LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING -- REALLY?

An "Oldie but Goodie"

Two days ago I was prompted by circumstances to sit down and actually write a letter, er, E-mail to my son.  It felt just like it did 60 years ago when I would write a letter just about every week.  They were the usual letters that a teen ager at boarding school would write to his mother and father.  Over the letter writing years of my life, I suppose that I probably dashed off about 1,000 letters to various people for any number of reasons and from several places.  I suppose that if ever anyone ever fell into the stash of these things, they could get a very good snapshot of my life.  Going through them would be a "kick" I am sure.  Such a "kick" that I hope no one has any of them piled up somewhere.  If there is, I have a sneeky suspicion that I could find it...But I won't intrude into my personal life of 60 years ago!
Last night, as I lay abed thinking of the nice letter that I had written to my elder son, I got to thinking about one of the mysteries of life that came to light when I was in school.  We would consider certain historical moments in the light of a letter that so and so had written to another historical so and so.  It was amazing to me that these letters, some of which were rather personal, were still in existence.  For me, letters were so personal that when I got them, I read them, tore them up and trashed them.  I hoped that the recipients of my letters to them did the same.  I surely never expected that 200 years after I'd been sweating pushing daisies that someone would be enjoying the frivolities that I had written to dear mother on the second Sunday in May of the year 19forgotten.  I asked EFR Dion about that one time and he was straight with me.  He said that public figures wrote "letters" for the record and the recipients knew it, so did not trash them...even if they seemed to be love letters.  Even if they were love letters, they were meant to be public.  That was a revelation.  I had not yet written a love letter, so I could not imagine anyone writing a public love letter.  But, I know that some of them did.  Not I, though.
Then, across the years some letters that had come into our family from one person or the other on the occasion of a very important event surfaced some 40 or 50 years after the author's demise.  The one on top of the page, much the worse for its age, is of that nature.  There is another one also that was written to my mother, MJT Dion from EFR Dion's brother when the latter was stationed in England for some R&R in the springtime of 1943, I guess.  It was all about the fresh lilacs that were in full bloom at that time of the year.  Very nice three page letter.  But don't hold your breath, that kind of writing is mighty rare these days, I suspect.
So, look whose talking.  I write a love letter almost every single day.  During certain times of the month, two a day.  They'll never go away. I write them specifically for my sons and for those who just might be curious enough to find out what a crazy old grouch of the early 21st century would write about.  Not that this is art.  But whatever it might be called, at least it is something that I can leave the children.  I'm doing my best to die in debt, so this is it.  It's not worth anything, so that they won't be tempted to take it away from you.  That's the plan.  Neat, huh?
That's why they won't cry at my funeral.  That's the plan too.