General Chat

Bridget,if you can bear to,please offer these things to a record office.I'm sure they will respect your privacy and keep them secret until a date you agree.What an amazing source they will make for future social historians.Can you imagine finding letters from a young girl in the time of the Boer War or the Crimea and the insight it could give you to the feelings of the time.Those love letters are extremely precious,please don't destroy them,they will make such a wonderful legacy.

Er...yes, but they're not from my husband!! Bridget, your thread is lovely, please keep all those special memories!

bridget, that was lovely...see i was right about you!! bryan.

Keep hold of them and treasure them.Your past,memories etc make you what you are today! My mum has loads of stuff in our attic.My hospital braclet,first locks of hair,birthday cards from every year etc! Recently she showed me her diaries that she had kept as a child, which was lovely. It will be nice for your children to look through them and see the wondeful life you have had, and it may mean alot to them that you have kept these things! It means alot to me. No money in the world could buy those things. I think it is lovely that you rumage through them!Please keep them and your not silly for keeping them. Now I have my own son(6months) I have kept everything so far. I see myself probably like you in years to come, wondering why I kept them but they make me happy when I look at them and bring a smile to my face!! xxxx

nudge

I have kept my husband's and know he has mine but have often thought do I wish anyone else to read them? Or would g.children be shocked to find Grandad's sizzle!!!!!! Ann

Yes - letters, cards, photos and mementoes. Then my first husband had a bonfire ... CB >|<

Bridget, That was lovely. Keep the letters, they are a part of you and will show your children and grandchildren a part of you before they were born. When my gran went into a home and we had to clear out her house, we were lucky enough to find amongst the mass of belongings, a box of letters between her and my grandfather (who I had never known). I kept these letters and only looked at them after she died aged 99. What a revelation!! She wasn't always that strict lady I knew - she was young, foolish and in love once - and went against her family! It's a slog transcribing them - and all the spelling mistakes (how many different ways could grandad spell Wednesday and still not get it right!!! lol) but a joy to read them over and over and put bits of their early life together, and a wonderful social history lesson. maggie

Bridget what a beautiful thread you should so hang on to the precious letters of the past so your descendants can read them and also remember you , your such a kind soul.Idont have any love letters unfortunatly, but what I do have are letters that my beloved grandmother sent me till shortly before she died in 1979 I read them and it makes me laugh and cry about the wonderful lady who was such an important part of my life,and I realise I am a lucky person that she was my 'Gran'. Davex

Oh Bridget - that was lovely to read.... and hold on to your bits of paper and photos, they are all important to you. You know yourself, from looking at them, how they bring back memories. Yes, they mean a lot to you - because you know what they are all about and who is in the photographs etc. But in years to come, when someone else looks thru them - they may not mean so much. But still be worth lots because they belonged to YOU! I recently scanned a load of old family photographs and was lucky enough to put names to most of them. But when i had finished scanning them and went to put them away - i suddenly realised that in later years, after i am gone - probably no one would be able to put names to the faces. So before putting them away, i carefully wrote on the back of each one, the names and years etc. Maybe you could make notes, a potted history type thing, and put them with your treasures - and hopefully in years to come, people will look at them and understand why they have been saved and how much they meant to you. I recently came across two huge bundles of love letters for sale on ebay and it saddened me to see them.... would have loved to get hold of them and read them but cant justify the expense for something not related to my family. i have almost nothing from my parents early life together - a Christmas card sent from France during the WWII and lovingly signed by my father. And a little card from when they got married - i assume the kind you slip in with a piece of cake. And thats about it.... dont even have many photos. I am 57 now and reckon i have lived a rich and varied life - but how much of it does my 20 year old daughter know about? Probably very little and i keep saying i will write down some of my memories and events, to leave for her.

Tonight I had occasion to go up into the attic. I know from past trips up there I am entering a world of “ What Ifs” and If Only” I just intend looking for knitting needles my friend has asked to borrow. Previous trips up there has found me many hours later sitting on the floor, surrounded by open boxes of faded photos, many of them a relic from the old Brownie box camera. I am ashamed to admit while many faces look familiar the names elude me! Im afraid my memory is not perfectly preserved like some of these photographs. Just as fossils over the years leave their imprints on the rocks I too am finding dents on my senses made by the passing years!! As before, I ask myself 'Why have I started this?' I can't resist opening boxes and bags to exammine their contents! I smile to myself as I open a bag only to reveal several silver horseshoes with the faded words 'Good Luck'written on what was once white satin ribbons, now faded and yellow. My 21st birthday cards, they to are dogeared and grubby, silly me, why do I keep them? I shed a little tear when I open the tissue paper that houses my childrens very first shoes, the yellow lacy ones my daughters and the tiny white boots my sons. Special occasion cards and letters are held safely within its rafters, away from prying eyes, between just me and the stars. Do we shove all our memories good and bad into the attic, hoping they will not confront us again? My son is now 50 years of age and my daughter is 40, both are married and have long left home. Why then do I hang on to their collections of papers and memorabilia from University? Photos of past boy/ girl friends peer back at me in the dim light of the attic. What is just a smiling face to me may mean Oh! so much more to them. I justify my intended clear out by telling myself I have to be heartless and not hold on to all this junk, it will lighten the load when I am gone, they will not have so much stuff to clear out. I come across my own papers and photos. One by one I look at the photos and wonder, “What ever happened to?” Smiling faces look back at me, My God, was that young girl in jeans and sweater really me? The boy in the picture, smiling with arm slung loosely around my shoulder. It was years later I learned he really loved me, his sister told me when she wrote to tell me of his passing. I am so sad, did I unintentionally hurt him? Reaching deeper into my box of memories I come across the bundle of letters held together with a blue ribbon. The envelopes are different and the cover displays the dove of peace, so strange, they have been posted from a Prisoner of War Camp somewhere in Korea, the year 1953.. I cast my mind back over the years and remember my joy on receiving the first of these letters; it was a Christmas Eve 1953. No greater present could have come my way, it let me know my boyfriend,( later my husband) missing and believed killed was alive and in a P.O.W. camp. The years slip away and I am reminded how I watched for the postman, hoping another letter would soon follow the first one; unfortunately, they were few and far between. Should I take them into the garden and burn them now? This bundle of letters, I have read them over and over again. They comforted me when I lost my beloved husband at a fairly young age. No, I just can’t bring myself to destroy them, let my children read them when I am gone and learn from them the meaning of a true and deep love. I place the letters back into a neat bundle, retie the blue ribbon and place them back in the old now rusty biscuit box. I retrieve my children’s letters and photos from the black bin bag where I had placed them ready to destroy. I return them to their boxes. If this old lady wanted to hold and cling on to her memories, why not them? Bridget x