Dear Junebug,

I guess I don’t have to pretend that you’re reading this in the future anymore, since if you are in fact reading this I’d imagine you are doing it right this second in heaven.

Words cannot express how we feel right now. We are angry you left us . . . we are deeply sad that we will never hold you in our arms . . . we are scared this will happen again . . . we are relieved this happened now, if it was going to happen, and not in a week, or a month, or a year . . . Overall, we are emptier.

Last night we burned the sonogram from a few weeks ago (the one and only time we heard your heart beat), and also most of the things we bought you over the past couple of months. We will sprinkle some of the ashes in Yosemite this weekend as a memorial. However, I did save one of your blankets from the patio bonfire. It is safe with me. I wanted something to remember you by, even if we barely got to know each other.

Of course, remembering you is easy. Every time I see a stroller, or a diaper commercial, or a Babys-R-Us store I think of you. And unfortunately I never realized how many babies there are in the world, and how evidence of their existence is ubiquitous and inescapable, until we lost ours.

Please know that although you died, our dream to have a child has not. We want to try again in a few months, even at the risk of opening ourselves up to more heartbreak and disappointment. But rest assured that you were not a setback, or a delay, or a false hope. You were briefly, gloriously, and unapologetically our baby. 

Tomorrow morning we leave for Yosemite. Your mother and I need to clear our heads, say goodbye, and find as many reasons as we can to hope for the future. 

“Say goodbye. . .” I never thought that just imagining those words together would make me cry.

In closing, I will keep this blog up as a kind of anonymous memorial to you, our anonymous baby, the elusive Junebug. It will remain short, just like your life, forever. But while you won’t be able to read this blog in twenty years and laugh at how stupid your dad used to be (or is), it may prove useful someday if we ever do have a baby, and that baby grows up to conceive a baby of its own before suddenly and inexplicably losing it. As when my mom told me about her own miscarriage earlier today, I will send my future baby a link to this blog. 

Anyway, I have to go help your mother. She still isn’t feeling well. I hope she knows how much I love her. 

Goodbye, Junebug. I hope we meet again someday.

Love, Dad

Dear Junebug,

Now that you’ve see The Princess Bride for the first time . . . what did you think? Hopefully I was there watching it with you, but if I wasn’t, then tell me . . . what is the difference between “all dead” and “mostly dead?” I never really understood that, apart from the obvious opportunity that the former presents for sifting through the dead person’s pockets. Does “mostly dead” mean that Wesley was in a coma? Clearly Prince Humperdink needs to allocate some of his Assassins and Torture Research Division budget money into his health care system. Then Miracle Max would still have a job . . .

In any event, it is a great movie. One of my favorites from childhood. I know it is a bit before your time (it came out 28 years ago), but I hope you like it nonetheless.

Love, Dad

P.S. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You messed up my double-chocolate frappucchino. Prepare to make me another one!” . . . Ha!

Dear Junebug,

Today got off to a crappy start. The very first thing I saw this morning after I opened my eyes to turn off my phone alarm was an email from an academic journal acquisitions editor. She told me that while the article I submitted contained good research, it needed substantial revisions if I wanted to ever get it published. She attached my peer reviews, one of which absolutely excoriated the manuscript as “not interesting.” I was taken aback by the criticism, especially since I honed the manuscript repeatedly with the help of my writing group.

This made me feel pretty awful, since it led me to ask some terrible questions . . . am I a crappy scholar? Am I a terrible writer? How could I have been so careless and so stupid to submit something so awful, so beneath the dignity of my profession? My colleagues must hate me. I must be bad. I failed. I’m a failure. AAARRRGGGG!!!

This negative feedback loop did not do me any favors, however. So I went online and read about how Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie (remember that movie we wouldn’t let you watch?), was submitted to thirty publishers before it was picked up, and how Thomas Edison failed thousands of times to perfect the light bulb. Both Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S Grant, the two men who did the most to save the Union during the Civil War, failed spectacularly and repeatedly as businessmen. And yet Robert E. Lee, a man who never failed at anything, the Babe Ruth of American generals, lost his gambit at Gettysburg and eventually lost the war.

What does all of this mean? People fail and they make mistakes. But it is important to learn from those mistakes, and to turn them into positive experiences that give you the knowledge and foresight you need to succeed later in the future. So, while driving to work, I formulated a plan to help me get that article published, and decided to learn how to properly structure a journal article (which I’ve never really done before). 

I don’t know whether you’ve seen this article, because I don’t know if I succeeded in making it exist. You know the answer to that as you read this, but I don’t. 

What I do know is that I’m probably going to fail a lot more in my life, and you will also fail a lot in your own. So, I will make you a promise: any time you don’t succeed at something and need to feel better about it, call me (or send me a telepathic telegram, or whatever we do in the future to communicate . . . 2015 Me has no idea!), and I’ll tell you about a proportionately large failure of my own. That way, even though you may fail, you’ll never be alone in failure. 

And if I’m not available for some reason, watch a video of a cat doing something cute. That also seems to work. 

Love, Dad

Best funny and cute cat videos compilation 2014

Dear Junebug,

First of all, I just want to say how excited I am to meet you and how much I love you. I never met you, but I’m already certain that I love you. Unless you’re a serial killer or a Scientologist. Just kidding, I still love you . . . but I’d be asking some questions. 

This blog is for you. But it is also for me. I’m going to write things for you, someday, to read. And the things you will read now are things I want to say now to future you.

That said, if I am not around or if you happen to meet these people before I do, please convey my apologies to the Letters to Junebug blog people. Your in utero name just happened to be Junebug, and we don’t know what your real name is going to be yet, so for now you are named after a giant, creepy insect. But rest assured, we (your mother and I) are certain that you are a lovely, wonderful person. Even though, as I’ve said already, we haven’t even met yet. 

I guess everyone deals with the news that they are going to be a dad differently. Some people take it in stride, while others freak out. Some run away, while others run to the “Babies” section at Barnes and Noble (what we in 2015 call a “bookstore”). I suppose I’m somewhere in between all of those extremes. I’m excited, anxious, the owner of several books for daddies-to-be, and daydreaming of driving away into the mountains someplace. I still might. But I will come back. And someday I hope we can go and see the country together.

It’s a good time to mention this now . . . At some point in the future (and at some point in your past, I suppose) I will write about the lost art of the road trip. You will hate me for not letting you take your phone/tablet/Oculus/virtual reality Beats Apple Google glasses on our journey together. It is not because I want you to be bored and suffer, but because I want you to learn that looking at the scenery, listening to albums, and talking to your dad are not boring activities. As Clark Griswold once said, “Getting there is half the fun,” but you probably don’t know who that is.

Anyway, I’ve never been good at blogging consistently in the past, so whether or not I actually fill this blog with posts should be readily apparent to you by now. Hopefully the dreams and aspirations of Middle of 2015 me will come to fruition and you’ll have a lot of things to read on here. I suppose we’ll find out.

Sorry for the rambling post. I’ve never met you, so I don’t really know what to say. In fairness, you haven’t even been born yet. I’m rambling again. 

Sorry.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Love, Dad