With Some Memories Come Sadness

As I tidied my computer room/ office I found several cards, letters, and notes that stirred many wonderful and achingly poignant memories. Most of them were sad with an occasional smile stirred into the mix. I said tidied, because there are stacks of photos, notes, folders, and manuscripts of tales and poetry to go through. Surfaces still lined with dust.

I decided to get rid of old Christmas cards, birthday cards, and thank you cards that will have no meaning for others, but a valentine card signed by my granddaughters Celine and Moriah was reason for a pleasant memories in the stack of cards that I’m keeping. There are cards and letters from loved ones that will stay as well. The oldest was from a fellow corpsman and friend I met in Orlando Florida. Although he was a raging Liberal hippie type, we became friends. He was reassigned to Field Medical Training School to be with Marines, during the Vietnam Conflict. He wrote me with his address and when I wrote back. I used his full name, Charles Felix Scott. His return mail thanked me for letting everyone and God know, including fellow Marines that his middle name was Felix. Sorry Scotty. If you see this, write back. I’ve lost contact with him.

The next card and letter was from Cousin Liz Moore. We were about the same age and always liked to be around each other until her family moved to Ohio. We still kept close with letters and cards. She has since passed away. The hardest thought for me to bear was when I sent a letter at Christmas to her and received a card with her obituary from her husband telling me that she’d died several months before. I get choked up thinking about it.

The last card and letter inside was from a former pastor and dear friend. His birthday and mine were close in March. We would go to lunch and hit places that had annual book sales. He was an avid reader and bibliophile. He’d been a missionary in South Korea and left our church to teach other missionaries at a college in North Carolina. Even after he moved, we would visit at least once a year. I always would find a book that I knew he would enjoy. He was a dedicated servant of God with a desire to the reach the lost people in Madagascar so remote he would need to be flown in by helicopter. On the day before his departure, he died and is sorely missed. Good bye Pastor Norm.

I can’t read any of the letters for now; there is too much sadness there.