Wherefore Art Thou, Lost Letter?

How a missing message doomed Romeo and Juliet, and reminded me of a postcard I never received.

Dear Reader,

Sitting in the fourth row of Shakespeare in the Park last week, mesmerized by the actors, the set, and the sweet summer breeze drifting through Central Park, I was reminded of a tragedy caused by a letter that never reached its destination.

As I watched Romeo and Juliet unfold, I was struck by something I’d somehow overlooked despite reading and seeing the play countless times: Romeo dies because he never receives Friar Lawrence’s letter explaining that Juliet isn’t really dead.

A tragedy caused by an undelivered letter.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just thinking about Shakespeare. I was thinking about all the messages that never reach their destination, the truths that never find their intended readers, and the lives—real and fictional—that might have unfolded differently had they simply made it through.

How many tragedies could have been avoided if a letter had simply arrived?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how often stories hinge on messages that never arrive. But what fascinates me isn’t the device itself. It’s why we find it so compelling.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve all experienced some version of it. A text unanswered. An email diverted to spam. A letter lost in the mail. A message sent into the world with no way of knowing whether it ever reached the person who needed to read it.

The “what if” is irresistible.

It also sent me back to my own box of letters. Decades of correspondence that, thankfully, found its way to me. But what about the ones that didn’t? The ones that arrived too late or were lost along the way?

As it happens, I know of one lost letter.

In 1990, my boyfriend was overseas for a year and wrote often. In one of his letters, he described a postcard he had written to me but never managed to mail.

Anyway, I carried around the card all day with me looking for a mailbox…finally my friend Andrea offered to carry it in the inside cover of her journal (my hands were getting sweaty). Of course, she didn’t read it. I let NO ONE read my private thoughts to you. Except I guess for the strangers who find that postcard. You guessed it. Andrea lost her journal. It’s gone, my original postcard’s gone. Maybe I shouldn’t put intimate words on postcards in the future…

I wonder how many love letters never reach their destination and wind up on some filthy sidewalk never to be read?

Thirty-five years later, I still wonder about that postcard.

What did it say? Was it embarrassingly romantic? Did some stranger find it and read it? Did it sit for years in a lost-and-found box somewhere, carrying words meant only for me?

I’ll never know, and perhaps that’s what has kept me thinking about it all these years. Maybe that’s why this trope hooks us so completely. It isn’t really about Romeo and Juliet, or any fictional character at all. It’s about the quiet fear that something important never arrived. That the truth was written down, sealed, and sent, and still wasn’t enough.

So now, when I watch Romeo drink the poison, I no longer think only about Shakespeare’s tragic timing. I think about Friar Lawrence’s letter…never delivered, never read.

And I find myself wishing that, for once, the letter had arrived.

With love (and appreciation for the letters that did arrive),

P.S. Is there a letter you never received, never sent, or still think about years later? Tell me about it. Some letters have a way of lingering long after they're gone.

SONG OF THE WEEK

On the Radio by Donna Summer