I hope there is no problema in showing here an open letter that someone posted publicly dedicated to Hailey and her Dad. I think it is deep and beautiful and we need beautiful and pure things in our lives. As pure, beautiful and touching as a two year old like this baby can be...
Dear Hailey,
I'm a truck driver in Manitoba. We didn't know each other, but I'm a grandpa and I love my children and my grandchildren deeply and intentionally. I shuddered and my heart broke yesterday when the news of your death spread across the country. I'm also a Christian and, putting aside all the complex postulations of theology, I have hope for a heavenly afterlife of peace and profound understanding somewhere beyond time. I think, that because you are there, I can use big people's words and you will be able to understand me.
First I want to apologize. I'm so sorry, sweetheart, for what happened to you and your daddy. I'm sorry that you had to encounter that vacuous husk of soulless humanity that took so much from you. I'm sorry for the pain and fear you had to experience at those unthinking, unfeeling hands. Our responsibility as adult Canadians is to make your world safe and to create an environment so that you can have a full and rewarding life. We failed you and I'm sorry for that too.
The second thing I want to do, little one, is commend you to God. I want to lift your wonderful brief life up to God as he cradles you in his loving ethereal arms. I ask him to cherish and honor, not just the two years He blessed the world with, but the scores of possibilities that weren't allowed to come to fruition.
Lastly Hailey, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for being two years old. For bringing a spark of gleeful exuberance and childish wonder to those around you in only that way a two year old can. But most of all I want to thank you for being that spark that brought purpose and empathy to your daddy's life. Even with your tiny frame you were powerful enough to turn his life around, by all accounts, and that pretty awesome for a two year old. I hope he's standing there with you reading this and feeling proud, loved, and maybe a bit humble all at the same time.
I just thought I'd write you a note to let you know I'm thinking about you dear one. I hope we can meet some day and get to know each other. Grandpas like reading stories and I know a good one about a very brave mouse.
Grandpa....
(The letter was signed. Obviously I refrained fom posting the name)