I used to write to you. Long letters or short paragraphs, whenever I missed you or I thought of you. When it was your birthday or the anniversary of your going. Sometimes just because. In between those rows of words, you were still with me. We could still talk. There was still you and me.

I don’t write much anymore, and if you asked me why, I couldn’t really give an answer. It’s not because I don’t still love you. Real love doesn’t change. It’s immutable, unalterable, as steady as the sun breaking over the window ledge in the morning. Time doesn’t change love. But it has taken away the need to write, to keep you with me.

It’s been ten years. Ten. And when you’re sixteen to start with, ten years change everything. I won’t lie – that time has numbed the pain is a relief. I couldn’t have gone on like that forever. Able to cry any moment, the tears always burning, throat always aching when I swallowed, the emotion sitting in my chest. The always remembering and never forgetting how your breathing slowed and your hands grew cold, your eyes no longer seeing. I couldn’t have carried that around with me, a backpack of bones, forever. 

But in an entirely different way, I resent the time, these ten long years. In my mind, I see the West Virginia Gauley River – wide and deep, mountains dark with trees on either side. Rocks breaking from the surface, white water swirling against them. And I picture you standing on one of those rocks, stable and steady, while the water carries me away. You stay, a fixture of time and memory, while I go.

And now ten years have passed, and those ten years have stolen many things. I forget what it was like to have you. Your wallet and keys are no longer on the bookshelf. Your reading glasses no longer sit by the window. Your clothes are gone, but even if they were still here they would no longer smell like you. The Rhododendrons grew unruly without you. Your Bible dusty. 

We broke your favorite mug a few years ago. The one you reserved for green tea sweet with honey. I cried when it happened. 

Ten years stole those slips of paper, the ones resting in odd places around the house made alive by your handwriting. Ten years stole our nighttime routine – Clair de Lune on the CD player and the windows open to summer. Ten years stole your laughter, your humor, your wisdom. 

But you know what I resent the most? Ten years means I can hardly remember the sound of your voice. That is, perhaps, the most bitter consequence of time. If I close my eyes in a quiet room, I can almost make out the sound of you singing. Under his wings I am safely abiding; Though the night deepens and tempests are wild. 

But the richness of your voice. The kindness, the love, the realness that lived there – those are nearly gone. 

Your eyes and your smile, I see those in pictures. But that’s all I have left – frozen images. They don’t capture your vibrancy. They can’t recreate a person. 

Sometimes I’ll play To a Wild Rose on the piano or pick up a basketball and the ache of not having you here will fill me up inside, the realization as fresh as if you left us just yesterday. And in those ways I still have you. I carry you around inside of me, seeing the world like you saw it. Seeing God in everything, knowing He’s real through the things He created. Even while dying, you believed in His goodness. If you still believed while staring into the face of Death, how could I not believe in Life?

I don’t write anymore, but please don’t think it’s because I don’t miss you. I miss you every single day. But I’ve learned how not to think of you, as selfish as that sounds. You’re no longer the first person I think of when I hear a beautiful piece of music or watch a particularly exquisite sunset. I’ve replaced you with others. I know that’s the way it should be, the way you’d want it, but it still hurts to admit it.

I’m tempted to hold on to my grief, to clutch it close, because it’s the last piece I have of you. To remember that you were real, that what I feel is real. But ten years is a long time. The water carries me, and I’m rounding that bend in the river. You’re slipping out of sight, just a glimmer behind me. A fixture of time and memory.

I can’t stay with you. I never could. But you know what you taught me? You taught me that this world isn’t real. That this isn’t my forever. I may be trapped in the valley now, the mountains tall on either side of me, but someday I’ll be able to see above them. That’s where we’ll meet again. High above it all.

But until then, I have to keep traveling. The journey isn’t done. There are other people to love and care for. Other people to grieve when their time comes. 

The river carries me, its rhythm singing a lullaby. Sometimes I feel so far away that I fear I’ll begin to forget. But then I catch a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror, the same color and shape as your own, and I realize that I could forget you as easily as I could forget my own name.

Though Time is a healer and a thief, it cannot be slowed or stopped. It does not negotiate. It is not a river to be dammed or a bird to be captured. Obviously not all of life can or should be lived in memory. I cannot be so preoccupied with the tick of the clock that I am paralyzed by its inevitability, but I can use it to remind myself of the preciousness of this life. The miracle of existence.

The miracle that you lived and were, and that I got to love you. 

Best of all – that I lived and was and got to be loved by you. 

And so by this, a closing letter, I just want you to know how strong that love was. That I still feel it ten years later. Stretching over and across and beyond that river. And that makes me smile because I know it was real. The real things last.

So until we meet again and I am warmed by the sound of your voice, just know – I love you. I always will. 

-Lizzybeth