From: Bonnie

Dear Uncle Dick,

You've never met me before, so I should introduce myself
before I start rambling to you. I'm the only daughter of the
baby sister you left behind when you died. I'm grown now,
but I still sometimes feel like a kid - and yet, I'm older than
you ever had the chance to be. Death at 20 is something I
can hardly fathom. I know you must've had so many dreams
you never got to live out. The Army was never your choice,
and I wonder what you would've done if you'd had all the
freedom I've had. Maybe you'd still be alive. Maybe you
would've lived just a few more years, only to be sent to
Vietnam and die there, with your mind and soul broken by
the violence and horror. Korea, at the time you went, was a
safer place, and I'm glad your time overseas wasn't spent
watching your best friends die.

There's so many things I wish I could ask you. What did you
think about politics? Did you like Nixon or Kennedy? Were
you religious like Nannie and Mama, or a searcher like
Granddaddy and me? What did you like to do for fun? I know
about the dog shows, because that was Granddaddy's hobby too,
but I don't know much about who you were besides that. I've
seen a few of the letters and pictures you sent home from Korea,
and I can see your sense of humor in them, especially that one
picture of you in a dress. (We have dozens of pictures of you,
but that was always secretly my favorite.) I think you would've
made a great uncle, with that sense of humor. The only thing
anybody really said about you was that you were kind of private
and didn't share a whole lot of yourself with the family. I'm the
same way, so I can understand that. We're both Virgos, maybe
that's why, I don't know. But I do, selfishly, wish you'd left
more of yourself behind.

Mama left me last year, gone at a young age too, though she
lived two and a half times as long as you. We buried her beside
you. Nannie and Granddaddy have been gone for years, and
so have all our aunts, though Aunt Evelyn lived to be 93. Maybe
you know all that; maybe they're with you in some comforting,
tangible afterlife. But in case they're not with you, in case you
never saw them again, you should know that you were always
remembered and deeply loved. I've known about you for as long
as I've known anyone else. Mama always talked about how she
admired her big brother, and Aunt Evelyn was always going on
about little Dickie with the golden curls. Even though I never knew
you, I could feel the hole you left. There was something dark and
broken behind Nannie's eyes, some unanswerable confusion in
Mama's mind, some hardened place in Granddaddy's heart that
was built to hide his pain. Mama was so little when you died, and
had a bad memory besides, but she could still remember the way
Nannie screamed when she got that awful telegram. Nannie never
could bring herself to talk about you much. I think she was afraid
she'd start screaming again.

I've mourned for you, too, in my own way. Many times I've
regretted that I never had an uncle, when I knew I was supposed
to. Many times I've wondered if I would've had your children to
grow up with, or your grandchildren to babysit. I was scared when
I turned 20, scared some family curse would come and take me
then too. I wrote an essay about you in sixth grade, to warn my
classmates about speeding and seatbelts and all. I drive carefully.
When I hear about car accidents, I see you in my mind.

I think that's the thing that makes me most angry, when I think
about how we lost you. Like so many of your generation, you
died while in the Army, but you didn't die in service. Nobody
got to describe your death as a "sacrifice" or take comfort in
the idea that it meant something. Your death was meaningless
and stupid, wholly avoidable, a product of young foolishness
that wasn't your own. The "friend" who crashed the car that
killed you dragged your lifeless body into the driver's seat and
ran away. He only broke his arm. Thinking of that makes my
blood boil, though I sympathize with him. I'm sure he was afraid
of jail, and thought the blame could bring no consequence to a
dead man. He was wrong. It troubled Nannie deeply to think you
would do such a stupid thing. She never believed you were
responsible, and she claimed to "hear" you tell her, somehow,
that it wasn't true. A few weeks later she received a letter saying
the driver confessed to what he'd
done.

Part of me will never forgive him for taking you away from me,
for taking your potential children away, for putting out my
grandmother's inner light and making my mother grow up
feeling unstable and lost. But I also know he was young and
out for a good time, and cars weren't as safe in the 60's as they
are now, and anyway his conscience has probably ripped him
to shreds over the last 48 years. I hope he's found some peace
about it, even though I doubt I could look him in the eye.

Even though most of the people who knew you are gone, I've
still kept quite a bit of you around. I still have your coin collecting
book, though it's out of date and falling apart, and somewhere
around here is the bag of international coins you collected. I
still have your Army hat, and your Buddy Holly record, and your
favorite shirt, and your baby shoes. There's a box under Mama's
old bed with your Korean knives and the keys to the car you died
in. I have all your letters, too, though I haven't been able to bring
myself to read many of them. In some ways I've done what Nannie
did, deliberately keeping you at a distance to avoid the pain. The
more I know you, the more angry I am that I don't know you. It
hurts, too, seeing you write to people I did know and don't have
with me anymore. Someday, when the pain of losing Mama is not
so fresh, I'll dust them off. Maybe I'll write Donna and ask her to
dig up some old memories - I think she knew you better than
anybody else.

Until then, though, I want you to know that I care about you.
All of my friends who've known me for any length of time have
heard of you. I plan to tell my children about you. I think of you
when I hear Buddy Holly on the radio or see a bull terrier or a little
boy with curls. You've been gone so long, but you were never
forgotten. I plan to keep it that way.

Love,
Bonnie