One Hundred Thirty-Five Words

"...it's been blank for seven years and ten days—since the discovery—since the day my world was upended."

"I still remember the last words I spoke to you, as your son. What you did hurt me more deeply than I can ever fully express. It took a long time for me to heal enough to feel like myself again, especially in the eyes of my wife and children. You were the greatest loss I have ever known. For years, the anger and grief made it hard to be as present for them as I should have been. I'm not writing to ask for anything. I'm not looking for reconciliation or any kind of relationship. I simply want you to know that, from my heart, I have truly forgiven you. To the man I once loved and so proudly called "Father," I wish you peace, love, and warmth for the rest of your days."

I felt the pull of forgiveness for weeks, maybe even longer, before I actually wrote the letter that would release me from so much I had been carrying.

I remember telling my wife I needed her to pick up a few blank cards.

She broke down crying when I told her what it was for. She had been waiting for that moment longer than I was aware. It took me over seven years to get to that point.

Some of my beta readers for To the Man I Called Father reached the chapter I've come to call the "I had to put the book down" chapter, and would text or email me afterward, still in shock — partly at my father, at the extent of what he had done, but also wondering: "How? How did you forgive this man?"

To understand that, you will have to keep reading.

I will say it wasn't easy.

My life — my family's lives — were irrevocably changed by what my father had done. We all lost so much.

But I lost even more holding on to it for so long. My act of forgiveness was less about my father and more about letting go of the past in a way that no longer excluded me from the cherished memories that made me who I was.

And so, when I was finally ready, I sat down on a cool December morning, before the house woke, and wrote it out by hand — one hundred and thirty-five words.

I mailed it within the hour, before I could talk myself out of it, and watched that small red envelope disappear from my life forever. I may never know for sure whether it reached his hands, but I have enough corroborating evidence to assume it did. I don't believe it really matters if it did or not. What does matter to me, and to my family, is that what was in that envelope is simply no longer mine to carry.

Here is what I wrote. Read it once more — now that you know what it took to let it go.

"I still remember the last words I spoke to you, as your son. What you did hurt me more deeply than I can ever fully express. It took a long time for me to heal enough to feel like myself again, especially in the eyes of my wife and children. You were the greatest loss I have ever known. For years, the anger and grief made it hard to be as present for them as I should have been. I'm not writing to ask for anything. I'm not looking for reconciliation or any kind of relationship. I simply want you to know that, from my heart, I have truly forgiven you. To the man I once loved and so proudly called "Father," I wish you peace, love, and warmth for the rest of your days."