Dear William...

Hi bud.
We’re four days into our ski trip now, our annual pilgrimage back to Big Sky. It has been beautiful and hard all at once, exactly as it always is. It will never be easy to be here. It will never be easy to return to the place where you died. But it matters that we come. It matters that we spend time near you, that we keep learning how to love this mountain again, even though it holds so much of our heartbreak.

Dad and Kai and Bodhi are loving it. They’re skiing every day. I’m jealous in ways that surprise me, mostly of Dad and Kai. They are having such a wonderful experience together, bonding on chairlifts and mogul runs, tracing all the trails you would have skied with them. They come home with tired smiles after yet another epic powder day, and I am not part of that. It hurts in ways that don’t always make sense, because I could be with them. I’m choosing not to.

Skiing feels too overwhelming for me. It feels wrong to do the thing that took your life, especially when I didn’t even love it the way you did. So I’m trying to figure out how to hold the jealousy instead of pushing it away. I trust that a little space will open up inside me, one that helps me understand it more gently. And the truth is, I really am happy for them.

After you died, Dad was crushed in so many ways. You were his best buddy. The two of you had so many things that were just yours, so many moments and rituals and inside jokes. Kai was a bit younger then, still needing me in different ways, and Dad hadn’t yet had the chance to build the same kind of bond with him. I remember how worried Dad was after you died, worried that maybe he and Kai would never have what the two of you had.

Of course, it isn’t the same. Because every relationship is unique, because you are you. But, oh, William, you would be so happy to see them now. You would be so proud. Kai is a young man, and he and Dad are best buds. They laugh so easily together. They genuinely enjoy each other. I wish you could be there with them.

And then there’s Bodhi. He has been pure joy on this trip. So much energy, so much excitement. Every morning he wakes up happy, gets himself ready, and heads off to ski school without a single protest. He loves meeting the other kids. He loves his instructors. He can’t wait for pickup, especially on the days when he and Dad and Kai get to take a few last runs together so he can show off all his new moves. He thinks he’s a great skier. And he is.

The other day he casually mentioned that maybe someday he’d race. Just like you, I almost said. But I didn’t.

He talks about you so openly, so plainly. Today it was cold, so we put those boot covers on him, the ones that keep your feet warmer. He asked where we got them, and I told him we bought them seven years ago here at Big Sky. He thought for a second and then asked, “You mean when William was alive, or when William was dead?”

He says things like that without fear, without flinching. He has no trouble holding the hard truths and naming them out loud. I love that about him. He hasn’t yet been taught that death is something we’re supposed to whisper about or avoid. I hope he never learns that lesson.

So yes, this trip has been all of it. Good and hard. Heavy and meaningful. A trip we cherish, even when it hurts.

Tomorrow we mark seven years since you died. February 19.
I’ll see you somehow, tomorrow.

Love,
Mom

The Shaws, February 2026