Dear Bernice

 

On another blog I write called Korea: A World Away, I am posting letters my Dad sent to my grandmother while he was in Korea.  I have enjoyed reading them because it is like getting to know Dad as a young man.  I have gained a lot of insight to the times and how he felt about a lot of things.  It gives me an interesting perspective to understanding him.  Some things are easily understood and others give tantalizing hints of things that he must have done or felt, that are forever lost to the present day reader.  I had often thought during the course of the blogging that wouldn’t it be nice to have such information about my other ancestors. 

My grandfather never threw anything away as far as our garage on

Lake Drive

could attest.  There are boxes and boxes of stuff still crated and not opened since they were sealed years ago.  It is a daunting task to sort through them.  I can tell you how much he spent for breakfast in Jackson, Mississippi on the 2^nd of August 1951, when he bought the last War Bond in 1944 and a host of other nonsensical items.  One item jumped out at me like a lighting bolt.  It was an envelope that on the outside was written a woman’s name, Bernice Livingston.  I opened it and what follows is the content.  It was a photo copy of a letter he had written to Bernice.  My grandfather had no more than an eighth grade education so the letter was less than Shakespearian.  He didn’t do a bad job however.  What he lacked in literary style he made up for in carving out an emotion I never knew he had.

1970

Dear Bernice, 

I saw you the other day at Wards at a distance.  Age has been kind to you.  You are still an attractive lady.  It has been over 45 years since we last talked and would really like to talk to you again.  For what reason I am not really sure.  Perhaps it is touch of the melancholy that old age brings when recounting life experiences and wanting to set things right before the grim reaper has his day.

Our last conversation was less than pleasant.  I recall the circumstance very well as I hope you do also so no need to go into all that again.  I thought at the time all that needed to be said had been said but no sooner had you walked away than a 1000 things came flooding to the for front of my mind.  Things I wish I had said or explained a little better, or told you honestly about the feelings I had.  Perhaps if I had every ones life would have been different, at least every ones life whose life we have touched since then. Not that it would have made life better for either of us only different.

I have had a good life.  My wife loves me dearly as I do her.  We lost one baby early on but had a son soon afterwards and now have several grandchildren.  I have not made a lot of money (but enough) or had an exceptional career (but varied and interesting) but have been happy and content and really missed very little in life’s journey or least nothing that I feel like I have missed.  I heard you married John and from all accounts had a great life until his passing several years ago.  I thought at the time I would write and give my condolences or even go to the funeral, but I didn’t think it would matter much and just drudge up old memories or perhaps feelings that at such an emotional time as it must have been need not be brought up.  Or perhaps I just wasn’t ready to feel those things myself.

I don’t know why I left really, it seemed like the thing to do at the time, but for what it is worth, I made a mistake.  The hurt I must have caused you was devastating and unforgivable I am sure, only perhaps surpassed by the hurt I have inflicted upon my self these oh so many years due to my actions.  That is no excuse of course.  I should have been more of a man about things and at least given you the opportunity to send me down the road and not make decisions for you.

I would like to meet with you, and completely explain everything.  Not to rekindle anything of course.  That preverbal ship has sailed.  Perhaps it is selfish of me to want to explain entirely and honestly but we were friends and young lovers once and I owe you at least the opportunity to say no to me this time and have a decent parting.  Perhaps I just need to fill a void that has persisted these last 45 years.  Let’s meet at the old bandstand area in Sugar Creek next Tuesday.

I feel some what guilty about seeing you because I don’t want Marie to know, she would not understand that my feelings for you have changed and have nothing to do with my feelings for her.  But feelings of past and first loves never completely go away and I have thought about you much more than a grown man should over the years.

If you are not there Tuesday I will understand. 

Best Wishes,   Conley

So, who was Bernice?  What happened to break them up?  Did they ever meet at the band stand?  Did she ever receive the letter or did he even send it?  Did she feel as much of a loss as apparently he did?  I would like to think they did meet.  I would like to think they smiled, laughed about the folly of youth, that she understood why he felt the need to see her, that she too had had a good life, he explained why he left and forgave him, had a found farewell and that they were able to keep the memories of their love in a different place in their minds where things like that belong and when they did dredge them up hence forth there was no pain just found remembrances of things past.  We should all be so lucky.  Some of us are.  But this I will never know.  Joseph Conley McAnally died in Jan of 1971.  A search of obituary records in the Kansas City Star shows that a Bernice Livingston Crawley died in Jan of 1972. 

The answers to the above questions remain unknown.  I guess there are some things really never known and perhaps it is just as well.