My Parent Loss Letter, Valentine’s Day, 2018

Whether a one-off or part of a regular tradition, writing to your lost loved ones can be incredibly healing. A way to feel connected no matter how many years have passed. Here’s a letter I wrote to my father on the third anniversary of his death. Perhaps it will inspire you to write your own parent loss letter.

February 14, 2018

Papá,

Today is the day I lost you—which suggests that part of the total ickiness I felt yesterday had to do with mourning.

I remember that day, three years ago. I was with Steve and the kids at a family-friendly Valentine’s Day party at Noam and Laura’s house. It doubled as a birthday party for Noam.

There were many kids. Lovely food and drink. Occasional near-complete conversations with grownups before inevitable kids’ boo-boos interrupted. Requiring lavish kissing-away displays.

And then there was a call on my cell phone that sent terror shooting through me.

I’d been with you just three days prior in Boston for a celebration of your 78^th birthday. A party you proposed, having just been released from the hospital.

You wanted to sing.

And snowstorm be damned, your circle of Boston friends was going to be there to sing with you.

It was a wonderful celebration, and sing you did. And dance, complete with Nigerian beads around your waist. Delighting children and adults alike. 

Just a day earlier you were sitting in a hospital room with your brother William, who had come to visit from North Carolina at my bidding. (Unbeknownst to you).

I called on the phone, pretending to be in Philadelphia. You described how nice the nurses had been and some of the highlights of this, your most recent stay. You were animated, speaking into your flip phone as I rounded the corner and tiptoed into your room.

The surprise-turned-to-delight on your face was worth every bit of subterfuge. Your laugh would have been a bellow if only you had the body mass for such a thing.

Quite the contrary.

We helped you dress and headed back to the house in Jamaica Plain. But you’d grown so thin that as you walked up the back steps—assisted on each side by Alice and William—your pants had other ideas.

They plummeted to your ankles, leaving your little sticks of legs poking out from blue flannel boxer shorts for all to see.

Fortunately, the snow drifts were already more than adequate to prevent any neighbors from having any idea of what had transpired.

Uncle William and I would share several shoveling shifts in those days together as relentless Mother Nature kept burying Boston in ever more snow.

Snow shoveling included, it was a magical visit and a special time.

As I needed to depart for the airport, you stood to bid me farewell.

You lost your footing somehow and fell to the ground—fortunately not hurting yourself. You quickly and instinctively sought to right your frail, frail body.

Somehow it was in that instant that I knew I was seeing you alive for the very last time.  

I carried that feeling with me to the airport—probably desperately attempting to shove it down into my toes with the help of a cinnamon bun or some other something I surely didn’t need.

But it was precisely that feeling that leaped into my throat when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket at the Valentine’s Day party at Noam and Laura’s.

Your almost imperceptible voice on the other end of the line—explaining that you were just so cold—fulfilled my deepest sense of dread.

I probably asked some silly question about adequate blankets.

When really what I wanted to say was how very much I loved you. How you were the perfect father for me despite your many failings that compounded so confoundingly with mine.

Instead I talked about blankets. You talked about being so cold.

I did tell you I loved you, and you told me you loved me, too.

I felt so very far away. Because I knew the end was so very near.

It would be an hour later, maybe two, when Alice called to say that they were rushing you to the hospital by ambulance.

Syd, who’d literally just arrived from Chicago, got to see you before you were whisked away.

I know you still weren’t ready to go. Just the day before you’d shown me the pully set-up you intended to use to keep doing your daily exercises.

You only very reluctantly agreed to modifications I proposed so you could continue to do the things you wanted without traversing those treacherous steps to the basement.

You still had plans, I know. An inveterate agitator, you weren’t ready to give up the fight.

But I also believe in my heart that seeing Syd, even for such a tragically short stint, did help you feel a little bit more ready to let go.

Alice called again…who knows how much time had passed. She was at the hospital now with you, and a friend had come to be with her.

It was in that call that she said to me she knew I wasn’t the praying sort. But that now was the time for prayer.

Was it because I didn’t know how to pray that her next call was to tell me that you’d died?

Valentine’s Day forever bittersweet. I miss you, my Papá. I love who you helped me become.

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