Your Childhood Was Fine

Letter 21 – Your Childhood Was Fine

 

Dear Garrett,

I don’t look back on your childhood and think to myself, if only I had done that, or if only I had decided on this instead of that, things might have turned out differently. I don’t do that, because I know I loved you, and that you had a wonderful childhood in so many ways. I know this.

I have no desire to review your childhood to second guess the choices we made. I know that you loved us, and I know that you trusted us. We don’t know that different choices would have led to better outcomes. We just don’t know.

 

 

Similar Posts

The Dog Park

Letter 30 – The Dog Park

Byastrid_oliver

  Dear Garrett, It can’t have felt good, to have people look down on you and say I don’t like you. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when there are people telling you that they don’t like you. Or in a more distant way, to watch out for that person. That feels bad. Today,…

Liam

Letter 39 – Liam

Byastrid_oliver

Dear Garrett, Liam died. You were so shocked to hear it. We all were. I never expected it. I thought he was doing well. I wanted him to be doing well. You were in high school. A junior. The two of you had such a history together. Good friends, true friends, followed by a slow…

A Hardened Rock

Letter 27 – A Hardened Rock

Byastrid_oliver

  Dear Garrett,  If I wait too long between appointments to see Tricia, I can feel myself turning to stone. I get stuck in my own thoughts. I feel myself sinking down into a sense of defeat, and I stay there. It feels like a logjam of stuckness, which usually means I need to sit…

Thinking About Those Comments

Letter 46 – Thinking About Those Comments

Byastrid_oliver

Dear Garrett, I better understand now the people whose comments I saw online that said, It’s been years and I feel like this happened only yesterday. I understand now more than I did before. Before, when everything was new, I was scared by those words. I didn’t want to be stuck feeling the way I felt…

I Want to See You

Letter 41 – I Want to See You

Byastrid_oliver

Dear Garrett, After my visit with Annee, the medium, things weren’t suddenly, magically, okay. It wasn’t as if, now that I had heard that you were a happy spirit in the universe, I said, yay, everything is now right in the land. No. That didn’t happen. It did have a great impact on me. It…

The Gathering

Letter 10 – The Gathering

Byastrid_oliver

  Hi, bud. The last thing I wanted was to have a funeral. And I didn’t, not really. At first, I didn’t want to do anything. I was in shock. I couldn’t absorb the fact that you were dead. It still comes up, a little wail in my mind that says, how can this be?…