The Echo

Hey, it's Sunday Morning.

The Egyptians believed a person dies not once, but twice: First, when the body stops breathing. And again, when their name is spoken for the last time.

In other words, memory sustains existence. To be remembered was to live on, to be forgotten was to vanish completely.

My friend Bill Shaffer just finished The Clarence Diaries—40 weeks of sharing his uncle's handwritten journals. Week after week, he brought Clarence back. Small joys, ordinary moments, private reflections. It was an act of devotion. A way of saying: You mattered. You still do.

Clarence was a carpenter. So was my father, Roberto.

But my father left me no journals. Just his hands, his work, his presence. Beautiful memories of lived love.

I was his first assistant. He told me I was the best—not because I was, but because I learned to anticipate: hammer by the handle, angled just right. Hold the plank, never pull. Call the measurement out loud. Twice. Twice. Like a surgeon's assistant, but the patient was wood.

The rhythm of our work said everything: Reach, hold, cut. Reach, hand, thump.
A faint smile. Sweat. A shared Orange Crush.

If the tree did fall, made a crack, a thud—and the forest heard it, even if you didn't, does that make it any less real?

Maybe that's why I write these letters. Because his love made a thud inside me. A sound—still moving through.

That's how I know it is real.