Open Letter #5 - The Package

Dearest Albert,

Sundays have always been quiet days—hushed and contemplative, as if the world itself is holding its breath. Back then, I was buried in my undergraduate studies, navigating the relentless tide of academia while reaching, always reaching, for fiction—writing that told poignant stories of our people, of a struggle. It was around that time that you found me—just as I was teetering between duty and desire, between the demands of coursework and the voice inside me that ached to be heard.

Our conversations became a refuge, threaded between essays and exams, between the life I was expected to live and the stories waiting to be written. I clung to them, to you, because you carried me to a place only writers understand—a deep, uncharted space in the dark corners of my mind. A place my husband resented, yet a place I needed to escape.

On Sunday, April 4, 2020, I wrote to you:

"Albert, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation yesterday. I feel growth each time I speak with you. I'm looking forward to getting past these exams so I can begin writing—I’m ready.I wanted to share another article from the Sacramento Union newspaper that you may find insightful.Have a peaceful Sunday.—Terry"

And you replied, in the way you always did—steady, unwavering, as if you saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen in myself:

"Terry... That was a very good article, very insightful. I hope you feel the foundation for your future success is being laid at your feet. I want to know more, hear more of your voice...—Albert"

You had a way of pausing the chaos in my mind, of drawing my focus to the shimmer of candlelight in the dark, of teaching me to listen—not just to silence, but to the voices waiting within it. My characters. My literary voice. You helped me find them, and they have grown so much since then.

I wonder if you remember any of this—the words we exchanged, the moments we shared. If you held on to anything that mattered to me. Not to sound self-absorbed, but I suppose I had hoped that, with all we shared, it had mattered to you, too, even in some small way.

You would say things like this to me often, and still, I wonder—endlessly, futilely—who else might have heard those same words whispered in the hush of night. Whose mind you’ve set alight with the same careful rasp, whose hands have trembled at the weight of your conviction.

"To Terry...........It is about 11pm my time, I just got your e-mail. I could, for whatever reason, not download the other article. My computer is very limited. Perhaps when we talk, you will tell me more of what is to be known. Please remember, this is your time coming. Light a candle, sit in silence, and you will see within yourself......I wait for your call."

I read those words now, and they settle over me like an echo too familiar to be my own. Were there others, lost in the same silence, staring into the same flickering flame, waiting for you to tell them this was their time, too?

I do not ask. The answer would change nothing.

Please do not mistake my intent in writing these letters. They are not a summons, nor a plea. I do not seek to see you, nor to hear a single word in return. My only wish is that one day, my words might find their way to you—that they might drift into your path like an autumn leaf caught in an unexpected wind, carrying with them the raw truth, unvarnished and unshaken.

That is all. I ask nothing of you.

And if these letters never reach you, if my words remain unread in some distant corner of the world, it matters not—for one day, the world itself will know. The hidden moments we shared, the quiet echoes of what was, will find their voice beyond these pages.

I understand now—and have long accepted—that I will never receive the answers I once sought from you. I have made my peace with that. Life is far too brief, too fleeting, to wade endlessly in wonder, to linger in the hollow spaces where questions dissolve into silence, where you have lingered for ages.

That was the side of you I never admired—the way you let bitterness settle into your bones, how you held fast to burdens that were never meant to be carried alone. Not to diminish the VA meetings, those fleeting sessions of solace that offered you momentary reprieve before the dark thoughts pulled you under again.

You were always drifting back into that same abyss, refusing to surrender what weighed you down to God, as the good book teaches—the same book I mailed to you before my flight back to California, sealed with a farewell letter and something far more intimate—the bronze flower locket, the very one worn by a character I once conjured into existence—the one you had, in some way, helped bring to life. A piece of fiction, yet laced with something achingly real, something of me.

Countless nights, I’d lie awake, my mind adrift in the quiet hours, wondering if you ever opened it, felt the weight of power in your hands, if you turned its pages in search of meaning, or if the locket remained untouched, its weight forgotten, its story unread. Perhaps your stubbornness kept you from tracing a path to Ephesians, to Romans, to Acts—from letting the words press into you as deeply as the silence you chose instead. Or maybe you set them all aside, like an unfinished manuscript abandoned before its final chapter, a story left untold.

Could it be that the package sat untouched, its edges fraying beneath layers of dust, or maybe it never even reached your doorstep—lost to time, to indifference, to fate? Or perhaps it met a simpler end, discarded without a second thought, its weight no heavier to you than a scrap of unwanted paper.

Just maybe it was easier that way—to discard what you did not wish to face, to silence what you did not wish to hear. Maybe, to you, it was nothing more than paper and metal and words, weightless in your hands, inconsequential in your mind. But to me, it was the quiet closing of a door I had once left open, a threshold I once believed—so foolishly, so desperately—you might allow me to cross again one day.

Back then, I had hoped—fiercely, foolishly—that you might unburden yourself, that you might see past your own bitterness and remember the sanctuary we had built in the spaces between words, between pages, between all that was left unspoken.

More than anything, I had hoped you would learn to forgive yourself—the sins you carried like stones in your pockets, the shadows you let shape you, the wounds you refused to let heal. But that was then. That was a different time, a different version of me.

And yet, understanding does not silence memory, nor does acceptance erase the echo of what was left unsaid.

Sincere Regards,

Terry A. O’Neal