Letter 11 – Do I Trust You

 

Dear Garrett,

In the early days of seeing my counselor, she would ask me if I trusted you. Do you trust him? My answer to that was a really, hard, NO. No, I don’t trust him. No. Not at all. Because you are dead, Garrett. At seventeen. I was literally stricken by this. Again, such a full understanding of a word I had only imagined I understood before this happened.

You were a teenager. Several times in the months following she has asked me, do you trust him? And the answer has always been no, but my conviction might be weakening. She is asking me if I trust in your death. That you died at the time that was right for you. How can I ever agree with that? But she wears me down. With her compassion and belief that there is more of you out there than your boxed-up ashes. Is there? I don’t know.

I have probably read dozens of books by now on grief and life after death. When you died, I felt compelled to know what had happened to you. Where are you? Are you still out there in some way? I dearly wanted to hear you say, Hey, mom. I wanted to talk to you. You left in the middle of our conversation. I wasn’t finished. We weren’t finished. How many times after we moved into the new house did I see you coming up the stairs and saying, hey, mom. And I would say, hi, Garrett. So many times.

I so want to talk to you. I remember telling my counselor, I don’t want to talk about Garrett, I want to talk to Garrett. I don’t care about talking about you with other people at all. Mostly I’d like to just have a conversation with you. To hear that you are ok. And to tell you that I love you.

In some of the books that I read, the authors told of these great conversations they had with their dead person or their spirit guides. About how much insight and knowledge they received so unexpectedly from the experience. I wanted contact with you so much that reading about these people really ticked me off. I’d think to myself, well bully for you, people. In the middle of reading these books I’d say, ok, Garrett, ok spirit guides, here I am. Bring down the knowledge, because I could really use some knowing right now. I am right here. It never happened, but I really, really, really wish it would have. I still wish this to be true.