An elderly man in California received a touching delivery on Wednesday more than two decades after it was mailed.
When Bob Sheppard of Long Beach opened his mailbox, he found a postcard from Cophenhagen, Denmark, that had been sent to him more than 26 years ago, ABC 7 reported Saturday.
What made the surprise even sweeter was that it was from his late parents who had been on a trip there when they mailed the card containing a simple message.
A flabbergasted Sheppard told the outlet, “I just started looking at it and go, ‘Oh my gosh. This is a treasure!’ It was the only mail I got that day.”
The message on the postcard read in part, “Flying in, we saw lots of water and green, green land everywhere. Love, M&D.”
An image showed Sheppard holding his treasure alongside a photo of his beloved parents:
Postcards became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s and were a quick and inexpensive way to communicate with friends and family, according to the Cleveland Public Library.
Even now people still enjoy sending, receiving, and collecting postcards, according to a Reddit forum.
“I enjoy sending/receiving postcards or just traditional letters in general because it’s a tiny moment of connection between two strangers from totally different walks of life, and I think that’s a beautiful concept,” one commenter stated.
Sheppard’s mother, Joanne, passed away four years ago, and his father, a U.S Army veteran named John, died during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic while he was in the hospital. Due to restrictions at the time, Sheppard did not get to say goodbye to his father.
Sheppard described his parents in glowing terms, saying his father was intelligent and caring, while his mother loved to travel and make friends.
When he asked his mail carrier why the postcard had been delayed for so long, he was told it might have fallen out of a bin years ago and ended up under a piece of furniture, been recently found, and then found its way to him, as he was still living at the address on the card.
But whatever happened, Sheppard said, “This was, to me, almost a postcard from heaven.”
