Letters From Heaven

It was a cool March morning, a gentle breeze chilled the air, and the grass was covered with dew.  I poured a thermos to the rim with freshly brewed coffee.  I called my dog, Buddy and he jumped into his place on the back seat.  It was a good morning for exploring the backroads and lost highways.  We turned up the music and headed out looking for new adventures and to take photos of what we found.

The highways had little traffic and the more we drove the fewer houses we saw.  In the distance, we saw that the highway ended, and off we went down a dirt road.  The road got narrow, and I knew it was time to get out and walk.  Buddy and I walked about a mile when we started seeing buildings in the woods.  The silence was deep and almost made you feel its weight, heavy, dense, and the quiet foreboding.

In the distance, we heard a crow cawing and we worked our way through the shrubs.  The house was old with cracked windows and doors open.  It was like someone left in a hurry or decided that some things were not worth taking.  Two rocking chairs stood silently on the porch, rocking slightly as a breeze blew gently in the forest.  Sitting in one it felt sturdy as if built to last, and I could feel memories dancing around the old house.

We walked a little way down the overgrown dirt road and could see barns and tenant houses all around us.  The road went both left and right, a massive Packhouse barn sat majestically in the middle of the circle.  There were at least twelve buildings scattered throughout the forest.  This was a large farm, yet all the fields were overgrown.  It seemed that maybe this was a main road at one time.

Sitting on the old porch in the weathered rockers I closed my eyes and let the whispered story unfold from the mist.  I opened my eyes looking past the yard to the dirt road and noticed a mailbox.  I stood up thinking surely there could not possibly be mail in the box.  It was old and a bit rusty, yet it seemed newer than the surrounding structures.

With deep anticipation, I slowly walked to the end of the overgrown driveway and stood staring at the mailbox.  My imagination was in overdrive as I slowly opened the box seeing the paper within.  I held all the items by my side and sat back down in the rocker sorting the trash from the interesting items.

It was a varied collection, a church bulletin from 1958, a faded newspaper and a letter from a book publisher congratulating the sender on getting her poem published, and lastly a wedding invitation from a granddaughter.  My mind was unable to process all these old letters. I wanted more; I wanted a story.  Truly this was romance, love, family, and a forgotten life coming back to live again, lost memories waiting to be told.

Looking again at the mailbox I thought about what it would be like to get letters from heaven, a letter telling a son that he would be alright and have a good life filled with dreams, love, laughter, and family.  Imagine a letter telling a family that got left behind, how to till the rich dirt and make the farm prosper.

Is it possible, perhaps it is truly a blessing when we find a lost or forgotten letter, a letter from heaven?