When I was in middle school, I wrote an essay about the song Wake Me Up When September Ends. While many people seem to think this song is a joke, and publish memes about waking up the artist at the end of September, the song is a deeply personal one. Green Day’s song is about front man Billie Joe Armstrong, hitting the anniversary of his father’s death each year. I have never related so deeply to the song as I have this year. Each day of September we draw a day closer to the day that Kody died by suicide. I don’t know what it is about anniversaries like this, but they hold more significance than all those other days without him.

I can feel the fall coming. There is a certain crispness in the air and a changing of the light that signals the fact that the fall equinox is coming quickly. I am taken back to this time last year, and some of the last moments of Kody in my life. How can it be that this is all now almost a year ago? It doesn’t feel like so much time has passed and at the same time it feels like a century. Grief seems to do that, freeze time even while it slips away like sand in an hourglass.

Kody and I both listened to Green Day on a regular basis. We loved the depth of some of the songs, even while on the surface many of them don’t appear to be as deep as they are. I enjoy listening to them still although now I feel a specific type of nostalgia for them that I don’t think I felt before. It is crazy to think back to middle school and before I even knew Kody and to realize that this song particularly resonated with me so much back then. It’s as if my soul knew. I felt the sorrow of the song even then and felt like it related deeply to my life.

Is it possible that in some way I felt the connection far before it was warranted, because a part of me somehow knew? Did my soul have some understanding of what was going to happen in this lifetime? It feels like this now. I recognize my connection to the song now as I too spend September in dread. Waiting for this first anniversary of his death. Do I too feel the pull to ask that someone wake me up when September ends?

I don’t know how I will feel on September 22nd. I don’t know what kind of world I will wake up to when it becomes a whole year since Kody passed away. Grief is strange and unpredictable. Will it be a day where I want to just stay in bed? Or one where I am filled with the need to do something special? Will it be just like all the other days this year have been? I think I am most afraid of the last one. I am afraid that the day will pass as just another day. Nothing special or important. Anything else would be easier to bear.

It is tempting to wish I could just sleep through September. Skip over the worst bits and move on to October. But if I did that, somehow I worry that his death would mean nothing. And somehow if that were the case it would mean his life meant nothing. I am going into September awake. I will see all that it will bring with it.