VAPOURS OF HOPE

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Each morning I find myself inscribing the same word with my finger into the condensation on the shower’s glass pane. Sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it, I guess it’s just become automatic.

I stare at it. I watch as it’s slowly swallowed by the steam and trickles away down the glass — and I’m reminded. I’m reminded life is like a vapour (James 4:14), there one moment and gone the next.

You see, in 2018, my son passed away at seven months of age, and for me it felt just like that — he was there one moment and gone the next.

Over the coming months, in the depths of my grief, some uncomfortable questions began to surface within me. Not only because I didn’t know how to answer them, but uncomfortable because they didn’t fit into my understanding of faith or God. The very lens through which I perceived the world was beginning to blur and distort and I had no control over it. That’s a scary place to be, where the immovable and foundational truths in your life suddenly don’t feel so solid anymore. You thought you were walking on rock, but you look down and it has turned to a sheet of ice. That’s how those months felt.

In those same months, I can also tell you that we were showered with extravagant kindness by many caring people. Our friends and our church carried us in a way that I’ll never forget and will be forever grateful for.

During that time, (and still to this day), gifts would show up at our front door. Some of those gifts were books about loss and grief, both thick paperbacks for my wife and I, and also storybooks for us to share with our three young daughters.

As we began to read them, I soon found that I was quite drawn to the children’s books. The simple eloquent prose, coupled with magnificent illustrations resonated with me deeply.

It echoed what I’d learned over my years working as a filmmaker — simple stories often express the most profound truths.

I decided I would write a storybook of my own and use this simple medium to express the complexities of my grief and confront those seemingly unanswerable questions that weren’t going away.

I didn’t have a story yet, but I had this image in my mind of a boy alone at sea and I just started writing. This approach is uncharacteristic for me. As a rule, I need to know where a story is going and I need to know how it ends before I can begin to tell it. But in this instance, I stepped out and trusted that it would come. Gradually, it did. Bit by bit, The Little Captain began to take shape.

Before I go on, I need to add a note here. The journey from writing that first draft to holding the actual hardcover book in my hand is a story in itself and a tale for another time. What I can tell you is this journey was fraught with self-doubt. It took about two years and only came to fruition because of the help of friends, especially one in particular who believed in the project, (and me), more than I did, not to mention a Kickstarter campaign and the many generous backers who supported the project.

So what is, The Little Captain? It’s an over 40-page illustrated storybook and it’s about grappling to hold on to the things we’ve lost and searching for answers to things that are not easily explained.

It’s the story of a young boy named Wilkie who lives with his family on a ship until one day he is snatched by the sea and taken on a harrowing journey as he fights to find his way back to them.

It was very important to me that, The Little Captain, did not culminate in a classic ‘fairy-tale’ resolve. Not all stories have a happy ending and I don’t believe there’s always a silver-lining to be found either. I acknowledge this may not be a popular thought, but for me, once I allowed myself to stop looking for the good in the bad, (as we so often feel compelled to do), I found a sense of peace.

However, a silver-lining isn’t to be confused with hope. They’re not the same thing. A silver-lining is a luxury, but hope is essential. It’s like oxygen — we can’t survive without it. So even though, The Little Captain, ends on a sorrowful note, it’s also not without a whisper of hope.

When I look back over the long journey of creating this book, I can see that it has been a gift to me. I’m grateful for it and I’m proud of it, but I wish my son was here and it had never been created at all. I wish I had a more uplifting and happier story to share with you, but that wouldn’t be honest and that wouldn’t be real.

I still feel like I’m walking on that sheet of ice sometimes. There’s still pain, and there’s still a nagging question that never goes away—a single word I find myself etching into the shower glass each morning — “Why?”

I don’t know why. And I likely never will, (on this side of life anyway). It may not even be a fruitful question to be asking, but it keeps bubbling up inside me and telling stories is the best way I know to try and make sense of it all.

To find out more about the book or order a copy email: thelittlecaptainbook@gmail.com