Letters

On Saturday, my family buried my grandmother Joyce Lind in Tilden. She died Wednesday after a short illness. She was 91. 

Meanwhile, I’m 1100 miles away, hiking in Glacier National Park. How is that for family devotion? Pretty shitty granddaughter if you ask me. 

I did have enough time to get back to Nebraska for the funeral, thanks to my Mom, who kept me updated throughout. (Thank you, Mom.) And clearly I harbor some guilt about not being there. But mostly I am comfortable with my decision. I spent 10 days in Tilden before we departed on this adventure, and I visited Grandma three times while there. I do wish I would have stayed a little longer each time, held her hand a bit more, told her a few more things—like how much I appreciated the quilt she made for me, in collaboration with my maternal aunt, Letha. But that’s another story.

Grandma Joyce and great-granddaughter

Joyce gave me a lot of things, actually. For example, I have her strong, almost perverse conservation ethic. I used to laugh at her for saving for her plants the water she drained off boiled potatoes. Now I often do the same thing. Rex gives me hell for it, but he and I both dream of building a greywater system for our next home. 

I don’t think she realized how subversive this was, but Joyce also gave me Ranger Rick, the kid’s magazine of the National Wildlife Federation. I pored over those issues, and I credit them in part with teaching me the inherent value of nature, even if and when there is no money in making space for it. 

But after reflecting on it for the past few days, I realize the thing I will miss most from Grandma will be her letters. They were not exactly well-written, although Joyce did have an above-average command of the English language. Her notes and cards were magical because they were, well, her, revealed on the blue-lined page. She wrote about what she thought about, including the weather, the crops, her garden, her family, the work she needed to complete, her own shortcomings. Each letter would contain at least two weather reports, maybe more, as she started a note then returned to it later in the day or week. Every missive also contained a minimum of one apology for not writing sooner—never mind that I never returned her letters any faster than she did—as well as a critique of her own handwriting. I loved her handwriting because she would occasionally include shorthand notions, evidence of her time at an Omaha secretarial school. 

I saved Joyce’s letters, as I do all letters. How could I discard a piece of someone who cared enough to put themselves on the page and send themselves to me? And that’s what a good letter is—some else being there, with me. Yes, I know—printed symbols on the page are not an adequate substitute for physical presence. But we would all feel less alone, I think, if we embraced the art of the letter, which, at its best, transports the author into the presence of the reader. 

Smart people have offered much deeper thoughts on this topic, and savvy ones in my field are now thinking about handwriting versus mass printing versus digital communication, and how our experience of the other and the self changes between media. And maybe that is why we love Web 2.0 so much--it transports more effectively and efficiently than does a written letter. I touched on this briefly in my dissertation, and I hope to return to it someday.

Right now, though, I really wish I had some of Grandma’s letters.