Work Out's Brian Peeler on Doug Blasdell's Death

AE: What were your initial thoughts and reactions?
BP: Anger. Very angry. At first I didn’t believe it. Then it was just anger. Why? Why do the good always die young? And then just grief. It’s hard for me to deal with because I never lost somebody that close to me. When I was younger, I lost my grandfather, but I really didn’t understand. It didn’t hit me like this. Doug was like my brother. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to deal with. I looked at my wife and was like “I never want to lose you. I don’t think I could handle it.” I want to be with her the rest of my life. I hope we die at the same time so neither one of us has to go through the pain. I want it to be just like “The Notebook”.

AE: But Doug was a trainer in great health…
BP: Cancer is a beast that we know something about, but not a whole lot about. And we’re always finding new things with stem cell research and everything. No matter what, shit can happen to you. You can be driving on your bicycle and get hit by an 18 wheeler. A meteor can fall out of the sky and hit you. Things happen that we are not in control of. We can only live as healthy as we can. Choices we make in life do weight out later in life. We have to do deal with those. But stuff that is out of your hand and hereditary… I mean his mother and his father had the exact same cancer and died at the exact same time in their lives. And her sister died in a car crash too young. So we don’t even know if she would have lived to 40 or if she would have had lymphoma. Maybe it was something in the water or something where they lived. It’s something we will never know.

AE: Did Doug know he was going to die?
BP: Yes. He always had the fear. He says in the episode before, “This will be my last birthday. This will be the last birthday I ever have.” He knew he was going to die. It’s painful to know and to think like that. All he wanted to do was live to be 44. To know he outlived his parents. He had such a drive to make it to that age. To beat them out, beat the odds, and live just a little bit longer. And maybe he just gave up. But I know he was fighting hard. He wasn’t going down without a fight. And he had a new outlook on life. It wasn’t about being big and muscular. It was about getting his body back to normal mode. It takes a very tragic event to make things happen sometimes.

AE: How are you coping now?
BP: There are times that I’m home and I’m alone. The dogs will bark, and I’m sitting in the bathtub, and I think maybe Doug’s there. When we were at Doug’s memorial, Don Scott spoke and said that if Doug ever died, he said he wanted to come back as a hummingbird. It’s what he always wanted to be. Several days before the memorial, I was walking outside with some bags. And there was a hummingbird. It was white with black spots on it. I’ve never seen a hummingbird like this in my entire life. It flew over to me, right in my face. I set the bags down and put my hand out. It came and landed in my hand. It sat there for about 5 seconds and then flew off again. It didn’t register with me when it happened. But when I was sitting at the memorial and Don Scott said Doug always wanted to come back as a hummingbird, my heart just dropped. I started crying.

Sometimes I believe he’s with me and watches over me. He used to always… if I got into an argument with Kate, he would always be there to talk to and help me rationalize. He was like a guy and a girl all wrapped into one. He was my counselor/therapist/best-friend/work-out partner.

AE: Who told the other trainers?
BP: I got the call that he had passed away. Then I called everybody individually. Because I got to see him the day before he passed. It was really tough to see him because he had lost about 40 – 50 pounds. He didn’t look like the Doug I knew. I needed closure to see him. It was very tough.

AE: Who took it the worst?
BP: It was difficult for the other people. I’d say Zen and Erika took it the hardest. Dre held back his emotions. He didn’t cry or anything until we went to the memorial. It finally set in. Dre and I are taught from the South to be tough and not show your emotions. I’ve more [than] in the past couple of years let my guard down, and I’m more emotional of a being. It took Dre a little bit. I consoled him and told him, “It’s all right to cry man. He was somebody close. You have to let it out.” Luckily, I’ve had Kate there for me. She’s my rock and guides me through things. We also had to deal with the death of her grandfather after Easter. There’s a lot of death in my family this year.

AE: What do you want people to know most about Doug?
BP: The one thing I would want to say is that he was the most caring individual in the world. He was, in every aspect of the word, an angel. He didn’t have to say a word to you. He didn’t have to touch you. He could just look at you and move you. His presence was ungodly. He was everything that every man on the face of this earth should want to be as a human being.