By Lisa Kulka
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.
~Phyllis Theroux
My grandmother's eightieth birthday was approaching and I was at a loss as to what to give her. She had recently moved into a nursing home and didn't have room for extra "stuff." She insisted that she didn't need a thing.
To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.
~Phyllis Theroux
My grandmother's eightieth birthday was approaching and I was at a loss as to what to give her. She had recently moved into a nursing home and didn't have room for extra "stuff." She insisted that she didn't need a thing.
Finally, I came up with an idea. In her birthday card, I sent her a gift certificate for "A letter a week for the next year!" It was a big commitment. I've never been much of a letter writer, but now I was living far from home, and should be able to find plenty of news. Growing up just a mile from my grandparents, we'd always been close. I knew that she'd love to hear what was going on in my life.
The letter gift certificate was a huge hit. She got fifty-two letters that first year. Some were long and filled with homesickness. Others were short and newsy. More than once what she received was just a funny card with a few short lines. All showed her that I was thinking of her regularly.
As her next birthday rolled around, she asked for another letter gift certificate for her birthday. In fact, that's also what she wanted for her next eight birthdays.
For nine and a half years I wrote her. She was rarely able to write back. So much happened in those nine years! At first I wrote about the cold Michigan winters and working on my graduate degree. Then I wrote about my pregnancy, which turned out to be twins! We lived in four different places during those years and I described them all. During the boys' preschool years I shared every funny thing they did and said, and as they grew they started adding "picture letters" to the envelope. I sent postcard letters from vacations.
I flew home annually to visit and soon realized that the entire nursing home staff knew all the details of my life, as more and more often they were reading the letters to her.
My last letter arrived the day after her death. I've always wanted relationships with no regrets. None of that "I wish I had told her I loved her" for me! I felt I had given her the best gift I could.
What I hadn't counted on was how her gift would come back full-circle to me.
Months later, while going through her things, my dad found a box full of her correspondence. It was filled with letters from me. Those letters are a journal of my life. Some were unremarkable. Others were filled with moments and pictures I had completely forgotten. Such as on May 22, 1997, when I told her that the twins were having Western day at preschool and that when I explained to three-year-old Ben that the boys would be dressing up as cowboys he asked, "Will the girls be dressing up as cows?" Funny, I don't remember that. In some ways it seems I missed those years due to motherly exhaustion. She saved those memories for me in my letters.
Life really does fly by. Loved ones come and go. But sometimes our gifts to others come back to us in unexpected ways. This is one of those times.
The letter gift certificate was a huge hit. She got fifty-two letters that first year. Some were long and filled with homesickness. Others were short and newsy. More than once what she received was just a funny card with a few short lines. All showed her that I was thinking of her regularly.
As her next birthday rolled around, she asked for another letter gift certificate for her birthday. In fact, that's also what she wanted for her next eight birthdays.
For nine and a half years I wrote her. She was rarely able to write back. So much happened in those nine years! At first I wrote about the cold Michigan winters and working on my graduate degree. Then I wrote about my pregnancy, which turned out to be twins! We lived in four different places during those years and I described them all. During the boys' preschool years I shared every funny thing they did and said, and as they grew they started adding "picture letters" to the envelope. I sent postcard letters from vacations.
I flew home annually to visit and soon realized that the entire nursing home staff knew all the details of my life, as more and more often they were reading the letters to her.
My last letter arrived the day after her death. I've always wanted relationships with no regrets. None of that "I wish I had told her I loved her" for me! I felt I had given her the best gift I could.
What I hadn't counted on was how her gift would come back full-circle to me.
Months later, while going through her things, my dad found a box full of her correspondence. It was filled with letters from me. Those letters are a journal of my life. Some were unremarkable. Others were filled with moments and pictures I had completely forgotten. Such as on May 22, 1997, when I told her that the twins were having Western day at preschool and that when I explained to three-year-old Ben that the boys would be dressing up as cowboys he asked, "Will the girls be dressing up as cows?" Funny, I don't remember that. In some ways it seems I missed those years due to motherly exhaustion. She saved those memories for me in my letters.
Life really does fly by. Loved ones come and go. But sometimes our gifts to others come back to us in unexpected ways. This is one of those times.
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