Well, it’s a very odd Sunday morning here in the city of salt. While not unheard of, it’s strange to have a storm roll through and cool the temperature down into the 50s in June. Given the blast furnace we’ll be living in soon enough, I’ll gladly take the break.

Yesterday, as I worked in the garden—his garden, the one I’ve been keeping up since everything hit the fan—I got two texts from different friends. Both said more or less the same thing: “I can’t imagine having to go through what you did and still be functional.”

Let’s start with that word: functional. That’s a moving target depending on the person, the day, and the hour.

This, of course, was in reference to the recent post about the suicide. I took a couple days off after publishing it and busied myself with house projects. That might sound very zen and emotionally well-adjusted. It’s not. I’m no spiritual guru, and I’ve never claimed to be. Anyone who’s watched me over the years can confirm that my coping skills are more “triage in a tornado” than “balanced and enlightened.”

When he died, I did initially go to counseling. A lot of it. But eventually escape felt easier. That’s what led to substance use. Like I’ve said many times before—it wasn’t the problem. It was the wrong solution to the problem.

Truth is, none of us really know how we’re going to cope with something until we’re knee-deep in it. I didn’t wake up one day thinking, “You know, I better prep a plan in case the person I love dies by suicide.” It doesn’t work that way.

Years ago, I went to a training on PTSD and triggers. We tried to teach people that triggers don’t come in neat little packages. You’re not going to walk around life with a well-labeled chart of “Here’s a trigger, and here’s my plan.” It’s chaos. It’s personal. And sometimes it’s completely irrational.

Here’s a perfect example: I was at Costco with another vet, shopping like normal. We turned down an aisle, then made our way toward the checkout. I noticed his body change—vigilant, tense, on edge. Full-blown fight-or-flight.

I asked, “What happened?”

He said, “I don’t know. I’m just triggered.”

We spent hours trying to figure it out. Eventually, we traced it back to a display of Irish Spring soap. The smell. The scent of a common barracks shower soap. And the same soap present when he was sexually assaulted in the military. One whiff of a grocery display sent his nervous system into overdrive.

It took us two hours to make that connection.

That’s the thing about trauma. You can’t anticipate every trigger. What you can do is learn your body’s reaction and try to respond with care. Don’t chase perfect awareness. Chase better responses.

Back to the clusterfuck of the past few years. How did I get through it? Honestly, I had a weird moment of clarity in those first few days. I asked myself: “What’s the alternative?”

I never considered the .45 caliber solution. That was never on the table for me—not even when things got pitch black. Because once you open that door, it’s always open. Even if it takes you six months to walk through, it’s still the same door.

I know some people see that as the only way out. I don’t know what was going on in his head, but I do know he was struggling. Still, I wouldn’t recommend suicide as the answer to any problem—especially not one that’s likely to be temporary.

As I’ve delayed talking about all the changes in my life, this has been one I couldn’t have predicted. I used to get texts like, “Are you ever going to get a break?” Eventually, I stopped asking. Every time I did, life seemed to answer with, “Hold my beer.”

I’ve put on the brave face. That’s about all it was—face. The trauma didn’t make me stronger. It didn’t make me wiser. It tested the absolute limits of my coping skills, and then some. I’ve made bad decisions. Some okay-ish ones. Maybe even one or two decent ones. But I wouldn’t call any of it graceful.

The grief came in waves. And none of them were the same. There’s no tidy five-stage process. Grieving for one person didn’t prepare me for the next. Each loss was its own beast.

So what did I learn?

You don’t really get a choice. You move forward, or you don’t. And moving forward doesn’t mean doing it well. It just means moving.

It’s taken me two years to grant myself even a sliver of grace. I’m a work in progress. I’ll keep messing up. I’ll keep trying. And I hope, with enough time and space, I’ll start getting more things right.

In the meantime, I’ll keep pushing forward. Probably stubbornly. Probably clumsily. But forward nonetheless.

And if nothing else, I try to be the person my dog and my mom hoped I’d be.