Dear Rob,
The past few days have been crazy, emotional, and exhausting all at the same time.
On Saturday, our oldest completely threw me off guard. Our quiet, reserved son scrambled through the house looking for his black dress pants and black dress shirt. The last time Anders went to the homecoming dance, you helped him get ready, and you drove him to the dance after the soccer team you coached placed second. That night will forever be remembered as one of your highlighted days. You were so proud of Charlie and his team. Then you took a picture of Anders all dressed up and wearing your tie. You texted me and said, “Look at our handsome son.”
After I dropped Violet off and got my nails done, I returned home. When I walked into my room, I wanted to cry. On my bed, Anders had placed your suit. He couldn’t fit into it. This was the suit my parents bought for you. They were so proud to buy you that suit. Seeing it lying there was another painful reminder that you are gone. Another reminder of how handsome you were when you wore a suit. The last time you wore it was for your Grandpa Dave’s funeral, a year before you died. It amazes me how clothes can trigger memories so sharply and vividly. One minute, I’m standing in my bedroom, and the next, I’m right back in another moment of our life.
Last night, I had an amazing conversation with Anders. We talked about homecoming. He had fun. I was tearful when he told me that because, deep down, I have always worried that he hadn’t found his group of people. I worried that he was too quiet, too reserved, too much in his own world. But he did. He found them. And I wish you were here to see it. I wish you could have watched him get dressed, watched him walk out the door, and celebrated this moment with him.
As you know, Anders and I have always been close. Ever since he could talk, he confided in me, and we always had an open line of communication. You struggled with that. You didn’t always have the patience for those conversations. You hated that about yourself. And it took your death for me to fully understand how badly you didn’t want to become what you had been exposed to. You knew what you had experienced, and you knew what you didn’t want our children to experience. I think you were always fighting against parts of your past, even when you didn’t know how to explain it.
I openly asked Anders what kind of girl he would go for. If you were here, you would probably say, “Stop harassing him.” And I would laugh and tell you, “I’m not harassing him.” But what Anders said made me emotional, and I shared it with my therapist today because it meant more to me than he probably realized.
Anders said he isn’t stupid. He knows the kind of girl he wants as a girlfriend and, someday, as his wife.
“Just like Dad knew.”
Those were his exact words.
You said those things so often, Rob, that your kids heard them. They knew how you felt about me. They knew how you talked about marriage. They knew what mattered to you.
Anders knew you were a man of integrity. A man who valued honesty, truth, family, and marriage. You told me for more than 20 years that you made the right choice when you married me. You always said you knew it.
Anders asked what your checklist was.
So I told him.
You used to say, “You are beautiful inside and out. I love your heart. I love how you serve others. I love how you forgive, how patient you are, and how loyal you are to your friends and me. You love your parents. You love your friends, and it shows. You bring so much joy to others. I won the lottery when you became my girlfriend and wife.”
You wrote those words in so many cards to me. You said them over and over that I can still hear your voice saying them. I can still see your smile getting bigger. I can still remember the way your eyes met mine. The way you would brush my hair away from my face. The way you would hold my face in your hands.
That is the one piece of us that stayed with me through all of this.
I know you loved me.
And somehow, knowing that is both comforting and devastating.
We were supposed to have more time.
Anders told me that he wants the same kind of person. Someone who is beautiful inside and out. Someone who is kind, not just to other people, but to her family and to him. Someone who loves God. Someone who loves Anders for all that he is.
And Rob, in that moment, I saw our oldest son differently.
In two months, he will be 18 years old.
Eighteen.
Sometimes I look at him and still see the little boy you coached on the soccer field. The quiet kid who didn’t always say much but was always watching. Always taking things in. And now he is standing in front of me, talking about the kind of woman he wants to marry someday.
Our baby is growing up.
And I know you would be proud of him.
Anders has always been our old soul. He has always seemed so much more mature than his age. There is a gentleness in him that reminds me so much of you.
And that is where I see the greatest contrast between the two of you.
You were gentle, too. But your gentleness had to fight its way through so much of what happened to you. You carried things you didn’t know how to put down. You struggled with your trauma. You struggled with patience. You struggled with communication. You struggled with parts of yourself that you desperately wished you could change.
Anders has watched all of that.
He saw the good in you.
He also saw the parts you struggled with.
And somehow, he is choosing what he wants to carry forward and what he wants to leave behind.
That makes me incredibly proud of him.
Because the things I loved most about you are in him. Your gentleness. Your kindness. Your integrity. Your loyalty. Your love for family. Your desire to provide. Your ability to love deeply.
But I also see something else in Anders.
He knows how important it is to communicate.
He knows how important it is to be emotionally present.
He knows the kind of husband and father he wants to become.
And I think some of that comes from watching you.
You were a provider. You were a family man. You were my husband. Those were two of the biggest roles in your life, and despite everything you struggled with, you loved those roles deeply.
I wish you could have lived long enough to see what you helped create.
I wish you could see your children now.
I wish you could see Anders standing at the edge of adulthood, thinking about the kind of man he wants to be.
Because despite everything you endured, despite the things you wished you could have done differently, you gave him something.
You gave him a foundation.
And maybe the greatest proof of that is the fact that, on the night you died, when our entire world had fallen apart, Anders looked at me and said, “I’m going to take care of us. I’m the man of the house now.”
Those words broke me in so many ways.
He was just a kid.
He should never have had to think he needed to become the man of the house that night.
But he said it because that is what he believed a man did.
He took care of his family.
We returned to our home early because of Anders.
He painted the upstairs. He packed and moved all the heavy furniture while still attending soccer tryouts every single day. He was grieving, but he was also trying to make sure we had a home we could come back to.
And I know exactly where he learned that.
From you.
I just wish you were here to see the man he is becoming.
I wish you could see that even though you didn’t always get everything right, you left pieces of yourself in him that are beautiful.
And maybe that is the part I need you to know most.
Your children remember everything.
They remember the good.
They remember the hard.
And they are taking both with them as they grow.
But Anders is not becoming you.
He is becoming himself.
And somehow, he is taking the best parts of you with him while creating a different path of his own.
I think you would be so damn proud of him.
At the end of our conversation, I told Anders all of this. I told him how incredibly proud I am to be his mom. And I told him that I know you are so proud of him up in heaven.
I reminded him that I trust him. But I also told him that he has to understand something about his mom.
He is my firstborn.
My handsome boy.
And all I want to do is protect him.
I know I can’t forever. I know there will come a time when I have to let him make his own choices, make his own mistakes, fall in love, build his own life, and become the man he is meant to be.
But I told him something you craved for all your life.
I said “I love you.”
And I will FOREVER love him.
I am PROUD of the man he is becoming.
I will always be there for him, no matter what.
I will always protect him with everything I have.
And no matter what life throws at him, I want him to know that he is strong, he is worthy, and he deserves every good thing this world has to offer.
I also took accountability and told him that, in my eyes, no one will ever be good enough for my baby boy.
But I promised him that when the time comes, I will do my best to support him. I will try to remember that loving him also means letting him live his own life.
This is the exact moment when you would roll your eyes, look at me, and say, “Cut the umbilical cord, honey!”
And I can hear you saying it.
I can see that look on your face.
And for just a second, I can almost hear you laughing.
Maybe that is what I’m learning about being his mom.
I can protect him.
I can love him.
I can guide him.
But I can’t live his life for him.
You taught him how to take care of his mother and siblings.
I’m teaching him that it’s okay to let people take care of him, too.
And somewhere between the two of us, I hope he becomes the kind of man you always wanted him to be—and the kind of man he chooses to become for himself.
Our baby is growing up, Rob.
And God, I wish you were here to see him.
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