The Mourning Mail (FINAL)

Chapter 2

PRESENT DAY

It had been two months since Dad passed. The movers were stacking the last of the boxes retrieved from his house into the corner of the spare bedroom I used for my home office. I wasn't anxious to move them again by myself. That thought had me helicoptering over the men as they rolled in their dollies of cardboard boxes. As they arrived, I tried to sort them by their labels into stacks that made sense to me.

I had the men set a few cartons aside—those with names that didn't fit any of the categories I'd assigned to my stacks. One box stood out, marked with a Sharpie in Dad's distinctive handwriting, "CEMETERY LETTERS." Maybe records about buying the plot and planting the tree?

After the workers were done, I put everything I'd moved out of their way back into their proper places. My curiosity was drawn to that oddly labeled box now sitting all by its lonesome.

When I opened it, I discovered a dark brown, expanding legal file folder labeled, "For Debra Ann." It had a big flap over the front opening secured by a cloth ribbon tied around the whole thing. Along with the folder was a carefully packed 24-inch fluorescent black light. Old school, like the ones used in the seventies to give a Day-Glo effect to the printing on posters.

Also in the box were two handmade square forms about a foot wide and eighteen inches tall, made of PVC tubing used for plumbing. Dad had joined them at their shorter sides with two thinner sections of plastic pipe, in parallel, about three inches apart. I wasn't sure what he'd intended the framework to do.

I checked out the contents of the folder first. The front pouch contained only a small audio tape. The other pouches held letters, photocopies, and envelopes clipped together in zip-locked freezer bags. Dad must have recorded a message on that tape. Now my curiosity took over. I longed to hear what I hoped were Dad's last words for me.

The tape Dad made was a microcassette. I'd kept some of those tape recorders in the hall closet, relics from the days before I began using fully digital voice recorders or my cell phone. I wasn't sure what shape the one I dug out was in. Wanting to minimize the risk of damaging Dad's original recording, I tested the rewind and playback functions using an old microcassette. Once I knew it wouldn't eat the tape, I used a software app to convert the output from Dad's microcassette to a digital file. I could then make copies to hear on my laptop without using the old machine.

Dad's voice was barely recognizable on the recording. Frail and quiet, it lacked his usual energy. "Hi, sweetheart. I hope all is well with you. I meant to call you. There's a bit of unfinished business I wanted to see if you could help me with. But my sleep schedule is all screwed up. It seems I'm awake when the rest of the world is asleep and vice versa.

"I'm grateful for every day I'm being given, and I don't mean to complain. But it's getting harder for me to do things. There's not much time left, so I thought I'd record this for you. Bill Hanniquet is working on securing your future after I'm gone. He tells me he'll finish this week. I've asked him to give you this tape and some letters that go with it.

"You'll need some background so that the letters make sense. You know that until I got too sick to make the trip, I visited your mom every weekend since she passed. She's always been such a patient listener. Even when Alzheimer's was ravaging her mind and memory, she had moments where things were lucid. She was one of the few people who got me. You can't let go of that once you've experienced it. I never wanted to miss a week seeing her.

"Your career has blossomed, and you've become so busy, especially with all the travel. But I've always appreciated that you went with me whenever you could. I know Mom welcomes your visits, too.

"It was while I was spending time with her that the letters started turning up. They're in the folder Bill will have for you. I noticed the first one about four months ago. It was cartwheeling through the grass on its corners. Caught my eye—a square wheel rolling along in the breeze. I grabbed it, thinking someone had left it for their deceased loved one. I thought I should try to return it. The sender didn't seal the letter—they just pushed the flap inside the envelope. Something had curled the envelope and its contents a little. The outside of the envelope just said, 'Sis,' underlined, and inside were four pages of blank paper. I brought it home and promptly forgot about it.