The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

It is beyond my comprehension the lengths to which children will go in the name of cruelty, and I know you know this, but I want to repeat that when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them. It doesn’t help a bit to hear that when you’re young, but later it will.

Grief shared, I think, can produce two outcomes. Either you bind yourselves together and hold on for dear life, or you let go and up goes a wall too high to be crossed. For us it was the latter.

Terrible things happen. We make choices. Time cannot be rewound. The good that comes out of the bad can be unbearable.

And here, I know you are all tucked away down in Texas, and we are both caught in the wretched web of aging, aren’t we, but I hope this last stretch of time we both have, I hope it is full for you. This is also, I suppose, what I hope for myself.

we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic.