Dear Charlie

To my Charlie,

First, I want you to know that I love you with my whole heart and I am so sorry that I won’t be there for you and your brother.

Theo put down his pen and tried to mute his cough with his hands. The coughing fits were more regular now. And his spittle was tinged with blood. A year into this pandemic and he knew this was one of the late signs of The Sniffles.

Such an innocent name for a disease that was fatal in nearly all adult cases. He knew he didn’t have long left. He needed to finish this note.

In the flickering candlelight of his upstairs room he began to write again.

Your mother and I, we tried so hard to give you two the life we always wanted. Shuffling back and forth between homes was never the plan. It all started out so good. I want you to remember the best of us, not how it was the last few years. I don’t know if I ever told you about the night your mother and I met. But I want you two to remember us how we were. Remember us at our best.

Theo and Margaret met in college. He was pre-law, and she was working on finishing her art history degree.

He could remember the first time he met her. It was a clear bright day in December, she stood sipping a glass of wine, staring at a Chagall painting in some rich friend’s loft.

The painting was surely just a replica, but the way she studied every stroke, tears welling in her eyes, made Theo’s heart ache. “Excuse me,” he had said “may I get you another?” he gestured to the mostly finished glass in her hand.

Theo was struck by the way she carried the glass, delicately, with slender fingers barely touching the surface.

In that moment he could think of only how desperately he wanted to hold that hand. How he wanted his fingers interlaced with hers. To feel her fingertips delicately stroking his beard.

“No thank you.” She said, “I need to drive home soon and—”

“My name is Theo.” He interrupted, holding his hand out. “You’re a fan of Chagall?”

“Margaret.” She responded, smirking at the boy. “I was saying I plan on leaving soon. I have to—”

“To get dinner with me sometime. I know, I know. I’m free tomorrow. I was thinking—”

“I have class tomorrow morning.” She held a hand up. “But... I would appreciate if you walked me home. My date seems to have disappeared and I need to be home before dark.” she grinned.

Theo tried to hide the smile threatening to burst from his lips. “I would love to.”

In normal circumstances, the rest, they would say, is history. Theo walked with Margaret that night. But not to her home. A short walk turned into coffee at a 24-hour diner. Breakfast in the park watching the sunrise.

And laughter.

Your mother and I never stopped laughing. She was the constant optimist. We got a flat tire one day and her response was ‘Well, that just means more time with you, my love.’ She was unflappable. I just don’t want you to ever forget, Charlie. You were made with so much love.

And then, Theo met Charlie and the world stopped turning for just the tiniest moment.

Margaret called Theo while he was just getting to the office, he threw his bags down and blew through every red light he could to get to her side.

Theo’s father told him the day they announced Margaret’s pregnancy that “A woman is a mother from the moment she feels life inside of her; But a man is a father the moment he holds his child in his arms.”

Holding Charlie’s fragile body in his arms, was a moment unlike any other.

The monitors beeped and the doctors and nurses continued to work around them... But Theo’s eyes were glued to Charlie, riveted to the spot by her faint tufts of blonde hair, her blue eyes, her hands reaching out in the space between them.

Theo took her hand between his thumb and index finger and wept while the world flowed around him.

I thought I’d found the depth of my love the day I met your mother. But the day I met you, I realized I hadn’t touched the surface. Charlie, I have loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. And I will love you forever. I will love you *both* forever.

When your mother told me that your brother was coming, I will admit, I was worried. I loved you so much and you were so perfect! How could there be space in my heart for another? But then we met Pickles. Our Dylan, Dill Pickle, our Pickles.

Charlie, I learned love is not a finite resource. It is deeper than any ocean, wider than space, and lasts forever.

If I am in your heart, I will be with you.

As long as you remember me, I will be with you. I promise.

I love you two sooooooo much, it hurts.

Theo put his pen down again, feeling the warm tears roll down his cheeks, and the menacing tickle of a coughing fit begin to rise. His breathing slow and shallow, trying not to wake the wet beast living in his chest, he glanced around the room.

His room had become a makeshift storage area. Stacks of canned goods, neat piles of wood, and old newspapers, folded and waiting to live their last moments as kindling, lined the walls.

On his desk, a framed picture of Theo, Charlie, and Dylan at a waterpark.

At the time, the ten-year-old Charlie was obsessed with flowers and somewhere along the way had found a daisy to decorate her hair.

Theo had saved that flower and now it lived in the corner of the frame, dried and pressed. He reached out and picked the frame up, stroking the flower, remembering the day.

Dylan was terrified of the water, wouldn’t go down any of the slides.

But Charlie? Fearless.

Charlie, wanted more. The trio spent the day looking for faster and faster rides. Theo lost count of how many times Charlie rode The Alpine Chute. Waiting in line on her own, taking the plunge into the warm summer water, then laughing and running to do it all over again.

Finally, noticing how terrified Dylan was the whole time, Charlie knelt in front of him, took his hand and said

“Don’t be afraid, Pickles. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

You’ve always been so brave, Charlie. I need you to keep that up. I’ve tried to teach you everything I know. I just hope its enough.

*Enough.* Theo thought.

*Have I done enough?*

Theo repeated those words over and over in his head.

*How many months’ worth of canned goods will they have? Three? Four? It’ll be winter soon. Do they have enough firewood? Will they remember how to start the fire?*

Theo’s heart was suddenly hammering and a cold chill swept his body. He couldn’t tell if it was the disease or the overwhelming fear that all of his efforts were in vain. The fear that he hadn’t done enough to give his children the tools they needed to survive.

Summoning what little strength he had, Theo stood up from the little writing desk in his bedroom and began walking to the stairs, determined to drag his weary body once more into the chilly night to gather a few more stacks of wood.

His body ached and every step felt like dragging his feet through thick, muddy sludge.

Taking the stairs one at a time so as not to overexert himself and trigger a coughing fit, he made it to the final step and surveyed the landing.

Artifacts of the past lined the walls, pictures from times that felt so foreign now. Smiling faces living in the land of plenty. Faces unaware of the future they would soon endure.

Faces blissfully ignorant of the dwindling sands in the hourglass.

Suddenly a flicker of movement in the corner of Theo’s eye caught his attention.

Turning sharply he gasped and staggered back, staring into the gaunt, hungry face of a sunken eyed ghost. Theo winced and stepped back, preparing to lunge and fight off the intruder, when he noticed something odd.

It was wearing a familiar shirt. A familiar threadbare and dirty plaid shirt.

His shirt.

He stared into the dark and tired pits that held his once clear blue eyes; now red and bloodshot from the final stages of The Sniffles. For a brief moment, he was staring into his own father’s eyes and was transported back to the hospital the elderly Mr. McCarthy spent his final days in.

“Dad? Dad? Dad... Its me, Theo.” He had said to the frail old man. Wheezing, the old man turned to the sound, his rheumy eyes searching the distance, unable to focus on the voice’s owner.

Theo watched the wheels slowly begin to turn, making their sluggish revolutions through combinations of voices and faces before finally giving up.

“Theo?” Mr. McCarthy choked, confusion contorting the wizened features. “My Theo is 10 years old. Who are you?”

“No, dad, its me, I promise. I came to see if you needed anything. I came to-”

I came to say goodbye, Theo thought, choking back the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat.

“I came to say I’m sorry... I’m sorry that I haven’t been around as much, as much as I should be. I came to... I don’t know dad.” Theo’s heart ached and he fought to hold onto the pieces of his cracking voice.

“I came to say thank you. For being the best dad you could be.”

A hurricane of memories crashed into the young man as he squeezed his dying father’s hand. Sitting at a red light on the way to school, his father, tired from the nightshift resting his eyes in the driver’s seat ‘Just let me know when the light turns green.’

VHS tapes stacked in piles, Lion King ramparts and Little Mermaid drawbridges fashioned into a makeshift fort, his father staging small green army men for an invasion. ‘Remember the Alamo!’ the elder McCarthy shouted.

Tight hugs after skinned knees. Hugs so tight he imagined he was sand slipping through his father’s arms held together only by force of will.

A tipsy Mr. McCarthy, dancing in the kitchen while making Thanksgiving dinner, the whiskey glint in his eyes as he sing-shouted ‘Theo, my boy. I love you soooo much, it hurts!’

The pride in his father’s eyes the day Charlie was born. The two men holding each other in the nursery, weeping at the new deep bond they shared.

“Now you know,’ he said squeezing Theo tight, ‘what it feels like to have your whole heart walking around the world without you.’

The rattling in his father’s chest brought Theo back to his father’s bedside.

“Charlie and Dylan said they love you too, dad. They’re waiting for me at home. I should get going.”

Theo stood up, dusting off his knees, wiping at his eyes, trying to distract himself with anything in the room other than the shell of the once proud McCarthy patriarch.

“Theo, my boy.” The old man said, smiling weakly and reaching out for his son’s hand one last time. “I love you. I love you soooo much, it hurts.”

It wasn’t the cancer or the dementia that took Theo’s father. It was the flu, progressing to pneumonia. It slowly drowned the elderly man much like the respiratory illness that would take the world by surprise just a few years later.

Theo reached out and touched the mirror, disgusted by the toll time and illness took on his body. He felt a burning pressure in his chest and knew that his body was pleading for more air, desperate for a lungful of life.

The thought of the horrible cough and the pain he would feel after brought a tear to his eye.

Steeling himself, Theo glanced into the mirror, tracing a thumb over the purple blue lines that faintly resembled his lips, and took a deep breath.

The cough was immediate, thick and wet, catching in his chest and warning of the foul substances he would soon expectorate.

But the pain.

The pain that came after the cough took Theo to his knees.

The pain was always there, waiting for a cough to rip it out of hiding.

But this time. This time it was wickedly sharp, cutting through his frail body like butter; stabbing into the ribs and wrapping around to his back before digging in again.

This time it was slow to subside and continue its predatory wait.

This time the pain lingered. Poking and prodding his chest with every short gasp.

“Daaad? Dad are you okay?”

*Charlie.* Theo thought, covering his mouth in another vain attempt to silence the beast.

Tiny feet shuffled into the living room and a mess of curly blonde hair bobbed into view.

“Dad! What are you doing out of bed? Its 3am! You need to rest!” Hooking an arm around Theo’s waist, Charlie McCarthy lifted the broken man from the floor. “Lean against me. Come on, I’ll get you back to bed, dad.”

Feeling his strength fail him with every step, Theo suddenly realized that without Charlie he would never have made it back upstairs.

The thought came with another realization.

His time was almost up.

“What were you even doing, dad? You need to sleep.” She said, gently laying her father back in bed. “God, you’re burning up. Let me get you some Tylenol.”

“No.” Theo managed to rasp through another round of wet coughs. Gasping, he pleaded “Save it... I’ll be... fine... You. Might... Need. It. Open... the window.”

Charlie could feel a change in her father. A shift that she feared would come and wasn’t sure she had the strength for. Her eyes clamped shut, trying to hold back the flowing tears she knew were coming.

“I’ll be fine. I wrote...A letter.” He said, reaching out to caress her face. What type of woman would she have become in a different life, he wondered.

Their eyes met, both understanding this was their goodbye.

Theo searched for words, unsure of what to say in the face of the end. There would be no more water parks. No more pressed flowers.

He would never feel her reach up for his hand again as they stepped across a busy street.

He would never again check in on her sleep as he had when she was an infant, and then a toddler, and now a teen.

Never again feel his heart stop and unnecessary panic seize him as he waited to see her chest rise and fall. Every time knowing that she was still breathing but not satisfied until he watched her body perform the unconscious motion.

He would never help her navigate the waters of love, trying to point out the sharp rocks lurking beneath the waves that all sailors eventually dashed their ships upon.

For years he had tried to guide her safely through life. Through so many smiles, tears, and milestones he had been her source of comfort. He had been her father.

He had to trust that it had been enough.

“I love you... Charlie. So much... It hurts.”

As the words were swallowed by the silence of the dark house Theo closed his eyes, falling into the sleep of the bone weary.

Charlie leaned down and kissed her father’s cheek.

“I love you, daddy.”

--------------------------------------****--------------------------------------

It was the stillness of the house that woke Charlie the next morning, but she didn’t realize it at first.

Throwing back her thick comforter she glanced over at her brother Dylan, smiling to herself at the small, dried tracks of drool sticking to the corner of his gaping mouth.

The sun cut clear bright paths through their bedroom window and birds sang just beyond the glass warning of the winter that seemed right around corner. The only thing missing, Charlie realized, was the sound of her father’s deep hacking cough that had become a fixture of the house over the last three weeks.

Charlie made her way slowly up the creaking steps leading to her father’s room, praying with each one that maybe, just maybe, he had turned a corner.

She opened the door and saw her father, lying in bed. His body perfectly still in the cold December light.

And her heart broke.

Rushing to her father’s side she tripped over a box of mementos Theo had gone through in his last few moments of life. Scattering its remaining contents across the floor, she watched report cards, plaster molds of hers and Dylan’s infant feet, stick figure drawings, and handmade Christmas ornaments crumple and shatter against the back wall of the bedroom but she didn’t care.

She sobbed into her father’s favorite plaid shirt, the one she remembered him always wearing to her soccer games. “For good luck.”

Trying desperately to fit her fingers once more into his hand she felt a small dried and pressed daisy crumble against her palm.

She had no idea how long she stayed there, silent sobs wracking her body.

Reading and rereading the final letter her father wrote to her.

As long as you remember me, I will be with you.

Her mourning was interrupted by a small sleepy voice calling from downstairs. “Dad? Charlie? Where are you guys? Hello?”

Charlie stood, wiping the tears from her eyes and smoothing out the rumpled sheets of her father’s death bed.

She rushed to the stairs as she heard Dylan begin to take the first few creaky steps.

“Hey, lets let dad sleep for just a little bit longer, Pickles. Come on, lets go outside and grab some firewood for breakfast.”

“Aw, alright. Do you think he’ll want to play today? Its nice and sunny today. We haven’t played outside in a long time.”

“I can play with you Pickles. Come on! Hey! Pickles...” Charlie paused, swallowing against the tears. “Do you remember that time Dad tried to put those training wheels on your bike?”

Dylan laughed. “Yeah, but he didn’t know what he was doing. I almost died!” he said remembering the day, remembering the shoddy wheels.

“But you didn’t! And right as the training wheels fell off the bike you got your balance and there you were. Riding a bike!”

The pair put on their jackets and made their way to the front door. “How about this one! Do you remember the story of how mom and dad met? It was around this time of year. At a party...”

“Mom didn’t like dad at all!” Pickles giggled, recounting the family lore.

Together, the two set off into world.

It was a clear, bright day in December.

Charlie reached out and lovingly ruffled her little brother’s hair. “I love you, Dylan. Soooo much, it hurts.”