An Adolescent's Guide To Dealing With Grief, Written From Experience

The Age

Saturday April 28, 2007

Lily Bragge

In her new book, Erin Vincent revisits how it felt to lose both parents at age 14. She talks to Lily Bragge.

A GENETIC QUIRK HAS GIVEN ERIN VINCENT a mouth that even when she smiles, manages to make it appear as though she is sad. "Like I'm constantly frowning," Vincent says.

Diminutive and wide-eyed, with a pixie-like figure, pale, flawless skin and bright crimson-painted lips - all Cupid's bow and downturned, she appears to have stepped, Pierrot-like, straight out of her own Commedia dell'arte play. The only things missing are the white satin clown suit and solitary teardrop drawn in black on her cheek.

Vincent's face, both sweet and sombre, is one that befits the tragedy she endured when 14 years old - a tragedy that has shaped her life.

The Australian-born Vincent and her husband, photographer Adam Knott, have lived in Los Angeles since 1995. On the verge of moving permanently back here, she is briefly visiting to promote her memoir, Grief Girl.

It is a compelling, searingly honest and often bleakly funny account of what it is like to be unexpectedly orphaned alongside her 17-year-old sister, Tracy, and three-year-old brother, Trent. Vincent's unusual story is at turns heart-wrenching, endearing and brutal, and it occasionally beggars belief.

Ronald and Beverly Vincent lived an ordinary life in the Sydney suburb of Beverly Hills. On October 23, 1983, they went to visit Erin Vincent's grandmother's grave. As the couple crossed the highway to check out a roadside stall, a speeding tow truck knocked them down.

Beverly was killed instantly and Ronald was taken to hospital, where he survived for another month.

The aftermath of her parents' deaths and how she coped (or did not), with her two siblings, is detailed from Vincent's adolescent perspective in almost diary-like style. That sunny, comfortable, predictable suburban life was no more, and the Vincent children were completely on their own.

The book covers not only her grief, but crippling depression, family treachery, poverty and life as "the loser orphan girl". It begins with a quote from Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest: "To lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; but to lose both looks like carelessness."

Primarily aimed at teenagers, Grief Girl was eight years in the writing and editing. "I wrote it because when I was 14 and trying to cope with my parents' death, I searched for books to help me get through the horror I was going through and there was absolutely nothing," she says. "If this book can help anyone suffering with grief or depression, then that's what it's for."

Now 38, Vincent found the reliving of old memories both freeing and imprisoning - like a bizarre form of personal therapy. At one stage, she sought the help of a psychologist to check that the reactions she was having (persistent outbreaks of hives, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness and occasional panic attacks) were normal.

"The psychologist said, 'Yes, Erin, what you are experiencing is not abnormal. You are going back and reliving the most painful time of your life - did you think that you wouldn't be reacting at all?' "

The week before her parents' accident, Erin Vincent had been fantasising about what life would be like if they were indeed dead. Grappling with a God she was never sure existed in the first place, she obsessed for years that her thoughts had killed them, often wondering if she was evil. It's the sort of stuff that, if you have no one to talk to honestly about, can make you crazy.

In the first few months after their deaths, she thought God had specifically punished her. Through a school friend, she became involved with a Christian youth group. In November 1984, she "gave my life to God", and says, "It took much less effort to like God, rather than hate Him."

Her love affair with the Lord, however, was short-lived. A couple of older, sexually predatory men, combined with being publicly humiliated by the pastor in church one Sunday for wearing her wild, self-designed clothes, led to Vincent leaving and never going back.

Now, she believes she is a bit like her mother - a dabbler in everything. "Mum was really interested in Buddha and (early 20th-century American psychic) Edgar Cayce, reincarnation and God. I think anything's possible and there is definitely some kind of other force out there."

Having trained as a journalist with The Australian, worked as a fashion designer, creative consultant and theatre actress with a swag of odd, kooky jobs in between, Vincent has decided it is definitely the writer's life for her. "I had to write my occupation on a form the other day and it was the first time I've put down 'writer'," she says. "It felt right."

She is enjoying promoting her book, but is looking forward to getting back to the US and the two novels she's working on.

When asked how often she wants to share milestones in her life with her parents, particularly her mother, who she was closest to, Vincent thinks for a moment.

"You know, it's not as often as you might think - in fact hardly ever. But the day my book was launched in Los Angeles, there was a big party at a book store. It was pretty glamorous and lots of fun. My mum loved Hollywood. We used to watch old black-and-white movies together. I stopped and looked around, and thought, if the accident hadn't happened - if they hadn't died, ironically then I would never have written this book - if she could've been here, Mum would have really loved this."

Grief Girl: My True Story is published by Pan Australia at $16.95.

© 2007 The Age

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