I attended a funeral this week. One of my dearest friends grandmother left us, aged 87, to join her husband at the pearly gates (I assume that’s where they were reunited, I am not overly religious but Joyce was, thus I choose to think she is with her beloved husband somewhere she believed existed).
As I sat there and listened to the priest talk about Joyce, he told the story of how she met her husband. It was 1944, she lived in Marrickville in NSW and she was walking to work with her sister. She stumbled upon a letter which had fallen out of someone’s pocket. It was addressed to the man who would later become her husband, stationed in Papua New Guinea with an Australian battalion. It had fallen out of his brothers pocket on the way to post it. Joyce’s sister suggested writing a note before posting it on, which Joyce did. A few weeks later she received a letter from him and a pen pal friendship ensued for 12 months. Then, while on a weeks’ leave, he visited Joyce, and the rest is history. They married in 1946 and were together until he passed away in 1990.
My point here is I miss the writing of and receiving letters. I had penfriends galore growing up and used to write pages and pages. These days I am lucky to receive a Christmas card in the post let alone a letter written by hand (I still send Christmas cards, ready to be posted so they arrive at their destination on the 1st of December, yes I know, who has time for that, well I do!), actually in this day and age birthday cards seem to be a thing of the past too..
What with the likes of Facebook, Skype, Twitter and other social networking sites, I guess it is passé to send things via “snail” mail. But sometimes when I see something sticking out of the letter box, my heart leaps and for a split second I wonder who has written me a letter.. Then when I reach the letter box, it is a bill or junk mail…
Oh well, just quietly I will continue to live for the day a hand written letter arrives in the mail. Till then I’ll keep blogging.
No comments:
Post a Comment