Letters to Jason: Riding Shotgun
January 25, 2026
It’s cold, it’s snowing. It snowed more than expected. I had to take the drive in the snow home alone from my mom and dad’s. I forgot to put the brush back in the car. The heavy duty brushes you got me. Don’t worry, I put them in the car as soon as I made it home. I’m glad you chose a safe car and even better tires for us. Thank you. I feel safe when I drive in it. But I’m missing you. I miss riding passenger princess as you drove us to and from most everywhere. Especially my parents. I miss coming up over the hill on Lookout Road, smiling at you. Always taking in the view, talking about how beautiful it would be to take this drive with our kids on the way to grandma and grandpa’s. Something we dreamed of over and over. Something positive that you recall from your childhood. We talked about how beautiful it would be to take kids to my parents on Sunday afternoons, Sunday evenings would continue to be our thing with them. It was supposed to be our life. I miss you on the drive home, too, holding my hand, smiling, singing at me, talking about how beautiful evening was. You’d always leave saying “gosh I love your mom and dad so much. I just feel like I found it all and I’m so happy.” I’m so glad you were so happy, because I was so happy too, and my world is so empty without you here.
I miss you in every single way possible. I try to hold it together when I sit in their living room and you’re not there, as I sit in the chair that you died in. It’s not weird to me that you died in the chair, it’s more that I just hate that you’re not here. You’re not here to do any of this with me. I just I hate it. I hate it so much. I wish you were here. I wish you were here to drive up to my mom and dad’s, to see your beaming face as you get out of the car, my mom opening the door like she did so many times, to let Nora in first. We would follow right behind her and you’d always just have a warm welcome hello and you would give my mom a big hug and say hi mom hi dad. You’d hug him too, because you loved them. You loved them more than anything in this world, besides me. You were so happy.
There were supposed to be more of that, there was supposed to be so much more than that.
I just fucking miss you.
I wish you were here to drive me home tonight, not because I’m not capable, but because that’s how it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to be my man driving me around in our car, making me feel safe and comfortable. Which you almost always did, except for when I’d freak out when you’d drive us in Denver rush hour traffic because of my own PTSD from my car accident in college. You are supposed to be that person, you were supposed to be that person for me, for forever. Now you’re dead and gone and I hate it. I just want you here. I want hold your hand and think about how beautiful this life was supposed to be. There was so much ahead of us, so much, so many hopes and so many dreams. I ache for these moments. I ache for all the small moments in every single day. The every time something new happens, for the first time that it happens since you died, like the fact that it’s snowing and I had to take the car from my parents house to home because that would’ve been you and you would’ve been there right beside me. It’s something so small and minuscule and in the grand scheme of things is probably going happen 1 million more times and it happened so many times when you were here. But I never thought twice about it until I am thinking about it because the person that I love isn’t here to do it with me.
I love you Jason more than I can even possibly put into words and I just want you here. I ache for you and it’s so hard to think about a life without you. So hard. Nora and I do our best and we try every single day, we’re doing ok, we do what we can, but it sucks.
It sucks.
It sucks because you’re dead and I want you.
…
Seahawks win the NFC and I just started sobbing. I literally have no ties to the Seahawks and you have no ties to the Seahawks but just something about Sam Darnold and the underdog and you thought it was so good when he was in Minnesota and you loved it and you were all about it . I just, I just wish you were here. You would’ve loved it. You would’ve loved the story of the underdog and I just wish you were here.
