Collateral Beauty: A Collection Of Letters

Dear Death

Dear Death,

Misery. But, an understatement, is what I would consider you to be.

In mere months, you were able to bring me to a state of melancholy. One that lingered further on with every step that I took. Every single person that I passed. It followed me. It followed me to the extent where it was as though I was constantly covered in a darkened cloak.

Within mere months, you were able to break me. And, my heart. You became the deafening shatter. You became the shards that I found myself having trouble to pick up. You became the flattened line of the heart monitor that was supposed to keep him breathing. Keep him alive. Keep him here.

Within mere months, you were able to become everything that I feared. You are now the cancer that I wished and wished could have vanished from his system. The cancer that was able to take over his entire body and destroy it.

You, Death, are the creak beneath the hard wooden floorboards that once alerted me whenever he arrived home. The creak in the hard wooden floorboards that was so obnoxiously loud. The creak in the hardwood that I once hated but now, welcome.

You see, within everything that my father touched, you ruined. You ruined the kitchen that he once stood in while he prepared my breakfast. You ruined the bed that he slept in every single night- give or take a few. You ruined the pictures of us that he spent the entire day putting up around the house days after my mother had left. You ruined, you ruined and you ruined.

But, at the same time you did not. If it had not been for you, those little things that distinguished my father's style from other's would have remained to go unnoticed. If it had not been for you, the less and less he dragged his feet in the morning would have gone unnoticed. If it had not been for you, the slight grey pigmentation of his skin would have been over looked as nothing but the monthly town sickness. If it had not been for you, I would not know what real heartache felt like.

You, Death, are very much underestimated. You do not take those we love for your own amusement. No, it is not that way. You take away those that you believe to be in pain. You take away those that you believe are of a different time. You take away those that you believe need a different type of love. You take away those that you believe are not ready for what our so called earth, has in store.

You are not all bad. But, far from good. You can never be the comfort. You can never be the love. You can never be the time I wish I had more of. All you can be is Death. The one that takes. The one that teaches us to relive what we once had. The one that teaches us to feel. The one that tells us that it was never their plan for us to forget those we lost. The one that is natural and within everyone of us. The one, the one and the one.