DEAR

As a reminder, all submissions to DEAR must be PG-13 and signed with a nickname or with the request to remain anonymous!

Any further questions can be answered either by visiting letterstothingslost.com, reading the examples on this blog, or directly messaging me if you have a question that hasn’t already been answered!

To reiterate the statement of DEAR: Healing takes time, and healing takes connection. It can be difficult to move on from grief when you feel like your grief is inconsequential to larger problems in life. It can be difficult to talk about grief when you feel like no one close to you wants to listen, or when you worry that no one close to you cares enough to listen. DEAR is a safe and anonymous place to write a letter of goodbye to that thing you lost--be it your favorite necklace, that fuzzy pair of socks you loved to wear to bed, a loved one, and everything in between. It’s important to take the time to mourn something you’ve lost, and the best way to understand your pain is to see it in writing.

I guess it’s been nine years that I’ve had you and used you on an almost day to day basis. Frankly, you should have broken years ago, like that one time I accidentally dropped you onto the ground from two stories up, or the time I slipped walking back to the apartment and I slid downhill on my ass for a block before I found my footing and managed to walk the rest of the way back. Thankfully it was almost midnight and most people were asleep, so no one actually noticed or recognized me.

When you did break this morning, honestly, I was more embarrassed than upset, because of course that would happen when I was trying so hard to have a good day. Of course life would test me like that. And I was okay with it. The worst thing I thought at the time was, “oh, no, I have to buy a new water bottle. I don’t have time for that right now.”

After my lunch, though, I guess I realized how long I’d had you? And I collected so many stickers that I put on you. And something just shifted. It started with a produce sticker from an apple and ended up with me trying to hide the fact that I was crying while I sat on a cold concrete floor. It wasn’t about the fact that you broke, or the fact that I would now have to try and salvage as many stickers from you as I could. To do what with, I don’t know. They won’t stick on anything now. At the time, it seemed more about the memories attached to the stickers.

There’s the first one, the produce sticker from the apple, where I thought I was so cool as a freshman in college for organically deciding to put a sticker on my water bottle as a statement and not just deciding to do it. And there’s all the college event ones, from the dances and the late night breakfasts. The neon one is my favorite, when it was a disco theme and they played Breakfast Club and Footloose and had a waffle bar and the cafeteria staff wore roller skates. Each sticker I put on you was part of a story.

But I cried again when I got home, and I realized it wasn’t the memories that came with the stickers. I don’t need stickers to remember that one time at the spring meltdown when the staff decided to fill a kiddie pool with tubs of ice cream and just had students a cup to fill. I don’t need stickers to remember late night conversations with a friend about tattoos we had and what they meant. I remember that all just fine on my own.

No, it wasn’t losing the stickers or my favorite water bottle that made me cry twice. Dearest water bottle, I realized that the reason I got upset over you breaking is because that it meant I had to adapt to change. I had to get a new water bottle. Not upsetting when you think about it as just that, but everything else in my life has been changing at a rapid and terrifying pace, into scary and new things. And you breaking shoved the realization on me that sometimes for things to change, things need to break. And that, in turn, broke whatever bit of hope I had left that you can hold on to everything from your past to move towards the future.

Grief and loss, especially this year, have affected us all. And especially this year, it can be harder than ever to feel like you have a safe place to express that grief. DEAR is here to help.

Dear delicate, little bees,

Why did you allow the ignorance of humankind to get to you. I never thought the origins of all life would also aid in the demise of those who provide nourishment for the rest of us. How could I have known your winter ways, that you would take refuge in the side nearest the sunrise. I gave you plenty of food to weather the harshest season, yet you refused to access it because you’d rather starve yourselves, then let your mother, the queen, or your brood freeze to death.

There’s so much I have yet to learn. More than humanity could ever understand. The most prominent characteristic you exhibit, is first and foremost, selflessness. The ways in which you would suppress your own self control for the good of the colony, for the weak, the young, the old, and each other. The lengths you would go to keep each other warm.

The dances and wiggles, and waggles of your grace. The songs you would sing that man never heard. The lessons no man listened to, and the thoughts no one will ever know. Sometimes I think of you still and feel helpless in the lack of understanding of your importance and your beauty. That is perhaps, what I will miss the most.

But the hope is that I’m not alone. For if your kind starves, we will all starve together. You mattered because I remember. Your loss is not personal, because you matter not only to me, but the world. You may have been small but your existence was not insignificant. Thank you not only for your pollination but the life you spread. That is what I will remember about you.

Sincerely, your former beekeeper and admirer,

I’ve always wondered what happened to you. You were so good to me, so helpful. You had a weird power that kept the ghosts away, and I still thank you for that. I don’t know where you went, but I hope the spirits didn’t take you to spite me. 

I guess it’s partially my fault that I lost you. I let myself get too deep into something that wasn’t good for me. Falling in love at 14 wasn’t the worst mistake of my life; she treated me well. It was after she and I’s good riddance that he found me, alone and broken. I was dumb enough to let him in because I thought no one would ever want me. I didn’t mean to lose you. It’s safe to say, in 11th grade, I let him take you from me. I thought I was in safe hands, but it wasn’t until we were alone in his car that I realized that I had made a mistake. That entire week was comprised of him picking you off of me; he couldn’t get enough, and eventually I didn’t have enough to give. I broke it off when I came back home. When he threatened to burn my house down, I realized that you were something I could never get back. I put my heart in his hands and he was too young to know that I was so fragile. To this day, no matter how many relationships I go through, I want nothing more than to have you back. All I have is the shell of the sweet girl I was before I decided to leave my heart with a man.

Dear Friends,

I never really belonged in this group. I see that now. I was only there because I followed M around like a lost puppy. But for a little while you actually made me feel like I was a part of something. Friend group V1 made me feel like that too, before it all fell apart. But the group falling apart I can take. You? You’re all still together, just without me. In fact, there is a literal wall between us. You’re right next door but I never see you. Sometimes I can hear you, through the wall, and I wonder what happened that stranded me on this side. I miss you all. So very much. If only you missed me too.

I never got the say goodbye, but at the same time I never really got to say hello.

You’re a massively important person in my life for someone I’ve never gotten to know. In fact, I wouldn’t have a life at all. I was that idiot baby by the lake in august who toddled into the water and fell over and didn’t know how to get back up. My poor overworked mother couldn’t have lost sight of me for more than a few minutes, but by then I was unconscious. The teenage lifeguard must’ve known what to do, but she was young and scared and a child like me.

So you stepped in. As an off-duty paramedic, you said you didn’t think there was much hope for me. But you tried anyways. Tiny baby me started breathing and you saved my mother a lifetime of grief. You must’ve done a damn good job at resuscitating me, because the staff at the hospital were in disbelief. “This was the kid who almost drowned?” I was awake, alert, and looking around, being my cheerful baby self. Even after being deprived oxygen for several minutes, I didn’t have any brain damage. I don’t think.

Since I was the ripe old age of one, I don’t remember this incident. I’ve seen pictures of us together, but I don’t hold any memories I can call my own. It’s surreal to hear a story in which you are a major player but have no recollection of, especially if it involved being brought back from the brink of death. It’s a formative part of my history, and yet from my perspective it never really happened.

Think about the butterfly effect in my immediate family. My mother would be broken, and probably not be the uplifting presence she is today. She has expressed that had I died that day she would not have been able to have a third child, so my younger brother and best friend would not exist. My older sister would grow up an only child–I can’t even imagine what type of person she would end up being. By saving one little life, you saved an entire family.

I wanted to show you the person I had become. From the half-drowned baby by Cedar Lake to a cheerful young woman graduating high school. I don’t need to tell you this–as a paramedic you probably understand the power and value of life. When you saved that baby that summer day, you probably weren’t thinking about how she’d end up at the clinic for eating a poisonous bulb in the backyard, or how she’d accidently push her brother through a window ass-first, or end up being the smartest of the dumb kids and have a lifetime of issues stemming from that, or how she’d survive bullying in middle school, or how she’d gain a love of writing that would lead to her getting into her dream college. After that day you saved that baby, you never really got a proper introduction to the person she would become. And in a way, I never got to see the person you became.

I don’t know what kind of turmoil you were in. I know everyone has their demons to battle, and not everyone wins. I can’t imagine wanting to die so badly, but still being too scared to do it by your own hand. I don’t know why I, out of the hundreds of people you saved, thought I could’ve saved you.

You never knew that I don’t cry. And you never knew that I cried then.

Today is Oma's birthday. 

She died about a year and a half ago, now. She was sick for many years with Alzheimers before she passed, and I like to believe that she remembered me up to the very end, even though I know she probably didn't recognize me as her granddaugther after a certain period of time, but more as a caretaker. That hurt more than seeing her sick and dying at times, honestly.

As many of you have probably heard from me, the reason I started this project DEAR is because last year when my Oma died, I didn't have the time to grieve properly with school. I had six classes to keep up with, and I threw myself into them as both a way of coping with Oma's death and as a way of avoiding dealing with my grief over her death.

In May, I went to Holland with my family to spread Oma's ashes on the lake that she grew up sailing on. I love traveling, and Holland is my favorite place to go. With Madurodam, the Anne Frank house, canal tours, and amazing food and culture, it's an amazing place. This summer, though, the weather seemed to match my mood there. I still hadn't fully been through the grieving process, and spreading my grandmother's ashes on a lake that I will rarely be able to visit was one of the hardest, if not the hardest, moment of my life. And yet I was unable to cry. Grieving is hard for me.

Then, over the course of the rest of the summer, I had an intensive job that lasted for long hours over the week. I threw myself into that as best as I could to avoid dealing with the reopened wounds of grief.

And then my first semester of my senior year started. I was still in the grieving process, and around this time Warren Baker, my professor and advisor at Champlain, asked that the PWRT majors graduating in the spring start to form concrete ideas about what we wanted to do for our Capstone projects.

The idea for DEAR formed when the year anniversary of Oma's death came, and I was struck by the realization that I hadn't come back to school after her passing with a proper place to grieve in the way that would best help me. This was compounded upon by the understanding that in May, I'd said my final goodbye to Oma. I'd spread her ashes on a lake in Holland that I would rarely be able to visit because of the expenses of international travel.

I've never been a very religious person, and believing that I can just talk to my grandmother and that she'll be listening makes me so angry. I cannot believe that. I have spent a lot of time wishing that Oma would at least have wanted to be buried, because then I wouldn't have to travel to Holland and sit on a lake to talk to her. There would at least be a gravestone that I could leave flowers at. In fact, I have vowed to myself that when the time comes to write my own last will and testament, I will make it very clear that I want to be buried. That way, there is a quiet and safe place for my loved ones to go to lay flowers and talk to me, whether they believe that I am listening or not.

DEAR is a place to write to things lost, whether that be an idea, an object, a place, or a person. However, my vision for this project is that it grow from letters to things lost to being a place for people to really be comfortable grieving the people they have lost, more than objects or ideas or places.

Yes, we lose ideas and things and places every day, but it's the grief of losing loved ones that is the driving force behind this project for me, and I hope that it can become the driving force behind it for everyone else, as well.

DEAR is dedicated to my grandmother, my Oma, the woman who inspired me to be strong and passionate about art, Baukje Cohen. I hope that everyone can keep that in mind with future submissions. 

It was almost a year from when I brought you home from the farmer’s market to the day I finally threw your brown lifeless leaves and bone dry dirt into the trash.

It was my fault you died. It was cruel. I watched your leaves grow more brittle and brown and thought that it didn’t matter if you died. I barely had enough motivation to keep myself alive, let alone tend to you. The thought had crossed my mind that it would be poetic for the two of us to wither together. But it was nothing more than a lack of motivation in the end. I didn’t have the emotions for poetry.

I noticed the African Violet next to the sink today, hidden behind a cluster of dirty dishes. The leaves had started to brown at the edges, the dirt dried out and condensed, and only one flower was still alive. I couldn’t remember the last time I watered it.

I thought of you.

I watered the African Violet.

Sincerely,

I misplaced you in the first grade. Do you remember me, even now? I left you behind at the day care place I went to after school, where I sat in a corner with a stuffed blue dog and buried my nose in a book, hoping no one would talk to me.

You kept me warm on the worst days, when I had to be pretty, when I had to smile and interact with other people who told me I looked nice. You drew unwanted attention, and some part of me hated you for that.

Maybe that’s why I lost you – or why you left. You were done being a reminder of what I didn’t want, so you packed your bags, hid yourself among the other raggedy backpacks, and removed yourself from my thoughts.

That was when I stopped remembering. My mother searched desperately for you, but you were already on your way, and my memory had gone with you.

More lost jackets have joined you since, along with books, and birthdays, and meetings, and names, and faces. I’m sure you gather them all in your sequined arms now, cradling them like treasures beneath your trim lining.

I guess this is just to say that I’d like, if nothing else, the voices back. What my first grandmother sounded like when she was holding me. What my second’s laugh felt like. How my high school friends said my name. It’s hard to even remember what I sound like, most days.

If nothing else, grant me that much. Please.

With love I never granted you,

Dear Left Shoe,

I wonder where you went. Obviously, things can get lost really easily in a messy room, but I’ve cleaned since! Not to mention moved out. But when I came home and cracked open the bin with the toxic plastic smell I only found your mate. Lonely.

It’s not like I don’t have other shoes, ok. I have too many, probably. Not just shoes, but black heels. You aren’t special.

I’m sorry. You were special. 2.5 inch wedge with patent leather exterior and a little tiny bow on the toes. The inside has a red pattern, and it always reminded of the skirts that the kids who went to Catholic school wore. I still fit the Right one, and it’s easy to walk in. Or, it would be, if you were here. Are you somehow still lodged in my closet, hiding underneath the stack of blankets upon which my little sister curls up to do Algebra with Nordic runes?

Or are you at my grandmothers, having been toted along for Christmas or Easter and thrown under a bed, into a corner, shoved past a closet door.

It’s been years and I still haven’t thrown the other one out. Maybe next time I come home you’ll be there, innocuously nestled in that gross bin, just waiting for me.

 Sincerely,

Dear Ducky,

You were so excited in your hand sewn Hawaiian shirt. Planting a foot on your duffel bag in giddy triumph and carefully adjusting your hat at a daringly rakish angle. You learned and you grew and you became and it was your favorite place in the world. Where did you go?

Each eye roll, each scoff, each muttered complaint, you slipped away a little more. Every time your eyes narrowed slightly you dwindled.

That day, your party, when Dad left a bottle of rum out and your aunt made the line behind the glass drop further and further until “it’s time for us to be going” said her husband and swept their son into a car seat.

Or that hot, hot day when a man tried to corner your sister in the pool, and you jumped, dragging her away and wrapping her in a towel, herding the both of you slightly closer to the door.

The first time you read a book and cried, the tears made worse by your shock at your own capacity for pain.

You were sliding away every time.

I hear you echo when there are games, at the campfire, when lips move to form the songs they’ve known for over a decade. But you’re just a shadow, and I have to turn on a light so that the little ones behind me don’t trip.

I’m glad to hear you bouncing back, from time to time. I know you’ve gone, but please.

Just don’t leave me.

Love,