For Cooper.

Today is my son Cooper's birthday. He died suddenly at home following complications after surgery to repair a heart defect. He was six weeks old. If he had lived, he would be 41. For many years I held this day in secret sorrow. It is always a raw, hard day. But one year I posted the remembrance you see below on Instagram, inviting others to share the names of the ones they deeply miss, and the response was overwhelming. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Grief-drenched and love-soaked. Now it’s become my way of honoring the day. Maybe it’s a way to honor someone you love, too, either in the comments here or on Instagram. And please feel free to share with anyone you think might find it helpful. Here we go.

IN REMEMBRANCE:

To me, one of the cruelties of losing a loved one is that we never get to say their names. We say “my sister” or “my dad” or "my son" but somehow death becomes a secret we agree to keep, so we don’t say their names, and they fade into the mist of the nameless dead.

I want to change that. I’m going to say the name of my baby who died, because he is also my baby who lived.

Robert Cooper Carey. Robert after his paternal grandfather and Cooper after his maternal grandfather, and we called him Cooper.

Many of you grieve loved ones. Accidents, cancer. Heart attack. Pregnancy loss. Covid. Dementia. A life lost to suicide. So many stories, so much heartbreak.

Do you miss saying their names, how the sound of it can conjure a brief moment of return, an echo of laughter, the light in their eyes, the hope and love you carried for them?

If so, would you share that name now? I want to hear it. I want to know them. I’ll read them aloud, here where I am, and speak the names of your loved ones and send them like prayers on the wind.

I send you deep peace in this fellowship of sorrow I wish we did not share.