Dear Mary,

It has been a long, long time since we reveled in our passion for each other. The memories of our good times together have to a large extent faded from my mind. Now and then a scene from our past forms in my brain that reminds me of how good things were for us. The politically correct speak of old age as the golden years. Hogwash! I see the golden years as the years we had together as a family, especially those before our kids became teenagers smarter than their parents, but even those years with their challenges were mainly good ones.

Even though my claim that I married you to get a good mother-in-law may have contained a grain of truth, that was far from the whole truth. I admired you very much. Your values were on the right track and your personality complemented my own. I don’t know for sure but I may have really loved you. At the time I was sure that I was in love with you. You must have loved me a little because you stayed with me while learning to cope with an unfamiliar lifestyle. Love is not a static thing. It either grows or fades and I am grateful that ours grew stronger.

My love for you grew because you were a great companion, a good mother to the children and I felt your love for me respecting my decisions. We were able to settle our differences without malice.

I always admired your courage. You took on the job of getting prepared to train Girl Scout leaders. You confronted the owner of the local newspaper face to face when you thought him wrong about public education. You joined three other women to help children learn to read by trying to get a phonics based reading program into the school system.

I am grateful that you were able to be the steering force of our family life until the children became adults. I deeply regret that you and I together were not allowed to enjoy the fruits of our labor. I believe that for the most part you would be proud of your children and their offspring were it not for that most dreaded of all diseases.

Know that my love for you still lives in my heart.

Honey 

P.S. You probably don’t care about this nor do I but I’ve been asked to write a description of what I saw on the top of my mother’s dresser. It has been seventy years since I saw her dresser. I don’t remember the dresser, much less what was on it. I would venture a guess. The dresser had some drawers was made of oak and had a three-foot long mirror mounted at the rear. It likely had a scarf covering most of the top. There lay on that a comb and hairbrush, maybe some hairpins and some skin cream. You fill in the rest.