The bundle was packed with letters. Hundreds of them. Some were still in envelopes, some were tied together with string, and every single one was addressed to the same woman. What made the floor seem to tilt was the date on the first letter. He had started writing to her in 1968 and never stopped.
I sat down right there in the basement and began reading. The man everyone described as quiet and alone had spent more than fifty years writing to the love of his life. From what I could piece together, they had been engaged when they were young, but life pulled them in different directions. She moved away, married someone else, and built a family. He never married at all. The letters weren’t angry or bitter. Most were simple updates about his garden, the neighborhood, a baseball game on television, or memories he didn’t want to lose. In one he wrote, “I know you’ll never read this, but talking to you is how I make it through the day.”
The ammo can held the rest of the story. There were photographs, old Christmas cards she’d mailed him over the years, and a newspaper clipping with her obituary. That was when I understood why the letters had been hidden away. The last one was written a week after she passed. His handwriting shook across the page. “I suppose this is goodbye,” he wrote. I had to put it down and wipe my eyes before I could finish.
I tracked down a niece listed in the obituary and asked if she wanted the box. She drove three hours to get it. We sat at my kitchen table looking through the letters until dusk settled outside the windows. When she left, she carried the bundle against her chest like something fragile. The house was quiet afterward, but those letters weren’t hidden in the dark anymore.