“I hope you never have to read this, because if you’re reading this letter, it means I have died …” the handwritten letter began.  It was sealed in a large manila envelope, and written on the outside in dark bold letters, was a stark warning, “Private, open only in the event of my death”. Warm tears flowed down my face. I had secretly dreaded this day would come and now, here it was staring me in the face.

 

Last letters from soldiers to loved ones have likely been written or communicated in some form or another since men and women first left loved ones to go off to war.

 

When Steve, my close friend and colleague at the FBI, first deployed to Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks, he handed me a sealed envelope. “Hold on to this, ok? Don’t open it unless something happens to me and then give it to Lisa” Steve said, almost casually.  I took the envelope, ever the supportive squad mate and friend; however, I felt a sense of unease as the reality of the situation sank in.  Steve, a former Naval Officer, was going with the FBI to a warzone; he had a wife and two young daughters at home.  I well knew the tradition of writing a “death letter” for loved ones and had followed the practice myself when previously deployed overseas to dangerous locations.  Letters like these are common among soldiers and FBI Agents going overseas into harm’s way. They are personal and private; however, this was the first time I was asked to hold a friend’s death letter, and I’ll admit it kind of creeped me out.

 

Steve went to Afghanistan, and came back in one piece, so on his first day back in the office, before asking about his deployment or seeing the trinkets he had brought back - a flag and various patches from Navy SEAL units he had worked with - I handed him the sealed envelope he had entrusted me with three months earlier as if it was toxic and contained Anthrax.  I wanted to be free of the yoke of responsibility that had weighed on me for the past three months, holding the death letter in my desk drawer.

 

Six years later –

 

“Hey big man,” Steve yelled in his usual gregarious way, as he walked by my desk.  “What’s up?”, I replied.  “I got the green light; I’m going back to Kabul for another ninety day TDY.” TDY was the acronym for a temporary duty assignment, and I knew Steve had been itching to go back into the fight for some time, as the Global War on Terrorism ground on, then in its eighth year after September 11th.  “That’s cool, when are you going?”  “I have to go for the mountain pre-deployment training,” Steve said, the anticipation and planning required already noticeable in his voice.  Steve was my sniper team leader on the SWAT team, and he was always wanting to do more - more adventures, more risk, more time living life to the fullest.  “Well, you wanted to go over again, so good for you.  Jackie will make sure to keep in touch with Lisa and the girls.”  “Thanks, Brother,” Steve grinned as he turned, already talking on his cell phone to someone else.  That was Steve, always going ninety miles an hour.

 

Six weeks later, I drove Steve to the airport as he started a three-day journey from Madison, Wisconsin to Bagram Air Base located thirty miles North of Kabul, Afghanistan.  We made small talk on the short drive to the airport, and as I parked in front of the departure gates, Steve paused before getting out.  “Hey big man, please hold onto this for me ok, you know the drill,” and he pressed it into my hand and got out.  I looked down and saw the large black lettering on the outside of the sealed envelope “Private, open only …” It was the dreaded death letter again!  

            

Towards the end of his deployment, I got an email from Steve on the “high side”, which was the FBI classified email system.  Steve described an ambush on a SEAL team he was embedded with, and he vaguely described helping rescue a soldier who had been wounded and cut off from the main force.  When Steve got back home, he brought gifts for his SWAT teammates, and for me a large, framed photograph of Ahmed Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir. A small engraved plaque read “From one lion to another, Special Agent Joshua B. Mayers, FBI, Khowst, Afghanistan 2007”.  Steve knew Massoud was a hero of mine in the war against al Qaeda. He was a famously brave Afghan tribal commander who was loved by his men, he fought against the Taliban and was killed by bin Laden just before 9/11.  I was impressed by the special gift, and I placed the still sealed death letter on Steve’s desk.  “Here, it’s bad juju for me to hold onto this any longer,” I said.  Steve looked at me kind of funny, and then nodded.  I felt relieved to again be free of the responsibility and emotions holding the death letter evoked in me.  Later that year, Steve was awarded the FBI’s Medal of Valor, for running towards machine gun fire to rescue a young wounded soldier pinned down when the SEAL Team Steve was with was ambushed during a nighttime raid.

 

Three years later, I was sitting at Steve’s desk staring off into space, not thinking or feeling.  Our squad supervisor had asked me to help clean out Steve’s desk, as he had died in a freak accident at home a few weeks earlier.  Still in shock, grieving and spending every day since his death trying to help Steve’s widow, two young daughters, and his Mom survive and cope day to day.

 

Sitting at Steve’s desk, I started pulling out the contents – spare bullets next to paper clips, post-it notes, and pens.  SWAT team patches from various units around the state that Steve had trained and worked with, and school art from his daughters Maddie and Natalie.  Far in the back corner of the desk drawer, I saw a yellow manila envelope with some vaguely familiar bold writing on the outside, “Private, open only in the event of my death”.  Warm tears splashed on the desk blotter in front of me, I stared at the sealed, faded, dog eared envelope and turned it over and over in my hands, before opening it.  Inside was a handwritten note addressed to me, with clear instructions to provide whatever help was needed to Lisa and the girls, and three sealed envelopes were inside addressed to “Lisa, Maddie & Natalie”.  I placed the sealed envelopes into my jacket pocket and left the squad area. As promised twelve years earlier, I would deliver the death letters to Steve’s wife Lisa, and she later told me the letters had helped her and the girls a lot during those first awful, crushing months of grief, an important part of their understanding Steve’s legacy.

 

There would be a full law enforcement funeral attended by over 800 people, and later in the year Steve was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on a crisp cool day, with not a cloud in the sky.  As I walked among the hundreds of sparkling, orderly rows of white marble gravestones at Arlington, some dating back to the Civil War, I wondered how many of these heroes buried here had written private legacy letters to loved ones that had to be delivered and read through tears.  As the mournful notes of taps played in the distance, I hoped those who sacrificed so much received some measure of comfort as Steve’s family had.