love letters

As I’m sure we all do, I will occasionally receive an email from one friend or another (almost always female) containing some little inspirational message or story, which closes with something along the lines of “you have received this message because someone cares about you, please pass it along to the people that you love”. While I sometimes find the story or message touching, I also generally feel a little bit of a groan (‘oh no, not another one’) and I almost never pass these things along.

But yesterday I received such a message in my mailbox. You may have read this one, the story about the teacher who asked her students to confidentially write something nice about each of their classmates, which she later compiled into individual lists and distributed to the children. The story goes on to tell a poignant story of how one of the children was later killed in Vietnam, and how he had carried his ‘list’ in his wallet all his life, and at the funeral it was revealed by many of his former classmates that they too had cherished their lists…yadda yadda. (I’ve received this one before. ;)

The thing that was different this time was that the sender’s email address was that of a MALE friend of ours. We have been friends with this couple for many years, first only peripherally due to the fact that our sons were best friends, but as the kids have grown into adults and mostly gone their separate ways, our friendship with them has grown closer and closer. I did a double-take on who had sent it, then checked the ‘To’ line to see who all the email was sent to (assuming I might be part of some big distribution list). It was sent to only two email addresses, mine and my husbands. I immediately felt so touched by the gesture…and then a bit skeptical, thinking that perhaps his wife had inadvertently sent it using his email account instead of hers. So I sent back a generic reply: ‘Thank you. That was lovely.’

I got such a kick this morning when I opened my email to find a response back from him: “Please don’t tell anyone that I sent that to you – it will hurt my macho image!” (So naturally I shall blog about it for the whole world to see...muahaha) ;)

It’s funny how that one small, uncharacteristic gesture could mean so much. I think the next time I receive one of those types of emails, I’m going to make it a point to remember that no matter how cheesy the content, the intent of the sender is the real message.