Written Bliss

Letter writing is an old fashioned habit that’s having a tough time competing with the instant satisfaction available from email and text messaging. However, for people who grew up receiving real letters and cards while away from home, there will always be a place for the old fashioned letter.

Every so often I will open a drawer and find a letter from my grandmother who died over 15 years ago. I’ll stop, read the letter, and remember who I was when the letter was written. In the days before email brought us instant communication, people wrote letters when they wanted to communicate and those letters were a tactile reminder that someone out there cared enough to sit down and write me a letter. I probably wasn’t as good of a correspondent as my grandmother would have liked, but she saved all my letters along with everyone else’s. After she passed away, we found a box filled with letters she’d received from her family and reading those letters was like reading a history of our family. There were letters from my mother right after I was born talking about the cute things I was doing, there were letters from my aunts detailing the goings on in their lives, there were letters from me as a child, and there were letters I wrote from college. The college letters were carefully sanitized so that grandma didn’t know all the trouble her little darling was getting into, but there were stories about my classmates and teachers that I’d forgotten.

Letters are a way to share our lives with those we love and to let people know that we’re thinking of them. Right before my Uncle Gene died, I sent him and my Aunt Ethel a postcard from Mt. Fuji to let them know I was thinking of them and to share the joy I was feeling about seeing one of the most spiritual places on earth. A few days after the funeral, my mom called to tell me that my Aunt had gotten my postcard and that it meant a lot to her to know that I’d been thinking of her and my uncle even while I was visiting Japan. Right then and there I decided that I’d make as much of an effort as possible to put my thoughts in writing and let my family and friends know how much I love them and that I was thinking of them.

I sent a lot of cards and letters when my dad was sick in the hospital, including one where I’d taken a picture of his dog Blue, put it on a card, and then written a letter from Blue’s perspective. My dad thought that was the most wonderful card that he’d ever gotten and it followed him from hospital room to hospital room. I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I would have liked with my dad before he died, but knowing I was able to bring him joy via cards and letters helped ease my guilt over not being by his bedside.

The letters I sent my mom right after my dad died–and keep sending–helped keep her going in those dark days when she was coming to grips with the fact that the man she’d shared 44 years of her life with was no longer by her side. The letters weren’t all long, in fact most of them were just a quick note card, but they made her realize that she was loved and that people cared about her. I tried to send note cards that I knew would mean something to her. For instance, I sent a card with eagles along with a note that said my dad was still watching over her. He’d loved to go out along the Mississippi and watch the eagles in the days before he died.

One of my blissmakers was to send cards to people I care about and I spent some time this afternoon at my desk writing cards to people I love. I sent a card to my mom with a quote about how inspiring art is because she starts her first art class in a few days, I sent a note to my childhood best friend reminding her of the love and laughter we shared hanging out at her grandmother’s, and I sent a note to my husband with a picture of “his building” downtown Chicago and a note that I was so proud of him for achieving his dream of living in the burbs and working downtown. It didn’t take me more than an hour to write three heartfelt notes, but I know that the joy they will bring to their recipients will brighten their entire day.

My kids think it is tremendously silly that I go to the trouble and expense to mail them and their dad cards when I could just give them the cards. However, I know the joy that comes from opening the mail box and finding a real live card and I’m hoping that someday they’ll find a note from me stuck in a book or a drawer and they’ll know that someone took the time to write them a note to let them know they were loved.