Here is one first posted June 2009
Number One son’s rooting around in the bookshelves this
morning unearthed a letter from my Mother dated 7 May 1993: ten years and four
months before she died.
I did what I used to do when she was able to write regularly
and sat down and read it over breakfast.
All the usual stuff was there:
how the flowers were doing in the garden; who was doing what amongst our
family and friends; and how “despite the lying weather forecasters we’ve had
some really lovely days.” For a few moments
it was as if she was back with us again, full of character and with all her
faculties intact.
It was particularly poignant because, in my mind, we lost
Mother long before she died, as Alzheimer’s slowly took away first her ability
to write and finally her power of speech.
Letters were particularly important to Mother. She once told me that as a girl she went to a
fortuneteller who said “I see letters coming to you, thousands and thousands of
them.”
She was right.
Mother left home to become a WAAF in 1939 when letters and
postcards were the only means of communication for most people (only the
wealthy and professionals had telephones).
She and Dad met in 1940 and married in 1941. They were both in the RAF so were frequently
apart but wrote to each other every day instead.
When my Big Brother was born in 1943 Mother returned to
Benton, where Big Sister was born in 1944.
When peace broke out they all moved to the first of many RAF married
quarters.
So Mother’s letters home, and
to her in-laws, continued.
Middle Sister
arrived in 1949 and I landed in 1956.
Mother once showed me the letter Grampa Boyd wrote on my birth saying
“another beautiful daughter – won’t it be exciting when the girls grow up and
all the young gentlemen start calling.” A tiny glimpse of his Edwardian family life.
In 1958 we settled in the Boyd family home in Wales so there
were regular letters to and from her family in Benton. Auntie Edna was a good letter writer too and
Mum always read her letters out loud to us (possible edited to protect our
innocent ears).
At the beginning of the 1960s Big Brother left home to join
the RAF,
Big Sister went off to teacher training college and a whole new world
of letters opened up, and were read out.
Big Brother’s letters usually included a cartoon (something he continues
in birthday cards). In 1969
Middle Sister went to the Cardiff Royal Infirmary to do nursing. She came home a lot of weekends but was
expected to write too even after we got a ‘phone.
In 1975 I flew the nest to Newcastle University and, despite
Sunday ‘phonecalls, wrote home almost every week. This correspondence continued until the late
1990s when Mother’s increasing confusion caused her writing to become almost
illegible.
It was around this time that Big and Middle Sisters took on
the Herculean task of ‘sorting out’ the family home. Boyds had lived there since it was built in
1926 and we are hoarders. They found
thousands of letters. In 2003 they got
four big boxes, marked each one with one of our names and sorted the letters
into them.
We each now have almost every letter we wrote home to Mum;
unique and wonderful archives of our lives.
Occasionally I dig one out and am amazed at the things I wrote. I would never have told her about some of the
incidents to her face. One of these days
I shall sort mine chronologically and read my own story.
Nor have I thrown Mum’s letters away. They just got shoved
in drawers and used as bookmarks. Like
this morning, every now and again one drops into my hand and Mum is with me
again.
Not the helpless and confused old
lady in the care home who could hardly talk but my Mum, with all her health,
strength and humour.
The moral of this story is:
never throw letters from loved ones away. File them away in a box if you’re a
neatnick. Because someday in the far
distant future you, or someone else, will find them and know that person again
and remember how much you were loved.
This is quite lovely.
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