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Shawn Hunter dies at 2:37am on the eleventh of March. Shawn Hunter dies and life as Cory knows it changes forever. His world changes. It turns upside down and shatters into millions of tiny pieces. The pieces that he’s left behind with will never fit together again and everything is unfamiliar. He doesn’t know how to live in a world where his best friend doesn’t exist.
It was that damn motorcycle. The irony is not lost on Cory. Mr. Turner’s accident years ago now seems like an awful preview of the nightmare that has now taken over. Cory never liked the bike to begin with, telling Shawn it reminded him of Mr. Turner and that it didn't matter if he was careful because there were so many horrible drivers out there. “Please,” he had said and left it at just that.
But it wasn't enough. Cory knew deep down that nothing would be enough to convince Shawn to stick to public transportation or a car with seatbelts and air bags. He was always reckless even in the best of times. His travels around the world curbed his appetite for thrill and kept it at bay until he tried to settle down. The motorcycle was supposed to be for when he was home waiting for more assignments. Something to satisfy his reckless spirit. “Just a little fun,” was what he had told Cory. “I'll be fine. I'll be careful. I promise.”
In the end it was just as Cory had feared. Shawn was careful. He swore from the start he would never ride it in bad weather or after he had been drinking even if it was only a beer. He wore a helmet and kept the bike serviced regularly to ensure that it was as safe as possible. But all the precautions in the world could not stop the drunk driver from swerving into the wrong lane with his monstrous SUV. The helmet might actually stand a fighting chance in a clumsy spill, but it had nothing against six thousand pounds of metal at eighty miles an hour.
Phone calls that come at 12:14 in the morning are never a sign of good things. When Cory is jarred out of a sound slumber by the ringing of his cell he knows right away. He tries to push the sickening feeling of dread away as he fumbles to answer the call but his fingers are cold and clammy and he can't catch his breath properly. He drops his phone, curses, and wakes Topanga.
“Cor?”
Cor. God, it's like trying to get air through a straw. Cory ignores her and falls to his knees, located the phone in the dark and wraps his fingers around the slim device. “Y-yes?”
“Mr. Matthews? This is Mercy Hospital. You were listed as the emergency contact of a Shawn Hunter. I'm sorry to inform you that Mr. Hunter was just brought in after a vehicle accident.”
“Cory, what is it?”
Cory shakes Topanga's hand from his shoulder and staggers to his feet. An incessant buzzing sound in his ears drowns out the world around him and his upper lip feels numb. He can't stop shaking. “Is he-”
The part of him that's still clinging to reality is thankful that the woman on the other line senses his panic induced paralysis because he doesn't wait for him to try again. “He's in critical condition, I'm afraid.” A brief pause. “I think it would be best if you could come right away.”
There is no timeline to grief. No itinerary. No rules or regulations. The psychological babble about the five stages is entirely untrue. You don't feel denial and then move onto and through anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance in one smooth, predictable journey. That would be too easy.
Grief is a wound that never really closes. Cory has moments, long stretches of time even, when he can think about Shawn and feel okay. He can remember something they did together in high school and laugh. He can look at a picture of his best friend and smile. He can hear and speak his name as natural as anything. Acceptance, right?
But then there are days when he wakes up and the thought takes his breath away all over again. The words, “Shawn Hunter is dead” rip open the wound so that it feels fresh like it just happened. The pain, oh the pain, it always catches him off guard. He's reminded that he'll never grow use to it. No matter how much time passes it will always surprise him just how much it hurts.
It's because of Topanga that he gets to the hospital in the first place. Topanga is the one who calls their neighbor Katy and asks her to watch two-year-old Riley for them. She takes his hand and leads him outside where she hails a cab and tells the driver to take them to the hospital. She doesn't let go of his hand and she doesn't even ask him for details.
“You're in shock,” she says at one point, gently but firmly wrapping her arms around him. “Just breathe.”
So easy to say and yet nearly impossible to do. When he was seven, Cory had to be rushed to the hospital because of a bad case of pneumonia and a collapsed lung. To this day, he still remembers the struggle of being unable to breathe without feeling as though every inhale might be his last. It feels like this.
When they get to the hospital, a doctor comes out and informs them of Shawn's condition. Three broken ribs. A shattered leg. A concussion. A dislocated shoulder. A broken wrist. “But,” the doctor says, his grey eyes carefully remote as he delivers the final blow. “I'm afraid those are the least of our worries.”
Topanga squeezes his hand so tightly that Cody winces. She's wavering, but she refuses to fall. “Go on,” she says, only a slight tremor in her voice betraying her fears.
“Shawn has suffered massive internal injuries,” the doctor tells them. “There's damage to his liver, kidneys, lungs, and his heart. We're doing our best to repair the damage, but there's a lot of internal bleeding that's making it complicated.” He stops and regards as a hint of compassion overshadows his professionalism. “I'm so sorry, but I think you should be prepared. Does he have any family we can contact?”
“A brother,” Topanga whispers. “Oh my god, Cory. Jack. We need to call Jack.”
“Would you like us to call him?”
“No.” Cory finds his voice and shakes his head violently. “No, I. . . I think we should.”
Letting the hospital call Jack would no doubt be easier, but Cory knows now that he'd never forgive himself for letting his the elder Hunter find out about his brother from a complete stranger.
The doctor promises to update them soon and Cory can't help but take that as a bad sign. He watches as the older man walks away and then sinks down into the hard armchair, searching in his jacket pocket for his phone.
“Here,” Topanga gives him hers and then grabs his free hand. “Do you want me to do it?”
Her eyes are beginning to fill with tears and Cory pretends to be focused on the call. “No,” he says. “I'll do it.” This sitting and waiting thing is driving him insane. He needs something to do even if it might be the hardest thing he's ever done in his life.
One day it won't hurt this much. That's what the grief counselor told him. Cory wanted no part of talking to a stranger about his lifelong best friend's death. But Topanga pleaded with him to go, saying that it might help. This stranger might have never known Shawn but he was trained professionally to help people deal with loss. It couldn't hurt.
It did hurt. The pain threatened to swallow Cory up every time he opened his mouth to say something. Talking about it made it real and denial had too strong a hold on him for Cory to ever give in completely. Which was another reason the five stages thing was just a bunch of crap. The counselor never said anything about the violent back and forth between denial and acceptance. Most days Cory still finds himself laughing about something and immediately looking for his phone so he can call or text Shawn about it. Most days he has to remind himself that his best friend is no longer alive. It's been almost a year and he'll pay anyone a million dollars if they can convince him that his thought process has moved into the stage of acceptance.
Here's the truth about the nice little and neatly organized five stages of grief. They happen every day. Cory wakes up to the reminder that Shawn Hunter is no longer and living and breathing person. He clumsily tries to grasp this idea, unable to wrap his mind around it. It can't be. He doesn't know how to exist in a world where Shawn doesn't and yet here he is, existing. If he's here then Shawn has to be somewhere as well.
But when reality comes crashing in and his call goes straight to voicemail or his texts refuse to send because the recipient's message box is full, when Topanga looks at him, her eyes welling up with tears, when his daughter points to a picture of Shawn and asks who the stranger is, and when Jack calls him at two in the morning because he's too drunk to drive himself home, denial can only hold out for so long.
Jack can barely stand when he staggers bleary eyed into the waiting room. His face is drained of all color, tears swimming in his eyes but he refuses to let them fall. He and Shawn are alike in that way, Cory thinks as he watches his wife embrace his best friend’s brother. Neither of them cried until their last bit of hope had been stripped away. Crying would admit defeat and as if he could keep his brother alive by holding back his tears, Jack fought stubbornly to stay in one piece.
“What happened? How did this happen?”
Topanga takes Jack's hand and sits down with him, motioning for Cory to do the same. “He got hit by a car,” she says quietly. There's no way to break this news gently but she tries all the same. “The driver was drunk and he was speeding. He swerved into the wrong lane right in front of Shawn. It was so late at night that no one else was on the road.”
Shawn was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what the police officer told them before Jack arrived. The driver of the SUV was checked out but he only had a few minor cuts and bruises so they arrested him. Life isn't fair. Cory has always known this to be truer than anything else. But it doesn't make any of this easier to accept.
“They're doing all they can,” Topanga tells Jack now and Cory wonders when their lives became intertwined with a tv medical drama because tonight is every cliche in the book. A phone call in the middle of the night. A drunk driver. The doctors doing everything they can. Clinging desperately to hope because the alternative is too much to even consider. All that's missing is their miracle.
Cory hates the anger more than anything. It robs him of his identity, the Cory Matthews who was always known for being kind and gentle. It replaces him with someone who lashes out at anyone even his own wife and little girl. But it kills tiny bits of him every time Riley says things like, “Can Uncle Shawn come to my birthday party?” because a toddler doesn’t understand death. He can’t always be patient when Topanga tries to explain death to their toddler in a way that it doesn't hurt. His frustration boils over sometimes when Jack calls for a ride one too many times.
He snaps at his daughter when she asks about Uncle Shawn, accuses Topanga of lying to Riley about death because “it's not that easy and one day she'll have to realize that”, and once he broke Jack's nose after picking him up from the bar and called him a selfish fool and wished for Shawn in his place.
That was when Topanga first brought up the counseling. And Cory was angry about that too. Lashing out and yelling that he'd never talk to a stranger about Shawn because there was no way they could understand when he couldn't even understand it himself. It was only when Riley started to cry that he forced himself to stop yelling and take stock of all the damage he had done.
On his very first day his counselor suggested that Cory wasn't just angry at Topanga and Jack and Riley and the drunk driver who was currently riding out a life sentence for vehicular manslaughter. “You're angry at Shawn too,” he had said, leaving Cory speechless. “You're angry at Shawn for leaving you.”
Cory stares at the wall in front of him until it blurs and dark, shadowy shapes appear and start dancing across the flat surface. Jack is at his left, eyes focused on the hallway where the doctor had left them not quite an hour ago. Both Cory and Topanga have spoken up, offered what little words of comfort they could find but he hasn't responded. If he looks at him, Cory can see the tears building up, reddening his eyes. If he listens, he can hear the barely controlled inhale and exhale of each breath. But he doesn't look at Jack. He doesn't listen for him. Not anymore. Instead Cory stares at the wall, mesmerized by the shadowy shapes until he's almost in a different place.
He'd go crazy if he tried anything else. Even Topanga has fallen silent and that scares him. His wife’s bright, eternal optimism has been eroding in the time that they've spent waiting for an update. As the seconds tick by, Cory finds his hope for their tv miracle slipping away and there's nothing he can do about it. He can only do everything in his power to avoid thinking about what's almost certainly going to happen. It's too painful to try and comprehend so he just. . . doesn't.
On his right Topanga suddenly gasps and Cory stands with her and Jack as the doctor approaches them. He feels Jack stagger in his attempt to rise and instinctively reaches out to steady him, but in the back of his mind he doubts his own abilities. He feels Topanga clutching at his arm and reaches out for her.
He knows before the doctor speaks. He sees it in the tired eyes, the eyes that were never hopeful to begin with and are yet still full of dejection. Jack and Topanga must know too because he hears his wife start to cry as the words “I'm so sorry” start to leave the doctor’s mouth. He feels Jack slip away from him and watches as Shawn's brother falls to the ground out of his reach. And then he hears those words, the same words he was convinced he would only ever hear on tv.
“We did everything we could.”
There was never any use in bargaining after the fact. Cory remembers making all sorts of promises in exchange for a miracle. He'd donate to charity. He wouldn't find that drunk driver and strangle him with his bare hands. He'd go to church every Sunday. Be a better person. His life for Shawn's. It was pathetic and desperate but it was all he had at the time. Empty promises thrown up into the sky to whoever or whatever might be listening. Empty promises blown away by the harsh winds of reality.
Not this way, he had begged. Not like this. Not now. Later. Later when he could wrap his mind around it and accept it. When he was older. Wiser. He just needed more time. He was too young. Shawn was too young. Cory needed his best friend. Jack needed his brother. Riley needed to grow up knowing her uncle. Shawn needed to meet someone and become a husband and a father. He needed to have a chance to prove to himself that he could be a husband and father.
After that. After all of that, Cory reasoned, then Shawn could go. After he had lived a full life and got to have experiences and make memories he would treasure forever. After he had made the most of things and accomplished everything he had ever wanted. After he had made his dreams come true. He deserved that. He deserved to be happy. But the universe didn’t work like that.
The hospital room is quiet. Too quiet. Topanga and Jack are crying. Cory knows he should be crying too. His best friend has just died. He’ll never talk to him again. He’ll never go to another Phillies game with him, never get to invite him for dinner and listen to his travel stories again. Topanga will never joke about having competition again, Jack will never insist on brotherly bonding road trips again. Riley will never know her Uncle Shawn because at two, she's only seen him a handful of times, and has vague memories of each of those times.
Cory should be crying because his best friend in all the world is no more. But he can't cry. He watches helplessly as Jack sits by the hospital bed, begging beyond all reason for Shawn to wake up. He watches as Topanga takes his hand and tries to comfort him while tears stream down her face.
But Cory can't cry because he feels numb. Like his brain has disconnected from the rest of his body and refuses to cooperate. He sits on the other side of the bed and just stares at Shawn in disbelief, unable to accept what he sees in front of his very eyes. It's like something inside of him knows that he'll fall apart once he accepts it. So to protect him, this thing, this denial, just pushes the thought away and pretends it doesn't exist.
Cory isn't stupid. He knows that nobody lives forever. He knows that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. He knows that he and his loved ones are not immune to this phenomena. They were never untouchable. He's always known that. But now that the time has come for him to fully realize how fragile and human they all are, he realizes he never taught himself how to handle it. And now he's lost.
He stares at Shawn, looking for the answer. Despite all the cuts and bruises and all the crushed and broken bones, his friend is still very obviously his friend. Past the blood and the swelling, Cory sees the little ski jump in his nose. He looks down at the hand that isn't broken and sees the scar on his thumb from when they went fishing and he accidentally hooked his best friend. It's him. It's real.
And at the same time it's not. It's like an out of body experience because Cory can see himself along with Jack and Topanga, sitting by Shawn's bedside. He sees the anguish on their faces but can just as easily see the complete lack of emotion of his own face. He feels entirely unlike himself and he realizes this is because he doesn't recognize himself without Shawn.
Depression is a thief. If grief has taught Cory anything it's that depression robs a person of resembling a person altogether. There are days when he can't move and it feels like he can't breathe. When he physically aches all over from a pain that refuses to subside. It's a pain without a cure or treatment. Something deep inside that nothing can reach.
It begins as a weight on his chest making it harder to breathe. A heaviness pressing down on him until he feels like he's drowning on dry land. It spreads through his limbs until his arms and legs are practically useless. He’s useless. Paralyzed by the grief. It drains him of energy, all the color in his face. He becomes someone he doesn’t recognize in the mirror.
The worst part about this whole grief thing is that even though Cory stops being human, the rest of the world carries on. And somehow it expects him to do the same. Inexplicably it can carry on without Shawn but it can’t carry on without him. His wife and daughter need him. His students need him. Jack needs him. They all need him and because he loves them he wants to be there for them, but he just can’t. He can just barely take care of himself and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to take care of them.
Holidays and birthdays. Cory dreads them. There's no cause for celebration anymore. But Topanga insists on getting the family together and carrying on their traditions. Cory can see that it helps his wife to keep moving. She never acts like Shawn's death never happened but she refuses to let it stop her. There's strength in numbers. So even if they all sit around the Christmas tree and smile through tear blurred eyes as Riley rips open her gifts, it's better than being alone.
Cory doesn't agree. The quiet and the sadness even with so many people around is a million times worse than if they just got through it by themselves. It's suffocating. They're all trying so hard to be happy but Shawn’s absence is impossible to ignore. One less chair at the dining table, a smaller pile of presents, and his empty arm chair in the corner. They're all reminders of what they can no longer have and Cory hates it. But he lets Topanga carry on because it's something he can so for her and without it, he would be useless.
It rains on the day of Shawn's funeral and Cory finds this fitting. There's no way the sun should ever shine again but he knows that somehow, impossibly so almost, it will. The world is still spinning and people are still going about their business. The sun will shine again even if all the light in Cory's life seems to have been put out forever.
He sits in the front of the pew, uncomfortable in his black suit and shoes that pinch. Topanga is at his left while Jack sits at his right, both of them having cried themselves to the point of exhaustion. Jack is bleary eyed and pale and Cory has had to physically lead him out of the apartment and to the car and then out of the car and into the church. Topanga is so emotionally drained that she's stopped trying to support anyone else and just sits there alone in her own thoughts.
His parents have taken care of everything today. His mom is in the row behind them holding Riley who has been unusually quiet all day, as if she senses the solemn mood. His dad stands by the entrance of the church greeting everyone with a strength that contradicts the aged look of a father who just lost his son. Cory wants to do something. He wants to say something. He wants to be useful in any way possible but he still hasn't found his way back to himself. Only helping Jack along has tied him to reality by the thinnest and most fragile of threads.
The minister says a few cliched words about life and death and then admits that he only knows of Shawn because of what he's heard from other people. All wonderful things that ensured Shawn must have been a wonderful person which makes this loss senseless and painful. But he cannot do Shawn justice simply by repeating what he's been told. “I thought it would be best if someone who knew him, probably better than anyone, could come up here and say something.”
That's his cue. Cory stands up and moves to the front of the church to stand by the closed casket. His hands are shaking as he reaches inside his pocket to take out the folded piece of paper where he's written his speech. The minister steps down, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder in a brief moment of silent support.
It's becoming impossible to ignore. He's standing by a large wooden box that's holding the body of his dead best friend. The anguish wraps around Cory's heart and squeezes hard. He hasn't cried yet. The shock hasn't fully worn off, keeping the pain at a distant throbbing. It's caught the attention and drawn the concern of everyone because they've all cried so much that they've run out of tears. But here and now, Cory can feel the oncoming wave of grief ready to crash into him with violent force. The shock is slipping away from him and he knows it won't be much longer.
He forgets about his prepared speech and clears his throat. “Shawn Hunter was my best friend,” he says too quietly for most people to hear. He tries again. “Shawn Hunter was my best friend.”
Cory makes the mistake of looking up and sees his mother holding Riley close while silent tears run down her face. His father is crying too and the sight is nearly Cory's undoing. There's something about watching the steady rock of his family break down that makes him feel like a little kid; scared and helpless.
“We met when we were six. It was our first day of kindergarten and the teacher wanted us to color pictures of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I was coloring a picture of myself playing baseball for the Phillies and Shawn. . . Shawn was coloring himself in a bat costume. “A millionaire superhero is the best possible combination,” he told me.”
That gets a few strangled chuckles from some people. Cory tries to smile too but it feels like he might break into a thousand tiny pieces. “Anyway, my big plans were disrupted by the fact that I couldn't find any red crayons near me and being the tough kid that I was I started to cry. Being the sensitive kid that he was, Shawn stole Mary Carpenter’s red crayon and gave it to me. Our teacher, Miss Whitestone called it a match made in heaven even though she made Shawn sit in time out. I think that was because I insisted on sitting with him.
Miss Whitestone is here today. Or rather Mrs. Hudson now. She smiles up at Cory through her tears and Cory tries to smile back. He takes a deep breath before continuing. “Shawn and I were inseparable. He was always there for me and I was always there for him. Our friendship wasn't just split fifty-fifty with each of us doing half the work. We were both doing one hundred percent.”
His hands are starting to shake so he folds them into fists and shoves them inside his pockets. “I got the chicken pox when we were seven and my mother did her best to keep us separate seeing as I was highly contagious. But the next morning she came into check on me and Shawn was asleep on my bedroom floor with tiny red spots all over his face. He had climbed through my window that night and we played Go Fish and War until we fell asleep.”
“When we were eight, Shawn broke his foot climbing a tree and my mother swore that if I tried to do the same she would chop off both of my legs. So I played it safe and even though it was summer I was more than okay with spending all of my free time with Shawn eating junk food and playing video games. It didn't matter what I was doing so long as I was doing with Shawn.”
The crowd in front of him suddenly blurs and Cory gives his head a quick shake. “Um,” He senses a movement in front of him and looks to see his father poised to get up. He shakes his head again but this time to dissuade any desire to help him. He has to finish.
“My friendship with Shawn was always categorized by our ages and what happened at that time. So seven was the year of the chicken pox and eight was the year of the broken foot. Eleven was the year of the cherry bomb. Fifteen was the year of sneaking into a Phillies game. Seventeen was the year of graduation. And so on.”
Something is clawing at his throat, trying to choke him. Cory tries to take another deep breath but it doesn't work this time. All he can muster is a strangled gasp for air. He sways a little and reaches out for something to grab onto. His hand lands on the casket. Cory stares at the flowers and the wood until it all blurs into one. In the very far distance he can hear a low murmur of concerned voices but he can't bring himself to answer any of them.
Someone is crying. Loud, harsh, ugly sobs that are difficult to listen to. Each one feels like it's tearing Cory's heart into even smaller pieces. The desperate gasping for air hurts to hear and Cory just wants to help. No one should be hurting that much.
Then he feels a steady hand on his back and hears his father whispering to him. “It's okay, son. Just breathe. Let it out. It's okay.”
What's okay? Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. Cory realizes that he's the one who's crying. Another sob tears out of his throat and he leans forward to collapse into his father’s arms, finally and completely broken. It's as if all the tears that have refused to fall the last several days are now making up for lost time and he's lost in a storm of his own sorrow.
Shawn is dead. He's not coming back. Twenty-three was the year of the motorcycle accident and now it's all finished. There are no more years.
Grief is ugly. It brings out the worst in people. The useless denial and bargaining. The violent anger. The crippling depression. The inevitable resigned acceptance. And it doesn't end all neat and orderly with acceptance being a pretty bow tying the package together. It's an endless cycle with denial ripping the acceptance away after short moments of peace.
Sometimes it seems like there are more bad times than good. Sometimes Cory forgets what good feels like. His counselor tells him that it's okay to get stuck in the bad times every once in awhile as long as he recognizes the good when it finally does show up. “You'll learn how to cling to those moments even when the bad times come back around. And that'll help.”
He tries. He tries so hard every single day. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But Cory tries. When he thinks he can't take the pain any longer he takes a deep breath and looks around. He looks at his daughter, so precious and beautiful. He looks at Topanga, an unstoppable force of love and grace and the strength to keep all of them going. He looks at his tiny little family and takes comfort in the idea that Shawn would love them just as much as he does.
“Look outside of yourself,” is another thing his counselor tells him. “Sometimes when we help others look for joy or leave, we find it ourselves. Spend time doing something or with someone that makes you feel closer to the one you lost.”
This, Cory knows, is in direct reference to Jack. He's thankful for the reminder because when the anger wears off he sees how much Shawn's brother means to him. He sees how much he matters to Jack. He sees how much they need each other. They're the link to what they no longer have in their lives. All they have left.
So he picks Jack up from the bar, cleans him until he looks more like himself and less like a shell of a man. He sits next to him at the AA meetings and makes a bed for him on the couch. He cooks for him and gets him another job and does as much as he can for him until he's drained of everything. Then he starts all over.
It takes a while but Cory notices that when Jack finally takes an upward turn, he does too. One day he comes home after a long day with Topanga and Riley to find that Jack has invited Eric over and the two of them have cooked enough dinner to feed half the city. Jack for the first time in forever is bright eyed and alert and smiling. Cory catches himself laughing at the jokes Jack and Eric are trading back and forth and the laughter doesn't hurt.
Two weeks later, Eric brings a puppy to the apartment and Cory's willpower is nonexistent thanks to Topanga, Riley, and Jack begging him to let them keep it. It's a floppy eared, fluffy, golden retriever and they name her Beatrice. Bea for short. It's Riley's idea and no one bothers to question where she came up with such a name. The puppy is impossibly cute and so easy to love. She doesn't offer a temporary distraction from the pain. She brings a little sunshine back into their lives altogether. She's perfect.
“One day it won't be this hard. It won't seem impossible. One day it won't hurt this much.”
Cory didn't believe his counsellor when he first said that. Granted, he didn't believe a word out of the other man’s mouth but this has seemed the most absurd leap of logic. Happy endings seem like a foreign concept. Only in fairy tales In other words happy endings are not for him. That’s what he thinks in the beginning. And the middle. The middle that stretches out for miles of time until he thinks that he’s reached the end and there’s nothing else left for him. But his counselor wasn’t finished when he spoke those seemingly cliched and meaningless words.
“You’re going to have to work for it, but one day you will be happy again.”
Cory has never needed to work for his happiness before. All his life happiness had been as big a part of him as his parents and siblings, his wife and daughter. Shawn. Everyone made him happy, but that all went away after Shawn died so he had begun to associate happiness with Shawn and only Shawn. That was his first mistake. Happiness could be found in many places. All he had to do was look for it. And eventually, he finds it.
He finds it in his daughter’s face; the way her big brown eyes light up when she smiles and the way her giggle bubbles up all the way from her belly. He finds it in the way Topanga has never stopped loving him even at his worst, and the way she loves their beautiful little girl, the way she sacrifices everything for them. He finds it in the way Eric pulls Jack out of his dark place in a way he couldn’t. With that simple little puppy named Bea. He finds it in the way his parents grieve for Shawn like their own son as twisted as that is because he was their son and it means that they loved him the way he deserved to be loved. He finds it in the way the sun, against all odds, still rises and sets every day. Life goes on. And that’s not a terrible thing.
“Seek out happiness. And know that you deserve to find it.”
That's the hardest part. After he let the grief take away nearly every last bit of his humanity, stripped him of all that had made him who he was, Cory spends a lot of time wishing for happiness but confident that he doesn't deserve it. He spends a lot of time waiting for happiness to find him but resigned to the fact that it never will. The truth is, if he spent all his time waiting then it really never would appear again. Happiness would never find him because he had to find happiness.
“I love you,” Topanga tells him one day. “What happened doesn't change that.”
“But I've changed.”
She smiles a sad smile full of heartbreak and loss, and reaches out to touch his face. “Not forever,” she says before she kisses him gently on the lips. “Grief does change people. And there are some bits and pieces of you that may never come back.” Her eyes fill with tears as she takes his hand on her own.
She's right. Bits and pieces of him died with Shawn and Cory feels incomplete without them. He's afraid he'll never be whole again. “You deserve someone who is whole,” he says. “and so does Riley.”
But Topanga just shakes her head. “I love you,” she says again. “and that's all that matters. You're not a terrible person, Cory Matthews. You're just a little. . .”
“Broken? Damaged?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “What did you tell Shawn all those years when he thought he was too broken and damaged to deserve any good in his life?”
His heart still aches when he hears his best friend’s name. Cory wraps his arms around his wife and pulls her close to him, holding her tightly. “I told him that he was never too broken or damaged for me.”
“Love is not about turning away when things change and get tough. It's about remaining the one constant in the face of all that change and being soft and gentle when things get tough and everything hurts. When everything else is stripped away, love remains. No matter what. That's what you told Shawn. Maybe not verbally, but you definitely showed it to him.”
This time it's Cory who kisses Topanga.
Here's what Cory knows now: Grief is terrible. It's scary and painful. It's stubborn and long lasting. It's powerful. Very powerful. It's deceiving and cruel. It's dehumanizing. It's life changing. Isolating. It seeks it's victims out and threatens. In some ways it never truly goes away.
But it does fade. Because it's not the strongest thing out there. Hope and love are even more powerful. They're gentle and quiet. Restoring and beautiful. Honest and steadfast. They remain in spite of the change, never changing themselves but stay constant and comforting. They keep company. Reassure. They're healing. They bring happiness. Peace. They come to anyone who looks for them.