Lydia Plath on brother Joshua’s death: ‘I was in the car when it happened’
Welcome To Plathville star Lydia Plath recently appeared on the The Unplanned Podcast this week. During the course of the 80+ minute podcast, Lydia opened up about a wide range of topics — from her marriage to Zac Wyse, to the death of her 17-month-old brother Joshua when she was just four years old.
Below is the full podcast. The episode is broken down into chapters, which you can find at the bottom of the video, or you can click the links in the description.
KIM PLATH ON THE DEATH OF SON JOSHUA
As Welcome To Plathville viewers are likely aware, the Plath family suffered a tragic loss in 2008.
While the family was outside transplanting fruit trees, Kim Plath accidentally ran over her 17-month-old son Joshua in a Suburban.
“I lived in Hell on earth,” Kim Plath later wrote in a blog post on the Plath family website. “I woke up every morning and functioned. But just barely. I wanted to die.”
Kim expressed her gratitude for how her husband Barry treated her during the very difficult times after Joshua’s passing:
I thought of the accusations I would have thrown at Barry if the situation had been reversed. I knew what would have happened if Barry ever said anything like that to me. I was so fragile and had totally lost my will to live. I would have just curled up and died. He never did. He never even hinted at anything like that. He was strong. He just loved me.
Kim was eventually able to heal enough to move on with her life and find joy again — thanks in large part to Barry and God. “God has been so faithful to our family for getting us through such a horrific event,” Kim wrote. “He has indeed fully restored our joy. And we are forever grateful!”
LYDIA PLATH ON THE DEATH OF BROTHER JOSHUA
During Lydia Plath’s appearance on The Unplanned Podcast, she suggested the Plath family — Kim especially — didn’t really deal with, or talk about, Joshua’s death for a long time.
“Honestly, I think that has more to do with my parents’ divorce than the show,” Lydia said, before revealing that Joshua’s passing was taboo to talk about.
I think because our household wasn’t necessarily one to just talk about everything and be vulnerable when that happened, we didn’t know how to talk about it. And especially with it, you know, being in the hands of my mom, we weren’t going to dare talk about it around her.
So, I think yeah, definitely with us not talking about the hardest thing in our childhood, it kind of just bred that in general. Like, we just don’t talk about hard things. And I can’t imagine how that affected my parents about just, like, not facing the hard things, not talking about the hard things, and kind of having to shut up your emotions a little bit because it’s too painful to feel again after something like that.
“It’s so sad because I can see it in my mom sometimes,” Lydia continued. “Does she know how to connect, and how to feel, and how to know her emotions and all those things?…At times I can be, like, ‘Can’t you just see this?’ And other times I’m, like, I can imagine she can’t because she’s had to shut that up because it’s too painful.”
Lydia then iterated how she felt Joshua’s passing should have been talked about more in the years after he passed. “I think the hardest part for me as I’ve grown up was how little he was acknowledged,” Lydia confessed. “I don’t think I visited his grave until I was like nine because it was just too hard to go back to.”
“I remember very vividly when I was still four talking, like asking questions about Joshua to my dad instead of my siblings,” Lydia revealed. “We started talking about it, but then mom walked in the room and he was, like, ‘We can’t talk about this anymore because she was there, and we just couldn’t talk about it around her.’ So the one time I remember trying to talk about it I couldn’t.”
In contrast, Lydia fondly recalled a time more recently when she suggested she and her mother Kim “grab lunch and go have lunch with Joshua.” She described the lunch as a “super fun time” before clarifying.
“It was fun in the sense of just kind of sitting there kind of picnic style and having her reminisce with me.” Lydia said she didn’t have a lot of memories of Joshua and wanted to be “brought into who he was before everything.”
LYDIA WAS IN THE CAR WHEN JOSHUA DIED
Lydia Plath also talked about the day Joshua died. “I remember that afternoon he was sleeping on his blankie out in the sun,” Lydia recalled.
Unfortunately, Lydia also has very clear memories of what happened later.
“Every detail of the accident I remember too well,” she said.
More of what Lydia recalls about the accident:
I was in the car when it happened…My mom, she like freaked out, got out, pulled him out from under the car, and then her and all my siblings ran to the house to grab the phone.
Isaac and I…were in the car. I got out. I saw him, and I just — it’s terrible. So I go…back in the car and I just told Isaac, I was like, “Don’t look. Just get out the other door. We got to go.”
So those details I remember too well. But I am blessed to remember some moments of his childhood, too.
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
