After - Letter from Tucker to Rosie
Dear Rosie,
It’s been exactly two years since you silently slipped away in your sleep. You were in my arms, and Grace, Nathan, your parents, Erin, and the twins, were all crowded in your bedroom. You fought a good fight against your cancer and I’m so glad we got the time that we did together.
After that day, I didn’t know how to go on, for so long.
What they say about grief is true, that it comes in waves.
At first it felt like I was getting pulled under by a tsunami, but slowly, it started to ebb a little more.
About a year after you died, I was doing an interview for Nash Country Weekly.
It’s not The Rolling Stones, but it’s something!
Grace says that you know, that you’re somewhere up there watching everything that’s happening. I really hope that’s true.
But I guess I should back up a little bit.
The week after you died, I got a call from Murphy.
I told her that, no, there was no way I’d be able to go on tour with Peyton (for the second time) that fall after losing you.
We’d done it the year before, and you were at every show in California that you were well enough to be at, despite the chemo making you so sick and the tumor by your brain sometimes making you have seizures.
But you were there. You got better for a little while, after things got bad after graduation. You were doing okay, until you weren’t.
The next year, she wanted me to open for her again, but I was drowning with the loss of you.
There was no way I’d be able to go and tour now that you were gone.
How was I supposed to live my life without you?
How am I supposed to live my life without you?
You were—are—my everything. There was no way I’d be able to sing.
Thankfully, Murphy knew what was going on, and didn’t tell Peyton that I’d said no.
The day before Murphy called again, Nathan showed up with a box he’d found while they were going through your room.
It was pink and your dad painted a ballerina on it when you were little.
Inside the box was a journal and some letters from you.
Nathan and I talked for a while; he’s doing good.
Still dating Grace and he’s going to school to be a doctor, in hopes of helping more kids with cancer some day.
I mentioned how when you fall in love for the first time, there’s this part of you that thinks ‘this is it’ and not in a way that makes you feel stuck or trapped, but in a way that gives you even more butterflies than before.
Like you didn’t know it was possible to care about someone that much, but now you do, and you can’t imagine life without them.
That’s how it felt falling in love with you, Rosie.
And Nathan agreed that the love we had, it was something special.
I was head over heels (can a guy say that?) and I didn’t care who knew it.
I felt all those feelings come rushing back as I read those letters from you.
It was as if I was right there, back at the beginning again, only this time I was seeing it all from your eyes and I loved that.
I thought we were forever, Rosie. I wanted us to be forever, but we don’t always get what we want.
At least, not everything we want.
When Murphy called the next day, asking again if I wanted to open for Peyton, I said I’d do it, but only if they’d let me have a moment of silence at each concert in honor of you.
Turns out Peyton is also a hopeless romantic and thought it was sweet.
Needless to say, that tour kicked off my music career.
Last year, my first album, ROSIE, was about to come out, and that’s when I had the interview. I still felt so heavy that you weren’t here to see it all happen, that you weren’t here to live your dreams. In the interview, you came up. That’s what happens when you name your album after a girl.
“So, who’s this Rosie?” the journalist asked me. “And when do we get to meet her?”
My heart dropped, just like it always does when someone asks me this question. I don’t get the second one as often; if anyone was at any of the shows on tour the fall before, they know who you are and why I choose to honor you. This journalist though, either didn’t know, or she didn’t care.
“Rosie is the love of my life,” I told her, “but she’s been gone for about a year now, cancer.”
The journalist’s eyes flickered in surprise, so she didn’t know. Which sort of made me want to laugh—I mean, for her, I was just an assignment.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.“How did you keep going, after her loss?”
Then I just started talking. I didn’t know I believed the words I was saying until I said them.
“Some days I feel like I can’t breathe, I get so sad that Rosie isn’t here to see this, that she’s not here for me to love, that she doesn’t get to live her own dreams, because she was taken way too soon.
But I’m the man I am today because of her.
“Not because she died, but because of her love. Loving Rosie was all-consuming, but in the very best way. When she loved something or someone, she gave it her whole heart. She had a way of filling you up. And even at the end, when she was so sick, seeing her still made the day better.
“Loving her made me who I am. And because I love her, I get up and I sing. She would have killed me if I sat on my bed and stopped living my life after she died. I mean, I did do that for a while, but then I realized that the ache of missing her might always be there, that because of who she was to me, the heartache might not ever go away, not that I’d ever really want it to.
But I realized I could either crumble, or I could rise and make her proud, and that’s what I chose to do. ”
Like I said earlier, I thought that you were my forever, Rosie. But I’m just so glad that we got part of forever together.
I love you. I miss you.
Today I’m going to leave pink and yellow tulips on your grave.
Then I’m going out with your parents, Nathan, and Grace to get some fish tacos at that food truck you love.
Cause we all know that’s what you would have wanted.
Next week, I start my very first tour, all on my own.
I know you’ll be there with me, at every show.
I don’t really know how to end this letter, but I guess I’ll say this: I hope you’re proud of me. I’m trying, I’m living, and I think that’s all I really can do, because I miss you like crazy.
You were the best part of my life and nothing will ever change that.
I love you, Rosie, I always will. I hope you're dancing up there in heaven. Save a dance for me.
Love you always,
Tucker