We've done really well this year, almost too well, it's like we've had a special angel guiding and helping us. Your four funerals were so hard. But I wore my Dress Blues to each one, as you asked me to. I found a school for Gabriel, then a house for all of us, then a job. The job started part-time, then became full-time very flexible hours and location. Couldn't have been a better fit. We all moved into the house on Grinkley Ct in December and had Christmas there. Zahraa and Gabriel started school at Fiore Montessori and did well. A few months later I found Blueberry Hill, only a few miles away... and there was a house for sale there. The very night we first came to visit, Manman made an offer on the house. Then I found a basement apartment for Gabriel and me right next door. Now, Odette works on the farm and we get vegetables in return, and the kids can play outside as much as they want, and we have friendly neighbors and music and community. Manman will have her garden. Everyone is doing well; you'd be proud of us. Sophie is working three jobs! We miss you every day. I have had so many dreams of you... in every one, you're still alive somehow, either it was a mistake or I'm back in time. The first dream I had of you, just a few days after you died, you were wearing your white pants and white guayabera, and you were dancing, happy. Then Manman came and danced with you for a while, and then she left and you kept on dancing. That was the best dream. But they've all been good, and I always wake up feeling like I just saw you. In the last one, night before last, you were close to death, but talking to us, and I told you: "We'll see each other on the other side" or something like that. (Which I didn't actually ever say.) But I felt better for having said it in my dream. Gabriel remembers you... The other day he saw a flat tire and said "Papi peut reparer ca." He will remember you as the one who came to the rescue when we had a flat tire, who knew how to fix it. The one who installed handles everywhere for the babies to grasp to help them not to fall as they learned to walk. The one who gave him the little stuffed buffalo and your own toy bull from when you were a boy. He knows you loved him very much. When I am sad and Gabriel sees me cry, he knows it's about you and immediately says "Papi est mort." The other day he said you died because of the big "bobos rouges sur son ventre." Don't know how he knows that. It still feels like you're not really gone, just on another continent, traveling, working, busy. I'm sure there have been times before now that a year passed without seeing you. Sometimes I just wish we could talk on the phone, or that I could at least write you a letter. Just to let you know what's going on, to tell you about the kids. To ask career advice. To talk politics and current events and history and everything. Love you so much. Charlotte