My grandma promised to send me one of the letters and today it came. The pages are thin, the folds pronounced, it is typed out with penned in corrections of his English.
“How can I ever doubt your esteemed character when I have spent five days and six evenings in your company…I like to recollect all my memories. But you I shall always see in my mind that way as I first met you when I was introduced to you by the Senator whose name I cannot remember. If you could only know how beautiful you looked that night when you appeared at the dance and you so tall in the dress which fell to the toes and made you look so lady like. So there you see I remember you. Perhaps you think I am saying this as an excuse for my lateness in answering your letter but do believe me I would have the same to say if I had answered immediately.”
This part is handwritten in a green pen: “I am writing a long letter because I wish to write to you always. You are truly to me very dear. Every moment of that thought gives me great pleasure. Your remembrance has been a great reward for that trip. Speaking in English I shall save everything for you… yes just for you.”
The letter is dated December 26, 1940 and Yugoslavia was on the brink of being taken over by the Axis powers. “Can you forgive my tardiness? Believe me I was away where it was impossible to write as I was on duty as you know todays situation in the world…We are preparing to celebrate our great day the birth of Christ a moment when we Yugoslavs realize peace and a future in the wings of our home. We are at peace now when from all sides blood is being spilled of young and good sons of different lands.”
I tried googling his name but got absolutely no responses, not a single thing even appeared. I can’t help but conjure in my mind the possibilities of who this man is – endless elaborate concoctions, piecing together the bits I know, weaving through them varying negative or positive contemplations. Whatever his intentions, for whatever reason the letters stopped coming, whoever he was, he was a man who closes tender letters by saying “Always I am to you.”
Do I post this and share? Or is it too sacred perhaps? Did she really love him or is this letter really nothing? She was about to destroy the letters, worried that people would gossip about the romance, but my grandma had protested and kept one of the letters all these years. Thelma was an avid traveler, going to every continent, and she did make it to Yugoslavia at one point, it was actually her last international trip, two weeks in Dubrovnik in 1982. Had he faded from her memory years before that, or did glimpses of him and that voyage still appear on lonely nights?
