It makes me think: why do we write a last will and testament, make arrangements for our children and possessions to be taken care of, but we don't say goodbye to the people who are the most important to us? We don't leave them with something to hold onto to bring them comfort...we don't leave an unmistakable "I loved you and you were important to me!"
I guess it's because we'd like to think that it will be a loooooong time before something like that would be needed and/or it's just another of the too-many-things we need to do.
I remember writing some goodbye letters when I was a teenager, just in case. Ironically, one of those was to my Beloved Friend. I'm going to update my goodbye letters. I do my best to let the important people in my life know that they are important to me, but do they really know? Have they believed me when I've told or tried to show them?
There are
Because I would give almost anything to be reminded by my friend that she loved me and knew how much I loved her.
5 comments:
Ooof. I'm so sorry.
I wish I could tell you for sure that your friend DID know how much you loved her. Because I truly believe that she did.
And I like your idea of writing those notes JUST IN CASE. (I totally did that as a morose teenager too. They'll need to be updated and not contain so much awkward poetry.)
I've thought about writing notes to my husband and children - especially the children, yet I don't know what I would say other than "I love you" about a million times over.
I write each child letters about once a year - sometimes more - that go in a book for each of them. I like to think that if (really when) I die they will read those letters and it will be clear how over the moon I am for them.
I love the idea of yearly letters to the kiddos. That seems a lot less morbid than "just in case" letters.
I hate that you're in a position to be thinking about such things. :(
When I was 30, a high school friend got a rapidly-moving cancer and died. I didn't find out he was even sick until the day after he died. I've wished so hard that he'd written to say good-bye.
That idea above, about writing letters to your children each year, well, that's awesome! Especially now that I have two children who are older, it's harder to tell them what I want to tell them face to face (too mushy and sentimental). But in a letter, yes, that's the way to do it.
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