A postcard from Henrietta

We have a kind of “antique row” in my town, with a more than average saturation of shops profiting on the second life of your grandmothers’ discards. One of them had a boxful of postcards tucked in a corner, some dating from the early 20th century. The messages are mostly banal and pro forma: “Having a good time. Weather is nice. Wish you were here.” One that caught my eye was signed “Henrietta” and had this one-sentence enigmatic message to an unnamed recipient:

“You should say what you mean.”

Wouldn’t you love to know the story? Was she angry? Was she jesting? Was there something unsavory going on? Or was it as prosaic as a request for clarification? My thoughts went to Longfellow’s 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish about the early colonists in Plymouth, Mass., and in particular about a purported love triangle involving military advisor Miles Standish, his friend John Alden, and fellow Mayflower passenger Priscilla Mullens.

According to Longfellow’s poem, whose historicity is debated, when the recently widowed Mr. Standish sent his roommate Mr. Alden with a marriage proposal to Miss Mullens, the latter responded to Mr. Alden, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Miss Mullens ended up becoming Mrs. Alden, and we must presume it was a happy ending.

Whatever Henrietta’s deal was, my heart is instructed by this chance discovery of a personal exchange via the post office. For like King David and everyone (except Christ) before and after him, Henrietta and her correspondent one day died and returned to dust, of this we can be sure:

“For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption …” (Acts 13:36).

Such is man, “like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4).

Scripture says that once a man passes from the land of the living, even “its place knows it no more” (Psalm 103:16). What utter disappearance, that even the house and land you once lived in move on and get over you. I have seen it myself: I revisited the city where my grandfather once had a prominent business and asked around, and no knew his name anymore:

“Their graves are their homes forever … though they called lands by their own names” (Psalm 49:11).

We shall not be knowing what Henrietta’s plans were with Mystery Man, but I am certain of one thing about man, that:

“When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:4).

The other day I was in the car with my husband and was inclined to be cranky—just because I could. He got quiet and said to me, “Andrée, we have only a finite number of hours together.” The words scared me sober; may it please be that salubrious fear of the Lord we are told to have.

I hope that Henrietta had it too.