On Tuesday, we listened to a podcast of love letters from World War II read aloud. The first one struck me in a different way from all the others, because it was a goodbye. It’s a pain that’s hard to imagine, knowing your life is coming to an end and having to send a written goodbye to your loved ones. It must have been a lot of pressure for Sullivan to try and write the perfect letter and make sure he said all the right things and include everything he wanted to before he died. I cannot fathom what that must have been like. It makes it worse that the letter was never mailed. The language and tone with which he wrote also prompted some questions for me. Sullivan’s writing was so poetic, almost rhythmic, and I really wonder: Did people actually speak that way? It seems a bit unrealistic to think about people really talking to each other in that manner, so maybe it was just how people wrote, not how they spoke. This also makes me think about what the “art of letter writing” really is and why it’s a tragedy that it’s being lost. This poetic way of writing is not restricted to letters of course; it is still present in poems, books, and songs. However, there are different implications when it is written to a specific and real person. It’s a different level of connection. I can see how that is the true art of letter writing, and it really is being lost. I cannot imagine a person writing a letter in this way today. The romance and beauty of what letter writing used to be does not seem to exist anymore. Sullivan’s letter brought that to light for me.