My Sweet Grace.

My Aunt Helena was the one who introduced me to writing when I was 7 years old. She would come over and play with me and my siblings while my parents went to work. She said she liked all of my 3 siblings but she would wink towards me while she said that and I knew that she liked me most. My siblings: billy, daisy, and Brian would not play with me because I was too little to play with them. Often I was stuck alone playing by myself and Aunt Helena would come over, singing, “aww little grace, my little grace. Why don’t you write about how your week was and give it to me to take home with me.” I would get overly excited with having something to do and I would get out a paper, grab a pencil and chicken scratch my week away on paper. I wrote about how I threw up my lunch and had to leave, I wrote about how Tommy broke his arm while climbing the monkey bars. The bone stabbed it’s way out of the flesh and the teacher only noticed it when all of the 2^nd graders started surrounding him. Aunt Helena lived by herself. She wasn’t lonely, She said she was always with God and my letters to keep her company. Whenever she didn’t come around, I would joyfully await a letter from her and force my mom to sit in a rocking chair and read me her letter. She usually wrote about her plants in her garden and how some insects were starting to eat them. She would talk about the neighbors dog coming over to sleep in her garden. After that would scurry around finding paper and pen to write her back her a letter. 

By the age of 14, my family moved across the country, Aunt Helena and I promised each other to write back to each other. A few letters were sent here and there but then it started to dwindle. I got into high school, got a job, and started hanging out with friends that writing was more of a burden now. Her letters would always arrive but I would just put them aside and go do other important things. As the years went by, so did her memories of her.

She passed away when I turned 25. My parents called me to tell that she passed and made me promise to show up at her funeral. I had no intentions of showing up but after finding out that she had left something in her will, I decided to show. The funeral was boring. Many relatives whom I hadn’t seen before came and everyone expressed how sad it was she was gone but I secretly thought that they were here for the will. After the funeral was over, my family and some other relatives gathered around to read what was in the will. We got the better deal of her will. Billy got a guitar signed by some famous celebrity, daisy got her old car, and Brian got her old boat that she used to go fishing with. I got the lucky deal by getting her house but I wasn’t ready to move into a dead woman’s home and I wasn’t ready to move back to my old childhood town. Ugh. 

I quickly moved in and I lived there for some good years. I didn’t want to throw any of her old stuff in the house because. Well. Ghosts so I packed them in the basement and lived my life away. I soon got married at 30 and we moved in into the house. Since we were planning for kids, he wanted me to get rid of aunt Helena’s baggage in the basement. I tried to delay it but I knew that it was quickly time to get rid of it. Most of the stuff I decided to donate and some I decided to throw away. I only kept one thing from the basement and that was a small box that had a letter on top of it. I only kept it because I was curious and was intending the throw the box away immediately away if it wasn’t anything appealing. The letter was upside down and when I flipped it, it was addressed to me. On it, it said, “My Sweet Grace.” 

I didn’t even open the letter because I quickly dove into the box to only see stacks and stacks of letters. Tears started flowing from my eyes and I couldn’t seem to stop them. Memories started rushing in of when I would write to her. My chicken scratch handwriting with my poor spelling barely being readable but she knew what I had written every time. I couldn’t read the letters that day because my tears were soaking my the letters and I didn’t want to make the ink fade before reading them. 

I didn’t read them the next day, nor the next day after. I was afraid. She had written to me all these years and she knew that I was ignoring her but she kept on writing but kept them safe.

A month later, I finally got the nerve to look at them. I pulled the box out, got out some pen and paper, made some tea, grabbed some tissue and sat down on my couch, I reached my arm into the box and grabbed a random letter. The letter read:

My lovely Grace, My Sweet Grace, 

I hope you are having a good day at school. Today is your 16th birthday and it must be horrible that you have to go to school today. I hope you had a stress less and not a stressful day at school today. I can’t be their with you because of how far it is. High school is fun so don’t waste those years. I hope you can get this letter. Have a great day and I hope you can visit me one day.

I was able to control my tears with tissues and I bravely went through most of the letters. All of them started with “My lovely grace, My sweet Grade.” I was able to control my tears and quickly got to work. I rehydrated myself and quickly went to work replying to the letters. 

Every now and then I visit her grave with flowers in one hand and my letters in the other to finally reply to her letters years ago