Letter 75 – Thank You, Tricia

Dear Garrett,

This letter is for Tricia.

Tricia, you’ve told me several times that a completed death was not a preventable death. That is such a difficult thing to hear. I want to have changed it. I want to have prevented it, and I did not. Or as you might say, I could not.

Tricia, I know have a long way to go. Why I got you out of everyone out there, I don’t know, but I’m so very glad I did. The first time we met with you, Kevin and I looked at each other and said, I don’t know about this. Because you were so sure that Garrett is still out there. And you were so sure that we would be able to heal. People do heal, you told us. You can, too.

Thank you, Tricia. I trust you, even though I resist you. I trust you, even though I say no, I’m not going to do that. Right now, you’d say. You’re not going to do that right now. But you will.

And so I have. So I have in many ways. Could I have imagined myself talking out loud in front of another person, pulling out the most sorrowful parts of my soul? Never. I never thought I would do that. Could I have imagined myself saying out loud all of my regrets and painful questions? No. But I have, and I am better for having done it.

If you hadn’t told me, Garrett is still out there. He’s just different now. If you hadn’t said, you can heal from this, and I will help you through it. If you hadn’t shown me diagrams and graphs of what it is that I am going through and gave me words for it, I don’t know where I would be right now. Rock solid in a frozen state of numb, is what I imagine. Thank you for helping me feel all of my pain. It has been terrible. But necessary.

You’ve asked me, do you trust him? Do you trust Garrett? And I have always said, no. I didn’t, I did not want to, and I still don’t want to. I’m having the hardest time doing it. A part of me fears that if I say I trust him, that I am letting him go. That I am saying it is okay that he died, when it is still very NOT okay.

But, things have shifted over the course of this year. My thoughts and emotions are changing. My perspective. I am not the same now as I was at the beginning. And maybe, I would like to trust him, just a little. That maybe it could be true that he did die at the right time, for the right reason. Even though I don’t know what those reasons are. Maybe I will never know what they are. And maybe I don’t need to. I want to try to trust my child. To believe in this boy. To believe that trusting him is not the same as letting go, and saying it is okay.

Tricia, thank you for being my guide. There is no one else that I could want for this terrible, but necessary work.