Perhaps you’ve heard the story of 10-year-old Rowan Torrez and his father, Joseph, that’s been circulating in the news this week.
According to Rowan’s mother, Julie Van Stone, Joseph always dreamed of having a son.
“Every star he ever wished on and every wish bone he ever broke, he always wished for a son,” Julie told Denver’s KUSA.
So it’s no surprise that Rowan was his dad’s whole world. In fact, when Joseph was studying at MIT, away from his family in Colorado, he would write to Rowan, then just a toddler. On his way home from Boston in 2007, Joseph even sent Rowan postcards from the different states he drove through.
Rowan’s life was changed forever in March 2013 when Joseph passed away from a rare brain disease, at the age of 41. Before he died, Joseph promised Julie, “We will see each other again. All that matters is love.”
Rowan, just 8 years old at the time, didn’t get a last goodbye from his dad.
Until last Saturday, exactly a week before the 2-year anniversary of Joseph’s death. That’s when Rowan received something unbelievable in the mail. A postcard dated from June 10, 2007, and signed from his dad.
“Hello from Pennsylvania,” the postcard said. “I love you and I miss you so much. See you soon. Love, Daddy.”
Julie recalled that Joseph had written five or six postcards, though the family only received three or four of them.
“I feel like that was the final goodbye that he didn’t get to say,” Julie said.
We’ve written before in Mysterious Ways magazine about amazing signs of comfort from up above, like the card a widower found at the top of his staircase or the trail of purple balloons that guided a grieving sister. Still, these stories never cease to amaze me.
How did the postcard make its way home nearly eight years later? And how did it get lost in the first place? There are no clear-cut answers.
But one thing is for sure. Like all of God’s miracles, this one arrived just in time.
