Letters from the Past

One of the things I've discovered since Gwen's death is that, although most of her belongings have been donated to charity, I continue to discover things she left behind. Sometimes these items, which would have seemed terribly insignificant a year ago, now take on great emotional meaning. Among the items that have affected me this way are a box of body powder, black silk underwear, the pillow she slept on and a photo of her kissing me on the steps of the church right after we were married. The biggest discovery of all was letters we had written to each other from April, 1962 through June, 1963, when we were married. During that time, we had decided to get married, and, after a great deal of discussion, Gwen decided to drop out of college at the end of her sophomore year and take a job as a bookkeeper at a lumber yard in Iron River. (The decision for her to leave college was not taken lightly, she was a scholarship student, and her parents would have preferred that she remain in school. In our wedding vows I wrote in a sentence where I promised that I would help her complete college, and was so happy when her parents attended her graduation from nursing school at EMU in 1980.) She stayed at home with her parents that year, and I began my first year as a commercial teacher at Stephenson High School only a few miles from my home . I stayed at home with my parents and younger brother and sister.

So, there we were, madly in love with each other, but living 100 miles apart. Each weekend during that period of time I drove to Gaastra and visited with her. In the days between we wrote letters to each other. These were the letters I recently found hidden away in a storage bin in the basement of our home. What fun it was to read them all. I've told friends that it was kind of like seeing the movie Secretariat, which Gwen and I and all of our children and grandchildren did just a month before she died. As was the case with reading the letters, I knew how the movie would turn out, but there was the lingering doubt that maybe there was something I had forgotten or some historical truth that I didn't know existed. Maybe it wouldn't turn out the way I knew it did! To my relief, Secretariat won the Triple Crown of horse racing, and I won the Triple Crown of love and marriage! It was all there, in the movie and in our letters.

During the almost five years of Gwen's illness it was not always easy for me to be her caregiver, and it was harder yet for her, the strong, assertive, independent woman that she was, to consent to my caring for her. Yet, as she made it easy for me to love her during 47 years of marriage, she also made it easy for me to care for her during the years she was ill. After re-reading our letters I can now see in them the core of the love and commitment to each other that would sustain and nourish us not only the through the "for better" parts of our marriage but especially during the "for worse" times. I tried to express this in a poem I wrote:

LETTERS FROM THE PAST

She saved everything;

I found the letters we exchanged

the year before we wed,

when we lived apart.

They were neatly bundled

wrapped in plastic;

each letter carefully

returned to its envelope.

All were placed in order

day to day, month to month

John wrote to Gwen 137 times,

Gwen wrote to John 134 times.

I read them all,

on New Year’s Eve

and on into New Years Day,

every last one of them,

There was lots of ordinary stuff

like headaches and cold sores

and wedding presents.

Always, love was there--in each letter.

It was a love that would grow

on into the years, until death do us part.

In those 271 declarations of that love,

there was never a waver or doubt.

Death did us part,

as we knew it someday would.

The words in the letters

now carry new meanings.

The one who completed me

has left me incomplete

asking me to pursue our dreams

without her at my side.

I will love you forever

is made more real

each day since she’s gone.

I wish she could write me one more letter.

John A. Bayerl, January 2, 2011

In upcoming blogs I plan to write about events that have occurred since Gwen's death that I choose to see as "letters" from her.