining me, ms Avery Legget. Welcome, ms Legget. Thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for joining me. I am so glad you are here on today, very appreciative for you even agreeing to do this episode with me. I would like to say, for those of you who are listening, this may be a little sensitive topic on today. I do want to give that notice even before we jump into this episode. We are going to be opening up the Journey of Love series and it's going to be a little sensitive. Today we are going to be talking about the Journey of Love and how sometimes that journey does not end the way we want it to end. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me on today. I love you. I love you too. I love you. We are going to jump in. I'm not going to hold you guys up any longer. So, avery, my first question for you on today is how did you and your husband meet? How did you guys meet?

Okay. So I mentioned at Murrah High School, we went to two schools together. We went to Murrah together and we went to Reginald High together. We dated when we went to Reginald High, I ended up moving back with my mom, so I ended up going to school at Bayley. So at that point, obviously we were kids, we didn't have cars and not ways of seeing each other, so we ended up disconnecting once I moved schools. But we reconnected again on Facebook, I think in 2010. And we started dating after reconnecting on Facebook and it just went from there. 2010 we were dating 2011. I had Cameron, who is now 12 years old. So that was 12 years ago and in between that time we got engaged and we got married November 18, 2011. And Cameron was born June 2011. So everything happened very quickly. We already knew what we wanted and how we wanted everything to go. We didn't really have an official huge engagement. It was just kind of like understanding, like okay, we're doing life together, we're getting married, got you, and that's what we did. So we were married for 10 years before he passed away.

Okay, so you just gave me a full, basically a full summary of you guys life love story, even before I even got into all of the questions. Okay, so for my audience, you guys kind of have basically heard even what we're going to get into in the beginning, even before we even really dive into what we're going to be talking about. But, as you guys have heard, avery was married to her husband, Sean, for 10 years and unfortunately, sean passed away and we're going to get into that a little bit more later in today's episode. But she's already gotten into the meat. But we're going to dig into it a little bit more. But, avery, I do want to ask you, how long were you guys together before you realized that Sean was the one? How long did you realize, like, this is the man that I want to have a child with, this is the man I kind of want to spend my life with, I want to marry, I want to settle down with? How long were you guys together before you realized that?

Probably about seven or eight months, it was pretty quickly Okay.

It was very quick, okay, so what? And you just always used to tell me like.

You know you're going to be married. You know you're going to be my wife and I'll be like boy. No, I'm not. And like yes, you are, and then you know we actually did it.

So not only did you know he was the one, he knew you was the one. That's awesome. So what qualities about Sean made you realize that he was the one that you wanted to be with, that you wanted to spend your life with? What was it about him?

First, I'll say, at that time me and him were dating. I already had one kid and him and Austin instantly had a close-knit relationship. That was something that I was looking for. That was important to me and whoever I was going to be spending time with period was not that they just dated me, but I have a daughter and we are a package that they also spent time getting to know her and just like pouring to her, just like they do me. Not just like, but you understand what I'm saying. Yeah, mainly it was like some support and speak, and not only financially, even though he did come in and help a lot, but just being there when we needed him to be there, to step in and bridge the gap of me being a single parent. Also, just like the safety aspect of what a man brings to the table. And it's just like no matter what, where we were, what we were doing, if we were mad at each other, like no matter what, we always felt safe On the day he was going to protect us, whether it be from another person, a situation, whatever. We always felt safe with him. Then I guess he was just really a laid-back person. Nothing really made him upset, but you don't want to see him upset. But, he was just really a jokester and I always laugh and I always cuss, but one thing about it was real like nobody would be able to tell you that he showed them one thing and did something different when they went around, like he had a lot of things to say. So I already knew like, even though he had his flaws, but to me, like he was the perfect person for our situation.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay. So let me ask you this, because you guys, like you said, everything had been pretty quickly, as you summarized in the beginning. With everything happening so quickly, what was some of the hardest adjustments for you in the beginning of marriage?

Hmm, Okay, so I'll say just the merging of households. It's difficult because you really don't know a person for real until you live with them. Yeah, and I've known like some people are like you know, I'm not gonna live with this person until we get married or something like that. I'm like, nah, I wanna live with you before that. I wanna see you for all seasons. You know, just so I can know it, If there's something that I could deal with for the rest of my life and we did it Like we lived together in different apartments, we had different financial struggles together and we accomplished a lot of things together too, as far as finishing college and getting into our careers and stuff like that.

But yeah, so merging households was the hardest adjustment.

Yeah, that's the hardest adjustment. It was merging households and families, oh yeah, so we had like some bumpy roads with in-laws and through even friends like friends, and you go and talk to your friends, he go talk to his friends, and now when y'all get together y'all don't know which way y'all wanna go with anything that y'all facing, because there's so many people in the mix, you know. So, we just had to learn like to lean on each other instead of leaning on family and friends to help us get through the things that we need to go through as a married couple.

Oh, that's some great wise advice, girl. How old were you guys when you guys got married?

Oh, okay, I'm 34, 22, I was 22.

Okay, you guys were young, just like Corina, so I can totally understand having to learn me as you guys got older. Okay, you always here, be with someone who brings out the best in you. One thing's this show and bring out in you or teach you to love about yourself, then maybe you didn't know before you guys got together.

One thing I could say like sure, even if we were having like bad times or whatever, he just be like and make you laugh, like just make you live in that moment, like whatever is coming tomorrow is gonna come anyway. So you might as well not be stressed about it and just relax, like if they don't, if they gonna take something, they go take it if you want. You just ain't got it. Like why are you stressing out about certain things when life is gonna happen? And that was like something that he was really big on. Like even if I could come to him, be like I got good news, ain't bad news, which one you want first, and he just be like it don't even matter, you know which order you go in, the good and the bad is gonna have me, but like I'm still gonna be here, we still got each other and we don't get through whatever the situation is. So that's something that he taught me just to keep it moving, basically, and smile through the process and be happy. And so make time for myself, because I always, always like pride myself on being a good wife, good mother, making sure that everybody else was good, and he used to always just be like make sure that you do something for yourself. Sometime, when I wouldn't want to do it, he'll just like make sure that everything was done. In a way you ain't got nothing to do but it. Because you know, either you're gonna do it voluntarily or okay. Well, I got a go-by-girls. You know, I got a little laundry and he was like, done, done, done. What else you got? Like, make sure that you have time for yourself.

Every day is beautiful. Oh, my goodness, every day is beautiful. Oh, now let me ask you this, and this was not one of my questions, but I just love that response have you been doing that Well, like recently? Yes, in shun's absence, have you been taking care of you the way he taught you to take care of yourself?

Oh, I'm working on it every day, is you know? It's a journey, it's a learning experience. I do like get to do some things that I normally do, but for me like Things like in your hair and your nails I think there's like a not necessarily requirement, but it's just part of the normal things that I do. So I don't even consider that being something like Just for me, because I'm just a type of person who I always have like kept myself In a certain way. You get what I'm saying.

Yeah, I totally understand when.

I think about doing something for me. I'm talking about like Going out, like spending intentional time, like by myself, like even if I just take myself to lunch or go to the bookstore because I love to read, um, and when do I have time to do that? Even now, like I'm taking a year off. I've been a teacher for about 10 years as well. I'm not working this year, and this was supposed to be the year that I'm focusing like on myself. All my kids are at school and stuff. And even now I'm not myself just being the homemaker and making sure that the food is done and the house is clean and the homework is done and everything. So even Now I still just need to work on it, just work on making time for myself. So the after your question, I'll say probably about 75 or 80 percent it's not that 100.

Okay, well, that's better than zero percent, yeah, okay, okay. So let me ask you this Are you okay and this is going to take you back a little bit from the high energy but are you okay, going back to the moments leading up to you having to prepare yourself to say goodbye, to show yes, okay, how was that leading up to those moments?

Okay, so it was like summer of 2021. I think in June we had went on a date to this concert. It was the 85 South Shore. I think DC Young's live, chico being like some comedians which are his favorite, like he loved comedy. I really think that if he wasn't an engineer and like he probably would have been a comedian, because Sean would have you left all day. He was like so we have went to this concert and then they had like a shutdown from work for a week or so, and no two weeks, like in Nissan, they have like a shutdown where they shut down for two weeks during the summer. So he was off to work and then that week when he went back to work he was like on the wings that he said he had a headache and Sean never even gets like coming cold, like he hardly ever used to see. So I'm just like man, it's totally going around and so I think you go get tested. Like you never even get sick. And he was literally walking around saying turn stuff down. Like my head is hurting so bad, I don't want to hear no noise, I want to be in the dark, you know. And I told him to go and get tested and he told me like that everybody who worked in the same area with him was kind of sick and stuff like that, and we had just came back, like I said, from the concert the weekend before and he was sick, so he went and they had said that he did have COVID. So he stayed at home for maybe like two or three days and was getting progressively worse and I just kept on trying to make him go to the doctor but he would not go to the doctor at all. He was just like no, it's something on happening. You know, this is how I find it about whatever I want to happen at home and I did stuff and like I'm not the type of person that like to talk about death and stuff like that, but Sean always just wanted to talk to me and my kids about in his absence and I just be like, well, you hush, like we do not want to talk about it, but he always had conversations with them, you know, about basically what says self and what not says self and the kind of man he was, especially Austin. And if whoever she chose to be with wasn't the kind of man that he was, then he ain't the man for you. Basically, you know and have different conversations with me about what I needed to do in his absence and about just like finances and everything as a whole. So he kind of did like prepare all of us for his absence, but what we prepared when it happened, like mentally, no, we were not. So the days that I actually got him to go to the hospital was I came home and he was literally on the floor. He could not breathe or anything. So I was like I don't care what you say, you going today, like I don't want to hear, no, I want to stay home or none of it, like we're going. So I took him there, I dropped him out and I think he was there for four days and within their four days At that time COVID was new to everybody, so even the medications that they would give the patients was not even FDA approved yet. Some of them was still experimental and all of it. And they caught me and they asked me was it okay to give him a certain medication? And I'm like, well, you're a doctor, but if I have to consent and you feel like it's something that's going to get him better than yes. So I say yes. And then the next day after they gave him that medicine, they call me back and said that he was going to need dialysis from now on because the medicines are taking his kidneys throughout the night and now he had kidney failure. That was the first day. Then the next day they call me back and say that he was on the ventilator and I was like what? The first year I was calling me, saying that he was doing good. Now y'all call me saying that he on the ventilator. And then, four days from the time that I dropped him off, after that she called me and she said the shot had filled out paperwork, saying that something happened to him, that he did not want to be resuscitated. What did I want her to do? Because he had already called it like two times at their point and I was like I want you to try. So I stayed on the phone with them until they say that they could not bring him back. Like they said, they bring him back for a few seconds. But then they lost him again, and that was at 222 PM on August night. 2021 is when he passed away. So yeah, I was literally on the phone when it happened.

So yeah, I'm so sorry, avery, so it has been over two years now.

Mm-hmm, it don't seem like it, though it really don't Like. It's like time is like. I know because I mean I'm an adult and I know the concept of time that it has been two years, but it does not seem like it has been two years since he passed away. It seems like maybe a couple weeks ago or something. Because, like for us, like we still dealing with it at home every single day, me and our three kids, everybody else is moving on with their normal lives and stuff, but they don't know, like what me and my children have to carry in our backpacks every single day. So it seems like it just happened to us. And a lot of times I have to remember that, even when I do things and say things to my children or around them and they get triggered and I'm just like, oh Lord, it has been two years, but I mean that's not the thing to say, because it might be two years to somebody else who wasn't like his immediate family, but we did life on him, we lived in the house on him. So yeah, it has been a struggle.

And like you said, like even with me saying it's been two years because that's just a timeline, because we're on the timeline, but grief doesn't have a, it doesn't have a timeline. Like that was, that was your husband, that was the father of your children, you know.

Like grief, like for me, I think, like it really do change people, because I will tell you that me, nor my children are the same people that we were when Sean was alive. So like when somebody that is put in place to lead you leads and passes away, it's like what do I do now? You know, there was our cover and there was our leader. There was a man of our, you know our household. Everybody is different, so different people, because even I have been on a trip with you, I have been with different people and y'all will say who is this? You know it's not the same person and a part of you does die when, when a person dies and everybody around you just kind of has to adjust to the person that you become after that, yeah, what's your next question?

Hey, listen for real, that, that, that is real. My heart goes out to you. Real talk like my heart goes out to you, because just being, even though I'm, I'm talking to you and I'm interviewing you, being your friend, it's different because knowing, knowing you I've known you a long time, so knowing you before, sean which, and now knowing you on the other side of this, is completely different. And I just have to, as you said, a judge with no judgment, because life has happened to you. I mean, life has literally happened to you.

Yeah, and then it's just like, especially like with the whole time thing that we were talking about Like I really now two things that I hate to hear people say. One of them probably don't even have anything to do with this is like you got time? No, you don't. You do not know when your time is going to come. You don't have time. Whatever you want to do, do it Now. Whatever you want to say to a person, if you want to rekindle a relationship or if you want something to end like, don't waste your time doing something or being with someone that you really don't want to be with, because you just really don't know when your time is going to aspire with that person.

And then the other.

Thing is everybody who be saying, like I don't wear, like this person gonna be in a better place. They're grants my gears. Do you really know, do you? I have a great idea of where he was going because he was a God-fearing man, but at the end of the day, we not God, we don't really know. Especially when somebody passes away who was a hellraiser, like we don't really know. Why do people say that? Well, anyway, they don't have nothing to do with what we're talking about.

No, when I say I appreciate both comments you just made. I appreciate them wholeheartedly. My pastor just talked about that on Sunday, about stop telling people where people went when you know, how they will live, and stop stop telling people that. Just stop doing that. Okay, so that first statement you just made. This leads into my next question. That's why I appreciated so much my next question to you what advice would you offer to couples who may take one another for granted?

I could just speak from my own experience and like now let me say my husband had me spoiled. When I say spoiled, I ain't even talking about the normal spoiled like. Like give you anything you want type of spoiled I'm talking about when I tell you our whole relationship. I probably put gas in my car twice in 10 years, 10 whole years, like I didn't have to get no kids up for school. He did that Cooking, he did that Like. When I look back on our relationship, I'm just like, damn, was I even really the wife that I should have been? Because Sharon did everything. And when he passed away, I think that's one of the reasons why, not necessarily I was so sad or whatever, but yeah, why I was so sad. Because now I have to do everything, like so many things that I took for granted that I didn't have to worry about, like any household chores, any discipline of the children, any homework, like so many things that you think made things like he's doing this but he's not doing that, like Sharon was doing everything. So, yeah, just make sure that you appreciate the spouse that you have for who they are and if it's something that you want them to work on, like, talk to them about it. Don't talk to your friends about it. Don't talk to your family about it. Talk to them because they cannot change it. Only he can change it. Only God can change it. So yeah, Girl.

such great advice. Avery, oh my goodness. Okay, and to wrap us up for today, this has been girl. I have enjoyed you so much. Oh my goodness, this last question. It says what encouragement would you give to the spouse who has too lost the love of their life and they're in a grieving process as well?

I guess just to make sure that you find a good support system. Yeah, when I say a good support system, I'm not talking about the people who just don't like not tell you when you write or uphold you when you're wrong doing, but some people who you know like they're gonna support you and they're gonna tell you when you're wrong and they're gonna pray for you and cover you and, just, you know, make you feel loved and appreciated. And also just to take care of yourself. Make sure I remember in the beginning, like if I ate, if I took a bath, that's like a wonderful day. Like just make sure that you are taking care of yourself. And if you have kids, just show up. Even if you showing up at 10%, my kids would give 90 if I only had 10. You know, you just gotta make sure that you continue to show up for the people who are around you, because they still grieving as well. And this one part that Monique and everybody around me has been talking to me about and my kids just got done with group counseling and it's been two years and I need to do it. So I'm working on it. But that's important as well too, cause I could see small changes in them as well, since they have got done with theirs, and that every day is not gonna be like a super good day. It could be a song, it could be a movie, like all of his favorite things, like there were a my of him. I know that we were in a restaurant the other day and a song came on and my kids was like, oh, that's daddy favorite song. And Ken was like can you put this song on my phone, like it's certain things. That lets me know that they still think about it. And you know, you just gotta know that kids got feelings too. They don't grieve the same way as you do, but they are still grieving as well. And that's it. That's it.

Avery girl, thank you so much for even agreeing to do this. I appreciate you and I love you for having me. I love you too, and I'm so proud of you, thank you. Thank you and for our sis.

It's an ongoing process. You know, Did you be thinking like you're gonna be with somebody until you? in a walk or something. Then something happens Because this is totally not like what we have planned for each other, or or not what my kids were expecting. Like you be one, you in your space, to see your kids graduate, to see your kids get cars, and just accomplish goals, or Like any of y'all long term goals that y'all had together. It's like, do I still can see you on those things he gone but you just have to know. Like you have to have some things for yourself. Like that's another thing that I didn't say when you asked me about advice, because when the other person is gone, if they was your everything like what are you gonna do now, you know? So you do have to have some of your own things that you like to do with own friends and own everything because, yeah, it might not be forever like you think it is.

This was an amazing interview. It was amazing and seriously, seriously.

I was nervous about it. I'm glad that I did it. I'm glad that you did it as well and I hope that it helped your listeners as well.

I may be a little biased because you're my friend, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna help a lot of you guys that are listening. And Avery, if you don't mind, I'm going to do it a little different than I usually do. But I know there are going to be people who want to listen to this, who may be walking through a breathing process as well, so I want to pray us out.

Okay.

You're having a father. Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to do this interview with my friend Avery once today. I thank you for this conversation with her Today. But I lift up those who may be listening to this, who may be coming across this episode, so, who may be walking through the breathing process as well, who may have lost a spouse, a Love one, the love of their life, as that you comfort their heart, lord, that you walk with them through this breathing process. Lord, whether they recently lost someone, whether it's been years, but we know that there is no timeline To grief. This breathing process is different for everyone, but I just ask that you comfort them and that you be with them and that you give them what they need during this time. Ask that you give them a support system and a village to be with them, to support them and to love on them, and it gives them everything they need during this time. But I ask that you Encourage your heart, that you give them hope, that you give them faith and that you keep their hearts open to love again. Thank you for your grace, thank you for your love, and bless my friend Avery and her babies. Lord, it's in your son, jesus name that I pray, amen.

Thank you so much girl.

I appreciate you and I love you, I love you too. All right to my listeners. Thank you guys listening. I hope you guys thoroughly enjoyed this. Remember I love you, but I love you so much more and I see you guys next week. Bye, I hope you guys have enjoyed follow me on Facebook at demo with mode. If you have any questions you would like answered here live on my podcast, email them to me at demo with mode at gmailcom. That's DEM oh WIT H M O G mailcom.