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Archive for March, 2009

Letters

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

I cou­ple of months ago I was clea­ning my office clo­set and found a box of saved let­ters. I went through them, rea­ding quite a few in full. It was a fun dis­trac­ting thing to do. Let­ters are a rare thing these days for most of us, even my grand­mother emails and text mes­sa­ges me, ins­tead of wri­ting now, though she was not really much of a let­ter wri­ter to begin with — notes in cards are her thing.

The let­ters in the lar­gest pile were from a friend I went to school with in Tas­ma­nia. We became lost friend pen-pals once I moved. The let­ters were long, and read more like sto­ries than let­ters, but they always ended with ques­tions meant to be ans­we­red by a return let­ter. I always com­plied. I couldn’t remem­ber if my return let­ters were long, though I couldn’t ima­gine them being short. I’m sure you know what I mean. We stop­ped wri­ting and star­ted emai­ling in or around 12th grade. We’ve follo­wing each through college and into grad school via the inter­net. I don’t have copies of her emails throughout the years, they of course got dele­ted. The real let­ter was dead, the writ­ten record of pie­ces of one’s life no more.

Her let­ters were beau­ti­fully writ­ten records of a time of life. After rea­ding them, and because I was clea­ning out things I no lon­ger nee­ded, I deci­ded to place them in an attrac­tive box. I then sent them to her, along with a let­ter. I thought she’d be glad to have them back, if for no other rea­son than as a record of that time in her life.

I couldn’t help but have a pas­sing thought about the fate of my let­ters to her, though I didn’t expect they would have been kept. Who keeps let­ters unless they are from a lover. Except me of course. I hadn’t heard from her in some time, and had for­got­ten about the let­ters more or less.

When I retur­ned home this eve­ning I found a box on the table. The box con­tai­ned my let­ters, and a letter.

Some things make you smile.

I sit here now mour­ning the obso­les­cent letter.

peace