Dearest Willa,
I am at our desk sweetheart, looking out the window to the grass beyond, watching your birds and your bunnies, your butterflies and your flowers. The house is very very quiet, a mouse house, where all the sounds are littlier and the light diminished because you are not here.
Daddy and I want to tell you some things angel. This letter is to be read out loud in front of everyone who loves you because with all the hearts beating in this room the message will be carried further, will reach you on wave after wave of love and memory and feeling.
When you were home you generated our days. You were our rising sun, our endless moon. You made such light that cars driving by could see it pour out these same windows I now watch your friends through. The floors reverberated with you. You traveled over them a great explorer; from the dining room to the kitchen in the red scooter to the basement you would request trips to, to be thrilled by the darkness and cobwebs. The walls talk about you still. The sinks cry from the faucets.
Willa we have never met anyone like you. You taught us how to see the world with eyes forever changed. You taught us to see our lives with hearts expanded. Every challenge you were set you ripped through as if it were paper. Every hardship, pain, hurt, discomfort, limitation you bore with a smile and then a kiss, always a kiss as if to show us how simple it was if we remembered to just love.
You loved so much it made your heart very fast. You loved so much I think it wore you out darling. You gave us everything and we are so very grateful.
Thank you Willa. Thank you for signing “daddy” over and over, for demanding I bring you upstairs to the studio to see him. Thank you Willa for saying “mama” out loud, even the day before you died. Thank you for learning the greatest mysteries were contained in your MeMe’s purse, for knowing there are few better sights that Pop Pop in a funny paper hat. Thank you for taking into your home all the people who came to care for you, to help you, to give you love and to brush your teeth and to make you sit, then stand.
Thank you for making us better people for knowing you, because we are now Biscuits. We are better for learning about true effort, about true hardship. We are better for learning about true love, true laughter. You broke the boundaries of what could have been an invisible life, a quiet life away from the typical. You threw away all the maps on us darling. Then you made the new ones. We were all fellow travelers on your journey, we explored with you the life that could be forged from stubbornness, desire, hope, curiosity and sheer, pure joy for living. You had a gift for living.
Today we are here thinking about you. We are remembering your birthday party, your dress with the cabbage roses. We are remembering Christmas, Friday treatment, Block Island, the waiting rooms of the hospitals. We are remembering your smile and we feel again your light, we feel it continue to change us, to give us new energy for living, to forever change the boundaries we think we live with. Willa you are and will always be our rising sun and our endless moon. Willa you are and will always be our most precious girl. We love you.
