“...You get one life, and not everyone gets to live it all, so make it beautiful.”
- Cosmo Silverman
DEAR COSMO:
STORY LILY SCHAFLER
Cosmo had a great laugh. I know everyone says that about someone they’ve lost, but his was different. It felt like it came out of nowhere – loud, sudden, completely unguarded. It made you feel like whatever you’d just said was the funniest, smartest or best thing anyone had ever said, even when it was nothing at all. Being on the receiving end of that laugh, over and over, changed me. It made me braver. It made me bolder. I kept reaching for it because nothing felt better than knowing I was the reason he was laughing like that.
I haven’t heard that laugh in a year. And I’m losing it. The exact pitch of it. I used to be able to close my eyes and hear it perfectly, and now when I try there’s just – almost. Almost his voice. Almost that sound. I’m terrified that one day I’ll reach for it and hear nothing at all.
We were each other’s people. It was always me, Sadie, Cosmo, and we were happy like that. That’s the simplest truth I know. He knew what I would order at every restaurant. He knew which songs I would skip and why. He could tell when something was wrong before I said a word – I was convinced he could read my mind. I have never felt so com-
pletely seen by anyone, before or since. I would give anything to be known like that one more time. We met in eighth-grade history class, sitting in the back row. Halfway through the year we realized we were neighbors in an area where almost none of our friends lived. We had been circling the same streets for years without realizing it. After that, we were inseparable. I knew from the first time we hung out that I had found a home in him, and I’d like to think he found one in me too.
Before Cosmo came into my life, I walked around with a quiet fear that I was doing everything wrong, that everybody seemed to understand something I didn’t. I lived my life waiting for the other shoe. He never said anything to “fix” me. He just loved me so completely, so comfortably as himself, that my fear grew smaller in his light. With him, I could finally set it down. With him, I could breathe.
I’ve found that grief lives in the smallest rooms. The way he texted back in seconds. The silence in the passenger seat on my way home. The shirt that he left in my room that still smells like him. A song he would have loved that he will never hear. A joke I saved for him that I’ll carry forever now.
We bickered constantly about everything and nothing–what movie to watch, which route to take, what to eat, who got to pick the music. Our fights were loud and stubborn, but they always ended in laughter. Even when we fought, it felt like love, because it really was love. Every moment with him was.
I keep coming back and rewriting this. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because nothing I say can really hold even a fraction of the weight of him being gone. There is no language big enough for what it means to lose someone like Cosmo. There is only what remains: the shape of the absence where he should be.
I’m not writing this because I have something wise to say, I don’t think I do. I’m writing this because I loved him with every piece of my heart, and I am so frightened of the day when people who didn’t know him stop asking. I’m afraid of the day when his name becomes something I only say in the quiet, to no one, just to keep it alive some-
where. He was extraordinary. Radiant. Funny. Completely and stubbornly himself. He was here, and he was so alive. And now he isn’t. And I don’t know how to explain what that does to a person –to hold all that love and have nowhere left to put it. But on days where I can feel the ache physically in my chest, and it feels like my world is crumbling again, here is what I hold onto: I am still becoming the person he believed I was before I could see it in myself. And I think maybe that’s how we carry the people who we’ve lost: by growing into the version of ourselves they saw so clearly.
If there is any lesson I’ve learned in this first year of loss, it is this: the pain is the final echo of our love. To wish the pain away completely would be to wish away the love, and I will never do that. So I carry both now – the love and the loss – woven together. Some days the weight of both is almost unbearable. But I let myself laugh when something reminds me of him, and I let myself cry when I feel his absence. Both feel like honesty. Both feel like my way of loving him still. All I can do for Cosmo now is try to live with the openness and courage he brought out in me. To not hide in my grief. To still notice the small, ordinary moments that make up a life. Because that’s what he did so beautifully. He showed me how to be fully here. I want to be here too, the way he taught me to be, even when here is so much smaller and quieter without him in it. And on the days when the sadness feels too heavy to breathe through, I try to remember his laugh. I let it pull me forward and remind me that I am still here, still carrying him with me in every bit of life I manage to live.
I love you, Cosmo. I loved you then and I love you now. I will love you in whatever comes after this – in the long quiet future where you are not, in every room I walk into for the rest of my life that you should have been in too. You are not small. You never were. And neither is this love. Neither is this loss. It is as vast, and raw, and endless as you were. And I would give anything just to hear you laugh one more time.
PAGE DESIGN OLYMPIA BROWN
COSMO BONNET SILVERMAN
My best friend, Cosmo
STORY SADIE THURNAUER
From the first time I met Cosmo in fourth grade, I knew he was special. He had this radiant energy where no matter what, you’d want to be his friend, or get to know him at least. This was because he was so interesting and hard to understand. You never knew what would happen next with Cosmo. One minute he could be laughing with you and the next he would
be furious. Though it annoyed me so much at the time, I find myself missing that feeling of not knowing what would happen next. Not knowing whether he would yell at me for liking the same clothes as him, or whether I would say something stupid and he would laugh so much harder than I ever expected.
Cosmo’s opinion is what mattered most to me. I remember once, after class, just before the bell rang, telling him to listen to the song Cherry Blossom Girl by Air. I was so worried he wouldn’t like it, but later that day when he came up to me telling me he loved it, it was the best feeling in the world. Because Cosmo was the coolest, if he liked something I liked, it meant I was cool. It was a sense of validation and verification that assured me: yes, I am cool because Cosmo said I was.
With a name like Cosmo, you’re born special. The world knew from the minute he was born that he was special, special enough to make such a big impact on so many lives, including my own. Cosmo had and forever will have an impact on everything I do. Whether it’s what I wear, what I think is funny, or what music I listen to, it’ll always be for Cosmo.
Recently I’ve been listening to the song Waltz #2 (XO) by Elliott Smith, and a line from that song sticks with me: “I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow.” I feel that way about Cosmo. I’ll never know him now. I’ll never know what he would wear right now, listen to, what he would paint, what we would like; but no matter what, I’ll always love him. I’ve always loved him, and I still do, no matter where he is.
Now, I often find myself worried: worried I don’t remember what Cosmo looked like, or
sounded like. Cosmo was such an important part of me. It felt like no matter what, we would always be friends, and we always will. It felt like that even if we hadn’t spoken in years, everything would go back to how it was in a second. And now, I find myself hoping for that. Hoping that Cosmo will come back from whatever “trip” he’s on and everything will go back to normal. We’ll sit in our old spot, hangout at the same places, and everything will be back to normal at some point.
Except that feeling of normalcy will never come, because after Cosmo died, nothing will be back to how it was.
Sometimes I wonder where Cosmo is, because it’s not possible that he’s gone. It doesn’t make sense in my head that he’s anywhere but here, that there will forever be an empty spot at the table, open for him. That we will never walk around his neighborhood or school together again, that he’ll never text me again, or that I’ll never hear his laugh again. Because Cosmo was such a big part of my life. He was a constant. No matter what, I always had Cosmo. We went from elementary school to middle school to high school together. He was the one person who went with me through these changes and stayed by my side no matter what. We were going to be together no matter what; because Cosmo was and forever will be, my best friend.
The thought that Cosmo watches over me comforts me. I like to think that a bird flying nearby or watching me is him, or a colorful butterfly flying near Lily and me as we sit in a park. It’s comforting to think that he knows what I’m doing, what I’m laughing at, what I’m wearing or listening to. I like to think that even though he’s gone, a part of him still stays with me in the quiet moments of my life.
COSMO’S PLAYLIST:
I miss Cosmo all the time, and so much reminds me of him. If it’s seeing something I know he’d laugh at, or something that would make him so annoyed, it all reminds me of Cosmo. And even though it’s hard, I never want that feeling to go away. Because if it goes away, that means a piece of me is gone too.
What I’m really trying to say through incoherent paragraph splices, is that Cosmo was someone special – someone so special that if you met him even once, you’d already know what kind of person he is. The kind of person that makes you feel understood just by one conversation with him. I see myself in Cosmo, and I see Cosmo in me. We were so similar, and so different. Even now, after everything, he still shapes how I look and move through the world. I catch myself wanting to show him a song, tell him a joke, or just hear his opinion on something so small and ordinary. That’s what it means to truly know someone: they don’t really ever leave you. Cosmo may not be here anymore, but a small part of him exists in every version of me, and he always will.
What hurts me the most about losing Cosmo is also what makes knowing him so meaningful. I don’t think that kind of connection ever really disappears. It doesn’t ever end, it becomes part of how I think, what I notice, and the way I carry him with me through everything I do. I will never stop missing you Cosmo, and I’ll always love you no matter what. You will forever be my best friend, Cosmo.
PHOTOS LILY SCHAFLER, SADIE THURNAUER, OLYMPIA BROWN, CHARLOTTE SILVERMAN