Editor’s note: Julian Linville, 70, suffered an apparent heart attack and died unexpectedly Thursday night at his home in Fayetteville. His son, Mark, also of Fayetteville, wrote this e-mail to his father the following Sunday. He now shares it with all of us.

From: Mark Linville
To: Julian Linville
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 11:18 AM
Subject: Oh, It’s Just Me

Dear Dad:

Your account is still open to receive my e-mails. And I have but to type the letters “J-U” and Outlook Express knows to fill in the rest of your address.

“Oh, you’re writing to your Dad again,”it seems to say. “Good.” It seems so natural to send something your way, so here it is.

We had probably 30 messages on our answering machine, missed calls deemed important enough to leave some message. Several of yours were included. Lynn let them play back.

I had just been reading [C.S.] Lewis’s “A Grief Observed,” and had read how his too-vivid memory of his wife’s voice reduced him to a wimpering child. How I understand now.

Your signature beginning in those messages, heard over and over, is “Oh, it’s just me.”

“Just” you? As in “merely” you? As in, “one of the least important people who might be calling my number”? “Oh, it’s just me” as if to apologize for distracting me from the genuinely interesting and important things going on in my life just long enough to hear what my mere father has to say?

Why, the man might actually need something from me, and then what? I might have to drop what I’m doing and run to the store to fetch something he needs or even go to his place to fix something. Who has time for such things? “Oh, it’s just me.”

It’s “just you” that I so desperately wish I could see again. How the tables have turned! I would do anything just to gain audience with you for five minutes.

In those five minutes I would say all of the things that I never quite said, or at least never said well.

You’ve heard me say, “I love you,” on an almost daily basis. It took some doing years ago for the male in me to allow it, but you and I settled into closing our phone conversations with, “Love you.” “Love you, too.”

But this exchange is in some ways like, “How are you?” “I’m fine.” That is more of a greeting than an inquiry or exchange of information.

And the casual expression of love at the ends of our conversations, while rightly and importantly there, fall far short of saying what needs to be said.

Romance between married lovers is not kept alive only by that quick kiss of goodbye when one of the two is breezing out the door, and neither is the full depth of love for someone plumbed in that familiar exchange of ours over the telephone.

How can “love you, too” convey to you that I have long since forgiven and forgotten anything from our deep past that might have called for it?

How can it tell you that I know the goodness of your heart and the gentleness of your spirit and that I appreciate and admire both?

Does “love you, too” let you know that I think you are a cleverly funny man who has always loved to laugh and make people do the same?

And did it ever allow you to understand that when you tell me you are proud of me (as you did just a few days ago regarding something I wrote) that it makes me proud to have you proud of me?
Could you know from that casual expression of affection that I carry fond memories of your involvement in my most formative years?

You were my catcher who taught me to throw a curve ball and a knuckle ball. You could toss a baseball up and hit it farther than anyone I knew, and you taught me to catch those fly balls.

You took me fishing, though I never amounted to much of a fisherman. You compensated for an all-too-busy work schedule by taking me along with you on some of those extra, all-night jobs like the fishing pier, where we stayed out together all night and watched the sun rise from the water.

Did you know that memories like these abound richly, and that I am who I am largely because of them? Did you know that I am grateful to you for them?

And how could “love you, too” possibly express to you the absolute torment that I would experience at the loss of you?

Did you have any idea that you would leave the world a desolate place for me with your going? That I would desperately wish to have you back?

“Love you, too” is what someone says when they assume the relationship is perpetual and that there will be all the time in the world for getting around to saying what really needs to be said. But that time seems to have run out on me some time Thursday night.

I imagine that you now have much more important and interesting things to do and people to see than to take time out to talk to me.

But, “Oh, it’s just me. I just wanted to tell you that I love you as much as any son could love any father and that my heart is broken over your absence. I wanted to tell you that I am hoping to see you again before too long if you have the time.”

I love you, Dad.

Mark

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