When my mom died, I was shattered. So I wrote a letter to her and slipped it into her casket. I buried my confessions with her, thinking that would be the end.
I was wrong.
Five years later, I got a reply that made me question whether the dead can really reach back from beyond the grave. The day my mom Polly died, I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and stomped on it.
I was 25 and completely lost. Everyone kept saying she was “in a better place” and that “time heals all wounds.” What a load of garbage.
Nothing about losing my mother felt better.
At the funeral home, people filed past her casket with flowers, photos, and little mementos. I watched them place their tokens of love and wondered if any of it mattered. When the crowd thinned, I pulled out the letter I’d written the night before.
My hands shook as I unfolded the tear-stained paper.
The words looked messy and desperate. “Mom, I don’t know how to live without you.” That’s how the letter started.
It was filled with everything I couldn’t say while she was dying. I’d penned every regret that had been eating at me and all the promises I’d never get the chance to keep.
I’d signed it “Your daughter, forever” and slipped it against her cold folded hands.
Nobody saw me do it. It was just between us. “That’s our final goodbye, isn’t it, Mom?” I whispered, heading back to the pew.
Five years crawled by like wounded animals.
I moved to Oak Ridge, got a decent job at a marketing firm, and even dated a guy named Marcus for eight months. People said I was “doing better.” But the hole my mother left never filled.
It just got easier to walk around it. I never told anyone about that letter.
It was sacred.
It was just mine and mom’s. But one fateful Tuesday changed everything. I grabbed my mail from the apartment lobby, sorting through credit card offers and utility bills when I saw a white envelope with no return address and my name written across the front in handwriting.
My stomach clenched.
Back in my apartment, I tore it open with shaking fingers and froze at the words:
“Mom, I don’t know how to live without you.”
Those words were mine, written exactly as I had penned them five years ago. My knees gave out and I sank onto my couch, reading through tears as the letter continued like Mom was answering me.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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