Calgary woman’s memoir recounts life after losing first love in avalanche
Posted Mar 15, 2024 2:22 pm.
A day rarely goes by without Ellen Anderson Penno thinking of the boyfriend she lost in a deadly avalanche in 1986.
When a magazine writer called her decades later to ask her to share her story, she realized that was something she wanted to do.
“I never felt I had permission to really tell my story and talk about it until the reporter called me,” Penno said. “And if someone else can tell my story, why can’t I tell my own story?”
So, that’s what she did.
The Calgary ophthalmologist’s soon-to-be released memoir, Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found, centres on the killer slide on Mount Baker, Wash. which killed two climbers, Steve Raschick and Penno’s first love, Ian Kraabel.
But, Penno’s memoir also shares a story of the strength that can be found in life after loss, living with grief, and finding joy again.
“From the date of the accident into the following spring, I literally felt like I was in a black hole. I felt like grief was like an endless pit and the first time you fall into that, you don’t really see a way out,” she said. “The next time you fall into grief, you have dealt with it and have that hope of going into hard things in the future. That’s one of the lessons I take away from my experience. So, when hard things happen, I might not be able to see the light, just yet. But I know it’s coming.”
Penno hopes her memoir “lifts people out of what might seem like a dark place and allows people to see the gifts that grief can bring you.”
For her, it was life-changing, shaping the woman both personally and professionally as a doctor.
“I’ll tell you a funny story,” said the Western Laser Eye Associates owner. “My mother said that after Ian died in the avalanche I was a much nicer person. It was a hard lesson in empathy and humanity and hopefully I was able to dial into that better than if I had not experienced it.”
While one of her daughter’s cautioned digging into the past might be too sad, the process proved delightful.
“Obviously, reliving the accident wasn’t delightful but relieving the part before that was actually delightful,” Penno said. “We had so much fun. The letters we wrote were like a dozen pages long. We just had a wonderful conversation for the years we were together.”
Peace came with finding a balance between living with heartache while carrying love and happiness death can never steal.
“Ian and Ian’s death are like two different people. One I loved in a present moment that is now past, the other is a final and finite character branded on my heart. The first has no future, the second requires attention,” she wrote in the memoir. “That scar of remembering the departed beloved is to be cherished as you make a future without them. Forgetting the dead is not a prerequisite for moving forward. You can and must keep your loved one in your heart, even if they have died; it only makes sense really, there are people who have had an important effect on your life and their death doesn’t erase their life or their effect on you. So in reality, these beloved are dead, but most definitely not gone.”
Avalanches in Alberta and B.C. take a devastating toll each year, already claiming several lives this season. That reality hits close to home for Penno.
“People are always going to go out to the mountains because there is nothing better than standing on a high peak. It’s exhilarating,” she says. “I just hope people not only have the proper gear but actually know how to use it and people going out there understand it’s one thing if you are willing to take the risk but think about the circle of people that will be affected if you have an accident. I’m not saying ‘don’t go out there,’ but just make sure you are taking things very seriously.”
Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found will be available on Amazon next month.
