For Rui Boy

Rui
Your first and eldest cousin, Zach Prager, will have his wedding this weekend on Saturday, June 3rd. It will be in Austin, Texas, where Uncle Neal, Aunt Lori, and your Cousin Sarah all live. Zach is going to marry his long-time girlfriend and partner, Molly O’Neil.

All of your U.S. family will be gathered together there in Neal’s house and around town at various places for an event that’s both deeply happy and serious. Zach and Molly have been all around the world together. And now they’re committed to being one partnership for good. It is a generational milestone in your family here.

Rui, your daddy misses you every day. It’s hard to go on with anything normal; every day is another day that has been stolen in this most supremely selfish, toxic mean-spirited attack against you and me. It’s beyond imagining, yet it goes on every day. And every day I miss you, think about you, wonder and wish I could find and defend and exchange life with you, and be your father. Nothing else really authentically matters to me as much; and so while this event is really a happy one for your family here, it will have a subterranean undercurrent of melancholy that I will bear quietly through the day. You should be here to see your cousin’s marriage begin. You deserve to know them; they are good people.

I study hard Rui. I hope you do too. I am seeking with all my waking hours and strength to try to understand all the complex ways that your abduction and our separation can have affected you. My one goal for my life is to work against this wrongdoing; and to see it stop happening to all the little ones in Japan, and around the world.

Seek the light Rui. Look up into the night skies for the moon and stars. I will be watching them just as you do. I wait with my heart full, heavy, and longing for the day our lives may be restored in some way.
Love and real devotion, from your father. Brian Prager

Listen to my heartsong, Rui boy.

Daddy