My Dear Lauren,
You probably can’t hear me.
I’d like to believe in the multiverse,
and that somewhere within it,
there’s some sort of world where
you can still smile,
a smile like any other,
and you can hear me tonight.
But in the only universe they’ve let me into thus far,
you died,
thirteen years ago tonight.
A universe where I said goodbyes I can only hope you heard,
a universe where in your last moment,
you finally understood how much I loved you.
The sad thing about this old universe where I’m stuck, baby,
is that they don’t let you know how much you loved someone until they’re gone.
Yeah, I’m happy now.
I found love again.
Made one more child out of that love, and is she ever something else.
Our old friend Brian said it best one day, when he sat here in the living room, watching her sing and dance and draw.
He looked at me and smiled and said simply, “she’s dynamite, Dave.”
And, in your own way, so were you.
Goddamn, my own happiness be damned, but goddamn the world is a lesser place without your dynamite in it.
Yeah, I’m happy now.
Everyone says that’s what you would have wanted.
That to spend the rest of my days without you in misery would have dishonored our love.
You probably can’t hear me, tonight.
Maybe you can. Maybe you can see me, see us, getting on here, day by day.
Living, laughing, loving, struggling in our own moments.
Maybe you can see me, see us, and maybe, well, I’d like to imagine you somewhere, in peace, with more answers than I could ever dream of, smiling down on us, with that smile that, in this world, will never meet its match.
Either way, thirteen years to the day after you passed the only world we lived in together, I just wanted to tell you I missed you.
You probably can’t hear me, but I just wanted to tell you I love you, and I always will.