Fifty-nine letters, bound by a brittle rubber band, saved in a dresser drawer for a half-century. Letters sent by my father to my mother at her family home in Chicago during World War II, written in his own hand on US Navy letterhead, the precise print of an engineer, angled slightly to the right.
Yellowed on the edges but otherwise pristine, each tucked in its envelope with care. Personal letters, private letters, too painful to touch.
Dad gave them to me one year after mom’s agonising death from breast cancer. The next day, my despondent father, who could not eat or sleep, and would not come out of the basement, invited her childhood friend on a date. And married her.
How does grief end on day 366? Does it slip into a compartment under lock and key?
I could not even look at the letters for 30 years, let alone read them. They sat on a wardrobe shelf in a dusty box marked “Mementos of Mom” until dad’s final year on earth, after the death of his second wife.