A woman from Texas got a surprising delivery in the mail when a postcard from her late friend turned up 17 years after it was posted.
Barbara Blevin became fast friends with her neighbour Jean Perry in the late 1970s when their families connected through their children, she told NBC5 in an interview.
The two women from Arlington could not be more different, but that is what brought them together.
"She was flamboyant and not like me at all,” Ms Blevins said to the outlet. “We were opposites and funny. She had a good sense of humour."
Almost two years have passed since Ms Perry died, but she said she sees her old friend’s house almost daily.
"I drive by there and I go, ‘I don’t believe you’re gone. It’s hard to believe it," she said.
While Ms Perry may be gone, Ms Blevins made the surprising discovery their friendship has lived on through as a material object – a postcard from 2006 that has been lost for almost two decades.
While the postcard may have been missing, it is almost as if Ms Blevins was always supposed to receive it that day rather than all those years ago.
Ms Blevins remembers her friend for her sense of humour, especially the audacious picture on the front of the card— (NBC5 Dallas-Fort Worth)
"I kind of feel that way. Like, [a] ‘Hang in there’ type of message,” Blevins said to NBC. “‘Everything is going to be a good’ type of message because that’s what she would say."
The postcard was adorned with a naked woman on the front, fitting with the humour that Ms Blevins said her friend had.
Ms Perry was visiting family in Florida when she sent her friend the postcard, but for unknown reasons, it was not delivered for 17 years.
When the postcard finally started to make its way, the outlet said it was mistakenly delivered to a kind stranger, who wrote on Facebook that he received this card and hoped to find Ms Blevins.
As if fate couldn’t pull her any closer back to her friend, the post reached Ms Blevins, and she told the man she lived just down the street.
"How cool is that,” Ms Blevins said. “I’m going ‘2006? 17 years!’ It was a shock."
In the heartfelt moment that Ms Blevins received a long-lost card from her late friend, she could not help from laughing at the naked woman on the front.
"The guy was giving it to me, and I went, ‘Oh!” she said.
Ms Blevins recalled that the man said, “Don’t worry about it. She had a sense of humour, didn’t she?’
“She did," Ms Blevins replied, chuckling.”
Ms Blevins said to the outlet that her wish is that this story brings hope to people who may have just lost a loved one
"They’re out there,” Ms Blevins said. “Blessings will come your way. I feel like I got one, you know.”
“Even though when I look at it [the postcard with the naked woman] I go, ‘Oh Jean!”
