A Voice from the Past

I was at my dad's house yesterday. I was looking at my parents' wedding album and I found an unfinished letter in it. The letter was dated 11/5/05 and was written by my mother. I suspect it was in the album because they were living at my brother's at the time and I had found the album intact at their house post Katrina and had brought it to her. Anyway it was to a cousin she hadn't seen in years and was kind of a recap of her life since leaving for college. She talked about their Air Force years as being good ones and about moving to Long Beach and falling in love with the place. She talked about her diagnosis and the fact that at that point she really couldn't do anything. I suspect she was going to write more but that's about the time her REAL downward spiral started--not that she had been well for a long time, but she was in the hospital about that time, had bronchitis at Thanksgiving that year, was able to enjoy Christmas but ended up in the hospital for the last time a the end of January, coming home on hospice care.

It was nice to see her writing again; it was kind of like hearing her voice. When I was in college, long distance calls were still expensive, and therefore, at least in my family, pretty rare. Mom wrote to me every week, and I wrote back. Its funny, I asked her to save my letters since I figured they'd be a nice diary of that time of my life, but I never thought to save hers. Now, I kind of wish I had. I miss her so much.