Dearest Peter,
Seventeen years ago on this day, December 18th, our hearts broke open and the earth tilted off kilter when you died from an agent orange related cancer. You were only 59 years old and had spent the last fifteen years in treatment of one kind or another to try and beat a cancer linked back to the Vietnam War.
Throughout these years, I have played conversations in my head about what I would like to tell you about my life and the adult lives of your children, since this day in 2004. I wonder what you would think of the many years I spent working on a book about the war, our family, and the turbulent times of our country in the late 1960s.
Well, Peter, in your honor, I just did it: Wrote the book and by a miracle of coincidence, it was published this year, 2021. For me it was a way of continuing conversations with you through reading and re-reading your letters from Vietnam. I spent many months in those foxholes with you but of course, I did not have to experience the absolute terror that you had to live through.
What would you think of the book? Of your words being shared? Would you be angry with me, or would you find healing in revisiting these stories? What I do know, is that the book has allowed me to connect with some of the buddies from your unit, @nd Battlaion/ 22nd Infantry, Compnay A aka the Triple Deuce, and they have appreciated your letters. Finally, what all of you went through is acknowledged, placed on paper, and recounted again. I have been told healing has occurred because of your letters.
The memory of you lives on and will continue through your well-written letters. May you rest in peace my dear brother, you are not forgotten.
Your “little” Sister,
Annette