My mother kept every letter, card, and message that I ever sent her. When she died my brothers and I cleaned out her house and claimed our childhood relics. For three years my cards and letters sat in boxes in my back bedroom. It doesn’t seem right to throw them away, but what am I supposed to do with them? I’ve decided to set aside an hour a week to start to organize and read through them. If they are as uninteresting as I think they are, I can throw them away with a clean conscience. Once a week I will post on my progress.
Maybe I’ll throw them away. Maybe I’ll find insight. Maybe I’ll find inspiration. Maybe I’ll just organize this one small part of my inheritance from my mother. It’s a journey I need to take, if only to spare my children the burden when they inherit the leftovers of my life.
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Good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went through my own mother's box of my childhood letters to her, it was too poignant for me to bear, and I chucked the whole box.
But then, I don't have children or grandchildren.
I well remember sitting on the side of my grandmother's bed while she read her childhood diary to me. "Pa killed the pig today." I was enchanted.
I've also got just such a big box of letters - I've lived away from my mother for more than thirty years (I live in Cape Town,south Africa); she passed away last year (in the UK) and I am meaning to go through all those letters. I have vowed though, to destroy any, which criticise my dad all the time. For all that, they were married for almost 70 years and he was devoted to her.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. Seems wrong somehow to throw them out, doesn't it. What about making a little book for each grandchild, with the pictures and notes, then write a story to go along with them?
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