Gone but not forgotten

Gone but not forgotten

Love Letters To The Dead by Ava Dellaira is a book about loss, pain, suffering, and learning to heal. In the book the main character, Laurel begins writing to dead people as a school assignment. It soon grows into a way she copes with the death of her sister, May and begins moving on. This is a book about learning how to move on after someone dies. It is about letting go but still knowing that they will always be in your heart.

A moment in the story when I began to develop this theme is when I realized that Laurel relates to the character in Stand By Me when he says, “ ‘I just wish I could go someplace where no one knows me.’ ”(pg.16) Laurel feels like this when her sister, May first dies. She doesn’t want to be at her old school with the kids who know what happened. She chooses to switch schools to escape all the staring and questions from the students and teachers around her. Laurel decides to isolate herself from her old friends because it is the only thing that can dull the pain of losing her sister.

“As she’d tell me about her adventures- the boys and the kissing and the fast cars- I pictured it sort of like I did when we were little kids, when I believed May had fairy wings and I’d imagine her on her flights through the night, swooping under the stars.” (pg.35) After reading this part of the story I realized how great of a connection Laurel had with her sister and how much harder it must have made it for her when May died. Laurel saw her sister as this amazing person with a wonderful life. Because if this it made it even harder for her to let go. She was struggling with fully accepting that her sister was gone. Sometimes the person you love the most while living can cause you the most pain when they die.

I believe this one line from the story let me find out so much about Laurel and what she’s feeling in her head. This line explains a lot of the book and reassured me about my assumptions of how Laurel was feeling. “I didn’t know how to explain that after May died, all I wanted was to disappear. That my sister was the only person I could disappear into. I think losing May really changed Laurel. For a while she was feeling depressed and alone. The one who could make her feel better wasn’t around. The only person that she wanted, she couldn’t have.

Losing someone can change you. Most of the time you can’t do anything about that, but you’re the one who can decide whether it will make you better or worse.  It may feel like you have lost all hope after someone dies and that you now have no one else, but you must remember that they will always be in your heart. Even if it’s hard for you to accept you should know it’s true. Don’t shut everyone out when you’re going through a hard time because if you continue to do it they might not be there to help you when you feel like you can’t go on and realize you need them. The pain and ache you feel will get better as the days, then weeks, then months, then years go by. You will start to heal. Your wounds will close and begin to fade away. They will be gone, but never forgotten in your heart.