I was sitting with my friend Dave, as you do waiting for kids to be released from school yesterday, and I was telling him I’m going to back off the hockey head coaching thing, I’ve been doing it for four years, and Sorenne and I need a coaching break from each other.

Dave’s kid is taking to the ice for the first time in full hockey gear on Sunday, so I said I’d be there to help him.

Dave asked me why I was backing off, and I said, I had a lot of death about 35 years ago, it’s all on the Intertubes, but now I’m revisiting it, because I don’t have endless amounts of kids, I don’t have a job, and it’s making me evaluate what went on and who I am.

And I’m not the best person to be lead for the kids.

Dave: You can’t leave me hanging, what happened?

Doug (the 90 second version): In March 1981 I was in a car crash. I was driving and went through a house. My best friend was in the front seat with me and he died. There was one other person in the other car and he died.

I was in the hospital for two weeks and still have long-term pain related to the left side of my body, which was basically collapsed.

Then I went to jail for criminal negligence causing death, then my cousin, the only one of six children who survived a car crash before I knew him, died over a waterfall in B.C.

Then I got out of jail, went to visit my grandmother in Barrie, Ontario (in Canada) where she was caring for her husband who was dying of Alzheimer’s, and she took her own life.

I took her to the hospital with my uncle and she pretty much died in my arms.

And then death pretty much went away and I’ve been completely fortunate.

I have a fantastic support group I meet with most Fridays, lots of military, post-traumatic stress disorder types, oh, and the concussions I received playing goalie with a shitty piece of plastic for a mask have now become legendary.

Why do I share this?

Because it’s hard fucking work to get inside your soul.

It makes me a better writer.

It may even make me a better person, jury’s out on that one.

Don’t like it? Start your own blog, that is why I started the other University of Guelph newspaper, back when newspapers existed in 1986, because I got tired of listening to myself complain.

Or hit delete.