One of the projects I busied myself with during my wife’s recent weeklong vacation involved sorting through four boxes of letters from friends and relatives, mail that I’ve saved since my high school years.
You remember letters. Those pieces of paper people wrote on in cursive writing, put in an envelope and then affixed a stamp. Well, maybe not. Certainly letter writing is a lost art these days of the Internet.
Not that all the letters are gems. Many are mundane accounts of routine daily activities. I ended up tossing about half of the correspondence. Yet some contain truly creative and well-constructed thoughts on the trials of life and the importance of relationships. Dashing off a few lines in a typed email doesn’t exactly convey the same message.
In reviewing letters I’ve collected over 35 years I’m afraid I came across several from people I have no idea of meeting. Other people, sadly, I’ve lost track of, even though we wrote back and forth for years. Sorting these writings proved to be bittersweet: people once happily married have divorced long ago; active church leaders now want nothing to do with God; letter writers who died in their 30s.
I finished sorting the fourth box the day of Patty’s return home only to discover another three boxes of letters lurking in the closet. More memories await.
No comments:
Post a Comment