Dear boys,

We made our first trip to see Grandma and OT since they moved back down to South Carolina and one thing Daddy wanted to make sure we did was visit Uncle Corey’s gravesite. During prayer time over the years, Daddy always promised Corey that one day he’d bring his sons to visit his resting place, when you were grown enough and had the capacity to understand the experience.

Daddy wanted you to pay respect to your uncle whose life was cut far too short. Uncle Corey was just twenty years old when he was killed; Daddy only twenty-one when he lost his younger brother. Just a year apart, you can imagine how they did everything together and what a tremendous loss this was for Daddy. “We always knew where the other one was on the basketball court — we’d pass the ball to each other without even looking!,” he often tells you. And while Grey is still a little too young to know all the details surrounding his death, Cash, you are well aware, and this visit to Uncle Corey’s gravesite had a great impact on you.

It’s hard to imagine losing a brother so close to you, both in age and relationship; a brother with whom you spent your entire childhood. More than anything Daddy wants you to hold sacred the bond you share — for you never know when it might be taken away. We pray for those lifelong memories that lay ahead of you, and that, God willing, you grow old together and can look back on them with fondness. Through sharing this tragic and unexpected loss, Daddy’s hope is to teach you not to take one another for granted. To show how you are blessed to have each other as brothers, here on earth and forever in eternity, where we will one day see Uncle Corey again.

I love you both so much.

Always and forever, Mom