The letter I didn't send: Mourning my middle school teacher

In the summer of 2016, I learned that my eighth grade English teacher—the man who’d put me on the path to being a writer and editor—had taken his own life after receiving a difficult health diagnosis.

This was a man who’d taken me out to dinner long after I’d left his class, just to check in; a man who’d made special trips to come watch me compete for my high school bowling team. He was a bit of an eccentric—clipping his fingernails during mandatory state-sponsored standardized tests, as if in quiet rebellion—with a unique name: Preston Staines.

Shortly after his death, I discovered that he’d written me an email about a trip he’d recently taken to New York City, a place he knew we both loved. I was bitterly disappointed to discover I hadn’t replied. I took that moment to finally write back about what I was feeling in the wake of his loss.

When I first contacted Jennifer Good, Peacefully’s co-founder, about working for her, I sent it to her as my cover letter. I include it below as an example of an exercise we can use to process grief—writing that “letter you never sent,” and getting out all the things you neglected to say—and in the hopes that if you are experiencing similar regrets, you might do the same:

Dear Preston,

Sorry to have waited all these years to write you back. And sorry I missed your 80th birthday party. Life feels different now than it did back when I was a chubby class clown in your eighth grade English class.

It's funny you should have written to me out of the blue after a visit to New York. I live there now. I think I live there because of you, because of the path to becoming an artist that you started me on. You brought the promise of New York to Michigan. It was in the bearing you held, your posture ramrod straight, like a signpost pointing to a life better and more richly lived than anything our suburban surroundings could provide. A life that pondered art, read profusely and non-judgmentally, drank deeply from the goblet of life…cabernet and cabaret...

You had panache. And I want you to know that I emulated you—let’s call it what it was, I did impressions—because, snot-nosed kid that I was, I thought imitation with a tinge of ridicule was as close to flattery as one could get out of an overweight, self-conscious 12-year-old boy who couldn’t even do a very good impression of himself.

I imagine you knew that. Otherwise, why would you want to stay friends years after I left junior high?

I was sad to hear today that you had died. Sadder still to hear that you took your own life. I think it's barbaric that we live in a country where a person sick with the type of diagnosis you got, at the age you’d reached—78!—can't decide to end their life in a peaceful and more dignified way, a way with panache.

And, I want to say I think it’s tragic that you might have had to live a life of secrecy about the person you were. I’m grateful that that’s changing. I wish you’d been able to let yourself enjoy it.

I wish you’d called me once before you left.

But, I respect that you did it your own way.

It’s great that you got to sit next to John Travolta at the Broadway show you attended. I imagine Mr. Travolta walked away from that performance of The Book of Mormon with as many questions about you as you had for him. Questions like, who is this buttoned-up old gentleman, with a husky laugh and a pointed chin, regarding the stage out of a skeptical corner of his eye? What is his deal, what does he do in life? (Who is his agent?) I’m grateful that I got answers to a few of those questions, at least in part.

Thank you for helping me become the person I am today. I’ll miss you.

—Bryan Kelly