I burned all her letters.

After 45 years, I burned all her letters.

She was in love with love. I was in love with her. Even though my other lovers had been men.  She sent me romantic cards and messages of love. No one had ever loved me like that.

But she left me. After we graduated, I got a job in another state. She planned to come along later. Instead, she came to visit and said, it’s over. 

I fell apart. Walking for hours. Not sleeping. Knocking on the door of an appalled new friend to tell her of my grief. All of it. 

Today, that new friend is only an acquaintance. A bridge burned.

Five years later, I met the man that I later married. He sent me silly cards. He is not romantic. He stuck around through years of relationship-shattering ups and downs. He brushes the snow off my car, takes care of me when I’m sick, fixes things when they break. 

During all those years, I kept her romantic cards and letters in a box. When I began to write plays, I vaguely thought she’d go into one of them. She never did.

Then my mother died, after 101 energetic years, leaving behind boxes and file drawers and baskets full of paper. Full of memories. It’ll take years to get through them all. Faced with that, and having no children to go through my boxes and file drawers,  I came home and filled a basket with my own paper memories, sending it to recycling.

But I burned all those love letters. Sitting in front of the fireplace, feeding them in for an hour, burning my hands, scorching my face. Because just recycling them wasn’t enough. After hanging on to them for 45 years, they deserved something better.