What One Man’s Secret Ritual Reveals About the Sacred Bonds that Shape and Strengthen All of Us
My friend David recently shared this story with me about his father, Terry. (Per David’s wishes, I have disguised the names below to keep identities confidential, but have included photos of the actual people and documents in the story.)
Terry was born in 1915 in Great Falls, Montana. When he was three, Terry’s mother passed away from the Spanish Flu, the global influenza pandemic that killed millions around the world.
Terry’s father was half-Blackfoot Indian and not a welcome member of the extended family. When Terry’s mother died, his father was brushed aside by relatives, and Terry was separated from his father and little brother Martin. He was placed on an “orphan train” with other children who had lost their parents, and sent to live with relatives who had agreed to take them in. Terry thus arrived in Great Falls, Montana, to live with his uncle.
He would later endure the hardships of the Great Depression and serve in the US Army in Africa and Europe for the entirety of World War II.
David remembers his father as “a strong yet kind and loving man, with an easy smile and quick sense of humor—friendly to everyone. He was never bitter about his family circumstances, never felt like a victim or believed he had been abandoned. He carried a practical, simple wisdom: life didn’t ‘owe’ him anything; it was up to him to make the best of it.”
One day, when Terry was in his eighties, David came home to visit his father.
“I walked into my father’s room and surprised him while he was lying up in bed, intently reading some sheets of paper.”
Terry, embarrassed, quickly hid the papers under the bedcover. David pretended not to notice, and they never spoke of it.
Shortly after that, David helped move his mother and Terry into an elder-care facility. When David returned to the empty home to collect his parents’ belongings, he remembered that moment from long ago. So he went into Terry’s room and found, under the bed, the sheets of paper Terry had quietly left behind as his dementia advanced.
There were letters written by Terry’s mother to her own mother, sister, and aunt over a six-month period in 1918, beginning in July, when Terry was three years old.
“The earlier letters describe family life during World War I—community meetings to support the war, women sewing for the Red Cross, concern for a brother serving in France, and the excitement of people beginning to buy automobiles.”
They also revealed Terry’s mother’s spiritual depth. She wrote to her aunt:
“…you and ma were baptized—well, just so you both know your names are written in heaven and your hearts yielded up to God. You are in the church of God no matter what names you take, whether it be Baptists or what. All we have to do is God’s will and walk in all the light God gives us, and He will shed more on our pathway…”
But in November 1918, the letters took a darker turn. She wrote about the spreading Spanish Flu, how everything in town was closed—schools, churches, everything. “I do hope none of us get it,” she said, “but all we can do is trust God to take care of us.”
In early December she wrote, “I write you…hoping you all are well, for we are not. Leo [her husband; Terry’s father] came home sick last night and I called the doctor today; he has got the flu, so please pray God to help us through. I and the children are well so far, but I expect we will take it too, as I am taking care of Leo and he is real sick…”
The next day she wrote again:
“Well, ma, this is Thursday, and ma, I guess I am taking the flu. I am quite sick tonight. I am going to try and break it if I can but there isn’t anybody to do anything… Pray God He will be merciful to us now and send someone to our aid. Well, God bless you, goodbye from your daughter. May God protect you all from this plague.”
There seemed to have been a pause in her writing, and then she wrote again:
“If I should die, will you please come and get little Terry and Martin [Terry’s younger brother]… I only write this for if something should happen, for you don’t know with this dreaded disease.”
It was her last letter. At the top of this letter, in another hand, someone had written, “This is the nurse. If there is anything you want to do, you must do it soon, for she needs help very badly. The time is short.”
The date was December 4, 1918. Terry’s mother must have passed shortly afterward.
Terry had probably been given these letters by his aunt or grandmother. He had kept them with him throughout his life, returning to them occasionally—like the day David walked in—to glimpse the mother he never knew, and to feel, in her own words, how deeply she loved him.
David told me, “[My grandmother] often ended her letters with: ‘I must close with love and kisses from little Terry to all…’”
In one letter, she wrote that little Terry got a pencil every day and “writes his grandma a letter. He is so sweet and just as smart as can be.”
David reflected, “My father never experienced a mother’s love or had memories of it, because of how young he was. But through those letters he could feel that he did have a mother’s love—written in black and white—how much she cherished him. He never shared the letters with me or anyone. They were a sacred, living link to a mother he could not remember, yet who continued to comfort him all his life.”
David’s father passed away at the age of 92. “I am sure when he passed, she was waiting for him on the other side. What a reunion that must have been!”
I was stunned as I heard David talk about these letters.
For here was a man—Terry—who was orphaned young, survived the Depression, fought in a world war, and built a life marked by strength, warmth, humor, and kindness. And yet behind it all, quietly, throughout his life, all the way into his late eighties, he was retreating to his room and reading these tender letters, drawing strength from his mother’s love, her appreciation of him, and the goodness of her own heart— a mother who he had barely known.
Imagine that.
This story reveals so many beautiful truths about you and me and all of us.
That no matter our age or accomplishments, each of us carries a quiet longing—to be loved, to be seen, to be cherished for who we are at our core.
That tenderness is not weakness, but one of the deepest sources of human strength.
That when we offer pure, selfless love to another soul, the memory of that love may become the very anchor they draw on—silently, privately, faithfully—through all the storms of their life.
May we live so that our words, our presence, and our kindness become letters of love that outlast us—treasures future generations might one day find, hold close, and draw strength from.
Warmly,
Hitendra
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