I Found a Letter My Son Wrote to Me 2 Days Before His Accident – I Wish I Hadn’t Read That Letter

My Son who hasn’t talked to me for years died in a bike accident when he was finally coming to meet me. And today, I received a letter in his handwriting postmarked two days before the crash that took him. 

Old bikers know there are two kinds of riders: those who’ve gone down, and those who will. But nothing prepares a father for the hole left when it’s your son who doesn’t get up. David was 47, riding the bike I’d given him on his 30th birthday—the same one he roared away on after words were said that can never be taken back. Our last conversation ended with the sound of tires on gravel and my voice, unheard, calling after him.

For three months, I’ve avoided that corner of the garage where his Harley sits covered, still twisted from impact. I couldn’t bring myself to clean the leather saddlebags or touch the helmet that couldn’t save him. Until this letter arrived.

“Dad,” it begins, “By the time you read this, I’ll be coming home….”

I sat in my living room for what felt like hours, that first paragraph of David’s letter burning in my mind. Outside, rain tapped against the windows, just like it had the day they told me he was gone.

The beer in my hand had gone warm, untouched. The grandfather clock in the hallway—the one that had been in our family for three generations—ticked steadily, counting moments my son would never see.

I forced myself to continue reading.

“Dad, I know we haven’t spoken in months. That’s on me as much as you. But I’m heading back now, taking the long way through the mountains. Remember how you always said a man thinks clearer at 60 miles per hour with nothing between him and the truth but open road? I’m finding out you were right. Again.”

A choked laugh escaped me. How many times had I told him that? How many times had I solved my own problems with nothing but the rumble of my bike beneath me and miles of asphalt ahead?

“There’s something I never told you, something about Mom’s accident.”

My heart stuttered. Margaret had died twelve years ago—car accident on a rainy night. David had been with her. He walked away with a broken arm and the haunted look of a survivor. Our relationship had never been the same after.

“I’ve been carrying this weight since I was 35, and I can’t anymore. You deserve to know what really happened that night.”

I set the letter down, my hands shaking too badly to hold it. What weight? What truth could be so terrible that my son couldn’t tell me for twelve years?

Outside, the rain intensified, drumming against the roof. I closed my eyes, remembering David as a boy, sitting on my stationary Harley in this very garage, making engine noises with his mouth. The way his face lit up the first time I took him for a real ride, his small arms wrapped around my waist, whooping with delight as we leaned into curves.

Where had that joy gone? When had the distance between us grown so vast?

I picked the letter up again, forcing myself to continue.

“Mom wasn’t just driving home from her book club that night. She was coming to meet me. I’d called her, drunk and angry after Lisa and I separated. I was a mess, Dad. I demanded she come get me from this bar out on County Road 22. She tried to talk me down, told me to get a cab, but I said things… terrible things. Said she never supported me. Said I needed her this one time.”

My mouth went dry. I’d never known this part. Margaret had simply told me she was going to her book club that evening. I’d kissed her goodbye, never imagining it would be the last time.

“She came for me, Dad. In that storm. Because I was selfish. Because I was hurting and wanted someone else to hurt too. I was waiting outside when I saw her car approach. Then… the truck came around the bend too fast. The rain was so heavy.”

I felt ill. Physically, violently ill. I stumbled to my feet, letter clutched in my hand, and made it to the bathroom just in time. After, I splashed cold water on my face and stared at my reflection in the mirror—a weathered old biker with new pain etched into the lines around his eyes.

Back in the living room, I forced myself to finish reading.

“I’ve never forgiven myself, Dad. Never told anyone the full truth. After the accident, I couldn’t bear to see the accusation in your eyes if you knew. So I pulled away. And when I couldn’t stand the guilt anymore, I’d pick fights with you. Make you the villain so I didn’t have to face being one myself.”

Tears blurred my vision. All these years of growing distance, of arguments that erupted from nowhere, of feeling like I was losing my son one day at a time—and I never understood why.

“The night before Mom’s funeral, you found me working on the Softail in the garage at 3 AM, remember? You said, ‘Son, whatever demons you’re running from, that bike won’t outrun them.’ You were right. I’ve been trying anyway.”

I remembered that night. David had been methodically taking apart and cleaning the carburetor by the harsh light of a single bulb. His eyes were red-rimmed, his movements mechanical. I’d tried to reach him, but he’d remained silent, hands moving over metal parts like they held some answer I couldn’t provide.

“But something changed last week. I was at a diner in Arizona, and this old guy sits next to me at the counter. Vietnam vet, rode a chopper. We got to talking, and somehow I ended up telling him everything. He just listened, then said something I can’t shake: ‘The road always leads home eventually, if you’ve got the courage to follow it.'”

The last page of the letter was slightly crumpled, as if it had been folded and unfolded multiple times before being mailed.

“So I’m coming home, Dad. Taking the coastal route, the one you and Mom and I rode that summer when I was sixteen. Remember that trip? Three bikes, two weeks, and more laughter than I’ve known before or since. I keep thinking about how you taught me to lean into the curves, not fight them. ‘The bike wants to stay upright,’ you’d say. ‘Trust it.'”

I closed my eyes, seeing that summer so clearly. Margaret on her Sportster, David on the small Honda we’d bought him for his birthday, me leading the way on my Road King. The campfires, the diners, the way David’s confidence grew with each passing day.

“I need to tell you something else too, something good. You’re going to be a grandfather, Dad. Lisa and I have been talking again. She’s four months along. A boy. We’re going to name him Frank, after you.”

I gasped, the letter trembling in my hands. A grandson? David was coming home to tell me I would have a grandson?

“I’ll be there Thursday around noon. Maybe we could work on the bikes together. Maybe you could teach me again how to lean into the curves.”

Thursday. He’d written this last week, planning to arrive yesterday. Instead, on Tuesday morning, somewhere on that coastal highway, my son had leaned into a curve for the last time.

“Until then, I love you, Dad. I’m sorry for the years we’ve lost. I’m hoping we can find our way back.”

The letter ended there. His last words to me—”I love you”—written but never spoken.

I sat motionless as night fell, the letter in my lap, the house silent except for the steady ticking of the grandfather clock and the occasional rumble of thunder. Outside, motorcycles passed on the main road, their engines rising and falling like voices in conversation.

Around midnight, I found myself in the garage, flipping on the lights. My 2005 Road King sat where it had been parked since the funeral, a fine layer of dust dulling its once-gleaming surface. I ran my hand over the seat, remembering all the journeys it had carried me through.

Next to it stood David’s empty parking space. His tools still hung neatly on the pegboard—he’d always been more methodical than me. A half-empty can of polish sat on the workbench, the rag he’d used still draped beside it.

Without really thinking, I pulled the cover off my bike and began wiping it down. My movements were automatic, muscle memory from decades of caring for motorcycles. As I worked, tears fell freely, spotting the chrome before I wiped them away.

Dawn found me still in the garage, the Harley now gleaming under the fluorescent lights, my hands dirty but steadier than they’d been in months. I’d made a decision sometime in the night, somewhere between polishing chrome and remembering my son.

I showered, made coffee, and called Tom.

“I need to ride to the coast,” I said when he answered. “Today.”

There was a pause, then: “I’ll be there in an hour. The guys too?”

“No,” I said. “Just you. This is a personal ride.”

He didn’t ask questions. That’s the thing about old riding buddies—they understand when a man needs the road.

Tom arrived as promised, on his meticulously maintained Electra Glide. He took one look at me, at the packed saddlebags on my Harley, and nodded.

“How far we going?” he asked simply.

“All the way to the curve,” I said. The place where David had died.

Six hours later, we stood on the shoulder of a coastal highway. The ocean stretched endless and blue beyond the guardrail. The road curved gently ahead, nothing particularly treacherous about it. Just a simple bend that had somehow claimed my son’s life.

“He was coming home,” I told Tom, my voice rough. “Coming to make amends.”

Tom placed a hand on my shoulder, solid and warm. He didn’t offer platitudes or ask questions. Just stood beside me as I looked out over the water, the same view my son had seen in his final moments.

“He was going to be a father,” I added, the words catching in my throat.

Tom’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

After a while, I pulled the letter from my jacket pocket and read it aloud—all of it, including the parts about Margaret’s accident. Saying the words made them more real, more painful, but somehow also began the process of making them bearable.

When I finished, Tom was silent for a long moment.

“Sounds like he was finding his way back,” he finally said.

“Too late,” I whispered.

Tom shook his head. “He mailed that letter, Frank. He wanted you to know, even if something happened to him. That’s not too late. That’s courage.”

I looked down at the weathered asphalt beneath our boots. Somewhere here, my son had taken his last breath.

“There’s something else I need to do,” I said.

From my saddlebag, I removed a small wooden box. Inside was a handful of earth from our family home, where David had grown up, where he’d first learned to ride.

Carefully, I walked to the edge of the roadside and scattered the soil where land met ocean. As I did, the wind picked up, carrying my words out over the water.

“I forgive you, son. For everything. And I’m sorry too.”

That night, we stayed in a small coastal motel. I couldn’t face the journey home yet. In the darkness of the unfamiliar room, I pulled out my wallet and removed a faded photograph—David at seventeen, standing proudly beside his first real motorcycle, a used Sportster I’d helped him buy with his summer job money.

His smile in that photo—God, it could light up a room. When had I last seen him smile like that?

The next morning, Tom and I rode north along the coast, no particular destination in mind. For the first time since the funeral, I felt the therapy of the open road—the way it forces you into the present moment, the way it clears your mind of everything except the next curve, the next mile.

We stopped for lunch at a seaside diner. As we waited for our food, I noticed a young couple at a nearby table. The woman was pregnant, her hand resting protectively over her rounded belly. The man looked about David’s age, laughing at something she’d said.

“Tom,” I said suddenly, setting down my coffee cup. “I need to find Lisa.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“David’s ex. Or maybe not so ‘ex’ anymore. She’s carrying my grandson.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You know where she is?”

“Last I heard, she was still in Portland. David mentioned it last Christmas, said she was teaching at some university there.”

Tom nodded. “So we ride to Portland.”

Two days later, I stood nervously on a porch in a quiet Portland neighborhood, Tom waiting supportively by our parked bikes. The door opened, and there was Lisa—her eyes red-rimmed from recent tears, her belly visibly rounded beneath her sweater.

“Frank?” she said, surprise crossing her face. “How did you—”

“David wrote me a letter,” I said simply. “He told me about the baby.”

Her hand went instinctively to her stomach. “He was coming to see you. He wanted to make things right before—” Her voice broke.

“I know,” I said gently. “May I come in?”

Over tea at her kitchen table, Lisa told me everything—how she and David had reconnected six months ago, how they’d been working through their past issues, how excited he’d been about becoming a father.

“He talked about you all the time,” she said, wiping away tears. “Said he needed to fix things between you before the baby came. That his son deserved to know his grandfather.”

I pulled David’s letter from my jacket, now worn from multiple readings. “Would you like to see what he wrote?”

She nodded, and I watched as she read his final words, her fingers tracing his handwriting as if trying to feel his presence through the paper.

“He never told me,” she whispered when she reached the part about Margaret’s accident. “All these years, he carried that alone.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “Now we carry it together.”

Before I left that evening, Lisa took my hand and placed it on her belly. Beneath my palm, I felt a strong kick—my grandson making his presence known.

“He’s going to need stories,” Lisa said quietly. “About his father. About the man David really was, not just how he died.”

I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.

“And he’s going to need someone to teach him how to ride someday,” she added with a sad smile. “If you’re willing.”

On the long ride home, through mountain passes and across desert highways, I found myself talking to David as if he rode beside me. Telling him about Lisa, about feeling his son kick, about the plans already forming to be the grandfather he’d wanted me to be.

The old saying goes that you never see a motorcycle parked outside a psychiatrist’s office. Maybe that’s because the road itself is therapy for riders like us—each mile a meditation, each curve a lesson in letting go.

When Tom and I finally pulled into my driveway after ten days on the road, I felt changed. Not healed—I knew that would take much longer—but different. As if I’d left behind something heavy at that coastal curve and picked up something precious in Portland.

That night, I went back to the garage and opened a cabinet I hadn’t touched in years. Inside was a small collection of model motorcycles—ones I’d given David throughout his childhood, before he was old enough to ride real bikes. I’d keep these for my grandson now. A connection to the father he’d never know.

Next to the models sat a worn leather jacket, too small for me. Margaret’s riding jacket. She’d been a hell of a motorcyclist—fearless in a way I never was. I touched the leather, remembering how it creaked when she moved, how she’d laughed into the wind.

“Our boy was coming home,” I told her. “And he’s given us a grandson.”

In the stillness of the garage, surrounded by machines and memories, I made a promise to both of them—to Margaret and to David. I would be there for this child. I would tell him stories of his grandmother’s fearless heart and his father’s redemptive journey. I would teach him that the road always leads home eventually, if you have the courage to follow it.

And when he’s old enough, I’ll show him how to lean into life’s curves—not fight them—just as I once taught his father.

Because some lessons can only be learned on the open road, with the wind as your witness and those you’ve loved riding in your heart.