I wonder...
Today was one of those eye-opening days. My mother, Scott, and I went to my grandma's house for a few hours. We took her out to lunch and helped her pay her bills and such. Scott mentioned that he was studying poetry in class and my grandma remarked that my grandfather used to write poetry.
When we got back to her house, she pulled out her old shoebox from upstairs.
Inside the shoebox were all of her mementos of my grandfather while he was in the navy during WWII.
My grandparents were a wartime love story for the ages. After dating for seven years, my grandfather kept trying to propose to her, but she kept refusing. Then he got his draft notice. In desperation, he showed it to her and proposed one last time. And she accepted.
The shoebox contained newspaper clippings, pictures, booklets about getting readjusted to civilian life and how to amuse yourself while away from home. The handmade belts my grandfather made, with his name and hers woven in. The letters he wrote, the handmade cards he colored and drew for her (in one of them, he copied the photograph of my grandmother from his wallet and colored it for her), the navy comics he drew, his full-size sketches of his patches on his uniform, the deck of cards he used to memorize the flying aircrafts, postcards, the poetry, his complete war diary about every single day during the war through his brief arrival at home and their on-the-spot wedding before he left again.
Above all, what amazed me the most were the letters. During the war, soldiers could not release information about where they were stationed or any other pertinent information. All letters were screened and such words were simply cut from the letters. My grandparents devised a coding system so my grandmother always knew where he was and how he fared. He would sign his letters with one of five greetings. Each greeting meant something different (ex. "Elsie Darling" meant he was on his way back to the U.S., "Dearest Elsie" would have meant that he was a prisoner of war, etc.).
They were married for 56 years before he passed away.
...
The whole story just leaves me speechless. I can't even begin to imagine...