Mail

Not long after her father died she mailed off his prosthetic leg. She walked into a shipping store, its foot protruding from a card board box and said, "Send this leg to Oklahoma. It is going to a new home."/

Ignoring the furtive glances she handed them the address. "Pack it well," she said. "It has a long journey ahead and needs to arrive unscathed."/

Many months passed. She checked her mail every day looking for some word of her father's leg yet nothing ever came. The silence perplexed her but after awhile, she put aside her daily watch and wondered about it only occasionally./

As the one year anniversary of her father's death approached she became apprehensive; concerned that she would once again be overwhelmed with grief as she had been when he first died./

When that morning dawned she felt tearful. She made a cup of soothing tea. Soon she heard the mail slot open and the sound of envelopes landing on the floor. She gathered them up one by one looking at each as she stacked them./

Oklahoma one said, almost out loud, as if it were actually speaking to her. She moved to the closest chair, sat and opened the envelope./

"Thanks for sending us your father's leg," the letter said. "We have rehabbed it and it has gone to its new home. We are grateful for your donation."/

"Finally!" she said first in a huff and then not as the timing of the letter dawned on her; one of those plausible yet uncanny occurrences. And she knew in that instant that she did not have to be sad and that her father had given her a most precious gift./

"Dad," she said. "Thanks."/

©kcasady