We start and end with family.

Dear Erik,
    You might be asking why I'm doing this.  My motivation is really Dad's death in December 2008.  I realized there were still many unanswered questions, many untold stories, and many things I needed to tell him . . . but, sadly, I ran out of time.  That has left an ache in my heart.  
     This is not to say I didn't, through the years, try to reach out to him.  I did, often.  He didn't like to dwell on the past or reminisce.  He didn't like to talk on the phone, and his letters seldom filled a single page.  He liked to keep things superficial, which was quite frustrating for me.  I think his reticence to speak of the past or to talk about his feelings had to do with his childhood.
     He used to say, "No one should have a childhood like mine."  More than once he told me that he'd had a dreadful childhood.  I never found out, for sure, what made his childhood so grim, although I have a few ideas, gleaned from other family members and from little bits of "bread" that Dad let drop now and again.  He wasn't an easy man to love, but still I did, and I always felt loved by him.  He would end his letters and birthday and Christmas cards, "Love you, always have, always will."
     He was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma . . . . "  I don't want to be a mystery to you.  I don't want you to have unanswered questions, untold stories, and things you wished you'd said to me but didn't.  I want you to know who you come from.  As the title says, "We start and end with family."  
     And so it begins.