Moving letter

By Casey Neill
VANDALS robbed a dying Belgrave woman of her father’s final words of support –
“To my beautiful darling baby girl, ‘Chin up!’ Love Dad”.
Heather Bell never read this heartfelt get well card sent from England, because her letter box was in pieces on the ground. She died in November.
“My letter box continues to be targeted by vandals, which both enrages me and reminds me of the terrible sadness,” her husband Steven said.
Mr Bell is appealing to vandals to consider the real cost of their actions.
“I thought maybe if people could understand it’s beyond just the price of a letter box and the nuisance…it’s just something you’ll never get back,” he said.
“It’s heartbreaking really.
“This vandalism is senseless and hurts people in ways that could not be imagined.”
Vandals first targeted Mr Bell’s letter box about five years ago, but it then went undamaged until last September.
His wife was battling cancer, and he was “running backwards and forwards from the hospital”.
“I came home and my letterbox was trashed, and I just didn’t have time to fix it,” he said.
“For a couple of days it was just sitting on the ground out there and it did get left alone.
“But then someone must have walked by and said ‘oh well, we’ll fix that’ and it got completely wrecked.”
Mr Bell did his best to repair it, but by this time he and his sister-in-law were staying with his wife around the clock.
“It was towards the end. She was frightened and scared and didn’t want to be on her own,” Mr Bell said.
“One day I came home and my letter box was just completely gone, and I just couldn’t do anything about it.”
Undeliverable mail is returned to sender.
“I didn’t know there was a card from her father,” Mr Bell said.
“The following week she died. And she never got the card,” Mr Bell said.
“It turned up afterwards, before the funeral.
“We put the card in the coffin and it went to the crematorium with her.”
Mr Bell spoke to the Mail last week after vandals again destroyed his letterbox.
“It just floods back,” he said.
“They don’t appreciate what they do to people,” he said.
He said neighbouring homes on Belgrave-Hallam Road had also suffered property damage, but those responsible – not police – needed to solve the problem.
“How do you know when someone’s going to be walking by? We can’t have the letter box police,” he said.
“I just want it to stop.”
“Maybe parents could talk about it with their kids. Maybe that could get the message across.”