Long before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. marked the month of September as a time of powerful remembrance for me (and many millions more) the month had become a time of deep reflection for another reason.  It marked the period that my former wife Cass (Cassandra) and I were looking forward with joy to the birth of twin daughters who, in fact, died shortly after their arrival in the world.

The loss of a child is not something a parent ever forgets but it is something one learns to live with, molding years of pain into strength and wisdom carefully applied to other situations.  I made peace with my loss through works of literature––my own and that of others––and through personal spiritual growth, many years ago. It therefore came as a brutal shock last week when I was organizing folders of old military records and came upon a letter written September 4, 1984, not to my commanding officer of the time, but to my unborn daughters.

I barely remembered writing it. And yet there it was. At first, I refused to acknowledge what it was and simply sat it aside because I needed to find the records for which I’d been searching. It had also been my plan to work a little later on poetry projects devoted specifically to September 11, so I needed, I told myself, to take care of the one thing before I could move on to the other.  The letter, however, refused to be ignored, so I stopped my searching and read it. 

There were their names: Serenity (a name I had chosen) and Jefferina (a name on which Cass had insisted as a feminization of my birth name). The overwhelming emotions––of pain, joy, regret, love––that I experienced upon reading the letter did not surprise me. The surprise came from reading what I had written about my anxiety over the state of the world at the time, when I was stationed with the U.S. Air Force in England.  So much of what I wrote all those 22 years ago is applicable in 2006 that it’s a bit unnerving.

Rather than go into further descriptions of the letter at this time, I have decided to post the letter itself, on the weekend of the anniversary of its composition, in honor of the memory of my daughters, and, as a gift of food for thought from them to the world. Although I am the one who wrote it, I consider the letter a gift from them because had it not been for their brief sojourn through life it would have never been written.

Aberjhani
© 8/25/2006