Letters 2017

Letter 49

         6th June 2017 (at home)

             Dear D,

Once again I am shocked and surprised it has been so long since I wrote to you.  Maybe it is not that surprising, as although these letters are some kind of manifestation of our relationship, realistically, we are almost strangers.  We have grown so far apart, in different directions.  By necessity, I imagine you have consigned me to the furthest reach of your mind, unwilling to go there, as it does not fit with your current lifestyle.  Maybe it is not that strange that I have not written, as you have been very much in my thoughts, during a period I have been able to re-adjust my focus on you.  I suppose it was always clear you had no wish or intention to make contact with me, as would usually be straightforward or normal for a daughter.  But perhaps I was not able to accept that really, although I always felt I was adhering to your wishes, I somehow felt that the bond between us, so strong in your younger days, must still exist.  Now I don’t know what I think; yet I have to accept you are not in focus, if anything I seem to believe you continue to move further away from me.  My only real connection or view into your life was your Facebook account and latterly your profile picture, which at least gave me a current image of you.  Sometime around Christmas just gone you took down your Facebook account, shutting the door on my only glimpse into your existence.  Maybe I am wrong, but I imagine that was intentional on your part.  So now that daughter I haven’t seen for more than eight years has slipped further out of my view.  If I lived in some kind of unrealistic kind of hope that even that occasional changing view would lead to a real connection with you, now I have come to my senses and I accept that whatever hopes I might have of a reconciliation with you, there is nothing I can realistically do about it by myself; it is all down to you.

Before we had our separation, I had been putting aside money for your university education and I carried on doing this into one of three accounts, until you were eighteen years old when the bank did not accept any further payments into the account, changed due to your age and put in a holding account. Conscious it was your twentieth birthday this weekend and you had probably just finished your second year at university, I posted details of the second account to you over the recent weekend, to an address given to me by the father of one of your old school friends. I hope that arrives safely to you and that you have the benefit of it.  I recently discovered that the bank let you have the proceeds of the first account, without notifying me, although it was from an account I held jointly in trust for you.  Nevertheless I am happy it has found its way to you.  The third account, in my sole name in trust for you, I propose to retain until you are finished university, or you ask me to release, prior to that, whichever comes first.  I had no further intention in maintaining these accounts, other than it would always have been my intention to try and soften the financial burden on you at third level education.  I will actually be relieved when all of these accounts are safely in your hands.

Now that I am retired, I can spend quite a lot of time with your four half-brothers & sisters, my other children.  As now you are not in contact with me, have not been for over eight years and appear to show no desire to make contact, it exercised my thoughts greatly when I recently reviewed my will.  It was a very difficult decision, but to be fair to the others, I decided to remove you as a beneficiary of my will, previously divided into five equal parts.  I will review this in the future if the situation changes, but I believe this is an equitable decision as things stand at present.  I also imagine that I will cease writing to you in this way, with my fiftieth letter in this sequence possibly the last.  I will review the website to which I upload the letters, hopefully adding some other relevant material.  I may even continue to write in a different way, given changing circumstances.  But I hope very sincerely you will gain access to read all sometime in the future.  This may sound confusing, but I feel I will always want to be in contact with you.  And how could I forget; I wish you a belated very happy twentieth birthday. And did you cry at the Ariana Grande concert, when she sang ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’?  And what do you think of the General Election?  So many things!

         With all my love for now,