THE LETTERS

There are e-card, e-books and e-mails, and although they all have their place and their convenience, I feel they are all over used.

There is nothing nicer then owning a good book or getting a card from a friend or loved one, or a letter to read and tuck away just for the sake of having it, to be brought out later to take a walk down memory lane with.

I fear the day of the written letter seems to be almost over.

Unlike a picture being taken, to save for all times for future generations to find and no longer wonder what great, great grandfather looked like, one day there might not be a letter for future generations to find, to document that we were here.

No finding a letter of love hidden away by a great, great grandmother, or from someone writing home to say how much they miss being with the family.

For one looking through the past these little things are like a treasure.

To find an old picture of a relative that someone has told you stories of, is of course a wonderful find, but to find something hand written by them, years and years after the fact, is a great find.

Think of it. Something to go along with that picture, something to help you feel like you know them. Something to relate to. To give that picture a soul.

Whether it is a love letter, secretly hidden away or a letter to or from a dear friend of theirs, it gives you an insight into that person.
A persons writings can tell you so much about them. Their happiness, their sadness, their kindness, their life. It can give you an understanding of who they really were, what they were really like. It adds meaning to that picture.

I find it sad that one day they may all disappear. That one day a letter or a book may become something that is viewed only in a museum. Perhaps even paper as we know it, a thing of the past.

When I was very young my father had an uncle that used to come to visit us and my Aunt Mary. We lived in California.
He was very old, but every once in a while Uncle Louie would make the drive from Arizona to California to visit. I loved it when he came to visit. He would tell stories of his past and even of his present.
Outrageous stories about his adventures through life. He was a detective, so he said.
We often wondered which stories were real and which ones where fantasy's of his imagination.
I remember the first time he told me about his old dog that he claimed had an eye that would fall out and just hang there, I gasped in horror and he said it's o.k. when it happens I just put it back in and he's fine.

As far as I know Uncle Louie was never married and had no children.
Alas, one day he died by hiself, all alone.

To our surprise he had planned for this day and had left instructions as to who to notify in case of his death. It was to be my Aunt Mary and so she left to take care of things.

When she arrived she found his home to be nothing more then a modest little broken down shack in the middle of nowhere, but upon entering, she found it to be his kingdom of treasures.

Inside she found a large trunk and in the trunk she found out more about Uncle Louie then any of us ever imagined.
The trunk was full, of his life. Everything in it told a story. There was old bank notes and old bonds, commendations (for what I never found out) and credentials,(he had been a detective) and correspondence lots of it.
Letters, lots of letters, from important people and government officials and presidents long since gone.

I still think about this small built, grey haired little old man from time to time and how I missed the visits and the stories.

Oddly, the stories that he told were fun to hear but nothing of any great importance . He never bragged on the things that were found in the trunk.

We never would have known the truth if no one had ever found -- the letters.


Inspired by 'Shirazi' .