On Searching

SO BREATHE, MAMA,
Keep breathing
BELIEVE, MAMA
Keep believing
FIGHT, MAMA
Keep fighting for
this truth to uproot
the lies in your
heart — you didn’t
fail.
Not even a
little.
From You are the Mother of All Mothers, by Angela Miller

Last fall, near the first anniversary of Cooper’s death, a friend gifted me the book You are the Mother of All Mothers, by Angela Miller. I read it then and have reread it several times. On a recent, drop-me-to-my-knees day, I turned again to this book. The verse above is on the inside flap of the dust jacket. On that particular dark day, I didn’t make it past those words; they were what I needed. They quieted that day’s torment.

To lose a child, grown though he was, and to lose him to suicide, well, that’s some heavy chaos to hold in one’s head. I can be rational, logical, intellectual, realistic—all those ways of being that let me off the guilt hook—but . . . I’m a mom. One of my children died, and by his own hand. He lived in my house; I knew he was struggling, but not to that degree. Still, shouldn’t I have known? Hindsight says yes.

It’s been long enough that I pass for functional most days. Sure, I look like hell, but lots of people look like hell. Passing for functional means I go to work. I make decisions. I work on projects and creative mishaps. I do the things. The weight of loss is always there—it doesn’t seem to leave—but I’m learning to carry the loss. Most minutes and hours and days, I get by.

Not always, though.

In the grief-crazed stretches dominated by heartbreak and guilt and sadness and questions, I find myself searching for anything that will help. Peace. I search for peace. I don’t expect it to find me; instead, I search for it. Some days, I search in desperation. Some days, I search among Cooper’s things or in the timber or on a long drive. Some days, I search within.

I’m learning.

Just as beauty is subjective, so too is peace. I’ve always found peace in nature—always. A hike or four-wheeler ride or paddle around a lake resets my soul. Peace lurks in the meticulously spun spider web and the cardinal making eye contact from my fence. Peace whispers from the delicately tenacious bloodroot, closed in protection against a chill or open in the warm sun. Peace pokes at me as the first mushrooms emerge and the timber wakes from winter.

It’s there. Peace is there. It has to be.

Peace is on the hillside I’ve loved for decades, the same hillside that will forever hold part of my Cooper. He and I thought that hillside would be the perfect place for a dwelling; I have peace knowing he’s there.

Peace is in the two pendants—two tiny urns—that I never take off. In those micro-bursts of grief, those words or phrases, sounds or scents that throw me back to sorrow, I find myself clutching one pendant or the other, holding Cooper, breathing through the ambush. Grief lamaze.

Peace is beneath a scarred cedar tree in a country cemetery.

In the early days following Cooper’s death, I was adamant—I absolutely would not go to that cemetery. I was afraid of what I would see and feel. A couple weeks later, after reading the note on his phone, I was drawn to the spot. I’ve visited several times by now, often on my hardest days. Sometimes, those hard days are anniversaries or birthdays, but mostly the hard days are just hard days. Days of heartbreak and guilt and sadness and questions. Days when I desperately need peace.

As paradoxical as it seems, I find peace where Cooper died. The same place that holds heartbreak also holds peace. I talk with him, apologize to him, sit with him. Pray for all of us. And always, by the end of the visit, I return to the fact that he found his peace in that very spot. I know where he sat and what he could see, and I know he was released from his torment. Eventually, that has to be enough. Eventually.

I wish it could be easy. I wish peace would just find me—magic, poof, all better—but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

No, finding peace is between me and God (with occasional input from Anne Lamott and Adam Hamilton). No magic, just searching, believing, trusting, and doing. The guilt clings to me, a stubborn stain of Cooper’s suicide, but I hope with time and work and patience, peace can fade the stain.