Grief Girl (23 page)

Afterword

T
racy and Chris live by the beach in Queensland, Australia, and have two teenage daughters, my darling nieces Shae and Bree.

Trent has a daughter, Michaella, who lives with her mother in America, not far from her devoted Auntie Erin. In 2006 Trent was married in a traditional ceremony in Japan. He and his Japanese wife, Mayu, live happily by the beach in Queensland as well.

In late 1987 I hired a lawyer (Tracy didn't want to be involved) and eventually got most of our money back, much more than Ronald admitted to taking. A couple of years later, at the funeral of a distant relative, Ronald said to Tracy, “Tell Erin I forgive her.” I have not seen him since. I made many attempts to have a relationship with Peter, but he was not responsive.

My grandfather died eight years after the accident. My grandmother wore a hot pink terry-cloth tracksuit to his funeral and introduced the few mourners to each other over the open grave as the minister tried to conduct the service. She died a few years later.

Auntie Connie and Uncle Steele still live in the same house in the cul-de-sac and are as wonderful and caring as ever. I visit them whenever I go back to Australia. They, and their children, generously shared many memories with me for this book, as did Julie. We had lost contact until I searched for her in 2001. Through her mother I found her living with her boyfriend in Sydney. We have since been writing letters back and forth and she is once again a wonderful blessing in my life.

And me? I met the love of my life five years after the accident. One day late in 1988 the newspaper sent me out on assignment with a young photographer, Adam Knott. In an instant I knew he was someone special. We have been together ever since.

Being married to a photographer has been quite an experience. I have done many strange things for the sake of art. I've worn a wolf's-head mask while standing naked on a Malibu beach, worn an elephant's trunk as well as a giant bug's head in public, been covered from head to toe with shaving cream, dressed up as Winnie-the-Pooh, and generally been a more than willing guinea pig. In the midst of all of this Adam also documented my grief and tears and laughter—all the things I could not have gotten through without him by my side.

So, am I still a journalist? Well, it turned out that journalism wasn't for me. One day when I was coming back from an assignment in a taxi, a barrage of police cars swooped in on a man in the street, forcing him to the ground. The photographer with me jumped out of the cab.

“Quick, Erin, let's go.”

My reply? “Oh, I think I'll go back to the office and have a cappuccino.”

It turned out the man was on Australia's Ten Most Wanted list and the incident was front-page news. Lucky for me, the photographer was Adam and the paper never found out they could have had a journalist on the scene!

Realizing I wasn't a true journalist, I took what I considered my “blood money” from the accident and decided I had to do something special with it. Something my mother would be proud of. So I went to see the world she never saw. I snorkeled in Indonesia, bummed around India, trekked in Nepal, rode a motorcycle off a wharf in Greece (oops!), and backpacked through Europe.

Upon my return I wanted to do something more creative and was awarded a scholarship to fashion school, which led to the prestigious job of counting buttons for a top designer for a year.

Discontented with our careers in Australia, Adam and I decided to try our luck in America. We arrived in Los Angeles on October 23, 1995 (ironically, the anniversary of the accident). We were illegal aliens for eighteen months until our green card applications went through, living on potatoes and free packets of salt, pepper, and ketchup. To this day I can make a mean potato dish!

Adam became a successful magazine photographer, and I worked for a well-known female fashion designer who started each day doing naked yoga beside my desk. Tired of the view, I started my own label and sold my designs while working as a freelance tailor/stylist for celebrity photo shoots. I sat on a famous Hollywood producer's bed first thing in the morning as he wiped the sleep from his eyes before being measured for his new silk pajamas, almost wet my pants on an Annie Leibovitz
Vanity Fair
shoot because I was not allowed to go to the bathroom in case the comedian-turned-major-movie-star had to go, and was hoisted up on a crane and left dangling while a photographer checked how the light would look when a certain TV star was wearing the dress they had me wear. I knew it was time to quit when I had to kneel at the feet of a famous actress to hem her dress a day before the Oscars. I felt invisible and small and decided I had to do something else.

Adam had been urging me for years to write about my experience, but I resisted, thinking my story was too boring for a whole book. Then one day I said, “Oh, what the hell, I can knock it out in six months!” That was eight years ago.

While writing the book, I worked as Adam's photo assistant. He would photograph celebrities in their homes and I would set up lights and take light readings, yawning the whole time, tired from the long days of writing. “Erin, you can't yawn in front of the celebrity,” Adam would whisper on jobs. “You're meant to look interested.” Eventually he fired me. What a relief!

So I got a job at a Los Angeles bookstore hosting events for authors, dreaming of one day hosting my own.

I hope I have done my parents justice, because without the solid foundation they gave me before they died, I would never have gotten this far.

—Erin Vincent
,
MARCH
2007

PRAISE FOR
GRIEF GIRL

“Fascinating and soberly eye-opening.” —
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books,
Recommended

“A gripping memoir…Glimpses of humor amid tragedy make this a page-turner.” —
School Library Journal

“Any adolescent going through the grieving process will tearfully embrace [Vincent's] book.” —
Booklist

“Her intimate, honest narrative captures both Erin's strength and vulnerability.” —
Publishers Weekly

“An incredible story by an incredible writer.” —Ellen Wittlinger, author of the Michael L. Printz Honor Book
Hard Love

“A treasure for any teenager experiencing grief and loss.”
—Rachel Cohn, author of
You Know Where to Find Me

Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

New York

Text copyright © 2007 by Erin Vincent
Cover photograph copyright © 2013 by Caiti Borruso

All rights reserved.

Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

Vincent, Erin.

Grief girl : my true story / Erin Vincent.

p. cm.

1. Grief in adolescence. 2. Bereavement in adolescence. 3. Parents—Death—Psychological aspects. 4. Teenagers and death. 5. Vincent, Erin.

I. Title.

BF724.3.G73V56 2007

155.9'37092—dc22

[B]

2006011650

Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89130-4

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