Dear Hunter;

Dear Hunter,

Last year would have been your 21st birthday. Last year was also my first year of freedom. It hurt deeply that you were not here to celebrate our milestones. But the sad thing about is that if you were here, I would not be celebrating freedom, I would’ve been celebrating you. It would have been far more important to celebrate you without celebrating me. Only one of those could have been. Because without you, I would’ve never lost my freedom.

And therein lies the source of my pain that I’m relating to you. I lost you and I lost my freedom. I lost you and I lost the love of my life. Or at least I thought she was the love of my life. In the moment your mother left me, I learned more about love than I did when I thought I loved her. It was also the moment I grew up. Losing her, losing you, those hurts were deep.

Those hurts also prepared me for what came next. The loss of a son. The loss of his mother. The loss of my freedom. The loss of dignity. The pain and torment that comes from suffering through persecution. The shame that comes when society wholeheartedly believes that you are something that you are truly not. The hurt of waking up every moment not when you want to but when someone else wants you to. The hurt of no longer having the power to make your own choices. The hurt of suffering and being surrounded by other suffering people who choose to alleviate your suffering by making you suffer more.

But all of this actually pales to the pain in surviving all of that. Because knowing that I survived all of that and that I’m out here now with those memories hurts more. Because when people who know what I went through look at me, it’s like I relive everything in the blink of an eye. Twenty years of pain and suffering come crashing down upon me in an instant.

There are people who would still label me unfairly. There are the people who would still try to take the ending of the story from me. I thought I had regained my freedom to choose and yet there are those who would still choose for me, regardless of what I cared to think about it.

And being a black man, Hunter? Oh God, you’ve been spared a world that hates you now more than ever. They never even got to know you but they would’ve created a million little hurts for you. A million little ways to take you from me again and again. Hurt you for wearing a hoodie. Hurt you for knocking on the wrong door. Hurt you for wanting to go to school. Hurt you for driving a car better than theirs in a neighborhood they think you didn’t belong in. Hurt you for daring to have the same skin color as your father who loves you so much even to this day.

With all that in mind and with all that I’ve gone through, isn’t it amazing that I can bravely leave my house at all? I’m not going to lie; I do get anxious. I do get nervous. I am afraid. It’s like I worry that someone will look into my eyes, see right to my soul, and see all my pain. I’m ashamed of that pain and those experiences. I am ashamed of the last 20 years of my life. I am ashamed most of all because of why those years happened. I made a single mistake and lost everything. I can’t even say it was a mistake because a mistake implies a choice and there was no choice in an accident taking place. The event that changed everything was the most random, the most accidental that ever happened to me and you.

But everything they did to me after that was intentional. It was more than intentional.

By now you have met your mother and father. They met you once while you were here, and you probably don’t remember it. They loved you. They saw how much I loved you. My relationship with them wasn’t the greatest. They didn’t understand what I was going through. They didn’t understand who and what I was. But they started to learn before they left. And they loved and accepted me. They tried their best to help create a new start for me. They did that. Your grandfather helped me become a published author. Your grandmother finally told me the truth. And even in my pain and suffering, I learned that I could still grow, and I learned that the seeds for healing could be planted.

Asperger’s. Autism. Neurodivergence. So many labels, but that’s my truth now. I wonder if we would have shared that or had any of my other foibles in common. I spent years wondering what you would be like and even now I still wonder. There are so many who think I should move on but you were a part of me. When I lost you, I lost a part of myself. Does a person who lost their arm ever forget that they lost it? Then why should I forget that I lost someone so important, someone I helped create?

So, I’m here now. I live my life in tribute to you. I’d like to think that you are proud of me, of what I’ve become. Of the life I’ve made for myself. It is not the life we envisioned, but it is a good life. I am free. I can choose. I can live. I can cry. But most of all, I can remember. It is those memories of the short time of happiness that you brought me that push me forward. I truly believe that Heaven exists and that you’re there waiting for me alongside your grandparents who are teaching you in the afterlife just as they taught so many in life. We will all be together again one day. The family dinner we never had here; we can have there.

I miss you, son. I will never forget you. And I will always love you. You are my son; I am your father. No one can ever take that away from us.

Love,

Your Father