This letter was written by my grandmother’s aunt Lovisa. She didn’t have children of her own, and I think my grandmother and her siblings loved her. Her photo is in an old album that was my grandmother’s, and whenever I asked about her my grandmother would say ‘That’s Aunt Lovisa‘, her tone indicating that I should know that already.
Lovisa died on January 28, 1931, about nine months after writing this letter to Ebenezer Lundquist, the husband of her niece Edla, in Lindsborg, Kansas. Her first sentence says that she had written a few months earlier, but not received a reply. Then the second sentence: “I wonder if my sister Emma is still alive”. “I am very ill”, she continues. It’s clear to me that she felt that she was dying, and one thing she wanted to know was whether her sister was already dead. Having waited for a reply for months, she had no other choice than to write a second letter herself.
At the time of writing Lovisa was 76 years old. Her sister Emma had emigrated with her family to Kansas in 1881, when Lovisa was was 27 and Emma was 30 years old. The sisters had grown up together, but they had lived most of their adult lives apart. If Lovisa was dreaming about her childhood as she lay old and sick in her bed, Emma would have been part of those dreams.
Emma died in 1939, so yes, she was still alive when Lovisa’s letter arrived in Kansas.