I wrote a letter to a friend. She had just lost her husband, and they had been childhood sweethearts who decades later, suddenly found themselves in their 60s, so this was a marriage for life, a monogamous relationship that lived out the marriage vows to the letter. I was writing because I saw her, knew her as a fragile person and worried about how she would carry on without her life partner and it troubled me to the point where I had at least to reach out in a letter and convey my thoughts as a way of helping to comfort her in even some small way, though I knew the pain she suffered now was beyond anything I could assuage.
I always liked them as a couple and appreciated their obvious warm and selfless love for each other and admired this in them. They seemed to me the very picture of how relationships should live out the years, and now suddenly one had been torn from the other, heartlessly and with a fatal suddenness that seemed to underscore the brutal side of life that so often occurs, with what seemed like a precisely planned randomness. One moment he was there by her side, lighthearted and laughing amidst the crowd they frequented, and the next moment he was gone, with no telltale signs, no fore-warnings, no complaints from him, his heart had simply stopped and in an instant, he had left this earth and her for eternity.
A few years before, this had happened to me, although not nearly as unexpected, yet still just as painful, just as awful and heart wrenching, life altering in every way imaginable. Her death had stopped me in life, had caused me to pause everything, and the simply unthinkable was suddenly and irrevocably palpable in my hands and on my lips, as I softly kissed her cold forehead and held her lifeless hand in mine. My beautiful friend, my lover of a lifetime, who had laughed at my silly jokes, who had tenderly held me so often in her warm embrace, who had believed in me beyond what I myself could even imagine, had suddenly, in the dark and early morning hours, slipped out of my life forever. And even in the few years that have passed since that morning, the sense of loss, the emptiness, the endless silence is what has replaced her laughter, her wit, and the tenderness with which she prepared the last, beautifully decorated Easter eggs, all gathered in a little basket, prepared for me as a surprise.
I was inconsolable, as I was afraid my fragile, wounded friend might also be, second guessing whether I had done everything I could to have saved her, had I given her too much or too little of the medicines that were easing her pain as she made her final passage, cursing myself for having fallen asleep instead of being there for her final, conscious moments, wondering if she had said anything that fell upon ears that were not listening, had wanted one last thing, asking myself all the questions in the aftermath that now would never have any answers. I didn’t want my friend to go through this as I had, and so I typed the letter:
4/6/2016
Dear Ellen,
I’m heartbroken as I write to you, and cannot convey how sad I am that you have lost your loving husband, Joe. I always felt you two were indeed, a match made in heaven, and that you would have found each other at some time, somewhere in life no matter what… you were meant to be together!
Our friend Dan told me some of the details of Joe’s death and I thought long and hard and felt I should write and tell you that like you, I was there for my wife when she died, and have many times wondered if there might have been something else I should have done in order to save her, to the point where it brought me pain and guilt, needlessly, since there really was nothing I could have done, nor was there anything that you could have done for Joe, beyond what you did, and Ellen, you should know this and be at peace. You deserve this and should not make the mistake of allowing Joe’s passing to haunt your thoughts, he wouldn’t want that, you don’t deserve that, and now is your time for healing, my friend.
I’ve been where you are now, and saying good bye to your life partner is the hardest moment in life you will ever face, but the pain in your heart will gradually subside, though it will always be there as long as you have memory. Now, as I, you will live on the many wonderful memories you have of your lover and friend, for you will always have Joe where he has always been, safely sheltered within your loving heart.
Now, take good care of yourself, my friend, and let the many who love you, look after you at your work, at your social activities and in your life. And if you ever have the urge to travel, please come visit… would love to see you!
Barry
I placed the letter upright in the mailbox, set the red flag up so the carrier would know there is outgoing mail, and hoped that in some small way it might prove helpful to her over time.
Several weeks later, my letter reappeared in my mailbox, unopened, stamped with the image of a pointing hand, marked, “RETURN TO SENDER, INSUFFICIENT ADDRESS, UNABLE TO FORWARD.” I couldn’t imagine why this had happened, the address was correct, she hadn’t moved anywhere, and yet here my letter had come back to me. My gentle gesture had failed, but I didn’t really want to call her, didn’t really want to say all of the things I had said in the letter to her over a telephone, it didn’t feel right, my words would vanish in the air, for I would be saying all the things she probably least wanted to hear during this time of grieving. I tossed the letter on the desk, unopened and frustrated that it hadn’t found its mark.
But it kept gnawing at me, and as time went by, it troubled me that my voice hadn’t been heard, as if I hadn’t cared in her mind about Joe’s passing. Slowly, as days went by, other ideas began to come to me. I had put my heart into writing the letter and had tried to express something helpful to a person going through something I had found so incredibly painful that I couldn’t let the moment pass without at least trying to give some comfort to her. It began to occur to me that although outwardly there was no valid reason this letter should have come back to its sender, or was there?
I opened the sealed letter and slowly read through each paragraph. Suddenly it was clear to me… I had counseled Ellen to do everything in the wake of Joe’s passing that I had failed to do for myself. I was still haunted by the thought that I hadn’t done enough, should have done something other than what I did, when the truth was plainly spelled out in the letter I now held in my hand; that no matter what I did on that early morning passage to eternity, she was going and there was nothing I could have done, or should have done to alter this. As Joe would’ve wanted Ellen to do, and as my wife would have wanted me to do… I needed to take my life out of this self-imposed suspended animation, and get on with living out the promise, fulfilling life for both of us, as she would certainly have wanted. I folded the letter, put it back in the envelop and placed it in the desk drawer.
It was late morning as I stepped outside and sat by the pool. The sun was rising high in the sky toward noon and it was going to be a scorcher, you could already tell. I sipped on my coffee, was glad to be in the cool shade of the umbrella, and watched Mugsy as he walked around the far side of the pool, sniffing busily along the edge of the cage screen. She would’ve loved it here, I thought, as I took another sip of coffee.