I wrote him a letter

Revisiting something I wrote in the beginning of September...

I wrote him a letter... about the heat and the Blackberry Festival I took the kids to.  I asked them if they wanted to say hi.  Ayden, as usual said no.  I write that his nephew says hi anyway.  Rayne is finally beginning to really talk.  "What doing?" she says as her big doll eyes look at me intently.  "Writing to Uncle Julien." I respond.  "Uncle Julien." She repeats.  But she will never know what this really means.

"What's this?" she asks while looking at my sparkly blue handwritten print.  "Words!" she says before I can answer.  I call her baby even though she is three now and most definitely not a baby.  "Yes, baby.  Words."

She was 15 months old the morning I got the phone call. 

She was 20 months old the afternoon he was charged with negligent homicide.

She was 24 months old the last time she saw him.

She was 27 months old when he accepted the plea bargain.

She was 32 months old when he went to prison.

  "Why crying, Mommy?' she says in her high pitched little voice.  But I don't respond because she is 42 months old now and she will never understand.  Off she runs with Ayden to cause chaos and mischief and I am reminded of the days long gone that Julien and I would play and laugh.  In the days before he grew up and became less interested in his family and more interested in his "friends" and getting high.  When drugs  became his best friend and our laughter in the gray house was all but a memory.

I wrote him a letter about the heat and the Blackberry Festival.  And I hoped it was enough.

Enough to know that we love him.

Enough to keep him sober.

Enough to remind him of the love and the laughter in that gray house.

Enough to be more than just a memory.