To: Ihor
I wish you had been softer, so I could be softer towards you. I wish you knew this side of me. Maybe you would always laugh. But I mean it. Forever.
To: Ihor
And if a better world comes about, maybe I will hope for reincarnation, so that you can experience it. I'll be Jesus. I'll forgive you for your sins.
To: Ihor
And when I think of you as a child and I see you as a child I cannot help but cry and want to save you from whatever made you into what you became.
To: Ihor
I wish you knew how much I thought of you. I wish you tried for yourself and for us all. I wish you knew you deserved a good life, once upon a time.
To: Ihor
I wish you kept a diary, like she did, so that I could feel closer to you in some way. So that I could feel as though I understood you even 5% more.
To: Ihor
When was the last time you cried? When was the last time you thought of me? Of her? Read a book? Ate a chocolate croissant? I wish I knew.
To: Ihor
And she acts like you never existed. Like no one ever did. And it boggles my mind that this is my family. I feel everything, I always want to talk.
To: Ihor
I wish there was an afterlife I could yell at you in. I wish I was going to see you again. I wish you could see me, really see me and know me.
To: Ihor
You are a phantom limb that I will carry within me for the rest of my life. You shape me in ways that I will never fully understand. It hurts.
To: Ihor
I spend so much time wanting to yell at you, until you understand. But, if she couldn't, why would you? I miss you sitting in my kitchen, years ago.
To: Ihor
They all think you're talking to them in dreams. You haven't visited me yet, and even if you do, it won't be you. It'll be me, like always. Boring.
To: Ihor
I miss when distance from you was a choice I made every day, rather than a fact of life. I wish I could've made it better, but it wasn't on me.
To: Ihor
You'll never know how much I loved, and disliked you. I miss your handwriting and your abysmal presents. Your hoarding tendencies. Your laugh.
To: Ihor
Mom will be devastated when she finds out you're gone. I don't know how she'll go on. I'm scared her life will collapse, like mine, the first time.
To: Ihor
l'll share your face, one day. You'll never see it. I'm both relieved and sad about it. I wish I was fishing with you, in a better life than this one.
To: Ihor
I had so many questions I wanted to ask you, and now I'll never get to. Not that you were ever a coherent speaker. Probably would've been fruitless.
To: Ihor
I'm also mad at you on behalf of your younger self. He deserved better, you know that? I wanted you to be happy. I wanted to be happy, with you.
To: Ihor
I'm still mad at you, for dying. It's irrational. You didn't choose it. Just like you didn't choose to be a better parent to me, or anybody.
To: Ihor
You were the only one who ever saw me
To: Ihor
They put your English name on the casket. I can't help but view that as wrong. It should be Ihor. Everyone saw you as a kid. They remember him now.
To: Ihor
I didn't understand your funeral because it was 95% Ukranian. I didn't get to see you because you were alone for too long. It was raining. You win.
To: Ihor
You should be here. You should've always been here, and no amount of excitement at a nice suit will resolve that feeling. I cannot love you, but I do.
To: Ihor
I miss you so much, and I don't miss you at all. I miss who I longed for you to be. I have no idea what my last words to you were. I didn't see you.
To: Ihor
You're gone now. I am still, and forever, mad at you. I said the nicest things I could at the funeral. You're welcome. You'll never meet the man I am.
To: Ihor
I hate that I believed you when you promised me ski trips, completed chess games, and summers at the cottage. I hate that you drank every single time.
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