Return to Sender

I’ve been away for the past couple weeks, finishing up school business and taking a much needed getaway to my niece’s high school graduation. With all that happened with my Dad’s illness and eventual passing in March my family needed something to celebrate. It was a busy time planning and getting ready for her Grad Party, East Coast style. No garage parties out there, that’s for sure! I’ve lived in the Midwest my whole life and I still cannot grasp why people through parties in dirty garages. I digress, my fancy party planning ideas aren’t what I want to talk about.

It was good to get away, be around family and partake in life’s fun like shop and take my daughter the highlights of the various Smithsonian museums on the Mall in D.C. The weather was so un-Virginia in June. Next to no humidity and cool. Even things like airplanes and airports went completely smooth and unexciting. As good as it was I was looking forward to my home, my own bed and my own space.

I arrive home, shuffle through the mail that arrived while I was away. Mostly junk mail and bills, a few thank you notes from my students and other graduates. Two red envelopes with Return to Sender stamped on them caught my eye. “Odd”, I think, I don’t remember sending out any envelopes of that color recently. I mean, Christmas, yeah. I picked them up to inspect them. They were addressed to the nursing home my Dad was living in, sent by me and my daughter. His Christmas cards, that apparently never arrived. I felt like I just got punched in the gut and overwhelmingly sad that he never got the stupid cards or the drawing my daughter made for him.

They are still sitting on my kitchen table. Unopened. I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t bring myself to open them. I certainly don’t want to keep them, I think, but it seems almost sacrilegious or somehow betraying my Dad if I throw them away. I really don’t know what to do with them. I could save them and hide them away, but then, I’ll come across them again someday and feel like complete shit again.

Ugh. Why couldn’t you have failed completely on this particular mission United States Postal Service? Then at least I’d never have to think about Christmas greetings that missed the mark.