A Letter to David Cook

I have seen you. You look so harmless. I look at you and expect to want to hit you, hurt you, make you feel even the tiniest fraction of what you have caused us to feel. Yet I have no urge to hurt you at all, I think because I cannot reconcile the fact that you appear so soft and innocuous, and yet I know you are not.

What is in you that is so powerful? Was it anger, or sadness, or self-loathing? What did you feel that prompted you to decide – yes, DECIDE – to be so careless with the lives of others? With the life of the person we loved so much, and by extension, with our lives?

How does it feel to have so much power? Have you even once thought about that power for what it has really done? The devastation, the pain, the grief, the hopelessness that it has wrought? I don’t believe you comprehend it – not because you are stupid, or ill, or young, but because you have not had to FEEL what we feel, you have never experienced what you have forced us to experience.

Let me tell you what you have the power to do.

You brutally and carelessly crushed – literally crushed – the life and breath from a person who was incredibly alive. He was not an ordinary man, and he was not a man who let life happen around him. He LIVED – until you used your power to stop him. He loved with a depth of passion and commitment that many people never find in themselves. He was funny – incredibly funny. Not in a “tell a joke” way. His humor always came from his observations of life itself – he just knew life was funny, and he made the rest of us see it too. He was respectful to others, unless they didn’t deserve it. He taught our children the lessons that will carry them though life. Lessons like “do the right thing.” And “never think less of anyone else for something not within their control.” He gave apples to homeless people, unless they didn’t have teeth, in which case he gave them granola bars. He worked hard, but if work threatened to interfere with family, he drew the line. He loved his dog with a passion, and wanted to have her cremated so he could keep her ashes and have them buried with him someday – little did we suspect that she would survive him. He loved the outdoors, and thought that’s where God was most likely to be found. He seemed invincible, and yet you killed him so easily.

You broke the hearts of his parents. They were alive and well when you took him from them. They are alive still, but I cannot describe them as well, because they are not the same, and never will be. Their phones no longer ring with his calls. They can no longer count on him to take care of them when they need it someday. Their birthdays, mothers day, fathers day, and every other holiday are forever altered by you, as is every ordinary day. Your incredible disregard for anyone other than yourself caused his parents to lose the child they made, they child they brought into the world and raised to be the incredible person he became. You caused them to watch as their child was lowered into the ground.

You have ripped my children’s father from them. Do you love your father? Do you appreciate him? My children did, but there is nothing like losing a person to make you realize how much. They are young still, and so was their father – they should have had him for many more years. The autopsy you forced on my husband said that they would have. He was perfectly healthy, other than the fact that you crushed his torso. No cancer, no heart problems, no liver or prostate problem. Just a crushed body. He would have been here to see them marry, have their own children. He would have been here to give advice on what a good price for chicken is, and what is probably wrong with your car that won’t start or your printer that won’t print. Fortunately, you didn’t kill him before he could show them the really important stuff, like how to be a good dad, and how to be an incredible husband. The problem is, that’s why they still needed and wanted him so much – because he was that dad, that person they counted on. That person they loved. My daughter does not tell new people in her life that her dad died. Not because she dreads their pity, or she is afraid it will make them uncomfortable. She does not tell them because she can’t stand the thought that they will picture her as a girl with no dad, a girl from an incomplete family. She HAS a dad, and she HAS a whole family. Yet you have separated us from each other, and we have no way to overcome your exercise of power.

You have rendered the rest of our family helpless – parents and in-laws, sisters, stepmothers, nieces and nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins. They grieve for him too, and they try to figure out how to help us. They don’t know what to say. They cannot FIX anything for us. They wish that they could take some of our pain. Most of all, they wish they could change it, but in the end they can only listen and watch as we struggle with the irreversible theft of someone so incredibly precious.

You have left a hole in his friends. To some, he was a great friend, to others he was as close or closer than their own families. There is a spot in their lives that is missing now. They feel it in the part of their day when they would have called him, and he would have answered – HEEELLLO, or Hi Kath Kath, or whatever greeting he used only for that one person. They feel it when they see something he would have thought was funny, and have the urge to call and tell him, and then remember they cannot. They feel it when they watch a game he also would have been watching and they cannot send the text they have the urge to write. They feel it when they scroll through their email box and see the last “joke of the day” he sent, just a few hours before you used your power to kill him. They feel it when they now do something alone that they always used to do with him. Or when they cannot bring themselves to do it at all because, thanks to you, they cannot do it with him.

I have saved myself for last because I do not know where or how to find the words to describe what you have done to me. You took my best friend, my love, my partner, my co-parent, my advisor, my coach and cheerleader. You took my HUSBAND, who was everything to me. Everything. We were not normal. We were THAT couple. Not because we were wealthy, or beautiful, or special in any conventional way, but because we had THAT marriage. The one that everyone can see for what it is – real, and special, and incredible. The one that lots of other people either wish they had, or don’t even know enough to wish they had, because they’ve never witnessed it.

When you killed him, he was on the way to the vet. His dog needed medicine, and he was going to get it. But what matters is where he had been. That day, he was shopping for jewelry for me. It was not my birthday, or our anniversary. It didn’t need to be. He just loved me, and wanted to surprise me and make me happy. He had been to three stores – the business cards were in his wallet, brochures on diamonds and gold on the seat beside him. He would not have made this purchase quickly – he would have explored all the options, in order to maximize my happiness. After you took him from me, a friend called the stores to see if by any chance he had ordered something. He had not, but every store remembered him. They remembered the big guy who came in, excited to plan a surprise for his wife. The guy who made friends with everyone in the store. The one whose love for his wife was evident on his face, in his voice.

We were not perfect, but we loved each other with a depth and passion and truth and ease that could not be mistaken or hidden. And not only did you separate us from each other, you used your power to rob us of our goodbye. The one we always thought we would have. The one where we say “I love you” over and over. The one where we say “I’ll see you again someday.” The one where we say “thank you.” The one where we kiss, and touch, while one of us peacefully leaves the other. The one where the person who is left behind gets to lie quietly with the one who has gone, before the rest of the world knows and can intrude with its forms, and laws, and demands for decisions, and grief and loneliness.

So much damage and pain. So much power for one who appears so harmless.