Letter Writing Lost

This week, I was looking frantically for photos of my cross country trip to post.  Some of my friends had photos, but they couldn't send them in time.  I also had a few photos that I didn't have permission to post, so I couldn't post those.

I went searching through our guest bedroom storage room, and I went searching through the garage.  I found boxes of "stuff" from my younger days.  Pages of writing, printed out with half-finished stories, photos of friends from Argentina and college.  Photos of my nieces and nephews when they were babes, and now they are almost grown.  Then I found a box of letters, handwritten letters. 

I had letters sent to me while I was at Camp Seafarer, Cabin #11, where I attended when I was eleven. Letters in my box written to me from my sisters, my parents, my friends back home, and even my sister's boyfriend at the time! There were also letters from my grandparents, who are no longer here. Letters telling me the going ons at home, and discussing the New Kids on the Block and which one I liked the most!

And I had letters all the way through my second year of college, then they seemed to abruptly stop with the advent of the Internet and digital photos, there seemed no reason to write letters.  Email replaced the written word, becoming so convenient.  It's funny though, I didn't keep any of my emails.  My emails start from 2007, maybe, only because I never clean out my inbox.  I don't have any reminders of who I was in college, besides my memory. The letters received in Cabin #11, then #23, and finally #31 allow me to look back and see a glimpse of my childhood from those letters.

It seems something has been lost in the decline of letter writing.  We no longer have the ability to look back on a string of letters and see a part of someone who may or may not be with us anymore, a sort of glimpse into their soul.  Sometimes, I wish I had printed off all of the important emails, but then it would be just typing on a paper not truly a letter.