The passion found among the grief

You know the old saying that Fact is Stranger than Fiction.... Not so much as stranger in this case more a parallel to it.
On going through an old metal box(yep, black painted metal old file lock box) I came across some letters (no, they weren't tied up together with a faded ribbon).
One was a small note written to my maternal great grandmother by her eldest son, Jason, as he left New Zealand for the Boer War, to "The Mother of his heart"- a hard working mother who nursed her invalid miner husband and cared for their 13 (yep thirteen surviving) children. He returned, fought with my grandfather on the Somme and came back from that.
The other a card sent to my grandmother by my grandfather from the Somme. They really did say... "Tomorrow we go over the top again, Jason and Tom are with me." (Sadly, Tom didn't return from over the top. I can still remember the sadness in my grandfather's eyes when he spoke of Tom.)
There was also a poem written in copperplate writing to my paternal grandmother from an admirer on the announcement of her "intention to marry" to my grandfather.
" Oh, the heartfelt sorrow knowing I shall not gaze upon your face
As you sit across from me at morning grace
For no grace can find the words to honor your beauty
Or mirror the depths of despair within my soul"

Tissues anyone?