November 14, 2023 • 57 mins
*Content warning: mature themes - listener discretion advised*
When someone is grieving the death of a loved one, it can be difficult to know how to approach them and what to say. How do you convey your compassion, your awareness of their enormous loss? What words and actions are helpful to the person grieving, and what is unhelpful or perhaps even harmful?
Colin Campbell, author of 'Finding the words', shares a practical and helpful approach to supporting someone in their grief, how to move through sorrow and profound loss with hope and purpose, and why there is a vital need for community during the grieving process.
Topics in this episode:
- The loss of a child
- Suicide
- How to support someone in their deep sorrow - what to say, what not to say
- "I have no words" ends any chance of a dialogue about grief. Find the words.
- The evolution of grief, and of the grieving person's identity within that sorrow
- The importance of engaging with and accepting grief, rather than avoiding it
- Grief as a sensitive, taboo subject further isolates those in mourning
- Why trying to comfort a grieving person is not helpful
- Different societal/religious responses to grief, traditional mourning processes, and cultural tools and rules for managing grief in community. Of particular note:
- Jewish mourning traditions: Mourning Kaddish, Shiva ,and Ending Shiva
- Māori mourning ceremony - Tangihanga
- What Losing My Two Children Taught Me About Grief - The Atlantic
- Viktor Frankl 'Mans Search for Meaning'
- Adoption (and the trauma and grief that can accompany it)
- In Memory of Logan
For help:
- Lifeline: 13 11 14
- Suicide Callback Service: 1300 659 467
- Mensline Australia: 1300 789 987
- Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800
- Standby - Support After Suicide 1300 727 247
Find us on Facebook at Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
Email us your questions and comments at podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
How often have you struggled to know what to say
when someone close to you is going through grief at.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
The loss of a loved one?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
What do you say?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
How do you convey your compassion, your awareness of the
enormous loss. This podcast contains some mature themes. Listener discretion
is advised. I've heard myself say there are just no words.
So many times many people have chosen to say nothing
(00:40):
at all because well, what's the right thing to say?
Or everything happens for a purpose, or they're in a
better place right now. Colin Campbell is the author of
Finding the Words. It's a book about working through profound
loss with hope and purpose, and he makes the argument
(01:02):
that the way our society treats grief is not just backward,
it's cruel. He of all people knows. In twenty nineteen, Colin,
his wife Gail, and their two teenage kids were driving
late one night when a drunk and high driver going
almost one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour tea boned them.
(01:25):
Colin and Gail survived, their two children, Ruby and.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hart did not. How does anyone live through that?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
After that?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
But perhaps just as important to discuss, how are we
to best support a friend, a colleague, a brother, a sister,
a grieving mother or father who literally does not know
how to go on after a tragic or profound loss.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Life brings grief.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's a human reality, especially if we've loved well. I
recorded today's conversation with Colin and how he survived such
a loss about three weeks ago. Just last week, my
own family experienced tragedy. My nephew, Logan died by suicide.
(02:19):
He had just turned twenty with the best and kindest
of intentions. I heard people say there are no words,
over and over and over again to me. In his book,
Colin says there are no words is the perfect conversation killer.
(02:40):
It immediately ends any chance of a dialogue about grief.
It's telling the mourner that we can't really discuss their
grief because there are no words that would be applicable.
This empty phrase encapsulates all that is wrong in how
our society handles grief. This is perhaps the most powerful
and employ in conversation that we have ever had on
(03:02):
the Happy Families podcast, and it offers a far more
practical and helpful approach to grief to what we normally
see It's an important discussion and one that we need,
and we're breaking format. This is not a conversation for
the time poor parent who just wants answers now. This
(03:23):
is a conversation that we need to have.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And it will take as long as it takes. Please
join me.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
We'll be right.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Back, Colin. Thanks for joining me for this conversation. Before
we talk about what happened. I'd really like to honor
your family to me, they're the main show in your life.
They're the main show in your book, even though it's
a book about grief. Can you tell me please about
your wife and your children.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah? Absolutely, and thank you for having me both the way, Justin,
I appreciate it. So my wife is is a comedy
writer and also now a comedy director for television. So
she's very funny and humor has always been part of
our relationship in our lives, and we raised Ruby and
(04:16):
Heart to be they love a good joke as well.
So it was a very it was a very fun,
loving and comedic centric family. And so heart Heart I
always think of him as like a clown. He was
just a performer. He would just embody these characters who
(04:39):
were always outrageous, totally over the top, almost alien like,
and they were hilarious. Ever since he was a little kid,
he would just play these characters, and he was known
for them on the school yard, so people would request them,
so like, oh, you know, can you play so and so?
And he would become these characters and they're all larger
(04:59):
than life and ridiculous. And it started with Ruby because
she was the director. So she initially would put him
into clothes, costumes, wigs, dresses, heels, and send him into
the living room to perform for us.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The hell he is Ruby Yah.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Ruby's three years and one day older than Heart, so
the birthday was one day apart, so so hers was
March twenty ninth and his was March thirtieth, so three
years and a day later. And they were an amazing team.
And they squabbled, of course they squabbled, but they also
loved each other and they were extraordinarily kind. And so
(05:41):
Ruby was an artist and Heart was her biggest fan.
Everything she did he thought was just amazing. And he
was so earnest and honest with her, and she'd show him,
you know, a drawling and he would just be like,
oh my god, Ruby, that is amazing. It's just like beautiful.
See this fourteen year old boy just gushing over his
big sister's artwork. And she was bullied in middle school.
(06:06):
She had a hard time. She was struggling with OCD
and depression, and she was like she became a target
for anybody that wanted to bully somebody because she seemed
so vulnerable right in middle school kids, they attacked the
vulnerable kids. But then something beautiful happened. She she owned
(06:27):
and embraced her own sexuality. She came out. She became
as proud. I call her a lesbian warrior for social
justice because she was very social justice minded. And she
became so cool and so confident that not only did
all the bullying stop, but in fact, people bullying other
people stopped around her because she'd be like, knock it off,
(06:48):
don't bully that little kid just because he's a nerd,
and they wouldn't because she was so cool. And that
was a beautiful thing to see. To see her come
into her own it was quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
As I listened to you describe your children and your wife,
it sounds, I mean, it really sounds like the perfect family.
The white picket Fence the smiling children. It sounds so
it sounds so blissful. It sounds like.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It's well the dream. Yes, except there was that struggle
with OCD and depression that was very serious. So that
was suicidality and it was not all bliss for sure,
But luckily at the very end of her life she
did come out of that. You know, we've got the
great medication, the great therapists, and then it was it
really was, to my mind, I had the greatest family
(07:33):
in the world. My kids were the coolest. Honestly, that's
how I felt. My kids are the coolest kids in
the world. My wife's the coolest waife in the world. Yeah,
and that sounds absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
The way you say it with the smile just makes
it even more real. Colin June twelfth, twenty nineteen, It
must be a date that creates enormous emotions for you.
What can you tell us about the events of that day?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, well, way, the evening leading up to it was
sort of the apogey of this perfect, boastful family because
we were on our way to Joshua Tree. It's one
of our favorite places on earth, the four of us.
We love scrambling these amazing rock formations out in the
high Desert. It's like two and a half hours east
of Los Angeles, very sparsely populated, extraordinary vistas in every direction.
(08:22):
It's just really beautiful, beautiful place. And we had just
put down an offer in a house like a little
a getaway shack, we called it, on the side of
the hill with amazing views. So the house is very simple,
but the views were extraordinary. That's all we really wanted,
and all four of us loved it, and we were
so excited. It was like a dream come true. We
could actually have our own place out there in the desert.
(08:44):
And we were driving there and it was wonderful. It
was like the school. It just ended the school year,
it ended Ruben Hart's work was all done. They were thrilled.
We were thrilled. And on the way, a drunken high
driver going ninety miles an hour tee boned the car
and Ruby and Hartt were killed in the backseat, and
Gail and I were wounded, but not that seriously. Certainly,
(09:06):
it was surreal, how okay we were compared to the
fact that our children were gone.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It sounds like you've just climbed the mountain. It sounds
like everything was there and in one unexpected second, it's not.
There are so many different questions that I have to
describe or ask you to describe the aftermath of what's happened.
What I'm most interested in when I think about how
(09:34):
I would react as a father with six daughters. How
do you I don't know if traverse is the right word,
but I'll use it. How do you traverse the days
and the weeks following the crash? How do you walk
into the house for the first time? How do you
walk past their bedroom for the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It's the little things.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
How do you how do you sit down at the
dining table with Gail and have a meal for the
first time, knowing that this is the near reality that
you don't have your kids anymore.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The terror is the first thing that comes to mind.
We were terrified to walk back into our house coming
back from the hospital, and that was surprising to me.
You know, I didn't understand why I was so scared.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I'd want to go, I'd want to go and check
into a hotel. I can't imagine walking into the house
and feeling the emptiness.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, well, it's interesting. It's like, and I know some
people who sell their home after they lose their child.
But in a way we couldn't because ruby and heart
stuff were there. Ruby was their heart, was there, our memories.
They grew up in that house, they were born in
that house, and so how could we leave? And so
there's this dual thing happening. It's like we need to
(10:46):
be in this house, and yet everywhere in the house
reminds us of what's gone's been taken from us, and
it's so painful. It's so painful and scary. And so,
in fact, you mentioned sitting the diningroom table, and that
was really hard. We had Gail's sisters took turns coming
out and staying with they're both on the East Coast,
Nina and Betsy, and they took turns staying with us,
(11:08):
just so that we could when we sat down at
the dinom table, it wasn't just the two of us
because it was too awful, you know, we couldn't take it,
the thought of sitting down at that table and just
be the two of us. So really, terror was uppermost
in my mind. And then and then the aching, horrible aching,
and the aching stays with me. I'm not I'm not
(11:28):
as terrified now, But but the aching for them is
very difficult. Yeah, to endure.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, you're right that a profound loss is, and I'm
quoting from the book here, a profound loss is when
you lose someone who you feel is entwined intrinsically with
your own identity. In other words, you define yourself partly
in terms of this other person. Close quote. So, I
think this is the thing that struck me most. Your
(11:59):
sense of self is that you're Dad, That's who you are.
And then this impossibly well it's not impossible to describe,
but in this incredibly cruel moment, that identity is forever altered.
Every time you meet somebody for the first time and
they say, so, tell me about your family. Have you
got kids, you must have to. You have to think
so hard about how you're going to answer that.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
How do you bring this up?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
How do you talk about profound loss and identity and
particularly what it meant for you? Again, the question, I
guess is how do you process this from an identity standpoint.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Two things I want to talk about and I hope
that I can remember, But the identity was really central
to me, and I kind of I like this definition
that I came up with for profound loss because I
feel like it's generous in the sense that the griever
gets to decide if it's a profound loss. Right, somebody
loses their parent, and somebody else doesn't have a close
(12:49):
relations to their parent, they think it's no big deal.
But to the one person who lost their parent, maybe
it is. Maybe it's a central idea of who they are.
They are so and so sign or daughter. That's how
they identify. So I like that the griever decides what's profound,
not somebody else. You know, it's who they think. It's
important to who they are as a human. And then
to have that gone for me was so destabilizing because
(13:15):
I literally, while they were alive, I did find myself
as Reubenhart's dad. I wasn't suddenly after they were gone
that's who I was. I took such pride in being
their dad. I was so proud of them. It was
so important to who I was as a human. And
then they were gone and I couldn't At first, I
couldn't accept it that I was the father of two
(13:37):
dead children. I was so resistant to that. But then
as my grief evolved, it changed, it shifted and I
kind of clung to that identity. It became important to
me because it was like, I need to honor Ruby
and Hart at all times. So I'm Colin Campbell. I'm
the father of two children who were killed by a
(13:58):
drunk driver, Ruby and Heart. That was my identity suddenly,
and that was important to me that I acknowledge it.
And I like this sort of the PSA quality to it. Right.
If I'm talking to somebody and they hear this, maybe
that could save a life, because maybe they'll think twice
next time before they drink and drive. And you know,
I don't know. But then as time progressed even further,
(14:21):
I had to shift my identity again, and each shift
was painful to me. It was hard to change. But
now I don't think of myself primarily as the father
of two dead children. It's a central part of my identity,
but it's not necessarily the first thing that I say
when I meet somebody new, you know what I mean,
(14:43):
Whereas before it was it was really important on the
first day of class. I'm a professor, and so on
the first day of class, I tell my students I'm
Colin Gamble and I'm grieving the loss of my two children.
They were killed by a drunk driver and so, which
was intense to tell students on the first day, but
I had to. It was too important to me, right
And now I don't have to, and that's also hard.
It's hard to let go of that, you know. In
(15:05):
a way, it's like every stage of this evolving identity
has been involved in it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I think you want so much to honor them and
to highlight that they are they are still part of
your life. And yet over time, I mean it's been
over four years now. I guess what I'm hearing you
say is the relevance of that conversation to the lives
of the people you're interacting with may not be quite
as substantive as you Perhaps you gave it more weight earlier.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
On Yeah, I was more like I need to tell
you right now, And now I think it all the time.
I think about Ruber Higher all the time, But I
don't need to tell you necessarily about them all the time.
That makes sense, Like my need for it is quieted.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This is a time thing, right, Like there is a process,
there's an evolution with grief. I'd imagine that the acuteness
of what was happening in those first days, the weeks,
and months must be so different to the passage of time,
allowing you to be four years down the track and
even say what you're saying with me.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, And I think it's not just time, because I
don't think that time heals our wounds. So I don't
think heals any of my wounds. But I have changed.
My relationship to pain and grief has changed. But I
think it's because of the time I've spent engaged in
my grief. I think if people are avoiding grief, then
(16:29):
they're not progressing through in a way. You can be
stuck and time can pass, but it doesn't change anything,
you know what I mean. But I think it's a
magical bomb.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, that's exactly where I want to take it now.
But I want to I don't want to talk.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
About how the griever either avoids or steps into their grief.
I want to talk about the people who are around
you and their avoidance of grief, which which in many
ways is where the book begins. And I think it
was what really struck me. You take a very very
strong and direct approach to people who are around you
(17:05):
in terms of advocating for your needs as you go
through this grief process through the book, you're very courageous
with others and also with yourself in some really challenging ways.
The emails that you write, the way that you talk
to people about things. One example, right after your only
two children in the world are kill you point to
what would be called the or what you call the
(17:26):
grief orthodoxy, and you make the point that people, well
intentioned people would say things like I couldn't live if
that happened to me, I'd kill myself, or they'd say Colin,
there are no words. There are no words, which is
something that I know that I've said before, and when
I read it in your book, I felt very guilty
about it.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
There is a question here, The question is this Your
response to that in the book was so impactful for me.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I'd love for you to talk about what your reaction
is to those comments, because you didn't kill yourself and
there are words.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, So I want to I do want to make
clear that I don't want you to feel bad about
saying that. I think some people, you know, I wrote
an op ed in the Atlantic, and some people were like,
these people are just trying to be nice. Why are
you scolding them? And like, I never scolded anybody. Just
for the record, anybody that said that to me, I
never said, like, hey, don't say that to me, because
I knew what they were saying, why they were saying it.
(18:21):
It made a lot of sense. You know, you're saying
there are no words because you're trying to express the
depths of the horror that I'm in, and it's apt
to say there are no words that I can say
that's gonna, you know, touch the horror of your reality.
But what happened was I was told that so many
(18:42):
times in early grief, so many times, hundreds, literally hundreds
of times people would say there are no words to me,
and very often the conversation would end there that would
be it, because there are no words, and I needed
to talk about my grief. I needed to talk about
ruby and heart. And so I started to think, because
I'm kind of a trarian, have to admit, and so
(19:03):
if two hundred people say there are no words to me,
I'm going to be like, wait a minute, is that true?
Are there really no words? And I found no, there
are words. There are people who come up to me
and they talk about rubying heart or they ask me
about my grief, how my grief is doing that moment,
and we can have a conversation about it. And nobody's
finding the perfect words. Nobody's finding words that are they're
(19:26):
going to solve my problem that I can't. No one
can fix my pain, No one can take away my pain,
no one can even give me comfort, honestly, But to
be able to talk about rubying heart and my grief
to somebody, especially with somebody who knew them, is transformative
in my experience of grief. I feel like I'm not alone.
(19:48):
I feel like there are other people who are grieving
them we can talk about that, and it helps me immensely.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
For somebody who is grieving, how does a friend approach them?
What do we say?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
What the woods? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
And I think so many of the words that come
off wrong are words that are attempting to give comfort,
because if you're trying to comfort somebody on some level,
you're trying to take away their pain. You're trying to
tell them maybe stop crying now, right, And in fact,
(20:22):
I believe a person who has lost a loved one
inevitably is going to feel pain. They need to feel
that pain. It's the flip side of love. You know
that if you've loved someone so so deeply and they're
gone from earth, they're gone from your life, you have
to allow yourself to feel the pain of that loss
in order just to be present, in order to be
(20:44):
present in this life without them. Otherwise you're in denial.
That's another way to go where you can compartmentalize and
pretend it didn't happen, or pretend you're thinking about it.
And there's always that temptation, and we all do that,
me included. But I feel like being allowed to express
my pain is so helpful. And so so if someone's
(21:05):
saying things like they're trying to come for me, like oh,
they're in a better place, or well, you could adopt
other kids, or you know, some kind of replacement, or
at least you had seventeen years with Ruby and fourteen
with heart. Those are all sort of nice things, But
the unstated implication is, so stop grieving so much.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Right, everything happens for a Raisin column.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, everything happens for a reason, So maybe you can
stop stop your grieving, you know, And those seem very
unhelpful to me. So the most helpful things that I've
encountered were people who are simply sharing rubying heart stories,
or sharing how much they love Ruby and Heart and
missed them, or how much they love me and want
(21:49):
to spend time with me even though I'm grief stricken
and maybe not so not so friendly or palatable. Or
also if they if they're asking me about my grief,
you know, how is my how's my grief today? Acknowledging it,
acknowledging that when I wake up this morning, I had
I had a hard time because I had to deal
(22:10):
with the thought that yep, another day and Ruby hard
is still gone. But I got to get out of bed.
You know, I was gonna I was gonna address your
other question, which is about this. I would just die,
right My kids would be killed out. I would just die.
And I heard that several times, and that felt very
unhelpful to me, because on the one hand, it felt
(22:30):
like me. It felt to me the implication was if
they must love their kids more than I love my kids,
because if their kids died, they would just kill themselves
and I didn't, so I must not really love my
kids as much. Right, That's the implication, And the truth is,
you don't really just spontaneously die. You would have to
actively end your life. And here I am in grief,
(22:54):
seeing how awful it is to endure such painful loss.
If I ended my life, what would that do to
my wife, or my mom, or my brother, sister, all
the people that love me? How could I intentionally and
Ruby Heart were murdered? How could I intentionally take my
(23:14):
own life and plunge my whole community into more grief?
And also, how is that going to honor Ruby in heart?
I want to stay alive so I can honor Ruby
in heart. And that was the thought that I had,
was like if if I die, if I died and
(23:36):
people that loved me killed themselves, I'd be bummed. I'd
be like, wait, no, so you stay alive. You're supposed
to tell Colin stories, right, You're supposed to stay alive
and talk about me.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
So.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And then on top of that was Ruby's suicidality. So
she struggled with suicidality, and in a sense she overcame
that You you don't just overcome depression, but she had
it managed. She wanted to live. She fought for her life,
and I couldn't. I couldn't dishonor her memory and her
(24:09):
struggle by taking my own life. So it felt like
to me when people made that comment or I would
just kill myself, it felt very flippant. It felt like
they weren't really thinking about it in a deep, deep way.
They were just saying it. It felt easy for them
to say that, and I don't. It's not easy for me.
I have to actually think about it, you know what
I mean. It's like, dude, I actually have to think
(24:31):
about it. Do I end my life or not? And
I have to think about what that means to other
human beings. And it's a rough road either way. And
you just sort of saying I would just kill myself
is offensive to me because you have the privilege, not you,
but the person who said that to me has a
privilege of just sort of tossing it off as opposed
to actually thinking about the reality.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You know, you've been through an experience that most people
would not actually be able to really step into an
imagine enduring so much so that you've gone and written
a book about number one, the grief process and how
it exists in our culture at the moment. And I
think that you're actually quite strong on saying that we
do not handle it in healthy ways right now in
(25:16):
our culture at all. I'm wondering if this was something
that you grew up with, were you always grief aware?
And the reason I ask it is because I've written
blog posts and articles and done podcasts on topics like this,
and I think that I've been empathic and given good advice.
But the profundity in what you've said and your solutions
(25:37):
and strategies, the way that you've honored your children and
honored your grief but also shown other people a roadmap
through their grief, seems particularly well, it's deep, it's really,
it's just so thoughtful. I'm just curious whether your background
taught you that.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
No, absolutely, of the exact opposite, right. My family upbringing
was I call it grief averse. So we did not
talk about grief much at all, honestly, so not religious
back like that, right, No, So, so my parents were
raised as Protestants, and they rebelled in their like twenties,
(26:21):
and we're atheists, are atheists. My father passed away, but
and they raised us without you know, any kind of religion,
and and all three of us, my brother and sister,
older brother and sister, We're we're all very happy atheists.
We enjoy we enjoy our our lack of belief in
a supreme being. But here when it came time to grieve,
(26:46):
that tradition for me didn't didn't have any cultural tools
for managing grief. So I leaned heavily on the Jewish traditions.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, I was going to ask you. Hearing you describe
your background make me even more intrigued because in the
book you talk about how your community came together. I wondered,
to what extent the Jewish faith, which your wife, Gail
is Jewish, how much that community and that faith actually
provided some kind of, I don't know, a rocker foundation,
(27:19):
a framework, a way forward for you. Could you talk
about the way religion, even though you don't have a
religious bone in your body, Religion actually, I guess shepherd
you through this grief process.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Honestly, because you know, I'm a religious so it wasn't
the religious component, but more the cultural component. And I
think it sort of helped me because it helped me
to analyze what these Jewish traditions were really about for me,
because they're all on one level about God, but for me,
they're not at all about God. They're about how do
(27:50):
you process grief? And I figured, you know, Jews had
thousands of years to think about this and work it out.
And if there are rules about grieving, I bet there's
like practical reasons for them. And and sure enough it
felt very practical to me. All the customs and traditions
that that I was exposed to all had deep practical
(28:12):
meaning for me. That literally taught me how to grieve.
Uh So the whole idea of even grieving in community,
that that's from the Jewish traditions. So so, just to
name name a few of them. Uh, you you have
to say the mourner's Cottish it's it's a prayer for
the dead, but you are not allowed to say it alone.
(28:32):
You have to say it with at least nine other
people present.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And when do you say this moren is Scottish.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
We're supposed to say it every day for the first
year with nine others. Yes, yes, Now we didn't say
it every day. We went weekly. We went weekly and uh.
And there are different rules for different losses as well.
So and again I'm not a rabbi, so I think
technically for child loss it's not every day but is
(29:02):
out of the point. The idea is that you grieve
with people, so inevitably, I'm saying this prayer in Hebrew
and there are people a mending me, and I'm I'm
going to weep. Right, I can't get through the mourners
collageespecially in early grief, without without crying and I and
(29:23):
I have to do it with people standing around me
with love. And isn't that beautiful? It isn't necessarily the
opposite of what was certainly the opposite of what I
conceived of grief, which is you go away in a
corner and you're just sad by yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right, that's what is in the movies of oscaram and
Hot Onto the Blankets watching Netflix.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, exactly, that's what everybody thinks. Or get really really
drunk or really really high. And the Jewish tradition is like, no, actually,
you've got to be present. You have to be engaged
in your grief. You can't compartmentalize because every day you're
going to show up and grief with people around watching
you and amending your shared grief. And it's so beautiful.
(30:04):
It's such a powerful experience to be supported that in
that moment over and over again. And the other example
that of the share is the notion of shiva. So
Shiva is the first seven nights after the funeral, people
gather at your house. They come to your house and
they literally sit with you. That's so called sitting shiva.
(30:26):
And Shiva's is Hebrew for seven, so it's the first
seven nights. And so each night hundreds of people would
come crowd our house, which sounds good, yes, yes it does, right,
it sounds It sounded terrible to me. I was like,
what are you talking about? Rubert hart Wood just killed
like seventy two hours ago, and now you want people
(30:46):
to pack into my home. But I was like, well,
I'm just going to listen to the Jews because they
know better, and sure enough they do. And so I
was very grateful that I that I did just listen
to them and do what they told me, the rabbi
told me to do. Because then our wise Rabbi, Sharon Browse,
she turned to us and said, these people are gathered here,
do you have anything you want to say to them?
And it turned out I did. I did. I desperately
(31:09):
wanted to talk about ruby and heart and all these
people wanted to hear about Ruby and Heart, and they
wanted to talk about Ruby and heart, and so it
was amazing. I could tell Ruby and Heart stories, we
could laugh and cry, and then I'd hear stories from
other people and it was like, Oh, yeah, we're mourning
in community. This is how one grieves. I don't sit
in a corner and eat ice cream and get drunk.
(31:29):
I'm here with people who love Ruby and heart and me,
and we can share stories and we can laugh and
cry together, so that those are all just huge eye
openers for me.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
As I read the book and came across this idea
ship of which I'd never heard of before, it made
me envious. I don't know if there's a bit of
word for it. I think about the funeral traditions. I
have a faith background, but my funeral traditions feel just
so lacking relative to what you described. This idea that
(32:02):
you're going to have a huge community, then you're going
to do a sitting shiver for seven nights where literally
one hundred plus people are showing up and finding a
space in your house and doing this. And then there
was another tradition as well, which I don't remember the
name of it, but at the end of Shiver, you
with the community. There's something really substantial that happens there
as well.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, you walk, you take a walk around the block.
And it's so powerful on so many levels, because sure enough,
that first week, Gail and I were scared to leave
the house.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And you don't do is that tradition like you're not
supposed to leave the house or something.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
No, I don't believe that you're necessarily restricted to the house. Okay,
but we felt restricted. We felt like scared to go
out into the world. And sadly we had to for
some doctor appointments. But aside from the doctor appointments and
the therapy appointments, we stayed in our house and it
was scary to us. And then on the last day
(33:02):
of Shiva, it's like, oh, we're all gonna walk around
the block together. We're going to accompany you around the block,
and it was like we're reintroducing you to the world.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
It's like a hundred people to that of people walking.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Down these the small side streets of Silver Lake, and
we blocked traffic. That was it. No car could go
in the side street while we're walking one hundred people.
And that was powerful because in a way it felt
like transgressive, Like, yeah, Ruby and Hard are dead, and
we're gonna take up space. We're gonna we're gonna demand attention,
and we're not gonna shy away from this. We're gonna
(33:37):
we're gonna break some rules for Ruby and Heart because
their loss is catastrophic. And I remember a car pulled
up ahead of us and saw this crowd and started honking,
and my brother ran over to the car and said
what was happening, and they just whoop and they just
backed away because it's like, right, there's one hundred people
in grief coming down the road. We don't care about
(33:59):
your your appointment that you're late for back up. It's
grief and it demands space.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It's pretty beautiful. When I hear you talk about it
feels like you said transgressive. It feel empowering. It's almost
like you're saying, I'm going to reclaim my agency. I'm
going to reclaim my capacity to start to take steps forward,
to expand my universe again. Despite the awfulness of the
tragedy you described a metaphor. In fact, I think it
was your rabbi who told it to you, but you
(34:28):
described in the book the metaphor of the shipwreck. When
I hear about this Shiver tradition, and I hear about
various other things that you did with community, which probably
go well beyond the scope of our conversation. Now they're
in the book and they're beautiful. I wonder if you
can describe for me the metaphor of the shipwreck.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah. So she shared that at the funeral itself. And
I have to just give perhaps to our amazing Rabbi
Sharon Browse. She's just an extraordinary human being. And she
held her hands figuratively and early for those first days
of awfulness and took us to pick out the casket right,
to pick out the caskets plural, to pick out the
(35:09):
burial spot. So some rough, rough days and she was
there for us and continue to be continue to be
there for us. But at the funeral, she shared this,
this story about and against it's it's from the I
forget where it's from. But J just have lots of
stories that I loved, beautiful, beautiful metaphoric stories. But in
(35:31):
this story, the shipwreck and and somebody clings to a
piece of wood that floats by, and that's how they survive.
And you go under the water and back out under
and out and you're holding on, you're clinging to this
this piece of wood floating by, and she said, de Gale,
(35:52):
and I want you to look out to this room
and see all these people and they're all going to
be planks of wood for you to cling to because
you're been wrecked. And that was powerful, and that was
a beautiful introduction to our community to be like, you
guys are going to be the planks to hold these
people up because they need help. And I love that idea.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Callum my PhDs in positive psychology and one of the
founding fathers of the modern positive psychology movement was Christopher Peterson.
He died a few years ago, but the phrase that
he was best known for, after analyzing a century of
research into psychology and what leads to a life well lived,
just harmonized this so beautifully with the shipwreck metaphor. And
(36:36):
it's just three words other people matter. When I here
described this grief process and how you work through it,
there's just this one word that keeps coming up, and
that is community, community, community. It's other people who matter.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah. I discovered that how important it was to me
in grief to have the community. And then I also
just building on that idea that you just said about
a life well lived is you know, Victor Frankel was
meaningful to me. I read his book Man Starts for Meaning,
and he talks about the idea that we find meaning
(37:12):
in other people outside of ourselves. So how are we
of service to other people that you can't just think
about your own needs and desires and find meaning that way.
It's how you are in relation to other people. And
that's also was very crystallizing to me.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
There's something as well as I think about this process,
we've very much focused on you and your grief, but
as an outsider, a friend of the family, a loved one,
somebody who is going through my own personal grief about
the tragedy, but also wanting so desperately, I mean, anyone
who's not you wants so desperately to offer support however
(37:53):
they can. There's a clumsiness, there's an awkwardness, there's an
unsuredness about it. But by being open and by actually
reaching out and saying you look like a plank of
wood that I could lean on for a moment, in
so many ways, you provide purpose and meaning. It sort
of ties in with that Frank idea.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When we shut ourselves off, not only do we harm ourselves,
but we also.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Reduce the capacity that others have to find meaning and
purpose and goodness in their lives through the same grief
that we're all experiencing.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Just to me. I think
you're right. I think that people were in ours desperate
to help Gale and I and it can be awkward
and difficult because I think I've spoken to many people
in grief, and oftentimes people say like, I'll do anything
for you, whatever you want. But in the early days,
(38:43):
we don't know what we want, and we feel lost,
and it's almost a burden to for us to think
of things you could do for me. You know, I
don't know what you can do for me. I know
you think about that, you know what I mean. I
don't want to live right now, so I can't think
about what you could do for me. But when people
gave specific offers, like hey, we'd like to go for
(39:04):
a walk tomorrow in the park, I'm available. That was
that was very helpful.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
How hard was it to say yes like that? You
must have wanted to say no, I want to sit
here and cry yes, Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So I talked about that in the book. I actually
I was finding myself saying no a lot because it
was very hard for me to make a decision. It
was very hard for me to even think about the
next hour alone tomorrow. Like someone said, oh, I'll go
for a walk with you tomorrow, I'm like, I don't
know how I'm going to feel tomorrow. I can't make
a commitment to that. I don't know if I'll be
out of bed, I don't know what's going to happen.
(39:39):
But I found that because I really want to be
with people in community, and I really I imagined that
I would want to have a conversation with this person.
So I started saying yes to everything. That was my
new policy. I wanted to say no, I just said yes.
And it was a way of staying engaged in life,
even when I didn't want to be engaged in life.
(40:00):
I trusted that I sort of fake it till I
make it kind of vibe, you know what I mean,
Like do I really want to go for a walk. No,
But I know that walking can be helpful and healthy,
and I'm going to say yes, and I'm going to
do it. And sure enough, as I'm walking, I'm discovering.
(40:21):
Oh I'm glad I took the walk, you know what
I mean. And I kind of trusted in that. I
sort of trusted that meaning and purpose would come back
to me because life feels meaningless when you lose something,
you have a profound loss, and your identity has shook.
Life feels meaningless because what matters? Why does it matter
what I do in my life? Ruby and Hart aren't
here to share that with me. But ultimately, I think
(40:46):
by just trusting that it would come back to me
and engaging in life, it has. You know, I think
I have found meaning and purpose in life, even in
their absence.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Is partly New Zealand Maory or Malti, as she would say,
they have a tradition where a person dies and that
person's body stays in the family home or on what
they call the mudai, and there are three days where
the entire family stays with the body of the deceased.
When this was first explained to me, Colin I, I mean,
(41:23):
I was probably in my early twenties, and frankly I
was horrified. I really liked the standard Western way of
keeping your distance. Death apparently is quite unquote disgusting, and
yet over time I've fallen in love with the idea
so much so that I'm looking forward to the opportunity
to celebrate the lives of Kylie's family in that way,
(41:44):
and I'm hoping that we can even adopt some of
that in our own family. Reading about the Jewish way
of going through the traditions that you described, it also
shifted me even further into wanting those deep and profound
traditions around death and grieving, especially with commune. Do you
have any sense of where the idea comes from that
we're supposed to push grief away.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah, I think there's several reasons why this has sort
of become our cultural default to avoid grief, avoid the
discomfort of grief. I'm still thinking about your wife's traditions,
which just seems how beautiful, and I feel like I
just want to respond quickly to your wife traditions the
idea that I think there's a lot of cultural heritage
(42:27):
that we all have that involves engaging in grief, and
it's somehow some easy to short circuit that stuff. So
I know lots of people should us post last seven Nights,
but many people don't do that many Jews don't do that.
There are a lot of traditions in the Jewish culture
about grief that in the morning that people do. Yeah, yeah,
(42:49):
that's what we're supposed to do, but we're going to
do a shorter version, you know what I mean, We're
not really going to do that, you know. And that's
true for Islam as well, and in Christianity. There are
there are lots of traditions we have of around grief
that that I think as a culture, we we short
change and think like, yeah, that's what we're supposed to do,
but doesn't feel right. And in a way, giving ourselves
(43:12):
over to these cultural traditions can be really beautiful because
it is uncomfortable to your point, you know what, why
why do we why is grief so avoided now? Is
because I think it's so uncomfortable and it seems like
it's easier to avoid it, But in fact it's not.
(43:32):
Because we don't get to avoid grief. It happens to
all of us no matter what, We're all going to
grieve and and it's okay to feel pain. I think
that people don't like the idea of people being in pain.
They want to speed it up. Right, Like, that's why
people are encouraged to get over it, because because they're
(43:52):
making people uncomfortable. I'm seeing you, you're in pain. I'm uncomfortable,
so I say, cheer up, stop grieving. But in fact,
there's nothing wrong with the pain of loss. It's a
beautiful pain. It comes from love. The reason it hurts
so bad is because I love them so much. And
isn't that a beautiful thing? Don't we want to love people.
Don't we want to open our hearts up to both
(44:16):
sides of love, the joyful feelings and then also the
aching wife close your eyes off to that. But I
think people are afraid of it and think that it's
somehow more convenient and not feel that.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
You speak so vulnerably and so beautifully. I just so
appreciate what you've shared. I have just a couple of
other questions, and then we'll bring this to a close.
In the book, page one seventy six, you share a
quote from Helen Keller. It's always been a personal favorite
of mind. But I didn't have the full context for
the quote, and the way you use it in the
book is just so I think so helpful. I want
(44:57):
to say so delightful. But that word feels a little
bit inappropriate in the convers and yet my mind exploded
in wonderful ways when I read it. Would you mind
reading that and perhaps sharing why this matters so much?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah? Absolutely so. Helen Keller wrote, security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children
of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is
no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life
is either a daring adventure or nothing. And I was
first introduced to this quote from Ruby. She was at
(45:33):
an OCD group, an adult OCD group. She was so
precocious at engaging that even as a sixteen year old
and seventeen year old, she was a member of this
adult OCD group, and she was a leader in this group.
By the way, she's an extraordinary person. And she brought
this quote home because it really it talks about exposing
(45:53):
oneself to danger, and a lot of elements of OCD
are about trying to control danger. So a lot of
a lot, not all, but a lot of people with OCD,
they're obsessive compulsive behaviors are about trying to keep safe
people safe. If I do this I will will forestall
(46:15):
something bad from happening. And in a way, part of
the therapy h very often for OCD is is saying, well,
what if something bad did happen, Like, let's expose yourself
to that and just and try and try and sit
with that discomfort. You know, we're not in control, we're
not actually safe, uh, and can we can we open
(46:35):
ourselves up to that? So this is a quote that
was important to Ruby, and she stuck it on her
on her corkboard in her room and then and I
knew about it, and then I discover it in grief
and I'm like, oh right, yeah, none of us are safe,
none of us are in control. Horrible things happen all
the time to people who are innocent, who couldn't have
(46:58):
been protected. War crashes, I mean, all sorts of terrible
diseases strike people, and it's all unfair and we can't
protect ourselves from it. And yet, do we want to
live a life that's like hungered down and trying to
protect ourselves from these things that we can't protect ourselves
fromb or do we want to open ourselves up to
(47:19):
it and try and engage in life and the adventure
of life, and so it became an inspirational quote from
me to help me stay engaged in life even though
it's scary.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I asked you to elaborate on that because my final
question for you really ties in with what you're describing.
Life is a daring adventure or is nothing? And yet
my two children in a loge with me and for
me to live that daring adventure. In some ways, there's
I don't know if this is probably the wrong word
to use, but there's this sense of I've got to
(47:52):
get over this, or certainly there are people who expect
that we have to get over this. My understanding though,
is that you never get over losing you two children,
having them taken from you, especially like this.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
In conclusion, how are you now?
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah? Thanks for asking, because I'm as scary to ask me, right,
how am I doing? I think it's scary to people,
but I always appreciate people checking in and it is.
It is all an ongoing struggle. I I don't like
to use the word healing because to my mind, I'll
(48:28):
never heal, you know, Ruby and Hart Uh, there I have.
I have holes in my heart, two whole, two large
holes in my heart. There aren't going anywhere, but I'm
living around them, so I'm still my heart's not it's
it's damaged, but it still works. I still love people.
I want to I want to be open to life.
(48:51):
And so early on after the crash, uh, you know,
for example, I said to Gail, you know, we could
be parents again. We could foster adopt. And one of
the reasons why I had that idea was because Ruby
put it in my mind a year or two before
she was killed. She said to us, we should foster adopt.
And we're like, what, how do you even know about
(49:12):
like a fifteen year old kid? How do you even
know about foster adopting? Because she was just that kind
of kid. She did research on it, and she said,
there's so many fams, so many children in in Los
Angeles County that need families, and we're a loving family,
and we should we should bring some into our family.
And we thought, that's such a beautiful idea. And I
(49:34):
thought the time, my hands are full, I got two kids,
that's beautiful Ruby, but no, and then suddenly I was like, oh, wow, right,
I've got two empty bedrooms, and maybe we could bring
children into our lives and continue to parent and it was.
It was difficult. So I said this to Gail, and
(49:55):
she burst into tears and said, thank god you said that.
I was thinking that too, but I scared that you
would be too scared to try again with other kids,
and so we embarked on this journey. So it's it's
a difficult journey, and you have to be to take classes,
you have to be trained to do this, and mostly
the training is about learning about trauma. These kids have
(50:19):
endured terrible trauma. That's why they're in the foster system.
No kid in the foster system doesn't have trauma. That's
how they got there, through no fault of their own right.
It was we tried to foster. I talked about the book.
We started fostering to adopt a teenage girl, thirteen year
old girl, and she lived with us for a year
and a half and I thought we were making a
(50:39):
new family, but in fact, she found it hard to
open her hearts up, open her heart up to the
idea of being part of a family. For her family
met trauma. For her, opening her heart meant vulnerability, and
that was catastrophic for her in the past. And even
though she wanted to have a new family, she couldn't
(51:00):
do it. It was too scary for her, and ultimately
she said, I want out. I don't want to be adopted.
I want to age out of the system, which is
very bleak statistically, in heartbreaking that she wasn't able to
just hang in there with us a little longer until
she could acclimate and see that was safe. But we're
(51:23):
trying again, and I think it's going very well. So
we have a thirteen year old son and a twelve
year old daughter, their siblings, and it feels good in
so many ways to be parenting, to have a family.
It's a real stretching of the heart. But it's also
(51:44):
challenging because here I am still in grief and they
have lots of trauma and grief of their own that
they're trying to process. But they're just a kid. So
I have my adult experiences and perspectives, but they're just
kids struggling with these terrible feelings of loss and trauma.
(52:07):
So it's like parenting on steroids. But it's very meaningful
to me and girl.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Colin, so grateful for what you've shared, So grateful for
the I want to say inspiration, but again I'm not
sure that's the right word. All I can really think
to do, though, is to express my appreciation, my gratitude.
Speaking about these things is I'm sure a combination of
both incredibly difficult and incredibly joyful. And the way you've
(52:37):
done that is a wonderful honor to you and your family,
and especially to Ruby and Heart. Thank you so much
for sharing what you have with us on the podcast today.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
Thank you, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
I saw a pre share Colin Campbell joining me for
that conversation. As I mentioned at the outset, my nephew
died on Sunday night last week by suicide.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
He was the most energetic and delightful kid.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
That I know.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
He was kind and fun, laughed all the time.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
My kids, his cousins loved hanging out with him, and
as his uncle, I loved hanging out with him too.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I remember last year we.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Served at Kira when the surf was as good as
it gets well overhead, absolutely pumping because surfing was his thing.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
He was so good at it. He was close to pro.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
He was staying at my parents' house the night that
he took his life. My mum and dad, his nana
Pop found him on the Monday morning. They found him
too late to help. They found him too late to
do anything except scream no. They found him too late
for him to hear them as they write his name
(54:02):
over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Logan, logan, logan. How do you hold the body of
your grandson for the last time? That was what my
parents did that Monday morning.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
How do you call your daughter, still celebrating a special
weekend with her husband in Melbourne and tell her that
she needs to come home because her son, just twenty
years old, has died. That was also what my parents
did on Monday morning last week. And then we received
the call, and then we sat with each of our children,
(54:40):
and the ripple effect of those conversations.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Carried and carried and carried.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
In a Facebook post last week, I said this, here's
what I want you to know. There are nine suicides
every single day in Australia. Seven of those nine suicides
each day are men, two of those nine are women,
and suicide is the leading cause death among young people
fifteen to twenty four years, thirty six percent of deaths
in this age group of suicides. Now, it's a complex
(55:10):
issue and rarely is there just one factor that leads
to someone taking their own life.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
But here's what we do know.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Strong social connections reduce the chance of suicide.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So please, please, please please please.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Be kind, be compassionate, be gentle, be inclusive, be supportive,
be less critical and judgmental, and be more of a cheerleader.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Don't be on your kids back.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Instead, make sure you've got their back, love them and
make sure that they know it. They have to know
they matter. This is a hard conversation to have. I
hope that my discussion with Colin Campbell and the way
that I've shared with you today has been helpful. Please
(56:01):
hug your kids, hug your husband, your wife, your spouse,
your partner, and share this message and this love with
everyone you know that needs to know how much they matter.
If you need help, call Lifeline thirteen eleven fourteen. The
(56:21):
Suicide Callback Service is one three hundred six five nine
four six seven, Men's Line Australia is one three hundred
seven eight nine nine eight seven and Kids Help Line
one eight hundred fifty five one eight hundred
How often have you struggled to know what to say
when someone close to you is going through grief at.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
The loss of a loved one?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
What do you say?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
How do you convey your compassion, your awareness of the
enormous loss. This podcast contains some mature themes. Listener discretion
is advised. I've heard myself say there are just no words.
So many times many people have chosen to say nothing
(00:40):
at all because well, what's the right thing to say?
Or everything happens for a purpose, or they're in a
better place right now. Colin Campbell is the author of
Finding the Words. It's a book about working through profound
loss with hope and purpose, and he makes the argument
(01:02):
that the way our society treats grief is not just backward,
it's cruel. He of all people knows. In twenty nineteen, Colin,
his wife Gail, and their two teenage kids were driving
late one night when a drunk and high driver going
almost one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour tea boned them.
(01:25):
Colin and Gail survived, their two children, Ruby and.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hart did not. How does anyone live through that?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
After that?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
But perhaps just as important to discuss, how are we
to best support a friend, a colleague, a brother, a sister,
a grieving mother or father who literally does not know
how to go on after a tragic or profound loss.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Life brings grief.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's a human reality, especially if we've loved well. I
recorded today's conversation with Colin and how he survived such
a loss about three weeks ago. Just last week, my
own family experienced tragedy. My nephew, Logan died by suicide.
(02:19):
He had just turned twenty with the best and kindest
of intentions. I heard people say there are no words,
over and over and over again to me. In his book,
Colin says there are no words is the perfect conversation killer.
(02:40):
It immediately ends any chance of a dialogue about grief.
It's telling the mourner that we can't really discuss their
grief because there are no words that would be applicable.
This empty phrase encapsulates all that is wrong in how
our society handles grief. This is perhaps the most powerful
and employ in conversation that we have ever had on
(03:02):
the Happy Families podcast, and it offers a far more
practical and helpful approach to grief to what we normally
see It's an important discussion and one that we need,
and we're breaking format. This is not a conversation for
the time poor parent who just wants answers now. This
(03:23):
is a conversation that we need to have.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And it will take as long as it takes. Please
join me.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
We'll be right.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Back, Colin. Thanks for joining me for this conversation. Before
we talk about what happened. I'd really like to honor
your family to me, they're the main show in your life.
They're the main show in your book, even though it's
a book about grief. Can you tell me please about
your wife and your children.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah? Absolutely, and thank you for having me both the way, Justin,
I appreciate it. So my wife is is a comedy
writer and also now a comedy director for television. So
she's very funny and humor has always been part of
our relationship in our lives, and we raised Ruby and
(04:16):
Heart to be they love a good joke as well.
So it was a very it was a very fun,
loving and comedic centric family. And so heart Heart I
always think of him as like a clown. He was
just a performer. He would just embody these characters who
(04:39):
were always outrageous, totally over the top, almost alien like,
and they were hilarious. Ever since he was a little kid,
he would just play these characters, and he was known
for them on the school yard, so people would request them,
so like, oh, you know, can you play so and so?
And he would become these characters and they're all larger
(04:59):
than life and ridiculous. And it started with Ruby because
she was the director. So she initially would put him
into clothes, costumes, wigs, dresses, heels, and send him into
the living room to perform for us.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
The hell he is Ruby Yah.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Ruby's three years and one day older than Heart, so
the birthday was one day apart, so so hers was
March twenty ninth and his was March thirtieth, so three
years and a day later. And they were an amazing team.
And they squabbled, of course they squabbled, but they also
loved each other and they were extraordinarily kind. And so
(05:41):
Ruby was an artist and Heart was her biggest fan.
Everything she did he thought was just amazing. And he
was so earnest and honest with her, and she'd show him,
you know, a drawling and he would just be like,
oh my god, Ruby, that is amazing. It's just like beautiful.
See this fourteen year old boy just gushing over his
big sister's artwork. And she was bullied in middle school.
(06:06):
She had a hard time. She was struggling with OCD
and depression, and she was like she became a target
for anybody that wanted to bully somebody because she seemed
so vulnerable right in middle school kids, they attacked the
vulnerable kids. But then something beautiful happened. She she owned
(06:27):
and embraced her own sexuality. She came out. She became
as proud. I call her a lesbian warrior for social
justice because she was very social justice minded. And she
became so cool and so confident that not only did
all the bullying stop, but in fact, people bullying other
people stopped around her because she'd be like, knock it off,
(06:48):
don't bully that little kid just because he's a nerd,
and they wouldn't because she was so cool. And that
was a beautiful thing to see. To see her come
into her own it was quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
As I listened to you describe your children and your wife,
it sounds, I mean, it really sounds like the perfect family.
The white picket Fence the smiling children. It sounds so
it sounds so blissful. It sounds like.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
It's well the dream. Yes, except there was that struggle
with OCD and depression that was very serious. So that
was suicidality and it was not all bliss for sure,
But luckily at the very end of her life she
did come out of that. You know, we've got the
great medication, the great therapists, and then it was it
really was, to my mind, I had the greatest family
(07:33):
in the world. My kids were the coolest. Honestly, that's
how I felt. My kids are the coolest kids in
the world. My wife's the coolest waife in the world. Yeah,
and that sounds absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
The way you say it with the smile just makes
it even more real. Colin June twelfth, twenty nineteen, It
must be a date that creates enormous emotions for you.
What can you tell us about the events of that day?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, well, way, the evening leading up to it was
sort of the apogey of this perfect, boastful family because
we were on our way to Joshua Tree. It's one
of our favorite places on earth, the four of us.
We love scrambling these amazing rock formations out in the
high Desert. It's like two and a half hours east
of Los Angeles, very sparsely populated, extraordinary vistas in every direction.
(08:22):
It's just really beautiful, beautiful place. And we had just
put down an offer in a house like a little
a getaway shack, we called it, on the side of
the hill with amazing views. So the house is very simple,
but the views were extraordinary. That's all we really wanted,
and all four of us loved it, and we were
so excited. It was like a dream come true. We
could actually have our own place out there in the desert.
(08:44):
And we were driving there and it was wonderful. It
was like the school. It just ended the school year,
it ended Ruben Hart's work was all done. They were thrilled.
We were thrilled. And on the way, a drunken high
driver going ninety miles an hour tee boned the car
and Ruby and Hartt were killed in the backseat, and
Gail and I were wounded, but not that seriously. Certainly,
(09:06):
it was surreal, how okay we were compared to the
fact that our children were gone.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It sounds like you've just climbed the mountain. It sounds
like everything was there and in one unexpected second, it's not.
There are so many different questions that I have to
describe or ask you to describe the aftermath of what's happened.
What I'm most interested in when I think about how
(09:34):
I would react as a father with six daughters. How
do you I don't know if traverse is the right word,
but I'll use it. How do you traverse the days
and the weeks following the crash? How do you walk
into the house for the first time? How do you
walk past their bedroom for the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It's the little things.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
How do you how do you sit down at the
dining table with Gail and have a meal for the
first time, knowing that this is the near reality that
you don't have your kids anymore.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The terror is the first thing that comes to mind.
We were terrified to walk back into our house coming
back from the hospital, and that was surprising to me.
You know, I didn't understand why I was so scared.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I'd want to go, I'd want to go and check
into a hotel. I can't imagine walking into the house
and feeling the emptiness.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, well, it's interesting. It's like, and I know some
people who sell their home after they lose their child.
But in a way we couldn't because ruby and heart
stuff were there. Ruby was their heart, was there, our memories.
They grew up in that house, they were born in
that house, and so how could we leave? And so
there's this dual thing happening. It's like we need to
(10:46):
be in this house, and yet everywhere in the house
reminds us of what's gone's been taken from us, and
it's so painful. It's so painful and scary. And so,
in fact, you mentioned sitting the diningroom table, and that
was really hard. We had Gail's sisters took turns coming
out and staying with they're both on the East Coast,
Nina and Betsy, and they took turns staying with us,
(11:08):
just so that we could when we sat down at
the dinom table, it wasn't just the two of us
because it was too awful, you know, we couldn't take it,
the thought of sitting down at that table and just
be the two of us. So really, terror was uppermost
in my mind. And then and then the aching, horrible aching,
and the aching stays with me. I'm not I'm not
(11:28):
as terrified now, But but the aching for them is
very difficult. Yeah, to endure.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, you're right that a profound loss is, and I'm
quoting from the book here, a profound loss is when
you lose someone who you feel is entwined intrinsically with
your own identity. In other words, you define yourself partly
in terms of this other person. Close quote. So, I
think this is the thing that struck me most. Your
(11:59):
sense of self is that you're Dad, That's who you are.
And then this impossibly well it's not impossible to describe,
but in this incredibly cruel moment, that identity is forever altered.
Every time you meet somebody for the first time and
they say, so, tell me about your family. Have you
got kids, you must have to. You have to think
so hard about how you're going to answer that.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
How do you bring this up?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
How do you talk about profound loss and identity and
particularly what it meant for you? Again, the question, I
guess is how do you process this from an identity standpoint.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Two things I want to talk about and I hope
that I can remember, But the identity was really central
to me, and I kind of I like this definition
that I came up with for profound loss because I
feel like it's generous in the sense that the griever
gets to decide if it's a profound loss. Right, somebody
loses their parent, and somebody else doesn't have a close
(12:49):
relations to their parent, they think it's no big deal.
But to the one person who lost their parent, maybe
it is. Maybe it's a central idea of who they are.
They are so and so sign or daughter. That's how
they identify. So I like that the griever decides what's profound,
not somebody else. You know, it's who they think. It's
important to who they are as a human. And then
to have that gone for me was so destabilizing because
(13:15):
I literally, while they were alive, I did find myself
as Reubenhart's dad. I wasn't suddenly after they were gone
that's who I was. I took such pride in being
their dad. I was so proud of them. It was
so important to who I was as a human. And
then they were gone and I couldn't At first, I
couldn't accept it that I was the father of two
(13:37):
dead children. I was so resistant to that. But then
as my grief evolved, it changed, it shifted and I
kind of clung to that identity. It became important to
me because it was like, I need to honor Ruby
and Hart at all times. So I'm Colin Campbell. I'm
the father of two children who were killed by a
(13:58):
drunk driver, Ruby and Heart. That was my identity suddenly,
and that was important to me that I acknowledge it.
And I like this sort of the PSA quality to it. Right.
If I'm talking to somebody and they hear this, maybe
that could save a life, because maybe they'll think twice
next time before they drink and drive. And you know,
I don't know. But then as time progressed even further,
(14:21):
I had to shift my identity again, and each shift
was painful to me. It was hard to change. But
now I don't think of myself primarily as the father
of two dead children. It's a central part of my identity,
but it's not necessarily the first thing that I say
when I meet somebody new, you know what I mean,
(14:43):
Whereas before it was it was really important on the
first day of class. I'm a professor, and so on
the first day of class, I tell my students I'm
Colin Gamble and I'm grieving the loss of my two children.
They were killed by a drunk driver and so, which
was intense to tell students on the first day, but
I had to. It was too important to me, right
And now I don't have to, and that's also hard.
It's hard to let go of that, you know. In
(15:05):
a way, it's like every stage of this evolving identity
has been involved in it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I think you want so much to honor them and
to highlight that they are they are still part of
your life. And yet over time, I mean it's been
over four years now. I guess what I'm hearing you
say is the relevance of that conversation to the lives
of the people you're interacting with may not be quite
as substantive as you Perhaps you gave it more weight earlier.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
On Yeah, I was more like I need to tell
you right now, And now I think it all the time.
I think about Ruber Higher all the time, But I
don't need to tell you necessarily about them all the time.
That makes sense, Like my need for it is quieted.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This is a time thing, right, Like there is a process,
there's an evolution with grief. I'd imagine that the acuteness
of what was happening in those first days, the weeks,
and months must be so different to the passage of time,
allowing you to be four years down the track and
even say what you're saying with me.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, And I think it's not just time, because I
don't think that time heals our wounds. So I don't
think heals any of my wounds. But I have changed.
My relationship to pain and grief has changed. But I
think it's because of the time I've spent engaged in
my grief. I think if people are avoiding grief, then
(16:29):
they're not progressing through in a way. You can be
stuck and time can pass, but it doesn't change anything,
you know what I mean. But I think it's a
magical bomb.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, that's exactly where I want to take it now.
But I want to I don't want to talk.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
About how the griever either avoids or steps into their grief.
I want to talk about the people who are around
you and their avoidance of grief, which which in many
ways is where the book begins. And I think it
was what really struck me. You take a very very
strong and direct approach to people who are around you
(17:05):
in terms of advocating for your needs as you go
through this grief process through the book, you're very courageous
with others and also with yourself in some really challenging ways.
The emails that you write, the way that you talk
to people about things. One example, right after your only
two children in the world are kill you point to
what would be called the or what you call the
(17:26):
grief orthodoxy, and you make the point that people, well
intentioned people would say things like I couldn't live if
that happened to me, I'd kill myself, or they'd say Colin,
there are no words. There are no words, which is
something that I know that I've said before, and when
I read it in your book, I felt very guilty
about it.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
There is a question here, The question is this Your
response to that in the book was so impactful for me.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I'd love for you to talk about what your reaction
is to those comments, because you didn't kill yourself and
there are words.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, So I want to I do want to make
clear that I don't want you to feel bad about
saying that. I think some people, you know, I wrote
an op ed in the Atlantic, and some people were like,
these people are just trying to be nice. Why are
you scolding them? And like, I never scolded anybody. Just
for the record, anybody that said that to me, I
never said, like, hey, don't say that to me, because
I knew what they were saying, why they were saying it.
(18:21):
It made a lot of sense. You know, you're saying
there are no words because you're trying to express the
depths of the horror that I'm in, and it's apt
to say there are no words that I can say
that's gonna, you know, touch the horror of your reality.
But what happened was I was told that so many
(18:42):
times in early grief, so many times, hundreds, literally hundreds
of times people would say there are no words to me,
and very often the conversation would end there that would
be it, because there are no words, and I needed
to talk about my grief. I needed to talk about
ruby and heart. And so I started to think, because
I'm kind of a trarian, have to admit, and so
(19:03):
if two hundred people say there are no words to me,
I'm going to be like, wait a minute, is that true?
Are there really no words? And I found no, there
are words. There are people who come up to me
and they talk about rubying heart or they ask me
about my grief, how my grief is doing that moment,
and we can have a conversation about it. And nobody's
finding the perfect words. Nobody's finding words that are they're
(19:26):
going to solve my problem that I can't. No one
can fix my pain, No one can take away my pain,
no one can even give me comfort, honestly, But to
be able to talk about rubying heart and my grief
to somebody, especially with somebody who knew them, is transformative
in my experience of grief. I feel like I'm not alone.
(19:48):
I feel like there are other people who are grieving
them we can talk about that, and it helps me immensely.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
For somebody who is grieving, how does a friend approach them?
What do we say?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
What the woods? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
And I think so many of the words that come
off wrong are words that are attempting to give comfort,
because if you're trying to comfort somebody on some level,
you're trying to take away their pain. You're trying to
tell them maybe stop crying now, right, And in fact,
(20:22):
I believe a person who has lost a loved one
inevitably is going to feel pain. They need to feel
that pain. It's the flip side of love. You know
that if you've loved someone so so deeply and they're
gone from earth, they're gone from your life, you have
to allow yourself to feel the pain of that loss
in order just to be present, in order to be
(20:44):
present in this life without them. Otherwise you're in denial.
That's another way to go where you can compartmentalize and
pretend it didn't happen, or pretend you're thinking about it.
And there's always that temptation, and we all do that,
me included. But I feel like being allowed to express
my pain is so helpful. And so so if someone's
(21:05):
saying things like they're trying to come for me, like oh,
they're in a better place, or well, you could adopt
other kids, or you know, some kind of replacement, or
at least you had seventeen years with Ruby and fourteen
with heart. Those are all sort of nice things, But
the unstated implication is, so stop grieving so much.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Right, everything happens for a Raisin column.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, everything happens for a reason, So maybe you can
stop stop your grieving, you know, And those seem very
unhelpful to me. So the most helpful things that I've
encountered were people who are simply sharing rubying heart stories,
or sharing how much they love Ruby and Heart and
missed them, or how much they love me and want
(21:49):
to spend time with me even though I'm grief stricken
and maybe not so not so friendly or palatable. Or
also if they if they're asking me about my grief,
you know, how is my how's my grief today? Acknowledging it,
acknowledging that when I wake up this morning, I had
I had a hard time because I had to deal
(22:10):
with the thought that yep, another day and Ruby hard
is still gone. But I got to get out of bed.
You know, I was gonna I was gonna address your
other question, which is about this. I would just die,
right My kids would be killed out. I would just die.
And I heard that several times, and that felt very
unhelpful to me, because on the one hand, it felt
(22:30):
like me. It felt to me the implication was if
they must love their kids more than I love my kids,
because if their kids died, they would just kill themselves
and I didn't, so I must not really love my
kids as much. Right, That's the implication, And the truth is,
you don't really just spontaneously die. You would have to
actively end your life. And here I am in grief,
(22:54):
seeing how awful it is to endure such painful loss.
If I ended my life, what would that do to
my wife, or my mom, or my brother, sister, all
the people that love me? How could I intentionally and
Ruby Heart were murdered? How could I intentionally take my
(23:14):
own life and plunge my whole community into more grief?
And also, how is that going to honor Ruby in heart?
I want to stay alive so I can honor Ruby
in heart. And that was the thought that I had,
was like if if I die, if I died and
(23:36):
people that loved me killed themselves, I'd be bummed. I'd
be like, wait, no, so you stay alive. You're supposed
to tell Colin stories, right, You're supposed to stay alive
and talk about me.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
So.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And then on top of that was Ruby's suicidality. So
she struggled with suicidality, and in a sense she overcame
that You you don't just overcome depression, but she had
it managed. She wanted to live. She fought for her life,
and I couldn't. I couldn't dishonor her memory and her
(24:09):
struggle by taking my own life. So it felt like
to me when people made that comment or I would
just kill myself, it felt very flippant. It felt like
they weren't really thinking about it in a deep, deep way.
They were just saying it. It felt easy for them
to say that, and I don't. It's not easy for me.
I have to actually think about it, you know what
I mean. It's like, dude, I actually have to think
(24:31):
about it. Do I end my life or not? And
I have to think about what that means to other
human beings. And it's a rough road either way. And
you just sort of saying I would just kill myself
is offensive to me because you have the privilege, not you,
but the person who said that to me has a
privilege of just sort of tossing it off as opposed
to actually thinking about the reality.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You know, you've been through an experience that most people
would not actually be able to really step into an
imagine enduring so much so that you've gone and written
a book about number one, the grief process and how
it exists in our culture at the moment. And I
think that you're actually quite strong on saying that we
do not handle it in healthy ways right now in
(25:16):
our culture at all. I'm wondering if this was something
that you grew up with, were you always grief aware?
And the reason I ask it is because I've written
blog posts and articles and done podcasts on topics like this,
and I think that I've been empathic and given good advice.
But the profundity in what you've said and your solutions
(25:37):
and strategies, the way that you've honored your children and
honored your grief but also shown other people a roadmap
through their grief, seems particularly well, it's deep, it's really,
it's just so thoughtful. I'm just curious whether your background
taught you that.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
No, absolutely, of the exact opposite, right. My family upbringing
was I call it grief averse. So we did not
talk about grief much at all, honestly, so not religious
back like that, right, No, So, so my parents were
raised as Protestants, and they rebelled in their like twenties,
(26:21):
and we're atheists, are atheists. My father passed away, but
and they raised us without you know, any kind of religion,
and and all three of us, my brother and sister,
older brother and sister, We're we're all very happy atheists.
We enjoy we enjoy our our lack of belief in
a supreme being. But here when it came time to grieve,
(26:46):
that tradition for me didn't didn't have any cultural tools
for managing grief. So I leaned heavily on the Jewish traditions.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, I was going to ask you. Hearing you describe
your background make me even more intrigued because in the
book you talk about how your community came together. I wondered,
to what extent the Jewish faith, which your wife, Gail
is Jewish, how much that community and that faith actually
provided some kind of, I don't know, a rocker foundation,
(27:19):
a framework, a way forward for you. Could you talk
about the way religion, even though you don't have a
religious bone in your body, Religion actually, I guess shepherd
you through this grief process.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Honestly, because you know, I'm a religious so it wasn't
the religious component, but more the cultural component. And I
think it sort of helped me because it helped me
to analyze what these Jewish traditions were really about for me,
because they're all on one level about God, but for me,
they're not at all about God. They're about how do
(27:50):
you process grief? And I figured, you know, Jews had
thousands of years to think about this and work it out.
And if there are rules about grieving, I bet there's
like practical reasons for them. And and sure enough it
felt very practical to me. All the customs and traditions
that that I was exposed to all had deep practical
(28:12):
meaning for me. That literally taught me how to grieve.
Uh So the whole idea of even grieving in community,
that that's from the Jewish traditions. So so, just to
name name a few of them. Uh, you you have
to say the mourner's Cottish it's it's a prayer for
the dead, but you are not allowed to say it alone.
(28:32):
You have to say it with at least nine other
people present.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And when do you say this moren is Scottish.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
We're supposed to say it every day for the first
year with nine others. Yes, yes, Now we didn't say
it every day. We went weekly. We went weekly and uh.
And there are different rules for different losses as well.
So and again I'm not a rabbi, so I think
technically for child loss it's not every day but is
(29:02):
out of the point. The idea is that you grieve
with people, so inevitably, I'm saying this prayer in Hebrew
and there are people a mending me, and I'm I'm
going to weep. Right, I can't get through the mourners
collageespecially in early grief, without without crying and I and
(29:23):
I have to do it with people standing around me
with love. And isn't that beautiful? It isn't necessarily the
opposite of what was certainly the opposite of what I
conceived of grief, which is you go away in a
corner and you're just sad by yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right, that's what is in the movies of oscaram and
Hot Onto the Blankets watching Netflix.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, exactly, that's what everybody thinks. Or get really really
drunk or really really high. And the Jewish tradition is like, no, actually,
you've got to be present. You have to be engaged
in your grief. You can't compartmentalize because every day you're
going to show up and grief with people around watching
you and amending your shared grief. And it's so beautiful.
(30:04):
It's such a powerful experience to be supported that in
that moment over and over again. And the other example
that of the share is the notion of shiva. So
Shiva is the first seven nights after the funeral, people
gather at your house. They come to your house and
they literally sit with you. That's so called sitting shiva.
(30:26):
And Shiva's is Hebrew for seven, so it's the first
seven nights. And so each night hundreds of people would
come crowd our house, which sounds good, yes, yes it does, right,
it sounds It sounded terrible to me. I was like,
what are you talking about? Rubert hart Wood just killed
like seventy two hours ago, and now you want people
(30:46):
to pack into my home. But I was like, well,
I'm just going to listen to the Jews because they
know better, and sure enough they do. And so I
was very grateful that I that I did just listen
to them and do what they told me, the rabbi
told me to do. Because then our wise Rabbi, Sharon Browse,
she turned to us and said, these people are gathered here,
do you have anything you want to say to them?
And it turned out I did. I did. I desperately
(31:09):
wanted to talk about ruby and heart and all these
people wanted to hear about Ruby and Heart, and they
wanted to talk about Ruby and heart, and so it
was amazing. I could tell Ruby and Heart stories, we
could laugh and cry, and then I'd hear stories from
other people and it was like, Oh, yeah, we're mourning
in community. This is how one grieves. I don't sit
in a corner and eat ice cream and get drunk.
(31:29):
I'm here with people who love Ruby and heart and me,
and we can share stories and we can laugh and
cry together, so that those are all just huge eye
openers for me.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
As I read the book and came across this idea
ship of which I'd never heard of before, it made
me envious. I don't know if there's a bit of
word for it. I think about the funeral traditions. I
have a faith background, but my funeral traditions feel just
so lacking relative to what you described. This idea that
(32:02):
you're going to have a huge community, then you're going
to do a sitting shiver for seven nights where literally
one hundred plus people are showing up and finding a
space in your house and doing this. And then there
was another tradition as well, which I don't remember the
name of it, but at the end of Shiver, you
with the community. There's something really substantial that happens there
as well.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, you walk, you take a walk around the block.
And it's so powerful on so many levels, because sure enough,
that first week, Gail and I were scared to leave
the house.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And you don't do is that tradition like you're not
supposed to leave the house or something.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
No, I don't believe that you're necessarily restricted to the house. Okay,
but we felt restricted. We felt like scared to go
out into the world. And sadly we had to for
some doctor appointments. But aside from the doctor appointments and
the therapy appointments, we stayed in our house and it
was scary to us. And then on the last day
(33:02):
of Shiva, it's like, oh, we're all gonna walk around
the block together. We're going to accompany you around the block,
and it was like we're reintroducing you to the world.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
It's like a hundred people to that of people walking.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Down these the small side streets of Silver Lake, and
we blocked traffic. That was it. No car could go
in the side street while we're walking one hundred people.
And that was powerful because in a way it felt
like transgressive, Like, yeah, Ruby and Hard are dead, and
we're gonna take up space. We're gonna we're gonna demand attention,
and we're not gonna shy away from this. We're gonna
(33:37):
we're gonna break some rules for Ruby and Heart because
their loss is catastrophic. And I remember a car pulled
up ahead of us and saw this crowd and started honking,
and my brother ran over to the car and said
what was happening, and they just whoop and they just
backed away because it's like, right, there's one hundred people
in grief coming down the road. We don't care about
(33:59):
your your appointment that you're late for back up. It's
grief and it demands space.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
It's pretty beautiful. When I hear you talk about it
feels like you said transgressive. It feel empowering. It's almost
like you're saying, I'm going to reclaim my agency. I'm
going to reclaim my capacity to start to take steps forward,
to expand my universe again. Despite the awfulness of the
tragedy you described a metaphor. In fact, I think it
was your rabbi who told it to you, but you
(34:28):
described in the book the metaphor of the shipwreck. When
I hear about this Shiver tradition, and I hear about
various other things that you did with community, which probably
go well beyond the scope of our conversation. Now they're
in the book and they're beautiful. I wonder if you
can describe for me the metaphor of the shipwreck.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah. So she shared that at the funeral itself. And
I have to just give perhaps to our amazing Rabbi
Sharon Browse. She's just an extraordinary human being. And she
held her hands figuratively and early for those first days
of awfulness and took us to pick out the casket right,
to pick out the caskets plural, to pick out the
(35:09):
burial spot. So some rough, rough days and she was
there for us and continue to be continue to be
there for us. But at the funeral, she shared this,
this story about and against it's it's from the I
forget where it's from. But J just have lots of
stories that I loved, beautiful, beautiful metaphoric stories. But in
(35:31):
this story, the shipwreck and and somebody clings to a
piece of wood that floats by, and that's how they survive.
And you go under the water and back out under
and out and you're holding on, you're clinging to this
this piece of wood floating by, and she said, de Gale,
(35:52):
and I want you to look out to this room
and see all these people and they're all going to
be planks of wood for you to cling to because
you're been wrecked. And that was powerful, and that was
a beautiful introduction to our community to be like, you
guys are going to be the planks to hold these
people up because they need help. And I love that idea.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Callum my PhDs in positive psychology and one of the
founding fathers of the modern positive psychology movement was Christopher Peterson.
He died a few years ago, but the phrase that
he was best known for, after analyzing a century of
research into psychology and what leads to a life well lived,
just harmonized this so beautifully with the shipwreck metaphor. And
(36:36):
it's just three words other people matter. When I here
described this grief process and how you work through it,
there's just this one word that keeps coming up, and
that is community, community, community. It's other people who matter.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah. I discovered that how important it was to me
in grief to have the community. And then I also
just building on that idea that you just said about
a life well lived is you know, Victor Frankel was
meaningful to me. I read his book Man Starts for Meaning,
and he talks about the idea that we find meaning
(37:12):
in other people outside of ourselves. So how are we
of service to other people that you can't just think
about your own needs and desires and find meaning that way.
It's how you are in relation to other people. And
that's also was very crystallizing to me.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
There's something as well as I think about this process,
we've very much focused on you and your grief, but
as an outsider, a friend of the family, a loved one,
somebody who is going through my own personal grief about
the tragedy, but also wanting so desperately, I mean, anyone
who's not you wants so desperately to offer support however
(37:53):
they can. There's a clumsiness, there's an awkwardness, there's an
unsuredness about it. But by being open and by actually
reaching out and saying you look like a plank of
wood that I could lean on for a moment, in
so many ways, you provide purpose and meaning. It sort
of ties in with that Frank idea.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When we shut ourselves off, not only do we harm ourselves,
but we also.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Reduce the capacity that others have to find meaning and
purpose and goodness in their lives through the same grief
that we're all experiencing.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Just to me. I think
you're right. I think that people were in ours desperate
to help Gale and I and it can be awkward
and difficult because I think I've spoken to many people
in grief, and oftentimes people say like, I'll do anything
for you, whatever you want. But in the early days,
(38:43):
we don't know what we want, and we feel lost,
and it's almost a burden to for us to think
of things you could do for me. You know, I
don't know what you can do for me. I know
you think about that, you know what I mean. I
don't want to live right now, so I can't think
about what you could do for me. But when people
gave specific offers, like hey, we'd like to go for
(39:04):
a walk tomorrow in the park, I'm available. That was
that was very helpful.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
How hard was it to say yes like that? You
must have wanted to say no, I want to sit
here and cry yes, Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So I talked about that in the book. I actually
I was finding myself saying no a lot because it
was very hard for me to make a decision. It
was very hard for me to even think about the
next hour alone tomorrow. Like someone said, oh, I'll go
for a walk with you tomorrow, I'm like, I don't
know how I'm going to feel tomorrow. I can't make
a commitment to that. I don't know if I'll be
out of bed, I don't know what's going to happen.
(39:39):
But I found that because I really want to be
with people in community, and I really I imagined that
I would want to have a conversation with this person.
So I started saying yes to everything. That was my
new policy. I wanted to say no, I just said yes.
And it was a way of staying engaged in life,
even when I didn't want to be engaged in life.
(40:00):
I trusted that I sort of fake it till I
make it kind of vibe, you know what I mean,
Like do I really want to go for a walk. No,
But I know that walking can be helpful and healthy,
and I'm going to say yes, and I'm going to
do it. And sure enough, as I'm walking, I'm discovering.
(40:21):
Oh I'm glad I took the walk, you know what
I mean. And I kind of trusted in that. I
sort of trusted that meaning and purpose would come back
to me because life feels meaningless when you lose something,
you have a profound loss, and your identity has shook.
Life feels meaningless because what matters? Why does it matter
what I do in my life? Ruby and Hart aren't
here to share that with me. But ultimately, I think
(40:46):
by just trusting that it would come back to me
and engaging in life, it has. You know, I think
I have found meaning and purpose in life, even in
their absence.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Is partly New Zealand Maory or Malti, as she would say,
they have a tradition where a person dies and that
person's body stays in the family home or on what
they call the mudai, and there are three days where
the entire family stays with the body of the deceased.
When this was first explained to me, Colin I, I mean,
(41:23):
I was probably in my early twenties, and frankly I
was horrified. I really liked the standard Western way of
keeping your distance. Death apparently is quite unquote disgusting, and
yet over time I've fallen in love with the idea
so much so that I'm looking forward to the opportunity
to celebrate the lives of Kylie's family in that way,
(41:44):
and I'm hoping that we can even adopt some of
that in our own family. Reading about the Jewish way
of going through the traditions that you described, it also
shifted me even further into wanting those deep and profound
traditions around death and grieving, especially with commune. Do you
have any sense of where the idea comes from that
we're supposed to push grief away.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah, I think there's several reasons why this has sort
of become our cultural default to avoid grief, avoid the
discomfort of grief. I'm still thinking about your wife's traditions,
which just seems how beautiful, and I feel like I
just want to respond quickly to your wife traditions the
idea that I think there's a lot of cultural heritage
(42:27):
that we all have that involves engaging in grief, and
it's somehow some easy to short circuit that stuff. So
I know lots of people should us post last seven Nights,
but many people don't do that many Jews don't do that.
There are a lot of traditions in the Jewish culture
about grief that in the morning that people do. Yeah, yeah,
(42:49):
that's what we're supposed to do, but we're going to
do a shorter version, you know what I mean, We're
not really going to do that, you know. And that's
true for Islam as well, and in Christianity. There are
there are lots of traditions we have of around grief
that that I think as a culture, we we short
change and think like, yeah, that's what we're supposed to do,
but doesn't feel right. And in a way, giving ourselves
(43:12):
over to these cultural traditions can be really beautiful because
it is uncomfortable to your point, you know what, why
why do we why is grief so avoided now? Is
because I think it's so uncomfortable and it seems like
it's easier to avoid it, But in fact it's not.
(43:32):
Because we don't get to avoid grief. It happens to
all of us no matter what, We're all going to
grieve and and it's okay to feel pain. I think
that people don't like the idea of people being in pain.
They want to speed it up. Right, Like, that's why
people are encouraged to get over it, because because they're
(43:52):
making people uncomfortable. I'm seeing you, you're in pain. I'm uncomfortable,
so I say, cheer up, stop grieving. But in fact,
there's nothing wrong with the pain of loss. It's a
beautiful pain. It comes from love. The reason it hurts
so bad is because I love them so much. And
isn't that a beautiful thing? Don't we want to love people.
Don't we want to open our hearts up to both
(44:16):
sides of love, the joyful feelings and then also the
aching wife close your eyes off to that. But I
think people are afraid of it and think that it's
somehow more convenient and not feel that.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
You speak so vulnerably and so beautifully. I just so
appreciate what you've shared. I have just a couple of
other questions, and then we'll bring this to a close.
In the book, page one seventy six, you share a
quote from Helen Keller. It's always been a personal favorite
of mind. But I didn't have the full context for
the quote, and the way you use it in the
book is just so I think so helpful. I want
(44:57):
to say so delightful. But that word feels a little
bit inappropriate in the convers and yet my mind exploded
in wonderful ways when I read it. Would you mind
reading that and perhaps sharing why this matters so much?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah? Absolutely so. Helen Keller wrote, security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children
of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is
no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life
is either a daring adventure or nothing. And I was
first introduced to this quote from Ruby. She was at
(45:33):
an OCD group, an adult OCD group. She was so
precocious at engaging that even as a sixteen year old
and seventeen year old, she was a member of this
adult OCD group, and she was a leader in this group.
By the way, she's an extraordinary person. And she brought
this quote home because it really it talks about exposing
(45:53):
oneself to danger, and a lot of elements of OCD
are about trying to control danger. So a lot of
a lot, not all, but a lot of people with OCD,
they're obsessive compulsive behaviors are about trying to keep safe
people safe. If I do this I will will forestall
(46:15):
something bad from happening. And in a way, part of
the therapy h very often for OCD is is saying, well,
what if something bad did happen, Like, let's expose yourself
to that and just and try and try and sit
with that discomfort. You know, we're not in control, we're
not actually safe, uh, and can we can we open
(46:35):
ourselves up to that? So this is a quote that
was important to Ruby, and she stuck it on her
on her corkboard in her room and then and I
knew about it, and then I discover it in grief
and I'm like, oh right, yeah, none of us are safe,
none of us are in control. Horrible things happen all
the time to people who are innocent, who couldn't have
(46:58):
been protected. War crashes, I mean, all sorts of terrible
diseases strike people, and it's all unfair and we can't
protect ourselves from it. And yet, do we want to
live a life that's like hungered down and trying to
protect ourselves from these things that we can't protect ourselves
fromb or do we want to open ourselves up to
(47:19):
it and try and engage in life and the adventure
of life, and so it became an inspirational quote from
me to help me stay engaged in life even though
it's scary.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I asked you to elaborate on that because my final
question for you really ties in with what you're describing.
Life is a daring adventure or is nothing? And yet
my two children in a loge with me and for
me to live that daring adventure. In some ways, there's
I don't know if this is probably the wrong word
to use, but there's this sense of I've got to
(47:52):
get over this, or certainly there are people who expect
that we have to get over this. My understanding though,
is that you never get over losing you two children,
having them taken from you, especially like this.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
In conclusion, how are you now?
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah? Thanks for asking, because I'm as scary to ask me, right,
how am I doing? I think it's scary to people,
but I always appreciate people checking in and it is.
It is all an ongoing struggle. I I don't like
to use the word healing because to my mind, I'll
(48:28):
never heal, you know, Ruby and Hart Uh, there I have.
I have holes in my heart, two whole, two large
holes in my heart. There aren't going anywhere, but I'm
living around them, so I'm still my heart's not it's
it's damaged, but it still works. I still love people.
I want to I want to be open to life.
(48:51):
And so early on after the crash, uh, you know,
for example, I said to Gail, you know, we could
be parents again. We could foster adopt. And one of
the reasons why I had that idea was because Ruby
put it in my mind a year or two before
she was killed. She said to us, we should foster adopt.
And we're like, what, how do you even know about
(49:12):
like a fifteen year old kid? How do you even
know about foster adopting? Because she was just that kind
of kid. She did research on it, and she said,
there's so many fams, so many children in in Los
Angeles County that need families, and we're a loving family,
and we should we should bring some into our family.
And we thought, that's such a beautiful idea. And I
(49:34):
thought the time, my hands are full, I got two kids,
that's beautiful Ruby, but no, and then suddenly I was like, oh, wow, right,
I've got two empty bedrooms, and maybe we could bring
children into our lives and continue to parent and it was.
It was difficult. So I said this to Gail, and
(49:55):
she burst into tears and said, thank god you said that.
I was thinking that too, but I scared that you
would be too scared to try again with other kids,
and so we embarked on this journey. So it's it's
a difficult journey, and you have to be to take classes,
you have to be trained to do this, and mostly
the training is about learning about trauma. These kids have
(50:19):
endured terrible trauma. That's why they're in the foster system.
No kid in the foster system doesn't have trauma. That's
how they got there, through no fault of their own right.
It was we tried to foster. I talked about the book.
We started fostering to adopt a teenage girl, thirteen year
old girl, and she lived with us for a year
and a half and I thought we were making a
(50:39):
new family, but in fact, she found it hard to
open her hearts up, open her heart up to the
idea of being part of a family. For her family
met trauma. For her, opening her heart meant vulnerability, and
that was catastrophic for her in the past. And even
though she wanted to have a new family, she couldn't
(51:00):
do it. It was too scary for her, and ultimately
she said, I want out. I don't want to be adopted.
I want to age out of the system, which is
very bleak statistically, in heartbreaking that she wasn't able to
just hang in there with us a little longer until
she could acclimate and see that was safe. But we're
(51:23):
trying again, and I think it's going very well. So
we have a thirteen year old son and a twelve
year old daughter, their siblings, and it feels good in
so many ways to be parenting, to have a family.
It's a real stretching of the heart. But it's also
(51:44):
challenging because here I am still in grief and they
have lots of trauma and grief of their own that
they're trying to process. But they're just a kid. So
I have my adult experiences and perspectives, but they're just
kids struggling with these terrible feelings of loss and trauma.
(52:07):
So it's like parenting on steroids. But it's very meaningful
to me and girl.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Colin, so grateful for what you've shared, So grateful for
the I want to say inspiration, but again I'm not
sure that's the right word. All I can really think
to do, though, is to express my appreciation, my gratitude.
Speaking about these things is I'm sure a combination of
both incredibly difficult and incredibly joyful. And the way you've
(52:37):
done that is a wonderful honor to you and your family,
and especially to Ruby and Heart. Thank you so much
for sharing what you have with us on the podcast today.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
Thank you, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
I saw a pre share Colin Campbell joining me for
that conversation. As I mentioned at the outset, my nephew
died on Sunday night last week by suicide.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
He was the most energetic and delightful kid.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
That I know.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
He was kind and fun, laughed all the time.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
My kids, his cousins loved hanging out with him, and
as his uncle, I loved hanging out with him too.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I remember last year we.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Served at Kira when the surf was as good as
it gets well overhead, absolutely pumping because surfing was his thing.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
He was so good at it. He was close to pro.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
He was staying at my parents' house the night that
he took his life. My mum and dad, his nana
Pop found him on the Monday morning. They found him
too late to help. They found him too late to
do anything except scream no. They found him too late
for him to hear them as they write his name
(54:02):
over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Logan, logan, logan. How do you hold the body of
your grandson for the last time? That was what my
parents did that Monday morning.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
How do you call your daughter, still celebrating a special
weekend with her husband in Melbourne and tell her that
she needs to come home because her son, just twenty
years old, has died. That was also what my parents
did on Monday morning last week. And then we received
the call, and then we sat with each of our children,
(54:40):
and the ripple effect of those conversations.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Carried and carried and carried.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
In a Facebook post last week, I said this, here's
what I want you to know. There are nine suicides
every single day in Australia. Seven of those nine suicides
each day are men, two of those nine are women,
and suicide is the leading cause death among young people
fifteen to twenty four years, thirty six percent of deaths
in this age group of suicides. Now, it's a complex
(55:10):
issue and rarely is there just one factor that leads
to someone taking their own life.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
But here's what we do know.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Strong social connections reduce the chance of suicide.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So please, please, please please please.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Be kind, be compassionate, be gentle, be inclusive, be supportive,
be less critical and judgmental, and be more of a cheerleader.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Don't be on your kids back.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Instead, make sure you've got their back, love them and
make sure that they know it. They have to know
they matter. This is a hard conversation to have. I
hope that my discussion with Colin Campbell and the way
that I've shared with you today has been helpful. Please
(56:01):
hug your kids, hug your husband, your wife, your spouse,
your partner, and share this message and this love with
everyone you know that needs to know how much they matter.
If you need help, call Lifeline thirteen eleven fourteen. The
(56:21):
Suicide Callback Service is one three hundred six five nine
four six seven, Men's Line Australia is one three hundred
seven eight nine nine eight seven and Kids Help Line
one eight hundred fifty five one eight hundred
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