You've got mail

There are too many of them.

Too many to sort. Too many to read. Too many to save.

And yet, they are a lifeline of letters. A cache of history spanning several generations that have been stashed in our family home for years, tucked in closets, corners of the garage, and any nook and cranny that would hold them. Boxes and boxes of them overflowing with love and tears and joy and the activities of the times.

One batch of them came with our family's move to Aurora in 1954. Over the years, more were added to that group and stayed on when my widowed mother retired to Ohio over 24 years ago and my brother bought the home from her.

Now 54 years later, the home is leaving the family as my brother is moving away. It is time for the letters to go.

But what to do with them? None of us knew how many had been kept. Out of sight, out of mind.

And so when my brother kept uncovering boxes and boxes of them, the task became almost overwhelming. One look at the musty cardboard containers and dust covered letters and practical folks would have pitched them without a second thought.

But we have never been a practical clan. Our creative curiosity got the better of us, and we began to take a peek.

Amazingly, it immediately became apparent our random picks were uncanny, as though the letters were still speaking to us all these many years later.

As we sat at the kitchen table in the light of the early summer sun, my mother and I began to examine the contents of one of the first boxes. Scanning through the group, I pulled one out. It was a letter from my aunt to my mother years ago, and because my 88-year-old mother can no longer see well, I read it to her.

It was filled with good cheer and the happy chatter that my aunt, now deceased, so often wrote over the decades to her sister three states away.

"Oh, I how I have been longing to hear from my sister," my mother said as she sat beside me. "And here is a letter from her like it was written yesterday."

That was only the beginning.

Here was a long letter from my grandfather to my father on his 21st birthday in 1936 welcoming him officially to manhood. In it he wished his son endless happiness in the years ahead, offered up wisdom for life, congratulated him on meeting some secret goal between them, and sent him into the future with endless love and devotion.

No wonder my father kept it.

Here was a l944 love letter from my mother to my father serving over seas during WWII describing her day, making plans for the year ahead, and lovingly longing for his return.

Here were boxes of get well letters to my grandmother in 1953 offering her courage and faith in her struggle with cancer and a follow-up box of sympathy cards upon her death.

Soon the boxes of letters began to move into the next generation giving insight into my siblings and my growing up years. Gratefully, my younger sister arrived on the scene to help out.

In her perusing, she found a hilarious epistle written by me from camp in 1960.

It is an amazing tale recounting a fellow camper's insistence that she "saw a great big round light way up in the sky and it would light up everything and would stay there for about 5 seconds--. I didn't see it because I had a headache and didn't want to see it."

I go on to write that in the morning another camper tells me she saw a "man in a white suit and hat look in my window- but I know it isn't true."

Apparently, I liked reporting interesting events at an early age.

Another fun find from my past was a letter from my grandmother in 1958 describing our stay together at our cabin in northern Wisconsin. She writes to my parents that I am good about swimming down at the lake only when older adults are around. However, I have a problem remembering time even though I have pinned my wristwatch to my beach robe.

"So you were having trouble being on time even back then," remarked my husband, a prompt creature if there ever was one, who has put up with my time idiosyncrasy for 38 years of marriage.

Other finds among the letters included small books of love poems from a cherished boyfriend of my older sister over 40 years ago; endless business transactions, old wills, legal letters, resumes, and banking papers that unraveled some family mysteries and created others; joyful letters from friends sending happy welcomes to the newest baby in the family; news from aunts, uncles, cousins, fathers, mothers and grandparents graced with good wishes of the day; and a remarkable memoir from an unknown great uncle describing his family farm at the turn of the century and their oxen "Buck and Board" plowing the prairie.

Even my mother, the main keeper of all these letter, muttered an "Egad!" as yet another box was hauled to the table to sort through. The question, of course, is why in the world they were kept all these years.

My brother-in-law, a history professor, remarked it almost seems disrespectful to the writer to throw them away. We all agreed. Someone after all, was thinking of you, had taken the time to gather pen and paper, sit down and write, find a stamp, and post it in the mail often timed to the mailman's schedule.

Nowadays, of course, letter writing has disappeared in favor of e-mail, text messaging, or a cell phone call. And although these are the communications of the times, there is definitely something missing.

Foremost is a paper trail of lives lived.

For despite the dusty work and emotional roller coaster that these letters sent us on, the ones we randomly selected to read ironically spoke to each of us as though they were meant to be discovered, to bring renewed truth and remembrance.

And yet beneath the many laughs and funny finds there rode an undercurrent of sadness. Life, we all know, does not always turn out as we had anticipated. So many of the good wishes for joy and success written so lovingly to the letter recipient did not come true.

Failures, illness, death, financial reversal, love lost, personal struggles, and various disappointments often replaced the hoped for happiness.

Despite the setbacks, however, there are a myriad of blessings. A continual, overriding theme of joy in embracing everyday simplicities dominates; humor persists; awareness and appreciation in the beauty of God's natural world continues; and most importantly, faith holds onto the future.

Finding these letters offered testimonies to lives lived fully with the best of efforts no matter what the circumstances. Most obvious were the strong bonds of love that made a difference.

Yet today, the message these missives send across the decades as I read them is loud and clear.

Make peace with the past. Let it go.

And by doing so, we can open our hearts with faith to the paths of light and love that lie ahead.

Joy awaits.