Letter 2

September 14, 2023

Dear Aimee,

It was December 13, 2019, one week before you would end your life.

I was driving to Alabama with Sailor to spend time with Andrew’s family. As I drove on the highway a vision came to me and I intuitively knew it was significant even though I did not understand the context. Without hesitation I picked up my phone to make a voice memo of what I was seeing so I didn’t forget.

The days following your death pulled me deep into myself in a way I had never known. I experienced this through our brother Jesse’s suicide but now I was experiencing it again—but with you. Like falling into the deep end of a pool, the farther down I slowly sunk, the more muffled the external world above was. This place that I went, it was a place where everything existed simultaneously. The shock, the trauma, the secrets in our bloodline, the terror—sheer terror, the fractured parts of self, the suspension of time. I was completely awake to an experience happening within me.

In order for a person to transmute something, one must truly know it.

It was December 31, 2019, just 11 days after your death—18 days after the voice memo recording—and exactly one year from the dream I had and wrote to Jesse about in letter 27.

As I lay under the covers in the darkness of my bedroom I became viscerally aware of the presence of something moving closer to me. An image was illuminated in my mind and I saw a murky, indistinct cloud with a density that filled its formless edges.

I felt it energetically move up the stairway ceiling towards my bedroom—towards me.

My stomach started to feel as though it was being pulled in and down by a cord—a plug, while my body instantly became tense with adrenaline shooting throughout.

I knew this presence, it was dark.

I had felt it in the motel room where our brother ended his life—the place you found him dead.

The place it was passed on to you.

Fear-induced tremors gripped me, prompting an instinctual reaction as if my life depended on it. A sudden recollection surged from deep within me.

GET UP JENEE!

With tears building in my eyes, my heart beating almost out of my chest, I made my way downstairs and without flinching grabbed our mother’s ashes off the living room shelf and headed straight for my back door where I saw Andrew.

There was already a fire burning.

I flung the sliding door open and nearly collapsed on the deck—my mind, body and emotions on overload from everything I was being tasked with to experience in losing you.

Without flinching, I opened the glass box and threw her ashes into the fire.

Staring at the burning flames, I slowly sat down, my mind, body, and emotions in turmoil. A potent force spoke through me:

“ She was the portal that brought us three children here,

And I am the only one who has brought through children after her,

It ends here with me and will not continue on through my children.”

In the hushed moments that followed, I uttered one last declaration into the consuming flames:

"My magic is alchemy"

Sitting in silence, I contemplated my actions, witnessed not only by myself but also by another. Amidst the stillness, a profound peace settled within me. Those words marked a decisive shift in my journey. My dance with alchemy had just begun.