Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming… - December 14, 2020
I love receiving Christmas cards. I REALLY DO.
So much so that last year we – OK, I – had our mail forwarded from our apartment in Ontario to our trailer in Arizona. You do not want to know the price of having mail forwarded from one country to another for six months. I’m not sure that I completely “fessed up” the total cost to my hubs Laur, but what I like to say in these situations is “It’s all in the past.”
And I truly LOVE Christmas letters too. I love the daunting ones where I learn things like…
And the silly ones where I learn that…
I fondly – oh so fondly – remember the Sunday afternoon early in December when our Mom would write up the Carrie family Christmas cards. It may have been more than one Sunday afternoon – our Mom had many admirers.
And I’m not sure what my role was. Our Mom was a perfectionist. She had beautiful handwriting. I have the handwriting that not even a pharmacist can decipher. But help her I did, somehow.
She would bring out the angel chimes and I’d get to the light the candles. (Perhaps that was my role.) The flames would glow and the three angels would go “ding ding ding” over the two bells and four candles.
Unlike me, our Mom was very organized about everything in life, including her Christmas card writing. She kept the cards and envelopes from the year before. If you didn’t send a card, you weren’t getting one from her – unless you were a new friend. But even still there were SO many to send.
There is only one comment Mom made that stood out for me – even to this day. Mom said, “Gram’s handwriting is getting pretty shaky.” Gram was my Dad’s mom. She lived in Toronto with my Dad’s brother and sister–in–law. She was a bit of a mystery woman to me. I rarely saw her. And I secretly hoped she would marry my ‘Pa’. Pa was our Mom’s dad and he lived with us, or we with him. I wasn’t sure.
But I was sure that hearing that Gram’s handwriting was getting shaky was a bit of a bad omen.
*****
Christmas 2019. My Mom did not send out Christmas cards. And hadn’t for a few years.
My Mom was an extremely proud woman and it bothered her that her hand-writing was now “shaky.” So much so that my sweet brother Jim, who went to visit Mom every week, helping her with a variety of things, also did the things that required handwriting. Our Mom – once more powerful than a locomotive – and I know a thing or about the unstoppabilty of trains, being a train-driver’s daughter… Our Mom was beginning to fail… She did not live to enjoy Christmas 2020.
I thought a lot about our Mom as I was sending out my Christmas epistles in early December. In particular, her time in palliative care. Mom received hundreds of well-wishing emails and dozens of card of love and of 98th year birthday greetings. Her caregivers printed out the emailed ones and they filled up a thick binder. The snail-mail cards covered her bulletin board – three times over. The staff at the Hospice had never seen anything quite like it.
It reminded me of that sweet but sad saying, “In the end, the only things you get to keep are the things you give away.”
*****
Did I mention that I am a dedicated card maker, writer, and sender? 😊
And not just Christmas cards. I also love sending out monthly cards of encouragement – though admittedly I’m running out of people to encourage. I heard this amazing podcast on CBC’s Tapestry this morning about a man who was imprisoned as a teenager. What kept Marcus Bullock going was his mother’s daily letters to him. Sometimes accompanied with pictures. For example, a pic of the meal she was going to make for him when he came home. It encouraged not only him, but many of his friends in prison. They formed friendships that lasted beyond the years served.
Do check out https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/family-bonds-and-unconditional-love-1.5836660/instagram-for-prisons-how-a-mom-s-daily-pics-kept-her-son-alive-1.5836669 People go through rough patches, and need love and resources to bring them through.
I recently asked MCC–O – Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario – if they could use a volunteer letter writer. I love MCC. They respond in Canada and around the world to basic human needs and work for peace and justice.
I would love to write letters of thanks when government does the right things for folks who are in need of the basics of today and of hope for the future.
And I also want to write letters of admonishment when these people – who we vote in and pay our tax money to – do the exact opposite of the Golden Rule, which exists in all religious faiths. (While I am Christian, I also appreciate how the Jainists express it. “One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated”.)
My next letter will be to the Canadian Mennonite Magazine. I am going to ask them to do an issue on how we old people can continue to assist folks in need – at the personal and political level – BY LETTER WRITING. What are the organizations that need folks like me, who have good lives on “the outside” in independent housing, to send cards to folks like me who are living lonely lives in “the inside” of care facilities? Or to the imprisoned? Haven’t you ever done something that you are deeply ashamed of? Folks can and do change – take Marcus Bullock for example.
I believe that handmade cards with shaky handwriting might be able to reach the dispossessed and the members of parliament in a way that computer generated, emailed, or faxed might not. Just give us grannies and grandpas the names, addresses, and necessary information and we’ll be on this like jam on toast.
(I wanted to say, “like penicillin mould on bread,” but hubs thought that wasn’t a great image.)
If we seniors have lived this long, chances are we have been the beneficiaries of medical miracles. Our arthritic hands ought to long to give back.
So much so that last year we – OK, I – had our mail forwarded from our apartment in Ontario to our trailer in Arizona. You do not want to know the price of having mail forwarded from one country to another for six months. I’m not sure that I completely “fessed up” the total cost to my hubs Laur, but what I like to say in these situations is “It’s all in the past.”
And I truly LOVE Christmas letters too. I love the daunting ones where I learn things like…
- Jenny, aged 3, is on course to be an atomic scientist
- Buford, 18 month, has already been approached by the Bolshoi Ballet Academy
And the silly ones where I learn that…
- The sender had four pet ratlets and enjoys rejigging the “rattay’s” apartment and play cage. Oops! That would be me..
- The husband who is truly a math phobe is the treasurer for a humanitarian group. Oops! That would be my hubs.
I fondly – oh so fondly – remember the Sunday afternoon early in December when our Mom would write up the Carrie family Christmas cards. It may have been more than one Sunday afternoon – our Mom had many admirers.
And I’m not sure what my role was. Our Mom was a perfectionist. She had beautiful handwriting. I have the handwriting that not even a pharmacist can decipher. But help her I did, somehow.
She would bring out the angel chimes and I’d get to the light the candles. (Perhaps that was my role.) The flames would glow and the three angels would go “ding ding ding” over the two bells and four candles.
Unlike me, our Mom was very organized about everything in life, including her Christmas card writing. She kept the cards and envelopes from the year before. If you didn’t send a card, you weren’t getting one from her – unless you were a new friend. But even still there were SO many to send.
There is only one comment Mom made that stood out for me – even to this day. Mom said, “Gram’s handwriting is getting pretty shaky.” Gram was my Dad’s mom. She lived in Toronto with my Dad’s brother and sister–in–law. She was a bit of a mystery woman to me. I rarely saw her. And I secretly hoped she would marry my ‘Pa’. Pa was our Mom’s dad and he lived with us, or we with him. I wasn’t sure.
But I was sure that hearing that Gram’s handwriting was getting shaky was a bit of a bad omen.
*****
Christmas 2019. My Mom did not send out Christmas cards. And hadn’t for a few years.
My Mom was an extremely proud woman and it bothered her that her hand-writing was now “shaky.” So much so that my sweet brother Jim, who went to visit Mom every week, helping her with a variety of things, also did the things that required handwriting. Our Mom – once more powerful than a locomotive – and I know a thing or about the unstoppabilty of trains, being a train-driver’s daughter… Our Mom was beginning to fail… She did not live to enjoy Christmas 2020.
I thought a lot about our Mom as I was sending out my Christmas epistles in early December. In particular, her time in palliative care. Mom received hundreds of well-wishing emails and dozens of card of love and of 98th year birthday greetings. Her caregivers printed out the emailed ones and they filled up a thick binder. The snail-mail cards covered her bulletin board – three times over. The staff at the Hospice had never seen anything quite like it.
It reminded me of that sweet but sad saying, “In the end, the only things you get to keep are the things you give away.”
*****
Did I mention that I am a dedicated card maker, writer, and sender? 😊
And not just Christmas cards. I also love sending out monthly cards of encouragement – though admittedly I’m running out of people to encourage. I heard this amazing podcast on CBC’s Tapestry this morning about a man who was imprisoned as a teenager. What kept Marcus Bullock going was his mother’s daily letters to him. Sometimes accompanied with pictures. For example, a pic of the meal she was going to make for him when he came home. It encouraged not only him, but many of his friends in prison. They formed friendships that lasted beyond the years served.
Do check out https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/family-bonds-and-unconditional-love-1.5836660/instagram-for-prisons-how-a-mom-s-daily-pics-kept-her-son-alive-1.5836669 People go through rough patches, and need love and resources to bring them through.
I recently asked MCC–O – Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario – if they could use a volunteer letter writer. I love MCC. They respond in Canada and around the world to basic human needs and work for peace and justice.
I would love to write letters of thanks when government does the right things for folks who are in need of the basics of today and of hope for the future.
And I also want to write letters of admonishment when these people – who we vote in and pay our tax money to – do the exact opposite of the Golden Rule, which exists in all religious faiths. (While I am Christian, I also appreciate how the Jainists express it. “One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated”.)
My next letter will be to the Canadian Mennonite Magazine. I am going to ask them to do an issue on how we old people can continue to assist folks in need – at the personal and political level – BY LETTER WRITING. What are the organizations that need folks like me, who have good lives on “the outside” in independent housing, to send cards to folks like me who are living lonely lives in “the inside” of care facilities? Or to the imprisoned? Haven’t you ever done something that you are deeply ashamed of? Folks can and do change – take Marcus Bullock for example.
I believe that handmade cards with shaky handwriting might be able to reach the dispossessed and the members of parliament in a way that computer generated, emailed, or faxed might not. Just give us grannies and grandpas the names, addresses, and necessary information and we’ll be on this like jam on toast.
(I wanted to say, “like penicillin mould on bread,” but hubs thought that wasn’t a great image.)
If we seniors have lived this long, chances are we have been the beneficiaries of medical miracles. Our arthritic hands ought to long to give back.