A long awaited opportunity to say, "Thank you."

Dear Jhosselin,

It has been almost three years since I got that life-changing phone call in the early hours of the morning; my mother’s voice on the other end of the line telling me my brother had been killed. The cry and the silence in the moments that followed contained the knowledge that the pain of sorrow had just permeated my life and was about to sweep over my family with transforming waves of excruciating measure.

As the story unfolded over the next year and a half, we heard there was an airman who had arrived at the scene and stayed with Noah. Today, I found out that that airman was you.

I wish there were words to express to you how I am feeling right now.

Do you know what you did for my family?

You watched over our beloved Noah when we couldn’t...We have sat beside 2 others in our ranks as they breathed their last, but Noah died suddenly on the side of the road in a state far away. We weren’t there to hold his hand or stroke his head or let him go or send him off in a shower of our tears; we didn’t get to remind him that we loved him or assure him that we’d see him again. Miles separated us.

But you were there, Jhosselin. You stopped and you gave us an incredible gift when you stayed beside him. You gave us your time and your presence and the sweetness of knowing that he was not alone; because you were brave and you were there.

And to say “thank you” seems so minute a statement in relation to the proportion of kindness you showed my family.

I thank you for your gift to us: You counted the trauma you would have to endure by encountering someone in his broken state as worth the cost. You chose to stop and you chose to stay amid the bloody mess of a life lost because you counted this stranger in a pool of blood as someone’s loved one.

And he was loved, SO loved.
And he is missed, SO missed.

And though my words fail, my gratitude toward you is immense, and I pray the Lord would pour blessing over you that is far greater than I could ever think to ask or imagine.

With so much love,
Hannah