(1988 Note from Patrice to Mom) Please forgive me for all the times I talked fresh.
(1993 Note from Patrice to Mom) I’m sorry I never show how much I love you, but I do love you a lot. Please don’t talk about this note or school anymore because it will make me grouchy.
(1994 Note from Patrice to Mom) Thank you for putting up with me. It has been a rough year for both of us, and I’m so grateful you stayed strong when I couldn’t.
(1995 Note from Patrice to Mom) I know how hard and difficult I can be, but you still disregard my continually horrible attitude and let your love shine through. You will never know how sorry I am when I hurt you, and I cannot explain why I do it, but I do want you to know I love you no matter what.
(1995 Note from Patrice to Mom) I’m sorry if I don’t always show my love, but I hope you can look past that and know how much I truly love you.
I’ve reached a new level of emotional draining. It’s one thing to go through clothing and furniture. On the other hand, sorting through the paper archive that one saves during a lifetime is disorienting. Memory typically serves as a merciful editor. Meanwhile, the paper trail chronicles our long-forgotten struggles and traumas you thought you healed. Most people have an aversion to dwelling on things and self-pity. I clearly do not.
Above are direct quotes from letters I wrote my mom over the years. People—even my sister who was away at college—seem baffled when I tell them how downright dreadful I was to my mom during my teenage years. And while I comb through old notes & letters, I am confronted with my former self. Sassy. Boy-crazy. Defiant. Deceitful. Selfish. Stubborn. Emotionally distant. I get that I was discovering who I was, and as my mom used to say, “you take it out on the one you love the most.” Revisiting those years rattled me, and I am ashamed of who I was from the age of 10-18 (I also blame those wicked hormones). Obviously my mom & I have come a long way, and the transformation of our relationship is evident as the notes continue. By the time I turned 20, I was referring to her as my best friend and greatest confidant.


Admittedly, going through the house has been a secret thrill and triggering in a cathartic way. I know I don’t have to sort through the thousands of scraps, but if I don’t, I’d miss windows into my families’ history. I legit had one week where I really thought I needed to find a therapist ASAP. Instead, I relied on my standbys for this whole experience: friends, writing, margaritas, nature and working out.
Neatly-organized and chronologically stacked, my mom was pen pals with so many people and wrote weekly notes about her trials—elements of her life narrative. I feel a little weird taking such a deep look into a private part of her life where I never had access, or rather from which she shielded my sister and I. What’s more bizarre: she is sitting in the next room whilst I do so.
My parents never aired their dirty laundry; they were private people. I apparently missed the family mission statement. I remember when I first launched this blog in 2008, my dad was distressed. Even though he eventually loved following along, I think today he might be a tad uptight how I’ve used my writing as a way to encapsulate and examine my deep-rooted thoughts. Blogging creates my own time capsule, without burying it.
When I found the stack of letters my dad wrote my mom from 1966-1967, I knew that would uncover a literal minefield that pieced together my messy childhood. My dad was drafted into the Army when he turned 21. My parents had been dating for 3 years at that point. My mom was head over heels in love, while my dad just thought he was going to die in war. He wrote letters while he was in basic training for 6 months, and continued writing while he was fighting in Vietnam for 13 months. The yellowing paper has a smell and a texture, but also a tactile picture of hell. The juxtaposition of his beautiful cursive writing against the horrific conditions he endured seems ironic.

I watched him unravel page after page. From 9,000 miles away, he tells my mom to move on. Moments later, he tells her he misses her fiercely. What would you do if you were her? What would I do? We all know the bittersweet answer.

I kind of want to go back in time and shake my mom and say get out while you can!! You will not save this soldier. He will come back broken, so incredibly broken that you will endure years of a crappy life where you will end up hating him. You will have 2 girls who will grow up with an alcoholic father, and they will hate him at different times in their life as well. Somehow, no one in the family goes through therapy and we all come out … as normal as we can be. Doesn’t everyone have their own family skeletons in the closet?



Besides all the heavy, serious stuff, there are other comical elements as I emerge from a mountain of paperwork. I’m convinced my mom held onto every photo and piece of paper that came through the front door. There has been a lot of unopened junk mail, early 1990s shopping catalogues, old Christmas lists (dating as far back as 1994) and receipts so faded we couldn’t even identify the store. We fed the paper shredder 30 years of banking documents dating back to the 1990s that nearly broke the machine. My mom regularly donated to at least 25 different charities, so we have enough address labels to last 4 lifetimes. As true relics of past American connection, I’m hopeful I can recycle the 25+ dust-covered phone books that my mom still used time and time again because she didn’t know how to use the Internet.



My mom always claimed she had a method to her madness with the things she kept. I used to think it’s just madness. Now I understand that the house holds more than just things. It hold elements of identity and relationships.
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Wow, those letters and little notes are so important and precious. I’m glad you got to read through them, even if it was somewhat awkward. As the memory packrat of my family, I try to go through every 5-10 years and review things I’ve kept for value. I need to finish going through Forest’s toddler art soon. He doesn’t remember half of what he made but I certainly do…but what good will be it be to have him doing what you are doing in 40 years?
Again, I hope you were able to get through it all! I donated so much of my parents’ things or sold items that it was just unreal.
Here’s to Halloween, another one without our loved ones that will live on forever in our memories.
❤️