random artifacts

throughout my life, little bits of old shit just randomly appear in my home. no matter where i live or who i live with. just out of the blue, some old piece of paper floats on by and i pick it up and read it, and it's just so random and strange.

when i lived at gary point just over a year ago, a little booklet surfaced. looked like it was from the 50's, and talked about making good sandwiches for the man in your life. it had illustrations like this:



out of a book of poetry i own, once fell a piece of paper, so thin like tracing paper, with typewriter print. it was an open letter to the mothers of sons fighting in WWII. it read as such:

When The Door Opens
By a Mother


I write this in the deep and earnest desire that it may, to some extent, comfort, help and strengthen all those who have lost a dear one during these bitter years, and, dreadful though it must be, those who are going to lose dear ones in the months to come.

Some weeks ago, I recieved a telegram telling me that my youngest son had been killed in action, out over the Atlantic he was helping to guard. Four weeks later, to the very hour, I had another telegram telling me that my second son was missing over enemy territory. I still do not know whether he is in this world or has gone to join his brother. Their ages are 21 and 20, both sergeants of the R.C.A.F., and skilled men.

I only mention these details because some people say, "What a waste of valuable young lives." Indeed that is not so. All the long years of hard work and high endeavor were leading to their supreme purpose, to protect our England and all the world, and to seek out, fight and destroy Evil.

I had a letter which said, "It is not the length of his life that matters, but the quality of it." How true that is. All these young men are putting more into their short lives than some people put into all their years on earth.

Those letters we recieve, are they not a most wonderful consolation? It is one of the greatest characteristics and one of the most priceless assets our nation posesses - that intense desire to help little children and anyone in distress.

After the second telegram many friends said to me, "I do not know what I can say to you" and I answered, "Believe me when I tell you that it doesn't matter what you say, the fact that you have shown me your sympathy is everything to me, and I assure you I value it more highly than I can possibly express."

Our boys of the Armed Forces of the Crown, by land and sea and air, go out in the day and in the night, in storms and sunshine, heat and cold to fight Evil, and they do not go alone. Each and every one of them carries a Guiding Light, "the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." They do not die - there is no death; death has been conquered.

Their spirit, their influence, their love, live on. God has called them to yet higher work, to go on fighting Evil for the sake of their little brothers and sisters:

What here is faithfully begun
Shall be completed, not undone.

They are not far away, they have not left us. They are, as it were, in the next room, and it is only that the door is shut.

In God's good time, the door will open and we shall be with them again, but we must make sure that we shall not be ashamed to meet those brave young men who willingly gave up Life itself - in the titanic struggle against Evil.

I have not forgotten the children of the Blitz. They stayed so short a time with us, but dear and sacred memories remain with us. Their little souls are with us too, in the next room, and those memories and their influence are such that I cannot understand those who say it would have been better if they had never been born. God in His infinite mercy limits our capacity for suffering, and I believe that no one, man or woman, is given a greater burden than he can carry.

And so we will try and do what they would ask us to do - carry on; carry on our daily work of trying to make a better world for our little ones.

Since the two telegrams, I have lost all vindictiveness. I only pray that all this dreadful misery and slaughter may cease, that after we have beaten the enemy, we may buckle to and start the real job - and it is a full-time job - of trying to make the enemies of mankind into decent God-fearing men and women. If we could succeed in that, we certainly need not be ashamed when the door opens into the next room.

and today, as i was shifting papers on my desk, i came across this:



curiouser and curiouser!

posted by Courtney at 2:05 p.m.

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