Dear Edward

“Bruce Adler looks at his boys; their faces are unreadable. He has the familiar thought that he is too old and out of touch to decipher them. A few days earlier, while waiting for a table at their favorite Chinese restaurant, Bruce watched Jordan notice a girl his age walk in with her family […] [Jordan] gave that girl a face that Bruce, who has studied his son every single day of his life, had never seen. Never even knew existed.”

Almost every character in Dear Edward carries a few secrets, and they inevitably strain relationships. Not only does this section introduce the theme of adolescence, but it also foreshadows the way Jordan’s secret relationship with Mahira will affect Edward’s journey. Bruce is aware that his oldest son is growing up, and he is becoming a new person with different interests; Edward will have to accept the same truth about Jordan to heal.

“Edward is unable to answer any of these questions. He can’t consider how he’s feeling; that door is far too dangerous to open. He tries to stay away from thoughts and emotions, as if they’re furniture he can skirt past in a room.” 

Edward is unable to confront the tragedy of the plane crash for much of the novel. He understands the weight of the incident and delays facing the difficult emotions they evoke. Instead, Edward becomes stoic and dissociative. Without addressing his feelings, though, he is unable to move past the event and becomes passive.

“The passengers are pulled into themselves; the long flight has only just begun, and they need to get used to this new space, the silver bullet in which they will spend most of the day. They resign themselves to the new normal, one by one. The prevalent question is: How should I pass this time before my real life resumes?”

The passengers of Flight 2977 mentally seclude themselves from one another despite the cramped space on the plane. By choosing to see the flight as an interruption of their “real” lives, they are ignoring the connections they could be making with others. Edward will reflect this tendency after the crash; he will spend much of his journey withdrawn and emotionally isolated as he passively waits for a return to his own “normal.”

“He hates being out of the hospital. He hadn’t anticipated this feeling, but then, he finds it impossible to anticipate any feeling now. It turns out that the hospital, with its beeping machines and routine and constant parade of medical staff, had been holding him together. His body now hurts in a new way; the dullness has been extinguished.” 

Edward’s hospital stay is a segue between his old and new life. The delay in his rebirth comforts him; it postpones the pain of building a new life without his family. The sudden surge of pain—both physical and emotional—after leaving the hospital causes Edward to further delay his growth. The hospital is another example of the stability that Edward loses.

“He feels aware of the hours in a new way. He has a vague understanding of how they pile on top of each other to make days, and how seven days group together into a week. And the weeks collect until there are fifty-two, and then it is a year. The flight was on June 12. That means it must be late July now. Time is passing.” 

Though he doesn’t have the vocabulary yet to describe it, Edward is slipping into a fugue state. Time is unimportant to him, so he does not track its passing. Edward is refusing to enter the reality of his new life, and he continues to relate everything, including time, to the flight. The way Napolitano explains groups of time also indicates that Edward is in a childlike phase of his new life in which he is relearning basic ideas.

“When his mouth feels like sawdust, he scrapes a small amount of chocolate off the bar with his front teeth. He remembers cramming potato chips in his mouth with his brother […] He remembers sitting at the dining room table with his family, the sun setting behind them, Bach playing on the stereo. Then he bites an O in half and wills himself to remember nothing, think nothing, until all that exists is a flatness—a flatness he now identifies as himself.” 

Edward is unable to eat in the months following the crash. Napolitano makes it clear that food is an important element in the memories of Edward’s family. Eating would represent Edward moving on with his new life, something he resists. Before he can even do basic actions, like eat food, he must divorce himself from the memories of his life before the crash. 

“Florida can almost see the scenes, the missing people, the dense minutes and hours and years that sit behind each person on the plane. She inhales and lets the choked air fill her lungs. The past is the same as the present to her, as precious and as close at hand. After all, if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present?” 

Florida’s philosophy of time and past lives will become relevant to Edward in the years after the crash. He will spend most of that time dwelling on the past, thus denying himself a new future. His refusal to live in the present stalls his growth. Florida, on the other hand, appreciates the way her past shapes her present; it is a lesson that Edward will take years to accept.

“Edward looks down at his hands […] They don’t look like the same hands that practiced piano for hours every afternoon. He feels certain that if he sat down at a piano now, he wouldn’t be able to play any of the compositions he’d learned. His fingers feel different, and no music has played in his head since the crash. It’s not something he’s consciously thought about, but he realizes now that he’d been waiting for the music to return, like a dog that escaped its leash. But it hasn’t, and it won’t. It’s gone. Eddie was musical; Edward is not.” 

Edward’s trauma causes deep changes in his personality. While he is reluctant to accept the start of his new life, there are certain parts of his old life that he cannot reclaim. Napolitano uses the phrase “waiting for the music to return,” because Edward is not active in his own rebirth yet. By not acting, he is simultaneously choosing to lose part of his old self and refusing to develop a new identity.

“He closes his eyes for a second, and Edward sees the lines of pain on Gary’s face; they’re the same lines—carved by loss—that engrave Edward’s whole self, and the boy shudders in recognition.” 

Edward does not find a catharsis for his grief until later in the novel when he discovers the letters. However, by recognizing his own grief reflected in Gary, he begins to understand that the crash has impacted the lives of many people other than himself. The tragedy is part of his identity, but it isn’t something he alone experiences; this interaction with Gary is Edward’s first glimpse at the ripple effects of the crash, and his first step toward reaching out to others. 

“He wants, suddenly, to lean forward and whisper all the details about his relationship with Mahira into Eddie’s ear […] from the first kiss, the secret has acted as a wedge. It’s created space between him and Eddie where none has ever existed […] He and his brother pull apart, and he knows the division, however slight, hurts them both.” 

Jordan’s secret relationship with Mahira will have a great impact on Edward’s journey. Before he can separate himself from Jordan’s identity, Edward must learn that Jordan was a wholly separate person. Here, Jordan understands the same difficult lesson. As his own identity develops, he will become less of a whole with Edward. Both learn this in the middle of adolescence, which Jordan reaches years before Edward.

“…the red sneakers, the parka, the pajamas, were simply a way of keeping his brother close by. Right now he’s wearing Jordan’s blue-striped sweater, and Lacey is wearing his mom’s blouse. When Lacey pulls him in for a final hug, he thinks, Who are we? He steps away from the hug and the tangle of Jane, Jordan, Jane, Jordan and almost throws himself into the car.”

Edward and Lacey both wear the clothes of their deceased siblings. Lacey insists she does so for strength, but Edward understands that the reasons are more complex. They are keeping the identities of their siblings alive by assuming parts of their looks and personalities. This throws Edward into a crisis because Lacey’s embrace puts him momentarily back into his old life. 

“Edward understands […] the real reason he doesn’t sleep in his aunt and uncle’s house. He can’t bear to live with a mother figure, who’s not his mom, and a father figure, who’s not his dad. He had the real thing, and he lost it. Also, it’s too difficult to try to pretend to be John and Lacey’s kid, when their real kids never made it, and he’s not even a kid; he’s something else altogether.” 

Edward has not yet started to cope with his loss, because he fears that moving on will be another step away from his family. By accepting new people to fulfill his family’s role, he is accepting their loss as permanent. Edward is holding onto the truth of his old life and trying to maintain his own identity in the process. He doesn’t want a new family, and he doesn’t want to be a replacement for the family that Lacey and John were unable to start. 

“Edward can feel the heartbeats of the mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses, cousins, friends, and children upstairs. His body syncs up with their sadness. He’s glad he stayed in the basement. The others are beating the plane windows with their fists, and Edward is down here because he doesn’t belong with them. He belongs with the dead, the ones who didn’t show up, the ones who know everything, and nothing.” 

Edward finds himself trapped in a proverbial limbo. He survived the crash but identifies more with the dead than the families and friends they left behind. By choosing to stay in the basement during the NTSB meeting, Edward is keeping a physical barrier between him and the others affected. This indicates that Edward exists in both worlds, the living and the dead, which allows him to act as a bridge between the dead and their loved ones later. 

“He curls up on his side on the ground. The September night is surprisingly cold. He closes his eyes to match the dark water and the dark sky. He can’t remember crying like this, since the crash, maybe ever. His cheeks become soaked, his shoulders judder. His tears raise the level of the ocean around him. Waves climb and then crumple into whitecaps, and he wonders if he’ll see Gary or his whales.” 

After Besa asks him to stop sleeping in Shay’s room, Edward collapses outside. Shay’s room was a place for Edward to hide from the world, and this represents his first true loss since the crash. Edward loses control of himself physically and emotionally, the effects of his trauma overwhelming. At that moment, however, he thinks of Gary—the crash profoundly impacted his life, too. Edward is not alone in this moment of devastation.

“Edward sleeps in empty space now, alone. He walks around all day, alone, even if Shay is with him. He considers telling the therapist that even though Shay is still his friend, their deeper connection—which he’d always known was his oxygen—has been slowly dying […] when whatever’s between him and Shay finally dies, what’s alive inside him will be done too.” 

Edward hits the peak of his isolation. Like the other passengers on the plane, he feels alone despite others surrounding him. Shay has been the driving force behind his recuperation, and losing her friendship frightens Edward. Again, rather than confront his emotions, Edward withdraws into himself, stalling his growth.

“His uncle frowns, and something about his expression makes Edward understand that insomnia and nighttime disruption don’t belong only to him. In the dark, flat middle of the night, Edward had assumed that he was the only one awake, the only one who could not rest. But now teenagers are crossing laws and John is choosing between beds, and Edward is another year older, another year distant from his family.” 

Edward begins to understand that he is not the only person living with grief and that the trauma suffered by others is just as real as his own. While Edward is growing away from his family, he is also finding companionship through that pain. John’s trauma is as valid as Edward’s, and it gives them a deeper understanding of one another. 

“Lacey kisses his cheek the exact same way his mother had kissed Edward’s cheek when she was alive. The kiss feels deliberate and intentional; Lacey can’t write her sister’s movie, but this is something she can do. But she also kisses his cheek the way Lacey would have kissed the cheek of a baby she had so badly wanted […] The word cherish enters his brain as if on a foreign breeze, and then departs.” 

The relationship between Edward and Lacey is complicated. Edward understands that Lacey is fulfilling the role of a surrogate mother, but he is uncomfortable with the idea of her replacing Jane entirely. At this moment, though, Edward reframes their relationship. Her kiss reminds him of Jane, but he also knows that Lacey has her own trauma—and her own identity—that makes her a separate person. He is not simply a replacement for the child Lacey wanted, either. Their relationship is like Edward himself: it is uniquely their own but suffused with the emotions of their memories.

“[Florida] had long nursed a theory that she improved with every incarnation. She remained human, and flawed, but she was more evolved. She knew what was what. She knew what mattered. She knew, at a deeper level each time, that what mattered was love. But love was what she had misread, mistaken, and misplaced in this life.” 

Florida looks at her past lives through a positive lens. Like the other passengers, though, she does have misgivings about her present. This relates to Edward’s journey. His previous life—with his family—holds mostly positive memories for Edward. This makes his rebirth incredibly complicated because the love in his new life is different; it comes from different people and new relationships. Giving all his love to the family he has lost prevents him from sharing it with the people in his new life.

“A new reality blossoms in Edward’s brain. Jordan is the one who survives, and instead of going home with Lacey and John from the hospital, he insists on recuperating with Mahira […] Edward can picture him lying in a single bed, one of his legs in a cast. His face is contorted with pain, but he’s looking at Mahira. He’s going through the loss with her and finding comfort in that. When the plane crashed, he didn’t lose everything.” 

Learning about Mahira forces Edward to recognize that he did not know everything about Jordan’s life. Edward feels guilty for surviving in Jordan’s place because of this; there were parts of Jordan’s life that could have helped him cope better than Edward. His survivor’s guilt deepens, but it also allows Edward to let go of pieces of Jordan’s identity.

“He meets her gaze, and there’s something new there. Edward used to think that what had happened had happened only to him, but he knows Shay has been changed, and he knows the writers of the letters have been changed too, so the ripple effects feel possibly infinite.” 

Edward slowly awakens to the ways in which the crash affects others throughout the novel. After meeting Mahira and seeing how it affected her, Edward realizes the depth of its impact. He has claimed the trauma of the crash as his own, but it does not belong solely to him. Edward begins to heal by helping others, but he first must understand that he is not the only one in pain.

“He’s aware of Shay beside him. Her molecules are mixing with his; he’s not just himself; he’s made up of her too. Which means he’s composed of everyone he’s ever touched, everyone he’s ever shaken hands with, hugged, or high-fived. That means he has molecules inside him from his parents and Jordan and everyone else on the plane […] if the passengers are part of his makeup, and all time and people are interconnected, then the people on the plane exist, just as he exists.” 

Edward believes that healing will require losing the past and the people he loved who died in the crash. This quiet moment with Shay allows him a deeper philosophy on how he carries the memories of those people. Healing will not require Edward to forget the past, because he is completely linked to the people in it. In that sense, he and the letter writers are keeping parts of those people alive.

“The man says, ‘What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.’” 

Again, Edward is reframing his loss. This insight from Dr. Mike further explores Edward’s realization that healing from trauma does not mean forgetting the past. Edward has been trying to free himself from trauma, but that is futile; instead, he must accept it as part of his rebirth.

“I stared at you, this tiny boy with a seatbelt around your waist, until you yelled again. Then I stepped forward and picked you up, and you held me around the neck, and I felt like you were saving me in the same moment that I was saving you. We walked back toward the others, while you repeated, quieter now, but with the same level of insistence: I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.” 

Napolitano further explores connection in the letter Edward receives from his rescuer. Again, Edward realizes that his story has affected people outside of himself and that those people are also trying to heal. They can only do so together. It is also clear that Edward, who has remained introverted and passive throughout the novel, has always possessed the strength he required to survive. More importantly, he has always wanted to survive.