Post office

Facing surgery has made me think about writing letters to my husband, son, and daughter. I discussed this idea with my rabbi when we met last week. I asked if it was morbid to deal with my fears this way. It’s not that I need anyone’s permission to write to my loved ones, it just feels like sitting down to write these letters could be part of a cheesy montage in a bad movie. I’m afraid of letting myself get caught up in overly dramatizing this thing. My rabbi thought the letters were a good idea, a way to make a positive ritual from the experience.

The next difficult thing, after deciding it’s okay to write the letters at all, is figuring out which one to write first. I never considered writing a group letter. One of the things I love about these three people is the distinct, separate, and unique relationships I have with each of them. I don’t interact with them as a unit, and I get out of the way so they can interact which each other without my intrusion. I don’t know if this is unusual or not, I just know this is not the way I grew up. I was part of a family that didn’t have time to deal with me as a distinct individual. The most important way I have found to heal from being subsumed into various configurations of my family is by insisting on having one-to-one relationships with the people I love. But, this means I cannot avoid deciding which letter to write first. It doesn’t help that they never need to know the order.