Charles Bronson & Love Letters

I’ve been doing a lot of research this past week in preparation for updating the book Hearts West: True Stories of Mail Order Brides. I’ve come across some truly moving correspondence between couples who believed they would never see their loved ones again. Whether a cholera outbreak had overtaken the wagon train carrying a future spouse to their beloved, or lack of water threatened their passage over the Salt Lake desert, the last words they wrote to their betrothed was about love. In all the years I’ve been doing research I’ve never come across anyone who left a letter of hate. I don’t believe anyone has that thought in mind as the end draws near. Love is the prevailing sentiment. I’d like to hope that for myself, but believe that would be folly. My parents spent what might be the last time with my brother today. My mother reports that his tremors are out of control and that he struggles to keep his head from shaking violently. Parkinson’s is the runaway train on course to collide with an early, painful grave. Rick will go, but not before he suffers more. In these final times I don’t have love on my mind. It’s hate. It’s bitterness and angst and a desire to track down the bad guys and make them pay. I feel like the Charles Bronson character in Once Upon a Time in the West. I will only rest once I see the bad guy fall from grace, lose everything, and be fully exposed to the world. And then, as they cry out for mercy, and dare to ask how this could happen to them, I will be there to remind them and watch the murderers downfall. I want to see their faces filled with the recognition that they have been found out. No thoughts of love from them or for them will be issued – only signs of relief that evil has passed. Rick didn’t deserve this. My mom didn’t deserve this heartache. I can’t live without somehow making it right. And as Bronson promised Fonda, making it right will only come at the point of dying.