I Turn 61 Today. It Took Me 15 Years to Want Another Birthday

I turn sixty-one today.

I've been trying to work out what I actually know. The list is shorter than I expected.

I was at the top of my game once. Or I believed I was. A business that worked. A family. Enough money that I bought what I wanted when I wanted it, and stopped noticing I was doing it.

Inside five years, most of it was gone. The business went first. Then the marriage ended. Then Maddie died. And somewhere in there I lost that fire to live, which I'll say plainly because there's no useful way to say it otherwise.

Five years. That's how long it takes to dismantle a life you thought was solid.

What it forces on you is an inventory. And it’s not one you choose. You go through what's left and find out which parts were load-bearing and which were furniture. A fair bit of what I'd have called essential turned out to be furniture.

Then about fifteen years I spent wanting to forget.

For most of that time I'd have told you those years were a hole in the middle of my life. Now I think they taught me more than everything on either side of them put together. It took until my sixties to work that out.

That's what nobody says about hard things. The understanding shows up years late. You don't get it while you're in it. You get it long after, usually by accident, and by then you've stopped waiting for it.

The decade

Maddie died in April 2015. She was fourteen.

What followed was about ten years of darkness. I almost didn't get out of it.

There's a version of this story that gets told a lot and I don't believe it. The one where a person loses someone, stands at a fork, and chooses the good path. Purpose. Vigilance. Honouring them.

That isn't what happened. I didn't choose anything for ten years. I was in it.

I could tell you I tried in earnest. Realistically it was a pep talk I gave myself most mornings to get out of bed. Back then life was just really hard.

If you're four months out, or four years, and someone has handed you that story about choosing, I'd let you off the hook. It took me almost a decade. Some people take longer. The other direction stays available far longer than anyone tells you.

What moved

Two things shifted around the same time. I only noticed either one looking back.

The first was that I stopped trying to get back to who I'd been before. That effort had been running underneath everything and it was never going to work. What I hadn't considered was that the man who replaced him might be worth keeping.

I still have moments. Anger, frustration, both still show up. But there's more patience than there used to be, most of the time.

What actually changed is what I'm willing to risk. I believe in what I'm building, and I'll change course on it without much agonizing. The old version of me would have stayed on the same road, because real change might break something that was working.

That's one of the things losing someone does. Fear stops running the show. Set against what's already happened, most of what I used to weigh up, doesn't weigh much.

The second shift was my relationship with Maddie. For years, thinking about her meant sadness, full stop. Then I caught myself smiling at something. Then laughing.

There wasn't one moment. It accumulated. A photo of the two of us hamming it up for the camera, which I'd have scrolled past for years and one day didn't. Somebody telling me what they missed about her, and the thing they picked being exactly right. It kept happening until it added up to something.

I can't tell you which caused the other. Maybe the softening let the memories back in. Maybe the memories did the softening. Coincidence, maybe.

The stories

Here's what I didn't expect.

Most of what pulled me came from other people.

After she died, people started telling me things she'd done. Small things. Kids from her school, parents, people I barely knew. Things I had no idea about while she was alive, because a fourteen-year-old doesn't come home and report on being kind to someone.

I learned who my daughter was partly from strangers, after. I've never found a way around that sentence.

Those stories are what did it. After enough of them I couldn't keep sitting still. She became my copilot once she was gone. She pulled me along until I could walk on my own again. I know how that sounds. I don't have a better description and I've stopped looking for one.

The MentorWell started around then. That's just where it sits on the timeline.

Sixty-one

I wish I'd studied psychology. I have no desire to be a therapist, although I feel like one sometimes. I wanted to understand what makes people tick, and I've spent the back half of my life working it out the long way instead.

I'm still learning. If I only got one thing on the list, that's the one I'd keep.

And this. Your life doesn't have to be over while you're still grasping for a reason to carry on. Both of those can be true at the same time. They were for me, for years.

People who never met my daughter write to me about her. They tell me what she's meant to them, and some of them are carrying things I know nothing about.

I'm proud of her. That's the plain version of it.

Now I want to know what the next fifteen bring, and I think it's fair to say they owe me.

My job now is to keep making room for her. She'll keep helping others on their troubled journey.

If you're struggling, the 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline is available across Canada and the US, 24 hours a day. Call or text 988.

You May Also Like

What I Would Do Differently as a Parent
Seven things I'd change about how I raised a teenager, written from the other side of loss.

For Maddie: Why The MentorWell Exists
Where the work came from, and why it sits where it does between homes and workplaces.

Don't Tell Them the Odds: Parents in a Teen Crisis
The statistics say most teens will be fine. At 2am outside a closed bedroom door, that helps nobody.