When I was sixteen, our English teacher gave us an assignment I’ll never forget.<\/p>\n
We were supposed to write letters to soldiers serving overseas.<\/p>\n
Most of my classmates treated it like homework.<\/p>\n
Some wrote a few sentences about school.<\/p>\n
Others asked what it was like to be a soldier.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know what to say.<\/p>\n
So I simply wrote about my life.<\/p>\n
I told my soldier about my little brother who constantly stole my records.<\/p>\n
I told him about our terrible cafeteria food.<\/p>\n
I wrote about the girl who sat behind me in math and how she always fell asleep during class.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of the letter, I wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope you’re okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, I received a reply.<\/p>\n
The return address said Kentucky.<\/p>\n
The letter was from a young soldier named Eddie.<\/p>\n
He thanked me for writing.<\/p>\n
Then he told me about the place where he was stationed.<\/p>\n
He described the unbearable heat.<\/p>\n
The long nights.<\/p>\n
The loneliness.<\/p>\n
He said receiving my letter had made him feel like someone back home remembered he was still a person\u2014not just a soldier.<\/p>\n
So I wrote back.<\/p>\n
And he wrote again.<\/p>\n
Before long, we were exchanging letters regularly.<\/p>\n
For nearly two years, Eddie and I became pen pals.<\/p>\n
We never flirted.<\/p>\n
We never made promises.<\/p>\n
We simply became friends separated by thousands of miles.<\/p>\n
He told me about his family.<\/p>\n
I told him about school.<\/p>\n
He wrote about the food.<\/p>\n
I complained about exams.<\/p>\n
Sometimes his letters were serious.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they were funny.<\/p>\n
Once, he wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I get home, I’m going to eat the biggest hamburger Kentucky has ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed for days.<\/p>\n
Then, in 1971, his letters stopped.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought he was busy.<\/p>\n
Then weeks passed.<\/p>\n
I wrote another letter.<\/p>\n
No answer.<\/p>\n
I wrote again.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I stopped writing.<\/p>\n
I never learned what happened to Eddie.<\/p>\n
Life continued.<\/p>\n
I graduated.<\/p>\n
I got married.<\/p>\n
My husband and I raised three children.<\/p>\n
Years passed.<\/p>\n
Then my husband died.<\/p>\n
After the funeral and the long months that followed, I began cleaning out our home.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, I found several of his old military uniforms.<\/p>\n
They had been sitting untouched for years.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t bear to throw them away.<\/p>\n
So I decided to donate them to the VFW.<\/p>\n
I carried the uniforms inside and placed them on the counter.<\/p>\n
The man behind the desk began filling out the donation form.<\/p>\n
Then he looked at my name.<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
He looked at me again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s your maiden name?\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him.<\/p>\n
His face suddenly changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBriggs?\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
He stared at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Sycamore Grade School?\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart skipped.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn’t answer.<\/p>\n
Instead, he turned toward a hallway.<\/p>\n
Then he shouted:<\/p>\n
\u201cEddie!\u201d<\/p>\n
I froze.<\/p>\n
The man called again.<\/p>\n
\u201cEddie, come out here!\u201d<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, nothing happened.<\/p>\n
Then a door opened.<\/p>\n
An elderly man slowly walked into the room.<\/p>\n
He had gray hair.<\/p>\n
A cane in one hand.<\/p>\n
And a faded military jacket hanging from his shoulders.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
He stared at me.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then he smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you Briggs?\u201d<\/p>\n
My eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cEddie?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t move.<\/p>\n
For nearly fifty years, I had wondered what happened to the young soldier who had once written to me from Kentucky.<\/p>\n
And suddenly, he was standing three feet away.<\/p>\n
Alive.<\/p>\n
Older.<\/p>\n
But unmistakably Eddie.<\/p>\n
I started crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it was you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recognized your name the moment they called it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked the question I’d carried for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you stop writing?\u201d<\/p>\n
His smile faded.<\/p>\n
He took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reached into a small wooden box.<\/p>\n
Inside were dozens of letters.<\/p>\n
My letters.<\/p>\n
Every single one.<\/p>\n
Carefully folded.<\/p>\n
Carefully preserved.<\/p>\n
My hands began shaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy unit was transferred suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he told me the truth.<\/p>\n
In 1971, Eddie had been wounded.<\/p>\n
He spent months in recovery.<\/p>\n
When he was finally discharged, he returned home with severe hearing loss and struggled with memories he couldn’t explain.<\/p>\n
He had written to me several times.<\/p>\n
But the letters had been returned because I had moved.<\/p>\n
He didn’t know where I’d gone.<\/p>\n
Eventually, he stopped trying.<\/p>\n
But he never threw my letters away.<\/p>\n
He kept every one.<\/p>\n
Then Eddie smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were the only person who wrote to me just because you wanted to know how I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the stack of letters.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kept these for all these years?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn’t throw them away.\u201d<\/p>\n
I picked up one.<\/p>\n
The paper was yellow with age.<\/p>\n
My handwriting looked impossibly young.<\/p>\n
At the top, I’d written:<\/p>\n
\u201cDear Eddie, today we had a fire drill\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed through my tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t believe you kept this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just telling you about my boring life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were giving me a life to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sentence broke me.<\/p>\n
We sat together for almost two hours.<\/p>\n
We talked about the things we’d missed.<\/p>\n
My marriage.<\/p>\n
His life.<\/p>\n
Our children.<\/p>\n
The years between us.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I asked him something I had never dared ask when we were teenagers.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you ever wonder what happened to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughed softly.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single year.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wondered about you too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he reached into his box one more time.<\/p>\n
He pulled out an envelope.<\/p>\n
It was sealed.<\/p>\n
My name was written across the front in faded ink.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote it in 1971.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn’t you send it?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I didn’t know where you lived anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
He handed it to me.<\/p>\n
I opened it carefully.<\/p>\n
Inside was a short letter.<\/p>\n
It said:<\/p>\n
Dear Briggs,<\/em><\/p>\n If you ever read this, I want you to know something.<\/em><\/p>\n Your letters made the hardest days easier.<\/em><\/p>\n You probably think they were ordinary.<\/em><\/p>\n But when you’re far from home, ordinary things become precious.<\/em><\/p>\n The sound of a school bell.<\/em><\/p>\n A rainy afternoon.<\/em><\/p>\n Someone complaining about homework.<\/em><\/p>\n Knowing that somewhere, a girl named Briggs was living a normal life.<\/em><\/p>\n Thank you for reminding me that there was still a world waiting for me.<\/em><\/p>\n I hope I get to see it again.<\/em><\/p>\n Eddie.<\/em><\/p>\n I couldn’t stop crying.<\/p>\n He reached over and gently squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou did get to see it again,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n He smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cApparently, I just had to wait fifty years to find you.\u201d<\/p>\n We kept in touch after that.<\/p>\n Not every day.<\/p>\n Not even every week.<\/p>\n But regularly.<\/p>\n Sometimes we’d talk on the phone for hours.<\/p>\n Sometimes he’d send me photographs.<\/p>\n Sometimes I’d mail him newspaper clippings about our old hometown.<\/p>\n And every once in a while, we’d laugh about the teenage versions of ourselves who had no idea how long their friendship would last.<\/p>\n I eventually framed his first letter.<\/p>\n I put it beside a photograph of my late husband and our children.<\/p>\n Because my husband had been the love of my life.<\/p>\n But Eddie was something different.<\/p>\n He was a piece of my youth that I thought time had taken away forever.<\/p>\n And one afternoon, while sitting beside Eddie at the VFW, I finally understood something.<\/p>\n The letters hadn’t really disappeared.<\/p>\n They had simply been waiting.<\/p>\n Waiting for two old friends to find each other again.<\/p>\n And sometimes, life doesn’t give us back the years we’ve lost.<\/p>\n But sometimes\u2026<\/p>\n it gives us the chance to finally say the goodbye\u2014or the hello\u2014we never got to say.<\/p>\n Nearly fifty years after his letters stopped, I finally knew what happened to Eddie.<\/p>\n And more importantly, he finally knew that the sixteen-year-old girl who wrote to him had never forgotten him either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was sixteen, our English teacher gave us an assignment I’ll never forget. We were supposed to write letters to soldiers serving overseas. Most of my classmates treated it … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5352,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5351\/revisions\/5352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}