To My Daughter Who Left This World Too Soon

To My Daughter,

I just want to let you know that first and foremost that your daddy loves you. Your daddy lives and dies just for you because no one could ever take away how much you mean to him. I’m writing you this letter so that you understand that nothing will change the way your mother and I love you. Baby, one of the things I wish to stress to you is the importance of change, and how love is greatly affected by it. Love is complicated and complex; love is never the same between different people. The love your mother and I have for you is one of understanding that you will always be part of us as we are a part of you.

Unfortunately, one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to learn is that love between people can change over time and sometimes it will cause rifts between people who once couldn’t be separated. Once upon a time, your mother and I had a love that wasn’t easy to understand or define, but it was real, heartfelt and full of a passion that could’ve destroyed us if we weren’t careful. One thing you’ll learn as the years go by is that every person has a story that isn’t something you’ll see on the surface; it was a lesson that took forever for me to learn about your mother. Beneath the beautiful woman with a smile that could melt icebergs of hearts, lies a girl who was robbed of so much as a girl, that it took her years to come to grips with what was stolen before she could learn to fight back. Your father on the other hand is a hard-headed human being who struggles with the boy inside of him that always felt like he was fighting to prove he was something the people closest to him thought he could never be. He fought uselessly trying to prove something he never needed to. Your mother met me at a time where I was losing control of everything, and something about her drew me in…that I just could never turn away from. Your mother and I were never the perfect match; we argued over things that now seem inconsequential, compared to the love we created that resulted in you.

It’s hard to really capture the truth as eloquently as I would like to, but I want you to know that there are always two sides to every story. The difference between me saying that, and what the rest of the world may tell you, is that I won’t tell you that it’s not as simple as defining which side was right versus what side was wrong. Sometimes, what matters the most is that both sides both struggle with the consequences of what was done, and that the best that either side can do, is hope that they can survive the overwhelming reminders of what once was, and the fear of what lies ahead. As your father, I want to teach you that yes, life is complicated. It is full of blissful highs full of brilliant moments that define happiness, and it will also bring you to the darkest depths of everything you thought could and should never happen…the fact is, bad things do happen, no matter how hard we try to avoid them.

I want you to know that your mother and I, regardless of what happened that lead to the way things are today, truly do love one another. To say that we still don’t would be a lie. It’s just that, sometimes things happen between people that create rifts that become hard to build bridges between, and while I struggled to construct the flimsiest of bridges, your mother was smart enough to realize that we were doing nothing but fighting against the flow of time. Your mother was trying her best to teach me the error of my ways; I was trying to juggle things that we out of my control, and trying to convince myself I could handle everything when I clearly couldn’t.

Your mother did everything to try and show me that she wasn’t trying to hurt me by doing what she did, but I refused to believe it, because I was too hard-headed to accept that sometimes when you love someone, sometimes the best thing you can do for them is to separate and let them be on their own. It’s one of the hardest things to learn as an adult, but I want you to learn this now, so that you’re a lot more prepared than I was for that reality.

I’m writing this letter because I want you to know that your mother’s decision wasn’t one that I agreed with, but ultimately needed to accept because she was doing something that she knew was the best option for the both of us. I’m writing this letter in the hope that as much as I love you, and as much it brings me to cry tears of joy when I see you in my dreams and I embrace you with all the love I wish I could’ve given you, I need you to stop haunting me… I’m writing this because 10 months have passed since you were taken from the world before you even had a chance to draw your first breath.

I’m writing this because I need you to know that your mother and I are doing everything we can on our own to live the kind of lives we know we couldn’t if you were to be here with us…doing everything we can to come to a future version of ourselves where we could give the possibilities of your brothers and sisters the opportunities and life we wouldn’t have been able to give you. Whether or not we will be together when that happens, only time will tell, but regardless of which…I write this letter to you to remind you every day that no matter what happens, we both love you very much.