From Touko’s letter to Hely, 21 January 1945

Helsinki, 21 January ‘45

Dear Heikkä,

Let me tell you from the start that I’m going to tell you something I’d rather nobody else heard about. So please read this by yourself. I’ll write another letter shortly for everyone at home to read.

So, I’ve been thinking and I’ve realised why the three of us – you, Kaija and I – are so close and inseparable, i.e. “us three” that nobody else can be part of, really: not Mainio, not Kaija’s future and final Mr Right, and not mine who is, and will be, non-existent. We shared our childhood, we have had and have our own mother, who is nobody else’s mother, and our own father. Nobody else can feel the same way about them and our lives as we, who have so much of them in our lives and souls. And this will last for the rest of our lives, though it will, of course, weaken as we all become to our families what a real mother and father are, what our mother and father are to each other and to their family. And that’s why we don’t often talk about the things that we perhaps should talk about the most. And so things come out in a letter, when it’s just the two of us, with nobody disturbing us. Heikkä – how much we mean to each other, no matter where we are and what circumstances, even in the future!