Letters Between a Husband and Wife
The introduction of these extraordinary, moving letters and journals of my parents, Thomas and Susan, is delicate and emotional, especially as their firstborn.
The heart of correspondence covers three periods, courting and mid-marriage when the children are young and their children are grown up.
My mother preserved her soulmate’s letters over decades in a shoebox. More strikingly, they reveal my father's dedication for all things to better himself, his love for his partner and their children. His writing gives a glimpse of the strong and disciplined character of my mother, from the way my father has written to her.
The letters start with disciplined and ambitious young Thomas writing to his sweetheart, soon-to-be fiancée, Susan, in 1952. Thomas was in his mid-twenties, and Susan was eighteen when their romance started. Thomas had established himself as a high performer in civil service in the government of Sri Lanka while Susan was finishing high school.
Susan’s father, Lewis, trusted Thomas but did not provide the courting couple with too much freedom. The young Thomas’s desire to be alone with his sweetheart is romantically captured in the letters and creative poems.
Two years later, Thomas married Susan in a simple ceremony.
Eleven years of married life passed. They are now parents to three young children.
The exchange of letters starts again when Thomas is posted to a remote town in 1965 for work some 250 kilometres away. Back in the day, it took more than a whole day to travel that distance. The only way to communicate was through letters from his outpost. The letters now focus on family life, well-being, children, education, and domestic logistics. Thomas writes to Susan about his everyday life in the remote town, and his dedication to his work, which he imparted to his children with his role modelling. One sees Thomas and Susan being in step in their family life.
In this period, when my father could only visit us monthly, managing the family logistics was hard for my mother. The stress of taking care of Susan’s mentally ill own mother and the irresponsibility and abdication of duties of Susan’s elder brother are evident in the letters.
There is an appreciation for me, as his eldest at ten years, taking responsibility for the family in collecting rent from our family’s properties.
Intimacy, blind Christian faith, and dedication to each other and the children manifest in these letters.
The letters stop when Thomas got a transfer closer to the family home. Thomas and Susan reunited again in 1967.
I do not have the replies from Susan to Thomas, but Thomas’s writing provides a glimpse of what Susan has replied to him and her thinking.
The final and third sets of writing start as personal journal entries when Thomas and Susan’s children are grown up. This time, the writings belong to Susan. In them, one finds the grateful and thoughtful mindset of my mother. She joyfully acknowledges how Thomas influenced the children and his interactions with the two boys. She enjoys quietly listening to the children’s conversations with their father. She is buoyed by her boys' emotional intelligence pirit and compliments Thomas for everything he has done for their children.
Among the many journals I found, Thomas and Susan ir dedication, love and kindness aily. Personally, for me, having lived only 16 years with my parents, these treasures tell me a tale of the great thinking behind these two life-giving characters. They changed generations beyond them for the greater good.
Susan shows emotional attachment to her husband vividly in these journal entries.
Thomas was a self-improver and self-made man. He was born in 1926. His father died when he was fifteen years. At great odds, he studied and nt service by his early twenties. Once established, he sought out a beautiful girl from an established family.
Susan was his dutiful wife, taking on family responsibilities for her husband and children. Life was not that rosy, with several challenges from the extended families, particularly when Susan’s father died. To make up for the absence of leadership from her elder brother, she dutifully took responsibility for her adult siblings. Yet, Thomas and Susan managed their nucleus, raised fine children, educated them, and set them up for life.
It was a moving experience reading my parents' letters and journals, the thoughtful developing relationship between a good man and a good woman and the natural yielding of one to the other. The writings tell a tale of ever-evolving love, hardship, sacrifices and gratitude between two great humans.
In reproducing these letters, I have adopted a policy of non-intrusion, only quoting parts of the letters. Most writing is in Sinhala, my parents' first language, with certain selected parts in English. Most of these quotes are personal and private, and I like to respect my parents’ great legacy by not publishing them in their entirety.
I rejoice to see their humanity through these writings. I am immensely proud of them both.
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