The Power of Storytelling
This is a draft of a chapter I'm contributing to a book on grief. I'd love some feedback!
I’ve been asked to contribute to an anthology on grief. I think there are 40-50 other authors whose work will be featured. The idea of the book is to be an opportunity for the authors to share some uplifting insights or a-ha moments that have emerged during their journey through grief.
For those of you have been reading this Substack, some of this will probably be familiar and some of it will be new. I barfed this out while feeling especially sad at the airport and on the plane yesterday and in the hotel room today.
I would love to hear your feedback on what you liked and what you think might make it even better. I am always trying to improve as a write and a communicator! Your feedback will help me reach and impact more people.
Here we go:
She Didn’t Make It
My wife Tanja called me at 8:10 while I was out for a walk with a friend. She told me the police were there and that I needed to come home right away. I could tell by the sound of her voice that something was terribly wrong, so I sprinted the rest of the way home. I had all kinds of doomsday scenarios running through my head while also holding onto the hope it would turn out to be nothing.
I remember turning the corner onto our street and hoping beyond hope there was no police cruiser in front of our house. But of course, there it was, sitting there looking menacing under the street lights. I ran up the stairs and through the front door. The officer introduced himself as "Paul" and told me I had better sit down. He said quite a few things, but the only words I remember are the only ones that matter, "There's been a terrible car accident," and "Chloe didn't make it."
She didn’t fucking make it.
On February 1, 2023 at 7:20 pm, our beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter Chloe Elizabeth was killed in a head-on collision.
An All Too Familiar Nightmare
Unbelievably, this is the second chapter of the same nightmare. 4696 days before, on March 26, 2010, Cindy, my first wife and Chloe and Melody’s mom, took her own life. The girls were just five and six years old.
Cindy struggled with devastating mental health issues resulting from a lifetime of trauma. After five years of battling her demons with everything she had, she could no longer face the pain. I found out about her death in much the same way. The police showed up at my house at midnight and told me, “Brother, you’d better sit down. There’s no easy way to say this. Cindy’s dead.” I asked what happened and he told me in the starkest terms, “Suicide.” My little girls were fast asleep upstairs and I sat downstairs burdened with what felt like a terrible secret.
I sat staring at the clock for most of the eight hours before they woke up, wondering how I was going to tell them and how they were going to react. When I finally sat them down to tell them, I said, “I have some terrible news. Mommy died last night and now she’s in heaven.” Melody, who had just turned five a few days before looked at me and asked, “When is she coming back?”
And now, thirteen years later I had to tell her that she’d lost her sister too. She was away at a school camp so we drove through the night for four hours to get to her before she woke up and found out on social media. I will never forget the contorted mask of anguish on her face as long as I live.
Coping with Cindy’s Death
Driving away from Cindy's funeral, I thought, “I’m glad that's over. Now we can move on with our lives.” I naively believed it was that simple. So, I dealt with Cindy’s death in the only way that made sense to me. I got to work. I set about the task of building a new life so I could leave the old one behind. The idea of my needing to grieve didn’t cross my mind. I thought grieving was what weak people do while strong people, like me, get done what needs to get done.
Of course it wasn’t nearly that simple. I was deeply hurt by Cindy’s death and I needed to grieve so I could heal. But instead, I tried to drink the pain way without realizing I was trying to drink the pain away. I drank every day before Cindy’s death as a misguided means of coping with her mental health issues. And I drank every day for four years after Cindy’s death. I snuck out to a few beers at lunch by myself. I secretly stopped on the way home from work. I poured a drink as soon as I got home. I drank myself to embarrassment at social gatherings.
I craved people’s validation for the hardships I’d suffered. I’d share different versions of the story that had one thing in common; they went into great detail about the damage Cindy had caused while leaving out the worst of my own behaviour. I went to great lengths to appear like I had my shit together so people would marvel at how I’d come through this nightmare unscathed. Ironically, I was often drunk while their marvelling was happening. But I wasn’t unscathed. I was hurt. I blamed Cindy for everything that happened and I lied about my own behaviour in the past and present. I’d fully embraced my victimhood.
Opening the Door to Grief
On August 20, 2014, after a particularly shameful day, I put down the bottle. For the first few months, the only noticeable change was waking up without a hangover. But gradually, things started to shift. I found myself thinking about Cindy more and more. I found myself crying and visiting her grave more often. I started writing about our shared experience. As I wrote, my focus shifted from judgment of her to compassion for both of us. I started feeling intense sadness and anxiety, which made me worry I might be falling apart.
I remember asking my current wife Tanja, “Do you think it’s weird that I’m spending so much time thinking about my dead first wife?” Her response was so simple and yet it hit me like a lightning bolt, “No dummy, you’re grieving.” Until that moment the idea of had never crossed my mind. Cindy had died almost five years earlier - could I really be grieving her death after all this time?
Allowing myself to grieve allowed me to develop a sense of ownership over my experience. I became more comfortable admitting to myself how difficult and painful it had been for me. I realized that I was still in pain, would be in some form for a long time, and that it was okay. I remember thinking something which seemed profound at the time and now seems so obvious, “I can’t be the only one who has struggled in their life.”
Taking a nerve-wracking step, I decided to talk more openly about Cindy’s death and my battle with alcohol. Although terrified of being judged as a failure, I was met with understanding, support and interest instead. The simple act of being vulnerable and sharing more of myself made it safe for other people to share more of themselves. It turns out we’re all surrounded by people waiting for someone else to just go first.
I found myself having more meaningful conversations with people and it felt great. My experiences and what I was learning from them seemed to be helping people think differently about their own struggles and shame. I realized I had the ability, and the need, to be of service to the people around me. I started to look more forward to going to work as I began to see each day as an opportunity to connect more deeply with someone new. I was becoming a better man who was having a positive impact on other people and I wanted more.
Changing the Script
As this was happening I noticed the stories I was telling myself and others about my experience started to change. I stopped being the tragic fake hero and helpless victim of my own story. I threw away the narrative about the years leading up to Cindy’s death being a dark and tragic time. Of course, there will always be a tragic element to our story. She died after all. The girls lost their birth mom and I lost someone I had loved for eighteen years. And yet our story was so much richer than a simple tragedy.
I could clearly see how Cindy’s death was a pivotal part of my becoming a still imperfect but more self-aware, compassionate and giving human being. I might never had experienced this kind of growth had I lived a different life. My journey through grief has been a catalyst for a personal transformation. I was finding meaning in her death by making a small difference in the lives of others. I couldn’t change the series of events that led to her death but I did have the power to change the stories I told about it. I had the power to decide how Cindy’s death changed me.
In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin and yang represents the belief that everything is composed of complementary but opposing forces working harmoniously together. One important lesson I’ve learned from Cindy’s death is that something can be a tragedy and a gift at the same time. It took me a few years to to accept that these two ideas can coexist. At first, the thought of Cindy’s death being a gift filled me with guilt, as if I were dishonouring Cindy by acknowledging the good that had come from her death. I feared that voicing this idea would lead others to think of me as a monster. They didn’t.
As time has passed and I’ve evolved, I’ve realized that both Cindy’s and Chloe’s deaths are, at their most fundamental, just two things that happened. Everything else is a story I make up about them. With Chloe’s death being so recent and unexpected, I’m finding it incredibly hard to find empowering thoughts and words. But I’ve already managed to find some and I will continue to search for and find more. That “knowing” provides me an important sense of comfort in a very challenging time. It’s a light that even the darkest of shadows cannot extinguish.
A Bottomless Well of Power
Cindy’s death changed the trajectory of my life forever and I know Chloe’s will as well. In fact, it already has. I’m still in tremendous pain from the loss of my beautiful daughter and I know and accept that I will be for a long time to come. The difference this time is I understand what’s in my control and what isn’t. One of the greatest sources of power that’s been bestowed upon us is our ability to choose how we think and talk about what’s happened to us, what’s happening to us and what we most want to happen in the future.
We get to choose what we focus on and what we focus on tends to grow. When we obsess about our sadness over all we’ve lost we’ll find ourselves manufacturing even more sadness than we were already feeling. When we focus on the beauty in what we had and what we have we’ll find and create more of it. My dream was to die at one hundred having spent seventy years with Chloe in my life. It didn’t turn out that way. I got to spend nineteen years with her and I’m profoundly grateful for that. Nineteen is a hell of a lot better than zero. My life is better because Chloe was and will continue to be an important part of it.
I’ve had people say things to me like, “No parent should have to lose a child”, and “Cindy died and now Chloe is dead too. That just so unfair”. I reject those words and ideas out of hand. Parents lose children all the time for all kinds of reasons. And Cindy and Chloe’s deaths have nothing to do with fairness. Those are the words that open the door to victimhood. I’ve walked through it once and I will never walk through it again. True freedom comes from accepting that anything can happen to anyone at any time and that we have the choice to shape how things affect us.
The pain of your loved one’s passing is already difficult enough without you making it worse. Listen to the stories you’re telling yourself and others. Ask yourself why you’re telling them and how they are serving you and the memory of the person you love so much. Question the beliefs you’re holding tightly too and what might happen if you were able to let them go. Make the choice to use empowering words and to focus on gratitude. When it seems the hardest is when it’s the most important.
Human beings are masterful storytellers. The story of your future hasn’t been written yet. Only you get to decide the future you will write. Let the past and present inform your future but don’t let them dictate it. Feel, heal and grow by writing a story that honours the best in you and your loved one. Now pick up your pen and get to work.