“Tried to summon all that my heart finds true
And send it in my letter to you”

The words of Bruce Springsteen in LETTER TO YOU

Eight years back, when we were going through Mum’s house we came across a letter. Not to us, but still a letter. A decades old letter that indicated Dad had been married and divorced before he met Mum. We had no idea. Without finding that letter we would never have found out. I can imagine asking Mum …..

Why didn’t you or Dad mention this small fact…..

And I can already hear Mum’s response ‘Well you never asked dear, now go and put the kettle on, there is an old Clark Gable movie starting on the telly in a couple of minutes…..”

A friend in the village once told me that after his partner died he found a LETTER. A beautiful letter from his partner which talked about unbreakable love, wonderful times, happy memories and the best of times. The letter also talked about starting again, finding happiness, living life and maybe love again.

Definitely summoning all that my heart finds true.

I found a LETTER TO ME. With trepidation I opened the letter addressed to me. Not from the end but from a few years back. My partner liked to go on overseas solo adventures and I guess before every trip she wrote a letter just in case the worst happened. One of those letters had become hidden in other stuff and had become long forgotten.

I didn’t find too many expressions of love, no heartfelt messages. This LETTER TO ME basically reminded me to

  • Inform X,Y and Z.
  • To stop her Accountancy Subscription Fees.
  • Cancel her hair and dentist appointments.
  • To check her clothes pockets before I take them to the charity shop.
  • Make sure I clean her car out properly before I sell it.
  • Don’t forget to paint the front door.
  • Remember to put the bins out on a Tuesday…..

Not sure that’s the kind of thing Bruce was writing about in his song.

32 thoughts on “Letter to you”

  4. Oh, I find that utterly beautiful. A letter from the reality of a shared life. I never wrote such letters when I went away from family as I don’t believe I was thinking about the worst. My late sister liked to remind me who I should contact if the worst happened to her on a trip — her lawyer and friend, who had written her will. When she got glioblastoma, there was plenty of warning for her lawyer and for all of us hoping against hope until the end.

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  5. It’s not that I don’t think of dying — I actually think about it all the time — but those around me will know I’m gone, and very few of them need to be told. No songs of love to anyone, my partner will want to grieve in her own way if she survives me.
    The letter I did write — well, more of a post — is to my Word Press friends. If I suddenly disappear from WP I want them to know I am gone. The thing is, my partner knows nothing about how to Word Press, though I wrote the instructions out tor her, but will she remember to look for them? If not, please forgive her. I tried…

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  7. Oh I love your wife. That is the sort of letter I’d leave. My kids always say that I would lie on my death bed giving them a list of instructions. Yes I think I would have got on well with your wife. Hugs Xx

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  10. But very practical. I keep a book in my drawer that says on the cover: I’m Dead. Now What. It is full of very useful information that is so valuable to whoever is left.

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  11. I love a letter. After my grandmother died we found all sorts of things tucked into her office drawers. I can lose an hour reading through faded letters from relatives I’ve never met, even the boring conversation about whatever random thing happened that week feel special in a letter from years ago.

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  13. I had a bit of a chuckle at the contents of the letter, Gary. Such pragmatic things that our loved ones tend to worry about. But nonetheless, I bet these words are so treasured as well as they connect the different moments of time into a thread. You really want me to do a deep dive into Springsteen now!

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