SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH

Dear Cilla,

I’m going to read this letter at your memorial today. I’m writing it on my last sheet of stationery. I thought the happy yellow and pink roses might hurt to look at, but I’m actually smiling right now.

It’s Sunday. We’re not at church this morning, but Father O’Malley is here. He’s going to say Mass before we honor you. I’m not sure if you were still going to church when you died. I’m not sure if you even believed in God. But Mom and Dad wanted him here.

Actually, I did, too.

Mom lined the brick walkway with daisies, your favorite flower. She went to every flower shop and every supermarket in town. Every flower shop in the next town, too, until she had more than two hundred daisies. She bought a bunch of mason jars at the craft store and wrapped them with colored paper, then arranged flowers in each jar. I helped her put them out on the bricks. It looks nice, but also really homemade. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t think you will.

Dad bought a special box for me, the kind they use in time capsules. I filled it with your favorite things: Cuddly the koala and your old, ripped script from My Fair Lady. A half-empty pack of your favorite kind of gum that I found in your desk drawer and your journal, which I found in there, too. (I didn’t read it at all this time!) The Penderwicks, your favorite book from when you were a kid. A baby blanket and your earbuds.

Amélie’s picture.

I left enough room in there for what I’m going to add later (which will be now, and my letters, for those of you listening to me read this).

Dad dug a hole underneath your favorite tree, the maple tree you planted when you were in third grade. I remember when you first told me that it was “your” tree, I was so impressed. You seemed like God to me then. You’d created life. Well, you’d planted something in the ground. That was close enough when I was three years old.

Now you really have created life. You had a baby. You named her after me.

That’s not what makes you special to me, though. You’re special because you’re Cilla. I could say so much about why I love you. I’m sure everyone here could, too. Mom and Dad. Emma. All your theater friends. Alex is here, too. I invited him and he said he’d come. He said he had to, that he needed closure, too.

We could list reasons that would go on forever, that would use up every piece of paper in the entire world. We could talk about the time you organized the food drive at school. The time you let Emma buy the last “cute green sweater” at the mall because she wanted it so much. The time you convinced me we should cook tacos and pretend to be mariachi singers for Mom and Dad’s anniversary, since their first date was at a Mexican restaurant.

I don’t need to list all the reasons, though. I don’t need to write them down and bury them with you. You’re not special because of “reasons.” You’re special because you’re Cilla. I don’t need to make a list to know why I love you.

Loving you is a feeling. It’s the warmth that fills my chest when I think about you.

It’s not just one memory; it’s a million, twisting and twirling and wrapping together into something that looks like the pictures of galaxies in my science book.

That feeling will stay with me forever.

Your body is buried. These letters will be, too. I’ll bundle this one up with the rest and add them to the box. They’ll be my memorial to you, and this will be the place I can go to talk to you and feel your presence.

I hope I’ll be able to feel your presence. But even if I can’t, I know that the letters aren’t my only link to you. Amélie is out there somewhere, which means that a part of you is, too. Maybe I’ll never meet her. I’ll be sad about that, but hopefully I’ll be okay, too. Because it’s enough to know she exists. That I have a niece and that you loved her.

Even though you were ashamed, I know that you loved her. Just like even though you didn’t answer my first set of letters, I know you loved me.

I forgive you for not writing back.

Because I learned from your mistakes. I learned to be proud of who I am. I learned that it’s okay to grow and change, to like who I want and to believe what I want.

I don’t really know what I believe or who I’ll end up with, but I know what I want now. And I know that it’s okay for me to want it.

Thank you for helping me get here.

I won’t make valentines with you this year.

I’ll still make them, though.

You won’t see me go to high school.

I won’t see you go to college.

I’ll still go, though.

You won’t see me have a baby, but maybe I will.

Maybe I’ll have a family of my own, even if you’ll never have that chance.

You won’t have the chance to figure out what God is or isn’t.

Hopefully I will.

You won’t get to sing or dance or love or hate or tease me about all the annoying stuff I do.

I’ll probably still do annoying stuff.

Things will change. Things have changed.

Things are still changing.

One thing will never change, though.

I’ll always miss you.

Love,

Evie