Year Zero

Before Christ (B.C.) and After Death (A.D.). Your first living memory. Your last tragedy. Our lives are all marked by a series of Year Zero events. It’s the point in which life as we knew it is obliterated and a new world order takes its place in our minds. The clock does not turn back and “the time before” falls away behind a shimmering, impenetrable veil of what may never be again. 

Liam’s death marks a Year Zero in our lives. In my mind, I will now and forever mark an event as happening before or after we lost our son. Some of the readers here also mark time from this point, mostly family and close friends. 

For my 1 yr old, Josie, this period of time will fade naturally behind the veil of baby memories and her only touchstone with her brother will be in photos and videos. How grateful I am that we have those methods of sharing the love her brother had for her. I am constantly impressed by Eliza’s memory, but as a 4 yr old, her memories of Liam will likely fade as well. In some ways, I grieve this eventual loss for my girls- I lament that some of our sweetest times together will not be treasured in their minds in the same way I will treasure them as a mother. In other ways, I am envious of their forgetfulness. To forget is to become innocent of the pain death brings to the living. 

Despite the sweet release of pain that forgetfulness gives, it is not my path, nor the right one for those of us well beyond the age of innocence. Martin Prechtel wrote in The Smell of Rain on Dust, “Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost... is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.” In marking in our lives a new Year Zero, we acknowledge what an incredible child Liam was, how deeply we miss him, and how much he mattered. 

We don’t do a lot of crying and weeping in this western culture of ours- it’s unseemly. Especially after any amount of time has gone by. What most people don’t understand is that the first three months after a loss is mostly spent in acute shock. It is only as reality sets in that true grief begins to reveal its infinite depth of heartache.

In some tribal cultures, expression of grief is the way the dead are transported to their eternal home. The more grief there is the more quickly a loved one arrives on “the other side.” Some readers might find this idea silly or uncivilized, but I think it holds a significant amount of wisdom into the nature of grief. Sadness needs to be felt and not buried under a mountain of things to do. Grief needs to be expressed or it suffocates the grieved. Regardless if you believe there is another side or by which route and manner a soul arrives there, the demand for an expression of grief is actually permission to feel in whatever way your loss causes you to feel. What freedom!  

These days I do a lot of crying. It would be easy to wipe them away and press on with my day, but recently I’ve stopped myself from rushing to the next thing and instead honor Liam by allowing the grief to flow. I cry so much because he was loved so much. Would that we all experience such love to mourn and be mourned so deeply.