Dear Eric,

Most letters are started with hi, how are you?  I don't really want to know exactly, as I'm going to assume you're better than when we last saw each other.


It was three months yesterday that you died.  It could have been three seconds ago as the sight of your last breath lingers in the front of my mind always.  I think about how scared you were to die.  I know it didn't get easier for you, you just submitted to the "fact of the matter".   I'm sorry I didn't have more hope and relied more on science than on faith.  (I feel like I've written this letter to you before, but I guess it's necessary for me to tell you again.)  I remember us crying together about how unfair it would be for our children.  I don't want to burden you with this, but it is so unbearable for them.  


Our son whose heart is in reality his mind was broken.  "My heart was broken" is no longer just a phrase, I've seen it happen.  Over the last months I've seen the million little pieces come back together slowly for him.  The light that dimmed to darkness in your eyes also dimmed in his.  I can see glimpses now of  who he once was.  Some of his heart is starting to mend but it's so broken I just don't know how long it will take.  He needs to be held most of the day.  "Hugs."  That's all he says, with his arms outstretched for me to hold him.  Sometimes, it's annoying as I'm busy doing nothing.  I hate that about myself.  Hugging has become so important to him that I've learned that I don't hug well enough.  It was a short, how do you do, as opposed to a long tight hold and a passing of love to someone else.  


Our big girl, is much more of a thinker and do'er.  She has taken the role of "helper" to compensate for you not being here.  She manages the dogs, the baby, her hair, and makes coffee for my mother everyday.  She doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve like Harrison.  She's more like you in that sense.  She's so so sad, but it's so hard for her to talk about the hurt of you dying.  She talks about you everyday.  Some of the stories she tells I'm not even sure if they really happened.  I listen intently and depending on what reaction she wants me to have, that is reaction I give to her.  I'm spending alone, girlie, time with her and she loves it!!!  Oh, and I play Lego's with Harrison and I HATE it.  He cries that he didn't play Lego's with you enough.  I know he asked you to play, I'm not sure if the two of you did play or not, but I know it wasn't enough.  It never could have been enough I guess.


Our baby girl sees pictures of you everyday and says Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.  As always, when I put her to bed, we sit in our yellow chair and discuss our day.  Yesterday, I told her how much you loved her.  I told her how sorry I was that I put her in this awful situation.  I feel so badly that she's going to grow up without her "real" daddy.   We had her so late in our lives.  Hesitating and not sure if having another child was the right thing to do.  Calculating how old we'd be when she graduated college and got married.  None of that really matters now as you won't even see her second birthday.  I wouldn't change having our sweet girl, but I feel so selfish for not considering the "what if" more, and only thinking of what I wanted.  She is talking up a storm.   She even say "aggilator" for alligator.  She says her "L"s perfectly thank god, as her first name has two of them.  An L speech impedement would have been challenging.


I miss you.  I hate living in our home not because you died here but because you lived here and made it what it is.  Such hard, back breaking work you put into this bunch of brick and mortar to make it a home.  The more the flowers bloom and the trees grow the more I hate it.  They shouldn't be here as you're not here to see it.  I don't see it as some stupid testimonial, I see it as this just sucks.  The lights in the house that go dark stay dark until my father comes and replaces them.  All of the "things" I either passed to you or were just your "job" are now nobody's job really.   The absolute worst are the technical things that go wrong in the house.  It's as if my mind has no capacity to understand what to do.  I do what you taught me to do.  I stop, I think, and then I execute.  It's takes a little more time than taking a mallet to the fucking safe I couldn't open BUT I did figure it out AND didn't have to call the company.  I know you wouldn't believe it happen if you saw it, but it did happen.


You come to me in my dreams and lecture me about stuff.  I'm going to ask you nicely to STOP FUCKING DOING IT!!  It causes me to lose sleep.  Two weeks ago it was four days in a row.  It really drives me crazy to wake up and have nobody to talk back to.  Always being able to have the last word in a conversation just isn't fair.  Payback is a bitch I guess.  I knew that would make you smile.  


You'd be disappointed to know that because of me Harrison has lost his best friends.  I know you told me to "keep my mouth shut about things", and I always did when you were here.  Then you left, and then I couldn't help but just be me.  And so I ruined what was so important to Harrison.  He cries over it about three times a week, tells me he hates me, and I say I am so sorry.  "I lost my dad, and my best friends, and it's all your fault!"  He's right.   Maybe if I did have hope things you wouldn't have died.  Maybe if I just sucked it up and shut my mouth and didn't say things I was thinking I would still have friends and Harrison's heart wouldn't be broken.  There are so many what if's and should have's that I could scream.


The baby is starting to wake up right this second and the first thing she screamed was DADDY!!!!  As if I wasn't hysterical writing you a letter on the day after the third month anniversary of your death.  I'll go to her, I'll pick her up, she'll say, "Mommy, cry."  When she sees me cry she also makes a sad face and asks for a NaKin to wipe my tears.  


This new life really does suck.  I've gotta tell you, it's mostly about the kids.  I'm not sure how I'd feel if we didn't have them, but my sadness is buried in their sadness.  I can't even "process" (your favorite phrase) how I feel yet.  


I've gotta go, but I wanted you to know that the kids just can't come to see you yet.  I ask them sometimes if they'd like to go visit you and they're not ready.  I'm not sure they'll ever be ready as children.  Maybe when they're a little older, but I'll keep asking them.  They're kids, they change their mind all the time.


Oh yea, there's a new song by Train called "You Can Finally Meet My Mom"  I've cut and pasted them below.  It's the song Adelaide and I sing together in the car when we're doing stuff together.  She doesn't wanna hang out with anybody else but you when it's her time she said.  I don't blame her.


I love you,


Alyce

Just like Daddy!!

"You Can Finally Meet My Mom"

Don't cry when I die
When it's my time I probably won't die
I'll just lie down and close my eyes
And think about stuff
These eyes got too wide seen too much of life's goodbyes
Should have spent less time making loot
And spent more time in my birthday suit with you

And everybody upstairs, everybody down stairs
I'm not gonna have time to hang out with them

'cause I'll be hanging out with you

Not Jimi Hendrix, Jesus or the dude
Who played the sherriff in Blazing Saddles
You not Chris Farley Mr Rodgers oh I've waited so long
You can finally meet my Mom

Life is good, but love it's better
Even Bieber ain't forever
We all got to go you know
So you might as well go in style
Everybody prayin, everybody singing
I'm not gonna have time to hang out with them

'cause I'll be hanging out with you

Not Gilda Radner, Buddha or the dude
Who had pop rocks and soda at the same time
You, not Jesse James, Paul Newman and oh I've waited so long
You can finally meet my Mom.

I'm not making light of things
But who's to say who's right with things like this
There's so much that we miss
Tryin so hard to be rich and famous
Pretty and thin, to win
It's a shame that youth is wasted on the young

So forget everything and just be with me here now
For as long as we can and whoever goes first save a spot

You, not Etta James, Bob Marley or the girls who won my heart along the way
You, not Sitting Bull, Ella or Bach and I almost forgot
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom

No Steve Jobs, or Ty Cobbs, Al Capone or any other mobs
No Whitney Houston, Chet Baker, Andre the Giant or the Undertaker
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom
You can finally meet my Mom