How love letters work to those who aren’t here

Ron, 
I read this out loud to my students on Tuesday. 
You would have hated me doing that. 
I told them who you were, why you are so important to me, where we met and how. 
I said you were kind. And funny, and irritating. 
I said you loved Paris, and a great hot cocoa, and to laugh.
I told them what you told me. 
That motion is not always action. 
That stillness is not always a lack of choice but rather a culmination of every possibility suspended in time. 
That we all get lost in the fog, here and there. 
That sometimes you just gotta go for it.
That a great scarf is necessary.
That love is only heartache, but we like that. For some unknown reason. 
That you should never underestimate anything. A person, a dream, a great chocolate chip cookie.
And Ron, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I hold you in my heart every time I step barefoot into a studio to share, just a little even, of what you shared with me.
Look though. Look at how your love of this craft ripples outwards even now, to students you don’t even know. How simple lessons have become profound guideposts. How the things you said mean something. How I am now entrusted, in my small way, with carrying that on.
There are other sentinels to thank too; so many northern stars who pick up the phone, and let me stay with them, and send Christmas cards, and hire me again and again.
But without you, I would not have met so many of them.
And without you I wouldn’t have the courage to do this. 
So without you, I wouldn’t be here…even though that is without you. 
It is hard to not call and ask you about it first hand: but this, all of this, is a gift.
A simple sheet of paper, your choice of font and border; tucked into a folder for safekeeping now front and center of my teaching. 
And somehow that means you aren’t so far after all.

Love always,
Kitty