Long-lost letter carries farewell from deceased friend

Thanks to a simple gesture from a stranger, Alisson Lang of Palatine finally received the goodbye she never had from a friend who passed away three years ago.

Marlin Keesler of Streamwood was volunteering at the Little City Foundation's Used Book Sale in Skokie this month when a worker he was supervising saw a sealed envelope drop from a stack of books she was moving.

When she asked Keesler what should be done, he noticed the Palatine addresses of both the sender and intended recipient -- Lang -- as well as the outdated 37-cent stamp. He dropped it in a larger envelope with a short note of his own and mailed it.

"It would have been so easy to throw it away," Keesler said, "but as I told my wife, I don't think that way."

Lang said she got a lump in her throat the moment she saw the return address of her friend Elaine, who'd died in a nursing home in 2006 at age 85.

The letter was a thank-you card to both Lang and her mother for organizing Elaine's 85th birthday party.

"I just want to thank both of you for one of the best birthday parties I ever had," she wrote.

Lang suspects the letter slipped Elaine's mind before she had a chance to mail it. Not long afterward, her health declined and she had to be moved to a nursing home.

She died soon afterward, and Lang felt she never really got to say goodbye.

In her own thank-you note to Keesler, Lang told him the letter meant everything to her, and she recognized an important moral in his simple act.

"Your selfless act had given me the peace of mind I thought I would never get back," she wrote. "You have also taught me a great lesson. I will never turn my head to something that means nothing to me, because it could mean the world to someone else."

Elaine, whose last name Lang declined to reveal, had been living with her son and daughter-in-law in a townhouse near Lang's. But as the couple had begun traveling frequently, they asked Lang to check up on Elaine while they were away.

But what started off as the task of a good neighbor turned into a great, bona fide friendship for the last two years of Elaine's life.

Lang said she would often bring Elaine shakes from Culver's or Frosties from Wendy's, which they would enjoy in her kitchen over "girl talk."

Now Lang feels she has the proper closure on those cherished days.