To: Lucy-Helen From: Judy
9:17 p.m.

Honey, I've never met you.

I just know that you would have been twenty-one this year, you would have contributed to our dinner table at Christmas dinner today.

There's still that empty seat that I always look at and think, "This place just feels empty, it feels wrong. Someone should be sitting there."

(I see my mom glance at that same empty spot)

I haven't seen you in a year, don't worry, we'll be there in May to visit you. I'll have fresh flowers for you from our front yard. (Remember, we planted those flowers just for you)

And maybe this year, we'll afford a gravestone for you, a pretty one, with an angel on it or a cherub, something simple and elegant, something you might have been but never got a chance to be.

I always wanted a sister, always. Dealing with two brothers and a mother who isn't used to the American ways was tough.

It would have been nice, late night chats with each other, having arguments.

(Would we have been close? Or would we have fought like Gena and Lauren does?)

I dunno, sis. I guess I just wish you were here, to help me out. I see Marko and David do their thing, be brothers, be happy, joke around.

And I don't have that. I stand there uncomfortable sometimes, not knowing what to say, just having to stand there and puff on my cigarette as they kid around with their brotherly affection.

And I don't have that.

I feel alone sometimes.

I have to be there to talk to my brothers for my parents when something goes wrong. I have to be there for my brothers when my parents are going nuts.

I'm the little mediator of the family and I wonder if it would have been this way if you were here.

I just wish I could see how it would have been like, seeing you every day (Tata's blue eyes or Mama's brown eyes) instead of every year with flowers that are soggy from the rain that always happens on Memorial Day.

I'm just saying that I wonder about you, I do.

And to have a Merry Christmas.

Tell God 'What's up?' for me, will you?

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