Daniel's Sixteenth Christmas Letter

                                                     Image by Nightingale Craftery

    Daniel,

                  If this letter finds its way to you, then it has been sixteen years since you suddenly passed, the day after Thanksgiving in the year that we here on Earth know as 2008.  So many things have happened here on Earth since then, that although I miss you terribly, I also have come to find a certain amount of relief that you aren't here on Earth to have grown up with economic uncertainly, medical system corruption, political corruption, and to try to earn and living, navigate a marriage and raise a family here in this era.   It's hard to imagine that since your departure I have gone from thinking that your passing is a 100% terrible thing, to perhaps a benefit to you, as you were spared many of the difficult if not terrible things that happened in the world afterward.

                As you know, thirty plus hours after what should have been an ordinary influenza vaccine, your brother Matthew passed, only a week later than you, fourteen years after your passing.  As brave as I was when you departed, I have not found the same grace for the loss of a second son.  I had less reserve, and I have not bounced back in the same manner. I am also not as fine a person as you knew then.  I battle bitterness now.  I used to be the "better person" who would conjure the situation and circumstance that would help those who are lonely to get out in the world again.  I don't do that anymore, and I don't fill the silences in conversation with others as I used to.  I don't have the reserve, and I have become accustomed to the silence.

                Please know that I still love you and Matthew, and my Dad who is there with you, with all the love I ever have, but that my energy has dipped, the result of too many Earthly sorrows and losses.

                 Please know that you are loved wider than the ocean and deeper than the seas, and that this will never change.  Please know, I write this letter here to you, rather than sticking a copy in your Christmas stocking, which incidentally, is up at the mantle with the others, just as it always has been.  How do you like the Wedgwood medallions on the mantle, as Jefferson had them at Monticello ?   I'll have to see you again to have that particular question answered.   Merry Christmas !