A Handwritten Letter From Daddy

Drawing of ‘Daddy.’ Artwork by Saugus resident and artist, Naomi Young. Courtesy photo
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As I’m looking at my letters of correspondence with my father over the years they bring back so many beautiful memories. Each letter is holding a special place in my heart for different reasons.

These collections of letters are testimonies to a time gone by. Each letter I received was written by my father with his beautiful, calligraphy like handwriting style. These letters seem as if they froze in time… They told me about all the day to day hardships that they experienced through war times and happy times of new babies born, who went to kindergarten, fell in love, became soldiers, married and had kids of their own.

I told him about my son Koren’s first day in school and his brother Ryan’s first step and together we learned about each other’s lives and celebrated our milestones, a world apart.

The anticipation of waiting for a letter in the mail was something that I was looking forward to every week. The last letter I received from my dad revealed to me that he was not well. The crooked writing spoke volumes and told me something that my family was trying to hide from me. My father had a heart attack! I could tell that something was wrong. I thought that he became paralyzed, hence the bad handwriting.

Living so far away my family did not want me to worry about his health and bother me with the bad news. In my last phone conversation with my dad I told him that I was coming to see him. That bothered him that I might come because I’m worried.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine!” He insisted that he was recovering well and that things are getting back to normal. “Even better” I replied, “I will come to see you doing well and what’s wrong with that?”

The next day I arrived in the evening to find out that my father passed away that same morning. None of us could see the writing on the wall but I guess destiny was written from above.  I am very grateful that I still have all those letters written to me by my beloved father.

 

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