Write a Letter Today, PLEASE

Recently, I found some old love letters.  It was last Saturday, and I was trying to get a very messy garage cleaned out when I found an old jewelry box.  Inside were many treasures.  There was my class ring--shiny gold, its green stone hardly changed in all those years.  There was an old black rosary, some Indian Head pennies, and a gold, delicate ring--its onyx stone cracked and lost long ago.  When I reached the bottom of the box, I took out a stack of letters, all from my sweetheart, the man I married, my husband.  The letters were postmarked Falls Church, Virginia, and were from March to August.  The year was 1969.  He had lived there during the months before our wedding, working at several different jobs, waiting for the draft, and saving money for our September wedding.  I got a letter at least once a week, maybe twice.  The price of a stamp was six cents, and the United States Post Office was the only mail service around.  I slid off the frayed, pink ribbon that held the stack of letters and opened one.  There were six pages, each one lined, each one written in the same blue ink.  I pictured him at twenty, sitting at a kitchen table, probably at the end of a long day of work, patiently writing the loving words that would eventually bring me to this epiphany.  People simply do not write letters much at all anymore.  And even more tragic--they probably never will again.  Most of us text or post or tweet.  How ironic that I am even defending this archaic practice in a blog!  Besides, why should people write something down that is already old news when the recipient receives it?  That's a waste of time, right?  Well, no.  The discovery I made in reading those old letters was a genuine realization that letter writing should not be dying.  Words have tremendous power:  to persuade, to express feelings, to change the world.  Letters are a history, a record, an account.  Written letters require a commitment.  They require the writer to risk something of himself.  They are a tangible reminder that thoughts of a loved one, an account of an experience, or the mundane happenings in the life of a twenty year old might cause tears to fall on blue ink pages 42 years after the words were first written.  So letter writing doesn't have to die unless people allow it to happen.  And if it does?  Well, the joy in opening a treasure like I did last Saturday will be lost forever.  If I may, I'll suggest that you go out and buy a nice pen in your favorite color.  Pick up some linen paper and envelopes.  And go ahead and buy a few stamps while you're at it.  Make someone's day.  Write a letter, PLEASE.