Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #888 Finding the Words with Colin Campbell

Transcript

#888 Finding the Words with Colin Campbell · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:08
Speaker 1: How often have you struggled to know what to say
0:11
Speaker 1: when someone close to you is going through grief at.
0:14
Speaker 2: The loss of a loved one?
0:16
Speaker 3: What do you say?
0:18
Speaker 1: How do you convey your compassion, your awareness of the
0:23
Speaker 1: enormous loss. This podcast contains some mature themes. Listener discretion
0:32
Speaker 1: is advised. I've heard myself say there are just no words.
0:37
Speaker 1: So many times many people have chosen to say nothing
0:40
Speaker 1: at all because well, what's the right thing to say?
0:45
Speaker 1: Or everything happens for a purpose, or they're in a
0:49
Speaker 1: better place right now. Colin Campbell is the author of
0:54
Speaker 1: Finding the Words. It's a book about working through profound
0:58
Speaker 1: loss with hope and purpose, and he makes the argument
1:02
Speaker 1: that the way our society treats grief is not just backward,
1:06
Speaker 1: it's cruel. He of all people knows. In twenty nineteen, Colin,
1:14
Speaker 1: his wife Gail, and their two teenage kids were driving
1:17
Speaker 1: late one night when a drunk and high driver going
1:20
Speaker 1: almost one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour tea boned them.
1:25
Speaker 1: Colin and Gail survived, their two children, Ruby and.
1:29
Speaker 2: Hart did not. How does anyone live through that?
1:36
Speaker 3: After that?
1:38
Speaker 1: But perhaps just as important to discuss, how are we
1:42
Speaker 1: to best support a friend, a colleague, a brother, a sister,
1:46
Speaker 1: a grieving mother or father who literally does not know
1:51
Speaker 1: how to go on after a tragic or profound loss.
1:56
Speaker 3: Life brings grief.
1:58
Speaker 1: That's a human reality, especially if we've loved well. I
2:02
Speaker 1: recorded today's conversation with Colin and how he survived such
2:06
Speaker 1: a loss about three weeks ago. Just last week, my
2:11
Speaker 1: own family experienced tragedy. My nephew, Logan died by suicide.
2:19
Speaker 1: He had just turned twenty with the best and kindest
2:25
Speaker 1: of intentions. I heard people say there are no words,
2:28
Speaker 1: over and over and over again to me. In his book,
2:34
Speaker 1: Colin says there are no words is the perfect conversation killer.
2:40
Speaker 1: It immediately ends any chance of a dialogue about grief.
2:43
Speaker 1: It's telling the mourner that we can't really discuss their
2:46
Speaker 1: grief because there are no words that would be applicable.
2:49
Speaker 1: This empty phrase encapsulates all that is wrong in how
2:52
Speaker 1: our society handles grief. This is perhaps the most powerful
2:59
Speaker 1: and employ in conversation that we have ever had on
3:02
Speaker 1: the Happy Families podcast, and it offers a far more
3:06
Speaker 1: practical and helpful approach to grief to what we normally
3:10
Speaker 1: see It's an important discussion and one that we need,
3:15
Speaker 1: and we're breaking format. This is not a conversation for
3:19
Speaker 1: the time poor parent who just wants answers now. This
3:23
Speaker 1: is a conversation that we need to have.
3:28
Speaker 2: And it will take as long as it takes. Please
3:32
Speaker 2: join me.
3:33
Speaker 3: We'll be right.
3:33
Speaker 1: Back, Colin. Thanks for joining me for this conversation. Before
3:40
Speaker 1: we talk about what happened. I'd really like to honor
3:43
Speaker 1: your family to me, they're the main show in your life.
3:46
Speaker 1: They're the main show in your book, even though it's
3:48
Speaker 1: a book about grief. Can you tell me please about
3:51
Speaker 1: your wife and your children.
3:54
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, and thank you for having me both the way, Justin,
3:56
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. So my wife is is a comedy
4:02
Speaker 3: writer and also now a comedy director for television. So
4:06
Speaker 3: she's very funny and humor has always been part of
4:11
Speaker 3: our relationship in our lives, and we raised Ruby and
4:16
Speaker 3: Heart to be they love a good joke as well.
4:21
Speaker 3: So it was a very it was a very fun,
4:23
Speaker 3: loving and comedic centric family. And so heart Heart I
4:31
Speaker 3: always think of him as like a clown. He was
4:35
Speaker 3: just a performer. He would just embody these characters who
4:39
Speaker 3: were always outrageous, totally over the top, almost alien like,
4:45
Speaker 3: and they were hilarious. Ever since he was a little kid,
4:48
Speaker 3: he would just play these characters, and he was known
4:51
Speaker 3: for them on the school yard, so people would request them,
4:53
Speaker 3: so like, oh, you know, can you play so and so?
4:55
Speaker 3: And he would become these characters and they're all larger
4:59
Speaker 3: than life and ridiculous. And it started with Ruby because
5:03
Speaker 3: she was the director. So she initially would put him
5:07
Speaker 3: into clothes, costumes, wigs, dresses, heels, and send him into
5:11
Speaker 3: the living room to perform for us.
5:12
Speaker 2: The hell he is Ruby Yah.
5:17
Speaker 3: Ruby's three years and one day older than Heart, so
5:20
Speaker 3: the birthday was one day apart, so so hers was
5:24
Speaker 3: March twenty ninth and his was March thirtieth, so three
5:27
Speaker 3: years and a day later. And they were an amazing team.
5:32
Speaker 3: And they squabbled, of course they squabbled, but they also
5:36
Speaker 3: loved each other and they were extraordinarily kind. And so
5:41
Speaker 3: Ruby was an artist and Heart was her biggest fan.
5:44
Speaker 3: Everything she did he thought was just amazing. And he
5:47
Speaker 3: was so earnest and honest with her, and she'd show him,
5:50
Speaker 3: you know, a drawling and he would just be like,
5:52
Speaker 3: oh my god, Ruby, that is amazing. It's just like beautiful.
5:56
Speaker 3: See this fourteen year old boy just gushing over his
5:59
Speaker 3: big sister's artwork. And she was bullied in middle school.
6:06
Speaker 3: She had a hard time. She was struggling with OCD
6:09
Speaker 3: and depression, and she was like she became a target
6:14
Speaker 3: for anybody that wanted to bully somebody because she seemed
6:17
Speaker 3: so vulnerable right in middle school kids, they attacked the
6:22
Speaker 3: vulnerable kids. But then something beautiful happened. She she owned
6:27
Speaker 3: and embraced her own sexuality. She came out. She became
6:30
Speaker 3: as proud. I call her a lesbian warrior for social
6:33
Speaker 3: justice because she was very social justice minded. And she
6:38
Speaker 3: became so cool and so confident that not only did
6:41
Speaker 3: all the bullying stop, but in fact, people bullying other
6:45
Speaker 3: people stopped around her because she'd be like, knock it off,
6:48
Speaker 3: don't bully that little kid just because he's a nerd,
6:50
Speaker 3: and they wouldn't because she was so cool. And that
6:54
Speaker 3: was a beautiful thing to see. To see her come
6:56
Speaker 3: into her own it was quite extraordinary.
6:59
Speaker 1: As I listened to you describe your children and your wife,
7:01
Speaker 1: it sounds, I mean, it really sounds like the perfect family.
7:04
Speaker 1: The white picket Fence the smiling children. It sounds so
7:08
Speaker 1: it sounds so blissful. It sounds like.
7:10
Speaker 3: It's well the dream. Yes, except there was that struggle
7:13
Speaker 3: with OCD and depression that was very serious. So that
7:16
Speaker 3: was suicidality and it was not all bliss for sure,
7:22
Speaker 3: But luckily at the very end of her life she
7:24
Speaker 3: did come out of that. You know, we've got the
7:25
Speaker 3: great medication, the great therapists, and then it was it
7:29
Speaker 3: really was, to my mind, I had the greatest family
7:33
Speaker 3: in the world. My kids were the coolest. Honestly, that's
7:36
Speaker 3: how I felt. My kids are the coolest kids in
7:38
Speaker 3: the world. My wife's the coolest waife in the world. Yeah,
7:41
Speaker 3: and that sounds absolutely.
7:43
Speaker 1: The way you say it with the smile just makes
7:45
Speaker 1: it even more real. Colin June twelfth, twenty nineteen, It
7:52
Speaker 1: must be a date that creates enormous emotions for you.
7:55
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about the events of that day?
7:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, way, the evening leading up to it was
8:03
Speaker 3: sort of the apogey of this perfect, boastful family because
8:06
Speaker 3: we were on our way to Joshua Tree. It's one
8:08
Speaker 3: of our favorite places on earth, the four of us.
8:12
Speaker 3: We love scrambling these amazing rock formations out in the
8:14
Speaker 3: high Desert. It's like two and a half hours east
8:16
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles, very sparsely populated, extraordinary vistas in every direction.
8:22
Speaker 3: It's just really beautiful, beautiful place. And we had just
8:26
Speaker 3: put down an offer in a house like a little
8:28
Speaker 3: a getaway shack, we called it, on the side of
8:32
Speaker 3: the hill with amazing views. So the house is very simple,
8:35
Speaker 3: but the views were extraordinary. That's all we really wanted,
8:38
Speaker 3: and all four of us loved it, and we were
8:39
Speaker 3: so excited. It was like a dream come true. We
8:42
Speaker 3: could actually have our own place out there in the desert.
8:44
Speaker 3: And we were driving there and it was wonderful. It
8:47
Speaker 3: was like the school. It just ended the school year,
8:49
Speaker 3: it ended Ruben Hart's work was all done. They were thrilled.
8:53
Speaker 3: We were thrilled. And on the way, a drunken high
8:56
Speaker 3: driver going ninety miles an hour tee boned the car
9:00
Speaker 3: and Ruby and Hartt were killed in the backseat, and
9:03
Speaker 3: Gail and I were wounded, but not that seriously. Certainly,
9:06
Speaker 3: it was surreal, how okay we were compared to the
9:10
Speaker 3: fact that our children were gone.
9:12
Speaker 1: It sounds like you've just climbed the mountain. It sounds
9:15
Speaker 1: like everything was there and in one unexpected second, it's not.
9:22
Speaker 1: There are so many different questions that I have to
9:27
Speaker 1: describe or ask you to describe the aftermath of what's happened.
9:31
Speaker 1: What I'm most interested in when I think about how
9:34
Speaker 1: I would react as a father with six daughters. How
9:38
Speaker 1: do you I don't know if traverse is the right word,
9:41
Speaker 1: but I'll use it. How do you traverse the days
9:43
Speaker 1: and the weeks following the crash? How do you walk
9:45
Speaker 1: into the house for the first time? How do you
9:48
Speaker 1: walk past their bedroom for the first time.
9:50
Speaker 2: It's the little things.
9:51
Speaker 1: How do you how do you sit down at the
9:52
Speaker 1: dining table with Gail and have a meal for the
9:56
Speaker 1: first time, knowing that this is the near reality that
10:01
Speaker 1: you don't have your kids anymore.
10:03
Speaker 3: The terror is the first thing that comes to mind.
10:05
Speaker 3: We were terrified to walk back into our house coming
10:09
Speaker 3: back from the hospital, and that was surprising to me.
10:12
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't understand why I was so scared.
10:16
Speaker 1: I'd want to go, I'd want to go and check
10:18
Speaker 1: into a hotel. I can't imagine walking into the house
10:20
Speaker 1: and feeling the emptiness.
10:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's interesting. It's like, and I know some
10:27
Speaker 3: people who sell their home after they lose their child.
10:30
Speaker 3: But in a way we couldn't because ruby and heart
10:34
Speaker 3: stuff were there. Ruby was their heart, was there, our memories.
10:36
Speaker 3: They grew up in that house, they were born in
10:38
Speaker 3: that house, and so how could we leave? And so
10:42
Speaker 3: there's this dual thing happening. It's like we need to
10:46
Speaker 3: be in this house, and yet everywhere in the house
10:49
Speaker 3: reminds us of what's gone's been taken from us, and
10:51
Speaker 3: it's so painful. It's so painful and scary. And so,
10:56
Speaker 3: in fact, you mentioned sitting the diningroom table, and that
10:58
Speaker 3: was really hard. We had Gail's sisters took turns coming
11:03
Speaker 3: out and staying with they're both on the East Coast,
11:05
Speaker 3: Nina and Betsy, and they took turns staying with us,
11:08
Speaker 3: just so that we could when we sat down at
11:10
Speaker 3: the dinom table, it wasn't just the two of us
11:13
Speaker 3: because it was too awful, you know, we couldn't take it,
11:15
Speaker 3: the thought of sitting down at that table and just
11:18
Speaker 3: be the two of us. So really, terror was uppermost
11:22
Speaker 3: in my mind. And then and then the aching, horrible aching,
11:26
Speaker 3: and the aching stays with me. I'm not I'm not
11:28
Speaker 3: as terrified now, But but the aching for them is
11:34
Speaker 3: very difficult. Yeah, to endure.
11:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right that a profound loss is, and I'm
11:41
Speaker 1: quoting from the book here, a profound loss is when
11:43
Speaker 1: you lose someone who you feel is entwined intrinsically with
11:48
Speaker 1: your own identity. In other words, you define yourself partly
11:52
Speaker 1: in terms of this other person. Close quote. So, I
11:55
Speaker 1: think this is the thing that struck me most. Your
11:59
Speaker 1: sense of self is that you're Dad, That's who you are.
12:01
Speaker 1: And then this impossibly well it's not impossible to describe,
12:05
Speaker 1: but in this incredibly cruel moment, that identity is forever altered.
12:10
Speaker 1: Every time you meet somebody for the first time and
12:13
Speaker 1: they say, so, tell me about your family. Have you
12:15
Speaker 1: got kids, you must have to. You have to think
12:18
Speaker 1: so hard about how you're going to answer that.
12:19
Speaker 3: How do you bring this up?
12:21
Speaker 1: How do you talk about profound loss and identity and
12:23
Speaker 1: particularly what it meant for you? Again, the question, I
12:26
Speaker 1: guess is how do you process this from an identity standpoint.
12:29
Speaker 3: Two things I want to talk about and I hope
12:31
Speaker 3: that I can remember, But the identity was really central
12:34
Speaker 3: to me, and I kind of I like this definition
12:38
Speaker 3: that I came up with for profound loss because I
12:40
Speaker 3: feel like it's generous in the sense that the griever
12:44
Speaker 3: gets to decide if it's a profound loss. Right, somebody
12:47
Speaker 3: loses their parent, and somebody else doesn't have a close
12:49
Speaker 3: relations to their parent, they think it's no big deal.
12:52
Speaker 3: But to the one person who lost their parent, maybe
12:54
Speaker 3: it is. Maybe it's a central idea of who they are.
12:56
Speaker 3: They are so and so sign or daughter. That's how
12:58
Speaker 3: they identify. So I like that the griever decides what's profound,
13:03
Speaker 3: not somebody else. You know, it's who they think. It's
13:07
Speaker 3: important to who they are as a human. And then
13:09
Speaker 3: to have that gone for me was so destabilizing because
13:15
Speaker 3: I literally, while they were alive, I did find myself
13:18
Speaker 3: as Reubenhart's dad. I wasn't suddenly after they were gone
13:21
Speaker 3: that's who I was. I took such pride in being
13:25
Speaker 3: their dad. I was so proud of them. It was
13:28
Speaker 3: so important to who I was as a human. And
13:31
Speaker 3: then they were gone and I couldn't At first, I
13:34
Speaker 3: couldn't accept it that I was the father of two
13:37
Speaker 3: dead children. I was so resistant to that. But then
13:42
Speaker 3: as my grief evolved, it changed, it shifted and I
13:45
Speaker 3: kind of clung to that identity. It became important to
13:48
Speaker 3: me because it was like, I need to honor Ruby
13:51
Speaker 3: and Hart at all times. So I'm Colin Campbell. I'm
13:56
Speaker 3: the father of two children who were killed by a
13:58
Speaker 3: drunk driver, Ruby and Heart. That was my identity suddenly,
14:04
Speaker 3: and that was important to me that I acknowledge it.
14:07
Speaker 3: And I like this sort of the PSA quality to it. Right.
14:10
Speaker 3: If I'm talking to somebody and they hear this, maybe
14:12
Speaker 3: that could save a life, because maybe they'll think twice
14:15
Speaker 3: next time before they drink and drive. And you know,
14:17
Speaker 3: I don't know. But then as time progressed even further,
14:21
Speaker 3: I had to shift my identity again, and each shift
14:24
Speaker 3: was painful to me. It was hard to change. But
14:28
Speaker 3: now I don't think of myself primarily as the father
14:33
Speaker 3: of two dead children. It's a central part of my identity,
14:37
Speaker 3: but it's not necessarily the first thing that I say
14:40
Speaker 3: when I meet somebody new, you know what I mean,
14:43
Speaker 3: Whereas before it was it was really important on the
14:45
Speaker 3: first day of class. I'm a professor, and so on
14:47
Speaker 3: the first day of class, I tell my students I'm
14:49
Speaker 3: Colin Gamble and I'm grieving the loss of my two children.
14:53
Speaker 3: They were killed by a drunk driver and so, which
14:55
Speaker 3: was intense to tell students on the first day, but
14:57
Speaker 3: I had to. It was too important to me, right
15:00
Speaker 3: And now I don't have to, and that's also hard.
15:03
Speaker 3: It's hard to let go of that, you know. In
15:05
Speaker 3: a way, it's like every stage of this evolving identity
15:10
Speaker 3: has been involved in it.
15:12
Speaker 1: I think you want so much to honor them and
15:15
Speaker 1: to highlight that they are they are still part of
15:17
Speaker 1: your life. And yet over time, I mean it's been
15:20
Speaker 1: over four years now. I guess what I'm hearing you
15:22
Speaker 1: say is the relevance of that conversation to the lives
15:26
Speaker 1: of the people you're interacting with may not be quite
15:29
Speaker 1: as substantive as you Perhaps you gave it more weight earlier.
15:33
Speaker 3: On Yeah, I was more like I need to tell
15:36
Speaker 3: you right now, And now I think it all the time.
15:41
Speaker 3: I think about Ruber Higher all the time, But I
15:42
Speaker 3: don't need to tell you necessarily about them all the time.
15:46
Speaker 3: That makes sense, Like my need for it is quieted.
15:50
Speaker 1: This is a time thing, right, Like there is a process,
15:54
Speaker 1: there's an evolution with grief. I'd imagine that the acuteness
15:58
Speaker 1: of what was happening in those first days, the weeks,
16:00
Speaker 1: and months must be so different to the passage of time,
16:04
Speaker 1: allowing you to be four years down the track and
16:06
Speaker 1: even say what you're saying with me.
16:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's not just time, because I
16:11
Speaker 3: don't think that time heals our wounds. So I don't
16:14
Speaker 3: think heals any of my wounds. But I have changed.
16:17
Speaker 3: My relationship to pain and grief has changed. But I
16:21
Speaker 3: think it's because of the time I've spent engaged in
16:24
Speaker 3: my grief. I think if people are avoiding grief, then
16:29
Speaker 3: they're not progressing through in a way. You can be
16:35
Speaker 3: stuck and time can pass, but it doesn't change anything,
16:39
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. But I think it's a
16:41
Speaker 3: magical bomb.
16:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly where I want to take it now.
16:44
Speaker 2: But I want to I don't want to talk.
16:45
Speaker 1: About how the griever either avoids or steps into their grief.
16:49
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the people who are around
16:51
Speaker 1: you and their avoidance of grief, which which in many
16:54
Speaker 1: ways is where the book begins. And I think it
16:57
Speaker 1: was what really struck me. You take a very very
17:01
Speaker 1: strong and direct approach to people who are around you
17:05
Speaker 1: in terms of advocating for your needs as you go
17:07
Speaker 1: through this grief process through the book, you're very courageous
17:11
Speaker 1: with others and also with yourself in some really challenging ways.
17:15
Speaker 1: The emails that you write, the way that you talk
17:18
Speaker 1: to people about things. One example, right after your only
17:22
Speaker 1: two children in the world are kill you point to
17:24
Speaker 1: what would be called the or what you call the
17:26
Speaker 1: grief orthodoxy, and you make the point that people, well
17:29
Speaker 1: intentioned people would say things like I couldn't live if
17:34
Speaker 1: that happened to me, I'd kill myself, or they'd say Colin,
17:38
Speaker 1: there are no words. There are no words, which is
17:41
Speaker 1: something that I know that I've said before, and when
17:43
Speaker 1: I read it in your book, I felt very guilty
17:44
Speaker 1: about it.
17:46
Speaker 2: There is a question here, The question is this Your
17:48
Speaker 2: response to that in the book was so impactful for me.
17:51
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to talk about what your reaction
17:53
Speaker 1: is to those comments, because you didn't kill yourself and
17:58
Speaker 1: there are words.
18:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I want to I do want to make
18:03
Speaker 3: clear that I don't want you to feel bad about
18:05
Speaker 3: saying that. I think some people, you know, I wrote
18:07
Speaker 3: an op ed in the Atlantic, and some people were like,
18:10
Speaker 3: these people are just trying to be nice. Why are
18:12
Speaker 3: you scolding them? And like, I never scolded anybody. Just
18:15
Speaker 3: for the record, anybody that said that to me, I
18:16
Speaker 3: never said, like, hey, don't say that to me, because
18:19
Speaker 3: I knew what they were saying, why they were saying it.
18:21
Speaker 3: It made a lot of sense. You know, you're saying
18:22
Speaker 3: there are no words because you're trying to express the
18:25
Speaker 3: depths of the horror that I'm in, and it's apt
18:30
Speaker 3: to say there are no words that I can say
18:33
Speaker 3: that's gonna, you know, touch the horror of your reality.
18:38
Speaker 3: But what happened was I was told that so many
18:42
Speaker 3: times in early grief, so many times, hundreds, literally hundreds
18:46
Speaker 3: of times people would say there are no words to me,
18:48
Speaker 3: and very often the conversation would end there that would
18:50
Speaker 3: be it, because there are no words, and I needed
18:53
Speaker 3: to talk about my grief. I needed to talk about
18:56
Speaker 3: ruby and heart. And so I started to think, because
18:59
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a trarian, have to admit, and so
19:03
Speaker 3: if two hundred people say there are no words to me,
19:05
Speaker 3: I'm going to be like, wait a minute, is that true?
19:08
Speaker 3: Are there really no words? And I found no, there
19:13
Speaker 3: are words. There are people who come up to me
19:14
Speaker 3: and they talk about rubying heart or they ask me
19:17
Speaker 3: about my grief, how my grief is doing that moment,
19:20
Speaker 3: and we can have a conversation about it. And nobody's
19:23
Speaker 3: finding the perfect words. Nobody's finding words that are they're
19:26
Speaker 3: going to solve my problem that I can't. No one
19:29
Speaker 3: can fix my pain, No one can take away my pain,
19:32
Speaker 3: no one can even give me comfort, honestly, But to
19:37
Speaker 3: be able to talk about rubying heart and my grief
19:39
Speaker 3: to somebody, especially with somebody who knew them, is transformative
19:45
Speaker 3: in my experience of grief. I feel like I'm not alone.
19:48
Speaker 3: I feel like there are other people who are grieving
19:50
Speaker 3: them we can talk about that, and it helps me immensely.
19:55
Speaker 2: For somebody who is grieving, how does a friend approach them?
19:59
Speaker 2: What do we say?
19:59
Speaker 3: What the woods? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
20:05
Speaker 3: And I think so many of the words that come
20:08
Speaker 3: off wrong are words that are attempting to give comfort,
20:12
Speaker 3: because if you're trying to comfort somebody on some level,
20:14
Speaker 3: you're trying to take away their pain. You're trying to
20:17
Speaker 3: tell them maybe stop crying now, right, And in fact,
20:22
Speaker 3: I believe a person who has lost a loved one
20:27
Speaker 3: inevitably is going to feel pain. They need to feel
20:29
Speaker 3: that pain. It's the flip side of love. You know
20:32
Speaker 3: that if you've loved someone so so deeply and they're
20:35
Speaker 3: gone from earth, they're gone from your life, you have
20:38
Speaker 3: to allow yourself to feel the pain of that loss
20:42
Speaker 3: in order just to be present, in order to be
20:44
Speaker 3: present in this life without them. Otherwise you're in denial.
20:47
Speaker 3: That's another way to go where you can compartmentalize and
20:50
Speaker 3: pretend it didn't happen, or pretend you're thinking about it.
20:54
Speaker 3: And there's always that temptation, and we all do that,
20:57
Speaker 3: me included. But I feel like being allowed to express
21:02
Speaker 3: my pain is so helpful. And so so if someone's
21:05
Speaker 3: saying things like they're trying to come for me, like oh,
21:08
Speaker 3: they're in a better place, or well, you could adopt
21:12
Speaker 3: other kids, or you know, some kind of replacement, or
21:14
Speaker 3: at least you had seventeen years with Ruby and fourteen
21:17
Speaker 3: with heart. Those are all sort of nice things, But
21:20
Speaker 3: the unstated implication is, so stop grieving so much.
21:25
Speaker 2: Right, everything happens for a Raisin column.
21:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything happens for a reason, So maybe you can
21:29
Speaker 3: stop stop your grieving, you know, And those seem very
21:34
Speaker 3: unhelpful to me. So the most helpful things that I've
21:37
Speaker 3: encountered were people who are simply sharing rubying heart stories,
21:43
Speaker 3: or sharing how much they love Ruby and Heart and
21:46
Speaker 3: missed them, or how much they love me and want
21:49
Speaker 3: to spend time with me even though I'm grief stricken
21:52
Speaker 3: and maybe not so not so friendly or palatable. Or
21:59
Speaker 3: also if they if they're asking me about my grief,
22:02
Speaker 3: you know, how is my how's my grief today? Acknowledging it,
22:05
Speaker 3: acknowledging that when I wake up this morning, I had
22:08
Speaker 3: I had a hard time because I had to deal
22:10
Speaker 3: with the thought that yep, another day and Ruby hard
22:13
Speaker 3: is still gone. But I got to get out of bed.
22:15
Speaker 3: You know, I was gonna I was gonna address your
22:17
Speaker 3: other question, which is about this. I would just die,
22:20
Speaker 3: right My kids would be killed out. I would just die.
22:23
Speaker 3: And I heard that several times, and that felt very
22:26
Speaker 3: unhelpful to me, because on the one hand, it felt
22:30
Speaker 3: like me. It felt to me the implication was if
22:33
Speaker 3: they must love their kids more than I love my kids,
22:36
Speaker 3: because if their kids died, they would just kill themselves
22:39
Speaker 3: and I didn't, so I must not really love my
22:41
Speaker 3: kids as much. Right, That's the implication, And the truth is,
22:46
Speaker 3: you don't really just spontaneously die. You would have to
22:49
Speaker 3: actively end your life. And here I am in grief,
22:54
Speaker 3: seeing how awful it is to endure such painful loss.
23:01
Speaker 3: If I ended my life, what would that do to
23:03
Speaker 3: my wife, or my mom, or my brother, sister, all
23:07
Speaker 3: the people that love me? How could I intentionally and
23:11
Speaker 3: Ruby Heart were murdered? How could I intentionally take my
23:14
Speaker 3: own life and plunge my whole community into more grief?
23:19
Speaker 3: And also, how is that going to honor Ruby in heart?
23:24
Speaker 3: I want to stay alive so I can honor Ruby
23:27
Speaker 3: in heart. And that was the thought that I had,
23:30
Speaker 3: was like if if I die, if I died and
23:36
Speaker 3: people that loved me killed themselves, I'd be bummed. I'd
23:39
Speaker 3: be like, wait, no, so you stay alive. You're supposed
23:41
Speaker 3: to tell Colin stories, right, You're supposed to stay alive
23:44
Speaker 3: and talk about me.
23:46
Speaker 2: So.
23:48
Speaker 3: And then on top of that was Ruby's suicidality. So
23:51
Speaker 3: she struggled with suicidality, and in a sense she overcame
23:55
Speaker 3: that You you don't just overcome depression, but she had
24:00
Speaker 3: it managed. She wanted to live. She fought for her life,
24:05
Speaker 3: and I couldn't. I couldn't dishonor her memory and her
24:09
Speaker 3: struggle by taking my own life. So it felt like
24:13
Speaker 3: to me when people made that comment or I would
24:14
Speaker 3: just kill myself, it felt very flippant. It felt like
24:17
Speaker 3: they weren't really thinking about it in a deep, deep way.
24:20
Speaker 3: They were just saying it. It felt easy for them
24:24
Speaker 3: to say that, and I don't. It's not easy for me.
24:26
Speaker 3: I have to actually think about it, you know what
24:28
Speaker 3: I mean. It's like, dude, I actually have to think
24:31
Speaker 3: about it. Do I end my life or not? And
24:32
Speaker 3: I have to think about what that means to other
24:34
Speaker 3: human beings. And it's a rough road either way. And
24:37
Speaker 3: you just sort of saying I would just kill myself
24:41
Speaker 3: is offensive to me because you have the privilege, not you,
24:45
Speaker 3: but the person who said that to me has a
24:47
Speaker 3: privilege of just sort of tossing it off as opposed
24:50
Speaker 3: to actually thinking about the reality.
24:53
Speaker 1: You know, you've been through an experience that most people
24:56
Speaker 1: would not actually be able to really step into an
25:00
Speaker 1: imagine enduring so much so that you've gone and written
25:04
Speaker 1: a book about number one, the grief process and how
25:07
Speaker 1: it exists in our culture at the moment. And I
25:11
Speaker 1: think that you're actually quite strong on saying that we
25:13
Speaker 1: do not handle it in healthy ways right now in
25:16
Speaker 1: our culture at all. I'm wondering if this was something
25:19
Speaker 1: that you grew up with, were you always grief aware?
25:23
Speaker 1: And the reason I ask it is because I've written
25:26
Speaker 1: blog posts and articles and done podcasts on topics like this,
25:29
Speaker 1: and I think that I've been empathic and given good advice.
25:32
Speaker 1: But the profundity in what you've said and your solutions
25:37
Speaker 1: and strategies, the way that you've honored your children and
25:41
Speaker 1: honored your grief but also shown other people a roadmap
25:44
Speaker 1: through their grief, seems particularly well, it's deep, it's really,
25:50
Speaker 1: it's just so thoughtful. I'm just curious whether your background
25:53
Speaker 1: taught you that.
25:55
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, of the exact opposite, right. My family upbringing
26:01
Speaker 3: was I call it grief averse. So we did not
26:05
Speaker 3: talk about grief much at all, honestly, so not religious
26:12
Speaker 3: back like that, right, No, So, so my parents were
26:15
Speaker 3: raised as Protestants, and they rebelled in their like twenties,
26:21
Speaker 3: and we're atheists, are atheists. My father passed away, but
26:24
Speaker 3: and they raised us without you know, any kind of religion,
26:28
Speaker 3: and and all three of us, my brother and sister,
26:30
Speaker 3: older brother and sister, We're we're all very happy atheists.
26:34
Speaker 3: We enjoy we enjoy our our lack of belief in
26:39
Speaker 3: a supreme being. But here when it came time to grieve,
26:46
Speaker 3: that tradition for me didn't didn't have any cultural tools
26:50
Speaker 3: for managing grief. So I leaned heavily on the Jewish traditions.
26:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you. Hearing you describe
26:59
Speaker 1: your background make me even more intrigued because in the
27:01
Speaker 1: book you talk about how your community came together. I wondered,
27:06
Speaker 1: to what extent the Jewish faith, which your wife, Gail
27:09
Speaker 1: is Jewish, how much that community and that faith actually
27:15
Speaker 1: provided some kind of, I don't know, a rocker foundation,
27:19
Speaker 1: a framework, a way forward for you. Could you talk
27:22
Speaker 1: about the way religion, even though you don't have a
27:25
Speaker 1: religious bone in your body, Religion actually, I guess shepherd
27:28
Speaker 1: you through this grief process.
27:30
Speaker 3: Honestly, because you know, I'm a religious so it wasn't
27:34
Speaker 3: the religious component, but more the cultural component. And I
27:38
Speaker 3: think it sort of helped me because it helped me
27:40
Speaker 3: to analyze what these Jewish traditions were really about for me,
27:45
Speaker 3: because they're all on one level about God, but for me,
27:48
Speaker 3: they're not at all about God. They're about how do
27:50
Speaker 3: you process grief? And I figured, you know, Jews had
27:54
Speaker 3: thousands of years to think about this and work it out.
27:57
Speaker 3: And if there are rules about grieving, I bet there's
27:59
Speaker 3: like practical reasons for them. And and sure enough it
28:02
Speaker 3: felt very practical to me. All the customs and traditions
28:07
Speaker 3: that that I was exposed to all had deep practical
28:12
Speaker 3: meaning for me. That literally taught me how to grieve.
28:15
Speaker 3: Uh So the whole idea of even grieving in community,
28:17
Speaker 3: that that's from the Jewish traditions. So so, just to
28:21
Speaker 3: name name a few of them. Uh, you you have
28:25
Speaker 3: to say the mourner's Cottish it's it's a prayer for
28:29
Speaker 3: the dead, but you are not allowed to say it alone.
28:32
Speaker 3: You have to say it with at least nine other
28:34
Speaker 3: people present.
28:35
Speaker 2: And when do you say this moren is Scottish.
28:38
Speaker 3: We're supposed to say it every day for the first
28:40
Speaker 3: year with nine others. Yes, yes, Now we didn't say
28:46
Speaker 3: it every day. We went weekly. We went weekly and uh.
28:52
Speaker 3: And there are different rules for different losses as well.
28:54
Speaker 3: So and again I'm not a rabbi, so I think
28:58
Speaker 3: technically for child loss it's not every day but is
29:02
Speaker 3: out of the point. The idea is that you grieve
29:06
Speaker 3: with people, so inevitably, I'm saying this prayer in Hebrew
29:12
Speaker 3: and there are people a mending me, and I'm I'm
29:16
Speaker 3: going to weep. Right, I can't get through the mourners
29:19
Speaker 3: collageespecially in early grief, without without crying and I and
29:23
Speaker 3: I have to do it with people standing around me
29:26
Speaker 3: with love. And isn't that beautiful? It isn't necessarily the
29:29
Speaker 3: opposite of what was certainly the opposite of what I
29:32
Speaker 3: conceived of grief, which is you go away in a
29:34
Speaker 3: corner and you're just sad by yourself.
29:36
Speaker 1: Right, that's what is in the movies of oscaram and
29:38
Speaker 1: Hot Onto the Blankets watching Netflix.
29:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, that's what everybody thinks. Or get really really
29:44
Speaker 3: drunk or really really high. And the Jewish tradition is like, no, actually,
29:49
Speaker 3: you've got to be present. You have to be engaged
29:51
Speaker 3: in your grief. You can't compartmentalize because every day you're
29:55
Speaker 3: going to show up and grief with people around watching
29:58
Speaker 3: you and amending your shared grief. And it's so beautiful.
30:04
Speaker 3: It's such a powerful experience to be supported that in
30:10
Speaker 3: that moment over and over again. And the other example
30:14
Speaker 3: that of the share is the notion of shiva. So
30:17
Speaker 3: Shiva is the first seven nights after the funeral, people
30:20
Speaker 3: gather at your house. They come to your house and
30:23
Speaker 3: they literally sit with you. That's so called sitting shiva.
30:26
Speaker 3: And Shiva's is Hebrew for seven, so it's the first
30:28
Speaker 3: seven nights. And so each night hundreds of people would
30:33
Speaker 3: come crowd our house, which sounds good, yes, yes it does, right,
30:38
Speaker 3: it sounds It sounded terrible to me. I was like,
30:41
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? Rubert hart Wood just killed
30:43
Speaker 3: like seventy two hours ago, and now you want people
30:46
Speaker 3: to pack into my home. But I was like, well,
30:49
Speaker 3: I'm just going to listen to the Jews because they
30:51
Speaker 3: know better, and sure enough they do. And so I
30:54
Speaker 3: was very grateful that I that I did just listen
30:56
Speaker 3: to them and do what they told me, the rabbi
30:58
Speaker 3: told me to do. Because then our wise Rabbi, Sharon Browse,
31:02
Speaker 3: she turned to us and said, these people are gathered here,
31:04
Speaker 3: do you have anything you want to say to them?
31:06
Speaker 3: And it turned out I did. I did. I desperately
31:09
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about ruby and heart and all these
31:11
Speaker 3: people wanted to hear about Ruby and Heart, and they
31:13
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about Ruby and heart, and so it
31:16
Speaker 3: was amazing. I could tell Ruby and Heart stories, we
31:17
Speaker 3: could laugh and cry, and then I'd hear stories from
31:20
Speaker 3: other people and it was like, Oh, yeah, we're mourning
31:23
Speaker 3: in community. This is how one grieves. I don't sit
31:27
Speaker 3: in a corner and eat ice cream and get drunk.
31:29
Speaker 3: I'm here with people who love Ruby and heart and me,
31:31
Speaker 3: and we can share stories and we can laugh and
31:34
Speaker 3: cry together, so that those are all just huge eye
31:38
Speaker 3: openers for me.
31:39
Speaker 1: As I read the book and came across this idea
31:41
Speaker 1: ship of which I'd never heard of before, it made
31:44
Speaker 1: me envious. I don't know if there's a bit of
31:48
Speaker 1: word for it. I think about the funeral traditions. I
31:52
Speaker 1: have a faith background, but my funeral traditions feel just
31:57
Speaker 1: so lacking relative to what you described. This idea that
32:02
Speaker 1: you're going to have a huge community, then you're going
32:04
Speaker 1: to do a sitting shiver for seven nights where literally
32:08
Speaker 1: one hundred plus people are showing up and finding a
32:10
Speaker 1: space in your house and doing this. And then there
32:13
Speaker 1: was another tradition as well, which I don't remember the
32:16
Speaker 1: name of it, but at the end of Shiver, you
32:19
Speaker 1: with the community. There's something really substantial that happens there
32:21
Speaker 1: as well.
32:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you walk, you take a walk around the block.
32:28
Speaker 3: And it's so powerful on so many levels, because sure enough,
32:32
Speaker 3: that first week, Gail and I were scared to leave
32:36
Speaker 3: the house.
32:37
Speaker 1: And you don't do is that tradition like you're not
32:39
Speaker 1: supposed to leave the house or something.
32:41
Speaker 3: No, I don't believe that you're necessarily restricted to the house. Okay,
32:45
Speaker 3: but we felt restricted. We felt like scared to go
32:48
Speaker 3: out into the world. And sadly we had to for
32:50
Speaker 3: some doctor appointments. But aside from the doctor appointments and
32:57
Speaker 3: the therapy appointments, we stayed in our house and it
33:00
Speaker 3: was scary to us. And then on the last day
33:02
Speaker 3: of Shiva, it's like, oh, we're all gonna walk around
33:04
Speaker 3: the block together. We're going to accompany you around the block,
33:08
Speaker 3: and it was like we're reintroducing you to the world.
33:12
Speaker 2: It's like a hundred people to that of people walking.
33:15
Speaker 3: Down these the small side streets of Silver Lake, and
33:18
Speaker 3: we blocked traffic. That was it. No car could go
33:20
Speaker 3: in the side street while we're walking one hundred people.
33:23
Speaker 3: And that was powerful because in a way it felt
33:27
Speaker 3: like transgressive, Like, yeah, Ruby and Hard are dead, and
33:30
Speaker 3: we're gonna take up space. We're gonna we're gonna demand attention,
33:33
Speaker 3: and we're not gonna shy away from this. We're gonna
33:37
Speaker 3: we're gonna break some rules for Ruby and Heart because
33:42
Speaker 3: their loss is catastrophic. And I remember a car pulled
33:46
Speaker 3: up ahead of us and saw this crowd and started honking,
33:49
Speaker 3: and my brother ran over to the car and said
33:52
Speaker 3: what was happening, and they just whoop and they just
33:54
Speaker 3: backed away because it's like, right, there's one hundred people
33:57
Speaker 3: in grief coming down the road. We don't care about
33:59
Speaker 3: your your appointment that you're late for back up. It's
34:04
Speaker 3: grief and it demands space.
34:06
Speaker 1: It's pretty beautiful. When I hear you talk about it
34:09
Speaker 1: feels like you said transgressive. It feel empowering. It's almost
34:11
Speaker 1: like you're saying, I'm going to reclaim my agency. I'm
34:14
Speaker 1: going to reclaim my capacity to start to take steps forward,
34:18
Speaker 1: to expand my universe again. Despite the awfulness of the
34:22
Speaker 1: tragedy you described a metaphor. In fact, I think it
34:26
Speaker 1: was your rabbi who told it to you, but you
34:28
Speaker 1: described in the book the metaphor of the shipwreck. When
34:31
Speaker 1: I hear about this Shiver tradition, and I hear about
34:35
Speaker 1: various other things that you did with community, which probably
34:38
Speaker 1: go well beyond the scope of our conversation. Now they're
34:40
Speaker 1: in the book and they're beautiful. I wonder if you
34:43
Speaker 1: can describe for me the metaphor of the shipwreck.
34:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she shared that at the funeral itself. And
34:52
Speaker 3: I have to just give perhaps to our amazing Rabbi
34:54
Speaker 3: Sharon Browse. She's just an extraordinary human being. And she
34:58
Speaker 3: held her hands figuratively and early for those first days
35:01
Speaker 3: of awfulness and took us to pick out the casket right,
35:06
Speaker 3: to pick out the caskets plural, to pick out the
35:09
Speaker 3: burial spot. So some rough, rough days and she was
35:13
Speaker 3: there for us and continue to be continue to be
35:16
Speaker 3: there for us. But at the funeral, she shared this,
35:20
Speaker 3: this story about and against it's it's from the I
35:24
Speaker 3: forget where it's from. But J just have lots of
35:27
Speaker 3: stories that I loved, beautiful, beautiful metaphoric stories. But in
35:31
Speaker 3: this story, the shipwreck and and somebody clings to a
35:39
Speaker 3: piece of wood that floats by, and that's how they survive.
35:42
Speaker 3: And you go under the water and back out under
35:45
Speaker 3: and out and you're holding on, you're clinging to this
35:48
Speaker 3: this piece of wood floating by, and she said, de Gale,
35:52
Speaker 3: and I want you to look out to this room
35:53
Speaker 3: and see all these people and they're all going to
35:55
Speaker 3: be planks of wood for you to cling to because
35:59
Speaker 3: you're been wrecked. And that was powerful, and that was
36:05
Speaker 3: a beautiful introduction to our community to be like, you
36:08
Speaker 3: guys are going to be the planks to hold these
36:10
Speaker 3: people up because they need help. And I love that idea.
36:14
Speaker 1: Callum my PhDs in positive psychology and one of the
36:17
Speaker 1: founding fathers of the modern positive psychology movement was Christopher Peterson.
36:22
Speaker 1: He died a few years ago, but the phrase that
36:25
Speaker 1: he was best known for, after analyzing a century of
36:29
Speaker 1: research into psychology and what leads to a life well lived,
36:33
Speaker 1: just harmonized this so beautifully with the shipwreck metaphor. And
36:36
Speaker 1: it's just three words other people matter. When I here
36:39
Speaker 1: described this grief process and how you work through it,
36:44
Speaker 1: there's just this one word that keeps coming up, and
36:47
Speaker 1: that is community, community, community. It's other people who matter.
36:51
Speaker 3: Yeah. I discovered that how important it was to me
36:56
Speaker 3: in grief to have the community. And then I also
36:59
Speaker 3: just building on that idea that you just said about
37:01
Speaker 3: a life well lived is you know, Victor Frankel was
37:05
Speaker 3: meaningful to me. I read his book Man Starts for Meaning,
37:08
Speaker 3: and he talks about the idea that we find meaning
37:12
Speaker 3: in other people outside of ourselves. So how are we
37:17
Speaker 3: of service to other people that you can't just think
37:20
Speaker 3: about your own needs and desires and find meaning that way.
37:25
Speaker 3: It's how you are in relation to other people. And
37:28
Speaker 3: that's also was very crystallizing to me.
37:31
Speaker 1: There's something as well as I think about this process,
37:35
Speaker 1: we've very much focused on you and your grief, but
37:37
Speaker 1: as an outsider, a friend of the family, a loved one,
37:41
Speaker 1: somebody who is going through my own personal grief about
37:46
Speaker 1: the tragedy, but also wanting so desperately, I mean, anyone
37:49
Speaker 1: who's not you wants so desperately to offer support however
37:53
Speaker 1: they can. There's a clumsiness, there's an awkwardness, there's an
37:56
Speaker 1: unsuredness about it. But by being open and by actually
38:00
Speaker 1: reaching out and saying you look like a plank of
38:02
Speaker 1: wood that I could lean on for a moment, in
38:04
Speaker 1: so many ways, you provide purpose and meaning. It sort
38:07
Speaker 1: of ties in with that Frank idea.
38:09
Speaker 2: When we shut ourselves off, not only do we harm ourselves,
38:12
Speaker 2: but we also.
38:13
Speaker 1: Reduce the capacity that others have to find meaning and
38:16
Speaker 1: purpose and goodness in their lives through the same grief
38:19
Speaker 1: that we're all experiencing.
38:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Just to me. I think
38:26
Speaker 3: you're right. I think that people were in ours desperate
38:31
Speaker 3: to help Gale and I and it can be awkward
38:35
Speaker 3: and difficult because I think I've spoken to many people
38:38
Speaker 3: in grief, and oftentimes people say like, I'll do anything
38:41
Speaker 3: for you, whatever you want. But in the early days,
38:43
Speaker 3: we don't know what we want, and we feel lost,
38:46
Speaker 3: and it's almost a burden to for us to think
38:49
Speaker 3: of things you could do for me. You know, I
38:50
Speaker 3: don't know what you can do for me. I know
38:52
Speaker 3: you think about that, you know what I mean. I
38:55
Speaker 3: don't want to live right now, so I can't think
38:57
Speaker 3: about what you could do for me. But when people
39:00
Speaker 3: gave specific offers, like hey, we'd like to go for
39:04
Speaker 3: a walk tomorrow in the park, I'm available. That was
39:08
Speaker 3: that was very helpful.
39:09
Speaker 1: How hard was it to say yes like that? You
39:12
Speaker 1: must have wanted to say no, I want to sit
39:14
Speaker 1: here and cry yes, Yes.
39:16
Speaker 3: So I talked about that in the book. I actually
39:19
Speaker 3: I was finding myself saying no a lot because it
39:23
Speaker 3: was very hard for me to make a decision. It
39:25
Speaker 3: was very hard for me to even think about the
39:27
Speaker 3: next hour alone tomorrow. Like someone said, oh, I'll go
39:29
Speaker 3: for a walk with you tomorrow, I'm like, I don't
39:31
Speaker 3: know how I'm going to feel tomorrow. I can't make
39:33
Speaker 3: a commitment to that. I don't know if I'll be
39:35
Speaker 3: out of bed, I don't know what's going to happen.
39:39
Speaker 3: But I found that because I really want to be
39:41
Speaker 3: with people in community, and I really I imagined that
39:44
Speaker 3: I would want to have a conversation with this person.
39:46
Speaker 3: So I started saying yes to everything. That was my
39:48
Speaker 3: new policy. I wanted to say no, I just said yes.
39:52
Speaker 3: And it was a way of staying engaged in life,
39:57
Speaker 3: even when I didn't want to be engaged in life.
40:00
Speaker 3: I trusted that I sort of fake it till I
40:03
Speaker 3: make it kind of vibe, you know what I mean,
40:05
Speaker 3: Like do I really want to go for a walk. No,
40:10
Speaker 3: But I know that walking can be helpful and healthy,
40:15
Speaker 3: and I'm going to say yes, and I'm going to
40:16
Speaker 3: do it. And sure enough, as I'm walking, I'm discovering.
40:21
Speaker 3: Oh I'm glad I took the walk, you know what
40:23
Speaker 3: I mean. And I kind of trusted in that. I
40:25
Speaker 3: sort of trusted that meaning and purpose would come back
40:28
Speaker 3: to me because life feels meaningless when you lose something,
40:31
Speaker 3: you have a profound loss, and your identity has shook.
40:34
Speaker 3: Life feels meaningless because what matters? Why does it matter
40:39
Speaker 3: what I do in my life? Ruby and Hart aren't
40:41
Speaker 3: here to share that with me. But ultimately, I think
40:46
Speaker 3: by just trusting that it would come back to me
40:49
Speaker 3: and engaging in life, it has. You know, I think
40:53
Speaker 3: I have found meaning and purpose in life, even in
40:57
Speaker 3: their absence.
41:00
Speaker 1: Is partly New Zealand Maory or Malti, as she would say,
41:05
Speaker 1: they have a tradition where a person dies and that
41:07
Speaker 1: person's body stays in the family home or on what
41:10
Speaker 1: they call the mudai, and there are three days where
41:14
Speaker 1: the entire family stays with the body of the deceased.
41:20
Speaker 1: When this was first explained to me, Colin I, I mean,
41:23
Speaker 1: I was probably in my early twenties, and frankly I
41:25
Speaker 1: was horrified. I really liked the standard Western way of
41:28
Speaker 1: keeping your distance. Death apparently is quite unquote disgusting, and
41:33
Speaker 1: yet over time I've fallen in love with the idea
41:36
Speaker 1: so much so that I'm looking forward to the opportunity
41:39
Speaker 1: to celebrate the lives of Kylie's family in that way,
41:44
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping that we can even adopt some of
41:46
Speaker 1: that in our own family. Reading about the Jewish way
41:50
Speaker 1: of going through the traditions that you described, it also
41:53
Speaker 1: shifted me even further into wanting those deep and profound
41:57
Speaker 1: traditions around death and grieving, especially with commune. Do you
42:01
Speaker 1: have any sense of where the idea comes from that
42:04
Speaker 1: we're supposed to push grief away.
42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's several reasons why this has sort
42:10
Speaker 3: of become our cultural default to avoid grief, avoid the
42:15
Speaker 3: discomfort of grief. I'm still thinking about your wife's traditions,
42:18
Speaker 3: which just seems how beautiful, and I feel like I
42:22
Speaker 3: just want to respond quickly to your wife traditions the
42:24
Speaker 3: idea that I think there's a lot of cultural heritage
42:27
Speaker 3: that we all have that involves engaging in grief, and
42:31
Speaker 3: it's somehow some easy to short circuit that stuff. So
42:36
Speaker 3: I know lots of people should us post last seven Nights,
42:38
Speaker 3: but many people don't do that many Jews don't do that.
42:42
Speaker 3: There are a lot of traditions in the Jewish culture
42:45
Speaker 3: about grief that in the morning that people do. Yeah, yeah,
42:49
Speaker 3: that's what we're supposed to do, but we're going to
42:50
Speaker 3: do a shorter version, you know what I mean, We're
42:52
Speaker 3: not really going to do that, you know. And that's
42:54
Speaker 3: true for Islam as well, and in Christianity. There are
42:58
Speaker 3: there are lots of traditions we have of around grief
43:01
Speaker 3: that that I think as a culture, we we short
43:06
Speaker 3: change and think like, yeah, that's what we're supposed to do,
43:08
Speaker 3: but doesn't feel right. And in a way, giving ourselves
43:12
Speaker 3: over to these cultural traditions can be really beautiful because
43:16
Speaker 3: it is uncomfortable to your point, you know what, why
43:19
Speaker 3: why do we why is grief so avoided now? Is
43:23
Speaker 3: because I think it's so uncomfortable and it seems like
43:30
Speaker 3: it's easier to avoid it, But in fact it's not.
43:32
Speaker 3: Because we don't get to avoid grief. It happens to
43:35
Speaker 3: all of us no matter what, We're all going to
43:37
Speaker 3: grieve and and it's okay to feel pain. I think
43:44
Speaker 3: that people don't like the idea of people being in pain.
43:47
Speaker 3: They want to speed it up. Right, Like, that's why
43:50
Speaker 3: people are encouraged to get over it, because because they're
43:52
Speaker 3: making people uncomfortable. I'm seeing you, you're in pain. I'm uncomfortable,
43:56
Speaker 3: so I say, cheer up, stop grieving. But in fact,
44:02
Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with the pain of loss. It's a
44:04
Speaker 3: beautiful pain. It comes from love. The reason it hurts
44:07
Speaker 3: so bad is because I love them so much. And
44:10
Speaker 3: isn't that a beautiful thing? Don't we want to love people.
44:12
Speaker 3: Don't we want to open our hearts up to both
44:16
Speaker 3: sides of love, the joyful feelings and then also the
44:21
Speaker 3: aching wife close your eyes off to that. But I
44:25
Speaker 3: think people are afraid of it and think that it's
44:29
Speaker 3: somehow more convenient and not feel that.
44:34
Speaker 1: You speak so vulnerably and so beautifully. I just so
44:37
Speaker 1: appreciate what you've shared. I have just a couple of
44:40
Speaker 1: other questions, and then we'll bring this to a close.
44:44
Speaker 1: In the book, page one seventy six, you share a
44:46
Speaker 1: quote from Helen Keller. It's always been a personal favorite
44:49
Speaker 1: of mind. But I didn't have the full context for
44:51
Speaker 1: the quote, and the way you use it in the
44:52
Speaker 1: book is just so I think so helpful. I want
44:57
Speaker 1: to say so delightful. But that word feels a little
44:59
Speaker 1: bit inappropriate in the convers and yet my mind exploded
45:03
Speaker 1: in wonderful ways when I read it. Would you mind
45:05
Speaker 1: reading that and perhaps sharing why this matters so much?
45:09
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely so. Helen Keller wrote, security is mostly a superstition.
45:15
Speaker 3: It does not exist in nature, nor do the children
45:18
Speaker 3: of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is
45:22
Speaker 3: no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life
45:26
Speaker 3: is either a daring adventure or nothing. And I was
45:29
Speaker 3: first introduced to this quote from Ruby. She was at
45:33
Speaker 3: an OCD group, an adult OCD group. She was so
45:35
Speaker 3: precocious at engaging that even as a sixteen year old
45:40
Speaker 3: and seventeen year old, she was a member of this
45:42
Speaker 3: adult OCD group, and she was a leader in this group.
45:44
Speaker 3: By the way, she's an extraordinary person. And she brought
45:48
Speaker 3: this quote home because it really it talks about exposing
45:53
Speaker 3: oneself to danger, and a lot of elements of OCD
46:00
Speaker 3: are about trying to control danger. So a lot of
46:04
Speaker 3: a lot, not all, but a lot of people with OCD,
46:05
Speaker 3: they're obsessive compulsive behaviors are about trying to keep safe
46:10
Speaker 3: people safe. If I do this I will will forestall
46:15
Speaker 3: something bad from happening. And in a way, part of
46:18
Speaker 3: the therapy h very often for OCD is is saying, well,
46:22
Speaker 3: what if something bad did happen, Like, let's expose yourself
46:24
Speaker 3: to that and just and try and try and sit
46:28
Speaker 3: with that discomfort. You know, we're not in control, we're
46:31
Speaker 3: not actually safe, uh, and can we can we open
46:35
Speaker 3: ourselves up to that? So this is a quote that
46:38
Speaker 3: was important to Ruby, and she stuck it on her
46:39
Speaker 3: on her corkboard in her room and then and I
46:44
Speaker 3: knew about it, and then I discover it in grief
46:48
Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh right, yeah, none of us are safe,
46:51
Speaker 3: none of us are in control. Horrible things happen all
46:55
Speaker 3: the time to people who are innocent, who couldn't have
46:58
Speaker 3: been protected. War crashes, I mean, all sorts of terrible
47:03
Speaker 3: diseases strike people, and it's all unfair and we can't
47:09
Speaker 3: protect ourselves from it. And yet, do we want to
47:12
Speaker 3: live a life that's like hungered down and trying to
47:15
Speaker 3: protect ourselves from these things that we can't protect ourselves
47:18
Speaker 3: fromb or do we want to open ourselves up to
47:19
Speaker 3: it and try and engage in life and the adventure
47:22
Speaker 3: of life, and so it became an inspirational quote from
47:26
Speaker 3: me to help me stay engaged in life even though
47:30
Speaker 3: it's scary.
47:32
Speaker 1: I asked you to elaborate on that because my final
47:34
Speaker 1: question for you really ties in with what you're describing.
47:37
Speaker 1: Life is a daring adventure or is nothing? And yet
47:41
Speaker 1: my two children in a loge with me and for
47:44
Speaker 1: me to live that daring adventure. In some ways, there's
47:47
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is probably the wrong word
47:49
Speaker 1: to use, but there's this sense of I've got to
47:52
Speaker 1: get over this, or certainly there are people who expect
47:54
Speaker 1: that we have to get over this. My understanding though,
47:58
Speaker 1: is that you never get over losing you two children,
48:01
Speaker 1: having them taken from you, especially like this.
48:04
Speaker 2: In conclusion, how are you now?
48:08
Speaker 3: Yeah? Thanks for asking, because I'm as scary to ask me, right,
48:13
Speaker 3: how am I doing? I think it's scary to people,
48:16
Speaker 3: but I always appreciate people checking in and it is.
48:22
Speaker 3: It is all an ongoing struggle. I I don't like
48:25
Speaker 3: to use the word healing because to my mind, I'll
48:28
Speaker 3: never heal, you know, Ruby and Hart Uh, there I have.
48:32
Speaker 3: I have holes in my heart, two whole, two large
48:35
Speaker 3: holes in my heart. There aren't going anywhere, but I'm
48:39
Speaker 3: living around them, so I'm still my heart's not it's
48:44
Speaker 3: it's damaged, but it still works. I still love people.
48:48
Speaker 3: I want to I want to be open to life.
48:51
Speaker 3: And so early on after the crash, uh, you know,
48:55
Speaker 3: for example, I said to Gail, you know, we could
48:57
Speaker 3: be parents again. We could foster adopt. And one of
49:01
Speaker 3: the reasons why I had that idea was because Ruby
49:04
Speaker 3: put it in my mind a year or two before
49:07
Speaker 3: she was killed. She said to us, we should foster adopt.
49:10
Speaker 3: And we're like, what, how do you even know about
49:12
Speaker 3: like a fifteen year old kid? How do you even
49:13
Speaker 3: know about foster adopting? Because she was just that kind
49:16
Speaker 3: of kid. She did research on it, and she said,
49:20
Speaker 3: there's so many fams, so many children in in Los
49:23
Speaker 3: Angeles County that need families, and we're a loving family,
49:28
Speaker 3: and we should we should bring some into our family.
49:32
Speaker 3: And we thought, that's such a beautiful idea. And I
49:34
Speaker 3: thought the time, my hands are full, I got two kids,
49:36
Speaker 3: that's beautiful Ruby, but no, and then suddenly I was like, oh, wow, right,
49:41
Speaker 3: I've got two empty bedrooms, and maybe we could bring
49:49
Speaker 3: children into our lives and continue to parent and it was.
49:53
Speaker 3: It was difficult. So I said this to Gail, and
49:55
Speaker 3: she burst into tears and said, thank god you said that.
49:57
Speaker 3: I was thinking that too, but I scared that you
50:00
Speaker 3: would be too scared to try again with other kids,
50:04
Speaker 3: and so we embarked on this journey. So it's it's
50:08
Speaker 3: a difficult journey, and you have to be to take classes,
50:12
Speaker 3: you have to be trained to do this, and mostly
50:15
Speaker 3: the training is about learning about trauma. These kids have
50:19
Speaker 3: endured terrible trauma. That's why they're in the foster system.
50:22
Speaker 3: No kid in the foster system doesn't have trauma. That's
50:25
Speaker 3: how they got there, through no fault of their own right.
50:29
Speaker 3: It was we tried to foster. I talked about the book.
50:31
Speaker 3: We started fostering to adopt a teenage girl, thirteen year
50:35
Speaker 3: old girl, and she lived with us for a year
50:37
Speaker 3: and a half and I thought we were making a
50:39
Speaker 3: new family, but in fact, she found it hard to
50:44
Speaker 3: open her hearts up, open her heart up to the
50:48
Speaker 3: idea of being part of a family. For her family
50:50
Speaker 3: met trauma. For her, opening her heart meant vulnerability, and
50:54
Speaker 3: that was catastrophic for her in the past. And even
50:58
Speaker 3: though she wanted to have a new family, she couldn't
51:00
Speaker 3: do it. It was too scary for her, and ultimately
51:03
Speaker 3: she said, I want out. I don't want to be adopted.
51:06
Speaker 3: I want to age out of the system, which is
51:09
Speaker 3: very bleak statistically, in heartbreaking that she wasn't able to
51:15
Speaker 3: just hang in there with us a little longer until
51:17
Speaker 3: she could acclimate and see that was safe. But we're
51:23
Speaker 3: trying again, and I think it's going very well. So
51:27
Speaker 3: we have a thirteen year old son and a twelve
51:30
Speaker 3: year old daughter, their siblings, and it feels good in
51:36
Speaker 3: so many ways to be parenting, to have a family.
51:41
Speaker 3: It's a real stretching of the heart. But it's also
51:44
Speaker 3: challenging because here I am still in grief and they
51:49
Speaker 3: have lots of trauma and grief of their own that
51:52
Speaker 3: they're trying to process. But they're just a kid. So
51:55
Speaker 3: I have my adult experiences and perspectives, but they're just
52:01
Speaker 3: kids struggling with these terrible feelings of loss and trauma.
52:07
Speaker 3: So it's like parenting on steroids. But it's very meaningful
52:15
Speaker 3: to me and girl.
52:16
Speaker 1: Colin, so grateful for what you've shared, So grateful for
52:20
Speaker 1: the I want to say inspiration, but again I'm not
52:24
Speaker 1: sure that's the right word. All I can really think
52:27
Speaker 1: to do, though, is to express my appreciation, my gratitude.
52:30
Speaker 1: Speaking about these things is I'm sure a combination of
52:33
Speaker 1: both incredibly difficult and incredibly joyful. And the way you've
52:37
Speaker 1: done that is a wonderful honor to you and your family,
52:40
Speaker 1: and especially to Ruby and Heart. Thank you so much
52:43
Speaker 1: for sharing what you have with us on the podcast today.
52:48
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
52:59
Speaker 1: I saw a pre share Colin Campbell joining me for
53:01
Speaker 1: that conversation. As I mentioned at the outset, my nephew
53:06
Speaker 1: died on Sunday night last week by suicide.
53:10
Speaker 2: He was the most energetic and delightful kid.
53:13
Speaker 3: That I know.
53:14
Speaker 2: He was kind and fun, laughed all the time.
53:18
Speaker 1: My kids, his cousins loved hanging out with him, and
53:21
Speaker 1: as his uncle, I loved hanging out with him too.
53:25
Speaker 2: I remember last year we.
53:26
Speaker 1: Served at Kira when the surf was as good as
53:29
Speaker 1: it gets well overhead, absolutely pumping because surfing was his thing.
53:35
Speaker 3: He was so good at it. He was close to pro.
53:40
Speaker 1: He was staying at my parents' house the night that
53:41
Speaker 1: he took his life. My mum and dad, his nana
53:44
Speaker 1: Pop found him on the Monday morning. They found him
53:49
Speaker 1: too late to help. They found him too late to
53:52
Speaker 1: do anything except scream no. They found him too late
53:58
Speaker 1: for him to hear them as they write his name
54:02
Speaker 1: over and over and over again.
54:04
Speaker 2: Logan, logan, logan. How do you hold the body of
54:11
Speaker 2: your grandson for the last time? That was what my
54:16
Speaker 2: parents did that Monday morning.
54:19
Speaker 1: How do you call your daughter, still celebrating a special
54:23
Speaker 1: weekend with her husband in Melbourne and tell her that
54:25
Speaker 1: she needs to come home because her son, just twenty
54:28
Speaker 1: years old, has died. That was also what my parents
54:33
Speaker 1: did on Monday morning last week. And then we received
54:37
Speaker 1: the call, and then we sat with each of our children,
54:40
Speaker 1: and the ripple effect of those conversations.
54:42
Speaker 3: Carried and carried and carried.
54:47
Speaker 1: In a Facebook post last week, I said this, here's
54:50
Speaker 1: what I want you to know. There are nine suicides
54:53
Speaker 1: every single day in Australia. Seven of those nine suicides
54:56
Speaker 1: each day are men, two of those nine are women,
54:58
Speaker 1: and suicide is the leading cause death among young people
55:01
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty four years, thirty six percent of deaths
55:06
Speaker 1: in this age group of suicides. Now, it's a complex
55:10
Speaker 1: issue and rarely is there just one factor that leads
55:13
Speaker 1: to someone taking their own life.
55:15
Speaker 3: But here's what we do know.
55:16
Speaker 2: Strong social connections reduce the chance of suicide.
55:19
Speaker 3: So please, please, please please please.
55:22
Speaker 1: Be kind, be compassionate, be gentle, be inclusive, be supportive,
55:28
Speaker 1: be less critical and judgmental, and be more of a cheerleader.
55:36
Speaker 3: Don't be on your kids back.
55:39
Speaker 1: Instead, make sure you've got their back, love them and
55:42
Speaker 1: make sure that they know it. They have to know
55:45
Speaker 1: they matter. This is a hard conversation to have. I
55:51
Speaker 1: hope that my discussion with Colin Campbell and the way
55:55
Speaker 1: that I've shared with you today has been helpful. Please
56:01
Speaker 1: hug your kids, hug your husband, your wife, your spouse,
56:04
Speaker 1: your partner, and share this message and this love with
56:08
Speaker 1: everyone you know that needs to know how much they matter.
56:14
Speaker 1: If you need help, call Lifeline thirteen eleven fourteen. The
56:21
Speaker 1: Suicide Callback Service is one three hundred six five nine
56:26
Speaker 1: four six seven, Men's Line Australia is one three hundred
56:33
Speaker 1: seven eight nine nine eight seven and Kids Help Line
56:38
Speaker 1: one eight hundred fifty five one eight hundred