Yours Truly

A collection of family letters contained a lifetime of surprises

- Andrea Battista

MY MOTHER-IN-LAW left us an unexpected and priceless gift. After she died in 2016 at the age of 92, my husband, Richard, and his sister went through the contents of her house in Montreal. Richard discovered every letter we had written her during our 46-year marriage, neatly filed and stacked in four shoeboxes behind the furnace. Each letter was put back into its original envelope, giving us a record of our various homes in Ontario—we lived in Toronto, then Chatham and now Burlington throughout the years. Equally important, she kept all the letters that my mother had written to her, too.

I come from a long line of letter writers. My grandparents, who came to Canada from Scotland between 1909 and 1913, loved to receive letters from across the ocean. When I was away in Germany on a student exchange in 1970, my grandfather kept my airmail letters in his shirt pocket and read them daily. Knowing this, I tried my best to write to our two families regularly. And when I got older, I made a point to stay in touch with my parents every week or so.

EVERY LETTER WAS NEATLY FILED AND STACKED IN FOUR SHOEBOXES BEHIND THE FURNACE.