To the editor:

To the person who burglarized our storage unit in Clinton this last week or so. Almost every article you stole were gifts inherited from friends and family who are now deceased.

I’ll only go into detail about one particular item just so I may honor my sobbing mother’s request.

The 1961 Fender guitar. Just a guitar huh? Little did you know that that is the only physical belonging my family has that once belonged to my now-deceased grandfather (my mother’s father).

See, she, Madeline, didn’t have the option of being raised by him and only has fragmented memories from her childhood of their time together. All of those memories are rooted in that guitar. He would play music and lull her with song.

Her warmest reflections of her youth are in that guitar and that time spent with her father, Raul.

When he died when I was 14 years old we had just revived our family connection for about three years beforehand. My mother and grandfather, during that time, began to form a relationship they hadn’t the privilege to nourish. That guitar was one of the few possessions my Grandfather Raul still had into his elder years. When he died, he specifically willed it to her to keep always.

But instead you’ve taken it.

It was in the midst of my temporary care, and now it is gone.

That guitar, stranger, has more worth then you’ll ever get out of it and I would greatly appreciate it back along with so many other items that I assure you aren’t worth much on the market but are of great sentimental value.

Take for instance that unlocked money bag that’s full of photos of my sweetheart’s dead father Alex. All of the tools were his father’s too. Truly, how would you know that those tools are gifts to a boy and now man who watched his father fight cancer for 15 years starting when he was only 5. Do you care now, though?

Please take them back to the storage anonymously and make a call to the office; no questions asked. The repercussions of your choice will be in the hands of those spirits now. Clean your slate or I assure you you’re on the verge of making your life very, very sick.

The utmost compassion for you. Good luck.

Joline Ma’hale

Clinton