Saturday, January 16, 2016

Dear Curt

Dear Curt,

It has been almost 11 years: 11 years since I last saw your crooked smile. Eleven years since I last heard “I love you.” Eleven years since you last called me “Lady”. Eleven years since you died. It really doesn’t seem possible. You died. And I didn’t. How can that be?

For almost eleven years, I haven’t gotten to talk to you. I miss our conversations. Do you know I still talk to you? In the kitchen while I’m cooking, sometimes when I’m driving, or wherever I am when a thought or problem strikes me and I want to talk about it with you, I just do. But you don’t answer. That’s the hardest part. The times when I desperately need an answer, there is just silence on your side. I miss you.

Our daughter is beautiful. She is amazingly thoughtful and empathetic. You should be here to know her. You would adore her, and she would so delight in you. She loves history, just as you did. Do you know that? It fascinates her. You would be so proud. She has never known what it’s like to have a dad, but we have always talked about you, and we have always tried to let her know that – once upon a time – she had a father.

Violet took a long time to recover from losing you. She loved you so much. She still cries sometimes when she looks at pictures, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. She actually has vague memories of you. She was so little when you died, all of three and a half years old, that a lot of memories have gone blurry, but there are a few that she retains that I didn’t put there. She hangs on to those, and tells me about them when she’s feeling melancholy. You affected us all, Curt. And when you died, the life we all had died with you.

I still have daydreams about what it could have been like if you had lived and were there with me in the operating room for the c-section when Emma was born. You were so excited when I told you I was pregnant. You were so happy. I had never announced a pregnancy to that reaction before, and it felt wonderful. In my daydreams, in the operating room, you are there instead of my mom. You stroke my cheek and tell me everything will be fine. When the doctor pulls her out, you get to cut the cord, and then kiss me for congratulations. It’s a happy scene. So much happier than real life, which was bittersweet at best: my mother stood in for my deceased husband as I, a widow, delivered my baby. God, I wanted you there. I wanted to see you holding our daughter in your arms.

You weren’t supposed to die, Curt. You were young and handsome and wonderful and kind. I am heartbroken that every good thing that I wanted for you did not happen. Do you know how much I wish I could hold your hand again? Do you know how much I wish I could feel your heartbeat under my cheek again? Do you know how much I still grieve for you?

Does anything I say, or anything I feel, make it to you? Does heaven have a blog? Surely, there is a better way of communicating than tears, and sobs, and wishful thinking.

I love you. I will always love you.

Your lady,


Karen