The Things You Would Have Said

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend with lots of family and friends! Instead of posting a letter today, I wanted to write a short message to encourage everyone to write a letter of their own, in honor of Memorial Day.  Whether you personally know someone who has risked their life for ours, you’ve heard about a heroic act somewhere around the world, or there is someone in your life that has simply done a great deal for you, this is a perfect opportunity to tell them how you feel.  Take some time today or this week and write a letter to those who have made an impact on your life, acknowledging them and all of their greatness.  Happy Memorial Day and check back in this week for some amazing letters!

Dear Grandma,

I love you, but then you know that. I still think you know it, even though you don’t seem to totally know who I am. You still light up, even if for a brief moment, when I walk in and greet you. Your face still smiles when I give you a hug. The tears still well up when we have to say goodbye. There is something in you that realizes I am someone who loves you and whom you love back.

When you walk me to the door and watch me leave, with my three little boys, I get that choked up feeling, that tightening in the back of my throat.

Still, if you could have just one day of pure clarity, there is so much I would tell you.

I would tell you that I am good, that life is good, that God is good. I would tell you about how blessed I feel, to have a good husband and three beautiful boys. I would tell you all about our recent move, from city life to country home. I would explain the whole process, and how you were part of that process even though you didn’t know.

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Dear Timmy,

You are my best friend.  I think you were the first friend I met when I moved to New Jersey.  You always loved Legos as much as I did.  We would build for hours while watching tv, not even looking at our hands as we threw things together. At school, we would always call each other by our nicknames that we gave each other–Skittles and M&M.  For some strange but funny reason, they were candies.  Even though we live on different sides of the country, I know we will always be friends. I wish we could have one more day to do the things we can’t do together. 

Timmy, you are the nicest, kindest, and coolest kid I have ever known and I hope we will be friends for life.

Your friend,
Matthew, age 10

Jen,

I realized on Tuesday that I still can’t believe you’re gone. I don’t think I can accept it.  Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. It’s not possible for that smile to never shine again.  To know that I will never look into your blue eyes as we both burst out laughing at the same time to a joke it took us both 5 minutes to get. No more cruising the oceanfront with ABBA blasting. 

You were not the first loss in my life but I have to admit you are the most significant. You had so many friends and acquaintances, but you were my best friend.  I did not even have a clue as to how many lives you had touched until the day we all met and laid you to rest together.

We knew each others deepest secrets, darkest fears and most treasured hopes. We took care of each others children.  I hope you know that without doubt I will be there for Mike and the kids whenever they need me, as I know you would be for my family.  My heart aches at the thought of my son never getting the chance to truly know what a wonderful person you were. 

We have been best friends for 15 years and will continue to be. We just can’t go get ice cream for the kids together anymore.  The world is truly a darker place without the light that came from you.  I love you and I miss you more everyday.

Joanne, 31

Dear Daddy,

I wanted to say I love you and that I did not want you to move out of the house.  Every time you would leave, I would start to cry.  I miss you when I have to go back to Oregon.  Then, I wait for a year and a half to see you again.  I got to stay with you last year for only two weeks and that made me sad.  I hope I get to stay with you a little longer this year.

Love,
Leia, age 9

To my Grade 5 choir teacher,

You never said I should try harder, or even that I was doing anything wrong. You just told me I wasn’t good enough, and for 20 years I believed you. You took away the little self-respect I had. I’m sure you felt it was a trivial thing, but when you hurt someone who is already vulnerable, especially a child, you can do so much damage. Your scorn might have been ignored by another child, but I had no one to talk to, no one to tell me that I wasn’t the problem. I never sang in public again. I don’t sing Happy Birthday, even from the safety of a crowd.  You took away so much, so casually.  I wish I’d told someone, while there was still a chance to make you understand how much harm you did. People break so much more easily than they heal.

DS, age 40

Dear Birth Mom,

It feels strange to be writing this letter to you. I’ve never had a desire to meet and talk to you face to face, but there are things I wish I could communicate to you. I hope that you aren’t hurt that I haven’t pursued finding you; it’s just something I’ve never felt I had to do. Naturally, I have a fairy-tale picture in my head of what it would be like, but that heart-warming picture is enough for me. My adoptive parents have always told me they would be supportive should I want to seek you out, but a small part of me feels it would be a dishonor to them in some way. I truly do not need the closure – my parents are amazing and I consider them my own flesh and blood. I have never felt like there was something missing in my life.

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Red Robin,  
 
I really miss you, Red Robin, even though you were just a hermit crab. There were a lot of funny things that you did and you looked very odd. Even though you died when I was just eight, I still remember a lot about you. I liked how you climbed up and down your cage and liked to hide in the sand. I don’t know how you died but I wish I knew you were going to die because then we could have the best time ever, just you and I. I wish I could just say how much I wish you wouldn’t die and say always how much fun I had with you. I really miss you, Red Robin. 
 
From, 
Alex, age 10

Dear Sweet Beautiful Amy,

Like it was yesterday, I remember the last day and time I saw your beautiful smile, sporting your new hairdo. You and your best friend surprised me with a visit!  I took you both out for dinner that night to your favorite restaurant, the Spaghetti Factory, because it was a tradition when you came to visit me.  Gosh, did we have fun laughing, eating and just hanging out that night, or what? At the end of the evening, I hugged and kissed you both and wished you a safe and fun trip on your spring vacation. You two were off to Las Vegas!

It is now going on seven years since that day when I received that ugly late night call from your step dad. We lost you to a car accident. I have cried every day since and still with tears running down my face now as I write you this letter. I pray every day for you and hope that you were not scared, that you did not hurt or feel any pain, and that in the end of it all you had the time of your life, as short as it was on this earth.

Your mom and twin sister love and miss you so much, Amy. They are so strong to go through the motions every day. I really don’t know how they do it. I don’t. And when I look at your sister, I see and hear you in her voice, her mannerisms, her smile and laugh. It is so bittersweet.  She had to learn to be a single sibling in a very painful and devastating way. You were always the leader and she the follower.

Every year, your mom and step dad put together what we endearingly call Bowling for Amy Day. We celebrate your life! With all of your family members, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, we go bowling, eat pizza, play horseshoes and gather in a big circle with helium-filled colorful balloons with our personal handwritten messages to you. We say a prayer and release them to you, in your honor.

Please keep visiting your mom and sister in their dreams, and if you have time, swing by and visit with me too! You are forever in our thoughts, forever in our hearts and never forgotten.

I love you, Amy.

Aunt C, age 56

Dad,

I’ve started this letter a million times…in my head, on paper, on the computer. But the words never seem to come out right. And I oftentimes wonder why I should be the one reaching out to you. You’re the one who left us. Who didn’t want us.

Didn’t want us. Maybe that’s not how it seems to you but to me that’s how it feels. How else are two children supposed to feel when one day their father is there and the next day he’s gone? I was so young that I don’t even have many real memories of our brief time together. And pictures of you are scarce–after all, you are the reason for my mother’s broken heart.

And my broken heart. Don’t get me wrong–Mom raised us well and sacrificed everything for her kids. She loves us with ever fiber of her being. But there continues to be a void in my heart. A void that can only be filled by you.

I always maintain the strong face in public but when I’m by myself I let my true feelings about you show. I’m sad you’re not around to see the person I’ve become. I’m sad you will never have the opportunity to walk me down the aisle. I’m sad that I grew up without a father–I never had a chance to be a “daddy’s girl.”

There are worse things in life then having an absentee father. But the one thing that continues to devastate me is you don’t want anything to do with us. You walked out that door and we had to beg to see you. Never did you volunteer to take us anywhere to spend any quality time with us. And that cuts the deepest.

Yet you found a way to take on a new family. If you didn’t love Mom anymore then for her sake, I’m glad you left her. But you don’t know how it hurt to see you at grandmom’s funeral with your new wife and her daughter. She’s about my age.  Why are you willing to take care of her, your stepdaughter, but not your own children? Were we not good enough? Or were you scared to approach us? Were you just afraid of how we would react?

The anger and hurt I carry around in my heart has taken its toll on me. Relationships fail because I’m afraid to get too invested. Afraid he’s just going to walk out the door. But I’ve found someone I want to make things work with. And I refuse to let the anger and hurt you’ve caused to stand in my way. So I’m done carrying around this anger. The sadness is much harder to erase but I can forgive. That does not mean that the scars on my heart will be erased.

Sometimes I envision spending countless hours at a little diner just talking to you. Learning about the last twenty years of your life and filling you in on mine. How I fell in love and was ready to marry someone before pushing him away. How I live and breath horses still after all these years. How much I love music. And how, no matter what, I still love you. But then the traffic light turns green or I wake up or someone interrupts my thoughts and my daydreams go out the window.

I pray to God that one day you’ll find the strength to reach out to me. As angry as I am if we were face to face right now, I would just run into your arms and call you “Dad.” I haven’t said that word to you in twenty years. Maybe one day I’ll find the strength to reach out to you. I have to completely let go of the anger, though, before I try to conquer my fear of being rejected by you–again.

Love,

Your Daughter, age 24

To my someone,

The last month of your life was a bad time for us.  Had I known then what I know now–that you were sick and not just being a jerk–I would have said and done a lot of things differently.  When we said I love you and parted ways, I had no idea it would be the last words.  Had I known you would take your own life twenty minutes later I would have said, “Hold on.  It will get better.  Get through the moment.  Tomorrow is a new day.  It will get easier. Nothing is worth your life.  Think of me, think of our baby girl, think of your mom, family, friends.  The world will NOT be a better place without you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I wish you could have just gotten through that moment.  I now have to face the fact that my husband murdered my husband.  That’s really what happened and part of me absolutely hates you for it.  There are people fighting as hard as they can for their lives and you had the nerve to take your own?  It is the ultimate act of selfishness.  I had to tell our 3 year-old-daddy’s-girl that her daddy was dead and never coming back.  Someday I will have the task of explaining to her that it was by your own hand. I am horrified at what a dark place you must have been in to actually be able to go through with it.  What pain you must have been feeling at the time that made you want to end it all.  Did you do it to save us?  Did you know how sick you were so you ended it to save us the heartache and life of abuse?  I’ll never know. 

What I do know is that the man that died in my garage that day was not the same man I married.  The man that I married – I will love for the rest of all time.  I miss you babe, every single day, I miss you so much it hurts.  She misses you too–she needs her daddy.  You should not have left us.  You should have gotten help.  I would give almost anything to look into your beautiful blue eyes and hold you and tell you exactly how much I love you – that I will always love you.

Tiffany, age 36

Dear K,

There was a fire truck at your funeral.  They parked it out front because your mother told them how much you liked fire trucks.  Someone at your funeral said that we would all be lucky if we could make as much difference in our lifetime as you had in just under seven years.  He was so right–the church was overflowing– someone said that there were 400 people there.

You were amazing.  I wish I had told you that when you were alive.  You had to work so hard for everything–but you always just did it. You always did the work, twice as much as anyone else had to–and you did it smiling and cheerfully.  And everyone fell in love with you because of it.

I hope you’re up there holding grandpa’s hand like I imagine (your daddy said this is the image in his head, too).  I know that grandpa’s beaming at you.  And probably feeding you ice cream for breakfast.

You saved three lives.  I hope you know what a hero you are.  I know heaven knows what a hero you are.

Love,
Aunt C., age 33