Songs For Charlie | Feat. Jack Symes

Sneaker Waves and a Song For Charlie.

I grew up near the beach and from the time I was very young I remember being terrified of sneaker waves. Every trip to the beach came with a warning from a concerned adult and scary stories from my friends. If I didn’t watch for the sneaker waves, one would blindside me and carry me away forever.

For a long time, I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy a day at the beach because I was such a diligent and dedicated wave watcher. Sometimes a wave would knock me down, but the dreaded and deadly sneaker waves never got me.

After a while, I stopped watching.

Then, decades later, on a New Year’s Eve in Mexico, while I was busy watching fireworks, one finally got me. I’m not gonna lie, it was almost as scary as I’d always imagined. As I was pulled into the deeper water, it was dark and disorienting. There was nothing to grab on to and I didn’t even know which way to swim towards. Then I saw more fireworks flash above the water and I followed the light until I reached solid ground and breathed the most grateful breaths ever.

Since then,

I’ve started paying attention to the waves again.

I think grief is a lot like those sneaker waves. You know it’s out there and you hear stories from friends about the people who get hit, but until grief actually hits you, it is almost impossible to prepare for. Like the sneaker waves that wait until you are focused on something else…grief usually hits you when you are least expecting it. It can feel so overwhelming that you wonder if you’ll ever find solid ground again.

Before my Dad passed, he had been in the hospital for a while. He had been rushed there via ambulance in a coma. My brother called me on my way to work and I drove straight to the airport, then to the hospital. I didn’t even pack because I didn’t think there was even time for that.

By the time I got to the hospital, Dad was awake and talking...limited words, but he was back from the brink.

I stayed for over a week and every day, he improved a little more. A few days after I went home, he was released from the hospital to go home and recover more. I could relax and breathe again. The crisis was over. Imagine my shock when less than a week later, my brother called to tell me that Dad had quietly passed in the night. I had been bracing for the worst in the hospital, but it actually hit when I was no longer watching for it. It was the first time I experienced it, but not the last….grief likes to blindside you.

Blindsided is how Jack Symes felt when his friend, Charlie Ternan, died suddenly at the age of 22.

You don’t expect someone so young and full of life to leave so suddenly. There’s no way Charlie’s family or friends could have prepared. No warning signs. No reason to suspect that his time with them would be cut so short. When it happened, the shock waves of grief were felt by Charlie’s friends and family, literally from coast to coast.

As a songwriter, Jack did the the most instinctual thing he could do.

He took a pen and a notebook and just started writing. He ended up with a song….a gift to Charlie’s family that brought both comfort and catharsis. It became the theme song for an organization that Charlie’s parents started to help save other lives while they worked through their own waves of grief. If you’d like to read more about Charlie’s story and the work Song For Charlie does, please visit http://www.SongforCharlie.org. You can help support that work by downloading the album “Songs For Charlie” here.

Charlie Ternan loved music and though I never met him, his story introduced me to the music of Jack Symes and I’ve been really enjoying this discovery. Thank you, Charlie….and thank you, Jack, for a conversation about grief that was both honest and hopeful. I hope it helps someone going through it right now.

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