Dear Deceased Parent,

By the time this is published, your death anniversary will have already happened a couple of days ago. You've been gone for seventeen years. Crazy, right?

I was only three years old when you died, but I still feel your loss every day. I know I was one of the lucky kids. My other parent got remarried and gave me the least wicked stepmother I could have ever asked for. I think you would've liked her. I sure do. I still wish you could've been around to watch me grow up, though.

I love my stepmom to death, and even though I don't have many of my own memories of you, it honestly isn't quite the same as having your real mom around sometimes. I know you would love the family and the life that she's given me, but I always have to wonder what it would have been like growing up with you as my main mom.

Sometimes I feel bitter that my siblings can all remember you so clearly compared to me. They were all a lot older than me when you died. You actually got to raise them. I get really frustrated because it isn't fair. I want to remember you and know you and love you like everyone else, and it's so hard to do any of that. I wish you could've seen me start preschool, and sent me off to my first days of school every year. I wish you could've seen me with all of my missing baby teeth. I wish you could've been there to see me perform in a college production of "Steel Magnolias," especially because I know it was your favorite movie. I wish you could've helped teach me how to drive and helped me get ready for homecomings and proms. I wish you could've seen me graduate high school and take the scariest plunge I've ever taken: moving two and a half hours west to go to college. I wish you could meet all of my best friends. I wish they all could've known and loved you like all of my siblings' friends still do.

At times, I feel like I don't even have a right to mourn you because I can barely remember you at all. There's this deeply-rooted feeling in the core of me that feels your loss as only a toddler can, even at 20 years old. It's this unfillable hole of grief that was never able to be dealt with because I was barely even sentient when you died. Every year I tell myself I won't let you not being here bother me, that I won't cry, and every year I break those promises. I don't know how not to.

People tell me stories about you, and I realize that we're a lot alike. It always frustrates me that I couldn't learn about you directly. I just know we could've been so close. You could've taught me how to ride a horse and we could've ridden together. We both love painting and making art. That could've been "our thing." We're both so forgetful and from different stories I've heard, I bet you were a little bit of an airhead like me. I love the story of when you started your car to warm it up in the winter and went back inside only to get a call saying you didn't have to come into work. You forgot you had started your car and left the it running all day, and it melted all of the snow around it. That's definitely something I can picture myself doing. We could've made so many funny memories together, and I hate that we'll never get to.

A lot of people say they know what it's like and when I mention that my mom died; they all give me the same uncomfortable, sympathetic looks. They mean well, but losing a parent at such a young age is vastly different than losing them as an adult. As an adult, you can deal with the grief most of the time. That's not to say that losing a parent as an adult isn't as bad, not at all. In loss, there aren't winners or losers or better off or worse off. There's pain, and everyone can agree that it just hurts. A lot. No matter what the situation is.

I think losing you made me a more resilient, strong person. I think your loss has taught me a lot throughout my life, whether I realize it or not. I know you'll always be my mom, but I think I got the best outcome the situation could've had. My other mom is much more than a stepmom; that's why I don't refer to her as my stepmom. Getting to grow up as a part of her family was probably one of, if not, the best things I ever have gotten to experience. I miss you, and wish you were around longer, but maybe, if losing you has taught me anything, it was meant to happen, even if it doesn't seem fair.

I wish I knew what your voice sounded like, or had my own memories of you before you got cancer. Any slight memory I have of you is from when you were bald and on your death bed, basically. I wish I could remember you healthy and lively. I wish I knew if you'd be annoyed at me for the same reasons I annoy my other mom, like when I wear socks that don't match or I scrape my teeth on silverware. I wish I knew you. I wish I could talk to you. I wish you could respond to this letter because I miss you.

Loss does a weird thing to people. It makes them irrationally guilty. I remember looking at you in your casket at your funeral, or maybe it was the showing, and someone told me to go up and say a prayer for you. Being three, I thought prayers were just things you said before bed, so I said the one we always said before bed, and all the time after that, I thought saying a bedtime prayer maybe made it so you never woke up. When I got older, I thought maybe since I wasn't a healthy kid, maybe my medical bills kept you from paying your own, and that's why it was too late to get rid of the cancer. A million different things always have went through my mind asking if there was something else that could have been done to save you. Sometimes it keeps me up at night, even though I know it shouldn't.

I still have the stuffed polar bear, Chilly, you gave me before you died. i keep him on my bed in my very first apartment. I wish you could see how well everyone is doing. I'm in my second year of college and it's going great so far. You have son-in-laws and grandchildren and kids with successful careers who've built amazing lives for themselves. We all miss you all the time, this time of year especially. We all wish you could see how far we've come and enjoy it along with us, but we have to have the faith that you can, even if we don't know it. I hope you know I love you, Mommy, even if it's a complicated, grief-filled love, I'll always love you unconditionally, like only a three-year-old can love their mother. I'm glad we had a little time together, even if it wasn't as much as either of us wanted.

I hope if there's a heaven, that it's full of all your favorite things. I hope you've liked it up there for the last 17 years. I wear your wedding ring every day and I'll continue to sleep with Chilly on my bed with me. I love and miss you, and hope I get to meet you again someday.

Love,

Your Child