Letters for the Living

My mother and I watched the World Series this year—the Dodgers versus the Blue Jays, all seven games. Before each one, we listened to both national anthems and found ourselves cheering louder for the Canadian performers than the American ones.

And I wondered why.

My grandfather loved an underdog. That was part of it. But something else was at work—something harder to name.

It’s easier now to cheer for someone else’s country than to make sense of our own. We know too much about one another, and not nearly enough about how to hold that knowledge gently.

There are moments when you’ll stand firmly in your own shoes, certain of where you belong. And others when something as simple as another nation’s anthem will shake your foundation.

I write from that second place—somewhere between belonging and bewilderment.

These letters are for you. For the living. For the ones trying to stay human while the world moves too fast in some directions and walks backward in others. For those who still notice things—a security guard’s kindness, the way the sun finds its way to your morning coffee, the particular loneliness of cheering for the wrong team.

I don’t know when you’ll read this. Maybe this year, 2025, will seem quaint to you. Maybe you’ll smile at how much we worried about things that sorted themselves out.

But some things don’t change: the need to notice people, to stay a little longer with those you love, to find the places—in life or in memory—that feel like music.

That’s what these letters are about.

Not advice. Not answers. Just reminders of what matters—written down before I forget, passed forward in case you need them.