July 7, 2021

Dear Jessica —

Yesterday marked thirty days. 

Thirty days since we last looked on your beautiful face.

Thirty days since we watched you draw your last breath. 

Thirty days since we were able to hold out a shred of hope that life might go back to being what we expected it to be.  

I can’t speak for everyone, but I still just can’t believe you’re gone. Your stuff is still everywhere. Your name is still on mail and packages that come to the house. Your account pops up when we watch TV. Your reading room—“the shecava”—still smells like a gentle herbal tea. Goodreads still shows the books you’re working on finishing. Your pens and coloring book are still waiting to be used. Your study guide for working at the Aquarium is still on the shelf, waiting for you to make more notes. 

Milo’s meow has gotten louder, as he checks each room to see if, maybe, you were there all the time and he just didn’t notice. 

We’re in no hurry to change any of that. Except maybe the volume on the meows. If you can’t be with us, it helps to be reminded that you were. As the old woman says at the end of “Ever After,” if you and Ethan did or did not live happily ever after, the most important thing is that you lived. 

Still, for thirty days, we’ve missed you and wished that time would just reset, or that we’d go to sleep and wake to learn it was an actual nightmare, not a nightmarish reality. This nightmare started twenty days before you died, when we were told the cancer was in your lungs. Until that moment, we truly believed you were beating it, and had nowhere to go but up. From that day, things just cascaded downward.

I’ve been posting pictures of you, or things related to you, every day since you left us. I want people to know who you are, why you were perfect as a member of our family, and why the world is better off because you spent 25 years and just under six months as one of its inhabitants. I hope you don’t mind. Although you blogged and didn’t flinch at telling a room full of authors it was time to stand up, shut up, and let someone else have the room, you could be shy. I hope you wouldn’t think I’m drawing too much attention your way. It’s just that I think there’s not enough admiration in all the world to give you your due. I’m known as a pretty cynical, pessimistic person (by those who think they know me and really don’t), but, dammit, when I’m proud of someone, when I love someone, I want everyone to know it. 

I wish I could tell you everyone here was okay. Truth is none of us really are. But we keep going in the knowledge that you would keep going, if you could. And I imagine you would want us to keep going until it’s well and truly time for us to journey to wherever you are, and see you again. 

Ethan firmly believes you’re still with him, watching over him. I’m glad. I believe that too. If you have any power to reach out and help him, I know you will. And you know we’ll do our part too. Thank you for loving our son so well. From the moment the two of you met, I could see in your eyes how you both felt. That’s one of the most precious things a parent can ask, to see that love in someone else’s eyes for the person they love so much. I always saw it in yours for him, and his for you. 

Other than that, all I can saw is that this sucks. We miss you. I hope you know that, and can somehow see us. And I hope you’re not hurt or scared anymore.

Love,

—Steve

PS: I’ll follow this up in the coming days with a collection of the photos I’ve been posting. Some of your friends, young and old, just don’t do the social media.