Dear Moth,

(Letter #1 to my mom who died in 2016)

Mom,

It’s been a long time since I’ve written to you, hasn’t it?

On my desk, I have a card you sent me during my freshman year of college. It starts out “Josh, I can’t believe the day has finally arrived that we are leaving you–or rather you are leaving us. When I think back to carrying you in my womb and longing for you and singing to you, and then holding you in my arms–it doesn’t seem that long ago. Yet here you are–18 and grown and leaving home.”

If you can believe it, more years have passed since I was that age than the years that had passed since you’d held me in your arms–24 years since you gave me that card in 1998. In fact, Anna is now 16, and is two years shy of being the age I was when you gave it to me! 

She reminds me of you so much. She is a very diligent student (even though, like me, she has ADHD and probably autism so it’s not easy for her) and next year she is going to be starting college through the running start program–she will get two years of college done alongside her high school diploma (if it all goes well and feels like a fit–and if it doesn’t, that’s okay). 

Anyway, thinking of this reminds me of the journal you started when you were 17, one year older than she is, and you were starting college yourself. I loved reading that journal growing up and seeing how vivacious you were, how full of excitement for the things you were learning and doing. Anna has your zest for life. Like you, she is also a deeply caring and spiritual person. She has a connection to the beyond that is profound and unusual, much like Grandpa Woody did.

And, unlike you, she swears. She swears a lot. That’s the Weed side, for sure, and the juxtaposition of her sweet personality and her delight in dropping f-bombs is such an unexpected detail of her personality that is very endearing (I’m not sure you would have been too amused by this when you were alive, but I have no doubt that now, unencumbered by this world, you see this in her at times and it makes you chuckle, and it allows you–just as it does me–to see how inconsequential and unrelated to worth and spiritual connection things like swearing are.)

She is a true delight. Oh, how I wish you could meet her and hug her. I wish she could hear your voice as you told her how much you love her, and how special she is.

That said, she is already particularly connected to you, as you well know, and it has been very powerful to get to know you better where you are through her unique spiritual gifts.

Last night, Lolly sent a text from Utah where she was taking the girls to go to cousin camp with Mike and Deena (they are such wonderful grandparents to those girls!). They were able to take time to visit your gravesite, which they had never seen. I will share a photo she took, and also the sweet things Lolly said they said.

And here is what was captured of what they said, thanks to Lolly being a rapid texter:

Lexie: “Your son misses you a lot, and so do I.”

Wow does that one make me tear up. It’s so powerful that that little girl knows me well enough to know how much I miss you. (I love how tiny her hands look in that picture.) And how bittersweet it is that she misses you, too. It makes my heart ache that she will never remember you. There was just the one time you met each other here on this planet, down in Coos Bay, before you went to the rest home in Idaho. She was so, so tiny—about six months old—and you were so, so, sick. But you were absolutely thrilled by her, to the point that even though you could no longer speak (you died six months later—that’s how close to the end this was), you started squealing with glee and squeezing her! Your excitement for her was almost uncontainable.

I’m so glad that even though that occurred long before any of her memories were formed, she still feels your absence as missing you.

Anna: You would be so proud of my dad. He’s everything you would have wanted him to be. He’s such a good dad.

Now I’m really bawling. When I read these words yesterday I didn’t cry, but when I wrote them in this letter to you just now, they sank in. I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing someone’s child could say about them than that their mother would be proud of them, and that they are everything their mother would have wanted them to be, and that they are such a good dad.

What good, good granddaughters you have! Oh how I love them.

At the bottom of the card you sent me that sits on my desk, you say something that I am noticing now in a new way. You close with, “No matter what is going on in your life, always remember that your mommy loves you and is constantly praying for you.” And then you sign off, “All my love, Mom.” But then, right below that, almost as an afterthought, you say, “Don’t forget to write!”

Many times I have looked at that tiny postscript as it sits here on my desk and have felt prodded along by you in my life as a writer–buoyed up by your encouragement as I post on social media and practice my skills and take courses and get better. But when the thought occurred to me last week that in this Substack, which I realized is actually just letters, I could write letters to you, I was overcome with emotion and excitement. It just felt right. It feels right.

I haven’t written you a letter in six years. Actually, many years more than that–but I haven’t seen you in six years. You well know that I have felt you in the last six years and even seen you in vision many times, and that I have been communicated to by you in the sweetest ways (some of which I might write to you about so I can tell you what they meant to me). But writing letters to you like this, and then sending them off into the void where you “receive” them, and where others who feel drawn to this exchange can also read them and be edified by you and the love you so beautifully gave me, makes me feel different and really really good in a way that’s valuable. It feels wonderful to write words on an actual page that I am sending to you, even though I know that you will never see them, and that you can see and feel my thoughts instantaneously. And also that, like you communicated to me clearly one morning several years ago as I lay in weeping in distress on the bathroom floor: I am with you in every breath.

This is different somehow. It has the permanence of words on a page, of thought objects positioned somewhere specific in space as time passes. It feels different energetically. It feels familiar and good and concrete. It is very healing.

And most of all, it feels like I am responding to your injunction “Don’t forget to write!” in a very real, very meaningful way, and that makes me feel happy.

Helpfully, because you are now in a non-physical realm, I can also write to you with more abandon and not worry at all that I have said something unpleasing, or have made you worry, or have miscommunicated anything, because I know that you actually see my heart and know my intentions and the depth of my inherent goodness–for you gave me that goodness and in many ways are that goodness, and it is the same goodness I desire to share with the world, so that the way you made me feel continually–loved, cherished, deeply seen, worthy of good things–can be transmuted into other beating hearts, other troubled minds through the use of words in English.

(Funny that right after saying “and now I don’t have to worry about having miscommunicated” I wrote a sentence that made me worry I had miscommunicated. Ha! Obviously, you know exactly what I mean by all of that. This whole human experience is a trip, man. I’ll tell you what. I guess I was probably worried that anyone else who felt drawn to reading our exchange might misunderstand me, but I suppose this is good practice for the principle I’m trying to learn of truly doing, saying and thinking the thoughts that are right for me and not worrying at all what that ends up producing inside of other people, as their thoughts/reactions are theirs to manage, not mine.)

I have to go upstairs and run and shower and get ready for work–I have a really full day of clients today and the girls are coming over to our place this week (we have them half the time, and Lolly has them half the time… she and I divorced, as you know… God, there’s so much to tell you. But I guess I have plenty of time.)

I’ll be back later, but for now, know how much I love you, and how grateful I am for the legacy of parental love you gave me, which I am able to share with those four girls of mine.

“I love you more than the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky…” (Said in a silly way while petting your face with the tips of my fingers and giving you a huge hug, just like I used to do as a teen)

You really are my favorite Moth,

Love,

Joshy

PS—don’t worry—I won’t forget to write!