A Love Beyond War

April 3, 2005

Somewhere Near Fallujah, Iraq

My Sweet Emma,

By the time you read this, I will be gone.

I don’t know how to write this. I have tried a thousand times, but each time, my hands shake, and my chest tightens with the weight of everything I want to say. There aren’t enough words, not in this language, not in this world, to tell you how much I love you—to explain how much of me belongs to you, how much of me will die with you when your time comes.

But I have to try. Because this is my last chance.

I never wanted our love story to end this way. I never wanted you to be left holding only memories, reaching for a hand that isn’t there. I never wanted to be another folded flag, another name on a wall, another ghost that lingers in your heart long after the world tells you to move on.

I wanted forever.

I wanted morning coffee and stolen kisses before work. I wanted to fall asleep beside you for the next fifty years, my arm wrapped around you, my heartbeat syncing with yours in the quiet. I wanted fights about nothing—about dishes left in the sink and forgetting to take out the trash—because even our arguments meant I had you. I wanted to be the one who held you when you were old, when time had turned your hair silver and softened your voice, when the world had changed a hundred times, but you were still my Emma.

I wanted to be your last love.

But war doesn’t care about what we want.

I don’t know how it happened, not exactly. One moment, I was here. The next, I wasn’t. I can feel the blood, hot and thick, slipping between my fingers, my breath shallow, too shallow. I can hear the shouting, the radio crackling, the distant hum of a world that’s about to go on without me.

And I am thinking of you.

Not my brothers in arms. Not the battle. Not even the pain.

Just you.

I see your face, clear as day. I see the way you smile, that little tilt of your head when you’re trying to be serious but your dimples betray you. I see the way you looked at me on our wedding day, your lips trembling as if you knew even then that our love would be too big for this world, that it would end too soon.

And our daughter, Emma—our little girl.

She will never know me.

She will never feel my arms wrap around her when she’s scared, never hear my voice telling her she’s safe, never run to me with scraped knees so I can kiss them better. She will never know how I dreamed of her before she was born—how I would close my eyes and picture her tiny fingers wrapped around mine, the weight of her against my chest as I held her for the first time.

She will never know that I had already planned her whole life.

I wanted to teach her how to ride a bike, how to whistle, how to stand up for herself when the world told her she wasn’t enough. I wanted to be there for every tear, every heartbreak, every triumph. I wanted to be the one who scared away the monsters under her bed, the one who told her that boys like her daddy when he was young were nothing but trouble.

I wanted to walk her down the aisle, to hold her hand one last time before she became someone else’s world.

But I won’t.

So you have to do it for me.

You have to be both of us now. You have to be strong when she asks why Daddy isn’t coming home. You have to tell her I loved her more than I have ever loved anything, that my last thoughts—my very last breath—belonged to her and to you.

And you, my love…

You will think this is the end of you, too.

You will feel like your heart has been torn from your chest, like the world is suddenly too quiet, too empty. You will wake up in the middle of the night reaching for me, only to find my side of the bed cold.

But, Emma, you must go on.

I need you to live.

Not just survive. Not just exist. I need you to live for both of us. I need you to laugh again, to love again, to find joy in the smallest things, even when it feels impossible.

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking you will never love again. That no man will ever touch you the way I did, will ever make your heart race the way I did. That it would be a betrayal.

But Emma—promise me something.

When the pain is not as sharp, when the grief is not as suffocating—if love finds you, let it.

I do not want you to spend the rest of your life alone, carrying my ghost like a weight on your back. Love is not a tomb. It is not meant to be buried with the dead.

And when that day comes—when you find someone who makes you smile, who kisses away the tears I cannot—do not feel guilt. Do not think for one second that I would be anything but happy for you.

Because my love for you does not end here.

It does not end with a bullet or a breath stolen too soon.

It will be in every sunrise you see, every whisper of wind that brushes against your skin. It will be in the laughter of our daughter, in the warmth of the sun on your face, in the stillness of the night when you close your eyes and remember me.

And one day—one day far from now—when you are old and your time has come, I will be there.

I will be waiting, just beyond the veil of this world. I will take your hand as I did when we were young, press my lips to your forehead, and whisper everything I never had the chance to say.

And I will tell you, as I always have, as I always will.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Forever yours,

Matthew