Other People's Love Letters_ 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See - Bill Shapiro [4]
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Will you be my wife?
His girlfriend was always the photographer. She’d somehow managed to capture every one of their special occasions with a Polaroid—their first New Year’s Eve together, holding hands on a trampoline, the night they watched for falling stars. So it just seemed right, he thought, to capture the memory of his proposing to her. On November 5, 2005, he asked her to look for a surprise inside the drawer of a small table. While she rifled through the drawer, he got down on one knee beside her. When she finally found this Polaroid, he had the ring waiting. She looked up from the picture, and he asked her to marry him. She said yes.
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Mi flor
The couple met during an intimacy exercise at a weekend workshop called “The Miracle of Love.” He had just gotten out of a relationship and was more trying to figure out what went wrong than looking to meet anyone. But there she was. They’ve been together two years and recently held a commitment ceremony at California’s Joshua Tree National Park.
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Nude
This card was written several months into the couple’s second attempt at a relationship. It was left for its recipient on the bed, and read in private later that evening. This time, they’ve been together for two and a half years. (The word “neyuwl” was, until very, very recently, one of the couple’s private jokes.
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On the occasion of my being made aware of the birth of our firstborn
Ellen spotted Jack at a college bar. He was a junior—and very cute. They fell in love. She became a teacher in Harlem; he became a Marine, a lieutenant. They were married in February of 1968 and moved to the base in Quantico, Virginia. She was well into her pregnancy when, in March of 1969, Jack shipped out to Vietnam. They exchanged frequent letters and audiotapes, and even talked on the phone once. Their son was born on June 6. On June 30—just a few days before he was set to leave Vietnam and see his boy for the first time—Jack was killed. Ellen saved every one of his letters and, thirty years later, their son, John Hulme, used the letters—including this one—to retrace his father’s movements during the war. Ultimately, he and Ellen found the very spot in Vietnam where Jack lost his life. John made the documentary film Unknown Soldier about their experience.
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While you were out getting stoned
This note, left on her desk by a coworker, ignited a first date for the last night of 1999. The couple married in 2004.
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A year with Pooks and Dude
Judith (“Dude”) created this booklet in 1970 for her husband Jonathan (“Pooks”) to commemorate their first year of marriage. After thirty-seven years, they’re happily married with three grown children and two grandchildren.
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It’s a dusty one today
This letter was sent from Iraq, where the author was flying Blackhawk helicopters. The couple met in high school, in 1977, and married in ′81; they have three grown children. He’s completed two tours of duty in Iraq and is expecting to return for a third.
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I can’t call you on your birthday
Erica Smith blogged this open letter to her boyfriend, Ben Stern, on what would have been his thirty-sixth birthday. He died of a heart attack on January 23, 2005, while the couple was walking through a park during a blizzard after midnight.
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Braille
After the Great Depression, when jobs were still hard to find, a carpenter began working at a residential institution for the blind. There, he met a secretary. She was plucky and sociable, and although she had lost her sight in her early twenties, she could