Email is my primary communication medium with my far-flung
family. And every now and then, I am
shocked into memory and melancholy when I’m searching through my old inbox
messages for something random and happen upon the group of messages from my
mom, who has been gone three years now.
She was, among many things, a great correspondent who made
the transition from the handwritten note to email rather effortlessly. She still sent handwritten cards and notes on
special occasions or when sending a news clipping. Our neighborhood priest opened a note from her the day after she died – congratulating him
on his well-fought battle against cancer and thanking him for his prayers. But for the most part, by 2008, email was her
main communication tool.
Her death in December 2008 followed on the heels of a
staggering diagnosis only 5 short weeks earlier. From an administrative standpoint, that
meant, at the time of her death, I hadn’t yet cleared out my backlog of old
emails since about April of that year.
So, as I ventured back to them, intentionally, my clean-up resolution
was an exercise in revisiting that unreal year and that surreal winter, as I
copied each message from her to a cumulative document for safekeeping.
As I read about the US Postal Service cutting back on
delivery frequency to curtail costs, I am reminded of the priceless
nature of any scrap of handwritten correspondence from lost loved ones. The changes at the Post Office are yet
another nail in the coffin for the handwritten letter. I saved very few handwritten notes from my
mom or dad, not realizing the time for saving was so short. The manila envelope she saved for me was chock full of treasures
she kept from my childhood, all in my own handwriting – letters from camp,
hand-made Mothers’ Day cards, thank you notes and even a long letter in my
early adult voice telling her about my new college boyfriend. We wrote each other every week when I was in
college. And we continued that pretty
faithfully once I packed my car and moved 700 miles away. Oh, to have those letters
now.
Thankfully, I still hear her voice in a myriad of other ways
and can even reflect on her views in the small collection of columns I have from
when she wrote as a guest columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, not that
long ago. There are many documents I own
that I can read and feel her hand on my shoulder – especially the book I’ve
drafted in whose part she played chief editor and fact source, right up until
she died.
My college friend saved a rare letter his father wrote to
him not long before his father’s sudden death at 57, just two years after we
graduated from college. I envy him that
he can slide that letter out of its envelope and see his father’s handwriting,
immediately recalling his face, hands and voice. These letters, recipes, pieces of clothing,
silver pins, kitchen utensils, Christmas decorations take on exaggerated value
when their original owner exits too early, but the exaggeration is warranted and
their value is priceless.
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