Like a Message from Heaven

 

Hello, sweet blog. It's been a hot minute since I have taken time to update you. But I had to with this amazing story ...

I'm not sure exactly why we still have our landline. At first we kept it because we weren't keen on giving Eliza a cell phone, so we wanted a way for her to call us in an emergency if she was home alone. But she's had a phone for awhile now. Who knows why I still have this home phone? I never answer it when it rings, and I rarely check the voicemails. Most of our messages consist of pleas from the Red Cross for us to donate blood, so I usually just ignore all of them. [side note ... I am pro blood donation and the Red Cross. They just call soooo often, that I don't bother answering. Go donate blood. Save a life!] But this week I got the most amazing message ever, making me momentarily happy that I kept this ancient relic of a phone line in our house. I was working from home one day when a call came through. I was mostly ignoring it, as usual, when I thought that I heard an important piece of info that might be something I wanted to remember, so I ran to the answering machine to replay the message. It ended up being a worthless message, but I figured that I should go ahead and delete the 50 old messages on the machine while I was sitting there. The next ten minutes went like this ...

• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! My name is [redacted]. I live in Iowa, and I found something that I think you would like to have. {DEL .... wait, WHAT?]

This WONDERFUL woman in Iowa was going through some boxes that belonged to her mother who was being moved to a nursing home. In one of the boxes she found four letters which my father had written to his parents when he was serving in the army during Vietnam. She read them and thought that there might be someone in the world who might want to have these, so she began to research who Ron or Clyde Landis might be, and it led her to me.

 I quickly went back to listen to the message and realized that she must have called me way back in October 2023. Oh no! I was terrified that she might have just tossed the letters when I didn't reply, so I immediately jumped on the phone to call her. [This is actually a really big deal for me. I hate calling people on the phone. It stresses me out, so I usually have to take a second to psych myself up for making a call. Weird ... I know.] But I got through and left a message, and she called me back that morning. 

We have no idea how her mother got these four letters. She lives in southwest Iowa near the town where my grandparents lived. This lady (I have her name at my other house right now, so I can't give her proper credit) believes that maybe it was thrown into a box she purchased at some estate auction or something, and for some reason she kept them. I can't imagine how she got to me after finding these letters since I don't have my maiden name on my facebook account, and there wouldn't be an obvious public record that would lead her to Melissa Blau, but when she mailed the letters to me she included a sticky note where she had done a bunch of research ... finding addresses for my grandfather and my dad, figuring out who the children of my dad were, and then listing my married name. She must have spent FOREVER figuring out who we were and where to find us, but she succeeded ... and all of this while she was moving her mother and her own family. What an amazing and lovely human being! She promised to mail them to me right away.

The letters arrived this week, and what a wonderful gift it was! My dad was drafted to serve in the army during Vietnam. He never really talked about it. Never. I don't think there was a reason for his hesitancy to share his army story with us. He just wasn't quick to share personal stories from his past with us ... at least not often. I have a few pictures from his time in the service, but most of them were (disappointingly) pictures of the hillsides in Vietnam. Not many people. In these letters he shared how much he loved practicing shooting on the range ... but how terrible he was at it. haha He shared the fatigue of dealing with unrelenting rains and foot deep mud. Most of these letters dealt with his work setting up new positions as his battalion relocated to new areas. It was also fun to see him responding to things that my grandparents shared with him about life back in Clarinda. Side note ... who is this Sam that he mentions in his letters? I couldn't tell if he was teasing him or was irritated with him in one of the letters. But I have no idea how this guy relates to our family (Maybe Aunt Rose might know???). My dad was so young. It blows my mind to think about sending such relative babies into combat. I wasn't even close to being on his radar at that time, but in a few short years he would become a dad. I wonder if he could have imagined such a life that was ahead of him as he slogged through the muddiness of the hills of Vietnam during his service. But I can catch glimpses of the trademark slightly irreverent sarcasm of his later years in these letters. We Landis folk are not always super conversational, even among close family, so it was wonderful to get this chance to experience my dad through letters. For all of us who experience our interactions primarily through the more transient nature of texts, I worry that we are depriving ourselves and our future posterity of the wonder of knowing who we are through our written words. 

I wish for all the blessing of Heaven to rain down on this amazing woman who reached out to me and brought me this wonderful gift. I felt as if it was my dad was sending me a little message from Heaven through this kind soul. This world is still full of good and kind and thoughtful people, and one of them blessed me this week. I will be forever grateful!