~maybe like forever~

Long before the days of text messages, social media and voice mail, my mom did the most awesome thing.  She took a pen, a sheet of paper and an envelope, then sat down at the table and proceeded to practice a nearly lost art today.

She wrote letters.

I came across some of them this past weekend as I helped to clear out the belongings of my sister Sherry.  They were tucked away into envelopes and baskets just where Sherry had left them. The dates postmarked were from long, long ago.  As a matter of fact, well over ten years of long ago.  I recognized the writing on them immediately as that of my mom who died a couple of weeks after her 87th birthday in September of 2007.  Her scrawl never changed and as I held the envelopes in my hand, I couldn't help but remember what my mom would often ask me to do.

"I wrote Sherry a letter today.  Could you come by after school and take it to the mailbox for me?"
And I always did.

I believe that my sister must have kept nearly every piece of correspondence that she ever received from our mom.  If she didn't, then surely she only discarded a few of them.  Now that both of those precious women are gone from this earth, I am so glad to have those messages to once again reread.  To both of them, I owe a word of thanks.

You know, Mom didn't write about anything earthshaking.  It was usually about the weather, how her health had been, which kid or grandkid had stopped by, or the fact that one of her favorite programs on television had been pre-empted by the football game on Sunday afternoon.  In her letters to Sherry, Mom would always ask about the kids at school and how they were doing that particular year.  She would inquire about Sherry's own kids and later on grandkids too.   Her letters were most likely a couple of pages long and always written on both sides because she believed in getting her money's worth out of that postage stamp that was affixed to the right hand corner of the envelope.  Mom tried to keep a regular schedule of writing, trying for once a week and mailing them out on Mondays.  She was just like that.

I brought the letters home to read once again before discarding them once and for all.  I sat down and opened a couple of them Saturday evening before going to bed.  The very humble thoughts of my mom are now quite precious to me.  Reading those old and forgotten letters is like sitting down beside her at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in hand to discuss the day's happenings together.  I can hear my mom's voice in them and realize now all the many lessons she taught me.  Many of those things I had forgotten but so many of them I do remember.

There wasn't enough time to go through them all so I placed them into the spare bedroom closet and will look at them another time.  What was once going to be discarded by me, is now more than likely to remain safely nestled away into the manila envelope they are all stored in.  Those letters don't take up that much room and who knows?

Maybe, just maybe, I will keep them a little bit longer than I planned.
Maybe like forever.