Dear Tom,
Today, for one of my final assignments for school, from which I'll be graduating soon, I have to write a formal letter to someone who means a lot to me. I told my teacher that I would be writing to my older brother who I don't get to see anymore, and, not knowing I meant that I don't see you only because you're dead, she thought that it was cute that I was writing to someone who clearly meant so much to me. “I think that's so sweet of you, Bill,” she cawed at me from where she stood in front of the blackboard that was a mess with all sorts of stuff I wasn't sure if I understood or not, “and I really hope that it will bring the two of you close together again.”
I wish.
What if there really was a way for these letters to somehow reunify us again, so we could be close brothers like we were when we were real little? Momma always told me that she knew her baby boys were going to grow up to be the greatest of friends; she could just feel it in her heart when she looked at the two of us. When we were small, we always used to play together, and we never got into the silly little scraps that babies do, about toys and trivial stuff like all that. She says we played real nice together, and we loved to nap by each others' side, and she once told me that she had the bad habit of dressing us in the same clothes, with just the smallest difference in something so she could keep track of which twin was which. We looked alike, we acted alike, we liked to do the same things.
I keep holdin' tight to the thought that maybe these letters will somehow bring me close to you again, even though I know that there's not really a way for that to happen. Letters can't transcend the boundary between this world and whatever world you're in nowadays. It's not that I feel like I've been disconnected from you, if you thought that by what I said, but I often times wonder what it would be like to use these things that I've been writing to you since I learned how to write words down on paper as real social interaction. What if there really was a way for you to have these letters? I like to imagine myself giving them to you, and sitting with you and watching as you read through them all. I wouldn't mind the wait, Tom. I've had dreams where we're sitting on the couch in my living room while Momma and Pop are out someplace, and you sit there and read letter after letter, and I just watch you do it. We don't say no words, but it's not weird or nothin'. You're busy with reading, and I'm busy being fond of the idea that you're really there with me.
If Heaven had a post office, I would send all of these silly little things to you. Sooner or later, Momma is going to find them, since I have quite the collection of them built up from the past thirteen or so years. Sending them to you and letting you have them would take out the chance that she finds them and thinks that I'm some sort of crazy. Only the rich crazies get to go to the sanitariums, but we're just your average family of average income, so I think I would end up having a lobotomy or something loony they do to those people they decide just aren't right, to try to take the crazy out of them. I want to keep my head as together as it is, so I don't want her to find these.
What with me being here for so long, all my memories of life here in New Brunswick, New Jersey seem to be washing away the ones I used to keep of life back home in Leipzig. Sometimes, I wish you were around to tell me about these things, Tom. As my older brother, only by a couple minutes, I would feel okay with asking you to help me remember. If you can look back on the little bit of life you had here on Earth, would you help me out and give me a clue? These are my roots that I'm forgetting; New Brunswick is all I know nowadays.
You see, when we were three, we still lived in Germany with our parents. Until you got sick, there was no reason for us to pick up ship and move here to America. But, then, like I'm sure you know well by now, you did get sick, and it was so bad that... well, we just won't talk about that part. But, your “departure”, we'll call it, drove Momma and Papa mad. From what Momma tells me about it, you “leaving” made both of them more emotional than they ever had been before. They each started to play the blame game with one another, and that made them fight that much more. It didn't take long before they separated. Wanting a new life, Mom decided that her and I, since she got to keep me when Papa left, were going to move to America. I don't know how she picked New Brunswick, but the fact that I'm still stuck here is proof enough that she did. When we got here, she met a new man, named Gordon, and they got married pretty quick. I don't remember Papa and I don't remember what our last name was, but I know that I go by Bill Trumper because of that marriage.
Now, that's not to say that I blame you for making Momma and Papa separate. It's not like you exactly wanted to die and drive them apart. Like I said, I don't remember Papa, so it's not like I really miss him any. Gordon's all the father I know, and it would probably be kind of weird to introduce another man into my life and be expected to hold him to the same esteem. Momma says they didn't know that their love couldn't survive the loss of a child, but that she doesn't worry about it, because she loves Gordon a lot more than she ever loved our Papa, so she likes to tell me, even though there's still pictures of us as a family around our house here in New Brunswick. She says she does it for the sake of keeping pictures of you, but she's got some of just us together, but the one of us with Papa is still right there, and she makes no moves to take it down.
She ain't mad at you for nothin', and I ain't either.
It's just, I want to know. What was it like? Is there any way that you remember? When I was little, I used to think that Heaven was on the tops of the clouds, and everyone wore white and looked like they did when they died, but now that I'm older, I like to think that maybe Heaven can be customized. You pick what era of your life, that happened or that would have happened, you liked the best, and you look like that, and you can go where you wanted to. I like to think that you still look just like me, and maybe you're home in Leipzig.
A little piece of me wants to go back. A part of me wishes we never moved here at all. When I was little and started school, my accent was so thick, and the people who didn't think that it was cool liked to make fun of me for it. They'd pretend they had a German accent too, and they'd say a lot of stupid stuff. When it happened the first time, it made me cry. How could someone make fun of me just for being European? But then I got used to it, and then, as my accent faded out fast, people got used to me, and the teasing stopped by the time we started first grade. That part, I'm glad for.
And sure, I would probably miss my two best friends, and the other kids the three of us hang around with, and I'd really like to hope they have soda fountains in Germany, because I don't know how I could do without the root beer float I get every Friday afternoon from Robert's Fountain down the street a little ways. I'd miss the pretty girls that sometimes give me attention, and I'd miss all the familiar faces around my cozy little part of New Brunswick, but I think I could do it as long as the root beer float gets to move back to Germany with me. That's one thing I'm afraid I cannot budge on.
Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to move back to Leipzig, and sometimes, I really do want it. Before this war, it might not have been too hard to get back into the country, but now that this whole thing is going on, I doubt they'd let an American like my casually restart his life in his home town, even if I really am from there and Momma probably has the papers and stuff to prove it.
Though I really do wonder why I want to be back there so bad. Life wasn't bad here before the war started, and, like I already told you, I don't even really remember life before we moved here.
Part of me likes to think that I only want to go back because I have the crazy idea that you'll be there, just living you life like it never even came to an end all those years ago. It seems that I fall under the impression that moving back to where I was born will somehow bring you back, even though I know well enough that it can't happen. Just because I'm in a different place doesn't make you any less dead, and that thought hurts me deep inside in ways that I just can't put words to.
Your absence from my life hurts me deep, Tom, and I wish there were just some way that I could have you with me again, if only for a little while. I'd give the world for just a couple minutes with you, and they would mean more to me than any other moments in my life. It would top when I get married and have kids and all that stuff grown-ups like to think is special.
You mean more to me than that stuff. I hope that, wherever you are, you know that.
I love you. I miss you. Godspeed.
- Bill
