A Letter To Scott

Dear Scott,
Twenty five years ago my heart broke when they told me you'd died. A part of me died with you.

You're perpetually twenty-two while the rest of us have grown older. Can you believe it, I'm fifty and a grandmother and our little brother Jeff is forty-four! Your nephews, Douglas and Tommy, are men now and Douglas is the father of beautiful twin daughters. Jeff is the father of two grown daughters, Stephanie and Brittany, both in college, both amazing women as well as being a stepfather to Tyler and the twins Cain and Caleb. He's married to Stacy--you'd love her, she fits right in.

You'd be so proud of Mom and Dad. They celebrated fifty years of marriage in 2003. Mom just turned seventy-seven and Dad is seventy-five. They haven't slowed down much in spite of their years. They are very active in the church. Dad still leads singing and Mom is the church treasurer. Dad helps Pastor Byron Gurnee with building projects and maintenance around the church and parsonage. Mom fixes meals for visiting evangelists and preachers who come to fill in and does laundry for a dear old lady who lives in a nursing home.

Grandpa Cole died the year after you did but Grandma lived until 1994, dying just before her ninety first birthday. Aunt Shirley died in July of 1983 of cancer just a few months after you left us. Aunt Mame died several years later of Lou Gehrig's Disease, Aunt Kate died last year of cancer and Uncle Tommy died of a massive coronary just a year ago. Your friends Bill Hall and Don Hill are both gone now, too.

It hasn't all been loss and sadness, however. I did graduate from nursing school in May of '83 in spite of my grief. Tom became an absolute whiz at computers--self-taught, no less--and is the PLC programmer at Plastpro, Inc. besides being the maintenace supervisor. Douglas is an ordained Assemblies of God minister and is currently selling insurance in Columbus. Tommy is happily living in a home for mentally retarded men where he is, as he says, "the big cheese." And for the past fourteen years we've lived at 519 Lake Erie Street in North Conneaut.

Jeff spent time in Germany and Hawaii courtesy of the US Army. He's a correctional officer at the Lewisburg Federal Penetentiary in Pennsylvania. In his spare time he fixes up houses to sell and is looking forward to retirement in a few years.

Our Cleveland Indians who, as you know, were always dead last in the standings when we were kids, won the pennant twice in the mid ninteen nineties and have been more than respectable since. Old Municipal Stadium has been razed and they now play in a beautiful park called Progressive Field.

We're in a new century and a new millenium. Almost everybody carries a cellular phone with them everywhere. Cameras are digital, making film nearly obsolete. You simply download your pictures onto your computer. Everybody has a computer these days. Some of them are even portable, called laptops. No one uses a typewriter anymore. Everything is typed on the computer. Drafting, keeping accounts, recording music, taking college courses and thousands of other things are all done on the computer. People rarely write letters these days. They simply "email" each other. There is no need for encyclopedias. All the information one could possibly want is on the internet.

Music is burned to a six inch disk called a CD and movies are available to everybody on disks, as well. They're called DVDs.

The Cold War is over, the Berlin Wall has been torn down both due in large part to President Ronald Reagan. He has since died of Alzheimer's Disease. Besides him George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been president since you died. This year a woman and a black man are running for president.

On September 11, 2001 terrorists flew jets into both towers of The World Trade Center in New York City killing more than 3,000 people and plunging the nation into The War on Terror.

Although both the world and your family are far different than they were on January 25, 1983, you are still mourned and missed. I look forward to the day we are reunited in heaven. Until then know that I love you. Your sister, Cindy