The Letters For Those Left Behind

Adam's Letter

We all met up in her room two weeks later. We only had so much time until we all went off to college. I sat next to Adam, my head resting on his shoulder as he said, "I'll go."

Adam,

Hey cousin of mine. I know that by now you probably know that I've died and Karen probably read her letter already and you held her as she cried and Cole was mostly silent. That's how things have always been. Karen's the emotional one, you're the smart ass, Cole is the silent jester, and I'm the tag along fourth kid. I dunno what exactly I was in our group dynamic. But I know it wasn't important.

Anyways remember when we were just little kids, back when we still called church Happy Day? Well I was thinking about that a few days ago. I remember you said you believed in God whole heartedly and would never stop believing. Well do you remember me laughing and saying that I could never believe in Him the way you do? Of course in little five or six year-old speak back then.

Well I've been thinking about it recently and I think I've finally figured out why I never believed as strongly as you did. It's because the things I believe in most are things I can touch and see and just know it's there and will never change. That's why I struggled with my faith so much. Now that I'm older I still have that problem, but not as badly as I used to. And I've been thinking about it, about Heaven and what it must be like.

Well I'm not sure about you but I think it'd be almost impossible for me to get into Heaven now. What with me killing myself and all. I mean to take a life is a sin. But if it's your own life do they put that against you on Judgment Day? I dunno.

But I've also been thinking about time and how you were always so confused by it when it made perfect sense to me. To me time is just something that someone, I don't know who, created to make humans more focused on deadlines and worried about what happens when we have little time. And to fear what we all fear; time running out. I was thinking about how I always hated the idea of time and you would be confused because, 'It's time. How can you hate something that doesn't really exist?'

And that's when it hit me. I don't fear it because I fear time running out. I fear time because it doesn't exist. It simple is there staring you down and threatening to take you away before yours is up. Before you're ready. Well now that I've thought about it, I don't fear time anymore. In fact I the only time humans don't fear time is when we've run out of it. When our time is up.

I know my time on this earth is up. But that idea doesn't scare me. In fact I welcome the thought. But you've probably guessed that by now.

-Amanda H. Rose

PS. You've been more of a brother to me than my own.

We sat there in silence for a bit and I thought about what she said. About how nothing, not even the thing that scared her most, scared her anymore. How she knew exactly what she was doing and how it didn't effect her choice. I didn't realized I was crying until Adam handed me a box of tissues.

"I think that's enough for today." Cole said.

I nodded and watched him leave the room, holding tightly to Amanda's pillow.

"Why does he have her pillow?" I asked.

"He asked for it." Adam shrugged. "Said he wanted to remember how she smelt."