What We Would Like Them to Hear

He did not try to answer all six. He picked three that felt true.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a man named Felix, 73. He has a one-page list of doctors and accounts. He has a folder by the door, and a weekly call with his family. One thing was still missing.

"The page tells them what to do," he said to a friend. "It does not tell them what I think."

His friend asked, "What would you want them to hear?"

Felix did not know. He had spent a lifetime answering practical questions. He sat for a while, then said, "I would want my daughter to know I was proud of her. I have said it, but maybe not in a way she could keep."

That is the idea of a letter or a recording. A voice may stay clear for a long time, and then it may not. Felix tried it on his phone. He talked for a few minutes, played it back, and winced.

"Is that what I sound like?"

"That is what you sound like," his friend said. "She knows it well."

He tried again, more slowly. The second time he said what he wanted, and it was short.

Here are some prompts to start from, in whatever order you like.

He did not try to answer all six. He picked three that felt true.

He wrote the letter by hand. He recorded a second version with his voice, in case a voice would be wanted. He asked a lawyer how a letter like this sits beside a will, since each country may treat the two differently. He put the letter in the folder with the page, and he told his daughter where it was.

"Do not read it now," he said on the phone. "Just know it is there."

She was quiet. Then she said, "Thank you for telling me."

A few weeks later, while they talked, he told her the thing about being proud of her again, aloud. He kept saying it aloud, and the letter stayed in the folder.