At a glance
- Author Hannah Richell has written a memoir, An Ocean and a Day, about her personal journey with love and grief.
- She lost her husband, Matt Richell, in a surfing accident at Tamarama in 2014.
- The pair had two young children together, Jude and Gracie.
- She joins Tiffany Dunk on The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast.
If love is one half of a two-sided coin, many say that on the other side is grief. That’s something that Hannah Richell, my guest on this week’s episode of The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories, knows an awful lot about.
In 2014, her husband Matt went out for a morning surf. It was something he did often … but this time he didn’t come home.
In the wreckage of an unexpected accident which saw Matt lose his life and their two young children left without a dad, Hannah has traversed unimaginable grief.
“It felt like falling into a sinkhole,” she told me of those early days. “It was just despair and sadness and sorrow and pain and rage and shame. More than five stages of grief. It’s a whole muddle and mess of emotion.”
Listen to the episode:
Hannah has finally written about this journey in a newly released memoir, An Ocean and a Day. It’s a beautiful love letter to Matt as well as a companion for anyone who has lost someone they love. And over the course of an extraordinary conversation, she shared some of the learnings she hopes will help others on their own journey.
Expect the unexpected
When Hannah was first told Matt had died, she experienced an unexpected emotion.
“I was just overcome with this horrendous sense of shame,” she told me. “It was the weirdest feeling.
“I’ve questioned this so much now. You know, why would I feel embarrassed or ashamed that this awful accident had happened through no one’s fault? And I can only think now that it was the sudden wrongness that our life felt like it had swerved into. It was almost like I was questioning from the very get-go, what did we do wrong? Was it some kind of karmic experience we were going through? Had we been too happy, too lucky, too in love? Did we deserve this somehow?
“And I know it sounds crazy, but that was one of the very first grief feelings that I had, which I’d never heard anyone talk about before.”
Children experience grief differently
Telling the kids their father had died was the hardest thing Hannah has ever done. But she enlisted help to ensure she approached it in the best way she could.
“ I had a beautiful friend who arranged for a child psychologist to come to the house,” she said of how she prepared for this awful moment.
“One of the things she told me was that kids experience grief. They experience all the same feelings that we do as adults, but kids are so present, they’re so wonderful at being in the moment, so they can jump in and out of their emotions like jumping through puddles.
“And that was helpful because when my kids were screaming with laughter one minute and then desolate and sad the next, I could kind of piece things together and understand what was happening for them and their little bodies.”
Routine will prove invaluable
In addition to this advice, the psychologist also told Hannah that routine and structure would be crucial for the kids as they went through this seismic change. But it would also help her.
“So while it was agony to get up in the morning and take them to school and take them to daycare and try and keep to the sort of format of our life as much as we could, I think it was helpful because we all needed something to pin ourselves to,” she said.
“I needed the kids and their structure and their love as much as they needed me to be the mum that they needed and the structure that I could put in place for them. We helped each other.”
Find ways to connect and remember
Early on, Hannah and her kids made a Memory Jar for Matt. Her kids were so young – just six and three – that she was terrified they would forget their father.
“So finding ways to honor and remember Matt, to talk about him, to make him feel as present as possible, were important,” she said. They would also find release, she added, in drawing pictures of their dad.
The “firsts” give you a framework, but not an end
Celebrating “firsts” – first birthdays, anniversaries, holiday celebrations – are tough in the aftermath of loss. But for Hannah, getting to the end of that first year opened up a new level of grief.
“You’re left with, ‘Okay, we’ve done all the firsts. Now we’ve gotta do another year. And t then we do another year. And another. So actually, the firsts give you a weird framework, but then they fade away, and you’re still left with piecing life back together. I would almost say that grief gets a little harder after the first year. I mean, not harder, just a different hard.”
Don’t be afraid to talk about the person who passed away.
Many people, said Hannah, worry about “somehow making it worse” if they bring up Matt’s name. There’s nothing that anyone can do, she added to make it worse.
“Saying someone’s name, saying the deceased’s name, sharing memories, is a beautiful thing to do for someone who’s lost someone they love,” she said.
“I found it a great comfort when someone wanted to share a brief fragment of the Matt that they knew. That brings joy back to remember the person that you love and miss.”
Watch the episode:
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