Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Something. The next tell us something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is, welcome the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at Tell us something. Dot org this week on the podcast.

Hammy: That was the first thought I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department. I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. I get dressed. For some reason, I decided to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white.

Katie Van Dorn: And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was pod to say [00:01:00] the least, and a doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was

Marc Moss: four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Lost and found.

Karna Sundby: When I found his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. I look over and there’s a copy of the kinmen.

Kara Adolphson: The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over. And I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s what I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person on June 30th, 2025 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana.

Closing out Pride Month. On this episode of the podcast, we’re trying out something a little [00:02:00] different. Tell us something. Board member Beth Ann Osteen generously offered to bring in a professional sound engineer to better capture the feeling of a live event. We’re going to try to keep the essence of the live evening by using the storyteller introductions as I introduce the storytellers the night of the event.

As usual, I’ll give a little teaser of the story before the storyteller shares their story. We’d love to hear from you what you think. Shoot me an email and let me know how you like the new format. You can email me at info at tell us something. Dot org. Love it. Hate it. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Huge thanks. Goes out to the Greater Montana Foundation who encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. We are so grateful to the Greater Montana Foundation for their support to make the June event possible. Tell us something acknowledges that this land where Ogre Park, [00:03:00] uh, ogre Park now stands, is the ancestral territory of the Salish and Kalispell peoples who have stewarded it for generations.

Summertime is traditionally the primetime for indigenous peoples to gather various berries and roots that are in season while the bitterroot are already harvested. Now is the time for processing and storing any remaining bitterroot that have been gathered. Another staple canvas bulbs are being dug and prepared for storage huckleberry’s service.

Berries and choke cherries are ripening and being harvested for immediate consumption and for drying to preserve in winter. We take this moment to honor its land and the native people in the stories that they share with us to honor them, you can support the ongoing efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kni tribes by learning about their cultural initiatives.

And advocating for indigenous rights, more information can be found@kskt.org.[00:04:00]

In our first story, hammy shares his tale about family faith, and finding yourself what starts as a journey of self-discovery after a life altering decision. Takes an unexpected turn leading to a hilarious and surprising public health crisis on the very first day of a new job. Sometimes life’s most challenging moments can also be the most liberating.

Hammy calls his story, Ham’s First Day at the Health Department. Thanks for listening.

Hammy: Hello everyone. My name’s Hammy, and before I begin, I need to tell everyone that I just grew up loving my family. I, me, my mom, my brother, my sister, my dad. We were all so very close. Um, also, I never really heard my parents fighting at all, which was pretty cool. They would always fight about religion, though.

You see, my [00:05:00] dad was Roman Catholic and my mom’s a Jehovah’s Witness. And, uh, their son had a secret. Um, so I always knew that I had to, I always knew that one day I was gonna make this decision. And I, I tried, I prayed, I, I did the baptism, I did the conversion therapy. And when I was 27 years old, I finally realized I couldn’t do it anymore.

So I, uh, kind of, kind of came out. I, I started downloading the dating apps. I started dating. And I met this boy. There’s this beautiful man in Indiana and I decided to, to get married. Someone go, woo Indiana. Yeah. Um, don’t hear that often. So, uh, he, he just completely swept me up. And I, I came out and, uh, sure enough, my church gave me that phone call and they excommunicated me and my mom, my brother, my sister, my cousins, my friends, everyone.

Dead. That’s it. They just, I believe the church said they handed me over to [00:06:00] Satan. And I’m like, that is a little dramatic. I’m the gay one. Easy there, Satan. Um, but anyways, we were married for five years. We had a good relationship and till one day he decided that he didn’t wanna be married anymore. And so I thought, well, I, I left my family to marry you and, and you change your mind and, and that’s okay.

But what am I gonna do? I knew I wasn’t staying in, in, in Indiana, so, um, I, I wanted to go home. Everything in my body told me I gotta go home. I have to go home. And I knew that if I went home, I would get sucked into the church again. And I knew I would just end up killing myself. ’cause I would just, I would be conflicted.

So I decided to do one of those, you know, eat, pray, love things and just go find myself. But I really don’t like Europe, so I just came to Montana instead. So I got, I got a job at Yellowstone and in Big Sky and I did all those kind of things of working seasonal [00:07:00] jobs. And I finally decided what I wanted to do more than anything was.

Work in public health. I was in a first responder and then in occupational health and now I was in public health, so I got accepted back into a public health program online and I got a job at the Gallatin County Health Department. And so my very first day, right, well, let me actually back up just a minute.

After I, um, came off the mountain, uh, the girl was in heat. Let me tell you. I was divorced. I was in a new city. It was, I was feeling good about myself. You know, the grinder notifications were rolling in. So, uh, I had a lot of fun that first weekend. Now that morning, on my first day at the health department, I woke up and I went to go take a piss and I thought, shit, it started burning.

I said, this can’t be good. Maybe I’m just dehydrated. So I hop in the shower and I look down and this discharge is coming out. Well, you know what? We don’t need to get too [00:08:00] graphic, but I think I knew exactly what it was. That was the first thought. Shit, I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department.

I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. So I go to the I I, I get dressed. For some reason, I decide to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white, but I loaded up on underwear and I headed into work. And I thought, I don’t know what I’m gonna tell them. I don’t know if I’m gonna just keep it kind of quiet.

Um, but then they’re all gonna know they’re gonna do the contact tracing. So I met the health officer and she says, hello James. Welcome my, my real name’s James. She says, hello James, welcome. And I said, hello, and I have gonorrhea and I’m gonna have to talk to someone. And she says, okay, um, let’s get your boss, who’s the communicable disease manager.

Uh, and I’m like, of course, that makes total sense. So I tell her. I’m like, Hey. And then I kind of do it like at, by [00:09:00] that point I kind of go on like this one man show where I’m just telling everybody they got the first two out. So like epidemiologist, you knew front desk reception. I was letting her know, I just had to own that story.

So they, they arranged the, they, they do the, the follow up and contact tracing at the health department, but they do actually the testing, uh, at a different party. So I go down. Hey, I go get tested, um, and the doctor comes in, I’m like, I have gonorrhea. And she’s like, okay. So I pulled down my pants and then I look down and she looks down and we both notice a bump.

Now this was August, 2022. If anyone in public health knows what was happening around August 20, yes, there it is. Monkey px, m MPOs. She looks, I look, she says, I’ll be right back. Come leaves the room. She comes back in looking like monsters ink. It was head to toe, PPE, the mask, the shield, the gloves. The runway category was PPE, and she crushed it.

So she’s coming in and [00:10:00] so she like takes, you know, and, and. She, she, she starts slicing it. And I’ve only been in, yes, exactly. Oh, because I’ve only been in one public health class my first semester and three days at the health department. And inside I knew, I’m pretty sure it’s a swab, but I’m not gonna tell you like, Hey, by the way, doctor, I’m new to public health.

This is what to do. So she cuts it and as she cuts it, there’s like gonorrhea dripping out of my penis. It is a whole Hello. Yes. Um, there is a whole, it’s, it’s a whole production. So now I gotta call my boss on my way home and be like, Hey, um, they think it might be Empo and I have to quarantine. So Do you guys have like a remote or a computer?

Yeah, like a pickup. They were very great. The, the health department, I’ll tell you when, when they say you have, these, were all strangers and you have to rely on, on the, the compassion and kindness of strangers. They were all absolutely amazing. And, uh, they just re reaffirmed my life. And, uh, the people [00:11:00] in Butte, that queer people were being taken care of because there was no stigma.

There was no judgment. They were just right to the facts. Um, so. I get a phone call a couple days later. It’s, it’s negative. Um, for em, PX, gonorrhea, we all knew. Yes, that was, we, we had that one coming. So we get there and she’s, um. So I go back, I go back in and they say, okay, you gotta do your follow-up test.

Or I do my follow-up test and uh, they call me back. They say everything’s negative. We just wanted you to come back in one last time for a shot of penicillin. I thought, okay, that’s fine. Gimme a shot of pen penicillin. I wait a couple weeks. I go on another date. Now I have to go to Butte for this date. I go to Butte.

I first time, I think it’s really fun. Here I go. Have a nice beautiful morning with Clayton. His name was a wonderful man. We’re just having some coffee and he says, you know, we like to get lunch. He. I said, yeah, I just want to let you know I’m allergic to seafood. And he says, okay, well we’re in Butte, so relax.

Um, and [00:12:00] then, uh, I said, are you allergic to anything? He said, it’s just penicillin. And I said, okay, well, we can’t have sex after lunch because I might give you penicillin. Uh, I had gonorrhea. And they had, it wasn’t, but then thought it was monkeypox, but it wasn’t that, but it was gonorrhea actually. So if I can transmit it, I’m not, I’m only in my, like, third week of public health right now, so I don’t really know how all of this works.

Um, he said, I just want, I just wanna buy you lunch. So, uh, good guy. So that, that’s, that’s thinking about that now, you know, getting lost. Getting found was I, was I lost when I came out here? I think a little bit, and I think we’re always a little bit lost, right? Because that’s so, it makes life kind of exciting.

And, um, have I been found? Well, I found a really good therapist. Um, thank God for her. Uh, uh, I, uh, found a community. A [00:13:00] family. My partner Clayton, he stayed with me by the way. Uh, great guy by the way. Doug is here. Oh. Um, by the way, every interaction since then is always that of me being like, I have a wild story.

And him being like, sure. So it’s like the perfect relationship. Uh, and, uh, I, I found a great community in, in Butte. Uh, it’s such a wonderful town. Thank you to Missoula. Butte. It’s able to hang a pride flag. We got that passed. So thank you guys. Thank you Missoula for that. Um, but. In, in conclusion of this story, I, I try to talk openly about this.

I don’t want us to feel like we ever have to hold in that shame, that darkness. ’cause I know what that darkness does when we bring that darkness to the light in front of strangers. Um, just sharing our stories, we’re able to own that, right? So thank you guys so much for having me here. I appreciate it and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of this time.

Thanks, Marc.[00:14:00]

Marc Moss: Hammy is thrilled to be sharing his story tonight. He works in occupational safety, health and risk management. He is the founder and creative director of Queer Butte Arts and Culture, a new group celebrating local, queer art, queer culture, and local queer history. Last year he was named one of Southwest Montana’s 20 under 40, and this year he was honored as the young professional of the year by the Butte Local Development Corporation.

He is a homosexual and he lives in Butte with his partner Clayton. Also, a homosexual

ham is passionate about harm reduction, ending stigma, and walking on his hands. Above all, hammy believes that storytelling can save lives. In our next story, Katie Van Dorn recounts a childhood marked by an unexpected physical challenge to a life defined by adventure and a [00:15:00] relentless pursuit of wellness.

Katie’s journey is filled with extraordinary feats, unexpected setbacks, and profound self-discovery. Katie calls her story, the cracks are how the light gets in. Thanks for listening.

Katie Van Dorn: Wow. The only time I hold a mic like this is when I am in a room all by myself. So now I’ve gotta see all these faces. Anyway, um, well, good evening everybody. Have you ever heard the joke about the lost dog with three legs blind in his left eye, missing an ear and no tail? Well that dog answers to the name of Lucky and my, my brother used to call him.

Say that I was that dog named Lucky. And, and the reason for that is, is it began at birth. I was born with a dislocated hip and I was a [00:16:00] cesarean baby. So either the doctor pulled too hard or they, um, or somehow they didn’t check my hip at birth. So around. Age two, my parents finally discovered that I had a dislocated hip when I fell and couldn’t get up.

And, um, so I was braced, just, uh, just tucked in and kept in a brace. And I would be standing in the yard in the patio just spreading, go like this with my brother and sister running all around me. And a little tiny dog named Clyde would just knock me over flat on my back. And, uh. And so anyway, I, um, that actually did wondrous for me.

It, it sent me on my way. And I, because I grew up in Lala as Mark said, I, um, I was able to swim and, and surf body surf, and. Hike and run and all that. My childhood wasn’t affected, but at high school I started to have a lot of hip pain again, and so [00:17:00] I went to the orthopedic surgeon and he said, well, you need a pelvic osteotomy.

In other words, a total restructuring of my right hip, and basically it just rotates your. Acetabulum your socket straight down instead of down and out. And that actually six weeks, um, in a body cast, then seven months on crutches. And the body cast was like, my parents had to have a baby all over again.

They had to come give me the bed pan and water and food and everything. And I, um, I was not a happy baby. Um, and so anyway, I, uh. I got through that and it was like, I felt like the lucky dog. It was pretty miraculous. I was able to run, I was, I started school at the University of California Davis and I was able to run a half marathon and I just really got into running and I also got into swimming.

Um, I used to swim in the ocean, but I started swimming in a pool with a master’s program and the coach [00:18:00] there asked me if I wanted to do a race from. Lanai to Maui in Hawaii, swimming across the channel. And so I did that and it was a pretty neat experience with huge swells. And some of the, some of the swimmers were seasick ’cause the boat had to go as slow as the swimmer.

But I did it and it just fueled my love of adventure and my desire for more. And soon thereafter, I was invited to cook at a guest ranch in the cell way, bitter wilderness. And that was my introduction to Montana. And so I went back and cooked for five summers. I loved it. I would run along the river’s edge and jump into big pools.

And so for five years, I alternated summers in the cell way and winters cooking at a guest or at a restaurant at the top of Aspen or snow mass. Mountain and then I decided, okay, I gotta, I need a real job. So I went back to school in exercise physiology and learned about how, how exercise and nutrition [00:19:00] and all sorts of things factor into.

Staying healthy. And uh, but then soon after I graduated for my, got my master’s, once again, my hip was bothering me. So now I was facing surgery number three, and this was from the femoral side instead of the pelvic side. And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I walk, came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was.

POed to say the least. And, um, the, the, you know, doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was so, I just learned to use poles for hiking and I put lifts in on, in and outside of my shoe and I got a lot of body work. And my name used to be Katie Bodywork, van Dorn. And to this day I live by that principal, but I met my husband around that time and he also loved hug.

Hiking Ray, he’s up there [00:20:00] and, um, so we did a lot of adventures that involved hiking, trapper Peak, Lolo Peak, et cetera. And he, if I got sore, he would give me a piggyback and just bounce my, my hips around until I was. Good to go again. And, uh, so anyway, that, uh, went on. And then around 2001, when I was 45 years old, I decided to have a hip replacement.

And to tell you the truth, that was a very lucky experience because to this day, I still have that hip and it works wonderfully. I might have a. Funky gate, but it still works. And, um, and so because of that good surgery, we decided to do this ski trip from Finland, in Finland, from Russia to Sweden. And we skied about 40, uh, about 40 to 50 miles a day for seven days.

And that, again, was, was quite an adventure. And what I realized with both swimming and [00:21:00] skiing is that they’re very rhythmical. And so if you just put a piece of music like Taco Bell’s cannon in your head, you can just. Get into the flow. And so, um, so we, I did a lot of skiing and then I, um, because of this funky gait, I found myself needing knees, two of them in 2014.

And so I went back and I had, um, knee surgery. And again, that was so fortunate. It just flowed. So well, and, um, I had, I still to this day have the knees and the hip, and they both do really well. But what happened a few years later was that I started to have foot pain, left foot pain, and I, um, and I consulted doctors after trying ibuprofen and tons of steroid shots.

I kept pushing myself, pushing myself, and finally the doctor [00:22:00] said, you know what? You’ve, you’ve your foot. Uh, talus bone, which is your landing pad, has collapsed and your only option is amputation. Cut that off. And I said, I’m gonna cut my head off before I cut any foot off. And I, um, I meant it. And, um, so I.

Um, and this was the first time that there wasn’t a solution. There was always solutions to all these things. This is the first time when I thought, okay, you’ve got to figure this one out for yourself. And um, Henry David Throw once said that, not until we are lost. Can we begin to find ourselves? So I sought out, um, a lot of alternative medicine.

I got stem cells and prolotherapy and platelet rich plate plasma, and I, I sought it all out to try to help the foot. At least structurally. And then my mom passed, happened to pass away in the middle of all this. So I had time to [00:23:00] just go inward and think about, okay, what, what have I done wrong here? Maybe I’ve been, um.

Not a nice person because I lost my SOLE, but I felt like I needed my SOUL saved, and so I tried to do a lot of meditation and studying neuroscience and y. Um, how meditation can help that. And I studied energy medicine and I studied restorative yoga. And I, I just went, just went deep for three years. I just kind of hid out and all my friends up there were with me when, you know, I, Ray would put on his, his ski closer, his running shoes, and go to, to go out and exercise and I would start crying and I just would always be in tears.

And finally after a lot of work and it internally and a lot of outside work, little by little my foot started to be a little less blue [00:24:00] and so did I, and less swollen. And gradually I was able to do more and more. First I could walk without the brace. I had a A FO brace on my foot, and then I could. Walk a little bit longer and then I could double pull cross country skiing.

And finally, in 2022, I hiked to jump top a jumbo for the first time and I just wept. And um. With joy and gratitude. And ever since then I’ve really thought, okay, you’ve gotta be grateful for this body. ’cause you know, it’s, it’s pieced together. Lots of, lots of replaced parts, and so you’ve gotta take good care of it and honor it.

And when it doesn’t wanna do something, let go. Just let it go. And so. I wanna summarize my story, my lost and found story with a, a little verse from one of my favorite Museum, museum [00:25:00] musicians, Leonard Cohen. And the song is called Anthem. He says, ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Katie Van Dorn

is originally from Lala, California. Katie studied exercise physiology at the University of Montana. She is passionate about the outdoors and is a compassionate real estate agent who has been caring for home buyers and sellers alike in Missoula for over 20 years. Katie loves hiking, cross country skiing, swimming, gardening, and cooking.

You may have heard her freeform show on Montana Public Radio, where she is a rotating host and producer of Thursday freeform coming up after the break.

Karna Sundby: When I found [00:26:00] his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up.

Kara Adolphson: I look over and there’s a copy of the caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: That’s next on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about Missoula Broadcasting Company and listen [00:27:00] online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com.

Thanks to our in-kind sponsors, float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile.

Joyce Gibbs: Hi, it’s Joyce from Joyce of Tile. If you need tile work done, give me a shout. I specialize in custom tile installations. Learn more and see some examples of my work@joyceoftile.com.

Marc Moss: Alright, let’s get back to the stories.

You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss, opening up the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something Podcast. Karna Sundby goes on a blind date in Seattle, which leads to a whirlwind, romance and a life that feels like a dream when an unimaginable tragedy strikes. One woman’s world shatters, forcing her to confront the deepest of despair, follow her incredible journey through loss, unexpected healing, and the profound discovery of purpose amidst the pain.

Know that Karna’s story speaks frankly [00:28:00] about suicide. Karna calls her story, finding the gift. Thanks for listening.

Karna Sundby: Hello everybody. Can you hear me?

Come with me to Seattle. It’s after work and I’m on an escalator, headed up to a restaurant, and I’m feeling anxious and wondering why am I doing this? I get to the top and sitting on a couch is a very handsome man. Eyeing the escalator, he stands up, flashes me. A big smile, has perfect teeth, and maybe this blind date isn’t such a bad idea.

After all, we sit in the bar for hours telling stories about our families, our sales careers, his love of sailing, my passion for skydiving and all of our bizarre blind dates. Later, we would [00:29:00] agree that it seemed like a reunion. Like we already knew each other, maybe from some other time. His name was Ed, and his gentle spirit won my heart.

We spent almost every weekend on his sailboat, which was so relaxing and so exhilarating when you’re keeled over and the spinnaker’s out, slicing through the the swales, and then there’s nothing so tranquil as being lulled to sleep. By waves slapping against the hull of a gently rocking boat. Eventually we moved into a guest house, I mean a, a house on the Puget Sound, and it was summer in Seattle.

We were so happy. Life was so good. As I got to know him over the next couple years, I felt we had the happiest relationship of anybody that I knew. He was more quiet with other people than he was with me, and so I started [00:30:00] thinking of him as the strong, silent type. We were both in sales and I realized that he never should have been.

There was just too much pressure, too many quotas, too many, too much selling, and so I wish that he had had some different kind of career. We never had an argument. I never saw him upset or. Depressed until one November night. And then when I asked him what was wrong, he said it was his job. And I said, well, ed, you can find a different job, but I’d never seen him despondent like this.

And I didn’t know how to support him. So I just thought, well, I’ll just let it be. Let him watch Monday Night football and we’ll talk about this more tomorrow. But for us, there would be no, tomorrow I was 42 years old. Living a charmed life with the man of my dreams. Those dreams died the next day when I came home from work and found him dead.

[00:31:00] He had chosen to end his life. When I found his dead body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answer the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. Yeah, just then my neighbor shouted.

I called 9 1 1 and whoosh. All of my freaking out parts just came rushing back together and I thought, help us on the way. Maybe he’s not dead, maybe they can save him. The firetruck came very quickly and got him out of the, the car. We’re trying to resuscitate him on the driveway. It was so unbelievable. I ran into the house to get a pillow for his head.

I remember standing against this post just praying out loud. I swear I could hear the sound of my life shattering on the concrete. When I realized he was gone. I now know [00:32:00] that he’d been fired from that job for not making his sales skull. And later I would find a box of mail that he didn’t want me to see.

Debts a recent bill from the IRS with six years of unpaid taxes. The strong, silent type with secrets that I would never find answers for the next year was hell, full of dark emotions, sorrow to pray, despair, hopelessness, and I needed community to heal. So I went to visit some dear girlfriends in the LA area and happened to be there when the Northridge earthquake happened.

We were talking until late into the night when suddenly the earth just started quaking. The walls were shuttering, shirking violently back and forth, and it was dark as a tomb, and there was this dead silence except for my friends shouting, are you okay? Are you okay? They were [00:33:00] diving for door jambs and hiding under fufu furniture.

I was laying on the ground spread eagle in front of a plate glass window that went from the floor to the ceiling, hoping that it would shatter and kill me. And I’d made an instant decision that if it broke and didn’t kill me, I’d take a shard of glass and slip my juggler vein and no one would know that I had done it.

That’s how much I didn’t wanna be here. I wished that I could die, but I knew the pain of suicide. There was just this constant ache. This. Empty, endless hole that nothing could fill. And there were the nightmares that first year. It was a supportive family, friends, grief counseling and a spiritual connection that got me through the tough times.

I wanted to be free of the bad dreams. So I went to a professional. That first session was pretty scary because she wanted to take me back into the garage. The source [00:34:00] of the, the sight of the. Bad dreams where I would wake up in a cold, sweaty panic, sometimes screaming. But what she said made sense that I had, I was reliving it because that’s the way my brain had recorded it and that we needed to rewire my brain.

So she taught me how to disassociate in a healthy way from the event so that I could observe it instead of live it. After two sessions, I never had a nightmare again. After a few more sessions, I was blown away at how much better I was feeling no longer merely surviving. I was thriving. The modality was called NLP, which stands for Neural Linguistic Programming, and I decided I wanna help people heal from their trauma.

So I went to school, became a master practitioner of neural linguistic programming. [00:35:00] And when I first started working with clients, it was the most fulfilling thing I ever experienced in my life. It was such a gift, and there were other gifts that came from this tragedy, the gift of compassion. When I felt such deep pain, it led me to such deep compassion for human suffering.

I don’t know if I could have become someone who cares so much what people go through if I hadn’t gone through so much myself. That was such a gift, and another gift that I received was learning how to forgive. If I hadn’t been able to forgive the people that I wanted to blame, I think I’d still be haunted by this tragedy stuck forever in the past.

Maybe even using it as an excuse for why I couldn’t be happy or successful in life. But I like what Nelson Mandela says about forgiveness. To stay [00:36:00] in a state of non forgiveness is like me drinking poison, expecting the other guy to die. I didn’t wanna drink the poison, so I became someone who can forgive easily, and that is a great gift.

Another gift that I received was I learned how to feel all my feelings, no matter how dark they were, without being afraid of feeling them. I learned the truth of grieving, which is this, to heal you must feel. When I, when Ed first died, I never thought I’d be happy again, and I sure never thought I’d fall in love, but maybe it’s because I was willing to so deeply feel that I was able to truly heal my broken heart and create new dreams.

I’ve been with my amazing husband, Kirk, now for 24 years. Actually, it’ll be [00:37:00] 24 years on July 7th, and I would need that my whole 10 minutes up here to tell you what a wonderful man he is. I’m gonna start crying. So communicative. So reliable. So passionate about life and handsome. With perfect teeth.

When I first met Kirk, I realized that for me, some of the grief work was only gonna be completed when I was in a relationship again, and he was willing to walk that path with me bringing us so close able to talk about everything. I created new dreams with him, like moving back to Missoula where I went to college.

Our life is so good and I’m so grateful that I didn’t die in that earthquake. That I live to find this joy and I love my work. I love to help people transform. And when I help somebody heal their trauma, their depression, their PTSD, you know, the [00:38:00] really deep stuff, it means the world to me. I feel like I’m doing the work that I’m meant to do.

Do I think about Ed very much? Not so much when there’s a, some, you know, anniversary. Yes. When I hear of another suicide, yes, but when I heard that the theme tonight was lost and found, I thought maybe I would like to tell my story. I lost so much. I lost the man I loved. I lost my hopes. I lost my dreams, and I found so much.

I found my passion. I found meaningful work. I found my life’s calling, and maybe I was destined to work with people to help them heal their trauma. And maybe I wouldn’t have found my destiny without this tragedy. So the whole experience has brought me to develop kind of a new core belief in life, which is that when the really tough times happen, maybe there’s a gift in there [00:39:00] somewhere.

And if we can just keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, maybe somehow will be guided to find a gift amidst the pain. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Karna Sundby’s journey of self-discovery has led her to explore various paths in life. From teaching meditation to a successful career in corporate sales, what has always driven her most is the desire to make a difference. Often the toughest times in life are the ones which break us open and forge within us a deep well of compassion.

Her story tonight is about one of those times when a terrible tragedy led to a precious gift. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Kara [00:40:00] Adolphsen is a college freshman, grappling with a secret grief. Kara vows to herself that she will navigate her new life and grief silently. But on the anniversary of a profound loss, an unexpected invitation leads to an art exhibit, a surprising discovery and a breakthrough moment of joy and healing.

Kara calls her story finding humor after loss. Thanks for listening.

Kara Adolphson: Hello out there.

The first day of my freshman year in college was on the six month anniversary of my best friend’s death, and I had just come from this small Montana town where all of my day-to-day interactions had shifted from, Hey Kara, how’s it going? To, Hey Kara, how are you? [00:41:00] And I became so desperate to get away from that, that I moved as quickly and as early as I possibly could here to the University of Montana campus.

And as I arrived in the town that my friend and I had planned to move to together without her. I made a solemn vow to myself that I would tell no one that I was grieving, not only because I was so tired of these other sum interactions that I had been having, but also because at 18 I really didn’t have the words to explain what I was going through.

So it became my closest kept secret, and I told no one. I didn’t tell my professors. I didn’t tell my new bosses. I didn’t tell any new peers that I met. I didn’t even tell my [00:42:00] roommate that I lived in a proverbial shoebox with. It was truly a secret, but the thing about grief is that it tends to show up even when it’s uninvited, especially when it’s uninvited.

And my grief really showed up in my poor academic performance my freshman year. I had a hard time attending my classes, let alone doing anything to pass them. I practically flunked out my very first semester. I lost all of my academic scholarships, and while that was really difficult to hold. For anyone out there who has experienced grief, you can corroborate that.

One of the more difficult emotions to hold when you’re grieving is surprisingly joy. These two seemingly opposite emotions are hard to balance at [00:43:00] the same time, and it’s something that took me years of practice to master. But one thing during this year that really cracked open this joy for me was I, of course, met a boy and he really brought that glimmer back into my life.

I could tell that he could see through the facade that I was offering, and he was treating me like a normal person. And even so still, I couldn’t tell him about my grief. And as the year continued on and the seasons changed, and winter was preparing to give way into spring, there was this horrible date that was approaching, which was the one year anniversary of my friend’s death.

And I could tell pretty quickly that I wasn’t gonna be able to handle it very well. So I was [00:44:00] making plans of how I could kind of cancel the day and pretend that it. Didn’t even happen. And on the night before the one year anniversary, I was sitting in my dorm room predating calling out of work, canceling my classes, shocker, and just hiding away in my room.

And that’s when I heard a familiar ping on my laptop. A Facebook message because the year was 2013 and we still, Facebook messaged each other to communicate. And so I went over and it was a message from this boy and it said, Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? I thought, well, nothing. And he said, how would you feel about coming to one of my classes with me?

I thought, well, that’s really bizarre. Um, but what class? And he said, just show up. You’ll find out when you get there. So I agreed, [00:45:00] having no idea what I was agreeing to. The University of Montana offers over 300 different courses, including things like acrobatic trampoline class, so it really could have been anything.

But the next morning, instead of hiding away from the world as I had planned, I went out into it. And I went over to the social sciences building on campus, which is a kind of catchall building for a lot of classes to meet this boy. I went up to the third floor to a room that I knew was a lecture hall, hoping that I could walk in and blend in with the crowd.

But when I opened the door to that room, there was maybe 15 people in that room. There was no blending in, but I went in anyway and I sat down next to this boy and I said. Where am I? And he said, well, this is my art history class. I said, okay. [00:46:00] And right then the professor says, well, class, as you know, today is our big field trip day, so gather your belongings.

We’re leaving right now. Okay, so I get up with the rest of the class and we leave and we go all the way downstairs in the same building. There are student art exhibits on the first floor, and the class was to go around and just meander around the exhibits and make of them what you will. And this boy, he was beaming, so excited.

Because at some point over the last several months, I had told him that I love art, but what he doesn’t know that’s more salient to me on this day is that my friend, she really loved art. And so somehow on the one year anniversary. [00:47:00] I’m there at an art exhibit and as we go in, I’m pretty novice to the whole art exhibit scene.

So I’m breezing past the artist statements and I’m really taking like a vibes based approach to what’s in the room. And I walk into the very first exhibit. In The first display is this giant block of ice being melted by sound.

And I thought, oh no, I have no idea what this means, but I’m staring at this block of ice and this boy is staring at me staring at the block of ice. And I think you gotta say something brilliant. So I say something to the effect of, well, we’re all blocks of ice and. We’re all slowly melting. I’m having a rather existential day.

Mind you. [00:48:00] And he loves it and it encourages me to go authentically through the rest of the exhibit. So we go through serpentine all of the different art that’s on display until we enter the final room. Which is this magnificent display of all of these different hourglass shaped ceramic sculptures in all different shapes and sizes.

There’s one that’s four feet tall. There’s some on pedestals, like flower vases. There’s a hundred of them pinned up in a grid system, repeating over and over again, and I tell him how very. Warhol that is or something, and we spend a lot of time in this exhibit. We’re really enjoying it. And at the end, there’s this huge container of tiny versions of this sculpture that the viewers get to take home.

Perfect. We dig [00:49:00] through this container. We’re reaching to the bottom. We’re pulling them up to see how the glaze shines in the light. We’re rolling them in our palms to see the texture and the weight, and he finds one that he thinks speaks to him. I find one that speaks to me. We slip them in our pockets and we leave.

And as I made my way back to my dorm room, I was overcome with gratitude, how on a day that I had planned to disappear, I had been seen and really seen. And that night as I laid down in bed, I took my sculpture and I gave it a big kiss and I tucked it under my pillow, just warmed by the events from that day.

The next morning I even took it with me to the food Zoo for breakfast, and I went to the Food Zoo, the campus cafeteria, and I sat down with my cereal and my orange juice [00:50:00] and I look over and there’s a copy of the Caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet.

I’m gonna read that. So I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo in rather large writing. University butt plug exhibit is a huge success, and that’s when I realized that my sweet sculpture is in fact, yes. And I let out the biggest belly laugh that I had in a very long time, and it was during that time of tremendous loss for me that I found my sense of humor about life again.

Thank you,[00:51:00]

Marc Moss: Kara Adolphson. Kara is a Montanan community member, therapist and storyteller who finds joy in the arts, the outdoors, and Bluebird days in Missoula. She believes in the power of vulnerability, humor, and shared experience to bring people together, a lover of language and listening. Kara is committed to fostering connection, whether it is in the counseling room on a trail or around the dinner table.

Coming up in the next episode of the Tell Us Something podcast.

Aunvada Being: I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it. He was thrilled and that was shocking to me and also terrifying. And I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified.

Jilnar Mansour: Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew.[00:52:00]

Curfew is. Something that was happening then and is still happening now where people are not able to leave their home for hours or days at a time.

Steve Schmidt: I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence.

And I yell, sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there

Lauren Tobias: was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint. I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the June, 2025 live event that closed out Pride Month.

The theme was lost and found. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be sure to catch those incredible stories. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky and visit Tell us something.org. To explore 14 years of our story archives [00:53:00] and let me know what you thought of the new format. You can email me at info@tellussomething.org to share your thoughts.

Live recording by the recording Studio in Missoula, Montana, podcast production by me, Marc Moss Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org.

Marc Moss: Welcome to the Tell Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is, it’s the Little Things. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch.

The pitch deadline is November 7th. I look forward to hearing from you this week on the podcast.

Kate Wilburn: You would be also able to see, I think, how much I like the quality of things. It’s small and simple, this house, but everything is well done. She goes,

Marc Moss: Can we do it again? I was like, Yeah.

Amy McAllister: We meet Matthew, our mortician and Matthew.

Looks like or reminds me of Lurch from the Adams family.

Rachel Gooen: Bow ties and tuxedos and crushed velvet dresses, and we are in jeans and

Amy McAllister: t-shirts.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme letting go. Their stories were recorded. Live in person in front of over 900 listeners on September 27th, 2020.

At the Denison in Missoula, Montana, we wouldn’t have been able to produce this event without the help of our title sponsor The Good Food Store. We are so grateful to the team at the Good Food Store for their support. Learn more about the Good Food store@goodfoodstore.com. Tell us something acknowledges that we are on the Aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispell people.

You hear this at events all the time. What does it mean? Who cares? Right? . I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Why do we say it? Most of the time it’s white folks that are saying it. Are we trying to make ourselves feel better? What are we doing here? When I came to Montana, to the west from Ohio, which Ohio is the land of the Cas and Erie tribes, at least the part where I lived, I wore a Cleveland Indians hat.

Some of you know this former name of this baseball team and, uh, the mascot allegedly was to celebrate the native peoples. It’s pretty racist mascot if you haven’t seen it. And I was traveling out with a, a traveling companion who was admonishing me about my hat, and I dismissed her out of hand. I was wrong to do that, and I started thinking more about that as I started thinking about land acknowledgements.

And why I do them is not just to honor the people whose land we stole. Not us particularly, but everyone in here who’s white. Our ancestors stole the land. We can’t do anything about that, but we can admit it. Honor the people who live with us and work with us and recreate with us who are native to this land.

So again,

again, I say we are on Salish and Cooney. Let me take this moment to honor them and the stories that they share with us.

Our first story comes to us from Kate Wilburn. Kate loves wood and woodworking. She learned the craft of timber framing 40 years ago. Collected materials for a timber frame house, hauled them around for 30 years and is now ready to let them. Kate calls her story Dovetail a love story. Thanks for listening.

Kate Wilburn: Okay, so step into my kitchen with me on the cherry countertops. There are two jars of beans. Every morning I take a bean from the jar labeled 10 years. , 10 good years, days left, and I move it to the other jar labeled 10 good years. Days past. I’ve been doing this for three years with my friend Joseph. It’s an amazing thing to watch the days of one’s life.

Pass a bean at a time. Am.

Here we are in my small old house in Missoula. It was pretty sad until I remodeled it and now it’s cozy and beautiful looking around, you’ll see right away how much I love would the hemlock. fur trim, the raised panel fur doors, those cherry countertops, the maple kitchen cabinets, the old growth Douglas fur floor underneath that’s original and that I didn’t know was there until I unearthed it from layers and layers of goop.

So, You would be also able to see, I think, how much I like the quality of things. It’s small and simple, this house, but everything is well done. And if you looked out to the back side of my lot and saw the old ugly shed, you would wonder and be mystified. Why the heck has she let that thing stand? It’s a love story, not with the shed , but with the small timber frame that’s sheltering inside.

I learned the art of timber framing as a young woman, and I love it as much as I love wood, because it’s like creating a beautiful. , large piece of furniture that is going to become a home or another building. Timber frames use big, massive pieces of wood polished and carefully cut with strong joints that hold them together like dovetails.

you might have seen a dovetail if you’ve ever pulled the drawer out of an old well made dresser. The front is attached to the side with these amazing triangular joints. Those are the dovetails, and they’re not only beautiful, but they’re strong. So let’s go back to the shed and the tiny timber frame.

It’s the sixth one I’ve cut and designed in my life, and that was 30 years ago. Back then, I was married to an auctioneer and our home was pretty chaotic, so I imagined a quiet refuge back behind the house. Unfortunately, the marriage ended before I got the timber frame finished and standing. By then, not only had I invested, uh, cash and an incredible amount of careful painstaking work, but also a fair amount of fondness, and I chose to move it with me.

The next place that found us was a small home in North Carolina, and I thought it would be a perfect screen porch, unfortunately, the tiny timber frame. And I ran a mock of the HOA rules. . Oh, well the. When I became a nomad, I thought that was the perfect ending at last because it’s only eight feet by 12 feet, this tiny timber frame, and it fits really super well on a trailer to pull down the road.

The deal though is that the rafters are 14 feet. Uh, and that’s to make good overhangs on either side to shade the walls, but it’s way too wide for highway safety. It means that all this pile of lovely wood with intricate joints has been so far is a little building waiting to be a. , every time I moved, I, I checked in with myself.

Do I still have hopes for this little critter in me? Yeah, I do. So I’ve moved it from Idaho to Virginia to North Carolina, to California, to Idaho again, and finally to Montana. Is the year finally. Um, I’ve got the plans. I’ve got the permits. There’s some 220 volt electrical work involved, and it’s a little bit dangerous, but it’s simple.

And my friend Mike and I are going to do. Then he calls his master electrician Brother has a sudden emergency and he’s not going to be available in case something goes wrong. It’s a catalyst. It’s actually one of several, but I don’t have time to tell you the rest of them. So I ask myself, Is it time to throw in the towel on this?

I don’t want to. I can so clearly see it nestled in my backyard. These hand carved knee braces arching around windows where beautiful patchwork curtains hang. That mom and I stitched together

so many years ago, and I’ve saved them all this time for this building.

But other possibilities, whisper. There are other big dreams that I’ve held forever. I feel the preciousness of time and I know that when I get real, this project is at least a nine month project to bring to completion.

So, Here tonight with you. I’m gonna take a deep breath.

I might cry a little bit. . I think it’s time for me to stop building things. It’s time to leap into the unknown of these other dreams. It’s time to look for a new owner for this small building and for a different ending to the love story.

I don’t have any clue how. This will unfold, and I don’t have any idea how many beans of strong, healthy life remain to me. My friend Ruth just died,

so I’m ready to leap into the unknown. of other dreams and I’m letting this one go.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Kate. Kate Wilburn, church’s, wildland, and is keenly aware of legacy across Generat. Her life’s terrain is diverse from engineering and carpentry to single parenting, permacultural design and teaching. She’s found in Missoula, a place to show the beauty and practicality of living simply of creating an urban yard that is a vibrant ecosystem of perennial food for people, birds, bees, and other wild things all at the same time.

She seeks green wildness in a neighborhood like a village, even in the. You can see a photo of the jars of beans on Kate’s kitchen counter and learn more about kate@teleussomething.org. Our next storyteller is Marc Moss. Hi there. Working third shift at a late night coffee shop. I met all sorts of people.

I generally made a connection with most of them until a regular customer. Very grumpy, presented a challenge for me. I call my story third shift. Thanks for listening.

I learned how to drink coffee when I was 17, working midnight shift at a grocery store in Ohio, much like the Orange Street Food farm. Working third shift became something that I really enjoyed. The crew, I can’t, I don’t have the time to tell you how awesome they were and how weird they are still. But in those days, there were no 24 hour grocery stores.

And so at nine o’clock we’d all shuffle in, lock the doors, and they would put coffee on, and I would drink Coca-Cola or water because I hate the taste of coffee at 17. And eventually I got injured on the job and I, I had to start drinking coffee. That’s another story that I’m not telling you tonight.

tonight I’m telling you about my love affair. We’re third shift, and when I moved to Bozeman, Montana, I got another third shift job at a little coffee shop called Kinko’s. Kinko’s doesn’t exist anymore, right? I got bought out by some other company, so I can use the name. It’s not product placement. And third shift at the Bozeman.

Kinkos was great because like every Kinkos, it was located on or near a university campus. And when I was working there, I would meet all sorts of folks and the architecture students were like frantic, like outside chain smoking, waiting for their copies to be done, coming in, building these intricate models at a foam.

And, and I was like, You know, that’s gonna be really expensive. I’m thinking in my mind they come up and they, and they come to pay and the bill’s like 250 bucks. And I know that there’s students and I ask ’em like, Are you a student? And they’re like, Yeah, I’m great. And so like, ring ’em up for $75. And they’re like, What?

And I’m like, Student discount. And they’re like, Okay. Thank you.

When I worked third shift at the Kinkos in Akron, I met a lot of interesting folks also in the university campus. But the, the urban environment of the University of Akron was much different than the university or the, the Bozeman campus, whatever they’re called,

Go Grass, I guess. So, uh, I’d, I’d meet all kinds of folks, homeless folks coming in to stay out of the cold. There was a strip club about four blocks away, and so the, the strippers would come in and one of them would like sit up on the machine and copy her ass. And I’m like, Hey, that’s great. You know, clean the glass and if you break it, you bought it.

And she’s like, Don’t worry, honey. Big Wayne would show up and Big Wayne ran the strip club and he’d like make these little coupons to get in for free. So, you know, really interesting folks. But at the Bozeman Kinkos, the architecture students weren’t the only interesting folks coming in. There was a woman that came in all the time and she sort of shuffled in older woman in her fifties, Right.

Mousey looking woman, really grumpy. She’s like five foot two, sort of disheveled looking, super grumpy. And she’d come in. And in those days when you came into the, the copy shop, there was a like a little key counter. Remember those blue key counters and plug it in the machine and it counts off ICU nodding counts off how many cops?

And she’d make like four. She’d make like four copies and coming in to pay. And I did everything I could think of to try to reach her and like, and talk to her. And she was ignore. She would never say a word to me. And I’m, I’m trying to think of whatever I can think of to, to try to make a connection with her.

And I say, Hey, sweetheart, and I start flirting with her. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t, nobody does

so then I’m mean to her, right? She like walks up to pay and I walk. Ignore her. She doesn’t care. She like slams that thing on the counter like

then I’m like overly nice to her. Is everything to your liking this evening? You know, nothing. When I was a kid, you know Michael was telling that story about penny learning to ride a bike. I remember learning to ride a bike at a blazing. A huffy with a little banana seat and you know, the lightning bolt down the side and his sissy bar in the back.

And I didn’t have the cool backpack that Penny has. And, uh, my dad would like hang onto the back and, and, you know, just like Michael let go without me knowing. And, and I wrecked a lot. And because like, who needs training wheels? Like I’m a boy and. But I also like to cry and scream and yell when I got hurt.

And you know, my dad was like, Boys don’t cry. Suck it up. You know? And I would cry louder. And my aunt, the cool aunt, was like, That really must hurt. And I’m like, Yeah, it does. But I would stop crying. And I was thinking of that moment when this woman came in. Again, super grum. And I said, You seem kind of grumpy.

She goes, What? I said, Are you grumpy? She starts looking around, She’s just hurting me. You know, the machines are buzzing and you know, like, so I’m like, I gotta let go of that work. And now I’m, I’m in it like I’m committed to this. And I start to think about the bike, you know, and my aunt validating me and like acknowledging like, that must suck.

And so I said, You know what I do when I’m grumpy? I copy my face. And she’s like, What? And I’ve never done that before. And so like, take a right of hand, uh, put your head on the glass, close your eyes. Don’t go blind.

And she’s like, Hey. And she like pulls the thing up, grabs it, and I’m like, and she starts laughing. I’m like, This is great. She goes, Can we do it again? I was like, Yeah. She goes, We should make a bigger one. So I changed the size 11 by 17. She’s like, You should have one too. So we make. She’s like, I’m gonna do this some more.

I’m like, Great. I gotta go back to work. The machines back there aren’t running anymore, and if the machines aren’t running, I’m gonna get in trouble. So knock yourself out. Um, I’ll see you in a few minutes. So she’s like there for five minutes. I’m making copies of her face, enlarging, making ’em really small, different sizes of paper.

She comes back, she comes to pay, and she’s laughing. And I’m like, What’s your name? And she goes, My name’s Ruby. I said, Ruby, I’m Marc. Why are you so grumpy? And, and the copies are on me. Like, Put your purse away. She worked at the airport, third shift, second shift I guess, cuz she would always come in around two or three.

This was before nine 11, so no tsa. So I don’t know what she did at the airport, but apparently whatever it was at the end of. Was pretty slow. And so she was writing letters to her son every night and he wasn’t returning her letters and he wasn’t returning her phone calls and there was no texting in 2000 and she’s grumpy.

And I said, That sounds really lonely. And she goes, It sucks.

And she stopped coming in. I don’t know why. And what I’m hoping is, oh, because she said I’m gonna use these face copies as stationary to send to my son

And I didn’t say this, but I thought, Are you Catholic? Cause that’s a classic guilt trip, . But I didn’t say that something my mom would pull. She didn’t come back in. And what I’m, what I’m hoping is the reason she didn’t come back in is because she was writing those letters to her son and he was seeing her and he was remembering her, and he called her and he wrote her back.

And that’s all we all, all of us want is to be seen and heard and validated.

Thanks me, I’m the executive director of the non-profit organization. Tell us something. I recently hosted a tell us something event at Burning Man, where I’ve literally walked through fire with my life partner Joyce. And the cool thing is you can search the Tellis something website for Burning Man and listen to that.

Without walking through the fire yourself. We live together on Missoula’s historic North Side with a perpetual kitten. Ziggy to see one of the face copies that I made with Ruby visit tell us something.org. In our next story, Amy McAllister’s Dad dies two weeks after her mother dies. Amy visits his body in the funeral home.

And the funeral director assures her that the body he has prepared for her is indeed her father’s in a story that we call, that’s not my dad. Thanks for listening.

Amy McAllister: Both my parents passed away about, um, a few years ago, and they were both 93 when they passed away and actually doing really well until they hit about 91. Um, my mom was still going to jazzer size classes and my dad was playing golf and meeting up with his friends. Um, but at 91 it seemed like everything kind of started to fall apart and my brother and sister and I all lived in Missoula and my parents lived in Billings and it seemed like every other week, um, one of us was going down there for something.

There was broken shoulder, broken ribs, sepsis. Uh, some minor surgeries, furnace going out. So we tried everything we could to get my parents to move to Missoula and they absolutely would not do it. They insisted on living in their own home and they wanted to stay there, so they converted their basement into a, um, apartment and hired a full-time caretaker.

And then they had, um, hospice and some other organizations. And so they were able to stay in their own home and pass away. So it was about mid-November of, um, 2018, and we got a call from the hospice nurse that my mom wasn’t doing very well, and they said, If you wanna see her before she passes away, you need to come down to Billings.

So it actually took about four days for all of us to get to Billings, but we did, and we were able to spend Wednesday with my mom and then that night she passed. So my dad at that time was doing pretty well. Um, we spent Thanksgiving with him and he actually came up to Missoula for Christmas. But um, I think when he, he got back to, um, Billings in January, he just was done.

And I think what happens a lot of time. People have been together, spouses have been together for so long. My parents were married for over 70 years. Um, when one passes away, the other one passes away soon after. So this was, um, the middle of January now, and we get the same call. It’s a Friday afternoon and we get the call from the hospice people that say, Your dad is not doing very well.

And if you wanna see him, you should. To Billings when you can. And they said, but his vitals are pretty good. So he should be okay for a few days. Well, this time my sister Jane and I decide we’re gonna go the next day. It’s Friday afternoon, we’re gonna leave on Saturday. My brother’s outta the country. Um, but that night about eight 30, we got a call and my dad had died.

So the next day we leave for billings and I am super upset why my mom had the whole family around when she passed away. My dad had nobody there. So we’re talking on the way down to Billings and I say, I just feel like I need to say goodbye to dad. And Jane. My sister says, I wanna remember him how he was at Christmas and I don’t wanna see him, but I said, I think I, at the funeral home, maybe I should go in and say, So we get to billings and go over to the funeral home, and the first we meet Matthew, our mortician, and Matthew looks like, or reminds me of Lurch from the Adams family.

He’s tall, thin, kind of gaunt looking, but as most distinctive attribute is that the way he talks like lurch real low and slow. So he leads us into the office and we go over all the cremation, um, arrangements. And I asked Matthew, I said, Matthew, where’s my dad now? And he goes, He’s in the back room. Do you want us.

See him and I said, Well, Matthew, I don’t know. I said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a body in a funeral home before. Is it gonna look like my dad? And he said, Oh yeah, he’ll be a little pale, and his cheeks will be a little sunken, but it’ll look like your dad. So I said, Okay, if you’re sure. He goes, Oh, it’ll, it’ll be fine.

It’ll look like your dad. So my sister leaves and Matthew says, Can you give me about 30 minutes to get him ready? So I go out into the lobby, the waiting room, and there’s, I’m upset, but there’s two things to distract you. There are two things to read. These big giant brochures that have funeral packages and caskets.

Or the Penny Saver . So I grab the penny saver cuz I want nothing to do with the funeral stuff. And I start reading the jokes and doing the trivia. You know who played Laura Petre on Dick Van Dyke show. Oh, I know that one. You know, and Matthew comes to get me and he takes me back to this big, long, dark, creepy hallway with these three giant doors about the size.

Like let’s make a deal. And he leads me into the, into the room and quietly backs out and closes the door and I go up. To the bed, and I freak out because this guy looks nothing like my dad, . And I run out and I say, Matthew, that’s not my dad. And he looks at me real sadly, and goes, That’s your dad. And I said, Well, it doesn’t look anything.

Look like my dad. And again, he goes, That’s your dad. So, Okay. My friends keep telling me how un observant I am, and so I go back into the room and I go up to the bed and nothing. Now I really start studying my dad. Now, this man is shorter than my dad. He’s thinner than my dad. He has different coloring, and now I’m doing 360 s around the bed trying to find something familiar, age spots I’ve never seen before, a bump in his nose.

And I go to the top of his head and my dad had a pretty full head of hair. And this guy has a couple strands of hair. I’m thinking, can you lose, uh, body, lose all its hair in 18 hours? So now I’m convinced and I go back out and I find Matthew and I say, Matthew, that is not my dad. And again, he looks at me real sad, That’s your dad.

And I said, You’re telling me that man in there is Bill McAllister? And I see him go, uh, just a second and he goes into the back room and he comes back out and he. Uh, That’s not your dad. I said, I know. That is what I’ve been trying to tell you. So I said, Can you give me about 20 more minutes? So I go back out in the lobby, finish I dream a genie and Dick Van Dyke trivia.

And he comes to get me and he says, I’m really sorry about this. This has never happened before. This is really your dad. I can prove it. There’s a tag on his toe. So I say, No, just let me in and go see my dad. So I went into the door number two for the third time, and I go up to the bed and there’s my dad.

He’s looking a little pale, and his cheeks are a little sunken, but it’s definitely my dad. So I say my goodbyes to him, how much I love him and appreciated everything he did for us. And I walk home from the funeral home and about halfway home, I just start burst out laughing, thinking this could only happen to me.

So I get home and my sister and some other relatives are there, and some friends of my dad’s and my sister Jane comes up to me and says, all concerned, Oh, how did it go? And I just start laughing and she goes, What happened? So I tell them all the story of what happened in the funeral home, and especially my dad’s friends were just livid.

And I said, Really? It’s okay. It brought a little levity to this really, really hard situation for me, and it’s okay. So the next morning I have the Billings Gazette, the morning paper, and I’m going through the paper and I open up to the obituaries and who’s in there? My other dad. So I yell for Jane. I go, Jane, come here.

This is the guy they were trying to pass off his dad. So she comes in and looks at his picture. We read all about him. His name I think was Mr. Santori. It sounded like he had a really nice life, really nice family, which we were happy to read about. So I’ve told this story multiple times to a lot of different people, and some people think it’s funny, some.

Or appalled, but I really do believe that the person that would’ve gotten the biggest kick out of this story and would’ve laughed the hardest would’ve been my dad.

Marc Moss: Thanks Amy. Amy McAllister comes from a strong and loving family and has lived in Missoula for 45. She loves the variety of events offered in Missoula and was a school teacher for 32 years. To see a photo of Amy’s dad visit, tell us something. Dot org bringing us home in this episode of the Tell Us Something Podcast.

Rachel Goen on a trip to New York City with her family. And some of their international friends visits a fancy ballet at the Met after eating pizza. Rachel calls her story when letting go. Stops the show. Thanks for listening.

Great.

Rachel Gooen: All right, so it’s in 1983. I’m 13 years old and my family has a lot of international friends, and I’m not gonna get into how we have these international friends, but we do. So we have three Israeli boys staying with us and another family. Persian friends who just came from Iran. It was 1983. There was a lot of escaping from the ia.

Tolo. Coman. So my mom decides we are gonna hit New York City. And so the ages of the three Israeli boys are 10 to 16, and of this lovely Iranian family, it’s nine to 16 with their lovely mother Mary, and I’m going, and my sister Jane, who is 16, and my mom. So we hit New York City. And New York City for my mom is all about shopping.

Yeah. And so we go and we like, we’re down on the Lower East side going to all the really funky, cool places, and then we hit Midtown. We of course go to like Bloomingdale’s and FAO Schwartz, and that was kind of around when the movie Big came out and they had like the piano on the floor. So we’re all playing on the piano was super, super.

and um, we go to this amazing store called Fuchs, which back then was like the bomb in New York City. And we are like shopping bag and shopping bag and shopping bag. And my mom decides for some reason what would really top this day is if we go to a ballet at Lincoln Center. So we go in, it’s Saturday night.

She goes in and she gets tickets, and the only seats that are left are in the ninth row in Lincoln Center in the orchestra. So I don’t know if any of you have been to Lincoln Center and where the ballet is. It’s actually kind of like this. Except instead of 900 people, it has 2,500 people and it has six layers of balconies all around red velvet seated super fancy, super plush.

And so the woman looks at us, you know, and she says, Well, okay, well there are these ninth row seats if you want them. Yeah, sure. Cuz you know cash is cash. So my mom says they’re our. We decide to go across the street to a restaurant is the coolest restaurant ever. It was really known in New York City because all the waiters and waitresses roller skate.

So for us kids, it was awesome to like have them rollers skating by and have their pizza coming, and it was very, very cool. Now, this is about the time when I think I started realizing that I couldn’t eat certain foods. And I think pizza was one of them. And so we, you know, finished with our meal and we go back into Lincoln Center and, um, the lobby is just filled with.

Lovely, lovely people dripping with pearls and diamonds and Chanel is over there and Eve St. Loran is over there and Gucci is there. I mean there is bow ties and tuxedos and crushed velvet dresses and we are in jeans and t-shirts with big brown bag and FAO shorts bag and there’s 10 of us and we are just like this ragtag bunch kind of coming.

and uh, we go to the, you know, top of the theater and the usher looks at us as if like, we must be going to the wrong seats. And he says, uh, yes you are in the ninth row orchestra. So he walks us in and we like really fumble to get into all our seats cuz we have bags and people around us are just like, hmm.

Hmm. You know, looking and, you know, we’re kids and whatever. So we start to, we kind of fumble all and get in there and I start to feel this grumbling in my stomach and I’m like, , I really gotta go to the bathroom. And, uh, so you gotta remember it, 1983 in New York City. It was not a safe town, uh, at all. My mother had the fear of God.

Put into us whenever we went into New York City, you did not wear jewelry, you looked straight ahead. She marched really, really fast. And we traced after that Mama duck, as if we were all little baby ducks, afraid to get lost. And so, you know, I start whispering down the seats, you know, Um, Hey, anyone have to go to the bathroom?

um, anyone wanna go to the bathroom and no one wants to go to the bathroom with me. The line is really, really long. And, but remember, my mother, we weren’t allowed to go in elevators alone. You weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom alone, You weren’t allowed to do anything alone in New York City. And why we would go in to this glorious place to be scared shitless was always a mystery.

So, you know, I’m sitting there and I’m like, Okay, we’re not gonna be able to go to the bathroom. And you know, the Israeli boys are sitting next to me, saw Meet Elda Tie, and then on this side is Rachel, Roy, Rebecca, and Mary are Persian friends. And then my mother and my sister Jane. So, um, you know, we got Hebrew over here, we got Farsi over here, and all of a sudden, Mary and Roy and Rachel are like talking about the person in front of them and they’re like speaking in Farsi, and all of a sudden the man turns around and says in Farsi, you know, if you’re gonna talk about someone in front of them, you really should make sure they don’t know your language.

And what they were saying was, Ooh, look at the egghead in front of you. His head is so perfectly round and you know, here we come in this ragtag bunch and so we’re insulting the other patrons and everything. So the um, you know, the place that play the ballet starts and. . I, of course, more and more have to go to the bathroom.

Like I am grumbling. There’s grumbling and I’m like, Oh God, okay. I’m just gonna sit here. Just gonna sit here. It’s gonna be okay. The ballet starts. This ballet, by the way, it was not just any Saturday night, it was, um, George Bellen Sheen, who was the father of American Ballet. He had passed in April of 1983, and this was his big production, um, Bug Goku, which was a Japanese ballet, not just any Japanese ballet.

It was so perfect for a bunch of pre pubescent children to be seeing because it was an erotic sexual fantasy

So as if we weren’t really at a place already, um, the curtain rises and on either side of the stage are these big sumu wrestler men in diapers playing these flutes, which were kind of like didy dues, but they weren’t. They were just these big flutes. And the ballet is a very atonal ballet. Very uncomfortable sounding.

But what was even more uncomfortable is they started blowing the, the flutes and their cheeks would shake in their boobs, would shake in their bellies, shook in their legs, shook. And boy, we just ripped out with laughter. I mean, this was just too much for like pre pubescent or pu, you know, puberty full children, right?

The next thing that happens, Okay. It’s an erotic fantasy. I just want you to remember that with which, you know, the, um, costumes were minimal. And the next thing that happens is, is like, you know, the ballerina comes out and the first scene is about like the man and the woman meeting each other. And you know, yeah, we’ve seen female figures.

We’re used to that in America culture, no big deal. Um, but then the man comes out. And he has no shirt on and he has these really tight white tights and you can see his perfectly firm buttocks and his male package. And we just start like absolutely laughing hysterically, like ridiculously hysterical and people.

Poking my mother saying, Can you please control your children? Can you please control your children? This is not appropriate. And so we’re laughing so hard that a meet sitting next to me. Lets out a little toot. And I started laughing hysterical, and I slipped down in my seat and I let out the biggest fart ever.

This was like a base tube of fart. It was so loud. If you can imagine that when I let this fart out, every seat in Lincoln Center, all six rows, the balcony. Leaned forward like this sound lit went who? And everybody is looking and they’re like looking at me. And not only that, the conductor went like this

and I shrink into my seat and I am like, You did it in your sleep. You did it in your sleep, you did it in your sleep. And people are like, I think it was the little girl that bared . I think it was the little girl that bared. And I am just melting. I’m 13 years old, you just don’t even wanna be seen when you’re 13 and here.

2,500 people in Lincoln Center heard me. The conductor goes on. He continues with the ballet. Um, I’m not quite sure any ballet in Lincoln Center has ever been stopped by a fart before. So it’s intermission and. You know, kind of are walking out with all our bags, and I’m telling you, everyone is like, Yeah, it was definitely the little girl.

That little girl, that little girl fared. And we, we roll out the pathway of the auditorium and we are dying. And I’m dying. And we just collapse in the lobby. All of us with our bags laughing hysterically. And my sister Jane, who’s very mature, 16 years old, comes up to me and she says, If you’re gonna make it in high school,

she really said this, If you’re gonna make it in high school, you are gonna have to learn how to squeeze your buttocks tighter.

That’s what happens when you let it go at Lincoln Center

Marc Moss: Thanks, Rachel. Rachel, go Inhales from a gorgeous, lush state of New Jersey in a county where there were more cows than people. This is perhaps why it took her so long to learn the art of being cultured. She’s lived in Missoula for 25 years and loves playing in the mountains and rivers of Montana with her partner Jeremy and their pups, along with all of her dear friends in Missoula, she socializes for a living because she is a social worker.

Next week, tune in for Tell Us Something. Live from BlackRock City in 2022.

Jack Butler: The artist, the writers, the creatives, those were other people. That’s what other people did.

Sasquatch: My wife and I had spent 42 grand in cash on in vitro. That didn’t work.

Katie Condon: And

I wasn’t

just surprised.

I was

shocked.

Like there wasn’t enough room in

Kate Wilburn: my body for the blood.

It was amazing.

Tune in for those stories. On the next tell us something. Podcast.

Taylor Burbey: Hi

everyone. My name is Taylor Beby. I’m a tell us something volunteer. And I’m here to thank our sponsors. Thanks again to our title sponsor The Good Food Store. Learn more about the Good Food store@goodfoodstore.com. Thank you to our stewardship sponsor, Missoula Electric Cooperative.

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