for my artwork.
I’d made the road my home. Being on tour was as easy to me now as breathing.
I started to punch in the code to the gate, but it wasn’t working. I wrinkled my forehead. “This thing’s broken.”
“You’re at the wrong house,” Jason said from behind me.
I looked back through the gate. No. This was the house. The same one we’d rented for the last three years.
I turned around, confused. Kristen was beaming at me. I looked over her shoulder at Jason and Josh, watching me from the curb. They stood next to each other and grinned like conspirators.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.
Kristen looked giddy. “You moved.”
“What?”
She smiled. “So did we.”
“You moved? When? Where?”
The three of them looked at each other like they were trying to decide who should answer me. Jason volunteered. He stepped up and took my cheeks in his hands and kissed me. “To Ely.”
I gasped and whirled on Kristen. “What?”
Jason grinned. “We bought houses next to each other. A hundred acres combined. Private. Safe. A room with a lake view for you to paint and a recording studio for me.”
“We needed the bigger place,” Josh said, putting an arm around his smiling wife.
Kristen looked at her husband and he grinned at her. “Josh quit the fire department. He got a job with the Forest Service in Minnesota. And…” She paused. “Our surrogate’s pregnant.”
“What?” I breathed.
“She’s due in three months,” she said, beaming.
I put my hands over my mouth. “We get to have babies together?”
She nodded, her eyes tearing up. “I’ll be able to snowshoe to your house in a blizzard to borrow a cup of frozen milk.”
I laughed, taking turns hugging them all through tears. I ended with my husband and put my face into his chest. He put his lips to my ear, his arms wrapped around my back. “Trying to keep all my promises.”
All I could do was nod. The baby kicked between us, and I felt so much happiness my heart threatened to burst.
When I pulled away, he kissed me, his eyes a little misty. “Come on, we have a plane waiting. It’s time to go home.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
*The identifying details of the following have been changed out of respect for privacy.
I have a very close childhood friend who was widowed in her twenties when her young husband passed away suddenly.
Before the tragedy, my friend was fiercely driven and independent. She was working in a career she adored and was thriving. Two years after her husband’s death, she was still withdrawn and isolated. She’d stopped doing things she loved. She couldn’t hold down a job. She had anxiety and panic attacks. She’d disappear for weeks at a time in her isolation, and I couldn’t get her on the phone or get her to open the door. She didn’t have any close friends anymore, and her relationships with her family were strained. She refused to go to counseling.
It seemed like so much of the state of her life had some colossal ripple effect. The lack of self-care, the refusal to socialize or seek therapy, the junk food she ate because she couldn’t bring herself to cook for one, the unhealthy habits she picked up to cope with the stress and anxiety of her loss.
I now know that my friend was most likely suffering from a condition called complicated grief, also known as persistent complex bereavement disorder. It’s most common when the death is unexpected or particularly traumatic and the person lost is very close to you.
When I started writing The Happy Ever After Playlist, I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d get it published. Writing was just a hobby, and this book was more for me than anything else—a cathartic exercise, my own way of working through the confusing, shattered aftermath I was witnessing, a way to make my friend better, even if it was just fiction—because nothing I did in real life seemed to help her. I felt like a helpless bystander, and I wanted so much for something or someone to reach her beyond the wall of sadness she’d put up around herself. So I made up a fictional universe and a fictional widow who lived behind a wall of grief, and I sent in Tucker to retrieve her. But the rest had to be her.
It took active participation on my friend’s part and people around her who never gave up trying to make her whole again, but just like in the book, eventually she decided to pursue healing and happiness. She’s finally found joy in life again. I wish it would have happened sooner—but I’m grateful it happened at all. Because for a very long time, I was afraid it wouldn’t.
According to Bridges to Recovery, it is estimated that between 10 to 20 percent of those who have lost a loved one will experience an extended period of complicated bereavement. Complicated grief can affect you physically, mentally, and socially. Without treatment, complications include depression, suicidal thoughts, PTSD, increased risk of heart disease, cancer, or high blood pressure, and substance or alcohol abuse.
Getting counseling soon after a loss may help prevent complicated grief. Hospice will have resources available. Talking with others and seeking support from friends and family and support groups may also help. Medications are available to assist with depression and sleep disorders associated with the condition.
If you or anyone you know is suffering from unresolved grief, please seek help—it can get better. My friend wants me to tell you that.
♫THE HAPPY EVER AFTER PLAYLIST
♪ In the Mourning | Paramore
♪ affection | BETWEEN FRIENDS
♪ Middle of Nowhere | Hot Hot Heat
♪ ocean eyes | Billie Eilish
♪ Give Me a Try | The Wombats
♪ Future | Paramore
♪ Talk Too Much | COIN
♪ This Charming Man | The Smiths
♪ A Beautiful Mess | Jason Mraz
♪ Soul Meets Body | Death Cab for Cutie
♪ Name | Goo Goo Dolls
♪ Electric Love | Børns
♪ Make You Mine | PUBLIC
♪ Maybe You’re the Reason | The Japanese House
♪ I Want It All | COIN
♪ Girlfriend | Phoenix
♪ I Feel It | Avid Dancer
♪ The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald | Jaxon Waters
♪ Misery Business | Paramore
♪ Superposition | Young the Giant
♪ White Winter Hymnal | Fleet Foxes
♪ Everywhere | Roosevelt
♪ Into Dust | Mazzy Star
♪ burn slowly/i love you | The Brazen Youth
♪ 26 | Paramore
♪ Broken | Lund
♪ Blood in the Cut | K.Flay
♪ A Moment of Silence | The Neighbourhood
♪ Mess Is Mine | Vance Joy
♪ Holocene | Bon Iver
♪ Diamonds | Ben Howard
♪ Big Jet Plane | Angus & Julia Stone
♪ Do I Wanna Know? | Arctic Monkeys
♪ Yes I’m Changing | Tame Impala
♪ Little Black Submarines | The Black Keys
♪ i don’t know what to say | Bring Me the Horizon
♪ Keep Your Head Up | Ben Howard
♪ Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea | Missio
♪ Ful Stop | Radiohead
♪ About Today | The National
♪ It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) | The 1975
♪ fresh bruises | Bring Me the Horizon
♪ Somebody Else | The 1975
♪ If I Get High | Nothing But Thieves
♪ Proof | Jaxon Waters
♪ The Huntsman’s Wife | Jaxon Waters