A Letter

There are so many things I never told you. Not because I didn't want to, but because I thought I had more time.

But time ran out, didn't it?

Now, as I sit in this car, watching the road stretch endlessly ahead, I find myself talking to you in my head, hoping that somehow, somewhere, you can still hear me.

The road reminds me of all the times you picked me and my brother from school. We'd squeeze into the car, our backpacks shoved between us, exhaustion from the day still heavy in our limbs. You'd hum an old tune under your breath, the windows down, the scent of trees and rain lingering from the afternoon. Somehow, you made even those ordinary rides feel special, like they were more than just a routine, like they were moments worth holding on to.

Back then, I thought you'd always be there. I thought you were like a mountain, unshakeable and permanent. But mountains erode, don't they? And stars, no matter how bright, eventually fade.

Even now, I still see you everywhere. In the early morning rumble of an engine. In the quiet way a grandparent reaches for a child’s hand. It’s strange how someone can be gone and yet feel so present at the same time.

For a long time, I believed that if I worked hard enough and planned things just right, I could keep my world from falling apart. But life doesn’t work that way. No matter how tightly we hold on, people leave. Roads keep going, whether we’re ready or not.

I think of The Little Prince and the way he loved his rose: “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” Maybe that’s why the memories of you sit so heavily in my chest, because I spent so much time with you. Because you mattered in a way I didn’t fully understand until you were gone. And now, I don’t know what to do with all this love I never got to say out loud.

The roads narrow, winding through endless fields. The sky stretches wide, and for a moment, I feel small. I think of The Darkling Thrush, how Thomas Hardy looked at a bleak and lifeless world, only to hear a bird singing in the cold. 

“At once a voice arose among

 The bleak twigs overhead 

 In full-hearted evensong

 Of joy illimited.”  

Even in the harshest winter, the thrush still found a reason to sing. And maybe that’s what hope is, not something we see, but something that exists even when we don’t notice it. If a small bird can find joy in the middle of the coldest, hardest season, maybe I can, too.

And then there’s the Wild Geese. Mary Oliver wrote: 

“You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

 for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.”

For so long, I thought I had to be more. To be better. To somehow make up for the things I never said, the time I thought I had but didn’t. But her words remind me, I don’t have to punish myself for feeling lost. I don’t have to carry this grief like a stone in my chest.

And then, as if speaking directly to me, Oliver wrote:

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

The world goes on, Grandpa. And so must I.

The sun dips lower, the sky turning soft orange and violet. The road is still endless, but it doesn’t feel so lonely anymore.

 

Maybe, like the wild geese, I’ll find my way. Maybe, like the darkling thrush, I’ll learn how to sing again. And maybe, like The Little Prince, I’ll come to understand that love never really leaves us, it just changes form. It becomes the echo of an old song, the shape of the stars and the whisper of the wind on an open road.

 

I miss you. But I’ll keep going. I’ll keep on driving, keep watching the stars, keep listening for the song.

And as I move forward, I’ll keep looking for the beauty you always saw in the world, because love, like stars, never truly fades. 

 With Love