The letters Grandmother never sent

When we were clearing out Grandmother's house, I found a tin biscuit box at the back of her wardrobe. The faded picture of a garden was still on the lid. Inside, instead of biscuits, were thirty-odd letters, all in her small, neat hand, all stamped, and not one of them posted.

They were to her sister, who had moved to another city years ago; the two never saw each other again. Some were only a few lines: "The pomegranates came today. I missed you." Others ran to several pages, about weddings, illnesses and the price of bread.

What was never said#

None of them mentioned the quarrel that had parted them. There was only life, day by day, as if she wanted her sister to miss nothing, even if she never read a word of it.

My mother says Grandmother was a woman of few words. Perhaps that is why she wrote them all down and kept them in a tin. We laid the letters out by date and read the last one aloud. It was a single sentence: "If you ever come, the door is open."