I Googled an Old Friend and Found Her Obituary

And the Three Letters That Kept Her Alive

Dear Reader,

I was rereading letters (the kind I’ve saved for decades) from an old friend, O, when I grew curious about what she was up to. I typed her name into the search bar. I expected a LinkedIn page. A Facebook profile. Instead, I found an obituary.

That’s when I understood something new about the letters I’ve kept my whole life: they store memory. A letter from 1996 doesn’t just capture a friendship. It captures a world: the movies we watched, the politics we debated, the books we passed back and forth. When I reread old letters, I’m reminded not just of who my friends were, but who I was then, and how they saw me.

These letters have been enormously helpful as I write my next book. Sweeter still are the reminders of the people themselves.

Take for instance, my friend, E, someone whose story, thankfully, is still unfolding. We were friends around the same time in the mid-90s. We lived less than a mile apart in Amherst, MA and wrote each other letters twice a week because we loved getting mail. In one letter she described the day we biked to a mountain, hiked it, biked home, made dinner, and sat by the window watching a lightning storm roll through.

Reading that, the entire day returned to me—one of the best of my life—resurrected because she took the time to write it down.

But not all letters bring happy tears.

Letters from O, 1996

I worked with O at UMass and I only have three letters from her. We mostly communicated while going for walks or hanging out. Her apartment overflowed with plants. She had the greenest thumb I’ve ever known and regularly attempted to save the dying plants my mother sent me home with.

O and I hadn’t been in touch in more than twenty years. Occasionally her face would flash behind my eyes and I’d wonder what she was up to, but I never went looking.

This time, I did.

A few seconds after typing her name, my heart stopped. No profile page. No professional update. Just her obituary. She had died in 2014.

I reread her letters immediately, as if I might have missed something. Of course I hadn’t. They were written in 1996, when we were young and healthy and convinced time was endless. But certain lines felt different now.

“You always have so much energy and fabulous ideas. It’s refreshing to engage with someone who can match my energy level.”

“My parents are such a force in my life… I’m always reenergized after spending a few days at home.”

“My dad told me to ‘take time to smell the roses.’”

I had kept her alive in my mind for over a decade. Ten more years of bikes being ridden. Plants flourishing. Her dad reminding her to slow down and breathe. All because of three letters.

As saddened as I was by discovering her passing, I found myself smiling. She is still energetic on those pages—still making dinner, still inviting me over, still pruning her plants.

Maybe that’s the quiet miracle of letters. They don’t stop time, but they do hold it still.

With love (and many more loved ones still “alive” in my mind because of their letters),

P.S. If you ever wonder whether it’s worth writing the note, sending the card, putting pen to paper… it is. You never know how long it will keep someone (or you) alive.

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SONG OF THE WEEK

Letter from Spain by ELO