"He's just been found dead

in....(another country). They think it might have been his medical condition."
Middle Cat phoned us last night to give us the news that someone we know and like very much had just lost her son. He was a young man, not yet 30. 
Good friends of mine also lost their son recently. I wrote about it in an earlier post. He was twenty years older - but that doesn't make it any easier. 
This young man wasn't married. Towards the end of last year he went off to the other side of the world to work. He was looking forward to it. The application process had taken months but he had kept at it and, although a little homesick at times, he was enthusiastic about his new life. 
He was good about keeping in touch too. "He rings me at least once a week, often twice," his mother would say.
Yes, being a member of the younger generation, he didn't write letters.
And that brought me up with a jolt. What will his mother have left of his recent life? Did he send any written correspondence from the other side of the world?
My mother was a letter writer. Her handwriting appeared effortless. It flowed. It was highly legible. When her three eldest kittens were aware she wrote to them twice a week and to her mother once a week. The letters would be short, sometimes no more than half a page. They were simply to keep us informed about what was going on or to tell us what to do. We were expected to respond, and respond promptly.
When we left school the letters were cut back to one a week. We were still expected to respond. At university on the other side of the world I would write home every Friday. Back in Downunder when I went to another state to do more study I did the same thing. It didn't matter that I was trying to work to support myself and study full time. I had to find time to write a letter. Of course long-distance phone calls were expensive - timed in units of three minutes  - but it was more than that. 
My mother did not keep our letters. She wasn't in the least bit sentimental about such things. I had kept some of hers. She found them when she was going through some of my things - that I was I well and truly an adult then did not mean I had any right to privacy - and  she threw them all out. I have nothing left. 
My brother, who lives interstate, kept his. He says they are a reminder of "what could have been". 
I would, at very least, have kept my letters out of curiosity. They would have been a tangible reminder of my mother. There would have been a "here" and a "now" as well as "once" and "then" about them.
By not writing personal letters we are losing more than the news they deliver.