Dear Mom,
I wanted you to know that I didn’t brush my teeth much until I was about 12 years old.  I also had a hankering for BLT sandwiches in junior high – on toasted white bread with plenty of mayo.  I would cook up a whole package of Oscar Mayer after school and pretty much eat nothing else.  Except Twinkies at lunch, panhandling 20 cents at a time when I ran out of money.
I didn’t think I missed you, telling myself that I was lucky not to have someone telling me what to do all the time.  I got to ride the subways alone in elementary school, I was able to “get lost” on the uptown IND, taking the express to Harlem and missing Hebrew school now and then.  You weren’t there to scold me.  When asked about you, I would murmur that you died, then I’d get sympathy, almost foreign to me, like having a wart on my nose which I didn’t think was ugly.
Nothing was wrong, really, until I got to college.  It took about five more years to realize how angry I was, the same span as my birth to your death.  I guess I was awakened to my terrible problem relating to girls.  It wasn’t just shyness, it was my fear of abandonment and the rage once it happened.  By then an abstract thinker, I figured out it had something to do with your disappearance.
This is a forgiveness letter, back-and-forth.  It took 20 more years for my young man to forgive you for leaving.  I’m not sure why it took so long, something to do with the concrete needs of a five-year-old.  I was the man in his forties broken down like a kitten with nothing to suck.  I then saw your pain and fear, and your dread of leaving the children behind.  That was unexpected, intellectualized until then, but felt for the first time.  And when it all came out I realized one more thing.  I also needed your forgiveness for the years of blaming you for something you could never control.
Cancer has a way of calling the shots, including the endgame for some . . .  So this letter comes down to only three things.  I miss you.  I forgive you.  I hope you forgive me. love, R.