Postcards for the Dead
Words by Janelle Ketcher
A handwritten letter in black ink on lined paper from a son to his father. Courtesy of Postal Service for the Dead
Perhaps you know, through your beliefs or religion, what happens after death. For many, such as myself, who don’t have that confidence and clarity: How do we grapple with the uncertainty of disappearance? Postal Service for the Dead (PSD) offers an opportunity for relationships with the dead to continue and welcomes writers to navigate life after loss – the strangeness, pain, beauty, and everything in between.
Utilizing a variety of supplies to create a letter. Courtesy of Postal Service for the Dead
As I write this piece, three significant elders in my life are working through their final living moments under the care of hospice. While part of them is disappearing, there is a newness glimmering upon the conclusion of their long-lived lives. With their deaths I am anticipating new ways of seeing, understanding, and appreciating life. With over 250 collective years lived between these three giants of my personhood, I try to honor the legacies they leave behind by fostering creativity, giving back, and taking risks – three values each of them has taught me.
Founder Janelle Ketcher (right) leads a group of people in writing their own letters during a workshop. Courtesy of Postal Service for the Dead
This isn’t the first time I’ve sat in the liminal space between life and death – the moments before disappearance where a new relationship is slowly forming and glimmering in the distance, preparing to reappear. In 2019, my mom died from a 10 year journey with frontotemporal dementia – another version of disappearance, both haunting and beautiful.
Three years later, I started the project and community archive Postal Service for the Dead where people are invited to send letters to the deceased. We have amassed over 400 letters of love, longing, anger, and beyond.
While these people have disappeared through the universal and individual experience of death – what this archive of mail has taught me is that our relationships with the dead will reappear throughout life. One postcard recalls eating conch fritters with their dad while another incarcerated writer yearns for his wife’s scent. By putting pen to paper and sharing their mundane to momentous experiences with the deceased, writers are challenging the absoluteness of disappearing.
A postcard written in blue ink for the sender’s deceased father. Courtesy of Postal Service for the Dead
In late 2024, Postal Service for the Dead was joined by Isabella León-Chambers, Danielle Galván Gomez, and Sydney Kysar to develop a processing document for the ever-growing archive. The Archival Advisory Group’s conversations were intentionally slow, guided by trauma-informed practices and ethical privacy concerns which required patient decision making. The relationships inherent in each letter, sometimes loving and sometimes fraught, were elements of the archive that our Archival Advisory Group wanted to highlight. In addition to standard metadata terms such as dates and locations – we also developed terms such as “Relationship” to enable future archive users to engage with letters written to spouses, siblings, friends, and more. To honor the collective nature of PSD, we hope that the processing document will be user-friendly enough that anyone, with or without archival experience, can contribute to the processing of the collection.
Attendees of Artful Remembrance: A Creative Grief Workshop create collages and letters at Green-Wood cemetery. Courtesy of Postal Service for the Dead
Whether under the shade of trees at Hermon Park or in a museum surrounded by antiquities, we have invited grievers to share their stories through card making pop-ups. At Antigua Coffee in Cypress Park, our first of many events, we received letters that grappled with the complexities of loss – the heartbreak of cancer taking a beloved dog, seeing relatives in dreams, regret of losing an old necklace, and well wishes to the beyond.
Storytelling, sharing memories or lessons learned, offer an opportunity for the dead to reappear through those that remember them. When we allow something to disappear, we then give it a chance to reappear. Transformed, shaped, and guided by grief, the Postal Service for the Dead archive shows the power of bringing curiosity to the unknown.
From when I submitted this piece to when I was asked to edit it, one of my aforementioned elders died. In his honor, I’ll use a line from Desiderata by Max Ehrmann and invite you to “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others”. If you feel called to write a letter, please follow instructions found our website.
www.postalserviceforthedead.com
mail to:
Postal Service for the Dead
PO BOX 31412
Los Angeles, CA, 90031
RESOURCES
Whether community members or colleagues are handling these materials, selfcare is the highest priority in training folks in navigating sensitive material. Please take the time to explore resources our team has collected and bring some of these training, perspectives, and tips to your archival workplaces:
https://www.postalserviceforthedead.com/self-care-in-archives
For additional resources please visit:
https://www.postalserviceforthedead.com/resources
A pile of envelopes with various notations indicating ‘Do not read’, ‘Read but do not share’, and ‘Read and share publicly’. Courtesy of Death of the Party NYC
Janelle Ketcher (she/her) is an artist, library science professional, and Founder of Postal Service for the Dead. Janelle holds a BFA in Painting, Art History and Social Practice from The Kansas City Art Institute; received the Certification in Social Emotional Arts from Arts & Healing Initiative, completed the End of Life Training Program at Going with Grace, and is pursuing a MS in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She seeks to encourage creative expression throughout our entire lifespan-from youth programming to end of life projects through the intersections of resource access, archiving, and public service.
⟣DISAPPEARANCE⟢
More Stories
↓ ↯ ⬇︎ ⇣
Editors
Akosa · Stephanie Becker · Elena Diebel · Catherine Falls · Jenny Galipo
Sarah Jardini · Lisa Kahn · SL Leimbach · Vern Molidor · Kelli Yakabu
Editor-in-Chief
Jen Neville
Design
Zaira Torres
More selected projects
Sign-up to be a member of LAAC
Connect With Us
Site by Grace Danico