Teen Mom 2 alum Kailyn Lowry recently visited her estranged father, Raymond, in a hospice care facility amid his battle with stage IV Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
“I went in there angry, and not really open-minded, just more so because everyone told me I would regret it and I had all these conflicting feelings,” Lowry, 33, said on the Tuesday, September 23, episode of her “Karma & Chaos” podcast. “[I] pulled into the driveway saying, ‘My dad can kiss my ass and I’m gonna tell him how I feel.’ From the time I got out of the car [and walked] to the front door, I was already crying.”
Lowry, who revealed on a July episode of her podcast that Raymond was on hospice amid his COPD battle, was overcome with emotion after they spoke from his bedside.
“He let me ask every question I had. These were my notes, and I literally titled it ‘Death Bed Questions,’” Lowry said, holding up a list she brought with her. “At the end of it he asked, ‘Do you have any more questions?’ He was having a good day, he did have his oxygen on [and] you could tell he was getting pretty winded for the longer answers.”
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She continued, “I also filmed everything from my point of view, [so] you can hear him but you can’t see him, which I think that will be good. I think that this could help somebody.”
Lowry further revealed that Raymond answered an array of questions about her upbringing and their fractured relationship. (Lowry was primarily raised by a single mother, Suzi Irwin, but moved out when she got pregnant at the age of 16.)
“I did find out when my mom shut off my cell phone to go to Texas when I was 17, if it wasn’t for the film crew, I don’t know how I would have gotten from Philadelphia airport,” she recalled. “My mom actually called my dad. My whole life, my mom said, ‘I don’t know where he is.’ My mom had his phone number the whole time [and] was in contact with him the whole time. [She] called him while I was there and said, ‘So what do you think?’”
Lowry also learned that Raymond, who was absent from her childhood, did attend “every single court date” regarding custody arrangements.
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“[He went] for the first two years, and then he got a final order that said he had to stay away from me,” she said. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that he got a court order to stay away. At that point, what could he do? … He said he tried calling my grandparents. I can’t remember if he said they hung up or wouldn’t give him any information.”
While Lowry was surprised to hear Raymond’s revelations, she does “feel lighter” after returning home from the visit.
“When I left, he was like, ‘You still look mad,’” she said. “I was, like, ‘No, it’s just a lot.’ I essentially spent 30 years of my life being so angry and so mad, and it’s not going to go away overnight. … I have no regrets [and] there are no questions I wish I asked that I didn’t ask. There was no answer that I wasn’t satisfied with. I feel lighter, I feel more at peace, I feel forgiveness for him. I think all my anger was very misplaced, and he did what he could with what he had — but he didn’t have a whole lot. … My dad was by himself and he was trying.”
Lowry added, “I’m so grateful that I was able to go, my sister was able to go [and our] aunt was able to coordinate the visit. I have no regrets at all, and I hope to go and visit him one more time before he dies. I really do.”
Lowry is now a mother of seven children. She shares son Elliott, 15, with Jo Rivera, son Lincoln, 11, with Javi Marroquin, as well as sons Lux, 8, and Creed, 5, with Chris Lopez. The podcast host later welcomed son Rio in 2022 with Elijah Scott and twins Verse and Valley in 2024.
