A Wrinkle in Time.

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

 

I remember the moment you entered our lives.

I was standing in my kitchen and as I cleaned up the aftermath of the day he sifted through the day’s mail, his impatient eye skimming the headlines.

“Did you hear about the accident?”

An accident. That’s what it was. Something that shouldn’t have happened but did. Something that we couldn’t make sense of because there was no sense to be made. A cataclysmic event that ruptured your world and reverberated into the periphery of ours, the accident touched us in a way none had before.

“They’re our age, and our kids are the same age. They even have a son and a daughter like we do. I can’t even begin to imagine.”

And then 11 days later I knew.

That evening my thoughts kept returning to the woman and her children, and deep within my heart I knew that she was drowning in a sea of her own devastation only to be crushed by waves of mother’s guilt knowing that she could not remove your own pain.

We did not know it, but our lives changed that night with yours.

Someday you will come to understand everything that your mother has meant to so many who have come after her, the remarkable and deeply profound changes she has championed because of you and in honor of him. Someday you will understand that the love your father had for you was not defined or bound by the time you had with him. Someday you will look back and see how many lives you’ve touched and how many people you’ve inspired, if even for a moment, to live without regrets. Someday I hope that, regardless of the paths you each take, that the four of you, her children and mine, cherish the friendship you forged in the face of insurmountable loss.

I search for the bright spots more than I did before all of this happened to us. And, somehow, some way, your father and theirs dazzle amongst the rest. Because of them, you entered our lives and we are better for it.

I never had the chance to know him, but standing in the kitchen that evening I wondered what kind of man he was. Did he laugh easily? Did he love deeply? Did he risk everything to do what was right, and good and necessary? Did he look forward or did he look backward? Did humor dance in his eyes? Was he reserved or was he the one that brought life to the room? Five years later I know the answer.

Because we know you.