Dear Brad

I have heard that writing a letter helps when you are grieving. I decided to try and have discovered that I could just keep writing forever to my friend of over 20 years and I'm not certain it would make me feel better about being without him. Still, I think there's value in articulation so here it is. My hope is that there's some relief in sincerity. If it injures you to read it, don't. If it honors my friend and shines any light on how much I cared for him, then I'm pleased.


Dear Brad,

This wasn't supposed to happen, honey. Your birthday is just next month. You have dogs. Your hair is not all the way gray. You have nieces and nephews and I've done everything the book says you are supposed to do to keep you here so this is not supposed to happen. And also I thought you promised you wouldn't ever leave me.

I'm not ready.

God, I can't bear that you were alone when you left this earth. That's the worst part to me - that for even a minute you felt a separation from those of us who love you so much. And anyway, shouldn't I have known the instant you were gone? You'd think I would have felt the earth move a little when you left me. I keep looking backwards to see if maybe I did and didn't recognize that the tremor was your departure. I don't have much experience with these things.

Remember how you saved me? Remember? God, if it weren't for you I would have kept trailing after so many losers. You believed I was so much better than I ever was and you never could believe I thought the same of you. Remember when I needed you and you drove me several hours to my grandparent's house for the funeral and then you said for me to just call, you'd be back to get me another day? And remember when we grew our hair out together? Yours was huge and mine was flat and we were certain we looked fantastic. Remember after college when you came and whisked me away to a resort in Jamaica because we couldn't bear any more cold weather? Nobody else would have done that. Nobody else would have laughed me through bad haircuts and bad relationships and nobody else read every word of every thing I ever wrote. Nobody else made me laugh like you.

You were never any of the bad things you claimed to be, sweetheart. Sometimes I think you could glimpse what I could see, this shiny, smart, witty, champion, capable and quick to laugh. You were always more loved than you could accept. Your hilarious dissection of your every fault made you all the more precious to your friends. Didn't you know we adored you? Maybe if despair hadn't felt so familiar you could have believed that.

Thank God I have enough memories of us that I can keep you close, that I can hear your voice just as clear as day and that I know exactly what you sounded like when you laughed and when you cried even. I'm so grateful, honey, for every bit of influence your humor and heart have on me, so grateful that my daughter shares your birthday and that you showed up for me every single time I ever asked for you. And I'm sorry, too, that I didn't find the right combination of words that would make you stay here with me a little longer at least, that I didn't keep you closer if that's what it would have taken or that I didn't understand the depth of your despair. I'm still wishing I could somehow bargain you back here by rethinking every conversation.

So now I'm stuck dealing with people on Facebook trying to out-grieve one another and doing the frantic work of collecting every memory I can grab up, every voicemail, every scribbled note as some scrap of evidence that you did really love me and that you knew I really loved you. I'm the crazy woman, left here telling strangers at the market how you were always the funniest, smartest, most insightful one. If you wondered, they don't think our inside jokes are as funny as we did.

I hate this tangly, suffocating, horror of losing you and I hate that the world injured you so badly and so frequently and that you were just too sweet for the ugliness of it and I hate most of all that the person I would call to whine about all of it is you.

I know that grief works this way. I'm smart enough to know that I'll just have to miss you and miss you and miss you until this agony dulls around the edges. I can do that. It's just that it wasn't supposed to happen like this.