When Abigail Danian walked into her kitchen and noticed the empty packaging of a burner cellphone on the counter, she knew Isaac had gone. It was Sept. 7, 2020, and she or he had been out of city for Labor Day. All weekend, her 20-year-old son, Isaac, had been calling her from the household residence in Grand Rapids, Mich. He wanted cash for a “nice alternative” in Hawaii, however that was all he would say.
The subsequent morning, Ms. Danian’s husband, John, headed to the native airport. He drove the rows of the parking zone, urgent the panic button on a spare key till he heard the horn blare from Isaac’s silver Volkswagen Passat.
A couple of days later, Isaac known as his mom. He needed her to know he was secure and requested to speak along with his younger siblings, each of whom adored their massive brother. He was in Hawaii, he stated, however he nonetheless wouldn’t elaborate. Ms. Danian’s thoughts raced. Whom was he with? Had he joined a cult? How might she discuss him into coming residence?
A couple of weeks handed earlier than Isaac known as again. This time he knowledgeable his mother and father that he can be off the grid for 30 days however can be again in contact when he might.
Ms. Danian by no means heard from him once more.
4 weeks earlier than Isaac left his residence in Michigan, Shukree Abdul-Rashed known as his spouse in Rochester, N.Y. Mr. Abdul-Rashed, 26, tried to elucidate to her why he had stop his postdoctoral chemistry program and instantly deserted the life they’d been constructing collectively. The army would quickly be going door to door, he stated. They had been coming for him, for her, for everybody. She saved her composure through the name, however inside she was panicking.
It was the top of August 2020, and by that time his spouse, who requested to not be recognized out of worry of on-line harassment, had turn into aware of her husband’s delusions and eruptions of hopelessness — disturbing adjustments that had coincided with the pandemic lockdown. However at the least he had been at residence.
“OK. Properly,” she stated, pausing. “Do your mother and father know? Are you secure?”
He stated he was, however wouldn’t say extra. Not lengthy after, he related along with his spouse on a video chat. Once more she requested the place he was. He would solely say that he was with a “like-minded brother.”
The undertow of unreason had pulled Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed away from their family members, although it was not but clear simply how distant it might carry them.
To his spouse, Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s transformation throughout that first spring and summer time of Covid had been devastating. Mr. Abdul-Rashed was working towards muslim and a Ph.D. candidate in natural chemistry on the College of Rochester, researching novel methods for constructing complicated molecules. By the spring of 2019, he was already successful prizes, about to publish in a peer-reviewed journal and dealing to advertise variety in STEM. “He was charming and humorous,” his spouse stated, “and tremendous sensible, clearly.”
Shukree Abdul-Rashed in 2019. To his spouse, Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s transformation throughout that first spring and summer time of Covid had been devastating.
Abdul-Rashed Household
However because the lockdowns of 2020 wore on, Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse started to note that her husband was additionally spending a variety of time on-line, and that these classes had been agitating him. When she requested what he was watching, he would say one thing like, “Simply YouTubers or no matter.” Glancing over his shoulder every now and then, she noticed “plandemic” movies about Covid-19 and weird ultraconservative content material about Devil’s grip on the federal government.
Nonetheless, when she confronted him, she was cautious to not make him really feel cornered or belittled. “In case you select to marry somebody, they deserve your persistence and kindness,” she advised me. By way of the summer time, she endured as finest she might. Mr. Abdul-Rashed phased out and in of his troubling state, persevering with his natural chemistry analysis and being an attentive partner someday, sinking additional into paranoia and despondence the subsequent.
In mid-August, he met along with his adviser, Dr. Alison Frontier, a chemistry professor. Seated beneath a large oak tree on campus, Mr. Abdul-Rashed received straight to it. “I wish to resign from this system,” he advised Dr. Frontier. He was performed with academia and wanted to deal with different issues, specifically spreading the phrase about Devil’s plan for controlling humanity, bogus vaccines and the upcoming apocalypse. Dr. Frontier was at a loss, and she or he remembered considering: “It is a scientist who understands how vaccines work. How does this occur? How is science instantly thrown out the window in favor of the need of evil males to manage the world?”
For the Danians in Michigan, their son’s troubled frame of mind wasn’t a whole shock. Years earlier, he had been handled for despair, however his psychological well being had since improved, and he had just lately began working at a restaurant. Then in early 2020, he had “developed paranoid ideas” — made worse, Ms. Danian stated, by the pandemic, widespread social unrest and the presidential election. He began posting movies by which he talked a couple of totalitarian authorities, Armageddon and discovering Christ.
He proposed that the household research scripture with him. He was determined for others to see what he noticed. In a single wandering, nearly breathless, message, he wrote, “Because the Bible stated we fall for lack of information.”
Isaac Danian celebrated his twentieth birthday only a month earlier than he abruptly left for Hawaii.
Danian Household
By that time, the Danians feared that Isaac could be affected by schizophrenia or another psychological sickness. However earlier than they may persuade him to get assist, he was on a airplane to Hawaii.
Again in Rochester, Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse saved rethinking the dialog by which her husband had stated he was with a “like-minded brother.”
“That triggered me to go and look and see who he was interacting with,” she stated. She went to her laptop computer and commenced poring over her husband’s social media posts. She additionally remembered two T-shirts Mr. Abdul-Rashed had purchased just a few weeks earlier than leaving. They depicted a Black Jesus with glowing white eyes, and the slogan “Vaccines are the Mark of the Beast 666.” In smaller print, there was the URL of a YouTube channel.
She typed the deal with into a brand new tab and was led to a set of posts by a person with dirty-blond dreadlocks and a tattoo throughout his brow that spelled out, in archaic Hebrew, “Yahweh.” The caption accompanying the latest video learn, “Final alternative to affix me and pals in our exodus.” He was on the lookout for any males — as a result of girls, in his view, had been a temptation to sin — of sound thoughts and studious nature who needed to “bug out” of this clearly doomed society and begin rebuilding civilization as God supposed it.
On their subsequent video name, Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse requested her husband immediately: Are you with this man with the tattoo? He stated sure, however once more refused to say the place he was. Whereas he spoke, his spouse seen tropical vegetation within the background and thought: “undoubtedly not Rochester.” A couple of weeks later, she discovered an order receipt for the T-shirts, which included a return deal with in Hawaii.
“Oh my God — that is it!” she shouted.
The tattooed man’s identify was Matthew Mellow, although he had been born Matthew Logue. On his YouTube channel, Fb and different social media, he glided by the alias Mortekai Eleazar.
Mr. Mellow grew up in Orange County, Calif., the place he turned an avid physique boarder. When he was 20, he moved to Hawaii, the place he made ends meet refurbishing scooters. Within the early 2010s, Mr. Mellow set out for nonetheless extra distant shores, touring to many well-known surf breaks within the South Pacific. However by 2020, he was again on Oahu, residing along with his mom.
Mr. Abdul-Rashed and Mr. Danian had discovered Mr. Mellow and watched his YouTube channel, the place he preaches not a lot an atypical theology however a sprawling phrase cloud. He jumps from lambasting Christianity to evangelizing in regards to the correct technique to stroll with Jesus. He eschews romantic relationships (for now) and sermonizes on masturbation, Devil and the evils of Covid-19 testing. And at all times the chorus, “I’ve performed the analysis.”
On YouTube, Matthew Mellow requested folks to affix him within the South Pacific to rebuild the dominion of Christ.
The three males appeared to share a worldview that Devil had unleashed a plan to destroy society, and the pandemic was proof. As their conviction grew into fervor, they determined that the scenario known as for — that God known as for — dramatic motion. Mr. Abdul-Rashed and Mr. Danian traveled to Hawaii to attach with Mr. Mellow, their religious information and Pacific expedition chief. The exodus was on. All they wanted was a journey.
Mr. Mellow posted an advert on Fb and Craigslist providing $10,000 for passage to the South Pacific. “Mother (Petra) and I are on the lookout for a captain/constitution to sail us to Rarotonga Prepare dinner Islands,” the put up learn. “We’re able to go at any time within the coming days/weeks.”
Michael Schmidt and his pal Jeffrey McKinley took him up on the provide. Neither man’s sailboat was sufficiently big for the entire group, so that they must take each.
Mr. Schmidt was a 58-year-old itinerant mariner who offered used telephone techniques and typically labored as a constitution fishing boat captain and shark-fishing professional.
Michael Schmidt, left, and Jeff McKinley in Honolulu in 2020. With their small sailboats, the 2 males agreed to take a gaggle of passengers they’d discovered on Craigslist to the South Pacific.
Jeff McKinley
Like many People, Mr. Schmidt was skeptical of Covid protection in “the mainstream media.” He believed the federal government was utilizing the pandemic as a pretense to exert management. He adopted numerous conspiracy-minded social media accounts and had begun to worry fictions like nanobots within the bloodstream and Covid focus camps.
At first, Mr. Schmidt was cautious of the constitution. “I assumed possibly these guys had been needed,” he advised me. However incomes just a few grand on a South Pacific voyage sounded higher than idling his approach by way of months extra of what he known as “the shamdemic.”
The morning of Oct. 6, 2020, with Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed aboard, Mr. Schmidt leaned over the bow of his boat, Zulu Time, pulled anchor, and shoved off for the almost 3,000-mile voyage to Rarotonga within the Prepare dinner Islands. Mr. McKinley’s boat, A-Loona, departed just a few days later carrying Mr. Mellow and his mom, Petra Walter-Logue.
Aboard Zulu Time, Mr. Schmidt was comfy. Whereas the remainder of the world policed six-foot spacing and nervously wiped down groceries, he was touring the open ocean, answerable to nobody.
His passengers appeared equally content material. Neither of them knew something about crusing, however nonetheless they buzzed with pleasure in regards to the journey forward. Mr. Danian was clumsy however amiable, Mr. Schmidt remembered. “He’s out in the actual world, not his mother’s basement in Michigan,” Mr. Schmidt advised me. “It was, like, placing the zap on him. His eyes had been as massive as saucers about the entire thing. He was happening this massive journey.”
Mr. Abdul-Rashed was extra severe, spending hours studying the Bible or in intense dialog with Mr. Danian about faith, the pandemic and the “New World Order.” To Schmidt, the truth that Mr. Abdul-Rashed, a doctoral candidate, rejected the prospect of vaccines and spoke of a secret authorities agenda strengthened his personal convictions.
The crusing was nice, at the beginning — “Yahoo!” Mr. Schmidt texted to a pal early on. They put out fishing traces to complement their retailer of rice and canned meals, and Mr. Schmidt recorded a brief video of Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed after they’d hauled in a wahoo and a small yellowfin tuna.
Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed aboard the boat Zulu Time.
Mike Schmidt
However quickly sufficient, the climate bore down. “I’ve been in lots of squalls,” Mr. Schmidt texted a pal again in Hawaii after 5 days at sea, “however this had that scary scream to it identical to within the motion pictures.” Sideways rain hammered the boys, and waves washed over the Zulu Time as ocean and sky turned a wall of white.
On Oct. 23, two weeks and about 2,000 miles from Hawaii, the captains realized that due to the worsening pandemic, Prepare dinner Islands ports had been closed. They continued on the identical course for just a few days, hoping officers may grant them some type of exception to the no-entry rule. No allowance got here, and round Oct. 28, Mr. McKinley set an eastward course for Bora Bora in French Polynesia, a further 300 miles away. Mr. Schmidt reluctantly adopted.
However redirecting meant crusing nearly immediately into the prevailing wind. At one level, the waves had been so massive that, Mr. Schmidt stated, he broke his nostril whereas being tossed across the boat. He was livid. Simply earlier than midnight on Halloween, he despatched Mr. McKinley a message in regards to the grueling circumstances: “This 500 miles goes to show into 800 miles with all of the tacking. I don’t assume we have now sufficient water for an additional week of this. Fiji would have been higher.”
The morning of Nov. 5, after six days of zigzagging towards Bora Bora with solely incremental progress, Mr. Schmidt turned his boat to start crusing west, towards Pago Pago in American Samoa.
From Hawaii to French Polynesia
By The New York Occasions
By this level, Mr. Schmidt knew full properly that his passengers had been petrified of being examined for Covid. They believed that the check — not the vaccine, however merely the check — would sever their connection to God and unite them with Devil.
Mr. Schmidt was in sync with the younger seekers when it got here to worry of Huge Brother and vaccines, however dreading port officers brandishing nasal swabs struck even Mr. Schmidt as somewhat unhinged. “I attempted to speak sense into them till I used to be blue within the face,” he later advised me.
Because the boat neared American Samoa’s principal island, Tutuila, Mr. Abdul-Rashed and Mr. Danian begged Mr. Schmidt to drop them simply offshore; they’d make do from there. That they had even packed small baggage with provides — “lighters, bandages, stuff like that,” Mr. Schmidt recalled — and again in Hawaii they’d been working towards the best way to paddle to shore from greater than a mile out.
The trio sailed to inside a mile of shore, however no nearer. Zulu Time’s motor had stopped working simply days into the journey, and Mr. Schmidt advised me he was daunted by the prospect of crusing into, after which out of, a difficult and unfamiliar harbor. On the final second, he modified his thoughts and turned again out to the open ocean.
In April 2021, seven months after their final name from Isaac and nonetheless hoping that he was alive and solely selecting to be out of contact, the Danians filed a missing-person report with the Grand Rapids police.
A couple of weeks later, Ms. Danian took her personal torment public, with a Fb put up that started: “I’m solely placing this out right here in hopes that individuals can share. Isaac has been lacking since Oct. 4, 2020.”
Ideas and prayers poured in, as did suggestions. One reader recommended she contact individuals who run fishing charters or work as deckhands out of Kona Harbor. An individual who used to have a tendency bar within the space stated that Isaac appeared “tremendous acquainted” and that she might need seen him in February. (She hadn’t.) One other particular person recommended checking Cinderland, a commune-like “eco-village” on the south a part of the island of Hawaii. Ms. Danian adopted up on each suggestion, however none panned out.
On Could 18, she was grilling on her again porch when she and John obtained a weird telephone name. An interpreter on the road stated she was with an investigator from a French territory within the South Pacific, Wallis and Futuna. That they had discovered Ms. Danian’s identify by way of Fb. The girl knowledgeable the Danians that the native authorities had been wanting right into a disappearance — one thing to do with a sailboat that had arrived on the island again in November.
When Ms. Danian heard the particular person say one thing about “no proof of life however no physique both,” she collapsed on the porch, sobbing. The likelihood that Isaac had drowned was crushing. She had been making an attempt for months to maintain her composure in order that life felt “as regular as attainable” for her two youthful youngsters, however this information made her really feel like a zombie.
Mr. Danian’s household made a flyer that was posted digitally and distributed by hand within the space the place he was final seen in Hawaii.
Danian Household
Per week later, a Grand Rapids detective obtained a name from Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse, who defined that her in-laws had additionally been contacted by the authorities on Wallis. She then advised him in regards to the T-shirts, the receipt and the tattooed man’s YouTube posts.
Ms. Danian instantly reached out to Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse. The 2 girls had been now related in frustration and anguish.
The essential second that neither of them knew about, although, had occurred on Nov. 28, 2020.
After the aborted cease at Pago Pago, the trio aboard Zulu Time desperately wanted a spot to make port. The world was basically closed, and the boat would quickly run out of meals and water. On Nov. 18, a pal again in Hawaii recommended through textual content that Mr. Schmidt proceed about 500 miles farther west, with the wind, to Wallis and Futuna.
Ten days later, Mr. Schmidt was crusing Zulu Time into the slim channel off the south finish of the principle island, Wallis. The present was sturdy, and the boat was transferring at a swift clip, flanked by shallow, jagged reefs.
Mr. Abdul-Rashed was “very nervous and nervous,” Mr. Schmidt later advised the police. And Mr. Danian, he stated, “was like a soldier being dropped off at warfare.”
Mr. Schmidt added: “He wasn’t listening. I requested him to face by. He began tying the ropes the flawed approach. In hindsight, I believe they weren’t interested by what was happening on the boat; they had been interested by one thing else.”
As Mr. Schmidt advised it, the 2 passengers had gone under deck whereas he was navigating the tight channel. Out of the blue, earlier than Mr. Schmidt realized what was occurring, Mr. Abdul-Rashed emerged. Agitated however resolute, he leaped from the port facet into the water. A second later, Mr. Danian got here up, muttering, “Sorry about this,” and jumped too.
Mr. Schmidt was dumbstruck, after which irate. He yelled after them: What are you doing? However he needed to flip his consideration ahead and couldn’t hold his eyes on them for lengthy. Needing to seek the advice of his charts, he went under deck for a minute, possibly two. When he stepped again into the sunshine, he stated, all he might see behind the boat was the blue expanse stretching to the horizon.
For a lot of months after Isaac had left, Ms. Danian had been working underneath the idea that her son was nonetheless in Hawaii. The decision from Wallis modified that, however it might be an extra 5 months earlier than she was given the investigation report for evaluation. Even with that in hand, she remained hopeful that her son was nonetheless alive. She felt Mr. Schmidt’s account specifically was suspicious.
Mr. Danian’s pockets and its contents, in {a photograph} taken by the police on the island of Wallis and included within the report on his and Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s disappearance.
The police had been additionally skeptical of his story and interrogated him a number of occasions. In keeping with the report, they searched his boat exhaustively and confiscated his 9-millimeter pistol and later his laptop computer.
They questioned, as an illustration, why he had pulled up Covid conspiracy movies on YouTube as quickly as he had web entry on Wallis. He “by no means stops watching movies in regards to the finish of the world, conspiracy, Covid, unexplained phenomena,” the report reads.
Additionally, related information from Mr. Schmidt’s satellite tv for pc navigation system had just lately been erased. He advised the police that he didn’t keep in mind deleting something and that he not had the login data.
Had Mr. Schmidt, the police requested, maybe dropped the boys off on a small barrier island so they may swim to the principle island later, undetected?
No, Mr. Schmidt insisted. “If I had been in on the act, I’d have left them on an island in American Samoa,” he stated.
Then why hadn’t he taken essentially the most fundamental step in a man-overboard scenario, tossing one thing like a life jacket, a physique board or a seat cushion into the water after them? “I advised myself that I couldn’t assist them as a result of they wouldn’t need assist,” Mr. Schmidt defined to the police. “From what I had heard, they imagine that the Covid check will give them the mark of the beast and thus they’ll go to hell.”
After a four-month inquiry that included interviews, critiques of climate information, underwater searches, DNA analyses and digital forensics, the native authorities concluded that the most probably clarification was that Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed had certainly jumped from the boat and had been swept out to sea.
When pressed in an interview about who was chargeable for what occurred, Mr. Schmidt grew exasperated: The 2 guys had been loopy, they’d jumped, and it wasn’t his fault. Mr. Mellow was the particular person to see, he stated.
In Ms. Danian’s retelling of her final dialog with Isaac, she had pleaded with him to inform her the place he was going. “I keep in mind him saying it’s higher if I didn’t know,” she stated. “He was clearly being coached on this, and I might inform in his voice that he was upset that he couldn’t share with me.”
“Matthew Mellow is the rationale Isaac has disappeared,” she stated.
There’s a tackle this story by which two adults made their choice and confronted the results. Possibly they didn’t intend to drown, but when Mr. Schmidt is to be believed, they definitely supposed to leap. Finish of debate.
However what half did Mr. Schmidt play? He was the captain, in spite of everything. How did he not throw even a seat cushion after them?
And the journey itself — that was Mr. Mellow’s thought. Is he accountable? What in regards to the wider query of accountability?
Most of us participate in a world that incentivizes sharing of misinformation and disinformation. On social media particularly, the boundary between merely unusual beliefs and true detachment from actuality can blur. After so many hours of clicking and watching, the prone amongst us lose the power to discern fact from fiction. When such alternate realities take maintain, we dismiss the believers as delusional.
At the least some sense of a solution may lie with Mr. Mellow, who by the spring of 2022 had settled on the tiny French Polynesian island of Huahine. He agreed to satisfy on the Huahine Nautique, an open-air dockside restaurant within the island’s business heart.
When Mr. Mellow arrived, the total beard and dreadlocks from the YouTube movies had been gone. He was carrying a white polo shirt and carrying a gray-and-pink flowered backpack filled with books. Round his head, he wore a shiny bandanna that coated his distinctive Yahweh tattoo.
Mr. Mellow outdoors the Huahine Yacht Membership in December 2021. He spends his time on the island browsing and evangelizing to islanders.
He defined that his religious awakening had are available 2014, as he watched a tv present known as “Jail Break.” Within the collection, an enormous authorities conspiracy unfurls over many seasons, and when the present ended, a shocked Mr. Mellow turned to the web. “I went on Google, and I typed in, ‘Does a small group of individuals management the entire world?’”
He spoke with a wierd detachment, a cadence extra TikTok than televangelism. There may be a lot rubbish on-line, Mr. Mellow stated, that the reality finally ends up buried in distant corners of the web, labeled “conspiracy idea” or just censored. “I’m not the one who’s flawed,” he stated. “Everybody else is. Have you ever seen ‘The Matrix’?”
Within the 12 months and a half since he and his mom had arrived in French Polynesia, Mr. Mellow had saved busy recording movies of himself addressing issues of scripture and Covid and posting them to YouTube, Fb, BitChute, Discord. In actual life, he continues his “ministry,” touring to close by islands preaching in regards to the Illuminati, numerology, gene enhancing and Covid testing. “It’s probably not a swab check,” Mr. Mellow stated. “It’s nanocoils that appear like cotton” and ship “nanotechnology into folks’s physique, principally their mind.”
Almost everybody on Huahine appeared to know of Mr. Mellow; it’s a small place, in spite of everything. He rides his bicycle round, passing out tracts. A person working at my resort stated Mr. Mellow had come to his home when he wasn’t residence and had advised the person’s youngsters to refuse the vaccine and had then slid rolled-up copies of his flier by way of a gap within the lattice fencing.
Mr. Mellow stated with delight that he needed to date distributed 21,800 copies of this doc. “I’ve been in a position to assist folks right here,” he stated, clearly relishing the missionary high quality of his new life in French Polynesia, an analog node within the digital international conspiracy machine.
Mr. Mellow created a flier in French for locals to learn, which he passes out on Huahine. It particulars his theories in regards to the Covid-19 vaccine and the way it pertains to the Guide of Revelation.
Regardless of the brief time collectively earlier than setting off on totally different vessels — about six weeks with Mr. Abdul-Rashed and only a few weeks with Mr. Danian — Mr. Mellow stated he had felt a deep connection. “They beloved me; I beloved them,” he advised me. “They turned out to be one of the best pals I ever had.”
And their refusal to be examined for Covid? “Absolute heroes,” he stated. “I imagine that my brothers died in God’s graces.”
At one level within the interview, maybe realizing for a second how he sounded, Mr. Mellow stated, “There’s tons of people that imagine in what I imagine.”
For Abigail Danian, again residence in Michigan, it has been almost a 12 months and a half since she first heard from the authorities on Wallis. She had a tough time even saying Mr. Mellow’s identify, and she or he remained deeply skeptical of each Mr. Mellow’s and Mr. Schmidt’s accounts. She continues on the lookout for clues inside the lots of of pages of the investigation report and prodding the U.S. State Division to research her son’s demise. (The State Division and the F.B.I. each declined to touch upon the case.) She has additionally arrange a web site, findisaac.org, the place folks can depart suggestions. Two years after Isaac reportedly jumped from the boat, she nonetheless believes her son is alive someplace.
When requested if he was in any respect chargeable for what had occurred to Mr. Danian and Mr. Abdul-Rashed, Mr. Mellow appeared genuinely confused. Mr. Schmidt was the captain of their boat, and so they disappeared 1,500 miles from the place Mr. Mellow had ended up. How might he probably be accountable?
However what of his position because the organizer, because the Moses main this exodus? Mr. Mellow grew agitated. “They studied these items on their very own — possibly they watched my movies,” he stated, however the two males had been merchandise of their very own analysis. “They contacted me.”
When making to go away, Mr. Mellow appeared to think about how he may come off on this portrayal. He repeatedly asserted that he was not “loopy.” “In case you write that I’m loopy, I’ll lose a variety of religion in humanity,” he stated.
Mr. Abdul-Rashed’s spouse additionally nervous about how this entire story may sound, how the world would consider her husband. She selected to share, although, as a result of she had watched her husband slip away and had realized how shortly that would occur to somebody.
“I simply needed to let Shukree wasn’t loopy,” she stated. “I would like you to know he was a very good, charming, loving particular person. I would like that to be identified, so he is aware of he was beloved.” She paused. “In case he ever reads this.”