i don t have anything to live for. except maybe forgiveness. from who? from my boys. that s why you re talking to me today? exactly. yes. well, it s between you and them. i ll tell you, my take on it is you ve got some distance to make up. i know i do. i ve got a lot to make up. of the countless things keith stole from his family, resilience was not among them. aaron and zach are closer than they ve been in years. and now that they know what happened to their mother, they say they can finally mourn her passing. and focus on keeping her spirit alive for those two little granddaughters who were the center of her universe. my oldest daughter will remember. like i said, she talks about her almost every day. we have pictures of her up in her room. as my youngest gets older, we ll tell her the nascar nana story about when she was born. just never let her memory die.
making the three-hour drive home from indiana. he said i m on my way. i m probably, you know, two hours away. i said are you all right? he goes, yeah, yeah. i can tell he was in shock. the news hit zach griffith particularly hard. since coming out to his mother, his relationship with her had been strained, and now this. i guess you re just beating yourself up something terrible, you had been sideways with her. i know if we were just given more time that we would have been close again, that we would have been, you know, that mom and son duo that we were, but we just didn t have the time. it was ripped away from us. we ll never get it back. aaron, the elder son, had more of a take charge attitude. i have to take care of my brother and my dad. you have logistics. the grief. the news didn t get absorbed. it s kind of the way my brain is wired, i guess.
started digging a hole for a coy pond in the backyard. my parents come home and they re, like, what are you doing? i m, like, we re going to have a pond. were they okay with it? yeah, they were fine. they were kind of, like, this is going to be a nightmare. when aaron and zach flew the nest, they joined a motorcycle class through their church, frequently were a golf foursome with friends greg and temple. everybody that knew keith, loved him. great guy. did he become your best friend? definitely one of my best friends. temple felt that way about julie too. she had a heart of gold. she would do anything for you. she was also not afraid to tell you how it was. did she get people s feathers ruffled? yeah. but everybody loved her. after early retirement from the water company, keith found a second career as a traveling lawn mower salesmen, which left julie to spend a lot of nights alone in the house, but keith never worried for her well-being
in a safe neighborhood. their own door watched over by their beloved great dane claire. aaron s wife, ali. i know for a long time they didn t even lock their door. they would leave and go to dinner or go to town and leave the door unlocked because cleo was the guard dog. fulfilled as the griffiths lives seem to be, keith and julie remember transformed when aaron and alley brought into the world their first daughter, ari. when i had that first child, it was the greatest day of her life, i think. julie lived for my little girl. she wanted to be a part of everything that she did. and julie was there for ali when she went into labor with their second daughter, analise. her white-knuckled dash to the hospital earned julie the affectionate nickname nascar nanna. the flashers were going, and she was honking the horn. what was she saying to you? she talking to you? she said don t have a baby in my car. keep your legs crossed. don t have a baby in the car. everything seemed to
except maybe forgiveness. from who? from my boys. that s why you re talking to me today? exactly. yes. well, it s between you and them. i ll tell you, my take on it is you ve got some distance to make up. i know i do. i ve got a lot to make up. of the countless things keith stole from his family, resilience was not among them. aaron and zach are closer than they ve been in years. and now that they know what happened to their mother, they say they can finally mourn her passing. and focus on keeping her spirit alive for those two little granddaughters who were the center of her universe. my oldest daughter will remember. like i said, she talks about her almost every day. we have pictures of her up in her room. as my youngest gets older, we ll tell her the nascar nana story about when she was born. just never let her memory die. that s all for this edition of dateline extra. i m tamron hall.