Dearest Amanda,

 

In our darkest hour my mind replays,

a memory:

 

My eyes are pulled to where the road seems to bend,

where the trees are not green,

where the long river ends.

I kept asking our father why the sky looked so bright,

he turned to me and said, “soon I will be there, and later you will too. Mother will meet us there, and Aunt Sally too”.

So I grasped his hand and led him to the end

where the long river ends, where the sky is too bright

on my heaven’s eyes.

 

The truth is that I don’t know why people die, or why children cry.

The world seems to happen either happens too much,

or not enough.

 

Yes, we are born alone, we die alone.

 

Every whisper on the street,

every sigh of the land,

every glimmer in the snow,

haunts me as I sleep,

and keeps me wide awake.

It takes lives as it comes,

and it may never be saved.

 

But we will help each other live;

we may fall,

again,

and again,

and there will be no shame in that.

 

There is salvation in hardship, if only for a brief moment, and you know this best of all.    

 

We are born alone, we die alone,

but we cannot,       

and I say cannot,

make this journey alone.

 

With love,

Alexa