The Letter | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: The Letter | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lillian Jacobs
01/17/07
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I am writing this to you so that you might understand. I could never tell you. Have started several times and then stopped. You asked what it was and I said, “Oh, nothing, just a passing thought”.

I tried my best. I guess most mothers do, but I was not a Christian then, had no guidelines, just the past, and what is it in the Bible…the sins of the fathers… yes, the sins of the fathers.

I couldn’t have known and still don’t really. You were too young to remember. Too young to even remember him and how he doted on you. He was a good man, always was good to me. The rumors, the whispers from my older sisters, well, what happens within these four walls stays within these four walls. I know you have heard me say that many times. A lesson well learned from my childhood. Nothing ever happened to me. I would not believe, could not believe it to be true.

I should have asked though, should have thought it was strange that you changed and that you always cried at night. Always had so many nightmares that you couldn’t remember. When he said that he had lost you, I just thought it was because you started school and had other friends. Now looking back, I think that maybe it was more.

How do you unlock a secret that only the dead know now? I don’t know, and by the time you read this I will have joined them.

I just wanted you to know how sorry I was. How sorry I am that I was not more; did not do more. I know that I am a coward and writing this now and that you will read this after I am gone only makes me more so. I have no excuses.

Someday, when you have children, maybe you will understand. We all try. We all fail in ways big and small. You will make mistakes, I pray, none as large as mine. Then when you ask your God for your children to have some mercy on you for your failures, then maybe you will remember me too. Maybe then you can forgive the things that even you do not know. Maybe you can have mercy on me as well.

I did love you, just not enough.

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