Dear Brinton,

Remember when we were sitting on that park bench in Forsyth and I told you I wasn’t afraid of dying?  You couldn’t understand how I didn’t mind dying. I couldn’t understand what there was to not understand. It may take you many more years to understand that, and in many ways I pray you never understand that nonchalance of caring to leave this world or not, but now I DO mind dying. And as morbid as this is starting off, I owe it all to you. You reshaped my life in a direction that I had always wanted it to go in. You continue to shape it every single day. 

You make me a better person and you remind me every day of the miracle of God. You are the answer to so many hopes, dreams, desires, and prayers as big as this world is deep and wide and wacky.

The ease in which you carry yourself through life allows me to relax more than I ever have before. You make way for my thoughts to work themselves out, for my laughter to come to the surface. You take my stress and my fears and my insecurities and you carry them through life for me so I can walk a bit lighter. You make everything less and everything more at the same time.

I know who I am without you, but I also don't know who I am without you. You allow me to become the person I'm meant to be. You encourage me and believe in me like no one else in my entire life has. 

I’ll follow you across this world. Not because that’s what a good wife should do (you know this homemaking stuff is still difficult for me.. can’t you make us dinner forever?), but because I truly want to. You’re my best and my most favorite adventure I’ve ever gotten myself into. How beautiful is it to be known and loved so wholely?

My love for you is limitless, and my favorite life project will be telling you how much I love you every single day, in every single way. What an honor it is to get to love you.

Thank you, my husby. I'll forever be your flower and I'll forever be the most thankful for you. You are my end all, be all, the best thing in my life, and I love you more than anything.

Dear Daddy,

I have a lot of words, as you have always known, but none that will ever adequately be able to express how much and how deeply I love you.

You are my daddy, my protector, my first love, my hilarious jokester, my quiet, music loving, concert going, backwards hat wearing, beach loving, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant daddy. You are everything good in my life.

Do you remember on the drives to school every morning how you would ask me what I was thinking about? I think I usually responded with "nothing," mainly because I was afraid that if I told you what I was really thinking, it would break your heart because I was always so sad. And I couldn't handle breaking your heart any more than life already had. But you taught me something powerful on those drives to school with that one simple question. You taught me that I mattered - that my thoughts mattered, that my feelings mattered. You taught me that you cared. You taught me how to think about what I was thinking about. My favorite question to wonder silently to myself about those I love now is: "what are you thinking?"

The way that you carried your family through the war, how you built a fortress of love so strong it can withstand a bloody bath of attack after attacks, a hurricane of pain, a tundra of emptiness, is the one thing that leaves me speechless in this life. On days when I was too afraid to climb out of bed, too afraid of the monster of life that awaited, all I had to do was look up at you and take my cues. By watching you and by listening to you, I learned how to power through, how to guard my heart and my family with a fierceness that life demands, but in a way that still allowed the light and the joy to seep through.

Any time I hear I'm like you, which is often, a smile plays across my face because I know I just received one of the best compliments I'll ever receive. To be like my own father, the best father on the planet, is one of the greatest honors of my life and something I will be proud of until the end of time (even when mom sometimes isn't quite meaning it as the compliment I receive it as). If I can ever be a fraction of as cool, intelligent, both interested and interesting, strong and unwavering as you are, I know I'll be okay.

You have been championing me from day one of my life. I know that and feel that so deeply within my bones, it's like the act of breathing itself - just natural and ingrained in my brain, in my organisms, in my being. You have given me everything you could in this life, and on the rare occasions when you couldn't give me what I needed, you let me know that I mattered, that the situation mattered, that you cared, that you were there for me, and that you loved me beyond this life. So really, what more could I have ever needed?

Thank you and I love you. So so so so so so so so much.

p.s. - thank you for not giving up the good fight. thank you for fighting, for kicking cancers ass. who does it think it is messing with michael morris, the most badass papa bear out there? it clearly doesn't know what i know.

p.p.s. - growing up, somehow when the toilet paper in Zach and mine's bathroom was low, a new roll would magically appear on the countertop, ready to be changed over when the time would soon come. i, for some reason, though i should have known better, always just assumed Zach was the thoughtful culprit behind the fresh roll. after he died, the fresh roll of toilet paper kept appearing on the countertop. i remember the first time i ever saw it after that day in december. it was early in the morning and there it was - sitting to the right on our black granite countertop. in that very instant i felt like Zach was there, in something as silly as a fresh roll of toilet paper. i sincerely thought he had magically placed the new roll there, straight from heaven himself. it took me several years to figure out that the fresh toilet paper placer was actually you and not my gone brother, but it's still the most simple of acts that makes me smile and feel more loved than a piece of toilet paper should ever make a sane person feel. thank you for that. have i told you i love you yet? 

Dear Moomie,

Oh, mommy. I love you so much. Why is it most challenging to express how deeply and truly we really feel to the ones we love and appreciate the most?

Just like daddy, there aren't the proper words in the english language to tell you how much you mean to me and how much I love and adore you. I always wish we could trade brains for a day, so we would know what it's like to be each other, to think how the other one thinks. If you were in my brain for just one day, just one full 24 hour day, you would know how much I love you - how much I think about you each day, and how I think about you with such full and complete love. There is not a better person on this earth than you, mama.

Thank you for all of the grilled cheeses. Thank you for all of the offers and insists and willingness-es - the selfless, loving, financial and time consuming, joyful - offers. Thank you for always driving, for listening to me all the days of my life, for answering the phone most of the time, for believing in me and supporting me, even if you couldn't see the horizon line, even if it didn't follow the traditional path. Thank you for teaching me that we're all weird. Thank you for giving me one of the most sacred and life giving things you could have given me: a happy home. Thank you for loving my father with such a beautiful love that has inspired and shaped all of my days. Thank you for giving me the best big brother on this planet. You gave me everything I ever could have needed in this life, just by being my moomie.

I know no one else who has a fraction of the strength and the grace you possess, no one with a kinder heart or a more generous spirit than you. I pray to be more like you every day. More confident and at peace with what has been, what is and what will be, more gentle with the world and the people around me. More giving, more selfless, more faithful. I pray to be as kind as you, as wise as you, and as loving as you. I pray I'm everything like my mama is.

You are my everything. You are my best friend, my angel, my mommy. You are everything good in my life.

Thank you and I love you more than you will ever know.

Dear Zach

I can’t tell you what I want to tell you. I can’t tell you because I want to tell you everything. I want to call you and tell you about this new idea I just had. I want to tell you how much I miss your hugs. I want to tell you how well Sam and BrainJuice are doing. I want you to know Michael is the sweetest man. I want you to know that Mom smiles and laughs and laughs and laughs these days. You loved her laugh. She’s okay. I promise. Dad is still such a quiet badass. Sometimes we try to determine where you got your brains from. From Mom or from Dad? Dad claims you’re way smarter than he ever was or ever will be. I should have just said “you were way smarter” but sometimes I get so fucking tired of talking about you in past tense. So we’re sticking with the different tenses here and grammar cops can promptly exit from this page if they’re getting high and mighty. Plus, English and grammar weren’t exactly your strongest subjects, so we’ll pretend the misused commas and crap in this project are in your honor, okay?

Anyways, every day I want to tell you things. Like on a Monday in November the year before last I wanted to call you so badly and tell you about Amy’s baby. "Can you believe Amy had a baby? Me freaking either! And with Jack Reynolds, no less. Life is so weird, huh?" I imagine you laughing and saying, "that's so crazy." Oh my gosh, how good it would be to hear your laugh right now. Alright, back to Amy and Jack, you would love their story. Actually wait, did you orchestrate their story up there with God? It seems so like you. It’s got you written all over it. I bet you did.

I want to tell you how sorry I am. I can already feel you shutting me up. You’re saying “Little girl, it never was your fault. Don’t do that to yourself.” But Zach, I will always think it’s my fault. I will always wonder why it was you instead of me. It would have made so much more sense if it was me. You can’t argue with that one either. Everyone knows it would have made so much more sense if it was me instead of you. I used to wake up every day wishing it would have been me. Maybe mom and dad’s heart wouldn’t have broken so terribly hard. I know that’s not true, but I still think it. Maybe there would be a cure for AIDS by now if it was me instead of you. If it was me instead of you, how many smiles would you have put on so many peoples faces by now? Far too many to even begin to imagine it. So why was it you instead of me? Why is this world missing your joy and your impact and your smile and your sweet, sweet soul? Why wasn’t it me? I'll be asking that question for the rest of my life, knowing that one day when I come home and join you, you'll say "this is why it wasn't you, boo boo." 

Thank you for teaching me that it’s okay to be who I am, through the gentle screams of encouragement straight from Heaven when I’m doing something I’m supposed to be doing, when I’m doing something so aligned with my soul that you wonder what the heck took me so long. Thank you for teaching me that I’m not you, and that there’s beauty in that. There’s torment and there’s regret and there’s sadness and there’s attempt, years of attempt, but there’s also a bit of beauty there. And you taught me that. You taught me all the good things and all the hard things and all the things that a big brother is supposed to teach their little sister, even though we only had fifteen years together on this earth. You taught me how to sneak out of the house without mom and dad knowing, you taught me how to keep secrets, you taught me how to save my money by spending all of yours. You showed me what it’s like to be a friend. You were the very best friend. And it’s taken me a while, but you showed me how to be unapologetically confident in myself. You're still teaching me all the days of my life - in the days we had together and in the days since you've left. I've learned everything from you. And I'll be writing to you always, telling you things every hour of every day.

If there's one thing I'm proud of in this life, it's that I know you knew how much I loved, and love, you. And holy hell, is it a lot.

From the very first moment I was able to grasp who you were, that you were my big brother, I’ve loved you with all that I am. There’s not one single ounce of that love that will ever fade or dim. I’ll be missing you all the days of my life.

Thank you and I love you to the moon and back again and again and again, Zach. You’ll always be my perfect big brother.

*always flapping my wings like a birdie. always for you. 

Dear Running,

You taught me how to hold my spine tall, my head and neck even, how to keep my core tight. You showed me the power that ten little toes can hold, you showed me how to work through frozen fingers and stiff lungs. You taught me the importance of going off the beaten path. “Let’s blaze our own new path,” you whisper, over and over again.

Because of you, for the first time in my life, I realized I was innately good at something. What if I never would have discovered that? What if you never gave me the confidence you’ve been able to give me over the years? You taught me that oops, maybe I actually am a bit competitive (as in - hey 40 year old dude, watch me run quicker than you). You taught me the vital importance of consistency. You exposed the lies I tell myself. I claim I can’t run fifty more steps? You say “Yes, you can. Keep going, girl.” I can’t overcome this pain? You said “You already have, keep going.” I say I can’t do this or that? You say “Watch yourself.”

You’ve shown me the beauty in open fields and dirt roads. You’ve taught me (painfully, mind you) how to tread carefully over gravel - different terrains call for different moves and different speeds, such is life. You’ve shown me the beauty in all hours of the day: “Look how the sun rises in the morning, look how it burns off the cold and the fog. Rise every morning with me and you’ll watch the world shed it’s layers and come alive. The blackness that is night time? Watch how when you run with me at night you won't be able to come down from your high. Watch how the world tucks itself in at night. Be skeptical of that back corner in Forsyth park, but run past Jones Street with your eyes wide, look at the world around you.” You’ve allowed me to lay claim to towns and streets and roads and neighborhoods. You gave me precious moments to myself, moments that have transformed me and shaped me beyond shin splits and meditative breathing and one calf that’s bigger than the other. Without you, I think I truly would have lost my mind years ago. You gave me a safe space to process my never ending thoughts, you gave me something to bond with Brinton over, for which I will thank you daily for. You gave me a place to pour my destructive and self harming energy into. You don’t care if we haven’t hung out together in a week or two, you welcome me back with open arms every single time. You gave and continue to give me life, dear Running, and for that I owe you my life.

Thank you, and I love you with every broken fiber in my being. 

Dear Grandma,

The mama of my own mama. The mama of her older sister, the mama of my aunt. The grandma to her own babies first born son, the grandma to her babies baby. My grandma.

I love you for a million more reasons than the fact that you're my Grandma, for the fact that you loved me from the moment you knew I would come to be, and never stopped loving me since. I love you for the way your hugs enveloped me, for the way you always smelled just like my Grandma. I love you for the way you bickered with Grandpa, usually from the kitchen while he sat in his chair. I love you for the laugh you would joyfully bellow while I yelled out "stop fighting!" Oh, how much did I have to learn in life, would you think? I love you for the way you wrapped your arms around us, held us close, tucked us in at night and woke us up in the morning. I love you for the way you made us bologna sandwiches each summer and how we would laugh over the way bologna was spelled. I love you for the many french toasts you would make over the years we had together, never too tired or unwilling to make your grandchildren smile a bit. I love you for so many reasons that I wish I could still be loving about you today, but in many ways, I am - always have been, always will be.

The fire that runs through each of the Wilson women started with you, and makes me proud to be your granddaughter. The generosity that both Connie and mom hold deep in their bones comes from you. The selflessness that mom oozes out of her was learned from watching her own mama, you, be the best mama and grandma. If I can be a fraction of the daughters you raised, I'll be doing alright.

When you moved to Bellville, just a skip and a hop across the neighborhood from our house to your new one, I had all the plans. I was planning to come over after school each day. I was planning to sit with you, to learn more about the life my grandma led, to ask you all of the questions I wanted to know the answers to. I had all of the intentions to spend as much time with my Grandma as possible before it was too late, as I had learned by then that a "too late" would always come for each of us as some point. But then two days later it was already too late. Two days later you were in the hospital in pain and it was too late from there. I've missed those conversations we never got to have. I've missed those moments where I never got to learn more about you, straight from your own mouth. I can hear your voice right now. I miss those hugs and kisses hello and goodbye that we never got to continue on, with you just a hip and a skop across the neighborhood from us. I miss it all, I miss you, and in a way, you taught me then, for the second time in a short, hard two years, the importance of saying "thank you and I love you" when you have the chance. 

So thank you, Grandma, and I love you. So so much (with each "so" underlined twice, just like every card I ever have from you).

Dear Grandpa,

My memories of you will always be true. They'll always be the ones of us fishing when I was little, of your early dinner and bedtime, of your squabbling to Grandma in the kitchen, of your smile on birthdays and Christmas mornings and all of the days in between. You were and are my Grandpa, the gentle and kind soul I have known from the beginning.

Thank you for the family you've given me, simply by meeting that feisty young Betty in a bar. I like to think you'd be pleased to know I've carried on the tradition of the Wilson women meeting their future husbands in bars. Thank you for loving my Grandma so deeply and so strongly that only a couple of months could pass by without you before her heart decided it no longer could. To witness a love like that will inspire me all of my days. Thank you for my mama and my aunt, two of my most favorite people on this planet. Thank you for loving all of us to pieces. This I will always know to be true.

Thank you and I love you.

Dear Connie,

We may have always joked that I was really yours because I really am. My heart belonged to you that very first day we met - when you looked down at me in the hospital bassinet and I looked back up at you with sleepy but wild newborn eyes. Our souls were fused together in that moment and will forever be one and one, together side by side, for the rest of time. 

I love you with a fierceness and a fondness that is only reserved for you. A special kind of love just for the very best sister of my mama, the aunt who loves me like her own, and who I love like my own.

I was, and still am, proud to be your niece. It was one of the greatest roles of my life, and one that I wish could have continued long into both of our lives. Every conversation and moment we had together felt purposeful - full of love and honor, life and truth, two hearts and two souls intertwined in many different ways. I miss you more than you know, and you will forever be one of the great love and heartbreaks of my life, but I feel you each and every day. In the moments when I clutch your initial pendant to my chest and think of what you would say, in the dark moments when I know no one would understand the particular pain of wanting a child as badly as you, in the joy of dreams realized and looking at our family gathered around a table, sharing plates and lives and hearts - I know you're there. I know you're always there.

Days spent with you filled me with a sense of joy and wholeness that I've never felt from anyone else. It's a wondrous thing to know you're loved so completely, to never question your worth or your self in the presence of another. When you're one in the same, when you're cut from the same heart and blood and soul that inhabits the other, when you share the same loyalty for the people that raised each of you - that bond is forever and ever and ever. I still feel it and will carry it with me for all of my days. 

Thank you and I love you.

Dear Jim,

When I was little, my favorite thing was to see my Uncle JIm. I loved how tall and big you were, how special and loved and treasured you made me feel. One sack of potatoes around the room could make me laugh and laugh for days. And if I close my eyes now I can still hear the giggle of a little girl in love with her Uncle, and the laugh of that same Uncle who loved her just as much back. From little Allie fe fi bo balley to the Allie who watched you handle heartbreak with a bravery as big as you are tall, my love and admiration for you only grows with the years.

Thank you and I love you.

Dear 219 Duerr Drive,

I love you like I’ve never loved any structure in my entire life. Actually, I don't think I do love any other structure. I stand in awe in front of the Colosseum and am charmed by the row houses in Savannah and Boston and London, but I have never before or since loved a building made up of four walls and a roof like I love you.

You were our place of everything.

Our place of celebration in the joyful times - on birthdays and graduations and random evenings in the hot Texas summers, our place of refuge when the storms hit - and damn did they hit, our place of peace amidst our broken lives around us, our place of the most precious and priceless and treasured memories.

The place where the things we love most about our lives together took place - Zach sneaking out of the front door in the middle of the night to run to his car in the driveway, the few feet that separated Zach and I from each other for years, the comforting yellow walls of my wildly decorated bedroom, the sounds of Zach on the phone late at night coming from down the hall, the computer room where I can still hear him yelling at me for eating over the keyboard and getting it greasy, the pool where we swam like fish and played like kids, the garden out back where I can close my eyes anywhere in this world and instantly see mom kneeling in the flower beds, working away peacefully and fruitfully, the back windows that always scared me at night if mom and dad weren't there, the place where I first got the news that broke our family of four apart, and the place that gracefully and graciously let us all quickly fall apart and slowly put ourselves back together again.

Your walls contain my entire life. You will forever be my favorite home, my favorite refuge, my favorite keeper of my favorite memories.

Thank you, and I love you so, so, so very much.

Dear Pa,

Isn't it kind of funny to love someone you've never met before?

But I do love you. I love you for the husband you were to my Granny, for the father you were to my own father. I love you for the way your daughter lights up and smiles when she talks about you. I love you for the stories I've grown up hearing all of my life, the stories that have helped me feel connected to you, connected to a part of our family I have yet to meet on the brown soil of this earth. But as mama says, you picked me out and sent me down here, so perhaps our souls have already crossed.

I never tired of hearing of you, and you give me hope that perhaps my children won't tire of hearing about their uncle one day, that perhaps they'll feel a mutual connection and rich presence of him, just like I have grown up feeling of you.

I know the day I'll meet you in Heaven will be a fun one. I imagine that big smile playing across your face and a reunion a lifetime in the making. I'll see you then, Pa.

Thank you & I love you.

Dear Granny,

There are a few distinct moments and people that I associate with firsts - first true recognition of love, first true recognition of heartbreak, first true recognition of surprise and wonder, of joy and longing. I connect some of my first moments of love and heartbreak with you.

I loved you with an intensity reserved only for you from the day we first met, or so I can assume, for my earliest memories of you are met with a deep swelling of the vessels my heart. I loved being in your arms and at your house, cuddled up under the electric blankets on the couch, usually with you nestled in between Zach and I. I loved opening the closet off the kitchen, where I could always find Garfield and a myriad of other treasures. I loved the TV trays and the unique fun it was to have our dinners in the living room, on our own personal little tin trays just for us. I loved the trees in your yard and watching Zach climb the big one in the front. I loved the garage and seeing Pa's old truck in there, climbing in the front seat, plugging my nose from the smell of must. I loved the old songs we would dance and play around to - Great Balls of Fire will always take me back to dancing in the garage and what was probably your plan to rid us of some of our energy. I loved being tucked in by you at night, going to sleep knowing I was safe and loved and at my Granny's house.

I can still remember the pride and the awe I felt when I watched you dance with your friends. I thought it was the coolest that my Granny went to dance each week, and I slept in that faded black dance t-shirt of yours long after you were gone. There are few smells more comforting in this world to me than the smell of Dove soap, and Juicy Fruit gum will always make me smile and think back to you.

I can still feel the break of my heart that day you left us, and in the moments and days and years after. I didn't know an eight-year-olds heart could hurt that much or could long for someone so terribly so. You were my first lesson in saying goodbye, in learning to live with the pain, in learning to love harder and bigger and deeper. I've missed you every second since that July day, and find my comfort in knowing that you're always there, you've never left. I can still feel your hugs and smell the sweet scent of your perfume when I close my eyes.

Thank you for being the best Granny, and I'll love you always.

Dear Toni,

I've always had a favorite photo of you - the one where you're pretending to be asleep outside of a pub in London. Or was it Paris? I'm pretty sure it was London. Either way, I've always loved that photo of you. Even as a little girl I thought it perfectly captured the free spirit wittiness of my aunt. I thought it made you look like the badass that you are.

You've been teaching me since I was little how to hold my head high, how to be perfectly okay with who I am, practically through osmosis. I love the way your laugh opens up a room, how when you talk about Granny and Pa your face softens and the love and admiration are apparent. I love the way you do your own, always, and your love for road trips makes me smile. I love the way you inherited Granny's love for gardening and making the things around you beautiful.

I'll always admire your grit and your charm, and hope and pray that the badassery that makes up your cells was transferred to a few of my cells too.

Thank you for being my aunt Toni, and I love you.

Dear Stephanie,

You never really forget your first few role models. Whether they're Britney Spears (I hear she really was some people's first..) or your older cousin, you remember them forever and ever. I'm lucky enough to count the latter, my own older cousin, as one of my first role models. I thought then, and still do now, that you hung the moon. As far as I was concerned, there was no one cooler, no one nicer, no one prettier than you. I'll still stand by those little kid thoughts today.

You're one of the most selfless people I know, with a heart as big as the Texas sky is wide and tall. By simply living your days out, you teach me how to be a better human - one who is more patient, more giving, more loving, more full of joy and grace.

I've always been able to find comfort in your arms, embraced in a hug and a love I know I can count on all the days of my life. Your confidence and strength in the face of the unknown inspires me to trust the world and our God more, to rest in the peace that is sure to find us.

I'll always think you're the coolest and you'll always be twenty-eight or so in my mind, with long curly hair and the sweetest soul and smile to match. Thank you for loving me for forever. You're the best big cousin there is.

Thank you & I love you.