The Unread Letter
Nineteen years ago, it could have changed everything.
Is it random how things you’ve buried come to the surface just when you have nearly forgotten they existed?
I rummaged through a time capsule of a plastic file, looking for documents to take to the attorney. Because all three kids were inching towards their thirties, and one beyond, even, it was time to update my will.
The letter slid out of an innocuous 9" X 13" white envelope; two pages, a page and a half of single-line printed text, pressed in a crisp, deliberate half-fold that successfully blanked its existence from my mind.
It was the last thing I wanted when he handed it to me. My heart had shriveled, like the Grinch, into a tiny green lima bean. I didn’t care what it said. “Too little, too late,” my ego hissed inside my skull. “We are done.”
With that, my eyes blurred over. I could not read a word of it.
For some reason, my mom and grandmother were there when he dropped it off for me. He’d been gracious, and they intuited his intentions with the letter. I shrugged and said they could read it, busying myself with unpacking kitchen things. Filling the empty cabinets allowed me to stake a claim in my new life.
Somberly, Gram and Mom shared the pages between them. Having their eyes on his words was probably a privacy violation. Still, much like being in labor for nine hours with my first son, I was numb to the naked and excruciating pain of the process.
Gram touched me on the shoulder, looked me in the eyes, and said quietly, “He seems sincere.”
I just shook my head, closed the letter like it was the last page of a tiresome book, and continued unpacking the wedding dishes, lining them up neatly on the shelves.
I was having one of those desperate purge days when the urge for order and to cull the baggage from my past drove me into long-sealed places. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that this note emerged like an alien inside my gut, comatose for nearly two decades but now screeching for release.
Susan,
This is certainly a reversal. Me writing my thoughts down for you to read. Go figure. I had such a hard time expressing the feelings in my heart last night that I needed to write them down…
This man opened. He took responsibility. He shared his intimate thoughts and feelings, the very thing I had desperately wanted. It was a love letter. It was a letter of hope for the future, of asking for forgiveness. It was a prayer. It contained not one word of blame, not one harsh thought.
His words became a soliloquy, and I, the spectator, was older, wiser, and barely able to breathe, drowning in the intensity of his desire to repair things, to restore the family. Most of all, to be there emotionally for me.
I walked away from all this love.
One of my triggers is being dismissed — having my thoughts, but even more so, my feelings dismissed. This trait, in the positive, yielded empathy and compassion. Yet, my shields had been up, my fortress built, and I dismissed this man’s grand act of vulnerability in choosing my poor me relationship story.
There were consequences, of course. He was hurt by my “too little, too late” rejection. He spiraled into hell for a while. I remember dropping off kids, attempting to speak, and seeing the embers burning in his eyes. Anger rose like black steam, billowing around him, and it was clear we would not be friends nor end things amicably. Conversation between us was limited to email and text.
I had in my mind that there were “better men out there” and that someday, I would find one who would be that Prince Charming. How naïve I was to online dating and what it might be like to date in my forties. I pushed past the point of reconciliation, thinking my new life would be better.
Fast forward through the 19 years that eventually surpassed the 17 during which we were married and equaled the 19 that we were together. It feels like multiple lifetimes, measured in spans defined by relationships and periods of single living.
I have grown and matured immensely, and my expectations of men and relationships have changed. Gone is the fairytale fantasy of finding “the one” person who fills all my needs and gets me completely. I give myself outlets like friends, family, exercise, writing, and art. I have stopped needing someone to agree with me politically and spiritually and enjoy the same hobbies.
Getting divorced made family life much more difficult. I regretted that I couldn’t find ways to communicate my needs and grow within the format of my marriage.
Then this happened…
In 2020, I got nervous about the pandemic and how I would make a living. Knowing that my ex had moved out of the family home and two of my grown children still lived there, I picked up the phone and asked to rent a room. Without hesitation, he welcomed me back to the home, no rent required. I was stunned, hired some movers, and rolled up the long gravel drive a week later, hoping the moving van driver could dodge the deeper ruts and bumps.
Set at the back of an 8-acre tract of wooded land that was once a farm, the brick one-story home was his sanctuary, a house he built and finished in large part by himself. We had lived in it briefly before I blew the family up.
No one was at the house for my homecoming. In the hallway from the garage, a wall of family photos — warped images at fallen angles yet imprisoned within their matted frames — held cheerful smiles, despite the color fading from the faces. As I unloaded bags and boxes from my vehicle, I paraded by this lineup of the captured innocent, forever frozen upon the threshold of the happy life they thought lay ahead.
My ex never replaced most of the furniture I’d claimed as my spoils. Because the home was an open floor plan with high ceilings, it felt cavernous. Hard surfaces and empty spaces echoed the hollow feeling that came over me during the few times during years after the divorce that I’d stepped inside. Was the house homesick for its short-lived glory days? Was it a haunting reminder of a fantasy ending, or was it calling me to the comfort of its foundation to restore my perspective on a distant horizon in the rear-view mirror?
I settled into my eldest son’s empty bedroom, knowing this was a rare opportunity for closure and cleaning up the energy of the past. My ex planned to sell the property soon, so I anointed myself in charge of helping get the place ready to go on the market. I live best marching toward a new horizon, so I dug into physical tasks: cleaning, painting, repairing, and staging the place with the furniture that I brought with me.
My daughter and I bonded over picking through items from the past and selling what we could. I found a large laundry basket filled with my boxy, big-shoulder blouses, an oversized pink beach dress, and sweaters in garish colors. Under the main bathroom sink sat two bottles of hair products that had turned brown from oxidation. If the 1990s ever call, they can have their fashion back.
We sorted things into piles: keep, dump, sell, give away. My daughter found two electric keyboards, one with the keys labeled in black Sharpie. While she sang a sad girl pop song, I wondered how I did not know she had taught herself to play and that she had such a beautiful voice?
Backing into the garage one day during a storm, I ripped the driver’s side rear-view mirror off my vehicle.
Like an itchy scab that was ready to go, I had reached the point where my pilgrimage’s more profound, hidden griefs had been healed. By a great miracle, I had secured some upcoming work as a facilitator, so I scheduled my Chevy for repairs and began the search for a new place.
Showings for the house were picking up pace; the kids said it looked and felt more like a home than ever. My furniture suited the scale and style of the house, fresh coats of paint brightened the walls, and the family pictures had been carefully disassembled, their aging frames donated or tossed, and the photos respectfully transferred to a labeled box.
My daughter and I agreed to move together, giving her time to build a nest egg and find her career path. Reconnecting with her was worth a pandemic to me.
It was while my daughter and I were living together that the letter resurfaced.
Life invites us to reconsider, not to punish us for our choices, for it does not care if we go left or right. Its only duty is to allow us the gift of complete forgiveness, to awaken in a new place, ready to begin a new conversation from our higher perspective.
It’s never too little, too late.