Prior to Kalei’s death I used to have a pretty trusting nature. I worked off the theory that if I did not lie, cheat or steal from my fellow man, they would provide me the same courtesy – I could trust them and they could trust me. While I learned some caution as I got older, generally it seemed like a reasonable model to live by.  The same goes for trusting the strength of the circle of life. I figured as long as I played by the rules and did nothing really bad to cause God to throw an asteroid my direction, normal life ‘stuff’ would still happen, but the basic tenet of my life-circle – where my child would bury me when it was time – would remain trustworthy.

After she died, it felt like I lost all trust in well, pretty much everything. My thinking was, if I don’t trust anyone or anything, at least I will have eliminated one source of potential future pain. This no-trust-no-pain plan worked pretty well, at least for a little while. Then something interesting happened. Ever so slowly, without me even being aware of it, I began handing out trust again. First it was to the odd person who wanted to start a friendship with me, then trust weaseled its way into the building of my company and plans for the future. When I realized what was happening, I asked myself, “How could this be happening? I know better than anyone else I should not trust anyone or anything ever again!” Well, strangely enough, grief turned out to be the culprit! 

Grief, while responsible for making trust a nothing thing in my life after Kalei’s death, it created the environment where that emotion could be restored. It seems spending copious amounts of time in the spiritual universe where honesty, truth and faith are a gimme, you start becoming comfortable with faith and by default trust, again. While on one hand that was a good thing, because without those elements in my life, all I had to look forward to was a lifetime of darkness and anger. But, on the other hand, while I could make those amazing attributes laws in my spiritual parallel universe, I did not have that kind of control over my regular world. Add to that, this new world and different lifetime trust had no learned caution to help filter out bad people. As a result, some results were good and, some, well…not so much. 

Over the past 14 years, I have been duped out of tens of thousands of dollars in one scam or another. In one case, I gave a kitchen renovator $13,000 dollars in advance because he told me a tall tale that I never thought to question. I know, I know, dumb crayon in the box move, but I thought I could trust him. Sadly, he and my money disappeared, never to be seen again. But, just so you don’t think I should be locked up for my own good, I did get a little payback…well; the taxpayers of Canada got a little payback.

You see, through friends of friends, I found out this so called renovator had a bad ‘relationship’ with Revenue Canada. As I was pretty sure he was not going to voluntarily pay taxes on the money I gave him, I decided to ‘help’ him do the right thing.

I wrote the most amazingly heartfelt letter to Revenue Canada. Not only did I explain that the wounded souls of the grieving are low hanging fruit for bad people, but I also included cashed checks, money transfers, and deposit dates…pretty much a financial forensic trail in a nice little taxman package. I smile just thinking about the phone calls I know he received!

There were other trust abuses in those early years, but after each initial disappointment waned, I learned a little something from each and every one of them. I also gained strength from the continued support of friends and family who made sure they remained trust pillars in my life. As for the good people I have met since Kalei’s death – and there have been many – not once have they given me a reason to recall trust and for that, I am very grateful.  

In time I came to appreciate the fact that Kalei’s death did not destroy trust, it just became unimaginable…for a few years. Once I had a chance to spend some time in the parallel universe, where everything imaginary rules, my mind started sneaking images of trust back into my life.  It let me think I was in charge of ending trust in my life, when all the time I was slowly re-building it back into my life as I worked my way through the grieving process! Grief, it turns out, is quite the clever trickster!