Submission 223
To my Dad
I wish you could have stayed longer to meet your beautiful granddaughter and watch me step into motherhood. I see glimpses of you in Evie, and I made sure to carry on our surname proudly in her name.
Submission 222
Mum
I wish you'd have stayed
I wish you'd have stayed
Mum, I wish you'd have stayed.
The daylight wouldn't feel so harsh if only you'd stayed.
The nighttime is now memories and arguments replayed.
And it'll never be the same without you, Mum, if only you'd stayed.
Submission 221
Dear L,
It will have been 6 years since you left in December. That’s crazy, isn’t it? 6 years is a really long time, or at least to me it is.
I don’t really speak about you to other people. But I wish I could. I miss you so, so much and a day doesn’t go by where I don’t think of you or say a prayer for you. We only knew each other for a couple of years but I loved every second of our friendship. And if given the chance I would speak about all of the bits of you that I miss. So that’s what I’m going to do now. Don’t cringe too hard!! Haha.
I miss your smile the most. It’s clichéd, I know, but I’m being honest. You grinned like a Cheshire Cat and it was delightfully infectious. I miss your long brown hair, and the smell of the rubbish body sprays you used to get from Superdrug.
Submission 220
Dad,
I’ve been questioning myself on what this letter means. Unlike most of the letters I’ve read so far I didn’t really get the chance to know you. Maybe that’s a blessing, although it never truly felt like that was the case.
Submission 219
To my Florist,
To my Florist,
How lucky I am to miss you so desperately.
In the years after you died, we’ve all spent many hours trying to understand what happened, what could have happened, what we could have changed, questions that rearrange your world. I think that’s partly because we’re all still so young, with a desperate need laced with naïvety to rationalise the irrational and work out what our favourite colour is by the end of each day, only to wake up and change our minds. But I think that’s the nature of how you died, it’s not linear or something that can be prepared for. I’ve since stopped trying to neatly piece together answers, something’s are simply not that simple. That’s why we have grey, techno and question marks.
Submission 218
Hi Boy,
I miss you. I’m so angry with you. But I miss you. I think my anger bubbles up because it’s easier to feel than how much I love you.
God, I would have died to take away those feelings that let you reach where you did that night.
Submission 217
To their daddy,
When I think about all of the different life scenarios we discussed on first dates, this was not one of them.
When I think about how you described your young life, your life progression, from Luton to law, when you told me your goals. This was not one of them.
When we found out I was pregnant and we talked about all the things we would do as parents. This was not one of them.
When we started making memories, before life became a challenge. We didn’t want this one.
When we separated and argued for months, trying to parent anyway we could. When we were trying to work out what option was best for our boys. This was not one of them.
Submission 216
Dear Daisy,
Life feels strange the older I get and you are still 16 years young. I often find myself thinking about the things you’re missing out on and wonder what person you’d have blossomed into.
Submission 215
To my baby brother,
My other half is a term associated with love
I’m using it to describe you, my brother up above
My brain etched with memories of laughter and joy
Only shared with you my brother, my special boy
There’s a poem called the dash, about time on this earth
About the use of our time from the day of our birth
Your time on this earth so short and sweet
Submission 214
To my sister,
I miss you. I'm still angry. Still confused. Still wondering if it is real. It's been 7 months since the phone call I replay in my head over and over to remind me it is real or sometimes when I want to feel the pain just so I can miss you.
Submission 213
To my Dad
It has been one year, two months, and 25 days since you left us. There hasn't been a single one of those where I haven't thought about you, about why you did this, about what I could have done to change things.
Of course the answer is I couldn't.
Submission 212
Dad,
I don’t think I will ever really be ok without you here. I have a hole in my heart that will never be filled - not with all the money, love, friends or fun in the world, and I am so very sorry I didn’t realise how much you mean to me sooner. I will never forgive myself for that.
Submission 211
To my Brother,
I lost you nearly three years ago, and I am still to process it all. Some days are good, and the relief I feel is no longer just temporary- but the reality and reminders of you still crush me before the day is done.
Submission 210
Dear S,
Next Sunday would have been our 6th wedding anniversary. It's strange to think back on our story now - things happened in such a whirlwind at the start, and now I've been grieving you for longer than we had been married.
Submission 209
To my Brother,
Despite the years that have passed since you could no longer carry the weight of your sadness, l still find myself oscillating between the raw pain of losing you and the dull ache of missing you. And maybe worse than that I find every day is soaked in guilt.
Losing you felt like losing a significant part of myself - or maybe more accurately, the part of me that you were so integral to crafting became a part of me that was replaced with an angry, bereft shadow of its former self. Grief lives so permanently in my back pocket that I wonder what I’d be without it in the same way I feared what I’d be without you.
Submission 208
Dear big brother,
To my big brother.
To the one who was supposed to be along my side till the day life did us apart, to the one who was supposed to be a shoulder to lay on when things got tough. To the one who I was supposed to tell all my friends about, because of how much I looked up to you, and how much I wished I could be you when I grew up.
To the one who I still look up to, just not in the same sense as I did when I spoke your name, now it is just a lonely, long, stare at the stars - hoping you are looking down and telling me it will be okay.
Submission 207
To my amazing twin brother
Taylor, I miss you so much; life will never be the same without your laugh. We’re twins, we’re meant to be in this world together, we’re meant to be the same age. But now I’m 21 and you’re still 20… I feel like I’m leaving you behind.
Submission 206
Reader
Where to begin? Well,
typically, anniversaries might celebrate something like a relationship or a work achievement. This anniversary certainly didn’t feel like an occasion for celebration.
Submission 205
To my Matt
It’s been just over a year since you left us. The pain of losing you is still so raw. I loved you so much and would have done anything to help you, if only you had been able to tell me how you were feeling.
I had no idea, there were no signs that anything was wrong. We were so happy, planning to move away and have a better future. I am so sad for you and also angry that you have taken that future away from me and from yourself.
Submission 204
Dearest Christopher
Five years, two months and two weeks. The love, loss, guilt and anger I feel will be with me until I draw my last breath.