Dear John, —
I have not written in eleven months. I have started this letter twice and folded it into the drawer with the others. Tonight the kitchen is warm, and the dog is asleep at my feet, and I think perhaps I can begin.
Dear John, —
The maples on the lane have gone the color of old copper. I walked out as far as the bridge this afternoon, the way we used to, and I stood there for what must have been half an hour, watching the water. I did not cry. I was, I think, only listening.
Dear John, —
Mrs. Halpern brought a casserole on Tuesday. She did not stay. She has lost her own husband now, three months in, and we did not have to speak much. She held my hand at the door for a long moment and then she went down the steps very carefully, and I watched her go, and I thought: we are a kind of congregation now, the women on this road.
Dear John, —
I went back to church on Sunday. I sat in the pew we used to sit in, and Pastor Reeves caught my eye during the doxology and gave me the smallest nod, and I almost broke. But I did not break. I sang the hymn through, and I took the bread, and I came home, and I made tea, and I sat with it until it was cold.
Dear John, —
I have been reading the Psalms again. Not all of them — just the quiet ones. The ones that do not ask anything of me. I have decided that grief is a kind of prayer, even when it is wordless. I think you would have agreed.
Dear John, —
The pipes froze on Thursday night. I remembered, in the morning, exactly what you would have done, and I did it, and the water came back, and I stood in the kitchen with the kettle running and I laughed out loud for the first time in I do not know how long. The dog looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Perhaps I had, a little, in the best way.
Dear John, —
Our daughter called last night. She is well. She asked if I wanted her to come for Christmas and I said yes, and then I sat by the phone for a long time afterward, surprised by my own answer. I have spent these months learning to be alone. It is, perhaps, time to begin learning to be with people again.
Dear John, —
I dreamed of you. We were in the garden, the old one in Maryland, and you were trying to tell me something about the tomatoes, and I kept saying yes, yes, but I was not really listening because I was so glad to see you. I woke up at four in the morning and lay in the dark and was not sad. I was, for those few minutes, only grateful.
Dear John, —
I have begun to pray for you again. Not for your soul — that I never doubted. For mine, I think. That I might keep loving you well, in the new and strange way that is asked of me now. That I might not turn the loving into a museum. That I might let it stay alive.
Dear John, —
I will not send these letters. You know that. You have always known. But I will keep writing them, on the warm nights and the cold ones, until the writing becomes the thing itself, and I no longer need the page. The kettle is on. The dog is dreaming. Outside, the first snow of the year has just begun to fall.
— Yours, still,
— M.