#copingwithtrauma

February 2nd, 2021: When I was growing up the only grief I truly felt was the loss of grandparents and pets. The only grief I experienced firsthand all made sense to me, people who followed the order of life you get older, you get sicker, and then die.  At that point and in those instances it wasn't hard for me to utilize logic and reason to understand their lives were lived and their time here had expired.

In high school I witnessed the school, my friends, and my classmates just in shambles after two boys died in two separate car accidents. These deaths caused me to feel an overwhelming amount of empathy and sympathy for my sad friends, but I wasn't close enough to these two to grieve really. I felt bad for everyone feeling so bad and knew a generic "I'm sorry" simply would not suffice.  I still knew there was nothing on this planet that I could say or do to heal that wound. I knew there was no making sense of these tragic deaths. Two happy, smiling, kind, young souls were gone. There is no making that okay.

Since high school this area is cursed with so many young deaths. We've lost people to suicides, accidents, overdoses, the list goes on. Still, I remained in the helpful, supportive friend role. I was not the one with my world upside down, and truthfully at the time I was grateful. Watching people so sad from grieving was heart breaking enough.

When I was 20 and pregnant with my first son we had a gender reveal party, we were ecstatic, my family never had boys. We had people stay the night in a tent in my mom's backyard because we in no way wanted anyone to drive home drunk. My friends at the time partied until morning, then all four went to sleep in a little four person tent.

I woke up at tenish, my mom made French toast for breakfast for everyone, then left for a matinee with her friend. One by one my hungover friends started coming in for breakfast. My son's soon to be God Father came in and said "Nate snored so loud, he shook my pillow" I replied, "He was cocked, and passed out" and giggled at the thought of their shenanigans. My step-dad and sister and his best friend were just watching the Sunday Giants game, casually cracking their first beer around noon. 

My friends were about ready to go, trying to figure out how to make the six people fit in a five person car. Nate wasn't up yet, not shocked, it was only 1:00 pm. He was sleeping on his tummy, using his arm as a pillow. I started to wake him up saying "Nate...Nate...Nate..." giggly and patient. I tickled his feet and he didn't move, he was just sleeping heavy. "Nate...Nate...Nate..." I pushed my fingertips into the soles of his feet and they stayed. I instantly said "He's dehydrated, and retaining fluid, get him water." Still not panicking...I stared at his back looking for breath movement before I thought "I'll just yank him by the ankles, that'd wake anyone up." So, I did just that...nothing. I went to look at him and saw purple skin through his red hairline and ran to get an adultier adult, my step-dad.

I ran into the house, where they were all watching a seemingly compelling play during the game, bursted in and yelled "Nate's blue, he won't wake up, I don't think he's breathing!" I've never seen my 6' 8" step-dad move so fast. He ran outside, ducked in and looked in the tent for about .1 seconds before he said "Steph, you need to call 911 now!" at 1:06 pm I picked up Nate's phone (it was the closest in reach) and tried to give a bunch of information to a dispatcher. I made little to no sense, because my step-dad didn't tell me why I was calling 911, combined with anxiety, I wasn't able to give them my mom's address. My younger sister tried to take the phone from me but the dispatcher asked "Can anyone there do CPR?" We all could, why didn't I think of that? I handed the phone off to my sister, and ran back to my step-dad and all my friends just shaking their heads and said "WE CAN DO CPR!" My step-dad as calmly and level as he could said "We can't save him, Steph, he's gone."

My. Soul. Left. My. Body.

My legs just stopped working.

Draped in my step-dads arms.

He's 6' 8" standing next to him I'm chest height.

I was down to his stomach.

Sobbing.

Drooling.

Quickly I ran away from his embrace screaming "NO. NO. NO. NO", into the road screaming up it "WHATS TAKING THEM SO LONG?!"

In that instant for the first time, it was me. I was the one with the dead best friend. Begging cops "Let me go with you to his Mom, her whole world is upside down here, and you're gonna tell her that with a straight face, just take me to tell her." Of course, I was informed protocol exists, and that couldn't happen. The second Nate's death hit social media I was the one flooded with "Oh my god, what happened?" "I'm so sorry" "My condolences" blah blah fucking blah.

My best friend's heart stopped to due to a lethal combination of Xanax and alcohol. Nothing about life or death made sense anymore. My best friend died from partying too hard? How do you make sense of that? When we all went to his services we stood in a circle together. Everyone stared, everyone, we were the last ones with him. We were trying to process what was about to happen at the viewing and we heard "That's them." The services were a nightmare. My friend Bryan and I were first to walk in, and the second we saw his bright red hair in that white casket we both couldn't stand. We stopped the line, and I sobbed and said "We can't do this." We went in the room with his twin sister and mom, we offered his sister his aviator sunglasses that were left in the tent, and we offered his mom to go to her favorite local ice cream parlor on Mothers Day every year, a tradition Nate followed with her. I asked Nate's mom permission to name my son Nathan when we went to see her the day after he died, so I tucked an ultrasound of his namesake in his pocket, and a pack of cigarettes with his lucky flipped. We stayed through the whole viewing, saw all those sad broken faces, got all the sad and sorry hugs, at the end we all walked up together I kissed his forehead, and we left.

I spent the first threeish years of my new life without Nate crying occasionally or at appropriate times, like when I gave birth to my Nathan. The rest of the time I kinda carried on like mentally him and I were taking a break from eachother, like I myself was choosing not to message or call. I got into therapy after hearing countless "You need helps" from family and friends. In therapy, I was cautioned that this event gave me Complex PTSD and Complex Grieving. Still, I just kept going with the flashbacks, nightmares, and the stages of grief over and over. Three years in, I had a startling realization using a butt fuck of psychedelics of "Oh my God, my person is gone, I can't get him back, we can't talk, and that really happened." Instantly, I was grieving his death like new again. Oh no. I had less than understanding from most people. Most people honestly seemed perplexed how it could feel so fresh after "so many years" *eyeroll to my spine*. Solely because me being pained and honest with it is/was uncomfortable. OOOF.

I knew Nate taught me so much in his life and in his death. He also was the first to teach me how to help people in early grief, because of how many conversations I had that were text book This Is Not What You Say To Someone Grieving. Then again, we're all different.

Just before the 4 year mark with Nate's death, death found me again and again, it followed the people I loved. My honest theory is I saw death up close and personal, I know what that type of empty feels like, I was the one sobbing pounding the ground, mad at the world, so I noticed the devastation easier. I became the support system for my grieving friends, all by just being honest from the get, "Welcome to the club you don't want to be in, you still have to try to eat, you're never gonna be the same and there is nothing you can say to me that sounds crazy coming from the girl who has screamed in the cemetery at 2:00 AM "OVER A FUCKING XANAX?!" and unfortunately this club doesn't come with t-shirts it comes with trauma." It's simple to me, really. Act like they have a cancer on their brain with out being so in-your-face-it-feels-fake. Easy. I've helped countless freshly grieving people in the years after Nate's death.

  In October of 2020 I was talking to Zack, my middle school best friend on the phone, I needed help. He couldn't help me, as he was in legal trouble and needed to lay low. We caught up for a while, aside from what I needed help with. At one point he said "I wish Squid was here, he would've been down in a heartbeat." Squid passed in February of 2020. We talked at length about being more careful with ourselves, the worries we had about our other friends, and what grieving is like. Then he said, "I don't know how much closer death can get to me than Squid, he was my boy, it broke me." I just said  "I miss that boy so much, he was so warm." Zack went on to say "I don't wanna know which one of us is gonna go first, I don't wanna be the one left." We gave eachother all of our love, and hung up.

  On November 19th, 2020 Zack and another friend of ours from middle school, Alex, were headed home from Alex's band practice late at night. Alex was driving when he lost control of the vehicle. They both died on impact, together. It killed me. They died just riding home? The messages flooded in again. "I'm so sorry" "If you need anything, I'm here" as disingenuous as you could be really be. Again, I'm the one with the dead friends. Feeling emptiness in my finger tips. I hated everything, again.

  "If everything happens for a reason, than what the fuck?"

"Why them? Why me?"

Despair

When I laid in my boyfriend's bed staring at where the white ceiling met the lavender walls with silent tears streaming down my face I felt empty in my bones. I went outside, lit a cigarette, and called my soul brother, Alec. Al is traditionally a goof ball, but in sad times he has a way with comforting people. He's an absolute doll. I knew I needed to hear his voice and his words. When we spoke I cried and said all the awful initial thoughts, "How am I the one left? I didn't wanna do that. What do I do?" After I got those thoughts out we had a talk that would forever change my views on loss and grief. He said "All of these losses teach us something. Losing Squid taught me that I needed, wanted, and could have a healthy supportive friendship with Alison (his ex-wife, my best friend)." Alison drove up from Georgia to support me, Alec, all of our people, and grieve herself with her people. The hug they shared outside of the funeral home looked cathartic on a soulful level to me. They were who eachother needed to have in that sad and vulnerable time, even after their separation. To that I said, "I still don't get the fucking point."

That's when Alec said something I'll never forget. First, he quoted Carl Sagan in Cosmos, "We're all just a blue dot." Made zero sense, as I had yet to read all of Cosmos, and Alec already had (more than once). He then said, "People's love for you is eternal, regardless of when their physical being dies. Every lesson they taught someone will permanently imprint them, transferring person to person, generation to generation. Zack's love, Squid's Love, Alex's love, Nate's love, everyone's love is eternal as long as your soul learned things from them." I started crying hard. We gradually caught up and got ready to hang up and he said "Stephanie, you will have my love eternally, in this life and in the next, even if my physical being dies you will always have love from an Al"

  I had to process those words for weeks, thinking of every act of love, every admirable thing, every moment I witnessed that all my seemingly lost humans gave me, and what changed in me because of those moments. All of these souls filled up books in my mind, heart, and soul. They taught me how to be a happier better me, and they all loved me so much. These acts of love transferred onto my family, my friends, my kids, my relationship, hell, even strangers. Alec was right, my humans didn't die at all, and the more I looked the more I found glimpses of their love here, with me, no matter where they are. They literally cannot die, and there's no choice in the matter, it just happens.

I still have sad days and moments, but I know the saddest moments for me are also the most loving acts they gave me coming to surface...They are still with me to make those moments possible. You cannot change grief. It is a wild bull you just got onto, and you have to hold on tight and dig your spurs in for the rest of your life. The only thing that has calmed the immense pain I've felt was allowing these amazing humans to permanently imprint their best moments onto me. I'm forever grateful I had the privilege to be imprinted by so many angelic souls. All these seemingly small, miniscule moments created the most love in my soul. I'm here to learn, and I've been taught by the best of the best. Their deaths were not in vein, their deaths have all changed me. I sincerely hope this makes you consider how many souls have imprinted on you in life and in death, allowing seemingly impossible eternal love into your heart and soul.

XOXO

"I'm sure there ain't a Heaven, but that don't mean I don't like to picture you there. I bet you're bumming cigarettes off saints, and I'm sure you're still singing, but I'll bet that you're still just a bit out of key." Cigarettes and Saints by The Wonder Years

Dedicated to:

Nathan E. Osgood Sami Jo Colson Zaccaria "Squid" Crankshaw Ally LaMont Ryan Burton Zack Luck & Alexander Simon

I'll miss you everyday for the rest of my life, and will carry your eternal love wherever I may go.