The Grief Album of the Year with Will Anderson

 If you know love and loss, you know how music can transport us to a moment that time stole from us. And if you know grief, you know how simultaneously beautiful and painful that can be. Today, Nora talks to Will Anderson, who released his debut solo album How Little Love Is/How Worth Everything chronicling his grief after the sudden loss of his wife, Courtney Kampa. They talk about grief, love, Courtney’s posthumous collection of poems, A Bright and Borrowed Light, and all about Will’s new album, which has been added to the “Grieving People Essentials” list.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Hi.
Hi.
Hi there.
Hi. Hi. Hey, Nora.
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.
We have a lot in common. And one is that we are both right now in our grief season.
You just had your third death-iversary, and that also coincides with another really intense feeling, which is the release of a piece of art that means so much to you out into the world. So I really do need to know how you’re doing.
Yeah, we’ll talk about it for sure. We’re like, I’m home after the book tour, so just decompressing at the moment, trying to relax, do my best.
Yeah. I’m Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday the 25th, that is my 11 year widower-versary, that 11 year death-iversary for Erin. I feel like every year around this time, I have like kind of a regularly scheduled breakdown.
Yeah, it’s weird.
It does seem to pop, like even when you don’t realize it’s happening, it’s all of a sudden sneaks up on you. And I was like, oh, it’s that time of year. Okay, this is it.
Yeah.
What’s it like for you? Like what is your, what are your body and brain?
Well, I definitely start feeling incredibly, how can I put this, incredibly just weird, I’d say is the word for it, where it just starts, I just start zoning out a little more. I just start kind of pulling away from people.
And people have told me, like they’ve realized it’s happening in the moment. And then it kind of dawns on me that, oh yeah, this is getting close to the date. And it’s always right at the end of October, kind of early November.
And I’ve only done this three times, you know, so this is definitely not something I’m used to. But I start feeling a little more down, feeling a little, again, a little more isolated from people, a little more removed.
And then, yeah, and then it just sneaks up on you and you realize like, oh, this is in a couple days, or this is in a week, or, you know, it was this year was we were touring around, obviously doing the book tour with the album stuff and playing
acoustic shows. And all of a sudden, I realized that that ended the day before that date. So it was kind of like this weird coinciding of it all ending at the same time right before this time.
So it was it was pretty epic this year and very very heavy, I’d say.
Yeah, that’s so intense. I it took me it took me a long time to kind of realize the patterns.
Yeah.
And and even like 11 years later, it’s still, you know, I again, I haven’t. I had to say this when I was recording the introduction.
I have not slept in four nights more than like a few hours and just have not been able to fall asleep, haven’t been able to stay asleep. This happened like, you know, throughout my life.
But definitely, like, it’s just clockwork at this point in time. But even just like the beginning of November, I’m like so emotional.
And, you know, my best friend who has only known me for like five years, never met my husband, was like, yeah, I mean, it’s that time of year.
And I was like, oh, yeah, even they know exactly. It’s funny how it’s obvious to everyone else. Because I’ll get texts too being like, you doing all right?
Like, how’s everything going? And I’m like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, what do you mean?
And I’ll just kind of, yeah, this year, especially because I was so busy, it was really, it was harder to, last year, I feel like I was home and I was really, it was really obvious to me.
This year, I was so busy, it felt like, you know, it wasn’t, I was like, I wasn’t even necessarily thinking about that date because I had all these other kind of milestone dates to think about with the shows in different cities and seeing different
people. But when it hit me that that was was all leading to that point, it all made sense, some of the weird stuff that was going on.
And yeah, insomnia is definitely one of like, staying up late, having strange dreams, kind of waking up early and not knowing why. And yeah, it’s definitely odd.
Yeah, I’m just like, I want my body to just get it together. I want my brain and my body to like team up and be like, let’s do this. Let’s get her to sleep.
And that is what I am just like desperately in need of. But I also know that, you know, in a few days, I’m going to feel totally different. But I want to ask you, because I listened to this album, I went in cold, right?
Grace said just, Grace, who, shout out to Grace, my cousin works on this show. And also, it was like, your biggest fan, like pulled, you know, the publicist’s email. It was like, if you don’t do this, I’m going to kill you.
She was just so, so into it. And I cried so hard.
Mm, I’m sorry.
There are a few albums that I just know are like really, really good grief albums. I’m going to list them. And you tell me if you, Carrie and Loll, Sufi and Stevens.
A big inspiration for this album.
Huge. Courtney, it’s funny because Courtney, my wife, loved that album as well. So it was a big influence.
Yeah.
Oh, God. The Antlers Hospice.
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Another one. Yeah.
Just got me.
And now I’m adding this to that list of just like-
That is high praise.
You need to feel something. You need to really just rip your own beating heart out. You’re in the temple of doom.
Listen to this album.
6:53
Courtney Love Story
I was so, so unprepared. And then in my own parasocial way, I was like, I want to know. I want to know everything.
So I need to know how, I need to know everything about Courtney. I need to know how you met, how you fell in love, what your co-creative processes were, everything. So that’s one small question.
I’ll start from the beginning.
So I met Courtney in 2006. We were both at the University of Virginia. She was an incoming freshman.
I was a junior. And my friend, this guy named Luke who I love to death, had kind of told me beforehand about her.
And he had mentioned there was this girl coming in who had deferred a year, had been working up at the UN, had come back and was going to school.
And he said, like, this girl is the smartest, funniest, most beautiful girl you’ll ever meet, like the full package. And I was like, okay, sure, buddy.
And then one day, I was outside on our quad kind of thing at UVA, and she like yelled my name from across the quad and came running up to me. And she was so angelic, I guess is the word for it. And she tackled me and gave me a hug.
And I was like, who is this girl? And she said, I’m Courtney, and I’m Luke’s friend. You know, he told me about you.
And after five minutes of chatting, she left. But I remember calling Luke and I said, she is as advertised, like, oh my god, this person. And he said, I know, isn’t she great?
I’m kind of dating her. And I was like, oh, okay. That’s that.
And it’s funny because years later, we were in bed one night and she asked me, she said, you know, I saw her throughout the year, but never really like hung out too much or we didn’t really become friends until after college or like good friends.
And I remember she asked me later on, like after we were married, she said, why didn’t you ask me out that day? Like, why didn’t we go, like, why don’t you want to hang out more? And I said, oh, because you’re dating Luke.
And she said, I was dating whom? And we realized that he had told me that because he knew that I was going to fall in love with Courtney in that moment. And he was probably right.
Like, had I not, had I not done the bro code, we’re not going to, I won’t mess with your girl kind of thing, I probably would have pursued her at that point. But it took a little while longer.
And so then after college, she was up in New York City, studying, she was in grad school. And I was going up there with my band, Parachute, to tour and play shows and do press stuff. And we were always up in New York.
So she started coming out to more shows. And that’s really where we really got to know each other is just, she would come to a show or I would hit her up and be like, hey, let’s hang out. And so we became friends for about two or three years.
And then one time I was playing a show in New York. And afterward we were at this bodega and we were standing on a corner and we just kissed. And that was it.
I knew in that moment I was going to marry her. Like we both knew the moment we kind of crossed that line. That was it.
And we both were in love with each other literally right then and there. And she was up in New York teaching, teaching at FIT. And she was teaching writing and poetry and was just so brilliant and lovely and truly like kind and funny.
And she was just this magical person she thought and really interesting ways. She had really, I had more interesting conversations with her than anybody else in my life.
And I remember thinking like there’s something so different about getting to hang out with her. And I think everybody who knew her felt the same way. She was so unique in how she thought and her creative process, which I’ll talk about in a second.
But eventually, yeah, in 2016, in the winter, we had been dating for about three years at that point and just got engaged. And she knew, we both knew it was coming because we both really wanted to marry each other.
And so it was not like, you know, I tell this story, but like the only thing I had was the element of surprise, everything else we kind of knew. She literally like spelled out what ring she wanted. She gave me the diamonds.
Her mom gave me the diamonds that I was going to use. Like it was really like laid out for me. Like, hey, don’t mess this up.
And we went to get dinner in a Mexican restaurant. And I was so nervous. And afterward we went to her apartment and I, you know, I bent down to get psyched up and I got on one knee and I looked up and she had gone inside the apartment.
And it was just kind of, she came back out and she’s like, what are you doing? And I said, I’m engaged to you. I’m getting, you know, I want to marry you.
And she said, no, what are you doing? And pointed and there was a dog like doing its business next to me. It was just kind of this mess.
And she was very gracious about it all. But we got married in 2017. It was so wonderful ceremony.
We were just so excited to be married. And then, yeah, moved out to San Francisco immediately for her career. So we spent a lot of time working in the same apartment or house, but never actually really worked together on stuff, if that makes sense.
So she’d be writing upstairs and I’d be down in my little basement studio and working on my music. And she would be working on her poetry.
And then we kind of had these moments where one of us would come up or one of us would come down and we’d all just, we’d just hang out for a little while to take a break. And then she was really just, just dogged when it came to her poetry.
Like she would spend days on one line or one poet, one line break or one, one punctuation mark. And she always said to me, I always asked her why, like, why do you obsess over these little things?
And she goes, well, you have three things to like elicit an emotion from somebody. You have the lyrics, you have the melody, and you have the music. And you can combine all those things in different ways.
She’s like, all I have is this, the words, the letters on the page.
And so I have to obsess over them in a way that I think I didn’t have, you know, I didn’t necessarily, I had the luxury of not necessarily having to do with lyrics or, you know, any one part of the song. So she was such a brilliant mind.
And especially when it came to poetry, she just saw the world in really interesting ways and could take little things and just blow them up into the biggest thing in the world, the most important things.
And I think what I was always most impressed about with her poetry, especially after she passed away and getting to read it more closely, putting her book together, was just how layered everything was.
And she had a really good way of, she could funnel, I called it funneling down, where she would funnel you down from kind of the surface level.
And then all of a sudden, you’re feeling something, you don’t know why, but the more you read it, the more you realize there’s layers to it. It doesn’t mean what it necessarily means at the beginning. There’s so much underneath it.
And there are these revelations you have where, like I had one poem the other day that literally, I’ve been reading it for three years now, and her friend kind of mentioned what it was about, and it was totally different than what I thought it was
about. And it dawned on me that her friend was right, that it was about this other thing. And I had to like sit down and think about it for like 15 minutes straight of like silence, just sort of being like, oh my god, I missed it completely.
But it was so obvious and right there in front of me.
And it’s just so like impressive to me that she was able to do that, kind of give a little something to everybody, for those of us who don’t read a lot of poetry and those of us who do, I’m more in the former group, I don’t read much poetry.
So for me, it’s like just such a joy to have those moments of discovery with her. And her poems are just so accessible, but also they’re real poems.
This isn’t like Instagram sort of self-help poetry, I call it, where it’s a great entry level stuff, but this is real academic poetry. And I think what was most telling to me, putting this book together was how much respect she had from her peers.
They really thought she was kind of the one of the best of her time and her generation.
So, for me as a beginner in that world, making my album and putting that book together, it was such an inspiration to read her stuff, for my lyrics and for my stuff.
It was just, it was nice to have her voice there on the page in all this poetry that she left behind, because it really allowed me to remember her in a way that I think helped my album as well.
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I was wondering about what it feels like to discover or visit Courtney’s words when she’s gone. Because I think one of the hardest things about grief is like when you have those moments where you realize, okay, that’s all I’m getting.
There aren’t going to be more pictures, there aren’t going to be more poems. And my husband was a graphic designer, different kind of artist. And I found a hard drive recently, unlabeled.
He was good at file management, not my strength. And I opened it, and I was like, it was like a secret portal into the world. I don’t know if he made it for me or our son, but it was like organized chronologically.
There’s like video, there’s photos. I found a notebook that had little song lyrics and chords that he wrote. He was in a band in high school.
And there’s just something that helps a person feel more eternal, even as you’re kind of realizing the finite nature of our physical bodies.
I think, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I think for me it was, it made me appreciate it more.
I think I took for granted her poetry when she was alive, because I just thought this is all she’s going to do the rest of her life. She’s just going to write, and I’m always going to have these amazing poems coming at me.
And so I would read them and I loved them, and I was her biggest fan. But I think, yeah, I think you suddenly are, for me at least, I was, it was so precious almost where it was like, this is all like, like you said, this is all I got.
And especially photos, you realize how little photos you have. You’re like, you want more, and you expect that there should be all these, and you’re like, wait, there’s really like not that many in the big scheme of things.
And so many of them are bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, or they’re just of her or just of me and not together. And I’m like, why are there not, why do we not take a million photos a day?
And now I become obsessed with that. It’s like every day I’m like taking pictures of whatever. But with her poetry, yeah, I think, I’m sure in the same way, like I’ll stumble on like old submissions to, you know, just like finding it.
And I think for me, it really is like an appreciation of, A, how good it was, but B, yeah, like how much info there is in those poems that I didn’t necessarily even know about Courtney at the time.
Like, I’ve learned so much about her from those that.
Tell me something. Tell me a secret right now.
I think just things, things I didn’t know she thought about, if that makes sense, like things we never necessarily had a conversation about or she wasn’t super vocal about that I would think about, things like mortality or things like, what does
forgiveness mean? Like stuff that we never had a conversation about, but reading now, I realized like she thought about a lot and was way wiser and smarter about it and more, had more depth to it than I ever did in my thought process.
And just like, I wish I had asked her about this in life because she clearly had such an internal dialogue that was brilliant and just so thoughtful.
And to read it in the poems now is sort of my, like you said, the portal into this person’s thinking and their internal dialogue that I didn’t maybe appreciate in in life enough to, I just wish I could have, you know, 48 hours to just ask her all
these questions now that I have because it’s so evident that she had so much to say about it all. But she really worked it out in poems. Like I’m realizing now like that was her.
And the same way I do it with songs, that was her way of thinking through those things. And I don’t think I appreciated that in the moment enough. And I wish I had.
I don’t think it was necessarily she expected anybody to. But for her, yeah, those poems are really reflective of what she was kind of going through and thinking about and knowing that now and seeing it on the page.
It’s so, you’re almost kicking yourself, being like, why didn’t I ask about this stuff?
Yeah. We talk a lot on this podcast about death, about grief, and also about what still makes us feel connected to the people who have gone. And I get a lot of signs.
And I don’t know if I was always like that woo. I would say I’m woo-adjacent in a lot of ways. But I was raised Catholic.
There’s a lot of mysticism to it. You can pray to saints for intercessions. My dad was like, pray to your grandpa for an intercession.
Talk to your grandpa through prayer, that kind of stuff. And so I’ve felt like I get signs from Erin. Does Courtney send you signs?
Or what makes her feel present for you other than really sitting with her words?
Yeah, I think it’s funny. I’m not woo either. And my therapist makes fun of me because I’m always like, that’s too woo-woo for me.
Like, you know, I want practicality in that. But there are things like, I remember the day after she died, I dreamt about her and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. And I woke up to it and I felt it and I knew it.
And it was kind of like her way of saying like, I’m okay. And there are little moments like that where things that are coincidences, but you’re like, there’s too much, there’s a lot of Courtney in this.
Stuff that I don’t, I can’t necessarily put my finger on, you know, I don’t have specifics right now, but there are always these little moments where it’s like, it feels like she, you know, like certain things where I, when I was going through her
things, you know, probably six months after, there were some things I found, just some books and stuff. And I texted her friends like, hey, do you want some of these books? Like, you know, they’re some of her best friends.
And I sent out three different packages and each of them, the books I sent had a really strong connection with Courtney with each of those books. You know, it was like, how did you know this?
And I was like, I didn’t know, I just sent you, I literally just divvied them up and kind of just sent them out. Stuff like that where they were like, no, these, let me tell you exactly why.
And each one of those books, I sent a couple of books to each of them. And each book had a different meaning. And like, Courtney and I both love this book.
How did you know that? Did she tell you that?
Stuff like that, where it was really that, I often have a lot of dreams about Courtney, that it feels like something in the universe is sending you a sign where it’s like, hey, this is, she wants you to be happy, she wants you to be out there, and
just to be like, to keep living. But yeah, they’re just little moments. I can’t necessarily put a finger on it, but they’re just little signs.
Yeah, I feel like sometimes dreams, sometimes a dream feels like it’s just a dream, and then sometimes a dream feels like the one you had the day after Courtney died, where it’s like, it feels like a visit.
Yeah.
And it feels very like, very physically real.
Yeah.
And they’re very rare for me, but when they happen, I always feel so much better. Like I feel like really like, something happened when I was just like, please God let me sleep this week.
Yeah.
It feels that way like the next day, there’s a difference in how you, again, I have dreams all the time where I just, they’re insane. Like literally I’m a race car driver and I can’t find, you know, stress dreams or whatever.
But with her, with those specific dreams, it really is like, you wake up and it’s, and it’s, there’s a difference in it.
You know, there’s a profound, profundity that like really doesn’t, it doesn’t leave much, it’s like, no, this was something different. And yeah, I have those, I have those every now and then.
It’s not often, but like you said, when they do happen, you know it for sure.
Yeah. Um, okay, I want to talk about, uh, your new album. But I also want to, I do want to talk a little bit too about having these really sort of like, creative or career highs, right?
Like every time you like release something, puts something new out into the world, that’s just such a very specific feeling.
But the conversation has to be so different than a regular, like publishing a regular book of poetry, or releasing a regular, like a parachute album and having, you know, those like, oh, congratulations, this is awesome.
When it’s so tied to loss and grief, yeah, that feels like so many different feelings tied to one event.
30:44
Album as Therapy
How was releasing this album different from any other?
It didn’t really, I couldn’t really compare it almost, you know, like, first off, it’s been, it’s been six years since I released anything. So even the industry has changed so much that it was like a different process anyway.
So it already was kind of foreign, not foreign, but just like a different ballgame.
And in terms of the actual emotional attachment, I couldn’t compare it to any other album because I’ve never had the feeling of not necessarily even ever thinking it would come out.
Like when I made the album, I was making it just to sort of sort through the feelings that I was feeling and my feelings about Courtney and try to like remember her. I wasn’t necessarily thinking even, I’m going to put this out.
Oh, this is a great hook. We’re going to, this is going to be.
Eventually, I, you know, when I, when I, my manager who we started working together kind of in the middle of the process, and she’s an old friend of mine who, who we just caught up one day.
We ran into each other in LA and, you know, she manages some big artists. And so for me, I just love getting her, love to hear what she’s up to. And so we kind of caught up and she was asking me what I was up to.
And, you know, I sent her the song. She was one of the first people who heard them outside of me and maybe a couple other people who helped them. And she was like, I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know what you’re going through.
This resonated with me. And she was the one who really kind of put it in my head, like, oh, this is more than just my diary. This could be something that other people relate to.
And I think that was a big kind of realization. At the same time, I just knew I had to do it. Like, it was sort of like, I just need to make this album.
Like, that’s kind of what… Sometimes you have these bouts of creativity where you don’t… And this has happened a few times, but you just don’t have a choice.
You’re just kind of the vessel by which it flows through. And these songs specifically, I didn’t really have a choice. It just was…
Every time I’d finish one song, the next song would start. Like, there was no sort of like, oh, what do I need now? I got to wait around a couple of weeks for something to come, like songs usually do for me.
This was very much just like, on to the next, on to the next. And then you take a step back and you realize like, oh, this is becoming an album. But the previous albums, you know, with Parachute, we always had an audience in mind.
We had our audience, we had fans, you know, maybe not the first album. I mean, even then though, we did have fans at that time. So we’re always, you know, you’re writing with people in mind and you’re in a certain genre.
So, oh, we need to like play to that genre. This was very much like not that. And I think the things that were similar are maybe just like, you know, the post-creative process, post-writing process.
Recording is kind of recording. You’re not like, you can’t really go outside the box in terms of how it’s made. It’s not like it’s I was swinging for the fences, trying a bunch of weird techniques or anything.
It was, you know, like a lot of what I learned recording Parachute Stuff, I recorded this album. And then the mixing process where it’s how do we craft the sound to sound good enough to come out of your car speakers? That’s not that different.
But the actual writing of the songs and then the emotional investment, I think, is the big thing. Because every choice I made was with Courtney in mind, whether that’s sonically, lyrically. I was just kind of thinking, like, what would Courtney like?
You know, and it was kind of like making an album that would make her proud in a lot of ways.
And I think that was to my detriment at times, because I think stuff that Courtney liked, a lot of people don’t, you know, like, she had very specific taste. And it’s also, you know, it’s funny with this album.
It’s a bummer, you know, in a lot of ways. It’s a lot of fun songs, but it’s also really hard to listen to over and over.
You got to be, you know, it’s like you said, you start crying and people came up to the shows and were like, yeah, I can’t listen to this album that much because it’s so sad to me. And I’m like, yeah, I get it.
Like, you know, I don’t know if I could necessarily, I probably could now take a spin through it.
But I think previous Parachute albums, I don’t think I’d ever gotten that, where it’s like, oh, this is emotionally affecting people in a way that is different than previously. So it’s hard for me to compare those.
But I will say like, the release of it has been fun to sort of get back in the like, how do I help this reach as many people as possible? That’s a fun game for me. It’s like a fun challenge.
And I love social media, obviously, like that’s the other half of my job. I really love the game, I guess you could call it, of like, how do I reach as many people as possible? What’s connecting?
What’s not? And so it’s just an added bonus that, oh my God, I’m connecting with people on stuff that really means a lot to me. This isn’t just like, oh, I’m writing a song for fun.
This was like, this is like bearing my soul in a way that I never have, being very vulnerable and people are still connecting with it.
The reward was infinitely more satisfying to see it connecting with people than I’d say, even the Parachute stuff, which we love doing, and I felt like it was its own thing.
But yeah, this album is just emotionally just so much more invested in the songs themselves, but funnily, weirdly removed kind of from what other people thought about it until you started seeing it connect emotionally.
I was writing for an audience of one, Courtney, but then I realized that audience of one could actually be an audience of a lot of people because we’ve all experienced grief in some way.
So it just was weird to go do it for this and then be like, oh, actually, it’s pretty universal.
Yeah, it’s like, if you don’t know grief yet, you will, and it is one of those things that’s I think as universal as it is personal. There’s no two losses are the same and yet every loss is the same. And we lost our spouses in very different ways.
I had a long goodbye, Aaron had brain cancer for three years. And yours was like instant. And there’s I think kind of a reflex with a lot of people to try to say like, which one is worse, right?
Like, I don’t know. And what I always come down to is like, well, I guess I’d take mine at the end of the day. Well, yeah, yeah, you know, no matter what, because you just kind of get what you get.
But I really love the idea of sort of creating something for yourself and then finding out that it matters to other people.
I actually think that’s probably where my best work has come from, too, is just saying something that I needed to say or even writing to figure out what I needed to say or what I felt and then, you know, kind of tossing it out there and being like,
oh, okay, I guess, yeah, I guess that worked. oh, okay, I guess, yeah, I guess that worked.
37:55
Album Title Meaning
Will you tell me, how did you land on the album title?
It’s a line from a poem Courtney wrote for me after we got engaged. She was really, really meticulous in structuring her books. So she had one book, but she always kind of had an idea of like, I need this kind of poem, I need this kind of poem.
And after we got engaged, the craziness of the engagement, a couple of weeks later, she slipped a piece of paper into my pocket as I was leaving for the airport and said, don’t read that till you get there.
And, you know, it was a poem she had written, and it was about this little moment in Nashville here at my house where she had gotten a splinter in her foot and I, she was so dramatic sometimes, and I thought she was like dying.
It turns out it was just a little splinter, but I rushed out of the shower, like spilling all over, like thinking she was really, really hurt, and she just had a little splinter.
But she wrote a poem called Skin and Other Weapons that was about that moment, but it really was about love and like finding love and understanding what it means finally.
And she wrote on the paper, she said, you know, I always knew I wanted to write a love poem for this book, but I never had a reason why until I met you.
So the last line from that book is how little love is, or from that poem is, how little love is how worth everything. And that poem was always kind of my North Star. When I missed her was always like, I have this poem and I always will.
And so that that title kind of summed up everything I thought about Courtney anyway. And, you know, like we’re saying, it’s a little like it kind of sums up everything. Like it really is the perfect encapsulation of Courtney and I.
And then beyond that, I think everybody’s relationship with someone they’ve lost.
It really is amazing how in the big giant scheme of the universe, it’s really small, but you know, that my life has revolved around that love for however long, 15 years now. And it’s so, yeah, it just was perfect.
And I knew that she would have been totally fine with it. And it also was, the album’s about her, you know? So I wanted her fingerprint on it in a way that I think that title was perfect for her.
Yeah, there’s, I loved to, just sonically, you incorporated a voicemail that she left you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It fully wrecked me, fully wrecked me.
I’m sorry.
You’re not the first to say that. I, I, selfishly, I included that, selfishly, I included that because I wanted it in posterity. I was scared I was going to lose it someday, where it was like, on my phone, it was the only voicemail I had from her.
Same, why, why did, keep every voicemail, don’t delete anything, okay?
Become a hoarder.
Now, with my parents, I’m like, you know, every, every voicemail they ever leave, I’m like, same, same.
Send them the voicemail.
Yeah, yeah. But with her, it was like, that was the only one I had on there. And selfishly, I just wanted to have it in as many places as I could.
So I figured if it’s online and like in this album, it’ll never leave. And it was such a dumb little logistic voicemail you get from your spouse or a significant other, even your parent.
But now hearing it back, you know, it just is so, it wrecks me too, obviously. But I was surprised how many people have told me that. Like, that was the moment.
They were like, I was holding it together until then, and then it was game over.
Well, I think that’s also what that album title, it reflects the album title, it reflects the meaning of that poem too, which is like, you know, how little love is in the grand scheme of things, but also like, love lives in those little moments.
It lives in the mundanity.
Isn’t that funny? And she was able to express that in such a beautiful way.
It’s like, she boiled down what you and I knew instinctively, and you can feel, everybody in the world knows, but she could boil it down to just that one little beautiful sentence. It was like, God, she was so brilliant at that, you know?
Yeah. It really, it’s like, it is a beautiful sentence. It is a perfect sentence.
Like, it’s hard for me even to say all of them. Like, yes, I get it. I get it.
42:14
Public Private Grief
When you’re writing an album that is this personal, and, you know, I have written nonfiction and memoir, and there are certain things that as, you know, as you’re writing, feel important to share, and there are also moments where you just know like,
Yeah, yeah.
What is that process like for you?
Were there things that you wrote in this album that essentially you were like, no, that’s this part, this song, or this line that is just for us?
That’s a good question.
For sure, there are things that I, and even putting the book together too, I think it was a dual thing where we had to be sensitive that she wrote about her family and her friends and people who, it’s one thing for her to decide to include them, it’s
another thing for me to decide or to try to see what they’re thinking about it. With the album too, the album was really my place where I was like, okay, the book, we want this to be as much Courtney’s voice and be respectful of her and the people
she wrote about. My album was very much sort of like this is for me. I was like, I need something to be able to say what I want to say and not necessarily worry.
But there were times when I was debating, there was one song I wrote, this is a great example. One song I wrote that was really specific about the day she passed away. And I remember thinking like, this is A, too heavy for me.
I finished it, I got it out of my system. But it was the only thing on the album that I really was like, I can’t A, relive this every time I sing it or hear it.
And B, I think like, I don’t want necessarily to remember those details in a way, I always will, but like, I don’t want necessarily those kind of things out in the world where I’m, where people have, and I, you know, that was just something that I
just felt was a bridge too far, and it was like, okay, like, that’s a good note to realize like, maybe this album isn’t gonna be about that specific day and more about like the generalities of it, and then everything that was before and after that,
you know, like, so I think that was one big one. And then with her book, I also think it was much more like trying to understand how can we be sensitive to Courtney’s original vision with these poems, but it’s different when she can talk to the
Yeah, I think about that stuff all the time.
I am a writer.
I have, I’m looking at like, you know, a stack of journals from second grade to the present on my shelf where I’m like, you know, ooh, I don’t know, I don’t know what people, I don’t know what my family would publish, and, and what, especially
because I, you know, I really, I also share very little about like, my actual creative process with anybody. I really am kind of just off in my own land, and then something comes out and it’s just kind of how it works for me.
But I just think, I think that’s, I think that’s such a beautiful thing, and it has to make you feel so close to her. To like, engage and have so many of her words and ideas to engage with.
Is there ever a time where you just think like, I don’t know if I can go down that rabbit hole right now, or a time where you really feel like, I need that. I need to like, I need to go open a notebook.
I need to, you know, get into a bookshelf and just see what I can find.
It is such a, you know, I’m smiling because I love, it’s, I just know how lucky I am to have somebody who wrote so much, you know, like, I think a lot of people lose someone and, and I’m sure it’s, it’s not nearly as much material, you know, like,
and I am so lucky that she was a brilliant writer because, I’m sure, I mean, you know, it’s like, there’s just paper everywhere with little things. And, and even, like, the other day, I found, you know, like, in a book, just scribbles of, of her
thoughts about the book, or, you know, she would just go on tangents in the margins of books. And to see those, you get to see her handwriting.
And it was just like, oh, man, like, I, there are definitely days where I had to take a break, you know, where it was like, this is. But also, like, I don’t, I don’t necessarily view it as a burden.
It’s not like I, there are, how do I put this, as sad as you get from it, there’s also joy in it.
So it’s like a trade-off where you’re like, I know I’m going to be a little sadder, but there’s just so much joy in getting to read her voice that it’s worth it, you know? And I never want to forget her.
I’m not the kind of person who’s like, I got to move on from this. I want to find somebody else and then forget all… Like, I don’t think I’ll ever, obviously, ever forget her.
But more importantly, like, I never not want to be a champion of her work, if that makes sense. Like, I want it to live on forever. And this book is my ability to do that.
But I don’t think there’s ever going to be a cutoff point where I’m like, I’m done interfacing with this work. It’s not like I can cut that off.
There are times, there have been times in the past year or so where I’ve, you know, we finished the manuscript and like, okay, cool, like, I’m going to take a couple weeks to just work on other music or whatever it is.
And especially when the album finished, it was like, I’m going to dive in to opposite style music so I can just have a break from the heaviness of it all.
But it’s again, it’s a privilege to have somebody who is a writer to be married to them because you get to know them in a way you didn’t get to when they were alive even. And that’s so rare.
Like you said, usually there’s a cutoff where it’s like, I wish I got to know them more. This is like, every time I read a sentence from her or a little scrawl in the margin, it’s like I learned something new.
So I don’t view it as necessarily a burden to have to do that. It’s more like it just feels so natural. And with her especially, I think that’s what she wanted was to be heard through her writing in a lot of ways.
And so it’s lucky for me that I have all of it sitting around.
I think it would feel really helpful to the grieving process to have just access to that much of a person truly, especially when you didn’t get a good bye. You had a good night, but you didn’t get a good bye.
And there’s a difference, there really is. And grief is universal, and yet grieving, like the process of being able to grieve a person, especially in the US., it does feel like a privilege to be able to have that time, to be able to have that space.
What are the things that have helped you grieve?
Well, making the album, obviously, was beyond, I mean, I say the two things that saved my life for like my therapist and getting to like having the ability to write songs about it.
Because I was scared for the first six months or so that I would never write again. You know, I thought like I was too sad and it was just done. And I wasn’t ever gonna make music again.
I just assumed I’d get a job and, you know, live a normal life and just kind of do that. But once I started, once it started flowing it didn’t stop until it did.
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Now, especially three years after, I’ve come to recognize when I’m having those days. I think before I was having a lot more of them, obviously now I’m a little more in a groove of like, I know what living alone is like.
I understand what meeting new people is like. But I think for me, the biggest help has just been awareness of recognizing myself when I am grieving, and when I’m bummed, and when I’m missing her.
I think I was always really, not always, but especially the beginning of the grieving process, really confused by those feelings because I’d never felt, I’d never have anything bad happen in my life, I’m really honest with you.
Same, I was like.
I had great luck, and I had great childhood.
I was ugly for a while, for a long time, and that was bad, but I got through it.
But you’re not, it’s just not, the worst thing that could happen to you, happened to you now. And so I think I was very confused by those feelings, and mad at myself for feeling them almost, where it was like, I’m lazy, what are you doing?
You should be working, you aren’t being creative, you’re not being productive, whatever it was, I was really angry.
Your wife died two weeks ago, and you haven’t even.
Literally.
I haven’t seen you pick up a single instrument. I haven’t seen you.
It’s really, and so yeah, I was really mad at myself, and not giving myself much grace.
I think the thing that has helped me, especially accept when it’s happening, to accept it is like, even just, again, the recognition of like, oh, I’m feeling off today, and that’s okay, and being able to say like, why don’t you just not feel like you
have to be productive for a little bit? Why don’t you, you know, and just not necessarily sit in it, and like, all right, I’ll give you an hour to think about it. It literally is just like, hey, just like, do what you want to do.
What do you want to do today? Do that, rather than feeling like, you know, and a lot of time that involves work. Like, you know, I have things I have to do.
I have deadlines. I have artists I work with and brands I do social media stuff for. And, you know, like, like, oh, I got to post today.
Those things are, are like, everybody has responsibilities. That’s not the thing. But it’s more just like giving myself the grace to realize like, okay, this is gonna be a weird day.
Sure, there’s stuff you have to get done. And deadlines, you’re gonna be working even all day, whatever it is. But it’s more like the mindset of it is allow, just allowing myself to feel those things and recognizing them.
And on the days that I don’t have anything to do, weekend or whatever, like, it’s really nice to be able to just be like, I’m gonna not feel like I have to be productive today.
But having the ability to do that, I think was something I had to learn really. But as I’ve gotten better at it, it really has helped me not be mad at myself or ashamed or disappointed that I’m grieving again, like, oh, you should be over it by now.
And just sort of being like, you know what? You’re gonna have those days and that’s totally fine.
And I think my therapist obviously has been harping on that and been somebody who’s really encouraged me to recognize it and helped me work through the times when I didn’t.
And but it just is like, yeah, allowing myself to like miss Courtney or to feel like it’s weird that she’s gone or whatever it is.
Like, I think for a while there, I was really just not accepting of the situation in terms of like my own personal like reaction to it.
Yeah, I used to think, you know, I was like, what are you talking about acceptance? Like, yeah, I know he’s dead. But acceptance is the integration of that loss into your life.
Hundred percent, yeah. And, you know, I used work. I think in some ways, I was processing things.
And in some ways, I was kind of escaping from the feeling of things by intellectualizing it or, you know, alchemizing it into a book, a screenplay, something like that. And it was kind of a both-and situation.
But, you know, there are, there is, like, a power to, you know, the narrative of it and, like, finding a narrative to it or, you know, finding a different narrative to it.
And, you know, you mentioned, like, three years in, it’s different now, like, meeting people. There’s a time when, you know, you’re really early on in grief.
I don’t know if you felt like this, but it truly felt like I wanted to wear, like, I actually did make t-shirts. It said my husband died and all, like, I was this loves a t-shirt, right? My dad died, you know, all these.
Because it truly felt like the most important thing you could know about me, even if we were passing each other in the grocery store, is like, you don’t understand, my husband is dead, okay?
So I, like, I can’t… I am a widow. I’m a widower.
Literally, like, yeah, that’s it.
Yeah, like, and then there are certain, you know, times or periods where it goes from, like, being, like, the headline of your life to being, like, you know, it’s in the story, and maybe you’ll get that story at some point when I meet you, but it’s
not something I’m going to, you know, shout into your face. And I think, you know, like, the work that you have made here and the work that you will make even in the future, you know, there’s no world where Courtney doesn’t exist in your life and in
your work. You know, like, we are changed not just by, like, the loss, but by that love. These are, like, very, very foundational people. It’s like the forming of you, the forming of, like, all your work, not just this album.
Hugely, yeah.
And anyone who is, you know, worth knowing in any sense is going to know that and understand that and respect that and have, like, love for her, have love for Courtney, have love for the love that you shared.
And, you know, I say that as, like, as a remarried widow, where, you know, that’s what people always want to know. They’re like, well, how does, like, how does Matthew deal with it?
Yeah.
Oh, my God, he is so jealous of my first husband. He wishes he was dead. You know, like, what are you, like, what are you talking about?
Yeah, what do you think?
You know, what do you think?
What do you think? It’s like if he, if you, if you love someone, you love the people they love.
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think for me, you know, I dated somebody last year and it didn’t work out, but she was really wonderful about understanding the album I was making and the book stuff and all that.
And now, you know, I learned a lot from that process of, yeah, of, of dating somebody, but also like having now, not necessarily feeling like I need to date anybody right now.
But it is funny, like, like the people that I meet that I’m really drawn to are people who ask about Courtney, and people who, you know, not necessarily even the dating sense, but just friends like they’re not scared off and don’t want to talk about
it. They’re kind of like, hey, like, tell me about her, you know? Like, what is, what is, well, tell me more, or are able to sort of incorporate it in a way that’s not awkward or, and I know it’s weird for people, you know? I get it.
It’s like, what do you even say to that? Like, you know, but the people who do know and who I do tell the story to are, aren’t necessarily scared of it.
They kind of can realize like, oh, this person was like the biggest person in his life for over half his life, you know?
And like you said, it’s the people worth knowing are the ones who appreciate it and are saying, you know, it’s just amazing when people are like, God, I wish I had known her. Like, it’d be awesome to get to meet her and it’s like, really?
Like, you’re saying, you know? So it’s just interesting how people react to it because you’re right, being a widower or a widow, I’m sure you’ve had this experience. It’s just, it’s like the third rail.
Like, people like don’t necessarily always know how to respond. Again, totally understandable. But as I found people get to know me a bit better, new people that I meet, it’s really refreshing to be able to talk about her.
And I think that’s why I loved going on tour so much, because it was like a captive audience in a room.
I’m reading her poems and I’m like, we’re going to, I’m talking and you’re listening, and I get to talk about whatever I want to, which for me right now is going to be Courtney and my-
We’re talking about my dead wife.
We’ve locked the doors.
You’re not going anywhere.
And like everyone was so wonderful, because I think they, you know, they went into the shows kind of trusting me. And these are small, intimate, 150 person kind of seated rooms.
I think they just trusted me that it was like, I’m not going to tell you exactly how this is going to go down, but I promise you it’ll be worth your while. And, you know, I really felt, it was so cathartic to just get to chat about her.
And not necessarily like, and I said this in the thing, grief is such a lonely process that to finally get to speak about her and celebrate her was so nice.
Like, because the friends that I have that are sympathetic, but also yeah, are like understanding that this person was my whole world for so long, and that I get so much joy out of getting to talk about her.
And even discussing with you is like so nice to just be able to celebrate her and her work and her as a person.
It’s funny, like, you know, once you get past the initial awkwardness of like, oh, I didn’t know that about you, it’s been really refreshing to just have people that you can sort of know that you can bring it up and her up, and they’re not gonna be
like, oh, god, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say here. And again, those shows were kind of the bigger version of that for me.
Yeah, there are two things that I always really value, and one is when a person who did not know, Erin, my dead husband, says, oh my god, I read this thing, or I’ve been listening to the show and I’ve been reading the books, and now I feel like I
know him, right? Now I know that on August 21st, I go to Taco Bell to celebrate Erin Fess. That really means so much to me. The second thing is when somebody who knew him in a way that I did not, shares that version of him.
There was a guy came up to me at his funeral, I wish I could remember her name, but I was so demented and also I had not drank in however long he had been sick. I hadn’t drank in three years and I got wasted at that funeral.
Probably four glasses of white wine on an empty stomach, hadn’t eaten in three years.
Literally, prime form.
Everyone kept being like, you look so good. I was like, I haven’t eaten in three years. That’s what you’re all anorexia-pilled.
I’m dying, I’m not doing well, but thank you. Somebody came up to me at Aaron’s funeral and said, I went to high school with him and I never felt like cool, but he always had a spot for me at the lunch table.
And I was like, I didn’t know Aaron in high school.
I didn’t know that version of him and I just felt so truly in love, in love with that man who told me that story, the high school versions of them and just like, oh, there’s a little bit more of you out in the world that doesn’t belong to me and that
It was amazing on the tour because it was both those things.
I had friends of hers from high school and middle school or people who danced with her, whatever, and they were like, I knew Courtney when we were, I’m so and so, I knew Courtney when I was 12. And it was like, she’s like, I knew it was coming.
And then the other half was people, and I said this at the beginning of every show, the goal tonight is for you to get to know Courtney a little better. And you know, like, that’s what I want. So you can connect with this book in an even bigger way.
And people were coming up and saying that, like, I really feel like I know Courtney in a way that, you know, and fans who had maybe met her at a show of mine, or who had, you know, been a fan of her poetry from afar, but didn’t know the personal side
of her. And people coming up and be like, I had no idea she was so funny. And like, you know, I didn’t know she was so, um, like witty.
And I’m like, yeah, like, you know, people who didn’t know her personally getting to see that side of her was so refreshing.
But then for me, like, you know, crying in the line afterwards, as I’m like, you know, signing the books, my little section of the book where I wrote my essay about her, like, being like, oh my gosh, like, you’ve made my night. You don’t understand.
You know, someone telling me like, thank you so much.
I’m like, no, you, even just telling me that little anecdote about Courtney, like made my night or a fan being like, yeah, like we were at a show and she like brought me water when she went and got one because she was standing next to me, stuff like
Yeah.
Yeah. There’s something comforting about it.
Yeah. That’s a good word for it.
1:11:54
Anniversaries Mementos
I like what are what are the things like the anniversaries that mean a lot to you or that you celebrate?
I always felt so much pressure. I think I felt pressure the first death anniversary. I was like, I have to do something like really meaningful.
I had to make sure this counts. I had a little kid. I was like, he’s not even three yet, so I don’t really know what is he going to know?
What’s he going to remember? As time passes, that day is for me. I’ll be with his mom and his sister a little bit this Tuesday, and then the rest of the day will be for me.
I’ll pick up my son from school. We’ll do something special. But we celebrate Aaron’s birthday more than anything.
But what are those important dates for you?
Obviously, November 14th, which is the day she passed away, that is sort of… This year especially, it came on a really weird day. I was traveling back from the tour.
It was not like I could… Her birthday is a big one for me. It’s funny, Thanksgiving is another one.
We never went home for Thanksgiving. We’d always get takeout Chinese. So that’s always one little tradition that I always do.
It’s like, all right, Chinese on Thanksgiving. Even if it’s by myself, eating it here in Nashville, it’s like what I’ll do. But her birthday is really the one that I…
This year was… I was here in Nashville. It was so…
There’s nothing specific I’d say that I’m like, I got to do this every birthday. But I have a kind of a chest of her things that I kept after she passed away.
And that’s the day that I take them out and look at her glasses and her rings and her, like, the scraps of paper that were on her wall that I have in there, her favorite PJ set that I have in there, her perfume, you know, I’ll smell.
It’s just kind of like going through that stuff and just, you know, like, tactily remembering.
But that’s kind of the one thing I do do, where it’s like, okay, I never want to be the kind of guy who’s, who’s, like, rigid about, oh, I have to, you know, because I tend to have that problem. I’m a very routine-oriented guy in general.
But that is one tradition that I’ve done in the past three years was I’m really missing her on that day and I’ll just go through that box of stuff and just sort of like, it’s amazing how quickly things come back and the good stuff and, you know, it’s
really, I find that like the smell and the touch and the sort of like, yeah, the tactile sort of sensory thing really, really is, it just transports me right back. But it is the one tradition I have on her birthday.
So, you know, other than the Chinese food. And then I’ll also get, you know, it’s just funny, like, you know, we’ll drive back. I’ll drive back to Virginia all the time.
And on that drive we used to do together, we used to always get like chick-fil-a on the way home, you know, so I always get chick-fil-a because it’s like, oh, yeah, it’s what we do, you know.
And not because I necessarily like love chick-fil-a that much where I’m like, that’s what I got to have on this drive. It literally was like, oh, Courtney and I always did that. That’s what we’ll do this time.
And I think, yeah, the birthday is the one. I think I do, I often will do Legos on the day of her, you know, the last couple of years I’ve done, I’ve just sat around doing Legos because it’s also very comforting to me.
I don’t know why, but the birthday and the box are the one thing that I could point to and say like that, that happens every time.
You mentioned like, you know, there’s special stuff that you kept. I, there are certain things that I just can’t get rid of because like they belong to him, even though, and my example is this Dyson vacuum that he owned before he met me.
I mean, this vacuum has got to be, whenever Dyson came out with a vacuum, it’s got to be the original, right? He liked good design. It’s like, and it’s pink and gray.
Right in his alley, I’m sure.
Yeah, it’s just, and I just remember, when I met him, I was like, this is a man who owns a home, has a dog, and has a vacuum, an expensive vacuum.
Like, this is crazy to me, you know?
Got his life together.
You know, I was just coming off a relationship where the guy would steal toilet paper from a bar. So, you know, my standards were wild, and that vacuum, it doesn’t, it turns on. No dirt is going into it.
I can’t let it go. Do you have weird things like that where you’re like, I’m sorry?
Yeah, her phone. I had, it’s funny, even her computer, I was able to give away after. But yeah, her phone, I can’t get rid of.
Not because I turn it on and like look at it or anything, but it’s just sort of like, I don’t know. There’s something about it. Certain clothing that I have in there.
She had this scarf. We know, we donated a lot of her clothes to this wonderful woman’s shelter here. And it was exactly what Courtney would have wanted to do.
But there were just certain articles of clothing that I couldn’t give away. Like she had this scarf that literally I can like, it’s almost like her uniform when I picture her from when we were dating.
And then these pajamas that are like Courtney Kaur. It’s so weird. And obviously things like her glasses and her jewelry and her perfume.
But those were the clothing that I was just like, I cannot picture someone else wearing these. And yeah, the phone was another one that I don’t know why I didn’t, it’s just a phone.
And it took a while for me to turn off her phone line too, I think was a big one for me. And I finally did it. And it made sense because we had to switch something and it was just like, all right, if we’re going to do it, like this is the time.
And that would have been the time too to be like, okay, like you don’t need, it’s just a phone, you can sell it or you use that money, whatever. But I just couldn’t do it, so it’s there.
Technically, it turns on and everything is still on it as it left. And it was really something that I just didn’t want to, yeah, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why.
I really can’t put a finger on it.
Yeah. Yeah, there’s just something about, there are certain things that have like this strange sort of like magical quality to them, where you’re like, no, I don’t know, this is like a portal to a different world.
And her books, the other one was her books. I couldn’t get rid of any of the books. It was like, even if I don’t have them, I don’t have enough bookshelves to ever hold, I would need another house to hold all of Courtney’s books.
But I have an attic full of boxes of Courtney’s books that someday maybe I’ll be wealthy enough to have a big house with a bunch of built-in bookshelves. But for now, it’s just like, those will never leave my possession.
Yeah, boxes of comic books, maybe boxes of comic books.
Books I’ll never read in a million years. I have no desire.
Not in a million years, yeah.
Yeah, but they just can’t.
Yeah, and I have so many t-shirts. I mean, they’re like vacuum-sealed.
There’s an inventory of what they are, how many they are, what size they are, where they are, because I was just like, again, I can’t imagine anybody else having this L7 shirt that I bought in high school.
Did you take a long time to go through the stuff and kind of figure out what to do with it?
In some ways, yes, and in some ways, no.
Like, there were some things where, like, I just could not handle having, you know, like, certain, like, you know, all of his, like, you know, work clothes, like, I gave to the people who, like, knew and loved him, right?
Like, his mom has sweatshirts, his sister has sweatshirts. You know, my brothers, like, you know, who wore similar sizes to them, I was like, you know, also, it’s like, before he died, I, like, ordered him Christmas presents.
I’m like, do you want this sweater? He’s never, J. Crew’s not taking it back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unfortunately, they’re, yeah, so do you want it, like, that kind of stuff?
And then there’s some stuff where, you know, like, I would, I’ve gone through it, but I also just can’t let it go. And those are, like, I mean, all those, like, random hard drives, glasses, comic books, t-shirts. There’s just, like, certain things.
You know, when we moved, we left Minnesota, my current husband, our family, myself, we moved to Arizona. And Matthew was like, I’m not judging at all, but we moved more of Aaron’s things than we did mine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, we have a storage unit for them.
Yes, yes.
And, you know, like, all of his, you know, all of his guitars and things like that, where I was like, like, I gave one to my niece, because, you know, she’s really into music, and I think that Aaron would just be so excited.
It’s a thrill to know, like, that, you know, Ray’s making music with his old guitar from high school, would just, like, you know, is just like, he would just absolutely love that.
And then there are just certain things that I’m like, yeah, I don’t know, they can’t go anywhere, but they’re not necessarily, like, on display.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s, I, it’s funny, because I moved, I was moving out of my house, so I stayed at my parents for, like, three, two months after, three months after Courtney passed away.
And then my mom and I came down because it was, like, time to re-up the lease. So obviously I was like, oh, this is, like, like, I don’t necessarily want to stay in this house. I wanted to move to the other side of town.
I felt like when I, when I did move, I just, you know, too many memories, but, so I think there was a catalyst where it’s like, all right, pull the bandaid off, now’s the time.
But it’s funny because the physical things, I kind of, we, we just sort of went into that mode of like, we got to move out of this house, so we need to start organizing what we want to keep, what we want to get rid of.
It was the digital stuff that took me longer, where it was like, I don’t ever want to, like you said, I still have hard drives just full of her stuff, pictures and videos and stuff that I’m like, I don’t know if I’ll ever go through them.
Maybe someday I will, but I just can’t be, like, you know, I can’t get rid of it.
And the digital stuff especially was just so, I did go through the poems, you know, I went and did a cursory kind of like, let’s find all the docs and let’s, you know, let’s go through those and all that because we had to for the book, but all the
rest of the stuff, it was just like too much. But yeah, the physical side, we were kind of forced into it by circumstance with the house and sort of having to move out and figuring out like, okay, like we’re downsizing here and also like, I just
can’t have, you know, like all her clothes, it was like, I could find that woman’s shelter that was really, you know, right up Courtney’s alley and be like, I could tell myself like, oh, this is exactly, you know, this is what Courtney would want.
There were other things obviously, furniture and things that I was like, yeah, like that stuff can go. But yeah, it’s just amazing how certain things, it was really easy to let go of. And then other stuff, I was just like, there’s no possible way.
There’s no way, yeah. The digital stuff, especially, I’m just like, even finding that, I was like, oh, no, there’s more.
There’s more, like what was I missing, you know, like when you have a file management, you know, like, there’s a secret message for me somewhere.
I have all my texts with Courtney from when we started texting. And I have them in a spreadsheet and I stumbled on it today.
And I had this moment of reading old text of ours from 2011 being like, I could do this for the rest of my life, just read these texts. But like, I just couldn’t, I knew I had to keep them somehow.
You know, it’s just, it was just so like, I don’t think I’ll ever go through them. You know, I think it’d be too sad for me or just too weird. And I don’t know, maybe I will.
But for now to know that they’re on my hard drive and know that they’re on the backup, it’s like, I just like having them there because I just don’t ever want to lose them.
Same. There were certain things that you couldn’t do in 2014, like early 2015, you know, like technologically, you know? You couldn’t, as far as I know.
Now it’s so easy, right? Like you can get a voicemail, you can just boop, like save it to something.
Exactly.
I have like one voicemail from Erin and it’s similar to the Courtney one, right? Where it’s just like, it’s like, hey, I guess I’ll, well, nope, you’re calling me, I’ll see you later.
Like it’s just, and I’m like, oh, that is like, that’s like, that’s the real stuff that you miss, right?
Like I just remember, like the moments I felt the loneliest were actually, you know, it wasn’t, you know, you know, my birthday or anniversary, like yeah, those, those hurt, but it was just like that, the feeling of like when you walk into your home
I still have that when I’m like making, making dinner by myself and just being like, oh, like this, this is not nearly as fun as when we’d be making it together or I knew Courtney was in the other room and was going to eat with me in five minutes,
you know, whatever. It’s, yeah, it is, it is, it is remarkable how it’s, it just sneaks up and it’s so like, and I’ll have these moments, I don’t know if you’re the same where the only way I can describe it is like, it’s just weird she’s not here.
Like, it’s just weird. When you really think about it, you’re like, I cannot believe she’s no longer alive. Like, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes.
And it’s often in those moments where I’m like, this is just weird that I’m by myself and it’s not like she’s not coming back.
It’s just, and obviously sad, like that’s just a prevailing thing, but it’s more weird in the sense of just like, I just can’t wrap my head around it. You know, it’s like, just weird.
It’s so weird and then it’s so weird. Like my anger phase, it was long and it was potent, but I would also just be like, how is every asshole that I know going to live forever?
Yes.
You know, I’m like.
I have the moments where I’ll see poets that were peers of hers winning big awards or getting to do cool things or getting to do everything that she would have gotten to done. And I get so mad and so angry because it’s so unfair.
And my poor therapist, I’ve just gone in there being like, what the heck, going off. And I’m sure he’s like, here we go. But it is, there are moments where I just think it’s, I guess, so irrationally mad.
Because I’m equally happy for them. You know, I’m like, I’m glad you’re getting, I genuinely am like excited for them.
But then it often, there’s this other side of it that is just so mad that Courtney didn’t get to do all that stuff that that she would have, you know, deserved to do or gotten to do or whatever. And that was my anger phase.
And I still have it every now and then.
Yeah, I get that too every so often too. I’m like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. It’s like, it’s surprising too. I’m always like, oh, I did not know I was still, I was still gonna feel that one, but okay.
And I feel bad because again, I’m happy for them or I’m excited, but often I compare their lives to like Courtney’s and I’m just like, oh, how would this have played out for her?
And it’s maddening sometimes to me and it makes me mad at the universe or whatever you want to call it, the higher power.
Yeah. Yeah, all of it. I want to ask you too about what it is like, you like are, oh my God.
So things are different between us and that, you know, I, Erin’s death is really what kind of launched me into this career. I just worked in marketing. We both did.
Advertising agencies, things like that. And I had a Tumblr.
Nice. I still have a Tumblr.
Thank you. I, I, I.
I love Tumblr. What’s funny is right before-
Beta user guy.
Really? Right before I got on this, I was scheduling poetry posts for the rest of the month. So I have a poetry Tumblr for Courtney stuff.
Okay. And other people’s, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
I should get back on Tumblr. I miss Tumblr. That was, those were the days.
But, you know, I was just like writing for an audience of one, right? I was writing for myself. I was writing for Erin.
At first, it was like password protected. Like, girl, who do you think is going to try to find my husband’s tumor.tumblr.com?
Yeah.
I was like, this is just for us. And Erin and I wrote as obituary together. It went viral.
And that launched everything, right? It was like, that was a creative act that we did together. Yep.
And then I had all this attention. I had all this attention. But you already had attention.
You already had an audience. And then grief, you know, it just kicked you in the neck. And you don’t have, there’s nothing to compare it to, right?
Like, you’ve never had your wife die, not being famous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like, I just, I always wonder, like, how, I don’t know, like, how strange that must feel to, like, already have, like, eyeballs on you, and then have this seismic change to your life.
I guess you’re right. I don’t really know any differently. Because, like I said before, like, I’ve never had anything like this in my life.
Like, like, it was, so I guess for me… I think there was a part of me that wanted to be more private that I felt obligated almost to let people in, especially right after it happened.
I felt like I had to post about this, I have to announce this, because it started getting out. Weird websites started picking it up with misinformation about how she died.
And I was getting texts from people being like, hey, emails are going out amongst her old colleagues. How do you wanna do this? And her family didn’t necessarily want it.
They’re like, I don’t want to do this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was weird to have to make those sort of decisions. It’s one thing to write an obituary after the fact. It’s another thing to be like, what’s, do I need to put this on Instagram right away because people are already starting to post about it?
And it was, I think the immediate aftermath was the most strange time for me because I was so out of it and obviously in shock that it was, and it wasn’t like I had a publicity team at that point who’s like, oh, like, we’ll take care of this.
You know, you just need to like, don’t worry. We got, you know, I didn’t have a team at that point. I had, I had recently left working with my managers at that point, you know, a parachute was done.
So we didn’t, I didn’t have a lay, I literally was kind of working on my own because I was like in the process of getting all this stuff together. So it, and, and, you know, her family was pretty private in general.
So they were also wrestling with how do we also, you know, all these people who are interested in who, who felt a connection to Courtney, because she had a following as well at that point and had enough notoriety as a writer where it was like kind of
like news in certain circles. So it was just weird. And I think like that after the fact, it’s been sort of, I’m not the most vulnerable person. And I’ve kind of had to learn like, all right, like I tend to, how do I put this?
I tend to like seize up a bit when people want to get real with me in certain ways. So like if I don’t know them and I’ve had to just kind of learn to be like, you know what, like your reflection of what they’ve gone through in a lot of ways.
So strangers who come up to me and say like, I lost my spouse or I lost my parent or whatever it is, you know, whereas before I could sort of like float above it and be like, yeah, like, I don’t know what that feels like, but I’m sorry.
Now it’s kind of like, oh, they’re connecting with you on a deeper level. And again, people I don’t even know who have just sort of seen the story on Instagram or have followed me all these years.
It’s taught me to be, I think, more empathetic and more understanding of how desperate sometimes it feels to relate to somebody about something that you’re feeling.
Because I, oh my God, like getting to talk to you is such a different thing because you’ve been through a very similar situation.
Again, not the exact same, but losing a spouse is such a specific weird thing to happen to you that it’s refreshing to get to talk about that.
And so I’ve had to be a little more empathetic to be like, okay, I might not know this person, but they know me in a way that it feels to them like they can finally relate to somebody about all this stuff.
And so I try to be more proactive now about like answering messages or standing and talking with them and asking about their person. And then maybe I would have before just solely because I kind of know that feeling now.
And I think that’s like the biggest change long-term. Short-term, it was just sort of like, how do I even announce this? Like, what do I even say?
I don’t even necessarily like, I haven’t even wrapped my head around this. How am I supposed to like help other people wrap their heads around it?
But then long-term, it’s been more learning to be a bit more vulnerable with people and also just trying to remember like, oh, because I’ve allowed my, like, I love being the center of attention. I love, you know, that’s just my personality.
Like, I love getting to people to know who I am and like get to like entertain people in that way.
So like the other side of that is like, yeah, like now it’s your turn to realize like the other side of that, which is they know you in a way you don’t know them.
And you have to like be aware of that and realize that like that’s, that also comes with vulnerability in a way that I necessarily wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable with before all this happened.
Yeah, it’s like everybody needs a witness and anonymously they were yours and now you have this moment where you’ll be theirs because that is what grief needs.
But I also think that’s why an album like this and publishing Courtney’s book in the way that you did too is so generous because there’s so much of grief that is very like hidden away and our culture really likes a winner.
They love when you can just like get back up there and get going and just be like, you know what, I’m just grateful I fell in love once.
You know, just and however, you can just sort of like package it up into something beautiful and meaningful right away when really and what comes through on this album too is like, there’s so much of it that is just so dark and lonely.
So when you see like a little like, you know, a little light flickering in the distance at somebody else who gets it, like you are a moth to that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think like you said, there’s, it’s a really lonely thing, like really lonely.
So I think I just have a lot of, like I said, a lot of sympathy and a lot of empathy because I know that loneliness better than anybody. I, you know, there’s only so much people want to talk about it.
There’s like, you know, there’s only, I, and I have a wonderful therapist who I talk to every week about it usually, mainly that. And it’s, but so much of it is done internally on your own.
And again, like finding, like you said, finding that little light to latch onto is so refreshing for me that I’m like, man, I get it now. Like I probably, I mean, definitely would not have understood feeling that connection before.
But I think now it’s like, yeah, I get it. Like I have put myself out there in a way to be that little light in the distance. And not necessarily the reason I made the album, but now I can kind of recognize what that means to other people.
You know, especially on this book tour and getting to talk with them in person, it was really, you know, it was tough.
Like after a show to stand for an hour and talk with a bunch of people about either my stuff and being like, thank you for buying the book or their stuff. But it’s like, man, like, look, buddy, like, this, this is, you’re lucky to get to do this.
This isn’t, not a lot of people get to relate to people like that. And, and, and, you know, for me, as, as hard as it is to be vulnerable in general in life, I’m not that kind of person.
It sort of not forced it on you, but it is like, yeah, like this is, I felt a responsibility to kind of allow that on, especially in these last month of doing these shows. It was, it was, it was, and it was good for me in the end.
You know, I think, I think it’s helped me become more open and honest with myself and other people as well.
1:37:37
Courtney’s Poem “Fabric”
And this episode is leaving you feeling a little emotional.
Same, and let’s feel more emotional. This is a new segment. You might have heard it before.
I think I’ve done it one other time. We call it Cry About It. This is where I share things that have made me cry.
Said I’m not crying alone, I’m about to make you cry. And Will shared so much of Courtney with us today. And now I’m going to share one of her poems with you.
It is called Fabric by Courtney Kampa. And I would just like to say, I’m trying not to cry when I read it. And also, I’m not a poet, so I don’t know how poetry should be read, so I’m doing my best here, all right?
Today, I wait in line at Kroger behind a boy wearing a white cotton t-shirt, his backbone slim, track runner taut, the way yours were.
My basket foolish with hummus and clementines, and I think that if you’d made it to 25, there how yours would look too. And I’m breathing at his neck, at the luxury of his shoulder blades, and I’m jealous of him for you.
How this boy with hands in his pockets was yoked to the morning and pulled along. How his t-shirts turn him into the canvas of any sun-stunned Saturday.
How all he has to do is stand here and he’s a palette bleached by noon, stained gold in the moonlight, or reddened with dawn. How the day rubs itself off on him, unasked. Beauty is what the memory never abandons.
A stretch of fabric sunning itself across your shoulders. Supine Horizon, Wanting Only, and Always, More Light. See, I got the cry stuck in my chest.
I got this cry stuck in my chest, but woo, woo. I always want to know what’s making you cry, okay? You can text it.
You can text it to 612-568-4441. You can leave us a voicemail. You know, I want to know what’s making you cry too, okay?
Submit it, it might be part of a cry about it. I am so grateful I got that time with Will. I am so grateful that I have his art now to revisit and to bring me comfort and to help me feel something.
I hope that all of you go and stream that album. It will be linked in our episode description along with a link to Courtney’s book of poetry.
And after this conversation, I just keep thinking about the title of his album that he borrowed from a poem that Courtney gave him. Just, you know, how little love is, how worth everything.
And for all of that pain, all of that sorrow, all of that grief, it is worth everything. It is worth everything, all of it. This has been an episode of Thanks For Asking.
And we are so grateful to be here with you making this show. Thank you to everybody who has followed us over on YouTube. Hundreds of people are watching our videos.
But 11,000 people are subscribing. That really is a very cool thing. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on over there because of Grace Berry.
Any video you see, pretty much, Grace made it, okay? She’s doing an amazing job. We also have a Substack.
It’s noraborialest at substack.com. I send out a weekly essay. It’s not too much.
It’s not too much. You can get ad-free episodes of the podcast, the full archive over there. You know, a little commenting community.
It’s really lovely. And, you know, if that is not in the cards for you, there’s a free subscription, of course. Always.
There’s monthly. There’s annual. But just being here, listening to the show, sharing it with somebody, we are an independent production.
And so, like, we really, it’s a co-production with you all. Like, without you, we don’t have a show. So thank you for being here.
We appreciate it. And it is also time for me to thank our supporting producers, who are people who joined that Substack at a, not at the annual level, not at the monthly level. They said, I’m going to put in a few more bucks.
They had the one benefit, which is having my name in the credits. Here we go, baby. Oh, but before I do that, got to thank Geoffrey Lamar Wilson for our opening theme music and my son Q, who recorded our outdoor music that you are hearing right now.
Did this, did that at age eight, but now he’s a big nine-year-old. Okay, so we’ll see if, we’ll see if he comes up with another track. But right now, he’s pretty proud of this one.
So thank you to Joy Heising, KM., all caps, Nancy Duff, Jenny Medein, Jordan Jones, Sheila, Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey DeMorrow, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah
Garifo, Jennifer McDagle, Elia Filiz-Milan, Lindsay Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernick, Car Pan, LGS, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, Joe Theodosopoulos, Madd, Abbi Arose, Elizabeth Berkley, Kim F., Melody Swinford,
Here we have the Lemu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
Fascinating, it’s accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
Uh, Lemu, is that guy with the binoculars watching us?