Dad’s Postcard to Son Arrives Two Years After His Death
Joseph and Rowan Torrez in 2008. A year earlier, Joseph sent Rowan a postcard that just arrived this week. Photo courtesy Julie Van Stone.
A 9-year-old boy got the surprise of a lifetime this weekend when a postcard arrived from his late father — two years after his death.
Joseph Torrez, a commander in the Navy, died in 2013 of a rare brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. At the time, his son, Rowan, was unable to say goodbye because his parents were divorced, and Joseph, 41, was in a coma by the time Rowan could travel from his Colorado home to his dad’s, in San Diego.
STORY: Dads’ Adorable Love Song To Future Baby
“When I knew Joseph wasn’t going to make it, I told Rowan, ‘If it were possible for your dad to beat this, he would. He was very determined and there is nothing that would keep him away from you,’” Rowan’s mom, Julie Van Stone, tells Yahoo Parenting. “I said, ‘You’ll miss him, but you’ll always have a guardian angel.’”
The postcard that Rowan Torrez received from his late father, Joseph Torrez (and their two dogs), was sent in 2007. Photo courtesy Julie Van Stone.
But on Saturday, thanks to a long-delayed postcard, Rowan was reminded how much his dad loved him.
The postcard was sent in 2007, when Joseph was on a road trip from Boston, where he went to school, to Colorado. “Joseph was driving our dogs to Colorado to live with me,” Van Stone says. “Rowan was 2, and in each state, Joseph would stop and send a postcard. I kind of vaguely remember him saying ‘did you get all my postcards?’ and I said ‘We got three or four,’ and he said, ‘I thought I sent five or six.’ It’s like a fraction of a memory.”
STORY: Dad Raises More Than $330K For Quadruplets After Wife’s Death
But eight years later, one of those missing postcards has showed up. Addressed to Rowan, it says: “Hello from Pennsylvania. I love you and I miss you so much. See you soon. Love, Daddy.”
“Some of the postcards he sent had those classic vacation sentiments, like ‘the sky is so blue today,’ but this message was just ‘I love you, I miss you,’” Van Stone says. “It couldn’t have been more perfect for wrapping up what he was never allowed to say to Rowan.”
Rowan Torrez visiting the grave of his father, Joseph Torrez. Photo courtesy Julie Van Stone.
Despite its long journey, Van Stone says the postcard was in near-perfect condition. “There was one little shred that was ripped off, but otherwise it just arrived like any other piece of mail,” she says. “You hear about a postcard getting stuck between machines, or maybe it ended up buried in someone’s desk pile, or maybe they dropped it in the wrong mailbox that no one checked for eight years.”
STORY: Inspiring ‘Heaven on Earth’ Dad Loses Fight With Cancer
Van Stone says Rowan is only just beginning to understand how special this piece of mail really is. “At first he was like, ‘What was the postman doing? Why was it so late?’” she says. “But I think when he’s older, he’ll really understand. When somebody dies, everything you have of them is everything you’ll ever have. Suddenly here’s this magical thing that happened, Rowan has something new and fresh and it closed that whole karmic circle.”
After Joseph’s difficult battle with CJD, a neurodegenerative disease that causes the brain to take on a spongelike texture, Van Stone thinks this postcard is the closure that both she and Rowan have always needed. “Joseph got that last message out to Rowan — it was in the craziest way, but he did it,” she says. “We have this last little thing from him. It’s truly a gift.”
Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? E-mail us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.
