David McElroy

I was still 14 years old when I wrote the letter, but I sound older than that. How many ninth graders sit down and type a long and serious letter to an unknown future spouse?

The letter is an attempt to explain myself and where I came from to this future wife. It tried to explain how my confusing childhood had made me feel different from others — and I found myself assuming that the only sort of woman who could fit me was someone who could understand that.

“I figure you will have to be someone who has [been] hurt and been lonely just like me for you to understand,” I wrote.

Most of the letter is happier. It’s filled with joy at the prospect of finding someone who‘s enough like me — and shares enough values — for me to love. It describes in very clear terms what I want our marriage to be like.

I went though a box of unexplored things Tuesday night and found a number of interesting artifacts from the past, but two of them are on my mind tonight. One is this letter and the other is a handwritten application to a private school which asked what goals I had set for my adult life.

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Millions of lives are suddenly on hold lately. The crisis brought on by the new coronavirus has left many people jobless. It’s destroying companies — both large and small — and it’s forcing some of us to change plans that we had been ready to execute this year.

I didn’t realize how much this had affected me mentally until I put some things together Friday afternoon. Then I spent the weekend thinking about where I stood — and what I can do. I don’t have a new plan yet, but I discovered that the most important decision I could make was to take control back instead of waiting to see what others do to solve this crisis.

The audio embedded below is about eight and a half minutes long.

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There’s nothing in the world which teaches me to appreciate life quite the way death does.

When I was young, death seemed so far off for me that it didn’t seem real. Although I have a vivid memory of seeing the body of a man who had just been killed when I was about 10, that didn’t seem like something that could happen to me. It was only years later that I really found meaning in that.

I was one of the lucky ones who never had anybody in his life die other than the people we expect. My mother’s father died when I was about 5. I remember going to the funeral home and touching his cold body, but death didn’t seem surprising with an older person. All the other deaths I saw in the coming years were older people who were related to me. Not a one seemed surprising or “too soon.”

Some people experience a rough early introduction to death — especially those who unexpectedly lose a parent, a sibling or a close friend — but for me, death was almost an abstract concept.

Until the last few years. Death seems very real to me now.

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