Posted in 1994, Delivered for the Funeral

My father was not a writer. In seventy-six years he produced, as far as anyone knows, one piece of correspondence: a postcard from a fishing trip to the lakes in June 1994, which never arrived, a fact my mother teased him about for decades. 'You can't even post a card.' It became one of those marriage jokes with fossilised affection inside it.

He died in March, suddenly, mid-laugh at his own joke, which everyone agreed was the only way he would have consented to go. The week before the funeral had that specific chaos of grief administration, and the task defeating us all was the words for the order of service. Everything we drafted was either too much or nothing.

The morning of the funeral, among the sympathy cards on the mat, lay a postcard. Lake photo, faded to peach. A 1994 stamp, franked twice — the original mark, and a fresh one from three days prior, with a sticker: FOUND DURING SORTING OFFICE REFURBISHMENT. DELAYED ITEM. WE APOLOGISE.

Thirty years behind a machine, apparently. Addressed to my mother in his backwards-leaning capitals.

It said: 'Fish aren't biting but I don't mind. Sitting here thinking how lucky I got with you lot. Don't make a fuss when I'm not there — put the kettle on and get on with it. Love, D.'

My mother read it standing completely still in the hallway in her funeral coat. Then she said, 'Well, there's the reading,' and there it was. The celebrant read a postcard, the congregation broke and mended in the space of forty words, and the kettle went on afterwards, per instructions.

The sorting office's apology letter estimates the card sat wedged 'behind fixed machinery since approximately the mid-1990s'. The refurbishment that freed it had been scheduled for years and delayed four times. It ran the week he died.

Can't even post a card. Took him thirty years. Perfect timing.