A beautiful letter to the Bindners-- which may help a lot of us, too.

I received this email a little while ago, and immediately asked for permission to post it to the blog. Mona Davis is the secretary in the Division of Education. She generously gave me permission to post this.

Dear Don -- and Linda -- and Ellie,
I never have trouble sleeping. A joke John and I share is, when we go to
bed, if I'm still awake after a minute, I call out, "I can't sleep!" Then
we laugh and I go to sleep.

Last night I laid awake for hours thinking of
the three of you.

First, I was consumed by guilt because I have not
reached out to you. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good
intentions, my road is well paved.

I have not written because I wanted to
say the "right" thing. (Last night, laying in bed, I was eloquent -- this
morning, words don't come so easily.) I haven't visited because "I don't
know you that well."

Usually, when hard times strike someone we know, we
can offer a hug, or bake a casserole, or write out a check -- and then we
feel better, "we've done our part". It allays a little "guilt" that it's
happening to someone else and not to us. (But secretly -- and we don't
even admit this to ourselves -- we thank God that it's not happening to
us.) We stop to consider it for a little while and then go on living our
lives as if it would never happen to us.

But I can't even put myself in
your place in my mind. It's not happening to me -- it's happening to you
and I don't even have the right to pretend that it's happening to me. My
thoughts and feelings and wishes are for you, Don, Linda, and Ellie, and
not for me if I was in your place. And that's kind of a first for the
hardships I've gone through with others.

It's happening to you and I can
stand by your side or walk with you and cheer you on and even pick you up
but then I wonder what right I have to even be taking up your time. I
wonder what right I have to be happy or to be doing something I enjoy when
you are so wracked with misery.

I feel so very, very sorry that I haven't
known Linda, that I don't have any memories of Linda to give you. When my
Dad died and then two years later when my Sister died, my friends would go
to great lengths "not to talk about it". But I wanted nothing more than to
just talk about them, to just remember them, there was great comfort in
memories and talking.

Here's a memory I have. Don, you were my teacher
for "Computer Literacy" a few years ago. I remember the first assignment,
the scenario of several computer users and the question of which one was
computer literate. Then, at the next class meeting, we found out that the
people in the scenario were really members of your family. And now I
remember that in what seemed like every class meeting, you would make
reference to some family member and often, very often, your wife Linda. It
didn't seem obtrusive. It just seemed like a natural part of the
conversation.

Since then, during our mostly brief conversations in
Violette Hall, somehow Linda or Ellie were mentioned by you in every
conversation. You didn't "work them in to the conversation", they were
just naturally a part of the conversation. It's so very obvious, Linda and
Ellie, that you are not a part of Don and his life -- you are Don and his
life.

And now I've been staring at the screen for a long, long, time
wondering what it was last night keeping me awake for so long that I wanted
to say to you that I thought might help. The truth is, I don't know what
to say, I don't know what to do. And I have every confidence that there
are countless others out there that don't know what to say or what to do,
either.

But there is nothing we would not do.

I wish I was a take-charge
sort of person, but I'm not. Naturally, you are trying to plan for the
future.

My unsolicited advice to you is don't try to think too far
ahead. Get through today -- get through this hour or just this minute if
you have to. I haven't spent a whole lot of my life worrying, but the
things I have worried about never turn out the way I've worried about them,
anyway.

I know I'm "supposed" to tell you to fight this, but I'm telling
you instead to surrender a little bit. Do the best you can. When you
can. Nothing more.

So there it is -- the rough-cut, unpolished version of what kept me awake last night, hastily written, not eloquent, probably not even intelligent, but from the heart.

You may not remember my words. But you would have remembered my silence.

Sincerely, Mona Davis