|
When 70-year-old Bernie Meyers of Wilmette, Ill, died suddenly a cancer, his eight-year-old granddaughter Sarah Meyers didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to him．For weeks Sarah said little about what she was feeling．But then one day she came home from a friend’s birthday party with a bright helium balloon(氦氣球)．“She went into the house,”her mother recalls,“and came out carrying the balloon and an envelope addressed to ‘Grandpa Bernie, in Heaven Up High．’”
The envelope contained a letter in which Sarah told her grandfather that she loved him and hoped somehow he could hear her．Sarah wrote her return address on the envelope, tried the envelope to the balloon and let it go．“The balloon seemed so fragile,”her mother remembers．“I didn’t think it would make it pass the trees．But it did．”
Two months passed．Then one day a letter arrived addressed to“Sarah Meyers’ Family”and bearing(蓋有)a York, Pa(賓州)post mark．
“Dear Sarah, family & friends,
Your letter to Grandpa Bernie Meyers safely reached the address and was read by him．I understand they can’t keep material things up there, so it drifted back to Earth．Those who live in Heaven just keep thoughts, memories, love and things like that．Sarah, whenever you think about your grandpa, he know and is very close by with love．
Sincerely yours
Don Kopp(also a grandpa)
Kopp, a 63-year-old retired clerk, had found the letter and the nearly deflated balloon while hunting in northeastern Pennsylvania(賓夕法尼亞州)——almost 600 miles from Wilmette．The balloon had floated over at least three states and one of the Great Lakes before coming to rest on a tree．
“Though it took me a couple of days to think of what to say,”Kopp notes,“it was important to me that I write to Sarah．”
“I just wanted to hear from Grandpa somehow,”says Sarah．“Now I think I have heard from him．”
| 
