My father has written me a letter every day we have been apart. It started at a sleepaway camp in the 5th grade. He would write letters before I had actually left for camp to make sure I would arrive with an already filled mailbox. Now in my third year of college, I have a received a letter every day we haven’t seen each other.

When my dad was gone for the summer at a camp in Minnesota as a teenager, his mom would write him a letter every day they were apart. In his eulogy to her at her funeral this past May, he promised he would go back and read these letters he has kept. It will not be an easy task, but something he feels he needs to do to honor her.

Although my dad has lost his mother and will lose his father in the near future, he has somehow managed to write me a letter every day, through the grief. Maybe it’s the fact that he still has a flip phone and doesn’t know how to text, or maybe it’s because of his mom. But I get one every day.

The letters are filled with what he did the day before, having dinner with my grandfather, a funny memory or about how much he loves his “little girl” (me). I even once got a whole letter about his favorite Subway sandwich.

There is something about opening a real live mailbox to see a white envelope inside with my name on it, his familiar handwriting filling the page. It is something that only his fingers have touched and now mine. I will keep these letters, just like the letters he kept from his mother when he was my age. I will cherish them when he passes, and maybe someday when I’m famous I will make a book out of them.

Every morning he takes out his pad of paper, an ink pen, envelope and stamp, and writes a full-page letter; then he rips out the letter, and begins a new one for my sister Annie.

I think my dad’s outpouring of love for his parents and for his own family is a lesson we can all learn from. Letters are my dad’s way of showing he cares. He could email me, or text (if he knew how), or Facebook message me. But instead he takes his pad of paper, and writes to his beloved “RH.”

Rosie Ecker is an integrated strategic communication junior. 

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