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In this episode, we speak with Colin Campbell, author of Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose. Colin shares his personal experience of losing his children in a car accident and the importance of facing the truth and finding the right words to cope with grief. We discuss the instinct to shield grieving people from pain, the impact of being present during a loved one’s final moments, and how to support each other through the grieving process. Tune in for an insightful conversation on dealing with profound loss and finding hope and purpose amidst the pain.

Colin Campbell is a writer and theater and film director.

He shares his story and discusses his book, Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome Colin Campbell. He’s a writer and a theater and film director. He’s the author of the book Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose. Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Campbell: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into your book in a little bit, but first off, just briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Colin Campbell: Yeah. So my family was on a trip to Joshua Tree. It’s a town in the high desert about two and a half hours east of Los Angeles. It was my wife, Gail, and then my 14-year-old son, Hart, and my 17-year-old daughter, Ruby. We were struck by a drunk and high driver going 90 miles an hour in a 50-mile-an-hour speed zone, and both Ruby and Hart were killed. My wife and I were plunged into unimaginable grief.

Out of that experience, I started to really learn what it means to mourn. I was really taught by the Jewish traditions. My wife’s Jewish, and we raised our kids as Jews. I’m not Jewish, but I really embraced some of the Jewish traditions, and they taught me a lot of valuable lessons about grieving.

Kevin Pho: All right. Well, first off, I’m so sorry for your loss.

Colin Campbell: Thank you.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned that this incident taught you how to grieve. What do you mean by that?

Colin Campbell: Well, I like to say that my upbringing was grief-averse. In my family’s culture, we don’t really grieve or really delve into grief, you know? And so I had ideas about grieving. I thought that grieving meant that you go away into your own little corner and you just feel sad until you somehow miraculously feel better and come back to join the community. In fact, I learned that it is so valuable to not grieve alone. If you can grieve in community, if you can find people there to journey with you in any capacity, it’s so helpful.

Kevin Pho: So of course, after the incident, you said there wasn’t a lot of guidance. Tell us what happened next. Tell us how you decided to go on this path and not grieve alone.

Colin Campbell: Yeah. Well, our loving rabbi, Sharon Brous, and the head of our synagogue, Melissa Balaban, came right to our house right afterwards. So early that next morning, there they were, holding our hands and guiding us through this process, this terrible, terrible process. We had to go to the mortuary. We had to pick out caskets. We had to pick out burial plots. These are all things that we had never even thought that we might have to do for our own children, right?

And then the Jewish tradition has a lot of guidelines and a lot of support structures for the early grief process. You sit shiva: People come to your house every night for the first seven nights after the funeral. That’s when I really started to learn about grieving in community, because my initial instinct was, “No, don’t come to my house. My God, I’m in no shape to have people come and be in my space.” And yet when they did arrive, I found that it was so valuable to suddenly share my pain and grief, and also stories about Ruby and Hart, with my circle of friends and family and my community.

They, too, had a need. They needed to share stories about Ruby and Hart. They needed to grieve. We all needed to grieve together, and that was a very powerful lesson in the idea that we grieve as a community when someone dies.

Kevin Pho: You decided to share this tragic story in a book, Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose. Why did you decide to share the story in a book?

Colin Campbell: Yeah. Well, thanks for asking. My wife, Gail, and I went to many grief groups, sat in many grief circles, and heard many stories. A lot of the stories involved the idea that we were going to lose all or most of our friends and family. They were going to fade away in our grief, and we were going to be abandoned. There was so much bitterness and loss in these people’s voices when they talked about this. It was obviously a horrible secondary loss, after they lost their loved one, to be abandoned, to feel abandoned.

I really felt like there was a cultural miscommunication happening, because I knew my friends and family didn’t want to abandon me, but they also were scared about upsetting me. They didn’t know what to say. Nobody knows what to say, because we don’t talk about grief and grieving in the public sphere. Most often, people are shown going away into their corner, like I said.

And so my wife and I developed, maybe because we’re from theater backgrounds, we’re writers, I don’t know, we had a facility with language, but we found a way to talk to our friends and family to tell them our needs, and it was so helpful. So I really wanted to share that idea of tools one could use to keep your community close.

Kevin Pho: So talk about some of these tools. What are some specific ways that one can keep their community close after profound loss?

Colin Campbell: Yeah. Well, my wife and I developed what we called our grief spiel. What happened was people would come to our house and they would look stricken. They didn’t know what to say. They didn’t even want to say “hi” or “how are you,” because they were scared they were going to upset me, and they didn’t want to say Ruby’s and Hart’s names, because again, they thought that would trigger me, potentially. Not all of our friends, but many of our friends thought that way, and I could relate, because I would have felt the same way. I would have been terrified to mention somebody’s dead children’s names, right?

And so we felt we had a need to tell them what the ground rules were. We would pull them aside one at a time and say, “Here’s the spiel. We need to talk about Ruby and Hart. We need to hear their names. We want to hear their stories. We want to talk about our grief. And if we can talk about other subjects, it’s only for a couple of minutes. We’re going to circle back to our grief, because we can’t chitchat right here.” Our grief spiel changed over time. Our needs changed over time. And our friends really responded. They were very grateful for that, and they ran with it. So that was one wonderful tool.

Another tool was the idea of rituals, the idea of holding public rituals, sometimes small gatherings, sometimes large gatherings, but giving all of us a space to do something in honor of Ruby and Hart and our shared grief, even if it’s as simple as spelling their names out in rocks on the beach, or taking a walk and talking about them, or writing letters to them as a group. So there were a number of rituals we did that really helped keep our community close.

Kevin Pho: So tell us how these rituals specifically helped you in the community.

Colin Campbell: Yeah. Well, I’ll do my first birthday ritual, the one with the rocks. My 50th birthday was September 13th, only, I don’t know, two and a half months after the car crash, and here I am celebrating my birthday. I was not in the mood to celebrate anything. I felt like my life was destroyed. It was gone. My past life now became nothing but the painful thoughts of how it all ended poorly, and my future seemed bleak and meaningless.

But every year before that, I would love my birthday parties, and I’d invite Ruby and Hart’s friends and my friends to the beach. So I thought, instead of pulling away and having a miserable day of just agony, how about I invite people to the beach for a memorial for Ruby and Hart, not for my birthday, but for them? A huge crowd of supporters came, and we all spelled out their names in rocks. We told some Ruby and Hart stories, and we all jumped in the ocean in their honor. That helped me get through what could have been such a bleak day. It was a painful day. The pain didn’t go away, but it allowed me to be in community and grieving and moving through that day, and it became a special, beautiful day.

Kevin Pho: Talk about some of your interactions with the health care system, whether it’s doctors, social workers, specialists, or counselors. What was your interaction with the health care system during this time?

Colin Campbell: Yeah. Well, you know, I’m deeply grateful for everyone who helped us every step of the way. But my initial interaction with the health care system, in retrospect, did seem like there was a tiptoeing around us, that people didn’t want to tell us the truth about Ruby and Hart. At some level, I knew, my wife and I both knew, that both Hart and Ruby were dead in the back seat. But the paramedics came, and they heroically conducted CPR on both children, and then they rushed them to a very distant hospital. We were in the desert, so it was a distant hospital. Then they flew Hart to a further hospital, to a PICU, a pediatric intensive care unit. But they didn’t want to tell us how bleak the situation was. Nobody really wanted to tell us that, in fact, Ruby was already dead by the time we got to the hospital, and they didn’t want us to see Ruby’s body.

One of the moments that really stuck with me, that was such a tragic lost opportunity, was right after the crash. My wife has very poor eyesight, and her glasses were thrown in the car crash. So were mine, but my eyesight’s a little better. The paramedics and bystanders thought that she might have broken her neck, my wife, so they wanted to keep her stable. They put a neck brace on her, and they kept her on a park bench about 30 feet from both Ruby and Hart while they were having CPR conducted on them. I was able to go to Ruby and hold her hand, but my wife wasn’t, and she couldn’t even see our children, because they were just too far away for her eyesight, at night especially.

I think there was even somebody who said, “You know, moms don’t watch.” They kept Gail away from the sight of her children, and she has deep regrets about that. She didn’t get to hold their hands in that moment on the street. And I think that fear, that attempt to protect parents from the truth, from the awful truth, doesn’t help. There’s no way to lessen the blow, right? Your children are dead. You can’t soften it, and any attempt to soften it is just going to obfuscate it. It’s going to make it confusing: What’s happening? Why aren’t people talking to us? What’s going on?

And then finally, we arrived at the PICU, and this wonderful doctor, Jennifer, pulled us aside, and she told us the truth: that Ruby was dead, and that Hart had died of, or was dying of, three life-ending injuries. And then she did a very beautiful thing. In that moment of terror and anguish, she said, “Tell me about Ruby and Hart.” It was such an extraordinary gesture, because she wasn’t backing away from our pain. She wasn’t frightened of our agony, right? She was almost inviting more, right? And we wept, but we told her about Ruby and Hart, and it was such an extraordinary moment of connection for us. It was such a deeply valuable moment, and a lesson for me in particular about the power of words and the power of taking action.

Up until that moment, we felt helpless. We felt like we were just being buffeted by anguish and the unknown, and then here was someone giving us something to do: “Tell me about Ruby and Hart.” She wanted to share our pain in that moment, and it was so, so beautiful and so valuable.

And then beyond that, the further experiences were with therapists, which were invaluable. Both my wife and I see our own therapists. I started seeing somebody after the crash. My wife already had a therapist before the crash, so she continued with that doctor. And then we also saw Ruby’s OCD doctor, her OCD therapist. He saw us as a couple, like couples therapy, for the first few months, and that was also very helpful.

Kevin Pho: Now, you mentioned the actions of the initial health care staff. For those clinicians who may be listening to this story, and God forbid they encounter a similar situation, share some advice in terms of what you would have liked to see done.

Colin Campbell: Yeah. I would have loved to be told the truth, as hard as it was, as soon as they knew what was going on.

Kevin Pho: Is there any specific way that one would prefer being told the truth?

Colin Campbell: Well, definitely with compassion, right? And not being afraid of the pain. I think that’s the real takeaway for me in general, for all people dealing with grief, the grievers themselves or people who love people who are in grief: to not fear the pain, because the pain is going to be there. There’s no way around it. You love somebody, and they’re dead, and you’re going to feel pain. The pain is coming from love. And even though it’s scary, it’s bearable. We can bear it. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. There’s no way to soften the blow other than with compassion, other than with being willing to sit with that person. I think that’s the main thought that I would like to impart, you know?

Kevin Pho: So after sharing your story and writing the book, tell us some of the responses that you and your wife have received.

Colin Campbell: Oh, wow. Well, even before I wrote the book, just telling the spiel to my friends and family, the responses we got were so beautiful. People would tell us stories about Ruby and Hart, and many of them were stories that we didn’t know. It was such a boon to us. It was like, “Oh, my God, thank God we asked for help. Thank God we asked these people for their stories, because now we’re hearing things about our children.” We would never have known if we had kept to ourselves, right? If we had said, “Don’t talk to us,” or if we had not reached out to our friends and actively asked them for stories.

And then, from the book, I’ve received such beautiful responses from other people in grief, who said, “I feel seen. I feel seen and heard.” Because it was written very early in grief, my book. I started writing it just about, I don’t know, I think six months after the crash. So I don’t sugarcoat the pain. I don’t sugarcoat the grief journey. And again, the tools, the practical tools that I provide, I think were also helpful to people, the idea of taking specific actions in grief. These are lessons that I learned that I hope can help others, you know?

Kevin Pho: So how are you and your wife? How are you guys doing today?

Colin Campbell: Yeah, thanks for asking. Well, she’s in Los Angeles right now, and I’m in New York. I’m performing a solo show about grief called “Grief: A One-Man Show,” and I’m closing this weekend. I’ve been here for a month in New York, so I’ve got to get back to Los Angeles.

In terms of our grief, you know, we talk about it almost every day. I guess every day. And we’re trying to live with it, right? We’re trying to not compartmentalize it. We’re trying to feel Ruby and Hart’s presence and their memories and the love that we shared and the pain of that loss. And then also we’re moving through life. We’re trying to grieve with life, so we’re doing things. She’s remaining very active and creative, and she’s just gotten hired to work on a new television show. She’s going to direct an episode and write an episode. She just wrote a wonderful kids’ book, a book for middle grade, called The Big Dreams of Small Creatures. It’s lovely and light and hilarious, inspired. And I wrote a darker book, but hopefully also a helpful book.

Kevin Pho: So you wrote a book, and you’re doing a show centered around grief. What led you to doing a one-man show?

Colin Campbell: Yeah, I think again, it was that need. First of all, I wrote the show first. I wrote the show in the very beginnings of grief, just a few weeks after the car crash. I began writing because I had a need to express myself, because I think that’s how all of us process anything, you know? Even the good things. We process things by writing about them, by talking about them, by sharing them with loved ones. And grief somehow has become this taboo subject where you don’t share the grief. You share everything else, you know? You share all the happy things and all the difficult struggles, but grief, people don’t want to talk about. But actually, that’s how we process all these things.

So I needed to process what was happening to me, because it seemed so incomprehensible, and then I felt the need to share that with other people. And then when I started sharing it, I got such affirmation from other people who are struggling with all sorts of different kinds of grief, not just child loss, but people who lost siblings, people who lost spouses or loved ones or close friends, parents. And I felt suddenly, oh, almost like a missionary zeal: Let’s talk, let’s be more public about grief, let’s have grief be a more publicly discussed thing, because then it will be less scary and less lonely.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Colin Campbell. He’s a writer and theater and film director. He’s the author of the book Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose.

Colin Campbell: There you go. My book.

Kevin Pho: Colin, tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Colin Campbell: Thank you. Yeah, I think grieving in community is a big lesson. Find a way to grieve in community. And if you don’t have any community, find a grief circle, find a grief group. Go out there and find community that’s going to be there for you.

And the other big lesson I’d like to share is don’t be afraid of the pain. I think it’s so scary. Grief is such a scary thing. You feel like you’re losing your mind, and you feel like if you allow yourself to feel the pain, you will literally go insane and never come back to reality. It will be literally unbearable. But in fact, it’s not true. We can bear the pain, and we don’t lose our minds. We come back. It comes in waves. And allowing ourselves to feel that pain allows us to then come back to life more present and able to touch the joy that we shared.

Kevin Pho: Colin, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Colin Campbell: Thank you so much, Kevin. I appreciate it.