A royal blue cap from a cheap water bottle. Trash, really. But last week, that bottle cap sent me into a panic; I thought I knew where it was, but I was wrong. After a brief-but-chaotic search, I found the cap in a perfectly safe, moderately reasonable location.
A water bottle cap. Big whoop. Those aren’t hard to find. Right?
Not really. Not exactly.
The night I spent in the ER with Cooper while the nurses searched for a room in a behavioral unit (success on the 31st facility called, not that there’s a crisis or anything), Coop was ravaged by psychosis. He was severely dehydrated and malnourished from his week in the forest and he was out of his mind. Maybe there was a perfect storm that day.
Anyway.
When we were at home earlier in the evening—when the psychosis resurfaced—Cooper asked for a bottle of water, then poured it over his head (in the living room). He kept the cap in his hand for hours, worrying the cap’s little plastic bump with his thumb until his thumb was raw. Sometime overnight in the ER, he gave me the cap and told me to keep it forever. I have.
Others might find the cap, now in my jewelry box, and see misplaced trash, but I see a promise I can keep. I see something Cooper touched, something his plagued mind told him was important. Powerful. Worth saving. For most of the first year, I kept that cap in my wallet; it was always with me. Eventually, I moved it out of my wallet, but I know where it is. I have to know where it is. Sounds crazy, I know. Feels crazy, too, but I can’t throw away that cap. It’s associated with one of the hardest nights of my life, the night when there was no way to avoid Cooper’s truth, but I will keep that cap forever.
That panic I felt when I couldn’t immediately find the bottle cap? That happens. Cooper had so few possessions. Things didn’t matter to him. But that night–that awful, heartbreaking night–that cap mattered. For months I kept his phone in my purse, and when, a year after his death, I spent two nights out of town for my nephew’s wedding, I took the phone with me. The panic I felt leaving everything Cooper home alone for two days was crippling; the phone in my purse, a compromise. I know exactly where his favorite stocking caps are stored, and I know if I take them out and look inside I’ll find strands of his wavy red hair; if I bury my face in the hat I’ll smell a hint of the top of his head, remember the smell of his little-boy head after hours playing in the sunshine.
At this point in the After, these few innocuous possessions are priceless.
Knowing I’ll never have any new “Cooper” things makes me irrational about some of the things I do have. I suppose that’s normal. I’m not irrational about his knives and tools, not attached to every t-shirt or flannel, but you’d have to fight me to get his quilts or his “Trees Are Good” cap, his Bible or his Thoreau or his notebooks, his hoodies or stick-tight-laden Carhartt coat. I’m not a materialistic person, but I cannot part with all of his things.
The anxiety doesn’t come just from things, although I think it’d be easier on my soul if that were the case. I’m terrified I’ll forget the sound of his voice, the shape of his face, the dimple in his chin, the emotion in that last big hug before he left for his time in the wild. Will I always remember that when he swam, only the top layer of hair got wet, that his hair was so thick and coarse water couldn’t easily penetrate? Will I remember his giant-but-graceful hands, hands that let him work and create? Will I remember the freckle-free patch of skin on his forearm, one of many marks that tell the stories of bike wrecks, adventures, and failed mischief? Will I remember the lower half of his left eye was dark green instead of blue? Will I remember his self-satisfied chuckle when he smoked the rest of us at cards, the pranks he played on family?
I pray to God that I will.
I can store his hats and caps, his special shirts and his last yesterday’s clothes, his pillowcases and camping gear. I can keep his Bible and writings safe. The SD card holding his forest photos is always in my laptop, and the photos are safely backed up many other places. I don’t know if I can lock memories into my mind, password protect them so nobody and nothing can steal them away, and that unknown terrifies me.
I don’t have my son. I have memories of my son and I have the few things he owned.
So, I cling to what I have. I tell stories of Cooper’s antics and laugh at a friend’s young wild-man son who reminds me so much of my long-ago little red-haired boy, shit-eating grin and all. I write and share and speak his name.
I treasure.
I remember.
Woods Writes 