How many people write letters anymore? I mean the good old fashioned kind complete with salutation, body and closing?? I got to thinking about that today as I was perusing a wonderful website that my friend Bernie, over at One Mixed Bag, had posted on Facebook. It was an awesome link to a website entitled Letters of Note. The letter that she posted was one from Richard Feynman to his dead wife. I told Bernie that this one struck a chord with me primarily because when we were much younger I bought The Feynman Lectures for my hubby for Christmas. It was when we were living the Navy life, money was tight and this was a pretty extravagant gift. He had always spoken about Feynman, a well known physicist, and I knew that this was THE perfect gift for him. (Never mind that his mother let the cat out of the bag and told him I was getting it for him…..but I digress). And it was. He loved it.
The letter that is posted on the blog is sweet–tells of his undying love for his now dead wife and how much he misses her. It touched me and I am sure if you venture over there it will touch you, also. The great thing is that there are scads of really awesome letters to explore and read on that site and I just kind of got caught up in the whole thing for an hour or so…..I think it was more the so than the hour.
When I went to college the only thing that my parents really asked of me was that I write home once a week. Of course this was in the dark ages when computers were not the standard household item so that meant a physically written letter. To this day it is ingrained in me to write home to my mom weekly. The method has changed as she is a pretty high tech 82 year old and has a computer so we exchange emails instead of the old fashioned written letter but you know—I kind of miss those letters and when I do get one of her handwritten letters I get kind of excited. There is just something about holding the written word of a loved one in my hands that is indescribable.
Chris and I wrote many letters to one another when we were dating and I still have all of those. I know that I need to go through those and probably weed them out but it is hard to part with a part of life that was so exciting and new and precious. Those words we wrote to one another were the basis for our marriage of almost 30 years. I am reluctant to purge my house of those quite yet. I know that they have no significance for anyone other than us but yet—-it is a piece of history. Our history.
Do you cherish letters the same way that I do? Do you have any that you just would never part with? I would love to hear so please leave me a comment!
