When you get into the big yet ugly numbers, people view these reminders just a bit more awkwardly. I looked through the shoebox of things that I still have from high school and college, hoping that I still had a copy of the obituary to insert into today’s post. The Gazette’s searchable online archives offer imperfect free access to old content. And the obituary wouldn’t even be published until, I believe, April 3, 1992. At least I am certain that I did not know that Michelle was dead until April 3. At that point, I started watching my mailbox for a last letter that never came. Instead I will share a bit of a letter that she had sent me roughly a year and a half before she died. I think about this letter a lot. I think about it on days like today (the 26th anniversary of her death). But I also thought about it when I was prescribed a particular old-school medicine for my headaches. I’m pretty sure it’s the same drug that she’s talking about here, as the drugs that are common now were not prescribed to children in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was 18 when she died.

MAH