About a year ago, my mom passed away due to pancreatic cancer. After she was diagnosed with cancer, I moved in to help her and spent the last 6 months of her life with her. It was a very special time with her that I’ll never forget.
After she passed away, I waited a few months for the inevitable, but at some point I knew I had to clean out her office. It was her “special” place where she did her writing, kept her mail, paid her bills, etc. I had rarely ever set foot in that office for decades. She always kept it locked as it had all things important to her in it.
The office was stuffed full of 84 years of life’s things. It took some time to even begin to figure out how to clean it all out and yet keep the important things. Shelf by shelf, box by box, drawer by drawer, I began to separate things to throw or keep. Within a few hours I found some special things like her baptism certificate, wedding license, her 1950 yearbook, tons of old photos and even her high school diploma. It was amazing seeing these things for the first time in my life. I even found a mother’s day card that my mom had given to her mom. She probably kept it when she cleaned out her mother’s office. It was exhausting emotionally to go through so many of her things. It was past midnight and I was about done cleaning for the day but unexpectedly I came across two locked wooden cedar boxes. Eureka! My curiosity and excitement was exploding because I thought there must be something of great value in these two boxes. Both had keyholes but after some hunting around, I couldn’t find any keys that would open them. I used a large screwdriver to pry the first one open. What I found was a treasure trove of love letters she had written!
The first wooden box contained over 50 love letters that my mom had written to my dad before they were married. Each letter was a time capsule with words and sayings we don’t use anymore from around the 1949 – 1951 timeframe, the year they were married. Each letter was meticulously dated and each was stored in order, oldest to newest, up to the very last one dated 10 days before they married. The last words on the last love letter written to my dad before they were married were “God bless you my honey”. There was one additional item in the box, a small plastic bag with a lock of my mother’s hair in it. My mom had red hair and the lock of hair was still a vibrant red. I was surprised that it wasn’t faded in color.
The second box contained about another 50 love letters that my dad had written to my mom. It was an amazing view into the world that they lived in. Both lived on farms and so much of the letters were about the crops and the weather and family get-togethers. I haven’t read all the letters, but over time I will. The last words on the last love letter written to my mom before they were married were “I prayed to God for a good wife and mother, and my prayer has been answered”. My parents were married for 64 years when my mother passed away. She was the best mother I could ever have. My dad is still alive but very old and his memory sometimes fades. Sometimes he asks, where is mom? I tell him, she’s all around us, then my dad remembers her passing, then nods and says after a long pause, yes.
Beautiful story.
Thank you for sharing your story!
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Awesome story. I remember when I was just a child I used to go do small tasks for my grandmother who was first generation here in the U.S. I was only like 10 years old but I could sit there for an hour and listen to some of her stroies about the way things were when she was my age. And she was in her early 70's at the time she was telling me these stories. Those letters and things you have are valuable simply because they are so rare. I doubt we will ever go back to the time when we wrote letters like that to each other. Hold on to them as they are even more valuable that what you were "hoping for" when you tore into those boxes. :-)
Powerful and touching story thank you for sharing, our family had similar when our parents moved into a home my sister and brothers cleaned out the old house and when I returned home on my next visit my sister shared with me some little books our mum had written for each of us like a dairy of us from babies, when they both passed a few years later I came across the book again and it triggered such emotions but also wonderful memories
beautiful and very emotional story...