The Card That Was Never Read

My hands gravitated towards a piece of cardstock hidden amidst the scattered mess that lay before me. My eyes hovered over the array of sparkly-colored pens clattering on the marble floor, its shiny pigments calling out to the whimsical parts of my 12-year-old self.

This plain card felt ready for transformation. I proceed to litter the card with my classic indispensables: glitter and a profusion of stickers. With a black pen, its colour starkly contrasting the subdued sea-blue background of the card, I start to write.

“G-E-T”, I whispered, tracing the sinuous curves of each letter.

“W-E-L-L”, I continue with meticulous precision.

“S-O-O-N”, I finished, exhaling in quiet satisfaction.

A seemingly ordinary message that eventually turned out to carry the weight of something far more extraordinary.

I paused at first, pen hovering momentarily over paper in a moment of quiet contemplation. But with each passing second, I wrote and wrote until my thoughts bled into ink, until words devoured every inch of the vast expanse of paper, like a canvas slowly coming to life.

There’s something that shifts in you when a loved one falls ill. You could have been laughing the day before, arguing, or simply sitting next to each other in companionable silence. But in the face of a loved one’s plight, these shifting tides of emotion inevitably settle into something else altogether: love and…hope.

And that hope gave way to vulnerability. 

My hand battled with my heart as I found myself writing words that I’d never said out loud. Raw and unfiltered. My pen gradually defied hesitation, flowing more freely, voicing scattered thoughts into streams of conversation that were once pocketed away in the corners of my mind.

That night, I folded the card neatly into a thin envelope and left it on a nearby desk, certain that there would be time.

There wasn’t. 

By morning, the card had nowhere left to go.

For a long time, I was shrouded in sadness by the vicissitudes of the situation. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the card as anything but meaningless.

The card seemed to belong to a moment in time that ceased to exist, a heartfelt conversation prepared but never spoken. I thought of its unfulfilled purpose: to comfort, to reach, to inspire connection, to bridge a distance I longed to close.

I soon realised that my dismay lay beyond the card. It stemmed from how much has always been left unsaid, even before that night.

My grandfather was not someone who spoke in long sentences or grand declarations. Most of what he gave resided in the smallest of things, in his evening glasses of milk and boiled eggs; in the tangy after-school hajmolas¹; in letting me borrow his phone (rather begrudgingly) to feed my Temple Run obsession; and in those split-second moments where he’d let me sneak extra pieces of jalebi² from the fridge when my parents weren’t looking.

I’d grown accustomed to the familiarity of these quiet expressions of care, the kind that never asked to be noticed.

And yet, when it came to expressing something in return, I waited. 

For the right moment. 

The right words. 

For a time that felt certain until it didn’t.

For days, I thought its meaning had been lost. Without reaching him, it had nowhere to exist.

I realised I had mistaken its purpose. I thought that the card needed to be read to matter.

I thought about the night I wrote it. The hesitation before each sentence, the effort to find words representative of the viscerality of emotion. The tangible weight of thought. The joy that came with expression. The reminiscence of long-lost memories. The simple, almost forgotten act of putting pen to paper. To me, the card became a reminder of that delay. Not of what hadn’t been read, but of what had almost remained unwritten.

The moment had existed fully, even if it had never been seen. 

The card had never reached him.

But it awakened something within me that I had avoided for a long time.

Nothing about the situation changed. The card remains folded, still unread and untouched. Still carrying words that will not be received in the way once intended. 

And yet, it no longer feels empty or futile.

Because I no longer see it as something that failed to be read. 

I see it as something that was finally said.

¹A popular Indian, digestive candy known for its tangy, spicy flavor
²A popular Indian sweet where spiral-like batter is deep-fried and soaked in sugary syrup

• family
• loss
• love
• memories
• reminiscence