Mom’s Letters

At some point during a recent night, during one of those not quite sleep, but not quite awake phases, I realized I could take another pass through mom’s correspondence. I had targets. Yeah, that sounds a little harsh, and I don’t mean for it to.

There were at least 6” of letters between mom and someone she worked with at the university. They spent years writing after we moved north and her colleague left the university. I’ve researched accessors’ websites in counties where the colleague lived, looking up the addresses this person wrote from. Electronic records don’t go back that far. The university doesn’t list staff from back in the 70’s. The real limiter here is I don’t have a last name. This person isn’t listed in any of mom’s address books. Out the letters go. Sigh.

Another stack of letters I let go of were between mom and her college roommate. Billie was a fixture of my childhood, and even cooked at summer camp once! Her kids also went to camp, tho not as consistently as I did, were a little younger than me, and we stayed in touch until the mid ‘90’s. Most recently, I contacted her son, who lives north of us, when mom passed. I wanted to let Billie know. Her son let me know Billie was living in care near his family, with dementia. I offered that telling her about mom’s passing would serve no good purpose. He agreed. I kept one of her letters where she talked about a mutual friend of their’s influence in her (Billie’s) life, as well as my mom’s influence. No, I didn’t read each letter! Being really good at pattern recognition, I was able to pick out names as I glanced at that particular letter. 💕

I learned that a few folks are gone, one on the same day as mom, and also from a stroke. Marie and her husband were artists and had four kids who were my playmates. I let go of her letters. I found, in the wine case box that was suppose to be all one person (not), there were additional letters from her bestie. And that they passed letters from other people back and forth to each other. Including his (bestie’s) former wife, with whom my mom wrote the most. Yeah, a flowchart would help, but I’m not gonna do it.

It felt a little other worldly going through this correspondence. Particularly the parts where my mom is grousing about me to her friends. Yeah, I was no perfect angel teenager (does that exist? Should it?), but her perspective was kinda hurtful in the moment. And seemed very self centered. Odd feeling scolded from the grave 🤣. From here, two hours later, all this feels very normal on both our parts 😏.

Learning things about my parent’s friends that maybe their children would be better not knowing was a little odd. Or more to the point, that my parent’s friends shared with my parents about their children. Nothing but concern and worry, and yet, those kids don’t need to know my mom new their uterus was compromised…

I am so very impressed with the amount of time my mom put into keeping in touch. And that, for the most part, she kept a copy of every letter she wrote… Postage was cheap, email didn’t exist (at first), and God could she write.

It felt good to edit. I’m sure dad kept mom distracted with a double martini and a heavenly gallery opening so she couldn’t focus on my latest transgression… 😂