Letter from Grimm's mom

I came home today and found a padded envelope on the kitchen table from Matthew's mom. It started out, "Thank you so much for your beautiful card, the letter you put in the Daily Tribune anad please thank the students for all the wonderful cards they made." She also wrote, "We miss him so much and it is very hard not to think that one day he will come home and walk through the door with his big old smile."

Inside the envelope was a DVD. She said, "I'm sending you a memorial video that his brother, Andrew, made and was played at the funeral home." It took me a while tonight to be able to watch it; it showed pictures of Matt from the time he was a baby until right before he died. I was a mess after watching it, of course, but of course it made me smile, too (actually, parts of it made me laugh out loud; let's just say that my soldier went through quite the "awkward" phase, LOL).

The letter ended with, "Thank you once again for being an angel in my son's life. May God bless you."

I have his pictures up on my filing cabinet in my classroom. I also have the word magnets for the kids to play with (you know, the ones you can use to make sentences and poems and things). Today, I noticed that a student had placed three words around his picture: "We remember always."

I still miss him so much.