A Colorado boy received a postcard from his father two years after he died from a rare brain disease at age 41.
Rowan, 9, never got to say goodbye to his father Joseph Torrez when he died in 2013 from an incurable disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, which causes the brain to deteriorate over time, KUSA reported.
Torrez was being treated in San Diego and Rowan, whose parents were divorced, could not make it in time from his home in Littleton, Colo.
"When I knew Joseph wasn't going to make it, I told Rowan, 'If it were possible for your dad to beat this, he would,' " Rowan's mother, Julie Van Stone, told Yahoo! Parenting.
But on Saturday a postcard arrived in the mail from Rowan's dad- just days before the two-year anniversary of his death.
"Hello from Pennsylvania. I love you, and I miss you so much," reads the 2007 postcard from Torrez, who at the time was attending school in another state and did not get to see his son often. "See you soon, love daddy."
Torrez wanted to provide a better life for Rowan, so he joined the Navy and got two masters degrees from MIT in Massachusetts, Van Stone told KUSA.
Stone said Rowan's father sent several postcards in 2007- when Rowan was 2- from the states he stopped in as he drove from Boston to visit them in Colorado. But not all of the postcards made it to their destination.
"I vaguely remember him saying I sent 5 or 6, and I only got 3 or 4 in the mail. But I never thought anything of it," Van Stone said.
Both mother and son have no clue how the postcard, dated June 10, 2007, made its way to their home almost eight years after Torrez sent it. But Van Stone has an inkling.
"I feel like that was the final goodbye that he didn't get to say," Van Stone said.