Signed, sealed, delivered with love

This First Person column is the experience of Carly Verheyen who is a published author from Abbotsford, B.C. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

We were going through the challenging task of moving my grandfather into an assisted living senior home when we stumbled across what felt like a real treasure — love letters my grandparents had exchanged when they were in their 20s

My grandmother, who passed away a decade earlier, had squirrelled away so many things, probably because of the times she grew up in. From hotel shampoo bottles and soaps, to coupons and greeting cards, she saved it all. My mother says she didn’t have the heart to go through yet another plastic bag full of papers, but something stopped her. She pulled the papers out and was amazed to see her mother’s handwriting on over 100 fragile airmail envelopes. They were addressed to my grandfather from my grandmother, a war bride in England waiting to come to Canada.

My mother tucked them away for safekeeping and when I came home for a visit a few weeks later, we read them together over a cup of tea.

After a chance meeting at a dance hall in Farnborough, England in the summer of 1944, my grandparents began falling in love through letters exchanged in cursive.

My grandfather was a Canadian soldier and my grandmother was working as a mechanic for the Royal Aircraft Establishment disassembling German aircraft. She was hired as part of the British war efforts that encouraged women to work while the British men were off fighting in the war.

These specific letters were from a time when they were married but apart. My grandfather had travelled back to Canada with the troops while my grandmother waited for passage to Canada along with the 48,000 other British war brides and their children.

We felt connected to her in that moment, and giggled at her vibrant personality coming through the words on the page.

We only found my grandma’s letters as my grandfather said he burned the ones he wrote. He said they were personal and didn’t want anyone to read them.

It wasn’t until three years later that the letters became much more than a treasured family keepsake. I was in Long Beach, Calif., in March 2012 and by sheer luck, came across the RMS Queen Mary. This was the very same ship that my grandmother sailed to Canada on in 1946, leaving behind her country, her family and everything she knew for love.

Growing up, I had always noticed a photo of my grandparents in front of the same ship. It was tucked into a souvenir photo cube that my grandmother picked up on her travels to California in the 1990s.

I decided to recreate that family photo. As I lined myself up with the very fence that they stood in front of all those years earlier, I felt inspiration strike: I would travel to England to retrace her steps and write a blog about my experience. As an aspiring writer, I hoped the blog would someday become a book.

When I got home from California, I put my grandmother’s letters in chronological order and discovered that they were from January to July of 1946. That gave me nine months to plan my trip, apply for a loan, move out of my apartment and take a sabbatical from work. I even discovered that the 1946 and 2013 calendars lined up perfectly. Her Monday would be my Monday. It felt like it was meant to be.

My grandfather thought it was a lovely idea and knew that my grandma would have loved it. After getting his blessing, I went to England from January to July of 2013 — 67 years after the original letters were written, to knock on the door of the house where she wrote the letters and visit the places she wrote about. I found myself on a journey within a journey that forever changed my life.

And, with what might be the strangest voluntary twist to my own love story, I convinced my fiance Adam to also exchange love letters while I was in England. I knew that I wanted to experience what it must have felt like for my grandmother to wait for a letter. I wanted to feel the longing and anticipation of the postal worker coming with their daily delivery, with weekends and holidays feeling extra long with no mail. Luckily, Adam was on board.

We live in a time with instant communication like never before. Phone calls, texting, video chats and more. In 1946, my grandparents were using the most up-to-date forms of technology and communication with telegrams and letters. Phone calls at that time were expensive and rare.

Up to this point, Adam and I had been exchanging letters every few days, but most of it felt repetitive as we had also been connecting over video chat and text messages. For the final month of my six-month journey, I intentionally arranged for my fiancé and I to communicate only through letters. We talked about what life was going to be like when we were back together again and plans for the future.

That’s when I started to recognize the similarities in what we were writing about with what my grandparents talked about. For example, my grandfather was trying to find them a home before my grandmother arrived in Canada.

Adam was doing the same for us. My grandfather and Adam were both working new jobs. Adam and I even talked about our future children, like they did too.

Some days were harder than others. On one hand, I was on this grand, once-in-a-lifetime adventure in an amazing city, but on the other hand, I couldn’t believe that I was choosing to put us through this. My grandparents weren’t given the choice. They had to patiently wait for the immigration process to unfold. Adam was miraculously supportive of my creative ideas and dreams and knew that it would bring us closer and create a sense of gratitude for the simple things.

As I look back at the stack of letters my husband penned to me and the pretty airmail envelopes I sent to him, I realize the first year of our love story is forever documented. Yes, we sometimes talked about mundane happenings just as my grandparents did in the ‘40s, but when I read our words years later, the love always shines through in between the lines.

When I open one up and see his handwriting, I can actually picture Adam holding the pen and sitting there, back in 2013, missing me and wishing I were home. I remember longing for him and feeling as if I was sharing a lived experience with the woman my grandmother was at 27 years old. In that moment, she was my peer.

My grandfather and I shared a few letters back and forth while I was in London and we talked about my experience briefly, but mostly, I felt like we shared a silent knowing of just how big their love was. When I returned from England, Adam and I were relieved to return to regular forms of communication like texting and phone calls, and best of all, just being together. Adam put pen to paper so much during that time that I can’t really complain that we don’t write to one another very often anymore.

It’s said that letter writing is a dying art, but I hope that isn’t true. I want to be a voice for the power of the handwritten word. It’s a special feeling to receive handwritten mail and love notes from friends and family. To see their cursive lettering on paper with their own unique stylizations and markings. These letters tell a story.

Sending letters or snail mail isn’t only an act of love — it is a way to practise mindful presence and to show those you love just how much they mean to you. It takes effort to pen a well-thought-out letter, much more than quickly swiping a text with an emoji. In this fast-paced day and age, letter writing can make someone’s day and bring both sender and receiver back to the present moment.

Retracing my grandmother’s love letters has shown me that we are all searching for connection in its truest form with the people around us. Letter writing is just one way to keep that connection alive.

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