Jonathan's 28th Bday Card from Samantha

Dear Jonathan,

It is the night before your 28th birthday. In our past, wonderful life, we would all be going to the office together tomorrow, and giving you birthday kisses, and mom would probably say “what do you want to do special for your birthday lunch” and you would say “nothing, just eat here with the family.” You have been talking about the Verizon I phone for years (I know from JP), so of course, we would be getting you that as a present. In my heart I am imagining the one JP gets as being for you. Tomorrow night, we will go to mom and dad’s and what will we have? Either dad will make your favorite spaghetti and meatballs OR we will order first wokadoo, eggrolls, chicken and broccoli, wonton eggdrop soup. Saturday night the family will all go to the Palm and you will have a wedge, extra vinaigrette on the side (you and I love and appreciate a good vinaigrette so much!) and then the filet mignon, medium almost well, but never butterflied. Then you will go out to meet your friends and we will go home to put chase and cooper to bed.

I am thinking so much of all of our years together, and I feel so so lucky to have you as my brother. You are the best brother anyone could have – you are the sweetest, the most supportive, the most generous and thoughtful (I remember the doll you bought mom one year for Christmas, and the way you sat with me when I was on bedrest with Chase, so genuinely interested in what it was like to be growing another person in my stomach, and you were only 22 years old), you are the funniest and smartest and at once most modest and also most confident kid, you are so excited and hopeful and appreciative of life. I have the most amazing memories of you, because I got to watch you grow up – don’t forget I felt like your second mother (sometimes to the point you would get so mad at me – “stop being my mother” you would yell and “don’t use that tone with me!”) – memories of you running down the hallway when you must have been 18 months old, blond curls everywhere, in footy pajamas, coming to kiss me goodnight as I was doing homework, the summer you turned two and got chicken pox (even in your eyeball) and had to wear gloves and a little white bathrobe and you couldn’t go in the pool which was so upsetting because it was the first summer we had one, the summer you became obsessed with ghostbusters and even when it was 90 degrees you stood at the pool in your little proton pack and ghostbusters outfit (thank goodness we have a photo of you dressed up), all your little outfits, the pink blazers and madras bowties, swimming in the ocean at boca together (the ocean uker), you watching “photography,” watching clueless together with Sabrina the year in boca we were all in one room, you in a cot, taking you to see forrest gump, years before that your coming with us to see basic instinct and mom sticking the popcorn bag over your head, you never letting us eat the “poopycoon” until the movie started, holding the bag on the floor and guarding it, Cecilia, driving to Pittsburgh every year, you in the middle seat of the car, baking brownies with all of mine and sabrina’s friends, dancing in the dining room at the boca beach club with our favorite waiter skipper, you always being with all our friends, especially jimmy nissenson (he adored you) and roger Mincheff, your coming up to Penn visiting weekend and going crazy for the cinnabons at the food court and deciding you wanted to go to Penn simply bc you loved the food, when I had the taxi accident and we went to helaine’s house in florida together and you helped me get up and down the steps on my crutches, then we all started to get a little older, bringing Fluffy, Daisy and Lily to your football games at HM, visiting you in the hospital when you had shoulder surgery and mom slept on a chair in your room every night, chinooz badooz, what’s for lunch badunch, zsaka, baka, make the spell go on!, taking pictures at mom and dad’s of you and jen going to the prom, helping you pick out a lavender cashmere sweater for her at Ralph lauren because you wanted her to dress like us, visiting you at Emory your freshman year and we had that huge buffet breakfast at the Ritz and then you said you wanted to take us to this really cool ice cream place that was going to be HUGE and we said, no, we cant eat another thing, and three ice cream sundae’s later at Coldstone (we should have listened to you!)…, you always had the best ideas for inventions, if only we had let you invent…Billy Joel music, you all went to the concert when I was on bedrest and you kept calling me and letting me hear him singing and then you downloaded me the concert afterwards (I cant bear to listen to it anymore). So many memories, our happiest time will ALWAYS be our childhood, all together, the original 5. I know how lucky I am to have had you, but I cant help but feeling so beyond unlucky to have lost you so early, I always imagined us together forever, and I know we are together forever, I know it, just not right here together where we want you.

You more than anyone else believed so much in the legacy of our family, and believed that we would all do such incredible things, i think this year my birthday wish for you is that we live up to your expectations of us, and that we make you proud every single day. I miss you more than you can imagine and love you so much forever and ever and ever. Thank you for giving me an angel in my stomach, I will protect it as you are protecting all of us. Happy Birthday my baby brother and guardian angel. Love you. Samantha
PS- Chase is making you a card tomorrow, he said he is going to throw it up into the air so it gets to you in heaven. Should we do that? I told him we will keep it here because you are here with us, always. Love you.