Tomorrow is Mother's Day. A few years back (before Covid) I was eating at a restaurant when I saw three elderly women: two with canes, and one with a walker. Jumping up from my table , I ran to get the door for them. They thanked me and asked me to join them. Am I ever glad I did.

It turns out they were all headed back to Jersey after a long Winter in Florida. They told me what it was like to watch their Mother's get letters from their Son's during World War II. And how they were all scared of the Green Sedan with two Soldiers. The one that meant someone wasn't coming home. They told me that often their Mom would make everyone write to their brothers in the Services. And how they hated doing that. Until later in life, when they had to do the same thing with their children who were writing their brothers and sisters over in Vietnam. Some of the Stories they told had cute endings. Like this one:

"My poor brother had five sisters. My Mom made us write him once a month. So he would know which Sister wrote him, we all used a different perfume. After the War, he came home and told us girls that everyone in his Platoon thought he was a real "Ladies man" and had a harem at home. That made us all laugh. He said the Sergeant would call mail call and yell out: "Brewster, how many ladies are you stringing along. Pick one and end their suffering." And that would make them all laugh. What made us cry, is our brother then went out to his garage, shuffled through some boxes, and came back with all of our letters. he had put them in a metal box and saved each and every one of them. "

It was stories like that for the whole lunch. One of the things all those Mom's worried about back then, was whether or not they were reading a letter from a dead man. Sometimes it would take months, even years, before they got a letter. So that was a real worry.
I know my Mom and my Aunts saved all their letters...and my one Uncle kept my Aunts letters in his Uniform in a plastic bag. He would read them over and over again after he saw Action. So make sure the Mom's in your life hear from you tomorrow.