Trulogy

Dear blob of cells -

You were not much more than that to most people.  The Dr.'s and nurses at the hospital were so callous when I came in bleeding and crying just knowing that the worst was yet to come.
 
I knew about you for 5 days.  5 amazing, wonderful days full of hope and the promise of what would be.  During those 5 days I had this constant nagging thought..."you will lose this baby."  I always pushed it to the back of my mind, thinking it was just a "new mom worry".
 
But it wasn't.  And we lost you.
 
To me, you were my child, my baby, my son or daughter.  I was so damned excited I told EVERYONE we were expecting you only to have to tell them all 5 days later that there would be no baby.
 
I was so sad.
 
I sobbed often...I felt like my whole world was falling apart.  The grief was so intense at times that I thought I would implode.
 
I remember seeing butterflies EVERYWHERE after you left and I would think of the story I read about butterflies being the souls of children no longer with us...it brought me comfort everytime.  I knew you were watching over me and letting me know you were ok so I could go on.
 
Gradually it got better and two months later you sent me your brother.  I was sooo scared I would fail with him too.  But you kept him safe.  You watched over us and made sure we were ok.
 
I still think of you often, even 6 years later.  I love you whole-heartedly and look forward to the day we will meet.  I just know you're so beautiful!!
 
Love Momma xo

To my beloved cat -

You were always there when i needed comfort. no matter what you always would climb into my lap and purr as loud as you could, as if my presence was all you needed to be happy. when ever we had visitors you would come sit with me and my family members would all say, "yes, that's HER cat. he loves her more than anything" and i was so happy. then you got sick and we didn't know why you lost weight so fast. then the vet said it was cancer and we all fell apart. i found out a week later that my dad was going to put you down. i knew it was the kindest thing to stop your pain but i couldn't bear to see you, so thin and yet still purring loudly whenever you saw me. i left for the weekend and when i came back you were gone. i knew what had happened and i think i left that weekend just so i didn't have to see. when i came back the entire family was ignoring the subject and continuing on normally. I'm so sorry i didn't say goodbye when i left, so I'll say it now. Goodbye Spud, my little black kitty. know that i love you. and that you'll always be MY cat.

Dear Daddy -

 I miss you everyday. I am sorry for the choices I made and hope that you aren't disappointed in what you see when you watch me from heaven. Your little princess is growing up and is still learning about herself as well as the people she associates herself with. I wish you could have been here to meet your granddaughter she is has so much energy in her for the illness that she has. I know you are with us every time she goes in for another surgery and I am glad that you can be there in spirit though I do wish that you could be there in person. When I am there alone at night in her room during her recovery, I always wish you were there to wrap your arms around me and pull me in for one of your daddy bear hugs. I can't believe it is 11 years that you are gone I still expect you on some days to walk back in the door but I know that you aren't going to. I love you daddy and miss you every day.

I love you daddy.
Love,
V.

Dear...who?

Oh, there are so many of you. So many of you gone. I have said before that if I had known, at 18, 19, 20, that this was going to happen, that I would lose you ALL, I don't know how I would have gone on living.  If someone had said, before you've turned 30, you'll lose your PopPop and a girl you haven't met yet, but whom you will love like a little sister. And a few months after your birthday, your baby will die inside you, and another friend will turn his waxen face to you and say he is sorry. Three days later, you'll watch him die.   And your crotchety grandmother, who wrapped up lekvar cookies for you every Christmas--just for you--you'll hold her hand as they disconnect her from machines. You will be in the room as she takes her last breath.
And then Daddy. Your Daddy will die. 

If they had told me this, I could not have borne it. 

You each deserve your own story. You each deserve something from me.  I promise you I will say it, even if it's only here, where other broken hearts have come to rest.  Soon.

For now, I love you. I miss you, all of you; sometimes the lack of you folds me in.

To my Dad

Today is your birthday.  You would've (should've) been 55 today.  Instead you've been dead almost a year, and the pain of losing you is something I will carry with me forever.

I'm sorry that I wasn't more patient with you in the last several months of your life, as the brain tumor got bigger and bigger and your personality changed more and more.  I felt like I had just started to get used to the "new" dad, the one who woke up from brain surgery a changed man from the one I grew up with, and then as the tumor recurred and grew and grew . . . well, you got more and more different, and it got harder and harder for me to handle.  Having you live with us while Mom got my childhood home ready for sale and we prepared to all move into a house together was hard; being around you all day every day, the differences were so pronounced . . . and being pregnant while taking care of a 2 year old, my patience was already at ebb tide.  I'm sorry I didn't have more to give you.

I'm sorry that we didn't get more time.  When things started to really go downhill, they went so fast . . . from the day we decided to discontinue treatment they said we might have three months, and we had barely three weeks.

I'm sorry that my initial response to your death was, in large part, relief.  Relief that we were no longer dealing with cancer and hospice and medications and your steady decline.  Watching you disappear piece by piece was agony, and I was glad when it was over.  Now that I have put some distance between your illness and NOW, though, the pain of existing without you in my life is overpowering the relief of being through with cancer . . . and bringing with it a whole new kind of pain.

I'm sorry that my kids won't grow up knowing you--that my baby boy (less than a month old when you died) will have no memories of you at all, and that my daughter's memories will be fuzzy at best.

I'm so angry that you're gone . . . both that you were snatched from us forever on that operating table 4+ years ago, and that you were lost to us again in the beginning of this year.

I miss you like crazy, Dad.

"I'm so mad..."

I'm so mad at you for leaving.

So angry that you are not here.

To see your grandchildren grow up.

To pick up the phone when I need my best friend.

Most of all, I'm lost without you.

I wish I was there the day you left us.

To hold your hand and tell you that it's okay.

And for you to know that I will always love you.

I miss you mom.

Dear M. -

Before you left San Francisco to return to your native England, after we'd worked together in California for so long, you asked me to come visit you in your new home. And I said I would.

I had a vision of coming to the village where you grew up and meeting the people who were so lucky to have known you then. The village, I imagined, was lush green and overcast, the way English gardens are. You were sitting in the pub, making people laugh.

You went back to England with your partner who you'd met in San Francisco, and you were going to start a new life together, there. We were both working for the same company still, but both of us were working from our homes – mine on the west coast of the U.S. and yours in a village in England.

But then I got laid off. And then you were diagnosed with multiple systems atrophy. Then you got laid off too. You were looking for a new job and you found one. Your partner had turned into a jerk and was treating you terribly. I know it was hard for you to try to cheer me up, but you tried anyway. You told me, in an email, that I should watch some episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. We were both going through such hard times. One day when I sent you an email to your hotmail account, it bounced back. And we lost touch.

But I thought of you often. You were my best friend at that job. There's no dearer friend to a woman than a gay man.

I got another job, and then another job. I finally got pregnant. Life went on. And then one day I went to a work event and ran into another one of our former colleagues. He said, “So did you hear about M.?” And I wondered, what news could he have of you? Did you have a new job? A new partner? Had you moved back to the States?

But he told me that you had died a year and a half earlier. I was as in shock as if it had happened five minutes ago.

He told me that you'd drowned while on vacation. Your multiple systems atrophy maybe contributed to it. You were just in your mid-30s.

When I got home I started trying to track down other people who had heard about your death. I kept looking for more information. But I realize now that I was actually looking for someone who would tell me that it was all a big mistake. You weren't actually gone. I could call you on the phone now and arrange my trip to visit you.

But I never found anyone who would say that. And I couldn't find your parents or your sister either. It's harder to track down people in other countries than it is to track down people in the U.S. Eventually I stopped trying and I moved on.

Until a few weeks ago. I found your sister and sent her an email. I told her that K. and I still want to come visit you. We want to see where you grew up. We want to meet your family and friends. We want to take that trip that we never got to take.

And when I heard back from your sister, I felt reconnected to you again.

K. and I are planning a trip to visit your sister next year.

I remember back when we worked together, to be funny, you used to recite the words to “Candle in the Wind” – in that silly, dramatic way you had. And I think about you still, saying those words, and now they make me think of you. But instead of making me cry the way they did a few years ago, today they make me smile again.

love,
J.

To my best brother -

You knew your little sister loved you, but I'm sorry that you never knew how much.  And, aside from you being gone, there is nothing worse than knowing that in your final months, your final days, your final minute on earth, the mental illness that you fought so bravely prevented you from feeling the love of so many hundreds of people who thought you were a great man.

But I think I knew your goodness more than anyone.  I knew because I knew you before you could even talk.  I knew you as the smile and eyes leaning over my crib that I could always trust, the big brother who'd hold me up when I was toddling, take the blame for me when spankings were handed out, kick the hell out of anyone on the playground who you heard teasing me.  I often think it wasn't my own strength that got me through being raised in our crazy house by two alcoholics; it was knowing that you were there to protect me.

But you never knew how much that meant to me, because you never knew how much I needed to be protected.  In these last couple of years, I considered telling you, now that both of us were nearly 40 and you had your own children.  But the old instinct to protect the family from more upheaval kicked in, because I know if I told you, you wouldn't let it go.

When I'd tell my friends in college about my brothers, I had this shorthand: Good Brother and Bad Brother.  You were Good Brother, of course.  You never got credit for it because you were the troublemaker, you were the middle child who acted out all of the pain and dysfunction in our family.  Bad Brother got the credit for being oldest and making money and doing well in school.  You got the shit end of the stick, drinking, getting into fights, getting suspended, dropping out of high school, and then getting hit with bipolar disorder.  But I knew all along that you were the good guy.  You were the guy who got in fights for sticking up with people; you didn't start them.  You were the guy who wore the bruises I earned.  You wore the bruises of our whole family on the outside.

I wore them inside at first, and later in the layers of fat that I wore to protect myself.  Because when our other brother started coming into my room at night, I couldn't tell you.  I knew you might kill him, or if not, you'd do anything to protect me, even if it meant breaking up our family.  And for me, in my crazy kid-of-an-alcoholic way, preserving the tiny shreds of peace in our family was a greater priority to me than preserving my bodily integrity.  I squeezed tears through my closed eyes.  I told no one. 

But even in my darkest, darkest hours, I always knew that I *could* tell you.  Even years after I got him to stop, I knew that I could tell you.  And that knowledge that you would always be there for me, that there was always a net between me and the floor, is what kept me going, what gave me the strength to get out and get safe and get away.  You never knew what you did for me.

It was the greatest gift of my life that we had gotten really close in the past few years.  I will never forgive myself for failing to save you, for not sending you a text that morning, or calling you the night before, or any random thing I might have done that might have changed the outcome of that morning, that might have thrown a tiny slim ray of light into a darkness and despair that must have been darker and deeper and more painful than anything I can imagine, times a thousand.  Because I know you never would have left us willingly.  I know the pain you had already endured, and I know you were bigger and stronger than any pain I can imagine.  But your illness is lethal, and it killed you.

And now, for the first time in my 38 years, I exist in the world without a big brother.  These four months have been the worst of my life because the pain of your loss is with me with every breath.  There have been times in my life when my depression made me feel alone and unloved, but even in the darkest of depressions there was a part of me that knew that that was never true, because I always had you.  I rarely called on you to save me, but I always knew I *could*.  I don't know what I will do without you.  I'm sorry that you never had a moment in your life when you didn't have the pressure to take care of someone else. 

You were the best brother I had, my best friend, and the best man I've ever known.  I only hope that if there is a Heaven, it is one where you can finally know how much you were loved in life.

Boundless love,
Your sister

The Babysitter's Report

I only knew you for a little more than a year.  After you died, leaving your two girls behind, your home was so quiet.  I felt it was strange that I didn’t feel your presence still there.  It felt like you had simply vanished.  I never had a chance to say goodbye, because I couldn’t imagine that you’d be gone quite so fast.  A family member told me you had referred to me as “an angel” for staying so late to take care of your girls those last couple of weeks.  I hope that I was some kind of a comfort to you in your final week at home, and that you might have had just a little bit more peace knowing that I was there for your family.  That was the only thing I could give you.   

I think it’s ironic that we were never incredibly close, but I grew so close to your whole family after/because they lost you. 

I dreamed of you once last year.  We were sitting in your kitchen – I knew it was your ghost, but I wasn’t scared.  You were telling me that you were so glad that I had stayed with your family for so long and planned on staying more, that you knew the girls loved me and I them.  Then you said you had to leave, because the girls were coming home soon, and you didn’t want to scare them.  The dream seemed so real that I am inclined to think that it was really you, just stopping by to check in, giving me a performance evaluation of sorts.

Almost three years have passed.  The girls have struggled, they’ve missed you every day, they’ve had their ups and downs – but they are strong and are doing well.  I mention you often, partly so that they know they can talk about you with me, and I think they enjoy hearing little things that you told me about them.  They have a stepmother now.  She can never replace you, of course, but she is a good person and it is good for them to have her in their lives. You would like her.  They have step-siblings, they have a dog – the apartment is full and loud again.  I will never stop wishing that I could tell you these things, could fill you in on all big and little events of daily life as every babysitter fills in the parents when they come home. But you won’t be coming home – maybe that’s why I find it so hard to leave. 

The Nanny

To my friend,

I’ve known you and loved you since we were 12 years old, giggling over first kisses and meticulously feathering our bangs. You were my partner in skinny-dipping, calling boys, and later in true heartache and house renovations. After 20 years of friendship, I am ashamed of how I behaved in the last six months of your life. I never could have known when I chose to ignore your phone messages and emails that those were my last chances. My last chances to laugh with you, to cry with you, to simply be with you. There are lots of excuses that I could delude myself into calling reasons: your mental illness, my Grandfather’s death, a new pregnancy, a life that just keeps getting crazier. But when I look at myself in the mirror I know that they are just excuses. It’s true that you were crazy and wild and self-absorbed, but you were also beautiful and kind and passionate. Above all, you were my friend, and you deserved better.
 
Now I desperately want to return your calls and I can’t. I think about you every day, wishing I had access to some of your mommy wisdom as I struggle through the adjustment of having a second child. I look at his little face and cry that you will never get to meet him. I cry for your children who have lost the center of their world. I cry for you and the old woman you will never get to become; I was looking forward to being old with you.
 
This is the only way I know how to apologize, the only way I know how to say goodbye.
 
I’m sorry, so sorry. I love you.
 
Your friend.