COLUMN: Everybody Calls Me Jana Banana

Jana E. Longfellow
Published: October 10, 2008

Do you have a box of love letters tucked away?

A box full of handwritten cards, notes, letters and photographs from former loves, or from your forever love as a reminder of when your love was new? Most of my friends do, even the men. 

There is something so timeless and beautiful about seeing handwritten words on paper from a loved one, you can almost feel the emotion of the writer while you reread their message.

If you are lucky enough, you may even have some old letters or journals from your parents or grandparents that were lovingly saved and preserved.

My mother has some from her parents that both died when she was only three; her mother Josephine had been in a sanitarium suffering from tuberculosis when her beloved husband, Harry, passed away from a sudden heart attack. In her journal, we read in her ornate penmanship how she didn’t think she could go on. Her sisters, my great aunts, always told me that many people survived tuberculosis at that time, but “Jo died of a broken heart.” Their love letters to each other are touching, with professions of loving each other forever. It has always been a comfort to my mother that although she didn’t grow up with them, that she was a product of their love.
In today’s world, hand written letters are rare.

I still see people buying cards at Burry Bookstore, Carolina Christian Bookstore and Wal-Mart, so I know that people are still giving and mailing cards…but what about letters? Have they become extinct? My dear Hartsville friend Hannelore Wilson still writes letters, and my friend Kelly from Vermont does, but that is about it.

E-mails, however, have opened up the door to connect and communicate with loved ones.  I suppose that an enterprising fellow could transfer his emails to his sweetheart to a CD, or print them out. Although they lack the poetic charm of ink on paper, they still evoke that wonderful rush of emotion that comes from sitting alone and quietly reading the words that were carefully written and sent. Some say that they are even easier for people who are inhibited by their penmanship to craft and send on. 

This new technology of today provides us with so many ways to write, be it by text messaging on their cell phones, a social network site such as Facebook and MySpace, or e-mails. They no longer have to wait for a reply to a letter in their mailbox, their responses are rapid. Is it any better, or is it worse? I wonder if these young men knew that if they wrote a real love letter to a girl that she would keep it in a special place to read years in the future, would that inspire them to purchase some stationary and a nice pen? Whether the letter is held in your hand or read on a computer screen, as long as there letters and love is still true, love letters will still live on. Just don’t forget to hit “save.”