Let me tell you something

My dad thought ahead.  When he bought something big and expensive, he might say, "You kids will fight over this when I'm gone."  (Sometimes, I thought:  what you don't realize is we will fight over who has to take it.)  When Patrick was born, he didn't ooh and aah over his beautiful first grandson.  He started calculating how much of Patrick's life he would likely get to see.

For years, I've known there were envelopes "to be opened after I die," with letters from my dad.  Having spent years carefully prying tape off of Christmas packages to check out the contents beforehand, I found it difficult to wait. What did my letter say?

Dad died December 1.  I was with him as he faded from life, the light going out of his eyes.  He lost his ability to speak or move and drifted along the borderline between sleep and coma. I said goodbye, and I took my letter. Halfway home, I got a call that he was gone.

What did the letter say?

We've had our times, my dad and I.  Mostly good times, but some monumentally bad ones, too.  Dad rarely hesitated to deliver advice, and he wasn't entirely clear on the concept of "opinion," being pretty sure that he was right about all things. He was given to the grand gesture, like pulling the phone out of the wall when I was not quick enough to end a conversation.  (Back in the day, the phone--and there was only one per floor--was hardwired into the wall.  And you probably shared a party line with some cranky old lady.)

He clearly loved me.  Just as clearly, he saw room for improvement.  He was more forthcoming with advice than with love. Stand up straighter, lose some weight, get my hair out of my eyes, tuck in my shirt, get my elbows off the table.  Study harder, revise that college essay, practice the clarinet.  Save more money, hire someone to do that, and for god's sake, don't get married before you graduate from college.

He was a great one for the object lesson, and I was a great one for rebelling against the object lesson.  He favored the surprise attack. It is a kindness to both the living and the dead to leave that area unexplored.

My older sister and brother absorbed a lot of my dad's self-improvement energies, and that led to a lot of fireworks, especially with my brother.  Dad said to me once that, while they had pushed back, I just used humor as a weapon until I got my parents into shape, and then I eased up on them.

And every once in a while, when I really, really needed it, my dad came through for me in an unconditionally supportive way. The letter he left was one of those times.

I wanted to be alone when I read it, but I also wanted to be in a safe place.  I drove to church and read it in the empty sanctuary.  I knew I could draw on a circle of support there.

So what did the letter say?

He wrote about the joy I had brought him, about the love and respect he had for me.  He said he could never repay me for what I had brought to his life. He said he hoped when I looked back at my children, they brought me as much joy as I had brought him.

I burst into tears.

Dad wrote that letter in 1979, 34 years ago, and felt no need to edit it as the years went by.

I did plenty of editing of my own over those years--gaining a couple of kids, losing a husband, dropping out of the professional world, learning to take care of myself, learning to ask for and accept help. Dad had touched the essence of me and of our relationship and written me a letter that crosses the decades to speak in a universal way.

What would you write in your letter? What are the things your family needs to hear from you, or you need to tell them?

My children will surely find mine in snippets on my computer, in version after version, as unfinished as my Christmas letters from 2009 to 2012.

Or maybe they will just know that, yeah, they do bring me as much joy as I brought him.  Yup, they surely do.