The Department does not govern correspondence. The postal service has its own records, its own authorities, and its own definitions of what constitutes a successful delivery. The Department’s concern is the record of the living and the moment when that record closes. Correspondence, however, creates a category problem that the postal records do not address and that the Department has, until this filing, declined to formalize. Three entries have required the Department to reconsider this position.

Entry 1 — A Letter, Pueblo, March 1919

A man who had worked as a bookkeeper at a dry goods firm in Pueblo for twenty-two years mailed a letter to his daughter in Denver on the fourteenth of March, 1919. His entry closed on the seventeenth. The letter arrived in Denver on the twenty-first. The daughter read the letter before she knew her father had died — she received that news by telegraph later the same afternoon. The letter contained ordinary matters: a mention of the weather, a note about a neighbor’s illness, a question about the health of her children. Nothing in it suggested awareness of anything approaching.

The daughter wrote a reply on the twenty-second. That reply arrived at the Pueblo address three days after the estate had been formally settled and the household was in the process of closing. The letter sat in the box at the front of the house for eleven months. It was collected by the estate’s final executor along with a quantity of circulars, two letters of condolence, and a seed catalogue. The daughter’s reply was the only piece of correspondence addressed to the deceased that had been mailed after knowledge of the death was available to the sender.

The Department notes only that the daughter knew her father was dead when she wrote the reply. She mailed it anyway. The executor, when asked about this later, said he thought she probably just needed to finish the letter.

Entry 2 — A Telegraph, Trinidad to Colorado Springs, October 1906

A telegraph operator in Trinidad sent a message to a colleague in Colorado Springs on the fourth of October, 1906, concerning a technical matter: a question about relay timing on a particular circuit. The message was delayed three days due to a line fault east of Walsenburg. It arrived in Colorado Springs on the seventh. The Trinidad operator’s entry had closed on the sixth.

The Colorado Springs colleague sent a reply on the eighth. The reply arrived at the Trinidad office on the tenth, where it was held by the replacement operator for several weeks. The replacement was under the impression that his predecessor might return — the cause of death had been initially reported as an illness that might resolve. When this was confirmed not to be the case, the reply was set aside with other unclaimed items and destroyed at the end of the year along with the remainder of the unclaimed correspondence.

The Department notes that the reply contained an answer to the relay timing question. Whether the answer was correct is not recorded. The Trinidad operator had been proficient, by all accounts, and had likely known the answer before he sent the inquiry. The question was, in any case, no longer applicable at the time the reply was destroyed.

Entry 3 — Returned Letter, Alamosa to Walsenburg, May 1902

A woman in Alamosa mailed a letter of condolence to a friend in Walsenburg on the third of May, 1902. The Walsenburg friend’s husband had died the week prior. The Walsenburg friend herself died on the eighth, before the letter arrived. The letter was returned to the Alamosa address as undeliverable and arrived on the seventeenth.

The Alamosa woman died on the eleventh of June. Her estate executor found the returned letter in her keeping, still sealed. It had not been reopened. It was addressed from a woman now dead to a woman now dead, returned to a household now also approaching its own closing entry. The executor, not knowing what to do with it, placed it with the items donated to the parish. The parish records note receipt of several household items from that estate. The letter is not separately inventoried.

The Department classifies this letter as: delivered to no one. The letter was written as an act of condolence and became, without alteration, an object requiring the same. The Department finds no precedent for this condition in its prior filings.

Department Notation

The Department has no formal classification for correspondence that originates within an open record and arrives after the entry has closed. The standard approach has been to file such letters with the sender’s record, on the grounds that a letter is an extension of the sender rather than a property of the recipient. This is administratively convenient but inexact.

A letter in transit is no longer within the sender’s record. It has not yet arrived in the recipient’s. It occupies the interval between two records: a condition in which the sender is no longer present and the recipient has not yet received anything. The letter continues moving through the world after the entry has closed, arrives, is read, and occasionally prompts a reply that no one will answer. The Department has no name for this interval. It has filed letters there anyway.

The three letters above are filed with their senders. The Department acknowledges this is the best available option rather than the correct one. The distinction between those two things is, in the Department’s experience, rarely as wide as the living prefer to believe.

— D.M.

The Department also notes a fourth case it has not classified and does not intend to resolve. A letter was mailed from Colorado Springs in 1898, addressed to a recipient in Pueblo, that was never delivered and never returned. It remains, as of this filing, in the custody of the postal authority as unclaimed correspondence. The sender’s record is closed. The recipient’s record is closed. The letter’s record is open. The Department does not know what to do with an open record belonging to an object that is not alive. It has filed nothing. This footnote is the closest the Department has come to addressing the matter.