Finding a Box of Family Letters

The dead say little in their letters they haven't said before. We find no secrets, and yet how different every sentence sounds heard across the years. My father breaks my heart simply by being so young and handsome. He's half my age, with jet-black hair. Look at him in his navy uniform grinning beside his dive-bomber. Come back, Dad! I want to shout. He says he misses all of us (though I haven't yet been born). He writes from places I never knew he saw, and everyone he mentions now is dead. There is a large, long photograph curled like a diploma—a banquet sixty years ago. My parents sit uncomfortably among tables of dark-suited strangers. The mildewed paper reeks of regret. I wonder what song the band was playing, just out of frame, as the photographer arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot? Get out there on the floor and dance! You don't have forever. What does it cost to send a postcard to the underworld? I'll buy a penny stamp from World War II and mail it downtown at the old post office just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve. Surely the ghost of some postal worker still makes his nightly rounds, his routine too tedious for him to notice when it ended. He works so slowly he moves back in time carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses. It's silly to get sentimental. The dead have moved on. So should we. But isn't it equally simple-minded to miss the special expertise of the departed in clarifying our long-term plans? They never let us forget that the line between them and us is only temporary. Get out there and dance! the letters shout adding,Love always. Can't wait to get home! And soon we will be.See you there.