July 9, 1994

Dear Sam,

For the first time in over six years, I saw you last night, you and your lovely wife, Donna, when you lectured at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

I'd known you were coming to Los Angeles for weeks since my colleague, Baxter, got tickets the day your name appeared on the roster and he wouldn't stopped talking about you no matter how hard I tried to make him drop the subject. He's been an admirer of yours for years and wouldn't quit singing your praises for days on end. I told him, when he invited me to go with him, that I wasn't interest but he refused to take no for an answer. He even tried to bribe me with the invitation he'd received to the reception afterward which was all the more reason why I didn't want to go. I didn't think I could be in the same room with you, so close but unable to touch you, having to pretend you were a stranger while I'd be one to you.

I kept telling Baxter I wouldn't go with him but then last week he did a huge favor for me. I won't go into what it was he did, it isn't important, but I felt I owed him so I agreed to be his date for the evening. It was the first time I've gone out with a man since you, love and you couldn't really call it a date. Baxter just didn't want to go to the reception alone.

So, there I was, a reluctantly member of the audience in this large auditorium and then you walked out to the podium. Oh, love, you looked so good, so lean and striking in that dark gray suit, your hair a little too long and messed up so your white streak was kind of hidden and that sexy five o'clock shadow covering your face. I wanted to run away, to get as far away from you as I could but you started talking and I became hypnotized by the sound of your voice. I'll admit, I was in such a state that I didn't hear a word you said. I just listened to the hum of your voice, reliving the times when you'd whisper endearments in my ear.

And then the flood of memories began. Oh, Sam, I can't tell you how much those memories hurt. There is no way to describe them with words but I know I have to try because if I don't I'm sure I'll self-destruct. And even though I know you'll never read this, I'm writing this to you so I can fool myself into thinking I'm sharing the pain with you so it won't hurt so much anymore.

I'll begin with your leap out. If you could, you'd remember that we had just finished making the sweetest, most wonderfully passionate love but you hadn't left me yet, you were still inside me. I can recall thinking at the time that I wanted to stay like that forever but I knew that it was only a matter of moments before you disappeared from my life and the thought of another man being where you had been was too much to bear so I reluctantly pushed you off. The look on your face was classic and I was ready to start laughing but I never had a chance to share the joke. A strange look came over your face, your expression was pleading and before you could say a word you were gone. That pained look on your face still haunts me, love. I wish I could forget it but I know I never will.

Lennie appeared on the bed where you had been but was so disoriented that I had time to cover up before he noticed me. And he didn't notice me right away. He seemed more concerned with finding himself naked in a strange room that, when he finally saw me, he almost became hysterical. I wish I could have enjoyed the humor of the situation but I was too preoccupied with this great, overwhelming feeling of loss that I just watched in frozen silence as he scrambled to get his clothes on then left the room without saying a word.

I can remember sitting there in that frozen state for what felt like hours, replaying Al's words in my head. "She's intelligent, she'll pick up the pieces and carry on." But I didn't want to. I didn't want an existence without you. I wanted to die right there in the last place we'd been together. I started to cry. I cried for hours and hours without stopping until I was a shell of a person, a zombie. I went back to San Francisco, got my car and drove home to L.A. without feeling a thing. I ate because I'd get faint otherwise. I spoke only when spoken to. And I slept. I probably slept fourteen hours a day, every day for weeks. It was the only way to cope. In my dreams we could still be together and I didn't have to think about how I'd never see you again.

As self-awareness slowly returned, I realized that I had missed my period. At first, I attributed it to the stress of our ordeal and my deep depression but when I missed the second one I went to the doctor. I was pregnant with our child, Sam. I instinctively knew the time when I had conceived. It had to be that morning in San Jose when I woke you up. I wish you could remember. It was the most beautiful experience of my life and I have no one to share it with. But I digress. I was telling you about our son. Please forgive the tear streaked ink here but I can't think about him without becoming overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow because I lost him, too.

At the beginning of my pregnancy, I went through a lot of conflicting emotions. Joy that I would have a part of you, fear that I was a single woman who was going to try and raise a child alone, guilt that I was bringing a child into my lonely world with no family, sorrow that you wouldn't be around to share him with, sadness that he would never be able to know his wonderful father. Like I said, a lot of conflicting emotions. But as the months passed I began to plan for the future. I decided that when he was old enough, I would tell him about you and the circumstances of his birth. I would make sure he knew that he had been conceived in love and that he was more important than life itself but, again, I never got the chance. You see, I went into premature labor in my sixth month and Nakita Beckett Matsuda was born but he didn't survive. He died after struggling to live for thirty-six hours.

The doctor said his death wasn't my fault, that some babies just weren't fated to live and that I shouldn't be scared to try again but he couldn't have known that there would be no next time. That was my only chance because there will never be another man for me, Sam. You were my one and only love. And this hole in my heart is worse than if you'd died like Nakita because I know you're out there, I know what we had together but you don't even know I exist.

Well, let me rephrase that. After last night, you know I exist. We were introduced. At the reception after the lecture, Baxter insisted that we go up and talk to you. Oh, how I tried to get out of it. Just seeing and hearing you was hard enough, I didn't know if I could handle talking to you but Baxter was persistent. He kind of pushed me along until we were standing face to face with you and your wife. Baxter introduced himself and then me. You took my hand, looked at me with that searching peer of yours and asked if we had met before because I looked familiar to you. It was that bond, Sam, that bond between us that transcends time and space.

No matter where or when we are, we are permanently and forever connected which is why, after six years I'm writing this to you. I know I'll never mail this. I know you'll never know what's written on these pages but I will. I'll know there's a testament of our love that will live on whether or not anyone else ever knows about it. And I find solace in the fact that you have yet to experience it. That great adventure has yet to happen for you. My only hope is that afterward you can't remember like I do.

You have my love forever,

Tamlyn