My aunt-in-law Catriona Macdonald, a legendary cook, lover of birds (particularly owls) and gin & tonic drinker of note.

February 21st was her birthday. I read his letters to her again, but don’t have hers. What did her letters say? Is someone reading them now, too?

She turned her disasters, disappointments. Yes, turned them literally. Into something? Not necessarily. But if she did, perhaps into a Christian Science god, a friend like Dor, a sweet Spaniel, a porcelain owl, a tin of fresh shortbread, a bridge hand or her Progressive Party politics, a chauffeured ride in the Rolls to Scotland, her cigarette stub luxuriously doused in the door handle. Was that burying them? They were never destroyed. Her disaster comes forth in all his grandeur even now, softened in the tears of her niece and grandniece.

Only disappointments give notice but never leave. We watch them, examine them, damn them, but they never go away. What perverse fortune as they more than anything give us credibility, make us real. In their hidden, secret hollow they stay, respectfully, I think, until someone asks: Who is/was Catriona? How could she have lost him and borne her loss without a word? Like a sensitive plant, she nourished that hidden love with silent dignity until she died, defying the war that deprived them.

Further Reading

• May 14, 2014 ~ Heartbreaking letters from WWI soldier to his fiancee just months before he died on the Somme