Today’s prompt:
I’d like you to explore that balance, or that reality: That you write not just any story, but this story. That the words you form are not just any words, they are words that come from the deepest wound. They grow out of the reality of death – the loss of a person, a dream, a way of being in the world.
It’s funny – I don’t mean this as a downer. I mean this in the context of deep respect: for what you’ve lived, for what you carry, for the reality of life. And deep, deep respect for bringing your grief and your love to the page. To explore, in words, what will always be deeper than words.
How do we write, as we are called to write, and bow with respect to the fact that death is at the core of this story? That this isn’t a story at all? What is the story of the story you’re in?
What is the story of the story I’m in?
Oof.
Well, from this point forward, if you actually want to know me, you will have to know this part of me. I can’t isolate Cooper’s life and death from my story any more than I can live and tell my story without including Logan and Cassidy. He’s still my child. So many parts of my world, of my story, have changed, but that truth remains constant: he is my child. I have three children.
So, to know me is to know this story. Sure, there are things I won’t talk about. Believe it or not, I’ve kept many details out of these responses. I will always honor Cooper and preserve his dignity, but I can tell the story.
I can tell of a beautiful soul and a shattered mind. I can tell of a sly, wry sense of humor, so like my own father’s, and a love for nature that stretches back generations. I can tell of Coop’s ideas for improving the local agriculture industry and his desire to live to live, not live to work. I can tell of dreams of starting his own family, then the fear that he was too broken. I can tell of a search for answers, for guidance, that led to Revelation.
But to know me, to know another chapter in this story, is to understand that I mourn not only the loss of my son but also the loss of his future. Part of my own future. I won’t have his chubby-cheeked, hilarious, stubborn, intelligent babies to spoil. They are gone before they existed. I won’t get to watch as he’s outmatched by a freckled, red-haired monster of his own or as he tries to mediate sibling battles that would surely be payback for his own youth.
To know me now is to know that I am perpetually fighting for control of myself. Even at school, where I manage to keep it together, it’s a fight. Teaching high school English seems innocuous enough, right? Except Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy has him contemplating suicide. It’s impossible to teach that monologue and not think that Cooper must’ve asked himself those same questions. Or maybe Into the Wild. Except Cooper’s June experience–10 days in the Shawnee, suffering psychosis, endangering his life–has many similarities with the story of Chris McCandless from Into the Wild. For most of those days, we had no contact with Cooper. We didn’t know if he was alive. I feared the long and steady hug he gave me when he left June 9th had been good-bye.
So, I fight for control. Sometimes I lose. You’ll have to know that about me, accept that about me. It’s a big part of the story.
To understand the story of the story, to truly know me, is to accept that I am broken, but also to know I am trying. I’m moving — sometimes forward, sometimes backward, and sometimes a step to the side — but I’m moving. My moving isn’t pretty. I’m aware. I stumble and fall, but sometimes I catch myself. Other times I try to break my fall and tear my rotator cuff. There are days I can keep my shit together almost all day, maybe even pass for normal, unbroken Tonya, and there are days (today) I tear up if someone is too nice to me. Days when sustained eye contact is not an option. There are days I can handle mindless chit-chat, and days I just need to keep to myself. So if I vanish for a while, just roll with it. I’ll be back. This story necessitates vanishing. So much vanishing. But I will return. My mask may be soaked with tears, my steps heavy and slow, my eyes flat, but I’ll return.
Oh, the story of the story. Maybe I should’ve stopped at “oof.” That pretty much says it all. Not really, though. My story of the story has its beginning in Cooper’s story, just as his story had its beginning in mine. May the tale never end.
Woods Writes 