Letter 32 – When I Said No to the Phone Call

 

Hi, Garrett,

I talked to my mom the other day. Oma. In the early days, and months, I would call her and I would stand there and hold the phone to my ear. I didn’t talk.  I just held the phone to my ear and cried. I shared my pain with my mother. And my mother caught it all and shared it back with me.

She used to say that if she ever came back, she’d want to come back as you. All the opportunities he has, she’d say. All the exciting things he gets to do. Who wouldn’t want to be him?

Well. We don’t see all the things that go on in a person’s life. That go on at home or in school or outside in the world. But we did do a lot of fun things. And we made a lot of good memories.

What I’m most sorry about is that you wanted to call her before you died, and I said no. You wanted to reach out to someone, and I did not give you her number. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to call her to state your case, to convince her that you were being wronged, and that you wanted her to talk to us, or what. I felt like you wanted to call her to argue, and I didn’t want you calling her in your intoxicated state.

I made a judgment call that you were not in a condition to call. I was protecting her. And I was protecting my dad. And you. From you. I didn’t want them to hear you like this. To know you as this person. And I don’t know if I was wrong, but I feel that I might have been wrong, now. Of course. Maybe it would have made a difference, if you had called her. At the time it felt like the right decision. But I don’t know if it was.

I wish you would whisper in my ear and say, you should have let me call her, or, it was the right thing to do to not let me call her. At least then I’d know, instead of living in a state of not knowing about any of it. This is one of the hardest things to live with when a person dies so unexpectedly. You wonder to yourself, If I had done this. Or if I had done that. Would things have turned out differently?

I don’t have the answer. And I never will know that answer because the time for that is over. There are no more choices to be made. I can only say, as I’ve said to both myself and Kevin, that we were just people being people. Doing what people do.