Erma Bombeck The Unmailed Letter is from her book “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing in the Pits?”.     It was first published in 1971.

Happy Sunday!  Today is Erma Bombeck’s birthday (February 21, 1927) and I still smile reading the late Author’s books.

Erma Bombeck The Unmailed Letter

In her book, “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing in the Pits?” there is a section of the chapter on “The Trick Is Knowing When to Laugh”… entitled “The Unmailed Letter.”  In it she recalls her having found a letter she originally started to write many years before and decided to strike a few lines and update it, so instead of “The baby is…” she crossed out “toilet trained” and wrote in “graduating from high school this month.”  In her P.S. she had written “I found my first gray hair today”, and ran a line through gray and wrote “black”.   There are some more examples and she goes on to then say pretty much everything else in the letter was still current.

There is a article she wrote in June 1989 that picks up on the same subject of “Unsent Letter Is Still Usable…” and begins –  “I ran across a letter recently that I had started and never finished. With a little updating, the letter was fixable and I wouldn’t have to agonize over composing a new one…”

Here is a YouTube with Phil Donahue recalling his neighbor Erma Bombeck

Remembering Erma Bombeck is all the more amazing to realize this is a person who at age 20 was diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease,  and kept it secret and that she endured daily dialysis until going public with her condition in 1993, and who survived breast cancer and mastectomy.  All the while she embraced life having a family and did it all with such great humor.

I’m closing out today’s blog post with this quote of hers:

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’.” – Erma Bombeck 

Anchors Aweigh,  

Helen

Attribution & Thank you to the following who are referenced today — 

Wikipedia  Erma Bombeck February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996 American Humorist and syndicated columnist

Image above Cover “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries What Am I Doing in the Pits?” by Erma Bombeck Published March 12th 1985 by Fawcett (first published 1971) on Goodreads

Deseret News “UNSENT LETTER IS STILL USABLE – WITH A FEW MINOR MODIFICATIONS  by Erma Bombeck published: Sunday, June 11 1989

YouTube WDTNTV  Phil Donahue talks about his relationship with Erma Bombeck Published on Apr 10, 2014