Dakota Beacon

Of all seasons, I love autumn best. Time advances beyond the heat of summer to the cooler evenings of fall before eventually morphing into the bleak days of winter. The third quarter of the year offers an opportunity to reflect on the year’s earlier events.

A different autumn arrives eventually – the autumn of our lives. We inhabit time beyond our zenith, settling into quiet and placid moments of reflection. We occupy that realm reminiscing on past decades -- the good, the bad, and the mediocre. Photo albums, diaries, and chats with adult children resurrect long forgotten memories. But a more tender and truthful recall arises with the written word. Letters collected over the years preserve memories and emotions in a way no other medium can. In the case of my wife and me, dozens of letters, maybe hundreds of letters, resurrect long forgotten details of our past. Not only do letters record events, but they also give insight into the shared feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of writer and recipient.

We sorted through and organized boxes of letters, my wife doing most of the work. (I may have told this story before.) Letters from parents, letters to parents, letters pre-dating our friendship, letters between us when we first met, letters after marriage, letters between us when separated due to overseas assignments – on and on forming a lengthy history.

It seemed best to organize the letters by date. That would automatically categorize them by era. Categories generally included pre-high school and high school years, Yellowstone Park where we met working one summer, our pre-marriage years, Korea, Viet Nam, Germany, and later years.

For me, the earliest correspondence included letters my father wrote on my behalf involving a youthful indiscretion at age 11. I almost put out the eye of another boy when shooting at each other with slingshots. The letters built my father’s legal defense should we need it. Thankfully, we didn’t.

In my wife’s case, she and her folks saved letters written between them during her high school years. Her folks lived on a ranch in North Dakota where winters precluded daily travel between home and school. Solution? She stayed with her aunt and uncle in Austin, Texas where she attended high school and returned home by bus for the summers. Following graduation she gained seasonal employment in Yellowstone Park.

This era included a trove of letters starting in 1960 telling her parents of her work and adventures hiking and fishing during time off in Yellowstone. As an active farm kid, she was out and about in the forests and mountains of the Park while the city girls stayed back and goofed around the bunkhouse. It was her second summer in the Park when a new employee struck her fancy. That would be me in 1961. Not only do we have her correspondence with her parents, but we saved most of the letters she and I exchanged through our on-again off-again relationship. That era culminated in 1964 when we tied the knot in marriage.

Next came the era of separations with all related correspondence. After college we chose life as a professional Army household. Following Infantry Office Basic School and Ranger School separation followed at once with a 13-month assignment to the Korean Demilitarized Zone. We have almost all our letters from my Korean tour. One year back in the US incurred another separation. I was off to Vietnam to command an Infantry rifle company with the 101^st Airborne Division. We preserved as many of our letters as possible. But it was impractical to carry in my rucksack the numerous letters she wrote. However, she did preserve the ones I wrote to her.

The final three volumes have letters my wife wrote to her parents from 1973 to 1993. They include recollections of holiday memories, our kids up through teen years, travels through various military schools and assignments, and the culmination of our military experience together.

Re-reading and then collecting letters into volumes gives a true sense of our mortality. Better still, they apprehend the reveries of our hearts.

Outside of the immediate family, the fifteen volumes of letters would be of little interest except maybe to a voyeur. We could believe that someday our grandkids or their kids might kindle an interest in the family’s history. In that case, the organized volumes of letters would prove invaluable.

On the other hand, if the volumes of letters are of interest to no one and no one cares, then they will fall like autumn leaves eventually to be disposed of. If that be so, then the record of our lives well-lived will be scattered on the wind as dust. As Scripture says when we have passed, “…for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). And with our passing will go the story of our lives on earth. Even so, we have assurance we will live on in another Realm with Someone who does care.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).