Life after death: From grief, hope

LYNN – By telling the stories of 20 people recovering from grief, Helen Cogan said she has taken to heart a simple message in the six years since her husband, Robert, died.?You can be happy again,” she said.Cogan, a Basse Road resident, and Patti Comeau-Simonson finished “A Book of Hope” in April and have been filling book orders since then. The pair will be at Rolly?s on Aug. 20 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. to sign copies of their book available on amazon.com.?It?s for all of my Lynn friends,” Cogan said.The women met when Cogan joined a Danvers support group for widows and widowers a year after Robert Cogan died following an 11-month bout with oral cancer. The Cogans were married 28 years and have four children. A former General Electric employee, Robert Cogan taught in the Lynn public schools for 13 years, including Lynn Woods School.?Bob loved life. He was simple and easy-going. He was a great husband and an awesome father,” Helen Cogan said.She spent the first year following her husband?s death “putting one foot in front of the other,” at once supporting and relying on her children, Rosemary, Patrick, Matthew and Shawn.?It was hard for me to grieve, but I needed to be there for them,” she said.She sold her home and confronted the stark fact that dreams she shared with her husband were gone. The monthly discussions over coffee with other people grieving losses helped her grasp another equally tough reality.?I could stay angry or sad or put my feet on the ground and walk,” she said.She embraced a suggestion to pursue an enduring interest and took up photography. On sunny and snowy mornings, she roamed Lynn?s coastline and Revere Beach, snapping photographs, including a time-delay shot of her standing on the beach with arms upraised.She said the photo marked a point two years into her grieving when she firmly tackled the notion that she wanted to live life.?There were times I wanted to curl up and die but I had to create my own new world,” she said.Conversations about sharing the stories of other people grieving prompted Comeau-Simonson and Cogan to combine the stories with Cogan?s photographs to create “A Book of Hope.” Cogan shot most of the photographs in Lynn.The stories repeat some of the suggestions grieving people are urged to take along their journey to hope, like focusing on dreams and goals and, said Cogan, asking “what would your loved one want you to do right now?”She said her son, Shawn, wrote one of the stories that particularly moved her. It reads in part: “Grief is only for a second, and then I remember my dad and our good times together.”