Love Letters

Family history and family artifacts are pretty cool to me. We have some beautiful glasses that are 100+ years old!! I just think it is so incredible to think how many people used or owned something and all it "saw". The old "if walls could talk" idea.

Recently, my grandmother found a box of letters. Not just any letters. These were written from her mother to her father back in WWII when he was away in D.C. I think they might span a little bit after that as well. You see that handwriting! Both sides of the paper; multiple pages. That's the kind of letters these are! What a find!

There is so much about these letters that touch my heart. I've been a letter writer myself since I was seven years old. I save every letter I've ever been sent. I love getting mail. These files of letters are some of my most precious possessions.

My great-grandmother took the time to write long letters to her husband. She was filling him in on the life events he was missing. She starts her letters off with endearments like "darling" and "sweetest". If you scroll down, you get an idea of the massive amount of letters we are talking about by the size of the box. My great-grandfather saved every letter it seems!

To me, this is true love. This is romance. This is marriage. He cherished these letters and then, after he died much too soon, she saved them for the rest of her life. Now, my grandmother has these and can read about times she doesn't even remember or wasn't alive for. She can read about her brothers when they were young. My dad and uncle and my brothers and I can all glimpse into the past that we learned about as history but our relative lived. Do you see how cool this is?

These letters are history preserved.

I know writing letters is kind of old fashioned but I am thankful for the letters from the past and I want to keep the tradition alive if I can. Do you write letters? Do you like receiving letters? Maybe you can bless someone today with a short note. I know they'd love hearing from you!