It used to be that people wrote letters on paper to one another. Soldiers wrote home to family and girlfriends. Girlfriends wrote back to boyfriends. Grandchildren jotted thank you notes to their grandparents. Many have saved those letters over the years and for one reason or another, we would go back and re-read the letters again and again.
In my desk drawer are all the letters that my beloved brother wrote to me. They are kept in a light green leather-like box. When I open the box, I see his handwriting with its many flourishes and in some small fashion, this brings him back to me. His words, like “Sis… of all people, you and I know and understand each other best of all.” I did know him best. He is in heaven now, and has been for many years. And Tommy knew me. So when he says those words, I know exactly what they mean. They mean, “like old times, Sis, when we could finish the sentences of one another, and loved each other with our whole hearts.” I can touch the stationery and almost feel his personality through it. It’s physical… like skin! It’s real, unlike the computer e-mails of today.
My mother, who lived with us two+ years, had saved all of the letters that my father had ever written to her. They are to this day all tied together… “My Darling Carroll… I think of you and where you are and hope you are well… I pray daily for you and know that you will return to my arms.” Perhaps this is not remarkable. But to know that my father saved all of her letters and that now, they lie together in a special box, changes the complexity of the event. These letters include their courtship and then after they were married, my father’s deployment overseas during WWII. They are all of them in this box; and they tell a story of love and passion that to me is more beautiful than any poetry or movie could ever illuminate.
While my mother lived with Hubby and me, she shared those letters between the two of us one day. I watched her face fill with love for my father as she recognized his handwriting. She did as I did with my brother’s letters, and she held and touch the paper, looking for something… some skin. And, she laid them next to her check to feel that handwriting on her face. In Dad’s words, even though he had been gone to God for three years, she found a piece of him there among those letters… “Honey, when you hear about something big happening, know that I’ll be there…” referring to the D-Day Invasion. And, “Tommy is such a cute little boy! I am itching to see and hold him. Soon, Valette…” And also, “My heart is filled with love as I write to you today…”
I read the proposal of marriage my father made to my mother when they were forced to be at opposite ends of the state of Colorado. I could read about my father’s friends that he made while fighting in the European Theatre. There among the pages was the firm belief that they would one day be together again and enjoy each other as a married couple, no matter what took them apart. Mom told me she and Dad never once doubted that he would be coming back to her when the war was over. “Faith is a very powerful thing,” she said that day. “We always believed that we would be together again; so many we knew, doubted and lost their loved ones.”
Do you know the connection between letters and people that I’m talking about? It’s like magic… there’s something unique in a person’s handwriting, and signature that somehow makes us know and feel a human’s very being.
On the computer, if we know the person well, we can see and hear an individual’s voice when they write to us. We hear it in our mind’s ear as we observe a certain style of words thrown together, which are recognized as that person.
For example, when my father died a few years ago, one of the bros was the last person to talk to him before he slipped into his last stage of life. I asked him to write to Mom and me so that we might know what Dad had been thinking in those last moments. Travis was very gracious to share that most intimate conversation with us.
What he said, filled us with so many thoughts and emotions. We were gripped by his clarity and honesty as he wrote and shared. While I read it for the first time and longed for my dad and ached for my son, I recall reaching out with my hand to touch the monitor. It was shockingly cold, sterile. I couldn’t find him there as I do when I hold my brother’s letters. I printed out the page. Still, I couldn’t find him there. I could only look at the typed page, size 12 font instead of his penmanship on his usual fashion of stationery. Something went missing.
So here’s to Hallmark and all the other card companies. And, to the stationery companies that make that paper and pen which haunts our souls when writers put the two together. Yes, a stamp is an expensive item. But love expressed on paper knows no price.
I believe that the computer has truly changed our lives and given us something wonderful. That said, we must be wise as we move forward and progress into this 2000 Millennium. We must value what should be kept and what should be left behind. I think on the love lying in the green leather-like box and the mix of two lives that still share a home together in a closet… And guess where my values will be as I act this out?
May you make a wise decision between handwritten letters and cards, and our new friend, the computer.
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple