Letter 15

May 19, 2015

Dear Jesse,

I haven’t written in a while but you already knew that, Jess.

The speed in which change keeps entering my life has been so overwhelming. The past year it’s been focusing in on my internal life, my feeling, emotions, beliefs, and the days have been anything but short of kind at times.

It was a Sunday morning.

I placed your camera, flannel and beanie on the table in front of me. I just stared at it a while before picking up the phone. I could remember you alive in them as well as dead, after all, it’s what Aimee and I laid you out in. I was with you when you bought the flannel a few years prior. You had come to spend the night with me at my Jersey farmhouse when I was pregnant with Dylan. Those were better days for us; there was a sense of hope when we were together. You were soon going to be ‘Uncle Jesse’. It felt really good.

I miss feeling hopeful with you right next to me.

I miss hearing your voice enter my ears.

The coincidences had been too much for me to ignore in the weeks leading up to the phone call. I remember saying to Jeremy while in the car about four months after you died; that I had a feeling I was going to connect with you. He looked at me and just nodded more out of slight confusion and possible worry, but not out of belief. I felt even more alone in what was happening with me. Your suicide and my journey afterwards was changing me, challenging me, even if that meant I was walking alone.

It was Cicada season and they were so loud throughout the day and night. You never saw them alive, only heard them in the trees and then would see their empty shells around during the day. Just before I called her, I took Ollie outside for a walk. As I made a turn down the cul-de-sac I stopped. Just at the grass line was something squirming around and Ollie and I walked over. It was a live cicada in the middle of its transformation. I couldn’t believe it. It was half in, half out of its old shell, struggling to get out. I wanted to try and help but I stopped myself. There was something about this experience that was speaking to me; little did I know this was a total foreshadowing for my own journey.

I dialed the phone number given to me through the email exchange with her.

My hand was trembling.

I was really fucking nervous.

She kindly said hello, introduced herself, and spoke a few things to me about how she was going to conduct our session. I responded with a very tearful, “okay”, and she began.

“Who is the woman with breast cancer?” she asked

I couldn’t believe it.

“It’s my mom.” I replied.

She went on to recount exactly how mom died that night of December 9th, 2010. Not many were aware of exactly how she did die. The doctor signed her death certificate as stage 4 breast cancer but us three kids knew that wasn’t it. She hadn’t been back for any follow-ups the last 2 years she was alive. We all knew her doctor wanted to cover his ass. He had been prescribing mom various pills throughout the years. I remember even calling him in highschool telling him she was abusing whatever she was getting from him. That was highschool and she died when I was 28. Her body just fucking gave out after all the alcohol and pill abuse. Mindie even told me about the details of her GI tract issue the day prior to her death.

“I’m seeing a little boy, between 3-5ish, do you have a son?” she asked.

The tears started again.

Yes, I do, my son, Dylan.”  I replied

“She knows about him and is constantly around him, she says she needs you to know that.” 

I did.

I really did need to know.

Finding out I was going to become a motherless mother just 3 months after she died was earth shattering. I was in the throws of deep grief and to find this out, well, the word ‘scared’ doesn’t describe the feeling. It wasn’t until I found out my due date was the same week of her passing that I knew, I knew mom had a hand in giving me Dylan who was, is, and will always be the anchor that keeps me grounded through all of this.

“I keep getting someone here that, wait, in the throat, having a really hard time breathing?”

I didn’t respond.

She didn’t let up.

“Who is the person having a hard time breathing? It’s a male figure. Who is this?”

I couldn’t hold it back, 

“It’s my brother.”

The wave of tears could have drowned me.

Our new relationship as sister and brother had just begun.