HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Tom Reilly
November 3, 2005

G: Hello. I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley. Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. We know you hurt and that you miss that special person in your life. It is true that your life will never be the same; however, with time and support, you will again find meaning and purpose in your life. My guests are here each week to tell you that we have made it and so can you. Remember that just going about your day-to-day business is an accomplishment. Whether it?s working in the home or the office. I also want to tell you today that the Compassionate Friends and I have received many requests for CDs of my show, Healing the Grieving Heart. Many of you have expressed your wish to share these shows and the insights from my wonderful guests with others who are also grieving. It is with great pleasure that I announce the availability of the first set of ten selected compact discs in an easy to carry and store case. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to share with you pictures on the box and discs of my son, Scott, in whose memory I dedicate my work. The set will normally sell for $60, but for a limited time, it is available at the introductory price of only $45 with all proceeds benefiting the Compassionate Friends. To obtain an order form, please visit the Compassionate Friends website at www.thecompassionatefriends.org or visit my website, at www.healingthegrievingheart.org. You can email me at gchorsley@aol.com and if you?d like to go on the telephone, you can go to 877-969-0010. Well, it?s with great pleasure today that I introduce my topic and my guest. Our topic today is Next of Kin: a Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam, and my guest is Tom Reilly. Tom has a degree in psychology and has served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman and a criminal investigator. At age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate instances and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian and his idol. In July of 1970, Ron died in Vietnam. Tom at age 19, journeyed to war-torn Vietnam to find answers. Today, Tom is going to share with us his heartfelt story which he also gives us in his wonderful best selling book, Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. Tom, welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart.
T: Thank you, Gloria, it?s good to be here with you today.
G: It?s great to have you on the show. I must say in reading your book, it?s an amazing book, and it?s really a Tom Sawyer kind of story.
T: I?m flattered that I?d be compared to somebody like Mark Twain. It is a heartfelt story. It?s a heart-rendering story. It?s written with a lot of love for my older brother and you mentioned my parents dying and the first part of the book covers a young boy?s reaction to the death of both parents dying. They died a week apart, as a matter of fact.
G: Now, could you tell our audience about what they died of? Did your mom die of a broken heart? Do you think her death was related to your dad dying?
T: I think it was possible. My father died. As I say in the first chapter of Next of Kin, he was a hard-working, hard-drinking Irishman, and he worked almost two full-time jobs all the time. At age 49, he suffered a stroke, was taken to a hospital and died three days later. This took place in July of 1958 and I was seven years old at the time. Seven days later after the funeral for my father and after all the relatives had gone their separate ways and so on, my mother was sitting in a chair talking to me and she was age 42 at the time. She put her hand to her head and said I have a terrible headache. She never got the word ?headache? completely out. She had died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. When I was studying psychology, I did come across an article one time in one of the medical journals about how grief does affect the physical nature of a person and if they?re susceptible to anything, that seven to ten days after the death of a relative, especially a spouse, there?s a tremendous shock wave that overcomes a survivor. My mother had very high blood pressure and so that was possibly a contributing factor to the grief.
G: How did you cope with that as a seven year old? Did she actually die there in the chair or did they get her to the hospital?
T: Yes, she actually died in the chair. I didn?t know at the time, of course. It was at the home of my much older sister, a grown sister at the time. I was the baby of the family at age seven. So I was quickly ushered outside and the next thing I saw was the paramedics arriving. A couple of hours later, I was informed that my mother was gone. Coping with it, the death of my father did not strike me as severely as the death of my mother. I wasn?t as close to my father as I was to my mother. He was always off working somewhere and doing all this. I barely knew my father even though we had a fully functioning family. I was very curious about the whole escapade of the funeral home and the burial and all this with my father. Then when my mother died, I felt very alone. Even though I had older siblings, I knew that I was pretty much on my own.
G: It couldn?t have felt like a very safe world to you.
T: No, it wasn?t. When you lose both parents in such a short period, it didn?t seem, and I guess you?re the first one to ever mention it that way to me, but you?re exactly right. It didn?t seem like a very safe world; however, I had an older brother named, Ron. He was thirteen years older than me. I knew as long as I had him, I still had some safety in the world. I knew that somebody would look out for me.
G: You even knew that when you went to the farm? I know your brother-in-law, you were working hard on the farm, which I?m from that kind of background and I know kids, my friends who were on the farm, were milking cows in the morning before school. It?s a hard life.
T: Yeah. I was taken from this nice little small town childhood and went to live with my older sister and her husband on a dairy farm. This is in Central Wisconsin. I was worked quite hard and my brother-in-law?s work ethic was very sound and very stable. I almost became a hired hand on the farm so it was quite a change for me. But I still had my brother, Ron.
G: Even then when you were on the farm you knew.
T: Yeah. Even then I knew it wasn?t the right life for me on the farm. Ron was a career soldier at the time so he was always in a different part of the world and I would live from one episode of his leave to the next episode of his leave. He would come home once a year, every six months, or whatever for a few days and those were the highlights of my childhood then because we became very close even though he was physically in a different part of the world most of the time.
G: Well, yes, tell our audience about getting on your bike. That is an incredible story. Deciding that you couldn?t be on the farm anymore. How old are you? Twelve?
T: I was about thirteen.
G: Thirteen. You?ve got a lovely picture of you with your bike. Getting on your bike and riding off. How many miles?
T: Well, I became a runaway. I decided I was not going to be a farmer after all. It was quite a harsh life on the farm. I didn?t get along very well with my brother-in-law and so on, and so I had hinted to my older brother at one point that I needed to change my life. He saw that it was difficult for me living on this farm as well. So one night, I think I was thirteen years old, I just got on my Schwinn bike and rode 35 miles to another small town in Central Wisconsin where I had another older brother and I stayed with him briefly and then ended up in my own small little hole in the wall.
G: Yes. Tell them about that. That?s an incredible story. How long were you with your brother? Ron rented the apartment for you, didn?t he?
T: My brother, Ron, came home from the military on emergency leave when he heard that I had run away from the farm. Within a couple of months, he had enough confidence in me that I could live on my own and succeed. In a small town environment and in that time in our country?s history, it was possible. I wouldn?t recommend it today for any teenager doing that, but I was running to a better life. That?s what I thought. I wasn?t running away to get involved in drugs and drinking and any of that sort of thing. I was running to a life that I thought I could control and make better for myself. So he rented this small apartment and it was barely as wide as a desk. I had to kind of hold my feet in so I could sleep crossways across the end of the apartment. For $40 a month, I lived surreptitiously, really. I didn?t tell anybody that I lived alone.
G: You didn?t want to bring your friends over. None of your friends knew.
T: No. I didn?t bring anybody over. I didn?t want to blow a good thing, I guess.
G: Right. You didn?t want to end up in foster care.
T: And I didn?t want to have to pay tuition to go to a public school, so I had this ruse that I lived with my older brother all through high school.
G: And then he?d go to the school with you when he came home on leave, didn?t he?
T: Yeah, yeah, I would show him off. When he would come home on leave, I would show him off all over town so people would believe my story that I actually lived with him, but I worked two to three part-time jobs after school and on weekends. It was actually a pretty good life.
G: You know what. I?ll have to say, this story is so incredible because there?s a lot of humor in it. I find myself laughing at some of these situations that you were in.
T: Well, I think it?s an author?s job. If he can make an unknown reader who?s never met him experience the emotions of laughter and sadness and crying, I think an author does his job if he does that, and since the overall topic of the book is grief and sadness and my response to that, I only felt it was proper to give the reader a break and put in some humor as well along the way.
G: As you know, for somebody who has had so much tragedy, and as I know from tragedy in my life, there is a lot of humor in it because you just have to laugh at some of these things, particularly you do such crazy things at times. Yeah. It?s a crazy situation when you have people die, and I hope that as we go on with the show we?ll talk a little bit more about some of the humor that you had in your life. We?re going to come up on break now. When we get back from break, I?d like to talk a little more with my guest Tom Reilly. Tom has a degree in psychology and has served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman and a criminal investigator. At age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate incidences and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian and his idol. In 1970, Ron died in Vietnam and Tom at age nineteen journeyed to wartime Vietnam to find answers and Tom is sharing his story with us today. If you would like to email me, you can email me at gchorsley@aol.com or you can go on my website at www.healingthegrievingheart.org. Also, I?m pleased to announce that we have CDs of selected shows that you can purchase. You can call our toll-free number 877-969-0010 or you can go to my website or The Compassionate Friends website. And remember always that these shows are all archived so you can hear them day or night around the world. We?re coming on break and please stay tuned with Dr. Gloria Horsley and Tom Reilly.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria and my guest today is Tom Reilly, author of the best-selling book Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. Tom has a degree in psychology and has served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman and a criminal investigator. At age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate incidences and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian. In July of 1970, Ron died in Vietnam. Tom at age nineteen journeyed to wartime Vietnam to find answers. On this show, Tom shares with us his heart-rending story. Well, Tom, we?ve gone from you?ve been on the farm, you?ve run away from home, you?re now living in the city, you?re living in this little room, Ron comes back and forth and he is in the military, and you are now, you graduate from high school. Did he get to your high school graduation?
T: Yes. As a matter of fact, he had spent two tours in Vietnam in ?67, ?68, and then somewhere in ?69. I graduated from high school in June of ?69 and he had come back and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, for about a year. So he was fortunate enough to come to my high school graduation. He had always instilled in me this thing about my future. When I was even ten years old, he took me to museums in Chicago and Milwaukee. He took me to a university campus, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He told me this is where I needed to set my sights. That was the only way he would allow for me to live on my own with his knowledge was to keep my grades high in high school so I remained most of the time on the honor roll and worked all these part-time jobs. So he taught me, between the work ethic that I learned living on the dairy farm and what he instilled in me, I learned a lot about the future and what my future was supposed to be.
G: That?s fantastic. Now tell me, did you miss your parents? Did you cry at night ever by yourself there? Were you sad that they weren?t at your graduation? Was there any way you remembered them through letters or anything?
T: Yes. Obviously I missed them. Their death, I think the youngest of Tom Reilly at the time of their death, I was only seven years old. I think that helps a lot. Even though age seven is supposedly the age of reason, I remembered everything distinctly and vividly, but I think because of the young tender age, your emotions are somewhat more protected from grief. So, yes, I missed them. I thought about them at my high school graduation and my plans for going on to college the next year and so on. But their death was almost something in the past for me at that point. I tried to concentrate on living a good life and succeeding for the future and I had this older brother, Ron, that kept pushing me in that direction constantly.
G: Now he hadn?t been to college, had he?
T: No, he hadn?t. And he was one of these type of people that wanted something better. If I would have been his son rather than his younger brother, it was a typical case of a father wanting his son to succeed more than he did. He never wanted me to go into the military. The only way he wanted me to go into the military was if I could have gone as an officer and he was an enlisted man. He had been for ten years, eleven years at the time of his death. But he always wanted something better for me.
G: Now you went to a year of college. Tell us what happened then.
T: After my freshman year of college.
G: Are you still in the same room, by the way, when you?re in college or where did you go?
T: No, as a matter of fact, I went off to college and I actually lived in a dormitory. It was like living in a palace compared to my little one-room apartment. I got better meals and so on. I didn?t have to worry about where all the money came from. I had saved up money from my part-time jobs to attend college.
G: How much did you save?
T: Well, it was enough. I was a resident at the time of Wisconsin so the tuition was only like $250 a year or something plus some room and board. I had saved a lot of money and also I was receiving social security payments from the death of my parents ever since they had died.
G: Oh, so that helped you.
T: It helped a lot. It helped a lot. But so, no, I had put in this one year of college and I had no place to live at the end of the year. I didn?t really want to go back to my little apartment so I actually took a job remodeling and painting this old house in a sleepy little town called Montello, Wisconsin. It was a small resort town. One day when I was up on a ladder painting this house, a military sedan pulled into the driveway. I was so excited. I thought it was my brother coming home from Vietnam. He had since gone to Vietnam like four months before that for another combat tour. It was kind of his idea to keep going back to Vietnam so I wouldn?t have to as I became draft eligible because one relative at that time could actually block another one from coming into the combat zone in the service. So that was part of his plan. Plus he was a soldier. He felt that a combat zone was where a soldier belonged during a war. But when this army sedan pulled into this driveway, I thought it was him coming home. I could see a uniform. I couldn?t see the face of the driver. I could only see part of a uniform, and I could see some sergeant?s stripes. He was a sergeant so I went running down the ladder and unfortunately it turned out not to be Ron in that car. It was actually a sergeant coming to inform me of his death and hand me that typical yellow telegram that begins ?We regret to inform you.? As I mention in the book, I believe it?s chapter 5 in the book when I talk about this, a very poignant chapter. The heartfelt exhilaration that I felt running down that ladder.
G: Yeah, you do a wonderful job of describing that. I felt like I was right there with you.
T: I thought I was going to see my brother and when I looked up under the bill of the service hat, I could see that it wasn?t my brother. That it was somebody with — He already had tears in his eyes, and he was coming to tell me that my brother was dead half way around the world. My whole life changed that day. The problem with that death notification was that the telegram said, ?Of non-combat related causes.?
G: And you noticed that right away?
T: I noticed it immediately. When I was able to unfold and read the telegram that afternoon, one of the things that stuck in my mind was non-combat related death. So all kinds of things raced through my head ? Was he murdered? Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it friendly fire? Was it illness? What was his cause of death?
G: And I just want to let our audience know today that we?re not going to tell you what it was so don?t be disappointed when we don?t. We?ll play around the edges but part of the fun of this book and part of the interest and excitement is the mystery and we want you to find out the ending and those facts by reading the book. But anyway, we?ll play around the edges, right, Tom?
T: Right. The thing that I tell other people, though, and I don?t mean to sound harsh, but dead is dead.
G: But people have trouble dealing with that at first, and I know you did, because when I was reading that you?re getting ready to go to Vietnam, you?re trying to get there. We?ll tell our audience about that. And you also get what, $11,000? Was that how much you got?
T: I think it was $12,000 of insurance money from my brother. I was the official next of kin and his beneficiary.
G: So you had the money to go find out what happened to your brother.
T: Since I wasn?t given a cause and I couldn?t get an answer, within seven or nine days, I believe it was, I received his body back. I actually flew from Wisconsin to Oakland Army barracks in California.
G: I?m out in San Francisco. That was the whole other thing ? the big wooden box with the handle. And I don?t know, just the way you write, I had to laugh because the top of it said ?head.? There was something so bizarre about that.
T: It was a very bizarre experience. I was told not to do this. I was told not to fly to California to fly back on the same plane as my brother?s casket because that just wasn?t done in those days. Relatives didn?t come to that point of the funeral situation but I wasn?t very good at listening.
G: Well, you?ve done your own thing all your life. Why would you not do it now?
T: Yeah, I was pretty much on my own. I was very independent at the time and don?t forget my frame of mind at the time. I?d just lost my hero, my mentor, my older brother that I loved and nothing was going to stop me from getting in the way of the truth of what happened to him.
G: And also being with his body. You?re drawn. You want to be where they are.
T: I escorted his body back. We went through the military funeral.
G: Just to let our audience know, you didn?t see his body then, but you did see it at the funeral home.
T: Yes, I did. I saw his body at the funeral home and he looked fine. That sounds strange, but what I?m referring to is, it was him. I was positive it was him. I couldn?t tell by looking at him what the cause of death might have been and all the while this is going on, I am constantly contacting the military liaison, people that were assisting me as the next of kin, and so on. They didn?t have any answers either. And so after about three weeks of not getting any answers, I just decided, the heck with it. I?m buying a ticket and I?m flying to Vietnam and I?m going to find out what happened to my older brother.
G: And I know one of the words that popped out at me in the book was when you said, ?revenge.? You were thinking maybe you?d have to take revenge.
T: Again, at the time, I had no idea. All I knew was that I had a deceased brother. You start thinking of all kinds of things. One of the things that popped into my mind was, was he murdered? If he was murdered, I?m going to go there and I?m going to seek revenge. When you?re nineteen, maybe you?re not thinking as clearly as you should.
G: I think a lot of people think about that revenge in the beginning for lots of reasons?DUIs, all sorts of reasons that they would like revenge. There?s so little you can do after your sibling dies. Well, it?s time for us to come up on break now and when we get back from break, we?re going to talk more with Tom Reilly about the death of his brother and about his wonderful book, Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. I wanted to tell you again that we are selling a set of ten compact discs of selected shows of Healing the Grieving Heart. The discs are in an easy to carry and store box, and I?m pleased to have the opportunity to share with you pictures of my son, Scott, in whose memory I dedicate this work. Each CD has a different picture of him. The set will normally sell for $60 but for a limited time it?s available at the introductory price of only $45 with all proceeds benefiting The Compassionate Friends. To obtain an order form, please visit the Compassionate Friends website at www.thecompassionatefriends.org or call our toll-free number 877-969-0010. You can also contact me at my website, www.healingthegrievingheart.org or you can email me at gchorsley@aol.com.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley and my guest today is Tom Reilly, author of the best-selling book Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. At the age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate incidences and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian. In July of 1970, Ron died in Vietnam. Tom at age nineteen journeyed to wartime Vietnam to find answers. If you?d like to email me about this show or upcoming shows, my email is gchorsley@aol.com. You can visit my website at www.healingthegrievingheart.org and if you?d like to participate in our show today, our toll free number is 1-866-369-3742. Well, Tom, before break we were talking about your getting ready to go to Vietnam to find out what had happened to your brother. Well, you?re actually, right now you?ve gone with his body back home for the burial and now you?ve decided to go to Vietnam, is that right?
T: Yes, that?s correct. Like I mentioned earlier, I just couldn?t get any answers as to a cause of death and I owed it to myself for loving him and I owed it to him as helping raise me to get the answers. I wasn?t suspecting any kind of a government cover up, but then I really didn?t know. I just didn?t know what happened to him and so it was out of love that I decided to take this trip to find out for myself and also to see where he died, what his final days were like, and so on. I was aware that I was going to an active combat zone, and I tried to do this officially. I contacted the State Department. I wanted to find out what it would take for a civilian to go to South Vietnam at the time to an active combat zone. All they could tell me was don?t go. They kind of had the criteria if you were a clergyman and you wanted to go, this is what you had to do. If you were a contractor and you wanted to go, this is what you had to do. But for a grieving young loved one, a teenager?they had no idea.
G: A teenager. They didn?t know who they were dealing with, did they?
T: No, they didn?t know who they were dealing with. So I politely listened to them. I told them I would accept their advice and not go and as soon as I hung up the phone with them, I contacted my local travel agent, told them to buy me a round-trip ticket to Saigon. He thought I was totally out of my mind. I also went to my local doctor in this small town and asked what shots I would need to go to a tropical climate. I didn?t necessarily tell him Vietnam.
G: I love the way you take care of yourself.
T: So within a few days of deciding that I wanted to go to Vietnam myself to see what happened to my brother, I had shots in different parts of my body. Both arms were aching and it was hard to sit for awhile but I had the cholera and typhoid shots, malaria shots, and all this kind of stuff. And a few days later, I was on a Pan Am plane flying from Chicago to San Francisco, San Francisco to Hawaii, to Guam, to Manila, and I ended up in Saigon.
G: Did your siblings know you were going?
T: No. Nobody knew I was going.
G: Were you scared at all? Or did you have that energy of ?I?m going to do that.? You had a mission, right?
T: Yeah, I was on a mission of love. I knew I was going to an active combat zone. I knew that there was a potential of something happening to me. But I was kind of blinded to all that because I was on this one-track mission to find out what happened to my brother.
G: So that was kind of holding you up rather than depression or crying or sadness. I?m sure you did some of that but this mission was kind of holding you together.
T: Yes. Exactly. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a purpose to channel my grief into. I did grieve. Don?t get me wrong. I cried a lot at the death of my brother. But this was one of those things that I tried to take a negative and make it into a positive, as strange as that sounds, because it?s still not ever going to be positive because I still lost my brother. But when I landed in Saigon I ran into another whole host of problems that actually didn?t give me time to think about my grief for the next week or so because I was immediately deported, wound up in Bangkok, Thailand. I didn?t have the proper paper work because I decided I would do this as an unauthorized escapade instead of officially and so I wasn?t welcome in South Vietnam as a teenage American civilian at the time. It was ironic because we had about a half a million people in Vietnam at that time all wanting to get out and I?m trying to get in and they won?t let me in.
G: That?s ironic, isn?t it?
T: Yeah. I thought it was very ironic, but I eventually made it in to South Vietnam with the aid of the Southeast Asian black market and they smuggled me in for a price.
G: So you had that money from the?what did it cost you to get in?
T: I spent most of the insurance money for my brother on this trip. On the plane tickets, on paying bribes to the people that I met up with in Southeast Asia, and so on.
G: And by the way, everyone, this all is in the book. It?s a fabulous book. I would definitely get it. How can people get your book?
T: All book stores carry it. If a book store doesn?t carry it, they can order it for you and have it in stock in a few days. You can also order it online at amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. It is a nationally published book.
G: And you got to his unit? Ron?s.
T: Yes, I did. I eventually made it to his unit and I was accepted overwhelmingly by his friends.
G: Did they hug you?
T: Oh, God, yes.
G: I can just see his friends must have just loved you.
T: Well, his friends were hardened senior enlisted sergeants. He was well liked. He was well respected by the guys in his unit. When they first met me, first of all they couldn?t believe that I was there. But as soon as they got past that in about ten seconds, they totally accepted me. They hugged me. They plied me with Budweiser beer which was their favorite pastime in base camp. I actually got accepted almost as much as my brother was accepted by them, and they were glad to see me and they protected me. We went through a few episodes of the war in Vietnam together. I was in the country about five weeks. The book condenses it down to about a two-week trip. But, yeah, they were overwhelmingly accepting. They were grieving for my brother as well which was interesting for me to see. We shed tears with several of his close buddies. Tears of mine. Tears of theirs. We toasted him again with cans of Budweiser beer. It was quite an experience and in so doing, I was able to not only learn about the last days, the final days of my brother?s life, I was able to bring back the ground that his head fell on when he died.
G: What did you do with that?
T: Well, there were five precious little stones where they pointed out exactly where he lay, where his head was on the ground. I brought back the stones and I still have a couple of them. I gave one to my sister and one to each of my other two older brothers. We?re not as close. I was closer to my brother, much more closer than they were, but I wanted them to share what I had found out.
G: So do you have any rituals that you do in relationship to him?
T: Well, you know, with the military, survivors are blessed with rituals a lot?Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and so on. But there is one very private thing that I did and that I do on a daily basis. When I finished writing the manuscript and I typed ?the end? on the manuscript of Next of Kin, I went down and I went through a box of his personal effects that was sent to me right after his death. I hadn?t been in this box for thirty plus years and something compelled me to open this box and go through his things. One of the things I found in there was a Seiko watch that I mention in the book. One of the things he had purchased just shortly before his death was this Seiko watch. I found that watch and it had this kind of rotted away old army cloth wrist band on it. I picked up that watch. It was a self-winding watch. I shook it and it started running. So I took it and I cleaned it up and I put a new band on it and I wear it daily. I haven?t taken it off now since I finished the manuscript. The watch loses one minute a day, and I figure that has some kind of effect on his shortened life.
G: Well, it?s time for us to go to break again. My guest is Tom Reilly, author of the best-selling book Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. At age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate incidences and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian. In July of 1970, Ron died in Vietnam, and we?ve been talking to Tom about his brother and about those experiences. I want to again tell you that CDs from this show can be purchased through www.thecompassionatefriends.org website or by calling a toll free number, 877-969-0010 or you can email me at gchorsley@aol.com or go to my website www.healingthegrievingheart.org. These shows are archived on the www.thecompassionatefriends.org and www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com. Tom, when we come back from break, I wanted to ask you if there?s anything that you feel like we?ve missed on the show or anything that you would like to say especially to our audience. You?re listening to Healing the Grieving Heart.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley and my guest today is Tom Reilly, author of the best-selling book Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam. At age seven, Tom?s mother and father died in separate incidences and his older brother, Ron, became his guardian. In July of 1970, Ron died in Vietnam, and we?ve been hearing Tom tell us about the story about Ron, his life, their life together, and also his experience of going to Vietnam and meeting his brother?s friends and also finding more out about his brother?s death. I would recommend highly that you read the book and from that you?ll be able to, as I said this is sort of a mystery in some ways about what happened to Ron and a great way to find out is to purchase this book. Tom, I believe we have a caller on. Joy, is she there?
J: Hello.
G: Welcome to the show. Nice to have you on. Did you have a comment for Tom or me?
J: I do. I wanted to thank Tom for sharing his incredible story and to ask you, Tom, if you would be willing to describe your grief reactions to the loss of your parents and how your responses to their death might have differed to your responses to Ron?s death and maybe what they had in common?
T: I?d be happy to. I touched on this briefly before about my reaction to my parents? deaths. I think the tender age of seven did a lot to not deaden the grief, but it was almost of a curiosity at that time, especially when my father died because I wasn?t as close to him as I was to my mother. But watching first hand all these rituals of the funeral home and the grieving relatives and the adult relatives I?m referring to, it was an eye-opening experience for me, for both of my mother and father?s funerals only seven days apart. It was almost like d?j? vu. I was in the same funeral home a week apart. I don?t remember crying as a child over their deaths. It was this realization that they were gone. I was told by my older brother, Ron. He explained to me what death really meant.
G: Yeah, but at the age of seven, you?re not really ? a little bit later you comprehend the whole thing a little more fully.
T: You?re insulated a little bit more at a younger age, I think, from your true emotions and maybe they haven?t even developed enough yet. But when Ron died, my world I thought came to an end. When I was given the notification of his death, physically, my knees buckled. I had to lean against this army sedan in this dusty driveway where the sergeant came to report his death to me. The grief ? it almost brought me to my knees. Here I was. I was 19 and I had shared more life experiences with my older brother. He would send for me in different parts of the world and I would go and I would visit him when he was on furlough somewhere. He took on the role of a guardian and almost as a parent figure to set me straight on the road to a successful life, and so there was a whole lot more shared experience plus your emotions develop more as you get older obviously. It was a much more raw experience. But there was a distinct difference between my response to my parents? deaths and to my older brother?s death.
G: I just wanted to thank Joyce for being on the show. Ron, we?ve got an email ? excuse me, I called you Ron, Tom, that?s interesting. We?ve got an email here from someone. Actually I told someone about the book and they read it. Her name is Gerri. She?s from Utah. She sent me an email and she wanted to know this:
Tom, do you think your early life has made you more empathetic with those who suffer losses?
T: Oh, yes, without a doubt. Without a doubt. Like I said, I kind of learned the experience of death early in life at age seven. I learned a lot about how to experience the loss of someone and then through the loss of my older brother and since that time I?ve had other losses in my life. I think it almost is a learned thing. Unfortunately, it?s something many of us have to learn along the way, but the experiences are accumulative.
G: Do you think there?s a surrender aspect to it?
T: No. In my case, no. I don?t want to surrender. I think everybody makes that choice on their own. And you know, one thing I wanted to mention to the listeners is a lot of people are looking for closure after a death. I looked for closure. I think even subconsciously my first effort at closure of my brother?s death was this weird trip that I made to Vietnam as a civilian teenager during the war. I thought I was looking for closure then. I thought if I just found out the details of his death, I could close this episode and get on with it. Well, I didn?t find closure there. Then many, many years later, thirty years later, I knew I was someday going to write a book about this. As I got older, I knew I was going to write this book. When I wrote the manuscript and I typed ?the end? on it, I thought, ?well, okay, now maybe I have closure.? And I didn?t have closure then either. And then once the book was published, I received my first copy of it from the publisher and UPS one night when I was having dinner, and I took that copy and I read it because I never read my book in hardbound manner before, and I took a copy of that book and I placed it under my brother?s name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., and I thought, ?okay, this is going to be closure now.? And it still wasn?t closure. And so when you talk about surrender and maybe surrendering and closure are somehow related.
G: Well, I think surrendering to me is more like you?re never going to get closure. You might as well face it. Surrender to the idea that you?re not going to have closure is how I think of it.
T: That may be a good way of stating it because there is no closure. I think it?s important that there isn?t closure because if there?s closure, it almost means like you want to forget about that person and none of us want to forget about our loved ones.
G: Absolutely. We want to continue with those bonds, relationships, have rituals and have them in our life. You?ll never forget your parents or Ron. They?re part of your fabric.
T: And nobody should forget their loved ones. You should memorialize them somehow. And I was fortunate enough to do it by writing this book. Not everybody can write a book about their loved one but I think there are different ways of memorializing your loved one and some people that are able to do so, they?ll set up a scholarship fund or they?ll plant a tree. But I think when it comes right down to it
G: Or create a website.
T: Yeah, or create a website like you did.
G: I know you wanted to mention the Compassionate Friends.
T: Yes, I did. I wanted to say that when I was going through this whole process with my parents? and my brother?s death, I didn?t know about it. I didn?t have access to an organization like Compassionate Friends. Since I?ve learned about your organization of Compassionate Friends and the offshoots of it and so on, I think it?s a wonderful thing to have in our society. People need to know that they do have other people that they can talk with. I had to go through this alone. I toughed it out and I probably had to tough it out a whole lot tougher than I would have if I had known about an organization like Compassionate Friends.
G: Or had somebody wonderful like you on the show and I want to thank you so much for being on the show. It?s time to close today. I would definitely recommend getting Tom?s book, Next of Kin: A Brother?s Journey to Wartime Vietnam so you can hear more about his story. It is very poignant and written very sweetly. Please stay tuned again next week to hear Ben Sieff who was a teenager when his brother was murdered. Ben will discuss how the loss of his brother has affected his life. Joining us on the show will be Lew Cox, founder of the Violent Crime Victim Services located in Tacoma, Washington. Lew is a bereaved parent, a victim advocate, and a certified trauma service specialist. You can purchase selected CDs of Healing the Grieving Heart through www.thecompassionatefriends.org or by calling the toll-free number 877-969-0010. For a limited time, you can purchase a set of ten CDs valued at $60 for an introductory price of only $45. You can also email me at gchorsley@aol.com or go to my website at www.healingthegrievingheart.org. This show is archived on www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites. This is Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned again next Thursday at 9:00 Pacific Standard Time, 12:00 Eastern for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and renewal and support. Remember, others have been there before you and made it. You can, too. You need not walk alone. Thanks for listening. I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley.

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