Day #43 Writing Through COVID-19: Letters and Forgiveness

My sister Adrienne writes to my parents daily: good old-fashioned hand-written letters in stamped envelopes delivered by the noble USPS. These letters arrive at noon, filled with details of her day: her grandbaby has learned to shake his head yes and no; she saw cardinals out her window; she remembered a song my mother used to sing.

Handwritten letters are something of a motif in my mother's life. When she was in college, her English-teaching mother would correct errors in my mother's letters and return them to her. (Not a happy letter memory, but a lasting one.) My parents' courtship inched forward week by week through letters between Michigan and Iowa. In the '00s, my mom was slow to accept email, which she saw as a pernicious attack on the merit of handwritten missives. We children would send her email; she would answer via snail mail.

So the daily letters from Adrienne are a gesture of honoring something my mother has valued, not unlike me bringing my mother her meds in a tiny teacup. We are trying to tell her we have noticed and absorbed small treasures of her life.

But because my sister writes daily, the letters are piling up! My mother tucks them neatly back into their envelopes, then stacks them on the TV console, or the ping-pong table, or the bookshelf.

I thought a three-ring binder could organize the letters and allow my mom to leaf back through them at her convenience. I gathered the letters and made quick work of stripping off their envelopes, sorting them by date.

"I had them all in order," my mom said quietly.

I barreled on: "This will help you keep them all in one place!" I was so busy being pleased with my own idea, my mother needed to repeat herself to make her point.

"I had them in order. I wanted to save them so Adrienne can have them when I die."

"Oh yes! That's why I'm putting them in this folder!" I stammered.

"I had them all in order."
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It was too late to stop my runaway train. The grand letter-reorganization was nearly finished.

But my mom was sad, and that made me sad too. I had good intentions, but sometimes that's not enough. I should have just provided her with a shoebox, or better yet, ASKED her if she wanted help storing the letters in one place.

I reached out and put my hand over hers.

"I was trying to help," I said, "I'm sorry."

She lay her hand over mine. "I know," she said.

Enough.
Stay well.
Write.

Allison