A Letter to Ryan

Ryan,

Three months now.

I don't know how to start this except to just start.

The first month I barely remember in order. What I do remember is the wake. Standing room only. People spilling into the hallway, out the door, just to be there for you. Five hundred people came to your memorial, Ryan. Five hundred. Friends from every stretch of your life, showing up to say your name out loud, to tell me things about you I didn't even know. That kind of love doesn't happen by accident. You built that, every relationship, every text, every random check-in call. It came back to you tenfold that day.

I remember the urn. Trying to fit you into a forty character incription and not being able to say enough, not ever being able to say enough. I remember Chris standing up to deliver the eulogy I wrote, because I couldn't stand up and say the words myself.

I remember Little Rock. The base put together an incredible service for you. We met the guys you worked with, all of them, and every single one made a point to come up to us and tell us a story about you, what you meant to them. They took us out onto the flight line, into a hangar where they were servicing one of the sixteen C-130s you managed. They let us board the plane. Standing there, in your world, seeing what you built a life around, seeing how much those guys respected you... I understood you a little more that day, and I missed you even more for it.

While we were there, we went to the crash site. We found the long winding road. We saw the tree. We just stood there, in disbelief, staring at the exact place the world ended, trying to make it make sense, and it never will. It never will, Ryan. I don't think I'll ever stop seeing that tree when I close my eyes.

On your birthday, Robin, Mom, Richard, Tito, Tita, Raqui, Paulina, Nichole, and I went out to see you at Trinity Memorial Gardens. When we pulled up, Ozzy, Carson, Brian, Collin, and Logan were already there waiting. Great minds. That's the kind of pull you still have on people, Ryan. Nobody had to coordinate it. Everybody just showed up.

I got a tattoo. An upper sleeve, a tributeto you. Fouteen hour just to try and keep you close. I wear you around my neck now. Your shelf is the first thing anyone sees walking into this house. A shrine front and center, the way you'd want it.

I started writing it all down. Grievingryan.com. I didn't plan for it to become what it became, I just needed somewhere to put this that wasn't only inside me. I've been calling it "not worse" instead of better, because better isn't honest yet. Some days not worse is the whole victory.

I wrote that grief moved in like a housemate. I wrote about the third loss, losing you, losing the future I'd planned, and losing twenty-two years of being your dad in the present tense instead of the past. I wrote that I'm not surviving. Surviving implies I'm fighting for something. Existing is closer to true.

Father's Day came. I got through it. Barely counts as getting through, but I did.

I've pulled back from people. I know that's not like me. The version of me that used to answer every text and show up for everybody is not fully here right now, and I'm letting that be true instead of fighting it.

And today, Georgia played.

Ten years of you and Robin cheering on the Bulldogs, either all together or you on FaceTime, and I have never once watched a game without you in it somehow. Robin wore her jersey today. The dogs wore theirs. The game was on and you weren't, and Robin and I just sat there and cried through it.

I don't have a big ending for this letter. Three months in, I don't have big endings for anything.

But I want to tell you what missing you actually feels like, because "I miss you" doesn't come close.

It's reaching for my phone to text you something stupid and remembering halfway through the motion. It's hearing that laugh in a crowd that isn't yours and turning around anyway. It's the specific shape of your bear hugs, the weight of you, gone from my arms and nowhere to put that weight now. It's setting the table in my head for a life that doesn't exist anymore. It's wanting, so badly, one more random check-in call. Just one. Nothing to say. Just your voice.

The longing doesn't fade. It just finds new rooms to live in. It's in the quiet of the car. It's in the space next to me on the couch during games. It's in my chest at three in the morning when the house is too still and I'm the only one awake in it.

I would give anything, everything, to have you annoyed with me one more time. To hear you talk stats and matchups and championship odds like it's the most important thing in the world, because to you it was, and because it meant you were here.

I'm not looking for this to stop hurting. I don't think I want it to. The pain is the last thing I have that's only about you.

I miss you. I miss your laugh, that ridiculous laugh. I miss the bear hugs. I miss the calls for no reason at all. I miss you more than I have ever missed anything, and I will miss you like this for the rest of my life.

I'm still here. Still your dad. Still figuring out how to be that with you gone.

Love you always,

Dad