This is for you, whom I imagine if you are reading this, has recently had the painful experience of losing someone to a tragic and untimely death. My heart cries out for you and the intense emotions you must be feeling now.

 

Unfortunately, having lost my partner of 10 years to homicide over a decade ago, I have an idea of how difficult this time must be. My partner's sudden and violent death changed the entire landscape of my life, irreversibly, and for a time I was sure I'd died as well.

 

Terribly disoriented, I felt as though I was stumbling solo along a wordless path without a guide - because so often nobody knew of or had anything to say.  It was as though my tragedy was contagious and in some ways, I felt exiled.  

 

Failing to find the right words that could adequately convey the gravity of my loss to those who had no direct experience with sudden-death, I too, often said nothing.  The resulting awkward and deafening silence is a phenomenon that I call White Noise.  And it made the untimely death of my partner, and the collapsing of my own life even more devastating.

 

Pouting back then with the God I'd prayed to my entire life, I found myself in the sobering position of having nothing else to rely on but the creative process.  I wrote White Noise, an album of songs hoping to discover an authentic way to be with my overwhelming grief, in my own time - unburdened by the unrealistic expectations of those around me who - thinking it best - wanted me to "move on" swiftly.  

 

The process of writing songs helped me to carve a path through my grief, rather than around it.  I wrote the companion book, White Noise: The Underbelly of All That Lingers, Surviving Sudden-death Grief, for you - and all who have experienced unspeakable tragedy - hoping desperately that it will provide a similar outlet for you and spare you of the merciless white noise.

 

No one should feel alone in pain.  It is an awful predicament. 

 

May you find in the pages of my book a steady companion through one of the darkest times imaginable in one's life.

 

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR HOW TO USE THE BOOK

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The White Noise book offers a vivid personal account of my own experience of confronting, coping and eventually communing with tragic-circumstance grief.

 

Designed to also function as a guided journal, there are a set of questions at the end of each chapter, intended to prompt purposeful reflection so that in time you may, as I did, become the deliberate guide to your own healing and transformation.

 

I can think of no invitation to rebuild our lives more urgent than the one extended by tragedy.

 

Whom might you become?