Six Months Down, Forever To Go

Dear Rachel,

Today is the six-month anniversary of your death. Odd to think of it as an anniversary. I’ve always thought of those as something one celebrates: the anniversary of one’s birth, of a marriage, of the founding of something. In this case, it’s the anniversary of a profound loss.

In some ways it feels as if we had received that terrible phone call just yesterday. That poor Virginia Beach detective; I could tell he didn’t want to make the call he was making, but he did his job as best he could, knowing all the while that he was about to ruin a whole series of lives beyond the ones that were cut short the previous night in that condo by the beach. I wonder if the man who shot you knew how many lives he was really ending.

In other ways, it feels as if we’ve been living with the awful news forever. Day after day we grind through it, just trying to get by. There seems to be no end to it, and I don’t suppose there will be. We manage, mostly, but almost anything can set us off: a picture, a memory, a song on the radio.

But we owe you more than that. We owe it to you not merely to carry on, but to truly live. We need to rediscover the ability to feel joy, love, and peace. Maybe we can do that some day. We’ll try.

Love,

Dad