'Now everyone can write to their lost loved ones'

Matilda Handy, 11, came up with the idea of a postbox for grieving relatives to send letters to deceased loved ones after her granny Pat died. Now her story is a moving children's book

- CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE

One of many brutal aspects of grief is a longing to talk to the person you have lost, to share your news or to express how much you miss them.

Nottinghamshire schoolgirl Matilda Handy, 11, came up with an ingenious solution to this devastating problem after her beloved grandmother died.

And Matilda's inspirational story has now been immortalised in a new book, This Letter Says I Love You.

Matilda came up with the idea of the Letters To Heaven postbox after the death of her grandmother Pat, who she called Mama, in 2017.

"I used to visit her at work in the post office and she always used to let me sit on her chair and swivel," says Matilda. "Whenever people came in to give her letters, she would take me outside to the postbox and say, 'This is my postbox'. So when she died, I said to my mum, 'If she had a postbox then, can't she have one now?"

GRIEF

Matilda's mother Leanne works in Nottingham's Gedling Crematorium, so she approached her bosses to suggest installing a Letters To Heaven postbox, enabling anyone to post a confidential letter to their much-missed loved ones. They agreed that Matilda's idea was inspired.

So Leanne tracked down the CEO of Royal Mail on LinkedIn and sourced a red postbox. A local company shotblasted it and painted it white, and it was installed in the crematorium grounds in December 2022. By Christmas, over 100 letters had been posted.

"Grief is universal," says Leanne. "Love is love, and grief is grief, and it affects every one of us. This is our story - but it could be anybody's because it's what everybody feels."

Leanne's mum Pat was just 66 when she died of undiagnosed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and paraneoplastic syndrome. Her death came as a huge shock to her family.