NOTE: I forgot to post a previous letter to River for his 53rd birthday so I mention it in this post.
rest in peace and happy belated birthday, river. officially, thirty years on,
i want to say first and foremost happy belated birthday and rest in peace. i cannot believe that it’s officially thirty years since you’ve been gone. it hurts to think and realize that you’ll forever be dead longer than you’ve ever been alive. you truly deserved so much better and a definite better fate than you received.
it’ll forever break my heart that in just a couple years, I’ll be the same age that you died at and a year after that, i’ll be older than my favorite actor who would only be thirty-two years older than me. it hurts and causes such a whiplash to think about how fast time passes by and how older we get especially when we don’t even think about it.
this is something that i often can’t take my mind off of, particularly at times when it’s the birthdays of your close in age peers. for example, your costar, ethan hawke who will be turning fifty-three next week and close friend, companion and costar, martha plimpton who will also be turning fifty-three as well in the upcoming weeks. it’s sad to remember that you had just been three months older than them but instead, they’re now thirty years older.
i hope you know that despite how long it’s been, your movies and all your other acting projects will always be watched and adored. i will always enjoy watching such heartfelt breakout performances with chris chambers, danny pope and mikey waters or laughing so hard with devo nod along with another incredible performance from eddie birdlace.
in addition to this, both chris chambers and mikey waters are two characters that i related to a lot. with chris, i related to him because i understood what it was like to want to completely start over after people believing such false beliefs about themselves. in mikey’s case, in having such deep feelings for someone, in particular a friend and not being sure where it could go but that’s just my interpretation on that.
another thing, I wanted to mention is thank you for the tremendous influence you’ve been to me for these past ten years. you’ve introduced me to a variety of new things throughout this particular decade that i’ve been a fan of yours, i feel as if i learned about myself more through some things.
throughout these ten years, i’ve been both a vegetarian and vegan for both a few years. these are two things that i’m very passionate about, it’s upsetting to me to hear of animals being hurt and killed for our own food. i am the only one in my family who no longer eats meat, chicken or any type of poultry which is certainly difficult but i still try my best to manage.
in fact, i could see myself and most likely will for the rest of my life remain either vegetarian or vegan but not sure which i would remain of the two. i could see myself raising my children if i was to have any as either or. if i was to have children, specifically a son, i’d name him river jude in tribute.
i consistently have these thoughts in my head, always thinking of paying tribute whether with naming a future child after you or getting a tribute tattoo which i will mostly definitely be doing in two years when i turn twenty-three.
in conclusion of everything i mentioned, i want you to know that river, you will never be forgotten and along with your friends and family, we as your fans will always remember you. on august twenty-third and halloween, i’ll forever be thinking of and paying tribute to you in one way or another, with listening to some of your songs and posting tributes while wearing a river phoenix tee or doing the latter while watching some of my favorite movies of yours. you’ll never be forgotten, river jude phoenix and you’ll forever remain special.
