No offense to all the postal workers reading but, serious, the mail blows. I often joke the UPS should change their slogan to “Eh, it’ll get there.” Except sometimes it never gets there, or in this case, it gets there 20 years later.
A few days after Father’s Day this year, 87-year-old Duane Schrock Sr. of Virginia received a card from his son in the mail. It read: “Dear Dad, we haven’t been in touch for quite a while, I’m doing fine and am very happy in Richmond, I’d like to hear from you. Have a Happy Father’s Day, Love Duane.” It was a simple message, but to Schrock, it was “unbelievable.” The card had actually been sent in 1989, six years before Duane Schrock Jr. died of AIDS at 45 in 1995.
Please stop tugging so hard on the heart strings it’s making water drip from the corner of my eyes. God damn that’s sad. Luckily, Duane took it all in stride and actually thought it was an amazing thing. He’s moved all over the country over the years, which is how the the letter ended up bouncing around for so long, and thinks the card coming now is a “message from heaven.”
“It was sure welcome, and it restored faith in the mail service,” he says. “I still kind of tear up when I think about it.” The card, with a picture of a panda on the front, is especially significant to Schrock because his relationship with his son was sometimes strained. Schrock says he didn’t approve of his son’s gay lifestyle, but before Duane died, Schrock asked him “if he made peace with God because I want to see him in heaven,” reports ABC News.
That’s nice though I’d be nervous if the card was from his son in heaven and said “see you soon.”
[via Newser]