Letters

This summer I spent one month volunteering at a Young Life camp in Minnesota. For the campers, all electronic devices were taken away for the week that they were at camp, to avoid distractions and to provide them with an opportunity to focus more on one another. The only form of communication that they had with their parents was through letters and many of the people volunteering at the camp chose to communicate with their friends and family in the same way. I received more letters in one month than I have in my entire life, but I have only written one letter. My grandfather sent me a letter while I was away, explaining that he had made the decision to go off of his chemotherapy so that he could enjoy the remainder of his life without constantly sleeping and being sick. He wrote about his faith throughout his battle with cancer and about how proud he was of the work I was doing. His letter gave him the chance to tell me something that he may not have been able to say in person. After reading his letter I spent two hours of my free time crafting my own. Everything that I had felt from the time I found out about his diagnosis to reading his letter, I wrote down, finally coming to terms with his illness. Such a large topic doesn't seem fit for a text or email. What you can't say in person, you should be able to write in a letter. Feelings seem to flow much more freely on paper than they do on a computer screen.