Dear Mom,

Though there’s so much I wish we could talk about now, I can honestly say that there is nothing unsettled in my heart that I wish I had said before you passed away. Everything that is truly important and needed to be said was said. I told you every day before you passed away how much I loved you and how beautiful you were. Though we only had 21 years together, you taught me so much. 

That said, there’s so much I wish I could tell you now after your passing. There have been countless times that I have reached to pick up the phone and call you only to become frustrated that I know that you can’t answer where you are. So many things have happened, and I wish you were here just to talk about them. It’s the day-to-day things that I want to talk to you about the most, but I’ll just tell you the most important things I really wish you could know. 

I want you to know more than anything that I am still surviving. I still haven’t figured out how to live without you, but each day I wake up and try to make it through. It may not seem like much, but I think it’s what you would have wanted. In your absence, my heart is still broken, and I still cry often, but I also smile a lot when I think about all of the amazing times we had together. I also want you to know that you have left me well equipped to face the rest of life. You taught me the most important lessons in life in the short time we had together: love God, love people, be kind, give whatever you have to make some else’s life easier, and even when life rages against you, sing a song. I miss singing with you so much.

Finally, I want you to know how thankful I have become in the time since your passing. After you passed away, everyone was quick to tell me how sad I would be when I thought about you, but nobody told me how thankful I would be. I believe that I had the most amazing, beautiful, godly mother for 21 years, and when I let that thought sink in, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for the time we had together. Though some people have their mother for 60 or 70 years, how can I be jealous when I believe that the 21 years we had together were better than 100 with anyone else? I think about all the lessons you taught me—how to love, how to be loved, how to sing, how to worship, how to endure, how to be happy—and my heart is again filled with thankfulness and happiness.

If you can read this where you are, the last thing I want to say to you in this letter is that I love you and miss you so much, and I’ll see you afterwhile.

Love always,
Elijah, age 22