Finding Joy
My mother’s unfinished love story showed me that joy doesn’t need a happy ending
We often think joy has to last to be real, but a box of old love letters taught me it can exist in the encounter, not the outcome.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The writer's mother. Reading her mother's old love letters allowed the writer to see her more fully.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ROSIE WEE
Rosie Wee
When my mother died in 1967 of stomach cancer at the age of 47, she left behind her journal and a stack of letters written before and during World War II by a man called “JP”, who was not my father.
I was 17 when I found them in a wooden box in her bedroom and read them while seated on the floor, the afternoon light falling across the pages of letters written in JP’s elegant handwriting.
