Mom Mode Returns, Eulogies & Trivia - E94

Rick Denton  0:00  
This week on the loud quiet, Mom mode, returns eulogies and trivia. Hey guys, welcome

Clancy Denton  0:06  
back to the loud quiet. We have a little bit of a different episode this week. We thought we'd do

Clancy Denton  0:13  
kind of a wild card episode, if you will. We went to trivia on Thursday night. We thought that we'd start off with three questions from the trivia competition, and we will reveal the answers at the end of the episodes. You can see how well you would have done starting out on some of these that we pulled from the evening. The

Rick Denton  0:37  
first question is, when the Summer Olympics were in Brazil, what was the longest beach where events were performed? Second question, this question is an over or under? So I'm going to set the year at 2014 did Apple release its first independent podcasting app before 2014 or after 20 14/3? Question, Corsair and aviators are models of what car brand. There's three questions you got the whole episode to think about it, and then we'll reveal those answers.

Clancy Denton  1:12  
But don't tune out and just think about the questions.

Rick Denton  1:18  
And then, hey, go on the Facebook group the loud, quiet, emptiness, living, and let us know if you got it right or which ones you didn't get right.

Clancy Denton  1:24  
Yeah, maybe we'll post them this week. So we're talking about just kind of three different things that happened this week and are going on in our lives right now. And if you listen to last week's episode, we talked about how summer seems different this year and just connecting with the kids and that kind of thing. Well this week, I jumped right back into full mom mode, and to some degree you did too as dad mode. Our daughter, Teagan, had her wisdom teeth out on Tuesday, so I took her to the appointment. This is the doctor that has done Tanner's teeth, and he actually did mine as an adult. So we

Clancy Denton  2:14  
know the drill. We know the care all of those things. This one was a little bit different my experience with Tanner, which was just three years ago, they took him back, did the procedure. When they came out to get me, they were like, he is wide awake and won't stop talking, and we need him to kind of stop talking so that it won't disrupt anything going on in his mouth. So as I got back there, the first thing out of his mouth is, I need my phone. I need to do Wordle. That's when Wordle was the big craze. And the nurse, who was actually the same nurse that was there for Teagan this time, you know, told him, now maybe you can do the Wordle, but then give your phone back to your mom, because I don't want you posting anything that you're going to regret later. So that was my experience with him when they came to get me for Teagan, it was we can't get her to wake up, so we need you to come back and start waking her up a little bit more, because we can't let her go home until she's awake. I mean, this child was out, out, out. I kept trying to pat her leg and wake her up and and she did eventually wake up enough that we could leave the car ride home. She's completely out. Tanner, I have video of him rapping on the way home, and then I have to say blood is coming out of your mouth. Please stop. Two totally different experiences. We get home, we're, I'm getting her out of the car. I let her lean on me, and we get into the kitchen, and I'm like, let's get some fluid into you. Well, first of all, she can't find her mouth to figure out where to put the power unit in. Where is it I'm having to, like, really, literally, like a baby, pour liquid into her mouth. All of a sudden, she just turns white is a sheet, and she just says, I'm gonna be sick. So we got a chair, sat her down

Clancy Denton  4:28  
again. Totally I was not expecting this. This was just not what I had experienced with him. This was her first time having anesthesia. So now I know, and now she knows how she reacts to anesthesia, and so she sat for a while. We got her upstairs. We're getting her into bed. She literally falls on the ground and goes, Mom, I run to get the trash can, and she proceeds to a. To vomit and do the trash can. I was like, Yeah, this is not what I really signed

Rick Denton  5:04  
up for. Yeah. Where's my funny videos, where's my

Clancy Denton  5:08  
now, later, she's like, Mom, you came in clutch with that trash can. I was like, yeah, not my first rodeo. I'm I've been here before, and so bless her heart. I mean, I felt horrible for her, because this is not how you want to come home from a procedure. You want to get in bed and go to sleep, not her experience. And she really had a rough she had a rough few days, much, much rougher than I was expecting, and I think much rougher than she was expecting. For those of you know Tegan, you know she's not she's a tiny little person, and but she eats like a much bigger person. She likes her food, and she was having a hard time just feeling like wanting to eat anything, and the things that she was allowed to eat by day two, she was like, I want fruit and I want meat.

Rick Denton  6:07  
I want so I really don't know how vegetarians do

Clancy Denton  6:14  
it. She was carved out. She said, I don't want carbs right now. I want some protein in the form of meat and fruit. So I'm in there mashing up a peach, and I told her, I said, Oh, it's like, you know, making baby food, which I did not do. And so I'm mashing up a peach for her and and just really trying to care for her. All this week, I've have been up and down the stairs more this past week than I think I have in the past year, probably just checking on her, making sure and and you, you know, obviously stepped in as well, because one day I was out walking and I get a text, are you downstairs? I was like, No, but I knew you were about to come in. I said, your dad's almost home. And so then she just said, I just need someone to bring me yogurt and some water. So bless her heart, I felt bad for her, but she is now out of the woods and but it really did just catapult me totally back into that mom mode that I wasn't expecting. I'm curious,

Rick Denton  7:26  
was there a difference in how you felt about this this time because of our stage of life, like think about it, when you were caring for Tanner during that period of time, you hadn't given up the mom mantle, if you will, because Tegan was still home, you were used to doing that. Did it feel different this time when you have progressed full mode, empty nest mode, and then being pulled back into what feels like kind of old school, if you will? Mom role,

Clancy Denton  7:56  
yes, and she and I were actually talking about that, because she said, I don't even remember when Tanner got home that day from surgery, and so we we were pulling up the pictures because she wanted to see his pictures versus hers. And I said, Oh, well, look, you are having your drill team pictures that day. So I probably helped her with her hair that morning, before I went to take Tanner to get his surgery. I felt my I found myself almost on the twinge of getting annoyed. Okay, that's what. But I would never really think that way or or be that way, but yes, because I have my routine now that's completely different than the routine I had when they were still here. So yes, I did have a twinge of, okay, we've done this for a few days now. When are we going to get out of this? But again, that's really not in my heart

Rick Denton  9:00  
a twin, I get it just okay. What about in the context of what we talked about last week? And you know, realizing we need to kind of connect deeper with our kids, do you sense some of that? Like, is there almost a blessing in disguise element to this?

Clancy Denton  9:16  
I did enjoy getting to spend more time with her and getting to take care of her. She's very independent. I don't get to do a lot for her these days, so it was nice to be able to do those things. And like even last night, we all watched a movie together. Which movie did we watch together? We watched Minecraft, and it was actually entertaining. I enjoyed

Rick Denton  9:42  
it. Some of us missed a few parts,

Clancy Denton  9:45  
because you fell asleep, yes, but those kind of things, yes, I am so glad that she was pretty much a prisoner in her room for the past, you know, four days because it. Did give me the chance to what's the one thing I love doing for them. I love being able to get them the favorite foods that they want, the things that give them comfort. And so I was able to help her with that. And you know, I do love the fact I don't think Tanner ever asked me any questions about the care you know, that he was supposed to be doing after he had his teeth done, maybe the first day. But you know, she is very she wants to do it right, and so she checks with me to make sure that she's doing everything correctly. And so I do

Clancy Denton  10:42  
like that. Yes, they still need us, yeah, in certain ways. So I did enjoy being back in the mom mode, but it was very hard to balance this week that with the other things that we needed to get done. Yeah, and

Clancy Denton  11:01  
you know, you have some things on your plate right now that I don't think you are necessarily expecting to have on your plate. So that has added a little bit it's,

Rick Denton  11:11  
it feels like it's always something. And this is another one of those somethings that it's a good thing. We're going to be when this releases. A couple days later, we'll be doing the celebration of life service for my my Nana, my grandmother. We've talked about her on the show. 100 years old, passed away earlier this year, and a phrase came to mind, and it's, I'm tired of writing eulogies and it's not that I don't want to celebrate people. It's not that I don't have these warm feelings and these warm memories. But having to have written my mom's eulogy last year, and now writing this for my my Nana, it's harder than I expected. And it's not just harder in the sense of, you know, the emotions of of grief and loss and that, I think a lot of that had been processed, although, well, actually, no, I feel twinges of it actually sneaking back in that I wasn't expecting. It's also just the, this is going to sound almost bad, but the exercise of doing it, there's a pressure that I didn't quite appreciate before having to do this, of trying to encapsulate 100 year life in a five to 10 minute conversation with an audience, because unless Something changes. I think I'm the only one doing a eulogy. There's pressure to try to represent everyone's stories. A lot of those stories I don't know, because they aren't my stories. It's been a little different this time, trying to know the best way to celebrate someone in words, when so much of how I think about Nana are feelings and experiences, and I'm having trouble translating those into words.

Clancy Denton  13:13  
It's really hard when you have a person who lived to be 100

Clancy Denton  13:19  
because they don't have a lot of peers right, left. So really, yeah, there's no one outside of whatever family is left to do a eulogy. Usually you have a friend speak. You know your mom's, there was a friend, and then you and Tanner, and at your dad's, it was all his friends, because at that age, everyone was still alive. So yes, I can understand.

Clancy Denton  13:47  
And there's going to be people in this audience that we don't necessarily know, but that knew Nana through her church. And so you want it to be such a representation, but, but, yeah, I get the plight of, how do you do that for 100 year old person who did amazing things

Rick Denton  14:06  
and choosing which amazing things to categorize and and honestly, some of it's just remembering it. Yeah, I have this fear. Is way too strong of a word, but I have this thought that on the drive home Saturday, I'm going to have a face palm moment be like, Oh my gosh, I totally forgot, and I and I have to accept the fact that, look, that's just going to be reality when it's 100 years. Not everything can be included anyway, and I don't know, a little part of it is, while I'm honored to be the one doing this, I kind of wish there were some other voices as well, both to take the effort off, and I'll give an example. Nana went to a different church than the rest of her family went to. She's been at that church for decades. The rest of our families had found our own church. And other parts of Austin, she had an entire life and experience there that apparently was very special, based off of what we're hearing from some of the voices out of that church, even generations way younger than her, speak fondly of what she did there. I don't know what those are, and it I would hate for those to be lost to history, and that's just the reality of

Clancy Denton  15:23  
it. I don't know if maybe looking at it from a different lens of you're not doing this to please the people in the audience. You're doing this to honor Nana and get your thoughts and feelings out.

Clancy Denton  15:44  
And I don't think anyone sitting out there will be like, Oh, he didn't talk about this. And if they do, well, then they can get up on stage and talk about it,

Rick Denton  15:51  
get your ass up here and tell your own story

Clancy Denton  15:54  
exactly. And the other

Rick Denton  15:56  
thing that's what I could do, I'll just raise my hand when I'm standing there and just go, hey. So I didn't say everything, and I just point at people. What story do you want to tell? What story do you want to tell?

Clancy Denton  16:07  
Yeah, no, because you would not want anyone to do that to you. So please don't do that. I'm totally gonna point and please don't do the if anyone would like to say a few words, please do that now, because then everyone just sits there, and you're like, how long do we have to sit here until the person says, Okay, I don't think anyone wants to speak. Those

Rick Denton  16:28  
are the worst that works very well at an intimate graveside setting, not at a

Clancy Denton  16:33  
large auditorium. I think another thing is, you know, you are working on collecting pictures for the slideshow. So the pictures will say so much sure as well, that sometimes the words can't, I mean, we have, you know, hours of video of Nana talking about her life up until age was that probably only 90. Yeah, maybe 90. It may have been before that. So you can't put all of that into

Rick Denton  17:06  
and there's a little sidebar that I will throw out to all of y'all out there. That was a brilliant I forget who did it for the mom commissioned it. Was all the kids commissioned it, but they commissioned someone to come in and interview my my Nana, and be able to get all those stories on tape. Because I know a lot of folks say, oh, gotta make sure I do that with it was an incredibly wise choice to commission someone, pay them, have them do that, and have that then capture because those stories are there. I will say, though, many of the stories that Nana would tell us when we'd go visit her later in life, we're not on that tape. We've discovered quite a bit. So you can't just rely on someone else. I think fundamentally, I'm tired of writing eulogies, right? We're at that stage of life that we're losing those that are close to us, at the generation above us, and in some cases, even the generation of us. And it's, it's sad, it's exhausting, and it's and I'm not afraid of my mortality. It's not one of those situations. I know where I'm going, but it just is a reminder of that this life is short, so we'll get out there and do stuff, go out and have some fun,

Clancy Denton  18:22  
spend the time with the ones that you love, and remind them that you do love and care for them.

Rick Denton  18:30  
And it's saying yes to things and well, kind of like we did last week, the the thing that started us all off on this episode, we were invited to go, Hey, come down and play trivia.

Clancy Denton  18:43  
Yes, Tanner and his girlfriend invited both the families to come down and play Trivia at the place that they go to trivia on Thursday nights. And then they had just won Wednesday night at the Music trivia, which we would have been much better at that, which actually we ended up doing pretty well. How well did we did? We did very well. We came in third place of 26 teams, which we were all very pumped about, very excited that we

Rick Denton  19:18  
placed third. We were just one out of the money, the gift, gift certificates go to one and two, if you think about it though, from an Olympics perspective, that you know trivia question that we mentioned earlier, the bronze person is frequently happier than the silver. We were happy to be in third place because we made it that high.

Clancy Denton  19:35  
Yes, it was, it was fun and and both entire families came, siblings included, and we haven't shared a lot about Tanner and his girlfriend. You know, this relationship is a very interesting origin story of their relationship. You. Hear people, when you go to events, talk about how they met, and some people have very interesting stories. Some people just met through a mutual friend or something

Rick Denton  20:11  
like that story. I mean, our story is that, you know, the first time we met, I was on a date with another

Clancy Denton  20:15  
girl. Yes, that is true,

Rick Denton  20:19  
whose name I can't even pretend to remember. Don't know what she looks like, but I sure remember what you look like as we sat in the back row there at the Christmas event.

Clancy Denton  20:28  
So we started a life group. After Tegan left, we decided, okay, we need to start meeting some new people. So we started an empty nester life group through our church, one of the couples that were in our life group, as we got to know each other, we found out, oh, they have a daughter who's about to graduate. She's coming to SMU to go to continue her masters. Tanner was already in law school, and so we said, Great, let's just let them meet, because

Rick Denton  21:01  
he'd already had a semester of building relationships at SMU.

Clancy Denton  21:05  
Let's introduce them so that then she can start doing things with them when she's down there. Well, we didn't realize that when we introduced them, that we were creating the

Rick Denton  21:15  
love connection. Matchmaker. Matchmaker. Make me a match. Tanner

Clancy Denton  21:19  
actually said that. He said, y'all are matchmakers. So it is just so neat. On Thursday night, the parents, we were all just watching them, and when we had our private moments, just saying, it's just so interesting how God works, how everything has just happened between them, and we have to remind them, you know, we were friends first. That's right,

Rick Denton  21:52  
you will use it's a cascading you talk about it being watching how God has worked in relationships. One of the problems in the empty nest is loneliness, and we wanted to build a community for the sake of a community, but also, I'll be honest, selfishly for ourselves, because friends of our children in high school, some we've continued, but the crutch is gone. So we started this group. We then, yes, successfully built relationships with people, and that has that end of sentence great success. We never saw that it would go to that next stage, that our children would end up dating each other. And it's been, it's been a treat to watch, and it gives us a reason to go down and go to trivia night,

Clancy Denton  22:36  
yes, and we had so much fun. I mean, we just, we laughed, just, we just had a great time.

Rick Denton  22:44  
And this was even Terry was a strong one there. Yes, this was day two after her wisdom teeth, so she might not have been screaming,

Clancy Denton  22:54  
and probably, in hindsight, I don't know if we made the best decision, but she wanted to go. She wanted to get out of the house, and she wanted to go because she likes all the people that we were going with. But you could see, by the end of the night, when you're out with the 23 year olds, they wanted to go to another place. The rest of us were like, We need to get home. And then we had Teagan as the excuse we need to get her home.

Rick Denton  23:17  
Even I, who love truck yard, I wanted to go home. I was ready. It was done. And it

Clancy Denton  23:24  
wasn't like it was early, but it wasn't that's another thing that I like about trivia. It starts at seven. It was done by 845, nine o'clock. So I I can get down with that. It is just nice seeing your children in a relationship and in a relationship with someone that you really enjoy, and you enjoy the family, well,

Rick Denton  23:47  
I guess we owe y'all the answers to the trivia question. So right now, are you feeling good about it? Do you feel like you got the the right ones in there? So do you remember what

Clancy Denton  23:55  
order you did them in? I do not remember what order I did them in. First one was the

Rick Denton  23:59  
beach. Okay, so the beach, so if you guessed Copacabana beach, you are correct. We, however, were not, well, that was my fault. Well, you weren't alone in it. You were supported by it. Because

Clancy Denton  24:14  
I thought Copacabana, I didn't realize that was the name of the beach, because I'm going off the Barry Manilow song, and it's a club in the Barry Manilow song. And so we went to Ipanema, which, there were events at Ipanema too, but the length of the beach is shorter than COVID. I

Rick Denton  24:29  
actually looked it up when we heard the I was like, no, no, there were events on Ipanema. And looked it up. But yes, it was because of that. All right, yes. So that one was one that we got wrong, one that we got right. Was the year that Apple released its independent podcast app. Now some of you may be thinking, all right, it's the 20 year anniversary. If you've seen any of that, Apple has been celebrating 20 years of podcasting, but it started its podcasting inside of iTunes, so the individual, standalone podcast app came out in 2012 12. So if you guessed under the 2014 year, then you are correct. Now you got that one right, right.

Clancy Denton  25:06  
But let me add a little caveat, how we got that one right. This bar that does the trivia. Every Thursday, they send out a newsletter that has three clues. Well, all it said was Apple's standalone podcast app. So Tanner sent it to us. So of course, we're looking okay, what year did it start? Who was the first one? So we had things in our back pocket that we knew were probably going to be one of the answers. So just to put that out there, because none of us would have known that.

Rick Denton  25:42  
I would have guessed the 20 year aspect of it. I would have gotten that wrong. Yeah,

Clancy Denton  25:46  
the third one we got right too, though, that you gave today. The

Rick Denton  25:49  
third one is interesting in a bit of a kind of a it all comes back together, sort of world moment, Tanner and I went to lunch on Friday afterwards, as we were coming back to our car where we parked next to it was an aviator, and I don't know that I'd seen an aviator in the wild. So it's funny that the trivia question showed up in our real life the next day, but the answer is, Lincoln, so

Clancy Denton  26:17  
yes, lots of fun. So there were the answers you know. See how you did, that's right.

Rick Denton  26:21  
So you can play along with trivia night. And I will say this, if there's folks in this North Texas area, maybe we pull together a little our own competition down at Liberty. And so throw that out on the group. If you're in the area and want to do trivia night, we can get something pulled

Clancy Denton  26:36  
together, and they're all over. Yeah, we don't have to go down to Dallas. We enjoy it, but there's probably many in our backyard as well.

Rick Denton  26:46  
And that's what's so fun about this emptiness stage, is we do have the freedom to do it. We do have the the burgeoning community, to do this together. And that's it's been a fun time to build this together with y'all, and I hope that y'all enjoyed another episode of the loud quiet.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai