Copyright 2025 by Jack A. Urquhart

Dear Dillon. Dear Son,

If you’re listening, if it matters where you are, then I hope you’ll take note: today is March 8th, which would’ve been the 46th anniversary of your birth. If only you’d survived.

There have been many “if onlys” since you left us. So I can’t help wondering if you might’ve lived if we’d chosen differently.

There were, after all, other routes we could’ve taken, paths other than those that led us to where we are now – if only we’d chosen more conventionally, more selflessly. If I’d chosen familial fidelity? If you’d chosen something other than deadly false euphoria?

Then what?

But what do I know of the forces that mapped your path? Was I even there to witness your struggles – your first steps toward oblivion?

And if not, then doesn’t that make me complicit in your absence?

Ironic, don’t you think – that we’ve both found our private devastations (if that even matters in the grand nameless, heartless scheme of things).

What’s beyond supposition is that despite the bonds of age, the obligations of bone and blood, and paternal love, only one of us survived. And, so what(!) – if it was me?

When it should’ve been you.

Happy birthday, Dillon – if you’re listening. If it matters anymore.

Love,
Dad