what is a letter?

A letter is the expression of some thing, with the purpose that those expressions reach another. Whether that be another/future self or another person.  

George Saunders notes that “someone remembering to write” is one of the things that makes life pleasurable. For me, that someone was usually my mum. She wrote about the everyday: sitting reading under a woollen blanket or life working at a school which challenged her but she loved. She wrote about politics and the injustices she saw that made her angry. She sent clippings from magazines of articles she thought I might like or hate. She cut out pictures of outfits she thought I would appreciate and asked me what I thought of them. She wrote at the joy she got from mine and my friends Instagram stories and the appreciation of one friend’s colour-coordinated outfits in particular. She described seemingly mundane things in such detail that it forced me to be mindful and appreciative of the small things in life. 

But when my mum became ill and less able to write letters, this became replaced with other acts, from both her and others. And, ironically, the less she wrote, the more I wrote to her. It felt like the only true way of expressing and sorting all the painful things I was living. 

The distance that comes with writing a letter is a powerful thing. A few weeks after my mum was moved to a hospice, a time you would think to be filled with horror and despair, I wrote in my notebook: “wrote a letter to mum in the Cambridge sun and felt momentarily optimistic for my future – hold onto these moments”. Being physically far from someone seems to warrant the kinds of musings that would otherwise be accompanied with embarrassment and shame. It is powerful to be able to honestly speak your heart. Something which tends to come with the distance and reflection required to put thoughts down onto paper. I was not able to tell my mum this stuff or even speak about certain memories in person without crying. Crying every time you try to have a deeper interaction with someone you love can sour the experience. With a letter you can cry all you like. You can cry, smile, or laugh, without the urge to navigate the feelings of another. What you put down on paper is perfectly curated –filled with emotion but not overwhelmed by it. Writing to her felt essential in order to tell her everything I needed to tell her or everything I wanted to remind her of, everything I wanted to share with her before she died. 

After my mum became ill, the “someone remembering to write” became many more people. A note in the post or a carefully crafted message reminded me of all the love that surrounded me. Whilst I was not getting letters from the person I most wanted to receive them from, many people were expressing things that might have been difficult to say in another form. People that would not usually do so regularly were telling me they loved me, and my mum. People were telling me that my mum and I are alike, that I have inherited wonderful things from her, or even that they were just grateful to have me as a friend. That period would have been much lonelier and more uncomfortable if not for these expressions of love around me.  Susan Sontag writes of the decline of letter writing that “letters seem so – well, one-sided… One is too impatient for the answer”. However, at a time of such pain, this one-sidedness or the desperation for an instant answer falls away. It is those very things that make it the perfect medium for expressing what is necessary to a hurting person. 

In having distance, one is able to feel and reflect upon the love that is shared with the person you are not with. Writing a letter is an expression of the love that fills the distance between you and another person. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit talks of Simone Weil writing to a faraway friend “let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated”. In reflection, so much of the pain of grief stems from separation but this is yet another expression of that love. It would not be painful and there would be no separation if it were not for love. In the words of Jonathan Wilson: 

Missin' someone is a kind of hurt 

A heart should be grateful to feel 

Something so painful after death, however, is that this distance cannot be filled with love by writing a letter or any other act that shows someone that they are in your thoughts. You can express the love but that person is no longer there to receive it.  This is impossible to reconcile when someone who has loved you, and been loved by you your whole life, in the space of eight months, ceases to be there anymore.  

“The letter that was never sent, ghost of”  

“But a letter in the head is a letter, too” 

– Extracts from The Letter Scene, Susan Sontag 

After my mum’s death, a frenzied scramble to find letters and notes she had written me became the most important task. The last and lasting physical manifestations of my mum and the things she wished to share with me. The terror of losing these or them burning in a fire haunted me (and still does). They feel like the most important thing I have to hold on to the memory of my mum. Rereading these letters also came with a feeling of guilt of wishing I had written back more. She clearly appreciated receiving letters or she would not have sent them. Then I found the last thing my mum ever wrote me slipped inside the book I had been reading at the time – a thank you note in response to one of the letters I had sent her whilst she was in the hospice. In it she wrote “I never wrote to see how many letters I would get back!! I wrote from the heart knowing they would reach a soul fellow reader.” Writing the letters knowing they would reach me and give me comfort was as important for her as it was for me.  

Whilst all the “ghost” letters that will never be written, sent or received is a source of great discomfort, the sentiment that “a letter in the head is a letter, too” is soothing. I am constantly thinking of things I wish to send to my mum, just having that thought sends a letter of sorts. She is also still sending me letters of varying forms, despite no longer being physical in this world. By my definition a letter does not have to be written on paper and sent in the post. I consider my mum’s underlining of a line in a book or a note in the margin to be another kind of letter.  Something she wished to come back to at a later time, or reiterate in her mind has become a source of connection – something that she thought was significant is reaching me. Some of these underlinings appear to have cosmic significance. In Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which I finished reading a few days before she died, she had underlined: “A big moon was laid over the mountains that went around the city. It was a white moon and covered with scars. Any damn fool could imagine a face there.” A dear friend and I took the time to gaze at the full white moon the night of mum’s funeral and this line popped into my head. Another letter my mum gifted all the people who loved her is the song she chose for her funeral. A song which beautifully explores the light in all people, stars and eternity. Another dear friend wrote me a letter that contained the line “where do we go when we die? Just around the corner.” A friend of mine’s mother said that when my mum died it would be like she was just in the next room. Whilst it will always feel horrifying that I cannot just go around the corner or into the next room to see my mum, I see it more and more in these alternative letters I discover, or all the letters in my head which are letters too. Durga Chew-Bose writes in her essay Heart Museum about being “caught off guard by a lathery shade of peach on the bottom of painting at the Met” and being reminded that she hasn’t “seen all the colours.” In the same way that no one has yet seen all the colours, I haven’t yet received or sent all the letters I will to my mum.  

In that last note my mum wrote to me she also wrote “you write so well darling.” Writing and reading in many forms was so important to my mum and her saying that moved me. Writing will now always feel like honouring her. And all the ghost letters, the letters never written, sent or received, are a testament to the beautiful form of communication that she so appreciated. Even if, one day, the written letters from her do get lost or destroyed in a fire, her expressions of love to me or my love to her will always be present in some form and will go some way to fill the distance of our separation. 

Extracts from: 

‘The Letter Scene’ in Stories by Susan Sontag 

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 

Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose 

Lincoln in the Bardot by George Saunders  

Oh Girl by Jonathan Wilson  

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver