On A New Year

I see the posts—the hopeful, joyful, optimistic posts—filling my Facebook feed. I see the well-wishes and promises, the goals and memories, the lingering warm-fuzzies of the holiday season mixed with the possibilities of another January 1st. I see it all, but I feel very little.

Instead, I find myself wondering. I wonder . . . will this be the year? The year I claw my way back out of my shell? The year I enjoy holidays instead of feel relief when they pass? The year I can handle working on 8/24 and 9/16? The year Logan and Cass come home to visit and find a clean and orderly house, a restored mother? The year that discovering Cooper’s favorite book series is a TV show doesn’t make me want to tell him, because I know he’d love it? The year I stop flinching at gunshots? The year I stop wondering “what if?”

Who knows.

Not that 2022 was all bad—it wasn’t. I started a support group; that remains the one truly positive accomplishment I’ve been able to wring from Cooper’s death. I’ve gotten more involved with AFSP. I am the (middle-aged) poster child of suicide survivor for my students—a living example of what’s left behind. We can call me a guilt trip. I’m cool with that. I strive to put a face and a name to the tragedy that is suicide. I’ve continued to form friendships with other bereaved parents—some who lost their child to suicide, but many who lost their child to illness or accident. I picked up my camera and spent hours pursuing sunsets that tell a story. I did some things that mattered, either to myself or others, so 2022 didn’t whoop me. It didn’t make me forget my life, but it didn’t whoop me.

But now 2023.

There’s a specific ache that comes from entering another year without Cooper on Earth. Some days I feel the growing length of time since I last saw him, touched him, talked with him; other days, I can focus on being that much closer to being reunited with him (do NOT worry). Honestly, that contrast—that shift in focus from the negative to the hopeful and back again—is a good representation of my life.

There are moments, hours, days when I can look back and smile. I can tell stories of his ridiculous, fearless, often boneheaded adventures, of his childhood antics and imaginary family, of his wit and temper and orneriness, and I feel peace. I loved that complicated mountain man. I still do and always will. Conversely, there are times I tell the story of young Cooper offering his uncle a pickle mid-hike then pulling a pudgy fistful of warm, linty pickles from his pocket and find myself hiding in an empty room until the crashing waves of grief subside. If I could predict my reaction to a story—if my reaction were always the same to any given story—well, then, I’d just stop telling that story.

Grief doesn’t work like that, even two-plus years later. That pickle story? It cracks me up. It’s one of my favorite Cooper stories. I always laugh when I tell the story, but sometimes the story reminds me how cute and funny and usually-sweet Cooper was at that age and that old familiar pain behind my breastbone, the ache in my throat, the stinging in my eyes have me hiding and crying. I can see him, sticking-out ears, shiny red hair, November freckles, and carpenter jeans (pockets always mattered), quite sincerely offering his uncle a pickle, and my God the pain. Moments like that are unbearable and unfixable.

Grief is rough. The passage of time is rough.

I am not alone. We are not alone. Some lost children, some lost spouses, some lost parents or siblings, some lost physical health. We’ve all lost friends. 2022 was so hard for so many.

Stepping into 2023, I’ve avoided the ubiquitous “year in review” post and resolutions, but some retrospection is unavoidable. I’ve surely made some positive progress. Maybe the raw and oozing wounds are healing, but there are scabs and scars. I’ve stopped expecting that I’ll ever be the person I was before the coroner knocked on my door. How could I be? I don’t think of this passage of time as me “getting better.” It’s more a matter of evolving into a new me. I’m not better—in these circumstances, better isn’t a thing—but I’m different. Sometimes stronger, but sometimes not. I can help others, but there are still days filled with a despair no hug can quash. The difference, I suppose, is I know that debilitating despair will lessen. It’s never completely vanished and I may take minutes or hours or days or even weeks to come out the other side of that darkness, but it will happen.

Knowing it will, on some level, pass helps.

So, one year ends and another begins. Cooper’s still gone and I’m still finding my way. Maybe I’ll be finding my way the rest of my days. Maybe 2023 will be the year I begin to recognize myself, the year others recognize me. Maybe . . .