Burned Letters

A lesson in zen

Long before zen sand gardens became desk accessories, I heard about the Tibetan practice of creating enormous mandalas from colored sand or crushed rocks, a process that takes days or weeks, and then intentionally destroying them. I couldn't wrap my mind around investing that kind of time and work into something beautiful that could not and should not be preserved. Maybe it's because as a young artist, my mom admonished me to “keep everything!”—advice that would lead to my disposal of a box of embarrassing teenage love poems only last year. Or maybe it's a natural response, exposing the very attachment zen practice is meant to challenge.

Once I left a stressful job for a new position elsewhere. As I cleaned out my desk, I was struck by the number of things I could simply throw away. Reams of paperwork, files, notes—all of dire importance yesterday. All irrelevant today.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Stuff is ephemeral.

In my book I mention my favorite cousin, the one who died in open heart surgery while I was still grieving the loss of my marriage. I wanted to dedicate more space to her story, but the book isn't about her, and editing calls for the eradication of such darlings. She was a free spirit and loving soul whose loss left a deep wound in all who knew her. My entire family called her by a silly nickname she earned in childhood—I’ll call her Birdie.

I'm still friends with the partner she left behind; I call him my cousin-in-law. He and his new wife came to stay with me for a few days recently. After spending a whole day bouncing from one craft brewery to another, trying every IPA in town, they Ubered in around 11:00 pm. Aaron was already three sheets to the wind, and after retrieving another beer or two from the fridge, was four. His wife went to bed, leaving the two of us to reminisce about Birdie.

Now six years past her death, he'd found a box of letters that belonged to her in the basement of the home she once shared with him. Letters to and from her prior husband, who she'd stayed with until he'd died. Letters to and from another boyfriend or three. Private letters exposing secrets and misdeeds, some of which we discussed. Letters that gave Aaron complicated feelings.

They weren't for his eyes, Aaron had decided after suffering through a few too many. He'd taken them to the firepit and set them ablaze.

It was the right thing to do, of course, or at least a right thing to do. They weren't for his eyes. They stirred up feelings of jealousy, betrayal, empathy, sadness. Guilt for his voyeurism. An awareness that no good could come of continuing to read. And yet, the image of those letters going up in flames was a dagger to my heart. Those words of my precious Birdie, new words from someone who can utter no new words, important words on the most important matters of her short life, now gone in an impulsive instant. Why hadn't he given them to a family member? Why hadn't he given them to me? I missed her so, and reading those words would have given some of her back to me.

But those words weren't for my eyes, either. And what of all the other precious words she wrote and destroyed? And what of the words created and destroyed by my mother and my grandmother and my great-grandmother, whom I knew, and her mother and grandmother, whom I did not know? Precious words are everywhere, and everywhere they are lost and destroyed. They are mandalas in the sand, and I must find my zen.