Dear Reader

Kimberly Sewell

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Dear Reader,

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I am writing to you because I do not know you, and there is comfort in anonymity. What I have to say is too close and too painful to share with the ones I love. Their listening is tainted with feeling and memory that turns my pain into theirs, and I deserve to have my own pain heard. 

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On my father’s last day, he wrote three letters. They found the letters in the cupholder of the Suburban. They found the Suburban in a parking lot by the lake. They found Dad in the trees by the lake. I never saw him. Or the car. I avoid the lake. But I’ve kept the letter. 

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Dad wrote three letters with three different messages to three different readers. To me, he expressed his love and his pride, and his shame at leaving me. To my mother, he expressed his exhaustion and resignation to having failed, in some way, as a spouse and a father. Her letter was longer, but it was laced with poison and fattened by an unfeeling, but thoughtful, list of passwords and information so my mother could begin putting the pieces back together. I never read my brother’s letter, but I know he is haunted by nightmares of my father where he is always out of reach, where he is angry, where he is distant. I think I got the best letter. 

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I can’t talk to my family about these letters. It isn’t fair to them to know that my letter held only kindness, that mine had soft edges where they received biting words and lasting stings. That letter is a comfort to me, all the same. I haven’t read it in years, but I remember its sadness, how my father lamented that he wouldn’t be there for my future milestones.I think of that letter every time I find myself crossing a new threshold. My father didn’t see me graduate from college. He never met my husband. He couldn’t walk me down the aisle. He wasn’t there with a bottle of Crown Royal that we’d never finish, to celebrate our first home. 

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I keep the letter tucked away in a drawer. It haunts me. It hurts me—not just that he wrote it, but that he thought about it, that he typed it up. How long had those letters been sitting on the harddrive of our family computer before he hit print? How many drafts did he go through, what words were typed up and backspaced away? 

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I saved the envelope too. It’s the only place I’ve seen my name scrawled in his hand. His style is distinct. He was a doctor, and you know the joke about doctors’ handwriting? Well, when he wrote, he took extra care to compensate for that making his meaning plain by spelling every word out in all caps. When I went to college and began studying jazz music, I saw a similar style adopted in the handwritten musical charts my teachers passed around. I modeled my jazz writing after my father’s hand, and though I find it tiring to copy out lengthy segments of writing in that disjointed style, I use it as often as I can. Because it’s the closest I can get to my father on a daily basis. Because a handful of capital letters, a little vial of ashes, and a lifetime of regrets–of missed opportunities–are all I have left of him. 

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The last time I saw Dad was New Years Eve. I had a gig, and he came, like he always did. My father died in June of that year. January to June... those six months of radio silence is a hole in my heart that shrinks and grows and shifts from the recesses to the forefront in an unpredictable pattern of grief I know will follow me the rest of my life. I’ve tried to forgive myself for my silence, to make peace with the fact that I was a young woman living on my own for the first time, that I had secrets I was ashamed my family would learn if I called and asked them for help. That if I spoke up, they would know I had failed. I’ve tried to be kind to myself, and mostly I know it wasn’t my fault, but we are all culpable for the actions and inactions of our life. And so the hole stays. 

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I suppose it might make more sense to write to him than to you, dear reader. I certainly have a lot I could share with him. I could tell him about grad school. He was a writer too. I’ve read his poems, and I have his manuscript in a box... each typewriter page a thin and fragile record of his thoughts, ephemeral and fragile, and—so far—unread. What would he have to share with me now that I am entering this world? Would we connect over it the same way we connected over jazz music? I could tell him about my husband. He’s a comedian, and my dad loved a good joke. I can imagine him greeting my husband each visit with a newly crafted joke, with the generous permission that he could steal it for his set if he liked. I wish I could know if any of them would really be funny, if he would make my husband laugh. I wish he could meet my cats. I wish he could identify the bird that comes and lands near my window each morning. I wish I could ask him how he’s doing, as if the answer to that would be easy, as if asking it now could make up for not asking it during the six months between seeing him for the last time and having his letter put in my hand. 

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I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with this knowledge, Reader. I feel I’ve burdened you with the albatross around my neck, ambushed you in what might have been a joyous moment. I guess I’m sorry for that, but I needed to be heard, needed for someone to know—and in that knowing, absolve me of this pain. I thank you for reading, for bearing witness. I hope—that when you are full from your own grief—you find as gentle a reader to hold space for you.