EP10 Ed Paluch: Navigating the Grief of Both of His Brothers' Suicides

How does the devastating loss of not one, but two siblings to suicide change a person? It's a question that no one ever wants to face but is the heartbreaking reality for our guest, Ed Paluch.  Ed bravely opens up about the tragic passing of his 2 younger brothers, Greg and Andrew, and the profound impact their loss had on his life and his mother's. With raw emotion, he shares about Greg's battle with depression, Andrew's struggle with mental illness, and his mother's indescribable pain. As we remember Greg, his infectious laughter and physical humor bring a poignant reminder of the vibrant lives behind the statistical face of suicide.

Suicide's ripple effect is far-reaching, altering connections and dynamics in unexpected ways.  Hear Ed's insights on how Greg's death affected his bond with his remaining brother Andrew and triggered his active involvement in suicide prevention initiatives. We also examine the double-edged sword of social media and the urgent need for improving mental health resources for today's youth. In the midst of grief, Ed's reflections are a wake-up call to the importance of awareness and intervention in mental health issues. Join us for this deeply personal journey that underscores the enduring presence of those we lose and their continuous shaping of our lives.

If you or someone you know is dealing contemplating suicide, dial or text to 988.
https://988lifeline.org/

https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/suicide-prevention-month

https://www.amazon.com/This-Night-self-care-impacted-suicidal/dp/0692475907

https://sprc.org/author/annemarie_matulis/

https://www.instagram.com/avoiceatthetable/?hl=en

Transcript

Scott: 0:00

This episode deals with sensitive topics of suicide and mental health. Although there won't be graphic details, please know that the discussion will venture into areas that may not be suitable for children. Therefore, parental discretion is strongly advised. The guest today is Ed Paluch. He's the oldest of three brothers. Tragically, his youngest two brothers, greg, who I've been friends with from elementary school through college, and the younger brother, andrew, both took their own lives. September is suicide prevention awareness month. Ed has been kind enough and brave enough to join me to talk about his brothers, their passing and how he is carrying on their memories. Ed, thank you for joining us.

Ed: 0:38

Very happy to be here.

Scott: 0:39

You know you've obviously gone through this more than once, unfortunately. Yeah, you start with Greg first. Were there any signs of depression for either of the guys you know? Early in life, that kind of stand out to you now.

Ed: 0:49

Yeah, not so much early in life with them. I guess we'll start with Greg. You know, after he got out of college he was a licensed chiropractor and he decided he didn't want to practice and be in that, you know, trying to collect insurance and what not medical insurance. So he moved out to California to try and be a movie star and he actually had some little bit roles in some movies. When he was doing that, you know, I kind of started to notice that he was starting to isolate himself a bit. He would come back home and stay with my mom every couple of years and sometimes he wouldn't even tell us that he was coming back. So, you know, I would find out later that he had come and visited and we hadn't gotten to see him. Really, you know, that was always a tough thing, you know, and talking to a lot of his friends afterwards like yourself he did, you know they lost touch with him. He kind of self isolated, you know, just went down a path where I guess he couldn't see himself coming back from, unfortunately.

Scott: 1:50

Yeah, I remember you know, we had gotten out of college and he was in chiropractor school in Chicago and all the guys from high school you know five or six of them all decided to go out and visit him for like three or four days and I couldn't make the trip because I was driving cross country with my dad. We had had this thing planned we were coming back from Idaho and we were going cross country and that always got to me. I was always bummed about that in general, that I missed it. But then after I heard you know, heard the news about Greg, we were happy that he went out there and tried to become a chiropractor and then turn around and try to do the acting. You know it was a kooky Greg thing to do. Yes, greg was always the kind of guy I mean. Some of the fondest memories I have of Greg are just doing crazy things, yeah.

Ed: 2:32

And he was very gregarious, you know. He was Absolutely Fun to be around.

Scott: 2:37

My favorite memory of him is we were in like eighth grade. He slept over my house. The cool guy sleepovers in junior high. And he slept over my house on New Year's Eve and my mother put out some treats and stuff for us and we, you know, popped on MTV because that was pretty much the only thing you could do as a cool guy back in eighth grade and my mom hopped at the shower and was like you guys be good boys. We're like yeah, sure, whatever.

Scott: 2:58

And he picked up his pillow and smashed me in the head with his pillow and it exploded and every single feather that was in that pillow came out. There had to be a million birds worth of feathers in my living room and it was a good four inches on the ground. And he sat there and that laugh he's had, that laugh that was just amazingly infectious and just laughed his head off and I was freaking out. I'm like so I grabbed a trash bag and I'm trying to scoop these feathers back and my mother came out and told her she was like what the hell are you freaking out? And he just laughed at her. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Never forget that as long as I live.

Ed: 3:36

He was big into physical humor type stuff too. Yes, yes, he would always kind of love you when you weren't expecting it.

Scott: 3:43

Oh yeah, he would give you the dooper. I'm not really sure where that came from, but you'd be walking next to him and all of a sudden he would just kick you right in the ass for no reason. What the hell happened. How old was Greg when he passed?

Ed: 3:57

He was 40, seven years ago, I think he was about 45 or so yeah, that's crazy.

Scott: 4:06

I remember Vaughn called me, told me and I was just like that's no no, right, if you can't believe yeah. And that just seems to be the standard answer when anybody you hear has done this. I can't believe it. No way, not him, not her. How'd your family react? How was your mom about it? And obviously just destroyed.

Ed: 4:25

My mom is still destroyed over him. Unfortunately, he was staying with her and she's the one who found him. Oh, I guess that just adds to the, you know, another layer to it. Yeah, you know she's. She's always struggled over the years with that and you know, obviously now with with the Andrew, it just kind of brings it all back around for her again. Yeah, and your mom's such a sweet woman. Yeah, she is. She's been through a lot. Yeah, unfortunately, with Andrews mental illness he really wasn't able to work or anything. So she was fully supporting him and, oh really, um, because of his mental illness he became not that great to deal with, you know. So you know that just adds a level of complexity on it for her. So, yeah, Andrew go to Syracuse.

Ed: 5:20

He, he went to Syracuse for one year. Okay, he got in a bar fight where somebody hit him with a beer bottle and ripped his face off just about. Oh my god. Yeah, I do remember that, Okay after that he he went to University of Miami and then he, pretty much you know he stayed down in Miami Beach after that.

Ed: 5:40

What's like a club promoter at one point or he was trying yeah, he was trying to be like a, like a promoter, you know, set up party promoter, that type of thing. He's in that whole Miami scene. Yeah, one of his favorite things to do was to bring out his photo album and show everybody all the pictures of him with the different Celebrities.

Scott: 5:58

Yeah, I remember seeing the picture with puff Daddy.

Ed: 6:01

Yeah, exactly, yeah, you, you pretty much name it. You know Miami's a really happening scene for celebrities, so he really, you really met a lot of people.

Scott: 6:11

So you said you know that he struggled with mental illness. Was that diagnosed later on?

Ed: 6:15

So we couldn't even get him to go see the general practitioner. He would not go see a doctor for anything. You know, if we tried, kind of like I said before, you know, he would turn things on us. Yeah, it's always Very difficult when you have an adult that Refuses to get help. This very look. You know there isn't a lot you can do, unfortunately.

Scott: 6:39

Yeah, yeah, you know you'd mentioned that he had isolated as well.

Ed: 6:44

He just stopped coming home to stay to Miami and kind of did his own thing yeah correct and you know, like I said, was really with his mental state, was really unable to work and, you know, just Just continued to further isolate and just think that you know people were coming to get him in that type of thing.

Scott: 7:04

Yeah, oh my gosh. So he, his passing was relatively recent. It was under end of July. Yeah, I did July. Okay, yeah, and did you get a phone call? Is anybody even in contact? I mean, how did you find out so like?

Ed: 7:19

yeah, so that's, that's quite a story there. On a Thursday night I think it was a Thursday night my wife Paula noticed that she had a voicemail, so she looked at. You know, on Apple you can see the transcription of the message and it was from the Miami-Dade coroner's office. Oh my God. So at that point we're like oh my God. And that night I started calling the coroner's office and they run 24 hours but there's no one there that'll talk to you at night. And then we were trying to call the police department and they gave us a name of a couple detectives, but they wouldn't tell us anything. So finally, later the next day, we finally talked to an investigator from the coroner's office who gave us a rundown of what had happened. So that wasn't a fun experience by any means.

Scott: 8:13

No, just the anxiety of waiting. You know something's going wrong, but you Exactly yeah.

Ed: 8:18

It wasn't a fun night.

Scott: 8:19

I can't believe that they. I know they have jobs to do and they do great jobs, but it's gotta be. They have to understand what the family's going through as well too. Right.

Ed: 8:28

Yeah, I can't imagine what you're saying, what it is for those first responders, especially in an active community like Miami, but I didn't get a call back from a detective for almost a month. Oh my God.

Scott: 8:43

Yeah, until you found out what happened, or until, like you had found out what happened and then further information.

Ed: 8:49

Yeah, so you know, the coroner told us some of the details from the police report, but I wanted to hear, you know, there was other things he couldn't tell me. So I, you know, obviously wanted to talk to the detectives and, you know, get a little bit of closure there.

Scott: 9:05

Yeah, got it, and it took that long to get the information. Oh man, I'm sorry.

Ed: 9:10

I'm actually flying down there next week to try and see how his condo is, because he had started like a small fire. So I think things are a mess down there. You know, same kind of thing trying to get the property manager to talk to me or let me know what's going on. They just nobody responds.

Scott: 9:30

Yeah, you know, without obviously getting into details, you said that he started a fire. Was that method or no?

Ed: 9:37

No, okay, no, but he just felt like setting a fire and yeah, my guess is he thought he must have had a break and must have thought people were gonna be coming through the door Adam or something. So he started the fire and then he proceeded to die by suicide Gosh.

Scott: 9:54

I'm sorry. Yeah, You've been amazingly brave on social media, you know posting stuff, Greg's anniversary and making sure that people are aware of mental illness. And how do you feel having those two brothers go through such hard times and yeah, you know, I just feel, you know, awful and empty.

Ed: 10:17

You know it's something that's, you know, extremely hard to reconcile. But, like you said, I, you know I do what I can to try and get the message out that mental illness is no different than having the flu or cancer or any other kind of affliction or illness. It's not something that should be hidden or, you know, feel like that you're ashamed to talk about. Yeah, you know, the brain is just one part of the body that has to be taken care of, like the rest of it, you know.

Scott: 10:50

Yeah, yeah, you know it's a shame that we still, to this day, have that kind of a stigma about mental illness. Yes, it's nice that you know as many people as possible are still trying to help and get over that, and that's what we're trying to do, you know. Do here today. Yes, in a previous episode we discussed about one of my other friends who had also taken her own life, and I went through a really deep, deep depression about four or five years after college and she saved my life. The only reason why I never moved forward with any other plans was because I saw the impact that this had on everyone. Yeah, I felt the impact of the loss and I couldn't do that to anybody else. Mm-hmm, you know my issues at that time were not. I didn't feel that they were as big as hurting all these other people and I got lucky. You know there were a lot of people out there, your brothers included, that weren't.

Ed: 11:39

Right, I'm guessing that your strong relationship with your wife and, you know, with your other friends and family probably really helped as well. You know, yeah, yeah, it's all about connection and having Having people to talk to that you can talk to openly with. Yeah, you know people that you trust. Unfortunately, not everybody has that.

Scott: 12:01

Yeah, I think you made a great point about the isolation. You know, in both your brother's instances, isolation was the key for them to. You know, maybe shut that off, yeah, and not have to worry about, you know, hurting Absolutely, you know, for folks listening out there, I think you know, when you start to see someone isolating and you know that they are going through some rough times, that isolation is a huge, huge tell. It's a huge giveaway that something's going on, yeah. Then comes the challenge of trying to unisolate them. You know, trying to find your way to get back into their life, forget somebody back into their life, and it's, yeah, that's got to be a rough battle.

Ed: 12:33

Right, because when someone doesn't want to be engaged I've gone through it twice now, you know I still haven't figured out how to, how to get around that. Oh, you know, I always try and show unconditional love to all my family and friends and just have that door open, but unfortunately you can't always go in there with a battering ram yourself. Yeah, so I just try and be available and let people know that they're loved and that I'm here to talk. We're here to talk.

Scott: 13:04

What was Andrew's feelings towards Greg's passing?

Ed: 13:07

He didn't have a good reaction to Greg's passing. Yeah, he turned the blame on me actually. Oh my God, sorry. After that occurred we didn't talk for a few years. I had to. You know, for my own mental health I had to separate a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

Scott: 13:25

Rightfully so yeah.

Ed: 13:28

And you know he. You know, unfortunately my mom really took the brunt of it as well, because you know she kept talking to him and you know he would blame her as well when not an easy thing.

Scott: 13:38

No, I can't imagine your mom. Is she getting help? How's she doing?

Ed: 13:44

When Greg had passed, my wife and I became very active in some suicide prevention movements and, like you said, you know we've done walks and you know monthly tabletop discussions. I was on the board of a great group called the Taunton Community Services Incorporated and Amory Matulaitis is like a ground break in the industry for suicide prevention. One of the folks I met through there, steven Palm. He lost his daughter, casey, to suicide so he and his wife started a foundation and you know, as part of this whole group we commissioned an author and we've put you know thousands of emotional well-being books in public schools and you know things like that because that's really where you want to catch. It is when kids are young and just build those skills in them, you know, to cope and to have self-worth and to be able to talk about things.

Scott: 14:50

Yeah, I'll make sure I put all of those folks in the show notes too, so that people can check that out.

Ed: 14:55

Yeah, I forwarded an article to you on Steven. I can get you some stuff on Ann Marie as well, please do Thank you. So back to my mom now. So I used to bring her to those monthly tabletop meetings and she would typically feel worse after going to them, but she does have a great counselor that she does telehealth appointments with. That's a super support, you know, and just her getting help herself was a huge step.

Scott: 15:23

So yeah, after going through the research for these two shows, you know, I sat down, I looked at my own daughter and you can't imagine being a parent and having to watch your kid go through that and heartbreak and to your point, we've had a child that has had multiple suicide attempts and it's just something that leaves a hole in you that can never be repaired.

Scott: 15:46

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I used the word interesting very loosely. It's interesting when we were younger. I think you're three years old, I mean, I think you were when I was a freshman.

Scott: 15:56

You were like a senior. You know, back when we were kids you didn't bring up Suicide, exactly because if you brought up suicide, people thought you were promoting it as opposed to trying to stop it. And it'd be nice to see Kids learning about the impacts that this has and that there's always somebody out there to talk to them. Much sooner Then we learn. My daughter kind of got traumatized. Poor kid on the bus next to her threw up next to her and poor kid Got super traumatized. But right, you know, she met with the guidance counselor and then there's a resource officer and yeah, and we didn't have that grow it up, we had one person that was in a room and they just stuck a band-aid on you and kicked you back into the class.

Ed: 16:32

So but again, on the flip side, with all the kids have, that we didn't have is all this social media. It can, while social media I like you, I find it nice that it connects me with People that I went to you know high school, with their childhood friends. But a lot of the stuff that floats around on social media is really detrimental to kids and their mental health?

Scott: 16:54

Yeah, it, I was looking up some statistics and you know you think that over the years, science and medicine have gotten better, therapeutical access has gotten more prevalent and you'd think that that number would come down. But I think you know a number I was looking at was like from 1996 when one of my friends, heather, committed suicide. It, I think you know college age students. It was like 31,000 had lost their lives and then in 2022 that number went up to like 49,500. Right, that's, that's a 50% jump. I mean that's insanity, right, literally and figuratively, but right, 50% jump with better Technology even though there have been gains.

Ed: 17:29

Unfortunately, our mental health system is still just very inadequate. You know, having gone through it with various family members and stuff, it's just yeah, it's tough. It's really tough. If I could just say really quick, because I've done this before and and someone was nice enough to correct me but we don't say committed suicide because they didn't commit a crime, we just say died by suicide.

Scott: 17:56

Okay, thank you. Yes, and that absolutely makes way more sense. And you said you've gone through it with one of your children. How has it changed your parenting? You obviously having a child go through it changed your parenting, but you know, with Greg and Andrew probably changes it as well. So make you more cautious or, you know, overly paranoid.

Ed: 18:13

It definitely makes us really paranoid. Yeah, it's like your adrenaline is always Going because you're just worried. You know it's a hard thing.

Scott: 18:23

It's got to be tough, you know you kind of walking on eggshells, you know right, did I get too mad? Did I get say something I shouldn't have?

Ed: 18:29

and it definitely changes your parenting style.

Scott: 18:33

Yeah, yeah for us our group of friends that were right there in college that had gone through it. It definitely changed us but it made us grow up so much quicker. We to this day Changes that I made in my life in 1996. I see those and you know they come through in my parenting. Now I'm sure everybody else kind of sees that. You said you've done walks. I have not done a walk, have been meaning to, but it's more so that I'm just chubby and lazy. But I do intend on doing some. What's the atmosphere like there?

Ed: 19:05

So most of the people at these walks have directly lost a loved one, so they tend to be pretty somber. But I would like to think at the same time a little bit hopeful of making things better for the future and hopefully preventing it from happening to others.

Scott: 19:27

I just think of that. There's got to be some sort of it's overshadowed by the sadness, but some sort of enthusiasm that you have to be hopeful for that we're doing the right thing. We're doing something, we're getting better, slowly but truly. We're going to try to get better at handling this. Like myself, I didn't go out and do one. I should have done one. It's been doing 27 years since I lost my first friend. It's for Greg, seven or eight years now. Yeah, I always felt that I should do more and hopefully this will be the start of helping to do a little bit more.

Ed: 19:59

But you know what? Yeah, you're doing. This podcast is a great thing.

Scott: 20:03

So hopefully we can get that message out. Is there anything that you want to add about Greg or Andrew or your experience?

Ed: 20:10

I mean just in general, mental health now has its own 911. You can dial 988 or text to 988 and get some compassionate help. So that's a huge thing and there are a lot of good resources out there which, again, I can forward to you and maybe you can share. Yeah, Absolutely.

Scott: 20:32

Well, and I want to thank you again for your kindness and your bravery today and just in general in life, dealing with what you've gone through, what your family's gone through, and being a leader in helping others be aware, and hopefully we can put a stop to this as much as we can. I really appreciate you being here and I wish you all the best with everything.

Ed: 20:51

Yeah, and I really appreciate you asking me to join you. This is a really cool thing that you're doing and, of course, it's really nice to catch up with you as well.

Scott: 21:02

You were one of the big brothers that didn't really beat us up, but you would but occasionally poke the bear with Greg and beat Greg up in front of us, just to embarrass him a little.

Ed: 21:10

You know, like you said, we had. We had kind of a physical relationship, but not, definitely not abusive.

Scott: 21:16

So what a big brother's supposed to do?

Ed: 21:17

Yeah, right, I loved him very much and, like back when we were in high school, it was just just so awesome Having him on the us, being on the tennis team together and able to do that type of stuff, and yeah great times yeah.

Scott: 21:33

Yeah, he's a good guy and intro us to. Yeah, thank you, they're missed every day. Well, thank you again, ed. Thanks.