The flowers have mostly run their course. A few bouquets, late in coming, are still alive with color but are beginning to wilt. The food is eaten, and various snacks litter the kitchen counter—even in grief, there are limits to how many snacks one can eat in good conscience.

The beautiful, heartfelt cards have slowed in arriving. Text messages are scant, and the emails are gone too. My phone rings less. I frequently talk with my wife, daughter, and mom—a little less so with my brother—and I stay in touch with our sons living out of state. They are not big talkers.

I knew this day would come, but the silence—the “bounce,” as my neighbor describes it—arrived more quickly than I anticipated. Most family and friends want to get on with their lives, regain their own balance, and move forward. This is completely understandable; I would too.

Understand, we (my wife and I) can’t move forward that fast. To be fair, I am okay with this period of relative silence. I need the time and space to process, reflect, and grieve. It’s important to me, in honor of my son, that I make as much sense of this as I can. I am spending a lot of time going through Cooper’s digital history, looking for clues, trying to make sense of things. In fact, there are some things coming up that, while hard, are filling in the gaps.

My wife is home; she has been off work from teaching her “littles,” as have I, and we spend a lot of time together talking and reflecting. We tend to end up talking in circles sometimes, but I think this is okay. We are processing together. While I am weepy in the morning, my wife is weepy in the evening. We are working through our grief in different ways and at different speeds. I need to make sense of this, while my wife spends time looking at pictures and feeling. I create timelines and read through texts and emails; my wife sends pictures for printing at Walgreens.

I am still shocked by how suddenly Cooper vanished. He was here one moment and gone the next. I had a hamburger and a beer with him Saturday at a tailgate party, and then Sunday morning, he was gone. As I previously wrote, the finality of losing him is crushing. Man, it hurts. It hurts me too because I know, I believe, with quality therapy and good medical care there more than likely would have been a different outcome.

Friends ask, “How are you doing?” In truth, I think I am doing okay. I am being sincere. As I respond to this question when it’s asked, I wonder: what’s the barometer for losing a child, the gauge, to know how you are really doing? What is my basis of comparison? While I think I am doing “okay,” I have no past life experience to draw from, comparable with this event. None of my life experiences can begin to compare with this enormous blow.

Friends, I will explore counseling or grief therapy; I am not against it. My wife has already scheduled a meeting with a counselor. She’s on it, and I applaud her. I am still “feeling”—not thinking—about how I want to process this loss in the manner best for me.

Some days, I just feel like getting in the car and driving for a long, long time. A road trip. Road trips allow for that quiet processing time, just thinking it through.

Sure, I have had hard times in my life. I wonder if hard time x 1, plus hard time x 2, plus hard time x 3 creates an ability to deal with hard times no matter the context? I mean to say, I have had some steeling in my life, and I think this has helped me.

I am walking 30 minutes per day, eating decent food in reasonable amounts, drinking water, sleeping reasonably well, reading, praying, and otherwise caring for myself and my family. My wife is doing the same. Oddly, I do find that I am drinking coffee throughout the entire day—this is new for me. It seems I have to have something in my hand.

I have a morning routine. I get up, take the dogs out, pick up the house a bit, and start the coffee. I am still cracking the window and turning the lights on in Cooper’s room, you know, so his soul can visit. I light a candle and say my prayers for Cooper and for all of our family and friends, for healing in this grief.

Alter on dining room table

Our long, wooden dining room table has become an altar. Pictures of Cooper, crosses, ceramic cardinals, watercolor paintings, angels, candles, the Bible, and flowers cover the table. This is where I say my morning prayers, after lighting the candle for the day.

I am functioning, but I do notice I have a diminished capacity for sustained cognitive activity and remembering. I can’t work through mental complexity as I normally would. My usually poor listening skills are at an all-time low. What?

My emotions come in waves, and they are difficult to name. I am not sure how to describe these emotions showing up in my body. I am dealing with feelings I have never had before.

On some days, I feel good. I have hope for a brighter future in the midst of this suffering. I know there is a positive future ahead of me. I say a new mantra out loud to myself, “The best days of my life are ahead of me.” I know I am sort of lying to myself in saying this, but my brain is pretty naive. It believes the things I tell it, funnily, even when it knows it is being deceived.

In some moments, on given days, I do realize with absolute clarity what a huge, life-shattering event this really is, and I can’t even hide it from myself. The magnitude of losing my son hits me hard, and I weep in my grief. I loved him, I miss him, and I am heartbroken that he was in so much pain and I did not know the depth of it. He was such a good soul with such a bright future ahead of him.

I know this sudden, tragic event has impacted many, many people—friends and family. We, as parents, are not the only ones grieving. All of us are. We all hurt, and I know this.

Here we are then, standing together. And I think, if I didn’t know any better, that for today, standing together is a noble act.